The Hollowing (36 page)

“This is your son,” he said softly to Richard. “Look at him! Images of the higher mind. This is the history that makes us all. This is Alex. Without it, he is just a hollow man. We cannot leave it. We may never find it again.”

Helen tugged Lytton from the tree and led him to the path. “You have a flair for the melodramatic, Alexander. We must go back—we need clothes and I need an old Coyote. The tree won’t go away. We’ll come back in a few days.”

“The tree won’t go away,” Lytton murmured, defeated. “But we might miss the moment…”

*   *   *

Lytton’s own route to the Mask Tree had not been through Old Stone Hollow. He had discovered the place a year or more ago, after searching widely, carefully, following his instincts and the map of the layers of the wood which he had compiled at the Station. He had found the cathedral, but no Alex, and for a year had obsessively scoured the land around the Tree, becoming ill, becoming weak in limb, attacked by the wild, frozen by winter.

He had returned just once to the Station, marking out a gruelling four-day trek through freezing birchwoods, raging rivers, and deep valleys haunted by shadows and heavy with oak and elm, which closed above him until he had felt stifled in the heat, almost too frightened to continue. When he finally reached the camp, it was deserted, the haunt of scavengers, and he had retraced his steps.

Now he led Richard and Helen back along that same route, looting a mortuary enclosure on the way, for clothes, caps, and tarnished knives of bronze.

And it was clad in this way, in the trappings of the dead, raw with itching from the coarse cloth, that Richard arrived at the edge of a lake on the fifth morning and recognised Wide Water Hollowing and the Viking vessel that he had used against the serpent. Half a mile away around the shore was the gully to Old Stone Hollow.

Now he thought again of Sarin, whom he had abandoned so abruptly, instants after his deception of Jason. Would she still be in the Station, waiting for him, warm and safe? He felt suddenly apprehensive. For the last few days he had been dogged by thoughts of the drowned argonauts and by a curious anxiety that some of them might have survived. And indeed, perhaps this had been a process of premonition at work, for as he entered the gully, aware that there was indeed someone inhabiting Old Stone Hollow, his heart was squeezed with fear as he heard the tuneless wail of bagpipes, sounding from somewhere inside the Station. An image of a grinning man, wrapped in black furs, squeezing the leather bag to make the sound of dying came to him …

“Jason,” he whispered. “Oh Christ no…”

The pipes whined again, a long drawn out howl of pain, a mocking call to Richard before they were discarded, their challenge finished. Noticing Richard’s sudden agitation, Helen led Lytton up the bank, to cover in the rocks, before returning to the wooden palisade. “Trouble?”

“An old man with a big grudge—he must have found his way back.”

“You mean Jason…”

Richard thought of Sarin, and of the brutal man, and closed his eyes. But perhaps it was Sarin herself who was trying to extract music from the ancient instrument. Richard dismissed the thought—she had been too apprehensive of the pipes before, believing them to be a call to the shadow world. And to confirm his anxiety, as he walked into the tall grass he saw a black cloak, hanging from the branch of a tree, washed, wet, and drying. A skull mask hung over the longhouse door. Two spears and a round leather shield had been placed on one side.

The breeze rustled grass, branches, and the wet cloak. Otherwise the Station was silent. A thin stream of smoke rose from the longhouse, more dead than alive. Richard motioned Helen down and then ran quickly, bent low, to the entrance to the Lodge. He picked up the shorter spear and the shield, which had a cracked and heavy wooden back, and stepped inside, advancing stealthily into the first room. A fire had burned here recently. Its ash, the trickle of smoke, still swirled through the light from the small window. The discarded pipes lay nearby, plus two rolls of fleece and a tunic of patterned leather.

Certain that the thunder of his heart could be heard clearly, Richard stretched out the spear towards the rough curtain between entrance and inner room. When he tugged it open he saw only gloom, a deserted place, illuminated thinly from holes in the roof. He stepped forward and a hand gripped his shoulder, spinning him round.

“Have mercy! Have mercy!” Lacan roared through his belly laugh, as Richard made to strike. “It’s only me! Spare my life!”

“Arnauld!” Richard flung his arms around the big man.

“My favourite Englishman! You
stink!
”

“I thought you were dead. Oh God, I thought you were dead.”

“I should be. I struck a hard bargain! Sweet Virgin, what
is
that smell?”

“I was told you’d been killed on the
Argo!
”

“I wish I had been. I’m embracing you firmly, out of joy, yet asphyxiating with nausea. What have you been
eating?
”

“Mud and leaf litter, mostly.”

Lacan was beside himself with mirth, slapping Richard stunningly on his left shoulder. “I should have expected no less from the English! Terrible cooks, terrible taste in food. Ah well, each to his own.”

“I could murder a hare stew, right now. Christ it’s so good—so wonderful—to see you—I thought you were dead!”

Lacan detached himself from Richard’s second hug. “Enough of this excessive male bonding. There are limits, even for a Frenchman. Are you alone?”

From behind him, Helen murmured, “Any hare’s blood left?” and jabbed the second spear gently into the big man’s rump.

“Helen!” Lacan roared, with his second peal of genuine delight, and the ritual hugging and asphyxia began again.

*   *   *

With Lytton fed, washed, warm, and sleeping, they sat in the longhouse around the new fire, prodding at the burning wood, feeling the glow of comfort, pigeon stew, and nettle tea course through their bodies. For Richard, the whole thing seemed normal again, and it took an unwelcome effort of will to construct an idea of the world outside the wood, where time ran from one hour to the next, and the seasons obeyed the spinning of the globe.

“You said you struck a hard bargain—how do you mean?”

Lacan picked at his yellowing teeth. His hair rattled with shells, newly tied into his black locks. “One of Jason’s social workers—Tisamenus by name—pursued me for my pipes. He offered to strike off my head. I struck off his arm, then divided his skull—not without difficulty—into two uneven pieces. A
very
hard bargain.”

He looked at Helen who was very solemn, watching him and frowning. Lacan nodded. “Before I left I had never killed a man. This man, this Tisamenus, was my third in the years I was lost. I have rarely been frightened, but in the hours after a killing fear becomes like an illness. Fear of what, exactly, I don’t know. I am just afraid, and very sick. And very lonely…”

Helen reached out and squeezed Lacan’s toes through his thick boots. There was some silent conversation between them, a reference to a time before Richard’s acquaintance with them, perhaps, and he remained respectfully quiet. Helen asked, “How did you get here?”

“On the
Argo,
” Lacan said. “Disguised as Tisamenus. The ship came through Wide Water Hollowing, although I didn’t realise this for a while.”

Lacan had been lost on the shores of a hot sea, having strayed through a hollowing two years after he had left the Station. He had adventured like Hercules, loved, lived, sinned, sunned, and consumed the local wild life with a gusto that even he, now, found hard to believe. When the
Argo
had beached, and an expedition come ashore, the adventurer called Tisamenus had become envious of the pipes, which he had heard being played in the caves above the shore. The
Argo
was being pursued by two war galleys of sinister demeanour and intent. When they had appeared on the sea horizon Tisamenus called back to the ship, had masked himself and attacked the dark-bearded man, to claim the mysterious booty.

Lacan had then struck his deadly bargain.

Disguised as Tisamenus he had entered the
Argo
—“I was lost. I had nothing better to do”—and had kept his identity behind the mask during the ensuing battle.

“I was aware that there were living beings below the deck. Richard, this man, this Jason, was the worst of men. A true monster. If not for the battle he would have unmasked me and slaughtered me—although I would have exacted a terrible price! As I’m sure you both realise.”

“Terrible,” Richard concurred.

“Awesomely so,” agreed Helen.

“Indeed! But the
Argo
plunged through a sea cave, which turned out to be a hollowing. On the other side it was cold. I jumped for the shore. Only days later did I discover that it was this shore, this place, my old home. Someone had been here recently, but had gone. Now I realise it was you two! I
knew
there had been a woman here…” He grinned at Helen.

“Not me,” she said. “Been eating earthworms for a season or more.”

Lacan frowned. “Who, then?” And his words reminded Richard that Sarin should be near.

“A small woman, very thin, very chirpy,” he said. “She’s called Sarinpushtam. She was on the
Argo
with you, but below the deck, and too often being abused by Jason.”

Lacan shook his head. “I saw none of the prisoners, only the cooks. But I heard a young woman crying out sometimes, and not with pleasure. I’m glad I was only aboard for a few hours. I would have had to kill that man.”

Declining Lacan’s offer of help in locating Sarin—assuming she was still in the vicinity and hiding—Richard left the longhouse to look for her.

*   *   *

She was hiding beyond the Sanctuary, sheltering below an arch formed of two fallen pillars. Terrified and cold, she had been about to give herself to the lake, but Richard’s call reached her hearing and confused her determination. When Lacan, disguised as Tisamenus, had come to Old Stone Hollow a few hours before, she had fled, remembering the cruelty of that particular argonaut, not willing to experience it further. When Richard explained that Lacan was a good and trusted friend, she wept. When he told her that Lacan was a fine cook she stopped weeping.

“Since you left I’ve eaten nothing but mushrooms, dried fish, and something from your house. It was in a fragile crystal vessel and I had to break it.” She closed her eyes at its memory and half smiled. “It was like the food eaten by the gods. It drove me mad with pleasure. But there was very little of it.”

Meacham’s Potted Beef! Good God. An English horror had appealed to a Bronze Age appetite.

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Richard said. “Shops full. Unsold. Unwanted.” Sarin was delighted at the thought, and Richard led her back to the river.

It was close to dusk. Helen had made clothes from the cloaks of the drowned argonauts and Lacan had gone to the lake to peer into its depths. He was obsessed, now, with the idea of dredging the vessel from the castle ruins below and refloating it. Being a sensible man, he was wary of the lake serpent, but for most of the afternoon, Helen said, he had been sitting in the gathering gloom, thinking of the possibilities of voyaging aboard so famous a ship.

Sarin washed, ate heartily, and kicked the bagpipes, as if to reassure herself that they were not, as she feared, the source of summoning of evil shadows (which she called night feeders).

Another shadow had to be summoned, and Helen sat with Richard and Alexander Lytton and recalled the day she had journeyed to the edge of the wood and delivered the note to Richard’s home.

“I went out through the Old Lodge. There was a strange feel to the place, like movement, like ghosts. I assumed everything was mythagos. I wasn’t happy about it. Arnauld’s snares and probes were everywhere, so maybe they were having an effect. He always said that Oak Lodge had more than its fair share of ghosts.

“I rested in the clearing for a while, and a young girl appeared. Again, I assumed this was a mythago, although my first thought was that she was a local. But she didn’t speak. She was very willowy, very moon-faced, silvery, and beckoned me. I followed her through the wood, and came out into the field, above Shadoxhurst. No sign of the girl, but she was at the edgewood when I went back in, and again vanished as I followed her. As I say, a mythago of some sort.

“At Richard’s house? I noticed that a woman was living there, which irritated me.” She cast a glance at Richard. “I was tempted to leave a more loving note, but I didn’t.” She leaned toward him, “I did
miss
you, though.” And after a pause, “That’s about it. It was a flying visit to Richard through the ghost zone.”

Lytton had been scribbling furiously, and thinking hard. Without looking up he said, “The moon-faced girl was silent. Do you mean she didn’t speak?”

“Not a word.”

“And when she moved? Could you hear her?”

With a shudder Helen suddenly shook her head. “No. No, I didn’t hear her, come to think of it. It was quite eerie. I followed her by light. She didn’t glow, I don’t mean that. She sort of radiated. Ethereal, I guess. What do you think she was?”

“An elemental,” Lytton said quietly.

“You and your elementals!” Helen was amused, glancing at Richard.

Ignoring her, Lytton went on, “What I don’t understand is how she got there. Except that James Keeton re-emerged from the wood by way of Oak Lodge, hours older after an absence of months. Are you
sure
he said he’d come through the Lodge, Richard?”

“Quite sure. Like Helen, he said that he’d felt the presence of ghosts, many people. It had felt unearthly.”

Outside, from the direction of the wooden defences, a sound cut into the conversation. Richard stood and went to peer into the evening gloom. “It’s Arnauld. At last.”

Lacan had returned and was formally closing the gate, critically inspecting the crude hinges that Richard had contrived during his rebuilding. The Frenchman entered the longhouse and flung his cloak to one side.

“We must dredge up the
Argo,
” he said. “It’s an opportunity too good to be missed. What’s cooking?
Who’s
cooking?” he added with a nervous glance at Richard.