MY DEAR BOY,” SAID OLIVER, “I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT the Saracens! And that cardinal—Capuano. The sword of the Spirit and the helmet of salvation! Jerusalem!” Oliver waved his arms as wide as the world. “Yes, and about Venice, and your reading, your writing. I want to hear about holy men and heathens and the way to heaven, but you—all you want to do is ask about Gatty!”
“I’ll tell you!” I replied. “Everything! I promise I will.”
“But…,” said Oliver. “I know you.”
“Sir John said she left me a message. Can’t you tell me that first?”
“Tell you?” said Oliver. He levered himself up from the bench and lurched across to the chest. He turned the key. “I can do better than that, Arthur. I’ll show you.”
Oliver triumphantly held up a little roll of parchment, as if it were the king’s Great Seal.
“Did you write it?”
Oliver puffed out his chest. “And Oliver the priest and scribe…,” he said very grandly.
“The Book of Nehemiah!” I cried. “It wasn’t Oliver, though! And ezra the priest and scribe…”
“Excellent, Arthur! All’s not lost, I see.” He handed me the parchment. “Your missive,” he said.
I saw at once that it was bound with violet ribbon.
The ribbon I bought for her, with my last farthing, when we went to Ludlow Fair. “To tie up your hair…or wind round your field hat…or wear like a belt…”
I began to shake.
“She bit it in half,” said Oliver, screwing up his face. “Half for you and half for her, she said.”
I unrolled the parchment.
“And she wound hers round her wrist,” Oliver said. “Her left wrist.” I knew he was watching me closely.
“Your characters are all so neat and small,” I said.
Oliver sniffed. “Oliver the scribe,” he said. “Not, I fear, Oliver the grammarian. I did offer.”
Gatty to Arthur on any day
Where are you today I keep wondering. I often talk to you and see you easy. You got the sky on your shoulders. You remember when I said let’s go to Jerusalem? I can’t explain but somehow I thought it, I believed it, and now I’m going. You and your singing will keep us all safe, Lady Gwyneth says. Arthur, when are you coming back? I haven’t forgot going upstream. You promised. Or can you ride to Ewloe. Them bulls, and me wearing Sir John’s armor, and rescuing Sian from the fishpond and going to Ludlow Fair, and everything…It’s true! It is. Best things don’t never get lost.
BY YOUR TRUE GATTY
I don’t know how many times I read her words.
“Jerusalem!” I said. “Gatty! She’ll enter Jerusalem.”
“As we all hope to do,” Oliver said. “And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband…Well, Arthur? Which book?”
“I can’t remember.”
Oliver tutted. “The Book of Revelation,” he said.
I should have been happy, I know—happy for Gatty, and her escape from fieldwork and hunger, happy for her new life, her singing, her pilgrimage.
“Come on now!” Oliver said in a warm voice. “Head before heart.”
“It’s…it’s just that…”
Oliver patted my back. “Thank God for His great mercy. He has brought you safely home.”
“And sent Gatty away,” I said.