by Susan Cooper
“Who on earth can that be?”
They all stared at one another, and then at the door, as if it might speak. This was all wrong, like a phrase of music changing in mid-melody. Nobody ever came to the house at this hour on Christmas Day, it was not in the pattern.
“I wonder . . .” said Mr Stanton, with a faint surmise waking in his voice; and he pushed his feet more firmly into his slippers and got up to open the front door.
They heard the door open. His back filled the space and stopped them from seeing the visitor, but his voice rose in obvious pleasure. “My dear chap, how very good of you . . . come in, do come in. . . .” And as he turned back towards the living room he was holding a small package in one hand that had not been there before, clearly a product of the tall figure that now loomed in the doorway, following him in. Mr Stanton was beaming and glowing, busy with introductions, “Alice, love, this is Mr Mitothin . . . so kind, all this way on Christmas morning just to deliver . . . shouldn’t have taken the . . . Mitothin, my son Max, my daughter Gwen . . . James, Barbara. . . .”
Will listened without attention to the grown-up politenesses; it was only at the voice of the stranger that he glanced up. There was something familiar in the deep, slightly nasal voice with a trace of accent, carefully repeating the names: “How do you do, Mrs Stanton. . . . Compliments of the season to you, Max, Gwen. . . .” And Will saw the outline of the face, and the longish red-brown hair, and he froze.
It was the Rider. This Mr Mitothin, his father’s friend from goodness-knows-where, was the Black Rider from somewhere outside Time.
Will seized the nearest thing to his hand, a sweep of bright cloth that was Stephen’s present from Jamaica to his sister Barbara, and pulled it quickly over the carnival head to mask it from view. As he turned again, the Rider raised his head to look further back into the room, and saw him. He stared at Will in open triumphant challenge, a small smile on his lips. Mr Stanton beckoned, flapping a hand, “Will, come here a minute — my youngest son, Mr —”
Will was instantly a furious Old One, so furious that he did not pause to think what he should do. He could feel every inch of himself, as if he had grown in his rage to three times his own height. He stretched out his right hand with its fingers spread stiff towards his family, and saw them instantly caught into a stop in time, frozen out of all movement. Like waxworks they stood stiff and motionless round the room.
“How dare you come in here!” he shouted at the Rider. The two of them stood facing one another across the room, the only living and moving objects there: no human moved, the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece did not move, and though the flames of the fire flickered, they did not consume the logs that they burned.
“How dare you! At Christmas, on Christmas morning! Get out!” It was the first time in his life he had ever felt such rage, and it was not pleasant, but he was outraged that the Dark should have dared to interrupt this his most precious family ritual.
The Rider said softly, “Contain yourself.” In the Old Speech, his accent was suddenly much more marked. He smiled at Will without a flicker of change in his cold blue eyes. “I can cross your threshold, my friend, and pass your berried holly, because I have been invited. Your father, in good faith, asked me to enter the door. And he is the master of this house, and there is nothing you can do about that.”
“Yes, there is,” Will said. Staring at the Rider’s confident smile, he focused all his powers in an effort to see into his mind, find what he intended to do there. But he came up sharp against a black wall of hostility, unbreakable. Will felt this should not be possible, and he was shaken. He groped angrily in his memory for the words of destruction with which in the last resort — but only the very last resort — an Old One might break the power of the Dark. And the Black Rider laughed.
“Oh no, Will Stanton,” he said easily. “That won’t do. You cannot use weapons of that kind here, not unless you wish to blast your whole family out beyond Time.” He glanced pointedly at Mary, who stood unmoving next to him, her mouth half-open, caught out of life in the middle of saying something to her father.
“That would be a pity,” the Rider said. Then he looked back at Will, and the smile dropped from his face as if he had spat it away, and his eyes narrowed. “You young fool, do you think that for all your Gift of Gramarye you can control me? Keep your place. You are not one of the masters yet. You may do things as best you can contrive, but the high powers are not for your mastering yet. And nor am I.”
“You are afraid of my masters,” Will said suddenly, not knowing quite what he meant, but knowing it was true.
The Rider’s pale face flushed. He said softly, “The Dark is rising, Old One, and this time we do not propose that anything shall hinder its way. This is the time for our rising, and these next twelve months shall see us established at last. Tell your masters that. Tell them that nothing shall stop us. Tell them, all the Things of Power that they hope to possess we shall take from them, the grail and the harp and the Signs. We shall break your Circle before it can ever be joined. And none shall stop the Dark from rising!”
The last words keened out in a high shriek of triumph, and Will shivered. The Rider stared at him, his pale eyes glittering; then scornfully he spread out his hands towards the Stantons, and at once they started into life again and the bustle of Christmas was back, and there was nothing Will could do.
“ — that box for?” Mary said.
“ — Mitothin, this is our Will.” Mr Stanton put his hand on Will’s shoulder.
Will said coldly, “How do you do?”
“The compliments of the season to you, Will,” the Rider said.
“I wish you the same as you wish me,” Will said.
“Very logical,” said the Rider.
“Very pompous, if you ask me,” Mary said, tossing her head. “He’s like that sometimes. Daddy, who is that box for, that he brought?”
“Mr Mitothin, not ’he’,” said her father automatically.
“For your mother, a surprise,” the Rider said. “Something that wasn’t finished last night in time for your father to bring it home.”
“From you?”
“From Daddy, I think,” said Mrs Stanton, smiling at her husband. She turned to the Rider. “Will you have breakfast with us, Mr Mitothin?”
“He can’t,” said Will.
“Will!”
“He sees I’m in a hurry,” the Rider said smoothly. “No, I thank you, Mrs Stanton, but I am on the way to spend the day with friends, and I must be off.”
Mary said, “Where are you going?”
“North of here . . . what long hair you have, Mary. Very pretty.”
“Thank you,” said Mary smugly, shaking her long, loose hair back from her shoulders. The Rider reached out and removed a stray hair delicately from her sleeve. “Allow me,” he said politely.
“She’s always showing it off,” James said calmly. Mary stuck out her tongue.
The Rider looked down the room again. “That’s a magnificent tree. A local one?”
“It’s a Royal tree,” James said. “From the Great Park.”
“Come and see!” Mary grabbed the Rider’s hand and tugged him across. Will bit his lip, and deliberately blanked out all thought of the carnival head from his mind by concentrating very hard on what he was likely to have for breakfast. The Rider, he was fairly sure, could see into the top level of his mind but not perhaps the ones buried deeper than that.
But there was no danger. Though the great empty box and its pile of exotic packing stood right beside him, the Rider, surrounded by Stantons, simply peered obediently and admiringly at the ornaments on the tree. He seemed particularly taken with the tiny carved initials from Farmer Dawson’s box. “Beautiful,” he said, absently twirling Mary’s leaf-twined M — which, Will noticed vaguely, was hanging upside-down.
Then he turned back to their parents. “I really must go, and you must have your breakfasts. Will looks rather hungry, I think.” There was a f
lash of malice as they looked at one another, and Will knew that he had been right about the limits of the Dark’s seeing.
“I’m really immensely grateful to you, Mitothin,” Mr Stanton said.
“No trouble at all, you were right on my way. Compliments of the season to you all —” With a flurry of farewells he was gone, striding down the path. Will rather regretted that his mother shut the door before they had a chance to hear a car’s engine start up. He did not think the Rider had come by car.
“Well, my love,” said Mr Stanton, giving his wife a kiss and handing her the box. “There’s your first tree-present. Happy Christmas!”
“Oh!” said their mother, when she had opened it. “Oh, Roger!”
Will squeezed past his burbling sisters to have a look. Nestled on white velvet, in a box marked with the name of his father’s shop, was his mother’s old-fashioned ring: the ring he had watched Mr Stanton checking for loose stones some weeks before, the ring that Merriman had seen in the picture he took out of Will’s mind. But encircling it was something else: a bracelet made as an enlargement of the ring, exactly matching it. A gold band, set with three diamonds in the centre, and three rubies on either side, and engraved with an odd pattern of circles and lines and curves round them all. Will stared at it, wondering why the Rider should have wanted to have it in his hands. For surely that must have been behind the visit this morning; no Lord of the Dark needed to enter any house merely to see what was inside.
“Did you make it, Dad?” said Max. “Lovely bit of work.”
“Thank you,” said his father.
“Who was that man who brought it ?” Gwen said curiously. “Does he work with you? Such a funny name.”
“Oh, he’s a dealer,” Mr Stanton said. “In diamonds, mostly. Strange chap, but very pleasant. I’ve known him for a couple of years, I suppose. We get quite a lot of stones from his people — including these.” He poked one finger gently at the bracelet. “I had to leave early yesterday while young Jeffrey was still tightening one setting — and Mitothin happened to be in the shop and offered to drop it off to save me coming back. As he said, he was coming past here this morning anyway. Still, it was good of him, he needn’t have offered.”
“Very nice,” said his wife. “But you’re nicer. I think it’s beautiful.”
“I’m hungry,” said James. “When are we going to eat?”
It was only after the bacon and eggs, toast and tea, marmalade and honey were all gone, and the debris of the first present-opening cleared away, that Will realised his letter from Stephen was nowhere to be found. He searched the living room, investigated everyone’s belongings, crawled underneath the tree and around the waiting pile of still-unopened presents, but it was not there. It might, of course, have been inadvertently thrown away, in mistake for wrapping paper; such things sometimes happened in their crowded Christmas Day.
But Will thought he knew what had happened to his letter. And he wondered whether, after all, it had been the chance of investigating his mother’s ring that had brought the Black Rider to the house — or a quest for something else.
* * *
Before long they noticed that snow was falling again. Gently but inexorably the flakes came fluttering down, without once faltering. The footprints of Mr Mitothin, out on the path from door to drive, were soon covered over as if they had never been there. The dogs, Raq and Ci, who had asked to go out before the snow began, came humbly scratching at the back door again.
“I’m all for a white Christmas now and then,” said Max, staring morosely out, “but this is ridiculous.”
“Extraordinary,” said his father, looking out over his shoulder. “I’ve never known it like this at Christmas, in my lifetime. If much more comes down today, there’ll be real transport problems all over the South of England.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Max. “I’m supposed to be going to Southampton the day after tomorrow to stay with Deb.”
“Oh, woe, woe,” said James, clutching his chest.
Max looked at him.
“Happy Christmas, Max,” James said.
Paul came clomping into the living room in boots, buttoning his overcoat. “Snow or no snow, I’m off ringing. They ol’ bells up in thiccy tower don’ wait for no one. Any of you heathen mob coming to church this morning?”
“The nightingales will be along,” Max said, looking at Will and James, who between them constituted about one-third of the church choir. “That should do you, don’t you think?”
“If you were to perform your seasonal good deed,” said Gwen, passing, “with some useful task like peeling the potatoes, then perhaps Mum could go. She does like to, when she can.”
The small muffled group which set out eventually into the thickening snow consisted of Paul, James, Will, Mrs Stanton and Mary, who was, James said unkindly but with truth, probably more interested in avoiding housework than in making her devotions. They plodded up the road, the snowflakes coming down harder now and beginning to sting their cheeks. Paul had gone ahead to join the other ringers, and soon the tumbling notes of the six sweet old bells that hung in the small square tower began chiming through the grey whirling world around them, brightening it back into Christmas. Will’s spirits rose a little at the sound, but not much; the heavy persistence of the new snow troubled him. He could not shake off the creeping suspicion that it was being sent as a forerunner of something else, by the Dark. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his sheepskin jacket, and the fingertips of one hand found themselves curling round a rook’s feather, forgotten since the dreadful night of Midwinter’s Eve, before his birthday.
In the snowy road, four or five cars stood outside the church; there were more, usually, on Christmas morning, but few villagers outside walking range had chosen to brave this swirling white fog. Will watched the fat white flakes lie determined and unmelting on his jacket sleeve; it was very cold. Even inside the little church, the snowflakes obstinately remained, and took a long time to melt. He went with James and the handful of other choristers to struggle into surplices in the narrow vestry corridor, and then, as the bells merged into the beginning of the service, to make their procession down the aisle and up into the little gallery at the back of the small square nave. You could see everyone from there, and it was clear that the church of St James the Less was not Christmas-crammed this year, but half full.
The order of Morning Prayer, as were in this Church of England, by the Authority of Parliament, in the Second Year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, made its noble way through the Christmas pattern, led by the Rector’s unashamedly theatrical bass-baritone.
“O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever,” sang Will, reflecting that Mr Beaumont had shown a certain wry humour in choosing the canticle.
“O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.”
Suddenly he found himself shivering, but not from the words, nor from any sense of cold. His head swam; he clutched for a moment at the edge of the gallery. The music seemed to become for a brief flash hideously discordant, jarring at his ears. Then it faded into itself again and was as before, leaving Will shaken and chilled.
“O ye Light and Darkness,” sang James, staring at him — “are you all right? Sit down — and magnify Him forever.”
But Will shook his head impatiently, and for the rest of the service he sturdily stood, sang, sat, or knelt, and convinced himself that there had been nothing at all wrong except a vague feeling of faintness, brought on by what his elders liked to call “over-excitement.” And then the strange sense of wrongness, of discordance, came again.
It was only once more, at the very end of the service. Mr Beaumont was booming out the prayer of St Chrysostom: “. . . who dost promise, that when two or three are gathered together in thy name thou wilt grant their requests. . . .” Noise broke suddenly into Will’s mind, a shrieking and dreadful howling in place of the familiar cadences. He had heard it
before. It was the sound of the besieging Dark, which he had heard outside the Manor Hall where he had sat with Merriman and the Lady, in some century unknown. But in a church? said Will the Anglican choirboy, incredulous: surely you can’t feel it inside a church? Ah, said Will the Old One unhappily, any church of any religion is vulnerable to their attack, for places like this are where men give thought to matters of the Light and the Dark. He hunched his head down between his shoulders as the noise beat at him — and then it vanished again, and the rector’s voice was ringing out alone, as before.
Will glanced quickly around him, but it was clear nobody else had noticed anything wrong. Through the folds of his white surplice he gripped the three Signs on his belt, but there was neither warmth nor cold under his fingers. To the warning power of the Signs, he guessed, a church was a kind of no man’s land; since no harm could actually enter its walls, no warning against harm should be necessary. Yet if the harm were hovering just outside . . .
The service was over now, everyone roaring out “O Come, All Ye Faithful” in happy Christmas fervour, as the choir made their way down from the gallery and up to the altar. Then Mr Beaumont’s blessing went rolling out over the heads of the congregation: “. . . the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. . . .” But the words could not bring Will peace, for he knew that something was wrong, something looming out of the Dark, something waiting, out there, and that when it came to the point he must meet it alone, unstrengthened.
He watched everyone file beaming out of the church, smiling and nodding to each other as they gripped their umbrellas and turned up their collars against the swirling snow. He saw jolly Mr Hutton, the retired director, twirling his car keys, enveloping tiny Miss Bell, their old teacher, in the warm offer of a ride home; and behind him jolly Mrs Hutton, a galleon in full furry sail, doing the same with limp Mrs Pettigrew, the postmistress. Assorted village children scampered out of the door, escaping their best-hatted mothers, rushing to snowballs and Christmas turkey. Lugubrious Mrs Horniman stumped out next to Mrs Stanton and Mary, busily foretelling doom. Will saw Mary, trying not to giggle, fall back to join Mrs Dawson and her married daughter, with the five-year-old grandson prancing gaily in gleaming new cowboy boots.