The woman whispers, ‘Ersula? ‘
And rises, screaming ‘Ersula!’ into the rain.
It is all that the Green Man can do to restrain himself from leaping to his feet in euphoria at this joyful union, across the Veil, a union which cries out to be complete.
How, then, should he facilitate the completion of the union? With his hands around the tender flesh of her throat?
Yes, she is begging now for deliverance. Her hands are clasped, she is swaying, her breath coming faster, in great gulps. The Green Man feels his fingers pulse. He begins to rise from the bracken, in his majesty.
And then, all at once, she rears up, her arms wide.
‘Oh God,’ she whispers. ‘Oh … God. ‘
And then turns and runs away, taking the castle line, looking over her shoulder, once, as if to say, Follow me, follow me!
‘Oh, Grayle,’ Cindy whispered. The voice broke off and there was only the sound of breathing in the night.
‘This is when she saw whatever she saw,’ Maiden said. ‘And then came running down to the Castle, looking shattered.’
‘Though not as shattered as perhaps she would have been if she had known how close she had come to death.’
It is dusk when the Green Man returns to the castle, in his vehicle this time, driving into a field and parking, without lights, behind a hedge almost opposite the entrance.
When the woman was taken into the house, earlier, he was baffled. Was it to be done here? And what of the man? Him too? It occurred to him that now, in the absence of the old witch, the castle would at last be fully open to him…
Cindy stopped the tape. ‘Mrs Willis, you see. He could not have killed with Mrs Willis present. And now she’s dead he demonizes her, he calls her a witch.’
‘Why? Why couldn’t he … with her around?’
‘He perceived too much power around her, too much light? I don’t know.’
‘But you said he killed her. ‘
‘And now I am unsure. We do know that he drew her out in the only way that would work. He approached her and asked her for healing. The one thing Mrs Willis could not deny him. This gift she believed she had received from the Holy Mother at High Knoll. She could never refuse healing, see? Couldn’t refuse at least to try. Thus are saints martyred.’
‘This is getting too apocalyptic for me, Cindy.’
Cindy didn’t reply, but put on the tape again.
… and when he returns at dusk, he knows the identity of the woman.
Full circle.
He has realized — everything is for a purpose — that it must be done in the knowledge of who she is and why she is here.
Sent.
Yes.
But what if she is no longer here? He does not even know where she is sleeping.
You fool, he tells himself. Have you no faith?
And as he is telling himself this, a car turns into the castle gateway.
The Green Man alights silently and follows on foot, waiting in deepest shadows, under the castle walls.
He sees a man leave the house and get into the car. As the door opens, the interior light identifies the woman and, before the car emerges from the castle gates, the Green Man is back in his own vehicle, searching, without lights, for the field entrance.
This time Maiden switched off.
‘He thought it was Grayle. He thought Emma was Grayle. Because of the blond wig.’
‘And he was locked into it by then,’ Cindy said. ‘It was ordained. From the moment he saw her on the Knoll he knew what he was going to do.’
‘He nearly ran into the back of us once. Em slammed on the brakes and this Land Rover nearly went in the ditch. And yet didn’t protest. No horn-blowing, nothing. I should have known.’
‘How could you possibly have known?’
They were off the single-track roads now, passing stone farms, paddocks.
‘Can you go any faster?’ Maiden said.
It’s a new experience for him. He does not normally use the modern roads which brashly thrust across the old straight ways. He wonders occasionally, now, if this is right and tells himself to have faith.
And his faith is amply repaid when they leave the road and enter a wooded enclosure whose antiquity is immediately apparent to the Green Man. He does not need his map. He knows from the contours of the landscape and the ancient sanctity of this area, between the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons. Here rise some of the tallest and finest standing stones in the land. He is at once at home. His spirit burns.
It is an inn. The sign says, Open to Non-Residents. He is gratified to note that his is not the only all-terrain vehicle in the car park. Through a ground-floor window, he can see into the bar, which is quite full of people who, from their clothes, he can tell are mainly local. He does not see the woman there.
He must be careful not to bump into her; she will recognize him at once. But he is beginning to feel secure and protected. He enters the bar, speaks to no-one, passes through to the toilets and then to the reception area.
It seems that they are staying the night. There’s no-one at the reception desk, which is fortunate. The keys to the rooms are on a board on the wall. Three are missing. Rooms two, five and ten. There is no-one to see him as he casually ascends the stairs.
On the first landing he tries doors. Only one room is accessible: room seven, at the very end, which has no lock or handle, only a freshly drilled hole.
His footstep echoes in an unfurnished room. There is a smell of sawdust. He switches on the light to discover that room seven is presently undergoing refurbishment. There are scattered tools and heaps of plaster and some paint-stained overalls.
He hears voices from the landing and creeps back to the door.
Because of the age of the house, the passage is narrow, and the two people are in single file, walking away from him towards the stairs, the woman obscured by the man, whose back is turned to the Green Man until he half turns to make sure he has locked the door of room five, and the Green Man recognizes him at once, from Castle Farm. He’s probably the nephew of Marcus Bacton, and he poses a slight problem. For the Green Man’s human quarries, to date, have all been hunted singly.
Well, no hurry. They’re obviously going for dinner. Now that he knows, the Green Man emerges and takes a leisurely look around the upper rooms of this pleasant old house. He finds two ugly metal fire escapes, geomantically disastrous for such a building, but obviously useful to him tonight. In fact, he uses one to effect his exit, wedging the door open just a slit, using a chisel he has found in room seven.
Who knows? The chisel may be useful later. At the bottom of the fire escape, he finds himself in near-complete darkness amid trees and bushes, but, when he emerges onto a lawned area, the moon emerges too, from behind a cloud, and he can see the lie of the land as far as the mass of the mountain called Sugar Loaf.
He walks round the perimeter of the building and arrives on the other side of the fire escape, where he discovers a narrow path leading through bushes to higher ground.
A mound, in fact. A distinct mound! Elation blossoms like a golden flower in the Green Man’s groin.
Not yet.
