Elidor (Essential Modern Classics) Page 2

  “What’s the matter with you today, Roland? Stop dithering: he’ll be somewhere around.”

  “Yes, but where? He was by the lamp post a second ago, and it’s miles to the houses. We couldn’t hear him and not see him.”

  “I’d rather know where Helen and David have got to,” said Nicholas. “If they don’t hurry up the gang’ll be back before we’ve found the ball.”

  “Do you think they’re all right—”

  “Of course they are. They’re trying to have us on.”

  “They may be stuck, or locked in,” said Roland.

  “They’d have shouted,” said Nicholas. “No: they’re up to something. You wait here, in case they try to sneak out. I’m going to surprise them.”

  Roland sat down on a broken kitchen chair that was a part of the landscape. He was cold.

  Then the music came again.

  Roland jumped up, but there was no fiddler in sight, and he could not make out which direction the sound was coming from.

  “Nick!”

  The music faded.

  “Nick! – Nick!”

  The wasteland was bigger in the late afternoon light; the air quiet; and the houses seemed to be painted in the dusk. They were as alien as a coastline from the sea. A long way off, a woman pushed a pram.

  “Nick!”

  Roland picked his way over the rubble to the other side of the church, and here he found a door which sagged open on broken hinges: two floorboards were nailed across the doorway. Roland climbed through into a passage with several small rooms leading off it. Water trickled from a fractured pipe. There were the smells of soot and cat.

  The rooms were empty except for the things that are always left behind. There were some mouldering Sunday school registers; a brass-bound Bible; a faded sepia photograph of the Whitsun procession of 1909; a copy of Kirton’s Standard Temperance Reciter, Presented to John Beddowes by the Pendlebury Band of Hope, February 1888. There was a broken saucer. There was a jam jar furred green with long-dried water.

  “Nick!”

  Roland went through into the body of the church.

  The floorboards and joists had been taken away, leaving the bare earth: everything movable had been ripped out down to the brick. The church was a cavern. Above Roland’s head the three lancets of the west window glowed like orange candles against the fading light. The middle lancet, the tallest, was shattered, and the glass lay on the earth. But there was no ball.

  “Nick! Helen! David! Where are you?”

  The dusk hung like mist in the church.

  Roland went back to the passage. At the end was a staircase. The banisters had been pulled out, but the steps remained.

  “David! Nick! Come down: please don’t hide! I don’t like it!”

  No one answered. Roland’s footsteps thumped on the stairs. Two rooms opened off a landing at the top, and both were empty.

  “Nick!”

  The echo filled the church.

  “Nick!”

  Round, and round, his voice went, and through it came a noise. It was low and vibrant, like wind in a chimney. It grew louder, more taut, and the wall blurred, and the floor shook. The noise was in the fabric of the church: it pulsed with sound. Then he heard a heavy door open; and close; and the noise faded away. It was now too still in the church, and footsteps were moving over the rubble in the passage downstairs.

  “Who’s that?” said Roland.

  The footsteps reached the stairs, and began to climb.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Do not be afraid,” said a voice.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  The footsteps were at the top of the stairs. A shadow fell across the landing.

  “No!” cried Roland. “Don’t come any nearer!”

  The fiddler stood in the doorway.

  “I shall not harm you. Take the end of my bow, and lead me. The stairs are dangerous.”

  He was bent, and thin; he limped; his voice was old; there looked to be no strength in him; and he was between Roland and the stairs. He stretched out his fiddle bow.

  “Help me.”

  “All – all right.”

  Roland put his hand forward to take the bow, but as he was about to touch it a shock struck his finger tips, driving light through his forehead between the eyes. It was as though a shutter had been lifted in his mind, and in the moment before it dropped again he saw something; but it went so quickly that all he could hold was the shape of its emptiness.

  “What did you see?”

  “See? I didn’t – see. I – through my fingers – See? Towers – like flame. A candle in darkness. A black wind.”

  “Lead me.”

  “Yes.”

  Roland went down the stairs, a step at a time, dazed but no longer frightened. The church was somehow remote from him now, and flat, like a piece of stage scenery. The only real things were the fiddler and his bow.

  “I heard your music,” said Roland. “Why were you playing so far away from people?”

  “I was near you. Are you not people?” They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and were standing on the earth floor of the church. “Give me my bow.”

  “I can’t stay,” said Roland. But the old man put the fiddle to his shoulder. “I’m looking for my sister, and my two brothers—” The old man began to play. “—and I must find them before dark—” It was the wild dance. “—and we’ve a train to catch. What’s that noise? – Please! – Stop! – It’s hurting!—Please!—”

  The air took up the fiddle’s note. It was the sound Roland had heard upstairs, but now it was louder, building waves that jarred the church, and went through Roland’s body until he felt that he was threaded on the sound.

  “—Please!—”

  “Now! Open the door!”

  “I can’t! It’s locked!”

  “Open it! There is little time!”

  “But—!”

  “Now!”

  Roland stumbled to the door, grasped the iron handle and pulled with all his weight. The door opened, and he ran out on to the cobbles of the street, head down, driven by the noise.

  But he never reached the far pavement, for the cobbles were moving under him. He turned. The outline of the church rippled in the air, and vanished. He was standing among boulders on a sea shore, and the music died into the crash of breakers, and the long fall of surf.

  CHAPTER 2

  CLOTH OF GOLD

  A cliff rose above him, and at the top were the ruins of a castle. He was confused by the noise that had shaken the church, but the cold thrill and burn of the spray woke him.

  Roland walked along the shore. The cliff was an islet separated from the mainland by a channel of foam. High over his head a drawbridge spanned the gap, and there was no other way to cross. He would have to climb, and climb soon, for even as he tried to find the best place to start, a wave dragged at the rocks. The tide was coming in.

  The rocks sloped on one side, and were never more than a hard scramble: but the height was bad. The sound of the water dropped away and there was no wind. The cliff thrust him outwards, and each movement felt too violent for him to be able to keep his balance, and the tendons in his wrists were strained by the pressure of his grip on every hold. He knew better than to look down, but once he looked up, and the whole mass of the castle toppled slowly towards him. After that, he forced himself to see only what was within reach of his hand.

  The foundations of the castle were smooth masonry curving to the vertical wall, but between the foundations and the bedrock there was a ledge which Roland worked himself along until he reached the drawbridge.

  The chains that raised the bridge had been cut, and he was able to use one of them to pull himself up to the level of the gatehouse. The bridge itself was undamaged, but the gatehouse had fallen in. Roland climbed through into the courtyard.

  There were four towers to the castle, one at each corner of the broken walls, and in the middle of the courtyard stood a massive keep. It
was high, with few windows.

  “Hello!” Roland called.

  There was no reply. Roland went through the doorway of the keep into a great hall, cold and dim, and spanned by beams. The floor was strewn with dead roses, and the air heavy with their decay.

  An arch in one corner led to a spiral staircase. Here the light came through slits in the wall, and was so poor that for most of the time Roland had to grope his way in darkness.

  The first room was an armoury, lined with racks, which held a few swords, pikes, and shields. It took up the whole width of the keep.

  Roland drew a sword from one of the racks. The blade was sharp, and well greased. And that was another strange thing about the castle. Although it was a ruin, the scars were fresh. The tumbled stone was unweathered and all the windows held traces of glass.

  He replaced the sword: it was too heavy to be of use.

  Roland continued up the stairs to the next door. He opened it and looked into a barren room. Shreds of tapestry hung against the walls like skeletons of leaves, and there was one high window of three lancets… and the glass of the middle lancet was scattered on the floor… and in the hearth opposite the window lay a white plastic football.

  Roland took the ball between his hands, just as he had pulled it from under the lorry. The pattern of stitches: the smear of oil and brick dust: it was the same.

  He stared at the ball, and as he stared he heard a man singing. He could not hear the words, but the voice was young, and the tune filled Roland with a yearning that was both pain and gladness in one.

  Where’s it coming from? he thought. The next room up?

  If only he could hear the words. Whoever was singing, he had to hear. But as he moved, the voice stopped.

  “No,” whispered Roland.

  The ball dropped from his fingers, and for a long time he listened to its slow bounce – bounce – bounce – down – and round – until that was lost.

  “He must be up there.”

  Roland started to climb. He came to the room above; the last room, for ahead the curve of the stairs grew brighter as it opened on to the top of the keep.

  There was no one in the room. But under the window stood a low, white, marble table, and draped from one end, as though it had been jerked off, was a tapestry of cloth of gold.

  Roland went to the table. It was quite plain, except for the shape of a sword cut deep in the stone. He picked up the golden tapestry and spread it over the table. It dropped with the folds of long, untouched use, and the impression of the sword was in the cloth. And as he stepped back Roland felt the castle tremble, and the voice drifted to him through the window, far away, but so clear that he caught broken snatches of the words.

  “Fair is this land for all time…

  Beneath snowfall of flowers…”

  “O, wait for me!” cried Roland. “Don’t go!”

  “A magic land, and full of song…”

  He sprang up the steps and on to the battlement of the keep.

  “Green Isle of the Shadow of the Stars.”

  All around sea and air mingled to a grey light, and the waves were silver darts on the water. From the drawbridge a road went up towards hills and into a forest that covered the lower slopes. On the road, moving away from the castle, Roland saw the fiddler.

  CHAPTER 3

  DEAD LOSS

  B y the time Roland was clear of the gatehouse the fiddler had reached the trees. Roland hurried after him.

  For a while the road passed charred stumps of buildings, and field rank with nettle. Dust, or ash, kicked up under Roland’s feet, muffling his walk and coating his body so aridly that his skin rasped. Flies whined round him, and crawled in his hair, and tried to settle on his lips. The sky was dull, yet there was a brittleness in the light that hurt. It was no longer wonder that led him, but dislike of being alone.

  Even the singing had lost its enchantment. For now that the old man had appeared again Roland recognised where he had heard the song before: the fiddler had played it. And so what he had imagined to be the music of his dreams was only the jingle of a half-learned tune.

  Although Roland wanted to catch up with the man, he wanted less and less to reach the forest. He could make out nothing sinister at first, apart from a general atmosphere of gloom and stillness, and it was not until he was close that he knew why this forest was different from all others. The trees were dead.

  Roland looked back: but he had nowhere else to go, and at that distance the castle was a tortured crag. He clutched a handful of gravel and rubbed it against his cheek. It hurt. It was real. He was there. He had only himself.

  Within the forest the road dwindled to a line of mud that strayed wherever there was ground to take it: fungus glowed in the twilight, and moss trailed like hair from the branches. There was the silence of death over everything: a silence that was more powerful for the noises it contained – the far off crash of trees, and the voices of cold things hidden in the fog that moved in ribbons where there was no wind. Oaks became black water at a touch.

  Roland could not tell how long he had struggled, nor how far, when the trees thinned on to moorland below a skyline of rock. The forest held neither hours nor miles, and all that he had been able to do was to wade from one bog into the next, to climb over one rotting trunk to the next, and to hope for an end to the slime.

  He walked a few shambling steps clear of the trees, and collapsed in the grass. He had lost the road, and he was alone.

  When he opened his eyes Roland thought that he would never move again. The chill had seeped through his body and locked him to the ground.

  He turned on to his side, and dragged himself to a sitting position, his head on his knees, too cold to shiver.

  However long he had slept, nothing had changed. The light was just the same, the sky unbroken.

  He began to walk uphill towards the rocks. They were higher than he had thought – packed columns of granite, splintered by frost and ribbed by wind – but he scrambled amongst them up weathered gullies to the top.

  Here Roland found himself on a broad ridge shelving away to a plain which stretched into the haze. Nothing showed. No villages; no houses; no light; no smoke. He was alone. Behind him the hill dropped to the forest, and he could see no end to that. The only proof that anyone had ever lived in this land was close by him, but it gave Roland little comfort.

  A circle of standing stones crowned the hill. They were unworked and top-heavy; three times bigger than a man and smooth as flint. They rose from the ground like clenched fists. Roland walked into the circle which was easily four hundred yards wide, and at the middle he stopped and gazed round him.

  From the circle an avenue of stones marched along the ridge, and these were sharp blades of rock, as tall as the circle, but cruel and thin. They went straight to a round hill, a mile away.

  If possible, the air was quieter here: so quiet that it was as if the silence lay in Roland. He avoided making any noise, for fear that the stillness would not be broken.

  But how many stones were there in the circle? Roland started to count from the left of the avenue – eighty-eight. Or did he miss one right at the end? Try again – eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven. It may have been that his eyes were tired, but the flick, flick, flick, flick, flick of the pale shapes as he counted them was making the stones in the corner of his vision seem to move – eighty-four, eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine. Just once more. One, two three, five, six – no. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven – the air was like a deafness about him.

  Why am I bothering to count? thought Roland.

  “You must stay until you have counted them all.”

  Yes, I must – who said that? Roland caught himself looking over his shoulder.

  I did. I must be cracked.

  The silence was so complete that his thought had sounded as loud as a voice.

  I’m getting out of this.

  Roland sprinted across the circle, intent only on
reaching the open hill-top, and he did not notice at first that he was running into the mouth of the avenue. He swerved aside towards a gap between the stones, but as he approached, the perspective seemed to alter, to become reversed, so that instead of growing broader the gap appeared to shrink. He could not pass through.

  Roland changed direction, bewildered by his misjudgement of distance – and now he was going into the avenue again. Eighty-six. Eighty-seven. Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine. Ninety. Stones don’t move. There’s plenty of room between them.

  He fixed his eyes on one gap, and made for it.

  These huge boulders were spaced many times their own width apart, yet as Roland drew near, instinct told him that the gap was not wide enough. He kept jerking back, as though from an unseen obstacle in the dark. Stones – don’t – move. There’s plenty – of room. He could see that there was, but even in the last yard he flinched from the stones, and the moment of passing through tore a great, wordless cry from his throat.

  “I’m imagining things,” said Roland.

  The abruptness with which his fear had left him was frightening in itself, for the instant Roland crossed out of the circle the stones shrank in his mind to their true size.

  “You could drive a bus between them!”

  But even so, the air was less stifled now, and nothing moved when he counted.—Eighty-one. Again.—Eighty-one. No trouble at all.

  Roland decided to follow the avenue to the hill. He would have a better view from there, and perhaps something would give direction to his wandering: but he kept well clear of the standing stones, walking below them on the ridge.

  It soon became obvious that the hill, for all its mass, was not a part of the ridge but an artificial mound, completely circular, and flat-topped.

  The avenue ended at a dry moat, or ditch, that went round the hill. Roland slithered into the ditch, ran across its broad floor, and started to climb. The turf was like glass under his shoes.

  From the top of the mound there was one landmark, in front of him on the plain, far off.

  A heap of rocks. No, thought Roland, it’s towers – and walls: all broken. Another castle. That’s not much use. What else?