The Buried Giant (34 page)

“Turn back, friends,” I said when they came upon me in the woods. “This is no walk for elderly travellers like you. And look
how the good mistress holds her side. Between here and the giant’s cairn there’s still a mile or more, and the only shelter small rocks behind which one must curl with bowed head. Turn back while you still have strength, and I’ll see this goat’s left at the cairn and tethered well.” But they both eyed me suspiciously, and Master Axl would not let go the goat. The branches rustled above, and his wife seated on the roots of an oak, gazing to the pond and the cracked trees stooping to water, and I said softly: “This is no journey for your good wife, sir. Why did you not do as I advised and take the river down out of these hills?” “We must take this goat where we promised,” says Master Axl. “A promise made to a child.” And does he look at me strangely as he says so, or do I dream it? “Horace and I will take the goat,” I say. “Will you not trust us with the errand? I hardly believe this goat will much trouble Querig even if devoured whole, yet she may be a little slowed and lend me an advantage. So give me the creature and turn back down the mountain before one or the other of you fall in your own footsteps.”

They moved then into the trees away from me, and I could hear the shape of their lowered voices, but no words. Then Master Axl comes to me and says: “A moment more for my wife to rest, then we will carry on, sir, to the giant’s cairn.” I see it is useless to argue more, and I also eager to continue on our way, for who knows how far behind is Master Wistan and his bitten boy?

Part IV

Chapter Fifteen

Some of you will have fine monuments by which the living may remember the evil done to you. Some of you will have only crude wooden crosses or painted rocks, while yet others of you must remain hidden in the shadows of history. You are in any case part of an ancient procession, and so it is always possible the giant’s cairn was erected to mark the site of some such tragedy long ago when young innocents were slaughtered in war. This aside, it is not easy to think of reasons for its standing. One can see why on lower ground our ancestors might have wished to commemorate a victory or a king. But why stack heavy stones to above a man’s height in so high and remote a place as this?

It was a question, I am sure, equally to baffle Axl as he came wearily up the mountain slope. When the young girl had first mentioned the giant’s cairn, he had pictured something atop a large mound. Yet this cairn had simply appeared before them on the incline, no feature around it to explain its presence. The goat, nonetheless, seemed immediately to sense its significance, struggling frantically as soon as the cairn had become visible as a dark finger against the sky. “It
knows its fate,” Sir Gawain had remarked, guiding his horse up with Beatrice in the saddle.

But now the goat had forgotten its earlier dread and was chewing the mountain grass contentedly.

“Can it be Querig’s mist works its mischief on goats and men alike?”

It was Beatrice who asked this as she held with both hands the animal’s rope. Axl had for the moment relinquished the creature while he hammered into the ground with a stone the wooden stake around which the rope had been wound.

“Who knows, princess. But if God cares at all for goats, he’ll bring the she-dragon here before long, or it’ll be a lonely wait for this poor animal.”

“If the goat dies first, Axl, do you suppose she’ll still sup on meat not living and fresh?”

“Who knows how a she-dragon likes her meat? But there’s grass here to keep this goat a while, princess, even if it’s of a mean sort.”

“Look there, Axl. I thought the knight would help us, weary as we both are. But he’s forgotten his usual manners.”

Indeed Sir Gawain had become oddly reticent since their arrival at the cairn. “This is the place you seek,” he had said in an almost sulky voice, before wandering off. And now he stood with his back to them, staring at the clouds.

“Sir Gawain,” Axl called out, pausing from his work. “Will you not assist holding this goat? My poor wife grows tired from it.”

The old knight did not react, and Axl, assuming he had not heard, was about to repeat his request, when Gawain turned suddenly, and with such a look of solemnity, they both stared at him.

“I see them below,” the old knight said. “And nothing now to turn them.”

“Who is it you see, sir?” Axl asked. Then when the knight
remained silent, “Are they soldiers? We watched earlier some long column on the horizon, but thought they moved away from us.”

“I speak of your recent companions, sir. The same with whom you travelled yesterday when we met. They emerge from the wood below, and who’ll stop them now? For a moment, I raised a hope I merely looked on two black widows strayed from that infernal procession. But it was the cloudy sky playing its tricks, and it’s them, no mistake.”

“So Master Wistan escaped the monastery after all,” Axl said.

“That he did, sir. And now he comes, and on his rope not a goat, but the Saxon boy to guide him.”

At last Sir Gawain seemed to notice Beatrice struggling with the animal and came hurriedly from the cliff edge to seize the rope. But Beatrice did not let go, and for a moment it was as if she and the knight were tussling for control of the goat. In time they stood steadily, both holding the rope, the old knight a step or two in front of Beatrice.

“And have our friends in turn seen us here, Sir Gawain?” Axl asked, returning to his task.

“I’ll wager that warrior has keen eyes, and sees us even now against the sky, figures in a tug contest, the goat our opponent!” He laughed to himself, but a melancholy lingered in his voice. “Yes,” he said finally. “I fancy he sees us well enough.”

“Then he joins forces with us,” Beatrice said, “to bring down the she-dragon.”

Sir Gawain looked from one to the other of them uneasily. Then he said: “Master Axl, do you still persist in believing it?”

“Believing what, Sir Gawain?”

“That we gather here in this forsaken spot as comrades?”

“Make your meaning clearer, sir knight.”

Gawain led the goat to where Axl was kneeling, oblivious of Beatrice following behind, still clutching her end of the rope.

“Master Axl, didn’t our ways part years ago? Mine remained with Arthur, while yours …” He seemed now to become aware of Beatrice behind him, and turning, bowed politely. “Dear lady, I beg you let go this rope and rest. I’ll not let the animal escape. Sit down beside the cairn there. It will shelter at least some part of you from this wind.”

“Thank you, Sir Gawain,” Beatrice said. “Then I’ll trust you with this creature, and it’s a precious one to us.”

She began to make her way towards the cairn, and something about the way she did so, her shoulders hunched against the wind, caused a fragment of recollection to stir on the edges of Axl’s mind. The emotion it provoked, even before he could hold it down, surprised and shocked him, for mingled with the overwhelming desire to go to her now and shelter her, were distinct shadows of anger and bitterness. She had talked of a long night spent alone, tormented by his absence, but could it be he too had known such a night, or even several, of similar anguish? Then, as Beatrice stopped before the cairn and bowed her head to the stones as if in apology, he felt both memory and anger growing firmer, and a fear made him turn away from her. Only then did he notice Sir Gawain also gazing over at Beatrice, a look of tenderness in his eyes, seemingly lost in his thoughts. But the knight soon collected himself, and coming closer to Axl, leant right down as though to remove any small chance of Beatrice overhearing.

“Who’s to say your path wasn’t the more godly?” he said. “To leave behind all great talk of war and peace. Leave behind that fine law to bring men closer to God. To leave behind Arthur once and for all and devote yourself to …” He glanced over again at Beatrice, who had remained on her feet, her forehead almost touching the piled stones in her effort to escape the wind. “To a good wife, sir. I’ve watched how she goes beside you as a kind shadow. Should I have done the same? Yet God guided us down separate paths. I had
a duty. Ha! And do I fear him now? Never, sir, never. I accuse you of nothing. That great law you brokered torn down in blood! Yet it held well for a time. Torn down in blood! Who blames us for it now? Do I fear youth? Is it youth alone can defeat an opponent? Let him come, let him come. Remember it, sir! I saw you that very day and you talked of cries in your ears of children and babes. I heard the same, sir, yet were they not like the cries from the surgeon’s tent when a man’s life is spared even as the cure brings agonies? Yet I admit it. There are days I long for a kind shadow to follow me. Even now I turn in hope to see one. Doesn’t every animal, every bird in the sky crave a tender companion? There were one or two I’d willingly have given my years. Why should I fear him now? I’ve fought fanged Norsemen with reindeer snouts, and they no masks! Here, sir, tie your goat now. How much deeper will you drive that stake? Is it a goat you tether or a lion?”

Handing Axl the rope, Gawain went striding off, not stopping till he stood where the land’s edge appeared to meet the sky. Axl, one knee pressed into the grass, tied the rope tightly around the notch in the wood, then looked once more over to his wife. She was standing at the cairn much as before, and though something in her posture again tugged at him, he was relieved to find in himself no trace of the earlier bitterness. Instead he felt almost overcome by an urge to defend her, not just from the harsh wind, but from something else large and dark even then gathering around them. He rose and hurried to her.

“The goat’s well secured, princess,” he said. “Just as soon as you’re ready, let’s be off down this slope. For haven’t we completed the errand promised to those children and to ourselves?”

“Oh Axl, I don’t want to go back to those woods.”

“What are you saying, princess?”

“Axl, you never went to the pond’s edge, you were so busy talking to this knight. You never looked into that chilly water.”

“These winds have tired you, princess.”

“I saw their faces staring up as if resting in their beds.”

“Who, princess?”

“The babes, and only a short way beneath the water’s surface. I thought first they were smiling, and some waving, but when I went nearer I saw how they lay unmoving.”

“Just another dream came to you while you rested against that tree. I remember seeing you asleep there and took comfort from it at the time, even as I talked with the old knight.”

“I truly saw them, Axl. Among the green weed. Let’s not go back to that wood, for I’m sure some evil lingers there.”

Sir Gawain, gazing down at the view, had raised his arm in the air, and now without turning, shouted through the wind: “They’ll soon be upon us! They come up the slope eagerly.”

“Let’s go to him, princess, but keep the cloak around you. I was foolish to bring you this far, but we’ll soon find shelter again. Yet let’s see what troubles the good knight.”

The goat was pulling at its rope as they passed, but the stake showed no sign of shifting. Axl had been keen to see how near the approaching figures were, but now the old knight came walking towards them, and they all three halted not far from where the animal was tethered.

“Sir Gawain,” Axl said, “my wife grows weak and must return to shelter and food. May we carry her down on your horse as we brought her up?”

“What’s this you ask? Too much, sir! Did I not tell you when we met in Merlin’s wood to climb this hill no further? It was you both insisted on coming here.”

“Perhaps we were foolish, sir, but we had a purpose, and if we must turn back without you, you must promise not to free this goat cost us so dearly to bring here.”

“Free the goat? What do I care for your goat, sir? The Saxon
warrior will soon be upon us, and what a fellow he is! Go, look if you doubt it! What do I care for your goat? Master Axl, I see you before me now and I’m reminded of that night. The wind as fierce then as this one. And you, cursing Arthur to his face while the rest of us stood with heads bowed! For who wanted the task of striking you down? Each of us hiding from the king’s eye, for fear he’d command with one glance to run you through, unarmed though you were. But see, sir, Arthur was a great king, and here’s more proof of it! You cursed him before his finest knights, yet he replied gently to you. You recall this, sir?”

“I recall nothing of it, Sir Gawain. Your she-dragon’s breath keeps it all from me.”

“My eyes lowered like the rest, expecting your head to roll past my feet even as I gazed down at them! Yet Arthur spoke to you with gentleness! You don’t recall even a part of it? The wind that night almost as strong as this one, our tent ready to fly into the dark sky. Yet Arthur meets curses with gentle words. He thanked you for your service. For your friendship. And he bade us all think of you with honour. I myself whispered farewell to you, sir, as you took your fury into the storm. You didn’t hear me, for it was said under my breath, but a sincere farewell all the same, and I wasn’t alone. We all shared something of your anger, sir, even if you did wrong to curse Arthur, and on the very day of his great victory! You say now Querig’s breath keeps this from your mind, or is it the years alone, or even this wind enough to make the wisest monk a fool?”

“I don’t care for any of these memories, Sir Gawain. Today I seek others from another stormy night my wife speaks of.”

“A sincere farewell I bade you, sir, and let me confess it, when you cursed Arthur a small part of me spoke through you. For that was a great treaty you brokered, and well held for years. Didn’t all men, Christian and pagan, sleep more easily for it, even on the eve of battle? To fight knowing our innocents safe in our villages? And yet,
sir, the wars didn’t finish. Where once we fought for land and God, we now fought to avenge fallen comrades, themselves slaughtered in vengeance. Where could it end? Babes growing to men knowing only days of war. And your great law already suffering violation …”

“The law was well held on both sides until that day, Sir Gawain,” Axl said. “It was an unholy thing to break it.”