Suddenly he glimpsed the Tor through a break in the almost continuous cover of branches and thought with relief that at last he would be able to tell in which direction he was walking. He was surprised how far away it appeared and decided to leave the treacherous path and cut directly across the forest towards it. In that way he hoped to strike the path that passed Brother Collen’s cell and which led to the top of the Tor.
It was tiring work bending back brambles and bushes, wading through deep bracken, much of it still dry and prickly from the year before, and many times he had to retrace his steps to avoid an impenetrable mass of thorny branches.
The weather had turned cold and dark, and the forest was strangely silent. More than once he looked sharply over his shoulder as something seemed to move in the undergrowth behind him.
At last, when he was almost in despair of ever reaching the hermit’s hut, he was startled to come upon a clearing, and in the clearing was an extraordinary building. Immensely tall tree trunks covered with carvings formed columns to hold the roof so high up it was almost out of sight. Images of twisting and interlacing animals and plants curled round each other on the wood, swallowing and regurgitating each other. Fishes with the heads of dragons, vines with tendrils of snakes, men so deformed that their legs were knotted behind their ears, women giving birth to monsters . . . Lukas stared at them all — appalled and fascinated by the sense of a rich and fecund power, a wild and dark imagination.
He rubbed his arms to try to keep warm, for the cold drizzle was beginning to soak through his clothes. How could this building have existed so close to the monastery and yet he had never heard it mentioned? And then he remembered that the hermit had not been mentioned either.
He stepped forward, full of curiosity, ignoring an inner warning voice.
With his hand almost on the door he heard a sound behind him and spun on his heel. He was looking into the piercing eyes of the man he had seen at the top of the Tor. The chill from the cold and misty air was nothing to the chill he now felt in his heart. He wanted to run, but stopped himself and tried to regain some of the sense of purpose and the confidence he had had in his dream.
‘You were looking for me?’ The dark eyes bored into his.
‘I didn’t know,’ Lukas stammered, annoyed with himself for showing his nervousness. The eyes were watching him as he had seen the eyes of a cat watching a bird before it pounced. He had the impression that he was backing slowly, precariously along a log balanced over an abyss and at any moment he could fall off and be destroyed.
Suddenly the man smiled. ‘You are welcome,’ he said softly. ‘It is a cold day. Why do you not join me at my fireside and share a meal with me?’
Lukas did not know what to do. There was no doubt that he was tired, and cold, and hungry. There was nothing he would like better than food and drink and somewhere to rest. But . . . there was that warning voice again deep in his heart. Brother Collen had refused to name this man. Why? He was desperate to know more about him. He had seemed so menacing on the Tor — but at this moment he did not seem so.
Lukas decided to accept, but asked his name.
‘My name will mean nothing to you,’ the man replied. ‘It belongs to former times.’ Lukas fancied he saw a shadow passing across the thin, gaunt face. ‘Come, my food is nourishing, my fire warm.’ And he led him through the door.
Lukas noticed that a great many of the carvings on either side of him as he passed through were of heads with two faces, each facing a different way, each carrying a different expression. Seeing this, he hesitated once more. Why would the man not give his name?
‘Lukas!’ The stranger spoke sharply, and indicated that he should precede him into the chamber. Lukas obeyed. What he saw took his breath away. The place was huge and richly furnished. Upon a long low table a feast of many delicacies was laid as though an honoured guest was expected.
‘Sit,’ his host said pleasantly, and waved his hand towards a stool covered for comfort with thick and glossy furs.
Lukas stared at the hand that pointed. It had been bare when he had beckoned him to the house, but was now covered with jewels. The man himself seemed much younger, almost handsome in a hawk-like way. A cloak of darkness flowed around him.
‘Who are you?’ Lukas whispered hoarsely, now deadly afraid.
‘I might well ask you the same question,’ the man replied, looking closely at him from under lowering brows.
‘You know my name.’
‘That name is a broach you wear upon your outer garments. You can pin it on or take it off as you wish. It does not belong to your spirit.’
Lukas frowned, trying to recapture an image, or the shadow of an image that, for a brief moment, he half thought he saw. But it was gone.
‘Tell me who you are?’ The man was gazing deep into Lukas’s eyes as though he wanted to read what lay hidden in his mind.
‘My father was a farmer named Joel, but he is dead. My mother . . .’
‘You are wasting my time. These answers mean nothing. Tell me who you really are!’
Then it seemed to Lukas that he was beginning to wonder himself who he ‘really’ was. If he was no more than who he had always assumed himself to be, how did he know the things he knew that no one had ever told him? He began to concentrate, remembering the experience he had had upon the Tor — the knowledge that had come to him so vividly of infinite motion, infinite stillness — of pattern and splendour beyond anything he had ever seen or heard tell of . . . He thought about the dreams he had been having — the name he had had in the dream — the name which he no longer could recall.
‘I . . . don’t know,’ he said at last, hesitantly; and that was the truth.
The tall man rose and paced impatiently about the room. Lukas watched him as he put his jewelled hand to his mouth and bit the knuckles irritably.
‘You must be someone I have known,’ he muttered, pacing back and forth, back and forth. ‘Otherwise why do you pursue me so?’
Lukas said nothing though he was surprised. If anything, he would have thought it was he who was being pursued!
‘You are meddling with the tunnel. Why?’
‘I stumbled upon it by accident.’
‘Nothing happens by accident,’ was the snarling reply. His eyes were sparking with dangerous fire and his mouth was twisted with rage. ‘You moved the marking stone,’ he continued. ‘You saw the woman.’
‘What woman?’ Lukas was determined to deny everything, at least until he understood it better.
The man resumed his pacing. He seemed preoccupied now with his own thoughts and Lukas took advantage of this to move towards the door. Several times he paused, afraid the man would notice and stop him, but it was as though he had been forgotten.
As he left Lukas could not resist taking a piece of fat and juicy meat from the table.
As soon as he was clear of the great house he looked back to see if he was being followed. He gasped. The magnificent structure he had seen and indeed, had been inside, was no longer there. In its place was an ordinary hut, not much larger than Brother Collen’s. The meat in his hand was a charred and evil looking claw.
* * * *
In Brother Collen’s shelter he was given food and drink while he sat upon a plain wooden stool without any covering of shining furs. The hermit watched him with affectionate amusement as he greedily ate the bread and berries, the hot soup and milk that he provided, and did not attempt to talk until he saw the colour back in his cheeks. And then he asked where Lukas had been and what he had seen to make him look so distraught.
Lukas told him he had seen the man that had frightened him on the Tor.
‘Did you speak with him?’ Collen asked gravely.
‘Yes. He asked me who I was. He knew my name yet he kept asking me who I really was.’
‘I have asked that question myself,’ the hermit said in a voice so low it was almost inaudible.
‘O no! Not you too!’ Lukas cried.
Collen pulled h
imself together. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said aloud.
Lukas shrugged his shoulders. What had happened? And where should he begin.
‘Start with the day you came bursting through my wall.’
And so it came out at last, piece by piece, much of it muddled and confused, but at least it was the whole story as far as Lukas knew it. Collen listened to it intently and made no comment. At the end, he still sat silently, deep in thought.
‘What do you think? Is there a prisoner in the cavern?’ Lukas asked. ‘I had thought it was my imagination until he mentioned her himself.’
‘Did you tell him the story you have just told me?’
‘No.’
‘Anything of the tunnel, or of the Green Lady on the Tor?’
‘I did not tell him, but he seemed to know I had been in the tunnel.’
‘You did not tell him of your dreams?’
‘No.’
They both sat silently for some time. It was Lukas who spoke first.
‘What does it mean?’ he asked.
Collen frowned, his eyebrows coming together like a single piece of ragged fox fur.
‘There is much to unravel here Lukas, and I do not think we have all the threads of it yet.’
‘But tell me something to help me understand,’ Lukas pleaded.
Brother Collen shook his head thoughtfully.
‘If I say what I think now it may all be false. Something is unfolding for you and it will take its own way, its own time. If I interfere now it may not run its full and natural course and we will be left worse off than we are now.’
It was frustrating, but Lukas could dimly see that what the man said made a kind of sense.
‘Have you ever been in the tunnel yourself?’ he asked.
‘Once. But I did not see the marked stone or the cavern. To me it was nothing but a dark passage, well left alone.’
‘Why did you build your hut against it?’
Brother Collen shrugged. ‘Who knows? Perhaps I thought it might be useful to have a secret way of escape one day.’
‘Escape from what?’
‘One never knows,’ he said enigmatically, and left it at that.
‘Perhaps that is why I didn’t want to tell anyone about it,’ Lukas thought. ‘Perhaps I too thought of it as a way of escape.’
And then he remembered Matthew.
Ashamed that he had delayed so long he told Brother Collen how the monks had reacted to his name and how they had asked for him to come to the monastery to help Matthew. The hermit pursed his lips at this and looked thoughtful. Lukas wondered if there was some kind of bad feeling between the monks and Collen, that something had happened in the past to drive them apart, and it would take an effort on both their sides to bring them together now. He hoped that they would do it for Matthew’s sake.
He began to tell Collen about Matthew and how he was the only one in the world he had told his secret to before he had told Brother Collen himself. The hermit shook his head violently and for a moment Lukas feared that he was going to refuse, but then it seemed that the hermit was shaking his head as though to clear it of something. He stood up and stretched as though he were breaking his attention off from one matter, before he concentrated it on another. Lukas watched him with relief, knowing now that Brother Collen would not let him down.
Suddenly he began to feel very, very weary.
Collen saw it and smiled. ‘Stay here,’ he said quietly. ‘Sleep awhile. I’ll help your friend if I can.’
Lukas found his eyes already closing and he slid forward and rested his head on his arms on the table. Was this enchantment too as the strange house had been, or was it just the natural weariness of someone pulled from every side by potent and inexplicable forces?
He was not sure whether he was awake or not when he thought he heard Brother Collen say: ‘Whoever you may be, sleep well.’
8
When Lukas awoke to find himself in Collen’s hut he was at first surprised. Then he remembered. He looked around for the hermit, but there was no sign of him. How much time had passed he could not tell but there could be no doubt it was long past the time he should have been back at the monastery.
Greatly refreshed after his sleep he started back along the path, only to hesitate before he had gone more than a few steps to change his mind. He decided to return to the monastery along the tunnel. It was shorter and quicker and he would be able to have one more look for the marked stone and the mystery of the chained woman. He felt less frightened of doing this now that Brother Collen shared his knowledge.
The stones in the hermit’s wall had not been disturbed since the day he had made his sudden appearance. He pulled them out carefully, struggling with the weight, wishing that Brother Collen was there to help him. He had understood from the hermit’s words that it was somehow up to him, Lukas, to find out more about the mystery before any explanation would be attempted. Today he would try to do just that. He took Brother Collen’s lamp, feeling sure that the hermit would not object.
Once inside the dark, dank, confined space of the passage his resolution almost wavered, but he decided to go on. He moved slowly, swinging the lamp from side to side, determined not to miss the marking stone. Spider webs brushed against his face and made him start. A small creature scuttled away from his foot and he almost dropped the lamp.
It seemed the walls had no other carvings apart from the one he had seen. Would he ever find it? He stood still and thought about it. He tried to concentrate his mind, to send it like a beam of light into the dark to seek out the thing he wanted to find.
He began to feel strange, as though a power were growing inside him that he could not control. It was almost as though he could see in the dark and no longer had need of the lamp. He set it down and walked resolutely forward coming within a few moments to the mark he sought. He did not pause to wonder if the mysterious man who had fitted the stone back into the wall was near, but put his hand straight on it. This time, without pressure, it gave and swung open like a door. He entered the cavern and stared at the scene before him. The man he had first met upon the Tor was there, clad in his cloak of darkness and, facing him boldly, was a young woman in green.
Although she was still chained she was standing upright, fearlessly gazing into the man’s eyes.
‘You’ll not win,’ she was crying, her voice ringing clearly in the dark and hollow place. ‘Death is your kingdom and only death you can reap. You have not won me by bringing me here.’
‘Silence!’ he roared, and his voice was fiercely angry.
He stretched out his arms for her, his shadow ahead of himself, touching the hem of her green gown. Shuddering, she crouched against the wall of rock, her face twisted away from him, golden rivulets of hair falling like a curtain between them.
Suddenly, Lukas knew who the man was.
‘Gwynn, son of Nudd,’ he shouted. ‘You shall not have her!’
He found himself with a sword in his right hand and a hard leather shield grasped in his left.
The man turned and Lukas looked into the eyes of an ancient enemy. How many centuries had passed since the great god-king Arthur had doomed these two men to fight on the first day of Spring each year, the girl Creiddylad torn between them until the Day of Judgement, life struggling with death, the fine and silver heir of Spirit challenging the dark Guardian of the Underworld?
Creiddylad, the woman whom they both loved too much, wrung her hands.
‘Gwythyr,’ she cried. ‘You cannot win. Not here. Not in this Isle of Shades. Seek the sun . . . fight him in the sun . . .’
But Gwythyr, son of Greidyawl, had his sword at the throat of the man who had stolen his betrothed and cruelly slaughtered his kinsmen and friends.
‘I lost to you once Betrayer of Trust! I will not lose to you again,’ Gwythyr cried.
The King of Shadows raised his arms; darkness flowed from them and from the centre of the darkness Gwythyr saw his pointing finger and felt pain sharper than an
y sword pierce his heart.
He fell, and as he fell he saw Creiddylad reach for him — her eyes filled with love and pain and longing . . . but between the two of them there was a gulf of darkness widening every moment . . . and across this gulf there seemed to be no bridge.
* * * *
‘Lukas . . . Lukas! Where are you?’ Brother Collen’s voice broke through the strange buzzing in Lukas’s head.
‘Here,’ his voice answered from what seemed a hundred leagues away. ‘Here!’ Here. But where was she . . . where was she . . . Creiddylad . . . the lady of light and life . . .?
‘Why did you put down the lamp?’ Brother Collen fussed. ‘Why did you not wait for me?’
Lukas shook his head helplessly. Why? Why? Would there always be questions and never any answers?
He was in the tunnel, not the cavern. There was no sign of the marked stone or the entrance he had thought he had burst through. There was no sword at his feet. No feeling of power in his heart.
He sighed. ‘I wish these things would stop happening to me,’ he said. ‘I wish I could be myself again.’
Brother Collen put his arm round his shoulder and gave him a comforting squeeze. ‘Perhaps that is exactly what is happening,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You are learning to be yourself.’
‘I mean myself — Lukas.’
Brother Collen looked thoughtful. ‘What we are is more complex and more exciting than we think,’ he said. ‘He who grew up here on Glastonbury Island, who cleans the kitchen and waits at table, who studies Latin and sings in the choir, is only a small part of the Being who comes from God. We in our lives act out the Ancient Mysteries and no matter how small and insignificant we seem, in the secret inner levels of our Being, we are actors in the mightiest dramas of the Universe.’
Lukas looked bewildered.
‘Never mind,’ said Collen with a smile. ‘This will become clear to you one day. Meanwhile, let’s get you home to your friend Matthew.’
Lukas looked at him quickly, suddenly alert. Collen read the question in his eyes. He smiled. ‘Your friend sleeps now. I think that you will find him much improved.’
The Green Lady and the King of Shadows Page 5
