by Paul Hazel
onto his porch. The old minister’s eyes remained fixed on
him.
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“Because it is three times the Trinity and holy.”
The postman climbed onto the chair.
Morag grew still.
“Because for eight days,” he said softly, “Hobbamocko
labored. But when each hill was piled up, when the oakwoods
were thick and the great, holy river ran between Greylock
and the sea, then on the ninth day Hobbamocko rested.”
Longford was about to protest.
“Because,” Morag went on obdurately, “once at the
beginning of another world there were nine great kings
whose hearts. . . ” Helplessly, he watched the old postman
swing his stiff, arthritic legs into the air.
Morag closed his eyes tightly.
“Not that it mightn’t have been thirteen. . . or seven”
— his voice faltered— “not that it would have made any
difference if it had been. But o n ce. .. and so ever afterward. . .” He trembled.“Oh dear,” he said. “Poor man.”
Longford had never once looked out the window. No
longer quite listening, he found himself staring at Morag’s
feet.
“About that jacket,’ he said. “I don’t guess. I mean, if I
were to let you borrow one, you wouldn’t . . .”
“It is just one more instance,” Morag said, interrupting
him, “just a bit of something to cover one’s nakedness.”
A shadow had gathered in his face.
“It began with a cloak,” Morag said. “Did you know
that? A wondrous cloak probably, beyond cost, stitched with
silver and embroidered with gold. Yet to Duinn it was
nothing. It is said at least that the grave Lord gave it lightly,
seeing only that the boy was cold. With his cares, it is
perhaps not so unlikely. But Wykeham, we must imagine,
never forgot. And though on one world after another he
might have taken a stand, might at last have stood and faced
him, out of pity, remembering that one kindness, h e . . .”
His old eyes found Longford’s and, though the other did
not want to look, held them.
“I wonder if Wykeham ever knew,” Morag said, “how
many worlds would come to ruin because of that?”
2.
In the men’s kitchen George Tennison worried the joint with
too small a knife. Norfolk took up a cleaver.
“Here, let me do that,” he cried, impatiently and gave
two quick whacks. The blood splattered. Fortunately they
were both wearing aprons; only George Tennison felt more
foolish. Flushed with embarrassment, he turned and began
taking down the dessert plates, setting them aside for the
end. Through the door he could hear the voices of the men
finding their seats at the table. He gave a final stir to
something in a pot, poked at it tentatively, hoping that,
whatever it was, it was now cooked, and dumped the unknown contents into a serving dish. The steam rose in his face. The smell and the dampness made him dizzy; opening
the door with his shoulder, he scowled. He was hungry as
well as exhausted. It seemed unfair that in order to have his
dinner he should have to make it.
“Give way,” Norfolk said, pushing a cart at his heels.
They came into the room almost at the same moment. As
if waiting, the other guests remained standing. In the light of
the hearth their faces seemed darkened and out of date, like
the faces in old photographs. Did people really look like that,
George Tennison wondered, trying to remember the old men
of his childhood, men in shirts without collars, their oiled
hair oddly parted. If the truth were known, he felt rather old
and out of place himself. He put the platter down beside
Wykeham.
The young master smiled at him.
"Your seats, gentlemen,” he said.
There was a scuffling of chairs, the clink of crystal as one
of the heavier men bumped the table leg. Norfolk, the cart
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unloaded, was the last to find his seat. From the bottom of
the table he grinned up at Wykeham.
Wykeham nodded. Behind him the tall windows reddened.
All through the day the village men had been gathering,
coming on foot or on horseback and building fires on the
lawn. In the middle of the afternoon Norfolk had opened the
larder and just before dark he had rolled a half dozen barrels
down the wide steps and then out under the trees. Seeing
him, the men wandered up. “But when we start,” Norfolk
had warned them, “when the last comes up onto the porch,
then you must be silent.”
The men laughed. Already one of the barrels had been
hauled onto a makeshift table. Licking his lips, the sexton
removed a broach from his pocket. “And how shall we tell,”
he asked mildly, “when the last have come?”
“You might count,” Norfolk suggested.
The old sexton smiled. He looked back at the house.
"Quite right,” he said. “It was never our business to meddle.”
He rolled the broach over in his fingers. “Only, if you’ll
pardon me asking, how are we to know, what with all that
coming and going, who is worthy of being counted?”
“It is not a matter of being worthy,” Norfolk answered.
“Of what, then?” The sexton’s smile broadened. “Just as
a matter of clarification, if you see what I mean.”
The others had drawn nearer. Norfolk stared at them
grimly. “You’ll have to ask Mr. Wykeham himself,” he said.
“Aye, there’s the rub,” the sexton mused slyly. “He’s
inside and we ain’t.”
“Six more,” said Norfolk.
He turned quickly. But partway across the lawn Norfolk
slowed to a walk. They were his mates. He tried to remember that. It ill suited a man, raised though he had been above them, to seem too eager to leave them forever behind.
"I wouldn’t have taken Fred for one of them,” muttered
Izzy Franklin, who for forty of his sixty years had run the
feedstore on the far side of the green. He put down his
tankard. “Fred Norfolk,” he said petulantly, "Lord of Creation.”
“So much the worse for the world,” said the sexton. He
fingered his rifle. “Still, it takes all kinds, I should think.”
The storekeeper gazed at the drive. “But what possible
use could Fred be?” he asked.
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W1NTERKING
The sexton shrugged. “Must be that a drunken man
remembers something worth keeping.”
By now the wind, which was always about somewhere,
had begun to tickle his neck. He looked across the lawn.
Dusk was falling over the gardens. Except for the fires, the
hill itself was fading. Which of us, he thought, will still be
here come morning? But it was not a question which submitted to an answer. He sat quietly, waiting. It was becoming so dark he could scarcely see the Ford pickup making the last
turn of the drive; but the sound, echoing harshly against the
bams, he heard plainly.
“That will be the first,” he said.
; The old engine sputtered. The ancient doors rattled.
When Hunt switched off the ignition, the whole frame seemed
to tremble. Hunt gave a slam to the hood.
“You be quiet as well,” he said, looking across at the
Indian bound in the back. But the words went unheeded.
Arthur Houseman stared with narrowed eyes at the fires.
Borne up by the wind, the sparks were carried into the
darkness. In the upper air they grew smaller and more
distant. Yet they were not consumed. Houseman leaned into
the corner of the truck and worked at the ropes.
Something had come into the world. Or something had
left it. He did not concern himself with which.
It bums, he thought joyfully.
"And the wood fires blinking on a winter’s night,” Wykeham
said, gazing one by one into their faces. “The Royal Charles
with Fred Norfolk sprawled on the counter.”
His shadow, amplified by the firelight, ascended the
opposite wall. He alone had remained standing. His glossy
black hair had been parted in the middle. Brushed behind his
ears, it had given his head an unexpected dignity.
Like the head of a bishop, Longford would recall afterward.
The Duke’s tired eyes rested on the large open features.
Like a tyrant, he thought, casting about in his mind for an
image. In spite of the years it had been the longest he had
looked at him.
On the lawn the men of the village had turned silent.
Wykeham had himself stopped a moment. He smiled.
“The church draped for Christmas,” he continued, “and
Morag up in his pulpit, his congregation asleep, all the
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bored, bundled children staring out at the snow.” He rubbed
his chin. “And pigeons,” he said, almost gaily, “crowds of wild
pigeons in South Wood with spring coming. . . But the river
first. The river before everything.”
“The land?” Longford asked uncomfortably.
“This valley,” said Wykeham. “Since I plan to keep what
I like.”
“What you must,” Morag told him.
Wykeham made a vague gesture. “I had never intended
to start from nothing, Michael.”
“Could not,” Morag told him.
Hunt shifted the mass of his arms. He got up and walked
to the sideboard. Finding a fresh decanter, he brought it
back. One way or another this business had to be settled and
he was obliged to play his part in it. But until this moment,
eased by a sense of familiarity, by the firelight and darkness,
he had held his contempt in check. It was the terrible
paralyzing emptiness that must be safeguarded against. Nothing else mattered. But death came, he knew, always, reasserting the pattern. Everything that had happened or that was likely
to happen returned to that single and compassionate end. Whatever he attempted, Wykeham could not alter that.
Hunt laughed but now there was relief in his laughter.
“It is late,” he said. “What is coming is already on its
way.”
“Not yet,” Wykeham answered.
“A little while, surely.”
“Time enough," Wykeham said. “Until morning.” He
had smiled again, his odd, quiet smile.
“You were only the instrument,” he said. "Long ago I
had given up hating you.”
Hunt frowned.
“There was a river before you were here.”
“I have not denied it.”
“You have taken credit. .
“For what pleases m e,” Wykeham said. “From the start I
took whatever attracted me. What otherwise would have
been forgotten. And now it is stamped with my thought.” He
drew himself up. It was his house and his table. Smoke rose
from the hearth, curled from Holmes’s pipe. “And not only
the fields and the miles of walls,” Wykeham went on confi-
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WINTERKING
dentially. “Certain conventions, some of the institutions of
men. Did you suspect that?”
Longford looked at him uncertainly.
“What, for example?” he asked.
“Ministers.”
Longford stiffened.
“Married priests,” Wykeham said, explaining. “The just
living by faith.” All at once Wykeham grinned. “In the latrine
at Wittenberg, in the rotted old tower I squatted down
beside the young friar. I whispered in his ear.”
Hunt turned in his chair. “He never did,” he said and
laughed again. “He never did much of anything. Not that
lasted.”
Holmes stared in dismay.
The musculature was wrong. The bones were impossible.
“He murdered a man,” Holmes said quietly.
“Cured him,” Hunt said. “And, of course, made him
worse.”
“Stopped him,” Wykeham added. “But then I had run
out of choices. I had given him only a single rule. Had he
kept it, the world, for the time that was left, would have
become infinitely wider. He would have walked this valley
freely. . . as in a garden. And there, to make him happy, I
would have sent him a woman— a daughter of my own flesh.”
The Duke looked up.
“I have not forgotten,” Wykeham said. “From the first
you were to come with me. Still, what I gave you, you have
by default.”
His hands, long and hardened by a work only Hunt
knew, clutched the table. For an instant he turned to the
windows. There was only candlelight and hearthlight to see
by, only the red gilding of the lawn from the bonfires.
“It is out of ignorance,” Wykeham said, “you would have
me be merciful. But the law in itself is the supreme mercy.”
The Duke’s eyes searched his, uncomprehending, seeking a motive.
“Ignorance is forgivable, Your Grace,” Morag warned
him.
“Only ignorance,” the Duke said.
Wykeham’s jaw hardened. “We do not, perhaps, quite
understand one another," he said.
“I understand a little,”
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“Not enough."
“A man is dead,” said the Duke.
“What you question is justice.” Wykeham paused. “There
was a law, Martin.”
“— And I broke it,” the Duke said angrily. “I went
myself to the station. Though I had sworn I would not, I
watched. . . ”
With a swift, sullen movement Wykeham turned away so
that the Duke would not see his face. His Grace remained
staring.
Somehow the sky seemed to darken. It was as if a wall
had come to stand between the house and the lawn.
For a moment the Duke thought he heard a rustling out
on the porch. He turned but saw only shadows. Yet there was
something. It had almost a smell, as of twigs and branches,
the deep renewing recesses of leaves.
Wykeham was watching the darkness.
“That was merely for the Will,” he said slowly, carefully.
“It was of no consequence. I have told you there was but one
law.”
“Then I do not know it,” the Duke admitted.
Wykeham was silent.
/>
The men looked at one another but Morag was staring at
Longford. He said nothing, only stared at him, waiting for
understanding to come.
All at once Longford lowered his head. His lips grew
white. “Dear Ix>rd,” he said softly.
One last time Wykeham smiled at them. It had been first
of laws but it was broken.
“There is a Tree,” he said. “One of many planted in
darkness, drawing strength from the ground. Of these I had
given you freely. But the One you may not see, may not
touch. . . . ”
By then the hedge had reached the second story. Norfolk,
who had been sent to make certain, edged down the stairs
carrying a broken section of a branch. He had torn it off as it
had coiled in through a bedroom window. The gray brown
stem continued to grow in his hand. He set it down gingerly
in the midst of the table.
The doors had already been tried. Like the windows
they were impassable. With all his strength George Tennison
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WINTERKING
had given a kick to the mass of thick.stems spreading over the
sill, A tremor had run through the wood. As though with
pain, the queer dark leaves seemed to hiss at him and he had
drawn back, afraid. All about him there had come scrapings
and creakings, the muffled slither of limbs reaching furtively
into the shingles. When he looked out, he was no longer able
to make out the end of the porch. Soon, he thought, the roofs
and the chimneys will be covered. He had gone back to the
table. They had all gone back, from the west wing and the
attic, from the little-used and out-of-the-way rooms that,
since his return, Wykeham himself had not often visited.
They found their chairs silently.
Harwood disentangled himself from the twigs, which
somehow had caught hold in his pocket.
“There are roots in the basement,” he said. “Already
they have broken in through the walls.” A trickle of blood ran
down the side of his nose. He blotted it with a napkin. “Thick
as a man,” he said, looking around at the circle of faces.
“I don’t suppose we have an ax?” Holmes asked. He was
nursing a cut on his forehead. Burrowing his way out of the
kitchen he had snagged his coat and scratched his face