Silver on the Tree

by Susan Cooper

  Will could see him outlined against the sky, bright and dark by turns now as gathering clouds crossed the moon: a lean young man with long hair caught back in a stubby pony tail. The soft, remembering voice went on.

  “Haven’t seen Ginny for eight months. Man, that’s a long time. I’ve got our first day all planned out for when I get home. Keep thinking about it. Long lazy day in the sun, swimming, lying on the beach, surfing maybe. And beer and hamburgers at Pete’s. His burgers are just out of this world, big and juicy on a homemade bun, with this special sour pickle relish. Ginny loves them…. She’s so pretty. Long blonde hair. Great figure. She writes me every week. Didn’t come over here because her old man’s got a weak heart and she felt—ah, she’s just a great girl.” He paused, and slowly shook his head. “Hey, I’m sorry. You really got me going. I guess I didn’t know how much I’d been missing … people. It’s been fun here on the dig, but I’ll sure be glad to get home.”

  Behind him, a rounded grassy slope rose as skyline; yet although this seemed totally strange, Will had the conviction that somehow he was in the same place as before. Perhaps it was only that linking emotion, the ache in the American’s voice, and yet….

  Merriman’s voice said in the dim night, cheerful, breaking the mood, “He seems to have pressed a button, asking you about home. Have you been here a long time?”

  “It’ll be a year, by the time I’m through. Not so long really, I guess.” The young man became self-consciously brisk. “Well, hey, let’s show you. I wish this wasn’t such a quick visit, professor—there’s so much you could see better in the morning.”

  “Ah well,” Merriman said vaguely. “I have appointments…. Over here, you said?”

  “Just a minute, I’ll get a lamp. Better than a flashlight—” The American vanished into a boxlike structure that seemed to be a small wooden shed; a light flared in a window, and then he was back again with a hissing hurricane lamp unexpectedly held aloft, casting a bright pool around them in which Will could see grass at their feet, and Wellington boots on Merriman’s trousered legs. Beyond, poles and ropes and small drooping marker-flags jutted from an excavation made into the grassy mound that he had thought a natural slope, as if a giant slice had been cut from an earthen cake. At the inside of the excavation, where it cut furthest into the mound, he could see stones. He could see a stone-paved floor like a stretch of square cobbles; the scattered stones of a fallen arch; rising tiers of stones where once wooden benches had stood….

  The whirl of others’ emotions cleared from Will’s mind, and instead wonder and relief and delight flooded into him like a spring tide, and he knew, looking at the stone, that the secret releasing the Signs from their enchantment had been caught at the proper moment indeed.

  “You know the background, of course, Professor Lyon,” the young American said. “Always the mound was known as King Arthur’s Round Table, with absolutely no justification of course. And no one could get permission to dig. Or funds for that matter, until this Ford Foundation deal. And now that we finally get inside it, what do we find inside King Arthur’s so-called Round Table but a Roman amphitheatre.”

  “You’ll find a Mithraeum, too, before you’re done, I shouldn’t wonder,” Merriman said, in a strange brisk professional voice Will had not heard before. “Caerleon was a major fort, after all—built for keeping down the barbaric British in their mists and fog.”

  The American laughed. “I don’t really mind the mists and fog. It’s the rain—and all that mud afterwards. They sure knew how to work with stone, those old Empire-builders. Look, here’s the inscribed slab I was telling you about—Centurion Flavius Julianus and his boys.”

  The lamp hissed, the shadows danced; he led them to a shoulder-high column of great slabs of rock. Will saw the highest, the largest, with its inscribed letters battered now by age. It was newly excavated; an inch of earth still lay over it, where the stone above had slipped to one side.

  Merriman took a small flashlight from his pocket and shone it, quite unnecessarily Will thought, on the inscribed block of stone. “Very neat,” he said fussily, “very neat. Here Will, my boy, have a look.” He handed Will the light.

  “We think there were eight entrances,” the American said, “all vaulted, with this kind of stonework. This must have been one of the two main ones—we only started clearing it this afternoon.”

  “Excellent,” Merriman said. “Now just show me that other inscription you mentioned, would you?” They moved away to one side of the cave-like dig, taking the pool of yellow lamplight with them. Will stood still. He snapped on the light for a second, to be sure of his step, then turned it off. Putting his hand forward in the darkness of what he knew now was his own time, Midsummer Day a matter of seconds after he had first left it, he reached scrabbling into the earth that had lain since the decay of Rome’s Empire, some sixteen centuries before, in the hollow of the big rock of the broken arch. And his fingers met a circle of metal quartered by a cross, and putting down the flashlight to scrabble with both hands in the earth, he drew out the linked circle of Signs.

  Very carefully he shook off the dirt, with the circles and their gold links spread wide to keep the metal from rattling. He glanced up. Merriman and the young archaeologist were no more than a glimmer of light, yards away across the excavation. Excitement tight in his throat, Will clipped the belt-like chain of Signs round his waist, tugging his sweater down to cover them. He went forward to the lamplight.

  “Ah, well,” Merriman said blandly. “Time we were going, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s very exciting,” Will said, bright and enthusiastic.

  “I’m so glad you stopped by.” The young American led them to a car parked behind a fence. “It’s been a privilege to meet you, Dr. Lyon. I only wish the others had been here—Sir Mortimer will be real sorry—”

  In a flurry of farewells he handed them into the car, pumping Merriman’s arm in a kind of hearty reverence. Will said, “You made Florida sound lovely. I hope you see it soon.”

  But archaeology had driven his earlier emotion quite out of the young American’s mind. Nodding, smiling vaguely, he disappeared.

  Merriman drove slowly down the road. He said, his voice changed utterly, “You have them?”

  “I have them safe,” Will said, and a strong hand clenched his shoulder briefly, hard, and was gone. They were no longer master and boy, nor ever would be again; they were Old Ones only, caught out of Time in a task both were long-destined to fulfill.

  “It must be tonight, and quickly,” Will said. “Here, do you think? Now?”

  “I think so. The times are linked, by our presence and by the place. Above all by your good work. I think so.” Merriman stopped, turned the car, and drove back towards the excavation. They got out and stood in silence for a moment.

  Then they went together into the darkness, skirting the cleared arch and walls, climbing to the top of the grassy mound. There they stood, under a sky dark now with scudding clouds that hid the moon; and Will took from his waist the linked belt of crossed circles that was the symbol of the Circle of the Light, and held it up in both hands. And time and space merged as the twentieth and the fourth centuries became for a Midsummer’s instant two halves of a single breath, and in a clear soft voice Will said into the night, “Old Ones! Old Ones! It is time. Now and for always, for the second time and the last, let the Circle be joined. Old Ones, it is time! For the Dark, the Dark is rising!”

  His voice ran strong; he held the Signs high, and a glimmer of starlight flashed on the circle of crystal like white fire. And all at once they were no longer alone on the silent grassy mound. From all the world over, from every point of time, the shadowy forms of men and women from every kind and generation crowded there in the night. A great glimmering throng was gathered, the Old Ones of the earth come together for the first time since, six seasons earlier, the Signs had in their presence been ceremonially joined. The darkness rustled; there was a formless murmuring in the place, a communic
ation without speech.

  Merriman and Will stood there together on the hill in the night full of beings, and waited for the one last Old One whose presence would weld this great gathering into an ultimate instrument of power, a force to vanquish the Dark.

  They waited, and the night grew brighter with starlight; but she did not come.

  The glimmering forms murmured and rippled as though the land blurred, and Will’s consciousness, at one with the minds of all his fellows there, was filled with unease.

  Merriman said, low and husky, “I was afraid of this.”

  “The Lady,” Will said helplessly. “Where is the Lady?”

  “The Lady!” Indistinct as the wind, a long whisper ran through the darkness. “Where is the Lady?”

  Will said softly to Merriman, “She came at the turn of the year, the year before last, for the Joining. Why does she not come now?”

  Merriman said. “I think she has not the strength. Her power is worn by resisting the Dark—you and I know well how she has spent herself, in the past. And though she managed the effort for the joining of the Signs, you remember that then she had no strength even to take her leave.”

  “Yes,” Will said, remembering a small, fragile old figure, delicate as a wren, standing beside him overlooking a great throng of Old Ones as Merriman stood now. “She simply … faded. And then she was gone.”

  “And it seems that she is gone still. Out of reach. Gone until a helping magic may come from the sum of the centuries of this spell-ridden island, to bring her to our need. For the first time, for the only time, the help of mere creatures is needed for the Lady.”

  Merriman drew himself up, a tall shadowy hooded figure in the night, dark as a pillar against the sky. He spoke without effort or great force, yet his voice filled the night and seemed to echo to and fro over the unseen heads of that enormous throng.

  “Who knows?” he said. “Who can tell? Oh all you Circle of the Old Ones, who can tell?”

  And one voice came out of the night, a deep beautiful Welsh voice, rich and smooth as velvet, speaking with a rhythm that gave it the lilt of singing.

  “Y maent yr mynyddoedd yn canu,” the voice said, “ac y mae’r arglwyddes yn dod. Which means, being translated, The mountains are singing, and the Lady comes.”

  There was a great stir among the aery crowd, and before he could help himself Will let out a cry of joyful recognition at the words. “The verse! Of course! The old verse from the sea.” He sobered suddenly. “But what does it mean? We all know that line, Merriman—but what does it mean?”

  The question echoed in many voices, whispering and susurrating like the sea when a small breeze rises. The deep Welsh voice said, reflectively, “When the mountains are singing, the Lady will come. And remember one thing. It is not in the Old Speech, which we all use, that those words have come down to us, but in a younger language—that is nevertheless one of the most ancient used by men.”

  Merriman said softly, “Thank you, Dafydd my friend.”

  “Welsh,” Will said. “Wales.” He stared into blank dark space, where clouds once more were drifting over the moon. He said hesitantly, his mind feeling for the right word, the right idea, “I am to go to Wales. To that part where I have been once before. And there I must find the moment, the right way…. Somewhere in the mountains. Somehow. And the Lady will come.”

  “And we shall be complete and singly-bound,” Merriman said. “And the end of all this questing will begin.”

  “Pob hwyl, Will Stanton,” said the rich Welsh voice gently in the darkness. “Pob hwyl. Good luck….” And it faded and died into the soft whine of the wind, and all the gathering around them faded too, vanishing away to leave them standing, two lone figures, there in the darkening night on the grass-smooth mound, in the Midsummer Day of the time into which Will had been born.

  Will said, “But for that first time, to which I was called, the rising of the Dark in the time of Arthur…. We are allowed only a night and a day to bring help there. And I cannot keep to that limit now. So what of the great king, and the battle that is to come at Badon? What will—” He stopped himself, cutting off words that belonged not to Old Ones but to men.

  Merriman said, completing it, “What will happen there? What will happen, what has happened, what is happening? A battle, won for a little while. A respite gained, but not for long. You can see. Will. Things are as they are, and will be. In Arthur’s time, we have the Circle to help us, for they have been gathered, and much can therefore be accomplished. But without words from the Lady, the last height of power cannot be reached, and so the peace of Arthur that we shall gain for this island at Badon will be lost, before long, and for a time the world will seem to vanish beneath the shadow of the Dark. And emerge, and vanish again, and again emerge, as it has done through all the length of what men call their history.”

  Will said, “Until the Lady comes.”

  “Until the Lady comes,” Merriman said. “And she will help you to the finding of the sword of the Pendragon, the crystal sword by which the final magic of the Light shall be achieved, and the Dark put at last to flight. And there will be five to help you, for from the beginning it was known that six altogether, and six only, must accomplish this long matter. Six creatures more and less of the earth, aided by the six Signs.”

  Will said, quoting, “When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back.”

  “Aye,” Merriman said. Suddenly he sounded very weary. “Six, for a hard turning.”

  On impulse Will quoted again, a whole verse this time, from the old prophetic rhyme that had come gradually to light—a world ago, it seemed to him—with the growing of his own power as an Old One.

  “When the Dark comes rising, sa shall turn it back,

  Three from the Circle, three from the track;

  Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;

  Five shall return, and one go alone.”

  He spoke the last line more slowly, as if he were hearing it for the first time. “Merriman? That last part, what does it mean? It has never put anything into my mind but a question. Five shall return, and one go alone … Who?”

  Merriman stood there in the quiet night, his face obscured by shadow; his voice was quiet too, and without expression. “Nothing is certain, Old One, even in the prophecies. They can mean one thing, or they can mean another. For after all, men have minds of their own, and can determine their actions, for good or ill, for going outward, or turning in…. I cannot tell who the one may be. None shall know, until the last. Until the … one … goes … alone….” He gathered himself, and stood straighter, as if pulling them both back out of a dream. “There is a long road to tread before that will come, and a hard one, if we are to triumph at the end of it. I go back now to my lord Arthur, with the Signs, and the power of the Circle which only they can call.”

  He held out his hand, barely visible in the star-washed darkness, and Will gave him the linked belt of crossed circles, gold and crystal and stone glittering between dark wood, bronze, iron.

  “Go well, Merriman,” he said quietly.

  “Go well, Will Stanton,” Merriman said, his voice tight with strain. “Into your own place, at this Midsummer hour, where affairs will take you in the direction you must go. And we will strive at our separate tasks across the centuries, through the waves of time, touching and parting, parting and touching in the pool that whirls forever. And I shall be with you before long.”

  He raised an arm, and he was gone, and the stars spun and the night whirled about, and Will was standing moonlit in the hall of his home, his hand on the frame of a sepia Victorian print that showed the Romans building an amphitheatre at Caerleon.

  • Midsummer Day •

  At a triumphant trot Will mowed the last patch of grass, and collapsed, panting draped over the lawn-mower handle. Sweat was trickling down the side of his nose, and his bare chest was damp, speckled with tiny cut stems of grass.

  “Ouf! It’s even hotter than yesterday!”

&
nbsp; “Sundays,” James said, “are always hotter than Saturdays. Especially if you live in a village with a small stuffy church. James Stanton’s Law, you can call that.”

  “Go on,” said Stephen, passing with his hands full of twine and clippers. “It wasn’t that bad. And for two horrible little boys you still sound pretty angelic in the choir.” He dodged neatly as Will flung a fistful of grass cuttings.

  “I shan’t be there much longer,” James said, with some pride. I’m breaking. Did you hear me croak in the canticle?”

  “You’ll be back,” Will said. “Tenor. Bet you.”

  “I suppose so. That’s what Paul says too.”

  “He’s practising. Listen!”

  Distant as a fading dream, from inside the house the soft clear tone of a flute rippled up and down in scales and arpeggios; it seemed as much a part of the hot still afternoon as the bees humming in the lupins and the sweet smell of the new-cut grass. Then the scales gave way to a long lovely flow of melody, repeated again and again. Halfway across the lawn Stephen stood caught into stillness, listening.

  “My God, he’s good, isn’t he? What is that?”

  “Mozart, First Flute Concerto,” Will said. “He’s playing it with the N.Y.O. this autumn.”

  “N.Y.O.?”

  “National Youth Orchestra. You remember. He was in it for years, even before he went to the Academy.”

  “I suppose I do. I’ve been away so long….”