Cast Not the Day (17 page)

I swung round startled. ‘Where are you?’ I called, staring about at the shadows. ‘Show yourself.’

For a moment there was nothing. Then, from the deep darkness between the tree-trunks, a figure stepped out. But it was not the old woman; it was a girl. She wore a long white tunic as bright as the altar-stone. It shimmered in the light as she moved; and below it her feet showed pale and bare. She was, I guessed, about my age. She was handsome in the way of the Britons, with a round open face, and long black hair that cascaded over her shoulders.

She smiled; but after all my nervousness I was in no mood to be toyed with.

‘What is this?’ I cried, grabbing her arm. ‘Where is the crone? Do you take me for a fool?’

She did not struggle from my grip; she merely looked down with disdain at my strong hand locked around her wrist.

‘How like a man you are,’ she said softly, ‘angry and afraid at what you do not comprehend. Are you going to hurt me?’

I released her, ashamed.

‘No.’

‘Then come; the moon is waiting.’

She skirted the spreading yew, sometimes reaching out and touching with her fingers the overhanging pin-like leaves and scaly bark, as if the tree were something that must be mollified and soothed.

I followed, keeping my eyes warily upon her, until, at the side of the altar, she halted. I turned and glanced at the great flat stone. Then I started back with a cry. Lying on the slab, surrounded by a dark shimmering pool of blood, a cock-bird lay dead, its throat cut.

I drew an angry breath. The sight of the dead creature had shaken me, bringing out all my pent-up fears of the night. But before I could speak she reached out and touched a finger to my lips, silencing me.

‘Understand,’ she said, ‘there are times when the gods demand a death, the loss of some precious thing. Put your fear aside, satyr of the woods. It is as it has always been.’

She took a step forward, gesturing for me to approach, and as she moved the moonlight touched her face. Only then did I notice her eyes.

They were luminous green. Like moss.

I gathered my wits, telling myself it was nothing. There was no mystery – how could there be? She was the crone’s granddaughter, that was all; or some other of the bloodline, part of some peasant country priesthood handed down through the ages.

I swallowed, suppressing a shudder, determined to hide my fear. Then I stepped up to the blood-spattered altar, as she wanted.

She reached out and ran her hand over my nose and along the line of my mouth, parting my lips until her fingers touched my teeth. ‘You shake,’ she whispered. She reached then into a small leather purse at her waist, and from her closed hand scattered barley and tiny yellow flower petals over the stone. Above me, the yew branches creaked in the breeze. She looked to the sky. ‘It is almost time. Take off your clothes; go to the pool and wash, and then return.’ And, seeing my face, she added in a voice of infinite tenderness, ‘Dispel your fear. It is what you came for, though you did not know it.’

Silently, without comment or protest, I obeyed her command. When I returned, naked and dripping, her hands were outstretched and, as I drew closer, I heard she was intoning a charm or a prayer, speaking in some lilting melodic tongue, part British, part something else, far older, which I could not follow.

She fell silent, then said, ‘The god has chosen. She has been waiting for you.’

I stared at her. Water was running from my wet hair and into my eyes. I wiped it away with the back of my hand.

‘Who?’ I whispered. ‘What god?’

She raised her eyes and gazed up between the branches, to where the brilliant moon shone down.

‘She goes by many names. Luna or Selene or Diana; sister to the Sun and to Dawn, daughter of ancient Hyperion, last of the Titans. You have sought the Mother, and she has found you.’ She dipped her finger in the black blood, and reaching out traced a line from my throat, slowly down my chest and stomach to my groin.

Suddenly then I caught my breath. Fire surged through my innards. My thoughts ceased and it seemed I cried out loud. My being was nowhere, or everywhere, fleeing with the moon-shadows. I closed my eyes, and felt the touch of lips on mine. I rose to meet her, my body like a light-filled vessel, caught in a place outside time.

The moon had shifted when next I spoke. I was lying on the grass, looking up at the night sky between the treetops.

‘Are you the water-nymph?’ I whispered, touching her face. ‘Are you my daimon come to find me?’

She leant over me and shook her head, and her long hair fell over my chest, soft on my skin.

‘Not I,’ she said, smiling. ‘But your daimon is with you now, and you will hear her, if you listen. She comes in dreams, or speaks through signs, or shows herself in mortal men. For each it is different, but you will learn the ways to bring her close.’

Eventually, though I did not wish it, I must have slept. I woke to birdsong, and the half-light of dawn. I called for the girl, and my voice sounded raw and strange, like some other man’s. But she was gone, and no answer came. After a while I walked back to the altar, expecting to see the dead cock-bird there. But the slab was clean as when I had first seen it.

Then, as I turned, something caught my eye and I looked down.

At my feet, bright among the crushed grass, yellow petals lay scattered like specks of gold. And on my naked chest, with the contour of my muscle, there was a dark dry line of blood.

The hot, close weather broke in a night of wind and thunder. Each day I went up to the hill and the altar, or waited by the pool; but I encountered no one.

I questioned the servants, asking if there was a settlement nearby. There was not; only their own simple huts behind the house, and those of the neighbouring landowner some way off. Nor had they seen anyone of the description I gave.

Then, a quarter-month later, after I had run out of ideas and ceased to look, I walked out under the gateway and saw in the distance on the path an old woman. She was dressed in a hooded cloak, and stood gazing out across the overgrown fields, leaning on a rough-wood stick.

I ran, and though she must have heard my footfalls she did not turn. But when I was close she said in a soft, amused voice, ‘Greetings, young satyr.’

‘Where have you been?’ I cried. ‘Where is the girl?’

With no warning her hand darted out from beneath her cloak and locked with a grip like iron around my wrist.

‘What is it you seek, boy? An end to mystery? Have you learned nothing at all?’

She paused, studying my face from under the dark shadow of her pulled-up cloak. Then, with a grunt, she released my arm. ‘What you had, you had. Think on it. Forget the girl; she is gone.’ Then she made a luck sign over me, and with a laugh she turned and hurried off.

I stood rubbing my wrist, watching until she had disappeared into the dark forest beyond the fields.

I say no more. The old woman had her hood up, and though she seemed to know me, I cannot claim that it was even the crone. As for the rest, she said think on it, and that is what I have done, many times. And if I have an answer, it lies in what I have done, which is to tell it as it was, no more or less.

Balbus, restless and bored, returned to London, pleading unexpected business that could not wait. Leisure did not suit him, just as absence from her prattling circle of friends did not suit Lucretia.

She discovered from the servants that the neighbouring villa, which lay about three miles off, was the country residence of the aristocrat Quintus Aquinus, the man who had stepped into the government of the city during the Saxon siege. At once she despatched one of the footmen with a message announcing her presence, and waited for an invitation. When none came she quizzed the servant. Was the senator not at home? Was he ill or infirm? To whom had he delivered her note?

I was in the courtyard outside the window. From within I heard Albinus let out a harsh laugh and say, ‘Perhaps he does not wish to see you.’

There was a pause. I stopped by the herb-bed to listen. ‘Leave us!’ Lucretia cried at the servant. Then, turning on Albinus, she demanded to know how he could be so cruel, and could he not see that she was at the end of her tether, and what had come over him since they had come to this horrible house in the country, for he had been nothing but captious and insolent, even though she had sacrificed everything for him.

The footman, emerging moments later into the courtyard, caught me smiling. ‘Tell me, Fabius,’ I said, ‘what do you know of this Quintus Aquinus?’

He glanced up at the window, where they were still loudly bickering. ‘I cannot tell you much, master Drusus,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It is a great old house – my niece works there, and she is treated well. The land is well tended, and lacks for nothing, because old Aquinus has made it so. He has lived there all his life, and his ancestors before him, time out of mind.’

‘Have you met him?’ I asked.

‘I have seen him, but only from afar. They say he is a good man’ – his eyes darted significantly to the noise behind – ‘a good, decent man, and I wish there were more of his kind hereabouts.’

I was curious. I decided to go and see for myself. Perhaps, after all, the girl, or the crone, had something to do with this house.

The night on the hilltop had filled me with a yearning; it had touched places in my soul where desire lay, and need, and dark questions that demanded satisfaction. It was as though, just beyond my grasp, there lay the special thing my soul burned for. I felt it; yet I did not know what it was, or how I should recognize it. It drew me on. And so, two days later, on a clear, fresh morning, I took apples and cheese and a loaf from the kitchen and set out across the brook, over the stepping-stones and through the wooded strip of rowan and willows. From there, I followed a cattle track, up over the low ridge and through fields of yellow barley, pausing at the top to get my bearings.

The track led south, skirting the fields until it vanished in a deep swathe of forest. Beyond, in the distance over the treetops, I could see more fields, and sheep enclosures in undulating land. The house, I supposed, must be in one of the valleys, out of sight. I walked on.

From the ridge the forest had seemed easy to traverse; but once I passed between the oaks and high beeches the bright day was reduced almost to twilight, and the track began to twist and turn between dense undergrowth and the contours of the land. Still I followed, supposing it must lead to the other side; but after some time it ended at a great barrier of twined bramble.

I ought perhaps to have turned back then and retraced my steps. But I could see the way ahead was easier – mature beeches, their massive trunks soaring like columns up to the high canopy, with leaf-strewn open ground between – and so I pressed on.

I found I was thinking of something the girl had said: how the gods and spirits come in dreams, or speak through signs, or show themselves in mortal men. I felt like a man who finds the ground beneath him, which he had taken to be solid and immobile, suddenly shifting. What signs did she mean anyway, and how did one know?

I took an apple from my bag, and ate. In the corner of my eye I sensed movement. A rust-coloured squirrel was crouched at the foot of an oak, scratching at the forest floor. He paused and considered me with his head cocked; then, deciding I was no threat, he carried on at his work. Presently I came to another track, recently trodden. But the marks in the churned-up earth were boar, not man. I followed it even so, seeing nothing better. The way narrowed into a defile of hazel and prickly ilex; then, just as I thought the track would peter out, it opened into a grass clearing lit by shafts of slanting sunlight. At the far side, so grown-over with ivy and creeping shrubs that it looked at first glance no more than a rocky outcrop, was a small circular temple.

I stepped forward. The building looked derelict and forgotten. The facing on the walls was crumbling, showing red brickwork beneath. One of the columns had collapsed outwards; it lay like a fallen tree-trunk on the ground. I came to a high double-door, of old weathered wood studded with copper turned the colour of verdigris. The door stood half open, fixed ajar, its hinges rotted away. It would not shift when I pushed, but there was space enough to squeeze through.

Within were ochre columns and frescoes of woodland scenes, creating the illusion of openness. But what held my attention was the cult-statue, which stood in front of me, set back in a recess. It was old Keltic work, of a maiden holding in one hand the crescent of the moon, and in the other a spear. At her feet lay a fallen stag, its head rearing up to regard her. Traces of offerings lay about: burnt-out candles, a clay lamp, shrivelled fruits and old flowers.

I paused in the silence. I had plucked a sprig of white-flowering bryony outside; it seemed fitting now to lay it at her feet. But as I knelt I looked up and caught sight of the statue’s eyes.

I froze, and caught my breath; and stared. The eyes were green agate, luminous green, the colour of moss. I remained a long time still, assembling my thoughts, wondering what motions of chance or fate had brought me here.

When at length I returned outside, the sun was obscured by cloud and the clearing was in shadow. I paused on the stone porch-step, looking about me, considering what path to take. I had lost all sense of my direction. Suddenly the silence was broken by a rapid stirring in the undergrowth. I remained motionless, listening, remembering the boar tracks. But I heard nothing more. Keeping my back to the wall, staying under the narrow encircling colonnade, I stepped over a fallen branch and edged around to where I could get a better view. There was a sudden beating in the branches above. I jerked my head up, startled; but it was only a bird, rising in a flurry of wings through the canopy. I let out my breath. Then I heard a crack behind me – the sound of dried wood splintering underfoot. I swung round, realizing what it was. But I was too late. A spear-blade pressed into my ribs, and a voice said, ‘Keep still, or I will kill you.’