by Tom Holt
Malcolm leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It occurred to him that he had only known this girl for about a day and a half, and that he was being a bit hasty. He dismissed this thought, which was simply cowardice. The trouble was, he reckoned, he was probably afraid of being happy, of having what he really wanted. For some reason or other, which he could not be bothered to work out.
He got to his feet and walked slowly to the library. The girl was sitting at a table with a pile of books on it, writing something in what looked like a ledger. She did not hear him come in, and he stood looking at her for a moment. Life, he realised, was a fragile thing, and time and opportunity should not be wasted.
‘Blow that,’ he said, and the girl started. ‘Let’s go and buy a ring.’
His words had broken a deep silence, and silence followed them, so that Malcolm had the feeling that he was talking to himself. This would never do.
‘Come on,’ he pleaded. ‘You don’t have to do that now. Everything’s going to be all right now.’
Oddly enough, the girl seemed to understand what he meant by that, which was more than he did himself. She smiled (why did she always smile and never laugh?) and said Yes, she would like that. So they went downstairs and Malcolm walked out to the garage to get the car.
Alberich was sitting on the bonnet, eating a ham roll.
‘This is my lunch, you realise,’ said the Nibelung. ‘About the worst thing I could possibly have, barring lobster.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Malcolm asked.
‘I came straight back from Germany,’ continued Alberich. ‘I saw the two of you together just now, and I knew in a minute what had happened.’
‘Thank you.’
You know who she is, don’t you?’
Malcolm stared at him. ‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘Do you?’
‘Well, of course.’
Malcolm frowned. How in God’s name did Alberich know who she was? Did he have a library too? Malcolm suddenly felt that he didn’t want to know.
‘I know all about her,’ he said. ‘And we’ve just got engaged. We’re going to London to buy a ring.’
‘Buy a ring?’ said Alberich, genuinely surprised. ‘I’d have thought that was unnecessary.’
Malcolm did not understand this remark, so he assumed it must be a joke. Perhaps in the back of his mind he had an idea that Alberich was trying to tell him something very important, but if that was the case he managed to ignore it. He squeezed a polite laugh out of his lungs, and unlocked the car.
‘Hang on, though,’ said Alberich.
‘Sorry, I haven’t got time,’ said Malcolm. ‘I think we should get it in Bond Street. That’s where all the jewellers’ shops are, aren’t they?’
‘Why not Amsterdam? Or Johannesburg?’ asked Alberich quietly.
‘She wouldn’t understand about the Tarnhelm,’ Malcolm said. ‘It might frighten her.’
‘Most unlikely. Are you sure you know . . .?’
Malcolm started the engine and pressed the accelerator hard. Perhaps Alberich was saying something tremendously important; if he was, he couldn’t hear a word of it. The Prince of the Nibelungs hopped off the bonnet and banged on the window. Malcolm wound it down and shouted, ‘I’ll see you when we get back. The housekeeper will make you a cup of tea, I expect.’ Then he let in the clutch and drove furiously out of the garage.
Alberich stood for a moment and scratched his head. Then it occurred to him that he had been wasting his time. He picked up a spanner which was lying on the floor of the garage and hurled it at the wall.
Malcolm deliberately parked on a double yellow line in the middle of Bond Street. It was that sort of a day. If a traffic warden came and wrote him a ticket, he could tell her that he was engaged to be married to the most wonderful girl in the world. He wanted to tell people that, if only to hear himself say it. Anyway, he was feeling much better now, if a trifle hysterical.
The girl seemed to have cheered up, too. Almost for the first time since he had known her, she had laughed properly, and that was a wonderful sound to be anywhere near. In fact, Malcolm was at a loss to know what had got into her, for she behaved very childishly in all the jeweller’s shops they went into. She insisted on trying on all the rings they saw, taking them to the window to see what they looked like in the light, and then saying that they wouldn’t do. The stones were the wrong colour, or too small, or too big, or the settings were the wrong shape. It almost seemed as if she wasn’t taking this business seriously.
They had tried six shops, and it was nearly half-past five.
‘It’s no good,’ said the girl. ‘I don’t like any of the ones we’ve seen. And I’m the one who’s going to be wearing it; For ever and ever,’ she added, tenderly. For some reason, this remark struck Malcolm as being rather out of character, but he put it down to excitement.
‘We can try that one over there, if we’re quick,’ he suggested.
‘No,’ said the girl, ‘I know the ring I want.’ And she told him. As she did so, it began to rain.
The two sparrows that had been eating crumbs outside the largest of the jeweller’s shops looked at each other.
‘Did you hear that?’ said the first sparrow.
‘Don’t speak with your beak full,’ said the other.
‘But, Mum,’ replied the first sparrow, ‘it’s him. And he’s going to give her the Big Ring.’
‘It’s none of our business. And you’ll catch your death if you don’t get under cover this instant.’
‘But, Mum,’ insisted the first sparrow, ‘if he gives her the Big Ring it’d be terrible, wouldn’t it?’
‘How many times must I tell you not to listen to what other people are saying? It’s rude.’ The second sparrow flapped her wings nervously. It was indeed terrible, and she didn’t want to get involved.
‘But do you think he knows how terrible it would be? Do you?’
‘Quiet! People are staring.’
‘It’s rude to stare,’ replied the first sparrow, who had been told this many times. ‘If he doesn’t know, shouldn’t we tell him? Because if we don’t . . .’
Two ravens had appeared in the sky, wheeling slowly and noiselessly above the street. Nobody noticed them; they had come to see, not to be seen.
‘It isn’t him at all,’ said the second sparrow nervously, ‘it’s just your imagination. If you don’t come in this minute, I’ll tell your father.’
Malcolm was standing very still. The girl was smiling at him, saying nothing. He wanted to give her the Ring. He could see no reason why he should not. Almost from the first moment he had met her, he had wanted to give her the Ring, and now he was going to do it. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do.
The young sparrow hopped morosely under a parked van. His mother was scolding him, but he wasn’t listening. Surely it couldn’t be right that the Ring-Bearer should give the Ring to Wotan’s daughter. His mother stopped chirping at him for a moment, and stooped down to peck at a bottle-top. Now was his chance.
‘Please,’ said the girl. ‘I’d like it very much.’
Malcolm took the Ring between the first and third fingers of his left hand and started to pull it off. He was afraid that it might not come away easily, but it slid off effortlessly, and he held it for a moment. The girl was still smiling, not holding out her hand, not making a movement of any sort. He tried to read her thoughts, but he could not. He could feel the rain running through his hair, but he did not know what it was. It was right that the girl should have the Ring. It would be very easy to give it to her. Nothing at all could be easier, and then they would be properly engaged.
The sparrow forced itself through the air like a bullet and landed awkwardly on Malcolm’s shoulder. He did not seem to notice. He had other things on his mind.
‘Don’t do it,’ shrieked the bird. ‘She’s Wotan’s daughter!’
For a moment, Malcolm did not know where the voice was coming from. Then he felt feathers brush
ing the side of his face, which made him jump. As he started, he dropped the Ring, which rolled into the gutter.
‘She’s Wotan’s daughter. She’s Wotan’s daughter, she’s his daughter!’ screamed the sparrow. Malcolm swung his left hand furiously through the air and clapped the palm of it onto his right shoulder. He felt something fragile snapping under the fingers, and the voice stopped suddenly. The dead bird rolled down his arm and fell onto the pavement. It looked like a child’s toy or a hockey-puck, and it had landed in a puddle.
Then the girl stooped down to pick up the Ring. Without knowing what he was doing, Malcolm covered it with his foot. It was all he was able to do, but apparently it was enough. The girl stepped backwards, and she had a look on her face that Malcolm did not like very much.
‘I really do love you,’ she said.
Without even wanting to, Malcolm found himself reading her thoughts.
‘I love you too,’ he said, and he bent down and picked up the Ring. ‘If I offered this to you, would you take it?’
‘Yes,’ said the girl.
‘And you’d give it to your father?’
‘Yes.’
Malcolm closed his fist round the Ring. ‘It’s raining,’ he said, ‘you’ll catch cold.’
The girl looked at her shoes and said nothing. He slowly put the Ring back on his finger. He wanted her to have it more than ever, but it felt terribly tight now, and he doubted whether he would be able to get it off again without soap and water. There was some quotation about there being a providence in the fall of a sparrow, but he had never really understood what that meant.
He opened the car door for her. ‘Are we still engaged, then?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Are we? I mean, is there any point?’
‘But we love each other, don’t we? Yes, we do,’ he added, for he knew how indecisive she could be at times. ‘And there’s all the point in the world.’
‘Everything I told you about my family is true,’ she said, fastening her seat-belt. ‘So I don’t think there is any point, really, is there?’
Malcolm could not quite follow that one, but he wasn’t bothered about it. He could read her thoughts. This was all so silly.
When they were on the motorway, Malcolm broke the silence that had lasted since they had left London.
‘Obviously you know who I am,’ he said. ‘So you know I can read thoughts. I can read exactly what you’re really thinking.’
The girl said nothing.
‘Which is probably just as well,’ said Malcolm irritably, ‘since you never say anything. But I can see what you’re thinking, so it’s no use pretending. For crying out loud, you love me more than I love you.’
‘That’s for you to say.’
‘Then be quiet and listen. You don’t have to give him the Ring.’
‘You don’t have to keep it.’
Malcolm wanted to grab hold of her and shake her, but he was being overtaken by a lorry and needed both hands for the wheel. ‘Don’t you understand anything?’ he shouted. The girl stared at the floor and said nothing.
‘If I was feeling as bloody miserable as you are, I’d burst into tears,’ he said savagely. ‘But you won’t let yourself do that, will you?’
He pulled over onto the hard shoulder and stopped the car. Two ravens were circling overhead. Malcolm said a lot of things, some of them very loudly, some of them very quietly, and after a while he started to cry. But the girl said nothing, and there was no point saying any more.
‘All right, then,’ he whispered, ‘you can have it. But not yet. Not yet.’
‘I dunno,’ said Thought, as he watched the car draw up at Combe Hall. ‘Humans.’
The doors opened, and Malcolm and the Valkyrie Ortlinde climbed out.
‘Now what?’ whispered Memory.
Malcolm put his arm around the Valkyrie, and she rested her head against his face. The sharp eyes of the ravens could easily pick out the Ring, glittering on his finger. Neither the mortal nor the Valkyrie said a word as they went into the house, but the air was full of thoughts, and the ravens felt very frustrated that they could only read Ortlinde’s half of them.
The door of the house closed and the two ravens sat thoughtfully for a while, listening to the wind sighing in the pine trees that surrounded the Hall. They had seen many things in their time. They had seen Alberich screaming with rage and pain when Loge tore the Ring from his chained hands. They had seen Hagen drive his spear between Siegfried’s shoulders, and Hagen himself struggling for the last time in the floodwaters of the Rhine. Nothing surprised them any more.
‘Thick as two short planks, both of them,’ said Memory at last.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The girl - Malcolm could not bring himself to think of her as Ortlinde - was up at the crack of dawn cataloguing away like a small tornado. She at least had her work to occupy her mind; not that it was her proper work, of course.
Malcolm’s own work was not going so well. According to the BBC, a rail disaster in Essex had been narrowly averted, and a nuclear reactor in Kent had been shut down in the nick of time, just before it had a chance to make the English Channel a little bit wider. Needless to say, these unhappy incidents had all taken place at the same time as he had been struggling to keep control of the Ring. It was an added complication, but no more. It wasn’t that he couldn’t care less; he cared desperately, but what could he do? He was the master of the world, but not of himself.
Alberich had been waiting for him when he returned from London. In fact, he had been pacing up and down in front of the garage all day, which had scarcely helped his digestion, with the result that he lost his temper when he caught sight of Ortlinde and called her some rather crude and unpleasant things. Malcolm had been on the point of hitting him again, but the dwarf had realised the danger he was in and apologised to the Valkyrie, blaming his bad manners on a cucumber sandwich he had been rash enough to eat while he was waiting. Now he had come back, and was sitting in the drawing-room, drinking milk.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Malcolm said.
‘Yes,’ replied Alberich, ‘you probably do. Whether you understand it or not is another matter. Giant’s blood may have made you perceptive, but it hasn’t stopped you being plain stupid.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Malcolm sullenly, ‘but I can do without personal abuse.’
‘Listen,’ said the Nibelung. ‘I told you before that you were too nice to be a proper Ring-Bearer. Ring-Bearers can’t be like that. Sure, it worked well enough to start off with, but then it went all wrong. Well, didn’t it? A nice but enamoured Ring-Bearer is capable of doing more damage in forty-eight hours than Ingolf managed in a thousand years. You’re human; you can’t help it. But you aren’t qualified to hold the ring if you’re human. Don’t you see?’
‘No.’
Alberich frowned. It was as if someone had said that they could not understand why rain makes you wet. It would take some explaining.
‘Take my case,’ he said. ‘I’m not human, I’m delighted to say, but even so, the first thing I had to do before I was able to make the Ring in the first place was to forswear Love and all its tedious works. Whoever thought up that particular requirement knew what he was about, believe you me. Not that I was ever romantically inclined myself; my heart has often been burnt but never broken. Anyway, this made me immune from the one single greatest cause of idiocy in the world. Since I took the pledge, I have been smiled at by Rhinedaughters, yearned at by Valkyries, and generally assaulted by beautiful people of every species, all to no effect. And I don’t even have the miserable thing any more. I’m just a peripheral character, especially now that you appear to have dismantled the curse I so cleverly put on the Ring. Or perhaps you haven’t.’ Alberich was thoughtful for a while. ‘Perhaps this Ortlinde nonsense is the curse catching up with you as well. If it is, I’m sorry. Oddly enough, I don’t feel any real animosity towards you, even if you are as stupid as they come. Curse or no curse,
though, you’ve fallen head over heels into the oldest trap in the book. You really aren’t fit to be allowed out on your own, let alone be the master of the universe.’
‘I never asked for the job,’ said Malcolm wretchedly.
‘That’s true, you didn’t. But who cares? Shall I tell you about Love?’
‘Must you?’
‘Yes. The human race - we’ll confine our attention to your mob to start with, although what I say is applicable to virtually all mammals - the human race has achieved so much more than any other species in the time it’s been on this earth - a couple of million years, which is no time at all; about as long as it takes a sulphur-dwarf to learn to walk - that the imagination is unable to cope with all the things that the human being has done. The human race created Things. They built wonderful buildings, invented wonderful machines, brought into being poetry, music and art. To beguile their eighty-odd years they have every conceivable diversion, from the symphonies of Beethoven to the Rubik’s Cube. They can rush round in sports cars, they can shoot elephants, they can travel around the world in days, or even hours. In virtually every respect, they have made themselves the equals of the Gods. Most of all, they have all the Things in the world at their disposal to use and entertain themselves with. And what do they like doing best of all? They like taking off all their clothes - clothes over which they have expended so much effort and ingenuity - and doing biologically necessary but profoundly undignified things to other human beings. Any pig or spider can do that, it’s the easiest thing in the world. But you bloody humans, who can do so much that no other species could ever do, you can’t do that efficiently. You agonise over it. You make an incredible fuss over it. You get it all wrong, you make each others’ lives miserable, you write dreary letters and take overdoses. You even invent a medicine that deliberately makes the whole process futile. My God, what a species!’
