Under the Green Hill (17 page)

“Does he mean…Midsummer…he
is
going to fight against Rowan in the Midsummer War? But why? How could he?” And then she remembered his beatific face when he recalled his time with the fairies.
What I have lost…
Phyllida said that Bran had been taken, and eventually recovered, stolen by the fairies and then saved after many years' imprisonment. Meg had accepted the story. But what if that wasn't quite the case? What if Bran had gone willingly under the Green Hill, so that his supposed rescue tore him from the place of his bliss? What if he felt as much a captive in this, the real world, as poor Lemman?

Meg recalled the words of the Seelie prince when in the guise of Gul Ghillie:
Bran once rode with this company, fair as any fairy lord, and well beloved. He will not return.
Why he could not return, Meg did not venture to guess, but she knew enough about the peculiarities of fairies by now to realize that associating with them involved all sorts of rules and taboos and prohibitions. Though he longed to return, for some reason he couldn't. Well, what if the Black Prince offered Bran his fondest wish? Would Bran kill Rowan if in reward he regained his place in the fairy kingdom?

“Lemman, you have to tell me—is it true? I won't believe it unless I hear it from you. It's too terrible! Is it true?”

Lemman stared at her unblinking, and then, very slowly, both she and the dun cow nodded. With a sob Meg ran from the dairy and set off in search of Rowan. As she rounded the Rookery, she collided with Phyllida and almost knocked the octogenarian off her feet. Had she had the presence of mind to apologize, however briefly and insincerely, the Ashes might never have discovered the Morgans' secret. As far as Phyllida was concerned, a child in rash high spirits could break fourteen of her old bones, as long as it was an accident and much regretted. Such misfortunes are all a part of the joyful, heedless carelessness of youth. But she did expect contrition, and when Meg ran on without so much as a “sorry,” Phyllida knew either that Glynnis Morgan had brought up a very impolite child, or that something was dreadfully wrong. In either case, the matter must be dealt with. So, you see, instinctive politeness frequently pays off, and you should learn to apologize for almost everything you do, whether you mean it or not, just in case.

Phyllida tailed Meg at a clip that would have surprised the girl: Though she didn't actually run, she moved with a sort of sporting scamper that allowed her to travel quickly, even with a sore hip. Thus, under cover of Meg's own noisy steps and sobs, Phyllida came upon the practice session without even Gul Ghillie's being aware of her.

At first, she wasn't quite sure what was going on. It never occurred to her that her great-great-nieces and -nephews could so far disobey the rules she'd laid out as to become embroiled in the Midsummer War. She had spent the past weeks drifting along in complacent satisfaction, thinking that perhaps she should have been a mother after all, if children were as easy as this. They had shown little rebellion when she and Lysander declared that they shouldn't leave the grounds, and she thought that they must respect a firm but kind hand. She did not know that Finn regularly sneaked out to the woods to try his latest charm or potion for fairy-spotting, or that, with the Morgans, all the damage had been done the very first night, and they were in trouble aplenty without ever setting foot off the grounds again.

It certainly didn't enter her head that Rowan might have been chosen for the Midsummer War. She'd been well aware of the dangers inherent in living in a place so fraught with fairies, but her imagination only stretched as far as entrapment in fairy rings, or perhaps being torn apart by the skinless Nuckelavee, a horror roughly in the shape of a centaur. Those hazards, though daunting enough to the untutored eye, were easily avoided with just a few precautions, and the children had seemed tractable enough to take them to heart.

When she saw Silly, Rowan, and little James in the company of Gul Ghillie, she instantly recognized Gul as one of the fairies. How, exactly, I cannot say, for he certainly looked like any village lad. But she knew at a glance that her wards were consorting with a fairy, and she charged out of the bushes and spoke a word or two of powerful banishment that even the prince of the Seelie Court could not deny. He vanished with a laugh and a defiant snap of his fingers, but her banishment did nothing for the Seelie relics—paired Hen and Brychan, mighty Hagr and his ally Tew, and the leopard-spotted bow of the Hunter.

Had it just been Gul Ghillie, Phyllida would have thought it no more than relatively harmless fairy trickery that one of them should take on human guise, curious to find out about the Lady's heirs. Once she sent him away, the children would have received a stern lecture on the error of their ways, and been kept under much closer scrutiny for the rest of their stay. But as she stood in the children's midst, arms akimbo and eyes aflame, she spied the treasured weaponry and her heart sank, for it could mean only one thing.

I won't delve too deeply into the hours that followed. Lysander was summoned, and there was a great deal of yelling, threatening, and beseeching to be heard before the sun had set. In the end, all except Rowan had tears in their eyes. I really must say that on this evening, more than ever before, Rowan justified the Seelie Court's choice. It is hard to be brave and dignified under the rantings of a great-great-aunt and -uncle who can swear as creatively and unceasingly as the Ashes, but Rowan stood his ground.

They said things to him that would make grown men break down and promise to mend their ways. They told him to think of his mother, his poor mother, who would be bereft when he fell in a battle she could never hope to understand. They described, in vivid and painful detail, what his body would look like when it had been pierced by a sword or hacked with an ax. They told him they'd tie him up and ship him back home if he didn't put a stop to it. And through it all he looked at them like a serene young prince and said, quite calmly, that there was nothing they could do—his life was pledged to the Fairy Queen, his service to the Seelie Court, and fight he would. And the Ashes
knew
there was nothing they could do. But that didn't stop them from trying for many hours more to change his mind.

Phyllida was furious with Rowan, and called him a nasty, spoiled, stubborn brat who didn't have the good sense to do what his elders told him…and then she pulled him to her breast and squeezed him as though he were going off to die that night. She was even more furious with herself, and called herself a doddering, blind old fool at least as many times as she called Rowan a green, senseless one.

At the beginning of the bootless arguing, Lysander had been sent to fetch Bran. Phyllida thought he might be able to talk some sense into the boy where she had failed. After all, he knew the fairies better than anyone. He might even be wise to some tricksy way of getting Rowan out of it. Maybe if he cut off all his hair, or wore an iron horseshoe on a gold chain, or set a fire on the summit of the Green Hill…. She didn't hold out much hope. She knew the old lore almost as well as Bran, for though he had lived with them, she had been raised with the accumulated knowledge of generations upon generations of her foremothers. Bran might understand the fairy ways, but if there was some spell to bind them or ritual to summon them, she had it locked away in her memory. She knew well that the rules governing the Midsummer War had been long established: Mortal blood must be shed every seven years, but no human would ever be an unwilling sacrifice. Only one whose heart was dedicated to the task would do battle. And, despite her best efforts, Rowan was stoic in his determination.

But Bran was not to be found. No matter—Phyllida and Lysander still had plenty of steam of their own, and began a fresh assault on Rowan, and to a lesser degree on his siblings for letting it happen in the first place.

“And we don't even know who he's to fight!” Phyllida went on, rolling her eyes to the heavens. “Trust the Host to choose someone particularly loathsome or daunting. They've had their eye on the Gladysmere blacksmith for the last three Midsummer Wars, and he'd make six of you, Rowan, my boy.”

“Auntie Ash,” Meg began, but Phyllida didn't hear her.

“Or maybe some treacherous Gypsy or tinker. They'd promise him gold and mislead him about what he'd have to do.”

“I know who…” Meg tried again, to no avail.

“Just like the Seelie to pick a stupid noble boy for his ideals and his bloodline and then try to train him up at the last minute. Blast the Strangers, but they know what they're about! Probably picked some soldier, some big strong ambitious man who can knock the snot out of you blindfolded.”

“It's Bran!” Meg finally shouted.

Phyllida turned toward the house. “Where? Has he come at last? He'll talk some sense into that brother of yours. Bran! Come here at once!”

“No, I mean they chose him. Bran's the one who will fight Rowan.”

Phyllida refused to believe her at first, but after hearing Meg's tale she wasn't so sure. When she returned to the Rookery to search for Bran, she found that he had left. He was not seen again until Midsummer Night.

Finn and Dickie found themselves alone at supper that night, which so discommoded Dickie that he left to seek the sanctuary of the library and his constant tutor, the Wyrm. But it pleased Finn's sense of self-importance to have an entire table set with succulent dishes just for his benefit, to have three servants awaiting his pleasure and his alone. Feeling grandiose, he ordered every candle in the room lit and picked like a jaded aristocrat at each dish, finishing the meal with a call for pears flambé and a glass of brandy. The latter was ignored, but the server complied with the flambé, setting the fruit afire with a flourish, though he would probably have preferred to try his technique on Finn's head. Finn supped on in blissful ignorance, propping up his feet and imagining that he'd have an establishment like this one day, albeit with electricity and something a little sportier by way of transportation.

He was in a good mood. His efforts to uncover fairies had hitherto met with little success (other than an occasional pelting with elf-shot or shrill mocking laughter from just out of sight), but he'd consulted with Dickie, who revealed, it seemed somewhat reluctantly, that he'd discovered the formula for a seeing ointment. Finn had initially been reluctant to try any draughts or philters, for he was fastidious as well as timid about things that smacked too strongly of medicines and doctors. To make an iffy ointment of possibly toxic plants was a last resort. But all other methods had failed, wholly or in part, and as June neared, he was determined finally to one-up the Morgans.

As well as he could ascertain, the Morgans had had no further truck with fairies of any sort, though of course his spying could not pierce Gul Ghillie's disguise. Finn remained oblivious of the training that was happening practically under his nose, and he still thought to impress the Morgans with the discoveries he might make.

Now, with the help of his friend the Wyrm, Dickie had concocted a formula that made the invisible visible, and had gone so far as to try it on himself. He didn't report seeing anything (which wasn't quite true, for with the ointment Dickie saw not only the Wyrm, who slept, invisible, on a thick volume called
Things That Don't Exist,
but also a map painted in invisible ink on the curtains, and the passing shade of Harold Halberd, one of Phyllida's ancestors who fought in the Crusades, who nodded politely to him), but, more important to Finn, Dickie's eye didn't burn or sting or fall out. He snatched up the ointment and determined to try it himself in the woods the following day. He considered trying it that very night, but quite sensibly decided that things that choose to be invisible in the dark are probably worse than things that choose to be invisible in broad daylight.

Phyllida left the Morgans around sunset, having accomplished nothing. She and Lysander conversed well into the night, and eventually reached the conclusion it had taken Meg much longer to reach—that no force of their will could sway Rowan. Their only task now was to encourage him, and strengthen him in what ways they could.

More grievous to Phyllida was the knowledge of Bran's role. She was still incredulous, but Bran's apparent flight did nothing to exonerate him. She thought she knew too well the pain he had suffered after his restoration. Since the moment of his rescue from the fairy lands, he had longed to return there as a drowning man longs for one last breath of sweet air. But she'd never thought he'd pit himself against one of her own heirs. He was, you must remember, her father, and though she seemed the elder, she relied on him, now as in her childhood. Her first responsibility, as summer caregiver, must be to the boy under her guard, the innocent who had come to this grief (she told herself) through her own carelessness. But she had known Rowan a scant four weeks, and when she wept into the night, after Lysander had finally fallen asleep at her side, she was in truth weeping for Bran, her father, who seemed lost to her again.

In the morning, though, when the roosters, crows, and larks all sang in cacophonous chorus, she emerged from her room dry-eyed and clear-headed, and coolly gathered up the Morgans, directing them to bring their Seelie weapons to the practice grounds. She leaned against a tree, arms folded, and put Rowan through his paces with much the same critical eye as Gul Ghillie.

“When I was seven, I stood at my mother's side to witness my first Midsummer War,” Phyllida said when at last he stopped, hardly winded, and sheathed Hagr. “The human Guardian of the Green Hill is always called to be an observer, and my mother took Chlorinda and me to stand by her side. That year, the Seelie champion was a fine young man from the village, the baker's son. He'd long been a favorite of the Seelie Court, and they had groomed him to the task since he was a boy. His opponent had once been a boxer in London, but when he passed his prime, he moved into his father's cottage, outside of Gladysmere, and turned to drink. He was still a tough one, however, and cruel…and many's the time cruelty has outweighed high-handed skill. He fought with the long pike, and the baker's boy with Hen and Brychan. A mismatched fight if ever I saw one, finesse against brute force. All around the Green Hill they fought, through the night, until the morning star peeked over the horizon, until one fell.” She was silent for a moment, seeing the carnage through seven-year-old eyes again.

“And every seven years since then, I have stood at the foot of the Green Hill and watched a battle rage above me. I've seen great fighters fall, and feeble men rise to victory. I have seen base treachery and nobility beyond imagining. And every seven years I have seen some mother's son die at the hands of another. But never, my boy, have I seen a man hold his weapons with such skill as you. A month only you have been training? I would not believe it possible. And yet the fairies are fully capable of bestowing great gifts on those they favor—skill at arms, luck in love, gilded fingers, and honeyed tongues. If you stood against any save my father, I would give you victory this minute. But Bran has a soldier's heart, and his years with the fairies have given him skills beyond those of mortal men. The fairies, Seelie and Host alike, are all great swordsmen, for they, too, will all fight in the Midsummer War.

“Know this, Rowan, my child: Bran will kill you if he can. I do not know what force compelled him to fight for the Host, but now that he is committed, he will come at you like a dragon spitting fire. I had thought him too strong, too good, to buy his happiness at such a price. Now that he has turned, he who should have been your greatest protector has become a deadly foe.”

How it pained the poor woman to speak those words! How old she suddenly felt as she said them, how crushingly heavy was the burden of her eighty-four years. That I should live to see this day, she moaned within. That such a thing should ever come to pass.

“You may yet prevail, child, though it is by no means certain. You have three weeks, three weeks only, to save your own life. Never cease in your training, and never forget how daunting is your…enemy.” She could hardly say the word.

She took a deep shuddering breath and went on. “To better fight your adversary, you must know what lies in his inmost heart. Come, children, sit around me here, among the worms and the roots. I find this tale too heavy to tell standing.” Meg noticed that Phyllida's joints creaked as she lowered herself to the ground, and for the first time, she seemed thin and fragile.

“My mother was the most beautiful, brilliant, kind, loving person in the world. Everybody's mother is, of course, but she was like one of the old Guardians incarnate. She would walk through the woods, almost a fairy herself, singing in their secret tongue. She tried to teach it to me—I only know a few of the words now. It has a way of slipping out of most people's minds, so only a few can ever learn it properly. Fairy music is like that, too. Try as you may to remember the melody, you can never quite catch it again. When she sang, the woods would come alive. And some evenings, the trooping fairies would come at her call and ride past us on broad-chested horses, with packs of milk-white, red-eared hounds baying beside them.

“My father…Bran…I've always felt sorry for the men who marry into our tribe. How like outsiders they must seem, and yet how privileged, to be drawn into not only the happiness of love but an enchanted world. Lysander had an easier time than most—he grew up in the village. But Bran loved my mother first, and learned the consequences of his love later.

“I think perhaps Bran's downfall lay in taking to it all too well. From the moment he set foot in the Rookery, I'm told, the Seelie Court swarmed around to greet him. That day is still remembered in legend, the day the fairies marched visible for all to see. From that moment on, Bran was swept up in his new life—the mystery of it all, the beauty, the danger. He plunged right in, learning everything my mother could teach him, and discovering on his own even the things she refused to reveal—things reserved for her own daughter only.

“He was a remarkable man—as you see him now. So handsome that all eyes turned to follow him when he rode about the countryside. My mother loved him as she loved this land, making him a part of her. And I loved him. He was like a mountain to me, an unmovable strength, a reassuring colossus. He used to take me on his shoulders when I was a little girl, and I swear that I could see over the treetops to the Green Hill itself. He'd walk in the woods with Lysander and me, teaching us all the plant lore he'd only just learned himself, and when I got tired, in the evening, he'd carry me home, with a fairy light leading us through the gloaming.”

Meg didn't know which was harder—picturing Bran as a loving father, or Phyllida as a young girl.

“There came a day when he no longer took me for walks in the forest. Oh, he'd still go himself, but when I tried to follow he'd grow cross and tell me I had better help my mother. I was almost nine then, and it had begun to be apparent that Chlorinda wasn't suited to be the next Guardian. So it was true that my own lessons became more urgent. Still, I was hurt that he seemed to have no time for me. I cried in my mother's arms the first time he forbade me to follow him. She told me not to worry, that he was only concerned for my studies and just doing what a good father had to do. I saw something strange in her eyes as she said it. Have you seen it, when your parents lie to you in order to protect you? From that moment, I knew something was wrong, though I couldn't say what.

“My father was home less and less. Business, my mother told me. He came home before dawn and fell into bed without seeing any of us, without speaking a word, and slept the day away. Then he'd rise after dusk and set out again, and be away through the night.

“What does a child ever know of the things that drive adults? To them the world is simple, and secrets are only petty things we keep from our parents, not they from us. I knew that things were changing—that my mother was unhappy and my father ever more distant. At that age I only saw how it affected me. My father didn't play with me anymore, my mother looked always with her far-seeing eyes into the forest, toward the Green Hill, and hardly seemed to see the child who stood before her. And Chlorinda, well, by that time she was always half angry, half frightened, and I did my best to stay out of her way.

“One day, my father set out on his nightly journey a bit earlier than usual. Dusk was just settling around the Rookery, and I was at play in the garden when I saw him striding toward the wood. I called out to him, but if he heard me he didn't turn around. I wanted to go with him, though I knew he'd send me back if he saw me, and I couldn't bear that. So, though I knew my mother would soon be ringing the supper bell, I followed him into the deepening darkness. I had never been alone in the forest after sunset before, and even with my father only a few paces before me, oh, how alone I felt! I think in truth I lost him that night, and not the next, which was when he vanished from this world for seventy years.

“I was a little thing, and used to the woods, so it was easy for me to hide. By then he wouldn't have paid any attention to me even if he'd caught me. His thoughts were already with the fairies, and I no longer existed to him. He came to a glade near the Green Hill, a bluebell meadow that opened to the starlight. There he met a lady of the Seelie Court. She laughed and took his hand, and he followed her like a man bewitched…which I must tell myself over and over again he was. ‘Come to the feast with me, and sup upon honey and sweet nectar,' she said to him. But even under the enchantment of his glamour, he'd been too well schooled to partake of fairy food. It is the first thing every village child learns at his mother's knee—that a single taste can make you a captive and slave forever. She laughed at him again. ‘So many nights have I tried…. Soon you will yield. Very well, if you will not feast, at least you must dance.' And she drew him to her and whirled him about.

“Soon they were joined by others, stately couples of the high court, and dervish dancers, who seemed mad. The glade was filled with bodies, twirling and swaying, pressed close together in the crowd. The sound they made! Sometimes it was like the most beautiful music, with pipes and choruses. Then it would change, and sound like the wailing of tortured souls. Sometimes my father laughed, sometimes he seemed to scream, but while I watched, he never stopped dancing.”

The children listened, spellbound. “I ran home and…I never told my mother. I don't know exactly why. Perhaps you do. I composed myself and went in to dinner late and never said a word to show I knew where my father was going every night. He came home the following morning, but when he went out the next night, he never returned.

“I don't know how my mother got through the next few weeks. She blamed herself, you see, not my father. The temptation of the fairy court had been too much for him. I don't know if the man lives who can resist their call, once they've set their cap at him.
She
could have, no matter how hard they tried to lure her. Women can always pierce the fairy glamour far more easily than men, and are not nearly so subject to their tricks and wiles.”