The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) (11 page)

“And so the
only thing I
could do was to climb into a laundry bag and hope somebody came to take it away
before the guards thought to search the depot.”

“So, where will you go now?” Ezekiel asked.
Zachariah looked blank. “Where were you heading?”

 
Zachariah tried to look stern and decisive, but his heart
sank. How could he admit he hadn’t got even the faintest idea? Grania gave his
hand a gentle squeeze.

“Who’s talking about leaving? The boy’s only just
arrived. Come on, we’ll go pick up the children, and you can meet Fionnuala.”

* * * *

Fionnuala lived on the far side of the amphitheatre in a cave that was
longer and narrower than Ezekiel and Grania’s. At the back of the cave the roof
rose, revealing the entrances to two small, round inner caves reached by neat
metal ladders Zachariah guessed had been wrenched from the side of one of the
main pipelines.

Grania stood at the foot of a ladder and called.
Martha, her eldest niece, appeared in the entrance above, her face framed by a
mop of straw-coloured hair.

“Maeve’s telling us a story,” Martha called back.
“Do they have to go right away?”

“When you’ve finished your story. But first come
and say hello to Zachariah. He’s going to stay with us tonight.”

More curious faces crowded around Martha. “Hello,”
they chorused, then backed shyly into the darkness of the cave.

One face with round blue eyes lingered a little
longer. “Hello, Zachariah.”

Despite the impropriety, Zachariah returned the
young girl’s stare. “Hello. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name,” he replied
rather stiffly.

“Come on, Maeve,” Grania pleaded, “Come down and
say hello properly.”

But Maeve shook her head. “In a minute, I’ve nearly
finished.” After a final, long look at Zachariah, she disappeared after the
others.

“They don’t often meet strangers,” Grania
apologized. “You’ll see quite enough of them at suppertime, I suppose.”

“Are they really all yours?”

Fionnuala threw up her hands. “Oh, they’re just the
runts. The rest of the pack’s out scavenging round the mine shafts.” She and
Grania burst out laughing at the expression of astonishment on Zachariah’s
face. “Of course they’re ours!” She went on in a more serious tone, “That’s one
of the reasons we have to keep our heads down, not make too much of a fuss, and
accept the injustices. If the Elders decided to investigate how we really live,
they’d crush us like cockroaches.”

Zachariah tried to look as if he understood, though
he was growing more and more confused. The Ignorants were despised and shunned.
They lived in the worst housing, did the most menial jobs, and were given the
least nutrition. But they seemed to lead a parallel existence where none of
that mattered. They were the Dananns; they defied the laws, and lived more or
less as they pleased.

It was what they chose to do with their relative
freedom that Zachariah did not understand. They lived in an underground
shantytown, they had barely enough to eat, but they surrounded themselves with
children. At any moment they could be rounded up and destroyed like rats.
Zachariah frowned. And yet they seemed happy. Happier than anyone else in
Providence, anyway. The more he thought about it, the more complicated freedom
appeared.

Grania clapped her hands. “Come on, kids. Supper
time!”

Children dropped out of the little cave one after
the other. Grania silenced the vague mutterings of discontent with a look, and
she ushered her brood home. Zachariah followed, deep in thought.

Cooking smells greeted them as they stooped to pass
the low entrance. Once again, Zachariah was astonished; this time to discover
Ezekiel had been preparing the meal. A fire of the black lumps Grania had
brought in burned in the hearth, and the thick smoke was drawn up through the
roof of the cave in a metal pipe.
 
Grania lifted the lid of the cooking pot suspended over the fire and
added a plateful of yellow dumplings made from soya meal. The smell was so
intense Zachariah felt his head swimming, not only because he could not
remember when he had last eaten a hot meal, but because he could simply not
remember when he had ever sat down to a meal that smelled so appetizing.

“Ten minutes,” Grania called. “Get your hands
washed and set the table, please.”

Those were probably the longest ten minutes of
Zachariah’s life.

The children drew up an assortment of chairs to the
table, swapping them about and changing places until Ezekiel shouted, “That’s
enough!” The bewildering darting about settled down, and Zachariah was at last
able to look at each member of the swarm in turn. On his left, a boy who might
have been twelve or thirteen watched him intently with the same light brown
eyes as his father. He had the same curly brown hair too.

“This is David,” Ezekiel said, “named after a king
in one of the old stories who started off as a shepherd boy, a little Danann
probably. The cheeky little one hiding under the edge of the table is Demeter,
named after one of the old corn goddesses, and the baby of the family is
Daniel. Daniel might have been a Danann, too. He was certainly at home in a
cave, and the great wild beasts refused to harm him.”

“And this is Maeve, our eldest,” said Grania
proudly, indicating a lithe, wiry-looking girl with dark hair pulled back in a
loose plait like her mother’s. “Maeve was a great queen who did more or less as
she pleased and never took no for an answer, not even from the High King, her
husband.”

Maeve fixed her startling blue eyes on Zachariah
until he had to look away.

“I never really took much notice of names before,”
he stammered. “Names are given at the House of Registration. They have a list.
It depends on the day and the hour of birth. For us, anyway.”

“Well we choose our own names,” Grania said
emphatically. “They’re important.”

“I like Zachariah; it’s a good name.” Maeve had
spoken, and to his surprise, Zachariah found he was pleased she approved.

“Enough chatter.” Ezekiel lifted the lid of the
cooking pot. “Time to eat.”

He ladled a small piece of meat, dumplings, and a
dark, pungent broth onto each plate. Zachariah closed his eyes and took a deep
breath.

“This smells delicious. What is it?”

“Rabbit,” Grania replied, “cooked with mushrooms.
They grow in the dark, damp places, velvety brown and creamy coloured. They
give a good flavour, don’t you think?”

Zachariah nodded slowly, his eyes wide with
astonishment. “And this is rabbit? I’ve eaten rabbit occasionally, on feast
days, but the flesh was never like this. It never tasted of anything at all,
like eating pulped paper, and full of little bones.”

“Ah ha!” Ezekiel’s eyes twinkled. “That’s because
this isn’t one of those pink-eyed trembling little beasts out of a breeding
cage. This is a real rabbit, a wild one.”

Zachariah looked puzzled. “Where did it come from?
I mean, there’s nothing for it to eat down here, is there?”

Ezekiel scratched his head. “They burrow through
from Outside. That’s when we catch them. They must be able to live out there.”

Maeve turned her insistent gaze to Zachariah. “I
don’t care what the Elders tell us—it can’t be as poisonous as they say.
One day, I’m going to find out what it’s really like.”

David snorted contemptuously. “Don’t be daft!
People can’t live Outside. It’s all sand and demons.”

“Rabbits manage it.”

“So, now you’re a rabbit? Go on then. Get diggin’.”
David laughed.

Maeve lunged at him. “I’ll dig you a second hole,
you poxy little—”

“Maeve, David,” Ezekiel slammed his hand down on
the table, “just mind your language, you little savages!”

“If Maeve says she’ll do it, who knows?” Grania
said indulgently. “She’s as stubborn as a mule.”

“What’s a mule?” Demeter asked.

“It’s a beast with the scutters that stands next to
the cesspit crossing its legs, saying
Not
till somebody cleans it out,
” David shouted, rocking back on his chair with
laughter at his own joke.

“Not that an overflowing cesspit would bother you,”
Maeve snapped scornfully. “It’s your natural element, ya ball o’ shite.” Then
she pushed his chair over.

David suddenly stopped laughing.

“That’s enough now,” Grania shouted. “I don’t know
where you picked up that kind of language.”

“It’s Ruairi!” Demeter bounced up and down on her
chair in excitement. “They all talk like that at his house.”

“Just remember we have a guest, and that you are
not always foul-mouthed little barbarians.”

Maeve looked at Zachariah who this time could not
drag his eyes away.

“I will go, one day. I mean it.”

“In me arse,” David snorted.

Ezekiel put up a hand for silence. “Instead of
trading insults with one another, David, you can help me clear the dishes, and
Maeve, you can take Zachariah to hear Mother Freyja sing. Ask her for the one
about Adam and Eve. It’s a good story, the Danann version anyway.”

Ezekiel and Grania watched Maeve lead Zachariah
down to the story rock in the centre of the amphitheatre.

“He’s a brave boy,” Ezekiel mused. “There’s not
many have the gumption to get themselves out of the House of Correction.”

“Not many children care enough about their parents
to risk prison going to visit them,” Grania agreed. “And he’s such a handsome
lad, too,” she added. “Those lovely brown eyes, and that quick, shy smile. I’m
not the only one who’s noticed either.” She nudged Ezekiel in the ribs and
nodded in the direction of their daughter.

* * * *

Men, women, and children sat out in the open, forming a circle around the
storyteller. Fionnuala was there with the children. Maeve waved across to them,
but there was no calling out, no fidgeting. The crowd was silent, waiting.
Mother Freyja was a rotund, middle-aged woman with laughing eyes and short,
stumpy fingers that moved constantly as she sang. Her voice ran up and down the
phrases, not exactly in a tune, but pulling the words along, leaving them
hanging in suspense, or tumbling down into the thick of the action. Zachariah
listened, absorbed, as she related the story of the Garden of Eden, the wicked
serpent, and the flight of Adam and Eve. Maeve watched Zachariah.

In the flickering light of the candles, as they
made their way back to the cave, Maeve and Zachariah talked about the story.

“It’s in the Book, more or less,” Zachariah said,
rather pompously. “How Woman let her head be turned by the Serpent Witch and
tempted Man to taste the forbidden apples of knowledge. How the Witch is the
source of all evil, and knowledge must remain forbidden to Man. The Elders say
it was the fault of the woman’s weakness and pride that they were chased out of
the Garden, and that’s why women are not allowed to speak in public now.”

Maeve looked disappointed. “But our version’s
completely different! Remember, in our story there is no Wise God, just a
wonderful tree. It’s the tree that makes the Garden. The Serpent creeps into
the Garden to steal the apples of knowledge. Once evil enters the Garden and
gorges on the apples, it becomes enormously powerful, and Adam and Eve run away
in fear. The apple tree perishes rather than let the Serpent devour all the
apples of knowledge, but the story says Eve crept back and hid in the Garden to
collect the seeds the Serpent spat out. They have been in safe keeping ever
since, waiting for a brave heart to plant them and complete the cycle of life.”

Zachariah frowned. The Ignorants were notorious for
their blasphemous stories.

Maeve went on. “We Dananns believe the Garden is
still there, and one day we will find it, drive out the Serpent, and be happy
again.”

“But what about the Wise God? He imposed an eternal
punishment on the human race. Because of Eve’s heresy, we have all been
banished from the Garden forever.”

Maeve looked at him pityingly. “We don’t want
anything to do with a Wise God who throws out his children and condemns them to
an eternal punishment with no hope of ever being pardoned. What kind of a
father would do that to his children? The Elders invented the Wise God to
organise the chaos after the war. The Old Ones were forgotten, the Pattern was
broken, and the people believed only in their nightmares. But someday, a
descendant of Mother Eve will take the broken pieces and put the Pattern back
together. Nothing makes sense otherwise.”

* * * *

Maeve’s words echoed in Zachariah’s head all night as he lay by the hearth
in a cave within a larger cave that was the Danann’s world. He thought of the
Garden ravaged by Evil, the Serpent frustrated in its quest for ultimate power,
and the seeds of the future lying safe in the dark, watched over by an unknown
guardian. As he slept, he walked in a dusky darkness from cave to cave, each
larger than the last, until he stepped out of the largest cave of all. The dim
roof disappeared, a blinding light he could not describe took its place, and he
walked on green growing things rather than dead rock. His head filled with the
scent of flowers, and tall trees cast moving shadows at his feet. Peace fell
from the green shadows and he was filled with an immense joy.