‘Gwyr …’ I whispered quickly. ‘Thank you for friendship …’
‘Hurry,’ Elidyr growled again.
I spent a moment staring at Issabeau. Her eyes were half open and seemed to shine, but she was quite dead, the blossom of blood on her breast from the wound that had killed her covering her heart.
I held the sides of Guiwenneth’s boat and leaned down to kiss her cold lips. I reached out to touch her icy hands, folded on her breast. I didn’t understand. How had they died? I didn’t understand …
‘All died before,’ Elidyr said. ‘Now I must take them.’
Before? In the skirmish? ‘I thought only Gwyr had died,’ I protested. ‘The others seemed so alive in the boats.’
‘All died,’ Elidyr murmured. ‘Gwyr first. Then Kyrdu’s sons killed all while they burned him. I gave them back for you. For pity. But only for a while. I told you!’
Yes. Yes, Elidyr. You told me. You showed me the flower garden and the dead knight with his mourning lady. But I had thought you were warning me about Gwyr. Only Gwyr. I hadn’t known the skirmish had eliminated the whole Forlorn Hope.
Guiwenneth! Dear God, I couldn’t lose her now. I hugged her cold body and wept for her, but Elidyr reached over and pushed me firmly away, back into the water.
‘All over,’ he said harshly. ‘Now go away.’
Anambioros appeared on the bank, a sudden, screaming figure, leaping into the water, his face filled with despair and fury.
‘Issabeau!’ he howled.
Elidyr transformed. His giant’s body thickened even more, his face became that of a snarling hound, his pelt became wolf-grey. He lashed out at the Celt, who drew his sword and struck back, only to have the weapon snatched from his hand, snapped quickly and tossed away. Then Elidyr swiped a hand across the proud man’s face, knocking him backwards, below the river.
Baying and howling, angry and frustrated, crying out, ‘I have to do this!’ Elidyr tugged at the ropes that held his burden and continued his journey towards the Underworld, to enter the place through the route of the dead, along the river that flowed below the gaping mouth of the green-man cliff.
I swam to Anambioros and dragged his unconscious body to the shore. After a few minutes his eyes opened to stare at the sky, then his face twisted into grief and rage, his hands clenched into fists as he lay there.
When he was more composed he went back to the water’s edge and crouched down, crying softly, mourning the death of his beloved Issabeau. I stood behind him, numb and confused, my head reeling with memories of Guiwenneth, and with the events of the last few hours. I felt suddenly alone and totally helpless, aware that I was far from home and without the woman who had become such a part of my life that I had not noticed how much my fear of this wilderness had been soothed by her reassuring presence.
I didn’t know what to do, now. I didn’t know what to do next.
‘I took it for myself,’ Anambioros was saying softly, angrily. ‘I took it for myself. I could have given it to her. I should have given it to her … the boatman didn’t give me the choice …’
What was he talking about? I crouched down beside him, my arm round his shoulder. ‘What are you saying, Anambioros?’
‘I had the right to give back a life. It was one of my privileges. I died with the others, that awful day in the forest, when Eletherion attacked us. Elidyr has let me live because of my own geisa. But I would have willingly given it to Issabeau.’
And then she would have been alive and alone instead, I thought, but I didn’t voice the words. Anambioros was almost inconsolable, and by helping him through his grief I was able to delay the onset of my own deep sadness.
Or perhaps my strength at this moment was not because of the weeping king beside me, but because I was increasingly aware that Guiwenneth, now, was in the same Underworld realm as my mother, a terrible place opened to me by Mabon for a single journey only, for a single rescue only, his thanks for releasing him from the prison that he had guarded and which had guarded him in turn.
I felt almost faint as I stood and stared back towards the stone house, the narrow passage through the rocks and the grotesque face carved around the entrance to the deep.
My mother was there. Guiwenneth was there.
And I could go into that Dark and see them. I could sit and talk to them.
But eventually I would have to choose between them.
Twenty-Three
I was not greeted by Cerberus as I entered Hell; no five-headed hound snarled and snapped at me. But Mabon was there, old and grey, robed in black and smiling through his beard.
‘You took your time,’ he said.
‘It was about time I did something for myself,’ I replied. ‘I wanted to think. I wanted to be with Guiwenneth. From the moment I entered this wilderness of time, trees and gateways I have been led, pushed, shuffled, tricked, deceived, manipulated …’
‘Loved?’
‘Oh yes. Certainly that.’
‘But love itself is also something that happens to you,’ Mabon agreed. ‘Not something you can make happen. Yes. I think I understand how you feel.’
‘Love is wonderful. And I’m glad it happened. But now …’
He stood quietly as I struggled with my fears and feelings, staring beyond him to the bright land, a world of woods and fields, not at all the gloomy, grim incarceration that was the construct of Hell of his own, original time.
This was the Otherworld of the Mabon of my own legend, the Celtic Lordly One; I looked beyond him at the wonderful ideal of death held by the wild and optimistic clans of Iron Age Europe, and not at all the grey and dismal shroud of ancient Aegean philosophy.
‘Well, well. At least I can agonise in summer.’
‘Which, is more than can Eletherion,’ my Shade-guide said, and I followed his gaze to the skeletal figure that was strapped by chains to a jagged rock in the gloom. Eletherion’s wounds bled copiously, his eyes blazed furiously, but his mouth, though it worked angrily, emitted no sound, no sound at all.
‘His brothers are finding their own deaths, deeper in the ground,’ Mabon added. ‘But that is another story for another time. Look for it in your books, Christian, when you get home.’
‘I will.’
‘Home is where the heart is. How many times have you thought that, recently, I wonder?’
‘Very many. Very many indeed.’
‘Keep walking, keep following this path. Home and all your heartbeats are there, and if you remember the one simple truth: that you must not question your decision! If you remember that, then you can bring her out alive.’
‘And how do we then get home? To my true home!’
‘Elidyr will take you. He’s the boatman, remember? He doesn’t just transport the dead. You can trust Elidyr to take you home. Off you go, now. Time is passing faster than you think.’
I had run across the field from the wood and now stood breathless at the gate to the garden of Oak Lodge. Smoke curled from the chimney. Hens clucked and pecked, watching me nervously. Somewhere in the house music was playing, and I thought I recognised one of my mother’s favourite symphonies, by Vaughan Williams. It was peaceful and beautiful, but I had never taken much interest in classical music and I could do no more than register the gentle, pastoral theme.
My spirits lifted. This was a wholly different return to my childhood than the encounter with Mabon. I might almost have been home, properly home, on a hot, still summer’s day …
But there was smoke from the chimney …
I opened the gate and walked up to the house, then changed my mind about entering and continued to walk around the garden, peering in through the French windows at the study. Everything was intact, nothing broken, the desk polished and gleaming, my father’s journal on one side, two books on the other. No Huxley sat there, however. The place was just a shrine, a memory of intellect.
And so I entered my home and found my mother by the fire, sweat on her face, her gaze focused on the flames, her s
hirt stained red with the juice of the fruits she had been preserving.
I sat down beside her, clasped my hands together and stared at the flames. We spent a long time in silence. I couldn’t find the words to express my feelings. I looked around: at the clock on the mantelpiece, the pictures on the walls, the table with its thick green cloth, the shelves, dark-stained and ornate, with their wretched rows of plates and mugs. The room was stifling, and not just because of the fire blazing on this hot, still day.
After a while, my mother said, ‘She’s in the study. She’s waiting for you.’
‘Who is?
‘Guiwenneth. Go and see her.’
‘I’ve come here to see you,’ I said, tears flooding my eyes as I stared at my mother’s sad, bowed head. She was more forlorn than I could remember. She licked her lips, wiped her hand across her nose, clasped her hands in her lap, each tense, restless motion reflecting a thought or a memory that was haunting her and hurting her, and yet which she would not speak.
‘Go and see her,’ she repeated softly.
‘I’ve come to take you home, Mum. I’ve come to find you. To take you home.’
She was suddenly crying, but her voice stayed strong. ‘No. That’s not true. It was true once, but it’s not true now. And I wouldn’t want it differently. Go to her, Chris. You only have one chance. I’ll be all right. It’s only while you’re here that I feel the pain. Once you’re gone, once you are finally gone, my life will go on … Go to her. She needs you … And you need her. If you take her home with you, then the terrible things I’ve seen might not come true at all.’
‘I know what you’ve seen. It’s not going to happen. I will not become like that man you saw!’
‘I saw Grief make a monster of you.’
‘I am not a monster.’
‘I know. That’s why you must trust me. You must take Guiwenneth. I love you too much, and I’m too frightened of what you might become, to let you take me in her place.’
‘Everything you saw, all that horror, that vision of me as an old man killing my brother – just a dream! Just a lie! I will not kill Steven. I promise you, Mum! I will not kill Steven …’
‘Not if you take the girl from the wood. Take her home, Chris. Do what you have said and make the dream a lie! Perhaps when the time comes, and the dream breaks and dissolves into dust, perhaps I’ll know it. Besides,’ she turned to me, put her hands on my cheeks and after a moment, a restless, moist-eyed and searching moment, kissed my mouth.
‘Besides … you long for her more than you long for me. You have found love, then lost it cruelly. Now you can retrieve it. I long for your life to be long and loving. Go to her, Chris.’
* * *
There was someone in the study. I could hear the murmured words, the rustle of the pages of the journal being turned. I opened the door slowly and saw the spill of light from the garden through the opened windows. Issabeau sat weeping at the desk, her tears staining the scrawled writing of the journal as she read. She looked up at me, sorrowful and forlorn, her face as pale as snow, a small, sad oval in the tumble of greying hair.
‘She’s been waiting for you,’ the enchantress whispered. ‘She will be so glad you came.’
‘Where is she?’
‘In the garden. She’s been waiting a long time for you …’
I walked past the desk. Issabeau drew breath, fighting back her own sadness. ‘How is he?’ she asked in a small voice. ‘Will he remember me?’
‘Oh yes. He will remember you. Grief will not make a monster of him, he’s too proud for that. But he will not be the same man again.’
‘I loved him so much,’ she said. ‘I hope he knew that.’
‘He knew it, Issabeau. And God willing, I will make sure he never forgets it.’
‘Look after him.’
‘As much as I’m able, I swear I will. Issabeau …’
She looked up at me, a lovely face crushed by pain. ‘Go to her …’
Her fingers shook as she ran her nails down the lines of my father’s writing, raking through his thoughts and observations, and I left her there, lost in her own considerations, her own world, her own magic.
I finally found Guiwenneth by the sticklebrook, sitting on the dried mud of the bank, her bare feet in the shallow water. This was the very place where, as a child on a grey horse, she had trotted round me and struck me with her feathered coup-stick. She seemed to be remembering that moment pleasantly, her head tilted up, hair still luxurious and full, face almost serene with delight, eyes closed.
‘Hello,’ I said, and she opened her eyes and looked up at me.
‘Do you remember this place?’
‘Of course. You whacked me with a riding crop. Then we rode together, into that field, there, and fell from the horse.’
‘And Manandoun came to rescue me and was furious with me. I thought he was going to kill you, but I think he just wanted to make sure I understood how dangerous it was to come to the edge of the world and to go galloping off after gullible and gorgeous boys.’
‘Is that how you thought of me? Gullible and gorgeous?’
‘But you are, aren’t you? Sit down beside me.’
I sat down, she reached a hand to stroke my face, then tugged my hair and pulled me back, so that we lay on the earth, our faces to the heavens.
‘Once upon a time,’ Guiwenneth said quietly, her fingers entwining with mine, ‘there was a young man, fair-faced and full of life, who loved a girl. But the girl died. The young man rode the length and the breadth of his land, seeking in every forest and every valley and on every mountain for the way into the land of the dead. He sacrificed everything he could lay his hands on. He kissed every stone and undertook every quest that was asked of him. He slaughtered the beasts that inhabited the edge of the wood and the edge of the lake, even if he wasn’t asked to do so. He fasted, then feasted, then fasted again, then turned himself inside out and upside down, walking backwards for a whole season, and speaking his words in reverse. And at last he had done enough to enter the world of the dead, and there he found the girl he had loved.
‘“I’ve come to fetch you,” he said, and she looked at him in horror.
‘“Who are you?” she asked.
‘“I am the young man you loved,” he replied.
‘“Well, if you are,” she said, “you left him behind a long time ago. Things have changed. And you have certainly changed.”
‘“You are as beautiful as the day you left me,” said the sad old man.
‘“Alas, I cannot say the same to you. Go away. What we once had was wonderful. What has happened since cannot justify your waste of life. Go away.”
‘“I have spent my life trying to find you.”
‘“I was dead and in a wonderful place. You were alive and behaving like a dead man. You have wasted your life. There were better things for you to do. You have one life only, and there are always other lovers.”’
She turned to me, smiling mischievously. ‘Did you like my story?’
‘Not very much. What are you trying to tell me?’
‘You have one mother and you can take her back; you can start again; you can use her dream, her terrifying vision, to make sure that the dream remains unreal. As for me …’ her face changed from happiness to sorrow, though she tried to hide it. ‘As for me,’ she repeated, ‘you can find me again. I am always in the wood. There are more of me than you can imagine; all I ask, my dearest love … all I ask … just dream me well. Dream me beautiful. And dream me happy, and with a heart that can fulfil all your own needs and love.’
These last words had been spoken through tears and she crushed me to her, sobbing quietly, her fingers digging into my back and neck. ‘Just dream me well, Chris …’
‘I don’t need to dream you at all. I have you here, in my arms. I can take you out of here, I can take you home. I have won that right, and I will claim that right …’
‘You came for your mother. Don’t imagine I don’t know that. She is a
lone, Chris. She needs you, she needs this life more than I do. Chris … you can find me again so easily! Just dream me well,’ she repeated firmly. ‘We can always find each other again. You must take your mother out of here!’
‘I can’t leave you, Guiwenneth.’
‘You can’t leave her!’
‘She wants me to take you … you want me to take her … what am I to do? I want you both. I want you both so much!’
‘Good memory is a great comfort,’ she whispered. ‘Eventually, that is all we can ever hope for. I have loved my time with you. If you are sensible, we can find that time again. The same cannot be said for Jennifer. So go home, Chris. Go back to the beginning. Take your mother home!’
I had come to Oak Lodge across the field from Strong Against the Storm. As I walked back to the entrance to the Otherworld, I realised that I was following the same path through the tall corn that my mother had carved, years ago, when I had followed her to her death. This was not quite the same field; nor the same sky, nor indeed the same tree; though to my right, the edge of Ryhope Wood watched me with its hidden eyes as it had watched my family for years.
Somewhere here, I remembered, the trail through the corn divided, a part of my mother’s spirit taking off to flee into the safety of the wilderness beyond the forest.
Or perhaps … the mark of a spirit joining her? My father’s spirit, come to kill her? Invisible to me, though he didn’t know it.
Eventually, walking stiffly and carefully, repeating to myself that I must not look round, I must not speak, I must not even hear the murmuring and breathing of the woman behind me, I came to the rise of land from which ordinarily I would have seen the spire of the church at Shadoxhurst, away in the distance.
This ridge of land, this focus of my memory, close to the hanging tree, was where the bright realm ended and the grim, gloomy passage to the surface of the world commenced. I stepped forward into this Stygian night, and behind me footsteps shuffled on the bare rock.
Ahead of me, the new day was a glowing circle, the inside of the mouth of the green-man’s painted, stony face.
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