The Sending (17 page)

Meg and I went home, and I slept more peacefully than for weeks past. In the morning I walked down to Rita's cottage and found her packing up books and putting the place in order. I had not seen her for four days. She thought, she said, that I was too upset over the Holy Well to come and say good-bye. I explained that I had been busy in quite another way, not painting nor grieving but learning the responsibilities of a Robin.

She reproached me with being more sunk in myself than ever.

‘And I can't understand how you look so well since you came back from Paris,' she added.

‘It wasn't Paris. It was essential that Concha Pirrone should not know where I was really going.'

‘Not to Izar Odolaga!'

‘Close to him. But it's too confused a story for now.'

‘So little is for here and now except Meg.'

I longed to tell her that she had never been out of the here and now and never would be, but it was not a moment to choose when she was rightly annoyed with me.

‘I came to ask you if you would picnic on the downs with me this evening. It will be another warm night.'

‘No, Alfgif, I can't. I shall be busy packing.'

‘Once you asked me if I would start a coven and dance with you in the moonlight.'

‘And you said you were no good at dancing.'

‘Because my tail was still at the tailors. A white cloth, bread, wine and meat the Robin used to bring. And oysters arrived in Penminster this morning. Shall we walk up the valley from my house or would you prefer a broomstick?'

‘I will imagine the broomstick.'

‘Then you will come?'

‘Of course I'll come.'

At sunset we walked across the bullock paradise and up the smooth breast of the downs. She was talking with forced gaiety and I felt that she regretted her decision, believing that it would only lead to another memory of the door between us which would not open. As for myself, swinging one of Ginny's great baskets and with Meg in my pocket, I was often looking away into the even dusk like an animal bound across country for its mate and nervous of interruption, though I could not have said by whom or by what. I seemed to sense that we were accompanied, perhaps by the blessing of Julian Molay, seeking us from wherever he stabled his stallion and comforted some other secret disciple, perhaps by that which had been present the night before and was flitting along with us to look down on its home.

Rita noticed my quick glances and asked suddenly:

‘There isn't anyone else coming?'

‘Not unless Meg has invited a guest.'

‘Shouldn't there be thirteen in all?'

‘That's only on high holidays.'

The valley was silver, as on that night when I met my vixen and was overcome by terror. The stream had widened into a lake of haze, stationary between the woodland and the oaks. We were above it on the short and windless grass which still held the heat of the afternoon. A Robin of old days could not have appointed a better rendezvous for his coven, since there was no path for the wanderer and the mist, down in Penminster and the valley, would have kept the cottagers at home.

I laid out the white cloth in a dry combe below the ridge and spread out the food and drink for the Maiden of the Coven. The moon turned to white the pale gold of her forearms and the wine in the glasses. Her gaiety, true or false, did not return. We might have been picnicking on a cloud, like putti above the solemnity of an Italian betrothal, reverent but with growing cheerfulness as the nectar was handed round.

When our moonlight supper was over, we were at ease as in the first days of friendship, and she was finding in this peace either comfort or resignation. She lay with her hands behind her head. The irregular rise and fall of her breasts told me that her thoughts were troubled by so much perfection which was still imperfect, and that she was near sobbing.

A moment of difficulty. I could not cross the barrier of white tablecloth, breaking our old relationship so unexpectedly that she might mistrust the truth of the new, nor could I remind her abruptly that she had come to dance with me. It was Meg who saved me. I said to myself that, by God, if I had any power over Meg I should use it now! In the ears of my mind was the summons which Molay had sent across the valley, calling it the Harp of Orpheus, and I now found in it a rhythm which I stroked and tapped out imperceptibly on Meg's fur. She dived from my pocket, stood on hind legs to enquire, then tumbled, rolled and twisted into that waltz when one could swear she had an unseen partner.

Rita sat up to watch her, and at last I could say:

‘Come then! You too!'

It started with the bird-like flappings and posturings of modern dance and then turned into a more formal minuet in which we pirouetted under arched hands, separated and, in fun, bowed and curtsied.

‘But you are dancing as if there were music!' she exclaimed.

Yes, I was, for rhythm remembered was clearer than ever.

‘The minstrel has come with Master Robin,' I replied and speeded up the time.

Side by side we improvised the steps, never failing each other, sometimes with both hands joined, sometimes with my arm round her waist.

Now whether it was deliberate or whether, as she insisted later, she had tripped over the excited Meg I shall never know, but we came down on the turf together. Then the only dancing was of lips and arms and flung garments caught on the mats of thyme, and there was no doubt at all that Molay, the devil, could heal with the power of a saint.

‘And all that time you wanted me so much?' she asked.

‘All the time.'

‘But I told you over and over again.'

‘I was afraid I should disappoint you.'

‘But how could you, my love?'

The truth was for me only, so I answered that she had been right when she said I was so seldom here and now.

‘I would not expect a Robin to be anything else. Robin—that will be my name for you always.'

‘And you must really leave the cottage tomorrow?'

‘I thought for ever,' she said. ‘But now you must come with me, and be very near me for a day or two and bring me home again to all your family that I shall never see.'

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1980 by Geoffrey Household

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

978-1-4976-9865-9

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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