Caldecott The Green Lady and the King of Shadows

1. Auflage 2007
ISBN: 978-1-84319-332-6
Verlag: Mushroom eBooks
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 120 Seiten

When Lukas stumbles into a hidden tunnel under Glastonbury Tor, he is unprepared for the events that follow. He meets the hermit Collen and assists in the struggle against the mighty Gwyn ap Nudd, a confrontation involving the Earth Goddess and, ultimately, the highest powers in the universe.
Drawing on folklore, myth and legend, Moyra Caldecott weaves a thrilling fantasy of the struggle between good and evil in Dark Ages Britain.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Caldecott, Moyra

Leseproben

Chapter 4
Three days passed before Lukas could go back to the tunnel, but when he did he was well prepared. He wore his sheepskin jerkin against the clammy cold and carried rushes dipped in tallow for light and a sharp kitchen knife against the dangers he might meet. He spent some time reinforcing the lid of branches and twigs he had fashioned, so that it could be drawn aside easily from the inside of the tunnel as well as from the outside. He did not want company on his secret expedition. The rush light made weird flickering shadows and for a moment he hesitated to take the first step into the unknown. If the roof had fallen once, might it not fall again? What creatures lurked in the depths of the earth? He shuddered, remembering dark stories he had heard of monsters in underground caverns and tunnels. But in the stories they usually guarded treasure. What treasure might he not find in this dark place? This island had been inhabited since very ancient days. Old bones had been found, flint arrowheads, small carved stone heads from pagan times — even golden bracelets and necklaces. The chalice they used for the Eucharist each morning was made of gold melted down from ancient artefacts found in the earth not far away. Lukas found that he was sweating, though even in his jerkin he was very cold. ‘Fool! Idiot!’ he muttered to himself. ‘Those are just old stories!’ But he went slowly forward, holding the flame of his torch well above his head, feeling with his left hand the knife at his belt and the sheaf of spare rushes strapped by a thong of hide to his back. The light flickered wildly on the damp and crumbling walls as his hand shook. ‘Stupid!’ he said aloud, and then looked sharply over his shoulder as his voice came back to him as a hollow whisper. He had the impression that he was in the presence of a very powerful force — whether for good or evil he could not tell. It was as though he could feel the tremendous energy of the earth, coiled, waiting to spring; the energy that pushed huge oak trees out of tiny seeds, that raised mountains out of plains. And it seemed to him that the energy was conscious — was conscious of him — was in fact watching him in some way... It was as dark behind him now as it was ahead. He moved quickly, determined to find out where the tunnel led and to return to the comforting sunlight as soon as possible. But as the icy moments went by and there was nothing but the rough stone and the clammy darkness, his heart grew heavier and heavier and he began to have second thoughts. ‘I’ll come another day,’ he told himself. He turned, his shoulder brushing the wall and displacing the dust of centuries. The flame of his rush was burning low but its light momentarily caught a marking on one of the stones, the first mark of any kind that he had noticed on the walls. He lit another rush from the dying one and with the brighter light examined the marking. It seemed very old, blackened by the same time that had darkened and mouldered the blocks of rock out of which the tunnel was built. He rubbed the grimy surface with his sleeve, trying to see more clearly what the mark was, but as he put pressure on the block of stone it moved. Alarmed, he jumped back and turned to run, but his curiosity was now stronger than his fear and he paused. He held the light close to the wall again and pushed the marked stone, poised ready to retreat if necessary. But this time, although again it moved slightly under his hand, it did not give so easily. He tapped the wall and found that it gave back a hollow sound. He knew that he could not leave until he had found out what was beyond it. He put his rushlight on the ground, propping it up against the bundle he had been carrying, so that its light was aimed directly at the wall. He slid his knife blade into the fine cracks around the marked block and began to scratch and dig. Gradually the rock loosened. He pushed and pulled and scraped until his knife was blunt and his fingers were bleeding, but at last it had sufficiently swivelled on its base for him to get a proper grip on it. He tugged at the stone and suddenly the huge block came loose and began to fall. He tried to hold it but he was not strong enough and leapt back only just in time as it hit the stone floor, the sound it made reverberating like thunder down the black and dismal tunnel. Was it he who screamed with fear or something else in the shadowy darkness behind the stone? He would have run then if he could have but fear seemed to have turned his legs to dust and he could not move. The jolt of the fall had knocked the rushlight over and its flame now set the whole bundle alight. Suddenly flames flared upwards and illuminated the tunnel like daylight. Lukas stared with horror as the shadow of a giant towered over him. Shuddering, he turned to run and then realized that it was his own shadow, magnified by the leaping flames, the same flames which now brought light to the dim cavity behind the stone that had fallen. He gripped the grimy sides of the hole and peered fearfully in. Briefly and brilliantly what was beyond was illumined. He stared into a dark cavern, its walls dripping with slime. In a far corner a ghastly grey figure lay, chained by a metal that gleamed like gold, to the black wall. A figure that lifted its skeletal head to look at him as he stood framed in the hole he had made. He ran, stumbling and cursing with terror and pain as he knocked himself against the walls, back the way he had come, each step taking him further and further from the flaring light of the bundle of rushes, and the dreadful thing that lay in the dark hole beyond the marked stone. * * * * ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Brother Peter asked, startled as Lukas almost fell through the great door of the kitchen, his eyes staring and his face and clothes smudged and dirty. Lukas looked at Brother Peter blankly, for the moment not knowing what to answer, only half realizing where he was. ‘I... I fell,’ he stammered out at last. Brother Peter looked at him long and hard. Had he been brawling again? Only last week in defence of the young boy Matthew, Lukas had been involved in a fight that could have turned really dangerous if the Brothers had not stopped it in time. Would he ever be controlled and disciplined enough to please the Abbot and be finally accepted into the Order? Sternly he pointed to the ash bucket and the pile of greasy pans to be scoured and then left the room. Normally this was one of the most unpopular tasks in the kitchen but today Lukas set to it with a good will, relieved to have some ordinary, practical thing to do to make him forget the extraordinary experience he had just been through. Never would he go down that tunnel again; never lift that lid of branches. The only thing he would do was return to the hole the next day when the sun was full and bright and pull great boulders over the entrance to block it up so that no one would ever find it again, and no one or no ‘thing’ could ever climb out of it. He thought about Brother Peter. He was a gentle man. He kept his helpers busy and allowed no slackness, but he did not shout and punish as some of the other monks did. Everyone obeyed him out of respect, not out of fear. Should he confide in Brother Peter? Perhaps that ‘thing’ needed exorcism. But when Brother Peter returned to the kitchen he was in a hurry and told Lukas to be off. Walking away slowly the troubled young man remembered the words that had been read aloud in the chapel that morning. Out of my distress I called upon the Lord;
the Lord answered me and set me free. He whispered them over and over to himself, wishing he had the certainty of faith Brother Peter seemed to have, wanting to believe the monks’ teaching, but not finding that the way the Abbot taught it rang true to his own experience. * * * * That night Lukas lay a long time before he could sleep, although his body was more weary than it had ever been before. The dormitory in which he slept was a long low room, the roughly trimmed tree trunks which held up the beams of the thatched roof covered with clothes at night, hanging from innumerable pegs driven into the wood. The beds were rough trestles and very hard, the blankets hand-woven in the monastery from wool spun from their own sheep. In winter they had sheepskin rugs they had cleaned and cured themselves — all except the abbot who had a bear-skin brought with him from the mountains of Wales. Although in the east and the north of the country enemies had overrun their land and every day the danger of an invasion by the Saxons grew greater and greater, the monks kept their community in the old Celtic way as it had been for centuries. They prided themselves that there had been a monastery at Glastonbury before the Romans came to Britain, and it was still there long after they had left. They believed the same would happen should the Saxons come. They would absorb the invader, tame him, and watch him go. Had not God himself led Joseph of Arimathea to this very place after Our Lord’s death and given His promise that their tiny island would be an inspiration to the world for millennia to come? The original wattle huts which Joseph and his twelve companions had built had long since rotted, as a man’s body must rot with the passing of time, but the spirit of the work they had done still lived. In the Scriptorium, by the light of smoky mutton-fat candles when the sun was gone, the monks copied the gospels on vellum and sent them by river and sea, over mountain and plain, to far away places where others could read them. In the little chapel, half built of stone, half of...