The Greenstone Grail (19 page)

‘What happens,’ Nathan reiterated, ‘if the gnomons catch someone?’

‘Go inside him, eat his mind, bring madness …’ He laid his big hand on Nathan’s forehead. ‘Not you,’ he said. ‘I help.’ Then he turned, and strode off at great speed into the fields.

Nathan didn’t try to follow. He walked slowly back to the village, trying to digest everything Eric had told him, struggling to resist the creeping onset of fear. The gnomons aren’t after me, he told himself, wherever they come from. Their whispers had accompanied his vision of the Grail; they haunted Thornyhill woods and the lost home of the Thorns; the woodwose had seen them there too, without him. Something drew them to this place, something to do with traditions and stories which the Thorns themselves didn’t fully understand. The answer is in the stories, Nathan decided with a flash of illumination – but the tales were garbled, forgotten with the passage of centuries, only fragments written down. And what could the Grimthorn Grail have to do with the ruler of a dying world, hemmed in on
the last surviving planet, brooding on some secret plan that might never come to fruition?

He needed to talk to Hazel. If he talked things through, maybe they would be clearer.

Maybe not.

Annie and Michael were looking at books. ‘I think this box comes from Thornyhill,’ she said. ‘There are so many books there: Barty started this business by clearing some out. I found this the other day, in one of the cupboards. It’s probably been there since before I came. I must have put some stuff on top of it and forgotten about it. It’s very easy to overlook things here. Too many books, too many cupboards, too many nooks and crannies where all sorts of objects can go and hide.’

‘And yet it’s a small house,’ Michael remarked.

‘Larger inside,’ Annie said darkly.

‘I suppose Bartlemy’s a collector himself?’

‘I don’t know. He doesn’t spend all his time going to sales or auctions, like Rowena Thorn. I get special books for him sometimes, if he asks me, or if I hear of one I think will interest him. I suppose … he’s an
incidental
collector. He just goes through life picking up bits and pieces on the way.’

‘Like the rest of us in fact,’ Michael grinned. ‘He seems to have picked up quite a lot. How old is he?’

Annie smiled to herself. ‘I’ve always been too polite to ask.’

They found a social history of the Georgian era which Michael said he wanted and a couple of novels by Mrs Henry Wood which he said he couldn’t resist. He insisted on paying her over the odds – none of the books were valuable – and went away with a promise that she would call him if she needed company or a confidant. And for the first time, he gave her a farewell kiss, a peck on the cheek which was somehow not quite casual, leaving her disconcerted,
slightly flustered, and vaguely pleased, though she was not yet ready to tell herself why. Villagers in Eade did not kiss; and while the citified newcomers hugged, gushed and darlinged one another in the fashionable manner Annie had always drawn back from such contact, finding it faintly insincere. But Michael, though she was sure he could air-kiss and darling with the best of them, wasn’t insincere – or at least not with her. After he had gone she sat for several minutes in an agreeable haze that passed for thought, returning to reality on the reflection that if Rianna Sardou was actually the manifestation of a malevolent water-spirit, it was hardly necessary to have scruples about her. Of course, the real Rianna must be somewhere – comatose, dead, imprisoned, or in Georgia …

She tried to shake off fruitless speculation and looked down at the book in her hand, which turned out to be an early cookbook. She must restore it to Bartlemy: it would surely be one he wouldn’t wish to lose. She began to leaf through it, noting detailed recipes in printed copperplate, with references to marchpane and poupetons and Gâteau Mellifleur, and line drawings to illustrate the results. There were even a few colour plates, protected with sheets of tissue paper, showing still-life paintings of sumptuous dishes. It was as she turned the page to one of these that a piece of paper slipped out and flapped its way to the floor. Annie bent to retrieve it, assuming it was part of the book, but she saw her mistake almost immediately. It was handwritten, not printed, and had nothing to do with cookery. She stared at it for a moment then closed the book and jumped to her feet. A hasty thumb through her address book and then she was on the phone.

‘Rowena? Is that you? It’s Annie Ward. I think I’ve found your injunction.’

Rowena Thorn arrived within the hour, trailing her solicitor like a poodle on a leash. ‘This is it,’ the solicitor confirmed, studying the document. ‘It’s not the original – at a guess that disintegrated, if it was drawn up as long ago as you say – this is an update, made in the nineteenth century, but it’s perfectly valid. Now we’ve really got a chance to prove that the sale of the cup was illegal.’

‘And I found it,’ Annie said. ‘It doesn’t seem fair. The children searched so hard, and I didn’t look at all.’

‘You get the reward,’ said Rowena. ‘Five hundred pounds. Sorry it’s not more, but I intend to keep the cup, not sell it, so it isn’t going to bring in any money. I’ll do something for your boy and his friends too. Chocolates? Or maybe we could all go out for a slap-up meal.’

‘That would be terrific,’ Annie said. ‘But I don’t want the money –’

‘Nonsense! Everyone wants money, unless they’re mad or brainless, and you’re a bright girl. You take it and have done with it. You’ll spend it on your son no doubt, mothers always do, but he’s a good lad and hasn’t had much spoiling. Don’t refuse me – I owe you for this, more than money. I’m the rightful owner of the cup – knew it as soon as I saw it. I’d give my soul to get it back.’

‘You shouldn’t say such things,’ Annie said, with a sudden shiver. ‘I know you didn’t mean it seriously, but –’

‘I meant it all right,’ Rowena said.

In the evening, Nathan brought Hazel and George to supper, and they asked eagerly for the story of Annie’s find, and discussed at length what would happen next, and whether Rowena Thorn really would be able to recover the Grail. ‘It’ll be up to the courts to decide,’ George said wisely. He had recently decided he wanted to be a barrister, after watching
a courtroom drama on television, and was doing his best to adopt suitable turns of phrase.

‘If the injunction says the cup mustn’t be sold, then they’ll
have
to give it back to Mrs Thorn, won’t they?’ Hazel said.

‘I don’t suppose it’ll be that straightforward,’ Annie responded. ‘Legal matters never are. Even if they accept that the sale was invalid, there might be the issue of proving Rowena’s own entitlement.’

‘She’s a Thorn,’ George said, forgetting his barristerly manner. ‘Everyone knows that. There aren’t any others.’

‘I don’t see that,’ Hazel objected with a sudden frown. ‘There are bound to be distant cousins and things: all families have those. I’m a Thorn, in a way. Great-grandma’s a Carlow, and they’re descended from the Thorns. There could be lots of semi-Thorns, spread all over the place.’

‘Are
you
going to put in a claim for the cup?’ George demanded flippantly.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Annie said to Nathan, who had taken little part in the discussion. ‘How did it go with your immigrant friend?’

Nathan, though glad about the discovery of the injunction, had had other things on his mind. ‘Eric,’ he said absently. ‘His name’s Eric.’

‘Did you take him to see Uncle Barty?’

‘No. No, not yet. I will, though. He needs lots of good food. He’s an amazing person. He’s learnt to speak English so fast, and his eyes are purple, deep purple, like violets, and he … he likes
Star Wars
.’

‘He sounds cool,’ Hazel said, her eyes narrowing under her hair. They hadn’t had a chance to talk privately yet.

‘He’s the coolest person I ever met,’ Nathan said.

Later, when Hazel and George had gone home, Annie tried to draw him out on the subject, but with little success.

‘Did he tell you where he’s from?’

‘We talked about it,’ Nathan said guardedly. And, as Annie looked expectant: ‘Mali. That’s what he said.’

‘Mali in Africa?’

‘I suppose so. Unless there’s another one somewhere. He … he wasn’t clear.’

‘I thought you said he spoke very good English,’ Annie said, a little too sharply. ‘Anyway, I never heard of people from Mali having purple eyes.’

But to this Nathan made no reply at all.

He knew he would dream of the other world that night. Meeting Eric had made it seem much more real, much closer; he almost felt that if he tried, he could enter it while awake, in a daydream not a dream, but the idea alarmed him – it was as if he was losing his hold on his own world – and he didn’t try. He drifted into a sleep that was brief and shallow, and then he was awake again, he was there, in the city. Arkatron. He knew its name now. Arkatron, city of Ynd. He was instantly conscious of being more solid than before, more visible; he struggled to think himself back into a state of disembodied awareness, but he couldn’t do it. He was in the long gallery with the twisted pillars: the artificial light made him feel very exposed. Looking down at himself, he saw he was wearing pyjamas, and it occurred to him that in future he would have to start sleeping in his clothes. He felt very unconfident about wandering round an unknown universe in his nightwear. Of course, there were precedents – the children in
Peter Pan
, Arthur Dent in
Hitchhiker
– but in a world where fiction was outlawed nobody would know them.

He moved along the gallery, darting from pillar to pillar, ready to hide at any time. At the far end, the door to the Grandir’s chamber opened and he emerged, white-masked as
ever, accompanied by the purple-cowled man Nathan had seen previously in hologram. The woman Halmé walked a little behind them; she too wore a mask, a delicate etching of her own face in some dark substance which glittered subtly under the light. Her garments this time were a pale lilac and a section of her wimple was wound around her neck, shielding her throat. But he knew it was her: the mask must have been modelled on her features, and her poise, the grace of her movements were unmistakable. The two men didn’t glance his way but as she passed the pillar which concealed him she turned for a second, and looked back.

Nathan followed them as well as he could, frustrated by the difficulty of keeping out of sight. They met few other people, and those always stopped when they saw the Grandir, standing motionless, presumably out of respect, until he had moved on. This gave Nathan a moment to get under cover, or such cover as he could find, slipping round a corner, or into a doorway. They passed down many corridors, curving and intersecting like the passages in a maze, and moving staircases which swung round at the touch of a button, so you could alight in a number of different places. Halmé did not look round again, but Nathan wondered if she was aware of him. She walked always behind the men, not out of humility, he was certain, but because her thoughts were elsewhere, and their murmured exchanges did not interest her.

They went through a sliding door into a cylindrical cell which he knew was a lift. He dared not follow, he was too clearly defined; they would see him; he could only wait, half frantic at the suspense, until the lift returned. There was no illuminated panel to indicate its progress, no buttons that he could perceive, but presently the door reopened, and the lift was back, empty. He stepped inside.

The door closed and the lift began to descend immediately,
though he had touched nothing. Its motion was smooth and very fast: even in that dream state his stomach seemed to be left behind. He remembered he had been inside a lift in an earlier dream, but then he must have been too insubstantial to react to it; the more solid he became, the more he responded to his surroundings. A terrible fear grew in him that the time would come when he was completely solid, and then he would be unable to wake up, but he tried to suppress it: he had fears enough to deal with for now. When the door slid back again, at the bottom of the shaft, he almost expected to find someone waiting for him. But the passage was vacant, and a single door at the end showed him the only way his quarries could have gone. There was lettering on the door, in the language of Eos. In his mind it translated as
Private – No Unauthorized Entry
. There was little light down here and he felt as if he must be underground, in some dim sub-basement below the city. The gloom gave him confidence: here at least he had a reasonable chance of passing unseen. He touched the door, pressing gingerly. To his surprise, it opened at once.

He found himself entering a long room which reminded him of a laboratory in a film, the kind where they did experiments on animals. There were boxes and cages along the right-hand wall, most of which appeared to be unoccupied; along the left was a range of screens and storage units. The space in between was entirely taken up with workbenches stacked with bizarre scientific equipment: oddly shaped retorts connected with convoluted glass tubing, sealed metal containers, things which might be futuristic microscopes, or telescopes or other kinds of scopes. The area was poorly lit for a laboratory and the Grandir and his two companions, at the far end, had evidently not noticed the opening of the door. Cautiously, Nathan began to move towards them, peering into the cages on his right as he went. As he had already noted,
most of them were empty, but one was heaving with locust-like insects whose bodies shone with a faint, phosphorescence, while in another a gigantic black rat bared wicked teeth at him. Strangest of all, in a third there was a cat which seemed at one moment to be lying dead and the next, savagely alive, clawed at the sides of its prison. The Grandir, Halmé and purple-cowl were staring at a much larger cage at the very end of the room. Nathan slipped under an adjacent workbench and crept as close as he dared.