Merlin and Vivien had changed for dinner and looked more alike than ever in their black dinner jackets, boiled white shirts, and black bow ties over stiff collars, though Merlin had adopted a pale gray waistcoat and Vivien an eggshell-blue one. They had finished with the potato and leek soup, and were working on well-grilled lamb chops with mashed potato and peas, accompanied by a 1971 Bordeaux from an unknown vintner (the label having come off) with the certain knowledge of a dessert trolley’s appearance in the near future. Vivien filled Merlin’s glass and started to refill her own, then stopped suddenly, the bottle held at a dangerous angle, not quite pouring but quite likely to spill.
“Merlin! What are we doing here?”
Merlin was eating and reading, a green linen-bound hardcover of Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers propped up open against the silver-topped cut-glass salt and pepper shakers.
“Pardon?” he asked dreamily, looking up from the book.
Vivien repeated her question.
Merlin finished chewing on a piece of lamb. He looked at his sister, then slowly around the wood-paneled dining room, the six other tables with their snowy white tablecloths, silver and glassware set, but no one sitting at them. The familiar, enormous mahogany sideboard with the silver tureen in the shape of a vast oyster, the tall windows to the right, overlooking the woods, because they were on the third floor.
“Silvermere,” he said vaguely. “The upper dining room. Having dinner . . . or is it lunch? We came to . . . um . . . we came to . . .”
“Susan,” said Vivien slowly, trying out the name as if it were unfamiliar or she didn’t know what the word meant.
Merlin paled and closed his book. He looked around again, more alertly.
“Susan,” he repeated. “We brought Susan here, and we’ve forgotten! How long have we been here?”
Vivien slammed the bottle down and pushed her chair back.
“Not long,” said Vivien. “We were starving, we came straight to lunch. But Susan . . .”
Merlin pushed his own chair back, put the book into his yak-hair bag, and swung it onto his shoulder.
“We need to find the Grail-Keeper,” he said. His voice was even, but he was clenching and unclenching his fists. “Could . . . could Susan still be on the road?”
“The road isn’t there if I’m not,” said Vivien. “She must have come through. I mean, the alternative—”
“Sometimes I hate this place,” said Merlin vehemently. “Not that I suppose I’ll remember.”
“You will remember if you want to,” said the Grail-Keeper. She swung her legs out of the large dumbwaiter that could bring a dozen meals at a time up from the kitchen below, and stood up, brushing some crumbs off her matronly white tunic. As she always appeared to the younger booksellers, she looked like a middle-aged, kind but firmly in-charge sort of woman, a sort of nicer version of Margaret Thatcher. Her eyes were black and she had golden bracelets on her wrists.
“Where’s Susan?” asked Merlin.
“At this moment, walking with me through the wood to the Stone of Departure,” said the Grail-Keeper. “On her way to wherever she wants to go.”
“But . . . but she needs to be with us,” said Merlin, ignoring the multiplicity of the Grail-Keeper being in two places; this was a known part of visiting Silvermere and he remembered that. “She’ll be starving, too, and we need to work out what to do!”
“As I did not invite her here, and she does not have the standing invitation extended to those of your family, she cannot stay.”
“Oh, I . . . I . . . thought . . . thought it . . . it . . . would . . . would . . . be . . . be . . . okay . . . okay,” stammered Merlin and Vivien together, in weird sibling stereo.
“It is, as you say, okay, this time,” replied the Grail-Keeper gently. “In any case, I think Susan knows where she needs to go and perhaps even what she needs to do.”
“No she doesn’t,” said Vivien. “We’re still working out exactly what’s going on.”
“Do you need to know ‘exactly’?” asked the Grail-Keeper.
“No,” said Merlin. “Viv! We need to get to the obelisk before Susan tries to go anywhere.”
“We need to know about the Cauldron-Born,” said Vivien, resisting Merlin’s tug on her arm. “Was it made here? With our . . . your grail?”
“No. The grail has never been used in that way, and it never will be,” answered the Grail-Keeper, very firmly.
“Do you know which cauldron was used? And who has it?”
“I do not,” replied the Grail-Keeper. “I do know the St. Jacques knowledge of the cauldrons is lacking—”
She suddenly stopped talking and her hand flashed up. A small, bright knife appeared there, snatched out of the air.
“Now, there’s an unnecessary complication,” she said testily.
“That’s Merrihew’s!” snapped Merlin. “One of her leaf knives!”
“Merrihew,” said Vivien. “Oh no!”
“Likes knives, does she?” asked the Grail-Keeper.
She spoke to the air, for Merlin and Vivien had run from the room, tearing their napkins off to flutter to the floor behind them like startled, overburdened doves.
Chapter Twenty-One
Roses can be yellow, violets may be white
Hate might turn to liking, love could change to spite
Nothing is fixed forever, even stars will die
All that we can ever do, is ask the reason why
SUSAN NEVER HIT THE WATER, OR AT LEAST SHE DIDN’T THINK SHE did. One second she was falling, the next she was on solid ground and somewhere else entirely, no longer in Silvermere. Looking like an idiot with her knees bent and arms outstretched, on the shore of a tarn halfway up a mountain. A kneeling, bearded hiker stared at her over the top of his smoking Volcano stove, which had started to whistle. An enamel mug fell from his hand on to the stony shore, landed with a musical ding, and rolled away to end up against a wax-paper-wrapped sandwich.
“Did you come out of—” the hiker asked hesitantly, pointing to the tarn.
Susan didn’t answer. She could feel
