by Susan Cooper
“So he risked his life,” Will said slowly, watching Hawkin’s sprightly walk as he crossed the floor to the musicians.
“Yes,” Merriman said. “In our service he was safe from the Dark, but his life was in hazard all the same. He agreed because he was my liege man, and proud of it. I wish that I had made sure that he really knew the risk he ran. A double risk, for he might also have been destroyed today, by me, if I had accidentally touched the pendulum. You saw what happened when at the last I did that. You and I, as Old Ones, were merely shaken; but if Hawkin had been there, under my touch, he would have been killed in a flash, unbodied like the Book itself.”
“He must not only be very brave, he must really love you as if he were your son,” said Will, “to do things like this for you and the Light.”
“But still he is only a man,” said Merriman, and his voice was rough and the pain back deep in his face. “And he loves as a man, requiring proof of love in return. My mistake was in ignoring the risk that this might be so. And as a result, in this room in the next few minutes, Hawkin will betray me and betray the Light and mould the whole course of your quest, young Will. The shock just now of actually risking his life, for me and the Book of Gramarye, was too much for his loyalty. Perhaps you saw his face, in the moment when I held his shoulder and took the Book from its perilous place. It was only in that moment that Hawkin fully understood that I was prepared to let him die. And now that he has understood it, he will never forgive me for not loving him as much — in his terms — as he has loved me, his lord. And he will turn on us.” Merriman pointed across the room. “See where it begins.”
Music struck up brightly, and the guests began forming into couples to dance. One man whom Will had recognised as an Old One moved to Miss Greythorne, bowed, and offered his arm; all around them, couples joined into figures-of-eight for some dance he did not know. He saw Hawkin standing irresolute, moving his head a little to the beat of the music; and then he saw a girl in a red dress appear at his side. It was the witch-girl, Maggie Barnes.
She said something to Hawkin, laughing, and dropped him a small curtsey. Hawkin smiled politely, doubtfully, and shook his head. The girl’s smile deepened, she shook her hair coquettishly and spoke to him again, her eyes fast on his.
“Oh,” Will said. “If only we could hear!”
Merriman regarded him sombrely for a moment, his face absent and brooding.
“Oh,” Will said, feeling foolish. “Of course.” It would take him some time, clearly, to grow accustomed to using his own gifts. He looked again at Hawkin and the girl, and wished to hear them, and could hear.
“Truly, Madam,” Hawkin said, “I have no wish to seem churlish, but I do not dance.”
Maggie took his hand. “Because you are out of your century? They dance here with their legs, just as you do beyond five hundred years. Come.”
Hawkin stared at her aghast as she led him into a set of couples. “Who are you?” he whispered. “Are you an Old One?”
“Not for all the world,” said Maggie Barnes in the Old Speech, and Hawkin turned quite white and stood still. She laughed softly and said in English, “No more of that. Dance, or people will notice. It’s easy enough. Watch the next man, as the music begins.”
Hawkin, pale and distressed, stumbled his way through the first part of the dance; gradually he picked up the steps. Merriman said in Will’s ear, “He was told that not one soul here would know of him, and that on pain of death he must not use the Old Speech to any but you.”
Then the speaking below began again.
“You look well, Hawkin, for a man escaped from death.”
“How do you know these things, girl? Who are you?”
“They would have let you die, Hawkin. How could you be so stupid?”
“My master loves me,” said Hawkin, but there was weakness in it.
“He used you, Hawkin. You are nothing to him. You should follow better masters, who would care for your life. And lengthen it through the centuries, not confine it to your own.”
“Like the life of an Old One?” Hawkin said, eagerness waking in his voice for the first time. Will remembered the tinge of envy when Hawkin had spoken to him of the Old Ones; now there was a hint of greed as well.
“The Dark and the Rider are kinder masters than the Light,” Maggie Barnes said softly in his ear, as the first part of the dance ended. Hawkin stood still again and stared at her, until she glanced round and said clearly: “I need a cool drink, I believe.” And Hawkin jumped and led her away, so that now, with his attention caught and a chance to talk to him privately, the girl of the Dark would have a willing hearer. Will felt suddenly sickened by the approaching treachery, and listened no more. He found Merriman, beside him, still gazing black into space.
“So it will go,” Merriman said. “He will have a sweet picture of the Dark to attract him, as men so often do, and beside it he will set all the demands of the Light, which are heavy and always will be. All the while he will be nursing his resentment of the way I might have had him give up his life without reward. You can be sure the Dark makes no sign of demanding any such thing — yet. Indeed, its lords never risk demanding death, but only offer a black life. . . . Hawkin,” he said softly, bleakly, “liege man, how can you do what you are going to do?”
Will felt fear suddenly, and Merriman sensed it. “No more of this,” he said. “It is clear already how it goes. Hawkin now will be a leak in the roof, a tunnel into the cellar. And just as the Dark could not touch him when he was my liege man, now that he is liege to the Dark, he cannot be destroyed by the Light. He will be the Dark’s ear in our midst, in this house that has been our stronghold.” His voice was cold, accepting the inevitable; the pain was gone. “Though the witch-girl managed to make her way in, she could have accomplished no scrap of magic without being destroyed by the Light. But now whenever Hawkin calls them, the Dark can attack us here as elsewhere. And the danger will grow with the years.”
He stood up, fingering his white ruffled cravat; there was a terrible sternness in his fierce-curved profile, and the look that for a moment flared out from the lowering brows made Will’s blood run thick and slow. It was a judge’s face, implacable, condemning.
“And the doom that Hawkin has brought upon himself, by this act,” Merriman said, without expression, “is a dread matter, which will make him many times wish that he might die.”
Will stood dazed, caught in pity and alarm. He did not ask what would happen to small, bright-eyed Hawkin, who had laughed at him and helped him and been for so short a while his friend; he did not want to know. Out on the floor, the music of the second part of the dance jingled to a close, and the dancers made one another laughing courtesies. Will stood motionless and unhappy. Merriman’s frozen look softened, and he reached out and turned him gently to face the centre of the room.
Will saw there only a gap in the crowd, with beyond it the group of musicians. As he stood there, they struck up once more “Good King Wenceslas,” the carol they had been playing when first he entered the room, through the Doors. Merrily the whole gathering joined in singing, and then the next verse came and Merriman’s deep voice was ringing out across the room, and Will realised, blinking, that the verse to come was his.
He drew breath, and raised his head.
Sire he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain. . . .
And there was no moment of farewell, no moment in which he saw the nineteenth century vanish away, but suddenly with no awareness of change, as he sang he knew that Time had somehow blinked, and another young voice was singing with him, the two of them so nearly simultaneous that anyone who could not see the lips moving would have sworn that it was one boy’s voice alone . . .
Right against the forest fence,
By Saint Agnes’ fou — ou — ntain. . . .
. . . and he knew that he was standing with James and Mary and the rest, and he and James were singing together, and that the music with their voices
was Paul’s lone flute. He stood there in the dark entrance-hall, with his hands raised before his chest holding the lighted candle, and he saw that the candle had not burned down one millimetre further than when he had last looked at it.
They finished the carol.
Miss Greythorne said, “Very good, very good indeed. Nothing like Good King Wenceslas, it’s always been my favourite.”
Will peered past his candle-flame to look at her motionless form in the big carved chair; her voice was older, harder, more toughened by the years, and so was her face, but otherwise she was just like — her grandmother, must that younger Miss Greythorne have been? Or her great-grandmother?
Miss Greythorne said, “Huntercombe carol-singers have been singing ’Good King Wenceslas’ in this house for longer than you or even I can remember, you know. Well now, Paul and Robin and the rest of you, how about a little Christmas punch?” The question was traditional, and so was the answer.
“Well,” said Robin gravely, “thank you, Miss Greythorne. Perhaps just a little.”
“Even young Will too, this year,” said Paul. “He’s eleven now, Miss Greythorne, did you know?”
The housekeeper was coming forward with a tray of glittering glasses and a great bowl of red-brown punch, and nearly every eye in the room was on Merriman, stepping up to fill the glasses. But Will’s gaze was held by the strong, suddenly younger eyes of the figure in the high-backed chair. “Yes,” said Miss Greythorne softly, almost absent-mindedly, “I did remember. Will Stanton has had a birthday.” She turned to Merriman, who was already moving towards them, and took from him the two glasses in his hands. “A happy birthday to you, Will Stanton, seventh son of a seventh son,” said Miss Greythorne. “And success in your every quest.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Will, wondering. And they held up their glasses solemnly to one another, and drank, just as the Stanton children did for the Christmas toast on the one day of the year when they were all allowed wine at dinner.
Merriman was moving round, and now everyone had a glass of punch and was sipping contentedly. The Manor’s Christmas punch was always delicious, though no one had ever quite worked out what went into it. As the senior members of the family, the twins strolled dutifully across to chat with Miss Greythorne; Barbara, with Mary in tow, made a beeline for Miss Hampton the housekeeper and Annie the maid, both reluctant members of a village drama group she was trying to force into life. Merriman said to James, “You and your little brother sing very well.”
James beamed. Though plumper, he was no taller than Will, and it was not often that a stranger gratified him by recognising him as a superior older brother. “We sing in the school choir,” he said. “And solos at arts festivals. Even one in London last year. The music master’s very keen on arts festivals.”
“I’m not,” said Will. “All those mothers, glaring.”
“Well, you were top of your class in London,” James said, “so of course they all hated you, beating their little darlings. I was only fifth in mine,” he said in matter-of-fact tones to Merriman. “Will has a lot better voice than me.”
“Oh come off it,” said Will.
“Yes, you have.” James was a fair-minded boy; he genuinely preferred reality to daydreams. “Till we both break, at any rate. Neither of us might be any good then.”
Merriman said absent-mindedly, “In point of fact you will become a most accomplished tenor. Almost professional standard. Your brother’s voice will be baritone — pleasant, but nothing special.”
“I suppose that might be possible,” said James, polite but disbelieving. “Of course, there’s no way at all for anyone to tell, yet.”
Will said belligerently, “But he —” and caught Merriman’s dark eye and stopped. “Mmmm, aaah,” he said, and James looked at him with astonishment.
Miss Greythorne called across the room to Merriman, “Paul would like to see the old recorders and flutes. Take him in, would you?”
Merriman inclined his head in a small bow. He said casually to Will and James, “Care to come too?”
“No, thank you,” said James promptly. His eyes were on the far door, through which the housekeeper was advancing with another tray. “I smell Miss Hampton’s mince pies.”
Will said, understanding, “I’d quite like to see.”
He moved with Merriman towards Miss Greythorne’s chair, where Paul and Robin stood stiff and rather awkward, one at each side, like guardsmen. “Off with you,” said Miss Greythorne briskly. “Are you going too, Will? Of course, you’re another musical one, I was forgetting. Quite a good little collection of instruments and stuff in there. Surprised you haven’t seen them before.”
Lulled by the words, Will said thoughtlessly, “In the library?”
Miss Greythorne’s sharp eyes glittered at him. “The library?” she said. “You must be mixing us up with someone else, Will. There’s no library here. Once there was a small one, with some most valuable books, I believe, but it burned down, almost a century ago. This part of the house was struck by lightning. Did a lot of damage, they say.”
“Oh, dear,” said Will in some confusion.
“Well, this is no talk for Christmas,” Miss Greythorne said, and waved them off. Glancing back at her, as she turned to Robin with a bright social smile, Will found himself wondering whether the two Miss Greythornes were not one after all.
Merriman led him, with Paul, to a side door, and they walked through a strange musty-smelling little passage into a high bright room that Will did not at once recognise. It was only when he caught sight of the fireplace that he realised where he was. There was the wide hearth, and the broad mantel with its square panels and carved Tudor rose-emblems. But round the rest of the room the panelling was gone; the walls were instead painted flat white, and brightened here and there by some large improbable-looking seascapes done in lurid blues and greens. In the place where Will had once gone into the little library, there was no longer any door.
Merriman was unlocking a tall, glass-fronted cabinet that stood against a side wall.
“Miss Greythorne’s father was a very musical gentleman,” he said in his butler voice. “And artistic too. He painted all those pictures on the walls over there. In the West Indies, I believe. These, though” — he lifted out a small beautiful instrument like a recorder, black inlaid with silver — “he didn’t actually play, they say. He just liked to look at them.”
Paul was absorbed at once, peering at, into, through the old flutes and recorders as Merriman handed them out of the cupboard. They were both most solemn in their handling; they would put each one carefully back before taking the next out. Will turned to study the panels round the fireplace; then jumped suddenly, as he heard Merriman silently calling to him. At the same time he could hear Merriman’s voice aloud speaking to Paul; it was an eerie combination.
“Quickly, now!” said the voice in his mind. “You know where to look. Quick, while you have the chance. It is time to take the Sign!”
“But —” said Will’s mind.
“Go on!” Merriman silently roared.
Will glanced back quickly over his shoulder. The door through which they had come was still half open, but his ears would surely warn him of anyone coming up the passage between this room and the next. He moved soft-footed to the fireplace, reached up, and put his hands on the panelling. Shutting his eyes for an instant, he appealed to all his new gifts, and the old world from which they came. Which square panel had it been? Which carved rose? He was confused by the loss of the panelled wall all around; the mantel seemed smaller than before. Was the sign lost, bricked up somewhere behind that flat white wall? He pressed every rose that he could see, round the top left-hand corner of the fireplace, but none moved even a fraction of an inch. Then at the last moment he noticed, at the very point of the corner, a rose part-buried in plaster, jutting out of the wall that clearly had been repaired as well as altered in the last hundred years — ten minutes, he thought wildly — since he had last seen it.
Hastily Will reached up high and pressed his thumb as hard as he could against the centre of the carved flower, as if it were a bell-push. And as he heard the soft click, he was staring into a black square hole in the wall, exactly on the level of his eyes. He reached in and touched the circle of the Sign of Wood, and as he sighed in relief, his fingers closing round the smooth wood, he heard Paul begin to play one of the old flutes.
It was very tentative playing: a slow arpeggio first, then a hesitant run; and then, very softly and gently, Paul began playing the melody “Greensleeves.” And Will stood transfixed, not only by the lovely lilt of the old tune but by the sound of the instrument itself. For though the melody was different, this was his music, his enchantment, the same eerie, faraway tone that he heard always, and then always lost, at those moments in his life that mattered most. What was the nature of this flute that his brother was playing? Was it part of the Old Ones, belonging to their magic, or simply something very like, made by men? He drew his hand back from the gap in the wall, which closed instantly before he could press the rose again, and he was sliding the Sign of Wood into his pocket as he turned, lost in listening.
And then he froze.
Paul stood playing, across the room, beside the cabinet. Merriman had his back turned and his hands on the glass doors. But now the room held two other figures as well. In the doorway through which they had come stood Maggie Barnes, staring not at Will but at Paul, with a look of dreadful malevolence. And close beside Will, very close, in the spot where the door to the old library had once been, towered the Black Rider. He was within arm’s length of Will, though he did not move, but stood transfixed, as if the music had arrested him in mid-stride. His eyes were closed, his lips silently moving; his hands were stretched out pointing ominously towards Paul, as the sweet, unearthly music went on.