‘Or come back years later,’ said Dominic helpfully, ‘like Kilmeny, with no memory of the time between, and as young as when they disappeared.’
‘Oh, that’s common to every country in Europe,’ said Tom, disappointed. ‘Nearly every hill that has a striking shape or has been the site of occupation from very early times gets that tale attached to it. Are you sure King Arthur isn’t down there, waiting for somebody to blow a horn and wake him up?’
‘No, sir, we use Wild Edric instead round these parts, we don’t need any other saviours.’ That was Milvers, the third of his only-slightly-dragooned sixth-form volunteers for this week-end chore. A clever one, Milvers, stuffed with the history and legends of the borders, all the more because he was not himself a borderer. He might be able to tell more than Miles Mallindine about the documentation of the Hallowmount; but nothing he could say would be as revealing, as perfectly direct and simple as Miles’s mild: ‘All this region and its inhabitants are a bit uncanny, I suppose.’ Without pretensions and without reluctance he had included himself in that verdict, in just the same way as his mother dealt herself in. They found nothing incongruous in having one foot in the twentieth century and one in the roots of time.
‘And some say a witch-coven used to meet there,’ said Milvers, warming to the assignment. ‘Did you know that outcrop of rock is known locally as the Altar?’
He hadn’t known, but it didn’t surprise him. Just a place of acquired ill-omen, after all, an accumulation of ordinary superstitions.
‘So that’s it,’ he said. ‘Just bad medicine.’
‘Oh, no, not really. Not bad. Any more than lightning’s good or bad. Or fire. Or the dead.’ Miles straightened and quivered to the sudden energy of his own thoughts, the thick brown lashes rolling back widely from bright, intent eyes. ‘Did somebody tell you it was bad luck, or something?’
Tom told him, in a strictly edited version, about that lift into town. ‘Your mother evidently thought it was a place to fight shy of. I suppose that’s the legacy of the witches.’
‘I don’t believe there ever were any witches. Just that chain of lives going back so unbelievably far, and a kind of impress left from them all—’ He couldn’t find the words he wanted, and wouldn’t descend to substitutes; he shut his arms helplessly round his knees, and rocked and scowled, still mining within his mind for the means of fluency. When not stirred, he could be a little lazy; it was an effort getting into gear.
‘Then why should everyone be afraid of it?’
Dominic looked at Miles, and Miles looked at Dominic. Tom had seen just such exchanges pass before, and the two mute faces relax in absolute agreement, as now. After that it was always a toss-up which of them would do the talking, but it was a certainty he would be talking for both.
‘We’re not afraid,’ said Miles, carefully and kindly keeping his smile in check. ‘Why should we be? We were born here. We’re in the chain, we don’t have to be afraid of it. We belong to it.’
‘In awe of it, then.’
They considered that with one more bright and rapid glance, and as one man accepted it.
‘Oh, in awe, yes, but that’s quite another thing, isn’t it?’
‘Is it so far from being afraid?’ said Tom, unconvinced.
Miles scrambled to his knees, leaning over the faint glow of the fire; in a little while now they would have to smother it for the night. ‘When my mother drove you into town, did she get caught at the lights by the technical college?’
‘Yes, I remember they were at red.’ He saw no connection yet, but here again was the twentieth century taking hands simply and naturally with the primeval darkness, and he felt the continuity tightening, and his palms pricked with the foreknowledge of a revelation that would leave him mute.
‘And was my mother afraid?’
Patiently, willing to learn – and wasn’t that something new for him, too? – Tom said: ‘Of course not.’
‘No, sir, of course not. You’re not afraid of traffic lights at red, it would be silly, wouldn’t it? But you don’t drive through them, either – do you?’
And he hadn’t been able to pin any of them down more precisely than that, until Jane Darrill handed him over to the mercies of the Archaeological Society. Basely and deliberately, as it turned out, for she must have known very well that once they had received him as an enquirer they wouldn’t let him escape until he had imbibed every word that existed in manuscript or print about the Hallowmount. They wrangled among themselves, but they spared him nothing.
Well, he’d asked for it! The vicar primed him with the parish records, and dragged him along to Miss Winslow, who kept the local archives, and Miss Winslow in turn hustled them both into the damp, dark but lovely splendours of Cwm Hall, which was middle Elizabethan black-and-white, and excellent of its period.
Regina Blacklock was president of the Archaeological Society as of most such bodies, and Peter Blacklock functioned as usual, good-humouredly and resignedly, as secretary and her dutiful echo. The weight of birth and position and money was all on her side, it was rather overdoing things that she should also have so strong and decisive a character. Who could stand against her? She was an authority on everything to do with Comerford and district; where the folklore of the borders was concerned, what she said went. She poured details over Tom’s head in a merciless stream, buried him under evidence of the Druidic goings-on which had once enlivened the Hallowmount on midsummer night and at the solstices. The vicar, pink with enthusiasm, acted as chorus whenever she drew breath. Devotees both, and no need to suspect that their passion was anything but genuine. But somehow Miles had been more convincing in his vagueness, and acceptance, and serenity.
‘You must go to the Borough Library, Mr Kenyon,’ said Regina, radiant with helpfulness and ardour, ‘you really must. I’ll telephone Mr Carling in the morning and tell him to expect you, and he’ll have the Welsh chronicles ready for you whenever you like to call him and arrange a visit. And he has the aerial photographs of the Iron Age Fort – Maeldun’s Ring, you know, the one on Cleave. You should look at those, they’re a revelation. Peter has a few here, but not all. Peter, darling, where are those enlargements now?’
And Peter darling brought them. Blessedly he brought a large whisky and soda in the other hand, and a small, mild, rueful smile that warmed his long, rather tired face into a very acceptable sympathy. A tall, slender, quiet man, of spare, gentle movements and thoughtful face. Goodlooking, too, in a somewhat disconsolate way, and even his mournfulness enlivened now and then by fleeting gleams of humour, affectionate when his eye dwelt upon his formidable wife, but satirical, too. They appeared to understand each other very well, but it was inevitable that she should be the one on top, since she was the last of the Wayne-Morgans, and proprietress of half this valley and one flank of the Hallowmount. Peter Blacklock had been a local solicitor by profession, though he didn’t practise now, being fully employed in running his wife’s estates, and making, as everyone agreed, a conscientious job of it.
How old would they be? Forty-five maybe. Not more than a year or two between them, and it could be either way. She was a very striking woman, if only she wouldn’t work so hard at it; but that tremendous energy had to go somewhere, and if there were only small channels at hand to receive it they were bound to get overcharged. She expounded the history of the border as if it was the future of man. Eve Mallindine wouldn’t have thought her forebears anything particular to shout about.