Hollow Hills (34 page)

I called aloud: "Is anyone there?" and waited for the echoes to run up into the roof and die. No answer.

My dagger was in my hand; it had sprung there without conscious thought on my part. I had met this kind of situation before, and it had only meant one thing; but that had been in Vortigern's time, the time of the Wolf. Such a man as this hermit, living alone in a solitary place, trusted to the place itself, its god and its holiness, to protect him. It should have been enough, and in my father's time had certainly been so. But things had changed, even in the few years since his death. Uther was no Vortigern, but it seemed sometimes that we were sliding back to the time of the Wolf. The times were wild and violent, and filled with alarms of war; but more than this, faiths and loyalties were changing faster than men's minds could grow to apprehend them. There were men about who would kill even at the altar's horns. But I had not thought there were any such in Rheged, when I chose it for Arthur's sanctuary.

Struck by an idea, I stepped carefully past the altar and drew back the edge of the curtain. My guess had been right; there was a space behind the curtain, a semicircular recess which was apparently used as storage room; dimly the lamplight showed a clutter of stools and oil jars and sacred vessels. At the back of the recess a narrow doorway had been cut in the wall.

I went through. It was here, obviously, that the keeper of the place lived. There was a small square chamber built on the end of the chapel, with a low window deeply recessed, and another door giving, presumably, straight on the forest. I felt my way across in the dimness and pushed the door open.

Outside the starlight showed me the rampart of pine trees crowding close, and to one side a lean-to shed, with its overhanging roof sheltering a stack of fuel. Nothing else.

Leaving the door wide, I surveyed what I could see of the room. There was a wooden bed with skins and blankets piled on it, a stool, and a small table with a cup and platter where the remains of a meal lay half-eaten. I picked up the cup; it was half full of thin wine. On the table a candle had burned down into a mess of tallow. The smell of the dead candle still hung there, mixed with the smell of the wine and the dead embers on the hearth. I put a finger to the tallow; it was still soft.

I went back into the chapel. I stood by the altar, and shouted again. There were two windows, one to either side, high in the wall; they were unglazed, open on the forest. If he was not too far away, he would surely hear me. But again there was no reply.

Then, huge and silent as a ghost, a great white owl swept in through one window and sailed across the lamplit space. I caught a glimpse of the cruel beak, the soft wings, the great eyes, blind and wise, then it was gone with no more sound than a spirit makes. It was only the dillyan wen, the white owl which haunts every tower and ruin in the country, but my flesh crept on my bones. From outside came the long, sad, terrible cry of the owl, and after it, like an echo, the sound of a man moaning.

Without his moaning I would not have found him till daylight. He was robed and hooded in black, and he lay face down under the dark trees at the edge of the clearing, beyond the spring. A jug fallen from his hand showed what his errand had been. I stooped and gently turned him over.

He was an old man, thin and frail, with bones that felt as brittle as a bird's. When I had made sure that none was broken, I picked him up in my arms and carried him back indoors. His eyes were half open, but he was still unconscious; in the lamplight I could see how one side of his face was dragged down as if a statuary had run his hand down suddenly over the clay, blurring the outline. I put him into his bed, wrapped warm. There was kindling left by the hearth, and what looked like a winter-stone ready among the ashes. I brought more fuel, then made fire and, when the stone was warm, drew it out, wrapped it in cloth, and put it to the old man's feet. For the moment there was nothing more that could be done for him, so after I had seen to the mare I made a meal for myself, then settled by the dying fire to watch through the rest of the night.

For four days I tended him, while none came near except the forest creatures and the wild deer, and at night the white owl haunting the place as if it waited to convoy his spirit home.

I did not think he could recover; his face was fallen in and grey, and I had seen the same blue tinge round the mouths of dying men. From time to time he seemed to come half to the surface, to know I was beside him. At such times he was restless always, fretting, I understood, about the care of the shrine.

When I tried to talk to him and reassure him, he seemed not to understand, so in the end I drew back the curtains that parted the room from the shrine, so that he might see the lamp still burning in its place on the altar.

It was a strange time for me, by day tending the chapel and its keeper, and by night snatching sleep while I watched the sick man and waited for his restless muttering to make sense. There was a small store of meal and wine in the place, and with the dried meat and raisins left in my pack, I had sufficient food. The old man could scarcely swallow; I kept him alive on warm wine mixed with water, and a cordial I made for him from the medicines I carried. Each morning I was amazed that he had lived through the night. So I stayed, tending the place by day, and by night spending long hours beside him watching, or else in the chapel where the smell of incense slowly faded and the sweet air of the pines floated in and set the flame of the lamp aslant in its well of oil.

Now when I look back on that time it is like an island in moving waters. Or like a dreaming night which gives rest and impetus between the hard days. I ought to have been impatient to get on with my journey, to meet Arthur and to talk with Ralf again and arrange with Count Ector how best, without betraying either of us, I might enter the fabric of Arthur's life. But I troubled myself with none of these things. The shrouding forest, the still and glowing shrine, the sword lying where I had hidden it under the thatch of the shed, these held me there, serene and waiting. One never knows when the gods will call or come, but there are times when their servants feel them near, and this was such a time.

On the fifth night, as I carried in wood to build the fire, the hermit spoke to me from the bed. He was watching me from his pillows, and though he had not the strength to lift his head, his eyes were level and clear.

"Who are you?"

I set down the wood and went over to the bedside. "My name is Emrys, I was passing through the forest, and came on the shrine. I found you by the well, and brought you back to your bed."

"I...remember. I went to get water..." I could see the effort that the memory cost him, but intelligence was back in his eyes, and his speech, though blurred, was clear enough.

"You were taken ill," I told him. "Don't trouble yourself now. I'll get you something to drink, then you must rest again. I have a brew here which will strengthen you. I am a doctor; don't be afraid of it."

He drank, and after a while his colour seemed better, and his breathing easier. When I asked him if he was in pain, his lips said, "No," without sound, and he lay quietly for a while, watching the lamp beyond the doorway. I made the fire up and propped him higher on his pillows to ease his breathing, then sat down and waited with him. The night was still; from close outside came the hooting of the white owl. I thought: You will not have long to wait, my friend.

Towards midnight the old man turned his head easily on the pillows and asked me suddenly: "Are you a Christian?"

"I serve God."

"Will you keep the shrine for me when I am gone?"

"The shrine shall be kept. Trust me for it."

He nodded, as if satisfied, and lay quiet for a time. But I thought something still troubled him; I could see it working behind his eyes. I heated more wine and mixed the cordial and held it to his lips. He thanked me with courtesy, but as if he was thinking of something else, and his eyes went back to the lighted doorway of the shrine.

I said: "If you wish, I will ride down and bring you a Christian priest. But you will have to tell me the way."

He shook his head, and closed his eyes again. After a while he said, thinly: "Can you hear them?"

"I can hear nothing but the owl."

"Not that, no. The others."

"What others?"

"They crowd at the doors. Sometimes on a night of midsummer you can hear them crying like young birds, or like flocks on the far hills." He moved his head on the pillow. "Did I do wrong, I wonder, to shut them out?"

I understood him then, I thought of the bowl of sacrifice, the well outside, the unlit lamps in the sacred nine of an older religion than any. And I think some part of my mind was with the white shadow that floated through the forest boughs outside. The place, if my blood told me aright, had been holy time out of mind. I asked him gently: "Whose was the shrine, father?"

"It was called the place of the trees. After that the place of the stone. Then for a while it had another name...but now down in the village they call it the chapel in the green."

"What was the other name?"

He hesitated, then said: "The place of the sword."

I felt the nape of my neck prickle, as if the sword itself had touched me. "Why, father? Do you know?"

He was silent for a moment, and his eyes watched me, considering. Then he gave the ghost of a nod, as if he had reached some conclusion that satisfied him. "Go into the shrine and draw the cloth from the altar."

I obeyed him, lifting the lamp down to the step in front of the altar, and taking off the cloth that had draped it to the ground. It had been possible to see even through the covering cloth that the altar was not a table such as the Christians commonly use, but as high as a man's waist, and of the Roman shape. Now I saw that this was indeed so. It was the twin of the one in Segontium, a Mithras altar with a squared front and the edge scrolled to frame the carving. And carving there had been, though it was there no longer. I could make out the words MITHRAE and INVICTO across the top, but on the panel below where other words had been, a sword had been cut clear through them, its hilt, like a cross, marking the center of the altar. The remains of the other letters had been gouged away, and the sword blade carved in high relief among them. It was rough carving, but clear, and as familiar to my eyes as that hilt was already familiar to my hand. I realized then, staring at it, that the sword in the stone was the only cross the chapel held. And above it, only the dedication to Mithras Unconquered remained. The rest of the altar was bare.

I went back to the old man's bedside. His eyes waited, with a question in them. I asked him: "What does Macsen's sword do here, carved like a cross in the altar?"

His eyes closed, then opened again, lightly. He fetched a long, light breath. "So. It is you. You have been sent. It was time. Sit down again, while I tell you." As I obeyed him, he said, strongly enough, but in a voice stretched thin as wire: "There is just time to tell you. Yes, it is Macsen's sword, him the Romans called Maximus, who was Emperor here in Britain before the Saxons ever came, and who married a British princess. The sword was forged south of here, they say, from iron found in Snow Hill within sight of the sea, and tempered with water that runs from that hill into the sea. It is a sword for the High King of Britain, and was made to defend Britain against her enemies."

"So when he took it to Rome, it availed him nothing?"

"It is a marvel it did not break in his hand. But after he was murdered they brought the sword home to Britain, and it is ready for the King's hand that can find it, and finding, raise."

"And you know where they hid it?"

"I never knew that, but when I was a boy and came here to serve the gods, the priest of the shrine told me that they had taken it back to the country where it was made, to Segontium. He told me the story, as it happened in this very place, years before his time. It was...it was after the Emperor Macsen had died at Aquileia by the Inland Sea, and those of the British who were left came home. They came through Brittany, and landed here on the west, and took the road home through the hills, and they came by here.

Some of them were servants of Mithras, and when they saw this place was holy, they waited here for the summer midnight, and prayed. But most were Christians, and one was a priest, so when the others had done they asked him to say a mass. But there was neither cross nor cup, only the altar as you see it. So they talked together, and went to where their horses were standing, and took from the bundles tied there treasure beyond counting. And among the treasure was the sword, and a great krater, a grail of the Greek fashion, wide and deep. They stood the sword over against the altar for a cross, and they drank from the grail, and it was said afterwards that no man was there that day but found his spirit satisfied.

They left gold for the shrine, but the sword and the grail they would not leave. One of them took a chisel and a hammer and made the altar as you see it. Then they rode away with the treasure, and did not come this way again."

"It's a strange story. I never heard it before."

"No man has heard it. The keeper of the shrine swore by the old gods and the new that he would say nothing save to the priest who came after. And I, in my turn, was told." He paused. "It is said that one day the sword itself will come back to the shrine, to stand here for a cross. So in my time I have struggled to keep the shrine clean of all but what you see. I took the lights away, and the offering bowls, and threw the crooked knife into the lake. The grass has grown now over the stone. I drove out the owl that nested in the roof, and I took the silver and copper coins from the well and gave them to the poor."

Another long pause, so long that I thought he had gone. But then his eyes opened again. "Did I do right?"

"How can I tell? You did what you thought was right. No one can do more than that."

"What will you do?" he asked.

"The same."

"And you will tell no man what I have told you, save him who should know?"