‘But I have no story to trade,’ she protested.

  ‘I think you have,’ he said, ‘even though you may not know it yet. Besides, have you forgotten what it was you asked me?’

  She glanced at him across the table, seemed on the point of denying it, and then shook her head as if to say: ‘What could you tell me that I don’t already know?’

  For a while they ate in silence then Thomas pushed his empty plate to one side, swallowed a mouthful of ale and said: ‘I took ship at Port Maenclochog in the south of Dyffydd’s Kingdom. It was not the boat I would have chosen if I’d had a choice but by then they were right on my heels. They had picked up my tracks in Monmouth and were hoping I would lead them to Gyre. I decided to put my trust in Dyffydd’s shield. Besides, there was nothing better once the Edict of Proscription had sealed off the land route to the north. Did you know they’ve put a price in gold on our heads in five of the Seven Kingdoms?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Pots. ‘Five royal they’ve billed in New Exeter.’

  ‘That’s Simon of Leicester’s doing. Constant has entrusted him with the task of implementing the Edict. Having met the man I can well believe he relishes his new duties. The Falcons who trailed me across the Welsh mountains were members of a troop calling themselves the Gray Brotherhood. They have secular license to range the Kingdoms and owe allegiance only to Lord Simon. The days when each brood was firmly tethered to its own roost are over and done with.’

  ‘But you still managed to give them the slip.’

  ‘Only just. The brig sailed on Monday’s midnight tide with a cargo of wool and Welsh hides, bound for the Isles of Brittany. By noon on the Tuesday the wind had swung round to the southwest and by the time the coast of Cornwall was in sight it was clear we were heading into trouble. The mate and the crew were all for making a run into New Barnstaple but the Captain had once lost a vessel in those waters and elected to ride it out in the Channel. They hove to, made all fast, set a storm rig and threw out a drag anchor.

  ‘For a time all seemed well, but as the wind blew harder the boat began to roll like a barrel and then some of the cargo started to shift in the hold. Two of the sailors went below to try and secure it and one of them got his leg crushed against a stanchion. It was then that they began muttering about having a Jonah aboard.

  ‘The Captain was the only man who knew what I was and he spoke up for me. He was not Kin, just an ordinary, decent human being, and I daresay that if the wind had dropped a bit they’d soon have forgotten all about me. But, alas, it blew harder. By midnight you could hardly hear yourself speak for the screaming of the rigging and the roaring of the black waters. The Captain came into the cabin and told me the anchor cable had parted. “Pray for us, Kinsman,” he said, “and for yourself too, for I cannot stay them now.”

  ‘They took me and lashed my arms to a spar and cast me overboard. I saw the light of the ship’s lantern glimmer through the darkness once, then once again, and then it vanished. Later the clouds thinned and I saw the new moon swimming among them like a silver fish. Later still the sun rose and I saw the coast of Exmoor.

  ‘All that day I drifted with nothing for company but the gulls, though once in the distance I glimpsed a barque with white sails. Then, gradually, I began to slip away from myself, traveling back to the scenes of my childhood. Out and back again, out and back. And sometimes when I returned I found it was night, and sometimes it was day, and sometimes it was betwixt and between. And that was the second day.

  ‘By the third day I suppose my body was already drifting in the Somersea. I hovered over it with the circling gulls, grieving for it as it nodded there open-mouthed, awash upon its spar, and nuzzled up against it with the gray seals. The bond which tethered my soul was thinner than a lace and yet still it would not break. And so passed the third day.

  ‘By the fourth day that lace had shrunk to a thread of gossamer. I floated in a world of rose-red mists where there was neither pain nor heat nor cold, and yet I knew that I was not alone. It was as though I was lying awake in the night and listening to someone breathing quietly in the darkness beside me. It lasted for only a moment but somehow I knew that because it had been there, the thread which had all but parted the link between myself and that poor sodden thing on the spar, was being restored for a little while longer.’

  He lifted his hand and stroked his beard and then said abruptly: ‘And that ends my story. The rest you know better than I know it myself.’

  Pots blinked across at him then got up from his place, carried the flagon round the table and replenished the Kinsman’s tankard. ‘You spoke more truly than I gave you credit for, friend, when you told me you had been drowned. Faith, I know not what to make of it. Jonsey said you were less than a heart-beat away from death when he dragged you aboard.’

  Thomas nodded. ‘Less than a heart-beat,’ he murmured. ‘Aye, potter, he spoke true. But the question which troubles me so deeply is, Whose was the heart?’

  FOUR

  The Edict of Proscription outlawing the Kinsmen had been promulgated at the express command of Archbishop Constant, supreme head of The Church Militant throughout the Seven Kingdoms. For the first fifteen years following the martyrdom of the Boy Thomas at York in the year AD 3000 the doctrine of Kinship, though never officially recognized, had been permitted to flourish under the tacit aegis of the True Faith. By boldly claiming Thomas for the Church the Black Bishop (as Constant was then known) had sought to neutralize the power of the resurgent myth of the Forthcoming, and the advent of the White Bird of Kinship. But the spirit of the Boy had refused to be shackled. Blown by the breath of the old Tale Spinner, Peter of Hereford, and the renegade ex-Falcon Gyre, the spark of the Boy’s faith had flown out along the highways of the Kingdoms starting hungry fire in the dry kindling of men’s hearts.

  Before the year 3001 was out pilgrims were beginning to trickle into York, humble folk for the most part, but one or two traveling on horseback. They came to pray at the graveside in the Minster Close and at the station on the city wall where the fatal bolt had been loosed and the Boy had died. Thenceforward, each year, the numbers grew until the trickle had become quite a sizable stream and there was even talk of building an oratory in the cathedral precinct. Then, at midnight on the last day of December 3015, the first miracle was reported. A child who had been blind from birth was standing with her parents below the wall station listening to a Kinsman playing Thomas’s ‘Lament’ when she had suddenly cried out that she could see the White Bird hovering in the starlight above the piper’s head.

  By the next day the whole city was humming with the news. There seemed little doubt that something extraordinary had occurred. Certainly the child could see, and everyone who had known her swore that she had been sightless from the day she was born. Nevertheless, the Church in its wisdom hesitated to acknowledge the miracle, choosing instead to send a certain Brother Francis as Advocate Sceptic to ferret out the truth.

  To the Archbishop who had selected him personally, Brother Francis seemed an ideal choice. A man whose devotion to his faith bordered at times upon the fanatical, he had lost no time in questioning not only the girl herself but every single member of her family together with all the inhabitants of the little Cotswold village where she lived. In so doing, for the first time in his life. Brother Francis came into close contact with a complete community who had embraced the doctrine of Kinship. Thus it was that during the long watches of the night he found himself wrestling with a faith that was large enough to contain even his own. Being the kind of man he was, he rode back to York and delivered his report personally into the hands of the Archbishop.

  Their meeting took place in the Falconry, the grim tower block of gray stone which housed the headquarters of the whole of the Secular Arm of the Church Militant throughout the Seven Kingdoms. From a window of the sparsely furnished fifth floor eyrie which constituted the Archbishop’s personal quarters a group of pilgrims could be seen making their way across the Minster Close to the Boy’s grave. While Constant perused his report, Brother Francis gazed down upon the tiny figures now kneeling in prayer beside the plain slab of sandstone that marked the Boy’s tomb and was moved to wonder at the nature of the power that lay beneath it.

  The Archbishop concluded his reading, tossed the sheets of parchment on to the table before him and moved across to the friar’s side. ‘Fifteen years ago,’ he observed somberly, ‘I stood with Marshal Barran at this very window and watched them interring the lad’s body. I had my doubts as to the wisdom of what we were doing even then.’

  ‘How so, my Lord?’

  ‘I had not paid sufficient heed to the myth, Francis: I smelt heresy in the air – smelt it sharp as burnt feathers – and yet I did not trust my own nose. Now it is all coming to pass as Barran said it would.’

  ‘The Brotherhood of Mankind is no heresy, my Lord.’

  ‘You think not, Francis?’ The question was so gently voiced that anyone who knew the Archbishop less well than the friar might well have taken it for a mere conversational formality.

  ‘My Lord, the corpus juris canonici …’

  ‘Go on, Francis. Go on.’

  The friar turned and stared into his master’s face. ‘The Kinsmen preach only love for their fellows, my Lord, and the doctrine of the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit which lies within our grasp. Their White Bird is no more than a fanciful symbol of their …’ his words faltered and died upon his lips.

  ‘To you, Francis, I am sure it is,’ returned the Archbishop mildly. ‘But to them? This bird which the child claims she saw, was that a symbol? And the gift of sight which your report would appear to confirm, was that also symbolic? I only ask.’

  ‘I sincerely believe it to have been a reward for the maid’s pure faith, my Lord.’

  ‘But her faith in what , Francis? That is what troubles me. We can hardly suppose it to be her faith in the Holy Mystery we serve. Faith in the Boy Thomas, then? Or is it perhaps faith in something which he has let loose in the world and which now, like a pernicious mole burrowing secretly in the darkness of superstition, threatens the very foundations of our Holy Church!’

  ‘How so, my Lord?’

  ‘By undermining Her supreme spiritual authority, Francis. Do you really believe that if we decline to accept this “miracle” it will make the slightest difference one way or the other? Go out into the City and ask the shopkeepers for their opinion. Their answer is already lying in their moneybags. What better evidence of authenticity could they imagine? Give them sufficient time, Francis, and the Boy and his Bird will have the very streets of York paved with gold.’

  ‘But the miracle, my Lord. What of that?’

  ‘You really believe it was a miracle, Francis?’

  ‘I do, my Lord. It fulfils every requirement in the codex transcendentalis . At no point could I shake her.’

  Archbishop Constant pursed up his lips, drew a deep breath and then expelled it in a prolonged sigh. ‘A thousand years ago men had such miracles at their fingertips, Francis, and yet what did it avail them? They held the whole natural world cupped in the palms of their hands and all they could contrive to do with it was to ravish it and then drown it. They had the knowledge and the skill and yet they lacked the wisdom which alone can make skill and knowledge meaningful. Indeed some of them appear, in all sincerity, to have believed that they were responsible not to God but for Him! And when at last they awoke from their hubristic dream and saw what they had done they wrung their hands and blamed each other. That any of them were spared is surely the greatest possible tribute to the infinite mercy of the Almighty.’ He glanced back at the table where the report lay and shook his head. ‘I have learnt to distrust all miracles, Francis – even ones as well authenticated as yours. Especially ones as well authenticated as yours!’

  ‘But surely you cannot deny that they constitute our only evidence of true sanctitas , my Lord? I have always assumed that it was your awareness of this that made you insist upon the Boy being interred in consecrated ground?’

  ‘Oh, I was aware of something , all right,’ said the Archbishop. ‘It was in the air all that year and growing stronger month by month as the millennium approached. By Christmastide the rumors were flying around like feathers and with about as much substance. The “Forthcoming” the fools called it. ’

  ‘True, my Lord.’

  The Archbishop snorted derisively. ‘And where does that leave us? A legend: an old rogue of a story-teller; and a boy who plays the pipes. Smoke, Francis. Moonshine. Nothing.’

  ‘Surely enough, my Lord, in all conscience, if God chooses them.’

  ‘The rebuke is justified,’ said the Archbishop with a thin smile. ‘But the Church has no need of Birds of Kinship. The truth enshrined in Holy Writ must suffice us.’

  The Friar nodded. ‘Then you have made up your mind, my Lord?’

  ‘You have done it for me, Francis. Far better than I could. You have shown me the error of my ways.’

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Fifteen years ago I overlooked a small but highly significant detail of the legend. It was Barran who first drew my attention to it. He told me how in the very moment of its death, the blood of the White Bird splashed the breast of the Black Bird which had destroyed it, and from that moment the Black Bird became white itself and the whole cycle was repeated. Like that other fabled rara avis , the Phoenix, its death contained the seed of its own re-birth. Had I realized the implications even a bare twenty-four hours earlier than I did, that grave you now see below you would be an unmarked hole in the wall ditch and this whole farrago would have been forgotten. Well, perhaps it is too late to undo the damage, but what option have I but to try? I am debating whether to prepare an Edict of Proscription branding Kinship as heretical and having it promulgated throughout the Kingdoms. As for your report, Francis, that will go to join a hundred others – each in its own way not one scruple less convincing than your own – in the Secular Archives.’ He eyed the friar. ‘You are disappointed?’

  ‘I live only to serve, my Lord.’

  ‘Yes, of course you do. So do we all. Well, now I have another commission for you. I think it may be that we shall have to discredit the Boy, Thomas. To do this it will be necessary to discover all we can about him. So this is your next task, Francis. Find out where he was born, his parentage, upbringing and so forth. All I know for certain is that he hailed from Cumberland. There is an old clerk in the Chapter House, Seymour by name, who knows something about him. Start there. I can spare you for two months. That should prove ample for our purposes. After all, as I recall it, the whelp had seen scarce thirteen summers when he died.’

  Confidential. Into the hand of Archbishop Constant at York. Under Seal.

  The Priory of St Margaret, Kentmere.

  Quadragesima Sunday. February 3018 .

  ‘My Lord,

  ‘I write to you in all humility and great haste concerning the mission with which you entrusted me. I have been diligent in your service having questioned many people who knew the Boy, Thomas. All here speak of him as “Tom” and, for convenience, that is the form I propose to adopt.

  ‘He was born on Midsummer’s Eve 2986, the first born son and fourth child to Margot and Andrew Gill, a wheelwright of Stavely in Cumberland. Baptized on the 5th Sunday after Trinity, given names Thomas Andrew. His mother continued to suckle him until he was past his second year – a common practice in these parts. He appears to have been of a notably independent disposition even in infancy – “a mind of his own,” “knew what he didn’t want,” were two phrases commonly applied to him by his sisters. As soon as he had learned to walk he was wont to wander off into the woods and fells and was lost more than once. His father chastized him but to little avail.

  ‘On his second birthday his father made him a present of a wooden whistle which the boy had soon taught himself to play with remarkable skill, learning to copy the calls of birds so well that he was said to be able to charm down the birds from the trees. His musical talent brought him to the notice of one Morfedd of Bowness (2910–2296), known as “the Wizard of Bowness,” who approached Andrew and Margot Gill and “bespoke” the boy on his third birth-night (2989), offering in exchange the sum of thirty gold pieces and promising that he would gift the mother with a second son within a twelve month should she and her husband accede to his wish.

  ‘The size of the sum offered and Morfedd’s reputation were such that they could have had little option but to agree. The bargain was accordingly sealed and Tom went to live with the wizard on the Isle of Cartmel. Ten months later (April 2990) Margot was indeed brought to bed of a second son, Stephen, who now lives and plies his father’s trade in Stavely.

  ‘With regard to the man Morfedd I have found it well nigh impossible to disentangle fact from fantasy. He is, of course, credited with all the conventional powers of the sorcerer but, unless hearsay lies most grievously, he appears to have employed them with singular discretion, seemingly content to rely upon his formidable reputation to achieve his ends. However, when Irish raiders threatened to lay waste the coastal town of Windermere in 2840 the townsfolk approached Morfedd and begged him to protect them. This he is said to have done by “devising magic thunderbolts of such force that two of the raiders’ ships were sunk without trace and the rest fled.” To the best of my belief that was the only occasion when he was directly responsible for the taking of human life. Nowhere have I encountered anyone who is prepared to speak against him, though whether this is due to fear or reverence is hard to say. The terms most often applied to him are “good” and “wise,” and though he has now been dead for nearly twenty years the ineradicable impression he has left upon people’s minds is of a remarkable sage, benign and wholly fearless who revered life in all its forms.

  ‘Tom spent seven years in Morfedd’s tutelage, returning home every third month to pass seven nights with his family. His sisters report him as having been well cared for and remarkably happy if somewhat reluctant to tell them how he passed his days – “it was like a lock had been placed on his tongue.” But occasionally he let slip some remark which made them wonder whether he was not fey, as when he told his sister Angela that he was learning how to talk “plant talk.” Challenged to prove it he took her out into the kitchen garden, sat down cross-legged amid the young cabbages and “fell into a kind of a dream, sitting so still that the butterflies alit upon his head and I was afeared to say owt or e’en to go nigh him.” Shortly after Tom had returned to Cartmel Angela noticed that the plants surrounding the place where he had sat were all growing far bigger and stronger than the others, so that in a month they had attained the size of full-grown plants while the others still stood little more than a span.