The Green Lady and the King of Shadows

by Moyra Caldecott

  Collen hauled himself up, a broad smile on his face.

  ‘Your lady must be very close to God’s heart,’ he said.

  ‘You can move!’ Lukas shouted in delight. ‘You can talk!’

  Collen laughed. ‘I can also feel!’ he said ruefully, as Lukas in his excitement slapped him heavily on back and shoulders.

  Lukas pulled himself together and they decided the sooner they took the amber to its rightful owner, the sooner she would be able to benefit from its energies.

  Collen seized the lantern and lit it, while Lukas started to pull the stones from the wall.

  ‘What if we cannot find her?’ Lukas asked anxiously.

  ‘We will find her,’ Collen said confidently. ‘Just mind where you’re putting those stones. I don’t want to lose the use of my limbs again!’

  ‘If I take the amber out of its pouch it might lead us to her.’

  ‘No,’ Collen said. ‘I feel it should be kept covered as much as possible. We don’t know what we are dealing with here. We’ll find her.’

  Pictures began to come to Lukas . . . Creiddylad working at her loom in her father’s house, sunlight on her hair, he a young man tongue-tied before her beauty . . . Creiddylad carrying the ale jar for her father’s guests, stooping to pour into his cup, her hair brushing his cheek, smiling at him with her eyes and then turning her head quickly from him so that he would not think her too bold . . . Creiddylad watched by the warrior Gwynn . . . Creiddylad chosen by the priests to play the role of the three-fold goddess of the Earth and his joy as he learned that he was to be chosen for the Sun. Then other memories not so sweet . . . longing and desire . . . fear of losing . . . rage . . . riding with his heart bursting . . . his steed sweating . . . his men around him shouting . . . How he had cried to all the gods of the earth and sky to avenge his cruel loss! But he had lost her. And he had lost his friend Kyledyr. Poor mad Kyledyr.

  Dark Gwynn had won.

  Then Arthur, part king, part god, had put her back in her father’s house and forbidden either of them to touch her. Bitterly he had ridden away, death preferable to him than a lifetime of longing that could not be satisfied.

  Years . . . was it centuries? . . . passed and the old ways changed. Arthur was no longer remembered as a god. Gwynn and he had fought savagely year after year on the appointed day, the first of May, the day Creiddylad and he had lain together as man and woman, as god and goddess . . . but neither Gwynn nor he prevailed against the other . . .

  The old gods were forgotten and a new religion taught that vengeance was wrong, that forgiveness and love, even towards enemies, were right. At first he had denied this . . . but then one day . . . at last. . . the day he set the ants free from the fire . . . peace came to his heart and he decided to meet with Gwynn on the appointed day unarmed and speaking of peace. Gwynn did not keep the appointment that day. He too had decided to break through the doom of Arthur — but in a different way. He had seized Creiddylad once more and no one knew where he had taken her.

  Lukas moved now through the dark tunnel with the determination of Gwythyr to find the girl he loved. He could scarcely distinguish which memories were his own as Lukas, and which came from the times long ago when he used the name and the body of a man called Gwythyr, son of Greidyawl. He could no longer distinguish between the prisoner he had seen, Creiddylad the beloved of Gwynn and Gwythyr, and the lovely life-giving goddess of the Earth . . .

  Collen, who could sense the changing play of emotions in his companion, said nothing.

  * * * *

  Gwythyr stopped at last before the stone that was marked.

  He pressed it and it opened easily.

  Inside the cavern their lantern illuminated the figure of an old, old crone, thin as a skeleton, grey as dust, sagging forward from her chains. As they entered she lifted her head and her eyes met those of Gwythyr. A smile spread over her face like the first light of sunrise, and with it came an ecstatic beauty that made his heart skip a beat. From that ancient shrivelled body an ageless spirit looked out.

  Gwythyr ran forward and took her in his arms. He felt again the petal soft flesh, the vibrant strength of life coursing through her limbs. How many years, how many centuries had these two longed for each other? Was there not time for one long kiss?

  ‘No time,’ Collen urged. ‘We must get out of here!’

  Knowing that he was right, the two forced themselves to draw apart. With trembling hands Gwythyr untied the thread of gold and handed her the lovely jewel that had known the mystery of life and had conquered time.

  There was a sudden explosion of light, and the chains that had bound her fell away. She was free to move. But now she was also free to die.

  Gwythyr looked at the frail and aged woman before him, his heart breaking, but his love for her undiminished.

  Collen touched Lukas’ arm impatiently, and with the touch the burden of the present returned. It was Lukas who stood in the cavern and Lukas who remembered the King of Shadows.

  ‘I had forgotten,’ he muttered, drawing back from the grey and shaking figure.

  ‘Take me to him,’ she said. ‘There is something I must do before I die.’

  Lukas stood irresolute, confused.

  ‘Come!’ Collen urged. ‘It has to be. He’ll be up on the Tor, and there is no time to lose.’

  He lifted the frail figure in his arms and ran with her to the entrance to the cavern, and then along the tunnel towards his hut. Lukas followed, almost staggering from the strain of slipping between two lives, two memories.

  When they reached the place where they had taken the stones out of the hermit’s wall so that they could enter the tunnel, they found that they had been fitted back, and so firmly that with all their strength, they could not be moved.

  Lukas and Collen looked at each other in despair. The woman was breathing unevenly. They had put her on the ground and she was leaning against the dirty wall beside the lamp, with scarcely strength to lift her head. But in her thin and wizened hand she held the golden fire of the amber. Fearing that she might drop it Lukas moved to take it from her, but she shook her head faintly and said in a voice so thin and low it was almost impossible to distinguish the words:

  ‘I must hold it . . . it is the only thing that is keeping me alive now.’

  Lukas left her and hurried back to the wall.

  ‘There is no way we’ll break through here,’ Collen said.

  ‘There’s the entrance in the apple orchard,’ Lukas reminded him. He thrust the lamp into Collen’s hands and lifted the frail form in his arms. He scarcely felt her weight as they ran down the passage. But then a thought struck him.

  ‘If he put the stones back in the wall, he must know that we are down here.’

  ‘Without a doubt,’ agreed Collen.

  ‘What if he has blocked off the other entrance?’

  They increased their pace, chilled by the thought that they might well be trapped in this horrible place as Creiddylad had been, prisoner of such a Being, never to see the light again.

  Collen was ahead and suddenly gave a joyful cry. He had found the entrance and it was not blocked. Whatever elaborate and sinister game Gwynn ap Nudd was playing with them it did not include imprisonment. It crossed Collen’s mind that he wanted them to escape and had only been buying time when he had closed the exit in the hut. The orchard was much further from the Tor and from there it would take them much longer to reach him.

  Lukas gave Creiddylad into the care of Collen as he climbed the pile of rocks and earth to push the make-shift lid of branches out. The lantern rested on a pile of debris. Pieces of earth fell into his face, roots dangled down like ragged curtains and touched his shoulder.

  With the lid drawn back Lukas climbed out, looking anxiously round the orchard to make sure that they were alone. Then he reached down and Collen lifted Creiddylad to him. The hermit followed, extinguished the lamp and put the lid back over the hole.

  The sunlight dazzled the woman and she shut her eye
s, turning her head against Lukas’ shoulder.

  ‘Could we rest awhile?’ she pleaded. ‘It’s so long since I have seen the sunlight.’

  ‘A while perhaps — but not more than a few moments,’ conceded Collen. He himself was in need of a rest and glad that he had not been the one to ask for it.

  Lukas stood beside her and looked at her. She was old, older than anyone he had ever seen. Her clothes were rags, and her skin was dusty, but she was beautiful.

  Slowly she opened her eyes a crack. Shut them again. Opened them a little wider. He watched her, fascinated, trying to imagine how it must be to see the world after such a long, long time of darkness. At first she screwed up her face so that only the minimum of light could reach her and he noticed how she held the talisman tenderly up to her face, as though it were helping her to see. When at last she managed to keep her eyes fully open she slowly turned her head around gazing at everything with an expression of delight. She touched a little pad of moss that grew on a gnarled old root and stroked the fine grass beside her. She asked to be shown a snail that was crossing the path in a leisurely manner, and Lukas rushed to fetch it for her. After she had gazed at it for a long time and traced the spiral markings of its shell with a thoughtful finger, she asked for it to be set back in its place. Once on the ground again it continued in the same direction as though there had been no interruption in its quiet journey.

  Collen stood up again and urged that they waste no more time. ‘We must get to the Tor before it is too late,’ he said.

  ‘Too late for what?’ Lukas wondered, rising from the grass, but wishing that they could have stayed there forever.

  Collen helped the lovely lady to her feet.

  ‘The time has come for us to challenge him and he is aware of it,’ he said. ‘Who knows what he will do.’

  ‘What do you think he’ll do?’ Lukas looked at Creiddylad.

  She was slow to reply.

  ‘I don’t know how much you remember,’ she said at last. Lukas, who found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between his dreams, his memory and his imagination, shook his head.

  ‘Tell us all we need to know,’ he said. ‘I can’t trust my own memory any more.’

  Collen nudged Lukas to remind him that they must be moving on and he lifted her again. She began to tell them something of the background to her long imprisonment as they walked towards the Tor. Lukas strained to remember the things that she talked about. Most vividly he remembered that day on the Tor when he made love to her, and the full moon stood beside the sun in a blue and endless sky.

  She smiled and met his eyes as though she remembered too — and then a shadow crossed her face. ‘Gwynn could have stayed a mighty spirit Being but he chose to manifest as man. At first, perhaps intending only to stay a short while, but leaving it too long and taking on earth-nature so effectively that in the end he was neither one thing nor the other — lost between worlds, capable of all that a great Lord of Annwn is capable, yet motivated by the greed and jealousy that comes so easily to human-nature. He wanted to take, rather than give, to dominate rather than love. He began to believe that his mind, existing in time, was superior to his spirit, existing outside time.’

  ‘A fallen angel,’ Collen muttered.

  ‘A Being in need of help,’ Creiddylad said softly.

  ‘Surely you’re not sorry for him?’ gasped Lukas, almost letting her fall as he stumbled against a stone.

  The woman nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Is it so easy to be what you should be?’ she asked softly.

  Lukas flushed and conceded in his heart that it was not easy. Not easy at all.

  16

  Cerdic had started to return to the herb garden frustrated and angry. He felt he had been humiliated in some way. He had tried to help and his offer had been scorned. He was not fooled by Brother Peter. Matthew had been running from him, not on an errand for him. Why had he not been trusted to bring him back? Was it because of that incident the other night? It had been an accident. How was he to know that Matthew would nearly die? Besides, would it have been such a great loss if he had? Why was he, Cerdic, never trusted? Whenever there was something responsible to be done he was passed over. If he had been missing from duty half the time that weasel Lukas had been lately he would have been punished by extra duties or made to kneel on the icy flagstones of the chapel until he was stiff and sore in every limb. There had been that incident when he had been caught with one of the village girls behind the cowshed. If she hadn’t screamed out he would have got away with it. He was called up before Father Abbot and made to listen to a lot of pious words about how he would be tortured in hell for the sin of lust — and after that he was punished and looked on as some kind of filth. The younger boys used always to be whining about him, but lately he had stopped all that and they held him in proper awe. He was king of the roost. He had proved himself time and again, violently and powerfully, and not one of the boys dare question him or disobey his bidding. He sometimes thought . . . and here his glowering mood lightened a little . . . he sometimes thought that even the monks were afraid of him.

  The group of boys in the herb garden had stopped work and were sitting on the wall talking and laughing, looking out for Cerdic, clearly delighted that he had not caught Matthew. A wave of hot anger seemed to rise up through his body and a kind of fierce red blindness overcame him. Brother Peter had returned to the kitchen and was nowhere in sight.

  Cerdic picked up the hoe and turned on his heel, striding back the way he had come, his mouth in a tight angry line, determined to capture Matthew, who he blamed for what he thought of as his latest humiliation.

  Matthew, unaware of all this, had reached the path that led to the orchard but had not yet put a foot on it, when he heard something behind him and turned around. Horrified, he saw Cerdic, knew what he had in mind, but knew also that this time he would not be able to escape.

  Cerdic saw the fear in his eyes and raised the hoe. He brought it down on the boy’s head and shoulders again and again while Matthew struggled to dodge and run. Cerdic could think of nothing but beating him to the ground as he had a ferret that had bitten him only a few weeks before.

  The other boys had followed and now stared with horror as Matthew began to sob and plead for mercy, blood pouring from him. Not one of them made a move to help him, though there were many there who saw their own fate in his.

  Having satisfied himself that the iron grip of fear he had always had on his minions was secure again, he held off for a moment and demanded to be told where Matthew had been intending to go and where exactly Lukas was. When Matthew did not answer he beat him again. Cerdic could see that his dogged courage was beginning to sway the sympathy of the crowd behind him and he could not afford to allow this. The blow he brought down on Matthew’s head this time almost split his skull and the boy fell forward with a sickening lurching movement that drew a gasp from those watching. He hit the ground and lay horribly still.

  For what seemed a long, long time the boys and Cerdic stood staring at Matthew, not wanting to believe what they saw.

  Suddenly the watchers turned and ran, tumbling over each other to get away, leaving Cerdic shocked and stunned, staring at what he had done.

  When the Brothers Peter, Andrew and Owen arrived, running, followed by a stream of agitated boys, they found that Matthew was still lying where he had fallen, but Cerdic was nowhere in sight. The bloodstained hoe lay quite a distance away as though it had been flung there with some considerable force.

  Brother Peter lifted Matthew in his arms, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘Why? Why?’ he asked himself desperately. Had they not given Cerdic a place to live when he was lost and lonely? Had they not given him care, and tried to give him a sense of purpose? But he had never understood . . . never been grateful . . . always believed that everyone hated him until it had become a truth. They had tried to love him because their Lord had told them to love everyone — but Cerdic made it almost impossible. Sullen, d
isagreeable, cruel . . . he had been at the centre of every bit of trouble they had had in the last few years. They and he were trapped in a vicious circle: the worse he behaved, the less he was loved; the less he was loved, the worse he behaved. Nothing seemed to get through to him. The monks had prayed for him, but the Lord had given them no guidance except the uncompromising command: ‘love and forgive’.

  17

  Collen was not as young as he would have liked, and on more than one occasion on the way to the Tor he had to pause for breath. At such times Lukas lowered Creiddylad to the ground beside him, and paced restlessly around, anxiously estimating how far they still had to go.

  The afternoon sunlight flickered through the new green leaves of the forest and Creiddylad looked up in wonder at the sky glittering like tiny fragments of sapphire through the intricate filigree of gold and emerald. Sometimes she stroked the earth as though it were the child she loved and had been parted from for a long time.

  ‘It’s a pity there is no more of that holy water left,’ Lukas said to the hermit. ‘We might have need of it.’

  ‘Don’t fret about it. I would not go to such an encounter as we expect unarmed!’ and he patted his side where Lukas could just see the bulge of the pewter water bottle strung from his belt and half hidden by the folds of his clothes.

  ‘I thought you threw the last at me?’

  ‘There is always more in the sacred well.’

  ‘Is that what you were fetching when you left me alone with Gwynn?’

  Collen nodded.

  ‘I thought all water was holy,’ Creiddylad said, puzzled. ‘It brings life and comes from God.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Collen, ‘it may be so — but sometimes we need a little extra something to strengthen our confidence.’

  She smiled and bowed her head in acknowledgement.

  ‘I have my amber talisman,’ she said and raised it to her lips and kissed it. As she did so her face seemed to glow and for a moment she looked young again.

  ‘We must get on if we are to do all that has to be done,’ Collen said briskly. ‘Come Lukas — enough dallying!’