Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) (21 page)

Round the burning fire, stumbling and tottering, shrieking with mirth as a whole segment of the ring tumbled in the mud. Round and round.

The bells, the hammering of sticks, the whine of the violin, the Jack Tar sound of the accordion.

And at ten o’clock the whole wild dance stopped.

Silence.

The men reached down and took the bells from their legs, cast them into the fire. The cudgels, too, were thrown onto the flames. The violins were shattered on the ground, the fragments tossed into the conflagration.

The accordions wept music as they were slung onto the pyre.

Flowers out of hair. Bonnets from heads. Rose and lily were stripped off the lych-gate. The air filled suddenly with a sharp, aromatic scent … of herbs, woodland herbs.

In the silence Ginny walked towards the church, darted through the gate into the darkness of the graveyard … Round between the long mounds to the iron gate …

Kevin was there. He ran towards her, his eyes wide, wild. ‘He’s coming!’ he hissed, breathlessly.

‘What’s going on?’ she whispered.

‘Where are you going?’ he said.

‘To the camp. I’m frightened. They’ve stopped dancing. They’re burning their instruments. This happened three years ago when Mary … when … you know …’

‘Why are you so frightened?’ Kevin asked. His eyes were bright from the distant glow of the bonfire. ‘What are you running from, Ginny? Tell me. Tell me. We’re friends …’

‘Something is wrong,’ she sobbed. She found herself clutching at the boy’s arms. ‘Everybody is being so horrible to me.
You
were horrible to me. What have I done? What have I done?’

He shook his head. The flames made his dark eyes gleam. She had her back to the square. Suddenly he looked beyond her. Then he smiled. He looked at her.

‘Goodbye, Ginny,’ he whispered.

She turned. Kevin darted past her and into the great mob of masked men who stood around her. They had come upon her so quietly that she had not heard a thing. Their faces were like black pigs. Eyes gleamed, mouths grinned. They wore white and black … the Scarrows.

Unexpectedly, Kevin began to whine. Ginny thought he was being punished for being out of bounds. She listened, and then for one second … just one second … all was stillness, all was silence, anticipation. Then she reacted as any sensible child would react in the situation.

She opened her mouth and screamed. The sound had barely echoed in the night air when a hand clamped firmly across her face, a great hand, strong, stifling her cry. She struggled and pulled away, turned and kicked until she realised it was the Mother that she fought against. She was no longer wearing her rowan beads, or her iron charm. She seemed naked without them. Her
dress was green and she held Ginny firmly still. ‘Hold quiet, child. Your time is soon.’

The iron gate was open. Ginny peered through it, into the darkness, through the grassy walls of the old fort and towards the circle of great elms.

There was a light there, and the light was coming closer. And ahead of that light there was a wind, a breeze, ice cold, tinged with a smell that was part sweat, part rot, and unpleasant in the extreme. She grimaced and tried to back away, but the Mother’s hands held her fast. She glanced over her shoulder, towards the square, and felt her body tremble as the Scarrows stared beyond her, into the void of night.

Two of the Scarrows held tall, hazel poles, each wrapped round with strands of ivy and mistletoe. They stepped forward and held the poles to form a gateway between them. Ginny watched all of this and shivered. And she felt sick when she saw Kevin held by others of the Scarrows. The boy was terrified. He seemed to be pleading with Ginny, but what could she do? His own mother stood close to him, weeping silently.

The wind gusted suddenly and the first of the shadows passed over so quickly that she was hardly aware of its transit. It appeared out of nowhere, part darkness, part chill, a tall shape that didn’t so much walk as
flow
through the iron gate. Looking at that shadow was like looking into a depthless world of dark; it shimmered, it hazed, it flickered, it moved, an uncertain balance between that world and the real world. Only as it passed between the hazel poles held by the Scarrows, and then
into the world beyond, did it take on a form that could be called … ghostly.

Distantly the priest’s voice intoned a greeting. Ginny heard him say, ‘Welcome back to
Scarugfell
. Our pledge is fulfilled. Your life begins again.’

A second shadow followed the first, this one smaller, and with its darkness and its chill came the sound of keening, like a child’s crying. It was distant, though, and uncertain. As Ginny watched, it took its shadowy form beyond the Scarrows and into the village.

As each of them had passed over, so the Scarrowmen closed ranks again, but distantly, close to the fire in the square, an unearthly howling, a nightmare wind, seemed to greet each new arrival. What happened to the spirits then, Ginny couldn’t tell, or care.

Her mother’s hand touched her face, then her shoulder, forced her round again to watch the iron gate. The Mother whispered, ‘Those two were his kin. They too died for our village a long time ago. But Cyric is coming now …’

The shadow that moved beyond the gate was like nothing Ginny could ever have imagined. She couldn’t tell whether it was animal or man. It was immense. It swayed as it moved, and it seemed to approach through the darkness in a ponderous, dragging way. Its outlines were blurred, shadow against darkness, void against the glimmering light among the trees. It seemed to have branches and tendrils reaching from its head. It made a sound that was like the rumble of water in a hidden well.

It seemed to fill her vision. It occupied all of space. Its breath stank. Its single eye gleamed with firelight.

One was blind … one was grim …

It seemed to be laughing at her as it peered down from beyond the trees and the earth walls that surrounded the church.

It pushed something forward, a shadow, a man, nudged it through the iron gate. Ginny wanted to scream as she caught glimpses, within that shadow, of the dislocated jaw, the empty sockets, the crawling flesh. The ragged thing limped toward her, hands raised, bony fingers stretched out, skull face open and inviting … inviting the kiss that Ginny knew, now, would end her life.

‘No!’ she shouted, and struggled frantically in the Mother’s grip. The Mother seemed angry. ‘Even now it mocks us!’ she said, then shouted, ‘Give the Life for the Death. Give it now!’

Behind Ginny, Kevin suddenly screamed. Then he was running towards the iron gate, sobbing and shouting, drawn by invisible hands.

‘Don’t let him take me! Don’t let him take me!’ he cried.

He passed the hideous figure and entered the world beyond the gate. He was snatched into the air, blown into darkness like a leaf whipped by a storm wind. He had vanished in an instant.

The great shadow turned away into the night and began to seep back towards the circle of elms. The Mother’s hands on Ginny’s shoulders pushed her forwards, towards the ghastly embrace.

The shadow corpse stopped moving. Its arms dropped. The gaping eyes watched nothing and nowhere. A sound issued from its bones. ‘Is she the one? Is she my kin?’

Mother’s voice answered loudly that she was indeed the one. She was indeed Cyric’s kin.

The shadow seemed to turn its head to watch Ginny. It looked down at her, then reached up and pulled the tatters of a hood about its head. The hood hid the features. The whole creature seemed to melt, to descend, to shrink. Ginny heard the Mother say, ‘Fifteen hundred years in the dark. Your life saved our village. Our pledge to bring you back is honoured. Welcome, Cyric.’

Something wriggled below the tatters of the hood. The Mother said, ‘Go forward, child. Take the hare.
Take him!
’

Ginny hesitated. She glanced round. The Scarrows seemed to be smiling behind their masks. Two other children, both girls, stood there. Each was holding a struggling hare. Her Mother made frantic motions to her. ‘Come on, Ginny. The fear is ended, now. The day of denial is over. Only you can touch the hare. You’re the kin. Cyric has chosen you. Take it quickly. Bring him over. Bring him back.’

Ginny stumbled forward, reached below the stinking rags and found the terrified animal. As she raised the brown hare to her breast she felt the flow of the past, the voice, the wisdom, the spirit of the man who had passed back over, the promise to him kept, fifteen hundred years after he had lain down his life for the safety of
Scarugfell
, also known as the
Place of the Mother
.

Cyric was home. The great hunter was home. Ginny had him, now, and
he
had her, and she would become great and wise, and Cyric would speak the wisdom of the Dark through her lips. The hare would die in time, but Cyric and Ginny would share a human life until the human body itself passed away.

And Ginny felt a great glow of joy as the images of that ancient land, its forts, its hills, its tracks, its forest shrines, flooded into her mind. She heard the hounds, the horses, the larks, she felt the cold wind, smelled the great woods.

Yes. Yes. She had been born for this. Her parents had been sacrificed to free her and the Mother had kept her ready for the moment. The nightmare had been Cyric making contact as the Father had brought him to the edge of the dark world.

The Father! The Father had watched over her, as all in the village had often said he would. It had been the Father she had seen, a rare glimpse of the Lord who always brought the returning Dead to the place of the Lord’s Eve.

Cyric had come a long, long way home. It had taken time to make the Lord release him and allow Cyric’s knowledge of the dark world back to the village, to help Scarrowfell, and the villages like it keep the eyes and minds of the invader muddled and confused. And then Cyric, too, had waited … until Ginny was of age. His kin. His chosen vehicle.

Ginny, his new protector, cradled the animal. The hare twitched in her grasp. Its eyes were full of rejoicing.

She felt a moment’s sadness, then, for poor, betrayed
Kevin, but it passed. And as she left the place of the gate she joined willingly in reciting the Lord’s prayer, her voice high, enthusiastic among the nimble of the crowd.

for John Murry

At sundown, when the masons and guild carpenters finished their work for the day and trudged wearily back to their village lodgings, Thomas Wyatt remained behind in the half-completed church and listened to the voice of the stone man, calling to him.

The whispered sound was urgent, insistent: ‘Hurry! Hurry! I
must
be finished before the others.
Hurry!
’

Thomas, hiding in the darkness below the gallery, felt sure that the ghostly cry could be heard for miles around. But the Watchman, John Tagworthy, was almost completely deaf, now, and the priest was too involved with his own holy rituals to be aware of the way his church was being stolen.

Thomas could hear the priest. He was circling the new church twice, as he always did at sundown, a small, smoking censer in one hand, a book in the other. He walked from right to left. Demons, and the sprites of the old earth, flew before him, birds and bats in the darkening sky. The priest, like all the men who worked on the church – except for Thomas himself – was a stranger to
the area. He had long hair and a dark, trimmed beard, an unusual look for a monk.

He talked always about the supreme holiness of the place where his church was being built. He kept a close eye on the work of the craftsmen. He prayed to the north and the south, and constantly was to be seen kneeling at the very apex of the mound, as if exorcising the ancient spirits buried below.

This was Dancing Hill. Before the stone church there had been a wooden church, and some said that Saint Peter himself had raised the first timbers. And hadn’t Joseph, bearing the Grail of Christ, rested on this very spot, and driven out the demons of the earth mound?

But it was Dancing Hill. And sometimes it was referred to by its older name,
Ynys Calidryv
, isle of the old fires. There were other names, too, forgotten now.

‘Hurry!’ called the stone man from his hidden niche. Thomas felt the cold walls vibrate with the voice of the spectre. He shivered as he felt the power of the earth returning to the carved ragstone pillars, to the neatly positioned blocks. Always at night.

The Watchman’s fire crackled and flared in the lee of the south wall. The priest walked away down the hill to the village, stopping just once to stare back at the half-constructed shell of the first stone church in the area. Then he was gone.

Thomas stepped from the darkness and stood, staring up through the empty roof to the clouds and the sky, and the gleaming light that was Jupiter. His heart was beating fast, but a great relief touched his limbs and his mind. And as always, he smiled, then closed his eyes
for a moment. He thought of what he was doing. He thought of Beth, of what she would say if she knew his secret work; sweet Beth; with no children to comfort her she was now more alone than ever. But it would not be for much longer. The face was nearly finished …

‘Hurry!’

A few more nights. A few more hours working in darkness, and all the Watchman’s best efforts to guard the church would have been in vain.

The church would have been stolen. Thomas would have been the thief!

He moved through the gloom, now, to where a wooden ladder lay against the side wall. He placed the ladder against the high gallery – the lepers’ gallery – and climbed it. He drew the ladder up behind him and stepped across the debris of wood, stone and leather to the farthest, tightest corner of the place. Bare faces of the coarse ragstone watched the silent church. No mortar joined the stones. Their weight held them secure. They supported nothing but themselves.

At Thomas’s muscular insistence, one of them moved, came away from the others.

With twilight gone, but night not yet fully descended, there was enough grey light for him to see the face that was carved there. He stared at the leafy beard, the narrowed, slanting eyes, the wide, flaring nostrils. He saw how the cheeks would look, how the hair would become spiky, how he would include the white and red berries of witch-thorn upon the twigs that clustered round the face …

Thomas stared at Thorn, and Thorn watched him by
return, a cold smile on cold stone lips. Voices whispered in a sound realm that was neither in the church, nor in another world, but somewhere between the two, a shadowland of voice, movement and memory.

‘I must be finished before the others,’ the stone man whispered.

‘You shall be,’ said the mason, selecting chisel and hammer from his leather bag. ‘Be patient.’

‘I must be finished before the magic ones!’ Thorn insisted, and Thomas sighed in irritation.

‘You
shall
be finished before the magic ones. No-one has agreed upon the design of their faces, yet.’

The ‘magic ones’ were what Thomas called the Apostles. The twelve statues were temporarily in place above the altar, bodies completed but faces still smoothly blank.

‘To control them I must be here first,’ Thorn said.

‘I’ve already opened your eyes. You can see how the other faces are incomplete.’

‘Open them better,’ said Thorn.

‘Very well.’

Thomas reached out to the stone face. He touched the lips, the nose, the eyes. He knew every prominence, every rill, every chisel-mark. The grains of the stone were like pebbles beneath his touch. He could feel the hard-stone intrusion below the right eye, where the rag would not chisel well. There was a hardness, too, in the crown of Thorns, a blemish in the soft rock that would have to be shaped carefully to avoid cracking the whole design. As his fingers ran across the thorn man’s lips, cold, old breath tickled him, the woodland man
breathing from his time in the long past. As Thomas touched the eyes he felt the eyeballs move, impatient to see better.

I am in a wood grave, and a thousand years lie between us
, Thorn had said.
Hurry, hurry. Bring me back
.

In the deepening darkness, working by touch alone, Thomas chiselled the face, bringing back the life of the lost god. The sound of his work was a sequence of shrill notes, stone music in the still church. John Tagworthy, the Watchman, outside by his fire, would be unaware of them. He might see a tallow candle by its glow upon the clouds, he might smell a fart from the distant castle on a still summer’s night, but the noises of man and nature had long since ceased to bother his senses.

‘Thomas! Thomas Wyatt! Where in God’s Name
are
you?’

The voice, hailing him from below, so shocked Thomas that he dropped his chisel, and in desperately trying to catch the tool he cut himself. He stayed silent for a long moment, cursing Jupiter and the sudden band of bright stars for their light. The church was a place of shadows against darkness. As he peered at the north arch he thought he could see a man’s shape, but it was only an unfinished timber. He reached for the heavy stone block that would cover the stone face, and as he did so the voice came again.

‘God take your gizzard, Thomas Wyatt. It’s Simon. Miller’s son Simon!’

Thomas crept to the gallery’s edge and peered over. The movement drew attention to him. Simon’s pale
features turned to look at him. ‘I heard you working. What are you working on?’

‘Nothing,’ Thomas lied. ‘Practising my craft on good stone with good tools.’

‘Show me the face, Thomas,’ said the younger man, and Thomas felt the blood drain from his head.
How had he known?
Simon was twenty years old, married for three years and still, like Thomas himself, childless. He was a freeman of course; he worked in his father’s mill, but spent a lot of his time in the fields, both his family’s strips and the land belonging to the Castle. His great ambition, though, was to be a Guildsman, and masonry was his aspiration.

‘What face?’

‘Send down the ladder,’ Simon urged, and reluctantly Thomas let the wood scaffold down. The miller clambered up to the gallery, breathing hard. He smelled of garlic. He looked eagerly about in the gloom. ‘Show me the green man.’

‘Explain what you mean.’

‘Come on, Thomas! Everybody knows you’re shaping the Lord of Wood. I want to see him. I want to know how he looks.’

Thomas could hardly speak. His heart alternately stopped and raced. Simon’s words were like stab wounds.
Everybody knew! How could everybody know?

Thorn had spoken to him, and to him alone. He had sworn the mason to silence and secrecy. For thirty days Thomas Wyatt had risked not just a flogging, but almost certain hanging for blasphemy, risked his life for the secret realm. Everybody
knew?

‘If everybody knows, why haven’t I been stopped?’

‘I don’t mean
everybody
,’ Simon said, as he felt blindly along the cold walls for a sign of Thomas’s work. ‘I mean the village. It’s spoken in whispers. You’re a hero, Thomas. We know what you’re doing, and for whom. It’s exciting; it’s
right
. I’ve danced with them at the forest cross. I’ve carried the fire. I
know
how much power remains here. I may take God’s name in oath – but that’s safe to do. He has no power over me, or any of us. He doesn’t belong on Dancing Hill. Don’t
worry
, Thomas. We’re your friends … Ah!’

Simon had found the loose stone. It was heavy and he grunted loudly as he took its weight, letting it down carefully to the floor. His breathing grew soft as he reached for the stone face. But Thomas could see how the young man drew back, fingers extended yet not touching the precious icon.

‘There’s magic in this, Thomas,’ Simon said in awe.

‘There’s skill – working by night, working with fear – there’s skill enough, I’ll say that.’

‘There’s magic in the face,’ Simon repeated. ‘It’s drawing power from the earth below. It’s tapping the Dancing Well. There’s water in the eyes, Thomas. The dampness of the old well. The face is brilliant.’

He struggled with the covering stone and replaced it. ‘I wish it had been me. I wish the green man had chosen me. What an honour, Thomas. Truly.’

Thomas Wyatt watched his friend in astonishment. Was this
really
Simon the miller’s son? Was this the young man who had carried the Cross every Resurrection
Sunday for ten years? Simon Miller!
I’ve danced with them at the forest cross
.

‘Who have you danced with at the crossroads, Simon?’

‘You know,’ Simon whispered. ‘It’s alive, Thomas. It’s all alive. It’s here, around us. It never went away. The Lord of Wood showed us …’

‘Thorn? Is that who you mean?’

‘Him!
’ Simon pointed towards the hidden niche. ‘He’s been here for years. He came the moment the monks decided to build the church. He came to save us, Thomas. And you’re helping. I envy you …’

Simon climbed down the ladder. He was a furtive night shape, darting to the high arch where an oak door would soon be fitted, and out across the mud-churned hill, back round the forest, to where the village was a dark place, sleeping.

Thomas followed him down, placing the ladder back against the wall. But on the open hill, almost in sight of the Watchman’s fire, he looked to the north, across the forest, to where the ridgeway was a high band of darkness against the pale grey glow of the clouds. Below the ridgeway a fire burned. He knew that he was looking at the forest cross, where the stone road of the Romans crossed the disused track between Woodhurst and Biddenden. He had played there as a child, despite being told never
ever
to follow the broken stone road.

There was a clearing at the deserted crossroads, and years ago he, and Simon Miller’s elder brother Wat, had often found the cold remains of fire and feasts. Outlaws, of course, and the secret baggage trains of the Saxon Knights who journeyed the hidden forest trails. Any
other reason for the use of the place would have been unthinkable. Why, there was even an old gibbet, where forest justice was seen to be done …

With a shiver he remembered the time when he had come to the clearing and seen the swollen, greyish corpse of a man swinging from that blackened wood. Dark birds had been perched upon its shoulders. The face had had no eyes, no nose, no flesh at all, and the sight of the dead villain had stopped him from ever going back again.

Now, a fire burned at the forest cross. A fire like the fire of thirty nights ago, when Thorn had sent the girl for him …

He had woken to the sound of his name being called from outside. His wife, Beth, slept soundly on, turning slightly on the palliasse. It had been a warm night. He had tugged on his britches, and drawn a linen shirt over his shoulders. Stepping outside he had disturbed a hen, which clucked angrily and stalked to another nesting place.

The girl was dressed in dark garments. Her head was covered by a shawl. She was young, though, and the hand that reached for his was soft and pale.

‘Who are you?’ he said, drawing back. She had tugged at him. His reluctance to go with her was partly fear, partly concern that Beth would see him.

‘Iagus goroth! Fiatha!
Fiatha!
’ Her words were strange to Thomas. They were
like
the hidden language, but were not of the same tongue.

‘Who
are
you?’ he insisted, and the girl sighed, still holding his hand. At last she pointed to her bosom. Her eyes were bright beneath the covering of the shawl. Her hair was long and he sensed it to be red, like fire. ‘Anuth!’ she said. She pointed distantly. ‘Thorn. You come with Thorn. With Anuth. Me.
Come
. Thomas. Thomas to Thorn.
Fiatha!
’

She dragged at his hand and he began to run. The grip on his fingers relaxed. She ran ahead of him, skirts swirling, body hunched. He tripped in the darkness, but she seemed able to see every low-hanging branch and proud beechwood root on the track. They entered the wood. He concentrated on her fleeing shape, calling, occasionally, for her to slow down. Each time he went sprawling she came back, making clicking sounds with her mouth, impatient, anxious. She helped him to his feet but immediately took off into the forest depths, heedless of risk to life and limb.

All at once he heard voices, a rhythmic beating, the crackle of fire … and the gentle sound of running water. She had brought him to the river. It wound through the forest, and then across downland, towards the Avon.