Corbenic Page 9

Shadow shook her head. “It’s not that.”

  “What does he think I’m going to do?”

  Concentrating on getting the van out of the mud, Hawk said grimly, “We had a lot of trouble once with someone we trusted. He almost destroyed us.”

  “How?” Cal asked. Shadow’s kick on his ankle came just too late.

  “Ask someone else.” Hawk pulled up and cut the engine. He got out before Cal could say another word.

  Cal looked at Shadow. “Are they really sane, these people?”

  “That,” she said, swinging her boots out and splashing into the mud, “I really couldn’t say.”

  It was some sort of game, though they’d call it a reenactment. They were Arthur’s Company, and they had each taken on one of the characters from the legends, and they lived it, as if they really were those people, as if they’d been alive for centuries, not in some cave asleep, but here, still living, still guarding the Island of Britain from its enemies. Sometimes he thought they really believed they were Arthur’s men. Sometimes he almost believed it, too.

  He spent the first hour or so that day training with Osla. Osla was built like the side of a house; he could have picked Cal up in one hand, but his gentleness was amazing. Shadow said he kept tiny canaries flying free inside his broken-down van. Osla’s specialty was knife-work. He taught Cal how to defend himself, how to grab the assailant’s arm, what to do against strikes. He was patient and careful.

  Once, breathless, Cal leaned on the fence and said, “What about attack? When do I learn that?”

  Osla didn’t smile. “When I say. Arthur’s men don’t seek out quarrels. You have to learn about responsibility, Cal.”

  They were a strange bunch. Most of them seemed to live in various cottages and dilapidated barns around the farm, or in a decaying collection of vans out under the trees in the bottom field. They were always coming and going, but he’d gotten to know some of them. There was Bedwyr, a quiet man with a stutter, and a girl called Anwas, who told everyone she could fly and who spent most of her time designing bizarre machines made of plywood and feathers; there was Drwst, who had an artificial hand so strong it could straighten a bent sword; and Moren and Siawn and Caradog, all relations of Arthur’s, and a poet called Taliesin and a bent ugly man called Morfran who had a brother Sandde, who they all called Angel-face because he looked like butter wouldn’t melt, though he told the filthiest jokes. There was a whole clan called the Sons of Caw, about a dozen of them, all with impenetrable Glaswegian accents and looking so alike Cal could never tell which one he was talking to. There was Owein, who had a pet lion cub, and Sgilti, a whippet of a boy who could run so fast Cal told him he should train for the Olympics. Sgilti roared, and the man next to him, sharpening a pile of rusted spears, laughed with him. This was Gwrhyr, who boasted he could tell what the animals were saying, and could speak any language. If you named one he would spout a barrage of foreign-sounding words. Cal had no idea if any of it was real.

  They were scruffy and dirty and they laughed a lot. But he liked them. They were like no people he’d ever met. The girls were friendly; they didn’t make fun of him like the girls at home had always done. Their names were Olwen and Indeg and Esyllt, and they dressed as weirdly as Shadow, only in brighter colors. There must have been over a hundred Companions altogether, a loud, boasting, bickering tribe, who asked his name and nosed about his family and wound him up with dozens of crazy tales, how they’d once journeyed into Hell, how Gila could jump clear across Ireland in one go, how the old man Teithi had a magic knife and he could never get a handle to stay on it, and he was terrified that unless he did he’d dwindle away and die.

  Kai kept them in order. Cal rarely saw him practicing any of the arts of the Company, not jousting out in the field with Hawk, or swordplay, or archery; but his sharp sarcasms could be heard as he watched the others.

  “Keep your guard up,” he said to Cal, after an exhausting lesson. “Otherwise you’ll get hurt. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” He was drinking what looked like wine from a glass cup, and as he turned he stepped sideways and the cup tilted. Some of the wine splashed onto Cal’s white T-shirt.

  “Hey!” Furious, Cal leaped back. “Be careful!”

  Kai raised an eyebrow. He took out a clean silk handkerchief and tossed it over. “I’m so sorry.”

  Sipping, he watched Cal scrub viciously at the red stain. “It’s hardly worth bothering,” he said at last. “You’re only making it worse.”

  Cal flung the handkerchief back at him. “Thanks for nothing.”

  As the tall man laughed and turned away, Cal sat down on the grass and dumped his sword. He was sweating and sore and angry. “Who the hell does he think he is? He did that deliberately.”

  “Arthur’s brother.” His sparring partner, a dark man called Tathal, came over, scratching his chin.

  “Really?”

  “Well, foster brother.”

  “He was in care?”

  The man smiled. “Arthur was. You know, the old story.”

  Cal nodded wearily. “Oh, right. Sword in the stone, all that stuff. How could I forget? Don’t you people ever talk about who you really are?”

  Tathal ignored him. “Don’t cross Kai,” he said seriously. “He’s our best.”

  “He doesn’t look it. Hawk’s bigger, most of the others must be stronger.”

  “It’s not just in the body, friend. His heart is cold, and his hands. He has peculiar abilities. I mean it, Cal. He can be scary sometimes.”

  So can I, Cal thought wryly, watching Shadow laughing with Kai across the field, hating how tall he was, how fair, how expensive his clothes were.

  He rarely saw Arthur. Later, going into the farmhouse to find something to drink, he bumped into him and Gwen coming out. He felt awkward. “Sorry. They said it would be all right . . .”

  “Go anywhere you like. The house is open to everyone.” Arthur’s coat was worn; leather patches had been carelessly sewn over the elbows. He glanced at Cal’s stained shirt; Cal went hot, but Arthur only said, “Where is that strange sword of yours, Cal?”

  “Being sharpened.”

  “Hawk told us about the way you came by it.” It was the woman, Gwen. Her hair shone in the light. “We’d like to hear you tell that story. Have you tried to go back there, Cal?” She was being kind, but it annoyed him. He wasn’t sure they believed any of it.

  “No.”

  Arthur nodded, thoughtful. “It would be a good thing for the Company to find that place. This man Bron needs help, I think.”

  Cal edged past them. “Maybe . . .”

  In the kitchen he drank glass after glass of water down thirstily, while around him three men chopped and cooked and stirred the great steamy spicy-smelling pots that held the Company’s meals. Squeezing out, he wandered into a dim, dark-paneled room lined with books, and sank gratefully into a chair. His legs ached and his shoulder felt as if someone had tried to twist it off, but he felt good. For a moment he even ignored his spoiled clothes. The Hawk had said if he worked hard enough he might be able to fight in the Christmas event at Caerleon, a big thing, with great crowds and a fair and a mock medieval feast afterward for all the Company.

  He was happy for at least two seconds. Then the thought hit him hard. Christmas. He’d have to go home for Christmas. For a moment he sat there; then he got up quickly and crossed to the bookshelf, looking for anything that would take his mind off her, her voice on the phone, her new hair color. It looks so good, Cal, I can’t wait for you to see it. I’ve cleaned the house, Cal, just like you like it. I can’t wait to see you, Cal.

  There was a road atlas. He pulled it out and flicked the pages rapidly; then, more steadily, turned them over until he found the page with Ludlow on it. With his finger he traced the line of the railway, sitting on the arm of the chair, knees up, the book carefully balanced.

  Leominster. Ludlow. Craven Arms. There was no station in between. No Corbenic. Not only that, but there was nowhere of that name all alo
ng the line, no village, no church, no hotel. He dumped the book and thought for a few seconds, then picked up the phone and dialed.

  “You are through to National Rail Enquiries,” a voice said brightly. “This is Alison speaking. How may I help you?”

  “I want to know about trains to Corbenic.”

  “From?”

  “Chepstow,” he said at random.

  There was a moment’s silence, a few clicks of the keyboard. Then, “Could you spell that, please?”

  He thought back to the dripping sign on the dark, lamplit platform, and said, “C-O-R-B-E-N-I-C.”

  “I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound it. “There’s no station of that name listed.”

  “It’s near Ludlow.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, no. Perhaps you’ve made a mistake?”

  He nodded, then said, “okay. Thanks.”

  Putting the phone down he brooded silently. Until a voice said, “That castle is not to be found in this world.”

  Cal jumped. Sitting in the chair opposite, his eyes bright and crazy in the sunlight, was the ragged tangle-haired man they called the Hermit.

  Merlin.

  Chapter Twelve

  The sword requires a magic spell, yet I fear you have left it behind.

  Parzival

  He was eating what looked like half a cooked chicken, cracking the bones open in his hands, tearing off scraps for the dog. Cal couldn’t work out why he hadn’t seen him there before.

  “What do you mean?” he asked after a while.

  “The Grail Castle is not a place. It is a state of mind.” Merlin smiled his wolfish smile. “Little apple tree.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “I have been there.”

  Cal leaned forward, intent. “When?”

  But a sudden distant light was in the man’s eyes. “A sweet apple tree,” he whispered, “growing by the river. Who eats its magical fruit now? When my reason was whole I lay at its foot. . . . I have wandered fifty years among lawless men. After wealth, after the songs of bards I have been so long in the Waste Land not even the devils can lead me astray . . .”

  Cal waited. But that seemed to be all. After a few moments Merlin pulled off more of the chicken meat and chewed it calmly.

  Cal tried again. “Do you know how I might find that place again?”

  The Hermit looked up sharply. “Do you want to?”

  Startled, Cal said, “Well . . .”

  “You must wish to. With all your heart. More than life, you must wish it.” Suddenly Merlin tossed the carcass to the dog and came out of the chair with a terrifying speed; he grabbed both Cal’s wrists and held them tight, staring into his eyes. “And you must stop lying.”

  Cal tried to pull away, but the grip of the greasy hands was like iron. “I don’t know . . .”

  “. . . what I mean? I see into you, wise fool. I see you have been hurt. All your life you have been wounded; you bleed, and you resent her for it. You will punish her for it.”

  “No . . .”

  “You lie to them. To yourself. I know. I too have slept alone in the woods of Celyddon, and I know.”

  The broken nails were cutting Cal’s wrists. Rigid, he said, “Let me go.”

  Merlin opened his hands with a strange smile. His hair was a tangle over his eyes; the smell of him filled the room. “I see you,” he whispered. “You are in a small dark cupboard, filled with rubbish. You have locked the door and you are sitting against it, all crouched up. You are not crying, but rocking back and forth. You are ten. You have a slap mark on your face. You have terrible thoughts in your heart. . . .”

  Cal stood instantly. He went straight for the door and had almost reached it when Merlin said, “The way back to the Grail is long and hard. You had your chance and you didn’t take it. Did you not notice, Cal, did you not see, how the Fisher King has your own face?”

  Cal stopped. He put both hands out and pushed against the doorframe on each side of him, letting his breath out slowly, because it hurt him, like a sudden stitch, a stab wound. Panic crashed through him like sweat, like a chorus of voices.

  When he looked up he saw Shadow. She was staring in concern. “Have you hurt yourself?”

  “No,” he said hoarsely.

  “You look awful. Go back in and sit down.”

  “Not with him. He gives me the creeps.”

  She turned him around. There was no one else in the room.

  Cal stared a moment, then crossed to the chair and looked down at it. No smell, no chicken bones. Not a dent in the cushion. “He was here.”

  “Who?”

  “Merlin. The crazy one.” He turned. “Does he live here too? Is he part of the setup?”

  She sat, pulling her black hair through her fingers. “Yes. At least he has a place out in the woods; he calls it his ‘moulting cage.’ Hawk says it’s full of feathers, and there’s a pig there that he talks to. But I haven’t seen him around for a while. He comes and goes. He’s . . . not like the rest of us.”

  “Not if he can disappear into thin air he’s not.” But already the old, terrifying doubts were rising up in the corners of his mind, like shadows—what if he’d imagined the whole thing, talked to himself? What if these were the voices?

  He turned abruptly. “Let’s go outside.”

  They walked along the back lane of the farm, and leaned on the gate to the meadow, watching Hawk ride down and thunder lances against a swinging target that flung itself around to try and strike him on the back with its flailing ball and chain.

  Cal said, “Tell me about him.”

  “Hawk?”

  “Merlin. I don’t mean the old stories—who is he? Really?”

  Shadow smiled behind her cobweb. “Cal, when these people join the Company, they join it. All I know about the hermit is that there was a battle, some terrible slaughter, and a friend of his was killed. Now don’t ask me if it was a real battle or if it was some reenactment that went wrong, because it really doesn’t matter in the end, whatever you might think.” Ignoring his groan she went on. “He had some sort of breakdown. Went off and lived wild in the woods for years; Arthur had given up hope, but he just turned up one day and started building this den of his, this cage. He lives there most of the time, though he goes off on strange journeys.”

  “He talks a lot of odd stuff.”

  She tapped her black painted nails on the worn wood and laughed shortly. “Don’t we all. But they say he’s a prophet. That he knows what’s to come and what’s been. You have to look for the sense in what he says. Once he told me, really seriously, that the whole Company was his, not Arthur’s.” She turned, curious. “Did you really see him?”

  “I thought I did.” He caught her look and changed it to, “Yes. Of course I did. He went on about some apple tree.”

  Shadow laughed. “If it’s not the tree, it’s the pig.” The dinner gong rang, whacked by one of the sweaty men from the kitchen; catching Cal’s arm, Shadow pulled him toward the barn. “You’ll get used to him. It’s not easy, I know, being around someone like that.”

  As he queued for the hot soup and the greasy dollop of meat he thought bitterly that he knew far more than she did about people like that. He wished he could talk to her about his mother. But then he’d have to tell her she’d got it wrong, and he couldn’t. He liked the idea that she thought Thérèse was his mother. But even that had its dangers. “Cal’s half French,” she said, at some point in a conversation he wasn’t listening to. He looked up, off guard, swallowing the hot soup in a painful gulp.

  “Do you speak it at home?” To his horror it was Gwrhyr who asked, the one they called the Interpreter.

  Cal took a hasty drink of water. “No,” he said.

  “Pity.”

  Cal grinned, embarrassed, noncommittal.

  Hawk and Shadow were staying over at the farm for some sort of gathering that night. They were annoyingly secretive about it. “Don’t tell me,” Cal said sourly, feeling the edge of the newly sharpened
sword. “The Knights of the Round Table gather to feast. I’ve been looking for that piece of furniture ever since I got here.”

  Hawk snorted. “It exists, laddie. But not like you think.”

  After the archery practice Shadow drove him over the hill to the Chepstow bus stop. Glancing at the clean shirt he’d borrowed she grinned. “I heard about Kai.”

  He scowled, silent.

  “You’re really anxious about keeping clean, did you know that?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  She glanced in the mirror. “Yes you are. I saw you re-arranging Hawk’s books the other day. Tall ones at one end, small ones at the other. He was cursing later, trying to find something.”

  “I like order. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Not if it doesn’t get to be an obsession.”

  “If you knew what my house was like . . .” He’d said it before he could stop himself.

  Shadow laughed. “Yes, well I’ve been there, remember. Talk about neat!” She grinned. “I think your father thought he’d catch something from me.”

  The van swung around a corner. Desperate to change the subject he said, “You’re not really one of the Company yet, are you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re like me. You’re new. I can tell by the way you talk about them. And don’t tell me Shadow’s your real name.”

  She was concentrating hard on the narrow lane. Too hard. Finally she said, “No, it isn’t. I was traveling on my own, out toward Gloucester, and I got into a bit of trouble. Got stranded on a road, late at night, nowhere to go. It was raining, and I was a bit scared to hitch a lift, to be honest, and I didn’t know where I was going anyway. Didn’t care.” Her hands were tight on the wheel. He knew all the signs. “I was wet and cold and . . . well, anyway, I’d had it with everything. Then this van pulls up. With sunflowers painted on it.” She grinned. “I was crazy ever to get in. I mean, total stranger. But you know Hawk.”

  He nodded, trying to imagine it. There was a lot she hadn’t said. “So you’d left home?”

  “Yes.”

  “They let you? Why?”

  “Let’s just say I couldn’t get on with things at home.”