Ancient Echoes (38 page)

I walked twice around the silent, eerie structure. Four sides for four seasons, each marked with a symbol of the time of the year: a snowflake of astonishing intricacy; a sunblaze; a reed
pipe for the spring; a musk ox, bound and dying, for the autumn, the time of stockading.

And on each of the sloping walls, ten figures rose, twice the height of a man, icon-dressed, armed and watching the sky or the forest or the ground with long, lean-faced, blank expressions.

I remembered William’s description of his function in the world: ten steps of the winter dance; waiting to be united with the dances of the other seasons.

I
knew
this was William’s place, I could feel it in my blood.

I was shaking as I stepped into the inner sanctum, where shafts of light broke the gloom from slats in the ceiling, a towering distance above my head.

The tomb itself was in the centre of the space, dazzled by the light, crawling with crows which flapped and screeched as I approached, and took off, slow-winging, into the shadows. I watched them for a few moments, glad to delay the moment at which I would stare, I was sure, at the face in deepest repose of the man who had become my friend, and whom I had abandoned.

It was not William Finebeard, however, who lay in imperfect preservation in the glass-topped coffin.

She was dressed in shells and blue-green beads, her body swathed in this ornamentation; strands of the fine lace on which the shells were threaded drifted in the yellow liquid, for all the world, like anemones feeling for their prey. Ethne had been laid on her side, her knees drawn up, her hands tied together, palms together, as if in prayer. Her long hair drifted about a face reddened with ochre.

It was a vile sight. Whatever the preserving fluid, it was inadequate to the task, and the blotch and shrink of rot had begun to take its toll on the sweet corpse. The eyes were open, the lips drawn back, yellowing teeth bulging in the shrunken face. A cloud of fragments swirled in the tinted fluid, excited by the light from above, darting like living creatures among
the drifting hairs and strands, in and out of the shell patina of the body.

Poor Ethne. Poor William.

Rose-pricked though she might have been, no princely kiss would bring
this
sleeping beauty back to life.

I walked the shore for days, searching for a boat, a hulk, something, anything that could get me to the farther side of the great lake. The jetties and harbour of the fishing city were all corrupt, shaped stone spread out below the water, sinking into the mud. Wildlife abounded; my hunting skills improved; my belly remained full. I slept, at night, in the mausoleum, curled into a corner, fire protecting me from the snarling beasts that roamed and searched the shadows, some even standing up to peer at the silent queen, biting and snapping at the glass before retiring to the growling, nervous night outside.

At last, a small boat beached, an old man entered the tomb and placed fresh flowers on the grave. As I watched from hiding, he walked about the hall, gathering the bones of the creatures which had been consumed here, brushing up the leaves, piling everything into a shallow pit and setting this rubbish-tip alight.

He crouched by the flames, stoking the fire, shifting the bones, throwing finger-fulls of powder on the conflagration, which roared and spat, filling the mausoleum with an acrid smoke.

He was aware of me; he had deliberately left my hiding place alone. When I rose and walked to the door he watched me, an old man, grizzle-bearded, sharp-eyed, his body frail, I thought, behind the robust swell of leather armour.

He followed me to the lake’s edge, leaning on a thin harpoon, keeping the point ready. The boat, big enough for two, shifted on the swell as a fierce wind blew up from the direction of the maelstrom. I threw my pack into the boat and raised my hands, a question and an indication that I meant no harm.

He nodded, waved me in with the pointed stick, then clambered aboard himself, tossing me the rope that held the single sail, leaning hard on the rudder as the small craft sought the right angle of the breeze, dipped, swung and began to hop the waves towards the far white tower.

He watched me curiously, this greybeard, but never spoke, except to bark an order when the sail flapped, losing the wind, prompting me to tug the lines and secure them in the wooden cleats. I tried to remember if I had seen him on my previous Midax voyage, but only the gruesome face of Perendour came to mind. I was more exercised by the question of how many years had passed since I had last stepped on the land that circled the Eye.

From the rotten state of her hallowed corpse, it was impossible to say how old Ethne had been when fate or circumstance had intervened to cut her heart-strings. And for how long had she been entombed?

If the answer was centuries, then there would be no Greenface, waiting for me by the Watching Place. Or would there?

We came into the stone harbour, near the white tower, and the greybeard navigated the small boat between the half-sunk, rotting hulks of greater ships. This place, too, was long abandoned, though the smoke from fires further down the lake’s edge suggested that the area was still inhabited, though by whom, and in what fashion, I couldn’t tell.

With the boat tied securely, my captain led me to the shore, then turned and peered again; his breath was foul, his gaze close enough that we might have kissed. And then he grinned.

‘Jack?’ he murmured. ‘Jackjack?’

‘Yes. I’m Jack.’

‘Jackjack,’ he repeated, shaking his head, still half-smiling.

I’ve come to find William.’

‘William,’ the man echoed and looked away, his brow furrowing, the smile fading. A moment or two later he sighed and threw the harpoon towards the white tower.

‘William,’ he repeated, glancing at me. Then, quick as a wink, he had reached out and squeezed my ear before turning away, walking away, towards the distant fires.

I entered the city gate, pushing aside the tangling foliage with the sailor’s discarded harpoon. The place was overgrown, ivy, rose and strangling creeper of luxuriant green, with flower trumpets of brilliant hue, forming a carpet, a wall and a barrier that only reluctantly gave way to my onslaught.

I cut and pushed my way to the entrance to the tower, snarled back at a feral cat, chattered in like manner to a red-crested, red-billed carrion bird that caught itself in the briar in its panic to escape my aggressive action as I stabbed at it with the spear, then entered the place I knew well, the dimly-lit chamber where William had painted images of his beloved. The dark designs, the ochred patches, were still visible, but time, condensation and the spread of lichen had made a mockery of Ethne’s frail beauty.

On a pallet, covered in rough blankets, William Finebeard lay asleep below the icons of his passion. His body was entombed in briar, growing up from the floor, reaching down from the orifices in the tower, a web of forest, holding hard this winter warrior, growing into him through the pale skin.

From the slow rise and fall of his chest it was clear that
this
sleeping beauty was still alive, and I used a knife from my pack to ‘prune’ him, cutting away the thorns and ivy, aware that the stumps remained upon his skin, bleeding in a sluggish fashion.

He stayed asleep.

I walked up into the hills, searching for familiar paths, remembered ruins, but the world had changed beyond the lake and nothing encouraged me to think that Greenface was near, or had been close to the tower of ivory. I stood and watched the maelstrom, listened to the deep movement of the earth, the crash of rock, the loud and strident cries of the creatures that were spewed from the pit itself. I hunted for small game, gathered sharp fruit from a wide-branched, gnarled and twisted
apple tree (I saw no serpents) and found a patch of the same mushrooms that Nemet had fed to me, those years in the past. The world of my inner mind was rich with my favourite things, and perhaps I should not have been surprised.

Two days after I had cut the strands enmeshing my friend, a small flotilla of single-sailed ships passed close to the shore, cloaked figures on every prow, sharp cries carrying across the choppy water. They inspected the white tower, then caught the prevailing wind and turned like a flock to pass away to deeper water.

At dusk, hippari, brontotheria, bear-like megalotheria, brutish cynodontae and strutting aepyornithae filtered from the forest to wade, drink, feed, squabble and gallop along the twilight shore. They kept away from the sunken harbour, though the horses were curious and I entertained briefly the idea of trying to capture one. Their speed, their edgy energy, soon communicated the futility of the thought.

But if I had not been watching the evening feast, sitting on the stone wall which indicated the beginning of the jetty and surrounded by the cacophony of ancient voices, I might not have seen the city as it passed along the lake.

The sun had almost gone; the lake stirred, the waves came fast to the shore, spreading among the reeds, or breaking against the mudflats further down. The animals that were still watering became disturbed; the hippari bolted to the woodland. The cynodonts rose onto hindlegs, eight creatures standing like stooped, human grotesques, jaws gaping in the dog-like faces as they watched the lake. When they slowly backed away they set up an unearthly howling, then scattered as the great shape rose out of the water.

It was Glanum. The tower came first, the high walls, the tangle of trees and roots shedding water as they were thrust from the sub-aquatic world. It descended again, then broke the surface, turning towards the land, a mile distant. I could see
the gaping gate, but other features were indistinct against its gloomy bulk in the deepening night.

The city ploughed the lake, then sank into the shore, and I felt the ground shudder and rumble, the woodland shaking as if a violent wind was whipping and coursing across the canopy.

Glanum was soon gone, below the high hills, travelling in the direction of the Eye. I stood on the jetty for several hours, reluctant to retire to the comfort of furs, matting and the fire that I had kindled inside William’s broken stronghold. If the city returned, I wanted to see it. I wondered if John Garth had been standing on those shattered battlements, staring out across the Deep, perhaps searching for the boy he remembered from Exburgh.

Glanum was close now, and close for a reason; everything in my dreaming instinct suggested that I was soon to be reunited with the whale!

But … though the earth shook on two occasions, and wind took the trees, and a flock of carrion birds swooped low and angrily across the sunken jetty, the night remained quiet, and I went to bed.

In the morning, I examined the part of the shore where Glanum had passed, but found no trace, no cut, no gouge, no exploded earth, no sign as fierce and hard as that in the Hinterland, if indeed that scar in the piazza had been created by the whale.

Some time later, I returned to the bone tower, and as I entered the chamber where William lay in vegetative slumber, I heard his waking moan.

The cuts had ceased to bleed. I had left him on his side, but now he lay face up, his right arm above his head, his left draped across his belly.

Soon he sighed, shifted, turned on the wooden bed, letting the rags of the blankets fall from him, his fingers, in half-sleep,
now brushing and fiddling with the cut ends of briar on his chin, his cheek, his shoulders and his belly.

Abruptly, like a man awakening from a dream, he sat up and stared at the open door.

He looked at me, blinked, frowned for a moment, then grinned with pleasure as he recognized me.

‘Hello William, you romantic rogue!’

‘Jack,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Jack! Came back! Came back!’

Older in years, William was still a boy at heart, and when he had recovered his strength he went down to the lake, marvelling at everything he saw, from the wild beasts of the forest to the shattered remnants of the harbour.

He was delighted with the sunken hulks of the bigger ships, wading out to peer into the broken hulls, clambering across the shattered masts, pulling lengths of sail and rope, nodding, talking, plotting, planning.

‘It will take some work, but there’s everything here I need to cross to Ethne again. And with your help … it will halve the time. I’ll be afloat before the turn of the season. You came back!
Jack! Came back!’
he cried in English, tugging at my hair.

And he hugged me, rubbing a briar-bristled cheek against my own. He was bothered by the stubs, scratching and worrying at them, frowning as he tried to understand what had happened to him.

‘I saw her,’ I said softly.

‘Ethne?’

‘Yes. It came as a shock.’

There was sadness in his face, and a strange excitement. ‘I haven’t looked at her for so long. Has she changed?’

I felt awkward telling him the truth of her imperfect preservation, but since he seemed set on crossing to the tomb to view her again, it was better, I felt, that he should be forewarned. ‘Time is taking its toll. But you honoured her beautifully. It’s a wonderful monument.’ I could see the dark rise of the mausoleum, across the lake, half-obscured by mist, but a looming, distracting presence just the same.

He stared at me for a moment, perhaps trying to understand
me fully as we communicated in gesture, fragments of language and the movement of eyes. ‘I’m going to bring her back,’ he said. ‘Bring her to this place. It’s where she belongs.’

It seemed a strange idea. With a ship, water-safe and sturdy, he could cross the lake in a day. And why go to so much effort to build a monument to his ‘princess’ on the site of her birth, only to remove her?

What had happened to William Finebeard in the intervening years?

And when had he fallen into the rose and ivy slumber?

I could get little sense out of the man for most of the day; he had no appetite for food, seemed to need no water, and left me for hours, running the lake’s edge, prowling the woodland, chasing hippari and laughing as they outdistanced him. He swam naked in the cold lake, dived to inspect the rubble foundations of the fallen harbour, rising from the murky, muddy water draped with weed, a monstrous image from the wild.