Part Four: The Twin
Chapter 42 A friend and Brother
Lewis was looking ruefully at his rucksack; their sojourn in Avebury had supposed to have been for just one afternoon, but he had grown used to this place and it seemed strange now to be all packed and ready to move on to the next stage of their adventure.
Besides, it wasn’t as if they had to begin walking straight away; Mr Penry-Evans had arranged to pick them up from the Red Lion car park at ten o’clock. It was now quarter to the hour, and the men were enjoying a last smoke in the sitting room of Church Cottage before they would have to go.
George and Tolkien were sitting in the armchairs in front of the empty fire-grate, both bathed in blue pipe smoke and sharing last minute observations on Native American language. The smell of sausages and bacon still hung in the air.
Barfield was standing by the open window, watching the early bees flitting from flower to flower in the bay; Lewis could hear Shona Mac Govan-Crow singing to the babe Alfred in the kitchen:
Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon…
Lewis bent over his pack and took out the Ordnance Survey map; they had stayed here three nights, three more than intended; he traced the route they should have been taking; Calne they had missed, and Trowbridge and Wells, but all was not lost; today, according to the original plan (if the a loosely sketched itinerary they penned could be called a plan) they would have been walking from Wells to Glastonbury, no doubt aiming to arrive at the latter some time mid-afternoon. As it was, they would arrive in Glastonbury in time for lunch, earlier than planned.
Mrs Penry-Evans had said that they were welcome to stay at her house beside the Tor, in a large wooden hut she had acquired some time before and had planted on the lower slopes of the hill; so at least they didn’t have to rush about finding accommodation for the night. Or the next. Glastonbury was to be a two-day stop, given its importance in the Arthurian tradition, and its splendid Abbey ruins. We shall leave Merlin’s grave and find Arthur’s, Lewis smiled to himself. Rex Quandam Rexque Futurus…
Shona, little Alfred in her arms, entered the room.
‘Well it has been a pleasure having you gentlemen here these last few nights.’
‘Oh, I assure you the pleasure has been all ours.’ smiled Jack.
‘And do make sure if you’re ever in the area again that you drop by and see us all!’ she said.
Tolkien and George stood up from the fireplace and shook hands warmly.
‘It has been most illuminating talking with you Mr Mac Govan-Crow; I only regret we have not had time to talk more.’
George smiled warmly and bowed in appreciation. Then he turned and took the alder wood pipe from the wall above the fire.
‘My mother told me that one day this pipe would be given in friendship to a man who knew about the stars… I am wondering if you are that man, Mr Tolkien. Would you take the pipe in remembrance of the last few days here?’
Tolkien coloured deeply.
‘Mr Mac Govan-Crow…George that is very generous of you; but I can’t take this from you; young Alfred should be brought up with the sound of the flute in his ears; I should only deafen my children with my poor attempts; regretfully I cannot take it, though I am honoured and astonished that you considered it.’
George smiled and nodded in appreciation. ‘Perhaps then another will come who knows of the stars.’
‘Perhaps, I’m sure it will be so.’ Tolkien said. ‘But for my appreciation of your generosity as hosts I should very much like to send you a copy of my book, for young Alfred when it is printed later this year. A meagre gift but not without feeling.’
Shona smiled. ‘That is most generous of you.’
‘Well in that case,’ Barfield said, still at the window, ‘I shall also send a copy of my own children’s book, The Silver trumpet.’
Shona laughed. ‘And you Mr Lewis? Have you nothing for Alfred here?’ she winked.
‘Oh, I’m afraid nothing suitable just yet – but one never knows, one never knows…’
The three friends shook hands with Shona, and said goodbyes to the shy Alfred who hid his face in his mother’s shoulder, and then stepped into the warm morning sun, followed by George who had insisted he walk them to the car park.
‘George,’ Tolkien said, walking a few paces behind his friends; ‘I hope you didn’t think my refusal rude; it’s just too much of a precious thing to give away.’
‘In my culture we store great esteem by what is given rather than what is owned,’ George said, ‘but I understand; you wonder why I offered you such a precious thing when I don’t really know you, and you feel you haven’t earned it.’
Tolkien cleared his throat and nodded gently ‘Yes, I suppose it seems too great a gift when I have offered nothing in return.’
George put his hand on Tolkien’s arm so that he slowed and faced him.
‘You listened.’ His dark eyes were earnest. ‘Our people have been shamed; they have been taken from lands that once belonged to them, their traditions destroyed; I could never go back because although of Siksika blood I do not feel I belong there; I belong here where my son will grow and flourish – but at heart, though I live amongst Englishmen, I think different, because my mother and father brought me up different from others; I was taught the sacredness of our stories; how a story was more important than anything else as it defines a people and offers hope; a story connects us with the Great Spirit, it puts us in accord with nature.’
He paused and looked up at the sky.
‘You think like a poet.’ Tolkien said, and George smiled.
‘Shona knows stories, too, she understands in a way, but not as I do. I will tell my son these stories so they will not be forgotten; he will tell them to his own children and grandchildren and so they will not be forgotten; I feel the power of them when I speak. But I had always felt alone in this. But you, my friend, you listened. You cared about my story and you understood, and you felt it in here, felt their truth.’ he pointed to his chest.
‘You have the same fire in you that I have;’ he continued, ‘we understand things the same way; and you not only know the ancient tales but you make them afresh; you are a creator of stories; and your stories come not from your head but from the Great Spirit, as a gift, am I not correct?’
Tolkien nodded. ‘Yes; yes, I do feel that.’
‘You are my friend and you are my brother;’ George said, ‘that is why I would have entrusted the flute to you; but maybe it will be for Alfred to pass it on to another storyteller when you and I are just figures in someone else’s story!’.
The car was waiting, its engine already rumbling with life, and Lewis and Barfield were loading their packs into the small boot. They then said their goodbyes to George and took their seats.
George took Tolkien’s pack and fitted it in the boot.
‘Goodbye,’ he said, shaking Tolkien’s hand once more.
‘Goodbye, George.’
Chapter 43: Morning
Conall was outside the Red Lion when it opened at half-eleven, and having got himself a pint he sat at one of the outside tables and began to read.
My Dearest Edith,
This morning we are to drive to Glastonbury, having kindly been offered transport so we can get back on schedule. Last night we climbed the hill at Silbury and sat for a while and smoked and talked on the flat top where once some kind of fortress had been built, possibly a Norman motte, though the mound itself is far, far older. The night sky was very clear, and Orion was setting in the west. If only one could travel back in time and see how it all looked when this hill was first raised; perhaps, though, Wells’ Time Machine is not necessary for such a venture, as we have the power of the imagination, with which the past is really no distance away at all, nor other places. For in my mind’s eye the hill seemed as if once it were crested by trees, and it brought to mind Cerin Amroth, and the glade in Roos where you danced for me among the flowers. It all seems so long ago; especially here, in these places built by the old men of the west. They haunt me, Edith; their stories demand telling, and I have neglected them for too long. Over the last two days, however, I have come to realise that my own ‘imaginings’ are far closer to the truth than one might have believed! The star rising over the sea, and the great wave that swamped the coasts - part of that legend survives here, and maybe, now that Unwin is off my back and the Hobbit proofs finally corrected I can return and tell this tale properly, strange as it is; but I shall explain it to you in person, for it would take too long to write…
Suffice to say, I spent far too long these past few days wrangling over what all this might mean, and tying myself into all kinds of knots over whether the story was an historic memory – in which case how was it passed on to me – in the blood, some kind of racial memory, perhaps? Or was it plucked or gifted from some other mind? But the dream always seems so personal, a memory. And I am loath to consider it a memory from a previous existence, though I may have to one day consider that possibility.
Here, at Avebury, I have been reminded of the flood that drowned Boannd in the River Boyne; and how she was behind the Vivien of the Merlin legend; and how Merlin may have been remembered here as both Ymir, twin, and in the name of Marlborough.
Today we shall be driven to Arthur’s Avalon, but my mind is still on Merlin. It occurred to me today, on waking, that Merlin Emrys, the sacrificed youth, holds the key to all of this.
I have, however, cut through the Gordian knot of all this thought, with the sword of poesy – by which I mean that I came to realise, thanks to Barfield, that all these mental gymnastics over myth and history are irrelevant; if our ancestors lived in a world where they spoke in poetry and not prose, and the very world was thereby a mythically-infused place, then there was no distinction between myth and history, and for me to ask the question over which was correct was a symptom of modern western divisive thought. You see, the flood could be both historic and mythic – if we redefine what we mean by both terms. In the worldview painted by Barfield the past was an Eden, where man and God really did walk in the garden in the cool of the day; and elves walked under the stars. And still do if we open our hearts to poetic thinking. How I would love to walk in that world, under the starlit trees with them again. But why do I write ‘again’?
Love to the children.
Your
Ronald
‘Con, are you okay?’ Shen rushed towards him and held him closely.
‘I am.’
‘Really?’
Con smiled.
‘Wolf said you nearly drowned…. It was an accident, right?’
‘Yes. Don’t worry; I’m not that sensitive to what your boyfriend does!’
‘He’s not my boyfriend anymore’
Con made no effort to hide his smile.
‘Thank fuck for that. Can I say for the record that I thought he was a total cock? Well, he wasn’t, but he wasn’t good enough for you.’
Shen laughed.
‘Where is he?’ Con asked, looking behind her, expecting to see him rushing towards him.
‘He’s at his. He’ll have to come and get his stuff some other time.’
‘I’m sorry, though Shen – I didn’t mean to’ he paused, not really knowing what to say.
‘It’s ok. We weren’t really suited; it was only a matter of time…Anyway – you seem different. Lighter.’ She said.
Con smiled and stared over at the banks of the henge. ‘I’d been living in fear, Shen. And guilt – the fact I was here, and she wasn’t – that there might have been something I could have done. but there wasn’t, there really wasn’t.’
‘I know that. You’re a good man, Con.’
‘I’d been scared to feel anything anymore; but that was daft; protecting oneself against feeling – why? Because life hurts; well, yes – it does – but to be alive, to feel, to be, is the most important thing in the world; I saw that when I was seconds away from losing it; everything dropped away, Shen – the defensive stance I’d taken, protecting me, it just shattered, and I saw things – I really saw them, like seeing for the first time…’
And he looked at her now, as if he had never seen her before, and unafraid he raised his hand to her cheek and stroked it.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ She asked again. ‘You seem kind of in shock…’
He laughed. ‘I’m just taking it all in, Shen. I may not have been here today if it hadn’t been for Wolf. I’d have never seen the sun again, these stones… never tasted this beer… never seen you again; I feel like I’ve been given a reprieve. Something must want me alive; I felt before as if I had affronted the universe by surviving when she had died – but the universe had its chance – it could have taken me last night; but it chose not to.’
He remembered Wolf’s theory – that the universe never made things easy; he had been tested to the very limited and had survived; reborn, shining, renewed out of that milky river as his dream of all those years ago had suggested.
‘We go through life just not living; we protect ourselves against truly living because to really open up is to feel things too keenly – but what else is there?’.
He held her gaze, properly, for the first time since the previous year.
‘How’s the deciphering going?’ she asked, looking down at the sheaf of notes in his hand.
Con smiled – ‘Listen, I didn’t get to tell you this yesterday, but Tolkien thinks the Merlin myth happened here – which reminds me, I need to get some information from Wolf.’
‘How do you mean, the myth happened here?’
‘That Merlin is connected to the stones in some strange way; that Marlborough is named after him -and perhaps more….’ An image of Old Man in his glass case rose in his mind.
‘And…’ he took the latest letter and showed it to Shen.
‘Merlin is a twin… and Tolkien links him to Boannd, an Irish Goddess – I knew something about her – connected her to Nut and the Milky Way in my research – but he says about her drowning. I don’t remember that – I knew the Boyne was named after her, but not that she’d drowned…’
He looked into Shen’s dark eyes for some kind of answer.
‘I dream about the river of milk, and the three cows, and of walking into the water, and then twenty years later Mel drowns in the river Braint that she associated with the same dream; it’s like she was enacting the myth, Shen. It’s like she’s Boannd.’
Shen placed her hand on his.
‘Did she go there because of my dream, or did I dream it because of what she would later do?’ Con asked, a question neither he nor Shen was able to answer.
Shen shrugged. ‘I don’t know Con; it’s all too sad and strange.’
Strange. Yes. But the sadness, Con’s habitual sadness, seemed more bearable somehow; before it would have paralysed him with its ferocity, but today he could see beyond it the joy of Melissa’s existence rather than just its tragic end; as if she were finally emerging from behind her own shadow.
‘Shit…’ Con said, suddenly sitting upright ‘is Wolf gone?’
‘Not yet; he’d planned to go today but after last night, he’s asked if he can stay a couple more days.’
‘Bless him. I wasn’t really in a state to thank him last night.’
‘No, and I’m surprised you’re drinking today!’ Shen said.
‘I threw most of last night’s up in the river.’ Con replied.
‘Nice. I had a go at Wolf for not bringing you back here.’
‘I wanted to go back to my van.’
‘You should have gone to hospital!’
‘I was okay.’ Con said, though his neck was still sore, and the graze in his side where the cut-off branch had scraped him when he fell was bruising.
‘Anyway… something weird happened.’
‘Like what?’
‘I woke up about four with the van shaking…. No, behave!’ he said seeing Shen lift an eyebrow and smirking. ‘Really, it was shaking, and the lanterns and cups were swinging…’ he sipped his pint.
‘Anyway, I open my eyes and I can see the cups moving on their hooks and I know, and I mean I know, that hundreds of people are walking past, down the Avenue towards the circle. And I can sense two of them, at the end, kind of rounding off the procession – like chiefs or something. Well, I suddenly come to a bit and I realise I can’t hear voices, just feel their footfalls which are shaking the van – and I’m totally awake but I’m too scared to look outside, as I don’t want to open the door and find hundreds of walkers staring at me in my boxer shorts…but I do decide to peak through the window…’
He drank some more.
‘And?!’ Shen was staring.
‘No one there. Nothing. And the cups and lanterns were still moving, but they stopped shortly after. And I’m there trying to make them move by rocking on the bed, by breathing hard, by jumping up and down and I can’t – nothing I could do in the van would make the stuff move like it had been.’
‘What the fuck?’ Shen said, open mouthed. ‘What do you think it was? A dream?’
‘Dreams don’t make lanterns swing on their hooks, especially not if you’re wide awake and looking at them swinging! I think it was old ones. I think they were walking the Avenue, and that’s what it was for… not for us, but for them, the spirits.’
Chapter 44: Cherhill
‘I do apologise for being awkward,’ Lewis was explaining as they climbed out of the car onto the grass verge, ‘but we had intended to stop at the horse when we arrived three days ago…’
They had not been driving ten minutes, but Mrs Penry-Evans was amenable to the men’s wishes.
‘By all means – besides, we shall take the road south from Calne once you have found Coleridge’s house and join back up to the Glastonbury road in no time.’
All five people exited the car and stood at the bottom of the hill gazing up at the chalk carved horse that stood on its crest, flanked, half a mile to the right, by the Cherhill monument.
‘You know we’ve always driven past on the other side of the hill and so missed this, haven’t we Tom?’
Tom Penry-Evans, squinting against the sun, agreed. ‘We’ve seen the monument, though – had no idea there was a horse here.’
‘It’s rather a grander beast than the hakpen horse, eh?’ Lewis said to Tolkien.
‘Indeed; I seem to recall it was carved by a friend of Stubbs which might explain it – perhaps he had Stubbs do the original drawing, what?’ he smiled.
‘And look – can you see the eye?’ he said. Instead of being a darker patch on the white face the eye seemed if anything brighter, glinting.
‘Glass bottles, wrong-way up – that’s what the eye is made from – rather clever, eh? It catches the light most beautifully in the setting sun I would imagine.’
‘What are they doing up there?’ Barfield asked.
Several figures could be seen working above the horse, laying what looked like lines of cables down on the green hillside.
‘I was about to ask the very same question.’ said Lewis, who decided he didn’t want to waste time on conjecture and clambered over a nearby gate and began striding towards the hill figure.
Barfield eyed Tolkien wondering how Mrs Penry-Evans might take a further delay, but to his surprise the latter lifted her skirts and followed Lewis’s example.
When the party reached the carving, Lewis was already in conversation with one of the workmen, who raised his cap at the approach of the others.
‘This gentleman has told me, and from here you can see it more clearly, that they’re spelling out G E ready for the coronation on the 12th of next month; these are red lamps which will spell out the initials of our goodly sovereign and his wife, and below there’ll be a floodlight that will be trained on the horse.’
‘Every few seconds, you see,’ the workman explained ‘the floodlight will go on and then when it goes off the red lamps will go on, see? We’re testing them this evening as the weather is fine, and we’ll be able to get an idea of how it’ll look on the night – if there are any problems to iron out.’
‘I’m sure it will look splendid my dear man, I only regret we won’t be here to see either the test or the final result, but I wish you luck with it.’
Back in the car they drove slowly through the hamlet of Cherhill which in less than a month, Lewis informed the rest, a great street party would he happening for George VI
‘And no doubt in every town throughout the land – perhaps baked meats from last year’s coronation will coldly furnish forth the tables of this one.’ he jested.’
‘No doubt you think Edward a fool to have given up his throne for the love of a woman?’ Owen said to Lewis.
‘I wonder merely that he had to go fishing across the Atlantic for such a mistress. I’ve never seen the attraction in the American drawl…’
‘I remember George V’s coronation party, though it had an unpleasant end,’ said Barfield; ‘I ate rather too much and was quite sick, as children are wont to do at such functions.’ Nevertheless he was smiling at happier memories of the time.
‘These are austere times, though – then we were on the brink of war and knew it not; the war to end all wars; and here we find ourselves again in a similar strait; let us hope history does not repeat itself.’
‘At least we are too old to fight’ shouted Tom Penry-Evans from the front, above the noise of the engine.
‘Indeed; but that is no relief for our children.’ said Tolkien, frowning. ‘Still, it may not come to that. I pray.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Penry-Evans ‘indeed we do pray for that. Did you know that in Welsh legend the head of Bran was buried in the white hill in London to repel all invaders? It was Arthur that dug it up – and thus the Saxon race were allowed to enter… would that we could find his head again and plant it in the White Hill, then Britain would be safe.’
‘Protected by magic…’ Lewis smiled.
‘As it will be if ever our shores are threatened; there will be more than a war with weapons going on, I assure you; we humble occultists will fight our own war with words and with the mind…’
‘Like the white robed druids and black robed women shrieking on Anglesey who nearly scared off the Romans?’ Lewis asked.
Mrs Penry-Evans laughed heartily.
‘I am sure we should cut such dashing figures, yes. But the Romans did cross the Menai straits and destroy the groves, but they had generals at their backs who would kill their own men at any sign of cowardice…’
‘And what makes you think Herr Hitler wouldn’t do the same?’ Lewis asked, serious now.
They were coming in to Calne.
‘I have no reason to think he would be any different; but the English Channel is a better barrier than the Menai Straits…’
‘Exactly. When Coleridge was here,’ Lewis said, looking out at the village of Calne as they drove through, ‘trying to ween himself off opium in 1815, the Battle of Waterloo had been fought and the threat of invasion, feared for many years, had abated; so however much we fear, we must also remember such times; those 25 miles of sea between us and France are the best defence this island has. And that still holds true today; he who owns the channel owns England.’
‘Albion’ said Barfield
‘Ynys Prydein – The island of the mighty’ sang out the Welshman. ‘And you know what else my people called it? Clas Myrddin: Merlin’s precinct.’
‘Well, maybe if Bran can no longer protect us, Merlin will, wherever he lies now’ Tolkien said.
Chapter 45 The Other One
Con was talking animatedly as they crossed the road to the sanctuary.
Wolf had driven them both here after they’d lunched at the pub; Shen had had to go and do a tarot reading for a couple of Wolf’s friends who had come for the protest, and so Con had been able to ask Wolf all about the questions he’d been mulling over concerning Merlin as twin. Wolf had been more concerned about Con’s state of mind, but he found him animated and relaxed. And between them they had come to a number of realisations about the man in the tomb and the circumstances that had seen his internment therein … and had gone to walk the site to get their thoughts in order…
‘Robert Graves,’ Con was saying, ‘from what I remember - was convinced it was about an actual battle fought here, at Avebury, between the local tribesmen and the incoming Belgae in the centuries before Christ – it was a battle for dominance over the national holy places, but also about language – a change in the alphabet.’
Con was wringing this detail from his memories, from second-hand readings via conversations with Mel, her being reluctant to relinquish her grip on The White Goddess, Graves’ masterwork… details concerning Graves’ interpretation of a mysterious Medieval poem called Cad Goddeu – ‘The Battle of the Trees’.
‘But what seems more likely, and we know more about the date of language changes since Graves’ day – is that that the new languages arrived way before that and so the battle he envisaged took place earlier…’
‘Yep –‘ Wolf said, ‘the new languages came with the arrival of the Bronze Age horse riders; they brought in Indo-European languages – the ancestor of Celtic, in fact; and so the battle for language was between the indigenous Neolithic tribes with their pre-Indo-European tongue and the proto-Celtic speakers…’
‘A battle for language…yes, I remember the warriors in the battle are said to have been trees – and each tree, so Graves said, represented a letter of the alphabet; so there’s a clash of armies but in some sense it’s a clash of letters, of language.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. It was said that the battle could only be won if one side could guess the name of the opposing side – Gwydion wins because he guesses the name of Bran from the alder twigs Bran was holding – names were powerful things in the ancient world; if you knew something’s true name you could have power over it. The druids were said to be able to raise welts on a man’s face just with words. This was an age when a spell was exactly that – to write a word was to have power over it.’
‘We’ve lost all that,’ Con said, ‘ – words have become watered down, splintered, devoid of power… but you think that battle happened here?’ he asked, surveying the concrete posts of the Sanctuary where he had first stopped three days before but which now seemed weeks and weeks ago.
Wolf shrugged ‘Graves did – he didn’t really say why – he just said he thought it was Avebury. The poem states:
A battle was fought
On the root of its tongue
And another fight fought on the back of its head.
It was a black toad
Stalking on a hundred claws,
A spotted serpent ridged with a crest.’
‘And you think that means it was fought here? At the hakpen, the serpent’s head?’ Con asked.
Wolf nodded.
‘And Old Man. I’ve always thought of him as Bran, defeated by the horse-riders headed by Gwydion; I don’t mean he was literally Bran; I mean he was playing that ritual role. I know Ananda argued he died in a re-enactment of the creation myth, with Old Man being a kind of Ymir or Purusha… but I don’t know, the arrow in the throat… I feel it’s a point where that myth becomes enacted in history… that those opposing armies really did meet here, and that Old Man was defeated, and a new language overtook the old one. He was buried and the old tomb closed forever...nearly forever’
Con looked out over the Kennet valley towards the tomb, eyes narrow against the sun.
‘But might it go deeper than that? he asked; ‘This change in language, the battle at the root of the tongue and back of the head… what if it is about a change in consciousness? After this point men are buried individually in round-barrows like those on the hill there, where before they’d been buried together, as a tribe – nameless. It seems to be a change from a more communal state to one that is dominated by individuals; it’s the birth of the selfish ego – the ending of an older way of seeing things…of experiencing things.’
Just then a figure strode over the hill, waving – it was Shen. Con smiled and continued talking.
‘The battle signifies the defeat of the old language. These older tribes were at one with nature in a way the newcomers weren’t – the latter stole their land but didn’t possess the knowledge of unity with it. The old language, you see, enabled one to speak the language of the land, the animals and birds… It’s all in here…’ he said, fumbling in his rucksack, trying to find Tolkien’s letters and notes… Failing to find the exact sheet what he was looking for, he put his rucksack down on the grass and continued speaking off the cuff.
‘It wasn’t just a battle for territory, you see; it’s nothing short of a battle for reality, the victory of the new language made the world solid and concrete, and destroyed the old world described by the old poetic language - before this there was no poetry because all was poetry – all voice was a song; this is why Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil speaks in verse, because he is the oldest - he was around at the start of things, before the Fall of language. Do you see?’
Shen half nodded, but Con knew he was rambling and was losing her attention.
‘Have you never noticed how everything Tom Bombadil says is in verse – not necessarily rhyming but it has a poetic metre? I didn’t think about it until I read it in these letters. You read his words as prose because that’s what you’re used to seeing on a printed page…but when read without preconceived ideas you’ll see it’s poetry!’
‘Who’s Tom Bumble-what?’ Shen asked.
‘Haven’t you read Lord of the Rings?’ Con asked, surprised.
‘I saw the films, but they didn’t make me want to read the books…’
‘Oh, the books are better.’ Con said. ‘But Bombadil wasn’t in the films. Basically, he speaks in verse and lives in this kind of harmonic state with nature – inspired by Barfield’s ideas on language, actually – the fall of language – language once being poetic and full of meaning, and describing a world where myth and magic exist as a natural state; but later language becoming more literal, and describing a very different world; the one we live in – disenchanted, narrow.’
Shen put her head on its side, chewing all of this over in her mind.
‘So, what does this have to do with Merlin? Did I miss that bit, or am I being thick?’
‘This was the place of creation where twin was murdered.’ Con said
‘Twin?’
‘Yes – Ymir. Old Man,’ Wolf said, ‘The old man in the Long-Barrow – probably the last priest of Avebury killed and put away by the newcomers; he is the land, he becomes the earth in the original creation myth.’
‘And twin is Merlin.’ Con added.
‘What? What the hell did you two have for lunch? Any weird little grey mushrooms or anything?!’
‘Tolkien mentioned that Emrys and Ymir are related, both meaning twin– remember? And Amesbury and Avebury come from the same word? Well, as Wolf explained to me over lunch, the early sources talk of a figure in the north of Britain named Llallogan or Lailoken, whose story ties in with that of Merlin. Geoffrey of Monmouth drew on this Llallogan to write a book called the Life of Merlin, which isn’t about Stonehenge or Arthur or anything like that at all, but tells of Merlin going mad after a battle and living with his sister, Gwendydd in the forest.’
Wolf continued; ‘Lailoken means twin. Llallogan – literally the other one, as in ’one of a pair’ - Gwendydd is his twin… He lives as a wild man, a kind of shaman, and dies in a mysterious triple death, drowned in a river after falling from a height, catching his foot in an overhanging branch and impaling himself on a fish-spear…’
Con’s scratch in his side suddenly seared in pain…the foot caught in the branch, drowning in the river… he looked at Wolf but Wolf was continuing his exposition – not linking what he was saying to the events of the previous night – and why should he? It was an accident, and my foot was free before he came along…Con thought…
‘He builds a grove or temple in the woods, where he becomes a prophet…’ Wolf was saying, but Con’s mind was racing…
Gwendydd – brightness of day - the morning star or dawn… Merlin, her twin, who becomes imprisoned under the stone: they’re Nut and Geb… starry heavens and the earth below, separated… it’s the creation myth… she is his twin, this Gwendydd… and clearly, as her name suggests, she was associated with the sky… Tolkien’s words … where is his twin, is she in the sky?
Yes Tolkien, Con thought. That’s exactly where she is.
‘But it really happened,’ Wolf was saying, ‘it happened here. The old gods were defeated - the old shaman priest of the old cult will have faced the newcomers – and been killed – Merlin was imprisoned under a stone, in a castle of glass or air, in the earth, entombed… it was a re-envisioning of the creation, the rescuing of the sun through the defeat of the old winter serpent…but they did it here to claim the land, claim ownership – claim their crops, their cows and their wives and daughters…
‘Old Man in West Kennet – he was the last one buried there – with an arrow through his throat. Buried in the chamber which was then sealed so communication with the ancestors would cease and men in individual graves would rule the day.’
This is what they were doing when they shot him in the throat – Con thought, freeing the soma, the sun, from the mouth of the stone serpent. This soma, Con recalled Ananda saying, was often a magic spell or word, the secret of immortality… its extraction from the serpent was the same image as the magic won from Merlin by the enchantress Vivien… or the contents of the well of Nechtan, desired by Boann… and the image came to mind of Old Man, his throat bleeding, lying prone, grey-bearded, the old enchanter…Merlin… his wisdom tricked from him…
Shen was a lot less wordy in her synthesis, and direct in her observations. ‘So, by extension, the bones in the museum… they’re Merlin?’
Con and Wolf looked at each other and shrugged. ‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes.’ Wolf said.
‘Then he’s still imprisoned in a house of glass…’ Shen muttered, sadly.
Chapter 46: The Abbey
They had not stopped after leaving Calne but had driven for a couple of hours in glorious April sunshine through the pretty villages of Wiltshire and Somerset, glimpsing the Somerset levels bathed in a thin mist from the slopes of the Mendips; there, just visible and rising like a pyramidal island at its centre the tor of Glastonbury; they drove past the cathedral at Wells down into the levels and approached the rise of the town, clustered about the feet of the tor and its surrounding group of hills. It was a lush landscape, green and fat.
‘It’s a shame you won’t be here in a week or two, when the apple blossom comes.’ Violet said; ‘Avalon means apple trees, you know – the isle of apples to which the dying Arthur was taken by his sister Morgan le fay when this was still an island and the monks had yet to drain the levels and establish the water courses or rhines as they are known hereabouts.’
They drove past the ruins of the abbey along the street that would take them to the house on the slopes of the tor that would be there home for the next two days, and resolved to visit the ruins the moment they had unpacked.
***
The ruins lay in the bright afternoon sun, cream and grey against the green lawns at their feet; here ruined archways stood toppled, or reaching, but never to meet again, from opposite sides of the nave.
The men walked solemnly up the ruined nave to where an oblong of concrete lay, and a sign saying this was where the bones of Arthur and his queen had been placed before the altar in the time of Henry II.
‘The tomb of Arthur – an impossible thought, so the Welsh would have us believe,’ Tolkien said. ‘To think the bones of Arthur lay here. Where are they now, I wonder?’
‘Do you think it was all pretence? A money-making scheme dreamed up by greedy abbots trying to gain pilgrims and a king’s favour?’ Lewis asked.
Barfield shrugged. ‘Something was found here, I suspect – they did dig down and find a tomb, I think that is clear from the sources, but whether this was Arthur’s or not I don’t know. Follow me…’
He lead them through the Lady Chapel to a bench that stood a few metres from a sign that said this was the spot where Arthur’s tomb had originally been found.
‘They dug down some 12 or 14 feet as I recall, and found a hollowed out oak bole with the bones of a huge man with wounds to the head, and a woman with golden hair at his feet. Now I’ve seen pictures of similar coffins and skeletons with hair preserved in Denmark from the Bronze Age – maybe this place had been sacred for a long time and they had dug up the grave of a bronze age king.’
‘But they knew where to look – and there was the clearly phoney lead cross…’ Lewis interjected.
‘Yes, but I think they knew where to dig because the coffin had already been moved when they had built the cloister – they had already found the coffin, known the legends of Arthur in Avalon and had put two and two together, as they thought this was the place – then when Henry wanted to see the grave they dug it up...’
Barfield looked sad.
‘What is it Owen?’ Lewis asked.
‘I was here once before,’ he said, smiling wanly. ‘On this very bench. It’s where I met with my Cornish girl, the unrequited love I told you about.’
‘We had been corresponding since the previous summer, I full of hope and she, well, I misread, perhaps, the nature of the friendship. And when I next had chance to come down, she was staying with relatives near here and so we said we would meet. I was here early and she took an age to show, and we picnicked here on the lawns on bread and cheese, and little else I recall, for she had been running late and had only time to rush into the bakers and dairy.
‘I was a shy boy, you know, and she was a vivacious young thing and I’m afraid I sat in stunned silence most of the time, like Parsifal before the Grail.’ He laughed.
‘Well, I said I would write, and I did, but she sent a very short letter in reply saying I was sweet and shy and would I come down and see her again if I was passing; and I said yes, but I only got one letter more, saying she didn’t think it was the right time for us.’
He looked over at the fallen arches and sighed.
‘But you fell in love again, Owen?’ Lewis said.
He smiled. ‘Many times. And as I said I think I had an idea of the girl which perhaps wasn’t overly realistic; I put her on a pedestal, you see; I wish she had given me the chance to find out who she really was; it’s easy to idolize a goddess, but I think you can only truly love a woman when you see her warts and all; I think you need to sympathise and want to protect; no man ever wished to protect an Aphrodite or an Athene.’
‘Perhaps it is best to leave such women as muses, Owen’ said Lewis.
‘Possibly, Jack; I wonder what would happen if you were to marry one’s muse?’
Tolkien coughed. ‘It would not be such a disaster, I would think,’ he said, colouring, thinking of his beloved Edith; ‘one must always remember what one saw and that the eternal feminine shines through, however used one may be to her particular habits and behaviours. Did you ever consider finding her again?’.
Owen shook his head.
‘I don’t imagine it would have been fair on either of us. Would Goethe wish to chance upon Lotte again? It was not meant to be. Had it meant to be then fate would have arranged another meeting. I could have gone looking, but I didn’t. Part of me knew it was futile. There are perhaps stronger souls who do not give up and who persevere; and if fate looks kindly on them then the first meeting and parting is but the overture in a much longer symphony...’
Tolkien sighed; fate had decreed he should lose his Edith aged 17, and he had waited for 3 years for her, only to find her now engaged; but he had won her back; was their such a symphony as Owen spoke of? The hum-drum everyday life would often make one forget, but he would remember their early years and her dancing for him in the glade of hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire; Oh, my Luthien! He thought – and then suddenly he realised he’d left his letters in his bedside drawer at Church Cottage! Damnation! He would have to write to George for them when he got back to Oxford.
‘Your talk of Cheese has piqued my hunger, Owen.’ Lewis said. ‘It must be nearing tea-time and I warrant the George and Pilgrim on the High Street serves good fair. Cheese pickles and ale sound marvellous.’
‘One day, Jack I hope your heart dictates your life as much as your stomach!’ Owen said.
Chapter 47 Release
They could tell something was amiss from the shouting outside; but it was only on exiting the pub that they saw the smoke. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the manor, a heavy low black mist drifting across the road into the circle and bringing with it an unpleasant acrid smell.
Earlier in the day Con had retired to his van, having driven it to the village and parked it down the road from Shen’s house, and next to Wolf. They had visited the museum, and then afterwards made for the church to look at the font, only to find it roped off with workmen repairing some of the flagstones at its base. Con had returned to his van and had slept. He was woken by a rapping on the windows – it was Wolf, asking him if he wanted to eat. They had eaten at Shen’s before deciding to head to the Red Lion, for a hopefully more relaxed evening than the previous one. But they weren’t to get their wish.
‘Did you hear that? Someone said it was the museum.’ Wolf said, starting to pick up his pace, the smell of smoke getting stronger.
In the gardens in front of the museum a small crowd had gathered, while others were trying to get near to the stone building that was belching smoke through its broken-down doorway; the new extension was on fire, its pretty beechwood shingles smouldering like an old smoke-house; though there was more smoke than flames; the setting sun shining blood red through the dark haze.
‘Has anyone called the fire brigade?’ Con shouted. He turned and could see Shen was on her mobile – she was nodding.
‘It’ll be automatic – from the alarm in the museum…’ Wolf shouted back at them.
Con only now noticed the alarm.
I wonder how long it’s been burning, he thought; it’s gone eight o’clock, hardly anyone would have been here to see when it started. A couple of individuals in National Trust uniforms were running backwards and forwards with items from the museum, leaving green plastic crates full of objects clear of the smoking building.
‘Fuck – we’ve got to get him out…’ Con shouted back at Shen
‘Con, be careful – the fire brigade will be here soon – ‘
How soon, Con wondered. He and Wolf approached the building together – a wall of heat made them wince and cower back, but they could see within the museum, against a dull orange glow, the cabinets of axes and pots, already opened by the curators.
‘What’s happened?’ Wolf shouted at one of the National Trust team.
‘It’s something in the new wing; electrical fault or something – look…’ he thrust a plastic folder into Wolf’s hands, ‘if you want to help, it’s the Disaster Plan – these…’ he said pointing, ‘are the priority items…’ he looked up ‘I know we’ve been told to wait – the fire brigade are on their way – but I can’t just sit here and watch it burn…’
Wolf took the folder –
‘Con – straight ahead – those pots in the case there, they need bringing out…’
Con ran into the building, glancing to his left to where the new wing was aflame; a thick dense fog of black swirled below the ceiling like an upside-down stormy sea, searing hot. On the floor lay three empty fire extinguishers, useless against this size of fire. The museum itself, despite the smoke, seemed safe, its stone walls protection against the flames that were engulfing the wooden frame of the new wing. Con moved forward and took a pot in one hand and a bronze axe head in the other.
Others now had arrived, spurred on by Con and Wolf a chain of people had begun passing objects out of the museum. Con turned and handed the objects to a figure behind him, then turned back to rescue more.
Then in the distance the sirens of a fire engine could be heard.
‘Thank fuck’ shouted Wolf from the doorway.
‘Wolf – what about Merlin?’ Con shouted, trying to be heard above the bellowing of the flames.
Wolf entered the building momentarily.
‘Fuck it’s too dangerous, Con. I think it’s too late. It’s time to get out.’
Con glanced towards the new wing, shielding his face with his arm; showers of sparks were raining down across the doorway that separated the two areas.
‘I must try.’ He shouted and grabbed a crate from the floor and ran in.
He was in a cube of fire, filling from the top with a smoke that was viscous, a dark scum. He threw himself on his knees where the heat was less and the smoke had not yet reached, and there, before him, in the mock stone chamber that was now dripping with liquid fire, lay the bones, grinning against the conflagration above it; mock-stone warped and dripped in the heat, false drystone walling blistering and bulging just inches from the bones – the glass front of the display shattered and empty, a kerb of crystal shards cast before it.
Con edged forward, as low as he could manage crunching his way over the mosaic of broken glass– trying to breathe through his nose so as not to sear his throat. He was in there seconds – he tried to reach out to the bones and pull them to him, but it was too hot. He edged backwards into the main museum, gasping. Then he felt a figure push past him in breathing equipment.
The mask was lifted for a moment ‘Get the fuck out!’
It was Hayden.
‘The bones’ – Con shouted – ‘I’ve got to rescue the bones’
Hayden pushed him back.
‘Don’t be so fucking stupid, Con – get out – you’ll get yourself killed’
Two more figures arrived and pulled Con back to the door.
‘I’m okay’ he said, pulling himself away.
Then, somehow, he was outside in the cool air.
He lay breathing heavily, dizzy and shaken, a blanket from who knows where about him, and all around him was chaos: shouts, orders, hoses being dragged around - fire-fighters against the flames. People taking boxes of rescued artefacts away from the fire; silhouettes against the flames; noise; the flash of blue lights…
Con moved further away from the building against the low wall of the Manor garden – then Shen, who had been desperately trying to find him, rushed over and held him close.
‘I couldn’t get them, Shen’ Con said, sat on the grass, his back to the flint wall.
Shen held him close, too close – he pushed her away to breathe. ‘Where’s Wolf? Can you get me some water? Fuck, I feel weird.’
As she left to find him a drink another figure bent over him;
‘Wolf?’
No. It was a firefighter. And he was holding a plastic crate.
Con looked down at the contents of the box; staring up at him was a single skull and the fragment of antler. He looked at Hayden shocked.
‘Thank you.’
‘Another ten seconds and it would have been gone; and you too, you idiot.’
Hayden looked down at him and then knelt by his side.
‘Are you okay? Did you breathe in any smoke?’ Con shook his head. ‘A bit, probably. Not much.’
‘There’s fuck all left in there now,’ Hayden continued ‘– everything in that display is destroyed; it’s all ash; they’ll never be able to rescue any of it. If this had still been in there it’d be ash…and so would you! You’re fucking mad. It’s just bones.’
‘Maybe to most people. But not to us.’
Hayden’s face creased up with conflicting emotions.
‘You could have died, Con!’
Con shrugged. ‘I just wanted to save him.’
Hayden lent against the wall and laid his hands over his face.
‘Look. They won’t know - if you take it.’ he glanced over his shoulder at the chaos ‘– they won’t know that it wasn’t just destroyed with the rest of the stuff – I couldn’t grab it all – just the head – so there’ll be fragments still in there for them to find’ as he spoke he was taking the objects out of the box and wrapping them in Con’s jacket.
‘I don’t care what you fucking do with it, but this isn’t happening, okay? I never did this – you got to swear on this; don’t you dare let this come back on me… just take it and go…’
And he stood and turned and then was gone.
Con couldn’t see Shen but could make out Ananada, arrived from the pub, helping Wolf with boxes; the National Trust men were starting to organise the piles of artefacts, looking around at the scatter of boxes, at the crate near Con.
By the time they saw the box was empty Con had disappeared. He was walking south out of the gardens, down the side path to the car park, where he could see the great hill of Silbury low on the horizon in the dusk, his jacket with its contents in one hand. He stopped and took out his phone:
I’m taking Merlin to Silbury, said the text, and he sent it to Shen.
***
Coughing, spitting, dizzy from the smoke, tired with running, he kept looking back - was she following? Don’t look back a voice seemed to say, trust: don’t look back.
His head reeled and as he ran he seemed to see images flashing before him, great snakes, entwined, their scales slipping past each other with a smooth hiss; faces, water, images of conflict; a man in feathers with antlers on his brow standing on the hill…
I must get this away, must take it to the white hill, the head of Bran, head of Bran, player of the alder flute pipe… I must take this away…
Behind the hill the first edge of the lunar disk had emerged above the horizon.
Con somehow made it to the foot of Silbury, despite the darkness swimming about his head, and the hoarseness of his breathing. His burden in one hand he began to climb, hiding in the grass when another fire engine passed by; and no longer stopping to look to see if Shen were following him.
At the summit, sick and breathless, he slumped on the grass, an awful dizziness threatening to overcome him; and he drifted in and out of dream; words… he could hear words…
The singing of the ravens at the dawning of the world tell me that there shall be a great battle today. I shall put on my hood of speckled-calfskin, and my cloak of crow’s feathers, on my breast the amber pendant, the high twigs of alder in my hand. I shall dress my hair with the paste of the milkstone from the riverside, draw it back from my forehead; my cheeks I shall redden with the blood of the blackberry. At my side, the smooth axe from the Mother’s mountains shall hang, at the other my shield of alder. And unless they guess my name they shall leave un-victorious.
I have long awaited this day; since my mother’s mother’s day they have been among us; with their broad pale faces and the tamed beasts they ride; they first brought us gifts; knives of the sun-metal created from the fire; then the drink that makes men mad.
They shall ask for the land, these sons of the frenzied one, as if a man can own the land; it is the land on which our ancestors walked, within which they still dwell. But they do not see them. They see just the surface of things; they see the grass but not the blood in the soil; they see the rough skin of the trees but not the golden fire within; they hear not the language of the birds for to them it is just noise.
We knew they were coming. The gods above foretold it. The heavens shifted; we built the circle to anchor the Heavenly Mother to her husband the Earth; we built first hill beside the mother-stream to anchor the sky so that once again we could see the starry womb pregnant with the light on the favoured day; but still it changed. The sky has fallen. The axle of the world has broken; the straight path made crooked and the wise serpent’s treasure shall be robbed.
Our young men wear their hair now like the newcomers: braided and held by gold; their eyes have become hard like them; they covet their bows and their man-killing arrows; they dishonour the spirits; they are angry like the bear and the wolf; our daughters look upon the newcomers with hunger; they learn their words; they drink from their cups but not from the cup of their own ancestors.
But I, who am the first and the last, shall drink from the cup of the Old Ones; I shall imbibe the milk of the three kine, of the plant of vision, the plant of dreaming, and the grey serpent’s plant, and shall await them in the ring of dancing trees, at the serpent’s eye. The high twigs of alder will be in my hand, and the bones of my people about me. I, who am oldest and youngest, longest of days, shall rest tonight with my ancestors.
Thrice have I bathed in the waters. Lo, now, do I purify myself in the smoke of the sacred herbs; I pass it over me with the ghost owl’s wing. Ancestors, I bid thee welcome. See how the smoke curls; Lo, do I anoint my face and head with smoke; Lo do I purify my chest, my arms, my navel; Lo, do I step over the embers so that there is no part of me that is not purified.
Brides of the Bee attend to me; eldest, crone, comb my hair and whiten what time has already made white with the milkstone from the river; daughter, bloody my cheeks with the berry juice, mark my forehead with the sacred sign, the eye of the sun; daughter’s daughter, most beautiful, blacken my eye sockets with the ash of charred herbs, sing over me your songs.
I sing to you, Ancestors, Old Ones. Make me your mouthpiece; may my limbs be your limbs; live again through me. There is not part of me that is not sacred. I am a seven-tined stag; I am the land – that is all that I am. I go down to the earth and become the bones of the land.
Oh the land is sacred; the waters of the mother are sacred; oh, shall I drink from the waters of the breast of the mother; oh, shall I drink from the waters of the eye; oh shall I drink of the water in which the star-stones have been placed, thrice three in number. Oh, shall I drink of the bitter herbs, and the seeing herb; of the grey-serpents plant, of the plant of vision; of the wheaten brew mixed with the milk of the un-ridden mare, sweet with meadowsweet and honey. Lo shall it give me a powerful voice! Lo it shall revive within me the voice of my ancestors.
I lift to my lips the cup of my people; see where it is formed in the shape of the vision, adorned with the spiralling powers, with the lozenge, with the wave it is made holy. Lo do I drink. Aah! See how the fire now burns within me. I drink again. Pure am I, empty for the milk of the mother; purged through fast. It burns within me with the heat of the nine maidens who prepared it, to my mouth from their mouths. Fire in my belly; soon it shall warm my limbs; soon the fire will be in my head and then shall I see with the Eye of the Old Ones.
Light the fire, old woman, mother and maid, from the embers of the sacred herbs. Light the fire and cast open the doors.
I see within me that they come. Open the doors to the sun! Open them so that they may see me waiting here within the eye of the snake where since the start of things the Holy Ones have dwelt.
See! They come. Place in my hands the alder; place around my shoulders the crow-feather cloak; place around my throat the adder; on my head the horns of the white deer, the white roebuck; the wings of the lapwing flutter about me; lo do I hear the baying of the whelp of the underworld, bright by the river that I ready myself to cross...
Come, sons of the Frenzied One. Do you not see that I am ready? I, who am Twin, brother to her who stretches above us; our goal and consolation.
Chapter 48 The Wager
Barfield, Tolkien and Lewis were sitting on the pyramidal rise of Glastonbury Tor, their backs against the great ruined tower of St Michael’s church facing west to where the sun was sinking into the distant Bristol channel; below them a few lamps were being lit in the town, and lines of pale blue peat smoke rose from the chimneys of the houses. The abbey lay mostly obscured by the rise of Chalice Hill, and the half-moon lay high in the southern sky.
‘It’s just … I was thinking.’
‘Oh yes? What about Tollers?’ Jack asked.
‘Arthur: his name means the bear; and he is the son of Uther Pendragon, that is terrible head dragon. Now, I don’t know if you were aware, but the pole star used to be in Draco, the constellation of the dragon, and now, after some time, it has moved in Ursa Minor, the little bear. The pole has left the dragon for the bear. Might it be possible, I wonder, if the accession of Arthur to the throne after Uther is somehow symbolic of the move of pole star from Draco to Ursa Minor?’
Lewis looked Tolkien directly in the eyes.
‘Seriously, Tollers? Is this all we have to look forward to this trip? Give it a rest man and enjoy the view. As soon as the sun is set we’ll walk into town and get some decent beer, not like that varnish they sold at the Red Lion.’
‘That was perfectly good ale, Jack, you were too grumpy to appreciate it.’ Barfield said.
'I know a good beer when I taste one.’
‘You couldn’t have tasted if even it was dishwater – my word, were you feeling sorry for yourself!’
‘Utter rubbish. Anyway – I am now as fit as a fiddle. And already my mind is racing with ideas for our wager.’
The idea for the wager had occurred to Lewis after leaving the Abbey earlier in the day. Once more grumbling over the paucity of ‘the sort of books one likes to read’ Lewis had decided that the simple answer was to write them oneself, and had decided that two interesting subjects, or subjects that at least might provide scope for an interesting premise, were space travel and time travel. They should all, Lewis had suggested, decide to write a book on one of those very subjects, and see what kind of book resulted.
‘So what is it to be – space or time travel?’ Tolkien asked.
‘Well, we shall have to draw straws.’ Lewis answered.
‘Better than that let’s let nature decide – that crow on the tree down there – if it flies to the left you do space travel, to the right time travel.’
‘Done.’
They sat a few minutes watching the crow bouncing on the branch, wondering if it had, in fact, found its resting spot for the night, when the crow cawed and lifted itself skywards and turned to the left.
‘A space story it is, then – my word – that’s rather challenging. Space provides undreamed of vistas and creatures with which to play.’ Lewis beamed. Tolkien smiled to himself; he had wanted the crow to fly left, for he already had ideas on his time-travel story.
‘What about you, Owen? Can we tempt you to write?’ Lewis asked.
Barfield smiled sadly and shook his head.
‘I tried once but I don’t believe fiction to be my forte.’
‘From what I read, Owen, it was a splendid piece of work.’
‘Nice of you to say so, Jack – but you’re alone in that opinion; I think to write fiction you need a flair for storytelling that I just don’t have; my writing was a mixture of veiled autobiography and a vehicle for my ideas and I’m not sure whether that makes for a good read…’
Tolkien was already formulating his tale. It’ll be about the wave – the dream of the wave, and of knowledge from the past being passed down in memory… flashes of past times through imagination. He thought. He looked skywards where the clouds in the west had shaped themselves like a great eagle, set on fire with burning wings by the setting sun.
The eagles have come from the west… he thought. The eagles of the lord of the west come to Numenor…
He lit his pipe, content.
Chapter 49: The Re-Uniting
When Shen crested the hill she could make out the lone figure of Conall sat on his haunches at the southern rim of the flattened top, a blanket round his shoulders, and his hands clasping the skull to his chest; his face was pale under the sooty marks from the fire and he smelled of smoke.
‘Hayden got him for us.’ he said
‘I know. It was kind of him.’
She sat beside him and took the skull in her hands;
‘It’s light – I expected it to be heavier,’ she said. ‘Do you really think this was Merlin?’
‘Merlin’s a figure made up of many strands of legend – but the part of it that relates to his foundation sacrifice – well, this man embodied that myth, acted it out in the flesh; he’s as much Merlin as any might claim to be.’
Con gazed over the valley of the Kennet; the last light of the dying sun was casting a deep orange glow over the fields, striking against the deep blue of the sky where the first stars were pricking through the gloom; there on the rise opposite was West Kennet Long-Barrow, a sliver of earth on the horizon like a low lying crouching beast; and there behind it, huge against the horizon, the full moon had risen; here were the dark groves of trees around the Swallowhead, and dark against the evenings fire amongst the ripe corn, stiff and upright on this breezeless eve, a crop circle
To the south west two bright points had begun to shine in the sky. Shen asked what they were –
‘Planets – that’s Saturn and Mars – in a month they’ll pass close to each other over in the same part of the sky, just above Spica, that’s the ear of corn in the hand of Virgo… at the moment they’re trailing Leo.’
‘It’s all so beautiful, Con. What was it all about, Con, this place?
He looked out over the Kennet valley, where the waters of the mother were sending their cool breath skywards as vapour. He was still slightly befuddled from the smoke, and when he started talking, it was as if another voice were speaking through him, and he was listening as much as talking:
‘I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it started in the north; I think when the first farmers reached as far as they could go north, to Orkney, they looked up and saw the sky had changed; the diamond of Crux, the womb of the mother, could no longer be seen over the southern horizon; and her breasts, Cassiopeia, which formerly had set, now remained in the northern sky… yet they would have been in trade contact with tribes to the south, where the womb still rose. In the north Sirius had replaced Crux as marking the point of the rising of the midwinter sun – but perhaps for the first time people realised that the world was changing; the old stars were not fixed, and were slipping away.
‘I imagine some visionary, some Orcadian priest or priestess, having a dream; in the dream she sees the moment of creation, when the sky mother, as the Milky Way ringing the horizon, lies joined to the Earth – Nut and Geb before their separation – and she imagines creating a monument in that image, to cement in time that moment of creative union; perhaps it might keep the stars in place, stop time, reverse the change that threatens to end the world as they know it. But it also celebrates the creation – it marks where the Lady rises from her lover, the entrances of the henge marking where she rises and sets, and celebrates the new sun that is born from the union of earth father and sky mother, the creative twins.
‘I think it was a time machine, a way of returning to the point of creation, to the union of mother and father – to Eden; it was literally heaven on earth, for to enter the henge was to enter the body of the mother for rebirth; the entrances were star-gates that would allow passage into the body of the stars.’
Shen was looking up at him, but he seemed unaware, deep as he was in his reverie.
‘They were for the dead, these places. The bodies of the dead in Neolithic times, those that were not placed in the Long-Barrows, we think were placed in rivers and streams… but their souls – in Egypt the souls of the dead would enter the sky mother, the Milky Way, whose image was painted on the lids of their coffins; they’d pass through her body, the night sky, to be reborn with the sun in the eastern horizon, or to become stars themselves in the sky.
‘And when the living came here, it was to return to that state of paradise before the fall… perhaps in that state, with mother sky and father earth joined they stood out of time, and were united with those that they had lost to time and were dear to them; just as earth and sky united, so the dead might return as in the beginning and walk amongst the living…’ he thought of the footsteps he had heard that very morning, heading towards the circle from the direction of dawn; an invisible gathering under the fading stars…
‘This was the place where brother and sister were re-united…’ he said, wistfully.
‘But it was seasonal - each year the sun would be born anew, and the twins rent apart, only to return and reunite again the next year as creation was renewed. But the newcomers arrived, and they sealed the tombs; they killed the embodiment of Twin and buried him forever.’
Then silence; the sun had set yet the sky retained its milky glow; far below blackbirds called in the dusk, and the odd car rumbled past the hill. After a while Con turned, his eyes more focussed and present.
‘Shen, I’ve been thinking. I need to apologise to you.’
‘What for?’
‘For shutting you out.’
She didn’t speak; it would have been easy to deny it, to tell him not to be so stupid; but he was right; he had held her at arm’s length.
‘It’s about Mel, Shen. I didn’t tell you the truth; it wasn’t an accident. Shen, she killed herself; she drowned herself. And I was here. I got a phone call from Anthony saying she was missing, and I was just relieved – I thought she’d run off with the other guy from uni who he’d scared off a few weeks before. But I was here with you and I didn’t give it a second thought – not until I got a phone-call from Mum saying they’d found her body. That’s why I left without saying bye.’
He was staring at the floor, unable to meet her gaze, but had he done so he would have been met with a look of shock and bemusement.
‘I – I thought she died at the end of May?’ she said
‘No – why would you think that?’
‘Your letter – it was written the day of the funeral, and I got it in early June, I presumed she’d died just before that…’
‘No. There had to be an inquest and all that sort of stuff. They didn’t release her body for 3 weeks.’
‘Oh Con.’
‘It’s okay – it was hard at the time, but…’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m so sorry I misjudged you. I thought when you left it was because you didn’t like me – and that’s why you didn’t write. I didn’t realise that she had already…’
‘God Shen, of course I liked you – I just was in shock and couldn’t think straight – and when I did write I was drunk and I blamed myself for not listening to the text, for being here, for being happy with you… that’s why I wrote that.’
‘I thought you were just pushing me away – that you’d decided, before Mel, that you didn’t want to be in contact…’
‘No, no – that’s not the case, Shen. God – have you been thinking that all this time? No!’
Their eyes met, both brimming with tears.
‘I felt bad because I’d ignored the signs – she had been writing lyrics again, talking about singing, but a lot of the lyrics seemed to be about death, but I never put two and two together. I think when Anthony scared off her new man, she was distraught – that’s why she did it.’
Shen said nothing, just letting him talk – but she couldn’t help but see him in a new light – casting off that perception that he had played her; she wanted to hold him.
‘She was drunk, Shen. She’d had a bottle of wine at least they reckoned – I just wish she had called me. I don’t understand why she didn’t call me. She’d left a note, of sorts, and she’d filled her bag with quartz from the riverbed. She was naked but her bag was slung across her chest.’
‘Did the note explain why?’ she asked.
Con shook his head. ‘No. It was written in her Collected Coleridge, on Kubla Khan – she’d written the words to Damsel with a Dulcimer in the margins, and I guess she’d looked at it, her biggest hit, before she walked into the water. She’d written a line across the top.
I’m going to the river to die;
No more to drink the milk of paradise
She wrote it before she went in – the pen was still in the book –‘
He rummaged in his rucksack and took out the book he was referring to, opening it and showing the page to Shen with a shaking hand.
The handwriting was wild, large, filling the entirety of the top of the two open pages - a manic hand; a drunken hand.
I’m going to the river to die no more to drink the milk of paradise
Shen traced the words with her small index finger; she then turned back a page and read some of the notes and lyrics Melissa had written there.
Then she turned back to Kubla Khan and then back a page; twice.
She was frowning.
‘Are you sure she meant to die, Con? I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I’m not sure…’
‘Why?’ Con asked.
‘Think of Bumbledore or whatever his name is…’
‘Bombadil.’ Con said and frowned.
‘Think what you were saying about him earlier… I may not be right but…’
‘I said that Tolkien made him talk in verse…’
‘Yes, and that you didn’t realise it was in verse as you were expecting prose… look – on the page before her note, down one of the margins – it’s not in the same pen but it’s a verse, right?
I seek for the Mother
To cry no more
to find where her cool white waters rise…
In the depths of the water
To sigh no more
Lie stones fallen from the skies
Is that from one of her songs?’
‘No – it’s some of the new stuff she was working on. Milk of Paradise was to be her new album.’
‘Con, the suicide note… read the two together, these verses and the note…’
Con took the book and read aloud:
I seek for the Mother
To cry no more
to find where her cool white waters rise…
In the depths of the water
To sigh no more
Lie stones fallen from the skies
I’m going to the river To die
no more To drink the milk of paradise
I don’t get it; they do sort of rhyme, but it doesn’t mean they’re connected, and it doesn’t change the meaning…
‘Yes it does, you div! It’s a verse – it’s like Bomble-dil, whatever, she’s been speaking in rhyme all along, but you’ve missed it! You’ve separated ‘die’ and ‘no more’ because she’s written ‘no more’ slightly lower and closer to ‘to’; but follow the metre of the first verse!
I seek for the Mother
To cry no more
To find where her cool white waters rise…
In the depths of the water
To sigh no more
Lie stones fallen from the skies
I’m going to the river
To die no more
To drink the milk of paradise
‘To die no more, Con – it’s a verse about rebirth, about overcoming death, not going to one’s end!! It’s about rising again and not ever dying – like an initiation into the mysteries.’
Con stared at the words on the page, mouthing them again and again.
He looked up at Shen.
‘Mel was always fucking crap at punctuation! But - but what about the stones in her bag?’
‘How many were there?’
‘Nine.’
‘How big?’
He held up a hand and indicated an inch and a half.
‘That’s not that heavy Con… and nine? Nine? What sort of stones?’
‘Quartz.’
Quartz stones? God, Con! Clocha Geala! Shining stones! It’s an old Irish folk remedy – putting nine pieces of quartz in a pan of water and bringing it to the boil – you’d then let it cool and drink it over nine hours or days… my granddad used to do that for a sore throat! She was studying Celtic, right? She would know about that! Here’s this river with quartz in it, with which she’s obsessed – she’s going to be reading up on the Celtic use of quartz isn’t she? Now she’s not put hundreds of these things in to weigh her down, has she – she’s got nine. I think she went into the water to get the stones and slipped when drunk…’
‘the water with its milkstones…’ he stuttered, ‘she was trying to make a magical drink to revive her voice – to revive within her the song, like in Coleridge’s poem!
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
‘The Milk of Paradise, Shen, that’s what she was doing, she was collecting stones…to drink a draught of wisdom from the starry waters; she was like Boannd, seeking wisdom from Nechtan’s well but like Boannd she was overwhelmed… She was going to start again, wasn’t she – start singing again…she didn’t commit suicide, did she?’
‘No Con, I really don’t think she did.’
And then he began to cry; he cried because she should have been here today, and that she had not meant to die; that in those last moments, like him, she would have fought for her life but no Wolf had been there to save her; but he cried happy that she had been writing again, that she hadn’t been walking around in a fog of misery and despair – he was happy that he hadn’t missed any signs – she simply had gone there to enact some kooky rite in the water, to gather stones. Some kooky rite… just as he had! But the myth that possessed her was stronger than she knew.
On that last evening, a year earlier, they had both gone to the water for rebirth, he to re-enact a dream, and she to gather stones. He had been connected to her at the end – there was no mistake; the two particles apart in space were connected, but she had slipped in the water and he had stayed on the bank; he had felt no anger and despair as there was none to feel – he had felt joy, the joy she had been feeling – the elation of starting again; at that moment they had been together; and he thought of Alfred and of the stars of the bear, and the gift of the alder-wood flute, and it’s message ‘thank you for reuniting brother and sister’ and now he lent forward and cupped Shen’s cheek in his hand, his tears flowing freely, and said the same thank you to Alfred’s granddaughter.
‘Uniting brother and sister, Shen, that’s what he said. As if he knew.’
‘Don’t just thank me and Grandad, Con, thank Tolkien; if it hadn’t been him we’d have continued to read that poetry as prose.’
‘Thank you, John Ronald!’ He said, laughing. And he looked up at the great bear, at the double star, fizzing and dancing through his tears.
‘There they are, united. We are all united…Just think, men and women have stood here on this hill for thousands of years looking up at these same stars. And today – today it’s our turn. The stars are shining for us, Shenandoah.’
The mention of her full name caused her to catch her breath. She looked up at him and he returned her gaze without fear. Her brows were arched as if asking a question, imploring him for an answer; and he saw that she was trembling.
And it seemed to him that they were a bridge between the energies of the world below and the spinning firmament above – and when he held the side of her face with his hand, she leant into it.
‘Oh Shenandoah…’ and as he spoke her name water welled in his eyes so the stars seemed to spin again about her beautiful head like a nimbus of pale light; and she was crowned by Cassiopeia and the Milky way seemed to flow out of her shoulders upwards into the sky. At last they kissed, and he was surprised to feel her trembling still. Long they kissed, then he held her close to him, and he spread his coat beneath them so they could lie upon the dewy grass.
Later, they walked down the hill along the gently spiralling path in the bright moonlight, not caring now who saw them; carefully treading this age old path, happy and carefree; the western sky tinged with the palest golden green, the last pale glow of the dying of the sun.
Epilogue The Burial
Shen and Wolf were sitting by the window of Church Cottage, coffee in hand, while Con paced backwards and forwards in front of the empty fire grate.
‘I can’t think of anywhere more appropriate – or anywhere less obvious. Like you said, Wolf, we can’t very much bury him atop Silbury; archaeologists will dig him up in a few weeks, or sooner if they see there’s been a disturbance.’
‘I still like the idea of the well in the pub’ Shen grinned. ‘Rhian would be up for that.’
Wolf smiled. ‘She would, but it’s too public; and when the pub is sold on, who knows what will happen. Basically, it’s a nightmare as the whole bloody complex is an archaeologists’ wet dream, so wherever we put him he’s going to be found sooner or later.’
‘Which is why there is the best idea’ Con said, pointing straight out the window towards the church.
‘Excellent thinking on your part, Con, I must say.’
Con smiled. ‘Well, it’s in a state from the building work, and once that’s finished they’re not going to want to be digging up the floor for a while… and when they do – they’ll presume it’s some Christian relic, and he’ll be allowed to stay in the earth, not shoved in a museum again – we all saw how that ended!’
Con walked to the window.
‘Can’t be long now.’
Shen glanced at her watch. ‘It’s gone one so… here they are…’
From the doorway of the church two men emerged in white overalls, bearing a holdall full of tools; they walked to their van, locked the tools inside and headed down the street towards the pub. Once they were out of sight the three friends exited the cottage and crossed the road, a bundle under Con’s arm.
'I kind of would have preferred the stream – but what about when it dried up?' Con said.
The interior of the church was empty; as before the area around the font was roped off with hazard tape, and a number of flagstones lay on end against the wall, waiting to be put back in place; the ground, though, was better covered than yesterday; a number of stones had been put back in place, including those immediately in front of the font; in front of these the sand underneath had been levelled, ready for the last stones to go down.
‘Well you’d better start’ said Con, nervously to Wolf, eyeing the door. ‘They’ll be a while but what if someone else walks in?’
Wolf walked over to a pew and picked up a hard-hat and put it on.
‘They’ll presume I’m one of them.’ He grinned.
He lifted the hazard tape and walked over, kneeling before the font.
‘What I need to do is lift this bastard out the way and we’ll dig under that, level the sand again and replace it; bet the fuckers didn’t leave a spade…’
As Wolf worked Shen stood at Conall’s side at the doorway, on lookout.
She looked up at him and smiled shyly, taking hold of his hand; Con lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it;
‘I’m so glad I came back.’ He said, simply. She smiled. ‘Yeah, you’ve nearly drowned, been burned to death – stolen a precious artefact and are now involved in criminal damage… it’s been a fun few days for you.’
He laughed. ‘I think they call this the honeymoon period.’ And winked.
‘What will you do now?’ she asked him, suddenly serious.
He frowned.
‘I mean will you stay for a few days…’
He smiled. ‘Yes; I’ve nothing really to go back for in a hurry.’
She smiled but it seemed tinged with sadness.
‘It’s just when I think of you going away before…’ she said. He hugged her close. ‘This may seem premature, Shen, but that flute kind of belongs above the cottage fireplace… and as it’s now mine the only way I think we can resolve this is if I start to spend more time here…’
She smiled at him and he kissed her smile.
‘Besides, I think people will want to know the truth about this place – Tolkien has helped solve a great many mysteries, and I think I should stick around and tell people about it all – maybe set up tours or something, or write a book…maybe finish the PhD.’
Wolf called over and asked them to bring the bones; a pile of sand lay beside the font and a hole was now present at the rear of the space where a slab had been, edging back towards the font where it disappeared in darkness.
There’s a gap here under the font itself – the sand had been put in front of it and a stone put there to stop it going into the gap, but I managed to move it…’
He held his hand out and took the skull.
For a few moments he held it in his hand; this man who had all his life been fascinated by the figure of Merlin, face to face with the ancestor of that figure. He closed his eyes and planted a kiss on the forehead of the skull and muttered silent words.
‘Is there anything you want to say, Con, Shen?’
Shen shook her head and Con just leant forward and touched the skull, running his fingers around the eye socket. Itsipaiitapio’pah, he whispered.
The skull just fitted in the gap, and Wolf brought out his now empty hand and began to refill the hole, first placing the blocking stone in place.
Con stood and walked to the door. Luckily, the path was empty; a few swallows were swooping about the churchyard, and beyond the wall he could see the nicotiana blooming under the windows of Church cottage. There, to the left of the path, beside the myrtle bush, was Alfred’s grave; and Con felt comforted that Alfred lay no more alone in his grave; now the skull was back in the ground, in the earth of the ancestors, as it had always meant to be.
He felt a hand on his arm and he turned. ‘It’s done’ Shen said. Con looked down at her and kissed her gently before they walked into the church hand in hand.
The three friends stood in silence before the font – the stone was back in place, perfectly flat again – no one would have known it had been tampered with; but their eyes were drawn to the font itself, to the image it showed of the man, his face now hacked away, holding cup and crozier above the two wyverns; before he had been a priest condemning the old religion, or St George killing the dragon, or the horse-lord seizing the cup of wisdom from the serpent priest – but now, to the three gathered there, it showed Merlin, Twin, now back in his sacred space, and the two dragons were those of his vision, the duality of forms dancing to his song; he was their master, not their destroyer. Emrys, Ymir, Yemo was back in the soil of Avebury. The headless carving had arguably regained its head.
‘The head of Ymir in its magic well, dispensing wisdom…’ Con laughed; ‘where better to put him but beneath this holy water?’
Wolf chuckled ‘think of all those babies who’ll be baptised here by water blessed by the head of the ancient one!’
‘Do you think he’s happy now?’ Shen asked.
Wolf nodded. ‘he’s in his sacred earth, with the waters above; and we know he is here – and he’s not in that bloody glass case anymore.’
‘It’s weird, isn’t it – about the fire?’ Shen said.
‘Yes. Very odd. I went past the museum today; the old part, the stone bit, is going to be okay – the new bit is a wreck, though. Most of the artefacts were okay, except for those put in those new display boxes; it’s one of those that caught fire, they think.’
‘I can imagine the headlines – curse of the ancient bones destroys new museum.’ Con said.
‘I bet the chairman of English Heritage is well gutted.’ Wolf said, smiling.
‘He probably thinks you did it – some kind of druid curse.’
A few minutes later Con hid is face trying not to laugh as they passed the workmen returning to the church; the day was gloriously hot and Church cottage seemed too dark to enjoy on this lovely day.
‘What time is it?’ asked Wolf. Shen replied it was nearly two.
‘Then I make it time for a pint,’ he laughed. ‘I’m fookin’ parched.’
The End
Postscript
Tolkien’s The Hobbit went on to be one of the most popular children’s books ever written; his time-travel book, The Lost Road, was never published, but is to be found in his son Christopher’s 12 volume History of Middle Earth. His Lord of the Rings trilogy was voted Waterstones Best Book of the 20th century.
Lewis’s space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, was published to critical acclaim; the figure of Merlin appears in the trilogy. His later Narnia books would make him a much-loved children’s author in his own right.
Barfield remained a solicitor, but on retirement published several books on myth and language, including Saving the Appearances, one of the best books on language and myth ever penned. He died in 1997 aged 99.
Violet Penry-Evans, Dion Fortune, died in 1946 of Leukaemia, having defended Britain with magic during World War 2.
Stuart Piggot went on to become one of this country’s most respected and loved archaeologists.
Chapter 42 A friend and Brother
Lewis was looking ruefully at his rucksack; their sojourn in Avebury had supposed to have been for just one afternoon, but he had grown used to this place and it seemed strange now to be all packed and ready to move on to the next stage of their adventure.
Besides, it wasn’t as if they had to begin walking straight away; Mr Penry-Evans had arranged to pick them up from the Red Lion car park at ten o’clock. It was now quarter to the hour, and the men were enjoying a last smoke in the sitting room of Church Cottage before they would have to go.
George and Tolkien were sitting in the armchairs in front of the empty fire-grate, both bathed in blue pipe smoke and sharing last minute observations on Native American language. The smell of sausages and bacon still hung in the air.
Barfield was standing by the open window, watching the early bees flitting from flower to flower in the bay; Lewis could hear Shona Mac Govan-Crow singing to the babe Alfred in the kitchen:
Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon…
Lewis bent over his pack and took out the Ordnance Survey map; they had stayed here three nights, three more than intended; he traced the route they should have been taking; Calne they had missed, and Trowbridge and Wells, but all was not lost; today, according to the original plan (if the a loosely sketched itinerary they penned could be called a plan) they would have been walking from Wells to Glastonbury, no doubt aiming to arrive at the latter some time mid-afternoon. As it was, they would arrive in Glastonbury in time for lunch, earlier than planned.
Mrs Penry-Evans had said that they were welcome to stay at her house beside the Tor, in a large wooden hut she had acquired some time before and had planted on the lower slopes of the hill; so at least they didn’t have to rush about finding accommodation for the night. Or the next. Glastonbury was to be a two-day stop, given its importance in the Arthurian tradition, and its splendid Abbey ruins. We shall leave Merlin’s grave and find Arthur’s, Lewis smiled to himself. Rex Quandam Rexque Futurus…
Shona, little Alfred in her arms, entered the room.
‘Well it has been a pleasure having you gentlemen here these last few nights.’
‘Oh, I assure you the pleasure has been all ours.’ smiled Jack.
‘And do make sure if you’re ever in the area again that you drop by and see us all!’ she said.
Tolkien and George stood up from the fireplace and shook hands warmly.
‘It has been most illuminating talking with you Mr Mac Govan-Crow; I only regret we have not had time to talk more.’
George smiled warmly and bowed in appreciation. Then he turned and took the alder wood pipe from the wall above the fire.
‘My mother told me that one day this pipe would be given in friendship to a man who knew about the stars… I am wondering if you are that man, Mr Tolkien. Would you take the pipe in remembrance of the last few days here?’
Tolkien coloured deeply.
‘Mr Mac Govan-Crow…George that is very generous of you; but I can’t take this from you; young Alfred should be brought up with the sound of the flute in his ears; I should only deafen my children with my poor attempts; regretfully I cannot take it, though I am honoured and astonished that you considered it.’
George smiled and nodded in appreciation. ‘Perhaps then another will come who knows of the stars.’
‘Perhaps, I’m sure it will be so.’ Tolkien said. ‘But for my appreciation of your generosity as hosts I should very much like to send you a copy of my book, for young Alfred when it is printed later this year. A meagre gift but not without feeling.’
Shona smiled. ‘That is most generous of you.’
‘Well in that case,’ Barfield said, still at the window, ‘I shall also send a copy of my own children’s book, The Silver trumpet.’
Shona laughed. ‘And you Mr Lewis? Have you nothing for Alfred here?’ she winked.
‘Oh, I’m afraid nothing suitable just yet – but one never knows, one never knows…’
The three friends shook hands with Shona, and said goodbyes to the shy Alfred who hid his face in his mother’s shoulder, and then stepped into the warm morning sun, followed by George who had insisted he walk them to the car park.
‘George,’ Tolkien said, walking a few paces behind his friends; ‘I hope you didn’t think my refusal rude; it’s just too much of a precious thing to give away.’
‘In my culture we store great esteem by what is given rather than what is owned,’ George said, ‘but I understand; you wonder why I offered you such a precious thing when I don’t really know you, and you feel you haven’t earned it.’
Tolkien cleared his throat and nodded gently ‘Yes, I suppose it seems too great a gift when I have offered nothing in return.’
George put his hand on Tolkien’s arm so that he slowed and faced him.
‘You listened.’ His dark eyes were earnest. ‘Our people have been shamed; they have been taken from lands that once belonged to them, their traditions destroyed; I could never go back because although of Siksika blood I do not feel I belong there; I belong here where my son will grow and flourish – but at heart, though I live amongst Englishmen, I think different, because my mother and father brought me up different from others; I was taught the sacredness of our stories; how a story was more important than anything else as it defines a people and offers hope; a story connects us with the Great Spirit, it puts us in accord with nature.’
He paused and looked up at the sky.
‘You think like a poet.’ Tolkien said, and George smiled.
‘Shona knows stories, too, she understands in a way, but not as I do. I will tell my son these stories so they will not be forgotten; he will tell them to his own children and grandchildren and so they will not be forgotten; I feel the power of them when I speak. But I had always felt alone in this. But you, my friend, you listened. You cared about my story and you understood, and you felt it in here, felt their truth.’ he pointed to his chest.
‘You have the same fire in you that I have;’ he continued, ‘we understand things the same way; and you not only know the ancient tales but you make them afresh; you are a creator of stories; and your stories come not from your head but from the Great Spirit, as a gift, am I not correct?’
Tolkien nodded. ‘Yes; yes, I do feel that.’
‘You are my friend and you are my brother;’ George said, ‘that is why I would have entrusted the flute to you; but maybe it will be for Alfred to pass it on to another storyteller when you and I are just figures in someone else’s story!’.
The car was waiting, its engine already rumbling with life, and Lewis and Barfield were loading their packs into the small boot. They then said their goodbyes to George and took their seats.
George took Tolkien’s pack and fitted it in the boot.
‘Goodbye,’ he said, shaking Tolkien’s hand once more.
‘Goodbye, George.’
Chapter 43: Morning
Conall was outside the Red Lion when it opened at half-eleven, and having got himself a pint he sat at one of the outside tables and began to read.
My Dearest Edith,
This morning we are to drive to Glastonbury, having kindly been offered transport so we can get back on schedule. Last night we climbed the hill at Silbury and sat for a while and smoked and talked on the flat top where once some kind of fortress had been built, possibly a Norman motte, though the mound itself is far, far older. The night sky was very clear, and Orion was setting in the west. If only one could travel back in time and see how it all looked when this hill was first raised; perhaps, though, Wells’ Time Machine is not necessary for such a venture, as we have the power of the imagination, with which the past is really no distance away at all, nor other places. For in my mind’s eye the hill seemed as if once it were crested by trees, and it brought to mind Cerin Amroth, and the glade in Roos where you danced for me among the flowers. It all seems so long ago; especially here, in these places built by the old men of the west. They haunt me, Edith; their stories demand telling, and I have neglected them for too long. Over the last two days, however, I have come to realise that my own ‘imaginings’ are far closer to the truth than one might have believed! The star rising over the sea, and the great wave that swamped the coasts - part of that legend survives here, and maybe, now that Unwin is off my back and the Hobbit proofs finally corrected I can return and tell this tale properly, strange as it is; but I shall explain it to you in person, for it would take too long to write…
Suffice to say, I spent far too long these past few days wrangling over what all this might mean, and tying myself into all kinds of knots over whether the story was an historic memory – in which case how was it passed on to me – in the blood, some kind of racial memory, perhaps? Or was it plucked or gifted from some other mind? But the dream always seems so personal, a memory. And I am loath to consider it a memory from a previous existence, though I may have to one day consider that possibility.
Here, at Avebury, I have been reminded of the flood that drowned Boannd in the River Boyne; and how she was behind the Vivien of the Merlin legend; and how Merlin may have been remembered here as both Ymir, twin, and in the name of Marlborough.
Today we shall be driven to Arthur’s Avalon, but my mind is still on Merlin. It occurred to me today, on waking, that Merlin Emrys, the sacrificed youth, holds the key to all of this.
I have, however, cut through the Gordian knot of all this thought, with the sword of poesy – by which I mean that I came to realise, thanks to Barfield, that all these mental gymnastics over myth and history are irrelevant; if our ancestors lived in a world where they spoke in poetry and not prose, and the very world was thereby a mythically-infused place, then there was no distinction between myth and history, and for me to ask the question over which was correct was a symptom of modern western divisive thought. You see, the flood could be both historic and mythic – if we redefine what we mean by both terms. In the worldview painted by Barfield the past was an Eden, where man and God really did walk in the garden in the cool of the day; and elves walked under the stars. And still do if we open our hearts to poetic thinking. How I would love to walk in that world, under the starlit trees with them again. But why do I write ‘again’?
Love to the children.
Your
Ronald
‘Con, are you okay?’ Shen rushed towards him and held him closely.
‘I am.’
‘Really?’
Con smiled.
‘Wolf said you nearly drowned…. It was an accident, right?’
‘Yes. Don’t worry; I’m not that sensitive to what your boyfriend does!’
‘He’s not my boyfriend anymore’
Con made no effort to hide his smile.
‘Thank fuck for that. Can I say for the record that I thought he was a total cock? Well, he wasn’t, but he wasn’t good enough for you.’
Shen laughed.
‘Where is he?’ Con asked, looking behind her, expecting to see him rushing towards him.
‘He’s at his. He’ll have to come and get his stuff some other time.’
‘I’m sorry, though Shen – I didn’t mean to’ he paused, not really knowing what to say.
‘It’s ok. We weren’t really suited; it was only a matter of time…Anyway – you seem different. Lighter.’ She said.
Con smiled and stared over at the banks of the henge. ‘I’d been living in fear, Shen. And guilt – the fact I was here, and she wasn’t – that there might have been something I could have done. but there wasn’t, there really wasn’t.’
‘I know that. You’re a good man, Con.’
‘I’d been scared to feel anything anymore; but that was daft; protecting oneself against feeling – why? Because life hurts; well, yes – it does – but to be alive, to feel, to be, is the most important thing in the world; I saw that when I was seconds away from losing it; everything dropped away, Shen – the defensive stance I’d taken, protecting me, it just shattered, and I saw things – I really saw them, like seeing for the first time…’
And he looked at her now, as if he had never seen her before, and unafraid he raised his hand to her cheek and stroked it.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ She asked again. ‘You seem kind of in shock…’
He laughed. ‘I’m just taking it all in, Shen. I may not have been here today if it hadn’t been for Wolf. I’d have never seen the sun again, these stones… never tasted this beer… never seen you again; I feel like I’ve been given a reprieve. Something must want me alive; I felt before as if I had affronted the universe by surviving when she had died – but the universe had its chance – it could have taken me last night; but it chose not to.’
He remembered Wolf’s theory – that the universe never made things easy; he had been tested to the very limited and had survived; reborn, shining, renewed out of that milky river as his dream of all those years ago had suggested.
‘We go through life just not living; we protect ourselves against truly living because to really open up is to feel things too keenly – but what else is there?’.
He held her gaze, properly, for the first time since the previous year.
‘How’s the deciphering going?’ she asked, looking down at the sheaf of notes in his hand.
Con smiled – ‘Listen, I didn’t get to tell you this yesterday, but Tolkien thinks the Merlin myth happened here – which reminds me, I need to get some information from Wolf.’
‘How do you mean, the myth happened here?’
‘That Merlin is connected to the stones in some strange way; that Marlborough is named after him -and perhaps more….’ An image of Old Man in his glass case rose in his mind.
‘And…’ he took the latest letter and showed it to Shen.
‘Merlin is a twin… and Tolkien links him to Boannd, an Irish Goddess – I knew something about her – connected her to Nut and the Milky Way in my research – but he says about her drowning. I don’t remember that – I knew the Boyne was named after her, but not that she’d drowned…’
He looked into Shen’s dark eyes for some kind of answer.
‘I dream about the river of milk, and the three cows, and of walking into the water, and then twenty years later Mel drowns in the river Braint that she associated with the same dream; it’s like she was enacting the myth, Shen. It’s like she’s Boannd.’
Shen placed her hand on his.
‘Did she go there because of my dream, or did I dream it because of what she would later do?’ Con asked, a question neither he nor Shen was able to answer.
Shen shrugged. ‘I don’t know Con; it’s all too sad and strange.’
Strange. Yes. But the sadness, Con’s habitual sadness, seemed more bearable somehow; before it would have paralysed him with its ferocity, but today he could see beyond it the joy of Melissa’s existence rather than just its tragic end; as if she were finally emerging from behind her own shadow.
‘Shit…’ Con said, suddenly sitting upright ‘is Wolf gone?’
‘Not yet; he’d planned to go today but after last night, he’s asked if he can stay a couple more days.’
‘Bless him. I wasn’t really in a state to thank him last night.’
‘No, and I’m surprised you’re drinking today!’ Shen said.
‘I threw most of last night’s up in the river.’ Con replied.
‘Nice. I had a go at Wolf for not bringing you back here.’
‘I wanted to go back to my van.’
‘You should have gone to hospital!’
‘I was okay.’ Con said, though his neck was still sore, and the graze in his side where the cut-off branch had scraped him when he fell was bruising.
‘Anyway… something weird happened.’
‘Like what?’
‘I woke up about four with the van shaking…. No, behave!’ he said seeing Shen lift an eyebrow and smirking. ‘Really, it was shaking, and the lanterns and cups were swinging…’ he sipped his pint.
‘Anyway, I open my eyes and I can see the cups moving on their hooks and I know, and I mean I know, that hundreds of people are walking past, down the Avenue towards the circle. And I can sense two of them, at the end, kind of rounding off the procession – like chiefs or something. Well, I suddenly come to a bit and I realise I can’t hear voices, just feel their footfalls which are shaking the van – and I’m totally awake but I’m too scared to look outside, as I don’t want to open the door and find hundreds of walkers staring at me in my boxer shorts…but I do decide to peak through the window…’
He drank some more.
‘And?!’ Shen was staring.
‘No one there. Nothing. And the cups and lanterns were still moving, but they stopped shortly after. And I’m there trying to make them move by rocking on the bed, by breathing hard, by jumping up and down and I can’t – nothing I could do in the van would make the stuff move like it had been.’
‘What the fuck?’ Shen said, open mouthed. ‘What do you think it was? A dream?’
‘Dreams don’t make lanterns swing on their hooks, especially not if you’re wide awake and looking at them swinging! I think it was old ones. I think they were walking the Avenue, and that’s what it was for… not for us, but for them, the spirits.’
Chapter 44: Cherhill
‘I do apologise for being awkward,’ Lewis was explaining as they climbed out of the car onto the grass verge, ‘but we had intended to stop at the horse when we arrived three days ago…’
They had not been driving ten minutes, but Mrs Penry-Evans was amenable to the men’s wishes.
‘By all means – besides, we shall take the road south from Calne once you have found Coleridge’s house and join back up to the Glastonbury road in no time.’
All five people exited the car and stood at the bottom of the hill gazing up at the chalk carved horse that stood on its crest, flanked, half a mile to the right, by the Cherhill monument.
‘You know we’ve always driven past on the other side of the hill and so missed this, haven’t we Tom?’
Tom Penry-Evans, squinting against the sun, agreed. ‘We’ve seen the monument, though – had no idea there was a horse here.’
‘It’s rather a grander beast than the hakpen horse, eh?’ Lewis said to Tolkien.
‘Indeed; I seem to recall it was carved by a friend of Stubbs which might explain it – perhaps he had Stubbs do the original drawing, what?’ he smiled.
‘And look – can you see the eye?’ he said. Instead of being a darker patch on the white face the eye seemed if anything brighter, glinting.
‘Glass bottles, wrong-way up – that’s what the eye is made from – rather clever, eh? It catches the light most beautifully in the setting sun I would imagine.’
‘What are they doing up there?’ Barfield asked.
Several figures could be seen working above the horse, laying what looked like lines of cables down on the green hillside.
‘I was about to ask the very same question.’ said Lewis, who decided he didn’t want to waste time on conjecture and clambered over a nearby gate and began striding towards the hill figure.
Barfield eyed Tolkien wondering how Mrs Penry-Evans might take a further delay, but to his surprise the latter lifted her skirts and followed Lewis’s example.
When the party reached the carving, Lewis was already in conversation with one of the workmen, who raised his cap at the approach of the others.
‘This gentleman has told me, and from here you can see it more clearly, that they’re spelling out G E ready for the coronation on the 12th of next month; these are red lamps which will spell out the initials of our goodly sovereign and his wife, and below there’ll be a floodlight that will be trained on the horse.’
‘Every few seconds, you see,’ the workman explained ‘the floodlight will go on and then when it goes off the red lamps will go on, see? We’re testing them this evening as the weather is fine, and we’ll be able to get an idea of how it’ll look on the night – if there are any problems to iron out.’
‘I’m sure it will look splendid my dear man, I only regret we won’t be here to see either the test or the final result, but I wish you luck with it.’
Back in the car they drove slowly through the hamlet of Cherhill which in less than a month, Lewis informed the rest, a great street party would he happening for George VI
‘And no doubt in every town throughout the land – perhaps baked meats from last year’s coronation will coldly furnish forth the tables of this one.’ he jested.’
‘No doubt you think Edward a fool to have given up his throne for the love of a woman?’ Owen said to Lewis.
‘I wonder merely that he had to go fishing across the Atlantic for such a mistress. I’ve never seen the attraction in the American drawl…’
‘I remember George V’s coronation party, though it had an unpleasant end,’ said Barfield; ‘I ate rather too much and was quite sick, as children are wont to do at such functions.’ Nevertheless he was smiling at happier memories of the time.
‘These are austere times, though – then we were on the brink of war and knew it not; the war to end all wars; and here we find ourselves again in a similar strait; let us hope history does not repeat itself.’
‘At least we are too old to fight’ shouted Tom Penry-Evans from the front, above the noise of the engine.
‘Indeed; but that is no relief for our children.’ said Tolkien, frowning. ‘Still, it may not come to that. I pray.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Penry-Evans ‘indeed we do pray for that. Did you know that in Welsh legend the head of Bran was buried in the white hill in London to repel all invaders? It was Arthur that dug it up – and thus the Saxon race were allowed to enter… would that we could find his head again and plant it in the White Hill, then Britain would be safe.’
‘Protected by magic…’ Lewis smiled.
‘As it will be if ever our shores are threatened; there will be more than a war with weapons going on, I assure you; we humble occultists will fight our own war with words and with the mind…’
‘Like the white robed druids and black robed women shrieking on Anglesey who nearly scared off the Romans?’ Lewis asked.
Mrs Penry-Evans laughed heartily.
‘I am sure we should cut such dashing figures, yes. But the Romans did cross the Menai straits and destroy the groves, but they had generals at their backs who would kill their own men at any sign of cowardice…’
‘And what makes you think Herr Hitler wouldn’t do the same?’ Lewis asked, serious now.
They were coming in to Calne.
‘I have no reason to think he would be any different; but the English Channel is a better barrier than the Menai Straits…’
‘Exactly. When Coleridge was here,’ Lewis said, looking out at the village of Calne as they drove through, ‘trying to ween himself off opium in 1815, the Battle of Waterloo had been fought and the threat of invasion, feared for many years, had abated; so however much we fear, we must also remember such times; those 25 miles of sea between us and France are the best defence this island has. And that still holds true today; he who owns the channel owns England.’
‘Albion’ said Barfield
‘Ynys Prydein – The island of the mighty’ sang out the Welshman. ‘And you know what else my people called it? Clas Myrddin: Merlin’s precinct.’
‘Well, maybe if Bran can no longer protect us, Merlin will, wherever he lies now’ Tolkien said.
Chapter 45 The Other One
Con was talking animatedly as they crossed the road to the sanctuary.
Wolf had driven them both here after they’d lunched at the pub; Shen had had to go and do a tarot reading for a couple of Wolf’s friends who had come for the protest, and so Con had been able to ask Wolf all about the questions he’d been mulling over concerning Merlin as twin. Wolf had been more concerned about Con’s state of mind, but he found him animated and relaxed. And between them they had come to a number of realisations about the man in the tomb and the circumstances that had seen his internment therein … and had gone to walk the site to get their thoughts in order…
‘Robert Graves,’ Con was saying, ‘from what I remember - was convinced it was about an actual battle fought here, at Avebury, between the local tribesmen and the incoming Belgae in the centuries before Christ – it was a battle for dominance over the national holy places, but also about language – a change in the alphabet.’
Con was wringing this detail from his memories, from second-hand readings via conversations with Mel, her being reluctant to relinquish her grip on The White Goddess, Graves’ masterwork… details concerning Graves’ interpretation of a mysterious Medieval poem called Cad Goddeu – ‘The Battle of the Trees’.
‘But what seems more likely, and we know more about the date of language changes since Graves’ day – is that that the new languages arrived way before that and so the battle he envisaged took place earlier…’
‘Yep –‘ Wolf said, ‘the new languages came with the arrival of the Bronze Age horse riders; they brought in Indo-European languages – the ancestor of Celtic, in fact; and so the battle for language was between the indigenous Neolithic tribes with their pre-Indo-European tongue and the proto-Celtic speakers…’
‘A battle for language…yes, I remember the warriors in the battle are said to have been trees – and each tree, so Graves said, represented a letter of the alphabet; so there’s a clash of armies but in some sense it’s a clash of letters, of language.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. It was said that the battle could only be won if one side could guess the name of the opposing side – Gwydion wins because he guesses the name of Bran from the alder twigs Bran was holding – names were powerful things in the ancient world; if you knew something’s true name you could have power over it. The druids were said to be able to raise welts on a man’s face just with words. This was an age when a spell was exactly that – to write a word was to have power over it.’
‘We’ve lost all that,’ Con said, ‘ – words have become watered down, splintered, devoid of power… but you think that battle happened here?’ he asked, surveying the concrete posts of the Sanctuary where he had first stopped three days before but which now seemed weeks and weeks ago.
Wolf shrugged ‘Graves did – he didn’t really say why – he just said he thought it was Avebury. The poem states:
A battle was fought
On the root of its tongue
And another fight fought on the back of its head.
It was a black toad
Stalking on a hundred claws,
A spotted serpent ridged with a crest.’
‘And you think that means it was fought here? At the hakpen, the serpent’s head?’ Con asked.
Wolf nodded.
‘And Old Man. I’ve always thought of him as Bran, defeated by the horse-riders headed by Gwydion; I don’t mean he was literally Bran; I mean he was playing that ritual role. I know Ananda argued he died in a re-enactment of the creation myth, with Old Man being a kind of Ymir or Purusha… but I don’t know, the arrow in the throat… I feel it’s a point where that myth becomes enacted in history… that those opposing armies really did meet here, and that Old Man was defeated, and a new language overtook the old one. He was buried and the old tomb closed forever...nearly forever’
Con looked out over the Kennet valley towards the tomb, eyes narrow against the sun.
‘But might it go deeper than that? he asked; ‘This change in language, the battle at the root of the tongue and back of the head… what if it is about a change in consciousness? After this point men are buried individually in round-barrows like those on the hill there, where before they’d been buried together, as a tribe – nameless. It seems to be a change from a more communal state to one that is dominated by individuals; it’s the birth of the selfish ego – the ending of an older way of seeing things…of experiencing things.’
Just then a figure strode over the hill, waving – it was Shen. Con smiled and continued talking.
‘The battle signifies the defeat of the old language. These older tribes were at one with nature in a way the newcomers weren’t – the latter stole their land but didn’t possess the knowledge of unity with it. The old language, you see, enabled one to speak the language of the land, the animals and birds… It’s all in here…’ he said, fumbling in his rucksack, trying to find Tolkien’s letters and notes… Failing to find the exact sheet what he was looking for, he put his rucksack down on the grass and continued speaking off the cuff.
‘It wasn’t just a battle for territory, you see; it’s nothing short of a battle for reality, the victory of the new language made the world solid and concrete, and destroyed the old world described by the old poetic language - before this there was no poetry because all was poetry – all voice was a song; this is why Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil speaks in verse, because he is the oldest - he was around at the start of things, before the Fall of language. Do you see?’
Shen half nodded, but Con knew he was rambling and was losing her attention.
‘Have you never noticed how everything Tom Bombadil says is in verse – not necessarily rhyming but it has a poetic metre? I didn’t think about it until I read it in these letters. You read his words as prose because that’s what you’re used to seeing on a printed page…but when read without preconceived ideas you’ll see it’s poetry!’
‘Who’s Tom Bumble-what?’ Shen asked.
‘Haven’t you read Lord of the Rings?’ Con asked, surprised.
‘I saw the films, but they didn’t make me want to read the books…’
‘Oh, the books are better.’ Con said. ‘But Bombadil wasn’t in the films. Basically, he speaks in verse and lives in this kind of harmonic state with nature – inspired by Barfield’s ideas on language, actually – the fall of language – language once being poetic and full of meaning, and describing a world where myth and magic exist as a natural state; but later language becoming more literal, and describing a very different world; the one we live in – disenchanted, narrow.’
Shen put her head on its side, chewing all of this over in her mind.
‘So, what does this have to do with Merlin? Did I miss that bit, or am I being thick?’
‘This was the place of creation where twin was murdered.’ Con said
‘Twin?’
‘Yes – Ymir. Old Man,’ Wolf said, ‘The old man in the Long-Barrow – probably the last priest of Avebury killed and put away by the newcomers; he is the land, he becomes the earth in the original creation myth.’
‘And twin is Merlin.’ Con added.
‘What? What the hell did you two have for lunch? Any weird little grey mushrooms or anything?!’
‘Tolkien mentioned that Emrys and Ymir are related, both meaning twin– remember? And Amesbury and Avebury come from the same word? Well, as Wolf explained to me over lunch, the early sources talk of a figure in the north of Britain named Llallogan or Lailoken, whose story ties in with that of Merlin. Geoffrey of Monmouth drew on this Llallogan to write a book called the Life of Merlin, which isn’t about Stonehenge or Arthur or anything like that at all, but tells of Merlin going mad after a battle and living with his sister, Gwendydd in the forest.’
Wolf continued; ‘Lailoken means twin. Llallogan – literally the other one, as in ’one of a pair’ - Gwendydd is his twin… He lives as a wild man, a kind of shaman, and dies in a mysterious triple death, drowned in a river after falling from a height, catching his foot in an overhanging branch and impaling himself on a fish-spear…’
Con’s scratch in his side suddenly seared in pain…the foot caught in the branch, drowning in the river… he looked at Wolf but Wolf was continuing his exposition – not linking what he was saying to the events of the previous night – and why should he? It was an accident, and my foot was free before he came along…Con thought…
‘He builds a grove or temple in the woods, where he becomes a prophet…’ Wolf was saying, but Con’s mind was racing…
Gwendydd – brightness of day - the morning star or dawn… Merlin, her twin, who becomes imprisoned under the stone: they’re Nut and Geb… starry heavens and the earth below, separated… it’s the creation myth… she is his twin, this Gwendydd… and clearly, as her name suggests, she was associated with the sky… Tolkien’s words … where is his twin, is she in the sky?
Yes Tolkien, Con thought. That’s exactly where she is.
‘But it really happened,’ Wolf was saying, ‘it happened here. The old gods were defeated - the old shaman priest of the old cult will have faced the newcomers – and been killed – Merlin was imprisoned under a stone, in a castle of glass or air, in the earth, entombed… it was a re-envisioning of the creation, the rescuing of the sun through the defeat of the old winter serpent…but they did it here to claim the land, claim ownership – claim their crops, their cows and their wives and daughters…
‘Old Man in West Kennet – he was the last one buried there – with an arrow through his throat. Buried in the chamber which was then sealed so communication with the ancestors would cease and men in individual graves would rule the day.’
This is what they were doing when they shot him in the throat – Con thought, freeing the soma, the sun, from the mouth of the stone serpent. This soma, Con recalled Ananda saying, was often a magic spell or word, the secret of immortality… its extraction from the serpent was the same image as the magic won from Merlin by the enchantress Vivien… or the contents of the well of Nechtan, desired by Boann… and the image came to mind of Old Man, his throat bleeding, lying prone, grey-bearded, the old enchanter…Merlin… his wisdom tricked from him…
Shen was a lot less wordy in her synthesis, and direct in her observations. ‘So, by extension, the bones in the museum… they’re Merlin?’
Con and Wolf looked at each other and shrugged. ‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes.’ Wolf said.
‘Then he’s still imprisoned in a house of glass…’ Shen muttered, sadly.
Chapter 46: The Abbey
They had not stopped after leaving Calne but had driven for a couple of hours in glorious April sunshine through the pretty villages of Wiltshire and Somerset, glimpsing the Somerset levels bathed in a thin mist from the slopes of the Mendips; there, just visible and rising like a pyramidal island at its centre the tor of Glastonbury; they drove past the cathedral at Wells down into the levels and approached the rise of the town, clustered about the feet of the tor and its surrounding group of hills. It was a lush landscape, green and fat.
‘It’s a shame you won’t be here in a week or two, when the apple blossom comes.’ Violet said; ‘Avalon means apple trees, you know – the isle of apples to which the dying Arthur was taken by his sister Morgan le fay when this was still an island and the monks had yet to drain the levels and establish the water courses or rhines as they are known hereabouts.’
They drove past the ruins of the abbey along the street that would take them to the house on the slopes of the tor that would be there home for the next two days, and resolved to visit the ruins the moment they had unpacked.
***
The ruins lay in the bright afternoon sun, cream and grey against the green lawns at their feet; here ruined archways stood toppled, or reaching, but never to meet again, from opposite sides of the nave.
The men walked solemnly up the ruined nave to where an oblong of concrete lay, and a sign saying this was where the bones of Arthur and his queen had been placed before the altar in the time of Henry II.
‘The tomb of Arthur – an impossible thought, so the Welsh would have us believe,’ Tolkien said. ‘To think the bones of Arthur lay here. Where are they now, I wonder?’
‘Do you think it was all pretence? A money-making scheme dreamed up by greedy abbots trying to gain pilgrims and a king’s favour?’ Lewis asked.
Barfield shrugged. ‘Something was found here, I suspect – they did dig down and find a tomb, I think that is clear from the sources, but whether this was Arthur’s or not I don’t know. Follow me…’
He lead them through the Lady Chapel to a bench that stood a few metres from a sign that said this was the spot where Arthur’s tomb had originally been found.
‘They dug down some 12 or 14 feet as I recall, and found a hollowed out oak bole with the bones of a huge man with wounds to the head, and a woman with golden hair at his feet. Now I’ve seen pictures of similar coffins and skeletons with hair preserved in Denmark from the Bronze Age – maybe this place had been sacred for a long time and they had dug up the grave of a bronze age king.’
‘But they knew where to look – and there was the clearly phoney lead cross…’ Lewis interjected.
‘Yes, but I think they knew where to dig because the coffin had already been moved when they had built the cloister – they had already found the coffin, known the legends of Arthur in Avalon and had put two and two together, as they thought this was the place – then when Henry wanted to see the grave they dug it up...’
Barfield looked sad.
‘What is it Owen?’ Lewis asked.
‘I was here once before,’ he said, smiling wanly. ‘On this very bench. It’s where I met with my Cornish girl, the unrequited love I told you about.’
‘We had been corresponding since the previous summer, I full of hope and she, well, I misread, perhaps, the nature of the friendship. And when I next had chance to come down, she was staying with relatives near here and so we said we would meet. I was here early and she took an age to show, and we picnicked here on the lawns on bread and cheese, and little else I recall, for she had been running late and had only time to rush into the bakers and dairy.
‘I was a shy boy, you know, and she was a vivacious young thing and I’m afraid I sat in stunned silence most of the time, like Parsifal before the Grail.’ He laughed.
‘Well, I said I would write, and I did, but she sent a very short letter in reply saying I was sweet and shy and would I come down and see her again if I was passing; and I said yes, but I only got one letter more, saying she didn’t think it was the right time for us.’
He looked over at the fallen arches and sighed.
‘But you fell in love again, Owen?’ Lewis said.
He smiled. ‘Many times. And as I said I think I had an idea of the girl which perhaps wasn’t overly realistic; I put her on a pedestal, you see; I wish she had given me the chance to find out who she really was; it’s easy to idolize a goddess, but I think you can only truly love a woman when you see her warts and all; I think you need to sympathise and want to protect; no man ever wished to protect an Aphrodite or an Athene.’
‘Perhaps it is best to leave such women as muses, Owen’ said Lewis.
‘Possibly, Jack; I wonder what would happen if you were to marry one’s muse?’
Tolkien coughed. ‘It would not be such a disaster, I would think,’ he said, colouring, thinking of his beloved Edith; ‘one must always remember what one saw and that the eternal feminine shines through, however used one may be to her particular habits and behaviours. Did you ever consider finding her again?’.
Owen shook his head.
‘I don’t imagine it would have been fair on either of us. Would Goethe wish to chance upon Lotte again? It was not meant to be. Had it meant to be then fate would have arranged another meeting. I could have gone looking, but I didn’t. Part of me knew it was futile. There are perhaps stronger souls who do not give up and who persevere; and if fate looks kindly on them then the first meeting and parting is but the overture in a much longer symphony...’
Tolkien sighed; fate had decreed he should lose his Edith aged 17, and he had waited for 3 years for her, only to find her now engaged; but he had won her back; was their such a symphony as Owen spoke of? The hum-drum everyday life would often make one forget, but he would remember their early years and her dancing for him in the glade of hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire; Oh, my Luthien! He thought – and then suddenly he realised he’d left his letters in his bedside drawer at Church Cottage! Damnation! He would have to write to George for them when he got back to Oxford.
‘Your talk of Cheese has piqued my hunger, Owen.’ Lewis said. ‘It must be nearing tea-time and I warrant the George and Pilgrim on the High Street serves good fair. Cheese pickles and ale sound marvellous.’
‘One day, Jack I hope your heart dictates your life as much as your stomach!’ Owen said.
Chapter 47 Release
They could tell something was amiss from the shouting outside; but it was only on exiting the pub that they saw the smoke. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the manor, a heavy low black mist drifting across the road into the circle and bringing with it an unpleasant acrid smell.
Earlier in the day Con had retired to his van, having driven it to the village and parked it down the road from Shen’s house, and next to Wolf. They had visited the museum, and then afterwards made for the church to look at the font, only to find it roped off with workmen repairing some of the flagstones at its base. Con had returned to his van and had slept. He was woken by a rapping on the windows – it was Wolf, asking him if he wanted to eat. They had eaten at Shen’s before deciding to head to the Red Lion, for a hopefully more relaxed evening than the previous one. But they weren’t to get their wish.
‘Did you hear that? Someone said it was the museum.’ Wolf said, starting to pick up his pace, the smell of smoke getting stronger.
In the gardens in front of the museum a small crowd had gathered, while others were trying to get near to the stone building that was belching smoke through its broken-down doorway; the new extension was on fire, its pretty beechwood shingles smouldering like an old smoke-house; though there was more smoke than flames; the setting sun shining blood red through the dark haze.
‘Has anyone called the fire brigade?’ Con shouted. He turned and could see Shen was on her mobile – she was nodding.
‘It’ll be automatic – from the alarm in the museum…’ Wolf shouted back at them.
Con only now noticed the alarm.
I wonder how long it’s been burning, he thought; it’s gone eight o’clock, hardly anyone would have been here to see when it started. A couple of individuals in National Trust uniforms were running backwards and forwards with items from the museum, leaving green plastic crates full of objects clear of the smoking building.
‘Fuck – we’ve got to get him out…’ Con shouted back at Shen
‘Con, be careful – the fire brigade will be here soon – ‘
How soon, Con wondered. He and Wolf approached the building together – a wall of heat made them wince and cower back, but they could see within the museum, against a dull orange glow, the cabinets of axes and pots, already opened by the curators.
‘What’s happened?’ Wolf shouted at one of the National Trust team.
‘It’s something in the new wing; electrical fault or something – look…’ he thrust a plastic folder into Wolf’s hands, ‘if you want to help, it’s the Disaster Plan – these…’ he said pointing, ‘are the priority items…’ he looked up ‘I know we’ve been told to wait – the fire brigade are on their way – but I can’t just sit here and watch it burn…’
Wolf took the folder –
‘Con – straight ahead – those pots in the case there, they need bringing out…’
Con ran into the building, glancing to his left to where the new wing was aflame; a thick dense fog of black swirled below the ceiling like an upside-down stormy sea, searing hot. On the floor lay three empty fire extinguishers, useless against this size of fire. The museum itself, despite the smoke, seemed safe, its stone walls protection against the flames that were engulfing the wooden frame of the new wing. Con moved forward and took a pot in one hand and a bronze axe head in the other.
Others now had arrived, spurred on by Con and Wolf a chain of people had begun passing objects out of the museum. Con turned and handed the objects to a figure behind him, then turned back to rescue more.
Then in the distance the sirens of a fire engine could be heard.
‘Thank fuck’ shouted Wolf from the doorway.
‘Wolf – what about Merlin?’ Con shouted, trying to be heard above the bellowing of the flames.
Wolf entered the building momentarily.
‘Fuck it’s too dangerous, Con. I think it’s too late. It’s time to get out.’
Con glanced towards the new wing, shielding his face with his arm; showers of sparks were raining down across the doorway that separated the two areas.
‘I must try.’ He shouted and grabbed a crate from the floor and ran in.
He was in a cube of fire, filling from the top with a smoke that was viscous, a dark scum. He threw himself on his knees where the heat was less and the smoke had not yet reached, and there, before him, in the mock stone chamber that was now dripping with liquid fire, lay the bones, grinning against the conflagration above it; mock-stone warped and dripped in the heat, false drystone walling blistering and bulging just inches from the bones – the glass front of the display shattered and empty, a kerb of crystal shards cast before it.
Con edged forward, as low as he could manage crunching his way over the mosaic of broken glass– trying to breathe through his nose so as not to sear his throat. He was in there seconds – he tried to reach out to the bones and pull them to him, but it was too hot. He edged backwards into the main museum, gasping. Then he felt a figure push past him in breathing equipment.
The mask was lifted for a moment ‘Get the fuck out!’
It was Hayden.
‘The bones’ – Con shouted – ‘I’ve got to rescue the bones’
Hayden pushed him back.
‘Don’t be so fucking stupid, Con – get out – you’ll get yourself killed’
Two more figures arrived and pulled Con back to the door.
‘I’m okay’ he said, pulling himself away.
Then, somehow, he was outside in the cool air.
He lay breathing heavily, dizzy and shaken, a blanket from who knows where about him, and all around him was chaos: shouts, orders, hoses being dragged around - fire-fighters against the flames. People taking boxes of rescued artefacts away from the fire; silhouettes against the flames; noise; the flash of blue lights…
Con moved further away from the building against the low wall of the Manor garden – then Shen, who had been desperately trying to find him, rushed over and held him close.
‘I couldn’t get them, Shen’ Con said, sat on the grass, his back to the flint wall.
Shen held him close, too close – he pushed her away to breathe. ‘Where’s Wolf? Can you get me some water? Fuck, I feel weird.’
As she left to find him a drink another figure bent over him;
‘Wolf?’
No. It was a firefighter. And he was holding a plastic crate.
Con looked down at the contents of the box; staring up at him was a single skull and the fragment of antler. He looked at Hayden shocked.
‘Thank you.’
‘Another ten seconds and it would have been gone; and you too, you idiot.’
Hayden looked down at him and then knelt by his side.
‘Are you okay? Did you breathe in any smoke?’ Con shook his head. ‘A bit, probably. Not much.’
‘There’s fuck all left in there now,’ Hayden continued ‘– everything in that display is destroyed; it’s all ash; they’ll never be able to rescue any of it. If this had still been in there it’d be ash…and so would you! You’re fucking mad. It’s just bones.’
‘Maybe to most people. But not to us.’
Hayden’s face creased up with conflicting emotions.
‘You could have died, Con!’
Con shrugged. ‘I just wanted to save him.’
Hayden lent against the wall and laid his hands over his face.
‘Look. They won’t know - if you take it.’ he glanced over his shoulder at the chaos ‘– they won’t know that it wasn’t just destroyed with the rest of the stuff – I couldn’t grab it all – just the head – so there’ll be fragments still in there for them to find’ as he spoke he was taking the objects out of the box and wrapping them in Con’s jacket.
‘I don’t care what you fucking do with it, but this isn’t happening, okay? I never did this – you got to swear on this; don’t you dare let this come back on me… just take it and go…’
And he stood and turned and then was gone.
Con couldn’t see Shen but could make out Ananada, arrived from the pub, helping Wolf with boxes; the National Trust men were starting to organise the piles of artefacts, looking around at the scatter of boxes, at the crate near Con.
By the time they saw the box was empty Con had disappeared. He was walking south out of the gardens, down the side path to the car park, where he could see the great hill of Silbury low on the horizon in the dusk, his jacket with its contents in one hand. He stopped and took out his phone:
I’m taking Merlin to Silbury, said the text, and he sent it to Shen.
***
Coughing, spitting, dizzy from the smoke, tired with running, he kept looking back - was she following? Don’t look back a voice seemed to say, trust: don’t look back.
His head reeled and as he ran he seemed to see images flashing before him, great snakes, entwined, their scales slipping past each other with a smooth hiss; faces, water, images of conflict; a man in feathers with antlers on his brow standing on the hill…
I must get this away, must take it to the white hill, the head of Bran, head of Bran, player of the alder flute pipe… I must take this away…
Behind the hill the first edge of the lunar disk had emerged above the horizon.
Con somehow made it to the foot of Silbury, despite the darkness swimming about his head, and the hoarseness of his breathing. His burden in one hand he began to climb, hiding in the grass when another fire engine passed by; and no longer stopping to look to see if Shen were following him.
At the summit, sick and breathless, he slumped on the grass, an awful dizziness threatening to overcome him; and he drifted in and out of dream; words… he could hear words…
The singing of the ravens at the dawning of the world tell me that there shall be a great battle today. I shall put on my hood of speckled-calfskin, and my cloak of crow’s feathers, on my breast the amber pendant, the high twigs of alder in my hand. I shall dress my hair with the paste of the milkstone from the riverside, draw it back from my forehead; my cheeks I shall redden with the blood of the blackberry. At my side, the smooth axe from the Mother’s mountains shall hang, at the other my shield of alder. And unless they guess my name they shall leave un-victorious.
I have long awaited this day; since my mother’s mother’s day they have been among us; with their broad pale faces and the tamed beasts they ride; they first brought us gifts; knives of the sun-metal created from the fire; then the drink that makes men mad.
They shall ask for the land, these sons of the frenzied one, as if a man can own the land; it is the land on which our ancestors walked, within which they still dwell. But they do not see them. They see just the surface of things; they see the grass but not the blood in the soil; they see the rough skin of the trees but not the golden fire within; they hear not the language of the birds for to them it is just noise.
We knew they were coming. The gods above foretold it. The heavens shifted; we built the circle to anchor the Heavenly Mother to her husband the Earth; we built first hill beside the mother-stream to anchor the sky so that once again we could see the starry womb pregnant with the light on the favoured day; but still it changed. The sky has fallen. The axle of the world has broken; the straight path made crooked and the wise serpent’s treasure shall be robbed.
Our young men wear their hair now like the newcomers: braided and held by gold; their eyes have become hard like them; they covet their bows and their man-killing arrows; they dishonour the spirits; they are angry like the bear and the wolf; our daughters look upon the newcomers with hunger; they learn their words; they drink from their cups but not from the cup of their own ancestors.
But I, who am the first and the last, shall drink from the cup of the Old Ones; I shall imbibe the milk of the three kine, of the plant of vision, the plant of dreaming, and the grey serpent’s plant, and shall await them in the ring of dancing trees, at the serpent’s eye. The high twigs of alder will be in my hand, and the bones of my people about me. I, who am oldest and youngest, longest of days, shall rest tonight with my ancestors.
Thrice have I bathed in the waters. Lo, now, do I purify myself in the smoke of the sacred herbs; I pass it over me with the ghost owl’s wing. Ancestors, I bid thee welcome. See how the smoke curls; Lo, do I anoint my face and head with smoke; Lo do I purify my chest, my arms, my navel; Lo, do I step over the embers so that there is no part of me that is not purified.
Brides of the Bee attend to me; eldest, crone, comb my hair and whiten what time has already made white with the milkstone from the river; daughter, bloody my cheeks with the berry juice, mark my forehead with the sacred sign, the eye of the sun; daughter’s daughter, most beautiful, blacken my eye sockets with the ash of charred herbs, sing over me your songs.
I sing to you, Ancestors, Old Ones. Make me your mouthpiece; may my limbs be your limbs; live again through me. There is not part of me that is not sacred. I am a seven-tined stag; I am the land – that is all that I am. I go down to the earth and become the bones of the land.
Oh the land is sacred; the waters of the mother are sacred; oh, shall I drink from the waters of the breast of the mother; oh, shall I drink from the waters of the eye; oh shall I drink of the water in which the star-stones have been placed, thrice three in number. Oh, shall I drink of the bitter herbs, and the seeing herb; of the grey-serpents plant, of the plant of vision; of the wheaten brew mixed with the milk of the un-ridden mare, sweet with meadowsweet and honey. Lo shall it give me a powerful voice! Lo it shall revive within me the voice of my ancestors.
I lift to my lips the cup of my people; see where it is formed in the shape of the vision, adorned with the spiralling powers, with the lozenge, with the wave it is made holy. Lo do I drink. Aah! See how the fire now burns within me. I drink again. Pure am I, empty for the milk of the mother; purged through fast. It burns within me with the heat of the nine maidens who prepared it, to my mouth from their mouths. Fire in my belly; soon it shall warm my limbs; soon the fire will be in my head and then shall I see with the Eye of the Old Ones.
Light the fire, old woman, mother and maid, from the embers of the sacred herbs. Light the fire and cast open the doors.
I see within me that they come. Open the doors to the sun! Open them so that they may see me waiting here within the eye of the snake where since the start of things the Holy Ones have dwelt.
See! They come. Place in my hands the alder; place around my shoulders the crow-feather cloak; place around my throat the adder; on my head the horns of the white deer, the white roebuck; the wings of the lapwing flutter about me; lo do I hear the baying of the whelp of the underworld, bright by the river that I ready myself to cross...
Come, sons of the Frenzied One. Do you not see that I am ready? I, who am Twin, brother to her who stretches above us; our goal and consolation.
Chapter 48 The Wager
Barfield, Tolkien and Lewis were sitting on the pyramidal rise of Glastonbury Tor, their backs against the great ruined tower of St Michael’s church facing west to where the sun was sinking into the distant Bristol channel; below them a few lamps were being lit in the town, and lines of pale blue peat smoke rose from the chimneys of the houses. The abbey lay mostly obscured by the rise of Chalice Hill, and the half-moon lay high in the southern sky.
‘It’s just … I was thinking.’
‘Oh yes? What about Tollers?’ Jack asked.
‘Arthur: his name means the bear; and he is the son of Uther Pendragon, that is terrible head dragon. Now, I don’t know if you were aware, but the pole star used to be in Draco, the constellation of the dragon, and now, after some time, it has moved in Ursa Minor, the little bear. The pole has left the dragon for the bear. Might it be possible, I wonder, if the accession of Arthur to the throne after Uther is somehow symbolic of the move of pole star from Draco to Ursa Minor?’
Lewis looked Tolkien directly in the eyes.
‘Seriously, Tollers? Is this all we have to look forward to this trip? Give it a rest man and enjoy the view. As soon as the sun is set we’ll walk into town and get some decent beer, not like that varnish they sold at the Red Lion.’
‘That was perfectly good ale, Jack, you were too grumpy to appreciate it.’ Barfield said.
'I know a good beer when I taste one.’
‘You couldn’t have tasted if even it was dishwater – my word, were you feeling sorry for yourself!’
‘Utter rubbish. Anyway – I am now as fit as a fiddle. And already my mind is racing with ideas for our wager.’
The idea for the wager had occurred to Lewis after leaving the Abbey earlier in the day. Once more grumbling over the paucity of ‘the sort of books one likes to read’ Lewis had decided that the simple answer was to write them oneself, and had decided that two interesting subjects, or subjects that at least might provide scope for an interesting premise, were space travel and time travel. They should all, Lewis had suggested, decide to write a book on one of those very subjects, and see what kind of book resulted.
‘So what is it to be – space or time travel?’ Tolkien asked.
‘Well, we shall have to draw straws.’ Lewis answered.
‘Better than that let’s let nature decide – that crow on the tree down there – if it flies to the left you do space travel, to the right time travel.’
‘Done.’
They sat a few minutes watching the crow bouncing on the branch, wondering if it had, in fact, found its resting spot for the night, when the crow cawed and lifted itself skywards and turned to the left.
‘A space story it is, then – my word – that’s rather challenging. Space provides undreamed of vistas and creatures with which to play.’ Lewis beamed. Tolkien smiled to himself; he had wanted the crow to fly left, for he already had ideas on his time-travel story.
‘What about you, Owen? Can we tempt you to write?’ Lewis asked.
Barfield smiled sadly and shook his head.
‘I tried once but I don’t believe fiction to be my forte.’
‘From what I read, Owen, it was a splendid piece of work.’
‘Nice of you to say so, Jack – but you’re alone in that opinion; I think to write fiction you need a flair for storytelling that I just don’t have; my writing was a mixture of veiled autobiography and a vehicle for my ideas and I’m not sure whether that makes for a good read…’
Tolkien was already formulating his tale. It’ll be about the wave – the dream of the wave, and of knowledge from the past being passed down in memory… flashes of past times through imagination. He thought. He looked skywards where the clouds in the west had shaped themselves like a great eagle, set on fire with burning wings by the setting sun.
The eagles have come from the west… he thought. The eagles of the lord of the west come to Numenor…
He lit his pipe, content.
Chapter 49: The Re-Uniting
When Shen crested the hill she could make out the lone figure of Conall sat on his haunches at the southern rim of the flattened top, a blanket round his shoulders, and his hands clasping the skull to his chest; his face was pale under the sooty marks from the fire and he smelled of smoke.
‘Hayden got him for us.’ he said
‘I know. It was kind of him.’
She sat beside him and took the skull in her hands;
‘It’s light – I expected it to be heavier,’ she said. ‘Do you really think this was Merlin?’
‘Merlin’s a figure made up of many strands of legend – but the part of it that relates to his foundation sacrifice – well, this man embodied that myth, acted it out in the flesh; he’s as much Merlin as any might claim to be.’
Con gazed over the valley of the Kennet; the last light of the dying sun was casting a deep orange glow over the fields, striking against the deep blue of the sky where the first stars were pricking through the gloom; there on the rise opposite was West Kennet Long-Barrow, a sliver of earth on the horizon like a low lying crouching beast; and there behind it, huge against the horizon, the full moon had risen; here were the dark groves of trees around the Swallowhead, and dark against the evenings fire amongst the ripe corn, stiff and upright on this breezeless eve, a crop circle
To the south west two bright points had begun to shine in the sky. Shen asked what they were –
‘Planets – that’s Saturn and Mars – in a month they’ll pass close to each other over in the same part of the sky, just above Spica, that’s the ear of corn in the hand of Virgo… at the moment they’re trailing Leo.’
‘It’s all so beautiful, Con. What was it all about, Con, this place?
He looked out over the Kennet valley, where the waters of the mother were sending their cool breath skywards as vapour. He was still slightly befuddled from the smoke, and when he started talking, it was as if another voice were speaking through him, and he was listening as much as talking:
‘I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it started in the north; I think when the first farmers reached as far as they could go north, to Orkney, they looked up and saw the sky had changed; the diamond of Crux, the womb of the mother, could no longer be seen over the southern horizon; and her breasts, Cassiopeia, which formerly had set, now remained in the northern sky… yet they would have been in trade contact with tribes to the south, where the womb still rose. In the north Sirius had replaced Crux as marking the point of the rising of the midwinter sun – but perhaps for the first time people realised that the world was changing; the old stars were not fixed, and were slipping away.
‘I imagine some visionary, some Orcadian priest or priestess, having a dream; in the dream she sees the moment of creation, when the sky mother, as the Milky Way ringing the horizon, lies joined to the Earth – Nut and Geb before their separation – and she imagines creating a monument in that image, to cement in time that moment of creative union; perhaps it might keep the stars in place, stop time, reverse the change that threatens to end the world as they know it. But it also celebrates the creation – it marks where the Lady rises from her lover, the entrances of the henge marking where she rises and sets, and celebrates the new sun that is born from the union of earth father and sky mother, the creative twins.
‘I think it was a time machine, a way of returning to the point of creation, to the union of mother and father – to Eden; it was literally heaven on earth, for to enter the henge was to enter the body of the mother for rebirth; the entrances were star-gates that would allow passage into the body of the stars.’
Shen was looking up at him, but he seemed unaware, deep as he was in his reverie.
‘They were for the dead, these places. The bodies of the dead in Neolithic times, those that were not placed in the Long-Barrows, we think were placed in rivers and streams… but their souls – in Egypt the souls of the dead would enter the sky mother, the Milky Way, whose image was painted on the lids of their coffins; they’d pass through her body, the night sky, to be reborn with the sun in the eastern horizon, or to become stars themselves in the sky.
‘And when the living came here, it was to return to that state of paradise before the fall… perhaps in that state, with mother sky and father earth joined they stood out of time, and were united with those that they had lost to time and were dear to them; just as earth and sky united, so the dead might return as in the beginning and walk amongst the living…’ he thought of the footsteps he had heard that very morning, heading towards the circle from the direction of dawn; an invisible gathering under the fading stars…
‘This was the place where brother and sister were re-united…’ he said, wistfully.
‘But it was seasonal - each year the sun would be born anew, and the twins rent apart, only to return and reunite again the next year as creation was renewed. But the newcomers arrived, and they sealed the tombs; they killed the embodiment of Twin and buried him forever.’
Then silence; the sun had set yet the sky retained its milky glow; far below blackbirds called in the dusk, and the odd car rumbled past the hill. After a while Con turned, his eyes more focussed and present.
‘Shen, I’ve been thinking. I need to apologise to you.’
‘What for?’
‘For shutting you out.’
She didn’t speak; it would have been easy to deny it, to tell him not to be so stupid; but he was right; he had held her at arm’s length.
‘It’s about Mel, Shen. I didn’t tell you the truth; it wasn’t an accident. Shen, she killed herself; she drowned herself. And I was here. I got a phone call from Anthony saying she was missing, and I was just relieved – I thought she’d run off with the other guy from uni who he’d scared off a few weeks before. But I was here with you and I didn’t give it a second thought – not until I got a phone-call from Mum saying they’d found her body. That’s why I left without saying bye.’
He was staring at the floor, unable to meet her gaze, but had he done so he would have been met with a look of shock and bemusement.
‘I – I thought she died at the end of May?’ she said
‘No – why would you think that?’
‘Your letter – it was written the day of the funeral, and I got it in early June, I presumed she’d died just before that…’
‘No. There had to be an inquest and all that sort of stuff. They didn’t release her body for 3 weeks.’
‘Oh Con.’
‘It’s okay – it was hard at the time, but…’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m so sorry I misjudged you. I thought when you left it was because you didn’t like me – and that’s why you didn’t write. I didn’t realise that she had already…’
‘God Shen, of course I liked you – I just was in shock and couldn’t think straight – and when I did write I was drunk and I blamed myself for not listening to the text, for being here, for being happy with you… that’s why I wrote that.’
‘I thought you were just pushing me away – that you’d decided, before Mel, that you didn’t want to be in contact…’
‘No, no – that’s not the case, Shen. God – have you been thinking that all this time? No!’
Their eyes met, both brimming with tears.
‘I felt bad because I’d ignored the signs – she had been writing lyrics again, talking about singing, but a lot of the lyrics seemed to be about death, but I never put two and two together. I think when Anthony scared off her new man, she was distraught – that’s why she did it.’
Shen said nothing, just letting him talk – but she couldn’t help but see him in a new light – casting off that perception that he had played her; she wanted to hold him.
‘She was drunk, Shen. She’d had a bottle of wine at least they reckoned – I just wish she had called me. I don’t understand why she didn’t call me. She’d left a note, of sorts, and she’d filled her bag with quartz from the riverbed. She was naked but her bag was slung across her chest.’
‘Did the note explain why?’ she asked.
Con shook his head. ‘No. It was written in her Collected Coleridge, on Kubla Khan – she’d written the words to Damsel with a Dulcimer in the margins, and I guess she’d looked at it, her biggest hit, before she walked into the water. She’d written a line across the top.
I’m going to the river to die;
No more to drink the milk of paradise
She wrote it before she went in – the pen was still in the book –‘
He rummaged in his rucksack and took out the book he was referring to, opening it and showing the page to Shen with a shaking hand.
The handwriting was wild, large, filling the entirety of the top of the two open pages - a manic hand; a drunken hand.
I’m going to the river to die no more to drink the milk of paradise
Shen traced the words with her small index finger; she then turned back a page and read some of the notes and lyrics Melissa had written there.
Then she turned back to Kubla Khan and then back a page; twice.
She was frowning.
‘Are you sure she meant to die, Con? I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I’m not sure…’
‘Why?’ Con asked.
‘Think of Bumbledore or whatever his name is…’
‘Bombadil.’ Con said and frowned.
‘Think what you were saying about him earlier… I may not be right but…’
‘I said that Tolkien made him talk in verse…’
‘Yes, and that you didn’t realise it was in verse as you were expecting prose… look – on the page before her note, down one of the margins – it’s not in the same pen but it’s a verse, right?
I seek for the Mother
To cry no more
to find where her cool white waters rise…
In the depths of the water
To sigh no more
Lie stones fallen from the skies
Is that from one of her songs?’
‘No – it’s some of the new stuff she was working on. Milk of Paradise was to be her new album.’
‘Con, the suicide note… read the two together, these verses and the note…’
Con took the book and read aloud:
I seek for the Mother
To cry no more
to find where her cool white waters rise…
In the depths of the water
To sigh no more
Lie stones fallen from the skies
I’m going to the river To die
no more To drink the milk of paradise
I don’t get it; they do sort of rhyme, but it doesn’t mean they’re connected, and it doesn’t change the meaning…
‘Yes it does, you div! It’s a verse – it’s like Bomble-dil, whatever, she’s been speaking in rhyme all along, but you’ve missed it! You’ve separated ‘die’ and ‘no more’ because she’s written ‘no more’ slightly lower and closer to ‘to’; but follow the metre of the first verse!
I seek for the Mother
To cry no more
To find where her cool white waters rise…
In the depths of the water
To sigh no more
Lie stones fallen from the skies
I’m going to the river
To die no more
To drink the milk of paradise
‘To die no more, Con – it’s a verse about rebirth, about overcoming death, not going to one’s end!! It’s about rising again and not ever dying – like an initiation into the mysteries.’
Con stared at the words on the page, mouthing them again and again.
He looked up at Shen.
‘Mel was always fucking crap at punctuation! But - but what about the stones in her bag?’
‘How many were there?’
‘Nine.’
‘How big?’
He held up a hand and indicated an inch and a half.
‘That’s not that heavy Con… and nine? Nine? What sort of stones?’
‘Quartz.’
Quartz stones? God, Con! Clocha Geala! Shining stones! It’s an old Irish folk remedy – putting nine pieces of quartz in a pan of water and bringing it to the boil – you’d then let it cool and drink it over nine hours or days… my granddad used to do that for a sore throat! She was studying Celtic, right? She would know about that! Here’s this river with quartz in it, with which she’s obsessed – she’s going to be reading up on the Celtic use of quartz isn’t she? Now she’s not put hundreds of these things in to weigh her down, has she – she’s got nine. I think she went into the water to get the stones and slipped when drunk…’
‘the water with its milkstones…’ he stuttered, ‘she was trying to make a magical drink to revive her voice – to revive within her the song, like in Coleridge’s poem!
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
‘The Milk of Paradise, Shen, that’s what she was doing, she was collecting stones…to drink a draught of wisdom from the starry waters; she was like Boannd, seeking wisdom from Nechtan’s well but like Boannd she was overwhelmed… She was going to start again, wasn’t she – start singing again…she didn’t commit suicide, did she?’
‘No Con, I really don’t think she did.’
And then he began to cry; he cried because she should have been here today, and that she had not meant to die; that in those last moments, like him, she would have fought for her life but no Wolf had been there to save her; but he cried happy that she had been writing again, that she hadn’t been walking around in a fog of misery and despair – he was happy that he hadn’t missed any signs – she simply had gone there to enact some kooky rite in the water, to gather stones. Some kooky rite… just as he had! But the myth that possessed her was stronger than she knew.
On that last evening, a year earlier, they had both gone to the water for rebirth, he to re-enact a dream, and she to gather stones. He had been connected to her at the end – there was no mistake; the two particles apart in space were connected, but she had slipped in the water and he had stayed on the bank; he had felt no anger and despair as there was none to feel – he had felt joy, the joy she had been feeling – the elation of starting again; at that moment they had been together; and he thought of Alfred and of the stars of the bear, and the gift of the alder-wood flute, and it’s message ‘thank you for reuniting brother and sister’ and now he lent forward and cupped Shen’s cheek in his hand, his tears flowing freely, and said the same thank you to Alfred’s granddaughter.
‘Uniting brother and sister, Shen, that’s what he said. As if he knew.’
‘Don’t just thank me and Grandad, Con, thank Tolkien; if it hadn’t been him we’d have continued to read that poetry as prose.’
‘Thank you, John Ronald!’ He said, laughing. And he looked up at the great bear, at the double star, fizzing and dancing through his tears.
‘There they are, united. We are all united…Just think, men and women have stood here on this hill for thousands of years looking up at these same stars. And today – today it’s our turn. The stars are shining for us, Shenandoah.’
The mention of her full name caused her to catch her breath. She looked up at him and he returned her gaze without fear. Her brows were arched as if asking a question, imploring him for an answer; and he saw that she was trembling.
And it seemed to him that they were a bridge between the energies of the world below and the spinning firmament above – and when he held the side of her face with his hand, she leant into it.
‘Oh Shenandoah…’ and as he spoke her name water welled in his eyes so the stars seemed to spin again about her beautiful head like a nimbus of pale light; and she was crowned by Cassiopeia and the Milky way seemed to flow out of her shoulders upwards into the sky. At last they kissed, and he was surprised to feel her trembling still. Long they kissed, then he held her close to him, and he spread his coat beneath them so they could lie upon the dewy grass.
Later, they walked down the hill along the gently spiralling path in the bright moonlight, not caring now who saw them; carefully treading this age old path, happy and carefree; the western sky tinged with the palest golden green, the last pale glow of the dying of the sun.
Epilogue The Burial
Shen and Wolf were sitting by the window of Church Cottage, coffee in hand, while Con paced backwards and forwards in front of the empty fire grate.
‘I can’t think of anywhere more appropriate – or anywhere less obvious. Like you said, Wolf, we can’t very much bury him atop Silbury; archaeologists will dig him up in a few weeks, or sooner if they see there’s been a disturbance.’
‘I still like the idea of the well in the pub’ Shen grinned. ‘Rhian would be up for that.’
Wolf smiled. ‘She would, but it’s too public; and when the pub is sold on, who knows what will happen. Basically, it’s a nightmare as the whole bloody complex is an archaeologists’ wet dream, so wherever we put him he’s going to be found sooner or later.’
‘Which is why there is the best idea’ Con said, pointing straight out the window towards the church.
‘Excellent thinking on your part, Con, I must say.’
Con smiled. ‘Well, it’s in a state from the building work, and once that’s finished they’re not going to want to be digging up the floor for a while… and when they do – they’ll presume it’s some Christian relic, and he’ll be allowed to stay in the earth, not shoved in a museum again – we all saw how that ended!’
Con walked to the window.
‘Can’t be long now.’
Shen glanced at her watch. ‘It’s gone one so… here they are…’
From the doorway of the church two men emerged in white overalls, bearing a holdall full of tools; they walked to their van, locked the tools inside and headed down the street towards the pub. Once they were out of sight the three friends exited the cottage and crossed the road, a bundle under Con’s arm.
'I kind of would have preferred the stream – but what about when it dried up?' Con said.
The interior of the church was empty; as before the area around the font was roped off with hazard tape, and a number of flagstones lay on end against the wall, waiting to be put back in place; the ground, though, was better covered than yesterday; a number of stones had been put back in place, including those immediately in front of the font; in front of these the sand underneath had been levelled, ready for the last stones to go down.
‘Well you’d better start’ said Con, nervously to Wolf, eyeing the door. ‘They’ll be a while but what if someone else walks in?’
Wolf walked over to a pew and picked up a hard-hat and put it on.
‘They’ll presume I’m one of them.’ He grinned.
He lifted the hazard tape and walked over, kneeling before the font.
‘What I need to do is lift this bastard out the way and we’ll dig under that, level the sand again and replace it; bet the fuckers didn’t leave a spade…’
As Wolf worked Shen stood at Conall’s side at the doorway, on lookout.
She looked up at him and smiled shyly, taking hold of his hand; Con lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it;
‘I’m so glad I came back.’ He said, simply. She smiled. ‘Yeah, you’ve nearly drowned, been burned to death – stolen a precious artefact and are now involved in criminal damage… it’s been a fun few days for you.’
He laughed. ‘I think they call this the honeymoon period.’ And winked.
‘What will you do now?’ she asked him, suddenly serious.
He frowned.
‘I mean will you stay for a few days…’
He smiled. ‘Yes; I’ve nothing really to go back for in a hurry.’
She smiled but it seemed tinged with sadness.
‘It’s just when I think of you going away before…’ she said. He hugged her close. ‘This may seem premature, Shen, but that flute kind of belongs above the cottage fireplace… and as it’s now mine the only way I think we can resolve this is if I start to spend more time here…’
She smiled at him and he kissed her smile.
‘Besides, I think people will want to know the truth about this place – Tolkien has helped solve a great many mysteries, and I think I should stick around and tell people about it all – maybe set up tours or something, or write a book…maybe finish the PhD.’
Wolf called over and asked them to bring the bones; a pile of sand lay beside the font and a hole was now present at the rear of the space where a slab had been, edging back towards the font where it disappeared in darkness.
There’s a gap here under the font itself – the sand had been put in front of it and a stone put there to stop it going into the gap, but I managed to move it…’
He held his hand out and took the skull.
For a few moments he held it in his hand; this man who had all his life been fascinated by the figure of Merlin, face to face with the ancestor of that figure. He closed his eyes and planted a kiss on the forehead of the skull and muttered silent words.
‘Is there anything you want to say, Con, Shen?’
Shen shook her head and Con just leant forward and touched the skull, running his fingers around the eye socket. Itsipaiitapio’pah, he whispered.
The skull just fitted in the gap, and Wolf brought out his now empty hand and began to refill the hole, first placing the blocking stone in place.
Con stood and walked to the door. Luckily, the path was empty; a few swallows were swooping about the churchyard, and beyond the wall he could see the nicotiana blooming under the windows of Church cottage. There, to the left of the path, beside the myrtle bush, was Alfred’s grave; and Con felt comforted that Alfred lay no more alone in his grave; now the skull was back in the ground, in the earth of the ancestors, as it had always meant to be.
He felt a hand on his arm and he turned. ‘It’s done’ Shen said. Con looked down at her and kissed her gently before they walked into the church hand in hand.
The three friends stood in silence before the font – the stone was back in place, perfectly flat again – no one would have known it had been tampered with; but their eyes were drawn to the font itself, to the image it showed of the man, his face now hacked away, holding cup and crozier above the two wyverns; before he had been a priest condemning the old religion, or St George killing the dragon, or the horse-lord seizing the cup of wisdom from the serpent priest – but now, to the three gathered there, it showed Merlin, Twin, now back in his sacred space, and the two dragons were those of his vision, the duality of forms dancing to his song; he was their master, not their destroyer. Emrys, Ymir, Yemo was back in the soil of Avebury. The headless carving had arguably regained its head.
‘The head of Ymir in its magic well, dispensing wisdom…’ Con laughed; ‘where better to put him but beneath this holy water?’
Wolf chuckled ‘think of all those babies who’ll be baptised here by water blessed by the head of the ancient one!’
‘Do you think he’s happy now?’ Shen asked.
Wolf nodded. ‘he’s in his sacred earth, with the waters above; and we know he is here – and he’s not in that bloody glass case anymore.’
‘It’s weird, isn’t it – about the fire?’ Shen said.
‘Yes. Very odd. I went past the museum today; the old part, the stone bit, is going to be okay – the new bit is a wreck, though. Most of the artefacts were okay, except for those put in those new display boxes; it’s one of those that caught fire, they think.’
‘I can imagine the headlines – curse of the ancient bones destroys new museum.’ Con said.
‘I bet the chairman of English Heritage is well gutted.’ Wolf said, smiling.
‘He probably thinks you did it – some kind of druid curse.’
A few minutes later Con hid is face trying not to laugh as they passed the workmen returning to the church; the day was gloriously hot and Church cottage seemed too dark to enjoy on this lovely day.
‘What time is it?’ asked Wolf. Shen replied it was nearly two.
‘Then I make it time for a pint,’ he laughed. ‘I’m fookin’ parched.’
The End
Postscript
Tolkien’s The Hobbit went on to be one of the most popular children’s books ever written; his time-travel book, The Lost Road, was never published, but is to be found in his son Christopher’s 12 volume History of Middle Earth. His Lord of the Rings trilogy was voted Waterstones Best Book of the 20th century.
Lewis’s space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, was published to critical acclaim; the figure of Merlin appears in the trilogy. His later Narnia books would make him a much-loved children’s author in his own right.
Barfield remained a solicitor, but on retirement published several books on myth and language, including Saving the Appearances, one of the best books on language and myth ever penned. He died in 1997 aged 99.
Violet Penry-Evans, Dion Fortune, died in 1946 of Leukaemia, having defended Britain with magic during World War 2.
Stuart Piggot went on to become one of this country’s most respected and loved archaeologists.