Weathermonger

XI THE NECROMANCER

Geoffrey sensed at once that it wouldn't do to ask how the interview had gone. He took over the crank in silence, and lowered the stone. Then Mr. Furbelow solicitously took Sally into his cottage and made her lie down on one of the upstairs beds, and he himself settled down for a nap on his sofa. Geoffrey was left to explore, but found nothing of interest, and spent most of the afternoon looking for birds from the tower over the outer gate. He didn't see anything uncommon, but he fancied he heard a wood warbler several times.

They supped early and went to bed when there was still gray light seeping through the outer window. As soon as he was lying down Sally, who had been very quiet all evening, spoke:

“Jeff, you've got to do something. He’s killing

him, really he is. It was all about making a sword this afternoon, but full of words I didn’t know. It’s awful. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him, and he’s so marvelous, you can feel his mind all strong and beautiful, and Mr. Furbelow is just dithering around waiting for him to die. I tried and tried, but he wouldn’t hear what I was saying. His Latin’s a bit funny, the way he says it, but you soon get used to it. And goodness he’s big. Do you remember — no, you won’t — there was a dancing bear came to Weymouth once? It was beautiful and strong, and it had to do this horrible thing with everyone laughing and jeering and a chain round his neck. He’s like that, only worse, much worse. It’s horrible. Jeff, please!”

“Oh, Lord, Sal. I’ll try and think of something. Did you know he was Merlin?”

“Yes. It said so on the stone where he was lying. How did you?”

He told her about the diary, but before he’d finished she was asleep. He lay on his back with his hand under his head and thought round in circles until he was asleep too. It all depended on Mr. Furbelow.

But next morning Mr. Furbelow had changed. He was still polite and kind, but when they tried to talk about Merlin he said that that was his concern; and at lunch he told them that he would prefer them to leave next day. They were upsetting things, he said. They needn’t bother about the wolves, because they could give them the rest of the feast tonight and wolves sleep for twenty-four hours after a full meal. That was settled then, wasn’t it? He’d be sorry to see them go, but really it was for the best.

In the afternoon, for an experiment, Sally managed to maneuver Maddox into a position where he could take a good kick at Mr. Furbelow as the old man snoozed in a ramshackle deck chair in front of the house. The pony shaped happily for the kick, but suddenly danced away as if it had been stung and would not go near the place again. So that was no good. Nor, presumably, would be hitting him on the head with something, even if Geoffrey had managed to bring himself to do it. Geoffrey trudged round and round the tower, frowning. Mr. Furbelow would hear the windlass clack if they tried to raise the stone when he was asleep. If only they could contrive a reason for Mr. Furbelow sending them down without him.

He came round the tower for the twentieth time, and saw Mr. Furbelow, awake now, do his funny skitter down the steps. If only he would fall on them he might break a leg. They really were hideously dangerous, and that was the only hope. He must be made to fall.

The three of them dined together very friendlily.

Most of the meat was high by now, but they found a leg of sweet, thymy mutton. Then, in the dusk, Mr. Furbelow showed them some funny long wheelbarrows without any sides in one of the sheds, and they wheeled load after load of bad meat to the outer tower and threw it through the wicket gate. The wolves were already there by the time they brought the second load, snarling and tugging at the big joints. As they watched, more and more of the long shadowy bodies flitted out of the blackness under the trees. There were several mother wolves with cubs which waited, eyes green in the half-light, until their mother dragged a big hunk for them and they could begin a snarling match of their own.

When the last of the meat had been ferried away from the tables Mr. Furbelow barred the children into the tower. Two hours later Geoffrey stood at the parapet in his gold robe and thought of rain.

All day the island had slumbered in the sun. It was warm, warm, and above it the warmed air rose, sucking in winds off the western ocean, disturbed winds heavy with wetness, only just holding their moisture over the smooth, tepid sea. And now meeting the land, already cool with night, cooler now, cooler still, and the hills reforming the clouds, jostling them together, piling them up, squeezing them till the released rain hisses into the hills’ sere grasses. Now trees drip, leaves glisten in faint light, forgotten gullies tinkle. Rain, swathed, drumming . . .

Sally, wrapped in drenched furs, led him down the long stairs to shelter. He squatted in a corner, deliberately uncomfortable, so that he woke every half hour. When it was still dark he put his soaking robe on over a dry jerkin and went up to the parapet again. The last rain had gone, and starlight glistened in every puddle and drip. It was very cold already. He thought of frost.

Still air chilling the hills. Evaporation chilling the ground. The trees ceasing their breathing. An icy influence from the stars. Rivers of cold air flowing down, weaving between the trunks, coming here to make a deep pool of cold, crisping the grass. Cat ice now in crackles on the puddles, white-edged round hoof prints, ice glazing cobbles and stones in a shiny film. A deep, hard frost, making earth ring like iron. Deep, hard, deep . . .

This time he was woken from the weather trance by the violent shivering of his own body. The robe was starched rigid with ice, and his legs so numb with cold and standing that he couldn't feel his feet. He had to clutch the guardrail all the way down to the roof, and even so he nearly fell twice on the ice-crusted steps. He warmed himself by the never-dying fire in the hall, watched by yawning hounds, and then went up to the gallery. As he snuggled into his furs he was struck by a nasty snag in his plans.

The doors would still be barred, but if all went right Mr. Furbelow wouldn’t be able to open them. Sulkily he crawled out of the warmth and rootled through several chambers for belts. Ten ought to be enough. He hacked the buckles off and tied the straps into a single length with a loop at the end. And then sleep.

It was bright day when he woke. Sally was shaking his shoulder.

“OK, OK, I’m awake. Has Mr. Furbelow come out yet?”

“I didn’t look. I’ve brought some fruit and bread up for breakfast.”

“Hang on. I’ll just go and see what’s up.”

He ran down the stairs, carrying his leather rope. The hounds were used to him by now. Up the third ladder, which led to the suite overlooking the cottage. He peered through the small, square opening. Mr. Furbelow had already come out, and was lying in an awkward mess at the bottom of the icy steps. He didn’t move.

“Sal!” shouted Geoffrey, realizing in sweaty panic that perhaps the kind old man was dead and he’d murdered him, “Sal!”

She came into the chamber, flushed from running up the ladder.

“Look, Sal, Mr. Furbelow’s slipped and fallen on the steps. You’ve got to crawl out backward with this loop round your foot. Don’t lose it. Then when you’re over the edge you can stand in the loop and hold on to the straps and I’ll let you down; then you can run round and open the door and we can go and see if he’s all right.”

“I’ll take my dress off. Don’t worry, Jeff, I’m sure he’s all right. Anyway it was the only thing you could have done. You’ll have to lift me up.”

It was much more awkward getting her in backwards, and the loop wouldn’t stay on her foot. But then she was slithering down the tunnel, scrabbling at the edge, and then out of sight. The knots snagged on the far sill, so that he had to lower her in a series of jerks. When he was holding the last belt the whole contraption went slack and he heard her calling that she was down. He ran to the doors.

“Jeff, you’ll have to wait. I can’t reach the bar. I’m going to fetch Maddox.”

Silence. A long wait. The hounds scratched and the fire, which he’d never seen fed, hissed sappily. Outside a pigeon cooed its boring June coo. Then the clop of hooves.

“Stop there, Maddox. Good old boy. No, stand still while I climb up. That’s it. Golly, it’s heavy. I don’t think . .

A scratching noise and a clunk. Geoffrey heaved at the door and it swung open.

Mr. Furbelow was lying on one side, with his leg bent back under him. He was breathing snortily, with his mouth open. Geoffrey ran into the cottage, nearly slipping on the icy steps himself, and brought out the sofa cushions. They eased him on to these and straightened him out on his back. His left leg seemed to be broken somewhere above the knee. Geoffrey decided he’d better try and set it while the old man was still unconscious. Trying to remember everything that Uncle Jacob had shown him (“Decide slowly, laddie, and do it quickly and firmly. No room for the squeamishness in a sick bay”) he felt the bones into position. There was one place where they seemed right. Then he used his sword to lever the back off one of the kitchen chairs, bandaged the leg with torn strips of pillowcase from the bedroom, and lashed the uprights of the chairback down the leg with the knotted belts. It was very tiresome to do without unsettling the join, even with the leg propped on cushions, and when he’d finished it looked horribly clumsy, but felt as if it ought to hold the break firm for a bit. Sally went into the hall to fetch a jug of wine, but before she was back the old man blinked and groaned.

“Morphine,” he muttered. “Top right-hand drawer of my desk. Hypodermic syringe, bottle of spirit there too. Don’t touch anything else.”

There was a box of morphine ampuls, three hypodermic syringes and what Geoffrey took to be the spirit bottle. Mr. Furbelow took the things on to his chest, dipped the point of the needle into the spirit and then prodded through the rubber at the end of the ampul, withdrawing the plunger to suck the liquid out. Then he tilted it up, pressed the plunger until a drop showed at the point of the needle, and pushed the point into a vein on the inside of his left arm, squeezing the morphine slowly into his bloodstream. You could see the pain screaming from his eyes. Golly, thought Geoffrey, he's a brave old man and I’ve done a wicked thing. He decided to tell him the truth, but Mr. Furbelow seemed to have fainted again. They watched him for five minutes. Then he spoke, not opening his eyes.

“That’s better. Have you contrived to do anything about my leg?”

“Yes, Mr. Furbelow. I hope I’ve done the right thing. I tried to set it, and it felt as if it was together properly, and then I put splints on it. I am sorry. It must hurt frightfully.”

“What had we best do about him? said Mr. Furbelow.

“If you’ll tell me what to do, I’ll try and do it properly. Sally can talk to him if necessary. If it’s the best we can manage he’ll have to put up with it.”

“He will not like the change, I fear. He is the most conservative of creatures.”

“Would you like us to try and carry you into your house? It won’t be very easy, but I expect I could rig something up.”

“Let us leave that, for the moment. Perhaps he will be so angry that he will destroy us all, or perhaps he will mend my leg. In either case the effort will have been pointless. Oh dear. Well, there’s one comfort. I baked some oatcakes only yesterday. And I’ve put the water on to boil. He insists on water from the well, and I’ve always boiled it, but I haven’t liked to tell him. He won’t make his own food, though he doesn’t mind bringing the oats out of nowhere, and I have to pound them up in a mortar and then cook them. And the bees hive in the stable roof, and I collect their honey every autumn. The honey’s in the cupboard on the left of the passage, and the oatcakes are there too. The kettle’s on the fire in my room.”

He sighed and shut his eyes. Geoffrey started up the steps to look for this primitive meal, thinking how strangely different it was from the elaborate and moldering banquet which they’d thrown to the wolves the evening before.

“Wait,” said Mr. Furbelow. “I’m only resting.” Geoffrey sat on the bottom step, where the sun had melted the ice and dried a patch of stone. The old chemist’s face was gray as ash, the lines on it suddenly deeper, the nose pinched, but the wispy

moustache wavered slightly below his nostrils as his breath went in and out. Geoffrey was wondering whether he’d gone to sleep when he spoke again.

“You must take a clean linen cloth and a clean towel,” he said. “You will find them in the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers in my study. The kettle is a big one, so there will be plenty of water. First you pour about two pints into the silver jug on the mantelpiece; then you put that in the big earthenware jar in the back room to cool off, so that he can drink it. I’ve built a platform of stones in the bottom of the jar, so that you can put the jug in and leave it there, without unboiled water slopping in over the top. Then you can get the other things together — two oatcakes, the little silver bowl on the shelf full of honey, a linen cloth, a towel, and the bowl for the hot water in case he wants to be washed. Shall I repeat that?”

“I think I’ve got it,” said Geoffrey.

“Then you can come back and I'll tell you what to do, while the drinking water is getting cold.”

The oatcakes were not those thin saucer-shaped things you buy in tartan tins in Edinburgh: they were just lumps of cooked oatmeal, with no real shape at all. The honey was the palest yellow, very runny, and smelling of wilder flowers than the garden- and orchard-scented honey which shops sell. And the cloths smelt of mountain streams and sunlight. Mr. Furbelow spoke more drowsily when Geoffrey came back.

“It all depends,” he said. “Sometimes he just lies there and opens his mouth, like a bird in a nest, and you have to break bits off the oatcake, dip them in the honey and pop them in. Other times he sits up on his elbow and feeds himself. Sometimes he’s asleep, and I just put the tray beside him on his stone. About once a week he likes to have his face and hands sponged and dried. But really, you’ll find you know what he wants without his telling you. I should go as soon as the water’s cool enough to drink. I shall try to sleep now.”

The cranking seemed to take half an hour, but at last the stone gave the dull thud which meant it was high enough.

“I’ll go first,” said Sally. “It’s not really as dark as it looks — he makes a sort of light at the bottom. You’ve got to feel each step with your foot because they’re all different.”

They felt their way down the coarse stone. The steps did not seem to be shaped work at all — more like flattened boulders from a river bed, pitted with the endless rubbing of water and patterned with fossil bones. There were thirty-three of them. At the bottom a passage led away through rock towards a faint green light. It was eleven paces down the passage and into a long, low chamber whose rock walls sloped inwards like the roof of an attic. The air in the chamber smelt sweet and wild and wrong, like rotting crab apples. Merlin was waiting for them.

He lay on his side, with his head resting on the crook of his arm, staring up the passage. Perhaps he had been aroused to expect them by the clack of the ratchet. He wore a long, dark robe. Colors were difficult in the strange light, but his beard seemed black and his face the color of rusted iron. His eyes were so deep in the huge head that they looked like the empty sockets of a skull until you moved across their beam and saw the green glow reflected from the lens, like the reflection of sky at the bottom of a well. The light seemed to come from nowhere. It was just there, impregnating the sick, sweet atmosphere.

He gave no sign, made no movement, as Sally crossed his line of vision, but his head followed Geoffrey into the room — Geoffrey found he was gripping the tray so hard that the tin rim hurt his palms. There was a widening of the stone slab where he could have put it down, but instead he turned away from Merlin (it was a struggle, like turning into a gale at a street corner) and put the tray on the rough rock behind him. When he turned back Merlin had moved, rearing up onto his elbow. He was a giant. The black hair streamed down in a wild mane behind him. His eyes were alive now, and the chamber was throbbing with a noiseless hum, like the hum of a big ship’s engines which you cannot hear with your ears but which sings up from the deck through your feet, through your shoulder when you lean against a stanchion, and through your whole body as you lie in your bunk waiting for sleep. His lips moved.

“Ubi servus meus.”

The voice was a gray scrape, like shingle retreating under the suck of a wave. Sally answered in a whisper.

“Magister Furbelow crurem fregit.”

Merlin did not look at her. The green blaze of his eyes clanged into Geoffrey’s skull, drowning his will in a welter of dithering vibrations. The lips moved again.

“Da mihi cibum meum.”

As the huge wave of Merlin’s authority washed over him, Geoffrey gasped, “Tell him what’s happening.”

“Magister . . .” began Sally.

“Tacite,” said Merlin, and Geoffrey’s tongue was locked in his mouth, as though he would never speak again. Mastered, helpless, he turned and picked up the tray and put it on the slab. The giant lay back and watched him out of the corner of his eyes. Geoffrey broke off a crumbling corner of one of the oatcakes and picked up the little silver pot of honey.

The surface of the honey was curved, with the faint arc of its meniscus, and that or the shining curve of the silver below gathered the green light to a single focus, a spark of light in the gold liquid. The clean, wild-flower smell smote up through the sick air of the cave. Geoffrey stared at the gold spark. It was the sun, the outside world where the wheat was growing towards harvest. His mind clung to the light, hauled itself towards that tiny sun.

“Tell him Mr. Furbelow gave him poison,” he croaked.

“Venenum . . .” whispered Sally out of the blackness beyond the sun.

“Mel?” said Merlin’s voice.

“Venenum tibi dedit Magister Furbelow,” said Sally.

“Quando?” The old voice was weary, disbelieving.

“Hie quintus annus,” said Sally.

“Mr. Furbelow tried to wake him up with a synthetic stimulant,” said Geoffrey. “But he got stuck halfway.”

“What does ‘synthetic’ mean?”

“Made in a factory, out of coal or oil or something. Not grown. Not natural.”

Sally started on a longer whisper. Geoffrey still didn’t dare look at her — he still clung to the sun in the honey. When she reached the word “natura” he gave a strange, coughing grunt, and Geoffrey saw, at the edge of his vision, a shape moving downwards. At last he looked away from the little silver bowl, and saw that the shape had been Merlin’s legs. Merlin had heaved his body up again and was now sitting on the slab, his legs dangling, his head bowed so as not to touch the roof. He must have been nearly eight foot tall, and now he was staring at Sally with a deep, steady gaze as though he was seeing her for the first time. She finished what she had to say.

“Die mihi ab initio,” he said.

“He wants me to tell him from the beginning,” said Sally. “Where shall I start?”

“Start with Mr. Furbelow digging into his tomb. Tell him what he was trying to do. Say he’s not a bad man, but muddled. Then tell him what England’s like now — how cruel people are. Tell him about all the people who had to go away.”

Twice while Sally spoke to him something seemed to shake Merlin like a branch shaken by a sudden gust. Both times Sally paused; the feeling that the chamber was throbbing wavered, increased, then steadied back. Both times Geoffrey knew that Merlin had fought away the delirium which had engulfed him for the last five years. Sally’s voice became pleading. She wasn’t whispering now, but almost shouting. “Indignum est,” she said several times, “indignum nominis tui.” Her face became runneled with tears, as she tried to ram her message through six years of poisoned stupor — she was thinking of the dancing bear. In the end she was gasping between each syllable and her voice was cracked with pain. Merlin stared at her like an entomologist considering an insect, and at last sighed. Sally stopped shouting.

He turned to Geoffrey.

“Da,” he said.

Geoffrey handed him an oatcake and the honey pot. He broke off a fragment, dipped it in the honey and began to eat. While he ate he talked. Sometimes Sally answered. The word “natura” came up again and again. Next time he wanted food he just held out his hand to Geoffrey for an oatcake while he went on talking to Sally. His palm was covered with fine black hairs.

His voice changed, as though he were not asking any more, but telling. Sally just nodded. Then he handed the empty honey pot to Geoffrey, drank a few sips from the jug and settled back on to the implacable stone.

“Difficile erit,” he said, “sed perdurabo, Deo vo-lente. Abite vos. Gratias ago.”

The green light dimmed. Geoffrey picked up the tray. They left.

As Geoffrey began to wind down the stone he said, “Tell me what all that was about.”

“I didn’t really understand everything,” said Sally. “I told him what had happened, and then I said that what he was doing now was — there isn’t a proper word for ‘indignum’ — unworthy, dishonorable, something like that. Then he told me a lot about ‘natura,’ which means nature — but it isn’t anything to do with wild birds and hedges. It’s all about what we really are, and what is proper for us. I remember he said machines were just toys for clever apes, and not proper for man — they prevent him from finding his own nature. But anyway the stuff Mr. Furbelow gave him was very bad for his nature, and now he’s going to try and change it so that he can overcome it. He said it would be difficult. He said that all sorts of things might happen out here, because once you start interfering with the strong bits of nature the things round them get disturbed. It's like the whirlpools round an oar, he said. Then he said it would be difficult again, but that he would manage with God’s will, and then he said thank you. You know, he didn’t seem at all worried about what he’d done to the other people in England — it was just unlucky for some of them, but they didn’t matter much.”

“But he said thank you,” said Geoffrey as the flagstone boomed back into position over the dark stair.

“Yes,” said Sally.