Greenmantle (23 page)

After what Bannon had pointed out, Valenti took note of the man’s clothing. Like the boy’s, his trousers were woolen and he wore a collarless white shirt as well. Overtop was a tweed vest. His shoes were scuffed and old. Looking at him, taking in the creased face and snow-white hair, Valenti realized that everything about him was old.

He glanced at his companions, but they seemed to be waiting for him to make the first move. Valenti nodded and smiled at the old man. He took a couple of steps closer and held out his hand.

“My name’s Tony Garonne,” he said. “Are you Tommy, uh…” Christ, he thought. They didn’t even have a last name for him. That bothered Valenti. He liked to treat older people with the respect he felt was their due and that included no familiarities that weren’t okayed first.

The old man smiled as he took Valenti’s hand. “I’m not Tommy. My name’s Lewis Datchery. Welcome to New Wolding.” His handshake was firm.

Bannon stepped forward and took Lewis’s hand in turn. “Tom Bannon,” he said.

“You’re new to the area, aren’t you?” Lewis asked.

Bannon glanced at Valenti, then nodded. “Yes. I’m just visiting Tony for the week.”

“And who are you?” Lewis asked, looking at Ali.

“Ali. That is, Alice Treasure, only everybody just calls me Ali.” She shook the old man’s hand as well. His skin felt leathery and dry. “You knew we were coming, didn’t you?” she added.

“Yes—yes, I did.”

“Was it Mally who told you?”

“Ali, yes. You’ve met the little bandit, haven’t you?”

Ali nodded. There was a moment’s silence then that began to lengthen uncomfortably. Neither Ali nor Valenti knew quite how to begin, while Bannon stood back, just along for the ride.

“Do you all drink tea?” Lewis asked suddenly. After nods all around, he smiled. “Well, then why don’t we step inside while I put the kettle on and we can find out what brought the three of you here today.”

He moved to the front door as he spoke, ushering them all inside. Ali tugged Valenti’s free hand as they went through the door, her mouth shaping a silent “Wow” as she took in the walls of books.

“How long have you lived here, Mr. Datchery?” Valenti asked.

“A very long time. And please—call me Lewis. We don’t stand much on formality here.”

He busied himself, filling a kettle from a water container, checking the stove for fuel, then setting the kettle on top. Adding another log to the stove, he sat down at the table and waved them all to seats.

“So what
does
bring you to New Wolding?” he asked.

“Well, that’s kind of hard to explain,” Valenti said. He paused to think about where he wanted the conversation to go, then decided to take a different tack. “You’re sort of off the beaten path here, aren’t you?”

Lewis nodded. “We don’t have much commerce with the outside world. We grow what foodstuffs we need and the few staples we require beyond that are brought to us by the Gypsies.”

Valenti thought of the touring car and its occupants. That explained the way they’d looked. He should have known. He’d run into Gypsies in New York, but he’d just never put it all together.

“Why?” he asked then.

Lewis looked puzzled. “Why what?”

“Well, what’re you doing here? Are you folks, you know, Mormons or Amish or something like that? I mean, do you live here because of…religious differences or…” His voice trailed off as he realized what he sounded like. “Look. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come off all heavy with the questions or anything. I know it’s none of our business what you’re doing here, but living close like we do—like Ali and I do, anyway—we’ve been hearing things and…” How did he explain the stag? “It’s the music, you know what I’m trying to say? We hear it and it makes…it makes a difference. So we’re curious about it—like where it’s coming from, who’s making it, and why. Mostly why.”

Lewis smiled. The kettle began to rattle on the stove and he glanced at Ali. “Would you mind seeing to the tea?” he asked.

“I’ll get it,” Bannon said.

“Thank you.” Lewis regarded Valenti and Ali. “It’s a long and not altogether interesting story what we’re doing here. We are most of us originally from Wealdborough in England, from a small village named Wolding for Wold Hill, which stands above the village. Around the turn of the century, we turned our backs on what was then the modern world and returned to…older ways, including older ways of worship.

“It was Tommy’s piping that was the initial catalyst for the change—not the Tommy that pipes for us now, but his grandfather. Again, our only contact with the outside world was with the Travellers—the Gypsies—and it was they who told us about the great forests of this continent.

“A number of us wanted to come here. We felt that in this land we would be closer to the mystery that the pipes call up, and so we came, a dozen families in all, to build a place for ourselves here. We named it New Wolding to remind us of the land that we had left behind, and here we have lived ever since.”

Bannon rolled his eyes, but Valenti and Ali leaned closer to the old man.

“What is this…mystery that you’re talking about?” Valenti asked.

“In Gaul and Britain, he was given the name Cernunnos. In Wales, he was sometimes called Mabon. The Germanic people knew him as Uller, the winter bowman. The Greeks and Romans knew him in various guises: as Apollo and Orion; the Egyptians as Amen-Ra; the Hindus as Surya. He appears in the bible as Nimrod—Genesis describing him as a ‘mighty hunter before the Lord.’ He is a solar god, a huntsman and the lord of animals, and he has been both the pursuer with his own pack of hounds, as well as the pursued, with the hounds chasing him.

“The various descriptions of him become confusing when you try to put them all together, but I suppose that is a part of his mystery, just as the moon’s White Goddess has her own secrets. I like to think of him as the Green Man, an earthier view of the legendary Robin Hood—a Trickster figure, if you will—but I think the name that best sums him up is Pan.”

There was a moment’s silence as they all digested that. Ali and Valenti sat fascinated. By the stove, Bannon shook his head. Tony was taking all this too seriously. And talking the way he did in front of the kid who, well, sure, she was a good kid, but come
on
…

Bannon wondered when was the last time that Mario had spent some time with Tony Valenti. Everything Bannon had ever heard about the man was good, but maybe since the Magaddinos got on his case something had happened to him so that he wasn’t operating with quite a full load anymore. The way he just sat there taking in all this bullshit about gods…

“But you said he was a sun god,” Ali said. She knew her mythologies, even if the others didn’t. “That the Greeks knew him as Apollo and Orion. Wasn’t Pan a Greek god, too?”

Lewis nodded. “I told you that it becomes confusing. But the reason that Pan serves best, I think, is that he is so adaptable. There is something of Pan in each of the gods I named. And he has always been a reflection of what one brings to him.”

“I don’t understand,” Ali said.

“I don’t like to throw semantics around, Ali, but if you
did
understand, he wouldn’t be a mystery.”

“Yes, but—”

“That’s what the native people of this land call the little spirits of the wood—manitous. Little mysteries. And Kitche Manitou is the Great Mystery.”

“But Pan…” Ali frowned. “You said he’s a reflection—”

“That is his Trickster aspect. He becomes what you bring to him. If you approach him with fear, he fills you with panic.” Lewis smiled as he used the word. “If you approach him with lust, he appears as a lecherous satyr. If you approach him reverently, he becomes a majestic figure. If you approach him with evil, he appears as a demonic figure.”

“You mean like Satan?”

“Exactly. The Christians weren’t stupid. They borrowed what they could, from wherever it would be useful. They frowned on merriment and dancing, so they made Lucifer over in the shape of the Pagan Pan who embodied—at least for them—all that they stood against. But what can you expect from a religion that is based on so much suffering? It’s little wonder that faerie couldn’t abide the sight of their crucifix with the son of their god nailed to it. Did you know that the cross originally stood for the Tree of Life—for nourishment and life-giving? They turned it into a symbol of death.”

Ali shook her head. “It doesn’t stand for death—it stands for rebirth. Christ died so that our souls could be saved.”

“But it is still a symbol of suffering. A symbol that man must suffer the trials of this world before he can reap the benefits of the one thereafter. In Heaven. I don’t perceive life as something that must be suffered through for some dubious reward in the hereafter. Life can be and should be a joy right here and now!”

“It just means you’re supposed to be a good person,” Ali said.

“I can agree with being a good person, but Christianity doesn’t espouse that—at least not by its actions. Are you a Christian?”

“Yes. Well, that is, I don’t go to church, but I believe in God, I guess…”

“We’re getting a little off track here,” Valenti said.

No kidding? Bannon thought. It wouldn’t surprise him if what they’d stumbled on to here was some out-of-the-way asylum for the terminally strange.

“Just what exactly is it that’s running out there in the woods?” Valenti wanted to know. “Pan? The devil? What?”

“We saw him as a stag,” Ali added. “Not as a goatman.”

“He’s been known to wear both those manifestations…and many more,” Lewis explained. “And as I said before, I prefer to think of him as the Green Man—a brown-skinned man, tall and antlered, wearing a mantle of green leaves.”

“But what does he do?” Valenti asked.

“He doesn’t do anything. He simply is. We are the ones that do, depending on our nature.”

Valenti studied the old man. “And you folks worship him?”

“Not in the way
you
mean the word.” He looked them over, one by one. “What you should do,” he said finally, “is stay here this evening. Come to the stone with us. Hear Tommy’s piping close at hand. Follow the steps of the dance. Perhaps the mystery will manifest, perhaps not. But you’ll be closer to understanding then.”

There was a long moment’s silence.

“My mom’s not going to be back till late,” Ali reminded Valenti.

He nodded. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but what he was worrying about was that maybe this was some kind of a cult and he didn’t want Ali mixed up in it. On the other hand, he’d heard the music, and whatever else it was, it wasn’t evil. It wasn’t wrong. The mystery is what you bring to it, he thought, repeating what the old man had told them. What the hell did that mean? He looked over at Bannon, who was pouring them each a mug of tea. Bannon met Valenti’s gaze but gave him no indication of what he thought.

“Okay,” Valenti said. “We’ll stay and check it out. Why not?”

“Why not indeed?” Lewis said and smiled.

Valenti looked sharply at him, trying to read something in the old man’s features, in his eyes. Lewis returned his gaze. Humor crinkled his face with laugh lines, but it wasn’t a mocking humor. Valenti wasn’t sure what it was. It made him feel a little strange, one step out of kilter, like he did when he listened to the music. It wasn’t unpleasant; he just didn’t feel in control.

At home, sitting on his steps, he didn’t mind that feeling. It promised him things: solace, peace of mind. Here, it would be sharper. Here, he wouldn’t be able to just shut it off and walk back into his house. He heard a pitter-patter of rain on the roof and realized that the storm had finally come.

“Is the rain going to postpone this…whatever it is tonight?” he asked.

“The rain will stop before too long,” Lewis said with the authority of one who lived more by the weather than by a watch on his wrist. “You’ll see.”

“Here,” Bannon said, setting a mug in front of Valenti. “Have some tea.” His eyes said, you and me, we’ve got to talk.

Valenti got up and went back to the stove with Bannon as Lewis began to show Ali around the bookcases. “What’s the problem?” he asked in a low voice.

“This is crazy—you know that? Gods running around the woods and all this shit. The only thing we’ve got to worry about out here is the Don’s boys tracking us down.”

Valenti glanced over at Ali. She looked eager and ready for the evening, excitement barely under control.

“I know this doesn’t mean anything to you,” he said, “but it’s something we’ve got to look into. It’s important for us—Ali and me.”

“And that’s another thing,” Bannon said. “I tell you, you’re too free and easy in front of this kid. You’ve got real problems, Tony, and you’re not helping yourself going on nature hikes while Magaddino has all the time in the world to set things up out there where it counts.”

Valenti shook his head. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. And added a silent,
I hope
, to himself. “Besides, you think any of Magaddino’s people are going to find us back here in the bush? We’re probably in the safest place we could be right now.”

“Just saying this whole village doesn’t go weird on us and try to take us down.”