Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (Mythago Wood)

by Robert Holdstock

  Guiwenneth was awake, her head resting on a fat, feather pillow, a wet pouch of herbs pressed against the bruise from the slingshot; her breath was sickly with some medication that she had willingly consumed. Issabeau sat beside her, dark eyes watching me, one slender hand on the pale forehead below the tumble of luxuriant red hair of the wounded woman. She smiled at me as I closed the flaps of the covered wagon behind me. I wondered if it was for her that Someone now rode backwards behind the wagon.

  ‘Ellez trizda,’ she said in that deep, slow voice. ‘Ellez trayze trizda, mayze ellez sauve; le sonje ez forta.’

  Issabeau left the wagon. I came closer to Guiwenneth who reached out for my face with both hands, smiled and mouthed a kiss to me. There were tears on her cheeks and after a moment she looked at the sack I carried and asked to hold the head of Manandoun for a while, and though she kept it inside its leather bag, she talked to him as if he were there in front of her and answering back.

  ‘Trim his beard,’ she said suddenly and gave me back the bag.

  ‘Every whisker,’ I avowed, and kissed her on the lips. ‘Guiwenneth …’

  ‘Trim his beard!’ she said again, gently dismissing my moment of longing, and I left her, following Gwyr to the oilcart.

  Here, under a cover made from the skins of wildcats, a solitary man supervised all such ritual as the oiling of heads and the preparing of corpses. That he was a so-called ‘druid’ did not impress me, since he was neither exaggeratedly dressed for some festival of poetry and singing, nor a wild man, hair dishevelled, eyes glowing with the effects of hallucinogenic mushrooms. He was scruffy, his hair long and uncombed, his face covered with a grey stubble and heavily wrinkled, but his hands were very smooth, like the hands of a youth. His whole body was running with sweat (though this was deliberate, I suspected, since every so often he scraped the sweat from his skin with a curved, iron knife and let it run into a small, pottery receptacle). His manner was very matter-of-fact.

  Gwyr explained that it was Kylhuk’s wish that I prepare the head for Manandoun’s funeral. Although it was customary for a man like Manandoun to be interred with his horse and chariot, it was in Manandoun’s fate that he would be burned after death so that he could ride to the Islands of Fire, where a quest was awaiting him, so a pyre had been erected. The druid spread a wolfskin blanket on the floor of the wagon, fur side down, then told me to place the head upon it. Manandoun looked ghastly and bloody, his face still in its final grimace, hair plastered to the skin with gore. Next to it, the druid placed a crudely hewn block of elm wood, approximating to the size and shape of Manandoun’s head.

  The first task, then, was to wash the head and comb through the hair and beard. I did all of these things, the druid patiently showing me how.

  Whatever I did to the true head, I mimicked on the block of elm.

  When the cleaning was complete, a long iron knife was used to trim the end of the neck; then the neck was covered with a woollen cloth, dyed blue, and tied tightly with a leather thong, to stop any further seepage.

  A sharp flint blade was used to shave the stubble from the cheeks, and with a pair of iron shears I trimmed the beard, moustache and hair into a neat and precise style. On the wood, I scoured simple lines.

  With the eyelids closed, and a small stone carved with Manandoun’s totem wedged below the tongue, the head was ready for oiling. The druid guided my hands as I massaged the cheeks and the scalp. The cedar oil was pungent and enlivening. An iron awl was used to pierce the septum of the right nostril, Egyptian fashion, and oil was poured into the brain cavity before the entrance was sealed with beeswax.

  The wood was then oiled, its crude nose pierced with a knife. Finally, a chalk and water mixture was combed through the washed hair with fingers, making a fan, a peacock’s display of stiff, white hair, a crest around the head. The same mixture was caked on the block.

  When this had dried and the hair was rigid – it didn’t take long – Manandoun was ready. I picked up the head and presented it carefully to Gwyr, who took it away and returned it to the dead man’s wife.

  ‘Well done,’ he said as he departed. ‘Since the way you have made him look is the way he will live for the rest of his life, he will be more than pleased with you. Don’t forget the trimmings of his hair. His wife will need them. And the block, that tree-head, is to be buried with the widow when she goes, so treat it kindly.’

  The druid had already gathered up the trimmings and put them into a cloth pouch. Like a Victorian pharmacist, he was now busy stoppering pottery jars of unguents and potions and sorting out the wagon, where no doubt soon he would receive another corpse to dress.

  * * *

  And that was that for the better part of two more days, during which Legion lumbered forward towards the Long Person and the secret she held, and Issabeau and Someone son of Somebody became increasingly intrigued by each other. Of that, more later. But then Kylhuk sent for us all, all of the Forlorn Hope who had become my friends, to be his guests at the funeral of Manandoun. Jarag had vanished into another season, helping to guide the garrison, but the rest of us went back to where Manandoun was laid out on his pyre, his proud, chalk-whitened head on a stone beside it, ready to be replaced with the wood when the fires were lit.

  I rode there with Gwyr.

  Eleven

  As we approached the tent with its four pennants, each of a boar’s tusk crossed by a rose, Gwyr said to me, ‘I forgot to mention something. Kylhuk is very angry with you.’

  I slowed the pace of my approach and looked at the man, who was behaving in a slightly shifty way. ‘Angry about what.’

  ‘About your comments that he is a fat man, and would be a better warrior and a keener fighter if he were not so heavy around the waist, the flesh hanging on him like great folds of tree fungus, and all because he eats too much and drinks too much and prefers to ride horses, or travel in chariots, rather than running like the younger men you have cruelly compared him to.’

  I stopped the horse completely and turned it round.

  ‘Is there some problem?’ Gwyr asked.’

  ‘Yes. I made no such comments, and I have suddenly lost my appetite. Again.’

  ‘You made no such comments?

  ‘Would I dare make such comments?

  ‘Comments must have been made, why else is the great man Kylhuk so furious with you?

  ‘I made no comments! Tell the great man that I’m ill. I’m returning to the Forlorn Hope. I feel safer there!’

  ‘You cannot do that. You must face Kylhuk and explain your insulting behaviour, and your cruel slaps and pinches to the fat that you have complained about.’

  Ah! That was it, then. When he had buried Manandoun in his heart, though the funeral had not yet happened, but when the tears had become private and not public, he had begun to remember my inadvertent attempts to hold on safely as he rode around the Silent Towers, looking for his friend. He had been made painfully aware of his burden of flesh by my painful grip, and in his fury, being the man he was and from the type of warrior caste that he was, he had invented stories and insults to displace and reflect away his own embarrassment with himself. As a Celtic warrior, from whatever period of time or from wherever in Europe, he would have been ostracised for his lazy weight. Because he was a leader, and greatly feared, he was tolerated and respected, but the degree of sarcasm that I had already detected in conversations about Kylhuk, the great man, clearly suggested that this respect was being tested, and indeed, that his own self-respect was being challenged.

  The Celts simply did not tolerate a paunch on a man, especially not a young man, and certainly not a king. (Kylhuk was not young, but he was a king in his own domain.) And on such dissatisfactions as being overweight, regarded as a discourtesy, were changes in kingship made.

  I wasn’t sure that I was the young blood to take on such a challenge, but from what Gwyr had said, Kylhuk had fashioned a grand account of my insults with which to test me.

  ‘I didn’t say a word,�
� I said to Gwyr, adding, ‘I grabbed his belly for balance. He slapped me down.’

  ‘I know,’ Gwyr said. ‘Everyone knows. And it would certainly have been better for us all if you had found something more heroic to hold on to. But there it is, it is done, you have failed us. He is now so aware that he must stop eating and drinking if he is to run with the hound like CuCullain, the fleet-footed CuCullain, the iron-bodied CuCullain, and not run behind the hound like Dubno, the thorn-snagging Dubno, the breath-gasping Dubno, he is so aware of this that he is sarcastic at all eating and drinking, no matter who the eater or the drinker might be, man, woman, child or dog, sarcastic at all feasting unless it is with plums and water.’

  Plums and water?

  Events became even clearer to me! The great man had gone on a diet.

  And for ‘sarcasm’ read ‘criticism’.

  And the great man’s companions were not happy about this. Any of this.

  It wasn’t Kylhuk, I suspected, who would be angry with me, but the warrior guests at his nightly, knightly feast.

  ‘And you, Gwyr,’ I ventured, turning back to finish the ride to Kylhuk’s hold at the centre of Legion. ‘Are you angry with me too?’

  ‘Let’s see what he offers in the way of hospitality,’ the Interpreter said with ill-disguised disgruntlement.

  I believe I laughed, thinking at the time that the man was referring only to meat and mead. To Gwyr, though, and to all who were of a high caste in the society which had made them heroes, hospitality was as complex a concept as any I could ever wish to know, and single, mortal combat could and would be initiated on so sublimely senseless a notion that a man wearing a red flower, who had not shaved for three days, had been denied the first cup of mead at the moment the king sat down to drink after the death of his champion in combat in a river.

  Gwyr hinted this to me as we rode through the thorn and wicker fence and the lines of flaring torches that defined the oval funeral and feasting area. The strange notion he had described to me was another geisa, that taboo or demand on a noble which might need to be addressed once or many times in life, not one of Kylhuk’s in this instance, Gwyr had simply been giving me an example.

  For the moment, though, Gwyr led me through the wicker fences, through the shielding torches, through the grim-faced guards, to the cluster of crude tables, piled with bread, fruit and clay flagons of sharp-smelling liquor, where we found ourselves to be not just guests but honoured guests at the funeral feast for Manandoun, seated with Kylhuk himself, and so at last I met the man face to face and not cheek to spine, or fingers to fat!

  ‘Most of this celebration is for my friend, the Wise Counsel, Manandoun. I miss him. I will miss him all my life in this world—’

  He looked into the night sky and roared: ‘Taranis hear me, strike me with thunder if I lie! Modron, bring us together to hunt the great-tusked, ever-bleeding black boar, wounded after I put my spear in its side, and Manandoun put his spear in likewise, though less effectively, that deadly boar, the hunter of our world, the silent peril of our woods!’

  He looked back at me, softer, sadder. ‘Yes! That is how much I miss him, and this feast is for him, and on that pyre there, if you look closely, you will see my friend about to burn, to go into a place that I will soon know well, as will you, as will we all. But Christian … Huxley …’

  He scratched his chest and stared at me, looking me up and down as he sat there. ‘Huxleyoros? Huxleyaunii?’

  Clan names!

  ‘Where do you come from? Huxleyantrix? Huxleyuranos? What are you, I wonder? What clan? Why did I mark you? Why did I go so far into the netherworld to find you? Was I mad? I can’t remember for the moment. Can you help?’

  Before I could respond, he went on, ‘Anyway, though Manandoun will soon open the gate to a fairer land than this – and a fond goodbye to him, I weep to see him go – this feast is partly for you, Christian, to welcome you, even though you seem to have nothing to say, since you have not said a word since I started speaking, but you are welcome nonetheless, and here is the food, you must eat what you want, you must not hesitate to demand what you want, whatever Legion can offer is yours, have you tried these?’

  He held a plum towards me, watching me keenly.

  ‘It looks like a plum.’

  ‘Very well noticed,’ he said, holding it closer. ‘It is better for you than that foul stuff over there, that roasting pig-meat and the racks of hot-peppered chops for those men in iron …’ He scowled at the Courteous Men, the chivalrous knights in their colourful tunics and chain-mail protection.

  I took the plum, ate it, spat the stone into my hand and tossed it over my shoulder. Kylhuk watched me through furrowed brows. The aroma of roasting pig was making my stomach sing. There was a honeyish, alcoholic smell from flagons being surreptitiously passed around, but between Kylhuk and myself there was only a wide dish of crystal water, with rose-petals floating. He pushed the dish towards me.

  ‘Drink your fill. I am told this tastes very good.’

  I drank from the dish. Kylhuk studied me carefully, leaning forward. ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s water.’

  ‘I know it’s water. Are you content?’

  ‘No.’

  The whole feasting place was suddenly silent, all faces turned towards us.

  Kylhuk’s voice was a controlled whisper as he stared at me. ‘Why are you not content?’

  ‘Because water satisfies a thirst. But as drink goes, it does not satisfy the need to show a great man like Manandoun the respect he deserves. It is not the right drink to hold up to the flames that will soon accompany a great friend into the Otherworld.’

  ‘I agree!’ Kylhuk exclaimed emphatically. He rose to his feet, staring down at me darkly. ‘You speak with the same Wise Counsel as Manandoun himself! Yes … the same wise counsel … And I agree!’

  He flung the rose-water onto the ground and stamped on the clay dish, breaking it, kicking the shards all around the feasting area. He seemed very satisfied with the act.

  In the middle of the tables, over an open fire, the pig was a poor sight now, being no more than bone from skull and spine to upper haunch, and at the lower part of each leg. Like two obscene growths, the rumps, the prime cuts, were intact, untouched, since it was these portions that were Kylhuk’s to enjoy first. With a single stroke of his wide-bladed sword he cut the gruesome carcass across the backside, sending shards of bone and flaming charcoal among the cheering host.

  I had expected Kylhuk to cut from the haunch and eat, but instead he flung his sword onto the unlit pyre, calling out:

  ‘That another man has come to take your place does not mean that your place can ever be taken. Not here, old friend. You and I will always hunt for the heart of the beast, and if Trwch’s tusks take us, if the beast is too strong, then we’ll ride on its snout and tell stories for a year and a day! Manandoun! Wise, gracious Manandoun! Truthfully, I would not have seen you go, and certainly not on the end of Eletherion’s sword!’ Then he turned to the pyre-makers, snapping, ‘But he’s gone and that’s that. So burn him, and burn him well,’ before beckoning me through the gate in the wicker fence.

  As I went to follow, Gwyr flicked his fingers, drawing my attention, and pointed towards the hacked but still unused hind-quarters of the fat pig, crisping slowly in the charcoal where they had fallen.

  I went over and cut two thick slices of the tender meat, laying them out on a wooden platter. I carried this offering out to the silent man who stood, staring up at the waning moon.

  ‘Have a little piece of one of Trwch’s bastard offspring,’ I said, holding up the slices. He looked at the wooden platter for a moment, scooped up the meat in his hand, squeezed the flesh until the juices ran, then slapped it down again, wiping his palm on his clothes.

  ‘No. You eat it. I have no taste for it now.’

  ‘Kylhuk! If you offer me this meat, this best cut, then I will eat it to the memory of Manandoun. I met him when I was a boy, when he was Guiwenneth’s gu
ardian. And again recently, when he impressed me as a man of wisdom.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kylhuk said, turning to face me, his big hands on my shoulders, his dark eyes gleaming but not, now, with tears, ‘Yes. He was a man of wisdom! And the best friend a man could wish for. And you are not yet a man of wisdom, though from what you say, I believe you will soon become one. You are a man of impulse and recklessness, of shallow delights and shallow appetite, but you give me hope and heart, because once I was the same. And though you have insulted me I forgive you. You were right to say about me what you said, though I am certainly not as bloated as the corpse of a dead bullock swelling up on a hot summer’s day, as you so coarsely described me …’

  On Madron’s Heart, I did not! I wanted to cry, but there was a great warmth for me in this man at this moment, or so I thought. And the crackle of the pyre, the passing away of Manandoun, was casting a gentle and doleful sound across us, and I said nothing.

  And Kylhuk concluded, slapping his portly places, ‘You were right. This great man needs to run with CuCullain’s hounds, and I will do it, though Manandoun would have thought otherwise! We have time to run as we move towards the open legs of the Long Person. Time to talk, to get to know each other. Time to run with the hounds. Time to fast, you and I, to fast as no two men have ever tasted before, and ignore the greedy brutes who have gathered around me, those who feed only on succulent pig-meat, tender roasted venison, roasted fowl birds, all of it!’

  Still on a diet then, I thought grimly. But I said, ‘Is it this Trwch Trwyth, then, this giant boar that is your great quest?’

  ‘No. Though I long to hunt it down and take its head. And will do so before I ride to the Islands. But no. It’s something else.’

  He grinned at me, then embraced me, a full bear hug. Then he slapped the platter of meat I still held into the air and announced, ‘I have so much to tell you! And while my dear friend is still alive with the movement of flames, he can listen to me and clip my ear if I tell one word of a lie.’ He stared at me hard, for a moment, then said softly, ‘Gwyr tells me that you are confused by what slathan means.’