by Mary Stewart
"I — I don't know."
"You must at least have seen which way he went?"
"N-no, my lord."
"By the dog," exclaimed Cadal, "who cares where he is, as long as we get the horse? Look, boy, have some sense, we can't wait half the night for your master, we've got to get home. If you tell him the horse was for my lord Merlin, he won't eat you alive this time, will he?" Then, as the boy stammered something: "Well, all right, do you want us to go and find him ourselves, and get his leave?"
The boy moved then, jamming a fist to his mouth, like an idiot. "No... You must not... You must not...!"
"By Mithras," I said — it was an oath I cultivated at the time, having heard Ambrosius use it — "what's he doing? Murder?"
On the word, the shriek came.
Not a shriek of pain, but worse, the sound of a man in mortal fear. I thought the cry contained a word, as if the terror was shaped, but it was no word that I knew. The scream rose unbearably, as if it would burst him, then was chopped off sharply as if by a blow on the throat. In the dreadful silence that followed a faint echo came, in a breath from the boy Ulfin.
Cadal stood frozen as he had turned, one hand holding his sword, the other grasping Aster's bridle. I wrenched the mare's head round and lashed the reins down on her neck. She bounded forward, almost unseating me. She plunged under the pines towards the track. I lay flat on her neck as the boughs swept past us, hooked a hand in her neck-strap, and hung on like a tick. Neither Cadal nor the boy had moved or made a sound.
The mare went down the bank with a scramble and a slither, and as we reached the path I saw, so inevitably that I felt no surprise — nor indeed any thought at all — another path, narrow and overgrown, leading out of the track to the other side, just opposite the grove of pines.
I hauled on the mare's mouth, and when she jibbed, trying to head down the broader track for home, I lashed her again. She laid her ears flat and went into the path at a gallop.
The path twisted and turned, so that almost straight away our pace slackened, slowed, became a heavy canter. This was the direction from which that dreadful sound had come. It was apparent even in the starlight that someone had recently been this way. The path was so little used that winter grass and heather had almost choked it, but someone — something — had been thrusting a way through. The going was so soft that even a cantering horse made very little noise.
I strained my ears for the sound of Cadal coming after me, but could not hear him. It occurred to me only then that both he and the boy must have thought that, terrified by the shriek, I had run, as Cadal had bidden me, for home.
I pulled Rufa to a walk. She slowed willingly, her head up, her ears pricked forward. She was quivering; she, too, had heard the shriek. A gap in the forest showed three hundred paces ahead, so light that I thought it must mark the end of the trees. I watched carefully as we approached it, but nothing moved against the sky beyond.
Then, so softly that I had to strain my ears to make sure it was neither wind nor sea, I heard chanting.
My skin prickled. I knew now where Belasius was, and why Ulfin had been so afraid. And I knew why Belasius had said: "Keep to the road, and be home before dark."
I sat up straight. The heat ran over my skin in little waves, like catspaws of wind over water. My breathing came shallow and fast. For a moment I wondered if this was fear, then I knew it was still excitement. I halted the mare and slid silently from the saddle. I led her three paces into the forest, knotted the rein over a bough and left her there. My foot hurt when I put it to the ground, but the twinges were bearable, and I soon forgot them as I limped quickly towards the singing and the lighter sky.
9
I HAD BEEN RIGHT IN THINKING that the sea was near. The forest ended in it, a stretch of sea so enclosed that at first I thought it was a big lake, until I smelled the salt and saw, on the narrow shingle, the dark slime of seaweeds. The forest finished abruptly, with a high bank where exposed roots showed through the clay which the tides had gnawed away year after year at the land's edge. The narrow strand was mainly of pebbles, but here and there bars of pale sand showed, and greyish, glimmering fans spreading fernlike between them, where shallow water ran seawards. The bay was very quiet, almost as if the frost of the past weeks had held it icebound, then, a pale line under the darkness, you could see the gap between the far headlands where the wide sea whitened. To the right — the south — the black forest climbed to a ridge, while to the north, where the land was gentler, the big trees gave shelter. A perfect harbour, you would have thought, till you saw how shallow it was, how at low tide the shapes of rock and boulder stuck black out of the water, shiny in the starlight with weed.
In the middle of the bay, so centered that at first I thought it must be man-made, was an island — what must, rather, be an island at high tide, but was now a peninsula, an oval of land joined to the shore by a rough causeway of stones, certainly man-made, which ran out like a navel cord to join it to the shingle. In the nearer of the shallow harbours made by the causeway and the shore a few small boats — coracles, I thought — lay beached like seals.
Here, low beside the bay, there was mist again, hanging here and there among the boughs like fishing nets hung out to dry. On the water's surface it floated in patches, spreading slowly till it curdled and thinned and then wisped away to nothing, only to thicken again elsewhere, and smoke slowly across the water. It lay round the base of the island so densely that this seemed to float on cloud, and the stars that hung above reflected a grey light from the mist that showed me the island clearly.
This was egg-shaped rather than oval, narrow at the causeway end, and widening towards the far end where a small hill, as regular in shape as a beehive, stood up out of the flat ground. Round the base of this hillock stood a circle of the standing stones, a circle broken only at the point facing me, where a wide gap made a gateway from which an avenue of the stones marched double, like a colonnade, straight down to the causeway.
There was neither sound nor movement. If it had not been for the dim shapes of the beached boats I would have thought that the shriek, the chanting, were figments of a dream. I stood just inside the edge of the forest, with my left arm round a young ash tree and the weight on my right foot, watching with eyes so completely adjusted to the dark of the forest that the mist-illumined island seemed as light as day.
At the foot of the hill, directly at the end of the central avenue, a torch flared suddenly. It lit, momentarily, an opening low in the face of the hill, and clearly in front of this the torch-bearer, a figure in a white robe. I saw, then, that what I had taken to be banks of mist in the shadow of the cromlechs were groups of motionless figures also robed in white. As the torch lifted I heard the chanting begin again, very softly, and with a loose and wandering rhythm that was strange to me. Then the torch and its bearer slowly sank earthwards, and I realized that the doorway was a sunken one, and he was descending a flight of steps into the heart of the hill. The others crowded after him, groups clotting, coalescing round the doorway, then vanishing like smoke being sucked into an oven door.
The chanting still went on, but so faint and muffled that it sounded no more than the humming of bees in a winter hive. No tune came through, only the rhythm which sank to a mere throb in the air, a pulse of sound felt rather than heard, which little by little tightened and quickened till it beat fast and hard, and my blood with it.
Suddenly, it stopped. There was a pause of dead stillness, but a stillness so charged that I felt my throat knot and swell with tension. I found I had left the trees and stood clear on the turf above the bank, my injury forgotten, my feet planted apart, flat and squarely on the ground, as if my body were rooted through them and straining to pull life from the earth as a tree pulls sap. And like the shoot of a tree growing and thrusting, the excitement in me grew and swelled, beating through somehow from the depths of the island and along the navel cord of the causeway, bursting up through flesh and spirit so that when the cry came
at length it was as if it had burst from my own body.
A different cry this time, thin and edged, which might have meant anything, triumph or surrender or pain. A death cry, this time not from the victim, but from the killer.
And after it, silence. The night was fixed and still. The island was a closed hive sealed over whatever crawled and hummed within.
Then the leader — I assumed it was he, though this time the torch was out — appeared suddenly like a ghost in the doorway and mounted the steps. The rest came behind, moving not as people move in a procession, but slowly and smoothly, in groups breaking and forming, contained in pattern like a dance, till once more they stood parted into two ranks beside the cromlechs.
Again complete stillness. Then the leader raised his arms. As if at a signal, white and shining like a knife-blade, the edge of the moon showed over the hill.
The leader cried out, and this, the third cry, was unmistakably a call of triumphant greeting, and he stretched his arms high above his head as if offering up what he held between his hands.
The crowd answered him, chant and counterchant. Then as the moon lifted clear of the hill, the priest lowered his arms and turned. What he had offered to the goddess, he now offered to the worshippers. The crowd closed in.
I had been so intent on the ceremony at the center of the island that I had not watched the shore, or realized that the mist, creeping higher, was now blurring the avenue itself. My eyes, straining through the dark, saw the white shapes of the people as part of the mist that clotted, strayed, and eddied here and there in knots of white.
Presently I became aware that this, in fact, was what was happening. The crowd was breaking apart, and the people, in twos and threes, were passing silently down the avenue, in and out of the barred shadows which the rising moon painted between the stones. They were making for the boats.
I have no idea how long it had all taken, but as I came to myself I found that I was stiff, and where I had allowed my cloak to fall away I was soaked with the mist. I shook myself like a dog, backing again into the shelter of the trees. Excitement had spilled out of me, spirit as well as body, in a warm gush down my thighs, and I felt empty and ashamed. Dimly I knew that this was something different; this had not been the force I had learned to receive and foster, nor was this spilled-out sensation the aftermath of power. That had left me light and free and keen as a cutting blade; now I felt empty as a licked pot still sticky and smelling with what it had held.
I bent, stiff-sinewed, to pull a swatch of wet and pallid grass, and cleaned myself, scrubbing my hands, and scooping mist drops off the turf to wash my face. The water smelled of leaves, and of the wet air itself, and made me think of Galapas and the holy well and the long cup of horn. I dried my hands on the inside of my cloak, drew it about me, and went back to my station by the ash tree.
The bay was dotted with the retreating coracles. The island had emptied, all but one tall white figure who came, now, straight down the center of the avenue. The mist cloaked, revealed, and cloaked him again. He was not making for a boat; he seemed to be heading straight for the causeway, but as he reached the end of the avenue he paused in the shadow of the final stone, and vanished.
I waited, feeling little except weariness and a longing for a drink of clear water and the familiarity of my warm and quiet room. There was no magic in the air; the night was as flat as old sour wine. In a moment, sure enough, I saw him emerge into the moonlight of the causeway. He was clad now in a dark robe. All he had done was drop his white robe off. He carried it over his arm.
The last of the boats was a speck dwindling in the darkness. The solitary man came quickly across the causeway. I stepped out from under the trees and down on to the shingle to meet him.
10
BELASIUS SAW ME EVEN BEFORE I was clear of the trees' shadow. He made no sign except to turn aside as he stepped off the causeway. He came up, unhurried, and stood over me, looking down.
"Ah." It was the only greeting, said without surprise. "I might have known. How long have you been here?"
"I hardly know. Time passed so quickly. I was interested."
He was silent. The moonlight, bright now, fell slanting on his right cheek. I could not see the eyes veiled under the long dark lids, but there was something quiet, almost sleepy about his voice and bearing. I had felt the same after that releasing cry, there in the forest. The bolt had struck, and now the bow was unstrung.
He took no notice of my provocation, asking merely: "What brought you here?"
"I rode down when I heard the scream."
"Ah," he said again, then: "Down from where?"
"From the pine grove where you left your horse."
"Why did you come this way? I told you to keep to the road."
"I know, but I wanted a gallop, so we turned off into the main logging track, and I had an accident with Aster; he's wrenched a foreleg, so we had to lead him back. It was slow, and we were late, so we took a short cut."
"I see. And where is Cadal?"
"I think he thought I'd run for home, and he must have gone after me. At any rate he didn't follow me down here."
"That was sensible of him," said Belasius. His voice was still quiet, sleepy almost, but cat-sleepy, velvet sheathing a bright dagger-point. "But in spite of — what you heard — it did not in fact occur to you to run for home?"
"Of course not."
I saw his eyes glint for a moment under the long lids. " 'Of course not'?"
"I had to know what was going on."
"Ah. Did you know I would be here?"
"Not before I saw Ulfin and the horses, no. And not because you told me to keep to the road, either. But I — shall we say I knew something was abroad in the forest tonight, and that I had to find it?"
He regarded me for a moment longer. I had been right in thinking he would not look surprised. Then he jerked his head. "Come, it's cold, and I want my cloak." As I followed him up the grating shingle he added, over his shoulder: "I take it that Ulfin is still there?"
"I should think so. You have him pretty efficiently frightened."
"He has no need to be afraid, as long as he keeps away and sees nothing."
"Then it's true he doesn't know?"
"Whatever he knows or doesn't know," he said indifferently, "he has the sense to keep silent. I have promised him that if he obeys me in these things without question, then I shall free him in time to escape."
"Escape? From what?"
"Death when I die. It is normal to send the priests' servants with them."
We were walking side by side up the path. I glanced at him. He was wearing a dark robe, more elegant than anything I had seen at home, even the clothes Camlach wore; his belt was of beautifully worked leather, probably Italian, and there was a big round brooch at his shoulder where the moonlight caught a design of circles and knotted snakes in gold. He looked — even under the film which tonight's proceedings had drawn over him — Romanized, urbane, intelligent. I said: "Forgive me, Belasius, but didn't that kind of thing go out with the Egyptians? Even in Wales we would think it old-fashioned."
"Perhaps. But then you might say the Goddess herself is old-fashioned, and likes to be worshipped in the ways she knows. And our way is almost as old as she is, older than men can remember, even in songs or stones. Long before the bulls were killed in Persia, long before they came to Crete, long before even the sky-gods came out of Africa and these stones were raised to them, the Goddess was here in the sacred grove. Now the forest is closed to us, and we worship where we can, but wherever the Goddess is, be it stone or tree or cave, there is the grove called Nemet, and there we make the offering. — I see you understand me."
"Very well. I was taught these things in Wales. But it's a few hundred years since they made the kind of offering you made tonight."
His voice was smooth as oil. "He was killed for sacrilege. Did they not teach you — ?" He stopped dead, and his hand dropped to his hip. His tone changed. "That's Cadal's horse." His head
went round like a hunting dog's.
"I brought it," I said. "I told you my pony went lame. Cadal will have gone home. I suppose he took one of yours."
I unhitched the mare and brought her out into the moonlight of the open path. He was settling the dagger back in its sheath. We walked on, the mare following, her nose at my shoulder. My foot had almost ceased to hurt.
I said: "So, death for Cadal, too? This isn't just a question of sacrilege, then? Your ceremonies are so very secret? Is this a matter of a mystery, Belasius, or is what you do illegal?"
"It is both secret and illegal. We meet where we can. Tonight we had to use the island; it's safe enough — normally there's not a soul would come near it on the night of the equinox. But if word came to Budec there would be trouble. The man we killed tonight was a King's man; he's been held here for eight days now, and Budec's scouts have been searching for him. But he had to die."
"Will they find him now?"
"Oh, yes, a long way from here, in the forest. They will think a wild boar ripped him." Again that slanting glance. "You could say he died easily, in the end. In the old days he would have had his navel cut out, and would have been whipped round and round the sacred tree until his guts were wrapped round it like wool on a spindle."
"And does Ambrosius know?"
"Ambrosius is a King's man, too."
We walked for a few paces in silence. "Well, and what comes to me, Belasius?"
"Nothing."
"Isn't it sacrilege to spy on your secrets?"
"You're safe enough," he said dryly. "Ambrosius has a long arm. Why do you look like that?"
I shook my head. I could not have put it into words, even to myself. It was like suddenly having a shield put into your hand when you are naked in battle.
He said: "You weren't afraid?"