The Fellowship of the Talisman (6 page)

“No, I can't,” said Duncan.

Conrad came clumping into the cave, dumping the saddle and the packs to one side of the door.

“I heard you say a ghost,” he rumbled. “There isn't any ghost.”

“Ghost is a timid one,” said Andrew. “He hides from visitors. He thinks no one wants to see him. He has a dislike for scaring people, although there's really nothing about him that should scare anyone. As I told you, he is a decent and considerate ghost.”

He raised his voice. “Ghost, come out of there. Come out and show yourself. We have guests.”

A tendril of white vaporous substance streamed reluctantly from behind the cabinet holding the parchment rolls.

“Come on, come on,” the hermit said impatiently. “You can show yourself. These gentlemen are not frightened of you, and it is only courteous that you come out to greet them.”

The hermit said to Duncan, out of the corner of his mouth, “I have a lot of trouble with him. He thinks it's disgraceful to be a ghost.”

Slowly Ghost took shape above the cabinet, then floated to floor level. He was a classical ghost, white sheeted. The only distinguishing mark was a short loop of rope knotted about his neck, with a couple of feet or so hanging down in front.

“I'm a ghost,” he said in a hollow, booming voice, “with no place to haunt. Usually a ghost haunts his place of death, but how is one to haunt an oak tree? The Harriers dug my poor body out of the thicket in which I hid and forthwith strung me up. They might have paid me the courtesy, it seems to me, to have hung me from a mighty oak, one of those forest patriarchs that are so common in these woods of ours, tall trees standing well above the others and of mighty girth. But this they did not do. They hung me from a scrawny, stunted oak. Even in my death I was made sport of. In my life I begged alms at the church door and a poor living I made of it, for there were those who spread the rumor that I had no reason for the begging, that I could have done a day's work as well as any man. They said I only pretended to be crippled.”

“He was a fraud,” the hermit said. “He could have labored as well as any other.”

“You hear?” the ghost asked. “You hear? Even in death I am branded as a cheat and fraud. I am made a fool of.”

“I'll say this for him,” the hermit said. “He's a pleasure to have around. He's not up on all the ghostly tricks that other ghosts employ to make nuisances of themselves.”

“I try,” said Ghost, “to be but little trouble. I'm an outcast, otherwise I would not be here. I have no proper place to haunt.”

“Well, now you have met with these gentlemen and have conversed with them in a seemly matter,” said the hermit, “we can turn to other matters.” He turned to Conrad. “You said you had some cheese.”

“Also bacon and ham, bread and honey,” said Duncan.

“And you'll share all this with me?”

“We could not eat it ourselves and not share it with you.”

“Then I'll build up the fire,” said Andrew, “and we shall make a feast. I shall throw out the greens I gathered. Unless you should like a taste of greens. Perhaps with a bit of bacon.”

“I do not like greens,” said Conrad.

4

Duncan woke in the night and for a moment of panic wondered where he was. There were no points of reference, just a musty darkness with some flicker in it—as if he might be in some limbo, a waiting room for death.

Then he saw the door, or if not a door, an opening, with the soft wash of moonlight just beyond it, and in the fire-lit flicker, the bulk of Tiny, lying stretched out before the opening. Tiny had his legs pushed out in front of him, with his head resting on his paws.

Duncan twisted his head around and saw that the flicker came from a low-burned fire upon the hearth. A few feet away lay Conrad, flat upon his back, his toes pointing upward and his arms flung out on each side. His great barrel chest went up and down. He was breathing through his mouth, and the sucked-in then expelled air made a fluttering sound.

There was no sign of the hermit. Probably he was on his pallet, over in the corner. The air smelled faintly of wood smoke, and over his head, Duncan could make out the indistinct shapes of bunches of herbs the hermit had hung up to dry. From outside came a soft stamping sound. That would be Daniel not far away.

Duncan pulled the blanket up beneath his chin and shut his eyes. More than likely it was several hours till dawn, and he could get more sleep.

But sleep was reluctant to come. Much as he tried to shut them out, the events of the last few days kept parading up and down his mind. And the parading of events brought home again the rigors of the adventure he had embarked upon. In this hermit cave it was snug enough, but beyond the cave lay the Desolated Land with its freight of evil, with the burned-out village only a mile or so away, the church the only building standing. Not only the Evil, he reminded himself, but a band of evil men headed by the Reaver, who were out to track down his little party. For the moment, however, he could forget the Reaver, who had gone blundering off somewhere ahead of them.

Then his mind went back to that last day at Standish House when he'd sat with his father in the library, that same room where His Grace had told the story of the script writ in Aramaic.

Now he asked of his father the question that had been roiling in his mind ever since he'd heard the story. “But why us?” he asked. “Why should the manuscript have been in Standish House?”

“There is no way to know,” his father said. “The family's history is a long one and not too well documented. There are large parts of it that have been entirely lost. There are some records, of course, some writings, but mostly it is legend, stories from so long ago and so often told that there is no way to judge the truth that may be in them. We now are solid country folks, but there was a time when we were not. In the family records and in the legendary tales there are many wanderers and some shameless adventurers. It could have been one of these, traveling far, who brought home the manuscript. Probably from somewhere in the east. As part, perhaps, of his portion of the loot from a captured city or stolen from some monastery or, less likely, honestly purchased for a copper or two as a curiosity. There could not have been much value placed upon it, and rightly so, of course, for until it was placed in the hands of the fathers at the abbey, there was no one who could have known the significance of it. I found it in an old wooden crate, the wood half gone with rot and with mildew on the documents that it contained. The manuscript was tossed in among other odds and ends of parchment, most of which were worthless.”

“But you saw or sensed some significance in it. Enough to take it to the abbey.”

“No significance,” his father said. “No thought of any possible significance. Just an idle curiosity. I read some Greek, you know, and I can make my way in several other languages, although but poorly, but I'd never seen the like of the manuscript before. I simply wondered what it might be and was somewhat intrigued by it, and I thought that perhaps I should put some of those fat and lazy fathers at it. After all, they should be called upon occasionally to do a little work for us, if for no other reason than to remind them where they get their keep. When there's a roof to be repaired at the abbey, we are the ones they come to for the slate and the expertise to put it on. When they need a load of hay, being too trifling to go out and scythe it on their own, they know where to come to get it.”

“You must say this for them,” said Duncan. “They did quite a job on the manuscript.”

“Better that they should be doing that,” his father said, “which, after all, is useful work, rather than producing precious little conceits that they employ to spell out the happy hours of someone or other. All scriptoria, and I suspect the scriptorium at our abbey most of all, are filled with artistic fools who have too high an opinion of themselves. The Standishes have held this land for nigh on a thousand years, and from first to last we have given service to the abbey, and as those years went on, the abbey has become more grasping and demanding. Take the matter of that keg of brandy. His Grace did not ask for it, but he came as close to asking as even his good offices allowed.”

“That brandy is a sore point with you, my lord,” said Duncan.

His father whiffled out his mustache. “For centuries this house has produced good brandy. It is a matter of some pride for us, for this is not a country of the grape. But through the years we have pruned and grafted and budded until we have a vine that would be the pride of Gaul. And I tell you, son, a keg of brandy is not come by easily. His Grace had best use this one sparingly, for he's not about to get another soon.”

They sat for a time not speaking, with the fire snapping in the great fireplace.

Duncan's father finally stirred in his chair. “As we have done with the grape,” he said, “so have we done with other things. We have cattle here that run to several hundredweight heavier than most cattle in other parts of Britain. We raise good horses. Our wool is of the best. The wheat we grow is hardy for this climate—wheat, while many of our neighbors must be content with oats. And as it is with the crops and livestock, so it is with people. Many of the peasants and serfs who work our acres and are happy at it have been here almost as many years as the family. Standish House, although it was not known then as Standish House, had its beginnings in a time of strife and uncertainty, when no man's life was safe. It began as a wooden fort, built upon a mound, protected by a palisade and moat as many manor houses are protected even to this day.

“We still have our moat, of course, but now it has become a pretty thing, with water lilies and other decorative plants growing in it, and its earthen sides well landscaped with shrubs and slanted flower beds. And stocked with fish that serve as sport or food for whoever has the mind to dangle a baited hook into its waters. The drawbridge remains in place as a bridge across the moat. Ritually, we raise and lower it once a year to be sure it still will work. The country has grown a little more secure with the years, of course, but not so one could notice. There still are roving bands of human predators who show up every now and then. But with the years our house has grown stronger and news of our strength has spread. Not for three hundred years or more has any bandit or reaver or whatever he may call himself dared to throw himself against our walls. A few hit-and-run raids to snatch up a cow or two or a clutch of sheep are all that ever happen now. Although I do not think it is the strength of our walls alone that has brought about this security we enjoy. It is the knowledge that our people still are a warrior people, even if they be no more than serfs or peasants. We no longer maintain an army of idle and arrogant men-at-arms. There is no longer need to do so. Should there be danger, every man of this estate will take up arms, for each man here considers this land his land as much as it is ours. So in a still turbulent society we have created here a place of security and peace.”

“I have loved this house,” said Duncan. “I shall not be easy, leaving it.”

“Nor I easy, my son, at having you leave it. For you will be going into danger, and yet I do not feel any great uneasiness, for I know that you can handle yourself. And Conrad is a stout companion.”

“So,” said Duncan, “are Daniel and Tiny.”

“His Grace, the other night,” his father said, “carried on at some length about our lack of progress. We are, he said, a stagnant society. And while this may be true, I still can see some good in it. For if there were progress in other things, there'd be progress in armaments as well. And any progress in arms would spell continual war, for if some chieftain or piddling king acquired a new implement of war he need must try it out against a neighbor, thinking that for at least a moment it would give him some advantage.”

“All our arms,” said Duncan, “historically are personal arms. To use them one man must face another man at no more than arm's length. There are few that reach out farther. Spears and javelins, of course, but they are awkward weapons at the best and once one has cast them he cannot retrieve them to cast them once again. They and slings are all that have any distance factor. And slings are tricky things to use, mostly inaccurate and, by and large, not too dangerous.”

“You are right,” his father said. “There are those, like His Grace, who bewail our situation, but to my mind we are quite fortunate. We have achieved a social structure that serves our purposes and any attempt to change it might throw us out of balance and bring on many troubles, most of which, I would imagine, we cannot now suspect.”

A sudden coldness, a breath of frost sweeping over Duncan, jerked him from his review of that last day. His eyes popped open, and bending over him, he saw the hooded face of Ghost, if face it could be called. It was more like a murky oval of swirling smoke, encircled by the whiteness of the cowl. There were no features, just that smoky swirl, and yet he felt he was staring straight into a face.

“Sir Ghost,” he said sharply, “what is your intent to waken me so rudely and abruptly?”

Ghost, he saw, was hunkering beside him, and that was a strange thing, that a ghost should hunker.

“I have questions to ask your lordship,” said Ghost. “I have asked them beforetimes of the hermit and he is impatient of me for asking questions that do not fall within his knowledge, although as a holy man one might think he had the knowledge. I asked them of your huge companion and he only grunts at me. He was outraged, methinks, that a ghost should presume to talk to him. Should he think he might find any substance to me, I believe he might have put those hamlike hands about my throat and choked me. Although no longer can I be choked. I have been choked sufficiently. Also, I think, a broken neck. So, happily, I now am beyond all such indignity.”

Duncan threw the blanket off him and sat up.