The Buried Giant (23 page)

“The boy behaves as one bewitched,” Sir Gawain said. “Never
mind him, we must now decide, Master Axl. Do we walk on? Or do we cut this rope to give us at least a moment shielded from what lies beyond?”

“I say we cut the rope, sir. We can surely raise the gate again when we wish. Let’s first discover what we face while the gate’s down.”

“Wise counsel, sir. I’ll do as you say.”

Handing Axl the candle, Sir Gawain took a further step forward, raised his sword and swung at the pillar. There was the sound of metal striking stone, and the lower section of the gate shook, but remained suspended. Sir Gawain sighed with a hint of embarrassment. Then he repositioned himself, raised the sword again, and struck once more.

This time there was a snapping sound, and the gate crashed down raising a cloud of dust in the moonlight. The noise felt immense—Edwin abruptly stopped his singing—and Axl stared through the iron grid now fallen before them to see what it would summon. But there was no sign of the beast, and after a moment they all let go their breaths.

For all that they were now effectively trapped, the lowering of the portcullis brought a sense of relief, and they all four began to wander around the mausoleum. Sir Gawain, who had sheathed his sword, went up to the bars and touched them gingerly.

“Good iron,” he said. “It’ll do its work.”

Beatrice, who had been quiet for some time, came up to Axl and pressed her head against his chest. As he put an arm around her, he realised her cheek was wet with tears.

“Come, princess,” he said, “take heart. We’ll be out in the night air before long.”

“All these skulls, Axl. So many! Can this beast really have killed so many?”

She had spoken softly, but Sir Gawain turned to them. “What do you suggest, mistress? That
I
committed this slaughter?” He said this
tiredly, with none of the anger he had shown earlier in the tunnel, but there was a peculiar intensity in his voice. “So many skulls, you say. Yet are we not underground? What is it you suggest? Can just one knight of Arthur have killed so many?” He turned back to the gate and ran a finger along one of the bars. “Once, years ago, in a dream, I watched myself killing the enemy. It was in my sleep and long ago. The enemy, in their hundreds, perhaps as many as this. I fought and I fought. Just a foolish dream, but still I recall it.” He sighed, then looked at Beatrice. “I hardly know how to answer you, mistress. I acted as I thought would please God. How was I to guess how dark had grown the hearts of these wretched monks? Horace and I came to this monastery while the sun was up, not long after you yourself arrived, for I supposed then I had need to speak urgently with the abbot. Then I discovered what he plotted against you, and I feigned complacence. I bade him farewell, and they all believed me gone, but I left Horace in the forest and returned up here on foot hidden by the night. Not all the monks think alike, thank God. I knew the good Jonus would receive me. And learning from him the abbot’s schemes, I had Ninian bring me unseen down to this place to await you. Curse it, the boy starts again!”

Sure enough, Edwin was singing once more, not as loudly as before, but now in a curious posture. He had bent forward, a fist to each temple, and was moving slowly about in the shadows like someone in a dance enacting the part of an animal.

“The recent events surely overwhelm him,” Axl said. “It’s a wonder he’s shown the fortitude he has, and we must attend to him well once we’re away from here. But Sir Gawain, tell us now, why do the monks seek to murder such an innocent lad?”

“No matter how I argued, sir, the abbot would have the boy destroyed. So I left Horace in the forest and retraced my steps …”

“Sir Gawain, please explain. Has this to do with his ogre’s wound? Yet these are men of Christian learning.”

“That’s no ogre’s bite the boy carries. It’s a dragon gave him that wound. I saw it right away when yesterday that soldier raised his shirt. Who knows how he met with a dragon, but a dragon’s bite it is, and now the desire will be rising in his blood to seek congress with a she-dragon. And in turn, any she-dragon near enough to scent him will come seeking him. This is why Master Wistan is so fond of his protégé, sir. He believes Master Edwin will lead him to Querig. And for this same reason, the monks and these soldiers would have him dead. Look, the boy grows ever wilder!”

“What are all these skulls, sir?” Beatrice suddenly asked the knight. “Why so many? Can they all have belonged to babies? Some are surely small enough to fit in your palm.”

“Princess, don’t distress yourself. This is a burial place, nothing more.”

“What is it you suggest, mistress? The skulls of babes? I’ve fought men, beelzebubs, dragons. But a slaughterer of infants? How dare you, mistress!”

Suddenly Edwin, still singing, pushed past them, and going up to the portcullis pressed himself against the bars.

“Get back, boy,” Sir Gawain said, grasping his shoulders. “There’s danger here, and that’s enough of your songs!”

Edwin gripped the bars with both hands, and for a moment he and the old knight tussled. Then they both broke off and stepped back from the gate. Beatrice, at Axl’s breast, let out a small gasp, but at that instant Axl’s view was obscured by Edwin and Sir Gawain. Then the beast came into the pool of moonlight, and he saw it more clearly.

“God protect us,” Beatrice said. “Here’s a creature escaped from the Great Plain itself, and the air grows colder.”

“Don’t worry, princess. It can’t breach those bars.”

Sir Gawain, who had immediately drawn his sword again, began to laugh quietly. “Not nearly as bad as I feared,” he said, then laughed a little more.

“Surely bad enough, sir,” Axl said. “It looks well able to devour each of us in turn.”

They might have been gazing at a large skinned animal: an opaque membrane, like the lining of a sheep’s stomach, was stretched tightly over the sinews and joints. Swathed as it was now in moonshadow, the beast appeared roughly the size and shape of a bull, but its head was distinctly wolf-like and of a darker hue—though even here the impression was of blackening by flames rather than of naturally dark fur or flesh. The jaws were massive, the eyes reptilian.

Sir Gawain was still laughing to himself. “Coming down that gloomy tunnel my wild imaginings had readied me for worse. Once, sir, on the marshes at Dumum, I faced wolves with the heads of hideous hags! And at Mount Culwich, double-headed ogres that spewed blood at you even as they roared their battlecry! Here’s little more than an angry dog.”

“Yet it bars our way to freedom, Sir Gawain.”

“It does that for sure. So we may stare at it for an hour until the soldiers come down the tunnel behind us. Or we may lift this gate and fight it.”

“I’m inclined to think it a foe darker than a fierce dog, Sir Gawain. I ask you not to grow complacent.”

“I’m an old man, sir, and it’s many a year since I swung this blade in anger. Yet I’m still a knight well trained, and if this be a beast of this earth, I’ll get the better of it.”

“See, Axl,” Beatrice said, “how its eyes follow Master Edwin.”

Edwin, now strangely calm, had been walking experimentally, first left, then to the right, always staring back at the beast whose gaze never left him.

“The dog hungers for the boy,” Sir Gawain said thoughtfully. “It may be there’s dragon spawn within this monster.”

“Whatever its nature,” Axl said, “it awaits our next move with strange patience.”

“Then let me propose this, friends,” said Sir Gawain. “I’m loath to use this Saxon boy like a young goat tied to trap a wolf. Yet he seems a brave lad, and in no less danger wandering here weaponless. Let him take the candle and go stand there at the back of the chamber. Then if you, Master Axl, can somehow raise this gate again, perhaps even with your good wife’s help, the beast will be free to come through. My fancy is it will make straight for the boy. Knowing the path of its charge, I’ll stand here and cut it down as it passes. Do you approve the scheme, sir?”

“It’s a desperate one. Yet I too fear the soldiers will soon discover this tunnel. So let’s try it, sir, and even with my wife and I hanging together on the rope, we’ll do our best to raise this gate. Princess, explain to Master Edwin our plan and let’s see if he’ll enter into it.”

But Edwin seemed to have grasped Sir Gawain’s strategy without a word being said to him. Taking the candle from the knight, the boy measured out ten good strides over the bones till he was back in the shadows. When he turned again, the candle below his face barely trembled, and revealed blazing eyes fixed on the creature beyond the bars.

“Quick then, princess,” Axl said. “Climb on my back and try to reach the rope’s end. See where it dangles there.”

At first they nearly toppled over. Then they used the pillar itself to support them, and after a little more groping, he heard her say: “I hold it, Axl. Release me and it’ll surely come down with me. Catch me so I don’t fall all at once.”

“Sir Gawain,” Axl called softly. “Are you ready, sir?”

“We’re ready.”

“If the beast passes you, then surely it’s the end of this brave boy.”

“I know it, sir. And it will not pass.”

“Let me down slowly, Axl. If I’m still in the air holding the rope, reach up and tug me down.”

Axl released Beatrice and for an instant she hung suspended in the air, her body weight insufficient to raise the gate. Then Axl managed to grip another portion of the rope close to her two hands, and they tugged together. At first nothing happened, then something yielded, and the gate rose with a shudder. Axl continued tugging, and unable to see the effect, called out: “Is it high yet, sir?”

There was a pause before Sir Gawain’s voice came back. “The dog stares our way and nothing now between us.”

Twisting, Axl looked around the pillar in time to see the beast leap forward. The old knight’s face, caught in moonlight, looked aghast as he swung his sword, but too late, and the creature was past him and moving unerringly towards Edwin.

The boy’s eyes grew large, but he did not drop the candle. Instead he moved aside, almost as if out of politeness, to let the beast pass. And to Axl’s surprise, the creature did just that, running on into the blackness of the tunnel out of which not long ago they had all emerged.

“I’ll hold it up yet,” Axl shouted. “Cross the threshold and save yourselves!”

But neither Beatrice beside him, nor Sir Gawain, who had lowered his sword, seemed to hear. Even Edwin appeared to have lost interest in the terrible creature that had just sped past him and would surely return any moment. The boy, candle held before him, came over to where the old knight was standing, and together they stared down at the ground.

“Let the gate fall, Master Axl,” Sir Gawain said without looking up. “We’ll raise it again soon enough.”

The old knight and the boy, Axl realised, were regarding with fascination something moving on the ground before them. He let the gate fall, and as he did so, Beatrice said:

“A fearsome thing, Axl, and I’ve no need to see it. But go and look if you will and tell me what you see.”

“Didn’t the beast run into the tunnel, princess?”

“Some of it did, and I heard its footsteps cease. Now, Axl, go and see the part of it lies at the knight’s feet.”

As Axl came towards them, Sir Gawain and Edwin both started as though shaken from a trance. Then they moved aside and Axl saw the beast’s head in the moonlight.

“The jaws will not cease,” Sir Gawain said in a perturbed tone. “I’ve a mind to take my sword to it again, yet fear that would be a desecration to bring more evil upon us. Yet I wish it would cease moving.”

Indeed it was hard to believe the severed head was not a living thing. It lay on its side, the one visible eye gleaming like a sea creature. The jaws moved rhythmically with a strange energy, so that the tongue, flopping amidst the teeth, appeared to stir with life.

“We’re beholden to you, Sir Gawain,” Axl said.

“A mere dog, sir, and I’d happily face worse. Yet this Saxon boy shows rare courage, and I’m glad to have done him some service. But now we must hurry on, and with caution too, for who knows what occurs above us, or even if a second beast awaits beyond that chamber.”

They now discovered a crank behind one of the pillars, and fastening the rope end to it, soon raised the gate without difficulty. Leaving the beast’s head where it had fallen, they passed under the portcullis, Sir Gawain once more leading, sword poised, and Edwin at the rear.

The second chamber of the mausoleum showed clear signs of having served as the beast’s lair: amidst the ancient bones were fresher carcasses of sheep and deer, as well as other dark, foul-smelling shapes they could not identify. Then they were once more walking stooped and short of breath along a winding passage. They encountered no more beasts, and eventually they heard birdsong. A
patch of light appeared in the distance, and then they came out into the forest, the early dawn all around them.

In a kind of daze, Axl came upon a cluster of roots rising between two large trees, and taking Beatrice’s hand, helped her sit down on it. At first Beatrice was too short of breath to speak, but after a moment she looked up, saying:

“There’s room here beside me, husband. If we’re safe for now, let’s sit together and watch the stars fade. I’m thankful we’re both well and that evil tunnel’s behind us.” Then she said: “Where’s Master Edwin, Axl? I don’t see him.”

Looking about him in the half-light, Axl spotted Sir Gawain’s figure nearby, silhouetted against the dawn, head bowed, a hand on a tree trunk to steady him while he regained his breath. But there was no sign of the boy.

“Just now he was behind us,” Axl said. “I even heard him exclaim as we came into the fresh air.”

“I watched him hasten on, sir,” Sir Gawain said without turning, his breath still laboured. “Not being elderly as the rest of us, he’s no need to lean on oaks panting and gasping. I suppose he hurries back to the monastery to rescue Master Wistan.”

“Didn’t you think to delay him, sir? Surely he hurries to grave danger, and Master Wistan by now killed or captured.”