‘You found Guiwenneth dead,’ Jack said. ‘But she was taken into Lavondyss. Taken by whom?’
‘I shall never tell you. That secret dies with me.’
Jack stared at his father, almost too curious for words. When he tried to question him further, Steven cut him short.
‘But you waited for her. And she came back.’
‘I waited for her. And she came back.’
And with an inward shudder, Steven thought of what Guiwenneth had said to him, in her father’s stronghold, the deserted fort that rose on the hill above Eagle Valley.
I’m not sure who I am. I’m not sure I’m yours. I think - I dread to think - that I’m his.
Winter in the land had ended. It ended as suddenly as it had arrived, and the villa was in spring sunshine between one day and the next. The animals were let out of winter quarters, but there was no confusion in them. From shivering in misery they were suddenly frisky, and breeding was in the air.
If winter had left the valley, it had not left the family, and the relationship between Guiwenneth and Yssobel became bleaker by the moon. As Yssobell’s fascination and obsession with ‘the resurrected man’ increased, so did her mother’s anger and fear; there were times when Guiwenneth walked the grounds of the villa by night, and when Steven saw her he felt he was looking at a ghost, that her body had become translucent; as if she was losing all substance, all connection with the world.
This would change, though for a while only, and it changed when Yssobel began to dream of her grandfather, Peredur. One evening when Steven passed her room, the door was open and he saw her painting in a fury. She had made her own brushes, and had traded skins and meat from her hunting for pigments with the bone-shapers, tent dwellers who regularly passed through from the valley. She was always complaining that she could never get enough yellow. Red, green, black and white, but never enough yellow.
‘One day I will try and create the National Gallery,’ Steven said from the door.
She waved the brush at him dismissively. ‘Not now. I’ve got him. I can’t hold him.’
‘Who?’
‘Go away.’
He stood in the doorway, watching her. ‘The National Gallery in London is a famous place for famous painters. I would like to take you there.’
‘Create it, then,’ she snapped, not looking up. ‘I know several painters in the region. A boat painter, a cave painter and a woman who paints bodies with iron pins and skin dyes. We can make a feast of it and discuss our work. But not now!’
My my, Steven thought; sharp-tongued, sarcastic, irritable, dismissive . . . fevered.
Yssobel was painting on parchment. He could see the black marks on the written side. ‘Where did you get the scrolls?’
‘There are thousands of them,’ she said. ‘Most of them just fall to pieces when you touch them. A lot are painted, really beautiful paintings. I just took a sackful of ones with writing on.’ She turned the strip of parchment over. ‘It’s what you call hieroglyphs. I get a small sense of their meaning, but that’s from the green side. It’s not very interesting.’
Steven could hardly speak for a moment. ‘And what does your green side tell you they say?’
‘Just lists of battles, names of warriors, lists of weapons and chariots. There’s one that has a list of boats and the number of men who went to war in them. Really boring.’ She flipped another small pile of flattened parchment fragments, as yet unpainted in her workshop. ‘This one, in fact.’
Suddenly she leaned back, chewing the end of her paint brush, gazing intently at the man in the doorway. ‘There really are thousands. A few won’t matter, will they?’
What had she found, and where had she found it? He asked the question, and Yssobel pointed vaguely in the direction of the Serpent Pass. ‘It’s like a huge palace, built right back into the hill. Green marble on the outside, polished corridors and rooms, packed with all sorts of things. Including hunting equipment.’ She indicated with a glance the sturdy bow she used, and the tall quiver of arrows, which Steven knew she could fire with great accuracy. He realised he had assumed that Ealdwulf had made them for her.
She was quite a lesson in surprise, this girl.
She was painting again. ‘I found the place with Odysseus. It’s further up the valley from his horrible cave. I suggested he moved in. Warmer, for a start, but no: he had to stay in that hole in the rock. Such an odd friend. But a good friend.’ She finished the painting with a flourish, turned it round. ‘There. Got him. But you never saw him, did you? Nor Gwin.’
‘Who?’
‘My grandfather from the green,’ she said, intoning dramatically.
‘Peredur?’
‘War chief and hero. He has a strong face. And I can see where mother and I get our hair.’
The portrait was astonishing. It might almost have been a photograph. Thoughtful, a careful gaze, the hint of a smile in a lean, young, lightly bearded face, copper hair curling from below a simple crested helmet, the only decoration being two panels showing chariots in full attack. The man’s face was slightly scarred. Around his neck, an eagle’s head in profile, on a leather cord. In the background, sketched in light detail, rose the hill with its high towers where Guiwenneth had been born. He was a striking-looking man.
‘You saw him? Or dreamed him.’
‘Dreamed, of course. Greenside dream. But he was very clear. He was laughing and drinking, with friends, somewhere out in the open, close to a small fire. I don’t think he was aware that I’d come so close. I think they’d been fighting. Not each other. I could smell blood. But they were triumphant. For the moment, anyway.’
‘He’s very handsome.’
Yssobel turned the portrait back and considered it. ‘Yes. He is. I’m sorry he had to die so horribly. Shall I show it to my mother? Or will she rage at me again?’
Steven considered the question without knowing what to say. Guiwenneth was in a black mood again, for reasons he could no longer fathom, though he knew that fear and anger were at the root of it. She was so often like this, dark and despairing, though she certainly had her brighter moments; cheerful and active, full of life and energy, and eager to leave the villa for a look at the land around.
Since there was no ‘red side’ to Guiwenneth, only the green, Steven, in the dark hours, was inclined to think that she was slowly being called back into the wood, back into Lavondyss, death in the place of creation. He couldn’t bear the thought of it, so he chose - being full of everything that was the red in man, and able to avoid more difficult issues - to put it from his mind. Although he spent as much time with Guiwenneth as he could, and as he was allowed.
‘I think she’d like to see it,’ he said. ‘She never knew Peredur, nor her mother—’
‘Deirdrath!’
‘Yes. Deirdrath. Killed shortly after the birth, but she talked of him from the world of the Unhappy Dead. She had loved him very much. What a life she had had with the princeling. Yes, I think Gwin would like to see it.’
Yssobel gave a little sigh. ‘I hope so.’ And she added: ‘Shall I try to find Deirdrath?’
‘I don’t know, Yssi. Ask her. Sometimes we like to live with the memory we have and which we hold precious, even if what we remember is just a ghost. We don’t want them changed. But Gwin has always been curious about her father. So your portrait might be a lovely gift or it might hurt. Your choice.’
The girl nodded, picked up a piece of charcoal and quickly adjusted a contour. ‘I believe he would have made a good impression,’ she said, with an admiring smile. ‘I think I’ll take the chance.’
Ealdwulf suddenly appeared in the doorway, annoyed and flushed of face. ‘Dried meat. And fruit,’ he stated slowly. ‘On the table! I called you.’
‘Sorry, Ealdwulf. Didn’t hear you.’
Father and daughter exchanged a quick smile as the Saxon moved irritably away. ‘Dried meat and fruit,’ said Yssobel softly, holding her head in her hands theatrically. ‘Oh no.’
It was Ealdwulf’s way of signalling that the meal was frugal, and badly prepared. Something had gone wrong in the kitchen. Probably an argument.
Later, Steven went to Guiwenneth’s room, the small alcove where she liked to stitch hides together to make hunting outfits, or create small images in clay or bark of the entities and memories of her childhood. Yssobel had inherited her artistic talents. Guiwenneth’s shapes and forms were stranger, far more sinister in appearance, even though she claimed they were benign.
Yssobel was sitting on the floor, leaning back against her mother’s knees. The room was illuminated with candles, and Guiwenneth was holding the portrait of her father and talking softly.
Everything was peaceful.
‘I think, yes, he must have been very like this. I saw his image on a coin, and scratched on a piece of slate. I don’t know who scratched the lines.’
Yssobel leaned back, eyes closed. ‘Probably your mother Deirdrath. When she and Peredur were in love.’
‘I imagine so.’
‘Tell me what happened. What you were told had happened. It’s time I knew.’
A mother’s hand raked gently through a daughter’s hair.
The portrait was placed aside.
Sadness and memory hung heavily for a moment, then Guiwenneth, her voice almost as weak as the frail, ghostly body that contained it, whispered what she knew of her birth. Everything she remembered. Some of it, Yssobel and Jack had already been told.
‘Deirdrath met Peredur after a battle. She tended to his wounds. I think he was just a boy then, not yet the king. He hadn’t yet fought for the war chief’s seat at what would become Dun Peredur.
‘Deirdrath’s sister, Rhiathan, was barren, but her consort, a Roman of rank, wanted very much to have his own child. He planned to stay in Britain after his time of service to Rome was finished. So when I was born, Rhiathan killed my mother and took me for her own.
‘I’m not sure where my father was at the time. Peredur was always away. War was commonplace; or perhaps he was taking hostages from another island. Ship raids along the coast were common, from another island, further west.
‘When Peredur came home he knew at once what had happened. But Rhiathan’s husband had gathered a force of men to guard the fort. Peredur and his shield-men, nine in all, went to a place and summoned the Jagad, a dangerous thing to do. She rules the pathways to the underworld. She rules ice and fire. She hunts what lies between the land and the wasteland. She can misdirect the dead on their way to the otherworld, so that a brave man can find himself stranded in nowhere rather than rejoining his fellow horsemen and heroes and starting life again.
‘The Jagad exacted a great price for her help, but she allowed Peredur and his companions to transform into any three animals they wished. That was when they became Jaguth, which means: bound to the huntress.
‘They first chose eagles. The Romans used an eagle as their standard, so I can see the pleasure he must have taken as he swooped and took me, just an infant, from the unsuckling false-mother.
‘Sadly, a bowman of great skill, as great a skill as yours, Yssi, shot him down from the air. That was that. I was passed between the others.’
‘My dream,’ the girl whispered. ‘That’s my dream.’
‘I know. The Jaguth,’ Guiwenneth went on, ‘transformed and protected me until I was old enough to ride. But then the Jagad called them back - she took back what she had believed to be hers.
‘Without their protection, I was lost. But I survived. And the Jagad, terrible woman, showed one small morsel of compassion. Every year on the day of my birth she allowed the Jaguth to find me, for a night only. And the last time I saw them was at Oak Lodge, at the edge of the wood, after I had met your father and was still happy. Before I was taken again.’
‘What is the day of your birthday?’ Yssobel asked, suddenly shivering.
Guiwenneth smiled knowingly. ‘Soon. I sense it.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I can hear them again. After all this time. Their voices are on the wind. They are coming again. But they bring a cold fire with them. Urgency and danger.’
The room had gone cold as well. The mood had changed abruptly.
Yssobel said stiffly, ‘What danger?’
‘You know what I mean,’ said her mother softly, meeting Yssobel’s gaze with cold eyes.
The girl almost screamed with irritation, twisting round to kneel facing Guiwenneth, a flame-haired, furious-faced image of the older woman. She snatched the portrait back. ‘You hear danger in everything! You smell danger in everything! What has happened to you?’
And with a loud groan of frustration, she stood and started to walk from the chamber, hesitating only when she saw Steven standing in the doorway.
Suddenly humbled, she turned back and placed the painting on her mother’s lap. Guiwenneth stared straight ahead, pale and unmoving. Yssobel walked grimly past her father, though Steven saw there were tears in the girl’s eyes.
But enough had been done by the donation of the portrait of Peredur to ease the tension between the two women. Yssobel became fascinated with her grandfather, forcing her dreams to bring him to her sleeping mind, and she painted him vigorously; and in those paintings were reflections of his history, of his life, even - once - of his childhood.
She used sheets cut from a scroll that recorded part of The Iliad. Since the paint did not penetrate through to the text, Steven ignored the disrespect for the poet who had recorded the story of a fateful few days in the siege of Troy. He couldn’t read the language anyway, and occasionally Yssobel - when ‘green’ - would rattle through some of the lines, sighing heavily with boredom. To Steven this was magic from his daughter’s mouth, even if what she read was simply the list of ships and men who had gathered from all over the Greek world to savage the city of Troy itself.
The Cretans came in eighty black ships. All these were under the command of Idomai, who carried ten spears and two shields. He led the ships from Gnossos of the two-bladed axe, from Great Walled Gortyn, from all the hundred towns of Crete.