The Devil in Green (103 page)

He was dwarfed by everything, expecting to be destroyed at any moment, eradicated by a thought or a whispered word.

And then, in some strange way, he was standing on the downs with the warm summer wind at his back and the moon beaming down on the circle of standing stones, the atmosphere heavy with mystical possibilities. Below him, men wearing the antlers of their totem spirit moved on two legs, then on four, howling at the moon and the stones in a dance that was ancient even then. The Neolithic world called out to him, not with the brutality of a mean existence, but with spirituality and a sense of something greater.

'Here.' The disembodied voice sent tingles up his spine.

The world fell away and he was in the sacred grove where the sickle cut the mistletoe, and gathered around were naked men prepared for battle, their hair bleached and matted with lime so that it stuck out in nail-like spikes. The wise men who kept the oak-knowledge, the great knowledge, whispered and moaned and felt the universe move through him, and all those assembled sighed with wonder.

'And here.'

And he was in the golden fields where the workers made the corn dollies and left them in the silence of the harvest night. And then in the greenwood where the villagers crawled through and under the crushing yoke of the rich and powerful, impeaching the trees for aid to bring back the wealth to the poor. And he heard the answering call of the hunting horn and glimpsed the movement of a green-clad hero in the emerald depths. In the thundering, sulphurous heat of the iron foundry as the Workshop of the World made cities and empires, he heard the apprentice knock on wood. The rural churches where the vegetative face stared out from pew and column, the other churches where the horned faces had been disfigured, made into a grinning devil, a feeble attempt at supplantation that would never, ever work.

'Here, here, here.'

Then, like some god, he was above it all, with a vista over all time, all place, hearing the whispered names - Cernunnos, Puck, Jack o' the Green - seeing how they were stitched into the fabric of everything, from the very beginning to the very end.

No Devil,
he thought. And no Evil anywhere, just shadows and light, inextricably bound. Tears welled up at the wonder of it all; the meaning that he knew he would never grasp when the glue of his thoughts returned.

'I am part of it, and part of something greater, of Existence,' the Green Man continued, his eyes filled with a gleaming, unearthly light. 'An aspect. One face. To attack me is to attack everything.'

They were back in the grove. Mallory could smell lime, then cherry blossom, then decomposing leaves; everything was so rich it was all distracting. With a struggle, he forced himself to concentrate on why he was there, still amazed he had made it that far, doubting he would ever leave. 'Why've you allowed me to come
here ...
to you?' he asked cautiously.

'All may come to me, if they do so with an open heart. I care for all living creatures, for life itself.'

'You attacked the cathedral.' Awe made his voice a whisper; still he feared he would be knocked down like an oak before the tempest, like the sand before the wave.

The words hung in the air for a while before they were obscured by the whisper of leaves. 'I defend Existence. When it is attacked, I strike back.'

'They took something—'

'They stole from Existence. They attempted to control the very essence of everything for their own aims. And in doing so, they caused disrup
tion ...
and
suffering ...
and
death ...
the opposite of life.'

Mallory's mouth was dry. Power lay everywhere; a scratching feeling at the back of his mind hinted at some tremendous consciousness circling him. His dread began to flourish again. 'There are good men who are suffering. If I return what's been stolen, will you leave them alone?'

'If wrongs are righted.' The quality of light in the Green Man's eyes became more intense. 'You have it in your power, Brother of Dragons.'

Mallory flinched; was this mysterious quality in him so powerful that even such a force acknowledged it?

'You are part of me,' the Green Man said, answering his thoughts, 'and I am part of you.'

Mallory began to search those troubling eyes, but snapped his gaze away as they began to suck him in. He felt as if he was staring into a vast ocean of intelligence, one that stretched to infinity; unknowable, dangerous in its alienness, one that could swallow him whole in an instant, so that he would be lost to everything as if he had never existed. Worse than that, it knew him, knew his deepest secrets, his worst fears, appeared to want something of him; or wanted him to want something of himself.

'You have a choice,' the Green Man said. Mallory had the strangest feeling he was talking about something other than the matter at hand.

'If you call off your army, let me get back into the cathedral . . . I'll do what I—'

'You have it in your power, Brother of Dragons,' the Green Man interrupted. There was a lull; a rustle moved through the vegetation. 'This is your time,' he continued. 'There are two paths before you. Everything hangs in the balance. Your choice, Brother of Dragons. Your choice.'

Again, Mallory could tell he wasn't talking about the cathedral and the stolen relic. 'I don't know what you mean,' he said desperately. But another voice at the back of his head appeared to be telling him that he did, but it was lost, driven back, as always.

The Green Man only smiled.

Mallory had no idea what happened next; it was as if a light was switched off, but things continued to go on in the dark. The next thing he knew he was back in the church in Knowlton with Sophie standing beside him. It was daylight, but it felt as though days had passed. Where there had been a thaw before, the snow lay thick across the whole landscape, frosted in place. For a moment, they stood, still lost to the place they had been, but gradually it faded, like the wind across the fields, until it was almost as if they had never been there.

'What happened to you?' he said, dragging her into his arms with a force born of euphoria, and love.

'What happened to
you,}'
she replied, also giddy with her renewed life. 'I saw the Green Man.' 'So did I.'

They stared at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

'They had it all wrong from the start - Cornelius, Stefan, all of them,' Mallory said, as they walked across the henge in the bright sunlight. 'He was the good guy and they'd badly wronged him—'

'It was more than that, Mallory. In their language, they sinned against
God ...
my god . . . Existence . . . nature. They thought they had a right to take anything. That everything was created to be bent to their will, for the ends of their religion. Nothing else mattered but what they believed. And now they're paying the price.'

Mallory remembered the Green Man's eyes and shivered. 'It felt as though he was . . . more than he was. Does that make sense?'

'In ancient times, pagans believed there was one true God, so far removed they couldn't know anything about him, and all the other gods were aspects of him, symbolising different facets.' She looked up at the blue sky. 'It feels like the solstice.'

'Time's strange in . . . those places.' Mallory wasn't really aware of the vocabulary to describe the experience. 'How do you know?' 'I just . . . feel it.'

They paused at the gate, enjoying the sun on their faces, despite the cold. 'We have to go back, then,' he said.

'It's down to us to put things right. For . . . Existence.' She leaned over and gave him a kiss.

'I can't believe we're alive. I never thought we would be.' He took the measure of himself inside. 'Everything's changed.' 'Then we'd better not throw it away,' she said.

The gates of the cathedral remained closed, but they bore the innumerable scars of the vicious attacks inflicted during the time Mallory and Sophie had been away. Now they only hung by a thread; one final push could have broken through. Repairs didn't appear to have been carried out for some days.

In the twilight, the place looked mournful and desolate. No guards patrolled the walls, no sounds of activity came from within. Mallory stared at the imposing gates apprehensively, afraid of what he might find. The killer of Cornelius, Julian and Gibson was still loose, but it was a more personal fear that was eating away at him. The past felt hard at his back; his time of running was nearly done.

Salisbury was unusually quiet. The people had retired to their homes early, as if anticipating something awful. Even the pubs were deserted, their doors open forlornly, casting candlelight across the frozen pavements. But the Green Man had kept his word: his forces were nowhere to be seen.

'You should stay here,' Mallory said to Sophie as he craned his neck to survey the top of the wall.

'Can I weep gently until you come back, as well?'

'Sarcasm is a very unattractive quality.'

'So is being an asshole. You can waltz off waving your little pigsticker; just don't forget who has the real power around here.'

'It's not what you've got, it's what you do with it.'

'Yeah, yeah, that's what all men say. Have you ever noticed how women smile tightly when they hear it?' She examined the gates closely; although they were insecure, any attempt to break them down would attract too much attention. 'Any idea how we're getting in?'

'Well, you know, there's a thing called foresight.' From under his cloak he brought out a length of rope he had picked up from one of the houses they had rested in on the day's trek back from Knowlton. He tied a noose in one end and then took five attempts to throw it on to one of the defensive barbs protruding from the top of the wall. He hauled himself up easily, then dropped quietly on to the walkway. One brother trudged lamely through the snow near the cathedral. Quickly, Mallory hauled Sophie up and they climbed down the ladder into the compound.

As they hurried to the shadows at the base of the wall, Sophie grabbed Mallory's arm and held him tight. 'Look!' she said.