The Poisoned Crown: The Sangreal Trilogy Three

‘They’re famous,’ Nathan said, quoting: ‘To be or not to be, that is the question – and something about to die, to sleep – to sleep perchance to dream … For in that sleep of death what dreams may come …’

‘Boring,’ Hazel said. ‘You’re going all thoughtful on me. That’s your problem. Thinking.’

‘Thinking is a sign of intelligence,’ Nathan said.

‘No it isn’t,’ Hazel argued. ‘Stupid people think too. It’s the thinking that makes them stupid. Like that guy in the play. He stuck his sword in a curtain and killed a harmless old man because he thought he was someone else. Hamfist, Prince of Denmark. Stupid.’

‘I don’t go around sticking swords into people,’ Nathan said. ‘At least, only once.’ He had picked up the Traitor’s Sword – the sword of straw – and slashed at the Urdemon of Carboneck, but killing a demon, he felt, wasn’t the same as killing a person. ‘Anyhow, that was self-defence. I didn’t have much of a choice. The point is, maybe I found it easy to be brave, because – subconsciously – I thought I was sort of looked after. And now I know I’m not … well …’

‘You were brave from the start,’ Hazel responded. ‘You couldn’t have felt looked after then. If you’re more scared now, you’ll just have to be braver. You’ll manage it. You’re a brave kind of person. As long as you don’t start thinking about it.’

She hadn’t told him about the gnomons. Bartlemy had said he would set the trap that weekend. Hazel had already decided that if she didn’t think about what she had to do she wouldn’t worry, and if she didn’t worry she wouldn’t panic, but the effort of not thinking was taking its toll of her. She knew she wasn’t as brave as Nathan but that only meant she had to try harder. Nathan’s self-doubts she regarded as trivial – yet it was strangely reassuring to find that he, too, was having to cope with the possibility of failure and fear. Somehow, it made her feel better about her own secret terrors.

‘No thinking,’ Nathan said. ‘Right. I’ll – um – bear that in mind.’

‘And don’t start being clever,’ Hazel added, throwing him a dark look. ‘I can’t stand that either.’

‘Sorry,’ Nathan said. ‘Am I treading on your inferiority complex?’

‘I don’t have one,’ Hazel snapped. ‘I don’t do complexes and stuff.’

‘Oh really? Then why—’

But that was the moment when Annie put her head around the door with an offer of tea and cake, and the downhill run to a juvenile squabble was averted.

Since the accident Nathan had been on painkillers to help him sleep at night, and his dreams had stayed inside his head. The drugs, he suspected, affected his sleep patterns, making it impossible for him to stray outside his own world, but as the concussion had made him sick and the bruising had left him too stiff to move he had been feeling far from adventurous. However, he was strong and resilient, with quick powers of recovery, and that night he decided he could do without the paracetamol, though he didn’t mention it to Annie. It was hard to get comfortable – his shoulder still twinged at any awkward movement – but eventually he drifted into sleep, and through sleep into dream.

Only it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.

He was diving into deep water, hurtling down and down through an endless gulf of blue. The seabed rushed towards him like a moving wall. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream. He tried to close his eyes, to brace himself for the impact – but there was none. No impact, no eyes. With an exquisite surge of relief he realised he was only an atom of thought, a bodiless observer whose horrifying plunge had speed but no substance. He slowed as the sea-floor drew near and found himself gliding above the level sand which stretched away in every direction, featureless as a desert. He guessed it couldn’t actually be all that deep, since he could still see in the blue dimness, and high above there was the glimmer of the sun’s rays, reaching down through the water. Something like a cloud passed overhead, a huge shadow blotting out the far-off daylight. A ship, he thought, gazing upward – but no, this was Widewater, it must be, where the land had been devoured by sea and there were neither people nor ships. Yet it looked like a ship, a vast, deep-bellied tanker hundreds of feet long. Others followed, five, six, eight, one far smaller, another little more than a dinghy. Not ships: whales. A pod of whales far larger than any in our world, sailing the ocean like a convoy of giant galleons.

His thought floated up, passing between them, emerging into a world of sky and sea. A golden void of sunlight hung all around him. The backs of the whales arched out of the water, rising and falling like slow waves on their way to the horizon. Below him he heard a strange echoing boom, like the music of sea-trumpets blown in the deeps, and knew they were singing. He thought, on a note of revelation: This is their world. Nothing here can hurt them. All of Widewater was their kingdom.

Around the rim of the sky, clouds were piling up, great thunderheads swelling visibly, rank on rank of them, like mountain ranges marching across the sea. The sun was swallowed up; a wind came scurrying before the storm, whipping the waves into restless peaks. But the whales did not vary their pace, heaving and sinking to the same steady beat. A dark rain came slanting down; thunder-drums drowned out the whalesong. Purple lightning stabbed at the wave-caps, foiled by the salt water. A stem of cloud came writhing downward, sucking the sea into its vortex, until sea and sky were joined by a whirling cord as thick as a giant’s arm. The water seemed to be flowing up it, feeding the storm-heart.

Then Nathan saw the Goddess.

He could not tell if she were solid or phantom, vapour or water, but it made no difference: she was terrible. Her upper body seemed to spout from the wavering column of the tornado, filling the sky, a pale cloudy shape with billowing hair that mingled with the thunderheads and lightning eyes. Her arms were stretched wide as if to draw the whole ocean into her embrace; the storm flowed from her fingertips. This was the Goddess who had eaten the islands, destroying all human life, who had made Widewater into a sea without a shore – the Queen of the Deep, ruler of maelstrom and tempest, an elemental with no soul and no heart, made of rage, and power, and greed. Even as he was, without form or substance, Nathan feared her.

Not just because she was a goddess. Because he knew her …

She bent down over the whale-pod; he seemed to hear her voice like a giant whisper on the wind. Lungbreathers! The whales dived, eluding her cold grasp – all save one, the larger of the two calves, who hung back from curiosity, or because his reflexes were too slow. Her long fingers spanned his back, and the sea plucked him away from the others – away and away – sucking him into the storm, rolling him in the waves, spinning him into the tumult of the tornado. Nathan followed, drawn in his wake, closing his mind against the nightmare of engulfing water …

Long after, or so it seemed, the sea was calm again. The morning sun shone down through the water onto a coral reef flickering with smallfish. The young whale was coasting along its border, now far from family and friends, seeking the currents that would lead him back to the north. Then Nathan saw the fin cutting the water, just one at first, then another, and another. Following him. Circling. Nathan didn’t want to watch any more, but the dream would not let him go, not till the sea exploded into a froth of lashing bodies, and the red came, pluming up through the foam. Then at last it was all over, and the sea was quiet, and the finned shadows flicked and circled, flicked and circled, while the stain thinned like smoke on the surface of the water, vanishing into a vastness of blue.

Nathan sank out of the dream, and once again he thought he was drowning, plunging into a darkness without air or breath. He struggled in a growing panic, fighting against the familiar asphyxiation – and then he was in bed, breathing normally, and there was a hand on his forehead. A hand that felt unnatural, cold and leathern-smooth. A hand in a glove.

The hand was withdrawn, and when it returned it felt like skin. Nathan’s eyes were shut, but a picture formed in his head: the Grandir in his protective clothing, with his white mask and black gauntlets. It was an oddly comforting image. He found himself thinking about skin, human skin, the softness of it, its coolness and its warmth, the intimacy of its touch. Only a flimsy layer between hand and brow, between sense and senses, between heart and heartbeat. Animals had hide and scales and fur, feathers and down, protection and insulation. But humans wrapped themselves in a tissue-thin covering so transparent the blood-vessels showed through, so fragile it might puncture on a leaf-edge or a blade of grass, so sensitive it could feel the lightest pressure, from the footstep of a fly to the breath of a zephyr. Yet humans in their vulnerable skin were the most deadly predators in all the worlds …

It occurred to him that these thoughts didn’t come from him – they were unfamiliar, alien thoughts, which seemed to stretch his mind into strange dimensions. The Grandir’s thoughts, flowing from the touch of his fingers into Nathan’s head …

He opened his eyes.

A face was bending over him, a face that he had seen only once before, yet he seemed to know it well. A dark curving face with a metallic sheen on the hooked cheekbones and the blade of the nose. Hooded eyes, and beneath the hoods the glimmer of hidden fires, like glints of light in a black opal. Behind the eyes, deeps of power and thought, a force of personality that could re-shape the cosmos. But for now, it was all focused on Nathan. There was a tiny frown between the eyebrows that seemed to convey both anger and gentleness. The Grandir’s spirit was larger than that of other men; he could do many emotions at once.

He said: ‘You fear the water, don’t you? It is waiting for you in your dreams, but you fear to go there, to be overwhelmed by it – smashed against the rocks, crushed into the seabed. I have read the fear in your heart where there was none before. You must face it, and face it down. There are things you have to do, even in the dark of the sea.’

‘What happens if I become solid?’ Nathan said. ‘I won’t be able to do it. Whatever it is. I won’t be able to breathe.’

‘You must find a way. Your folly has made your fear – the risk you took, when no risk was necessary – and for what? For what?’ The frown intensified; for a moment, anger supervened. ‘To impress your peers! To vindicate the one you call friend! They are nothing – less than nothing – but you matter. You have no idea how much you matter. And you might have been killed – for a gesture! An instant of bravado!’

The hand had left Nathan’s forehead to stroke his hair. For all the Grandir’s fury and frustration, his touch was soft as a caress.

Nathan said: ‘Everyone matters.’ He was trying to hang onto that.

‘You don’t understand. One day – but not yet, not yet. You must take care. No more folly. No more rashness.’ Voice and face changed. The hard curve of his mouth appeared to soften. Almost, he smiled. ‘You are just a boy – so young, so very young. It is long and long since I had contact with youth. I had forgotten how it shines – how valiant it is, and how defenceless. You have tasks to do but your youth will find a way. You will go back to Widewater. I will care for you – when I can. But I cannot always save you. Remember that …’

Nathan said sharply: ‘Did you show me the whales? And the Goddess?’

‘These are things you needed to see—’

‘Who is she? I thought – I knew her.’

‘She is Nefanu, Thalasse, Queen of the Sea. You know her double, the witch from the river. But the spirit in your world is far less in power, though not in hunger. She would make Earth her kingdom, a desert like Widewater, landless and bare. She seeks to open the Gate and draw power from her sister-spirit, her other self – but that is unimportant. She has no part in my plans. It is Nefanu who dominates your task.’

‘But how can I face a goddess?’ Nathan demanded, trying to sit up.

The hand restrained him.

‘Only do what you must. Perform the task ordained for you; no more.’

‘What task?’

‘You know what task. Enough questions. There may be a time later, but not now. Now, Time is running out. My world is running out. Do your part. All my trust is in you …’

The dream was receding, almost as if the Grandir was thrusting him away, back into sleep, into his own universe. He knew a sudden fever of urgency – if he could only find the right questions maybe he would learn the answers at last. (One day, the Grandir had said.) He was groping blindly between worlds, fulfilling some obscure destiny that no one would ever explain – a pawn in an inscrutable chess game, a puppet on detachable strings. He knew it had to do with the Great Spell – with the Grail relics that he alone could retrieve – but there was still no answer to the great Why? Why was he born with this bizarre ability to travel the multi-verse – an ability he could not even control? Why was he sent on this unknown quest? Why him?

He tried to speak, to protest … but the Grandir’s face was slipping away, curving into the swirl of the galaxy, glimmering into stars. Darkness followed, and a sleep without dreams, and he woke in the morning to the pain in his shoulder, and the ache in his head, and a tangle of thoughts to unravel.

Annie brought him tea in bed, a rare indulgence which, as she explained to him, would run out as soon as his bruises unstiffened.

‘I’m not really stiff now,’ he said provocatively. ‘I could get up easily.’

‘No you don’t.’ She scrutinised his face, noting the sallow tinge to his complexion and the shadows under his eyes. ‘You look as though you’ve slept badly. Did you take your painkillers?’

‘I don’t like taking pills all the time.’

‘Yes, but the doctor said you’re supposed to take them at night for at least another week.’ She sat down on the bed, her exasperation changing to anxiety. ‘Have you – have you been dreaming again?’ And, after a pause: ‘Those dreams?’

He shrugged. Nodded.

‘For God’s sake.’ Annie fumbled for the right words, not wanting to hear herself fussing – knowing fussing would do no good. ‘You’re not fit enough yet …’

‘I don’t need to be fit. I wasn’t there physically; just in thought.’

‘Something’s scared you. You look done in.’

He wasn’t going to tell her about his fear of the water. ‘I’m okay,’ he assured her. ‘Just trying to figure out what’s going on.’

‘Can I help?’

‘Maybe.’ He hesitated. ‘How much do you know about the water-spirit who was after the Grail?’

Annie tensed, her nebulous fears returning like bats to their cave. ‘Do you think she had something to do with your accident?’

‘No. No, not that. But I’ve been to this place – Widewater – it’s all sea, a whole planet with nothing but sea. There was land once but it was overwhelmed. She devoured it. She hates all creatures of the air – lungbreathers – even whales and selkies. They call her the Goddess, the Queen of the Sea – the Grandir said her name was Nefanu. She seems to have some connection with the water-spirit here. Like an alter ego – a more powerful twin. And more evil.’

‘A Doppelganger,’ Annie said promptly. ‘I know. The theory is we all have other selves in other worlds, living out alternative lives.’

‘It’s something I’ve come across before, in a way,’ Nathan said. ‘Not exactly other selves but … parallels. The same stories running through every world, the same kind of people. Like, Nell always reminded me of Hazel – a mediaeval, princessly Hazel, much prettier and a bit spoiled—’

‘Don’t ever tell her that,’ Annie said hastily.

‘D’you think she’d mind?’ Nathan sounded a little surprised.

‘The phrase “much prettier” isn’t good. About this goddess—?’

‘This is different. The link seems to be much closer – as if the spirit in this world knows her counterpart is out there, and wants to reach her, to bond with her. That’s why she wants the Grail – and me. Or so the Grandir said.’

‘You’ve talked with him?’ Belatedly, Annie was picking up on the implications. More bats came home to roost.

‘Yes – but only briefly. He says he’s helping me, or guiding me, but he never answers my questions. Not the really vital ones.’

Annie asked, very carefully: ‘What kind of a – a being is he?’

‘Human.’ Nathan was startled. ‘Like Eric, only taller. Big shoulders. He makes you feel … like he’s huge, not so much

physically but his personality, his mind. His aura. He has the kind of vibes that fill up all the available space. He could talk to a crowd of millions, and every single person there would think and feel exactly what he wanted them to think and feel. And he wouldn’t even be trying: it would just happen. That’s how he is. Huge inside. It’s difficult to describe …’ He was running out of metaphors, gazing intently at Annie in an attempt to convey some impression of the man who had ruled a cosmos – who had laid an ungloved hand on his forehead, and stroked his hair. For a minute, he thought his mother had gone deadly pale. The way she might have looked if a raven had flown into the room and perched on the bedstead, croaking: Nevermore—

(And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted

Nevermore!)

—but he concluded it was a mere quirk of fancy, a footstep on his grave, that was all. The bleak winter daylight made everyone look grey and cold.

He said: ‘Mum …?’

‘Sorry,’ Annie said. ‘I was … wool-gathering. The goddess – what did you call her? Nefanu. Nefanu – and Nenufar. That’s almost an anagram. It can’t be coincidence.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that. D’you suppose she’s still around – Nenufar, I mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Annie said, but her expression gave the lie to her words.

She knew.

At Ffylde, the blame-chain had reached the headmaster. He had been in the job for less than a year, after his predecessor, the abbot, had left for higher things. Unlike Father Crowley he was a layman, who talked managementspeak and prided himself on his ability to bond with the boys, especially those with the wealthiest and most influential parents. Right now his main concern was that Nathan’s accident had occurred in the absence of the games master, laying the school open to possible charges of negligence. It was therefore imperative that blame – like the baton in a relay race – was passed on to someone else. The only question was whom. After interviewing Rix, sympathetically and at length, he talked to the other witnesses.

‘I gather Nathan was – hrmm! – showing off,’ he suggested.

Ned Gable said flatly: ‘No. Nathan never shows off. He isn’t like that.’

And, baring his chest for the knife: ‘It was my fault. I was the one who … I should’ve done the dive, but I couldn’t because of my ankle. So Nathan had to.’

‘Very fine of you,’ the headmaster said indulgently, ‘standing up for your friend, but you can’t take responsibility for his actions. That will be all.’

‘Sir—’

‘That will be all.’

The other boys received the headmaster’s suggestion with variations on a blank gaze and stony silence. Father Crowley would have known how to elicit the true facts, but the new head had neither his piercing eye nor his uncanny omniscience, and was only too ready to take that silence for assent. In the classroom omertà was the rule of the day: none of the boys would point the finger at Rix in front of an adult, whatever their private feelings – that would be the behaviour of a supergrass. However, many of them resolved secretly that on the rugger pitch they would make him pay.

All of which did Nathan no good at all.

‘The boys shouldn’t have been left unsupervised,’ the head told their form master, Brother Colvin. ‘That goes without saying. We can only hope the Ward woman won’t get herself an unscrupulous lawyer – that could cause us a lot of trouble.’

‘Mrs Ward,’ said Brother Colvin, laying some emphasis on the title, ‘is a very sweet person who would never dream of doing such a thing. A year or so ago Nathan had a problem with Damon Hackforth – he was a bit of a delinquent, we’d had a lot of problems with him – and Annie was quite amazingly kind and understanding about it. The whole business could have been very serious, both for the Hackforths and the school. If she hadn’t shown truly Christian forbearance …’

‘I see,’ said the headmaster. ‘I hadn’t realised Nathan had a track record as a troublemaker.’

‘Nathan wasn’t the one making trouble,’ Brother Colvin said. ‘I told you—’

‘No, no, Brother, say no more. He never makes trouble, he’s just caught up in it. That’s the danger with these scholarship boys: we all feel obliged to bend over backwards for them, no matter how badly they behave. They come to us from questionable homes – I gather Mrs Ward is a single parent – no discipline, no moral standards, and they’re thrown in the midst of decent kids from good families, and thanks to political correctness we have to make heroes of them. Well, I won’t have it. I infer Nathan fancies himself as a “tough guy” – he’d probably call himself streetsmart – and that sets a very poor example to the others. And word gets around, believe me. Many parents of prospective pupils could be discouraged by that sort of thing. I intend to see that Nathan’s scholarship entitlement for next year is going to be reconsidered.’

‘He’s very bright,’ Brother Colvin pointed out with deceptive mildness. ‘His results make an important contribution to our position in the league tables.’

‘Well, well. We’ll see. Perhaps Mrs Ward may be offered some kind of subsidy, providing she can come up with the bulk of the fees. This is a prestige establishment, not a charity school. I see no reason why she should freeload when other parents are prepared to dig into their pockets – often to make sacrifices – for their children’s welfare.’

Brother Colvin blinked. He wondered fleetingly what sacrifices bankers, stockbrokers and oil millionaires had to make to pay for their sons’ education. Living half the year in a tax haven, perhaps?

He said, still fighting his corner: ‘Nathan’s also an accomplished athlete. He’s on the school team for both rugby and cricket.’

‘No doubt,’ said the head, with a thin smile. ‘I don’t believe in favouring a boy for such reasons. This isn’t Cambridge, where they tolerate almost anything if a student can wield an oar.’ In his youth, he had been turned down for Magdalene, and still bore a grudge.

‘Father Crowley had a very high opinion of Nathan,’ Brother Colvin persisted.

A tactical error.

‘Father Crowley,’ said the head loftily, ‘was, I am sure, a naïve and trusting soul, as befits a man of the cloth. I, alas, am expected to take a more worldly view. The governors installed me as his successor since they needed someone with secular experience and the people skills that come from a life lived in the rough-and-tumble of the wider world.’ (He’s quoting from the speech he made when he first came here, Brother Colvin thought with a sinking heart.) ‘Trust me: I understand these boys. I can sense a bad apple even before I bite into it. Besides,’ he added, obscurely, ‘we have a good ethnic mix here.’ Belatedly, Brother Colvin realised this was a reference to Nathan’s dark complexion. ‘Think of Aly al-Haroun O’Neill – Charles Mokkajee – just the sort of pupils we need.’

‘If the corruption charges against Mr Mokkajee senior stick,’ Brother Colvin said rather tartly, ‘he’ll be spending a long time in a Bombay jail. Hardly the most desirable parent.’

‘Now, now,’ said the head, with a tolerant smile. ‘He’s innocent until proven guilty: we mustn’t forget that. Anyhow, I gather the case will be bogged down in the Indian legal system for some years. And by the way, it’s Mumbai, not Bombay. We don’t want to offend Charles’ ethnic sensibilities, do we?’