The Fellowship of the Talisman (15 page)

“Not as well as this valley, but I know it. A few miles from here, due east, there is another trail. A bad trail. Very crooked, up and down the hills. Hard going. But it will take us south. It will take us beyond these hills that block us from the south.”

“I think,” said Meg, “we best had seek that trail.”

12

They found Andrew's trail, but it proved to be the wrong trail. Halfway up a steep hillside it petered out to nothing.

They had left the enchantment far behind them, had escaped from it. Now there were no rainbow tints, no feeling that the landscape had been skewed. The land was the kind of land one would have expected to find. The oaks were honest oaks, the honest boulders had honest lichens on them, the stretches of underbrush were normal underbrush. The feeling of gloom was gone, the foreboding had dropped away.

It had been hard work. There had been no level ground. Constantly they had been traveling steep slopes, or making their careful way down steep slopes, which in some cases was almost as exhausting as the climbing.

Now that the trail had finally disappeared, Duncan glanced up at the sky. The sun was almost at its zenith.

“Let us stop to eat and rest,” he said. “Then we'll strike east and try to find the right trail.” He said to Andrew, “You are sure that there is one.”

Andrew nodded. “I've traveled it, but only a few times and that many years ago. I am not well acquainted with it.”

The trail had been lost on a small shelf of fairly level ground, extending for not more than a few yards before the steep slope took up again. Conrad gathered wood and started a fire. Daniel and Beauty stood with hanging heads, resting from hard travel. Tiny flopped down on the ground.

“We could use Ghost,” said Conrad, “but he is far away, spying out the land ahead of us.”

“I'll say this for Ghost,” said Andrew. “I have a lot more respect for him than I had before. It takes real courage for a ghost to go out in broad daylight and do the kind of job that he's been doing.”

A gray shadow moved among the trees below them.

“There's a wolf,” said Duncan.

“There are a lot of wolves around,” said Andrew. “More than there ever were since the Harriers came.”

Another gray shadow followed the first, and farther down the slope was yet another one.

“At least three of them,” said Duncan. “And there may be more. Do you think they might be following us?”

“Nothing to worry about,” said Conrad. “A wolf is a coward. Face up to one and he runs away.”

Meg put her arms around herself, hugging herself, shivering a little. “They smell blood,” she said. “They can smell blood before there is any blood.”

“Old wives' tale,” said Conrad.

“Not a tale,” Meg said. “I know. They know when death is coming.”

“Not our blood,” said Conrad. “Not our death.”

A wind had come up and far down the hill it could be heard moaning in the trees. The ground was thick with fallen leaves. And over all of it was a somberness, the sense of autumn, a psychic warning against the coming of the snow. Duncan felt a faint unease, although there was nothing, he told himself, to be uneasy about. In just a short time now they would find the right trail and be on their way again, following a harder road than they had first intended, but on their way at last.

How many more days, he wondered, and was amazed that he had no idea. Once they were through these hills, more than likely, they would make faster time. So far they had not hurried, but gone along at an easy pace. Now was the time, once they were squared around, he told himself, to really cover ground.

“If Snoopy were only here,” said Andrew, “he would know the way, how to find the trail. But that is wishful thinking. There is no honor in him. Even when he told us, when he gave his word, he had no intention of being any help to us.”

“We'll make out without him,” Duncan said, a sharpness to his words.

“At least,” said Conrad, “we walked out of the witchery that was laid for us.”

“The witchery, yes,” said Andrew. “But there will be other things.”

They ate and then moved on, striking toward the east, or as close to east as was possible, for in this tangled, tortuous land there was no such thing as heading in any one direction. There were diversions—a bad lay of ground, a particularly steep climb that they tried to skirt, a tangle of fallen trees they must go around. But, in general, they trended toward the east.

The sun went down the sky and there was still no sign of any trail. They moved through a region that had no trace of men, or of there ever having been any men. There were no burned farmsteads, no cuttings where timber had been harvested. Ancient trees stood undisturbed, hoary with age.

From time to time they caught glimpses of wolves, but always at a distance. There was no way of knowing if they were the same wolves they had seen earlier.

We are lost, Duncan told himself, although he said nothing to the others. Despite all that Andrew said, all that he professed to know, there might not be a trail. For days they might keep plunging into the great wilderness and find nothing that would help them, floundering in confusion. Perhaps, he thought, it might be the enchantment still at work, although in a less obvious manner than had been the case before.

The sun was almost gone when they came down a long slope into a deep glen, rimmed by the hills, as if it might be sunk into the very earth, a place of quiet and shadows, filled with a sense of melancholy. It was a place where one walked softly and did not raise his voice. The light of the sun still caught the hilltops above them and gilded some of the autumn trees with flaming color, but here night was falling fast.

Duncan hurried ahead to catch up with Conrad.

“This place,” said Conrad, “has an evil smell to it.”

“Evil or not,” said Duncan, “it is a place to camp. Sheltered from the wind. Probably we'll find water. There must be a stream somewhere. Better than being caught on some windy hillside.”

“I thought to catch sight of something ahead,” said Conrad. “A whiteness. Like a church, perhaps.”

“An odd place for a church,” said Duncan.

“I could not be sure. In this dark, it is hard to see.”

As they talked they kept moving ahead. Tiny had fallen back to walk with the two of them.

Ahead of them Duncan caught a glimpse of whiteness.

“I think I see it, too,” he said. “Straight ahead of us.”

As they progressed a little farther they could see that it was a building—for all the world like a tiny church. A thin tall spire pointed toward the sky and the door stood open. In front of it a space had been cleared of underbrush and trees, and they went across this space filled with wonder. For there should not be a church here, even a small one. Round about lived no one who would attend it, and yet there it stood, a small building, like a toy church. A chapel, Duncan thought. One of those hidden chapels tucked away, for one obscure reason or another, in places that were off the beaten track.

Duncan and Conrad came to a halt in front of it, and Andrew came hurrying up to them.

“Jesus of the Hills,” he said. “The Chapel of the Jesus of the Hills. I had heard of it, but had never seen it. I had no idea how to get to it. It was a thing spoken of half in wonder, half in disbelief.”

“And here it is,” said Conrad.

Andrew was visibly shaken. The hand that held the staff was trembling.

“A holy place,” said Duncan. “A place of pilgrimage, perhaps.”

“A holy place only recently. Only the last few hundred years,” said Andrew. “It stands on most unholy ground. In earlier times it was a pagan shrine.”

“There are many holy places that were raised on areas that once were special to the pagans,” Duncan told him. “In the thought, perhaps, that the pagans would more readily accept Christianity if the places of worship were built on familiar ground.”

“Yes, I know,” said Andrew. “Reading in the Fathers, I ran across some mention of such thoughts. But this one—this was something else.”

“A pagan shrine, you said. A place of the Druids, most likely.”

“Not the Druids,” said Andrew. “Not a shrine for humans. A gathering place for evil, where high carnival was held upon certain days.”

“But if such were the case, why was a chapel built here? It would seem to me this was a place the Church had best avoid, for a time at least.”

“I do not know,” said Andrew. “Not with any certainty. There were in the olden days certain militant churchmen who perforce must seize evil by the horns, must confront it face to face …”

“And what happened?”

“I do not know,” said Andrew. “The legends are unclear. There are many stories, but perhaps no truth to any of them.”

“But the chapel's here,” said Conrad. “It was allowed to stand.”

Duncan strode forward, went up the three shallow steps that led up to the chapel door, and through the door.

The place was tiny, a dollhouse sort of place. There was one window on each side made of low-grade colored glass that glinted in the fading light, and six pews, three on each side of the narrow aisle. And above the altar …

Duncan stared in horror. He gagged and knew the bitterness of gall gushing in his mouth. His stomach knotted at the sight of the crucifix that hung behind the altar. It was carved out of a large oak log, all of it in one piece, the cross and the carven Jesus hanging on the cross.

The crucifix was upside down. The figure of Christ was standing on His head, as if He had been caught in the midpoint of a somersault. Filth had been smeared upon Him and obscene sentences, written in Latin, were painted on the wood.

It was, Duncan thought fleetingly, as if someone had struck him hard across the mouth. It was only with an effort that he kept his knees from buckling. And even as he reacted to the profanation and the sacrilege, wondered why he should—he, the mildest of Christians, with no great piety or devotion. And yet a man, he thought, who risked his neck and the necks of others to perform a service to the Church.

The crucifix was a mockery, a gusty whoop of pagan laughter, a burlesque of the Faith, a hooting, a ridicule, a scoffing, and, perhaps as well, a hatred. If the enemy cannot be conquered, at least he can be ridiculed and laughed at.

Conrad had pointed out that despite the pagan ground on which it had been built, the chapel had been allowed to stand. And in this observation there was implicit the question of why it had been allowed to stand. And this, the reversed crucifix and the violence that had been done it, was the reason. Years ago a man of Christ had come, a militant man intent on ramming Christianity down a pagan throat, and had built the chapel. And now the joke had been turned upon him and the chapel stood a mockery.

He heard the gasps behind him as Conrad and Andrew saw the crucifix and caught, for an instant, the impact of the horror.

Duncan whispered at them, “A mockery. A living mockery. But Our Lord can stand that. He can take a little mockery.”

The chapel, he saw, was clean and well cared for. There was no sign of the ravages of time. It had been swept but recently. It had been kept in good repair.

Slowly he began to back out of the door, Conrad and Andrew backing with him. On the steps outside sat a huddled Meg.

“You saw,” she said to Duncan. “You saw?”

Dumbly, stricken, he nodded his head.

“I did not know,” she said. “I did not know we were coming to this place. If I had, I'd have told you, stopped you.”

“You knew what was here?”

“I had heard of it. That was all. Heard of it.”

“And you do not approve of it?”

“Approve of it? Why should I disapprove of it? I have no quarrel with it. And yet, I would not have had you see it. I've eaten your food, ridden on your horse, your great dog did not tear hunks of flesh from me, you ran no sword through me, the big one reached out his hand to help me rise, he boosts me onto the horse. Even that sour apple of a hermit gave me cheese. Why should such as I wish any ill for you?”

Duncan reached down and patted her on the head. “It's all right, grandmother. We take it in our stride.”

“Now what do we do?” asked Andrew.

“We spend the night here,” Duncan said. “We are worn out with our travels of the day. We're in no shape to go on. We need some food and rest.”

“Not a bite of food will I be able to swallow,” said Andrew. “Not in such a place.”

“What do we do then?” asked Duncan. “Go running out into the hills, fighting through the woods in the dark? We'd not make a mile.”

Thinking, even as he said the words, that were it not for Andrew and Meg, he and Conrad could go, leave this pagan place behind them, find a safer camping place. Or keep going all the night, if that were necessary, to put some distance between them and the Chapel of the Jesus of the Hills. But Andrew's legs were tottery from the punishment they'd taken, and Meg, although she probably would deny it, was near the end of her endurance. Back at the hermit's cave he'd worried about the volunteers they were taking on, and here was evidence that he'd been right in worrying.

“I'll get some wood and start a fire,” said Conrad. “There's a stream over to the right. I heard running water there.”

“I'll go and get some water,” Andrew said. Duncan, watching him, knew the kind of courage it had taken for him to offer to go alone out into the dark.

Duncan called Daniel and Beauty in, took the saddle off Daniel and the packs off Beauty. Beauty huddled against Daniel, and he seemed quite content to have her there. The two of them, Duncan thought, know as well as we that there is something wrong. Tiny prowled restlessly about, head held high to catch any scent of danger.

Meg and Conrad did the cooking at the fire that Conrad lighted only a short distance in front of the steps leading up to the chapel. The lights from the flames of the fire washed across the whiteness of the tiny structure.