The cranking seemed to take half an hour, but at last the stone gave the dull thud which meant it was high enough.
“I’ll go first,” said Sally. “It’s not really as dark as it looks — he makes a sort of light at the bottom. You’ve got to feel each step with your foot because they’re all different.”
They felt their way down the coarse stone. The steps did not seem to be shaped work at all — more like flattened boulders from a river bed, pitted with the endless rubbing of water and patterned with fossil bones. There were thirty-three of them. At the bottom a passage led away through rock towards a faint green light. It was eleven paces down the passage and into a long, low chamber whose rock walls sloped inwards like the roof of an attic. The air in the chamber smelt sweet and wild and wrong, like rotting crab apples. Merlin was waiting for them.
He lay on his side, with his head resting on the crook of his arm, staring up the passage. Perhaps he had been aroused to expect them by the clack of the ratchet. He wore a long, dark robe. Colors were difficult in the strange light, but his beard seemed black and his face the color of rusted iron. His eyes were so deep in the huge head that they looked like the empty sockets of a skull until you moved across their beam and saw the green glow reflected from the lens, like the reflection of sky at the bottom of a well. The light seemed to come from nowhere. It was just there, impregnating the sick, sweet atmosphere.
He gave no sign, made no movement, as Sally crossed his line of vision, but his head followed Geoffrey into the room — Geoffrey found he was gripping the tray so hard that the tin rim hurt his palms. There was a widening of the stone slab where he could have put it down, but instead he turned away from Merlin (it was a struggle, like turning into a gale at a street corner) and put the tray on the rough rock behind him. When he turned back Merlin had moved, rearing up onto his elbow. He was a giant. The black hair streamed down in a wild mane behind him. His eyes were alive now, and the chamber was throbbing with a noiseless hum, like the hum of a big ship’s engines which you cannot hear with your ears but which sings up from the deck through your feet, through your shoulder when you lean against a stanchion, and through your whole body as you lie in your bunk waiting for sleep. His lips moved.
“Ubi servus meus.”
The voice was a gray scrape, like shingle retreating under the suck of a wave. Sally answered in a whisper.
“Magister Furbelow crurem fregit.”
Merlin did not look at her. The green blaze of his eyes clanged into Geoffrey’s skull, drowning his will in a welter of dithering vibrations. The lips moved again.
“Da mihi cibum meum.”
As the huge wave of Merlin’s authority washed over him, Geoffrey gasped, “Tell him what’s happening.”
“Magister . . .” began Sally.
“Tacite,” said Merlin, and Geoffrey’s tongue was locked in his mouth, as though he would never speak again. Mastered, helpless, he turned and picked up the tray and put it on the slab. The giant lay back and watched him out of the corner of his eyes. Geoffrey broke off a crumbling corner of one of the oatcakes and picked up the little silver pot of honey.
The surface of the honey was curved, with the faint arc of its meniscus, and that or the shining curve of the silver below gathered the green light to a single focus, a spark of light in the gold liquid. The clean, wild-flower smell smote up through the sick air of the cave. Geoffrey stared at the gold spark. It was the sun, the outside world where the wheat was growing towards harvest. His mind clung to the light, hauled itself towards that tiny sun.
“Tell him Mr. Furbelow gave him poison,” he croaked.
“Venenum . . .” whispered Sally out of the blackness beyond the sun.
“Mel?” said Merlin’s voice.
“Venenum tibi dedit Magister Furbelow,” said Sally.
“Quando?” The old voice was weary, disbelieving.
“Hie quintus annus,” said Sally.
“Mr. Furbelow tried to wake him up with a synthetic stimulant,” said Geoffrey. “But he got stuck halfway.”
“What does ‘synthetic’ mean?”
“Made in a factory, out of coal or oil or something. Not grown. Not natural.”
Sally started on a longer whisper. Geoffrey still didn’t dare look at her — he still clung to the sun in the honey. When she reached the word “natura” he gave a strange, coughing grunt, and Geoffrey saw, at the edge of his vision, a shape moving downwards. At last he looked away from the little silver bowl, and saw that the shape had been Merlin’s legs. Merlin had heaved his body up again and was now sitting on the slab, his legs dangling, his head bowed so as not to touch the roof. He must have been nearly eight foot tall, and now he was staring at Sally with a deep, steady gaze as though he was seeing her for the first time. She finished what she had to say.
“Die mihi ab initio,” he said.
“He wants me to tell him from the beginning,” said Sally. “Where shall I start?”
“Start with Mr. Furbelow digging into his tomb. Tell him what he was trying to do. Say he’s not a bad man, but muddled. Then tell him what England’s like now — how cruel people are. Tell him about all the people who had to go away.”
Twice while Sally spoke to him something seemed to shake Merlin like a branch shaken by a sudden gust. Both times Sally paused; the feeling that the chamber was throbbing wavered, increased, then steadied back. Both times Geoffrey knew that Merlin had fought away the delirium which had engulfed him for the last five years. Sally’s voice became pleading. She wasn’t whispering now, but almost shouting. “Indignum est,” she said several times, “indignum nominis tui.” Her face became runneled with tears, as she tried to ram her message through six years of poisoned stupor — she was thinking of the dancing bear. In the end she was gasping between each syllable and her voice was cracked with pain. Merlin stared at her like an entomologist considering an insect, and at last sighed. Sally stopped shouting.
He turned to Geoffrey.
“Da,” he said.
Geoffrey handed him an oatcake and the honey pot. He broke off a fragment, dipped it in the honey and began to eat. While he ate he talked. Sometimes Sally answered. The word “natura” came up again and again. Next time he wanted food he just held out his hand to Geoffrey for an oatcake while he went on talking to Sally. His palm was covered with fine black hairs.
His voice changed, as though he were not asking any more, but telling. Sally just nodded. Then he handed the empty honey pot to Geoffrey, drank a few sips from the jug and settled back on to the implacable stone.
“Difficile erit,” he said, “sed perdurabo, Deo vo-lente. Abite vos. Gratias ago.”
The green light dimmed. Geoffrey picked up the tray. They left.
As Geoffrey began to wind down the stone he said, “Tell me what all that was about.”
“I didn’t really understand everything,” said Sally. “I told him what had happened, and then I said that what he was doing now was — there isn’t a proper word for ‘indignum’ — unworthy, dishonorable, something like that. Then he told me a lot about ‘natura,’ which means nature — but it isn’t anything to do with wild birds and hedges. It’s all about what we really are, and what is proper for us. I remember he said machines were just toys for clever apes, and not proper for man — they prevent him from finding his own nature. But anyway the stuff Mr. Furbelow gave him was very bad for his nature, and now he’s going to try and change it so that he can overcome it. He said it would be difficult. He said that all sorts of things might happen out here, because once you start interfering with the strong bits of nature the things round them get disturbed. It's like the whirlpools round an oar, he said. Then he said it would be difficult again, but that he would manage with God’s will, and then he said thank you. You know, he didn’t seem at all worried about what he’d done to the other people in England — it was just unlucky for some of them, but they didn’t matter much.”