The Way Between the Worlds

SIX

I made my way back to Cambridge.

I felt so low and dispirited that I would much rather have gone home to my family. I was very tired, for I had spent two nights sleeping out of doors and, although the weather had been mild enough, I had not been able to relax sufficiently to allow the deep sleep that restores. I had been so worried about my sister, and that anxiety had taken its toll. It was a vast relief to know that it was not Elfritha who had been so horribly, violently murdered, but the dead girl had been her friend and I knew she grieved for her. I wanted to go to my sister and comfort her, but I couldn’t.

As if all that wasn’t enough, there was also the legacy of my dreams. I kept seeing images — the mist, the dark figure, that strange crypt-like hollow in the hillside — and the sounds of the visions rang inside my head. I heard that restlessly moving stretch of water, waiting, lurking, somewhere beyond my sight. And, of course, those words were always with me.

My family would have given me their love and their support. But I needed something more than that: I wanted someone to help me untangle the mystery into which I had been drawn. Hrype would have been capable of advising me, I was sure, but he had disappeared without a word. He might have gone back to Aelf Fen, but it was by no means certain.

And that was why I went back to Gurdyman.

I knocked on the door of the twisty-turny house just as dusk was falling. I had been travelling since morning and I was worn out. Gurdyman let me in, took one look at me and, with a shake of his head and a quiet ‘Tut!’ led me along the passage to the open courtyard. He must have been sitting out there in the evening light, for when he gently pushed me down so that I was sitting in his big chair, the soft cushion on the seat was still warm from his body. He disappeared back inside the house, returning presently with a tray of food. I started to say something, but he held up a hand.

‘Eat first, Lassair.’

I wolfed down good white bread and cold meat, two small, spiced savoury pies and then three little sweet cakes, flavours of honey and cinnamon mingling deliciously in my mouth. Gurdyman handed me a fine pewter cup, filled to the brim, and I drank deeply. It was some special concoction of his own and, although it was cold as I swallowed it down, quite soon it seemed to spread warmth through my body. For the first time in days, I began to relax.

He was watching me closely. As I leaned back in his chair — he was perched opposite to me, on the bench he usually made his visitors sit on — he smiled. ‘That’s better,’ he murmured. ‘Now, first I must tell you that yesterday I received a message that I was to send word to the eel catcher that his daughter was safe.’

‘Oh, I hope you didn’t mind! I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more, but-’

Again, he held up his hand to silence me. ‘No need to apologize, child. Now I know that your father is an eel catcher, for you have told me all about your family. The message that his daughter was safe could have applied to you or to either of your two sisters. I guessed the message came from you or, at least, was concerned with your mission, and I was content to wait to find out more. I found a reliable lad — one I have employed as messenger before — and I dispatched him to your village. By now, your family will be aware of the good tidings.’

Until he told me that, I hadn’t appreciated how heavy a burden I’d been carrying. That I knew Elfritha was safe but my parents did not had been hard to bear. I met Gurdyman’s bright eyes. ‘Thank you,’ I said softly. ‘You cannot know what that means to me.’

‘Oh, I think I can,’ he murmured. Then, switching moods as fast as a blink, all at once he was businesslike and brisk. ‘Who was in danger, Lassair, and is now safe?’ He narrowed his eyes, studying me intently. ‘Not you, I think, for the shadow still hovers over you.’

Shadow? I did not want to think about that. So, trying to keep to the point and make my tale as clear and succinct as I could, I told him of my arrival at Aelf Fen to find my kinfolk safe and well, and of the news of the murder of the Chatteris nun. I related how I’d hurried off to Chatteris and found Hrype already there, and then our discovery that it was Elfritha’s friend who was dead, and I revealed how they said she’d been killed. I explained that Hrype had disappeared during the night and how, this morning, I’d spoken to the cheese seller and learned a little more about poor dead Herleva. Finally, slightly ashamed of myself, I told him that I’d been afraid for my own skin because the fanatical priest might know all about me and be on my trail.

‘He is powerful, this Father Clement,’ I whispered. ‘Hrype said he was and, now that I have encountered him, I have faced his force myself.’

Gurdyman didn’t say anything for quite a long time. I was feeling drowsy and, taking advantage of the fact that I was sitting there so still, Gurdyman’s black cat jumped lithely up on to my lap and made himself comfortable. His name is Abraxas, and he is very handsome. Stroking his smooth and luxuriant fur sent me deeper into my self-induced trance. I was on the point of falling asleep when at last Gurdyman spoke.

‘What of the dreams, Lassair?’ he asked.

‘I’m still getting them,’ I said shortly.

He was not satisfied. ‘Is the content the same? And the summoning voice, does it speak the same words?’

‘The content is much the same. I still see that strange scene with the low hills and the grave-like pit in the side of the mound, and also there’s an enormous bull that seems to rush at me out of the earth.’ I hesitated. ‘But the words have changed. The voice still says I need you, but before that it’s now where are you?’

There was another long silence. I could have been mistaken, but I was pretty sure I’d seen a sudden flare of interest in Gurdyman’s eyes when I mentioned the bull. Vaguely, I wondered why. I should have been alert, fascinated, bursting to ask him all sorts of well-thought-out questions, but I was just too tired. Scenes and events from the long day floated through my mind, slowly merging with dreams. Then I felt Gurdyman’s hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently.

‘Go to bed, child.’

I did as he bade me, dropping Abraxas to the floor and stumbling inside the house. I made my preparations for bed — they were even more perfunctory than usual — and very shortly I was tucked up in my little attic room. The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes was the light of Gurdyman’s candle down in the courtyard. I wondered how long he would stay up but, even as the thought went through my mind, I was asleep.

It was late next morning when I woke, if the sun through the open shutters was anything to go by. I felt rested and refreshed, and I had slept without dreaming, other than an absurd bit of nonsense about a cat climbing a ladder and offering me a piece of cheese, which I did not take seriously and certainly did not see as portentous in any way.

I descended from my little attic and made myself some breakfast, then went along the passage and down the steps to the crypt. Gurdyman was busy at his workbench and barely looked up as I entered. He was bending over his apothecary’s scales, an open jar in one hand and a tiny silver spoon in the other. He put a very small amount of some brownish substance into the pan of the scales, frowned at it and added some more.

He corked the jar and returned it to its place on the long row of shelves on the far side of the cellar. ‘That will do,’ he said. ‘I shall finish it later.’

‘Can I help?’

‘Yes. But, as I said, we’ll do it later. For now, there is something I must ask you and, depending on your answer, something it seems I must tell you.’

I felt a shiver of alarm, for his tone was grave and his face, usually so full of light and humour, was set in serious lines. He drew out two wooden stools from beneath his bench and, sitting down on one, waved a hand to the other. I perched on it and, my heart beating hard, waited for him to speak.

‘In your dream you say there was a bull,’ he began. I’d been right, then, when I thought I saw my mention of the bull pique his interest. ‘Tell me exactly what you saw.’

I closed my eyes and tried to recapture the image. ‘The scene is a lonely, desolate place, and I can see a line of low hills out on the horizon. The light isn’t good — it’s misty, or perhaps it’s getting dark. Close to me there’s a ruined building, and somehow I know it’s very, very old. There’s a pillar and some huge slabs of stone with carvings on them. I see a-’ I paused, wondering how best to describe the crypt-like hollow. ‘There’s an opening in the side of an earth mound, a bit like a grave.’

‘And what of the bull?’ Gurdyman prompted.

‘The bull is suddenly right in front of me,’ I said. ‘I don’t hear him approaching, which is odd because he’s really enormous and he’s wild with fear and very angry. It’s — it’s sort of as if he’s been there all the time but I wasn’t able to see him until someone decided the time was right.’

Gurdyman nodded. ‘As if a curtain had been drawn aside,’ he murmured.

‘Yes, exactly like that!’ I exclaimed. Only, surely the bull couldn’t have been concealed behind a curtain, or I’d have heard it bellowing and stamping. .

‘Describe what it looked like,’ commanded Gurdyman.

‘It was just a bull,’ I said lamely. ‘A very big one.’

I thought I heard him sigh. ‘How was it standing? Was it facing you?’

I screwed my eyes tight shut, trying to remember. ‘No,’ I said after a moment. ‘It was turned slightly to my right, and its head was thrown back.’ Then I recalled something I had quite forgotten. ‘There was a man there!’ I cried, my eyes flying open and going instantly to Gurdyman. ‘Or I thought there was — he was in the shadows, and he wore a weird cloak with a deep-blue lining that had stars all over it!’

Gurdyman closed his eyes, and his lips moved as if he was praying. Then he looked at me, a smile on his face. ‘Lassair, it is as I thought,’ he said, still smiling. ‘I do not yet know why you were sent this dream vision. There has to be a reason — there always is.’

‘Is it connected with the words in my head?’ I asked eagerly. ‘Can you tell me what it’s all about, Gurdyman, and who it is who is calling out to me?’

He put out a hand and grasped mine briefly. ‘Perhaps.’ He seemed to retreat into himself for a moment. ‘Yes, perhaps.’ Then he withdrew his hand, settled himself more comfortably on the stool and said, ‘I told you just now that there was something I might have to tell you, and the time has come for me to do so.’ He glanced around his cellar, eyes lingering here and there.

‘This house of mine holds many secrets,’ he murmured. ‘Some of them you will come to know about, Lassair; some will remain hidden. I will reveal one of them to you now, for it seems to me that the moment is right.’ He paused, and I sensed he was reluctant to go on. It was with some effort that at last he began.

‘There has been a settlement here for a very long time,’ he said. ‘Many centuries ago, men recognized that its location was readily defensible, for there is an area of higher ground which overlooks the place where the watery, dangerous fens can be crossed at their south-eastern corner. Later, the invaders from the south crossed the Narrow Seas and made this country part of their vast empire, although they never subdued the north to their will. They built a great wall there, marking the limit of their territory. They would have said, I have no doubt, that it was to keep the barbarians out.’ He smiled faintly. ‘They made roads across the length and breadth of the land, and their soldiers were ever marching up and down, to and fro, on the move all day and by night resting in the forts that their engineers put up along the roads. They built such a fort here, in the same place where a fort had stood before, and a settlement grew up around it. At first only soldiers lived here, but in time the merchants came too, for the river connects the town to the sea and trade developed swiftly. In the fullness of time, men brought their wives and their families, and a rich society developed such as we see here today. But to begin with this was a man’s world: a hard, tough world of soldiers, merchants and traders.’

He stopped, eyes again roaming around the cellar. Then, drawing a breath, he went on. ‘Wherever the soldiers went, their god went with them, for their lives were comfortless and full of danger, with death always at their shoulder. Their god was a god of light, of hope, who made a blood sacrifice for mankind in order to nourish the good earth and allow men to live.’

‘Like — like Jesus?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Like him, yes, but then throughout man’s long history, many religions have worshipped such a figure: a god who died for them and rose from the dead.’

‘Why did the soldiers choose this particular one?’

‘Because his worship was organized in a way that appealed to the mind of a fighting man,’ Gurdyman replied. ‘The soldiers of the southern empire lived under rigid military discipline, and the rules were firm and unbreakable. In this religion, worshippers were divided into ranks, just as the soldiers were in their everyday lives. The lowest rank in the religion, that of the new initiate, was a Raven. He went through various ordeals and, if he passed them, became a Nymph. The ordeals increased in severity, and some of them were both very painful and truly terrifying. If a man was brave and steadfast, eventually he could progress to Soldier, Lion, Persian, Runner of the Sun and, finally, Father, although few men rose to that high degree and many, indeed, were content to remain at a lowlier level.’

‘They’d be foot soldiers rather than officers,’ I suggested.

He smiled, pleased at my understanding. ‘Yes.’

Persian. Runner of the Sun. Silently, I repeated the exotic names to myself. ‘Did they have churches?’

‘No. They worshipped in caves — spelaeum, in their own tongue. In places where a natural cave was not available, they would construct an underground chamber. Always, wherever the god was worshipped, there had to be fresh water nearby in the form of a spring or an unpolluted well. The men of the south were habitually clean, Lassair, for they bathed frequently and used the occasion as a social event, going from baths of cold water to hot water and steam, and employing servants to scrape the dirt from their skin.’

I smothered a laugh, finding the idea of communal bathing both absurd and faintly embarrassing.

‘They never approached their god without first performing a ritual cleansing,’ Gurdyman was saying. ‘Together they would enter the sacred space, going down the steps until they were inside the earth, and there they would bathe and dress in clean robes before proceeding into the god’s presence.’

His voice went on, calm, even, soothing, almost hypnotic, and images flashed through my mind. A cave. Going down the steps into an underground chamber. A town that had stood there for centuries. A house with many secrets.

Then I knew what he was telling me.

‘This cellar was a place where the soldiers gathered to worship!’ I burst out.

His eyes met mine, and I saw that he was smiling again. He put a finger to his lips to hush me.

‘Wasn’t it?’ I hissed.

I knew I was right, even before he answered. The crypt seemed to be teeming with the presence of unseen men and the air was full of magic.

Gurdyman stood up and moved across the stone flags of the floor. It always surprises me how light on his feet he is, how silently he moves, for although he is short he is not a small man. Now, however, he almost seemed to hover above the ground. .

We had been sitting beside the workbench, which stood against the far wall to the right of the steps leading down into the crypt. Beside the steps was Gurdyman’s low cot, and the opposite wall was covered in shelves that groaned under the weight of bottles, jars, rolls of parchment, scales, lamps, ink, quills and all the other tools of Gurdyman’s work.

The fourth wall was covered by a large, heavy hanging. I had never given it much attention, for whatever pattern or scene was once depicted on its generous folds has long been obscured behind the smoke and the fumes and the occasional clouds of noxious humours that frequently fill the crypt. It is now a uniform dark-grey colour, and if you accidentally brush against it, clouds of ancient dust fly out.

Gurdyman walked up to it. He paused before it and, turning to me, beckoned with his finger. I got up off my stool and slowly approached him.

He took hold of the hanging with both hands. With a powerful tug, he pulled it down from the wall.

When I saw what was behind it I gave an involuntary cry and stepped hastily backwards, for in that first instant I truly believed that living, breathing creatures were lungeing towards me.

There was a man: a broad, strong-looking man dressed in a soldier’s short tunic. He wore a cap that rose up in a softly-pointed cone, and a wide cloak flew back from his shoulders as if a fierce wind blew. It was red, and the lining was deep blue, like the twilight sky, and spotted with brilliant points of light that seemed to shine like the stars. His right leg — it was thick and very well muscled — was extended, tense with the effort of keeping his balance, and his other leg was bent at the knee and pushed down hard into the shoulder of an enormous, pure-white bull. His dagger was thrust into the creature’s throat, and he was in the very act of sacrifice: the bull’s life blood — vivid red, glistening as if it had only just begun to flow — spilled out and pooled on the ground.

The painting was extraordinary, and it throbbed with life.

‘Behold Mithras.’

I did not know who spoke the words. It might have been Gurdyman, but it didn’t sound like his voice.

There was a long silence. I stood awestruck, and eventually I felt Gurdyman take my hand and lead me away.

‘This house is on the spot where, many years ago, a rich merchant built himself a fine dwelling.’ It was Gurdyman who spoke; it was some time later that day and we were sitting in the sunshine in his inner courtyard. I still felt very odd; it must have been past the time for the midday meal, but I had no appetite. My stomach was tense with — nerves? Excitement? I was not sure.

‘We know the merchant must have been a wealthy man,’ Gurdyman went on, ‘because he built in stone. As you will be aware, child, there is very little stone in this area and it has to be brought in from elsewhere.’ He glanced up at the clouds floating across the blue sky. ‘He could also afford to choose a location well away from the bustle and the stinks of the quayside,’ he went on, ‘which must have pleased him, for no doubt he had quite enough of that during the working day.’ He smiled happily at me. ‘Imagine him, Lassair, coming home at the end of a long, hard day. Tonight is special, for a very select group of men will make their quiet way to the house later for a ceremony. They will meet up here, then one by one they will descend the steps and prepare themselves, washing carefully and dressing in their ceremonial robes. Then they will go into the cave, and there the god will welcome them into his presence.’

‘I felt him,’ I breathed. ‘I’m sure I did, I-’

Gurdyman held up a hand, and I knew I was not to say any more. ‘I believe you did, child,’ he said softly.

We sat in silence for some time. I heard a blackbird singing, and the sound seemed far too normal for a day when something so extraordinary had happened. As if the blackbird thought so too, abruptly the song ceased. After a while, I said, ‘How do you know, Gurdyman?’

‘Hmm?’

‘How can you be so sure about the merchant and the — and what he made down there?’

Gurdyman smiled. ‘You do not doubt what I say, then?’

‘No!’ It hadn’t even occurred to me. Deep within myself, I knew that all he had said was right.

‘Good,’ he murmured. Then: ‘As to how I can be so sure, there are ways, Lassair.’

The word seemed to hang in the air. ‘Ways?’ I repeated in a whisper.

‘The barrier that divides time can be crossed, you know,’ he said softly. ‘If one has the courage to try.’

Out of nowhere I heard my own voice, relating the tale of my ancestor Luanmaisi and her daughter, my namesake. ‘Luanmaisi walked with the spirits,’ I murmured, ‘and they took her between the worlds to encounter beings of other realms.’

My mind detached from the present and I remembered what else I knew. I seemed to hear Granny’s voice: Luanmaisi learned much powerful magic from the spirits and the elves, and it was said that her daughter surpassed even her mother. Both women were shamans, healers and shape-shifters. Luanmaisi’s animal spirit was the hare: solitary, independent, representing immortality and symbol of the corn spirit, a fighter who will always ferociously defend his own territory. Lassair’s was the silver fox known in the northlands: clever, adaptable, cunning, able to move unseen. Fox has great magic in his pelt, and his element is fire. .

I wondered now if it could be possible that either mother or daughter, or even both, became sufficiently great shamans that they left this world and went into another one, where they existed still.

Gurdyman’s eyes were on me, demanding my attention, and they seemed to bore into mine, as if he was trying to get inside my head. ‘She was of your blood, this woman?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘She bore a daughter, although nobody knew who the child’s father was. The daughter was called Lassair.’

Gurdyman beamed widely, as if something had just been proved to his enormous satisfaction. ‘Hrype was right about you,’ he observed. ‘Child, so much awaits you!’

‘Will I do it?’ I asked in an urgent hiss. ‘Will I cross the barrier and go between worlds?’

I thought for one wonderful, terrifying moment that he was going to answer me. But then he smiled very kindly, reached out to pat my hand and said, ‘Not today.’

And as if a vast door had slammed on a room full of golden light, suddenly the magic that had been humming and thrumming in the air was shut off. We sat, a round old man in a shabby robe and a thin girl who looked like a boy, on a spring day in the sunshine, and somewhere above us, unconcerned, a blackbird sang.

I was dreaming. .

I am up in that wild country where the humps of low hills march steadily along the horizon. I am very afraid. Someone is after me. The giant with the axe? I do not know, but the urge to flee, to run till I can’t run any more, is quite irresistible. My feet keep stumbling, the soles of my boots caught in something tacky, and I realize it is blood. I cry out loud, and my voice is swept up in the bitter wind that whirls and swirls, sending dark clouds flying across a low orange sun.

I have to find a place to hide!

I am in that strange place where the ruins are. Beside me, the open grave pit beckons. I would be safe in there, wouldn’t I? I bend and creep inside, but the soft earth crumbles around me, falling on my face, in my eyes, in my mouth, and I forget about having to hide and scream because I think I am being buried alive. Then there is a figure in a cloak with a knife in his hand, and he leaps on the back of a bull and slits its throat, and the blood spurts over me, warm, pulsating with each beat of the mighty beast’s dying heart. .

I woke up.

I was lying on the floor of the crypt beneath Gurdyman’s house, wet with my own sweat, hot with the fever of my dream and yet shivering with cold. Gurdyman was crouching over me. He had a thick blanket across his shoulders, and he removed it and wrapped it tightly round me. It was warm from his body. I realized I was sobbing and, with an effort, made myself stop.

I looked up into his kindly, concerned and — I had to admit — fascinated face. I understood something about Gurdyman then: he would always look after my welfare, but his overriding interest in me was because he recognized some potential in me that as yet neither of us fully understood.

I was a little disappointed. But it was better to know, then I would not expect more than he could give.

‘You have been sleepwalking,’ he said. He moved away from me slightly, going to sit down on his low cot. ‘Clever of you,’ he added in a light tone, ‘to have negotiated both the ladder down from the attic room and the dark steps into the crypt without mishap, but then it’s said that sleepwalkers rarely come to harm in their own houses.’

‘How did you know I was down here? Did I — did you hear me screaming?’ I was very embarrassed to think that again I’d woken him with my noise.

‘I did, but I was already on my way to find you. I had dozed off in my chair out in the courtyard.’ That was why he’d been wrapped in the lovely, warm blanket. ‘There was a disturbance in the air, and that was what woke me.’

A disturbance? I wondered what that meant. Had the power of my dream shaken the whole house? The idea scared me.

He was watching me, his expression unreadable. ‘I think you had better tell me what you saw,’ he said softly. ‘The spirits do not send a dream of such resonance unless they seriously expect you to pay heed.’

I drew a deep breath, gathered my courage and then made myself go back to those awful scenes. I spoke even as I thought; I knew that if I hesitated, I might not dare put them into words.

‘Tell me more about this pit,’ he said when I had finished. ‘You have seen it before, I think. With an occupant, as I recall.’

‘Yes, that’s right. It — the body isn’t there any more. It was empty when I — when I went inside.’

‘Is it close to the ruined building?’

I pictured it. ‘Yes. It’s beside a structure that looks like a hearth, and there’s a stumpy, square pillar nearby with marks carved into it.’

Gurdyman was nodding even before I had finished speaking. ‘Yes, yes, it all fits,’ he muttered. Then he looked down at me and gave me a beaming smile.

‘You know this place, don’t you?’ I whispered.

‘I believe I do,’ he agreed. ‘The terrain that you describe is familiar to me.’ He paused, frowning, and I sensed his attention had momentarily gone far away. With a small shudder, he brought himself back. ‘I told you yesterday about the soldiers’ religion, Lassair. These same soldiers were sent to guard the great wall that their emperor ordered to be built up in the north, and there they made the caves where Mithras was worshipped. Everywhere they went, they kept their god close. I told you too about the ordeals that the men endured in order to progress to higher degrees. Fire was frequently required, and sometimes the ordeals involved being buried alive in order to be reborn into a better, more refined state. I think you saw a certain Mithraeum on the great wall. You saw the hearth, and you saw the altar: what you described as a short, stumpy pillar. The hole in the ground where you tried to hide was the ordeal pit.’

I looked at him. ‘Have you been there?’ I whispered. He must have; it was the only explanation.

His expression was enigmatic. ‘I have seen the place,’ he said.

‘It is surely a long way to travel,’ I persisted. ‘Did you-’

He held up a hand. ‘Enough, child,’ he said, mildly but firmly. ‘It is not for you to enquire.’

For a moment I felt the very edge of something. . some great force that existed within him but that usually was kept well concealed behind the genial facade. It frightened me. I wrapped the blanket more closely around me and seemed to feel myself shrink.

When he spoke, his voice was as friendly and cheerful as ever. ‘I wonder,’ he mused, ‘why you should be sent this image so insistently.’ He looked at me, his face creased in a frown. ‘Is it possible that one of your kin lives there in the north?’

‘No,’ I said, without hesitation. I knew the full tally of my kinsmen and women — it was part of my job as the family’s bard to memorize not only the past generations, right back to our first occupation of the fen lands, but also the details of the living.

‘Could anyone be visiting the region?’

‘No. None has any reason to be so far from home.’

As I spoke my mind was distracted. A suspicion was beginning to grow, at first no more than the first tiny patch of cloud that will later bring a storm. Nerving myself, I stared at him and said, ‘What is there up there, where you say this Mithraeum is? What sort of a place is it?’

‘It is border country, a place where two kings fight for possession,’ he replied. ‘Both men wish to reinforce it to protect their own land.’

My small cloud was waxing steadily. ‘Is there danger there?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He looked grim. ‘I fear that there is.’

‘Could — might a man be hurt there? Could he be injured, if there was fighting?’

‘Yes, child.’

Such a wounded man, far from home and friendless, might need a place to hide. A place deep in the earth where, like a wounded animal, he could lie and lick his wounds. Call out, perhaps, to someone he loved. Dream of her; send his essence to appear in her dreams. .

I knew then who I had seen lying in that pit. I knew who had called out to me, who had said, again and again, come to me, and then, where are you? I need you!

Half of me wanted to sing and shout with joy because he had not forgotten me. In need, perhaps in pain, it was I to whom he had called out in his despair.

The other half was plunged into an abyss of dread because he was hurt.