The Green Lady and the King of Shadows

Chapter 3

Chapter 3The following day a fowling expedition took Lukas away from the monastery and the orchard.

They set off in three shallow punts just after the earliest dawn prayers. The coming of light brought sound and movement to the water lands and there was the rustle of small rodents from the bank, the splash of fish leaping and falling back into the meres, the call of bird to bird on the wing, and occasionally the honking of a wild goose.

The party was in the charge of Brother Andrew who knew that he had a great many mouths to feed at the monastery and must return with a good supply of fresh meat for the cook. He intended that they should penetrate deep into the marshes before they started hunting. Lukas was in the third punt, moving quietly behind the others, enjoying the peace. Their pace was leisurely enough for him to enjoy the soft hush of the sedges as they stroked the sides of his boat, while the feathery flower heads of the reeds he touched shook above him, the pollen from them drifting like fine gold dust in the air. He saw pink orchids and purple gentian quietly pushing the grass stems aside on the little islands and wished that he had time to explore. He thought of living on an island by himself, providing his own food, dreaming his own dreams, poling his own punt when he felt like it. He forgot about the cold winter mists and the clammy ghosts of departed souls he might encounter, the wind and the icy rain flattening the reed heads, the snow flurries and the crackling ice. Summer always seemed as though it would last forever when it was there, and as though it would never come back when it was winter.

‘What were you doing yesterday?’ his companion, Matthew, suddenly asked. Lukas was startled out of his reverie. He remembered the tunnel.

‘Why?’ he asked sharply.

‘I was looking for you and I couldn’t find you.’

‘I was in the orchard.’

‘I looked there, but I didn’t see you.’

‘Just because you don’t see someone it doesn’t mean that they’re not there.’

Lukas could see that keeping his secret from Matthew might well be more difficult than he had thought. The boy was fourteen, but a very small and sickly lad. He had somehow made Lukas his hero since he had defended him on several occasions against bullying, and tended to follow him about like a dog its master.

The young man frowned as he lent out of the punt and pushed at the reed covered bank to extricate it from the mud. He had not been concentrating on the water as he should and had come in too close. The other boats were already out of sight. Should he tell Matthew about the tunnel? It might be easier in the long run than trying to keep it hidden. Of anyone he knew Matthew would be the only one with whom he would enjoy sharing a secret. But if Matthew were cornered he might tell the others. A secret in a community where they were all bunched together with very little privacy might serve to buy him importance, a temptation Matthew might not be able to resist.

‘Take the pole,’ he commanded. ‘Push that log.’

Matthew eagerly took the pole and pushed. His arms were like sticks. He was proud to be asked to help, but no matter how hard he worked, the boat did not break clear.

‘Come, give it to me,’ said Lukas impatiently. The punt rocked dangerously as he moved beside Matthew and leaned out as far as he could, the pole gripped in both hands. Matthew watched as Lukas pushed. His hero was tall and strong. His admiration for him knew no bounds.

The punt was dislodged at last, but by this time the other boats were nowhere to be seen. The plan had been for the three to stay close together until Brother Andrew gave the signal, and then Lukas and Matthew were to create a disturbance so that the wild duck would rise from their hiding places in the reeds. Cerdic, a sullen, heavy-set youth, and Brother Andrew, would then shoot their arrows. The other boat would retrieve the kill. The monks never used more than three punts, for one direction must always be left open for the birds to escape if they could.

Once clear, Lukas poled hard, weaving in and out of the little islands, avoiding mud banks and rotting logs. The daylight was growing stronger every moment and he began to fear that they were lost. As he rounded each bend, each cluster of tall bulrushes, he was sure that he would see the others. But there was no sign of them. He decided to find an island and chose one that had a bit of height to it. He waded ashore while Matthew looked after the punt, and climbed through the tangled weeds to its summit. From there he had an extensive view over the vast expanse of flat marshland. To the east there were hills on the far horizon but in the immediate vicinity was nothing but flat marsh and the one sudden, extraordinary hill, the Tor, the abode of demons, rising from the forests clinging to its sides. As Lukas looked at it he was almost blinded by the blazing golden light of the sun rising behind it. He shut his eyes quickly, but even through the smarting and the watering, he could see an after-image of glory that made him gasp.

‘Is anything wrong?’ called Matthew as he saw Lukas stagger slightly and cover his eyes with the palms of his hands.

Lukas shook his head, but he felt very strange, as though he at that moment was someone else, seeing the Tor in a different way, influenced by different memories.

But as suddenly as the strange feeling had come, it went, and he turned his attention back to the low-lying marshlands and scanned for any signs of the other two boats. At first he saw nothing and then he noticed the reeds shaking to the south-west. Suddenly, as though a handful of seed had been scattered in the air, a flight of frightened ducks arose, heavily beating their wings and crying their long sad cries. The scene was distant but Lukas could make out the sudden break in the composite pattern of their flight. He saw the falling of limp bodies, and heard the calls of the hunters.

‘We might as well go home,’ Lukas said as he rejoined Matthew. ‘The others seem to have managed without us.’ He climbed into the boat and pushed off without another word, his face clouded. Matthew watched him anxiously, sensing that something had happened on the island, but did not know what.

Lukas was thinking about the Tor, the strange and magical Tor that both frightened and fascinated him. It rose, mysterious and compelling, to the east of the untidy cluster of wooden buildings which comprised the monastery. Its lower slopes were forested but its summit was strangely flat, bare and windswept. Many were the stories of hauntings he had heard about the Tor, and no one of the village dared visit it. There were legends that in the ancient days when his people were still pagan, the island on which Glastonbury monastery was built had been the gathering place of all the spirits of the dead and the Lord of the Underworld waited on the Tor to greet them.

Four times a year, at the turning points of the seasons, the monks wound through the forest, circling the base of the Tor, chanting prayers of exorcism but never, as far as he knew, climbing to the top. When Lukas was a boy he had decided that when he was a man he would march boldly right up to the top of it and see for himself if any of the tales were true. Now it seemed, if his tunnel led where he hoped it did, he might well learn its ancient secrets in a different way.