Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) (10 page)

‘All you know?’

‘All I know is that
Broceliande
– the two warring lovers – is in your son and in your sister.’

‘She’s not my sister. No blood link at all.’

‘Whatever she is. In Rebecca. Your mother sensed the possession all those years ago, when your brother died. I’m sure of it. That’s why she sent you both away. But you came back, and now the wood has Rebecca, and her son. The power has them both. She came here, God knows why. Rebecca. She came here to the lake, then
she came to my lodge and sat with me. She’s blind, you know. And nine parts deaf, now.’

‘I know.’

‘She’s lost song, she’s lost story, she’s losing language. It’s all going into the boy. Or rather, to the traveller inside the boy.’

‘To Vivien?’

‘To Vivien.’ The pike thrashed suddenly, then was still. Frightened by the ideas that the bosker had put in his head, tired of the struggle out on the lake, Martin jerked the line angrily. The fish – it was two feet long, and gleamed purple as it broke the surface – rose into the air then fell back, but a second jerk on the line, the line cutting into his skin now and drawing blood, that second jerk snared the beast and it fell quiet.

He wound it in, cut the hook out of its mouth, cut off its head and tail. He gutted the monster, scraped the scales and pushed two pieces of willow through the carcase, propping it over the fire on a crude spit.

‘How do I stop it?’

‘The fight? You can’t. It’s too late. You were a fool. You were warned.’ And he added quietly, ‘There’s no way home for you either.’

‘That doesn’t help.’

‘Nothing can help.’

‘I don’t believe that. There’s a transference going on. Language, sight, song … the boy is taking it from Rebecca. Or is he? Is it possible that Rebecca is just reacting in an hysterical way?’

‘She sees shadows, now,’ Conrad said. ‘Only shadows.
She hears only first words, hears only the oldest songs, the shadow songs. She’s lost the first part of the fight. Daniel has drawn her out, he caught her unawares. Now she has a chance, though. This is only the middle game. Do you play chess? She has by no means lost. Leave them alone, leave them to end the struggle, one of them will win, one of them will be whole, nothing you can do will help shift the balance. So don’t start choosing. You’ll be left with one of them, and one only. If you interfere, you risk losing them both.’

I don’t believe what I’m hearing! Oh God, this can’t be real …

‘There’s something I don’t understand, though,’ Conrad went on in a hushed, weary voice. ‘If the woman we think of as Vivien tricked and trapped the old enchanter, all those centuries ago – why is she still here? Why does he taunt her? Something must have gone wrong.’

Martin was hardly listening. He stared out across the blue lake at the heart of Broceliande, where the moans of a dying man could sometimes be heard, and the cries of a woman, and from which shore came silent boats, and ghostly travellers, escaping whatever evil lay at the heart of the wood.

I don’t believe it! Merlin and Vivien still playing their tricks, their games … and in the process a family is destroyed?

But he
did
believe it. All his life he had believed it. All his life he had accepted that people moved up the path, to vanish below the hill where the church – even as a
ruin – had tolled its bells of calling, and mourning, and feasting: bronze-ringing that signalled the changing of the quarters of the year, when the fires were burned in different ways, and the offerings were made in different ways, and the people of the land came to dance and talk and drink and remember.

Of course he believed it. But what was happening now was something beyond his experience.

I can’t choose between them! Don’t ask me to choose between them!

‘I think we should go back to the edge of the wood.’

Conrad sighed and snuggled down among the skins, below the protecting umbrella of oilskin. The lake glimmered in the setting sun. It was close to dusk. The pike had been picked clean, the uneaten flesh wrapped carefully.

‘I’ll stay here, I think: A boat will be coming for me shortly.’

‘A boat?’

As Martin understood the old man’s point he felt again a moment of intense grief. ‘I don’t want you to die.’

‘I’m already dead,’ Conrad breathed, and chuckled through his parchment lips. ‘Do you know the way back? Can you find the way back?’

‘I think so.’

‘Too bad if you can’t. There’s no way of drawing you a map!’

The bosker smiled again, then closed his eyes, drawing the skins around his neck as he lay by the lapping waters.

‘Goodbye, Martin.’

‘Do I just leave you here?’

‘I won’t be here for long. The boat’s already on the lake.’

Martin stood and peered across the water. A wake was spreading, as if a water bird were swimming, but Martin could see no creature there.

He put more wood on the fire, throwing the bony remains of the pike into the reeds. When he looked back, Conrad’s eyes were closed, his mouth gaping. There was no movement below the furs. He was probably dead.

Martin made the sign of the Cross and Wheel on his chest, then followed the path, away from the lake, through the crowding trees, running back to the hunting lodge, then the edgewood, and at last to the path and his own house.

7

It was early afternoon, now. He had spent too long in the forest and it had been difficult to find his way back to the edge. He had felt crowded and crushed. At times he
had imagined himself followed, which had been a disorientating experience.

As he ran to the house to pick up his car – he was late for Daniel, who had to be fetched from school – he heard the terrible screaming from the kitchen, and for a second was stunned into immobility. Then Rebecca’s terror resolved clearly and he broke into a breathless run, almost flinging himself through the door.

Rebecca was standing in the middle of the room, which was in chaos. She had thrown the table over, kicked the chairs, broken plates, cups and picture glass. Her hands were bloody, her face smeared with red streaks. Her hair was awry, her long dress torn and stained. She was turning where she stood, and screaming, and shaking her head, battering at her eyes with the raw horrors of her fingers.

Martin grabbed her and forced her still. ‘I’m here! I’m here! Beck, what’s happened? What’s happened?’

‘Shadows!’ she wailed, then collapsed against him, weeping openly, clutching him in an embrace that said
never let me go!

‘What
about
shadows?’

‘All round. Everywhere. Watching. Laughing.’

‘Come on … let’s get you cleaned up.’

He urged her upstairs. She stumbled, felt blindly, whispered, ‘I can’t see. Anymore. All gone. Shadows only.’ In the bathroom he tended to the cuts on her hands, then undressed her and helped her into a warm bath. She lay back, her plastered fingers playing on his as he washed her, stroked her, comforting her as much as he could.

‘Please,’ she said quietly, through the steam and the heat. ‘Don’t. Let. Daniel. Home …
Please
…’

Even as she spoke, downstairs the back door was flung open. Outside, the sound of a departing car told Martin that one of the other parents had brought their son home.

The boy pounded up the stairs, came straight to the bathroom, bursting in to stand there, face glowing, breathing hard. ‘Got a lift from Thierry’s dad. Why weren’t you there? What’s up with Mummy? I’m hungry. Can I have some bread? It’s all messy downstairs. Have you been fighting? Why weren’t you
there
?’

‘Go downstairs and straighten the table and the chairs. I’ll get you a sandwich in a minute.’

Daniel stepped quickly to the side of the bath and looked at the pinkish water, at the rigid, naked body of his mother, her hands wrapped firmly, tensely around Martin’s. She stared blindly at the ceiling.

The boy said, ‘I love you, Mummy. Don’t be hurt. I really do love you. I always did.’

Rebecca turned her head to the tiled wall, slipping slightly in the water. ‘Away!’ she hissed.

Daniel grinned at his father. ‘I think I’m in the way. Shall I close the door?’

And with a suggestive chuckle he ran to the landing, pulling the bathroom door shut behind him.

Downstairs, the sound of noisy rearranging was testimony to Daniel’s efforts to tidy up after his mother’s
period of hysterics. Martin led Rebecca to the bedroom, insisting she get under the covers. She was shaking, a terrified creature, confronting darkness saved for shadows – and no shadows that were cast by the warm and familiar sun. She had few words, now. She struggled to speak, resorting to a scrawled note as Martin sat on the bed, close to tears himself.

She wrote:
ask Jac and Suz to have the boy. Ask priest to visit
.

‘You’re going to stay with Uncle Jacques for a few days.’

‘Why?’ Daniel asked. He was sitting at the table, staring defiantly as ever, his face that of a ten-year-old, though only six summer suns had warmed his lanky body. He had cut a chunk from a stale baguette, toasted it and spread it with brie. He chewed slowly, arms folded on the table, eyes fixed firmly on his father. ‘Why?’ he repeated.

‘Because I said so. Mummy isn’t well and I need to look after her, and it will be easier if you stay with Uncle Jacques.’

Daniel shrugged. ‘All right. When do I go?’

‘When you’ve finished your sandwich. Pack some clothes and I’ll drive you over.’

The boy did as he was told. He appeared downstairs, a small case in one hand, his New York Yankees windcheater opened to expose a Spookbusters T-shirt. Martin knelt down and pinched the boy’s cheek. ‘You don’t mind, do you? It’s only for a while, to help mummy get better.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Daniel said, then dropped the case and flung his arms around Martin. He was fighting back tears, and when Martin pulled away slightly he could see how the boy’s lip trembled.

‘It’s not for ever.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of
course
!’

‘Mummy doesn’t love me. She told me.’

‘Nonsense. Mummy loves you very much.
When
did she tell you?’

‘In a dream. She’s frightened of me. She thinks I’m trying to hurt her.’

‘She’s very ill, Daniel. And I really want to do everything I can to get her better. But part of her being ill is that she behaves strangely, she says things she doesn’t mean. I want you to go and stay with Uncle Jacques and Aunt Suzanne, and behave yourself, and do what you’re told, and in a few days you’ll come back here.’

And in his head, as he spoke these words, a voice whispered,
you liar. You liar. You’re terrified of what is happening. You suspect your son. Conrad’s words have frightened the life out of you. You liar … liar
…

Martin left the priest and Rebecca alone, the woman sitting huddled by the window, apparently staring out across Broceliande, the man, in jeans and track-suit top, standing behind her, talking quietly.

Later he came down and accepted a mug of coffee. ‘She’s made her peace,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t realised her spirit was still so strong.’

‘Is that why she wanted to talk to you? To make her confession?’

Father Gualzator nodded, staring into the mug. ‘What are you going to do?’

The question unleashed in Martin the full burden of helplessness. What to do? What
could
he do?

‘I have no idea. Specialists … speech therapists … psychologists … opticians … Rebecca says she can only see shadows, not even shadows of objects that are real. Like a kid round here, dancing through the people on the path, but they were never terrifying. She’s terrified of these shadows.’

‘There’s something else,’ the priest said, frowning. ‘Her language—’

‘Almost gone …?’

‘Almost completely gone, I think. I believe she has clung to these last few words to make her peace with God and the hill. Now, she has begun to speak strange words. Literally, strange words, but familiar. I can’t be sure … I wrote some down …’

He came over to Martin and showed him the page of his notebook. He had scrawled Rebecca’s murmured phrases phonetically.

‘It’s gibberish,’ Martin said.

‘I don’t think so. There are constructions here that have familiarity. Look: iambathaguz. That sounds like
Mabathagus
, a particularly unpleasant entity from mythology, a sorcerer.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Of course you haven’t. All you do is use your eyes to read. You don’t use your eyes to
remember
. But then
who am I to criticise? Here’s something else: jingux. In Basque, that’s almost the word for God, although not God as the church and the hill would understand it. Jinx.

‘I think a lot of the rest of this is a deeper peace being made, but there is so much, she is speaking so much, and keeps laughing, as if triumphantly. I don’t understand it. Not at all. But this fascinates me. I’m going to go south for a while, to find an old friend, someone who has a wider eye, an older eye than mine, someone who might see a little deeper into this, er …’ he hesitated, searching for the word.

‘Gibberish?’

‘It’s not gibberish, Martin. It’s pain. Look after Rebecca. She’s terrified.’

‘I know she is. I’ll look after her with all my heart.’

8

Almost as soon as the priest had departed for Basque country Martin took Rebecca to Paris, to her appointment with a specialist, André Benvenista, at the National Institute for Parapsychology. Suzanne accompanied them, while Jacques took care of Daniel.

The meeting, the observation on Rebecca, was unsatisfactory and distressing.

She lay in a room overlooking the Seine, her scalp covered with a fine tracery of electrodes and sensors. It
was a bright day, and Paris, at least, was alive with activity.

Martin sat quietly by the window, watching the technicians about their business, aware of strange patterns on black video screens, outlines in three dimensions of the brain of the silent, shadowed woman. Colour flickered in the infra-red as she was tested – reds, blues, starbursts of yellow. Martin thought of turbulent or boiling water.