Free The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Opinions! Oliver spat out the word with such force that he sprayed me with saliva.
    â€œMerlin’s an infidel!” he exclaimed. “He’s not true to the three-in-one and one-in-three. I’ll tell you something: Your fathershields Merlin. Were it not for him, Merlin would be in mortal danger.”
    â€œYou mean…”
    â€œI mean people with false beliefs must admit their mistakes. Otherwise, they’re cursed. Last year, in Hereford, an old woman went around telling people she was the Virgin Mary. She said she’d been sent back to earth by her son to tell people to repent.”
    â€œWhat happened to her?”
    â€œShe was tried,” said Oliver darkly. “And then she was walled up.”
    â€œAlive?” I exclaimed.
    â€œShe defiled the name of Our Lady,” said Oliver. “And believe me, the same fate would befall Merlin but for your father. I can’t think what Sir John sees in him.”
    Until I talked to Oliver, I didn’t realize how much he hates Merlin. But can what he said be true? Merlin’s own sister and his father…or a nun and an incubus?
    I think I will ask my father about Merlin—and my mother too. And maybe Serle knows something. There’s not much point in asking Merlin himself because he’ll just smile, and answer a question with another question. I don’t believe Merlin is dangerous or cursed, but it’s true there’s something strange about him.

27
MUFFLED
    K ING JOHN’S MESSENGER TOLD US TO MUFFLE OUR church bell until next Sunday, so Oliver has climbed the belfry and tied a kind of leather hood over the clapper of the church bell.
    â€œYour father’s doves,” Oliver told me, “are so pea-brained they seem to think my belfry is their cote. They’ve painted the whole place white. The walls are streaming. And I had to be careful going up the steps because they’re so slippery.”
    So when Oliver tolled the bell for Vespers this evening, it sounded very far away and lost in a thick fog.
    â€œIf memories had voices,” my mother said, “the sad ones would sound like muffled bells.”

28
THE PEDDLER
    A PEDDLER WALKED IN YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, AND HE had come all the way from Sir Josquin des Bois. That’s fourteen miles.
    â€œI’ve got something here for each of you,” the peddler said, and he delved into his dirty sack and pulled out colored silken threads, and leather pouches, and little cushions for pins, and linen kerchiefs, and a black leather belt, and gold-thread tassels, and two nightcaps.
    â€œThese will keep you ladies warm,” said the peddler. Then he put a pointed, cornflower-blue cap on my mother’s head and a rustbrown cap on Tanwen’s.
    â€œGogoniant!” exclaimed Tanwen—her mouth is full of strange Welsh words like that.
    â€œGlory be!” exclaimed my mother. “We look like two of the little people!”
    They both laughed and hugged each other.
    My mother bought the two nightcaps, and also a little pot of ointment for sore breasts; and before supper, my father decided to buy a square clay tile with a strange face on it: a wide-eyed man with a face as long as an almond, and a mess of hair, and an unkempt beard, and leaves sprouting out of his nose and ears.
    â€œHe is beautiful and horrid,” my father said.
    â€œJust horrid!” said Sian.
    â€œBoth,” said my father. “As we all are. And something else: If you move, the man’s eyes move too. His gaze follows you. He’s always looking at you.”
    â€œThreepence!” said the peddler.
    â€œNever!” said my father. Then he bargained with the peddler, and in the end he bought the face for one penny. “We’ll feed you well,” my father said, “and you can sleep in the hay barn.”
    When we woke up, the peddler had already gone. But so had Sian’s cat, Spitfire. She didn’t come in for dinner, and she has