For a long time Cal didn’t move, staring ahead. Finally he looked at the phone. He ought to make the call. Tell her.
Instead he rang Sally. Her daughter answered; there was a wait, he could hear the television blaring and a baby screeching, then Sally’s voice, sounding breathless. “Hi, Cal. Nice to hear from you.”
“How is she, Sal?”
Sally breathed noisily. He knew she was picking her words. “Up and down, I suppose. She’s on this program, and it was doing her good. Meetings. Social events, you know. I suppose . . . it’s hard for her to keep it up, Cal. She’s missing you, boy.”
“But she’s okay?” he asked desperately, wishing the answer.
“She’s got you a Christmas present. Don’t faint.”
He closed his eyes. “That’s a change,” he whispered.
“And she says she’s going to buy a tree.”
“Oh God, don’t let her.”
“I’ll check it, or Ryan will. We won’t let her burn the place down.” Then she said, “You’ll be up for Christmas, Cal? She’s banking on it.”
And all at once he couldn’t bear it anymore; his legs felt weak and his skin was cold with sweat and he said, “Yes. Of course.”
He heard her silent relief. “That’s great! You can come round.”
He didn’t want to go round. Not to talk rugby with Ryan. Not to crowd into the tiny sitting room, moving the piles of ironing. He said, “Tell her I’ll ring tomorrow. Okay?”
“Is that music? God it’s loud, Cal.” The opera. He’d forgotten it.
“See you, Sal.” The phone went down. He stared at it, face taut, hands clenched.
Then he went and flung the papers off the table, and the pens, and the file of accountancy notes, and the chessboard with its glass and silver pieces, flung them with a bitter fury all over Trevor’s immaculate carpet, the chorus of singers so loud the walls seemed to shake, and he laughed, because there were no neighbors and no one to care or hear.
He threw himself down on the leather sofa. And closed his eyes.
He was in a chair. A golden chair. He was sitting in the wreckage of the banqueting hall of Corbenic, and had been there forever. So long that the chair had grown roots into the ground; so long that the weeds had crept over it. As he sat there the weight of ivy was heavy on his lap, smothering his legs; its palest green tendrils had reached as high as his neck. Shuddering, appalled, he pulled it off, feeling the tear of its supple fringed growths velcroing away from his sweater, dragging great armfuls off his chest and shoulders, and dumping them.
Then he tried to get up, and gasped in agony. Pain shot through him. It seared him, like a spear thrust. Like a heart attack. Tears blinded his eyes; he felt sick, and then the intensity of it ebbed and it was a dull, endless ache down every channel of his body, every vein. And looking down he saw that the chair had wheels.
There was a mirror. Dim, green-smeared, it showed him the room and the place where the door had been, the door the Grail had passed through, the door that didn’t exist, and it showed him a man and that man was him.
Dark-haired, dark-eyed, tangled in ivy and bindweed, the ghostly white sweet-smelling flowers of it around the wheels of the chair, a man wearing his clothes, his face.
“Bron?” he whispered. And the lips of the man in the mirror whispered it too.
High in the roof, the osprey screeched. It looked down on him with its pitiless yellow eyes, and he sat rigid, remembering the ferocity of its attack on the castle battlements.
And then Leo was there, leaning against the crumbling doorway, arms folded.
“Now you know how it feels,” he said acidly.
Cal struggled to stand. His legs had no feeling. He collapsed back in the chair, sweating, trapped in the nightmare.
“It’s not me,” he hissed.
“No?”
“NO!” Somewhere there was music; not the soft flutes and harps of the Grail procession, but a wilder music, despairing, heartbroken. It was so loud he could barely hear his own voice as he shouted again, “NO! NO!” and then he was up from the sofa and the opera was all around him like a crowd, a ring of voices, the thunder of drums, the agony of violins.
In an instant he crossed the room and hit the off button. The music stopped; then, as he turned, it burst back on, louder, and he spun and stared at the tiny red sensor on the CD.
“I won’t go back,” he hissed, and he turned it off again, but it was still there; relentlessly the voices sang of their pain, of the beauty of the Grail, its splendor, its agony, its high enchantments, its healing.
“Stop it,” he muttered, and banged the button again, then went and tugged the plug out, smacking it against the wall. But the music went on, it couldn’t stop, it would never stop till it reached the thundering crescendo of its chorus, and he didn’t know anymore if it was real or if it was in him.
He turned and stumbled outside, slamming the door. The night was frosty. Without a coat, shivering, he ran. Out of Otter’s Brook, down the dark, lamplit streets, fast, his footsteps ringing under the town arch, past the drunks on the post office steps, under the glitzy gold and red of the Christmas Santas and reindeer.
By the church he was breathless, and held on for a second to the railings. The dark bulk of the tower blotted the stars above him; gargoyles with grotesque outlines peered down. Above them a shadow flapped. Bats? The osprey?
But the music was gone. He had outrun it. Here he heard only his heart, thudding as if it would burst, and his footsteps, and as he swung into the castle car park and around the Dell he was praying, praying they’d be back, that someone would be there.
He slid and scrabbled down the mud bank.
The castle was black. But parked in front of it, with smoke coming from the jaunty tin chimney, and the sunflowers looking wan and ghostly in the starlight, was Hawk’s van.
He caught his breath.
He waited a long time, getting calm, getting clean, rubbing mud from his hands, letting the sweat that soaked his back turn icy, before he walked up to the door and knocked. He was shivering, but that was the cold.
When Hawk answered he stared. “Cal. Haven’t seen you for a few days.”
“Been busy.” He shouldered his way into the wonderfully warm interior, saw the cat on Shadow’s lap, the pieces on the chessboard, the dirty dishes in the sink, the extravaganza of fabrics. The mess that he had left at home hurt his memory.
“Hi,” Shadow said, surprised.
Cal turned to Hawk, urgent. “I need to train every night. I want to fight in the Christmas display. I need to, Hawk!”
Hawk folded his arms across his dirty vest. “All right. Calm down. What brought this on?”
Cal sank onto a chair and wiped the soaked hair from his forehead. “I need to be here over Christmas,” he whispered.
Shadow leaned over and moved the white knight. “What he’s not telling you,” she said, “is that it’s not that easy. You have to challenge someone first.” She looked up at him then, serious behind the web of lines. “A real contest.”
He shrugged, careless.
Until Hawk said, “With real weapons.”
Chapter Fourteen
There was not a more handsome knight in all the world.
Conte du Graal
“Are you sure?” Arthur said quietly.
Cal looked down at the cracked slabs of the farmhouse floor. The kettle was boiling; Arthur waited till it switched itself off, then leaned over and poured the steamy water into all the mugs. Odd herby smells mingled.
“I’m sure,” Cal said firmly.
“Is he ready?” The Company’s leader looked across to Hawk, who gave a short sigh.
“Probably.”
Arthur stirred his tea. “Yes or no, nephew mine.”
“Yes, then. He’s fast and has good control. Thinks on his feet. Parries well. Ought to build himself up more, though.”