Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) (19 page)

‘Let him go!’

‘Martin asked for my help, and he convinced me to help him. But I can’t help him unless I travel in him. For a while at least.’

‘And how long is “a while”?’

‘In fact I’m nearly finished. I’ll give him back to you quite soon. But if you want to help your friend, you should go to the church and watch him safely beyond the hill. And you should not interfere. He has a journey to make.’

‘Where are you sending him?’

‘To fetch back the singing magic …’

The priest shuffled uneasily by the lake, his gaze on
the body of Martin, his ears attuned to the words, so civilised, so calculated, the words of a man dead two thousand years.

‘The singing magic? Who stole it?’

‘Nobody stole it. I let it go. An echo of it was captured by Rebecca. She used it once, she never lost it. If Martin can catch up with Rebecca he can find the singing magic, he can use the singing magic, he can do with it what he likes, and the consequences will all be his, because I’m still not sure what has happened to the enchantress. But he has a chance. It’s a risk he must take.’

Puzzled, Father Gualzator looked back across the lake, back to the village, to the farm, beyond the excavated graves. To Merlin he said, ‘Rebecca’s body is in the farmhouse. Daniel’s too.’

‘But only the bodies, only the flesh and bones. Martin saw them on the path. The essential part of them still lives, still walks the circle. He only has to catch them. He has to dance inside them. He tried it once, a few days ago. But he wasn’t looking. You know how important it is to
look
. They passed right through him! He missed the chance.’

‘How long, then? How long will it take for Martin to find the singing magic?’

‘Six months, six years, six thousand years … It depends on how you look at it. He’ll catch up with them eventually, and they’ll come back to Broceliande, and life will go on for them.’

For a moment Father Gualzator was silent, his white, lined face showing grief, a desperate sense of loss. When
he spoke, his words were scarcely audible. ‘But I’ll not necessarily see them. No-one here, no-one who loves them, none of us may see them again.’

And Merlin laughed. He was thinking of the long-gone, of the warlord Peredur, a brave man, a shining man, who had expressed the same wish that all things he could imagine should happen in the short, futile span of a single human life.

‘That depends how well you pass on your eyes. With such Old Eyes as yours, Father, with such
long
sight – you should know that very well.’

‘I suppose I do,’ the priest said, all resistance going. ‘I suppose I always have.’

Merlin came down the bank and took the ball of mud from Father Gualzator’s hands. Without comment, without rebuke, without expression, he tossed the simple weapon out across the lake, then took the priest’s muddy hands in his, embracing them with his fingers.

‘Then why are you fighting me?’

‘I don’t know. Because I’m frightened …’

‘Frightened of what?’

‘The way you play with people – with their lives. And deaths.’

‘Better to play with them than let them limp through time, warm home to cold home, birth to grave, no twists on the path. Don’t you agree?’

Father Gualzator twisted away from the other man. ‘No! How can I? It goes against everything that the church believes in—’

‘And the hill?’

‘The hill too. The path is not straight, but it goes forward. It was never meant for us to play tricks with the path.’

‘How do you know?’

The priest was shivering as he stared from the water’s edge at Martin, his friend, at Merlin, enchanting him.

‘I don’t, of course.’

‘Of course you don’t. You’ve forgotten how to play with toys. A toy is lifeless, but you give it life – you make it do things it could never do on its own.’

‘Our lives aren’t toys!’

Merlin laughed. ‘Of course they are! And like toys, you can keep them to look at, or you can twist them and torment them, and give them the
illusion
of life. But one thing’s for sure, Father. All toys wear out no matter how well you look after them.
Dance
them while you can. It’s the only thing to do with toys.
Surely
you agree.’

Suddenly weary, Father Gualzator looked away across the lake.

‘Yes … somewhere inside of me … I suppose I do. I do agree.’

Merlin laughed quietly. ‘Then I’ll say goodbye. And I’ll let Martin go in pursuit of his Vision of Magic. And as for you, Father. Hurry home. There’s a storm coming from the west.’

‘A storm?’ The priest looked up, looked round. ‘Are you sure? The winds seem quite still.’

‘Ah,’ Merlin said with quiet humour, ‘but you don’t know the wildwoods of Broceliande as well as I do.’

‘No. I suppose I don’t.’

‘Go home. Go back to the hill. There’s nothing more, now, nothing that you can do that will make a difference. Go home.’

1

In the darkness, in the world of nightmares, she sang a little song. In her small room, behind the drawn curtains, her voice was tiny, frightened, murmuring in her sleep:

Tuneless, timeless, endlessly repeated through the night, soon the nightmare grew worse and she tossed below the bedclothes, and called out for her mother, louder and louder,
Mother! Mother!
until she sat up, gasping for breath and screaming.

‘Hush, child. I’m here. I’m beside you. Quiet now. Go back to sleep.’

‘I’m frightened, I’m frightened. I had a terrible dream …’

Her mother hugged her, sitting on the bed, rocking back and forward, wiping the sweat and the fear
from her face. ‘Hush … hush, now. It was just a dream …’

‘The blind man,’ she whispered, and shook as she thought of it so that her mother’s grip grew firmer, more reassuring. ‘The blind man. He’s coming again …’

‘Just a dream, child. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Close your eyes and go back to sleep, now. Sleep, child … sleep. There. That’s better.’

Still she sang, her voice very small, very faint as she drifted into sleep again.
‘Three young fellows … came courting me … one was blind … one was grim … one had creatures following him …
’

‘Hush, child …’

Waking with a scream: ‘Don’t let him take me!’

2

None of the children in the village really knew one festival day from another. They were
told
what to wear, and
told
what to do, and
told
what to eat, and when the formalities were over they would rush away to their secret camp, in the shadow of the old church.

Lord’s Eve was different, however. Lord’s Eve was the best of the festivals. Even if you didn’t know that a particular day would be Lord’s Eve day, the signs of it were in the village.

Ginny knew the signs by heart. Mr Box, at the Red Hart, would spend a day cursing as he tried to erect a tarpaulin in the beer garden of his public house. Here,
the ox would be slaughtered and roasted, and the dancers would rest. At the other end of the village Mr Ellis, who ran the Bush and Briar, would put empty firkins outside his premises for use as seats. The village always filled with strangers during the dancing festivals, and those strangers drank a lot of beer.

The church was made ready too. Mr and Mrs Morton, usually never to be seen out of their Sunday best, would dress in overalls and invade the cold church with brooms, brushes and buckets. Mr Ashcroft, the priest, would garner late summer flowers, and mow and trim the graveyard. This was a dangerous time for the children, since he would come perilously close to their camp, which lay just beyond the iron gate that led from the churchyard. Here, between the church and the earth walls of the old Saxon fort – in whose ring the village had been built – was a tree-filled ditch, and the children’s camp had been made there. The small clearing was close to the path which led from the church, through the earth wall and out onto the farmland beyond.

There were other signs of the coming festival day, however, signs from outside the small community. First, the village always seemed to be in shadow. Yet distantly, beyond the cloud cover, the land seemed to glow with eerie light. Ginny would stand on the high wall by the church, looking through the crowded trees that covered the ring of earthworks, staring to where the late summer sun was setting its fire on Whitley Nook and Middleburn. Movement on the high valley
walls above these villages was just the movement of clouds, and the fields seemed to flow with brightness.

The wind always blew from Whitley Nook towards Ginny’s own village, Scarrowfell. And on that wind, the day before the festival of Lord’s Eve, you could always hear the music of the dancers as they wended their way along the riverside, through and round the underwood, stopping at each village to collect more dancers, more musicians (more hangovers) ready for the final triumph at Scarrowfell itself.

The music drifted in and out of hearing, a hint of a violin, the distant clatter of sticks, the faint jingle of the small bells with which the dancers decked out their clothes. When the wind gusted, whole phrases of the jaunty music could be heard, a rhythmic sound, with the voices of the dancers clearly audible as they sang the words of the folk songs.

Ginny, precariously balanced on the top of the wall, would jig with those brief rhythms, hair blowing in the wind, one hand holding on to the dry bark of an ash branch.

The dancers were coming; all the Oozers and the Pikers and the Thackers, coming to join the village’s Scarrowmen; and it was therefore the day of Lord’s Eve: the birds would flock and wheel in the skies, and flee along the valley too. And sure enough, as she looked up into the dark sky over Scarrowfell, the birds were there, thousands of them, making streaming, spiral patterns in the gloom. Their calling was inaudible. But after a while they streaked north, away from the bells, away from the sticks, away from the calling of the Oozers.

Kevin Symonds came racing round the grey-walled church, glanced up and saw Ginny and made frantic beckoning motions. ‘Gargoyle!’ he hissed, and Ginny almost shouted as she lost her balance before jumping down from the wall. ‘Gargoyle’ was their name for Mr Ashcroft, the priest. A second after they had squeezed beyond the iron gate and into the cover of the scrub the old man appeared. But he was busy placing rillygills – knots of flowers and wheat stalks – on each gravestone and didn’t notice the panting children just beyond the cleared ground, where the thorn and ash thicket was so dense.

Ginny led the way into the clear space among the trees in the ditch. She stepped up the shallow earth slope to peer away into the field beyond, and the circle of tall elms that grew at its centre. A scruffy brown mare – probably one of Mr Box’s drays – was kicking and stamping across the field, a white foal stumbling behind it. She was so intent on watching the foal that she didn’t notice Mr Box himself, emerging from the ring of trees. He was dressed in his filthy blue apron but walked briskly across the field towards the church, his gaze fixed on the ground. Every few paces he stopped and fiddled with something on the grass. He never looked up, walked through the gap in the earthworks – the old gateway – and passed, by doing so, within arm’s reach of where Ginny and Kevin breathlessly crouched. He walked straight ahead, stopped at the iron gate, inspected it, then moved off around the perimeter of the church, out of sight and out of mind.

‘They’ve got the ox on the spit already,’ Kevin said,
his eyes bright, his lips wet with anticipation. ‘It’s the biggest ever. There’s going to be at least two slices each.’

‘Yuck!’ said Ginny, feeling sick at the thought of the grey, greasy meat.

‘And they’ve started the bonfire. You’ve got to come and see it. It’s going to be huge! My mother said it’s going to be the biggest yet.’

‘I usually scrub potatoes for fire-baking,’ Ginny said. ‘But I haven’t been asked this year.’

‘Sounds as if you’ve been lucky,’ Kevin said. ‘It’s going to be a really big day. The biggest ever. It’s
very
special.’

Ginny whispered, ‘My mother’s been behaving strangely. And I’ve had a nightmare …’

Kevin watched her, but when no further information or explanation seemed to be forthcoming he said, ‘
My
mother says this is the most special Lord’s Eve of them all. An old man’s coming back to the village.’

‘What old man?’

‘His name’s Cyric, or something. He left a long time ago, but he’s coming back and everybody’s very excited. They’ve been trying to get him to come back for ages, but he’s only just agreed. That’s what Mum says, anyway.’

‘What’s so special about him?’

Kevin wasn’t sure. ‘She said he’s a war hero, or something.’

‘Ugh!’ Ginny wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘He’s probably going to be all scarred’

‘Or blind!’ Kevin agreed, and Ginny’s face turned white.

A third child wriggled through the iron gate and
skidded into the depression between the earth walls, dabbing at his face where he had scratched himself on a thorn.

‘The tower!’ Mick Ferguson whispered excitedly, ignoring his graze. ‘While old Gargoyle is busy placing the rillygills.’

They moved cautiously back to the churchyard, then crawled towards the porch on their bellies, screened from the priest by the high earth mounds over each grave. Ducking behind the memorial stones – but not touching them – they at last found sanctuary in the freshly polished, gloomy interior. Despite the cloud-cover, light was bright from the stained-glass windows. The altar, with its flowers, looked somehow different from normal. The Mortons were cleaning the font, over in the side chapel; a bucket of well-water stood by ready to fill the bowl. They were talking as they worked and didn’t hear the furtive movement of the three children.

Kevin led the way up the spiralling, footworn steps and out onto the cone-shaped roof of the church’s tower. They averted their eyes from the grotesque stone figure that guarded the doorway, although Kevin reached out and touched its muzzle as he always did.

‘For luck,’ he said. ‘My mother says the stone likes affection as much as the rest of us. If it doesn’t get attention it’ll prowl the village at night and choose someone to kill.’

‘Shut
up
,’ Ginny said emphatically, watching the monster from the corner of her eye.

Michael laughed. ‘Don’t be such a scaredy-hare,’ he
said and reached out to jingle the small bell that hung around her neck. Her ghost bell.

‘It’s a small bell and that’s a big stone demon,’ Ginny pointed out nervously. Why was she so apprehensive this time, she wondered? She had often been up here and had never doubted that the stone creature, like all demons, could not attack the faithful, and that bells, books and candles were protection enough from the devil’s minions.

The nightmare had upset her. She remembered Mary Whitelock’s nightmare a few years before – almost the same dream, confided in the gang as they had feasted on stolen pie in their camp. She had not really liked Mary. All the same, when she had suddenly disappeared, after the festival, Ginny had felt very confused …

No! Put the thought from your mind, she told herself sternly. And brazenly she turned and stared at the medieval monstrosity that sat watching the door to the church below. And she laughed, because it was only frightening when you
imagined
how awful it was. In fact, it looked faintly ludicrous, with its gaping V-shaped mouth and lolling tongue, and its pointed ears, and skull cheeks, and its one great staring eye … and one gouged socket …

Below them, the village was a bustle of activity. In the small square in front of the church the bonfire was rising to truly monumental heights. Other children were helping to heap the faggots and broken furniture onto the pile. A large stake in its centre was being used to hold the bulk of wood in place.

Away from where this fire would blaze, a large area was being roped off for the dancing. The gate from the
church had already been decked with wild roses and lilies. The Gargoyle himself always led the congregation from the Lord’s Eve service out to the festivities in the village. Ginny giggled at the remembered sight of him, dark cassock held up to his knees, white bony legs kicking and hopping along with the Oozers and the local Scarrowmen, a single bell on each ankle making him look as silly as she always thought he was.

At the far end of the village, the road from Whitley Nook cut through the south wall of the old earth fort and snaked between the cluster of tiled cottages where Ginny herself lived. Here, two small fires had been set alight, one on each side of the old track. The smoke was shattered by the wind from the valley. On the church tower the three children enjoyed the smell of the burning wood.

And as they listened they heard the music of the dancers, even now winding their way between Middleburn and Whitley Nook.

They would be here tomorrow. Sunlight picked out the white of their costumes, miles distant; and the flash of swords flung high in the air.

The Oozers were coming. The Thackers were coming. The wild dance was coming.

3

She awoke with a shock, screaming out, then becoming instantly silent as she stared at the empty room and the
bright daylight creeping in above the heavy curtains of her room.

What time was it? Her head was full of music, the jangle of bells, the beating of the skin drums, the clash and thud of the wooden hobby poles. But now, outside, all was silent.

She swung her legs from the bed, then began to shiver as unpleasant echoes of that haunting song, the nightmare song, came back to her.

She found that she could not resist muttering the words that stalked her sleeping hours. It was as if she had to repeat the sinister refrain before her body would allow her to move again, to become a child again …

‘Oh dear mother … three young men … two were blind … the third couldn’t see … oh mother, oh mother … grim-eyed courtiers … blind men dancing … creatures followed him, creatures dancing …
’

The church bell rang out, a low repeated toll, five strikes and then a sixth strike, a moment delayed from the rest.

Five strikes for the Lord, and one for the fire! It couldn’t be that time. It couldn’t!
Why hadn’t mother come in to wake her?

Ginny ran to the curtains and pulled them back, staring out into the deserted street, crawling up onto the window ledge so that she could lean through the top window and stare up towards the square.

It was full of motionless figures. And distantly she could hear the chanting of the congregation. The Lord’s Eve service had already started. Started! The procession
had already passed the house, and she had been aware of it only in her half sleep!

She screeched with indignation, fleeing from her bedroom into the small sitting room. By the dock on the mantelpiece she learned that it was after midday. She had slept … she had slept fifteen hours!