With the boat tied securely, my captain led me to the shore, then turned and peered again; his breath was foul, his gaze close enough that we might have kissed. And then he grinned.
‘Jack?’ he murmured. ‘Jackjack?’
‘Yes. I’m Jack.’
‘Jackjack,’ he repeated, shaking his head, still half-smiling.
I’ve come to find William.’
‘William,’ the man echoed and looked away, his brow furrowing, the smile fading. A moment or two later he sighed and threw the harpoon towards the white tower.
‘William,’ he repeated, glancing at me. Then, quick as a wink, he had reached out and squeezed my ear before turning away, walking away, towards the distant fires.
I entered the city gate, pushing aside the tangling foliage with the sailor’s discarded harpoon. The place was overgrown, ivy, rose and strangling creeper of luxuriant green, with flower trumpets of brilliant hue, forming a carpet, a wall and a barrier that only reluctantly gave way to my onslaught.
I cut and pushed my way to the entrance to the tower, snarled back at a feral cat, chattered in like manner to a red-crested, red-billed carrion bird that caught itself in the briar in its panic to escape my aggressive action as I stabbed at it with the spear, then entered the place I knew well, the dimly-lit chamber where William had painted images of his beloved. The dark designs, the ochred patches, were still visible, but time, condensation and the spread of lichen had made a mockery of Ethne’s frail beauty.
On a pallet, covered in rough blankets, William Finebeard lay asleep below the icons of his passion. His body was entombed in briar, growing up from the floor, reaching down from the orifices in the tower, a web of forest, holding hard this winter warrior, growing into him through the pale skin.
From the slow rise and fall of his chest it was clear that this sleeping beauty was still alive, and I used a knife from my pack to ‘prune’ him, cutting away the thorns and ivy, aware that the stumps remained upon his skin, bleeding in a sluggish fashion.
He stayed asleep.
I walked up into the hills, searching for familiar paths, remembered ruins, but the world had changed beyond the lake and nothing encouraged me to think that Greenface was near, or had been close to the tower of ivory. I stood and watched the maelstrom, listened to the deep movement of the earth, the crash of rock, the loud and strident cries of the creatures that were spewed from the pit itself. I hunted for small game, gathered sharp fruit from a wide-branched, gnarled and twisted apple tree (I saw no serpents) and found a patch of the same mushrooms that Nemet had fed to me, those years in the past. The world of my inner mind was rich with my favourite things, and perhaps I should not have been surprised.
Two days after I had cut the strands enmeshing my friend, a small flotilla of single-sailed ships passed close to the shore, cloaked figures on every prow, sharp cries carrying across the choppy water. They inspected the white tower, then caught the prevailing wind and turned like a flock to pass away to deeper water.
At dusk, hippari, brontotheria, bear-like megalotheria, brutish cynodontae and strutting aepyornithae filtered from the forest to wade, drink, feed, squabble and gallop along the twilight shore. They kept away from the sunken harbour, though the horses were curious and I entertained briefly the idea of trying to capture one. Their speed, their edgy energy, soon communicated the futility of the thought.
But if I had not been watching the evening feast, sitting on the stone wall which indicated the beginning of the jetty and surrounded by the cacophony of ancient voices, I might not have seen the city as it passed along the lake.
The sun had almost gone; the lake stirred, the waves came fast to the shore, spreading among the reeds, or breaking against the mudflats further down. The animals that were still watering became disturbed; the hippari bolted to the woodland. The cynodonts rose onto hindlegs, eight creatures standing like stooped, human grotesques, jaws gaping in the dog-like faces as they watched the lake. When they slowly backed away they set up an unearthly howling, then scattered as the great shape rose out of the water.
It was Glanum. The tower came first, the high walls, the tangle of trees and roots shedding water as they were thrust from the sub-aquatic world. It descended again, then broke the surface, turning towards the land, a mile distant. I could see the gaping gate, but other features were indistinct against its gloomy bulk in the deepening night.
The city ploughed the lake, then sank into the shore, and I felt the ground shudder and rumble, the woodland shaking as if a violent wind was whipping and coursing across the canopy.
Glanum was soon gone, below the high hills, travelling in the direction of the Eye. I stood on the jetty for several hours, reluctant to retire to the comfort of furs, matting and the fire that I had kindled inside William’s broken stronghold. If the city returned, I wanted to see it. I wondered if John Garth had been standing on those shattered battlements, staring out across the Deep, perhaps searching for the boy he remembered from Exburgh.
Glanum was close now, and close for a reason; everything in my dreaming instinct suggested that I was soon to be reunited with the whale!
But … though the earth shook on two occasions, and wind took the trees, and a flock of carrion birds swooped low and angrily across the sunken jetty, the night remained quiet, and I went to bed.
In the morning, I examined the part of the shore where Glanum had passed, but found no trace, no cut, no gouge, no exploded earth, no sign as fierce and hard as that in the Hinterland, if indeed that scar in the piazza had been created by the whale.
Some time later, I returned to the bone tower, and as I entered the chamber where William lay in vegetative slumber, I heard his waking moan.
The cuts had ceased to bleed. I had left him on his side, but now he lay face up, his right arm above his head, his left draped across his belly.
Soon he sighed, shifted, turned on the wooden bed, letting the rags of the blankets fall from him, his fingers, in half-sleep, now brushing and fiddling with the cut ends of briar on his chin, his cheek, his shoulders and his belly.
Abruptly, like a man awakening from a dream, he sat up and stared at the open door.
He looked at me, blinked, frowned for a moment, then grinned with pleasure as he recognized me.
‘Hello William, you romantic rogue!’
‘Jack,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Jack! Came back! Came back!’
33
Older in years, William was still a boy at heart, and when he had recovered his strength he went down to the lake, marvelling at everything he saw, from the wild beasts of the forest to the shattered remnants of the harbour.
He was delighted with the sunken hulks of the bigger ships, wading out to peer into the broken hulls, clambering across the shattered masts, pulling lengths of sail and rope, nodding, talking, plotting, planning.
‘It will take some work, but there’s everything here I need to cross to Ethne again. And with your help … it will halve the time. I’ll be afloat before the turn of the season. You came back! Jack! Came back!’ he cried in English, tugging at my hair.
And he hugged me, rubbing a briar-bristled cheek against my own. He was bothered by the stubs, scratching and worrying at them, frowning as he tried to understand what had happened to him.
‘I saw her,’ I said softly.
‘Ethne?’
‘Yes. It came as a shock.’
There was sadness in his face, and a strange excitement. ‘I haven’t looked at her for so long. Has she changed?’
I felt awkward telling him the truth of her imperfect preservation, but since he seemed set on crossing to the tomb to view her again, it was better, I felt, that he should be forewarned. ‘Time is taking its toll. But you honoured her beautifully. It’s a wonderful monument.’ I could see the dark rise of the mausoleum, across the lake, half-obscured by mist, but a looming, distracting presence just the same.
He stared at me for a moment, perhaps trying to understand me fully as we communica
ted in gesture, fragments of language and the movement of eyes. ‘I’m going to bring her back,’ he said. ‘Bring her to this place. It’s where she belongs.’
It seemed a strange idea. With a ship, water-safe and sturdy, he could cross the lake in a day. And why go to so much effort to build a monument to his ‘princess’ on the site of her birth, only to remove her?
What had happened to William Finebeard in the intervening years?
And when had he fallen into the rose and ivy slumber?
I could get little sense out of the man for most of the day; he had no appetite for food, seemed to need no water, and left me for hours, running the lake’s edge, prowling the woodland, chasing hippari and laughing as they outdistanced him. He swam naked in the cold lake, dived to inspect the rubble foundations of the fallen harbour, rising from the murky, muddy water draped with weed, a monstrous image from the wild.
‘This place is perfect,’ he seemed to say. ‘I can build on the ruins; make a city again. This place is perfect.’
‘You should know. You built it in the first place.’
He stared at me, then shook his head, and the first inkling of what had happened to the tundra-dancer insinuated its unwelcome presence into my mind.
‘Don’t you remember building the harbour? Throwing up new walls around the tower? Taming horses to carry you inland, to forage for the best trees to build the great ships?’
‘I remember the city,’ he said. He looked darkly at the lake. ‘It came out of the water and consumed everything that was here. I will never forget how it looked, a stone beast with a stone mouth and a stone heart, eating its way through the forest and the hill, leaving everything dead and broken. Maybe it even ate the maelstrom. It took the sanctuaries, it took the temple, it took the trees where the armour of my friends was hung in honour … I remember that. I remember it clearly. But this place was here before me. You and I came ashore, you tended my wounds. It was here then … all we need do is salvage a ship … prepare for the crossing …’
He glanced at the lake, where the hulks and stumps of masts broke the surface, the playground of waterbirds. ‘Have you ever salvaged a ship?’ he asked with a thin, hopeful smile.
‘Nothing as big as those.’
‘Hmm. Well, we’ll manage somehow. Now then!’
He turned abruptly to the forest and flung a piece of driftwood, smiling as the clatter in the branches set up the sound of howling.
‘Greenface!’ he announced, and his look was one of curiosity. ‘Did you find her?’
‘I’ve found her twice so far. This is my third attempt.’
He was surprised. ‘You’ve been back? I didn’t see you!’
‘I couldn’t find you.’
‘But I was here. I’ve been here since you left …’
‘I couldn’t find you.’ Although I saw you …
‘How strange.’
He brightened suddenly. ‘Elusive?’ He meant Ahk’Nemet.
‘Slippery.’
‘Like a fish,’ he mimed.
‘Indeed. But I think she’s waiting for me. It’s just a question of knowing where. The last time I saw her, she was close to the maelstrom, by a gate shaped like a Bull’s face. The Watching Place.’
‘I’ve dreamed of it,’ he said, scratching at the projection of a stub of ivy from his cheek. ‘I’ve dreamed of it many times. I’ve dreamed of the Bull. A huge creature. It neither descends into the Eye, nor emerges from it. It walks the edge of the whirling pool … It’s stronger than the earth, I think.’
‘Did you dream it? Or have you seen it?’
‘I’d know if I’d seen it. How long do you think you’ve been gone?’ he asked with a laugh.
‘I don’t know. How long?’
‘Not that long. A few months …’
A few months! He was deluded.
‘You left me here, wounded. I’ve had very little opportunity to do anything other than think, and plan, and dream … But you’re back, as you said you’d be. I’ll help you find Greenface; you’ll help me cross the lake. I shall resurrect Ethne from the hell of fish, gum and oil that embalms her. She belongs here, now. Here, with me …’
Embalms her? Had he truly said that? Or was this only my interpretation of his gesture and signal that meant no more than entraps, as in: take her away from the family who are holding her?
‘What will you do with her, when you fetch her?’ I asked tentatively, and he went dreamy, then excited, pointing to the hill behind us. Take her deep into the land. Find a place to spend our lives together. Dance with each child born. Avoid the ice at all costs, live only in the warmth!’
Dear God – he thought she was still alive! He had forgotten that his beloved Ethne had died years ago, and that he had buried her and built a tomb to her that now echoed with wind and wings.
I felt so sad for him. For a while I sat at the edge of the woods, watching him about his business, and my heart broke for him, since he was living in a state of such hope and such anticipation.
I went hunting, unsuccessfully as it transpired, seeking my own company, in a quandary as to what to do. At dusk, as I slipped down the hill towards the gleaming lake, I saw him standing knee-deep in the water, staring out across the distance towards the dark tomb. He was naked, his hands hanging limply by his sides. He remained motionless for nearly half an hour and I stayed quite still, crouched in cover, waiting to see what happened.
I believed, and was proved right, that he had begun to have an inkling of the truth about Ethne; that the past, drawn from him perhaps during sleep, was now seeping back, unwelcome days and nights, dark images obscuring the brief light that had set his face aglow on my return.
After a time he walked back to the shore, to the tower. I followed him as he pushed through the undergrowth, through gaps in the walls, a shadowy figure passing between the trees, soon discernible only by his rustling progress towards a deeper part of the ruined castle.
When I found him, he was asleep, wrapped in a tumble of ivy that spilled over a low wall and onto a carved stone bench. In the fading evening light, I realized that I was in a garden; small statues of children, carved in a blue-tinged granite, stood at the four corners of what had once been a deep pool. The fountain in the centre was shaped like the sturgeon from the lake that I had seen caught, a lifetime ago. Once, this garden had been covered with a roof of branches, open to the light, but casting shade in places; the wood was broken, rotting, overgrown with swelling, puffy fungus. But the blooms of flowers were still heavy with scent, and I could tell, just, that they were brightly coloured. They were closing to the night, but some of the trumpets were of enormous size.
I couldn’t wake William, though I tried, concerned for him sleeping in the open and with nothing but leaves for a covering. ‘Don’t leave me,’ I said to him, thinking that he might sink more deeply into sleep, and remain there.
Getting cold, I went back to the tower and for want of a better resting place curled up on his pallet, pushing aside the dangling vegetation, some fronds still dripping sap from the cut ends. The drops touched my skin like tears, and though I was tempted to move, I stayed where I was, thinking of William.
How long he had slept here I couldn’t tell, but a long time, many years. As he had slept, the shadows had been drawn from him by the nurturing garden, which had spread from its small centre to encompass the tower. Now those shadows played briefly in my own dreaming mind, an echo of another’s past, a heritage of war and anguish that would have to re-inhabit the fine-bearded man at some point, but perhaps not yet.
Such powerful dreams.
First, the anguish as he finally realized I was not coming back. He had waited on the shore for weeks, slowly healing, each wound a constant reminder of his feelings for Ethne, denied to him by the span of the lake. At dawn his crude defences were shattered by monsters. He starved for a while, then made a lucky strike, feeding on hipparion meat for several days before the flies discouraged him.
He was desolate, lo
nely, and frightened; the fear grew into rage; he stormed the hill, prowled the edge of the Eye, carved my name and called to me. I had never grasped the extent to which he had depended upon my help.
I had left him, and he soon decided that I was dead. He built a monument to me, a crude carving in wood. He blistered his fingers holding the knives with which he shaped the hard oak. When the icon was finished he took it up to the maelstrom and left it there, its blind eyes staring at the heart of the storm.
This memory had been taken from him, leaving him relieved to see me, as if only days had past.
I dreamed on: the lake crossing with a fleet of ships, low and sleek, rowed by a hundred men; hunters, mercenaries, knights, horsemen, raiders and rievers, all eager for battle.
I woke in the middle of the mayhem. The strong walls of the fishing city were broken down, the slaughter was complete, though Two Cuts escaped, badly wounded, into the forest. Ethne and her sisters were rescued, and as I passed back into sleep, trying to abandon the stink of guts and the sound of shrieking men, so I experienced the love that William and Ethne had known for several years …
And their children, twins, two boys of fair complexion, one thoughtful, one devil-may-care, both of them William’s pride and joy.
And then the horror: of waking to Two Cuts’ half-masked face, the dull bone that covered his eyes and nose giving him the look of a fish, the smile below unmistakable. He held the twins by their hair, two naked, limp bodies, red life still spurting from their throats where Two Cuts had brought grotesque meaning to his name.
Ethne was gone. The fort blazed. Out on the lake, the dark ships waited as Two Cuts’ warriors abandoned the destruction, their quest achieved, the woman returned.
In the dream, William screamed, ‘I killed you. I saw you killed!’