But for this he would first need Viviane alive and well and at his side.
And where was she? He had recently been so preoccupied with defeating Huandaw and Neol so as to put their lands under his control, that he had lost track of her. When he called for her now he was furious to discover that she was nowhere to be found.
He ordered Olwen to be brought before him for questioning.
Without hesitation Olwen revealed that her mistress had ridden off with Father David before the battle, to visit a sick cottager.
‘What sick cottager?’ demanded Idoc grimly.
But Olwen did not know.
‘If you lie to me girl, you’ll be sorry!’
‘Why should I lie, my lord? My lady did not say, and it was not for me to ask. I am sure you will learn where she went if you inquire among the other tenants.’
Idoc glared at her long and hard from beneath scowling brows, tapping his fingers irritably on the table before him.
‘Send me Gerin,’ he snapped at last to one of the guards.
‘If you would excuse me, my lord,’ said Olwen carefully, ‘my lady gave me a charge before she left and I must attend to that.’
‘I presume you mean the kidnapped girl,’ snarled Idoc. ‘The one who cost me half my warriors.’
Olwen was silent, her head bowed, waiting patiently to be dismissed. She knew that something was terribly wrong, but had faith that if she kept as quiet as possible, and went about her chores as though nothing was happening, any trouble would eventually pass her by. She was deeply worried that Viviane had not returned, but the princess had set her the task of bringing Cai back to health, and this she meant to do.
‘Did the queen have any part in bringing that girl here?’
‘No, my lord. She left with Father David before . . .’
At that moment the guard who had been sent to fetch Gerin rushed in and began speaking to the king in a low voice. Olwen saw the rage that flashed across his face and, without awaiting his permission, she slipped unnoticed from the room.
She arrived at Cai’s chamber flushed and frightened. The door was slightly ajar but, hearing a sound, she held back and peeped through the crack. Elined was kneeling beside Cai’s bed, her head resting on his left hand, bitterly sobbing. He was propped up on one elbow staring wonderingly down at her.
Olwen drew back and shut the door.
* * * *
The guard’s message which had roused Idoc’s anger was that Gerin was nowhere to be found – and neither was Rheged. The guards in the dungeon had been knocked out cold by an unseen assailant, and had only just come round. Meanwhile two horses were missing from the stables and, on being questioned, the guards at the gate reported having seen Sir Gerin ride out in the company of an old woman in a cloak. They had not thought to question him.
‘Old woman!’ screamed Idoc. ‘Are you mad! What would one of my knights be doing with an old woman?’ He ordered the gate-watch to be severely punished and sent a party of warriors after the fugitives, warning that they would pay with their lives if they did not return with the two men. He paced about the hall, muttering to himself, his anger so great that no one dared come near him. It was as though a huge black cloud had settled over the castle. Everyone was confused and frightened. No one could understand how their king could change so utterly in a few days, and no one felt safe from his violent rages and the inexplicable changes of loyalty and fortune that seemed to be happening. Many would have liked to flee after Gerin and Rheged, but none had the courage. Instead most felt it safest to do nothing, either keeping out of the king’s way, or trying to ingratiate themselves with him by carrying tales against others.
Finally Idoc decided to return to the dark tower. For there he would be able to see in his mirror where Viviane, Gerin and Rheged now were. There he would have the means to hunt them down. He put the castle under the temporary command of the Captain of the Guard, whom he knew to be an ambitious man, hinting at great rewards if the place was kept tight and safe against his return. Then he set off into the night, refusing any suggestion that he should be accompanied.
* * * *
Father Brendan and Viviane were walking the path that led up the narrow valley behind the house. At first every grain of soil was cultivated, even to the ledges stepping upwards from the little stream, but gradually wild nature took over. High cliffs of limestone replaced the terraces of vegetables and every nook and cranny and ledge was rich with natural growth. The tiny pink stars of stonecrop softened the edges of fissures in the silvery-grey rock, stone bramble and holly fern flourished, while wine-red moss-campion and yellow saxifrage lent a splash of bright colour. Even where there seemed no soil to support them, spindly trees – witch’s rowan and hawthorn – grew sideways from the rock, turning upwards to the sunlight, reaching towards the narrow slit of blue sky between the cliffs. The stream that ran over the boulders at her feet seemed too small to have carved this great chasm, yet it had – with minute and delicate persistence over a time so vast that the whole of man’s sojourn on earth seemed no more than a moment compared to it.
At one point the valley opened up where the stream took a sharp bend. One bank was steep, the other sloping gently to the water’s edge with a small grassy plain behind it. Here again trees could grow upright, and several did.
Father Brendan held up his hand for her to pause. ‘We’ll stay here for a while,’ he said.
Viviane was glad. She could not imagine a more beautiful, more peaceful place. Here the horrors of her recent life seemed remote and unreal.
Brendan smiled as though he read her thoughts. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘we might find that the invisible becomes visible.’
She wished she had her amethyst with her, but Brendan had refused to let her bring it. ‘Today,’ he had said, ‘you have to learn to see through illusion to the truth beyond, without any aids.’
The air was cool and crystalline. Deep in the gorge where the sunlight touched only the highest edge of the cliffs and the very tops of the trees, the contrast between shade and light was clear-cut and sharp; but on the little plain the sun shone down directly and the trees stood in a blaze of light.
‘The first thing you need to know, the river must tell you,’ Brendan said. ‘Sit a while on that boulder in the middle of the stream, and listen.’
Viviane was glad of a rest, and clambered eagerly over the rocks until she reached the huge rounded boulder that Brendan had indicated. She looked back at him inquiringly: what would he do while she was resting and listening? But he must have slipped away among the trees for he was nowhere in sight.
She settled down on the cool stone, glad that at least in this part of the valley the sun could enter.
She listened to the birds . . . noted the sparkle of the water as it hurried over and between the rocks . . . the green of the bushes that hung over the far bank, some of them trailing branches in the water, continually buffeted . . .
Then she began to listen to the water . . .
She began to forget herself and hear only water sounds . . . complex . . . beautiful . . . a hundred different harmonies within the same song. The water spoke, liquid-tongued, lightly lilting each tale a hundred different ways . . .
She could have listened for ever . . . but Brendan’s voice was calling her . . . cutting through . . .
‘What have you learned?’ he asked as she joined him.
‘I have learned that there are many ways to tell everything that is to be told, and that man’s language is clumsy and inadequate. It can tell only one tale at a time, and that tale only one way at a time.’
He smiled. ‘You listened well. Now come with me.’
He led her towards the trees.
‘The next lesson, a tree must teach you,’ he said. ‘Choose one carefully.’
She chose an oak, the tallest she had ever seen, standing like a giant, its girth such that two tall men with long arms stretched to the limits would find difficult to encompass. It rose straight and true, branch
es balanced and harmonious, its crown almost out of sight. She circled it several times, and then touched it . . . She began to feel something of the tremendous forces which coursed through it, which drove it up towards the sky. She put her hands on the bark and felt through her own flesh that upsurge of energy. Totally silent and with no sign of movement, the tree yet was vibrant with action. Beneath her hand prodigious events were taking place, so minute that they could not be seen with the eye, yet so powerful that the mighty Being of the tree was continually being created and renewed . . . its roots driving deep in the earth with the strength to crack rock and tumble mountains.
She returned in awe to Brendan and sat quietly beside him, aware that within her too the energy that created the universe was coursing.
‘This time I will speak while you learn, but my words will be no more than stones dropped into a still pool. It will be the rippling circles that ride out from the stones that you must note, and not the stones themselves.
‘I am going to make you see a scheme, a pattern, which might help you to understand many things you need to know. But you must remember the lesson of the water language. You must try to hear the other harmonies, the other patterns, which flow through the one you will now see . . .’
‘I will try,’ she said humbly.
Brendan began to speak, but she soon lost the sense of whether she was hearing his words or her own thoughts.
Whether it was the extraordinary concentration of sunlight that made the tree seem to vibrate and change before her very eyes, or whether there was a kind of magic in the air channelled through Brendan, she could not be sure . . . but the natural living tree before her began to take on a visionary quality. It became for her the mysterious Tree of Life, reaching up through all the Realms of Being to the very borders of that region where not even the archangels dare penetrate . . .
She realized that the Tree was growing as much downwards from above, as though rooted in the Light of Heaven, as it was growing upwards from below, where it was rooted in the World of Changes, the World of Matter.
She saw herself as Spirit from the highest realms, rooted now in the earth, but striving to return. She saw around her the world of air, earth, fire and water: the multitudinous beings of the World of Matter. And above her she saw the non-material World of the Soul, the region of angels and of demons, of elementals and of those who are awaiting rebirth. She knew that beyond this there were other realms, still out of reach of her understanding even in her most inspired moments: the Realm of pure Spirit where the mighty archangels observe and act – known to pagans as ‘the gods’ – even they still far from the threshold of the Unknown, the Dwelling of the Nameless One.
Viviane felt her head burning with the struggle to understand all that was coming to her.
She envisaged the Tree with energy flowing up and down from the First to the Last, the One to the Many, and back again. She saw spheres and realms contained within the Tree, each with its precise meaning and function. She saw beings going up and down and up again, animated by the tremendous ‘lightning flash’ of God’s desire for life, yet freely motivated by their own longing to explore before their yearning to rejoin their source drove them back, transformed and enriched.
She saw those who rose and those who fell. She saw those who tried and tried again, and those embittered and failed beings who had given up trying.
Dimly she remembered that Idoc had once described all this to her.
‘Why,’ she asked Brendan, ‘why would a man who has seen this vision let it go?’
He knew of whom she was speaking. ‘Idoc moved too fast and too unevenly . . . taking in knowledge before he had the wisdom to understand it. At first he had no motive but to seek the meaning behind all Manifestation, and, finding that he needed help, he asked for it from the realm beyond our own. To ask for such help with a pure motive is as it should be; but he soon forgot his original goal and began to think about how he could use such help to improve his earthly life, materially, and how he could use it to gain power over his neighbours. With this change of motive came a change of guidance. He refused to listen to those who tried to guide him upwards, and only to those who offered him easy and immediate rewards. He was taken over by a being whom he believed was one of the high angels, but who was not. His name was Ny-ak. Idoc followed Ny-ak’s every instruction, at first not realizing where it was leading him, still believing that he was on the journey of the Return. He abandoned his own judgement, his own sense of discrimination. He started cruel animal experiments and later he experimented on humans – believing that he had the right, in the name of knowledge, to use whatever and whoever came his way. He wanted to find answers to the questions that interested him about the relationship of “mind” to “reality” and of “soul” to “body”, and he chose to do this by taking the physical body apart and seeking, cell by cell, for the answer. His victims had to be alive: for dead these relationships did not exist. He suffered with their suffering at first, but excused it by telling himself how he would improve man’s lot on earth with the knowledge he would gain. Increasingly he felt no pain when he inflicted pain. The rational function of his mind grew at the expense of the imaginal. He became incapable of entering any reality other than the one of his own ego.’
Did Brendan stop speaking then, or had he stopped long before?
She understood now that Idoc must be freed from the incubus he had called down upon himself – as much as Caradawc must be freed from Idoc.
She put her head down on her knees with a deep sigh.
She could take no more.
Brendan understood. He touched her on the shoulder, and when she lifted her head she saw that she was beside a river, with trees and bushes and little birds singing cheerfully.
‘We had better return to the house,’ he said gently.
She nodded gratefully and stood up, stretching, enjoying the feeling of movement in her cramped muscles, the sun on her skin. The oak tree had returned to its natural form, as splendid as any vision, with its rich depths of rustling green, its huge and powerful trunk sustaining with its strength innumerable lives . . . insects and birds . . . fern and moss and lichen . . . even the Druid’s sacred mistletoe.
She walked lightly on the rocky path, listening to the river sounds with new attention, noting every colour, every shape, as though she were from another world and seeing this one for the first time.
Chapter 10
The door of flame
Idoc found that Caradawc’s body, though young and healthy, was sluggish after his etheric form, and his thoughts were troubled from time to time with irrelevancies. He longed for the power he had possessed before and rejoiced to feel it returning as he drew nearer the familiar valley and the rock made up of many rocks which marked the way through the woods and up the hill – the path Fiann used to take in the days when they were lovers . . .
His horse picked its way carefully through the shadows, the moonlight bright, but not enough to penetrate this tangled wood. At the top of the hill, standing clear of trees, he finally saw the tower rising tall and forbidding before him.
The tower had once been covered with the muscles and tendons of a gigantic vine, the work, he suspected, of the Green Lady, who had always opposed his schemes. He remembered how it had grown: how it had crawled and gripped and squeezed; how it had sealed the windows and begun to crack the stone. He remembered how he had broken three axes before he had been able to loosen its suffocating hold, but he had won at last and now it was nothing but a leafless, grey, brittle network of stem and tendril, powerless to harm him.
He was shocked to notice that the door was open. ‘Who dares?’ he cried aloud, leaping down and striding forward. He had never imagined that anyone could enter the tower without his knowledge. He now regretted even more his folly in taking on the burden of human flesh. There was so much one could not see with human eyes; so much one missed.
Inside, the stairwell was pitch dark. He ripped a branch from a nearby bush and se
t it alight. Silently, swiftly, he moved, determined to catch the rash intruder unawares. The lower three doors were firmly shut, but the fourth and uppermost lay wide open, the door to his octagonal chamber of power.
Without any hesitation he stormed in, his improvised torch held high. The mystery intruder was no longer there but the whole chamber was strewn with the sharp black splinters of his precious obsidian mirror. The wall where it had hung was bare. He turned suddenly and saw that he was being watched.
Small brown voyeurs, their eyes large and luminous, were crowding at the door, straining forward, eager not to miss a thing. With a curse he slammed the door shut, and heard them squealing and laughing and tumbling down the stairs.
He sat in his chair with his head in his hands.
Who could have done this? No man he knew was powerful enough to destroy that mirror. Without it how was he going to trace his enemies, Gerin and Rheged? Without it how was he going to find Viviane?
He remembered the creatures he had closed out when he flung the door shut. It was possible they had witnessed the destruction of the mirror. They seemed to appear everywhere – perching, prowling, watching everything that went on; relentless sight-seekers, sniffing out trouble and rushing to where it was to pry and peep; slobbering greedily over sexual couplings and gloating over suffering. He had even been half aware of them during the battle, shrilling to each other excitedly to come and see some young man horribly dismembered, clucking their teeth in hypocritical disapproval even as their eyes swelled larger and larger with excitement. Perhaps he could use them in some way to his advantage, though he hated the thought of relying on anyone – let alone such inferior creatures. The tower had always been his private space – where he could watch but not be watched; where he could make decisions that plunged others into misery, but never have to meet their eyes. He was determined to find out by whom his privacy had been violated.
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