Read Online Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) by Robert Holdstock - Free Book Online Page B

farming business had performed excellently on the Paris stock exchange. His mother had lived comfortably in her last years, and there were sufficient disposable assets almost to cover the taxes due upon the transfer of her estate.
    Martin and Rebecca were the main beneficiaries under her will, and the stipulation that they receivetheir due inheritance only when they had left Broceliande was discreetly, at Rebecca’s persuasive insistence, deleted from the document, witnessed and approved, albeit against his better judgement, by Uncle Jacques.
    Martin quickly organised the selling of land to cover the balance of the death duties, negotiated rental deals for the remainder of the farm space, and within two weeks the paperwork was more or less completed.
    The old retriever, Bess, was ailing and had taken to uncontrollable, pointless barking, and though it broke their hearts to do so they put her down, Rebecca taking care of the difficult arrangements.
    It was mid-October by now, and the weather was generally bad, a series of rainstorms, grey days, the occasional crisp, frosty morning. When the sun shone, one Saturday, and the air was sharp and scented, the woodlands alive, the fields flowing with bright shadow, Rebecca went quickly around the houses in the neighbourhood inviting everyone to the farm. Martin dug a fire-pit, Jacques rigged up a spit to take a whole piglet, a vat of cider was wheeled from the LeContes, bread was made, salads fabricated, or bought ready-made from the nearest hypermarket, and Martin and Rebecca hosted their first garden party as a couple.
    In the late afternoon Father Gualzator blessed the succulent and roasted creature and reminded everyone of the old custom by which the priest received the first cut from the best meat, the neck fillet, a tradition that was rapidly challenged, and which proved to be invention. Amidst the hilarity, as the priest staked his claimwith wilder and wilder stories across the fire-pit, each outmatched by Johann deClude, a storyteller of wild exaggeration, the snout and tail of the pig were prepared on a bed of lettuce and presented, with ill-restrained giggles, to Father Gualzator.
    ‘I
will
eat this!’ he declared solemnly, holding the plate before him, ‘but only if I can have the squeak as well.’
    ‘Long gone,’ someone said.
    ‘Not at all! I believe I saw it earlier. There it is – hiding in the
fillet!
’
    The roasting, the feasting and the hours of horseplay helped to create a special warmth on this cold, hard day. Then the fire was stoked and fed to make a warm place where there could be dancing until darkfall. Martin was very drunk. Rebecca danced alone, wide skirts swirling, hair flowing as the accordion wheezed out its jig, and feet stamped on the stone flags at the edge of the field, where the pit had been dug.
    ‘We haven’t had a party like this since 1946,’ said Father Gualzator, as he bobbed to the accordion and nibbled at a finger of cheese. ‘By the way, Conrad is over there, in the gloaming. Do you see? By the well. He’s watching us. But he won’t come into the fire-glow. I’ve asked him, but he’s staying out.’
    Martin couldn’t see the shadow that the priest had seen. ‘Have you taken him something to eat?’
    ‘No. I didn’t like to.’
    Martin cut four thick slices of meat from the pig, and two of bread from the heavy cob. The salads had all been consumed. He found a small china flagon and filled itwith the raw cider from LeConte’s vat. As he began to walk across the field to the copse, Rebecca stopped him.
    ‘It’s for the bosker. He’s up in the trees.’
    ‘I’ll take it. You’re very drunk,’ she laughed.
    ‘And you aren’t?’
    ‘Out of my skull. But I want to say hello. Where is he exactly?’
    ‘The copse, by the stone well.’
    With the words, ‘Don’t expect me back too quickly,’ she took the plate and flagon and strode off across the night field, to become a shadow among shadows.
    It was after