Merlin's Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  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!

  She grabbed her clothes, pulled them on, not bothering with her hair but making a token effort to polish her shoes. It was Lord’s Eve. She had to be smart today. She couldn’t find her bell necklace. She had on a flowered dress and red shoes. She pulled a pink woollen cardigan over her shoulders, grabbed at her frilly hat, stared at it, then tossed it behind the hat rack … and fled from the house.

  She ran up the road to the church square, following the path that, earlier, the column of dancers must have taken. She felt tears in her eyes, tears of dismay, and anger, and irritation. Every year she watched the procession from her garden. Every year! Why hadn’t mother woken her?

  She loved the procession, the ranks of dancers in their white coats and black hats, the ribbons, the flowers, the bells tied to ankle, knee and elbow, the men on the hobby horses, the fools with their pigs’ bladders on sticks, the women in their swirling skirts, the Thackers, the Pikermen, the Oozers, the black-faced Scarrowmen … all of them came through the smouldering fires at the south gate, each turning and making the sign of peace before jigging and hopping on along the road, keeping time to the beat of the drum, the melancholy whine of the violin, the sad chords of the accordion, the trill of the whistles.

  And she had missed it! She had slept! She had remained in the world of nightmares, where the shadowy blind pursued her …

  As she ran she screamed her frustration!

  She stopped at the edge of the square, catching her breath, looking for Kevin, or Mick, or any others of the small gang that had their camp in the earthen walls of the old fort. She couldn’t see them. She cast her gaze over the ranks of silent dancers. They were spread out across the square, lines of men and women facing the lych-gate and the open door of the church. They stood in absolute silence. They hardly seemed to breathe. Sometimes, as she brushed past one of them, working her way towards the church where Gargoyle’s voice was an irritating drone in the distance, sometimes a tambourine would rattle, or an accordion would sigh a weary note. The man holding it would glance and smile at her, but she knew better than to disturb the Scarrowmen when the voice was speaking from the church.

  She passed under the rose and lily gate, ducked her head and made the sign of peace, then scampered into the porch and edged towards the gloomy, crowded interior.

  The priest was at the end of his sermon, the usual boring sermon for the feast day.

  ‘We have made a pledge,’ Mr Ashcroft was intoning. ‘A pledge of belief in a life after death, a pledge of belief in a God which is greater than humankind itself …’

  She could see Kevin, standing and fidgeting between his parents, four pews forward in the church. Of Michael there was no sign. And where was mother? At the front, almost certainly …

  ‘We believe in the resurrection of the Dead, and in a time of atonement. We have made a pledge with those who have died before us, a pledge that we will be reunited with them in the greater Glory of our Lord.’

  ‘Kevin!’ Ginny hissed. Kevin fidgeted. The priest droned on.

  ‘We have pledged all of this, and we believe all of this. Our time in the physical realm is a time of trial, a time of testing, a testing of our honour and our belief, a belief that those who have gone are not gone at all, but merely waiting to be rejoined with us …’

  ‘Kevin!’ she called again. ‘Kevin!’

  Her voice carried too loudly. Kevin glanced round and went white. His mother glanced round too, then jerked his attention back to the service, using a lock of his curly hair as her means. His cry was audible to the Gargoyle himself, who hesitated before concluding,

  ‘This is the brightness behind the feast of the Lord’s Eve. Think not of the Death, but of the Life our Lord will bring us.’

  Where was her mother?

  Before she could think further someone’s hand tugged at her shoulder, pulling her back towards the porch of the church. She protested and glanced up, and the solemn face of Mr Box stared down at her. ‘Go outside, Ginny,’ he said. ‘Go outside, now.’

  Inside, the congregation had begun to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

  He pushed her towards the rose gate, beyond which the Oozers and Scarrowmen waited for the service to end. She walked forlornly towards them, and as she passed the man who stood closest to her she struck at his tambourine. The tambours jangled loudly in the still, summer square.

  The man didn’t move. She stood and stared defiantly at him, then struck his tambourine again.

  ‘Why don’t you dance?’ she shrieked at him. When he ignored her, she shouted again. ‘Why don’t you make music? Make music! Dance in the square! Dance!’ Her voice was a shrill cry.

  4

  There was no twilight. Late afternoon became dark night in a few minutes and a torch was put to the fire, which flared dramatically and silenced all activity. Glowing embers streamed into a starless sky and the village square became choking with the sweet smell of burning wood. The last smells of the roasted ox were banished and in the grounds of the Red Lion the skeleton of the beast was hacked apart. A few pence each for the bones with their meaty fragments. In front of the Bush and Briar Mr Ellis swept up a hundredweight of broken glass. Mick Ferguson led a gang of children, chasing an empty barrel down the street, towards the south gate where the fires still smouldered.

  For a while the dancing had ceased. People thronged about the fire. Voices were raised in the public houses as dancers and tourists alike struggled to get in fresh orders for ale. A sort of controlled chaos ruled the day, and in the centre of it: the fire, its light picking out stark details on the grey church and the muddy green in the square. Beyond the sheer rise of the church tower, all was darkness, although men in white shirts and black hats walked through the lych-gate and rounded the church, talking quietly, dispersing as they re-emerged into the square. Here, they again picked up sticks, or tambourines, or other instruments of music and mock war.

  Ginny wandered among them.

  She could not find her mother.

  And she knew that something was wrong, very wrong indeed.

  It came as scant reassurance when a bearded youth called to the Morrismen again, and twelve sturdy men, all of them strangers to Scarrowfell, jangled their way from the Bush and Briar to the dancing square. There was laughter, tomfoolery with the cudgels they carried, and the whining practice notes of the accordion. Then they filed into a formation, jiggled and rang their legs, laughed once more and began to hop to the rhythm of a dance called the Cuckoo’s Nest. A man in a baggy, flowery dress and with a big frilly bonnet on his head sang the rude words. The singer was a source of great amusement since he sporte
d a bushy, ginger beard. He wore an apron over the frock and every so often lifted the pinny to expose a long red balloon strapped between his legs. It had eyes and eyelashes painted on its tip. The audience roared each time he did this.

  As Ginny moved through the fair towards the new focus of activity, Mick Ferguson approached her, grinned, and went into his Hunchback of Notre Dame routine, stooping forward, limping in an exaggerated fashion and crying, ‘The bells. The bells. The jingling bells …’

  ‘Mick …’ Ginny began, but he had already flashed her a nervous grin and bolted off into the confusing movement of the crowds, running towards the fire and finally disappearing into the gloom beyond.

  Ginny watched him go. Mick, she thought … Mick … why?

  What was going on?

  She walked towards the dancers and the bearded singer and Kevin turned round nervously and nodded to her. The man sang:

  ‘Some like a girl who is pretty in the face.

  And some like a girl who is slender in the waist …’

  ‘I missed the procession,’ Ginny said. ‘I wasn’t woken up.’

  Kevin stared at her, looking unhappy. He said, ‘My mother told me not to talk to you …’

  She waited, but Kevin had decided that discretion was the better part of cowardice.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, disturbed by the statement.

  ‘You’re being denied,’ the boy murmured.

  Ginny was shocked. ‘Why am I being denied? Why me?’

  Kevin shrugged. Then a strange look came into his eyes, a horrible look, a man’s look, arrogant, sneering.

  The man in the hideous dress sang:

  ‘But give me a girl who will wriggle and will twist

  Each time I slap my hand upon her cuckoo’s nest …’

  Kevin backed away from Ginny, making ‘cuckoo’ sounds.

  ‘It’s a rude song,’ Ginny said.

  Kevin taunted, ‘You’re a cuckoo. You’re a cuckoo …’

  ‘I don’t know what it means,’ Ginny said, bewildered.

  ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo,’ Kevin mocked, then jabbed her in the groin. He cackled horribly then raced away towards the blazing bonfire. Ginny had tears in her eyes, but her anger was so intense that the tears dried. She glared at the singer, still not completely aware of what was going on except that she knew the song was rude because of the guffaws of the adult men in the watching circle. After a moment she slipped away towards the church.