arrive at meaning, for I am a simple soul and at times a stupid one to boot. And those ancient Fathers, it seems to me, ofttimes were much more involved in words than they were in meaning. As I told you, I’m not really a good hermit, but I keep on trying, although at times I find myself awonder at the true profession of a hermit. I have thought off and on that a hermit must be the silliest and most useless member of society.”
“It is, however,” said Duncan, “a calling that is thought of very highly.”
“It has occurred to me, when I’ve thought deeply on it,” said the hermit, “that men may be hermits for no other reason than to escape the labors of another kind of life. Surely hermiting is easier on the back and muscles than grubbing in the soil or performing other menial tasks by which one may win his bread. I have asked myself if I am this kind of hermit and, truthfully, I must answer that I do not know.”
“You say you hid here when the Harriers came and that they did not find you. That seems not exactly right. In all our journey we have seen no one who survived. Except one group of ruffians and bandits who had taken over a manor house and had been skillful enough or lucky enough to have been able to defend it.”
“You speak of Harold, the Reaver?”
“Yes. How come you know of him?”
“Word travels throughout the Desolated Land. There are carriers of tales.”
“I do not understand.”
“The little folk. The elves, the trolls, the gnomes, the fairies and the Brownies…”
“But they…”
“They are local folk. They’ve lived here since time unknown. They may be pestiferous at times and unpleasant neighbors and, certainly, individuals in whom you can place no trust. Mischievous they may be, but very seldom vicious. They did not align themselves with the Harriers, but themselves hid from them. And they warned many others.”
“They warned you so you could hide away?”
“A gnome came to warn me. I had not thought him a friend, for through the years cruel tricks he had played upon me. But, to my surprise, I found that he was an unsuspected friend. His warning gave me time to put out my fire so the smoke would not betray me, although I doubt the little smoke of my poor fire would have betrayed anyone at all. It would have gone unnoticed in the general burning that came about when the Harriers arrived. The huts went up in flames, the haystacks and the straw stacks, the granaries and the privies. They even burned the privies. Can you imagine that?”
“No, I can’t,” said Duncan.
Conrad came clumping into the cave, dumping the saddle and the packs to one side of the door.
“I heard you say a ghost,” he rumbled. “There isn’t any ghost.”
“Ghost is a timid one,” said Andrew. “He hides from visitors. He thinks no one wants to see him. He has a dislike for scaring people, although there’s really nothing about him that should scare anyone. As I told you, he is a decent and considerate ghost.”
He raised his voice. “Ghost, come out of there. Come out and show yourself. We have guests.”
A tendril of white vaporous substance streamed reluctantly from behind the cabinet holding the parchment rolls.
“Come on, come on,” the hermit said impatiently. “You can show yourself. These gentlemen are not frightened of you, and it is only courteous that you come out to greet them.”
The hermit said to Duncan, out of the corner of his mouth, “I have a lot of trouble with him. He thinks it’s disgraceful to be a ghost.”
Slowly Ghost took shape above the cabinet, then floated to floor level. He was a classical ghost, white sheeted.
The only distinguishing mark was a short loop of rope knotted about his neck, with a couple of feet or so hanging down in front.
“I’m a ghost,” he said in a hollow, booming voice, “with no place to haunt. Usually a ghost haunts his place of death, but how is one to haunt an oak tree? The Harriers dug my poor body out of the thicket in which I hid and forthwith strung me up. They might have paid me the courtesy, it seems to me, to have hung me from a mighty oak, one of those forest patriarchs that are so common in these woods of ours, tall trees standing well above the others and of mighty girth. But this they did not do. They hung me from a scrawny, stunted oak. Even in my death I was made sport of. In my life I begged alms at the church door and a poor living I made of it, for there were those who spread the rumor that I had no reason for the begging, that I could have done a day’s work as well as any man. They said I only pretended to be crippled.”
“He was a fraud,” the hermit said. “He could have labored as well as any other.”
“You hear?” the ghost asked. “You hear? Even in death I am branded as a cheat and fraud. I am made a fool of.”
“I’ll say this for him,” the hermit said. “He’s a pleasure to have around. He’s not up on all the ghostly tricks that other ghosts employ to make nuisances of themselves.”
“I try,” said Ghost, “to be but little trouble. I’m an outcast, otherwise I would not be here. I have no proper place to haunt.”
“Well, now you have met with these gentlemen and have conversed with them in a seemly manner,” said the hermit, “we can turn to other matters.” He turned to Conrad. “You said you had some cheese.”
“Also bacon and ham, bread and honey,” said Duncan.
“And you’ll share all this with me?”
“We could not eat it ourselves and not share it with you.”
“Then I’ll build up the fire,” said Andrew, “and we shall make a feast. I shall throw out the greens I gathered.
Unless you should like a taste of greens. Perhaps with a bit of bacon.”
“I do not like greens,” said Conrad.
4
Duncan woke in the night and for a moment of panic wondered where he was. There were no points of reference, just a musty darkness with some flicker in it — as if he might be in some limbo, a waiting room for death.
Then he saw the door, or if not a door, an opening, with the soft wash of moonlight just beyond it, and in the fire-lit flicker, the bulk of Tiny, lying stretched out before the opening. Tiny had his legs pushed out in front of him, with his head resting on his paws.
Duncan twisted his head around and saw that the flicker came from a low-burned fire upon the hearth. A few feet away lay Conrad, flat upon his back, his toes pointing upward and his arms flung out on each side. His great barrel chest went up and down. He was breathing through his mouth, and the sucked-in then expelled air made a fluttering sound.
There was no sign of the hermit. Probably he was on his pallet, over in the corner. The air smelled faintly of wood smoke, and over his head, Duncan could make out the indistinct shapes of bunches of herbs the hermit had hung up to dry. From outside came a soft stamping sound. That would be Daniel not far away.
Duncan pulled the blanket up beneath his chin and shut his eyes. More than likely it was several hours till dawn, and he could get more sleep.
But sleep was reluctant to come. Much as he tried to shut them out, the events of the last few days kept parading up and down his mind. And the parading of events brought home again the rigors of the adventure he had embarked upon. In this hermit cave it was snug enough, but beyond the cave lay the Desolated Land with its freight of evil, with the burned-out village only a mile or so away, the church the only building standing. Not only the Evil, he reminded himself, but a band of evil men headed by the Reaver, who were out to track down his little party. For the moment, however, he could forget the Reaver, who had gone blundering off somewhere ahead of them.
Then his mind went back to that last day at Standish House when he’d sat with his father in the library, that same room where His Grace had told the story of the script writ in Aramaic.
Now he asked of his father the question that had been roiling in his mind ever since he’d heard the story. “But
