Death of a Ghost Page 12

  He was not aware of having opened his eyes, but there, at once, were Susannah and Adam Price before him. Susannah was sitting upright in a high-backed chair. She was pale as chalk, but her eyes flashed. A flask stood on the table beside her, its neck bunged with yellow-stained cloth. And her wounds – the wounds he had felt bleed freely at his touch only minutes before – were dull, burgundy scars.

  “How long have I slept?” Ossian asked.

  “Long enough,” said Adam, “and less than you shall. When you wake next it will be to St Michael’s trumpet.”

  “And I’m sorry, brother, that it should be so,” said Susannah.

  “Susannah,” croaked Ossian, “what have you done?”

  “Adam made me tell,” she said. There was weeping in her voice, though her eyes were dry.

  “Tell what?”

  “The secret of the elixir, of course! He wanted it so badly and I was afraid. So I told him. To come by the elixir there is only one way. A head – a head of bronze. A nameless boy.” She was finding it hard to speak. “He wants the head from your shoulders, Ossian. He wants to slap clay across your eyes, to hear your bronze lips speak. And you will speak such things! Your head will prophesy so that the angels themselves will strain to hear.”

  Ossian looked from one to the other. Saturnine, heavy-set Adam Price was nodding gravely. Susannah smiled encouragement, as if she had brought him to the brink of heaven’s bliss.

  “You’re mad! Both of you!”

  Adam Price smiled dangerously. “Was Doctor Bacon mad?”

  “Yes! Yes, he was mad like you!”

  “You speak from ignorance. His spells would have raised a wall of brass round this island. His magic was strong and sound.”

  “There is no wall round Britain. That spell was a dream!”

  Adam rose, his dark cloak hanging from his shoulders to his feet.

  “It would have happened, sure enough. But Doctor Bacon’s apprentice neglected his duty and let the Head he made shatter. I have been more watchful of you, Ossian. And what I seek is such a little thing, so little, but a morsel of curiosity.” He opened his hands wide. “I would but know the truth of the world to come.”

  “And who but a dead man can tell him that, Ossian?” asked Susannah.

  Ossian’s head was clear enough by now for him to realise that he was no longer free to move his arms or legs. Adam had tied him as he slept, and he lay on the table he had seen when he came in. Only it was no table, but a cold, limestone slab.

  “How easy it was to bring you here,” said Susannah, “where the land is red. It must be bloodier yet, Ossian.”

  Her voice was muffled, as if he heard it from within the brass walls of a brazen skull. She’s not even the same person, he thought. She’s nothing like Susannah.

  That was true. She was tall; her head touched the roof-tree of the house. And there was no house, just the roof of spread branches and the green, thick light he amazed himself by breathing. Then not even the forest was there: nothing but the stone block he lay on and, far away, Peg of the Willow lamenting her dead lad.

  “It breaks my heart to mar his lovely flesh,” said Susannah. Though he could barely see her now he saw enough to know that even her scars were gone from her and that she was divine – a Shining One. Adam too was changed. His manners were deferential and humbly obstinate, all his wiles become a kind of devious service to this goddess.

  “Your tenderness is truly exquisite. But an Oracular Head can be come by in no other way. Remember, lady, this is not the real Ossian. Just a reflection, glinting on the dark ocean of—”

  “—human history. Yes, scryer, I remember that speech. But I cannot love as mortals do, to change with every turn of the season. I must love Ossian eternally; it is my destiny and his death will always bring me pain. Therefore, despatch him and be done. I will look away.”

  She drew her cloak about her.

  “Lady, you are a goddess that speaks it.”

  SUE HAD JUST come out of the shower. She sat on her bed in a white dressing gown, blow-drying her hair.

  “You knew, didn’t you!” Sue turned and smiled vaguely, as if she had not quite heard him over the dryer. “Hmm?”

  “Don’t pretend! I can see through all of you.”

  “Oh,” she said comfortably. “Hello, Ossian. Why don’t you come and sit on the bed and we’ll talk it over.” She patted the cover next to her. The turquoise on her ring shone like a third eye.

  “I’m not some lapdog you can just call to heel!”

  “What’s brought this on? There’s no need to be unpleasant.”

  “I haven’t even started yet! You knew! You knew Colin was watching, didn’t you?”

  “Colin?” Sue did a very passable impression of not understanding what he was talking about.

  “When you kissed me. That was for his benefit, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” she said, as if to a petulant child. “Is this hurt pride talking? Why should I want to do that?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what game you two are playing – but I’m not going to be part of it, all right?”

  She stood and put the hairdryer back on her dressing table, then turned to him coldly. “It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think? Your father made a fool of himself last night. Now I’m beginning to think it runs in the family.”

  “What Jack gets up to is nothing to do with me. Nothing is. I’m not involved.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Ossian. You’ve always been involved. And you’ve got business here in Lychfont you’ll never be able to finish.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I talked to Dad just now. He’s packing the car. He’s had a call, a big commission up north. So we’re off. You’ll have to find someone else to play your mind games. Sorry to have slipped through your net.”

  “A big commission?” laughed Sue. “Is that what he told you? Jack’s got a nerve, I’ll grant him.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “A big brush-off, more like. You should know him better by now, Ossian. There’s no fool like an old fool – except, perhaps, a young one.”

  “You don’t know everything!”

  Sue gave a chilly laugh and grinned, showing all her frost-white teeth.

  Ossian could hear her singing as he stormed out through the entrance hall, past the Stubbs bay and the tiger skin. Mr Frazer, busily transforming the driveway bushes into topiary goblets, looked up and followed him steadily with his gaze as he started across the lawn and down into the wood, making for the King’s Head. Ossian had decided to phone for a taxi; Southampton wasn’t far. And the path was unsteady with anger as he turned and set his face to the trees, away from Lychfont House. Away from all of them: Sue, Colin, Catherine, his father. He was going back to America and to Lizzy. He’d got cash in the bank, hadn’t he? Enough for the flight. Lizzy had been right all along. He never should have left.

  But he was no longer alone. Someone was tracking him through the wood. Didn’t Colin know when to give up? And what was he carrying? A croquet mallet? A length of lead piping? Ossian laughed out loud. What would Inspector Gordius have made of it – or feisty Sergeant Rosie O’Shea? He laughed until his cheeks were wet. When he blinked the trees were empty. He felt lightheaded. There was no sound beyond the green hissing of the leaves.

  “You shouldn’t have listened to her, Ossian! You shouldn’t have looked!”

  That was Colin calling! It sounded like Colin. But the voice was in his own head.

  “If you touch the goods, you have to pay, you know!”

  “Sod you!” cried Ossian and plunged into the wood. He ran. He felt the wind pull his skin back over his skull. The trees flicked, and in the shadows between ran black shapes, large as mastiffs, sinuous as otters. They were running alongside him, steering him, heading him off. Just shadows – shadows on the woodland floor. So he skewed his head to look, and one of the shadows turned its head too, and its mouth was dripping crimson, and the teeth wer
e saw teeth, and the points of them were tipped with crystal. Ossian gave a shout and ran on into the heart of the wood. He flung himself along the soft earth track, choking on his own breath until the ground welled with bubbling mud and sank him, and the grass looped to make him stumble and he fell, and drowned in the sudden drenching pool…

  …BUT WAS ALIVE. He had forgotten that the cord about his neck was twisted with a stick. It had crushed his windpipe, quite. His face had bloated and his eyes were shut. His wrists, loosely tied, floated above his head and occasionally hit the surface of green water, pocked with bubbles and the fall of leaves. That water was peaty and bitter, but when the sun shone it glowed with life, with lurking toads and snails, reeds bent and gluey with larvae. Fish ruddered by, and occasionally a crocodilian shadow would flow over Ossian’s face – the wriggle of a newt.

  A long time he lay, but not so long till the mud crept over his skin and gathered in the corners of his dreaming eyes and the waxy cap he wore was crowned with it. Ossian did not hear the drying of the bank as the river switched its course, how the reeds shrivelled and gave way to soil and children, how his head was circled with May dances. To him the reed was as the oak. The gruel of sorrel, mistletoe and thorn in his belly took root and thrust out a may tree miraculously, hung with snowy blossom in the spring, with blood-red fruits. It grew and died, and only the trunk was left unfelled, for the sake of the ghost who haunted it.

  THE PESTLE was grinding. It had done so, steadily, for more than two hours… scrape, scrape, twist scrape… Between stone and stone it had crushed the vinegar sorrel, the shrivelled haws. And mistletoe, that lovely plant, whose oak-berries must be lopped with gold. Ossian had seen his father cut it at midwinter; the fallen sprig had been caught in fine woven cloth, being too sacred to touch the earth. Dried, ground down, those pearl-white berries would season his last meal.

  This house had three doors. One door for each clan, one for each tributary stream. By turning his head, Ossian could see, distantly, the grove of willow and birch where Sulis raced her waters. But to turn that way hurt his neck. The cord that tied him chafed his throat badly and the head of Cernunnos sat heavy on his shoulders. So he looked straight ahead. There were children playing in the yard. Beli’s sister ran fastest; he saw her fall flat, winded – and Beli sat on her and chomped the flesh of her arm. Then their mother shouted and told them not to hurt their luck by mocking at a god. The trotting dogs followed them away.

  In the light-shafted, brown-aired house, Cernunnos sat upon the rushes with his legs crossed. A fire smoked in the central hearth and the smoke made a rough pillar, twisting up into the roof, where it was teased out on heaven’s spindle. When he looked at it he could see shapes – shavings of dream, sent by the goddess to lead him forward. The staff in his hands rippled with wedged-shaped notches. At its base they ran as serpent scales. The scales grew rougher towards the head, until they curled and rolled, were more wool than scales, were wool. The snake’s head was horned like a ram’s. Such was his staff, to guide him over the grassy plain of dreams.

  Inside the Cernunnos head Ossian was afraid. He had not been, to begin with. The gruel of sorrel and mistletoe had filled him with power at first. He had woken with the cup to his lips. Bitter, bitter taste, sharp as a sword, powerful.

  “Look in the pool.”

  A man had stood beside him. They had been standing in a grove, with a pool at its centre. There were trees all around them and a green palisade beyond, the rushes cross-woven. But most of the trees were dead. They were gnarled and carved with mouths, horrible in their great age and stained with dark. They gaped for him.

  He looked into the pool. Saw branches of tined bone, first, catch on the treetops. He did not realise they belonged to him, nor that they were antlers, until his head shook with the bitterness twisting in his mouth and he saw the branch bones shake too, and heard his name again.

  “O Horned God.”

  And the face was his, and he was Cernunnos. Then the man who had spoken was known to him, as everything was known. This whitebeard had been his father.

  “You have a journey,” said the priest. “Your bride waits for you.”

  So. That dream-cinder paled to ash. Now others kindled. Fingers touched the great antlers, the fur on his face. Was that just a mask? Where was Ossian? Was he hiding within the god?

  These questions did not catch; they flew from him like blown seeds.

  He dreamt of the wagon. He had travelled through the apple land, the green lanes and the meadow grass, with his bride beside him. Her face was beautiful – her face and hands were crisp flowers, lavender, bee-visited: her eyes blue musk thistle and all her bones were fragile plaited straw. In those few days, spring met with harvest, green shoots and yellow wheat, and the mowers’ chorus was everywhere. The memories came tumbling forward now. Garlands in the maybush! The woods had been plundered in their honour, and all were tied with marriage links for the wedding of Cernunnos and the Queen of the May. At each village gate they found a loaf unbroken, and the meal was sweet with honey, and—What was this? A child’s fingers, straining to touch the fold of his robe? That picture had stuck – even down to the red nail-dirt, the milk-white quick. The child’s face he never saw; she had been snatched from him roughly, as from a snake.

  In the house with three doors Cernunnos shifted from ham to ham. Now, had that been more like waking or sleeping? Waking, surely; he had never been more alive to every taste and sound. But to be tied to a post with a wicker mask upon his shoulders – to be awaiting the sword that would kill him – that must be some great, grey maggot of a dream. Not once, but three times he would be slaughtered. First with a golden blade, as befits a god. Then with a hemp rope – a thief’s death for snatching at forbidden sights. At last, they would dedicate him to the ground, with a stave’s blow to the skull.

  After a week and a day the wagon had come full circle. It had brought him here to the village and the goddess had withdrawn to her island. The wagon itself, led by the slaves who had tended her, was drowned in the bog. A year had gone to its making; each spoke had been gilded and the bronze faces of the gods had peeped open-mouthed from between his knees as they had travelled. Now all was broken up and buried beneath hurdles in the brown water. Neither wagon nor slaves would be seen again.

  Last night they had served him the sacred gruel a second time. But it had been too strong and he had retched up its magic. Now they held the boy Ossian, no god, though they did not know it. He would suffer, not fiercely and joyfully as a god should suffer, but as a mortal, in pain and desolation. He shivered. The slaves had not died quietly.

  The priest came and began his catechism. Ossian had heard the same exchanges before. Now he must be perfect or his father would find that the god had deserted him.

  “What is your name?” said the priest.

  “I am Cernunnos.”

  “That is a lie, for Cernunnos is dead.”

  “He is alive and I am he that speaks it.”

  The priest nodded; that was right.

  “The grey tent of the sky, will it fall?”

  “See, I have propped my staff between earth and heaven.”

  “The brown leaf, will it shoot again?”

  “I have ploughed the dead land and made it fruitful. I am the sower and the harvest.”

  “How long will the mayfly live?”

  “A day and a night, which is the whole of time.”

  Through the eyeholes of the mask, Ossian could see his father’s face. His father was not looking at him, but at the ground before his feet.

  “The King and Queen, the Red and White – what shall their child be named?”

  Ossian hesitated.

  “I know that but I will not tell you,” he replied.

  Satisfied, the priest left at length. Ossian sighed with relief. He had remembered his answers well, even down to the ritual hesitation.

  They came in the evening. Without the wagon he was forced to walk, but his train was kingly as he travel
led the quarter-mile from the village to the Stone of Cernunnos. The priest was behind him, then the princelet of this valley and his guard. The village straggled at a distance. They left the roundhouse and made for the hill track, where it swung close to the river. He tried to walk like a god, with a god’s ungainly stride, as if he were hobbled by this earthly form, a seed near to splitting. No one spoke, but there was a hand on his shoulder once or twice, to steer or steady him.

  Here they were nearest the trees. And now he stirred himself at last and tried to save his life. He turned and snatched the priest’s dagger from his belt. The old man crumpled and a cry went up – they thought he had slit his belly! But it was all right; the priest was just winded from the blow of the pommel. He was staggering forward, pushing offered arms aside, trying to form a name with rounded lips. But he fell. Even at that moment he fell and split his head on a rock. Twenty years of sacred learning leaked out on the stones. The man’s mouth opened and welled with spit. The moss was ruddled with it.

  A scream to left and right – but Ossian had fled to the wood, with the spears flying past his shoulder. No one dared follow. He made the cover of the trees, looked back and saw the hunters watch which way he would take. His chest pounded. They were watching, not chasing, but that made no difference. Soon they would come and find him in that grove. The god himself would point the way.

  In the heart of the forest he put his palms under the wicker frame of the Cernunnos mask and pushed. The mask did not move. It seemed to have grown tight against his skin. He gripped and pushed again, up and round, wrenching it. Something cracked inside and four spear-sharp wicker sticks were stabbing his chin, jaw and neck. As he eased the frame upwards they sliced him till the blood ran. The mask was made cunningly. To remove it that way would be to pierce his windpipe, gaff his spine. He stopped, defeated. There was no other way: the deer skin was supple and slick to the touch, and sewn tight with shrunk twine he broke his nails in trying to unpick. The antlers rammed his head with bone, bucked as his head shook. He feared their magic; they belonged to the god himself, who was the King of the Wood.