For several days the camp along the river’s edge was a hive of activity as this bizarre transformation took place, and on the gravel shore, above the waterline, the lean, low-prowed longship was constructed, its shallow keel sharp so that it could cut the water as it was rowed upstream, sail slung low to catch any favourable wind, deck wide so that men could easily stand and handle the oars that would drive us up against the current.
There was no fussy design on the ship yet, no figurehead, no iconography to challenge the world of myth and superstition into which we soon would sail. Just wood and metal, wheels, rope and cloth.
The vessel would carry a crew of twenty-seven (that number again!), I was certainly to sail on it, with my friends from the Forlorn Hope and with Kylhuk and his personal entourage. Meanwhile, a long and difficult process of selection was occurring behind the forest wall for the men and women who would make up the number. This involved games, tests, combat, trials of wit and the casting of lots. Guiwenneth watched it all with deep fascination and brought me lurid accounts of the activities and the often fatal consequences of the contests, some of which turned my stomach. I will not recount them here. At the end of it, the ship was crewed and a feast was held to celebrate the finishing of the task.
But as for the rest of Legion, when the celebrations were over it would have to follow along the edge of the river itself, a slow and dangerous journey and without a leader.
As I waited for Kylhuk, I glimpsed for the first time the extraordinary flow of life that was erupting at the river’s source; and of the death that it was drawing back, against the stream, as if the impulse to life was the easiest, that to death the hardest, all notion of entropy ignored.
A broken tree floated down the centre of the river, turning in the flow, its roots high above the water, a man and a woman, exhausted and afraid, clinging to its trunk. They saw me and called, but the Long Person swept them on.
Later, dogs swam past, six or seven of the creatures, leashes trailing, baying in desperation, their owner drowned perhaps. And a glittering barge, light shimmering from metal on its hull, white sails catching the breeze and tipping it slightly as the helmsman struggled and four cowled figures stared into the distance, unmoving and unmoved by the voyeur on the bank.
Then upstream, rowing hard against the current as soon we would be too, came a ship that looked so grim I drew back, half into the cover of the forest. A low, mournful horn sounded at regular intervals as it stroked its way against the river. Its blackened hull might have been tarred or charred. Faces peered at the shore from jagged holes hewn in the sides. The rails around the deck were lined with men who watched the forest. I could hear the complaints of animals and the stamping of hooves from below decks. A single mast trailed a shredded sail, so holed and rotten that the opposing breeze hardly ruffled it as it hung, half furled.
The horn moaned as it passed me, and suddenly a man’s voice shouted. There was immediate activity on the deck and a hail of arrows flew towards me, one grazing my cheek, another striking the tree next to me and spinning round to crack against my skull. A spear thudded into the ground, trailing red ribbons and black feathers. A second hail of arrows whispered past me, and stones struck and clattered among the rocks.
This terrible ship of the dead pulled away and I cautiously stepped out of cover to watch it go. A last arrow wobbled towards me in the air, a curved, crude shaft that was suddenly snatched from its flight as Someone stepped in front of me. He looked at the weapon then scratched his jaw with the chipped stone point as he stared into the distance.
‘We go that way too,’ he said after a moment. ‘But I’ll be glad to let that ship get ahead of us.’
‘How many more ships like that on the Long Person?’ I asked and Someone nodded soberly as he glanced at me.
‘Very many, I imagine. The challenge of the twin gates is too seductive.’
Although I had talked to Someone about his life of adventure, I had never thought to ask him about his childhood after the events of his father’s death by combat. The opportunity arose that night, as we camped by the open water, a few miles downriver from the main camp. Kylhuk had taken a band of forty men and ten specialists to guard the bank, since omens had suggested that Eletherion was there.
A torch-lit barque drifted past us, lighting up the river. A woman’s voice sang sweetly, though the woman was not revealed. A black hound watched us, paws crossed on the rails.
‘What is your earliest memory of love?’ I asked the Celt, and he glanced at me with a frown, tugging at his moustache.
‘Why?’
‘I’m interested to know. You’ve told me of adventure, and the search for your name; you’ve told me of the haunting presence of the tasks you feel obliged to perform. But you’ve never mentioned passion. Has it been a lonely life until you met Issabeau?’
He prodded the fire with his knife. ‘Truthfully, it has, though not by my choice. When I was very young I met a girl in the dark forests that filled the valleys to the north of my father’s fortress. I have never mentioned this before, and I don’t know why I should tell you now, but I will. Perhaps you can answer a question that has been bothering me for some time … ?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, and he drew breath, stared into the distance and began.
You will remember, from what I told you when we first met, that my father was summoned to a combat a few hours before my birth and before he could name me, challenged in a dispute about the stealing of a famous white bull and five cows that were being taken to honour Taranis. They were to be sacrificed, a sacrifice of great importance, and my father in his envy of the bull intercepted it with his warrior band and made the offering himself.
My father, you will remember, was killed outright by Grumloch’s first throw across the river, a truly lucky strike.
Because I hadn’t been named, Grumloch spared me. I was taken out onto a forest lake in a small boat. My father’s finest knights were murdered there, and dropped into the pool. I was left in a coracle with a wet-nurse, forbidden ever to return to the fort, though of course being only a babe in arms I knew nothing of what was occurring.
When I was weaned, the woman left me in one of the deep forest glades, one dedicated to Sucellus. She placed me in a hollow between the feet of the great wooden idol, where it was warm and protected from rain and wind. At night, the great gods roared at each other across the forest, and Sucellus strode around the glade, beating at branches. But he, like all of them, was tied to this place.
Every so often, masked people came and sacrificed or left offerings at the feet of the idol. I ate whatever was left and Sucellus never complained. Only later did it occur to me that because I had no name the god could not see me.
Then one day – I had lived in the shadow of this monstrous, shouting tree for ten years or more – animals began to visit the place, I remember a small, black bird that watched me for ages before flying off. And an owl settled on the wooden head, high above me, every night for a week. Then a grey-furred cat came slinking around the glade. And a small deer that I tried to snare, but it butted me and escaped each time.
These creatures all came through the forest from one direction, at the edge of the glade, close to where I had dug out my stink-pit. I found a hidden track there and one morning, after the statue had returned to rest, I began to follow the trail. And after a while I found a glade where two great wooden idols, one of a man the other a woman, stood locked in an angry embrace. They were wrestling, their legs stretched out for balance, their arms around each other’s heads, their mouths gaping in pain, the wood of their muscles swollen with tension. During the night, they were clearly fighting. During the day, the trees had grown together. They cast a vast and sinister shadow in the sun. I soon recognised them as Cernunnos, Lord of Animals, and Nemetona, Goddess of Glades.
There was a stink-pit here too, and the trees were hung with knots of grass, the stems of flowers, with strips of hide, and dolls made out of feathers. Another prisoner,
then. But who was she – I felt sure it was a girl – and where was she hiding?
I stayed at the edge of the clearing until nightfall. As the moon rose and the last of twilight was swallowed to the west, the statues began to detach from each other. The forest began to echo with the screaming of the wooden gods in their sanctuaries, and these two began to wrestle and scream until I was deafened. They staggered about the glade, tearing at the bark on their faces, clubbing at each other so that splinters and strips of wood flew like spears around me. At midnight they released each other and prowled the glade, pulling back the trees, prodding at the bushes, calling in their strange tongue. I cowered back as Cernunnos leaned towards me, gape-mouthed and slack-eyed, but the monstrous horned head moved away. It hadn’t seen me.
They were looking for something, and I imagined it was the human occupant of this place. Cernunnos stalked off through the forest. Nemetona hunkered down, growling, then turned her head to stare at the bright moon.
And at that moment a voice whispered, Don’t give me away. This one will tear me apart if she finds me.
I tried to speak to the girl, but she pressed a sap-scented finger against my mouth. Wait until morning. It’s not safe until then.
And then she pulled me to her body, holding me against the cool of the glade. I felt a soft fuzz of hair on her face. Her breath was sweet with wild herbs. She was as thin as a carcass, bones prominent below the flesh. She stayed awake all night, I think, because when I came out of my own forest dream, in the dead, dark hours, the first thing I saw was her starlit gaze on me.
At dawn, the wooden idol rose and bowed its head, hardening into the tree from which it had been so crudely hacked.
‘We’re safe, now,’ said my new-found friend. She ran to the stink-pit and squatted over it, then kicked leaves from a pile into the hole. I followed her example, fascinated by the way she had painted her body. She sat down against the heels of the idol, legs stretched out in front of her and face upturned, quite relaxed now that the night had passed.
What a sight she was! Not an inch of her skin was not painted with the tiniest of animals. What seemed like lines or circles on her face and arms were in fact a hundred creatures drawn so close together that each ran into its neighbour. I saw every creature I knew and a hundred that I didn’t. They ran across her features like deer on a bare knoll, like a flock of birds, wheeling at dusk.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked her.
‘Mauvaine,’ she replied. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Only my father knows, and he’s dead, killed by a spear on the day of my birth.’
‘I shall call you Jack of the Glades. Who killed him? Your father.’
‘Grumloch, his brother-in-law.’
‘Why was he killed?’
‘Over the matter of a bull and five cows, which had come his way.’
‘You mean he stole them in a raid.’
Yes.’
‘The Oldest Bull was called Tormabonos,’ Mauvaine said. ‘I have him painted here,’ she indicated a spot on her left side, close to where her small breast scarcely stretched her clothing. ‘All of the Oldest Animals are painted on me.’
‘Who painted them on you?’
She sat quite still, hands on the ground, feet splayed as she stared at me. ‘Taranis. When I was an infant. I think he knew what he was doing.’
‘They’re magic animals, then.’
‘Yes. They’re the Oldest Animals! Unfortunately, I can’t raise all of them, only a few. I was trapped here when I was too young. Nemetona keeps me here, and she will kill me, given half a chance. Cernunnos tries to take me away for his own ends, but their struggle is an endless one. She is not as powerful as he, but she has a secret which drains him of full strength.’
‘What secret is that?’
She looked at me with amused disbelief. ‘If I knew the answer, it wouldn’t be a secret,’ she said.
‘Indeed.’
‘She steals his knowledge and his power when they fight at night. But the animals that rise in the wood from my painted skin stalk her and bring some of that power back to him.’
Because of their struggle, Mauvaine was caught in this wilderness, a piece in a game that was beyond her control. When I suggested this to her she snarled at me.
‘Yes. But only if I fail to escape. And I intend to escape!’
‘I feel the same. But whenever I try to leave the glade, I end up back where I started. Something drives me in circles. At least you can disguise yourself as an Old Animal and run.’
‘Easy to say. Not easy to do.’
And she explained that Cernunnos had more control over her when she was in animal form than he could exercise when she was in her human guise. The animals ran, and her animal senses were heightened, but they were obedient to the call: a whistle for the hound, a song for the cat, a breath for the owl, a clacking of tongue for the ouzel, a bark for the buck. They could run and fly widely through the blackwood, but always came home at dusk.
‘We must burn the idols during the day. Set fire to them!’
‘I’ve tried it. As Nemetona burns, so I burn.’ And Mauvaine showed me her right leg, where the skin inside the ankle was red and scarred by scalding.
‘I am trapped here,’ she added sadly.
‘I had had the same thought. Then a cat enticed me away from my own prison.’
‘That was me.’
‘I know it was. Mauvaine, all we need is the way to break the charm that holds you here.’
‘I am charm itself,’ the girl said with a wry smile, lying back and stroking her body through her clothing. ‘My skin crawls with magic, but not my dreams.’
‘My own skin crawls with lice. So I’ll look to my own dreams for a way to save you.’
I remember the way she laughed at that, but that night I crept into her arms, sheltering her from the raging giants, shielding her from the splinters of wood that flew from the angry gods.
And when the moon was high, and the idols were off somewhere, stalking the night forest, I dreamed such a strange dream: perhaps a memory of my time as an infant, after my father’s death.
A face was hovering above me, old and wise, half-toothed, deeply scarred; a man who said: ‘I am your grandfather. I cannot tell you your name, since my son is dead, but he would have told you that you must always welcome any scarred-faced man to your hall if he pays you courtesy during the rising of the moon, and pay heed to his words. If his hair is black, you must pay him tribute. If he has lost a hand, you must allow him to depart in his own time.’
Then a woman came, full of gall and spirit, grey hair like the glow of the moon around her shrunken face.
‘I cannot tell you your name, but your father would have told you this: that at the beginning of each season you must offer advice to every child you meet in your fortress, even if they don’t ask for it. Nothing you say to them will ever be forgotten, even if it makes no sense.’
A druid crowded in on me in my dream, black-bearded, hungry-eyed, foul-breathed, a gold lanula round his neck dangling and glittering above me. ‘I cannot tell you your name, but you must give back a life before your death, or your death will be an ending and not a beginning. Give back a life! Don’t forget that. And because of your rose-bud mouth …’ he touched my lips with his stinking finger … ‘a kiss from this mouth will put new life in a dying heart, but only once. Once only.’
I woke from the dream to find Mauvaine deeply curled into my chest, her face and mouth close to my own as she slept, her breath so sweet in the night that I could think only that with a kiss I could take her away from the torment of this glade: I could put life into a heart that was dying.
And so I kissed her. And as I kissed her, her mouth opened and the kiss deepened. And her hands ran over me as she slept, and her fingers were in my hair, and she had rolled back to pull my body on top of hers, lifting her simple dress to expose her belly and pulling me onto her, trying to pull me into her …
In her sleep.
The kiss had not released Mauvaine, it had released me!
I spent years exploring that forest, searching for the glade where the painted child was imprisoned, but I found nothing but pain, loneliness, solitary adventurers … and finally Legion.
I have never forgotten that girl, though, and though the pain has gone, the betrayal remains.
I said, ‘You dreamed of the taboos that would be placed upon you by your clan. These were your geisas. They have haunted you since your infancy. You cannot be blamed for using one of them inappropriately when you were still so young.’
I managed no more of the thought. The Celt rose angrily, glaring at me, and stalked away into the forest. I ran through my own words again, and realised that nothing could have been more inappropriate than my empty-headed advice to the man, and no doubt I would have to make amends.
But I had him!
I knew him, now. Though not his name!
The ship was finished. All of us who would sail in her stood in a circle around the sleek vessel on the shore, holding torches. Kylhuk stood before the prow, swathed in a cloak of feathers. The frightening woman, the dolorous voice, whispered to the wooden barque, moving slowly around the hull, her hands spread on the planking. The Fenlander and the grim-faced Raven cut notches on the wood with their blades and Kylhuk made his own mark between their signs. Each of us then carved a symbol on the right side of the hull and nailed a crudely fashioned shield above the mark. The shields were made from bark, or cloth, or shards of wood tied together, and were gaudily and variously decorated. Everyone seemed to know what to carve and what to paint on the shields, but when the blade was passed to me, Kylhuk gripped my hand in his, directed the point to his own crudely scratched symbol – a tusked boar inside an oak leaf – and made me carve a C.
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (Mythago Wood) Page 21