by Susan Cooper
“It is almost time,” Miss Greythorne said.
“Some small refreshment for the newcomers first, perhaps,” a man beside them said: a small man, not much taller than Will. He held out a glass. Will took it, glancing up, and found himself staring into a thin, lively face, almost triangular, thickly lined yet not old, with a pair of startlingly bright eyes staring at and somehow into him. It was a disturbing face, with much behind it. But the man had swung away from him, presenting Will only with a neat, green-velvet-covered back, and was handing a glass to Merriman.
“My lord,” he said deferentially as he did so, and bowed.
Merriman looked at him with a comical twist of the mouth, said nothing, but stared mockingly and waited. Before Will had a chance even to begin puzzling over the greeting, the small man blinked and seemed suddenly to collect his wits, like a dreamer abruptly woken. He burst out laughing.
“Ah, no,” he said spluttering. “Stop it. I have had the habit for long years, after all.” Merriman chuckled affectionately, raised the glass to him, and drank; and since he could make no sense of this odd exchange Will drank too, and was filled with astonishment by an unrecognisable taste that was less a taste than a blaze of light, a burst of music, something fierce and wonderful sweeping over all his senses at once.
“What is it?”
The small man swung round and laughed, his creased face slanting all its lines upwards. “Metheglyn used to be the nearest name,” he said, taking the empty glass. He blew into it, said unexpectedly, “An Old One’s eyes can see,” and held it out; and staring into the clear base, Will suddenly felt he could see a group of figures in brown robes making whatever it was that he had just drunk. He glanced up to see the man in the green coat watching him closely, with a disturbing expression that was like a mixture of envy and satisfaction. Then the man chuckled and whisked the glass away, and Miss Greythorne was calling for them to come to her; the white globes of light in the room grew dim, and the voices quiet. Somewhere in the house Will thought he could still hear music, but he was not sure.
Miss Greythorne stood by the fire. For a moment she looked down at Will, then up at Merriman. Then she turned away from them and looked at the wall. She stared and stared for a long time. The panelling and the fireplace and the overmantel were all one, all carved from the same golden wood: very plain, with no curves or flourishes, but only a simple four-petalled rose set in a square here and there. She put up her hand to one of these small rose carvings on the top left-hand corner of the fireplace, and she pressed its centre. There was a click, and below the rose, at the level of her waist, a square dark hole in the panelling appeared. Will did not see any panel slide away; the hole was simply, suddenly, there. And Miss Greythorne put in her hand and drew out an object shaped like a small circle. It was the image of the two that he had himself, and he found that his hand, as once before, had already moved of its own accord and was clasping them protectively. There was total silence in the room. From outside the doors Will could certainly hear music now, but could not make out the nature of it.
The sign-circle was very thin and dark, and one of its inside cross-arms broke as he watched. Miss Greythorne held it out to Merriman, and a little more fell away into dust. Will could see now that it was wood, roughened and worn, but with a grain running through.
“That’s a hundred years old?” he said.
“Every hundred years, the renewing,” she said. “Yes.”
Will said impulsively, into the silent room, “But wood lasts much longer than that. I’ve seen some in the British Museum. Bits of old boats they dug up by the Thames. Prehistoric. Thousands of years old.”
“Quercus Britannicus,” Merriman said, severely and abruptly, sounding like a cross professor. “Oak. The canoes you refer to were made of oak. And further south, the oaken piles on which the present cathedral of Winchester stands were sunk some nine hundred years ago, and are as tough today as they were then. Oh yes, oak lasts a very long time, Will Stanton, and there will come a day when the root of an oak tree will play a very important part in your young life. But oak is not the wood for the Sign. Our wood is one which the Dark does not love. Rowan, Will, that’s our tree. Mountain ash. There are qualities in rowan, as in no other wood on the earth, that we need. But also there are strains on the Sign that rowan cannot survive as oak might, or as iron and bronze do. So the Sign must be reborn” — he held it up, between one long finger and a deeply back-curved thumb — “every hundred years.”
Will nodded. He said nothing. He found himself very conscious of the people in the room. It was as if they were all concentrating very hard on one thing, and you could hear the concentration. And they seemed suddenly multiplied, endless, a vast crowd stretching out beyond the house and beyond this century or any other.
He did not fully understand what happened next. Merriman jerked his hand forward suddenly, broke the wooden Sign easily in half and tossed it in the fire, where a great single log like their own Yule log was halfway burned down. The flames leapt. Then Miss Greythorne reached out towards the small man in the green velvet coat, took from him the silver jug from which he had poured drinks, and threw the contents of the jug on the fire. There was a great hissing and smoking, and the fire was dead. And she leaned forward in her long white dress and put her arm into the smoke and the smouldering ashes, and brought out a part-burned piece of the big log. It was like a large irregular disc.
Holding the lump of wood high so that everyone could see, she began to take blackened pieces from it as though she were peeling an orange; her fingers moved quickly, and the burned edges fell away and the skeleton of the wooden piece was left: a clear, smooth circle, containing a cross.
There was no irregularity to it at all, as though it had never before had any other shape than this. And on Miss Greythorne’s white hands there was not even a trace of soot or ash.
“Will Stanton,” she said, turning to him, “here is your third Sign. I may not give it to you in this century. Your quest must all along be fulfilled within your own time. But the wood is the Sign of Learning, and when you have done with your own particular learning, you will find it. And I can leave in your mind the movements that the finding will take.” She looked hard at Will, then reached up and slipped the strange wooden circle into the dark hole in the panelling. With her other hand, she pressed the carved rose in the wall above it, and with the same sight-defeating flash as before the hole was suddenly no longer there. The wood-panelled wall was smooth and unbroken as if there had been no change at all.
Will stared. Remember how it was done, remember. . . . She had pressed the first carved rose at the top left-hand corner. But now there were three roses in a group at that corner; which one should it be? As he looked more closely, he saw in fearful astonishment that now the whole wall of panelling was covered in squares of carved wood, each containing a single four-petalled rose. Had they grown at this moment, beneath his eyes? Or had they been there all along, invisible because of a trick of the light? He shook his head in alarm and looked round for Merriman. But it was too late. Nobody was close by him. Solemnity had left the air; the lights were bright again, and everybody was cheerfully talking. Merriman was murmuring something to Miss Greythorne, bending almost double to speak close to her ear. Will felt a touch on his arm, and swung round.
It was the small man in the green coat, beckoning to him. Near the doors at the other end of the room, the group of musicians who had accompanied the carol began playing again: a gentle sound of recorders and violins and what he thought was a harpsichord. It was another carol they were playing now, an old one, much older than the century of the room. Will wanted to listen, but the man in green had hold of his arm and was drawing him insistently towards a side door.
Will stood firm, rebellious, and turned towards Merriman. The tall figure jerked upright instantly, swinging round to look for him; but when he saw what was happening Merriman relaxed, merely raising one hand in assent. Will felt the reassurance put into his mind:
go on, it’s all right. I’ll follow.
The small man picked up a lamp, glanced casually about him, then quickly swung the side door open just far enough for Will and himself to slip through. “Don’t trust me, do you?” he said in his sharp, jerky voice. “Good. Don’t trust anyone unless you have to, boy. Then you’ll survive to do what you’re here for.”
“I seem to know about people now, mostly,” Will said. “I mean, somehow I can tell which ones I can trust. Usually. But you —” he stopped.
“Well?” said the man.
Will said: “You don’t fit.”
The man shouted with laughter, his eyes disappearing in the creases of his face, then stopped abruptly and held up his lamp. In the circle of wavering light, Will saw what seemed to be a small room, wood-panelled, with no furniture except an armchair, a table, a small stepladder, and a wall-height glass-fronted bookcase in the centre of each wall. He heard a deep measured ticking and saw, peering through the gloom, that a very large grandfather clock stood in the corner. If the room were dedicated only to reading, as it seemed to be, then it held a timepiece that would give a very loud warning against reading for too long.
The small man thrust the lamp into Will’s hand. “I think there’s a light over here — ah.” There began an indefinable hissing sound that Will had noticed once or twice in the room next door; then there was the crack of a match lighting and a loud “Pop!”, and a light appeared on the wall, burning at first with a reddish flame and then expanding into one of the great white glowing globes.
“Mantles,” he said. “Still very new in private houses, and most fashionable. Miss Greythorne is uncommonly fashionable, for this century.”
Will was not listening. “Who are you?”
“My name is Hawkin,” said the man cheerfully. “Nothing more. Just Hawkin.”
“Well look here, Hawkin,” Will said. He was trying to work something out, and it was making him most uneasy. “You seem to know what’s happening. Tell me something. Here I am brought into the past, a century that’s already happened, that’s part of the history books. But what happens if I do something to alter it? I might, I could. Any little thing. I’d be making something in history different, just as if I’d really been there.”
“But you were,” Hawkin said. He touched a spill to the flame in the lamp Will held.
Will said helplessly, “What?”
“You were — are — in this century when it happened. If anyone had written a history recording this party here tonight, you and my lord Merriman would be in it, described. Unlikely, though. An Old One hardly ever lets his name be recorded anywhere. Generally you people manage to affect history in ways that no man ever knows. . . .”
He touched the burning spill to a three-candle holder on the table beside one of the armchairs; the leather back of the chair shone in the yellow light. Will said, “But I couldn’t — I don’t see — ”
“Come,” Hawkin said swiftly. “Of course you do not. It is a mystery. The Old Ones can travel in Time as they choose; you are not bound by the laws of the Universe as we know them.”
“Aren’t you one?” Will said. “I thought you must be.”
Hawkin shook his head, smiling, “Nay,” he said. “An ordinary sinful man.” He looked down and smoothed his hand over the green sleeve of his coat. “But a most privileged one. For like you, I do not belong to this century, Will Stanton. I was brought here only to do a certain thing, and then my Lord Merriman will send me back to my own time.”
“Where,” said Merriman’s deep voice to the soft click of the closing door, “they do not have such stuff as velvet, which is why he is taking such particular pleasure in that pretty coat. Rather a foppish coat, by the present standard, I must tell you, Hawkin.”
The little man looked up with a quick grin, and Merriman put a hand affectionately on his shoulder. “Hawkin is a child of the thirteenth century, Will,” he said. “Seven hundred years before you were born. He belongs there. By my art, he has been brought forward out of it for this one day, and then he will go back again. As few ordinary men have ever done.”
Will ran one hand distractedly through his hair; he felt as though he were trying to work out a railway timetable. Hawkin chuckled softly. “I told you, Old One. It is a mystery.”
“Merriman?” Will said. “Where do you belong?”
Merriman’s dark, beaked face gazed at him without expression, like some long-carved image. “You will understand soon,” he said. “We have another purpose here than the Sign of Wood, we three. I belong nowhere and everywhere, Will. I am the first of the Old Ones, and I have been in every age. I existed — exist — in Hawkin’s century. There, Hawkin is my liege man. I am his lord, and more than his lord, for he has been with me all his life, reared as if he were a son, since I took him when his parents had died.”
“No son ever had better care,” Hawkin said, rather huskily; he looked at his feet, and tugged the jacket straight, and Will realised that for all the lines on his face Hawkin was not much older than his own brother Stephen.
Merriman said, “He is my friend who serves me, and I have deep affection for him. And hold him in great trust. So great that I have given him a vital part to play in the quest we must all accomplish in this century — the quest for your learning, Will.”
“Oh,” Will said weakly.
Hawkin grinned at him; then jumped forward and swept him a low bow, deliberately snapping the grave mood. “I must thank you for being born, Old One,” he said, “and giving me the chance to scurry like a mouse into another time than my own.”
Merriman relaxed, smiling. “Did you notice, Will, how he loves to light the gas-lamps? In his day, they use smoky, foul-smelling candles that are not candles at all, but reeds dipped in tallow.”
“Gas-lamps?” Will looked up at the white globe attached to the wall. “Is that what they are?”
“Of course. No electricity yet.”
“Well,” Will said defensively. “I don’t even know what year this is, after all.”
“Anno Domini eighteen seventy-five,” Merriman said. “Not a bad year. In London, Mr Disraeli is doing his best to buy the Suez Canal. More than half the British merchant ships that will pass through it are sailing ships. Queen Victoria has been on the British throne for thirty-eight years. In America, the President has the splendid name of Ulysses S. Grant, and Nebraska is the newest of the thirty-four states of the Union. And in a remote manor house in Buckinghamshire, distinguished or notorious in the public eye only for its possession of the world’s most valuable small collection of books on necromancy, a lady named Mary Greythorne is holding a Christmas Eve party, with carols and music, for her friends.
Will moved to the nearest bookcase. The books were all bound in leather, mostly brown. There were shiny new volumes with spines glittering in gold leaf; there were fat little books so ancient that their leather was worn down to the roughness of thick cloth. He peered at some of the titles: Demonolatry, Liber Poenitalis, Discoverie of Witchcraft, Malleus Maleficarum — and so on through French, German, and other languages of which he could not even recognise the alphabet. Merriman waved a dismissive hand at them, and at the shelves all around.
“Worth a small fortune,” he said, “but not to us. These are the tales of small people, some dreamers and some madmen. Tales of witchcraft and the appalling things that men once did to the poor simple souls they called witches. Most of whom were ordinary, harmless human beings, one or two of whom truly had dealings with the Dark. . . . None of them, of course, had a thing to do with the Old Ones, for nearly every tale that men tell of magic and witches and such is born out of foolishness and ignorance and sickness of mind — or is a way of explaining things they do not understand. The one thing of which they know nothing, most of them, is what we are about. And that is contained, Will, in just one book in this room. The rest are useful now and then as a reminder of what the Dark can accomplish and the black methods it may sometimes use. But there is one book that is th
e reason why you have come back to this century. It is the book from which you will learn your place as an Old One, and there are no words to describe how precious it is. The book of hidden things, of the real magic. Long ago, when magic was the only written knowledge, our business was called simply Knowing. But there is far too much to know in your day, on all subjects under the sun. So we use a half-forgotten word, as we Old Ones ourselves are half-forgotten. We call it ’gramarye’.”
He moved across the room towards the clock, beckoning them after him. Will glanced at Hawkin, and saw his thin, confident face tight with apprehension. They followed. Merriman stood in front of the great old clock in the corner, which was a full two feet above even his head, took a key from his pocket, and opened the front panel. Will could see the pendulum in there swaying slowly, hypnotically to . . . and fro, to . . . and fro.
“Hawkin,” Merriman said. The word was very gentle, even loving, but it was a command. The man in green, without a word, knelt down at his left side and stayed there, very still. He said in a beseeching half-whisper: “My lord —” But Merriman paid no attention. He laid his left hand on Hawkin’s shoulder, and stretched his right hand into the clock. Very carefully, he slipped his long fingers back along one side, keeping them as flat as possible to avoid touching the pendulum, and then with a quick flip he pulled out a small black-covered book. Hawkin collapsed into a sitting heap, with a throaty gasp of such terrified relief that Will stared at him in astonishment. But Merriman was drawing him away. He made Will sit down in the room’s one chair, and he put the book into his hands. There was no title on the cover.
“This is the oldest book in the world,” he said simply. “And when you have read it, it will be destroyed. This is the Book of Gramarye, written in the Old Speech. It cannot be understood by any except the Old Ones, and even if a man or creature might understand any spell of power that it contains, he could not use their words of power unless he were an Old One himself. So there has been no great danger in the fact of its existence, these many years. Yet it is not good to keep a thing of this kind past the date of its destiny, for it has always been in danger from the Dark, and the endless ingenuity of the Dark would still find a way of using it if they had it in their hands. In this room now, therefore, the book will accomplish its final purpose, which is to bestow on you, the last of the Old Ones, the gift of gramarye — and after that it will be destroyed. When you have the knowledge, Will Stanton, there will no longer be any need of storing it, for with you the circle is complete.”