A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle (5)

 

In the attic Meg lay quietly in bed, her eyes closed. Her hand continued to rub rhythmically against Ananda, receiving the tingling warmth. Behind her lids her eyes moved as though she were dreaming. The kitten stood up, stretched its small back into a high arch, yawned, and curled up at her feet, purring.

Charles Wallace-within-Madoc felt the young man’s surge of joy at seeing his brother alive, the brother he had thought dead and buried in a forgotten part of the forest.

The man in the dugout jumped overboard and ran splashing to shore.

“Gwydyr! You are alive!” Madoc held out his arms to his brother.

Gwydyr did not move into the embrace. His blue eyes were cold, and set close together. It was then that Madoc noticed the circlet around his brother’s head, not of flowers, but of gold.

“Gwydyr, my elder brother.” The joy slowly faded from the sunny blue of Madoc’s eyes. “I thought you dead.”

Gwydyr’s voice was as cold as his eyes. “It was my wish that you should think so.”

“But why should you wish such a thing!”

At the pain in Madoc’s voice, Zyll dropped lightly from the rock and came to stand close by him.

“Did you not learn in Gwynedd that there is room for one king only?”

Madoc’s eyes kept returning to Gwydyr’s golden crown. “We left Gwynedd for that reason, to find a place of peace.”

Gwydyr gestured behind him, and the drummers began to beat slowly on the taut skins. The paddles were rested and the men splashed into the shallow water, and pulled the dugouts onto the shore.

Gwydyr raised the corners of his lips into what was more a grimace than a smile. “I have come to claim the Old Man’s daughter.”

The sound of the drums was an aching pain in Madoc’s ears. “My brother, I wept for your death. I thought to rejoice to see you alive.”

Gwydyr spoke with grim patience as though to a dimwitted child. “There is room for no more than one king in this place, little brother, and I, who am the elder, am that king. In Gwynedd I had no hope against six brothers. But here I am king and god and I have come to let the Wind People know that I reign over the lake and all the lands around. The Old Man’s daughter is mine.”

Zyll pressed against Madoc, her fingers tight on his arm.

Reschal spoke in his cracked voice. “The People of the Wind are people of peace. Always we have lived in amity with those Across the Lake.”

Again Gwydyr’s lips distorted into a smile. “Peace will continue as long as you give us half of your fish and half of all you hunt and if I take with me across the water the princess who stands beside my brother.”

Zyll did not move from Madoc’s side. “You come too late, Elder Brother. Madoc of Reschal and I have been made One.”

“Madoc of Reschal. Ha! My laws are stronger than your laws.” Gwydyr gestured imperiously. The men with the paddles pulled the blades off the shafts, and stood holding dangerously pointed spears.

A united cry of disbelief, then anger, came from the Wind People.

“No!” Madoc cried, outrage giving his voice such volume that it drowned out the beating of the drums, the shouting of the warriors with the spears, the anger of the Wind People. “There will be no bloodshed here because of the sons of Owain.” He stepped away from Zyll and Reschal and confronted Gwydyr. “Brother, this is between you and me.” And now he smiled. “Unless, of course, you are afraid of Madoc and need your savages with spears to protect you.”

Gwydyr made an enraged gesture. “And what of your peaceable Wind People?”

Then Madoc saw that the festive garlands were gone from the young men, flung in a heap in front of the great rock. Instead of flowers they carried spears, bows and arrows.

Reschal looked at him gravely. “I have been hearing the war drums since last sundown. I thought it better to be prepared.”

Madoc flung his arms wide. There was grim command in his voice. “Put down your arms, my brothers. I came to you in peace. I will not be the cause of war.”

The young men looked first at Madoc, then at the People Across the Lake, their spears threatening.

“Brother,” Madoc said to Gwydyr, “have your men put down their spears. Or do you fear to fight me in fair combat?”

Gwydyr snarled an order, and the men on the shore behind him placed their spears carefully on the sand in easy reach.

Then the Old One nodded at the young men, and they, too, put down their weapons.

Gwydyr shouted, “If we are to fight for the Old Man’s daughter, little brother, I choose the weapon.”

“That is fair,” Madoc replied.

Zyll made a soft moan of anxiety and placed her hand on his arm.

“I choose fire,” Gwydyr announced.

Madoc sang:

“Fire it shall be, then. But in what form?”

“You must make fire, little brother,” Gwydyr said. “If your fire cannot overcome mine, then I will be king of the Wind People as well as those Across the Lake, and I will claim the Old Man’s daughter for my own.” His close-set eyes flickered greedily.

Reschal walked slowly toward him. “Gwydyr, sixth son of Owain, pride has turned the light behind your eyes to ice, so that you can no longer see clearly. You will never take my daughter.”

Gwydyr gave the old man a mighty shove, so that he fell sprawling on the beach, face down. Zyll screamed, and her scream was arrested in midair, to hang there.

Madoc sprang to help the old man, and bent down on one knee to raise Reschal from the sand. But his eyes followed the Old One’s to a small pool of water in a declivity in the sand, and his movements, like Zyll’s scream, were suspended. Only the reflection in the small pool of water moved. Gwydyr’s face was quivering in the wind-stirred puddle, his face so like and so unlike Madoc’s. The eyes were the same blue, but there was no gold behind them, and they turned slightly in to a nose pinched with cruelty and lust. This was not, Madoc thought, the brother who had come with him to the New World. Or was it? and he had never truly seen his brother before, only Gwydyr as he hoped him to be.

Ripples moved over the shallow oval and the reflection shimmered like the reflections in the soothsayers’ scrying glass in Gwynedd.

Madoc had always feared the scrying glass; so he feared the small oval of water which reflected Gwydyr’s face, growing larger and larger, and darker and darker, quivering until it was no longer the face of a man but of a screaming baby. The face receded until Madoc saw a black-haired woman holding and rocking the baby. “You shall be great, little Madog,” she said, “and call the world your own, to keep or destroy as you will. It is an evil world, little Madog.” The baby looked at her, and his eyes were set close together, like Gwydyr’s, and turned inward, just so, and his mouth pouted with discontent. Again the face grew larger and larger in the dark oval and was no longer the face of a baby, but a man with an arrogant and angry mien. “We will destroy, then, Mother,” the man said, and the face rippled until it was a small, slightly pear-shaped sphere, and on the sphere were blotches of green and brown for land, and blue and grey for seas, and a soft darkness for clouds, and from the clouds came strange dark objects which fell upon the land and fell upon the sea, and where they fell, great clouds arose, umbrellaing over the earth and the sea; and beneath the bulbous clouds was fire, raging redly and driven wild by wind.

Gwydyr’s voice rippled across the scrying oval of water. “I choose fire, little brother. Where is your fire?”

The flames vanished and the oval was only a shallow pool reflecting nothing more than the cloud that moved across the sun.

Time resumed, and Zyll’s scream continued as though it had never been broken. Madoc raised Reschal from the beach, stepping into the oval as he did so, splashing the shallow water onto the sand. “Stand back, Old One,” he said. “I will break the scry.” And he stamped once more on the water left in the puddle, until there was not enough to hold the least reflection.

From the central dugout came one of the warriors, carrying a smoking brazier. Gwydyr took one of the spears and held the sharp end over the coals. “You must make your own fire, Madoc!” He laughed derisively.

Madoc turned to the rock where the young men had laid their chains of flowers. He gathered the flowers in his arms and placed them in a heap over the oval where the water had been. Then he took the crown of flowers from his head and added it to the garlands. As though responding to a signal, Zyll cast hers on the fragrant pile. One by one all the men, women, children of the Wind People threw their headpieces onto the heap of flowers, Reschal last of all.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Gwydyr screamed, dancing about on the sand, thrusting his flaming spear at his brother.

Madoc leapt aside. “Wait, Gwydyr. You chose fire. You must let me fight fire with fire.”

“You, you alone must make the fire. These are my rules.”

Madoc replied quietly, “You were always one for making your own rules, Brother Gwydyr.”

“I am the king, do you hear me, I am the king!” Gwydyr’s voice rose hysterically.

Madoc, moving as though in a dream, pushed his brother’s words aside, and focused the blue fire of his eyes on the great pyre of flowers. The scent of crushed blossoms rose like smoke. Madoc thrust his arms shoulder-deep into the garlands and pushed them aside so that once more he could see the oval. A thin film of water had bubbled up from the sand.

“No more of Gwydyr’s nightmares,” he commanded, staring fixedly at the water, which sparkled from the sun. The water rippled and shimmered and resolved itself once again into a mother holding a baby, but a different baby, eyes wide apart, with sunlight gleaming through the blue, a laughing, merry baby. “You will do good for your people, El Zarco, little Blue Eyes,” the mother crooned. “Your eyes are an omen, a token for peace. The prayer has been answered in you, blue for birth, blue for mirth.”

Then the oval broke into shimmering, and all that was reflected was the cloudy sky. Madoc looked heavenward then, and cried in a loud voice,

The sun burst from behind the clouds and shafted directly onto the garlands. The scent of roses mingled with the thin wisp of smoke which rose from the crushed petals. When the smoke was joined by a small tongue of flame, Madoc leapt toward his brother. “There is my fire, Gwydyr.” He wrenched the spear from his brother and threw it with all his might into the lake. “Now we will fight in fair combat.” And he clasped Gwydyr to him as though in love.

For time out of time the two brothers wrestled by the lake, both panting with exertion, but neither seeming to tire beyond the other. Their bodies swayed back and forth in a strange dance, and the People of the Wind and those Across the Lake watched in silence.

The sun completed its journey across the sky and dropped into the forest for the night’s rest, and still the brothers held each other in an anguished grip and their breathing was louder than the wind in the trees.

The fire slowly consumed the garlands, and when there was nothing left but a handful of ashes, Madoc forced Gwydyr into the lake, and held him down under the water until rising bubbles told him that his brother was screaming for mercy. Then he raised him from the lake and water spewed from Gwydyr’s mouth as dark as blood, and he hung limply in Madoc’s arms.

Madoc gestured to the People Across the Lake. “Bring out your boats and take your king back to your own land.” His voice held scorn and it held pain and his blue eyes were softened by tears.

The three boats pushed into the water. The spear-oars were returned to their blades. Madoc dumped Gwydyr like a sack of grain into the center dugout. “Go. Never let us hear the sound of the war drums again.” He reached into the canoe and took the golden circlet from Gwydyr’s head and tossed it far out into the lake.

Then he turned his back on his brother and splashed ashore.

Zyll was waiting for him. Madoc looked at her and sang,

And to him Zyll sang,

Madoc held her close in his arms. “Tomorrow I will mourn for my brother, for this death is far worse than the other. But tonight we rejoice.”

The children lifted their voices and began to sing, and then all the People of the Wind were singing, and Reschal said softly to Madoc, “That which your brother wanted us to believe from the scry is part of his nightmare. Perhaps our dreams will be stronger than his.”

“Yes, Old One,” Madoc said, but he thought of the things he had seen falling from the sky, and the strange mushrooming clouds and the fire, and shuddered. He looked at the water that had seeped into the oval. But all that he saw was the smiling face of the moon.

The moon slipped behind the trees to join, briefly, her brother, sun. The stars danced their intricate ritual across the sky. The People Across the Lake looked at Gwydyr, and his golden crown was gone, and so was his power.

Madoc’s arms encircled Zyll and he cried out in his sleep and tears slid through his closed eyelids and wet his lashes, and while he still slept, Zyll held him and kissed the tears away.

“Come,” Gaudior said.

Charles Wallace stood by the unicorn, blinking. “Was it a dream?” He looked at the dark lake lapping the shore, at the tilted rock; it was empty.

Gaudior blew silver bubbles that bounced off his beard. “You were Within Madoc, deep Within this time.”

“Madoc, son of Owain, king of Gwynedd. The Madoc of the book. And hasn’t there been a recurring theory that Welsh sailors came here before Leif Ericson?… Something about Indians with blue or grey eyes …”

“You should know,” Gaudior chided. “You were Within Madoc.”

“It can’t all have been real.”

“Reality was different in those days,” Gaudior said. “It was real for Madoc.”

“Even the fire among the garlands?”

“Roses often burn. Theirs is the most purifying flame of all.”

“And the scry—what Madoc saw in the water—was that a kind of Projection?”

The light in Gaudior’s horn flickered. “Gwydyr was on the side of evil, and so he was open to the Projections of the Echthroi.”

“So the terrible baby was a Projection the Echthroi want to have happen?”

“I’m never entirely sure about Projections,” Gaudior admitted.

“And there was the other baby …” Charles Wallace closed his eyes to try to visualize the scry. “The blue-eyed baby, the answer to prayer, who was going to bring peace. So he’s equally possible, isn’t he?”

“It’s all very confusing”—Gaudior shook his mane—“because we move in different dimensions, you and I.”

Charles Wallace rubbed his fingers over his forehead as he had done in Meg’s room. “It’s all in the book somewhere. Why am I being blocked on that book?” The unicorn did not reply. “A book against war, a book about the legend of Madoc and Gwydyr, who came from Wales to this land … and what else? I can’t get it …”

“Leave it alone,” Gaudior advised.

Charles Wallace leaned against the unicorn, pressing his forehead against the silver hide, thinking out loud. “All we know is that a Welsh prince named Madoc did come to the New World with his brother Gwydyr and that Madoc married Zyll of the People of the Wind. Gaudior, if, unknowing, while I was Within Madoc I gave him, the rune, would that have been changing a Might-Have-Been?”

The unicorn replied unhelpfully, “It’s all very complicated.”

“Or—did Madoc have the rune himself? How could he, if it came from Ireland and St. Patrick?”

Gaudior raised his head and pulled back the dark silver of his lips in a ferocious grimace, baring his dangerous teeth. But all he did was open his mouth and drink wind as though quenching a terrible thirst.

Charles Wallace looked about, and as he looked, the scene rippled like the waters in the scrying oval on the beach, and the lake receded until he was looking across a wintry valley, and the rock was no longer a slightly tilted table but the flat star-watching rock, thinly crusted with snow.

Gaudior lowered his head and licked wind from his lips. “Gwydyr did not stay with the People Across the Lake.”

“I wouldn’t think he would, but how do you know?”

Gaudior raised tufted brows. “I have just been talking with the wind. Gwydyr left the lake in disgrace, and moved southward, ending up in South America.”

Charles Wallace clapped his hand to his forehead. “That’s it! It’s in the book, too. Gwydyr going to Patagonia. And Vespugia is part of Patagonia. And there was a connection that was lost and had to be found, but what was it? I keep almost remembering, and then it’s as if someone slams a door on my memory.”

Gaudior sniffed. “Echthroi, probably. They’ll try to block anything that might be a clue to the Might-Have-Been they don’t want you to discover.”

Charles Wallace nodded. “Mad Dog Branzillo was born in Vespugia. But right here, where we stand, Madoc came and married Zyll and made the roses burn for peace. What happened to the Wind People? Where are they now?”

“They were lovers of peace,” Gaudior replied shortly. “Your planet does not deal gently with lovers of peace.”

Charles Wallace sat on the rock, the thin rim of snow crackling beneath him. He put his head down on his knees. “I think I have to find out what the connection is between Wales and Vespugia, between Madoc and Gwydyr and Mad Dog Branzillo.”

* * *

Meg stirred and opened her eyes. Her hand lay lightly on Ananda. “Such dreams, Fortinbras,” she murmured, “such strange dreams.” Her sleepy gaze drifted toward the clock and suddenly she was wide awake. “Ananda! For a moment I thought you were Fort. And it wasn’t dreaming, was it? It was kything, but not clear and sharp, the way it was when Charles Wallace was Within Harcels. He was deeper Within Madoc, and so I have to dig deeper to find the kythe. And Charles wants me to find something out for him … but what?” She pushed her fingers through her hair, closed her eyes tightly, and concentrated, her hand pressing against Ananda. “Something about a lake … about burning roses … and two brothers fighting … yes … and Mad Dog Branzillo and Wales. That’s it. He wants me to find a connection between Mad Dog Branzillo and Wales. And that hardly seems possible, much less likely.” She listened to the sounds within the silence of the night, the sounds which were so familiar that they were part of the silence. The old house creaked comfortably. The wind brushed softly against the window.—Nobody’s likely to be asleep, not tonight. And Sandy’s a history buff. I’ll go ask him.

She got out of bed, pushed her feet into furry slippers, and went downstairs. There was light shining under the door of the twins’ room, so she knocked.

“What are you doing up, Sis?” Dennys asked. “You need your sleep.”

“So do you, doc. I’m up for the same reason you are.”

“I often study late,” Dennys said. “What can we do for you?”

“What do you know about Vespugia?”

Dennys said, “With your hair down like that, you look about fifteen.”

“I’m an old married woman. What about Vespugia?”

Sandy replied, “I was just reading about it in the encyclopedia. It’s part of what used to be called Patagonia. Sort of between Argentina and Chile.”

“Branzillo was born there?”

“Yes.”

“Who colonized Vespugia?”

“Oh, the usual mishmash. Spaniards, a few English, and a group from Wales while it was still part of Patagonia.”

Madoc was from Wales. She asked carefully, “Wales—when was that?”

“There’s a legend that some Welshmen came to North America even before Leif Ericson, and that one of them went south, looking for a warm climate, and eventually settled in Vespugia—or where Vespugia is now. But that’s only legend. However, it’s fact that in 1865 a party left Wales for Patagonia and settled in the open wastelands near the Chubut River.”

“So maybe Mad Dog Branzillo has some Welsh blood in him?”

“It’s perfectly possible, although Branzillo hardly sounds Welsh.”

“What year did you say the group left Wales?”

“1865.”

“Are those the only times Wales is mentioned in connection with Vespugia?”

“In this encyclopedia.”

She thought for a minute. “All right. What happened in 1865 that I ought to know about?”

Dennys said, “Meg, sit down if you’re going to get Sandy to give you a history lesson. Is this something to do with being pregnant, like a passion for strawberries?”

“Raspberries. And I don’t think it has much to do with being pregnant.”

“Let me get The Time Tables of History.” Sandy reached for the bookcase and pulled out a large and battered volume, and began turning the pages. “Aha. 1865. Appomatox was on April 9, and Lincoln was assassinated on the fourteenth. The Civil War ended on May 26.”

“Quite a year.”

“Yup. In England, Lord Palmerston died, and was succeeded as Prime Minister by Lord John Russell.”

“I don’t know much about him.”

“And back to the once-more-United States, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.”

“Would there have been slavery in Vespugia?”

“Not sure. Bolivar died in 1830, and his influence would likely have filtered through to Vespugia. So I doubt if there’d have been slaves.”

“Well, good.”

“Okay, and also in 1865 the Atlantic cable was finally completed. Oh, and here’s something for you, Den: Lister caused a scandal by insisting on antiseptic surgery and using carbolic acid on a compound wound.”

Dennys applauded. “You’re almost as veritable an encyclopedia as Charles Wallace.”

“Charles has it in his head and I have to look it up in a reference book. My sphere of knowledge is considerably more limited. Mendel came out with his law of heredity that year”—he peered down at the book again—“and the Ku Klux Klan was founded, and Edward Whymper climbed the Matterhorn. And Lewis Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

“Indeed, 1865 was quite a year,” Dennys said. “What have you learned, Meg?”

“I think maybe a lot. Thanks, both of you.”

“Get back into bed,” Dennys chided. “You don’t want to get chilled wandering around this drafty old barn in the middle of the night.”

“I’m warm.” She indicated her heavy robe and slippers. “I’m taking care. But thanks.”

“If we made you some hot chocolate, would you drink it?”

“I’m off hot chocolate.”

“Some consommé or bouillon?”

“No, thanks, really, I don’t want anything. I’ll get back into bed.”

Sandy called after her, “And also in 1865 Rudyard Kipling was born, and Verlaine wrote Poèmes saturniens, and John Stuart Mill wrote Auguste Comte and Positivism, and Purdue, Cornell, and the universities of Maine were founded.”

She waved back at him, then paused as he continued, “And Matthew Maddox’s first novel, Once More United, was published.”

She turned back, asking in a carefully controlled voice, “Maddox? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that author.”

“You stuck to math in school.”

“Yeah, Calvin always helped me with my English papers. Did this Matthew Maddox write anything else?”

Sandy flipped through the pages. “Let’s see. Nothing in 1866, 1867. 1868, here we are, The Horn of Joy.”

“Oh, that,” Dennys said. “I remember him now. I had to take a lit course my sophomore year in college, and I took nineteenth-century American literature. We read that, Matthew Maddox’s second and last book, The Horn of Joy. My prof said if he hadn’t died he’d have been right up there with Hawthorne and James. It was a strange book, passionately antiwar, I remember, and it went way back into the past, and there was some weird theory of the future influencing the past—not my kind of book at all.”

“But you remember it,” Meg remarked.

“Yeah, I remember it, for some reason. There was a Welsh prince whose brothers were fighting for the throne. And he left Wales with one of his brothers, and was shipwrecked and landed somewhere on the New England coast. There was more, but I can’t think of it right now.”

“Thanks,” Meg said. “Thanks a lot.”

Ananda greeted her joyfully at the head of the stairs. Meg fondled the dog’s floppy ear. “I really would have liked something hot to drink, but I didn’t want Sandy and Dennys coming up to the attic and staying to talk when we have to concentrate on kything with Charles Wallace.” She got back into bed and Ananda jumped up beside her and settled down. The clock’s hands had moved ahead fifteen minutes, the length of time she had spent with Sandy and Dennys. And time was of the essence. But she felt that the trip downstairs had been worth it. She had found the author and the title of the book for Charles Wallace. And she had found a connection between Wales and Vespugia in 1865. But what did the connection mean? Madoc was Welsh, but he didn’t go to Vespugia, he came here, and married here.

She shook her head. Maybe Charles Wallace and Gaudior could make something out of it.

And how any of this could connect with Mrs. O’Keefe was a mystery.