At the Crossing Places (18 page)

A
IR CAN PULL A VOICE TO PIECES. ROCK CAN MAKE IT
repeat itself and sound more and more hollow.

In my warm right hand I held my obsidian. So firm and four-cornered, its rough underside covered with little lumps and grooves and white pocks, its glossy face like the eye of a dark pond. I know exactly how my seeing stone looks, and yet I scarcely know it at all. Each time I look into it, it surprises me.

I can see the hill shaped like Tumber Hill. The rock-prison. A knight is riding toward it.

And now I hear the terrible noises inside the rock. Howling. Sobbing, dry sobbing. But which are the cries, and which are their echoes?

The knight reins in and listens very carefully. He's uncertain whether this is a rock with a voice, or whether someone—maybe more than one person—is trapped inside the rock.

Now the knight sees what could be a passageway, blocked by a massive boulder. But not even one hundred men could move that.

Stormy howling—wild sobbing. The knight backs away a little and stares up at the rock.

“Is there anyone there?” he shouts. And then: “Where are you?”

Are-you-are…ooo…
The grey rock gives his own sounds back
to the knight. And now the utter silence is as dismaying as all the cries were before.

“I am Bagdemagus,” the knight calls out. “Is anyone there?”

“Merlin!” booms the voice inside the rock

A little swirl of wind picks up the word, giddies it, and whirls it up into the bright morning.

“Bagdemagus,” booms the voice inside the rock. “You cannot help me. No one can help me except for the one who has trapped me.”

That's true for Merlin, I know, because Nimue has trapped him with magic, but it's not true for me. I don't have to be helped by the people who have wounded me—Serle, Sir William. I can help myself. My own efforts can set me free.

Slowly Sir Bagdemagus rides away from the rock.

I have hidden my gold ring. It is under the short floorboard in this room, right next to my seeing stone.

L
ORD STEPHEN SAYS I CAN SEND A MESSAGE TO MERLIN
when Simon next rides to Caldicot, but today he's gone to Ludlow and tomorrow he's riding to Gortanore.

“Is it about me, sir?” I asked.

“I don't know why you should think that,” said Lord Stephen.

Lord Stephen has decided to let me go to Verdon after all. “We don't want to disappoint Winnie,” he said with a half-smile. “You can ride over next Tuesday. Lady Judith will accompany you.”

It is very strange. During my lesson today, I read Haket the Gospel chapter about the wedding feast in Cana, when Jesus turned six stone jars of water into good wine. And when I looked into my stone this evening, the first thing I saw was a bridegroom and bride leaving their wedding feast. What happens in my life and what happens inside the stone are often connected like sounds and echoes—or like my left and right eye, which overlap but can each see more than the other. What I see in the stone sometimes seems like a promise, sometimes like a warning.

The bridegroom is leading his beautiful young wife along in a narrow town street carpeted with reeds and rushes and fresh mint. Flowered silks are hanging out of all the upper windows. The wedding party is following a man holding high an orange banner. All the bell ringers are busy…

Now I can see a bedroom. It's festooned with boughs of fruit trees—apple and pear and cherry and quince—but all the leaves are dry and curled, and although the sun's high in the sky and glaring fiercely at the bride and bridegroom through the leaded windowpanes, they're still lying on the bed. They're mother-naked!

The beautiful young woman stares at her sleeping husband. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. “Look what I've done to you,” she whispers. “Have you forgotten you're a knight?” She wipes her eyes. “It's a disaster!”

The man suddenly sits up. “What's a disaster?” he asks.

“I didn't say anything.”

“Enid! What's a disaster?”

“You were dreaming. You imagined it.”

“And these tears,” says the young man, laying one forefinger gently under his wife's right eye. “Did I imagine them?”

Now Enid clings to her husband. “Erec,” she sobs, “they're all laughing at you. Your friends. Your whole household. ‘Soft, completely soft…a slugabed…not a shred of honor left…' I keep overhearing them,” the young woman says. “They think I've stolen you and ensnared you. ‘It's all her fault. She's a love-witch.'”

Erec leaps out of bed. “All right!” he says. “Get up! Get dressed! Put on your finest gown, the one Queen Guinevere gave you. Put on your purple riding cloak.”

“Are you sending me away?” Enid asks timidly.

“Do as I say,” Erec replies.

Now I can see Erec and Enid riding away down the narrow street that led them to their marriage bed. Erec is mounted on a Gascon bay and Enid on a dappled palfrey.

“They're putting us to the test,” Erec tells Enid, “and we'll prove they're all wrong. We will ride together, but you must not help me. Whomsoever you see, and whatsoever you think is going to happen, you're not to say one word unless I speak to you first. Do you understand that?”

Enid takes Erec's hand and nods.

“Ride ahead of me!” Erec instructs his young wife. “You're not to turn round and look at me.”

All at once, slapping their horses' necks and bawling, three mounted men spring from my stone. Out of an ash copse, they come careering down the track towards Erec and Enid.

Enid twists round in her saddle. “Erec!” she calls. “Erec!”

“No!” shouts Erec.

At once he spurs his bay and surges past Enid. He kills two of the robbers, each with a single stroke. The third he unhorses, and the man hits the ground with a horrible grunt.

“This once I'll forgive you,” Erec tells his wife, “but you mustn't speak to me again.”

The day deepens. Waves of dark clouds rush in from the west, in too much of a hurry to shed their rain, and Enid keeps glancing over her left shoulder.

“We're being followed,” she says to herself. “I know we are. I must disobey him.”

Enid reins in. “Forgive me!” she says very quietly.

“What now?”

“Shapes in the wood. Over there. We're being followed.”

“Enid!” protests Erec. “Have you no respect for me? Not one ounce?”

Now five dark shadows turn themselves into five mounted men. Side by side four of them gallop towards Erec, and the fifth rams right into Enid's palfrey.

But Sir Erec is fully armed, while the mounted men are not. He whirls his sword around his head until it looks like ten swords, and the four men wheel away and escape into the dark woods. The fifth man throws himself on the ground and begs for mercy.

“You would have molested my wife,” Erec shouts, “and now you won't even stand and fight.”

In disgust, Erec turns his back on the groveling man. He rounds up his handsome horse, and he and Enid ride on.

The anxious moon rises and floats. The bleeding sun quickly sinks. Venus first, then Orion—and now, hundreds of stars, like all the tiny glittering crosses spangling Enid's beautiful dress.

Husband and wife slowly plod up to an old chestnut tree. They've been riding all day, and Enid is so tired she can scarcely sit upright in her saddle.

“We'll have to shelter here,” Erec says. “You sleep, and I'll watch over you.”

But Enid shakes her head. She gestures to Erec to lie down and tenderly lays her purple cloak over him. For a while she sits with her back to the twisted trunk and gazes at her sleeping husband. “Did I really doubt you?” she whispers to herself. “You've fought three robbers single-handed and killed them. You've driven off five men. How could I have doubted you?” Enid is so tired that only her strong will keeps her awake. “I'll obey you, Erec,” she whispers, “but I'll have you need me. I'll have you need me even if you don't recognize it.”

I'm not certain, but I think I must have fallen asleep myself while Enid was watching over Erec, because suddenly it was dark in my room, and nearby an owl was hooting. In the stone I could see a handsome hall, lit with hundreds of flickering candles, and a servant pouring wine from an earthenware jar.

Erec and the host are sitting at one end of a long table and Enid is at the other, and they're listening to a young woman playing the harp. Her fingers are long and very nimble.

“Your wife has been very quiet all evening,” the host says to Erec. “I'll cheer her up.”

But as soon as he sits down next to Enid, the host sings a different tune. “So far as I can see,” he says quietly, “that man's not worthy of you. You're very beautiful, and he's a boor. The moment I saw you, I desired you, Enid, and desire leads to love.”

Enid sits very still. She doesn't look at the host.

“He hasn't said a word to you all evening,” the host says. “Now listen to me. If you want to stay here as my mistress…”

Enid presses her fingernails into the palm of her right hand. “I'm not that kind of woman,” she says. “I'd sooner burn on a hawthorn pyre. I'd rather my ashes were scattered to the four winds than be unfaithful to my husband.”

“I see,” says the host, and he twists the lobe of his left ear. “So persuasion won't work.”

Enid glances at the host. She sees the evil in his eyes; she can feel it on the back of her own neck.

“Listen carefully,” the host whispers. “I'm giving you this choice: Either you agree to stay here with me, or I'll signal to my
men and they'll pinion your husband and cut off his head. In this hall. Not only that—I'll make you watch them.”

Enid rubs her lips together and smiles at her host, and I think she's forcing herself to say words she does not mean. “I was testing the strength of your feelings,” she whispers. “But you can't kill my husband when he's defenseless. It's true, he's tired of me. I'm tired of him. Send your men to our chamber very early in the morning. Erec may try to fight them, but they'll overpower him.”

The host looks at Enid like a wolf.

“And after that,” says Enid, “you can do what you want with him. I don't care.”

The host stands up and stretches. He embraces Erec and wishes him a peaceful night.

“I commend you to God,” he says.

At this moment, I heard a clattering at the bottom of the stone steps. Quickly, I wrapped my stone and hid it under the joist, and went to the door.

Anian was climbing the steps, banging a metal ladle against the wall.

“What are you making that noise for?” I asked. “You're as bad as Izzie. She came up here once, smacking the wall with a stick.”

Anian leered up at me. “Did she now?” he said.

“What do you want, anyhow?”

“Supper,” said Anian. “Lord Stephen says you're keeping everyone waiting.”

W
INNIE WAS WAITING ON THE DRAWBRIDGE FOR LADY
Judith and me. Her red-gold hair was tied back at the neck, as it was when I first saw her, and she was wearing a gold hairpin behind each ear.

First she greeted and kissed her aunt, then she turned to me. “I told you!” she exclaimed. “I knew Lord Stephen would let you come to Verdon. Follow me.”

The water in the moat was spangled with water lilies. There were clusters of iris on the far bank, and the manor walls were draped with honeysuckle, all its flowers shining in the sunlight.

Lady Anne is almost as spirited as Winnie. Her eyes are cornflower-bright, and she's very quick with words and often completes other people's sentences. Some people stump around as if their bodies are too heavy for them, but Lady Anne moves as if hers is too light and she can only just stop it from flying away.

“You're very welcome,” she said, with a gay smile, “very, very welcome. We want you to see everything—absolutely everything, don't we, Winnie. As if you were at home.”

Lady Anne doesn't look like Winnie, though, except for her snub nose. Her hair is covered with a wimple.

“It's as yellow as a crocodile,” Winnie told me. But I've never seen one, and neither has she.

“Crocodiles are bright yellow,” Winnie said, “and they have horrible teeth and claws.”

Tomorrow is Saint John's Eve. Before supper, Winnie and I helped Edie, Lady Anne's chamber-servant, to decorate the hall. Not with boughs of fruit trees, like Erec and Enid's bedroom, but with strings of marigold and midsummer-men, birch branches and wiry hanks of fennel. At least that's what I call it, but everyone at Verdon calls it spignel.

As soon as we had eaten, Lady Anne said: “Now, Arthur! When someone visits Verdon for the first time, we always, always welcome him—him or her—with a story. Isn't that right, Judith? And this is the story for Saint John's Eve. Have you heard about Wild Edric?”

I shook my head and Winnie squealed. “I'm going to sit next to you,” she announced.

“He lived in Clun Forest,” Lady Judith told me.

“Where we went hare hunting,” Winnie added. “He looked like the wildman on your tile.”

“A wild boar of a man,” said Lady Anne enthusiastically. “A man with an appetite! One summer day, Edric went hunting with his page, just the two of them, and he strayed so deep into the forest that he didn't know where he was. As it was getting dark, he rode up to a wall—a high stone wall, right in the middle of the forest. There was a little wrought-iron gate let into it, and Edric peered through…”

Next to me, Winnie began to rock gently, and then to hum-and-sing:

“
Mmm…mmm…acadam merlaster…
sam o thrat glista…mmm…mmm…
”

“A circle of young women were singing and dancing,” said Lady Anne. “They were wearing white linen dresses, and they were taller than Englishwomen. Even you, Judith! But those fairy women! How light they were on their dancing feet.

“The longer Edric looked, the more hungry he grew. Especially for that one, the lovely one with ear-jewels. She seemed to know Edric was there. Three times she turned and looked straight at him.

“Edric couldn't bear it,” said Lady Anne. “He grasped the gate with both hands, but of course he couldn't tear apart the iron bars. So then he shouldered it and burst the lock. He rushed over to the girls and snatched up the one with the ear-jewels. He tossed her over his shoulder.”

Lady Anne smiled and sipped at her tumbler of wine. “Well,” she said, “somehow or other, Wild Edric found his way home.”

“Lydbury North,” Sir Walter told me. “That was his manor.”

“Only three miles away,” Lady Judith added.

“He didn't let go of the girl,” Lady Anne continued, “not for one moment. And she wouldn't say a word. Nothing! Not for three days and nights. But on the fourth day, as soon as she woke up…

“‘Edric! Edric, I will be your wife. I will take you as my husband, and you will prosper. But if ever you speak ill of my sisters, or blame them for anything, I will leave you at once.'

“Well, Edric and the fairy woman were married. And do you
know, Arthur, when King William heard about her—her strange, precarious beauty—he summoned her to court so he could see her for himself.

“To begin with, Edric and his wife got on well enough, and they had a son. Alnod. But the fairy woman was a silent creature, and sometimes she had a desperate, lost look.

“One evening, Edric rode in late—very, very late—after hunting. He was so hungry he could have eaten a haunch of raw venison. He could have eaten the bark off the trees. But when he hurried into the hall, there was no supper awaiting him on the table. Not even a plate and spoon. Not even any ale.

“Angrily, Edric shouted at his wife's chamber-servant to fetch his wife, but even then she didn't come to the hall for some time.

“‘Where have you been?' Wild Edric shouted. ‘With your sisters, I suppose? This is their fault.'

“Right in front of Edric,” Lady Anne went on, “the fairy woman vanished. As if she were made of air. That was the last time Edric saw her, though he often searched for the place where he found her. And almost at once, things began to go very badly for him. He lost one manor to the Normans. Then he was besieged in his castle at Wigmore. He ended up in prison and in chains.

“But people still see him. Around here they do…flying north and east on his white horse, with his wife beside him.”

“I can see him in your words,” I said.

“Out of the forest and over the hills,” Lady Anne cried. “They're dressed in green, and their phantom hounds are rushing behind them.”

For one moment, Winnie laid her warm fingers on my left wrist, then she took them away again.

“Has that story been written?” I asked.

“Arthur writes everything,” Winnie said.

Lady Anne smiled. “I think we should remember everything we need to know,” she said.

“That's what Nain, my grandmother, says,” I replied. “But isn't there more knowledge in the world than we can remember?”

“There's too much,” said Sir Walter. “That's the trouble.”

“I wish I'd learned to read,” Lady Judith said.

“No,” said Sir Walter. “If people spend their lives inside books, they'll read a great deal they don't really need to know.”

“Instead of thinking for themselves!” added Lady Anne. “Now, Winnie, I want you to play the harp for Arthur.”

Winnie got up from the table and walked over to the harp in the corner of the hall. Her fingers are not all that long but they're nimble, and she's very proud of her pretty fingernails.

“Like filberts,” she told me once.

“You mean hazelnuts?”

“Exactly,” said Winnie.

I liked watching Winnie, leaning forward with her arms around the harp, but she hasn't been learning for very long. She could play some chords but couldn't pick out a melody.

“Very good,” said Sir Walter fondly.

“You must learn melodies, Winnie,” said Lady Judith.

“Quite right!” Sir Walter said. “I want you to play so well that, listening to you, a man will never notice he's growing old.”

“I'm not going to marry an old man,” Winnie objected.

“No, no,” said Sir Walter, and he flapped both hands rather hopelessly, as if he would only know what he meant when he heard what he'd said.

“Time to sleep,” said Lady Anne. “Winnie and Arthur, I want you to pick the wort in the morning. Before the dew's off the flowers.”