Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) (12 page)

He went quickly back to the house, called Jacques, then another neighbour, and when both told him that they had seen nothing of the boy, he fetched his torch and overcoat and went out again.

It was beginning to rain as he reached the first of the old bosker’s lodges, the ramshackle iron and wooden hut. The heads of the hunted foxes had vanished from their stakes, but the hanged line of squirrels turned and twisted in the wet wind, as did the torn oilskin over the door.

Daniel was sitting on the bed, a shadowy figure. He blinked as Martin flashed the torch in his face, but kept staring at the light. He was leaning against the wall, below the remaining pictures of Conrad’s childhood sweetheart. His arms were limp by his sides, his gaze quite expressionless, save for his narrowed eyes.

‘Stop shining it in my face.’

‘Sorry.’

Martin set the torch’s light to fluorescent. The stark glow illuminated the boy’s pale features and set sharp shadows around the room. Martin sat down in the old man’s chair.

‘Why did you break your computer?’

‘I don’t know. Just felt like it.’

‘Why are you upset?’

‘I’m angry. Not upset. Angry.’

‘Why don’t you come home, Daniel? I’ll make supper, we’ll look after Mummy.’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘You can’t stay here all night. The storm is going to be fierce …’

As if to illustrate his words, the whole structure shook and shuddered, the oilskin billowing as the rain and wind swirled and gusted.

‘I need the storm. I need the darkness. I like the darkness. It helps me think.’

‘Daniel …’

‘Not Daniel!’

‘Not Daniel?’

The boy stared through the white light. A smile touched his lips; he was otherwise limp, propped against the rough wall like a doll.

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Who are you? What do you want?’

‘I’ve got what I want. Most of it. He thought he could starve me at birth, but I’ve taken what I want, and now he can’t see anything but the shadows of lost forests. He’s
skogan
. He can’t hear anything but stone songs. He can’t make any sound except running water …’ Daniel laughed hoarsely, then looked away. ‘Leave me alone. I have to think.’

‘Let Daniel go. I want him home.’

‘Too late. The boy doesn’t want to go home.’

‘But I want him to come home, and I’ll take him home, and you too unless you release him.’

Daniel sniggered, his eyes closed as if with deep weariness. The storm raged through the forest, wind swirling through the eaves, sending skins and paper flapping in the cold shack.

‘Don’t threaten me,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m here for the duration. He’s kept something back from me. He always keeps something back from me …’

Martin felt that the reference was not to the boy, but to the ‘he’ who travelled inside Rebecca. ‘I intend to get it. But how? How?’

And suddenly, uncontrollably, Martin leapt at the limp human figure on the bed. The surge of rage had surfaced unbidden, and took him unawares. He just knew that he
hated
the traveller, that he was incensed at the so-calm dismissal of the human life in which it was a passenger. As he struck at the face, and squeezed at the neck, he was aware that it was his son’s body that he was assaulting; but it was not Daniel who was the object of his attack. It was the enchantress inside him, who screamed, and laughed through her choking throat, used strong fingers to bend back Martin’s, then kicked him powerfully, sending him hurtling back across the shack.

Daniel sat up straight, rubbing his neck, weeping from his left eye where Martin’s first blow had landed, taunting. ‘Daddy, Daddy, child abuser!’

‘Get out of my son!’

‘I
am
your son, you fool! This is how I was born. The body’s just the shell. Your body’s just a shell. We’re all
travellers
, as you so quaintly call it. Now go away! I’m stronger than you by far.’

*

And Martin left, staggering back through the driving rain, leaving his son behind him in the darkened ruin, leaving his life behind.

He was weeping as he entered the house. Suzanne was there, and she drew him into her bosom, holding him very tightly as the rain rattled the windows, and upstairs Rebecca shrieked and howled, her words incoherent, her footfall heavy as she stumbled about the room, the nurse trying to calm her, to ease her back to bed.

At about four in the morning, as the storm abated slightly, Martin woke from a deep, disturbed sleep. He was sprawled on a blanket, by the still-warm stove, using a cushion as a pillow. He became aware of someone crouching by him, a hand on his back, and he turned over quickly, looked up to see Rebecca, dimly lit by the night-light in the hall. She was wet around the eyes and lips, feeling blindly in the dark. When he reached for her she grasped for him and twisted below him, murmuring sounds.

‘Oh Beck! Beck … you shouldn’t be up …’

‘Ssssh!’ she breathed, and he drew back.

‘Can you understand me, Beck?’

She had opened her dressing gown. He placed his hands on her breasts and she closed her blind eyes, covering his hands with hers, holding him hard. He leant down and kissed her and at the back of her throat
she started to sing, her legs jerking violently, meaninglessly until Martin realised what she was trying to do. He reached down and undressed quickly, desperate to keep the kiss, desperate not to lose her.

Moments later, as she reached down to draw him deeply home, he felt a great fatigue. It was an irresistible drowsiness, and though he fought against it, he was helpless in its grasp; and making love he fell asleep, his last thought a silent plea for wakefulness.

In the morning she was gone. He woke, cold, half naked, to find the nurse in a panic.

‘She’s gone. Oh my God, she’s gone!’

Quickly covering himself, Martin stood, blinking the sleep from his eyes, rubbing them furiously.
She put a spell on me!

‘Where? Gone?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. The door was open. I only woke a few moments ago …’

‘Call Jacques. The number’s in the book. And the priest. Tell them that Rebecca has gone walkabout, and I need them to help search for her.’

Outside, in the grey dawn, the forest of Broceliande shimmered with the rain from the night’s storm. It seemed to have grown, to have become heavier, to have leaned towards the farm, to have consumed a little of the path. The air was fresh. The milk-cart was rattling past. Up on the hill, the church was a black tower against the spiralling clouds.

‘She’s dead,’ Martin whispered. He couldn’t find tears. He remembered her touch from the middle of the night, the feel of her lips, the warmth of her sex, the touch that
said how much she needed him, the touch that had said goodbye.

‘She’s dead …’

And he knew she would be at the lake. He walked indoors again and found his coat and rubber boots. He fetched a rake from the shed. The nurse watched him. He felt very calm. He felt dead.

‘Where are you going? Where are you going to look?’

‘She’s in the lake,’ he said. ‘Tell Jacques. She’s in the lake.’

‘What lake?’

‘The lake in Broceliande, by Conrad’s grave. The lake in the heart of the forest.’

‘Will he know which lake you mean?’

‘Just tell him to follow the path.’

‘If you’re sure of this, then go. Now. Hurry!’

He walked down the path. After the storm, the wood was quite still. It was as if the world had ceased to breathe. He was cold inside, he might have been floating through the trees, not walking. The memory of the kiss, the memory of her body, these things were gentle pleasures, memories of a lost life that walked with him, accompanied him calmly down the path, past the bosker’s cabin, through the silent forest of Broceliande.

And yet, as he passed Conrad’s hunting place, the frame of wicker, the wooden igloo with its rough skins, a voice said, ‘Hurry!’ and he began to run.

And by the time he came to the lakeside, to flounder in the mud among the rushes, he was screaming for his
lover – as if a spell had broken and suddenly there was hope after all. As if the drowned were not yet dead, and the water could be brought out through their mouths, their eyes, all the passages of their bodies, and the spirit returned to the flesh.

As he thrashed in the cold water, so the birds rose in flocks, to wheel about the lake, dark shapes in the dawn, circling and watching like hungry crows over the battlefields of old, waiting for the spoils.

When he saw her he screamed. As he approached he stumbled, aware of the two shapes floating in the deeper water.

He rose with a howl, soaking from head to foot, the rake held like a weapon, waved angrily above his head. The rats that had been feeding swam away. The dawn breeze caught the spill of hair. The bodies, interlocked by arms, turned slowly as the waves began to break against them. Martin staggered through the lake, then swam to reach them, drawing them by the feet, drawing them back to the shore, back to the mud.

They were alike, so alike. They were asleep, their arms entwined, their hair entwined, their faces white and almost smiling. In death the travellers had left them, no doubt. The peace of lives released in death touched each closed eye, the corners of each wide, perfect mouth.

Martin kissed them both, and hugged them, standing in the lake, the wind chilling his body. Then he dragged them through the reeds and to the dry earth where the wood began, and when Jacques arrived, hours later, astonished by the sight of the lake, he found his nephew
on his knees between the dead, holding their hands in his against his chest, as if the three were praying.

‘Turn them over! Get the water out of them! Turn them
over
, man.’

‘They’ve
been
turned over. Let them rest at last.’

‘Martin! Martin! There are people on the path. Your people!’

The words, shouted from outside, seemed like a dream at first, but with the constant hammering at the door, and the rattle of dirt on the window, he soon came awake, stretching out on the floor, groaning as his deadened limbs came back to life. He was fully clothed and his mouth felt sour and dry.

Again, the boy’s voice, ‘Martin. Martin! Hurry!’

He peered out into the brightening dawn. It was Richard, the Lordez’s eldest child, a familiar and cheery youth who kept his pony in Martin’s field. The boy saw the man and beckoned, then pointed to where Clarisse, his sister, was cautiously circling an invisible spot on the path, astonished by what she was seeing.

He went downstairs and drank copiously from the water bottle, then walked outside, shivering with the chill.

Richard called to him. The boy, fourteen now, was frightened, or perhaps apprehensive.

‘What is it? What have you seen?’

‘People on the path,’ Richard said, his voice a whisper, his pale eyes wide.
‘Your
people.’

‘My people?’

‘It’s Daniel. And Rebecca. They’re walking up to the hill.’

It took a moment for the meaning of the words to register. Then Martin was running, gaining speed, all sleep gone, all alcohol drained from a mind that was suddenly racing. Rebecca? Daniel? And as he ran he murmured, ‘Rebecca …?’ and his voice began to rise in volume until he screamed, literally screamed, ‘Rebecca!’

He reached the suddenly startled girl and gripped her by the shoulders. ‘Where? Where is she? Where’s Rebecca?’

Clarisse looked terrified, trying to pull away from the unshaven man, her eyes a window into combined terrors.

‘Where is she?’ Martin shouted, shaking her. ‘Where is she?’

‘You’re inside her,’ Clarisse whispered and her face twisted into a sob. ‘Please – let me go.’

He released the girl. She scampered away, then stood with her brother, slightly hunched, watching the path.

Martin turned, his arms outstretched. He could feel nothing. But he danced on the path, turning, turning, remembering Seb, desperate to touch the dead.

‘Beck. Oh God, Beck. Are you here?’ And loudly to the children, eyes still closed, ‘Where is she? Am I still inside her?’

Clarisse’s voice was a howl of sadness, ‘No. You’ve danced in front of her. Just stand still.’

Martin stood on the path, eyes closed, trying to feel. There was the scent of dawn, and a gentle breeze. He could hear the girl making noises, like a kitten, frightened. She was crouching, now, her brother with her, watching the man as he embraced the empty path.

‘She’s passing through you again,’ Richard called, and Martin closed his arms around his body, trying to hold the ghost.

‘What about Daniel? How does he look?’

They walked together up the path. The children described what they could see, and Martin tried to remember how it had been when he had been a child. Rebecca was walking slowly. She was dressed as she had been dressed when he had dragged her from the lake. Daniel was looking back, looking worried. Why was there always one person on the path who looked back, as if haunted, as if hunted?

They came to the church and Martin began to cry. He could feel nothing! He ran to the frightened children, grabbed at Clarisse. ‘Dance inside her. Please! Dance inside Rebecca. Tell me what you hear, tell me what you feel!’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ Richard said, but he hesitated. The girl shuddered, gripped by Martin’s hands. Her eyes filled and flowed, but she remained silent, blinking nervously.

Martin was desperate. ‘Please? Clarisse, will you?’

‘Dangerous!
’ Richard said earnestly. ‘Our parents always told us – not inside people we know!’

Screaming, not hearing those odd words
not inside the people we know
, Martin implored the girl. ‘Dance inside her! I must know how she feels! For Christ’s sake, do it! Clarisse – do it! Please! For me!’

The girl burst into tears, but nodded. ‘Look after me,’ she wailed as she tugged free and ran in pursuit of the invisible people on the path. Richard stared icily at the man, terrified. His sister’s sobs turned to screams of fear as she slowed to enter the ghosts, looking back.

And at that moment Martin realised what he had done. He raced after the girl, grabbed her, swung her round and hugged her as she cried out and sank down with relief. ‘I’m sorry. Clarisse, I’m so sorry. I was forgetting how dangerous it is. I’m so confused, so frightened. I’m so sorry, love. Of course you mustn’t dance inside her.’

Richard suddenly screamed, ‘Be careful! Clarisse! Watch out—’

The girl’s eyes had widened and she smiled. Somewhere, a long way away, the sound of someone running …

Martin held the girl, noticing how she seemed to melt, how her eyes glowed. Richard was running towards them.

‘Get out! Get out!’

They were inside the people! Rebecca and Daniel were passing through them!

Martin dragged the girl to the side. Richard thumped him hard on the back, a small man, furious. ‘You let them into her! You shouldn’t have done that!’

‘I didn’t know. I thought they were ahead of me. I
can’t see them, Richard. I can’t see them. Only you can see them. Christ, I want to
see
them! Where are they now?’

The boy hesitated, fury calming, then he looked towards the hedge around the cemetery. ‘Passing through. Rebecca is looking back at you. Do you think she knows you’re here? Did she feel something?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you feel anything?’

‘Nothing.’

They both looked at Clarisse.

‘Sis? Did you feel anything?’

‘Let me out,’ the girl said quietly. ‘So close, now. So near. Let me out!’

‘Who’s saying this?’

‘The old man. The old man in Rebecca. Let me out. I’m nearly out. Let me out!’

‘I don’t understand.’

But all Clarisse would say was, ‘Stuck in the shaft. Trapped in the tree. Let me out. Let me free!’

Her brother Richard took her home. A few hundred yards down the path the huddled pair broke into a run, holding hands, racing against the rising of the sun to return to their house.

Martin swung on the iron gate, imagining the way that Rebecca and Daniel were now descending below the hill, to pass through their own gate into a world beyond his understanding.

Let me out?
Trapped in the tree. Trapped in the shaft …

I’m nearly out. Let me out …

And Martin remembered Sebastian’s drawings, made years ago, shortly before the boy had died.

It took him two hours to find the faded paper, the scrawled sketches that Sebastian had made. Eveline had kept them safe, of course, as she had kept everything that her sons and daughter had drawn and written. They had been locked in one of many boxes, and the boxes stacked in orderly array within the attic. It was volume and security that made the task of discovery so difficult, but at last, from the filed and ordered memories of his mother, Martin found the sketches of the ‘vases’, the odd drawings that his brother had produced shortly before his death.

By the time he reached the church, Matutinus was underway, the priest, in his black robe, singing the words-of-morning to a congregation of two (the Delbondes, who never missed Matutinus). Candle smoke filled the church. Martin sat quietly at the back, and when the Delbondes scurried out, ready for breakfast, Father Gualzator snuffed the candles and came quickly down the aisle.

‘I was watching you. I saw everything. This morning.’

‘Richard and Clarisse?’

The older man nodded, taking the papers from Martin’s hand as if he had already intuited their content.

‘My old eye didn’t fill in the figures, but the children could see the ghosts of Rebecca and Daniel. And I heard the old man’s voice: Let me out.’

‘You heard it as an old man’s voice? It was the girl who was speaking.’

The priest laughed drily. ‘Old eyes do see, old ears do hear. It was an old man, speaking through the girl. He’s trapped, like the genie in the bottle. Except that he’s close to getting free. He’s been close to getting free for nearly two hundred years, now. These sketches are fascinating. They confirm something I’ve half suspected since I came to Broceliande. Come into the vestry.’

‘I wish you’d shown me these before. Look here …’

Father Gualzator produced a box file, opening it to reveal yellowed parchment, vellum, torn pages from note books, schoolbooks, even the blue tint of quality writing paper from earlier in the century. He spread the sheaf of paper on the table. On all of them were sketched, in childish hand, bottles and vases, all with bits of tree and bone inside them, each stoppered with little hats, or caps, consisting of round blobs.

But they weren’t vases. They were shafts into the earth, and the stoppers were:

‘Stones. These are votive shafts, dug deeply into the ground and capped with stone cairns. Do you see? The image was confusing for the children who glimpsed them from the ghosts, and they’ve always drawn jars, or vases. But they’re shafts. It’s a familiar device from pre-history, running on into late Celtic times. The shafts were filled with bones, stones, trees, whatever, and there is no reason why a shaft in one area of the world should necessarily function in the same way as a
shaft from another. But they are clearly an attempt to commune with the earth, perhaps to mollify the earth. Sebastian, like all the other children whose drawings I’ve managed to accumulate, has shown a shaft with a tree inside it. That was very common. The deepest shaft I know was dug about two hundred years before Christ, and was one hundred and forty feet deep, and very narrow. A whole tree had been thrown down it, plus pottery and bones, a dog, a stag, some bits and pieces of gold and bronze. Right at the bottom, below everything, was the corpse of a child, a deformed child, mind you, its skull neatly divided by a single blow.’

Martin leafed through the drawings. The similarities were astonishing. Each of these had been drawn by a child after dancing through the people on the path. Yet the oldest was from the early eighteen hundreds. The proportions were so much the same. The lopped off tree, its branches cut, all showed the same number of stubs: six, six for the stubs of a dismembered male human body.

‘Then this is the evil at the heart of the wood. Conrad knew it. He told me, just days ago. Merlin
is
trapped in the heart of Broceliande. His grave is there. Just across the lake, according to Conrad. It’s always been there, hidden from prying eyes, but no longer hidden, I think. We can get to it. We can dig him up!’

Father Gualzator smiled and leaned on the table. ‘This is the
pain
at the heart of the wood. And yes, it’s Merlin, or whatever it is that we’ve come to call Merlin. A vague memory of the killing in ancient times has survived as a legend of Merlin trapped in a tree, in a shaft of air,
accessible only to Vivien. But it’s an
earth
shaft. And probably very deep. And he, or it, is down there. And it wants to be let out. It’s been creeping out for ages. It’s been trying to tell us where it’s buried. That sounds dangerous to me.’

Martin let the priest’s words flow into and over him. All he could think was: perhaps he can help. If I let him out, perhaps he can bring back Rebecca. Perhaps he can give life again to Daniel. There is old magic in song, as Rebecca discovered. I must try. I must try …

But he couldn’t do it on his own.

Martin watched as the priest filed the drawings, adding Sebastian’s own sketches to the collection.

‘I’m going to dig him up.’

Father Gualzator shrugged, frowning. ‘Most of me wants to counsel against such an act. It should have occurred to you that you stand to release not just Merlin, but to revive Merlin’s tormentor again. They’re both down there, although how and why Vivien was trapped is beyond me. Something went wrong, all that time ago. She has been a vengeful and violent spirit for two thousand years, striking from the grave – possessing, using, destroying …’

‘Nevertheless …’

Martin hesitated. The priest was in a cold sweat, his hands shaking as he tied the ribbon on the box-file.

‘Will you help me?’

‘I suppose so. I’ll try. I’ll help until I can’t. Then you’ll have to forgive me, but I’ll not help if I feel the people in this parish are threatened. Do you understand that?’

Martin understood and said so.

*

They moved through the woodland for hours, following the path by Conrad’s first home, by his hunting lodge, dragging the canoe on its makeshift sled, lowering it down the rock faces, hauling it across the marshy ground, around the giant oaks, through the sun-bright glades, shifting their packs as they sweated on the path. Breathless and hot in the humidity of Broceliande, the priest in physical distress despite his fitness, they listened for the sound of the lake.

The canoe could carry two. Martin had driven to Bordeaux to buy it. It was made of fibreglass and was styled like the canoes of the North American Indians. It should easily transport them across the lake, from home-shore, to heart-shore.

Towards the end of the day they were moving still, dragging the long canoe along the path, but at dusk, just as the sun was blinking out of sight above the trees, they found the quiet water and the old bosker’s ruined fishing lodge. The body of Conrad lay there, drawn deeply into its skins. The cross above the grave where Martin and his uncle had buried Rebecca and Daniel was dark in the tree line. Father Gualzator went and blessed the hump of earth before coming back and watching the mist rise on the water.

‘Did you wrap them in linen?’

‘Very carefully.’

‘In one piece, I hope—’

‘I’m no butcher.’

‘Good. We should stay overnight here, I think. Cross the lake at dawn.’

Martin hauled the canoe to the reeds, pushing it half across the mud so that it was taken by the lake. He heaved the two packs into the middle of the craft, then came back for the shovels and the winch.

‘No. Let’s cross now. I’m impatient to go, impatient to be there.’