The Greenstone Grail (34 page)

She said: ‘I thought I would be alone here. I was told, you are always alone in the Pits. Forever alone: wasn’t that the idea? Are you an illusion they have sent me – a holocast – or the result of that last injection?’

‘No one sent me,’ he said. ‘I’m real. At least, I think I am. I’m real in my world; I might not be real here.’

She didn’t try to make sense of this. He realized later, thinking of what she must have endured, that she was beyond sense: the most she could manage was being calm. She was determined to have no hope, no fear, no weakness that her gaolers could take hold of.

‘You are very small,’ she said presently.

‘I’m thirteen. I haven’t finished growing.’

There was a long, long pause.

‘You’re a child? I thought – there were no more children. I have never seen a child. Why did they send you to me?’

‘I told you, no one sent me,’ he reiterated. This was his first conversation with anyone in his dreams, he thought, and she didn’t believe in him. Well, that was fair enough. ‘I dreamed myself here. It’s something I can do; I don’t know how or why. I come from another world.’

‘All the worlds are gone,’ she said. ‘
Unvarhu-sag
.’

‘No: I mean, another universe. Beyond the Gate.’ He didn’t know if this concept would have any meaning for her. ‘I saw you in the desert, when you escaped the lizard-monster. I was watching from the cave. What did you go to find there? Was it the Sangreal?’

‘Questions,’ she sighed. ‘I knew there would be questions. For an illusion, you know, you really are very good. The fine detail is quite perfect. I can’t imagine you’ll tell me how they do it?’

‘Nobody did it,’ he persisted. ‘I was just born, the normal way: I was born and I grew. Please try to believe me. Look, the cup isn’t in the cave: that’s a blind. It’s in my world. Someone put it there, probably for safekeeping, though we’re not sure. Why were you after it? If you’d managed to get it, what would you have done with it? If the cup
is
part of a spell to save your world, we need to know how it works. Please –’

She didn’t answer. Her mouth was very serious, a sombre line, but the trace of a smile lifted the corners. ‘If you are real,’ she said, ‘show me. Touch me.’

He hadn’t thought of that, and it was so simple. He came over to her, reached his hand out toward hers. ‘May I?’ It seemed important to ask, in this world of masks and coweralls, where he had never seen people touch one another. Eric, he recalled, was always diffident about physical contact.

Kwanji Ley nodded.

He laid his hand over hers. There was a quiver in her fingers – he felt it – like an electrical response. She said: ‘They cannot do this.’ And then: ‘They have scrambled my mind. It must be a spell. The Grandir is very powerful – more powerful than we had guessed. I have protection, but it isn’t strong enough.
I
am not strong enough …’ Her voice failed, dwindling to a whisper, terrible in one formerly so composed. He didn’t know if she was talking to herself or to him.

‘You
are
strong,’ he told her, horrified by the change in her. ‘I can see that. You’re very strong. There’s really nothing wrong with you: it’s me. I’m – I don’t know, a freak I suppose. I fall asleep, and dream, and I’m here. At first, I was just thought, invisible, but now I get more solid all the time. Please tell me about the cup. I’ll wake up soon, and then I’ll be gone, so –’

‘If you’re real,’ she said, ‘you can’t possibly go. We’re in
Deep Confinement. There is no way out. Nobody has ever escaped from the Pits.’

‘You still don’t understand. For me, this is a dream. I’ll just – vanish …’

Suddenly, Kwanji seized his arm – her other hand brushed over his face, exploring his features like a blind woman. ‘You feel too solid to vanish,’ she said, ‘or my touch lies. You are no were creature: your eyes are human. Magic cannot do this. Who is controlling you?’

‘
No one
.’ He was vehement, desperate. He could feel the darkness rushing towards him, tingling in his feet, rising in his mind. At any moment, it would reclaim him.

‘I think you believe it,’ she said. ‘They have fooled you too. There is
always
someone in control …’

And then it was over. He had a last vision of her face, lips parting in astonishment, before it faded – broke up – and he was wrenched away, out of light, out of thought, out of that whole world …

He woke in his bed at home, cold with sweat, starting up to see the beginning of dawn lightening the curtains. He was saying her name –
Kwanji
– urging, pleading with the empty room.

‘The Grail is coming home,’ Bartlemy said. ‘On Saturday, to be precise. I gather our friend Julian Epstein is not happy. It will be transported in a sealed van, with guards –’

‘Armed?’ Nathan asked eagerly. They were sitting in the bookshop, Bartlemy and Annie on the available chairs, Nathan perched on the edge of the table.

‘I really don’t know,’ Bartlemy admitted. ‘They’re bringing it to Thornyhill, where the – er – principal disputants will foregather. Rowena Thorn, the Graf Von Humboldt, and Alex Birnbaum. Also myself and Eric.’

‘We should be there,’ Nathan said. ‘We’re as involved as they are.’

‘Yes, but they don’t know that, and I have no intention of attempting to tell them,’ Bartlemy said reasonably.

‘Why is Von Humboldt doing this?’ Annie asked. ‘What does he hope to gain?’

‘There are wheels within wheels,’ Bartlemy explained. ‘Rowena, I infer, has convinced him that under these conditions she can persuade Birnbaum to waive his claim. He has a great respect for the cup’s historical background, the Luck of the Thorns and so on. If he thinks he is ceding it to Rowena, he will be prepared to back down.’

‘It’s true,’ Annie said. ‘He might.’

‘You’ve seen more of him than we have. Anyway, Von Humboldt believes it’s worth a try. Rowena has allowed him to think that once Birnbaum is out of the running she will countenance a sale and a division of the spoils. He wants to avoid a long, messy, and expensive court case at any price.’

‘That’s understandable,’ Annie said. ‘But what
is
Rowena up to? She’d never agree to sell the cup – would she? She couldn’t – seriously – be planning …? No.’

‘Robbery?’ Bartlemy smiled. ‘I don’t think so. I gather what she really wants is to get Eric to have a look at it. She’s been very impressed by him. People usually are. Whether she’s come to accept that he’s from another world I can’t say, but she’s no fool, and she must realize he isn’t mad. She wants him to see it – she wants it to be
in situ
. She’s gone to considerable lengths to organize it. I must admit, I had no idea she was capable of such duplicity. People are constantly surprising me – it’s really very reassuring.’

‘At your age,’ Annie said with a furtive smile, ‘I should imagine there are few surprises left.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Bartlemy. ‘The longer I
live, the more I realize that
no one
is ever predictable. Just when you think you’ve got people worked out, they do something extraordinary. Human nature has amazing depths – and shallows, of course. Whatever Freud may say, there are no rules of human behaviour.’

‘Surely your genes dictate who you are,’ Annie interpolated.

‘Genes don’t dictate,’ Bartlemy responded. ‘You can be trapped by your heredity – or you can live up to it – or you can rise above it. You make yourself. How can genes make a poet out of a monkey who came down from the trees? I have told you about magic, of the powers of the Gifted few, but the true magic is in the soul of Man.’

‘Men can do terrible things,’ Nathan said, thinking of the interminable confinement in the Pits.

‘And wonderful ones. They are two sides of the same coin. The darkness and the light is in all of us. We make ourselves into who we are. We choose.’

‘What about environmental factors?’ said Annie.

Their conversation wandered down psychoanalytical byways, while Nathan slipped into his own thoughts. These were mostly concerned with the back door at Thornyhill, and Hoover’s reliability as a guard dog who would never bark at a friend …

Nathan hoped he would dream again about Kwanji Ley that week, but he had another dream about the sea, in a world where all land had been devoured, and then about a beautiful country which resembled his childhood image of Narnia. There were green hills and mossy rocks and streams which tumbled over tiny falls. The woods were even lovelier and somehow
woodier
than Thornyhill, with thickets of dogrose and honeysuckle, a red squirrel flickering through the leaves, and birds singing whose names he didn’t know.

Night came, with a giant moon seen through a lacework of twig and branch, and an owl cruising on silent wings. And then suddenly there was fear. The moonlight was crawling with it; the woodland floor heaved upwards into a wave.
They
were there, the Ozmosees – even there, in that beautiful wild place. He had no iron on him, no protection. He ran like a mad thing, pursued by the nightmare, until he stumbled over a tree-root and went hurtling down – and down – into the black depths of undisturbed sleep.

Afterwards, when he thought about the dream, he wondered if that was the place where he had found Woody, on some long-forgotten voyage of his infancy. It was a while since he had seen his friend, and so one afternoon he went into the woods alone, equipped with a gift of Smarties, and they sat and talked together under the trees, though he didn’t mention the dream. He told Woody about the coming of the Grail, and his own plans for Saturday. He wanted many eyes watching when the time came.

‘I will watch,’ said Woody. ‘But others watch also.’

‘You mean the gnomons?’ Nathan frowned. ‘I think – they are bound to the cup. I don’t know what they’ll do. They can’t enter Thornyhill: there’s too much iron, and silphium in the herb garden, and I expect Bartlemy could manage the light and sound effects too.’

‘I was thinking of the dwarf,’ said Woody.

‘What dwarf?’ But as he spoke, he knew.

‘The one you released from the ground. The prisoner.’

‘We can’t worry about him as well,’ Nathan said. But the worry remained, niggling at the edges of his mind, and he couldn’t shake it off.

At the bookshop, Alex Birnbaum came in to talk about the cup, and invited Annie for a drink. Michael arrived in
time to hear her polite acceptance. ‘Your admirer,’ he said lightly, when Alex had gone.

Annie was conscious of an agreeable warmth about the heart. ‘He’s nice,’ she said. ‘I like him.’ She wasn’t cruel, but she was female, and Michael was still a married man.

‘I was hoping you’d have dinner with me,’ he said. ‘Friday.’ It was the first time he’d asked her to dinner, and his tone was uncertain.

‘Nathan –’

‘Nat can look after himself.’

She smiled, a little shyly. ‘All right.’

But on Friday morning, Rianna Sardou came home.

Michael telephoned to tell her, sounding both embarrassed and apologetic. ‘The Georgia tour was cut short – political unrest or something, too near Chechnya for comfort I expect. Maybe we could do dinner next week. She’ll be in London reading for a new production of
Macbeth
.’

Which role? Annie wondered. Banquo’s ghost? And which Rianna had actually ‘come home’ – the real one, or the spirit who wore her face? In addition, the idea of dining with Michael on the quiet, when his wife – or someone who might be his wife – was around, troubled her conscience.

‘It can’t have been her you saw in London,’ Michael added. ‘She’s been in Georgia all the time. I fished.’

Annie said something noncommittal, and hung up. After a minute’s reflection, she tried Bartlemy’s number, but he was out, probably finalizing arrangements with Rowena Thorn. When Nathan came in to lunch, he found his mother distracted. She told him Michael had cancelled, but not why, and she had never got round to describing the horror from the river. She was picturing it, going to the tower to sleep (did it sleep?), worse still, sharing a bed with Michael.

She had to know.

Michael had told her he would be out that afternoon; he was involved in a special project at the university run during the vacation for non-students. Around three, with one of Nathan’s door numbers in her pocket – though she didn’t know if iron would be any use against the water-spirit – she closed the shop and walked round to Riverside House.

It looked very quiet, sleeping in the sunshine, neither ominous nor welcoming, both picturesque and bland. It occurred to her that unlike most village houses in the pith of the afternoon it didn’t actually appear to sleep, it had too little personality – it was more like a show house than a real home, all façade and interior décor, no heart. She rang the doorbell and waited, her pulse thumping, listening for the sounds of an approach.

She heard nothing. No footsteps, no fiddling with handle or lock – nothing. The door jerked abruptly open, and Rianna was there.

For a second – less than a second – Annie wasn’t certain. It looked like a woman, flesh-and-blood, jeans-and-sweater, bare feet with painted nails, dark hair swept up in a butterfly clip with long strands escaping down her neck. She knew a pang of guilt – if it was a woman – because a woman could be wronged, and hurt, whatever Michael had said about the state of their marriage. And then she looked into the eyes, and knew. There was a blackness there beyond iris or pupil, the dark of the ocean depths where no light has ever been since life began. And no human feet could have approached so noiselessly on such a quiet day – bare feet, where surely a normal person would have worn sandals, bare feet which had left faint damp prints on the rug behind her …