by Susan Cooper
Merriman, the deferential butler, led the way into the crowd. It was the oddest gathering Will had ever seen. Suddenly half the village was living in close intimacy, a tiny colony of beds and suitcases and blankets. People hailed them from small nests scattered all round the huge room: a bed or a mattress tucked into a corner or fenced in by a chair or two. Miss Bell waved gaily from a sofa. It was like an untidy hotel with everyone camping in the foyer. Miss Greythorne was sitting stiff and upright in her wheelchair beside the fire, reading The Phoenix and the Carpet to a speechless group of village children. Like everyone else in the room, she looked uncommonly bright and cheerful.
“Funny,” Will said, as they picked their way through. “Things are absolutely awful, and yet people look much happier than usual. Look at them all. Bubbling.”
“They are English,” Merriman said.
“Quite right,” said Will’s father. “Splendid in adversity, tedious when safe. Never content, in fact. We’re an odd lot. You’re not English, are you?” he said suddenly to Merriman, and Will was astonished to hear a slightly hostile note in his voice.
“A mongrel,” Merriman said blandly. “It’s a long story.” His deep-set eyes glittered down at Mr Stanton, and then Miss Greythorne caught sight of them all.
“Ah, there you are! Evenin’, Mr Stanton, boys, how are you? What d’you think of this, eh? Isn’t it a lark?” As she put down the book, the circle of children parted to admit the newcomers, and the twins and their father were absorbed into talk.
Merriman said softly to Will, in the Old Speech, “Look into the fire, for the length of time that it takes you to trace the shape of each of the Great Signs with your right hand. Look into the fire. Make it your friend. Do not move your eyes for all that time.”
Wondering, Will moved forward as if to warm himself, and did as he was told. Staring at the leaping flames of the enormous log fire in the hearth, he ran his fingers gently over the Sign of Iron, the Sign of Bronze, the Sign of Wood, the Sign of Stone. He spoke to the fire, not as he had done long ago, when challenged to put it out, but as an Old One, out of Gramarye. He spoke to it of the red fire in the king’s hall, of the blue fire dancing over the marshes, of the yellow fire lighted on the beacon hills for Beltane and Hallowe’en; of wild-fire and need-fire and the cold fire of the sea; of the sun and of the stars. The flames leaped. His fingers reached the end of their journey round the last Sign. He looked up. He looked, and he saw . . .
. . . he saw, not the genial muddle of collected villagers in a tall, panelled modern room, lit by electric standard lamps, but the great candle-shadowed stone hall, with its tapestry hangings and high vaulted roof, that he had seen once before, a world ago. He looked up from the log fire that was the same fire, but blazing now in a different hearth, and he saw as before, out of the past, the two heavy carved chairs, one on either side of the fireplace. In the chair on the right sat Merriman, cloaked, and in the chair on the left sat a figure whom he had last seen, not a day before, lying on a bier as if dead. He bent quickly and knelt at the old lady’s feet. “Madam,” he said.
She touched his hair gently. “Will.”
“I am sorry for breaking the circle, that first time,” he said. “Are you — well — now?”
“Everything is well,” she said in her soft clear voice. “And will be, if we can win the last battle for the Signs.”
“What must I do?”
“Break the power of the cold. Stop the snow and cold and frost. Release this country from the hold of the Dark. All with the next of the circle, the Sign of Fire.”
Will looked at her helplessly. “But I haven’t got it. I don’t know how.”
“One sign of fire you have with you already. The other waits. In its winning, you will break the cold. But before that, our own circle of flame must be completed, that is an echo of the Sign, and to do that you must take power away from the Dark.” She pointed to the great wrought-iron ring of candle-sockets on the table, the circle quartered by a cross. As she raised her arm, the light glinted on the rose ring on her hand. The outer ring of candles was complete, twelve white columns burning exactly as they had when Will was last in the hall. But the cross-arms still stood empty-socketed; nine holes gaped.
Will stared at them unhappily. This part of his quest left him in despair. Nine great enchanted candles, to come out of nowhere. Power to be seized from the Dark. A Sign that he had already, without knowing it. Another that he must find without knowing where or how.
“Have courage,” the old lady said. Her voice was faint and tired; when Will looked at her, he saw that she herself seemed faint in outline, as if she were no more than a shadow. He reached out his hand in concern, but she drew back her arm. “Not yet. . . . There is another kind of work to be done yet, too. . . . You see how the candles burn, Will.” Her voice dwindled, then rallied. “They will show you.”
Will looked at the brilliant candle flames; the tall ring of light held his eyes. As he looked, he felt a strange jolting sensation, as if the whole world had shuddered. He looked up, and he saw . . .
. . . and he saw, when he raised his eyes, that he was back in the manor of Miss Greythorne’s time, Will Stanton’s time, with the panelled walls and the murmur of many voices, and one voice speaking in his ear. It was Dr Armstrong.
“. . . asking for you,” he was saying. Mr Stanton was standing beside him. The doctor paused and looked oddly at Will. “Are you all right, young man?”
“Yes — yes, I’m fine. Sorry. What was it you said?”
“I was saying that your old tramp friend is asking for you. ’The seventh son’, he lyrically puts it, though how he knew that I can’t say.”
“I am though, aren’t I?” Will said. “I didn’t know till the other day about the little brother who died. Tom.”
Dr Armstrong’s eyes went a long way away for a moment. “Tom,” he said. “The first baby. I remember. That’s a while ago.” His gaze came back. “Yes, you are. So’s your father, for that matter.”
Will’s head jerked round, and he saw his father grin.
“You were a seventh son, Dad?”
“Certainly,” Roger Stanton said, his round pink face reminiscent. “Half the family was killed in the last war, but there were twelve of us once. You knew that, didn’t you? Proper tribe, it was. Your mother loved it, being an only child herself. I dare say that’s why she had all you lot. Appalling, in this over-populated age. Yes, you’re the seventh son of a seventh son — we used to joke about it when you were a baby. But not later on, in case you got ideas about having second sight, or whatever it is they say.”
“Ha, ha,” said Will with some effort. “Did you find out what’s wrong with the old tramp, Dr Armstrong?”
“To tell you the truth he has me rather confused,” the doctor said. “He should have a sedative in his disturbed state, but he’s got the lowest pulse rate and blood pressure I’ve ever come across in my life, so I don’t know. . . . There’s nothing physically wrong with him, so far as I can tell. Probably he’s just feeble-minded, like so many of these old wanderers — not that you see many of them nowadays, they’ve nearly disappeared. Anyway, he keeps shouting to see you, Will, so if you can put up with it I’ll take you in for a moment. He’s harmless enough.”
The Walker was making a lot of noise. He stopped when he saw Will, and his eyes narrowed. His mood had clearly changed; he was confident again, the lined, triangular face bright. He looked over Will’s shoulder at Mr Stanton and the doctor. “Go away,” he said.
“Hum,” said Dr Armstrong, but he drew Will’s father with him nearer the door, within sight but out of earshot. In the small cloakroom that was serving as sick-bay, one other casualty — the broken leg — lay in bed, but he appeared to be asleep.
“You can’t keep me here,” the Walker hissed. “The Rider will come for me.”
“You were scared stiff of the Rider once,” Will said. “I saw you. Have you forgotten that too?”
“I forget nothing,” t
he Walker said scornfully. “That fear is gone. It went when the Sign left me. Let me go, let me get out to my people.” A curious stiff formality seemed to be coming into his speech.
“Your people didn’t mind leaving you to die in the snow,” Will said. “Anyway I’m not keeping you here. I just had you brought to the doctor. You can hardly expect him to let you go out in the middle of a storm.”
“Then the Rider will come,” the old man said. His eyes glittered, and he raised his voice so that he was shrieking to everyone in the room. “The Rider will come! The Rider will come!”
Will left him, as his father and the doctor came rapidly towards the bed.
“What on earth was all that about?” said Mr Stanton.
The Walker, with the doctor bending over him, had fallen back and lapsed into angry mumbling again.
“Goodness knows,” said Will. “He was just talking nonsense. I think Dr Armstrong’s right, he’s a bit cracked.” He looked all round the room, but saw no sign of Merriman.
“What’s happened to Mr Lyon?”
“He’s somewhere,” his father said vaguely. “Find the twins, would you, Will? I’ll go and see if the storm’s dropped enough to let us out yet.”
Will stood in the bustling hall, as people came and went with blankets and pillows, cups of tea, sandwiches from the kitchen, empty plates going back again. He felt odd, detached, as though he were suspended in the middle of this preoccupied world and yet not part of it. He looked at the great hearth. Even the roar of the flames could not drown out the howling wind outside, and the lash of icy snow against the windowpanes.
The flames leapt, holding Will’s eyes. From somewhere outside Time, Merriman said into his mind: “Take care. It is true. The Rider will come for him. That is why I had you bring him here, to a place strengthened by Time. The Rider would have come to your own house otherwise, and all that comes with the Rider too . . . .”
“Will!” Miss Greythorne’s imperious contralto came ringing. “Come over here!” And Will looked back into the present, and went to her. He saw Robin beside her chair, and Paul approaching with a long flat box of a familiar shape in his hands.
“We thought we’d have a kind of concert until the wind drops,” said Miss Greythorne briskly. “Everyone doin’ a little bit. Everyone who fancies the idea, that is. A cailey, or whatever the Scots call ’em.”
Will looked at the happy gleam in his brother’s eye. “And Paul’s going to play that old flute of yours that he likes so much.”
“In due course,” Paul said. “And you’re going to sing.”
“All right.” Will looked at Robin.
“I,” said Robin, “am going to lead the applause. There’ll be a lot of that — we appear to be a madly talented village. Miss Bell will recite a poem, three boys from the Dorney end have a folk group — two of them even brought their guitars. Old Mr Dewhurst will do a monologue, just try and stop him. Somebody’s little daughter wants to dance. There’s no end to it.”
“I thought, Will,” said Miss Greythorne, “that perhaps you would begin. If you were just to start singing, you know, anything you like, then gradually people would stop to listen until there’d be a complete hush — much better than me ringin’ a bell or something and saying, ’We will all now have a concert,’ don’t you agree?”
“I suppose so, yes,” said Will, though nothing could have been further from his mind at that moment than the idea of making peaceful music. He thought briefly, and into his mind came a melancholy little song that the school music master had transposed for his voice just the term before, as an experiment. Feeling rather a show-off, Will opened his mouth where he stood, and began to sing.
“White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
Still hangs the edge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.”
The talking around him fell away into silence. He saw faces turned in his direction, and nearly dropped a note as he recognised some that he had hoped to see, but had not found before. There they were, keeping quietly in the background; Farmer Dawson, Old George, John Smith and his wife, the Old Ones ready again to make their circle if need be. Near by was the rest of the Dawson family, Will’s father standing with them.
“The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.”
From the corner of one eye he saw, with a shock, the figure of the Walker; with a blanket wrapped round him like a cloak, the old man was standing in the doorway of the little sickroom, listening. For an instant Will saw his face, and was astonished. All guile and terror were gone from that lined triangle; there was only sadness on it, and hopeless longing. There was even a glint of tears in the eyes. It was the face of a man shown something immensely precious that he had lost.
For a second, Will felt that with his music he could draw the Walker into the Light. He gazed at him as he sang, making the plaintive notes an appeal, and the Walker stood limp and unhappy, looking back.
“But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.”
The room had stilled dramatically as he sang, and the boy’s clear soprano that always seemed to belong to a stranger soared high and remote through the air. Now there was a small silence, the only part of performing that really meant anything to him, and afterward quite a lot of clapping. Will heard it from a long way away. Miss Greythorne called to them all, “We thought, to pass the time, that anyone who feels inclined might do a little entertainin’. To drown out the storm. Who’d like to join in?”
There was a cheerful buzz of voices, and Paul began to play the old Manor flute, very soft and low. Its gentle sweetness filled the room, and Will stood more confidently as he listened and thought of the Light. But in the next moment the music could no longer bring him strength. He could not hear it at all. His hair prickled, his bones ached; he knew that something, somebody was coming near, wishing ill to the Manor and all inside it, and most of all himself.
The wind rose. It whipped screeching at the window. There was a tremendous thump of a knock at the door. Across the room, the Walker jumped up, his face twisted again, tight with waiting. Paul played, unhearing. The crashing knock came again. None of them could hear, Will realised suddenly; though the wind was near to deafening him, it was not for their ears, nor would they know what was happening now. The crash came a third time, and he knew that he was bound to answer. He walked alone through unheeding people to the door, took hold of the big iron circle that was the handle, muttered some words under his breath in the Old Speech, and flung open the door.
Snow spat in at him, sleet slashed his face, winds whistled through the hall. Out in the darkness, the great black horse reared up high over Will’s head, hooves flailing, eyes rolling white, the foam flying from bared teeth. And above it gleamed the blue eyes of the Rider and the flaring red of his hair. In spite of himself Will cried out, and threw up one arm instinctively in self-defence.
And the black stallion screamed and fell back with the Rider into the Dark; and the door swung shut, and there was all at once nothing in Will’s ears except the sweet lilt of the old flute as Paul played on. People sat and sprawled tranquilly about just as they had before. Slowly Will brought down his arm, still crooked defensively up over his head, and as he did so he noticed something that he had totally forgotten. On the underside of the forearm, which had been facing the Black Rider when he threw up his arm, was the burned-in scar of the Sign of Iron. In that other great hall, the first time, he had burned himself on the Sign when the Dark was making its first attempt on him. The Lady had
healed the burn. Will had forgotten it was there. “One sign of fire you have with you already. . . . ”
So that was what she had meant.
One sign of fire had kept the Dark at bay; driven it out of its strongest attack, perhaps. Will leaned limply against the wall, and tried to breathe more slowly. But as he looked across the tranquil crowd listening to their music, he saw again a figure that sent all his confidence crashing into nothing, and the quick instinct of Gramarye told him that he had been tricked. He had thought he was out-facing a challenge, and so he was. But in doing it, he had opened the door between the Dark and the Walker, and thus in some way so strengthened the Walker that the old man had gained a power he had been waiting for.
For the Walker was standing tall now, his eyes bright, his head flung up, and his back straight. He held one arm high, and called out in a strong clear voice: “Come wolf, come hound, come cat, come rat, come Held, come Holda, I call you in! Come Ura, come Tann, come Coll, come Quert, come Morra, come Master, I bring you in!”
The summons went on, a long list of names, all familiar to Will from the Book of Gramarye. In Miss Greythorne’s hall, no one could see or hear; all went on as before, and through the ending of Paul’s music, and the loud determined beginning of old Mr Dewhurst’s monologue, no eyes that glanced in Will’s direction seemed to see him. He wondered whether his father, still standing talking to the Dawsons, would shortly notice that his youngest son was not to be seen.
But very soon as the ringing summons from the Walker went on and on, he ceased to wonder, for under his senses the hall began subtly to change; the old hall of the Lady came back into his consciousness and absorbed more and more of the appearance of the present. Friends and family faded; only the Walker remained clear as before, standing now at the far end of the great hall away from the fire. And while Will still stared at the group in which his father stood, even while it faded he saw take place the doubling by which the Old Ones were able to move themselves in and out of Time. He saw one form of Frank Dawson step easily out of the first, leaving his other self to fade as part of the present; the second form grew clearer and clearer as it came towards him, and after it in the same way came Old George, Young John, and the blue-eyed woman, and Will knew this had been the manner of his own arrival too.
