“I think I’ve got it,” said Geoffrey.
“Then you can come back and I’ll tell you what to do, while the drinking water is getting cold.”
The oatcakes were not those thin saucer-shaped things you buy in tartan tins in Edinburgh: they were just lumps of cooked oatmeal, with no real shape at all. The honey was the palest yellow, very runny, and smelling of wilder flowers than the garden-and-orchard-scented honey which shops sell. And the cloths smelled of mountain streams and sunlight. Mr. Furbelow spoke more drowsily when Geoffrey came back.
“It all depends,” he said. “Sometimes he just lies there and opens his mouth, like a bird in a nest, and you have to break bits off the oatcake, dip them in the honey and pop them in. Other times he sits up on his elbow and feeds himself. Sometimes he’s asleep, and I just put the tray beside him on his stone. About once a week he likes to have his face and hands sponged and dried. But really, you’ll find you know what he wants without his telling you. I should go as soon as the water’s cool enough to drink. I shall try to sleep now.”
The cranking seemed to take half an hour, but at last the stone gave the dull thud which meant it was high enough.
“I’ll go first,” said Sally. “It’s not really as dark as it looks—he makes a sort of light at the bottom. You’ve got to feel each step with your foot because they’re all different.”
They felt their way down the coarse stone. The steps did not seem to be shaped work at all—more like flattened boulders from a riverbed, pitted with the endless rubbing of water and patterned with fossil bones. There were thirty-three of them. At the bottom a passage led away through rock toward a faint green light. It was eleven paces down the passage and into a long, low chamber whose rock walls sloped inward like the roof of an attic. The air in the chamber smelled sweet and wild and wrong, like rotting crab apples. Merlin was waiting for them.
He lay on his side, with his head resting on the crook of his arm, staring up the passage. Perhaps he had been aroused to expect them by the clack of the ratchet. He wore a long, dark robe. Colors were difficult in the strange light, but his beard seemed black and his face the color of rusted iron. His eyes were so deep in the huge head that they looked like the empty sockets of a skull until you moved across their beam and saw the green glow reflected from the lens, like the reflection of sky at the bottom of a well. The light seemed to come from nowhere. It was just there, impregnating the sick, sweet atmosphere.
He gave no sign, made no movement, as Sally crossed his line of vision, but his head followed Geoffrey into the room. Geoffrey found he was gripping the tray so hard that the tin rim hurt his palms. There was a widening of the stone slab where he could have put it down, but instead he turned away from Merlin (it was a struggle, like turning into a gale at a street corner) and put the tray on the rough rock behind him. When he turned back Merlin had moved, rearing up onto his elbow. He was a giant. The black hair streamed down in a wild mane behind him. His eyes were alive now, and the chamber was throbbing with a noiseless hum, like the hum of a big ship’s engines which you cannot hear with your ears but which sings up from the deck through your feet, through your shoulder when you lean against a stanchion, and through your whole body as you lie in your bunk waiting for sleep. His lips moved.
“Ubi servus meus.”
The voice was a gray scrape, like shingle retreating under the suck of a wave. Sally answered in a whisper.
“Magister Furbelow crurem fregit.”
Merlin did not look at her. The green blaze of his eyes clanged into Geoffrey’s skull, drowning his will in a welter of dithering vibrations. The lips moved again.
“Da mihi cibum meum.”
As the huge wave of Merlin’s authority washed over him, Geoffrey gasped, “Tell him what’s happening.”
“Magister …” began Sally.
“Tacite,” said Merlin, and Geoffrey’s tongue was locked in his mouth, as though he would never speak again. Mastered, helpless, he turned and picked up the tray and put it on the slab. The giant lay back and watched him out of the corner of his eyes. Geoffrey broke off a crumbling corner of one of the oatcakes and picked up the little silver pot of honey. The surface of the honey was curved, with the faint arc of its meniscus, and that of the shining curve of the silver below gathered the green light to a single focus, a spark of light in the gold liquid. The clean wildflower smell smote up through the sick air of the cave. Geoffrey stared at the gold spark. It was the sun, the outside world where the wheat was growing toward harvest. His mind clung to the light, hauled itself toward that tiny sun.
“Tell him Mr. Furbelow gave him poison,” he croaked.
“Venenum …” whispered Sally out of the blackness beyond the sun.
“Mel?” said Merlin’s voice.
“Venenum tibi dedit Magister Furbelow,” said Sally.
“Quando?” The old voice was weary, disbelieving.
“Hic quintus annus,” said Sally.
“Mr. Furbelow tried to wake him up with a synthetic stimulant,” said Geoffrey. “But he got stuck halfway.”
“What does ‘synthetic’ mean?”
“Made in a factory, out of coal or oil or something. Not grown. Not natural.”
Sally started on a longer whisper. Geoffrey still didn’t dare look at her—he still clung to the sun in the honey. When she reached the word natura Merlin gave an odd, coughing grunt, and Geoffrey saw, at the edge of his vision, a shape moving downward. At last he looked away from the little silver bowl, and saw that the shape had been Merlin’s legs. Merlin had heaved his body up again and was now sitting on the slab, his legs dangling, his head bowed so as not to touch the roof. He must have been nearly eight feet tall, and now he was staring at Sally with a deep, steady gaze as though he was seeing her for the first time. She finished what she had to say.
“Dic mihi ab initio,” he said.
“He wants me to tell him from the beginning,” said Sally. “Where shall I start?”
“Start with Mr. Furbelow digging into his tomb. Tell him what he was trying to do. Say he’s not a bad man, but muddled. Then tell him what England’s like now—how cruel people are. Tell him about all the people who had to go away.”
Twice While Sally spoke to him something seemed to shake Merlin like a branch shaken by a sudden gust. Both times Sally paused; the feeling that the chamber was throbbing wavered, increased, then steadied back. Both times Geoffrey knew that Merlin had fought away the delirium which had engulfed him for the last five years. Sally’s voice became pleading. She wasn’t whispering now, but almost shouting. “Indignum est,” she said several times, “indignum nominis tui.” Her face became runneled with tears, as she tried to ram her message through five years of poisoned stupor—she was thinking of the dancing bear. In the end she was gasping between each syllable and her voice was cracked with pain. Merlin stared at her like an entomologist considering an insect, and at last sighed. Sally stopped shouting.
He turned to Geoffrey.
“Da,” he said.
Geoffrey handed him an oatcake and the honey pot. He broke off a fragment, dipped it in the honey and began to eat. While he ate he talked. Sometimes Sally answered. The word natura came up again and again. Next time he wanted food he just held out his hand to Geoffrey for an oatcake while he went on talking to Sally. His palm was covered with fine black hairs.
His voice changed, as though he were not asking anymore, but telling. Sally just nodded. Then he handed the empty honey pot to Geoffrey, drank a few sips from the jug and settled back onto the implacable stone.
“Difficile erit,” he said, “sed perdurabo, Deo volente. Abite vos. Gratias ago.”
The green light dimmed. Geoffrey picked up the tray. They left.
As Geoffrey began to wind down the stone he said, “Tell me what all that was about.”
“I didn’t really understand everything,” said Sally. “I told him what had happened, and then I said that what he was doing now was—there isn’t a proper wo
rd for indignum—unworthy, dishonorable, something like that. Then he told me a lot about natura, which means nature—but it isn’t anything to do with wild birds and hedges. It’s all about what we really are, and what is proper for us. I remember he said machines were just toys for clever apes, and not proper for man—they prevent him from finding his own nature. But anyway the stuff Mr. Furbelow gave him was very bad for his nature, and now he’s going to try and change it so that he can overcome it. He said it would be difficult. He said that all sorts of things might happen out here, because once you start interfering with the strong bits of nature the things around them get disturbed. It’s like the whirlpools around an oar, he said. Then he said it would be difficult again, but that he would manage with God’s will, and then he said thank you. You know, he didn’t seem at all worried about what he’d done to the other people in England—it was just unlucky for some of them, but they didn’t matter much.”
“But he said thank you,” said Geoffrey as the flagstone boomed back into position over the dark stair.
“Yes,” said Sally.
Chapter 12
PORTENTS
It felt as if it should be later afternoon as they came up the steps, but it was still morning, the sun just sucking up the last of the melted ice from the night before. Not knowing whether it was the right thing to do, Geoffrey lowered the slab over the tunnel and carried the tray toward the cottage.
Mr. Furbelow had his eyes open. He too had been roused by the clack of the ratchet and was waiting for them.
“Did he miss me?” he said.
“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “He noticed at once.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Furbelow. Silence. “And he took it from you all right?”
“I hope you won’t be cross,” said Sally, “but we found him in a lucid interval and we told him what was happening.”
“You did what?”
“We persuaded him to try and go back into his sleep. I’m afraid he said it might be dangerous for us out here.”
“Do you want us to try to carry you into your house?” said Geoffrey.
“No thank you. I am better here.”
“Then we must try and build you some sort of shelter.”
There were a lot of curious tools in one of the sheds, great adzes and odd-shaped choppers. There were blunt and clumsy saws, too, and another shed was a well-stocked timber store. Geoffrey prized out four cobbles at the corners of Mr. Furbelow’s bed with his sword—they were pigs to move, each packed tight against its neighbors and jammed by century-hardened dirt. He loosened the exposed ground and walloped four pointed uprights into position, staying them with what he took to be bowstrings, which he tied to knives jammed between cobbles further out. He nailed a framework of lighter timbers onto the uprights, and fastened to this the most waterproof-looking of the furs Sally had brought out from the tower. The whole contraption took him about six hours to build, so, what with stopping for lunch (stale bread and cheese, apricots and souring wine) and ministering to Mr. Furbelow’s needs (the old man was quiet and dignified now, but gave himself another shot of morphine toward evening) it was drawing on to dusk by the time he had finished. Venus glimmered in a pale wash of sky above the western hill line before the first symptom occurred.
All the hounds in the tower began howling together, a crazy, terrifying yammer, interrupted by choruses of hoarse barking. A moment’s silence, and they spilled into the courtyard, howling again, dashing to and fro under the tower wall, biting fiercely at each other with frothing mouths until the yellow fur was streaked with dirty red blood. Geoffrey drew his sword and told Sally to run to the house if they came any nearer, but the madness stopped with a couple of coughs, like a fading engine, and the dogs crept away to lick their wounds and whimper under the eaves of the timber store.
The evening deepened and the air chilled. Geoffrey went to spread the lightest pelt over Mr. Furbelow and to let down the sheltering flaps at the side of his bed. One of the guy ropes had gone slack, and when he tried to tauten it he found that the crack into which he had driven its knife was now half an inch wide. The ground had moved.
“Sal, I think you’d better get Maddox out into the open. Anything might happen tonight. I’ll look for more rugs and food, if there’s any left.”
He jammed the knife into another crack and went into the tower. One of the big doors was off its hinges. Inside all the flambeaux were smoking, and the fire, too, was sending up a heavy gray column which didn’t seem to be finding its way out of the hole in the roof. The huge room was full of choking haze, and a voice was shrieking from the upper gallery: “Mordred. Mordred. Mordred.” It went on and on. One of the long tables had been overturned, leaving a mess of fruit and bread and dishes spilled across the floor, but on the other he found a bowl of tiny apples and some untouched loaves. He carried them out to the cottage steps, where Sally sat wrapped in a white fur.
“Get as much wood as you can out of the timber store,” he said. “We’d better have a fire. I’ll find something to protect Mr. Furbelow’s leg in case that contraption collapses. It sounds as though there’s people in there now, Sal, but I can’t see anyone.”
“I don’t think he’d hurt us on purpose,” said Sally.
This time the smoke in the tower was worse. The voice had stopped but there was a clashing and tinkling on the far side of the hall, interspersed with hoarse gruntings. He couldn’t see what was happening because of the smoke, but suddenly grasped that this must be the noise people make when they are fighting with shield and sword. He picked up a bench and began to carry it out, but before he reached the door there came a burst of wild yelling behind him and the running of feet. Something struck him on his left shoulder; he staggered and then something much solider caught him on the hip and threw him sideways across the bench he was carrying in a clumsy somersault. He crouched there as the feet thudded past, but saw nothing. When they had gone the voice began shrieking again: “Mordred. Mordred. Mordred.” It was lower in tone now, but still the same woman’s voice, hoarse and murderous. He picked up his bench and limped away, the pain where the thing had hit him nagging at his hip. Sally had gathered a useful pile of timber.
“We’ll want smaller stuff to start it with,” said Geoffrey, “and straw out of the stables. Did you see anyone come out of the tower? Somebody knocked me over but it’s so full of smoke that I couldn’t see what was happening.”
“I saw Maddox shying and neighing, and then he went off and made friends with the dogs, but I didn’t see anything else. How are you going to light the fire, Jeff?”
“If you’ll get straw and kindling, I’ll get a burning log out of the hall.”
“Do be careful.”
“Okay. But I don’t think being careful is going to make much difference.”
The voice had stopped again and there was no noise of fighting. The smoke was thick as the thickest fog. Geoffrey crouched under it and scuttled across the paving until he could see the glow of the fire. Before he reached it he realized there was something in the way, and stopped. It looked like two new pillars, supporting a heavy, shadowy thing. At the same moment as he realized that the pillars had feet, the thing became the back of an armed man, motionless, squat, brooding into the fire. His armor was leather with strips of thick bronze sewn on to it. A tangle of yellowy-gray hair flowed over the shoulders from under the horned helmet.
Geoffrey crept away beneath the shelter of the smoke. When he reached the wall he found a tall stool, which he stood on to take one of the flambeaux out of its iron bracket. He decided not to go back into the tower again.
The flame of the straw flared into brightness and died down almost at once, but some of the kindling caught and with careful nursing they made a proper fire, leaning billets of timber into a wigwam around the crackling, orange heart. As soon as it was really going the hounds slouched over and arranged themselves in a sprawling circle, scratching, yawning, and licking the blood off their coats. Maddox followed and stood in the half-ligh
t on the edge of the circle, thinking obscure horse thoughts. Geoffrey placed the bench at right angles across Mr. Furbelow’s sleeping form, and stayed it firm, to be a second line of defense if the shelter fell. He went into the cottage and brought out the rest of the blankets and the drawer of medicine, which he put into the shelter. Nothing noticeable happened for half an hour, while Sally and he sat on the steps and ate bread and apples.
Then came the storm. The stars which had been blazing down hard-edged as diamonds vanished from horizon to horizon. The sky groaned. Balefires pranced along the parapet and flickered down the edges of the tower. A few drops of rain fell, warm as blood, and then the valley cracked with lightning. Geoffrey could see that the dogs were howling again, but he couldn’t hear them through the grinding bellows of thunder. There was no darkness. All down the valley the black cloud-roof stood on jigging legs of light, blue-white, visible through closed eyelids. The shed next to the stables caught fire and burned with orange flames and black, oily smoke. Maddox picked his way between the dogs and nuzzled under Sally’s fur, shivering convulsively. The world drowned in noise.
When the storm finished he thought he was deaf. His head was full of a strange wailing, which he decided must be the effect of ruined eardrums. But then a log on the fire tilted sideways and he heard it fall—the wailing was outside, coming from the sky, swooping in great curves around the tower. As it crossed the now blazing stables he thought he saw a darker blackness in the night, bigger than a bird, but wasn’t sure. The wailing rose to a tearing squeal and floated away westward.
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