The Greenstone Grail

by Jan Siegel

  ‘We have songs,’ he said, ‘but lines go all way to end. What use song without music?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Annie said, taking the book from him. This was the most bizarre conversation she had had in a season of bizarre conversations, but she was finding it stimulating. She understood why Nathan was so impressed with Eric. For all his strangeness, she couldn’t help warming to him.

  The book was an anthology, and she began to read from the first poem she saw, which happened to be Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s tale of Pan inventing his pipes. The poem is all rhyme and rhythm, and the words make their own music, and as she read she saw Eric tilt his head on one side, and the colour in his eyes brightened to a glitter.

  ‘“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan

  (Laughed while he sat by the river),

  “The only way, since the gods began

  To make sweet music, they could succeed.”

  Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

  He blew in power by the river.

  Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

  Piercing sweet by the river!

  Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

  The sun on the hill forgot to die

  And the lilies revived, and the dragonfly

  Came back to dream on the river.

  Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

  To laugh as he sits by the river,

  Making a poet out of a man.

  The true gods sigh for the cost and pain –

  For the reed which grows never more again

  As a reed with the reeds in the river.’

  There was a short silence when she had finished. ‘How can music stop sun?’ Eric asked. ‘And true gods …? Gods are not true. Only in old legend. God is Man made big. This world very strange. Stories which lie, songs without music, lines which not go to end of page.’

  ‘Have some coffee,’ Annie said.

  He accepted both milk and sugar and pronounced the coffee good. ‘I like poem,’ he decided eventually. ‘Is kind of spell, yes? Very potent. Poem control force?’

  ‘Force?’ Annie was lost again.

  Eric leaned forward, suddenly sombre. ‘You need spell,’ he said. ‘Many spells. I come to tell you, Nathan in great danger. But you not worry. I help him.’

  ‘What danger?’ Annie said. ‘Why?’ She had her own fears about Nathan, but she couldn’t understand why this stranger should share them.

  ‘Gnomon,’ Eric said. ‘Gnomon from my world. They follow him in wood. They are not solid, unseen, very bad. They move through worlds. But you not worry. You take care of him, and I find something to help.’

  ‘What are gnomons?’ Annie asked, but there was a hollow note in her voice.

  ‘I tell you. Unseen, bring madness. I come to warn you. Tell Nathan, stay in daylight. Not go to woods at night.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Annie said. There was a chill around her heart.

  Them …

  Eric finished his coffee quickly, though it was hot. ‘Like to buy book,’ he said. ‘But I have not much money. Only for food.’

  ‘I could get you something to eat …’

  ‘Not now. Must go. Search woods for sylpherim.’

  Annie had no idea what sylpherim was, but she sensed his urgency. ‘Have it,’ she said, handing him the book.

  He shook his head. ‘No money.’

  ‘A present.’

  Suddenly he smiled, a great sweep of a smile lighting up his face. ‘People here very kind. Thank you.’ He gave a nod, almost like a bow. ‘May the force be with you.’ Then he was gone.

  ‘Good heavens,’ Annie said to herself, inadequately. And then: ‘Force? He was talking about … magic. How much magic is there in Mali, I wonder?’ But she knew now he didn’t come from Mali. Not Mali in Africa, anyway. We must take him to Bartlemy, she decided. He knows things. He knows about them …

  She reran his words of warning in her mind, and tried not to be afraid.

  Rowena Thorn was in the back room of her antiques shop in Chizzledown when she heard the clang of the bell on the door. Her assistant was at lunch so she came out herself, relaxing with arms akimbo while the prospective customer had a chance to look around. Antiques shops are normally dim and cluttered but Rowena had gone for a different look, with pine flooring, pale walls, an emphasis on space and light. It made it much easier to keep an eye on things. Dimness and clutter were relegated to the storeroom. Her visitor, however, barely glanced at the various items displayed alluringly around him. ‘I am looking for Mrs Thorn,’ he said. He had a slight accent, possibly German.

  ‘I’m Mrs Thorn,’ she said.

  ‘My name is Dieter Von Humboldt. Your friend at Sotheby’s may perhaps have mentioned me.’

  She nodded, straightening up, rising – physically and mentally – to the challenge. ‘You’re the Graf, Graf Von Humboldt. Your grandfather’s the one who acquired my cup. Under pretty unsavoury circumstances – still, that’s hardly your fault.’

  Her tone did not suggest forgiveness, and the visitor’s ‘Thank you’ was stiff and automatic. She guessed he was somewhere in his thirties, though it was difficult to be sure: he was the sort of man who looks middle-aged from twenty-five but never really changes. His hair was receding like a neap tide from the wide expanse of his forehead, expensive glasses shrank his eyes, his mouth was both thin and – at that juncture – tight-lipped. For the rest, his shoulders were rather broad, his tailoring conservative. Except for the accent, his English was virtually perfect.

  ‘I am told you are making a claim for ownership of the cup. Is that so?’

  ‘Must know it is. Been in several newspapers.’

  ‘I do not always believe what I read in the papers,’ Von Humboldt explained punctiliously. ‘I hope you will forgive me for arriving like this, without writing or telephoning first. I wished to meet you, to understand your position.’

  ‘All quite straightforward,’ Rowena said. ‘The cup belonged to my family for centuries – perhaps millennia. At some point there was an injunction drawn up forbidding its sale. Got lost down the years, but it’s in my hands now. Proves the original sale was illegal. Don’t know about your grandfather’s rights of ownership – not my business – but the chap he got it from shouldn’t have had it anyway. Any of that family popped up to claim it too?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes. There were some cousins who went to America; their representatives have been in touch with me. I do not blame them, you understand, nor you: of course not. Nor am I certain what are the rights and wrongs of the case. Your ancestor may have acted illegally in selling the cup, but the buyer must have been in ignorance of the injunction and could hardly be held responsible. Then there are the moral issues. By modern standards my grandfather acted wrongly, yet he had the principles of his time. He saw the cup as legitimate spoils of war. The idea is not yet outmoded: I infer the Americans expect to enrich themselves rebuilding Iraq, for example.’

  ‘No need to justify your grandfather to me,’ Rowena shrugged. ‘Might have to do so in court, though.’

  ‘That is the crux of the matter,’ Von Humboldt said. ‘A court case could be long and costly for everyone involved. I was hoping we might find a way to resolve the conflict without that.’

  ‘What way?’ Rowena asked bluntly. Privately, she was quite sure that no such avenue could be found, since she at least would settle for nothing less than possession of the cup, but she was willing to listen to him for now.

  ‘There are various possibilities.’ The Graf became deliberately vague. ‘Much depends – forgive me – on the strength of your claim, and that of this Alex Birnbaum. We need to be frank with each other, to pool information.’ Rowena allowed herself a cynical smile. Noting it, he moved on briskly. ‘However, I might be prepared to offer, let us say, a division of the spoils. The cup could be sold, and those of us who have the greatest right to it could share the profits.’

  ‘Generous,’ Rowena said. ‘’Fraid you’ve misse
d the point. I don’t want the cup sold. Not interested in profits. It’s a family heirloom, and I want it back. Haven’t the funds to buy it, and wouldn’t if I had. Belongs to me. You wanted frankness; I’m being frank. Nowhere to go but court.’

  ‘I see.’ She sensed he was not convinced. ‘Well, I will be staying around for a while. There is a very pleasant little hotel here, and I should like to see the locality from which the cup originated. I believe there are many interesting stories about it. Perhaps, even though you will not do business with me, we could have lunch, and you would tell me some of them?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Rowena was unencouraging.

  ‘I hope we will speak further,’ he said. He turned to leave – then hesitated. ‘There are many things about this matter that I do not comprehend, but at this moment there is one in particular.’

  Rowena said: ‘Yes?’ interrogatively, because it was clearly expected of her.

  ‘You have many beautiful things in this shop, which you are ready, presumably eager, to sell. The cup is not especially beautiful, and since the failed attempt at carbon-dating its antiquity must be called into question. Whatever legends may be attached to it, they can have no basis in fact. You strike me as an intelligent, hard-nosed woman, not given to sentimentality. Yet you only wish to possess this thing, for its own sake, without regard to value or potential profit. I find that extraordinary.’ His tone was politely sceptical.

  Rowena made a sound half laugh, half snort. ‘Think I’m faking it? Try me.’

  ‘I will,’ said Von Humboldt. When she volunteered nothing further, he left.

  That week, Nathan had a dream which he thought must be set in a different world from that of Eos, though whether in the same universe or another he couldn’t tell. Once again, he was incorporeal, a mere awareness floating in space. Below him stretched an expanse of sea so vast he thought either the world in question must be flat or the planet far bigger than Earth. The water was a wonderful deep blue – it looked much bluer than any sea he remembered seeing anywhere – with a string of tiny islands scattered across it, their colours blurred with distance into a brownish neutrality, given brilliance by the light of that enormous day. Because of course the sky too was impossibly huge: the sun, failing from its zenith, seemed to have a long, long way to go before it would reach the horizon. Clouds were building up to block its route, great towers of cumulus, top-heavy with rain. Their shadow came crawling towards the islands, darkening the sea to indigo. White wave-wrinkles indicated the new restlessness of the waters. The sun, struggling towards evening, sent a few long rays through a cleft in the cloud-wall, throwing a path of glitter across the sea-shadow, touching the nearest island with green. Nathan was much lower now and he glimpsed the contouring of cultivation, clusters of what might be houses, the outthrust jetty of a miniature harbour. Then the clouds rose to smother the lastlight, and the colours went out. There was a crack of thunder so loud it might have been the crashing of world against world. Lightning zig-zagged across the sky-roof and stabbed earthwards with many prongs. Nathan was descending fast and even though he had no substance everything became suddenly very alarming.

  The sea went mad. Waves arose like rolling cliffs and heaving mountains; the writhing column of a waterspout flowed upwards into a connecting arm of cloud. Chasms opened that seemed to reach into the depths of the ocean, and creatures from a lightless realm flickered briefly into view. Tentacles seethed, electricity crackled along the arc of a spine or the flourish of a gigantic fin. And there were other things in the tumult, human shapes that were not quite human, things half seen and half guessed – beings made of darkness and cloud-swirl, of sea-spume and black water. Night fell, and there was only chaos and noise. And somewhere in the midst of the storm Nathan’s awareness still hung on, shivering, if thought can shiver, overwhelmed by the power and horror of the elements.

  He didn’t know how long the dream lasted. Ages later, or so it seemed, the world was quiet again, and the clouds must have lifted and thinned, for a line of dawn spread along the sea’s rim, and a slow pallor seeped into that world, turning it to monochrome. The water was calm now, the sky veiled. There was no sign of the night’s violence.

  But the islands had gone.

  At first, Nathan thought he might have moved, and the island chain would be somewhere else, but when he looked around he saw the flotsam, rocking gently on the swell, and he knew he was still in the same place. Uprooted trees, with mud still clotting their tubers, floating mounds of rubbish, smaller items which it was best not to look at too closely, though they might have been nothing significant. But the islands themselves had vanished for good, devoured by the storm’s fury and the sea’s hunger. The cloud-veil drew back and the rising sun appeared, its light reaching out across the endless waters. And somehow Nathan knew that in all that world there was no longer even a tiny patch of land remaining, not a single rock standing out from the waves. The ocean ruled unchecked. The last seabirds wheeled and keened over the flotsam, soon to die. There was no other lament.

  Nathan sensed that what had happened was not the result of scientific pollution or magical contamination; the tempest had come from the sea itself, from the rage of elements which hated Man. And now the entire planet was a desert of water where only fish might live, and the spirits of wave and darkness reigned alone.

  He woke with the dawn, long before his schoolmates, and lay unsleeping while the aftermath of fear ebbed from his mind.

  Later that day, Annie called him.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ he said, surprised. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ If he had reasons not to be, surely his mother wasn’t privy to any of them.

  ‘Your friend came to see me. Eric Rhindon. He says you’re in danger.’ She added, by way of palliative: ‘I like him very much.’

  ‘So do I. Mum … don’t worry. He’s just overreacting to something. He isn’t used to this country. He was being persecuted, you know.’

  ‘This country,’ Annie said, ‘or this world?’

  Nathan evaded a direct answer. Clearly, explanations lay ahead – long, tangled, complex explanations which might well not be believed – but he would plunge into that quagmire when he came to it. His present problem was to focus on school work, when all his thought was elsewhere.

  Back home on Friday evening he used homework and tiredness to dodge discussion. On Saturday he got up at eight thirty, breakfasted in haste and went to the local hardware store. He had to wait, as it didn’t open till nine. Once inside, he told the assistant he needed something made of iron. ‘Proper iron, not some kind of alloy,’ he said. ‘It’s for a school project.’ Everyone always seemed to accept that.

  The assistant summoned the manager, who was intrigued. ‘Of course, in the old days we’d have been an ironmonger’s,’ he said, pointing to a faded notice demoted to a wall at the back of the shop. ‘Everything was made of iron then. Now – you’re quite right, it’s all some alloy, or stainless steel, or Teflon –’ he tapped a saucepan ‘– or plastic. Very up-to-date-they invented some of this stuff designing rockets – but it doesn’t wear like iron. What exactly is this project about?’

  Nathan improvised on lines suggested by the manager’s conversation, and explained he needed some examples of iron in use today. ‘All I’ve got is a couple of old horseshoes, and they’re only borrowed.’

  ‘This is what you want.’ The manager showed his range of mock-antique door furniture, handles, knockers, numbers, all painted black. Nathan bought a selection of numbers for himself, Hazel, Eric and his mother: he knew he was going to have to start telling Annie everything soon, and he wanted her, too, to be properly protected. It didn’t occur to him to buy one for Bartlemy; if he had thought about it, he would have sensed the old man required no protection. The numbers cost a lot of money, and he realized he would have to tell Annie whatever happened, if only to get his allowance supplemented. He stuffed his purchases in his rucksack, all except the seven which
he had chosen for his own: he put that in his pocket. Then he set off through the village to look for Eric.

  They met on the edge of the woods. ‘You not come here,’ Eric said. ‘Is not safe, not in night or day. No sylpherim. Stay with your mother.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I’ve got protection.’ He produced the number four. ‘This is for you. It’s iron. I had another dream, and your ruler, the Grandir, was talking about it. Something about iron’s magnetic field being too strong for gnomons. We know a bit about that even in this world: people used to use it to ward off evil spirits.’

  ‘Stupid!’ Eric exclaimed, evidently in self-blame. ‘Me – stupid. Is in old legend, but I forget. I begin to learn. Much truth in untrue stories.’ He accepted the iron reverently, as if it was a great gift. ‘Thank you for this.’

  ‘Have you been all right?’ Nathan asked. ‘I know you said you liked sleeping out, and the weather’s pretty warm, but what about food and stuff?’

  ‘I go to café where you take me,’ Eric said. ‘Chop wood, dig garden. They give me food.’

  ‘Good,’ said Nathan, ‘Rut I think we should go and see Uncle Barty now. The gnomons won’t be able to stop us this time.’

  ‘In dream,’ Eric said as they walked, ‘what else you learn?’

  ‘I think the Grandir may be controlling the gnomons, even across the worlds. I’m practically certain he sent them here. Do you know … who is the woman with him? Is she his wife? Her name is Halmé.’

  ‘You have seen her?’ Nathan mmmed an affirmation. ‘They say she is most beautiful of women. His sister, and his wife.’

  Nathan absorbed this thoughtfully. ‘In this world,’ he said after a pause, ‘we don’t allow that. It’s called incest. It’s against the law. I think actually it’s because the genes are too similar, so it can be dangerous for the children.’