The Greenstone Grail (23 page)

‘I see.’ She sensed he was not convinced. ‘Well, I will be staying around for a while. There is a very pleasant little hotel here, and I should like to see the locality from which the cup originated. I believe there are many interesting stories about it. Perhaps, even though you will not do business with me, we could have lunch, and you would tell me some of them?’

‘Perhaps.’ Rowena was unencouraging.

‘I hope we will speak further,’ he said. He turned to leave – then hesitated. ‘There are many things about this matter that I do not comprehend, but at this moment there is one in particular.’

Rowena said: ‘Yes?’ interrogatively, because it was clearly expected of her.

‘You have many beautiful things in this shop, which you are ready, presumably eager, to sell. The cup is not especially beautiful, and since the failed attempt at carbon-dating its antiquity must be called into question. Whatever legends may be attached to it, they can have no basis in fact. You strike me as an intelligent, hard-nosed woman, not given to sentimentality. Yet you only wish to possess this thing, for its own sake, without regard to value or potential profit. I find that extraordinary.’ His tone was politely sceptical.

Rowena made a sound half laugh, half snort. ‘Think I’m faking it? Try me.’

‘I will,’ said Von Humboldt. When she volunteered nothing further, he left.

That week, Nathan had a dream which he thought must be set in a different world from that of Eos, though whether in the same universe or another he couldn’t tell. Once again, he was incorporeal, a mere awareness floating in space. Below
him stretched an expanse of sea so vast he thought either the world in question must be flat or the planet far bigger than Earth. The water was a wonderful deep blue – it looked much bluer than any sea he remembered seeing anywhere – with a string of tiny islands scattered across it, their colours blurred with distance into a brownish neutrality, given brilliance by the light of that enormous day. Because of course the sky too was impossibly huge: the sun, failing from its zenith, seemed to have a long, long way to go before it would reach the horizon. Clouds were building up to block its route, great towers of cumulus, top-heavy with rain. Their shadow came crawling towards the islands, darkening the sea to indigo. White wave-wrinkles indicated the new restlessness of the waters. The sun, struggling towards evening, sent a few long rays through a cleft in the cloud-wall, throwing a path of glitter across the sea-shadow, touching the nearest island with green. Nathan was much lower now and he glimpsed the contouring of cultivation, clusters of what might be houses, the outthrust jetty of a miniature harbour. Then the clouds rose to smother the lastlight, and the colours went out. There was a crack of thunder so loud it might have been the crashing of world against world. Lightning zig-zagged across the sky-roof and stabbed earthwards with many prongs. Nathan was descending fast and even though he had no substance everything became suddenly very alarming.

The sea went mad. Waves arose like rolling cliffs and heaving mountains; the writhing column of a waterspout flowed upwards into a connecting arm of cloud. Chasms opened that seemed to reach into the depths of the ocean, and creatures from a lightless realm flickered briefly into view. Tentacles seethed, electricity crackled along the arc of a spine or the flourish of a gigantic fin. And there were other things in the tumult, human shapes that were not quite human, things half
seen and half guessed – beings made of darkness and cloud-swirl, of sea-spume and black water. Night fell, and there was only chaos and noise. And somewhere in the midst of the storm Nathan’s awareness still hung on, shivering, if thought can shiver, overwhelmed by the power and horror of the elements.

He didn’t know how long the dream lasted. Ages later, or so it seemed, the world was quiet again, and the clouds must have lifted and thinned, for a line of dawn spread along the sea’s rim, and a slow pallor seeped into that world, turning it to monochrome. The water was calm now, the sky veiled. There was no sign of the night’s violence.

But the islands had gone.

At first, Nathan thought he might have moved, and the island chain would be somewhere else, but when he looked around he saw the flotsam, rocking gently on the swell, and he knew he was still in the same place. Uprooted trees, with mud still clotting their tubers, floating mounds of rubbish, smaller items which it was best not to look at too closely, though they might have been nothing significant. But the islands themselves had vanished for good, devoured by the storm’s fury and the sea’s hunger. The cloud-veil drew back and the rising sun appeared, its light reaching out across the endless waters. And somehow Nathan knew that in all that world there was no longer even a tiny patch of land remaining, not a single rock standing out from the waves. The ocean ruled unchecked. The last seabirds wheeled and keened over the flotsam, soon to die. There was no other lament.

Nathan sensed that what had happened was not the result of scientific pollution or magical contamination; the tempest had come from the sea itself, from the rage of elements which hated Man. And now the entire planet was a desert of water
where only fish might live, and the spirits of wave and darkness reigned alone.

He woke with the dawn, long before his schoolmates, and lay unsleeping while the aftermath of fear ebbed from his mind.

Later that day, Annie called him.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course I’m all right,’ he said, surprised. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ If he had reasons not to be, surely his mother wasn’t privy to any of them.

‘Your friend came to see me. Eric Rhindon. He says you’re in danger.’ She added, by way of palliative: ‘I like him very much.’

‘So do I. Mum … don’t worry. He’s just overreacting to something. He isn’t used to this country. He was being persecuted, you know.’

‘This country,’ Annie said, ‘or this world?’

Nathan evaded a direct answer. Clearly, explanations lay ahead – long, tangled, complex explanations which might well not be believed – but he would plunge into that quagmire when he came to it. His present problem was to focus on school work, when all his thought was elsewhere.

Back home on Friday evening he used homework and tiredness to dodge discussion. On Saturday he got up at eight thirty, breakfasted in haste and went to the local hardware store. He had to wait, as it didn’t open till nine. Once inside, he told the assistant he needed something made of iron. ‘Proper iron, not some kind of alloy,’ he said. ‘It’s for a school project.’ Everyone always seemed to accept that.

The assistant summoned the manager, who was intrigued. ‘Of course, in the old days we’d have been an ironmonger’s,’ he said, pointing to a faded notice demoted to a wall at the back of the shop. ‘Everything was made of iron then. Now –
you’re quite right, it’s all some alloy, or stainless steel, or Teflon –’ he tapped a saucepan ‘– or plastic. Very up-to-date-they invented some of this stuff designing rockets – but it doesn’t wear like iron. What exactly is this project about?’

Nathan improvised on lines suggested by the manager’s conversation, and explained he needed some examples of iron in use today. ‘All I’ve got is a couple of old horseshoes, and they’re only borrowed.’

‘This is what you want.’ The manager showed his range of mock-antique door furniture, handles, knockers, numbers, all painted black. Nathan bought a selection of numbers for himself, Hazel, Eric and his mother: he knew he was going to have to start telling Annie everything soon, and he wanted her, too, to be properly protected. It didn’t occur to him to buy one for Bartlemy; if he had thought about it, he would have sensed the old man required no protection. The numbers cost a lot of money, and he realized he would have to tell Annie whatever happened, if only to get his allowance supplemented. He stuffed his purchases in his rucksack, all except the seven which he had chosen for his own: he put that in his pocket. Then he set off through the village to look for Eric.

They met on the edge of the woods. ‘You not come here,’ Eric said. ‘Is not safe, not in night or day. No
sylpherim
. Stay with your mother.’

‘It’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I’ve got protection.’ He produced the number four. ‘This is for you. It’s iron. I had another dream, and your ruler, the Grandir, was talking about it. Something about iron’s magnetic field being too strong for gnomons. We know a bit about that even in this world: people used to use it to ward off evil spirits.’

‘Stupid!’ Eric exclaimed, evidently in self-blame. ‘Me – stupid. Is in old legend, but I forget. I begin to learn. Much
truth in untrue stories.’ He accepted the iron reverently, as if it was a great gift. ‘Thank you for this.’

‘Have you been all right?’ Nathan asked. ‘I know you said you liked sleeping out, and the weather’s pretty warm, but what about food and stuff?’

‘I go to café where you take me,’ Eric said. ‘Chop wood, dig garden. They give me food.’

‘Good,’ said Nathan, ‘Rut I think we should go and see Uncle Barty now. The gnomons won’t be able to stop us this time.’

‘In dream,’ Eric said as they walked, ‘what else you learn?’

‘I think the Grandir may be controlling the gnomons, even across the worlds. I’m practically certain he sent them here. Do you know … who is the woman with him? Is she his wife? Her name is Halmé.’

‘You have seen her?’ Nathan mmmed an affirmation. ‘They say she is most beautiful of women. His sister, and his wife.’

Nathan absorbed this thoughtfully. ‘In this world,’ he said after a pause, ‘we don’t allow that. It’s called incest. It’s against the law. I think actually it’s because the genes are too similar, so it can be dangerous for the children.’

‘No children,’ said Eric. ‘There is old rumour they try, long ago, before sterile begin, but no children come. Force strong in their family. Children perhaps more powerful. Incest common in my world, in strong family. You see … Halmé? You see her face?’

‘Yes,’ said Nathan. ‘You’re right. She
is
the most beautiful of women.’

‘Your mother beautiful also,’ Eric suggested.

Nathan glanced up at him, suddenly smiling. ‘Yes, she is,’ he said. Halmé’s beauty was that of Helen, a queen of ancient legend, a goddess – but Annie’s beauty was something closer to the earth, nearer the heart, less perfect, less breathtaking,
but not less touching. A beauty that shines from inside, he thought, and he remembered how Halmé was weary of her endless life, and her dying world, and how little she seemed to care for anything. For all her swan-neck, and the poise of her head, and the artwork of her bones, there was nothing inside her that shone any more.

As they drew nearer to Thornyhill the familiar ripple came snaking through the leaves, and the whispers began. Even with the iron in his pocket, Nathan knew the eternal clutch of fear in his stomach, but he clasped the number tightly, and held it out, and Eric did the same, and
they
retreated. Not far, never far, and the pressure of their rage and their reluctance was like a tangible barrier, but Nathan and Eric kept going. When they reached the path to the house the gnomons suddenly melted away, their nothingness vanishing into the quiet of the wood.

‘You are very brave,’ Eric declared. ‘They follow you, but you have no fear.’

‘They aren’t following me,’ Nathan said. ‘And I’ve been to Thornyhill often enough without any interference. They just don’t want me to bring you here.’

‘Why not?’ Eric demanded in bewilderment.

‘I don’t know. But anything they don’t want me to do, I’m doing.’

He knocked on the door, wondering what he would say, how he would explain to Bartlemy about the uninvited guest. But when the door opened there was no need for explanations. There was no need to say anything at all.

‘I’ve been expecting you,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Come on in. Breakfast is ready.’

‘I’ve prepared a room for you,’ Bartlemy told the visitor after they had eaten. Eric had devoured scrambled eggs, bacon,
mushrooms, toast and marmalade like a hungry wolf; Nathan, his appetite impaired less by the cereal he had had earlier than inner tension, only managed some toast.

‘But – Eric likes to sleep out,’ he said hastily, and then stopped, knowing he sounded ungrateful.

‘That’s fine,’ Bartlemy said, addressing the exile. ‘The bed is there if you want it.’

‘You are kind,’ Eric said gravely. ‘There is much kindness here. But maybe I bring trouble.’ He glanced at Nathan for guidance. ‘I not want to bring trouble for you.’

‘No trouble comes to this house,’ Bartlemy said with quiet assurance.

‘There are things we should tell you,’ Nathan began.

‘If you wish.’ As with Annie, years before, Bartlemy’s manner was unhurried and incurious.

‘Eric comes from another world!’ Nathan blurted out.

‘So I assumed. Most unusual.’ Bartlemy inclined his head courteously in Eric’s direction. ‘I don’t think I ever met anyone from another world before. Your English is excellent.’

‘I learn too slow. Must read more. Read poetry now: lines that stop before end of page. Mother of Nathan give me book.’

‘There are many books here for you to read,’ Bartlemy said.

‘We’re not joking!’ Nathan protested, on the edge of frustration and fury.

Bartlemy gave him a look so serious that his anger died in an instant. ‘Nor I,’ he said. ‘What I would like to know, is how Eric got here. There is only one way between the worlds that I am aware of, and Death alone opens that Gate. So say the Ultimate Laws. But even those laws are made to be broken, so it seems. I gather you arrived on the beach at Pevensey Bay. Do you know how it happened?’