Greenmantle (6 page)

“I was sort of a private soldier,” he explained.

“You mean like a mercenary?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. But I’m retired now. And let’s keep this between you and me, okay? You got to make me a promise on this.” Christ, he thought. He had to be nuts telling her this much. Except who could she talk to?

Ali nodded solemnly. “I won’t tell anybody—not even Mom—if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“My lips are sealed,” she said and pinched them closed with her forefinger and thumb.

“How’re you going to drink with your mouth like that?” Valenti asked.

Ali giggled and took her hand away. “You want some more help with that fence?”

“Sure. Did you talk to your momma about you both coming over for dinner? What’d she say?”

“She said fine.”

“Sensational. This is a meal you’re not going to forget, Ali. We’re going to start with some antipasti and—”

“What’s antipasti?”

“It’s like olives, cold cuts, cheese—that kind of thing, you know? So we start with that and a nice white wine—your momma let you drink wine?”

“With dinner, sure.”

“Okay. So how’s about this Saturday night?”

Ali nodded and followed him back to where they’d been working earlier. Valenti continued to give her a rundown on what she could expect for dinner as they finished nailing the chicken wire up in place. The afternoon went by quickly and all too soon Ali was on her way home, running because she was going to be late for supper.

Valenti watched her go, hoping he hadn’t made a mistake telling her as much about himself as he had. But he was glad he’d done it. It was good to have a secret between friends.

Collecting up the tools, he put them away and headed for the house. He planned to go down and check out the woods behind Ali’s place later on to see if he could find any sign of her secretive visitor. While he got his own dinner ready, he tried to make up his mind if he should bring a piece with him or not. In the end he settled on his cane. Out here, who needed guns?

5

There was a tall, grayish-blue stone on the slopes of Snake Lake Mountain, a pointed finger of rock that lifted skyward among the cedars and pine, the maple, birch and oak. It looked to be a part of the forest and the backbones of stone that lifted from the rich forest floor, but it was older than either—a lost remnant of something secret. It stood in a small flat meadow, scooped from the slope. Above, the forest climbed onto the top of the hill in a tangle of underbrush and old trees; below it, younger trees trekked on down the slopes to circle the small village of New Wolding and its outlying fields before it wandered off to meet Black Creek and the land beyond.

Stags scraped the velvet from their antlers against that stone. Goats and sheep grazed there often enough to give the meadow the short, trimmed look of a lawn. But mostly it was Tommy Duffin who frequented the meadow and played tunes on his reed pipes to the tall old standing stone. He played in the evenings, as the twilight fell….

Like his father before him, and his grandfather as well, Tommy had the coarse rough features of the Duffins. His face was plump, his eyes somewhat vacant-looking, his hair lifting in an untidy thatch from his head. But when he lifted his pipes and set his breath into them, he changed.

His features seemed to become thinner, more defined, and a fire touched his eyes, a flickering of firefly light that said, I know mysteries, hear them in my music. And then he was no longer the same boy of fifteen who lived with his mother in the cottage closest, but one, to the hill.

That Tuesday evening, Lewis looked up to see Tommy passing by. Lewis was sitting out on the steps of his cabin and lifted a hand in greeting. Tommy nodded, friendly enough, but already that sense of distance was creeping into his eyes and he never broke step as he continued on up to the stone. The wolfish Gaffa gamboled in the fields across from Lewis’s cabin, making his own roundabout way to his master’s destination.

Lewis continued to sit on his steps. He heard a blackbird’s song, the hum and creak of insects, then—lifted above them, sweeter by far—the sound of Tommy’s piping.

One by one the villagers began to drift in the direction of Snake Lake Mountain, what they called Wold Hill after the hill they’d left behind in the old country. The Lattens passed by first, William and Ella, both stout and graying now, their son Willie, Jr. and his wife, Rachel, walking with them. Then Alden Mudden, Emery and Luca Blegg, and the Hibbuts sisters, Jenny and Ruth, all in a group. Tommy’s mother, Flora, followed, walking arm in arm with old Ailie Tichner, the only resident of New Wolding older than Lewis since her husband, Miles had died last winter.

Peter Skegland came next with his wife, Gerda, and their two daughters, Kate and Holly. Walking with the two Skegland girls was Martin Tweedy. His parents, George and Susanna, were not far behind. Bringing up the rear was Lily Spelkins, who’d be sixty-three this summer, but was still as slender and supple as a young girl, and would sometimes dance with the younger women when Tommy’s music grew too gay to resist.

There aren’t many of us left, Lewis thought as he fell in step with Lily. There were still representatives of all the families that had first immigrated here, all in a group in the late twenties, but slowly and surely they were dying out. Their lives were long, but Lewis didn’t like to think of a time when there would be no one left to follow the old ways.

There were so few children—and none in the past ten years. Many had left the village. Of the twelve cottages that made up New Wolding, four stood empty now. They needed only one of the two big dark-timbered barns to winter their diminishing herds and store their excess crops. The only part of the village that truly prospered these days was the graveyard.

“I love this time of year,” Lily said. When Lewis didn’t answer straightaway, she laid her hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze. “You think too much, Lewis. It’s going to make you an old man.”

Lewis gave her a half-hearted smile. “And that would never do, would it?”

“When Jango comes this year,” she told him, “I’m going to see what sort of a perk-up tea he can whip up for you, Lewis. Anything to get your nose out of those books and into the fresh air a bit. Remember the walks we used to take?”

Lewis nodded. That was before his wife Vera died, before his son Edmond left the village, not to return, before he realized that the something that had held them all together for so long was fading. It was before Lily’s husband Jevon died as well, when the village seemed more alive.

Now New Wolding was filled with memories rather than vitality. It had an air of imminent disuse about it. Tommy’s music let one forget, but only while it played. It wasn’t strong enough to draw new blood to the village anymore. The old haunting mystery just didn’t seem to run so deeply anymore. It no longer held the dark hounds at bay. And one day, too soon, it would all—

“Lewis!”

Lily poked him with a sharp elbow, bringing him back to the present, but not before he finished his last thought: One day it would all fade away.

“It’s as much what we feel,” Lily said, “what we give back, as what we take, Lewis. You of all people should remember that—you told it to me.”

Lewis nodded. The music didn’t come from a void, nor did it play to one. It was a conduit between themselves and the mystery that lay behind it. What it woke in each person who heard it reflected only what was inside them to begin with.

“You’re right, Lily,” he said, slipping her arm into the crook of his own. “I keep forgetting—It really is that simple.”

Lily leaned over and kissed his dry cheek, then gave his arm a tug. “Come along, Lewis. There’s something in the air tonight and I think I want to dance.”

Lewis smiled at her. Arm in arm, they hurried after the others, drawn to the meadow of the longstone by the call of Tommy’s music. No one quite entered except for Tommy. The rest sat or stood in a half circle among the trees, watching him play. The last light of the day washed over him and for one breathless moment he appeared to glow. His reed pipes woke an exultant music that skirled to meet the approaching night in a rush of breathy notes. Then the darkness stole in and the music turned into a jig.

The two Hibbuts sisters, in their fifties now, were the first to leave the shelter of the trees. They moved to the music, Jenny’s graying hair undone and falling across her thin shoulders as she stepped to the tune, while Ruth, the years wearing on her a little more, didn’t move quite so sprightly. Kate and Holly Skegland were next, both young and limber, though not quite graceful yet, and then Lily left Lewis’s side to join them.

To those watching from the trees it seemed that there were more than just five of their own dancing to Tommy’s music. The little meadow appeared to be filled with other dancing forms, ghostly shapes that spun in the steps with more abandon and an elfin grace. They danced a May dance that plucked the apples of the moon, silver and cool, rather than the bright apples of the sun.

Lewis looked for and found the small form of his night visitor in among the bobbing forms, her dance feline as a lynx at play, and no less merry. Martin Tweedy had left his parents’ side to join the dancers, holding hands with both Kate and Holly as they went round and round. A feeling of gladness swelled inside Lewis. An expectancy. A returned vitality. And then the dance music slowed to become a bittersweet air.

The ghostly shapes faded as the music changed tempo. The dancers returned to sit with the others among the trees—all except for one. Lewis saw her slip catlike into the brush behind the tall standing stone. The breathy sound of the pipes grew more haunting still and a hush settled over them all like a collective sigh.

All night sounds stilled until the pipes played alone into the vastness of the starry skies overhead. No one moved; no one dared to take a breath. It was into this moment of perfect stillness, with just the thread of a melody reaching up to the stars, that the stag stepped into the meadow.

He was huge, more the size of a small horse than a buck, a Royal by his antlers, having three tops and all his rights—brow, bay and tray tines. His coat was a ruddy brown like that of the red deer of the Scottish lowlands rather than the native whitetails. By Tommy’s feet, Gaffa regarded the enormous beast quizzically because, like a fawn, the stag had no scent. Moving silently, the stag stepped fully into the meadow, then turned to face the piper. Tommy brought the tune to a close and the two regarded one another in the ensuing quiet.

That’s where it lives, Lewis thought. Inside the stag. The mystery that called from beyond the music of Tommy’s pipes—the enchantment that men had followed through the forests of prehistory, in Arcadia’s gentle hills, in the black forests of Europe, in England’s tracts of bardic woodland, in the eastern forests of North America. No matter what shape it wore, it was always the same mystery. It was what their ancestors had followed, Lewis realized, when they crossed the Atlantic. The mystery had left the shores of England, moving west, and they had followed.

The music that Tommy played was only a memory of what this creature was. It was something between wizardry and poetry, between enchantment and music. Its antlers were the branches of the tree of life and in its eyes was the beauty of the world, always seen as though for the first time.

That was how Lewis saw it—the Royal stag called from Otherwhere by Tommy’s music, by the memories tied into those tunes—Lewis, with his walls of books and the thousands of pages that had passed before his eyes. The others didn’t see it quite the same. To them the stag was a wonder, a gift from Tommy’s music and the night. The play of the muscles under its skin as it slowly circled the perimeter of the meadow was an echo of their dancing. It was Tommy’s music given form for them to see.

Then, from the distance, a new sound came. A discordant baying of hounds. The stag rose on its hind legs, antlers sweeping the sky. For one moment it seemed to all those watching that a man stood there—a man with antlers lifting from his brow—then the stag dropped to all fours and sprang from the meadow in one long graceful bound, disappearing into the forest without a sound.

The baying drew nearer until Tommy lifted his pipes to his lips once more and blew a new music—fierce and wild, a trumpeting blare. Before the sound of it had died away, the baying was gone and the usual noises of a nighted forest returned.

Lewis closed his eyes and shivered. When he glanced at the longstone, he saw that both Tommy and his dog were gone. As was the stag. As the villagers soon would be, for they were already going as they’d come, in small groups, or one by one. Lily remained, a question in her eyes, but Lewis shook his head. Not until he was alone did he turn away from the meadow and its tall standing stone to return to his cabin.

Unlike the others, he couldn’t simply accept things as they happened. Questions troubled him when others had no need for either the questions or their answers. What brought the stag? What was different on the nights that it came from those nights when it didn’t? Tommy played the same music.

There was no answer in his books. No answer from anyone he could ask. No answer from Tommy’s music nor the wondrous creature it had called up tonight. He thought of his night visitor, of the gleam he sometimes saw in her slightly slanted green eyes. There was an answer in her, he knew. Only with her, he didn’t know the right question to ask. To her, “Why?” was only “Why not?” That wasn’t enough for Lewis. It never had been.