still didn’t seem to understand. “How do we go? Is it very far?” he said.
“Shut up,” said my aunt. “You’re a fool too!”
Ivar looked so puzzled at this that Finn sidled up to him and whispered, “It will be three or four days for the journey. Bernica is larger than Skarr, but not so large as Logra.”
“Did the boy learn no geography?” Aunt Beck asked the wet sky.
After this, I cannot remember anyone else speaking much for the rest of the day. We stopped for a silent picnic of bread, ham and plums and then went on across the green pillowy plain. By dusk it was raining really hard and quite obvious that we were not going to make Coolochie that day. We were forced to stop at a damp little inn for the night.
Aunt Beck glowered at the rain pattering off its thatch and the green moss growing up its walls. “I hate Bernica!” she said.
I sometimes wonder if my story would have been different if the beds in the inn had been comfortable. They were not. The mattresses seemed to have been stuffed with gorse bushes. They prickled and they rustled and the bed frames creaked, and I know it was hours until I got to sleep – and I only slept when Plug-Ugly came creeping in beside me, warm and soft. Aunt Beck probably had a worse night than I did. When I got up soon after cockcrow, she was still fast asleep, looking exhausted. I crept away downstairs where I found that Ivar had ordered a splendid breakfast for himself and Ogo and Finn, but forgotten Aunt Beck and me entirely.
“I’ll order more for you now,” he said. “Does Beck want any?”
My aunt never eats much for breakfast, but she does like her tea. When I asked in the kitchen, they only had nettle tea. No camomile, no thyme, no rosehip. I told them to take her up a mug of what they had and went out into the yard to see to Moe. Ogo had made sure she was fed luckily, and brushed her down, and Plug-Ugly was sitting in the cart, fully visible, eating the rest of the ham. I went and sat with him and finished most of the bread, and most of the plums.
“You are a strange creature,” I said to him. “What are you really?”
He just rubbed his head against my arm and purred. So we sat happily side by side until an uproar broke out in the inn. I could hear the landlord and his wife protesting mightily, sharp cracks of anger from Aunt Beck, Finn shouting for peace and Ivar yelling that it was not his fault. Shortly, both Ogo and Ivar shot into the yard, still eating, and Finn hurried after them, feeding a handful of raisins to Green Greet.
“What is going on?” I said.
“Your aunt’s being a sow!” Ivar said through his mouthful.
“Sure, she meant for us to eat in the cart as we travelled,” Finn explained.
It turned out that Aunt Beck had not budgeted for our stay at the inn, nor for the breakfasts – Ivar and Ogo had of course eaten the food they’d ordered for me. And Plug-Ugly and I had eaten the rest of the food in the cart. Aunt Beck was furious because this meant that we had to buy food in Coolochie now. I must say I didn’t feel this was a very good reason for being so angry. I put it down to the bad night on the bad bed, and I sympathised with Ivar when he kept saying, “She could have told us!”
We set off under another rainbow – a great double one – as a very subdued group, Aunt Beck all upright, with her mouth pressed into an angry line, and the rest of us hardly daring to say a word. Only Green Greet said anything, and he kept squawking, “Double bow, double measure!” Aunt Beck shot him looks as she drove, as if she was longing to wring his green feathery neck.
We reached Coolochie around midday. Ivar made moans of disgust when he saw it. It was not a large place and its walls were made of mud. Inside the big sagging gates, houses were crowded irregularly around a marketplace and it all smelt rather.
“I’ll say this for Skarr,” Ogo murmured to me as the cart squished its way into the market, “at least your towns smell clean.”
“Of course they do,” I said proudly. “And I suppose you remember the towns in Logra so well!”
“Not really,” he said. “But I do remember there was no mud on the streets.”
I sighed. Logra was all perfect in Ogo’s memory.
Aunt Beck meanwhile drove the cart among the scattering of poor-looking market stalls and drew up grandly in front of the largest. I looked at its stack of elderly cabbages and the flies hovering around the small heap of bacon and hoped she was not going to buy either of those.
Actually, my aunt is a good shopper. She managed to assemble some quite decent provisions and sent Finn off to the bread stall while she bargained for what she had chosen.
“Why are you sending him?” Ivar wanted to know.
“He’s a monk. He’ll get half of it free,” my aunt snapped and turned back to the bargaining.
This did not go well. Whatever price Aunt Beck suggested, the woman behind the stall named a higher one. And, when Aunt Beck protested, all the woman would say was, “You must remember there’s a war on.”
“What war is this?” my aunt demanded.
“The war against the Finens of course,” the woman said.
“What are the Finens?” said Aunt Beck.
“Cheating monsters from Ballyhoyle way,” was the answer. “You must know that the Finens never paid us for our cloth in my grandmother’s time. And were forever cheating and lying ever since. So last month our men went and took their sheep for payment. Last week the Finens came asking for the sheep back. But naturally we had eaten them by then, so the Finens took all our cattle and the food out of the fields, and when we asked for it back they threw stones. So yesterday our men took up their weapons and went out to teach the Finens a lesson or two. There was a great battle then.”
“Who won?” Ivar asked with interest.
The woman shrugged. “Who knows? For all we can tell the fighting still goes on.”
“But I am sure,” Finn said, arriving back with a great basket of bread rolls, “that the might of the men of Coolochie will prevail.”
The woman looked pleased at this, but she did not let Aunt Beck have the food any cheaper. Aunt Beck sighed and graciously paid over most of the money King Colm had given her. “And now let’s get out of here,” she said to the rest of us.
We had lunch a couple of miles on into the plains beyond Coolochie. “Do you think Coolochie’s in the right in this war?” Ogo asked, thinking about it as he munched.
“Of course not,” Aunt Beck said irritably. “Both sides are complete blackguards. From the sound of it, they’ve been stealing each other’s property for centuries. Are you finished? Let’s be on our way. I want to be out of this miserable country as soon as I can be.”
We had none of us really finished, but no one liked to argue with Aunt Beck in this mood so we walked along still eating. Finn said soothingly, “You’ll find Bernica’s not so bad, Wisdom, when you’re used to our ways.”
Aunt Beck shuddered.
We came over a
