by Aaron D. Key
“About eight months, I think. It is hard to keep track.”
“Have you always been a gardener?”
“Oh no, this is something I am learning anew. I used to work with horses, mainly.”
“What brought you here?”
“I got into trouble and Peter got me out of it. He was going to find me somewhere else to live but I begged him to let me stay here. This place reminds me of my home. He said I could.”
“What sort of trouble?” I asked, curious. This wasn’t something I would normally have felt comfortable asking but I wondered if it would have any relevance to my situation.
“I can’t tell you. It’s a little bit complicated.”
“I’m prepared to risk it,” I said lightly. I was determined not to be diverted this time.
“No, I really couldn’t tell you.” He laughed. “Not here, anyway.” He lowered his voice. “I will come and look at the spring with you when we’ve finished eating.”
I took this as an invitation to hear the rest of the story in private. I was intrigued. What sort of impossible situation had Gerard been rescued from and why couldn’t he discuss it in front of the people around us?
“How about you? How did you get here?” he asked me as we walked.
“Well, Peter was working in the gardens that I used to work in, and he offered me a job.”
Gerard looked baffled, as if such a thing had never been heard of. He shook his head. “You are precious to them but you do not know why?”
“How do you mean?” I asked, but he shook his head as a warning this time, as if to indicate the other people around us, and pushed his lips together like a childish symbol of silence.
When we walked towards the courtyard later, he tried to explain what he meant.
“You see, when you came, we all had to adjust our ways. This doesn’t usually happen with new people who are expected to just fit in. They introduced electricity, lights, and the sauna for you. We had Christmas and special instructions as to what we could say to you and what we couldn’t say. Peter said it would be hard for you to notice us, and that at least was true. I’ve been trying to get you to notice me for weeks now with no success.”
I was deeply interested. This seemed to be more evidence in favour of my having a reason to suspect something. I turned my head a little to take a better look at him. It was as if I had peered around a corner into the next dimension. The place where I had been, he had been an indistinct shell of a man, talking and walking but with no personality. Now I could see him properly: the laughter in his eyes, the irritation hiding behind.
“He was right,” I agreed, “but I have noticed you now. Did he say why this would be the case?”
“There was a good reason for it. It was to protect you, I think. It was important that you made no emotional links with us. Did he say why? I can’t remember.”
“Was there a particular reason why you were trying to get my attention?”
“I like a challenge. I like to do what I have been told is impossible, or undesirable, don’t know why. I’ve always been a bit of a heretic.”
He was smiling again, no irritation this time, as if remembering his former life – an infectious smile.
“No, you are precious to … Peter, to all of them. They have plans for you that do not involve you staying here, that much is obvious.”
“Yes, that’s what worries me,” I said.
“I truly believe from the depths of my ignorance that they only have your welfare in mind.”
“I can see that you have been thinking almost as much as I have about my situation.”
I wondered whether the spell, or whatever it was, had been broken just for him or for everyone. I looked away and tried to really see the few people walking by, without success. He watched my efforts with a quizzical expression and laughed.
“It is a strange affliction. Even knowing you have no control over it, it is hard to forgive the effects.”
We entered an arch into the main courtyard and I was struck for a moment by the change in its appearance I had wrought since I had first arrived. The greater courtyard was cut into two halves by the Great Hall and another large building that spanned it. In this half of the courtyard, the side furthest away from the lake, was one large open area informally laid to lawn with clumps of elegant trees and subtle-coloured borders crossed by the meandering path we were on.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been so happy here. I didn’t realise it was the lack of complication, of interaction, that eased my soul.”
“Do you prefer that then to a normal state?”
“I think I did to begin with,” I admitted. “Yet now perhaps not so much. I’m a different man to the man who first arrived here.”
“I can see that clearly.”
“Did it change you too, being here?”
“My first thought was relief that I was in a place where I was safe, and I was truly happy because of it, but recently I have been feeling lonely, isolated, different, which is why I was trying to communicate with you, feeling that you were the most likely person here to understand. When Peter said no emotional links, he briefly avoided looking at me, as if he was thinking ahead as to who was most likely to cause a problem, or at least this is what I imagined.”
“Do you mean that you too prefer the company of men?” I asked with a frown of contempt for my own inanity.
“That is what I mean exactly, and I have failed so far to find anyone who shares this preference since I have been here. Or at least anyone interested in me, and I crave this company with a surprising appetite, considering my last indulgence resulted in an accusation of witchcraft and my attempted drowning by an angry mob.”
“You probably imagine that this unlucky circumstance is unlikely to happen again.” I laughed. “Do you want to tell me about it or is it something you would rather forget?”
We left this half of the garden and paused for a moment under the low arch that stretched beneath the Great Hall.
“I could recreate it for you,” he said forlornly. “Except that there are no horses here and no stables, so we would have to use our imagination on that front.”
Up to this point I had been talking without care or even deep attention, thinking myself on a mission to discover the truth about the place I was in, but suddenly I was overcome by an emotion: a wave of loneliness mixed with desire. It made me take a step back from myself and view myself from afar, like a character in a soap opera whose motives always appeared obscure and inexplicable.
“I am a bit nervous about the witchcraft,” I probed cautiously.
“It was nothing more than I was accused of changing my form from female to male in order to defile the other man involved. He was scared, I understand that. He thought of something quickly to save himself but I was surprised how easily they seemed to believe him.”
We passed through into the more formal section of the courtyard garden and back into the brilliant sunlight.
“So no animal involvement, dancing in the nude, or calling up of evil spirits?”
“No,” he said pointedly. “No animals or evil spirits, and we don’t need to dance,” he added with a grin.
This half of the garden was divided into three main areas. The area we were in was where the lion’s head spring had been installed, and as we walked towards it I could hear that it was working. The sound of the water gushing out of the lion’s mouth was like gentle sea waves on a calm summer’s day: restful and rocking. I put my hand into the water to test whether it felt as smooth as my dream had made it and it was exactly right; it was as unlike to water as snowflakes were. This time, of course, no answering fingers met mine. I was as physically far as it was possible to be from my old love – separated by death, possibly time and space as well.
I had a sudden vision of what it must have been like to have been Rael, alone
in Herron with only this moving water for company, but of course I was not alone.
“Where would you suggest, given the lack of stables?” I said.
“Well, your room is a little close to the centre of operations so I think we should visit mine.”
“I will follow you,” I said with a nervous smile.
We left the lion’s head, on my part with a hint of sorrow – like a lost friend recently reunited, it was to me.
“Two days in a row you have been slacking. People will begin to wonder what has happened to you,” Gerard said in a mocking tone.
“Do you think so? Should I go back to work now?” I said, only half in earnest.
“That’s a day and a half off in three months. I think they will forgive you and wonder why you didn’t have a break before.”
We made our way out of the courtyard into the more informal garden. Here in a corner, without really knowing why, I had recreated a mediaeval-style herb garden. This strange aberration had become one of my most favourite areas. The smells were intoxicating, soothing, invigorating, and just pleasurable. Wild rose subtly mixed with lavender, marigold, mint, feverfew, lungwort – too many to distinguish them all.
I realised that I had never really seen a herb garden, in all of the gardens I had visited and worked in, that I had looked upon and truly envied: nothing to compare to this, although a few had stood out as something special. I did not understand how I had achieved this in such a short space of time unless my desire for the thing had created it. We stopped before a dark door by the side of the small herb garden pond.
“This is where I live,” Gerard indicated with a sweep of his arm. “You see why I am grateful to you. You have made my home a patch of heaven.”
The interior was surprisingly like a reasonably pleasant stable – very unlike my room in the tower. Here there were no modern amenities. The furniture looked handmade and rough. There were no curtains or woollen rugs, only shutters and plaited straw underfoot. Still, the smell of the herbs was the most dominant feature, rendering everything else relaxing and reassuring.
* * *
We lay sprawled across the bed like empty, unwanted clothes. I had paused my investigation into my alien abduction, as I had jokingly began to think of it, in search of another thing, but now that had been well and truly found I still thought the abduction unimportant, a side issue I could return to later. I felt more than satisfied. I felt alive again: part of the human race, not just an old worn-out picture gathering dust and watching life go by. Gerard was talking.
“I thought I was going to be haunted by the memory of that night in the holy land but I wasn’t. I only just thought of it quickly then: how I thought I had been betrayed and how the hurt of that was more painful than the fear of death. Rael let me haunt the man after. He explained how he had intended to save me but had been called away in the service of the king. The servant he left with instructions to free me ran off with the bribe money. I felt guilty about haunting him then, as he was so completely remorseful, but at least I knew I had not been betrayed.”
“Rael?” I said lazily, trying not to show how much I had been jolted by this name.
“Rael? Peter, I meant to say. I was just thinking of someone else.”
“Peter is Rael?” I said thoughtfully. “And Aileen is Elena?”
I could tell from the look on his face that he knew he had blown it and there was no convincing way to take back the slip. In many ways it made a lot of sense and explained many things I had put down to my own madness. Whereabouts in the story was I? I was dying to ask, but I took pity on his woebegone look and dropped that subject for the moment. There were other days: lots of days, I thought, in my ignorance.
* * *
The next morning was grey, I saw as I rolled over in my bed. It had never been anything but sunny until now. An ominous sign, which made me reluctant to jump out of bed. I struggled to rejoin the normal routine – to dress and breakfast, to decide where to start work.
Was it because now I knew I was no longer within a train journey of the life I knew, the country I called my own? Instead, I was back in the history of my delusions. It was an ancient past that seemed as relevant to me as meeting King Arthur in a modern high street: Rael at the height of his powers, carving a civilisation out of the ruins of another.
Why was I here? Was it only for the garden? I really hoped so but had a sinking feeling it would turn out not to be the case. I needed to find out more, so I wandered idly through the gardens pretending to be checking progress and problems but really looking for Gerard – the only person here who had shared with me the truth. Could I really claim that Peter, or Rael, had lied to me? It seemed such an unnatural thing for someone who I still believed was trustworthy. He had lied about his name, about my location. He had concealed so much, especially if I believed everything that Gerard had told me – and I was inclined to do so. I still believed that Rael had the best of motives, but I did not appreciate being lied to, whatever these were. Knowing only half the truth was like being unable to touch the floor, floating aimlessly over reality in a world without gravity.
I had now almost travelled the whole of the gardens without catching sight of Gerard. I was reluctant to ask after him, thinking that this would alert Rael to the fact I had managed to evade his manipulation of my mind, but I was beginning to think that I would have to.
After passing the herb garden, I knocked on the door to his room. There was no reply, only silence. I looked inside, wondering if this was socially acceptable, but then I felt bitterly that I was excluded from this society, from its laws and common practices, and couldn’t be expected to know how to act. The room was almost the same as it had been the day before. It felt different, though. It felt empty, evacuated. Small things, personal things were gone or moved. What had happened here? Was this connected to anything that I had done?
I suddenly felt afraid; a thing I had never been since being here. I sat down on the edge of the bed and felt a cold dread settle in my stomach. I remembered that there had been a wooden cross on the wall at the head of Gerard’s bed: a relic, he said, from the monastery where he had spent his early years that to him had been mother and father, as he lacked both. He had hidden it in a chest while we were together, explaining that it would not wish to watch this. The chest was also missing.
I felt the day drift away as I sat there, feeling neither hunger nor thirst. I must have slept, as the light from the open door changed and weakened as if afternoon had come and gone. I was paralysed with indecision and confusion.
“There you are,” I heard a familiar voice say. “I’ve been looking for you all over. I took the afternoon off to spend some time in this garden you have created for me.”
I looked up. It was the same familiar face of a man I trusted, that I was slightly in awe of. I could scarcely reconcile the sight to the thoughts I had been entertaining. I felt deflated and bruised, as if I had been in a fight, but I had to say something.
“Do you remember that day on the beach when you said you avoided following fashion and made your own rules about right and wrong?”
“Do you remember it?” he said with suppressed excitement.
“So what have you done here? Was this thing right?” I asked again, now sure in my mind that Gerard had been telling the truth – that this was Rael.
“I didn’t make Gerard go away, if that’s what you mean. He came and asked me if he could leave.”
“Why would he do that?” I said disbelievingly.
“Well, last night he asked me to remind him why it was that I had asked everyone to keep their distance from you, and after I explained it to him he asked if he could leave.”
“Where has he gone?”
“Back to his own time: England, this time, with a slight change in his looks. He would never have been happy here, you know. He was an adventurous soul. I only let him stay here because
he begged me. He had been crushed by fear and shock, but I knew he would bounce back and want to leave soon. Not everyone finds the life here to their taste.”
I was greatly relieved. I could see that Rael was telling the truth about this, and what he said about Gerard rang true. “Why was it that you wanted people to keep their distance from me?” I asked, still bewildered by his enthusiasm and obvious elation.
“Well, that is another matter that will take a bit of explaining. Can I take it, as you know who I am, that you know who you are too?” Rael asked with a hopeful tone in his voice.
“I used to know who I was,” I said doubtfully. “But I don’t know what I have got to do with this place or you, other than you have been in stories in my head since I was a child.”
“This is because you are Damon Ich,” Rael said, quite sadly this time, as if breaking the news of a death to me.
“It can’t be,” I said heavily, remembering the same insistence from Koa. “Damon Ich was a grown man. I remember every year of my life from the age of three or so. I spent it on earth. I have always been me.”
“You remember his life?” Rael asked.
I was going to admit that some of it I remembered in great detail, when suddenly flashes from a whole and alien life began to appear in my head. I was bewildered by the weight of new memories, by their extent, their variety. My head was throbbing: a pulse in my temple like the roar of a waterfall.
“Damon Ich, you’ve gone a funny colour. Let’s get you up and outside.”
I responded to the name even though I still denied it was mine and scrambled up, making an inelegant and hasty exit to be sick on the border outside. A second’s calm, long enough to mourn the adverse effect this had on a cluster of foxgloves, and I was sick again.
Rael stood silently beside me and after a few minutes said, “Is that it?”
The sound of the waterfall was beginning to fade. I felt different; added to, more whole – but I still denied that it could be so.
“Let’s get you some food,” Rael said, and although the side of my mouth twitched in revulsion, I followed him.