Strange to say, our journey after that did not go well. For one thing, it rained all the rest of the time we were on Bernica. Ivar did not help matters by saying morosely, several times a day, that my aunt should know better than to go around insulting queens. This kept Aunt Beck’s bad mood simmering, so that Ogo and Finn hardly dared go near her.
I had to be near her though, because we shared a damp bed in every damp inn we came to. That first night, Aunt Beck took me severely to task about my wretched initiation. “You told me nothing happened that night, Aileen. Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie,” I wailed. “Nothing happened. I just didn’t have any visions, that’s all.”
“Something must have happened,” Aunt Beck insisted. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I told you!”
“Nonsense. Tell me about every minute of the time you were in there,” my aunt commanded. “Every tiny thing. Out with it.”
“You mean,” I said, “I have to keep saying I sat there, Aunt Beck, and I shivered, and the floor was cold and hard, Aunt Beck, and it was too dark to see anything, Aunt Beck, over and over for however many hours I was in there? Because that was what it was like.”
“Not all the time,” said my aunt. “You were asleep when I hauled the stone back. Did you not dream?”
“Not that I remember,” I said, hoping she would stop.
Not she. “So there was no time when you were able to see even a flicker of light?” she persisted. “Don’t shake your head, Aileen. Don’t lie.”
She went on like this remorselessly, until at last I said, “Well, if you must know, I did see the moon shining in.”
“That has to be nonsense,” my aunt replied. “The stone was tight to the turf.”
“No it wasn’t,” I said. “There was a gap and so I rolled the stone aside and came out for a bit. There!”
“That stone,” my aunt said, “had not moved since I rolled it there the night before. I know because I put in two tufts of heather, as we always do, and they were still there in the morning, in the very same places. Or did you think you put them back from the inside through two feet of granite somehow?”
“Oh,” I said. “No. I didn’t know they were there. I just rocked the stone and it came out.”
“Did you?” she said. “And what did you think you saw outside?”
“I didn’t think I saw, I saw!” I said. “It was everything, just as usual, except the moon made it look as if there had been a frost. I saw our cabin and the hills and the sea and the full moon—”
“And was there a light in the cabin?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, it was all dark.”
“There should have been a light,” Aunt Beck said. “I was keeping vigil for you. You silly child! You go and have a vision and then pretend you didn’t!”
“It didn’t feel like a vision,” I mumbled. I felt very foolish. “If it was one, what does it mean?”
“I have no idea,” my aunt said, to my great disappointment. “But no wonder that disagreeable queen thought you were qualified. You clearly are.”
“But I don’t feel any different,” I protested.
“Neither did I,” said Aunt Beck. “The powers have been in you all along, so naturally you feel the same.”
I said, “I thought I would feel a fizz in my fingers – or at least be able to see into minds.”
“Or through walls maybe?” Aunt Beck said. “Lie down now and get some sleep and don’t be so foolish.”
I did lie down, but I don’t think I would have gone to sleep if Plug-Ugly had not arrived, silent and heavy, to lie across my feet, making that chilly inn bed warm as warm.
I was still feeling foolish in the morning, and for several days after that. How was I to know that it had been a vision? I’d never had a vision before. It had all looked so real. And it seemed unfair of Aunt Beck to blame me because she got angry with the Queen.
I gloomed about this as we trudged through rain across soggy green moors for the next few days. Ogo asked me what was wrong. I told him, expecting him to tell me not to be so foolish, like Aunt Beck had. Instead, he said, “Er – Aileen, aren’t you supposed to be secret about your initiation rites?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s no great thing after all.”
“Oh,” he said. “I remember my uncle saying he was not to say a word about his initiation. He seemed to think it was awfully holy.”
“He must have had different rites,” I said. “And I do think Aunt Beck is being unreasonable, blaming me. After all, she was the one who was rude to the Queen.”
Ogo looked up at Aunt Beck’s proud profile above us in the cart. “She doesn’t like Bernica,” he said. “She’d have blamed you for something.”
This was probably true. It was quite comforting.
The next day, when we stopped for lunch, we were mobbed by donkeys. The inn we stayed at the night before had sold Aunt Beck two loaves and a bag of hard-boiled eggs. My aunt sat on the tailgate of the cart and made sandwiches for us all, with a pot of relish left over from the inn before that.
Don’t ask me why donkeys should like egg sandwiches. Moe didn’t. I offered her some of mine after I’d given some to Plug-Ugly and she simply plunged her nose back into her nosebag. Green Greet didn’t care for them either. But those donkeys must have caught the scent from a mile away. They came thundering in across the wet moor, a whole herd of them, and tried to eat the sandwiches out of our hands. We slapped their noses aside, but it did not deter them.
They were wild, hungry donkeys. Some of them had been out on the moor for so long that their front hooves had grown into long upcurving spikes, like Gallis’s slippers. And the ones who got to us first were so determined not to let the latecomers get any of our food that they kept backing round and kicking the slow ones in the ribs. Boom. Like a drum. We were in a savage, kicking mob in seconds.
Finn went under the cart and crouched there. Ivar took his sword off his belt, scabbard and all, and hit out at donkeys with it. Slap. Whap. They took no more notice of it than they did of the heels of their own kind. One donkey bit him and he yelled. Aunt Beck scrambled for her whip, into the cart. I hastily bundled up the rest of the eggs and the bread in the cloths and then had a tug o’ war for it with a villainous black donkey who saw what I was doing. Ogo was jostled right out beyond the milling herd, where he ran in a half-circle, roaring with anger. He found
