A Swiftly Tilting Planet (10 page)

The moon slipped behind the trees to join, briefly, her brother, sun. The stars danced their intricate ritual across the sky. The People Across the Lake looked at Gwydyr, and his golden crown was gone, and so was his power.

Madoc’s arms encircled Zyll and he cried out in his sleep and tears slid through his closed eyelids and wet his lashes, and while he still slept, Zyll held him and kissed the tears away.

“Come,” Gaudior said.

Charles Wallace stood by the unicorn, blinking. “Was it a dream?” He looked at the dark lake lapping the shore, at the tilted rock; it was empty.

Gaudior blew silver bubbles that bounced off his beard. “You were Within Madoc, deep Within this time.”

“Madoc, son of Owain, king of Gwynedd. The Madoc of the book. And hasn’t there been a recurring theory that Welsh sailors came here before Leif Ericson?… Something about Indians with blue or grey eyes …”

“You should know,” Gaudior chided. “You were Within Madoc.”

“It can’t all have been real.”

“Reality was different in those days,” Gaudior said. “It was real for Madoc.”

“Even the fire among the garlands?”

“Roses often burn. Theirs is the most purifying flame of all.”

“And the scry—what Madoc saw in the water—was that a kind of Projection?”

The light in Gaudior’s horn flickered. “Gwydyr was on the side of evil, and so he was open to the Projections of the Echthroi.”

“So the terrible baby was a Projection the Echthroi want to have happen?”

“I’m never entirely sure about Projections,” Gaudior admitted.

“And there was the other baby …” Charles Wallace closed his eyes to try to visualize the scry. “The blue-eyed baby, the answer to prayer, who was going to bring peace. So he’s equally possible, isn’t he?”

“It’s all very confusing”—Gaudior shook his mane—“because we move in different dimensions, you and I.”

Charles Wallace rubbed his fingers over his forehead as he had done in Meg’s room. “It’s all in the book somewhere. Why am I being blocked on that book?” The unicorn did not reply. “A book against war, a book about the legend of Madoc and Gwydyr, who came from Wales to this land … and what else? I can’t get it …”

“Leave it alone,” Gaudior advised.

Charles Wallace leaned against the unicorn, pressing his forehead against the silver hide, thinking out loud. “All we know is that a Welsh prince named Madoc did come to the New World with his brother Gwydyr and that Madoc married Zyll of the People of the Wind. Gaudior, if, unknowing, while I was Within Madoc I gave him, the rune, would that have been changing a Might-Have-Been?”

The unicorn replied unhelpfully, “It’s all very complicated.”

“Or—did Madoc have the rune himself? How could he, if it came from Ireland and St. Patrick?”

Gaudior raised his head and pulled back the dark silver of his lips in a ferocious grimace, baring his dangerous teeth. But all he did was open his mouth and drink wind as though quenching a terrible thirst.

Charles Wallace looked about, and as he looked, the scene rippled like the waters in the scrying oval on the beach, and the lake receded until he was looking across a wintry valley, and the rock was no longer a slightly tilted table but the flat star-watching rock, thinly crusted with snow.

Gaudior lowered his head and licked wind from his lips. “Gwydyr did not stay with the People Across the Lake.”

“I wouldn’t think he would, but how do you know?”

Gaudior raised tufted brows. “I have just been talking with the wind. Gwydyr left the lake in disgrace, and moved southward, ending up in South America.”

Charles Wallace clapped his hand to his forehead. “That’s it! It’s in the book, too. Gwydyr going to Patagonia. And Vespugia is part of Patagonia. And there was a connection that was lost and had to be found, but what
was
it? I keep almost remembering, and then it’s as if someone slams a door on my memory.”

Gaudior sniffed. “Echthroi, probably. They’ll try to block anything that might be a clue to the Might-Have-Been they don’t want you to discover.”

Charles Wallace nodded. “Mad Dog Branzillo was born in Vespugia. But right here, where we stand, Madoc came and married Zyll and made the roses burn for peace. What happened to the Wind People? Where are they now?”

“They were lovers of peace,” Gaudior replied shortly. “Your planet does not deal gently with lovers of peace.”

Charles Wallace sat on the rock, the thin rim of snow crackling beneath him. He put his head down on his knees. “I think I have to find out what the connection is between Wales and Vespugia, between Madoc and Gwydyr and Mad Dog Branzillo.”

* * *

Meg stirred and opened her eyes. Her hand lay lightly on Ananda. “Such dreams, Fortinbras,” she murmured, “such strange dreams.” Her sleepy gaze drifted toward the clock and suddenly she was wide awake. “Ananda! For a moment I thought you were Fort. And it wasn’t dreaming, was it? It was kything, but not clear and sharp, the way it was when Charles Wallace was Within Harcels. He was deeper Within Madoc, and so I have to dig deeper to find the kythe. And Charles wants me to find something out for him … but what?” She pushed her fingers through her hair, closed her eyes tightly, and concentrated, her hand pressing against Ananda. “Something about a lake … about burning roses … and two brothers fighting … yes … and Mad Dog Branzillo and Wales. That’s it. He wants me to find a connection between Mad Dog Branzillo and Wales. And that hardly seems possible, much less likely.” She listened to the sounds within the silence of the night, the sounds which were so familiar that they were part of the silence. The old house creaked comfortably. The wind brushed softly against the window.—Nobody’s likely to be asleep, not tonight. And Sandy’s a history buff. I’ll go ask him.

She got out of bed, pushed her feet into furry slippers, and went downstairs. There was light shining under the door of the twins’ room, so she knocked.

“What are you doing up, Sis?” Dennys asked. “You need your sleep.”

“So do you, doc. I’m up for the same reason you are.”

“I often study late,” Dennys said. “What can we do for you?”

“What do you know about Vespugia?”

Dennys said, “With your hair down like that, you look about fifteen.”

“I’m an old married woman. What about Vespugia?”

Sandy replied, “I was just reading about it in the encyclopedia. It’s part of what used to be called Patagonia. Sort of between Argentina and Chile.”

“Branzillo was born there?”

“Yes.”

“Who colonized Vespugia?”

“Oh, the usual mishmash. Spaniards, a few English, and a group from Wales while it was still part of Patagonia.”

Madoc was from Wales. She asked carefully, “Wales—when was that?”

“There’s a legend that some Welshmen came to North America even before Leif Ericson, and that one of them went south, looking for a warm climate, and eventually settled in Vespugia—or where Vespugia is now. But that’s only legend. However, it’s fact that in 1865 a party left Wales for Patagonia and settled in the open wastelands near the Chubut River.”

“So maybe Mad Dog Branzillo has some Welsh blood in him?”

“It’s perfectly possible, although Branzillo hardly sounds Welsh.”

“What year did you say the group left Wales?”

“1865.”

“Are those the only times Wales is mentioned in connection with Vespugia?”

“In this encyclopedia.”

She thought for a minute. “All right. What happened in 1865 that I ought to know about?”

Dennys said, “Meg, sit down if you’re going to get Sandy to give you a history lesson. Is this something to do with being pregnant, like a passion for strawberries?”

“Raspberries. And I don’t think it has much to do with being pregnant.”

“Let me get
The Time Tables of History
.” Sandy reached for the bookcase and pulled out a large and battered volume, and began turning the pages. “Aha. 1865. Appomatox was on April 9, and Lincoln was assassinated on the fourteenth. The Civil War ended on May 26.”

“Quite a year.”

“Yup. In England, Lord Palmerston died, and was succeeded as Prime Minister by Lord John Russell.”

“I don’t know much about him.”

“And back to the once-more-United States, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.”

“Would there have been slavery in Vespugia?”

“Not sure. Bolivar died in 1830, and his influence would likely have filtered through to Vespugia. So I doubt if there’d have been slaves.”

“Well, good.”

“Okay, and also in 1865 the Atlantic cable was finally completed. Oh, and here’s something for you, Den: Lister caused a scandal by insisting on antiseptic surgery and using carbolic acid on a compound wound.”

Dennys applauded. “You’re almost as veritable an encyclopedia as Charles Wallace.”

“Charles has it in his head and I have to look it up in a reference book. My sphere of knowledge is considerably more limited. Mendel came out with his law of heredity that year”—he peered down at the book again—“and the Ku Klux Klan was founded, and Edward Whymper climbed the Matterhorn. And Lewis Carroll wrote
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
.”

“Indeed, 1865 was quite a year,” Dennys said. “What have you learned, Meg?”

“I think maybe a lot. Thanks, both of you.”

“Get back into bed,” Dennys chided. “You don’t want to get chilled wandering around this drafty old barn in the middle of the night.”

“I’m warm.” She indicated her heavy robe and slippers. “I’m taking care. But thanks.”

“If we made you some hot chocolate, would you drink it?”

“I’m off hot chocolate.”

“Some consommé or bouillon?”

“No, thanks, really, I don’t want anything. I’ll get back into bed.”

Sandy called after her, “And also in 1865 Rudyard Kipling was born, and Verlaine wrote
Poèmes saturniens
, and John Stuart Mill wrote
Auguste Comte and Positivism
, and Purdue, Cornell, and the universities of Maine were founded.”

She waved back at him, then paused as he continued, “And Matthew Maddox’s first novel,
Once More United
, was published.”

She turned back, asking in a carefully controlled voice, “Maddox? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that author.”

“You stuck to math in school.”

“Yeah, Calvin always helped me with my English papers. Did this Matthew Maddox write anything else?”

Sandy flipped through the pages. “Let’s see. Nothing in 1866, 1867. 1868, here we are,
The Horn of Joy
.”

“Oh, that,” Dennys said. “I remember him now. I had to take a lit course my sophomore year in college, and I took nineteenth-century American literature. We read that, Matthew Maddox’s second and last book,
The Horn of Joy
. My prof said if he hadn’t died he’d have been right
up there with Hawthorne and James. It was a strange book, passionately antiwar, I remember, and it went way back into the past, and there was some weird theory of the future influencing the past—not my kind of book at all.”

“But you remember it,” Meg remarked.

“Yeah, I remember it, for some reason. There was a Welsh prince whose brothers were fighting for the throne. And he left Wales with one of his brothers, and was shipwrecked and landed somewhere on the New England coast. There was more, but I can’t think of it right now.”

“Thanks,” Meg said. “Thanks a lot.”

Ananda greeted her joyfully at the head of the stairs. Meg fondled the dog’s floppy ear. “I really would have liked something hot to drink, but I didn’t want Sandy and Dennys coming up to the attic and staying to talk when we have to concentrate on kything with Charles Wallace.” She got back into bed and Ananda jumped up beside her and settled down. The clock’s hands had moved ahead fifteen minutes, the length of time she had spent with Sandy and Dennys. And time was of the essence. But she felt that the trip downstairs had been worth it. She had found the author and the title of the book for Charles Wallace. And she had found a connection between Wales
and Vespugia in 1865. But what did the connection mean? Madoc was Welsh, but he didn’t go to Vespugia, he came here, and married here.

She shook her head. Maybe Charles Wallace and Gaudior could make something out of it.

And how any of this could connect with Mrs. O’Keefe was a mystery.

SIX

The lightning with its rapid wrath

Thanks, Meg,” Charles Wallace whispered. “Oh, Gaudior, she really did help us, she and the twins.” He leaned forward to rest his cheek against the unicorn’s neck. “The book was by Matthew Maddox. I don’t think I ever read it, but I remember Dennys talking about it. And Mrs. O’Keefe was a Maddox, so she’s
got
to be descended from Matthew.”

“Descended,” Gaudior snorted. “You make it sound like a fall.”

“If you look at Mrs. O’Keefe, that’s what it’s like,” Charles Wallace admitted. “1865. Can we go there?”

“Then,” the unicorn corrected. “When. We can try, if you think it’s important. We’ll hope for a favorable wind.”

Charles Wallace looked alarmed. “You mean we might get blown into another Projection?”

“It’s always a risk. We know the Echthroi are after us, to stop us. So you must hold on.”

“I’ll hold on for dear life. The last thing I want is to get blown into another Projection.”

Gaudior blew softly through his teeth. “I find our most recent information not very helpful.”

“But it could be important, a group of Welshmen going to South America in 1865. I think we should try to go to Vespugia.”

“That’s a long way, and unicorns do not travel well to different Wheres. And to try to move in
both
space and time—I don’t like it.” He flicked his tail.

“Then how about trying to move to 1865, right here, the year Matthew Maddox published his first novel? Then we could try to move from 1865 here to 1865 in Vespugia. And maybe we could learn something from Matthew Maddox.”

“Very well. It’s less dangerous to go elsewhen first than to try to go elsewhen and elsewhere simultaneously.” He began to gallop, and as he flung himself onto a gust of wind, the wings lifted and they soared upward.