Greenmantle

by Charles de Lint

  The old man smiled as he took Valenti’s hand. “I’m not Tommy. My name’s Lewis Datchery. Welcome to New Wolding.” His handshake was firm.

  Bannon stepped forward and took Lewis’s hand in turn. “Tom Bannon,” he said.

  “You’re new to the area, aren’t you?” Lewis asked.

  Bannon glanced at Valenti, then nodded. “Yes. I’m just visiting Tony for the week.”

  “And who are you?” Lewis asked, looking at Ali.

  “Ali. That is, Alice Treasure, only everybody just calls me Ali.” She shook the old man’s hand as well. His skin felt leathery and dry. “You knew we were coming, didn’t you?” she added.

  “Yes—yes, I did.”

  “Was it Mally who told you?”

  “Ali, yes. You’ve met the little bandit, haven’t you?”

  Ali nodded. There was a moment’s silence then that began to lengthen uncomfortably. Neither Ali nor Valenti knew quite how to begin, while Bannon stood back, just along for the ride.

  “Do you all drink tea?” Lewis asked suddenly. After nods all around, he smiled. “Well, then why don’t we step inside while I put the kettle on and we can find out what brought the three of you here today.”

  He moved to the front door as he spoke, ushering them all inside. Ali tugged Valenti’s free hand as they went through the door, her mouth shaping a silent “Wow” as she took in the walls of books.

  “How long have you lived here, Mr. Datchery?” Valenti asked.

  “A very long time. And please—call me Lewis. We don’t stand much on formality here.”

  He busied himself, filling a kettle from a water container, checking the stove for fuel, then setting the kettle on top. Adding another log to the stove, he sat down at the table and waved them all to seats.

  “So what does bring you to New Wolding?” he asked.

  “Well, that’s kind of hard to explain,” Valenti said. He paused to think about where he wanted the conversation to go, then decided to take a different tack. “You’re sort of off the beaten path here, aren’t you?”

  Lewis nodded. “We don’t have much commerce with the outside world. We grow what foodstuffs we need and the few staples we require beyond that are brought to us by the Gypsies.”

  Valenti thought of the touring car and its occupants. That explained the way they’d looked. He should have known. He’d run into Gypsies in New York, but he’d just never put it all together.

  “Why?” he asked then.

  Lewis looked puzzled. “Why what?”

  “Well, what’re you doing here? Are you folks, you know, Mormons or Amish or something like that? I mean, do you live here because of…religious differences or…” His voice trailed off as he realized what he sounded like. “Look. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come off all heavy with the questions or anything. I know it’s none of our business what you’re doing here, but living close like we do—like Ali and I do, anyway—we’ve been hearing things and…” How did he explain the stag? “It’s the music, you know what I’m trying to say? We hear it and it makes…it makes a difference. So we’re curious about it—like where it’s coming from, who’s making it, and why. Mostly why.”

  Lewis smiled. The kettle began to rattle on the stove and he glanced at Ali. “Would you mind seeing to the tea?” he asked.

  “I’ll get it,” Bannon said.

  “Thank you.” Lewis regarded Valenti and Ali. “It’s a long and not altogether interesting story what we’re doing here. We are most of us originally from Wealdborough in England, from a small village named Wolding for Wold Hill, which stands above the village. Around the turn of the century, we turned our backs on what was then the modern world and returned to…older ways, including older ways of worship.

  “It was Tommy’s piping that was the initial catalyst for the change—not the Tommy that pipes for us now, but his grandfather. Again, our only contact with the outside world was with the Travellers—the Gypsies—and it was they who told us about the great forests of this continent.

  “A number of us wanted to come here. We felt that in this land we would be closer to the mystery that the pipes call up, and so we came, a dozen families in all, to build a place for ourselves here. We named it New Wolding to remind us of the land that we had left behind, and here we have lived ever since.”

  Bannon rolled his eyes, but Valenti and Ali leaned closer to the old man.

  “What is this…mystery that you’re talking about?” Valenti asked.

  “In Gaul and Britain, he was given the name Cernunnos. In Wales, he was sometimes called Mabon. The Germanic people knew him as Uller, the winter bowman. The Greeks and Romans knew him in various guises: as Apollo and Orion; the Egyptians as Amen-Ra; the Hindus as Surya. He appears in the bible as Nimrod—Genesis describing him as a ‘mighty hunter before the Lord.’ He is a solar god, a huntsman and the lord of animals, and he has been both the pursuer with his own pack of hounds, as well as the pursued, with the hounds chasing him.

  “The various descriptions of him become confusing when you try to put them all together, but I suppose that is a part of his mystery, just as the moon’s White Goddess has her own secrets. I like to think of him as the Green Man, an earthier view of the legendary Robin Hood—a Trickster figure, if you will—but I think the name that best sums him up is Pan.”

  There was a moment’s silence as they all digested that. Ali and Valenti sat fascinated. By the stove, Bannon shook his head. Tony was taking all this too seriously. And talking the way he did in front of the kid who, well, sure, she was a good kid, but come on…

  Bannon wondered when was the last time that Mario had spent some time with Tony Valenti. Everything Bannon had ever heard about the man was good, but maybe since the Magaddinos got on his case something had happened to him so that he wasn’t operating with quite a full load anymore. The way he just sat there taking in all this bullshit about gods…

  “But you said he was a sun god,” Ali said. She knew her mythologies, even if the others didn’t. “That the Greeks knew him as Apollo and Orion. Wasn’t Pan a Greek god, too?”

  Lewis nodded. “I told you that it becomes confusing. But the reason that Pan serves best, I think, is that he is so adaptable. There is something of Pan in each of the gods I named. And he has always been a reflection of what one brings to him.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ali said.

  “I don’t like to throw semantics around, Ali, but if you did understand, he wouldn’t be a mystery.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “That’s what the native people of this land call the little spirits of the wood—manitous. Little mysteries. And Kitche Manitou is the Great Mystery.”

  “But Pan…” Ali frowned. “You said he’s a reflection—”

  “That is his Trickster aspect. He becomes what you bring to him. If you approach him with fear, he fills you with panic.” Lewis smiled as he used the word. “If you approach him with lust, he appears as a lecherous satyr. If you approach him reverently, he becomes a majestic figure. If you approach him with evil, he appears as a demonic figure.”

  “You mean like Satan?”

  “Exactly. The Christians weren’t stupid. They borrowed what they could, from wherever it would be useful. They frowned on merriment and dancing, so they made Lucifer over in the shape of the Pagan Pan who embodied—at least for them—all that they stood against. But what can you expect from a religion that is based on so much suffering? It’s little wonder that faerie couldn’t abide the sight of their crucifix with the son of their god nailed to it. Did you know that the cross originally stood for the Tree of Life—for nourishment and life-giving? They turned it into a symbol of death.”

  Ali shook her head. “It doesn’t stand for death—it stands for rebirth. Christ died so that our souls could be saved.”

  “But it is still a symbol of suffering. A symbol that man must suffer the trials of this world before he can reap the benefits of the one thereafter. In Heaven. I don’t perceive life
as something that must be suffered through for some dubious reward in the hereafter. Life can be and should be a joy right here and now!”

  “It just means you’re supposed to be a good person,” Ali said.

  “I can agree with being a good person, but Christianity doesn’t espouse that—at least not by its actions. Are you a Christian?”

  “Yes. Well, that is, I don’t go to church, but I believe in God, I guess…”

  “We’re getting a little off track here,” Valenti said.

  No kidding? Bannon thought. It wouldn’t surprise him if what they’d stumbled on to here was some out-of-the-way asylum for the terminally strange.

  “Just what exactly is it that’s running out there in the woods?” Valenti wanted to know. “Pan? The devil? What?”

  “We saw him as a stag,” Ali added. “Not as a goatman.”

  “He’s been known to wear both those manifestations…and many more,” Lewis explained. “And as I said before, I prefer to think of him as the Green Man—a brown-skinned man, tall and antlered, wearing a mantle of green leaves.”

  “But what does he do?” Valenti asked.

  “He doesn’t do anything. He simply is. We are the ones that do, depending on our nature.”

  Valenti studied the old man. “And you folks worship him?”

  “Not in the way you mean the word.” He looked them over, one by one. “What you should do,” he said finally, “is stay here this evening. Come to the stone with us. Hear Tommy’s piping close at hand. Follow the steps of the dance. Perhaps the mystery will manifest, perhaps not. But you’ll be closer to understanding then.”

  There was a long moment’s silence.

  “My mom’s not going to be back till late,” Ali reminded Valenti.

  He nodded. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but what he was worrying about was that maybe this was some kind of a cult and he didn’t want Ali mixed up in it. On the other hand, he’d heard the music, and whatever else it was, it wasn’t evil. It wasn’t wrong. The mystery is what you bring to it, he thought, repeating what the old man had told them. What the hell did that mean? He looked over at Bannon, who was pouring them each a mug of tea. Bannon met Valenti’s gaze but gave him no indication of what he thought.

  “Okay,” Valenti said. “We’ll stay and check it out. Why not?”

  “Why not indeed?” Lewis said and smiled.

  Valenti looked sharply at him, trying to read something in the old man’s features, in his eyes. Lewis returned his gaze. Humor crinkled his face with laugh lines, but it wasn’t a mocking humor. Valenti wasn’t sure what it was. It made him feel a little strange, one step out of kilter, like he did when he listened to the music. It wasn’t unpleasant; he just didn’t feel in control.

  At home, sitting on his steps, he didn’t mind that feeling. It promised him things: solace, peace of mind. Here, it would be sharper. Here, he wouldn’t be able to just shut it off and walk back into his house. He heard a pitter-patter of rain on the roof and realized that the storm had finally come.

  “Is the rain going to postpone this…whatever it is tonight?” he asked.

  “The rain will stop before too long,” Lewis said with the authority of one who lived more by the weather than by a watch on his wrist. “You’ll see.”

  “Here,” Bannon said, setting a mug in front of Valenti. “Have some tea.” His eyes said, you and me, we’ve got to talk.

  Valenti got up and went back to the stove with Bannon as Lewis began to show Ali around the bookcases. “What’s the problem?” he asked in a low voice.

  “This is crazy—you know that? Gods running around the woods and all this shit. The only thing we’ve got to worry about out here is the Don’s boys tracking us down.”

  Valenti glanced over at Ali. She looked eager and ready for the evening, excitement barely under control.

  “I know this doesn’t mean anything to you,” he said, “but it’s something we’ve got to look into. It’s important for us—Ali and me.”

  “And that’s another thing,” Bannon said. “I tell you, you’re too free and easy in front of this kid. You’ve got real problems, Tony, and you’re not helping yourself going on nature hikes while Magaddino has all the time in the world to set things up out there where it counts.”

  Valenti shook his head. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. And added a silent, I hope, to himself. “Besides, you think any of Magaddino’s people are going to find us back here in the bush? We’re probably in the safest place we could be right now.”

  “Just saying this whole village doesn’t go weird on us and try to take us down.”

  Valenti touched the gun in his pocket. “We’ll just keep our eyes open going in,” he said. “That’s all.”

  Bannon sighed. “You’re the boss.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Valenti said. He picked up a tea mug and brought it over to Ali, who’d returned to the table. “Salute,” he said, raising his own mug to her.

  Ali grinned at him and took a sip.

  8

  Earl watched Fingers take the weapons out of the suitcase, one by one, and lay them on the bed. He glanced at Louie, standing by the window, then back at Fingers. What they had here was a fucking arsenal. His man hadn’t believed it when Earl had put the order in earlier today. “What’re you going to do with all this?” the man had asked. “Start a war?” Earl had simply shaken his head, unsure.

  He still wasn’t sure. He could understand the handguns—anything had more punch than those two little peashooters that Fucceri and Maita had smuggled in through customs. It was the heavy-duty artillery that had him puzzled. A 9mm Ingram submachine gun. A.30 calibre Browning automatic rifle. A sawed-off shotgun. An auto-reload shotgun. Together with the pair of Smith & Wesson .38s, they really did have enough here to set up their own army.

  “You figure we’ll be needing all this?” he asked.

  Louie turned from the window. “It’s nice to be prepared,” he said. “What we’d like is to knock him down a flight of stairs, run his car off the road—something simple. But if it comes right down to it, I’m ready to shoot him into little pieces. Be my pleasure.”

  Fingers grinned. He was taking apart one of the .38s. When he got back to what he was doing, the grin was replaced with a frown. “You got burned,” he said as he sighted down the barrel.

  “What do you mean, I got burned?”

  “Check the calibration on this—it’s going to throw off your shot. The breech is worn, too.” He spun the cylinder and shook his head. “I hope the rest of these are in better condition.”

  “Hey, what do you expect on short notice? This isn’t the U.S. of A., pal. We got handgun laws here like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I’m familiar with Canadian regulations,” Fingers said.

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “Okay,” Louie said. “Let’s take it easy. Earl here’s doing the best he can for us, Fingers. Aren’t you, Earl?”

  “You bet,” Earl said. What a pair of fucking monkeys. “So are we hitting Valenti tonight, or what?”

  “The way I figure it,” Louie said, “if he’s not gone, he’s going to be expecting us tonight or tomorrow, so what we’re going to do is lay off for a couple of days. That gives us a chance to set things up right.”

  “What if it’s taking him a couple of days to get out of there?” Earl asked. He waved a hand at the weapons on the bed. “With all that shit in our hands, he won’t be going nowhere if we hit him now. Wait too long and all you’ve got is an empty house.”

  Louie shook his head. “If he’s going, he’s gone now. Maybe we’ll take a quick spin round there later tonight—check it out. But if he’s there, he’ll be holing up tight. The thing we got to do then is keep him on edge. He’ll be sitting in there waiting for us, knowing he fucked up, knowing we’re coming. I don’t care how cool he used to be, he’s carrying lead in his leg now and he’s lost his edge. The man just won’t be able to move fast.”

  “
Yeah, but…”

  “Look,” Louie said. “We’re doing this my way and we’re doing this right. Any dumb ass could blow him away. I want him taken out clean. So clean, the police won’t be looking for anybody, even when they figure out who he really is.”

  “Okay,” Earl said. “You’re calling the shots.”

  Louie nodded. He didn’t bother explaining that he’d already tried the frontal approach on Valenti that time in Malta—hit him two, maybe three times, and the guy still disappeared like a ghost. It hadn’t done a whole lot for Louie’s rep. So this time he wanted it to be perfectly planned. He wanted to work in so close that he could tap Tony on the shoulder just before they blew him away. If they blew him away.

  Louie also liked the idea of taking Tony out without any evidence that it was a hit. In a way, Tony was an example. For two years or better he’d been thumbing his nose at the fratellanza and getting away with it. That wasn’t good for business. Other people might think they could get away with it too. But if he took Tony out without making it look like a hit, and let the word go out that Louie Fucceri had been in the area, it wouldn’t take too long for those others in the business to put two and two together.

  It made a nice example. Told them Louie Fucceri worked clean, and he always finished a job he started. That had been one of Tony’s own specialities before he fucked up. Louie liked the idea of using it on him.

  “So who’s going to check the place out tonight?” Earl asked.

  “We’ll work that out later.” Louie paused as a thought came to him. “What happened to the guy you were with last night? Did he know we were flying in?”

  Earl shook his head. “He doesn’t know dick about you being here. He got hurt last night so I left him at a friend’s place.”

  “What kind of place?”

  “A cottage—maybe a twenty-minute drive from Valenti’s.”

  “Maybe we should work out of there—what do you think?”