The Iron Grail (38 page)

‘Is someone “warping” you?’ I asked anxiously, and certainly naively.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Nothing like that. Only that I have seen this situation too many times before. My hull has been repaired so many times; I have plunged, under good and courageous captains, into seas every bit as strange as this one. It is familiarity that makes me weary. I am half blinded by the knowledge of just knowing what next to expect.’

I had never known her so forthcoming.

‘I tell you this, Merlin, because I know you will come to understand. You are no more than a ship yourself. Wood outlasts men. Age never shows until it shows, and then it comes with harrowing decay. You have lasted for millennia; you will rot in moments, though I hope this doesn’t happen yet. When it comes to your rotting, I will carry you in comfort to a place that not even you can imagine. I will be your bier, your pyre and your grave. You will be the last captain of this ship. But not for a long time yet. There is too much to do, as far as you are concerned.

‘And since you are the strangest captain I will have known, I can also tell you that for all of you who row at the benches, everything is lost, and everything is to be gained. The Island of the Iron Grail has nothing to plunder. But it will show you everything.’

She went quiet, then, an oracle that had given all it was prepared to give.

‘Are you reassured?’ Urtha asked me as I left the Spirit of the Ship and returned to my bench, gripping the wet binding of my oar with two blistered hands.

‘I don’t know what I am,’ is all I could think to reply at the time. ‘But our ship is in a black mood.’

Islands appeared before us as if Ocean herself was raising them in our path. We rowed hard around bleak crags, caught the breeze where we could and tacked past rough and jagged shores and coasts that were crowded with the strangest of creatures: giant horses that chased each other, as if being raced by men, but bloodily biting any flank that became vulnerable; an island where men and women poured to the shore, laughing and playing the sort of games that appealed hugely to Urtha. It was all we could do to hold him back, but at last he remembered the old story: that any man who beached there would start to laugh and play without mind, without reason.

One island, terraced and green with trees, was home to giant birds whose plumage was rich with reds and greens, usually a sign that they can be eaten. Atalanta had shot down three of them at a great distance before we realised that each was not just large, but almost as large as Argo. We anchored off-shore for a day, cutting up the meat and storing it, while the huntress defended us against the attacks of the angry flocks.

But by then we had become low on meat, and this rich feast was welcome, Elkavar cooking strips of bird flesh in a fire created in an upturned shield. Elkavar was a wonderful cook. He had forgotten to remove the shield’s leather grips, and although they were demolished along with the meat, whoever ate them failed to notice.

We came to an island where a long row of crouching wooden statues stared out to sea, warriors behind their shields. Urtha recognised them at once. He went ashore. As he approached each figure, so it rose and greeted him; men of oak and ash and elm, oiled and polished. These were the Coritani who had fallen in battle over the generations. Whenever they went to war they left such effigies behind in their homeland, a fragment of their spirit in each idol, a ritual that had been imposed on them in unhappier times, when their druids had been more powerful. Those who returned burned the effigy in celebration. Those who did not walked and sailed the effigies to this Otherworldly island, where they waited for such moments as this to send messages of greeting and love back to their families.

Urtha told us this as he clambered aboard again. He spent the next little while memorising the words and thoughts of King Vortingoros’s dead.

An island loomed into view a day later, a place of gentle hills inland and a warm, wide strand of soft sand gently touched by the surf. Dark-haired and beautiful women lined the water’s edge, waving to us, laughing delightfully. Their dress was strange, a figure-hugging robe of gleaming lace, dark grey with speckles of white. This time it was all we could do to stop Rubobostes leaping from Argo and swimming for a short spell of ‘rest and recreation’, as he termed it, an expression that made us laugh so much that it took all our strength to haul him back to Argo’s safety. Niiv and Urtha knew what they were witnessing, and as we rowed Argo hard and fast away from the pleasant-looking island so Rubobostes became aware—as did we all—of the danger that had threatened. The strand faded and the sharp, sea-swept rocks of the true shore became clear; the women slithered on their bellies, fat and glistening, whiskered faces staring after us as they seal-cried their annoyance.

‘What in the world of bad dreams were
they
?’ the Dacian demanded.

‘Selkies,’ Urtha explained. ‘Seal-like creatures that can warp and develop into the human shape of women.’

Rubobostes stared at him, bemused. ‘Why would they do that?’

‘To attract their blood-lunch; they need blood to maintain the woman in the seal. The rest of the time they have to feed on fish. Didn’t you smell the stench of rotting fish?’

‘Yes,’ Rubobostes said in a forlorn voice. He returned his gaze to the island.

‘Didn’t that warn you of danger?’ Urtha asked him.

‘Danger? In my country, rotting fish is used to make a great delicacy. For a moment I felt at home.’

The big man’s disappointment didn’t last long.

Argo ploughed her way through a sea that rose against us, a defiant sea, crashing against our flanks, fighting against the sail. A landfall on which we had set our sights, where a gleam of green and white suggested a palace, seemed to come no closer as time passed. It was blurred, now, in a haze of sea-spray, but it was clear that it remained as far away as ever.

Jason was frustrated, Urtha anxious. Even the argonauts whose lives were still tied to their stolen kolossoi seemed to despair as they crouched gloomily over their raised oars, or heaved at them when the wind shifted to blow against us and the sail was lowered.

It was Urtha’s anxiety, however, that proved to be the source of both comfort and warning. Hylas and I translated where necessary. Hylas had a skill with languages.

‘This sea is strange, but I’ve heard of it before. We are not the first ship to sail it. These islands are like the holes in Elkavar’s pipes: they can be played differently to make new melodies. The ocean is using us to make the words that go with the tune. Nothing is as it seems, but everything is familiar. In a story my father Ambaros told me, the sea-reiver Maeldun came close to despair, searching these islands for some trace of the life he’d lost. At the end of his voyage, he found home. We are sailing towards home, but don’t expect to reach it easily.’

The long-dead Greeklander Tisaminas now stood up, braced against the heaving sea by clutching hard with both hands at Rubobostes’ left arm, an arm already under strain as the Dacian used brute strength to hang on to the ropes that held the sail. ‘When Odysseus sailed on a similar journey, after the sack of Troy, he too reached home,’ he reminded his companions as sea-spray whipped at his beard. ‘But his home had to be reclaimed. Twenty years lost! That man had been adrift for twenty years. And in twenty years much changes. Men were looting his land. What he had lost he had to fight to claim back for himself and his family. If we are sailing for home, we must expect a fight.’

Urtha shouted through the gale, ‘Home is always a struggle! It’s a cauldron whose fire must be constantly watched. But home is the only cauldron that matters. Cauldrons have always been important to us. The Good God, Dagda, knows this, which is why he carries his own! What you put into the cauldron is what you take out of it. In goes flesh, out comes stew. In goes death, out comes life. Everything the same, everything different. Whatever the hardship, whatever the struggle, the important thing is to get there. We can do nothing but brace ourselves against the waves until we get there.’

‘Home is where the heart is,’ Hylas laughed, quoting from the sheaves of doggerel that Heracles, his one-time master and lover, had written with amazing energy between his adventures.

Home is where the gates are, I thought to myself, as this conversation of encouragement and courage went on. I could remember all too well so many gates closed against me as I’d wandered along the long Path around the world.

Niiv’s voice cut through the stormy air like a scolding mother’s. ‘If I might beg your attention: we’re about to run aground!’

An island of spectacular beauty had suddenly loomed before us. Jason’s skill and Rubobostes’ strength allowed us to miss the rocks and drop our sea anchor in the shallows, close to a cove where an arch of shining, translucent stone spanned the gap between the cliffs.

A boy, dressed in a tunic of white cloth embroidered with the earthy green of tarnished bronze, stood on a narrow ledge, hands on his hips as if impatient; as if he had been waiting. His long, dark hair was tied back and he wore thick-soled sandals. The surging sea blew spray against him, but he stood impassive, smiling; and, catching my eye, he beckoned me to the shore, then turned and jumped from rock to rock, below the arch and out of sight.

Argo whispered through her incumbent:
Follow him
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Iron Grail

I swam to the beach, my clothes wrapped in oilskin. Dressed again, and unarmed, I clambered over the rocks that bordered the cove and passed below the strange marble bridge. Almost at once I was hailed.

‘Antiokus! Antiokus! Come and see what I’ve built!’

Kinos waited for me at a distance. Then, just as I slipped and skidded on the wet marble, he turned and ran further through the cove; I followed. His own wet tracks led through the wooded path to a meadow, bright with flowers, heady with the scent of summer. Cloud shadow chased across the field. The boy raised his hands as he faced me, a smile of delight on his face. He was sea-crusted and ragged in his torn, white tunic, I saw now, but the child shone from the guileless eyes. He was only six or seven years old, salty hair tied into a tight top-knot, as had been the fashion in Iolkos seven hundred years ago.

‘You are just as I remember you, Antiokus. You’ve changed nothing but your clothes. Older in the eye. Otherwise the same.’

‘And you are just as I remember
you
. Little Dreamer. A little taller perhaps? But then, perhaps not. I’m not sure. Less dreamy in the eye? I’m not sure of that either.’

‘I dream! I dream!’ the child cried to me excitedly. ‘I can make such wonderful things. You must come and see what I’ve built. My father will come and find me soon. I know he will. I’ve built a place in which he can sit and feast. Come and see! Come and see!’

He turned again and ran quickly through the summer woods, following a path lined with briar rose and hawthorn, a boy bursting with excitement. When a rock face loomed before us, he laughed out loud, clapping his hands. There was a shallow cave below the overhang, almost buried in thorn. He had painted the gaping mouth with squares and triangles in green and red. Inside, he had laid skins and mats of woven grass to make a warm and comfortable floor. He had built low stools out of shaved and polished wood, and two of them sat on either side of a wide, narrow table carved from olive. In the middle of the table was a pottery bowl, crudely made, intricately detailed. In the bowl he had placed two pieces of fruit.

‘They rot quite quickly. I have to keep replacing them. But when he comes, they’ll be fresh. One for each of us. My father is sailing. He’s away, gathering more golden trophies. The quest is to the north, I expect. Among savages and beasts beyond imagination. He’s lost at the moment, but all winds can change. He told me that. Some winds change for the better, some bring storms. My father is wise, though; he knows the sea. He can smell which of Boreas’s children is gusting up in anger. I think he must be wounded, though. That’s why he is coming home so slowly.’

‘Is this the Father Calling Place?’

‘It is! It is!’

‘You played in a place like this with a boy called Kymon, the son of a king.’

‘Yes! I remember him. And his sister. He was a fighter too. He used to tell me what he would do to the enemies of his father when they became his slaves. His world was a muddy fortress, and it meant the world to him.’

‘Where is Munda now? Where is his sister?’

Kinos looked edgy, then shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Look, Antiokus! Everything that is important is here.’

He showed me ten small dolls, each made of wicker and grass, each clothed in strips of black hide or grey pelt that were cut to look like armour. I was immediately intrigued by them. Was it possible that the kolossoi were hidden among them? There were tiny ships, fashioned from wood and clay, and they were arranged as if in a fleet, sailing across the mat and animal-skin floor of this cave. One model stood apart, the symbol of Iolkos, Jason’s city, crudely painted on the dried leaf that acted as a sail.

‘Everything is here. Everything is here. All my father’s stories. Look. This is Phineus. Phineus was the best bit of the story of the golden ram…’

He picked up a small, tattered figurine and waved it at me, grinning. His other hand was behind his back. When he brought it out he was holding a dead bat, its wings stretched and held in place by twigs and twine. The creature’s belly had erupted with decay. It made swooping motions on to the figure of Phineus. Harpies attacking the blind man, he explained, though I had already made the connection.

‘Gnash, gnash, gnash,’ he growled as the dead bat savaged the wicker doll.

‘Phineus was blind and half mad,’ He said suddenly, pausing in the attacking movements. ‘But he still knew enough to know what was to come. He guided my father onwards. Sometimes you don’t need eyes to see. Sometimes you just need to dream…’

His own eyes glowed with excitement. Again he made the bat swoop on the straw figure, then he placed them down, lay down himself beside the ships, and touched each one with a finger, just enough to move it along a fraction.