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CHAPTER FIVE MAGICIAN, HEAL THYSELF! (#ulink_54f45e83-f9bc-5ae7-b055-81d7a90892fd)
When Will woke the next day at first light, he found that Morann had already left. He sat down at a small oak table and, while he waited for breakfast, took out the little red fish from his pouch. It was so like his own green fish that there could be no doubt that it had come from the same place. And as Gwydion always reminded him, a famous rede said there was no such thing as a coincidence. But what the meaning might be in the fish was far from clear. As he turned it over in his fingers he wondered why he had not shown it to Gwydion, or to Morann, who was surely the best person to give an opinion. He had just put it in his pouch and forgotten about it. Or had he?
Delicious smells wafted in from the kitchens and soon the Plough began to fill with Eiton’s harvesters. Will, who was sitting alone in the corner, saw how they first noticed him then touched their foreheads and shook him by the hand as they filed in.
‘Morning. Morning…’
Will breathed deep. He seemed to have lost his appetite, and took a little oatmeal. When he had finished it he took up the red fish and studied it again, while its beady little green eye studied him. It was so like his own talisman, yet the comfort he had always got from the green fish did not come from this one.
Now, as he looked up, he saw the harvesters holding out their sickles towards him.
‘Thank you, Master,’ the nearest of them said.
‘What?’
‘For your blessings upon our trade tools.’
He looked back at the man blankly, then he saw that his quarterstaff was propped up behind him and he realized with a bump what the men had taken him for.
They think I’m a wizard, he thought, smiling. A wizard! Would you believe it?
The men would not leave until he had touched each of their sickles in turn and muttered the name of it in the true tongue.
As the last of the harvesters left, a young mother came to him and asked to have a blessing laid on her child.
‘A blessing? Well, I don’t think I—’
‘Please. Just a good word for the babe, Master,’ she said. ‘To keep the horse flies off her while I ties up the corn stooks. See?’
‘You want me to put a good word on the baby?’ Will asked doubtfully. He looked across the room and saw Dimmet watching with folded arms. Will inclined his head, then shrugged. ‘Here. Give him to me. What’s his name?’
‘Rosy,’ said the child’s mother.
‘Oh, yes. Yes…of course.’
Will made a sign on the babe’s forehead, while muttering a spell of general protection against insects. He realized he couldn’t remember the true name for horse flies, so he protected her from wasps and creepy-crafties of all kinds, then he handed the child back.
‘She’ll be fine in the fields, but make sure she stays out of the sun, won’t you?’
‘Thank you, Master,’ the woman said and went away.
But no sooner had she gone than a toothless old woman appeared. She had with her a girl of five or six. When Will looked up the old woman said nothing, but the child smiled the most astonishing smile. She had no more teeth than the old woman, and was also cross-eyed.
‘Can I…help?’ Will said at last.
‘Begging your pardon, Master,’ the old woman said. ‘I brung the daughter’s daughter when I heard you was here.’
Will waited, but when nothing more came from the old woman except an expectant look, he said, ‘What I mean is…is there something I can do for you?’
He watched as the old woman shuffled and then said something to the child, pointing to Will’s staff. Straight away the child put her hands to her mouth and grinned shyly, then she darted forward to touch the staff.
‘Hoy! What’s this?’ Will asked. ‘What did you just tell her? That’s no wizard’s staff.’
The old woman looked suddenly cast down and began to beg piteously. ‘Is there nothing can be done for the poor little one, Master?’
‘What’s your name?’ Will asked the girl.
‘Thithwin.’
‘Thithwin. What a very nice name.’
‘It’s Siswin,’ said the old woman. ‘I’m africkened she’ll never get a husband looking like she do, Master.’
‘Surely it’s a mite early to be thinking of husbands for…ah, Siswin,’ Will said frowning. He was uncomfortable discussing the child’s looks in her hearing.
‘Ain’t there nothing at all can be done against plug ugliness, Master?’
‘Just…wait a moment.’
He thought back to his studies and knew there was something that could be done, if only it was to make the child believe that she was beautiful. According to the magic book Gwydion had given him that usually did the trick, for children had a way of growing into what they thought they wanted to be most of the time.
He took the girl’s shoulders in both hands, steadying her before him. Then he brushed back the hair from her face with his thumbs and put a pinch of salt on top of her head, after which he muttered a spell that was used to untangle knots.
‘Look at this finger with this eye, and that finger with that eye,’ he said holding up two fingers before her. Then he slowly moved his two fingers apart and muttered a ‘let it be’ spell.
‘You are a very pretty girl, do you know that?’ he said solemnly, and the girl nodded.
‘Now will you make my teeth grow, pleeth?’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about them. They’ll grow out in their own good time. They always do.’
Will waited for them to leave and allow him to finish his breakfast in peace, but they did not move.
‘And what about grandmammy? Will her teeth grow out ath well?’
Will spread his hands in regret. ‘Now that I can’t promise.’
‘Say “thank you” to the Master,’ the old woman said.
‘Thank you, Mathter.’
When they had gone Will finished his meal then, alerted by a buzz of voices, he got up to look along the passageway. There was a knot of people at the door of the inn, and all of them were marvelling at the improvement in the girl’s eyes. Dimmet was foremost among them, his voice booming.
Will spoke to Dimmet the moment he came in. ‘What did you tell them?’
‘Oh, ‘twern’t me. Word has just got about.’
‘What word?’
‘Why, that there’s a wizard in the district.’
Will tried to lower his voice. ‘But I’m not a wizard.’
‘You could have fooled me about that. That was as pretty a piece of healing as what ever I’ve seen. And I’ve seen a fair few healers in my time, genuine as well as the other sort.’
‘But that was just a little helper magic.’
‘Well, that’s it! Folks’ll walk for days to have a touch of magic. Don’t you know that? Many a time when Master Gwydion’s come here there’s been a crowd of folk started to gather outside. One time there was a line stretched halfway up to Lawn Hill. That’s why he don’t never stop in a place for too long.’ Dimmet grinned. ‘I expect he asked you to look after business for him for a day or two, did he? Save him the bother?’
‘What?’ Will said, aghast.
‘You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, Willand, you know that!’ Dimmet winked. ‘I expect I can handle all the extra customers. And there’s generally a powerful thirst on folk who’ve walked a half dozen leagues or more on a summer’s day in search of a cure.’
Just then Duffred put his head in. ‘There’s a man out here says can he bring his cow in to see the wizard?’
‘No, he cannot!’ Dimmet said and marched off down the passageway.
‘Where’re you going?’ Will called after him. ‘Duffred, where’s your father gone?’
But Duffred only grinned and said, ‘He’s found a mare’s nest and he’s gone to laugh at the eggs. What do you think? You’d better come out here before they start breaking the door down.’
Will groaned, and resigned himself to a long day.
A clamour began as he came to the alehouse door.
‘One at a time!’ he said. ‘Please!’
Duffred and two of his father’s serving men came out and marshalled the folk into a line, saying that if they did not stand quietly and in good order the wizard would not see anybody.
‘What did you say that for?’ Will hissed as Duffred went back inside.
‘Eh?’
‘What did you call me a wizard for?’
‘Oh, they don’t know no different. Besides, you are a wizard to us.’ And Duffred went off whistling.
When noon came, Will hardly stopped to eat. He had not bothered to count but he supposed that over a hundred folk had gone away happier than when they had arrived. He helped them over everything from bunions and hens that refused to lay to pig-bitten fingers and a troublesome toothache. But no matter how hard he listened, or how many signs he placed on heads, still more folk presented themselves.
Throughout the afternoon it seemed that two hopefuls arrived for every one who went away, and as the heat of the day began to mount, Will began to wonder how many folk there were left in this part of the Realm. The promise he had made to Gwydion to lie low had somehow failed without any intention on his part, and that was worrying. If I keep on like this, he thought, someone nasty is bound to hear of me and be drawn here – if only to have a cure for their boils.
‘I don’t want to disappoint anyone,’ he told Dimmet at last as the innkeeper brought him out another tankard of cider. ‘They come here with such faith in me. But there’s got to be a limit. I’ll have to call it a day when the sun does the same.’
‘You’ll never get through this lot by sundown!’
‘I’ll have to. It’s necessary to transpose spells when they’re cast at night. And of that art I know very little.’
The end of the line was still a long way down the road, and only when Will refused to see another person did Dimmet send Duffred along to guard the end so that newly arriving folk could be sent away.
The crescent moon was setting when Will finally escaped to take his supper. Dimmet, who was counting a stack of silver pennies, said Will deserved the best room in the inn, which was up a set of stairs jealously guarded by Bolt, the Plough’s big black dog.
‘That’s it!’ Will announced. ‘No more! You’d better tell them to go away, Dimmet. Because I am not seeing anyone else.’
‘There’s always tomorrow.’
‘Not tomorrow. Not ever!’
He went to bed very tired, but he could not rest easy, for though none of the casts had been great in power or extent, the exercise of so many spells still sparked in all the channels of his body.
As he lay restlessly, a thousand faces appeared to him – all the poor folk who had passed under his hands, all the wounds and worries, all the ailments and afflictions.
Surely, he thought as he turned onto his side, I couldn’t have advertised myself more widely if I’d shouted my name out from the rooftops.
The next day he woke early. He was still tired, and quite ravenous, but when he opened the shutters he saw a swelling crowd was already gathered below. They waited in hope, though they had been told that there would be no more healing. Those who had arrived since dawn were reluctant to believe what those who had waited all night were telling them. And so the crowd had continued to grow.
As Will sat at breakfast he debated what he would say. When he peeped through a crack in the shutters he saw that several hawkers had come hoping to profit from the crowd. There was even a juggler in red and yellow walking up and down with a chair balanced on his chin.
‘You’ll have to be strong with them today,’ Dimmet said, a gleam in his eye.
‘I’m not going out there. Tell them I’ve gone.’
‘Tell them yourself.’
Will’s fists clenched. ‘Dimmet!’
Dimmet was about to go out to make the announcement that Will was shortly to address them all when there came the drumming of a horse’s hooves.
‘Master! Master!’ someone cried at the back door. ‘Come quick!’
That sounded too urgent to ignore, and Will decided to go into the yard. He pushed his way through the onlookers and was met by a man sitting astride a dun pony who begged him to come along the Nadderstone road with him.
‘What is it?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Is someone injured?’
‘It’s up on the tower!’ he cried. ‘Come quick!’
‘What’s on the tower? What tower?’
‘They caught a goggly in a trap up by the old chapter house!’
‘A goggly?’
A great gust of surprise swept through those who were listening at the gate as they all caught their breath at once.
‘They wants to kill it! You got to come quick!’
That sounded sinister, though Will had no idea what a goggly was. Still, it was his opportunity to escape and he seized it. ‘Stand back!’ he said, waving an uncompromising arm at the crowd.
There were groans for fear that he would leave them. Some gave tongue to angry shouts and began to press in around him, but he leapt up behind the rider and thrust out his oak staff. He cried out as he had once heard Gwydion cry out, ‘Give way, there! Hinder me who dares!’
