The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

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      ‘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!’

      The crowd was struck dumb by that. Dimmet and Duffred and their helpers began to push people back from the gate. A way parted and allowed the pony to canter away. A moment later they had left Eiton village far behind, and Will clung on as they passed into open country.

      They followed the road that Will had taken the day before along the broad valley and past the ruined chapter house. But when they came up the ridge where the tower stood he saw that it was abandoned no more. A knot of folk were gathered at its foot, and they were looking up at the mottled brown stone. Many had armed themselves with sticks and were shouting angry oaths at the tower. They broke off when they saw their messenger had returned with the wizard.

      As Will got down from the horse he saw one of the young men begin throwing stones up at the tower.

      ‘Hoy!’ he shouted, and made the lad turn. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

      ‘Trying to wallop that there goggly.’

      When Will shaded his eyes and looked up he saw they were trying to dislodge the gargoyle.

      ‘It’s naught but a carven image!’

      ‘Nooo! ‘tis a goggly! Look, it moves!’

      Will stared at their red faces and began to suspect they had been put under an enchantment. But then the creature actually did move.

      ‘See, Master! Now then! What kind of a carving is that?’

      Will’s eyes narrowed. It was a live animal trapped high up in a corner of the wall. One of the ugliest creatures he had ever seen. Its every movement lifted the hairs in Will’s flesh, as the sight of a spider did in some. The creature was brown-grey and mottled, batlike yet baby-faced at the same time, and there was something elfin about it. It had wings and a tail and four thin limbs, and was about the size of a three-year-old child, though it was built much slighter and in strange proportions. Whenever it moved the folk below gasped and hooted. And when the bold lad made to pitch another stone up at it Will stayed him with a question.

      ‘Who found it?’

      One of the men spoke up. ‘My brother seen it up there around dawn when we come up from Morton Ashley to check on the snares.’

      ‘Snares?’ Will asked sharply. ‘Shame on you. There’s a deal of suffering in snares, you know that.’

      ‘Well, fetch it down then so’s we can kill it!’ the man said.

      ‘Is that what you brought me out here for?’ Will demanded.

      ‘Look!’

      The thing moved again, crouched in a corner, then scuttled at speed across a sheer wall, clinging to the vertical surface and the overhang of the parapet with long, clawlike nails. Will saw that something was clamped to its ankle and it trailed a long, rusty chain that seemed to be attached to the masonry of the tower.

      Stones were let fly at it and fists shaken.

      ‘Naaw! Naaaw!’ it cried, and a shower of grit flaked down into their eyes from its struggles.

      ‘Stop that!’ Will cried with all the authority he could muster. ‘You must try to calm yourselves!’

      ‘At night them gogglies fly out from caverns and drink the milk of our animals,’ a woman said, hate shining in her eyes. ‘And they steal babies from out their cradles!’

      ‘And they shuns the light,’ another told him. ‘But ‘tis said they can sit out even in the noonday sun and not budge once they’ve tasted of the flesh of a child!’

      ‘Nonsense.’

      ‘’Tis СКАЧАТЬ