Mortal Love (37 page)

DINING ROOM, APOTHECARY, KITCHEN, SCULLERY, REFRACTORY

As in a dream, he walked through it, the wreckage of Sarsinmoor. Everything was overgrown with tall yellow grass, green-tufted heathers, and long, delicate running vines with fragile white blossoms that loosed a breath of lavender and smoke when he touched them. He stepped over collapsed walls and through charred openings that had once been windows, picked his way among cracked stones and thickets of greenery, using his pipe now as a cane, now as a sword, hacking through vines and crumbling mortar. Now and then he recognized some remnant of Victorian life—a metal bucket, a blackened sarcophagus that had been a bathtub. Of the dog Fancy, he saw no sign.

But as he approached the far side of the ruin, Daniel came across what appeared to be far more ancient relics. Walls formed of compressed slates, a medieval arch opening onto a tumbled landscape of turf-grown stones and trees, the remains of a small cottage overlooking the sea. The scent of apple blossom was so strong it choked him, and for several minutes he stood motionless beneath the arch, one hand resting upon the sharp slates, the other clutching the iron pipe to his chest. He could feel something pushing at him, a weight like water rushing down, denying him entry.

“I will come!” he shouted. “Tell them I have come!”

He came through.

Before him was a vale of apple trees in bloom. Light filtered through white blossoms and pale leaves, light the color of tourmaline and shallow water, greenstone and beryl and new-grown ivy. He shut his eyes and stepped forward, feeling his way, the earth soft beneath his feet, until blossoms brushed against his cheeks and he felt the gentle touch of branches grazing his brow. The smell of apple blossom no longer sickened him; indeed, he no longer breathed it at all but felt it move softly in and out and through his very being, like wind in a room where all the casements have suddenly been flung open. He raised the hand holding the iron pipe, but the pipe was gone: he held a slender branch, curled leaves like fingers grasping his. He opened his eyes and lifted his face to the trees, white and pink and pale green spattering his cheeks like rain. He opened his mouth to taste honey and green fruit and the sweet cooked flesh of salmon, the sugared bite of wormwood, bittersweet and healing.

Here,
someone called him.
Here!

It was not a person, but Fancy's low urgent bark. Daniel lowered his head and saw the collie, almost hidden within a soft thicket of grass and green ferns. It stared at him with eyes no longer warning but alert and sharp with delight as a child's.

Here!
it barked again, and Daniel went to see what it guarded.

“Larkin,” he whispered.

They were asleep upon the ground, nestled within a bed of clover and woodbine and fallen apple blossom, both taller than he had remembered, taller than anyone he had ever seen, their long white limbs entwined and their dark hair twisted together as ivy enwraps the tree. Almost they might have been twins, or one form faced into a mirror: the same high, wide brow; the same strong mouth and columnar neck; long-fingered hands with fingers linked, breast pressed to breast and faces slightly upturned so that they shone in the first spark of morning, gold and green and white. A needle could not have slipped between them, nor a sword; and where their flesh met beneath their hollowed throats, he could see a single strong pulse, like the measured fall of water into a still pool.

They have one heart,
he thought, and looked away, amazed and shamed, his own heart breaking inside him.

Above him the apple trees stirred. The sky beyond them was clear and bright, though the sun had not yet showed above the horizon. He could hear the dog Fancy breathing and a twitter of birdsong. He lifted his hand to brush the hair from his face, looked down and saw something in the grass at his feet—a notebook, its cover stained with dew.

Closer.

He picked it up, opened it, and slowly began to turn the pages. Hundreds of pen-and-ink drawings, unbearably beautiful and strange—women with blossoms for breasts and eyes, birds that became men, an army of butterflies brandishing rapiers and javelins against a doctor wielding an immense hypodermic needle. A boy in a straitjacket, grinning as tiny winged creatures issued from his mouth and ears and nostrils, each minute figure as painstakingly drafted as an architectural drawing, each one lovely as the apple blossoms nodding overhead.

All, all were Larkin Meade.

Within her is the world. A time there was when Vernoraxia was lost to us and with her all our hope. A girl green as elderflower. You make her owls when she wants to be flowers. I am that queen.

He reached the last page. It showed a woman, a crown of vines and flowers upon her brow, standing alone within a grove of winter trees. Her face was so rent with grief that for a moment Daniel closed his eyes and looked away. Then he turned back and read the final words.

Kyng Orfew.
Daniel knew it from his grad-school days. But what kind of teenage boy would quote from a twelfth-century Breton lay?

I am that queen.

He closed the sketchbook. One last minute he gazed at her where she lay sleeping. He knew—absolutely, irrevocably, hopelessly—that he would never again look upon anything so beautiful, anyone he would desire like this, to the point of madness, mayhem.
It destroys you, yet she would die of it: mortal love.
Then, stepping carefully among the sweet crushed bracken and trailing woodbine, he leaned down to place the book between the lovers. It rested in the dark fissure between Larkin's breast and Val's, and as Daniel drew back, he heard her make a soft sound deep in her throat, then saw her smile as her hand moved to cup her lover's cheek.

Quickly Daniel turned away. He had just started to walk from the grove—blindly, his breath a stone in his throat—when someone grasped his arm. He pulled up short, ready to strike whoever was there, and saw that it was Juda Trent.

“You didn't wait.” She was white, her face racked by fear. Then she stared past him to where the lovers lay side by side beneath the trees. Her expression changed to disbelief, and Daniel knew that her fear had not been for him.
“Oh
…”

She darted past him, flinging herself down to kneel beside them with her hands held out protectively. Beside her the Border collie stood guard, tail wagging wildly though it made no sound, and as Daniel watched, he saw Juda's spare form fill with light like water, until, like the other two, she shone, tall and beautiful and unsparing. She was no more a woman now than he was, nor a man, yet still he could see something of Juda Trent flickering within that form, like the small blue heart of a flame.

“They are safe,” she whispered. Her gaze met Daniel's, and he saw that her eyes brimmed. “Daniel Rowlands. Thank you.”

He said nothing, just shook his head. Juda got to her feet again and stepped to his side, looming above him like a tree. Heat radiated from her as from a furnace. He forced himself to remain still, not to flee. When she touched his brow, a small gasp escaped him, though he continued to stare fiercely at the ferns and flowers clustered around his feet. For a long time, he didn't speak. When finally he did, his voice was low but steady.

“‘Lord, this question would I ask—which was the most fair and generous, as thinketh you?'”

“You, Daniel,” Juda said softly. “You were.”

He nodded, and at last he raised his head.

“Thank you.” He glanced to where the sleeping queen and her consort lay. As though she heard him, the woman stirred, lifting her head and staring dazed at the sweep of green and white above. She gave a small exhalation of relief at the glowing form beside her, and bent to kiss his brow.

And as she did, her gaze fell upon Daniel, watching from a few feet away. For an instant he thought she did not see him. Then, “Daniel,” she whispered.

He nodded. At her side the sleeping king yawned and blinked, but she had already gotten to her feet and in two long steps was at Daniel's side.

“I thought I dreamed you,” she said, gazing down at him. He still could not speak, for mingled grief and joy. That she had remembered. That somehow he, too, was real. “But … ?” She looked confused.

He shook his head and, for the first time, smiled. “No. I mean, I don't think so.”

He laughed wryly, looking at the vale of blossoming trees, the dark-green ridge that marked the cliff edge, sea and sky melding into a single scrolled scape, shining, verdant, a flare of blinding emerald-white in the center of the eastern horizon like a tear in the world. His breath quickened, and he looked away, to where Juda stood beckoning at the other figure just rising from the green earth.

“We must go,” Juda said. She crossed to Daniel, the dog Fancy at her feet. It alone remained unchanged, except for its eyes, green and gold now and laughing as a boy's. “Daniel. Do you remember what I told you last night? I can make amends. …”

Her outstretched hand reached for his face, but he turned aside.

“No! No,” he said, no longer caring that he wept. “That would be … that would be worse.”

Juda stared at him. “Very well,” she said. Then, her face ablaze, she turned to the others. “It is done, then! My lord—”

The figure that had been Val stared at Daniel kindly. He seemed scarcely less feckless than when Daniel had first seen him, but then he smiled, with an expression so rapturous and knowing that Daniel could only laugh and raise his hands in defeat.

“Go!” Daniel said. Fancy barked, the sound echoing from the cliff like horns blowing, and Daniel waved good-bye to him, too.

The three turned and started for the cliff. Suddenly Daniel cried after them.

“Wait!”

He thrust his hand into his pocket and withdrew the acorn. “This!” he said, running up to the woman. She stared down at him as he held it to her. He swallowed, his mouth turned to sand, and said, “This—the acorn. It's yours. It must mean something to you. I mean, I saw you, and …”

She looked at him, then at the acorn, as though struggling to recall what it was. Then she smiled.

“Oh, no,” she said. She extended her hand, her fingers unfurling like a leaf. “It belongs here. It is just that I always found them so beautiful and strange. Like everything here. That they are so small and so quickly grow.”

She closed her hand around his, and for a moment his entire being rang like a bell. “It would not thrive if I were to take it. Keep it,” she said. “Make it grow.”

He could say nothing, just, at last, “Larkin …”

She smiled, as though recalling a childhood name. One final moment she gazed at him. Then she turned and joined the others waiting for her.

A voice like thunder rolled across the grass. “You can keep the motorcycle,” it said. “The key's in the lock.”

Daniel nodded. He drew the acorn to his lips, shut his eyes against hot tears, and kissed the smooth small bole. From the near distance came a volley of furious barking, ecstatic shouts of amazement, joy, welcome; crashing waves and, faint and far-off as traffic on the M-1, the sound of horns.

“Don't go!” he cried, and opened his eyes.

The world had turned to gold. There was no line of demarcation between land's end and sky and sea. Before him a city hung in the air, spires and pennons and a whirl of birds, blue and gold and silver, green leaves and the endless flash of things that flew and dove and sang. The world he knew rolled back like a wave from sand, the world was revealed: one blazing instant like a flash of flame, and he could see it all, both of them, all.

“Larkin!” he shouted.
“Larkin!”

And it was gone. Before him the sun rose from the dark roil that was the Atlantic, bands of green and yellow striping the sea cliffs. He stood upon a small rise, alone. Behind him was the ruins of a cottage, the wreckage of a manor house. It was morning. The air felt cool and sweet; there was a smell of rain, heavy clouds upon the horizon that boded a storm later. At the farthest reaches of his vision, on the sea beyond the black spars of Tintagel's headland, he saw the white flash of a four-masted schooner under way. No apple trees, no blossoming vale.

Only, tucked into a patch of bracken as within a wren's nest, a sketchbook with faded green binding and carefully inked letters.

And, held so tightly in his hand that he bore its mark for many days, a brown-and-green weight like a living jewel.

An acorn.

The Order of Release

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Order of Release