Bound into the Blood

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

I’ve hit the mother lode, so to speak, George thought. He was sitting on the floor in the library of the huntsman’s house, surrounded by boxes and piles of paper. Everything my mother ever wrote seems to be here. The dogs had been banished to the front study where they snoozed, keeping him in sight whenever they awoke. The cats had vanished somewhere warm and quiet, and Imp was with Angharad in her studio across the lane.

He’d been afraid that there wouldn’t be much useful material, all of it being from the late ’70s and early ’80s before personal computers were available or common. But apparently Léonie had decided to do all of her writing by typewriter, an IBM Selectric, by the look of it. She’d expected to be a published author eventually, so not only was her work done by typewriter, even in first draft, but apparently she’d typed her letters, too. Her creative writing existed in one copy per draft, as near as George could tell by a cursory look, but her letters were all carbon copies. Apparently she sent the originals and kept carbons, he thought.

She seemed oddly organized for a young woman, but he found the orderliness of her mind familiar. I used to write software myself—must get it from her, I suppose. That would make more sense than getting it from my animal-loving father.

There was a growing pile of respectable size in one corner where he accumulated the various drafts of her finished or partial works, each in its own stack, and piles nearer at hand for correspondence, sorted by person.

He emptied the second box and tossed it to the far end of the room, then leaned forward to tug the third one towards him. He’d already gone through each of these quickly once, to pull out the important official papers, but now he wanted to sort the contents fully.

So far, he’d found nothing more of his father’s. He probed internally now and then, but Cernunnos was unresponsive. Evidently he doesn’t care if I look into my mother’s effects, he thought.

Ah, the letters his grandparents had sent her were in this box, neatly stashed in shoeboxes. He’d noticed they were in one of these big boxes when he went through them the first time.

Alun knocked on the open doorway that led from the library to the workroom, across from the kitchen. “Just a reminder. You’ll be eating in the great hall tonight, huntsman, and I won’t likely be here until rather later. Anything I can get you before I leave?”

George waved him off, then called out. “Wait, do you know when Angharad will be back?”

“She didn’t say, but I would assume later this afternoon, after she loses the good light,” Alun replied from the hallway and a few moments later George heard the back door close, leaving him alone in the house. Maelgwn was off with Thomas Kethin prowling the countryside and learning the skills of an apprentice ranger. He’d return whenever Thomas deemed it appropriate. Bedo was with Angharad.

He finished emptying the third box and found it was all correspondence. Halfway there, he thought—time to take a break. He stood up and stretched his back, rotating his neck and listening to the vertebrae crack, and the dogs raised their heads off the floor in interest. “Never mind,” he told them. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Three more boxes to go. He moved them closer to where he’d been sitting so he could reach them, and sat back down.

It’s not long past mid-summer, and still I want more light, Angharad thought, as she finished cleaning her brushes late in the afternoon. This storage room in the infirmary that Ceridwen had helped her convert into an impromptu studio wasn’t badly lit on a bright day, but it was nothing like her two large studios behind her house down in Greenhollow, just a couple of miles away. Her apprentice Bedo was making himself useful this afternoon, fetching them more supplies from there. Maybe she should let him live in the place for a while, maybe that would be the best solution.

She sighed. It had made sense to join her new husband at the huntsman’s house in the winter when the snow was heavy and movement was difficult, and now her pregnancy provided its own travel difficulties. She rested her hand on the swell beneath her breasts and smiled. It was worth it, every minute. She could always paint later, but children were so few for the fae.

She paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder. “Shall we go home?” she asked Imp.

The half-grown tomcat rose from the top of the boxes piled up under the window where he could get the most warmth and stretched, first his rump in the air, and then his shoulders. He hopped down and joined her at the door.

“Why are you here with us, Senua?” Angharad murmured as she looked down at him. Unlike a normal cat, inclined to twine about her ankles and make her cautious of her balance, Imp paced alongside her and didn’t get in her way. He glanced up now, as she spoke, but Angharad expected no reply.

She walked across the lane and up the steps to her own door, and the two of them entered the quiet house. Her terriers danced out into the hall to greet her.

“I’m in here,” George called from the study, having heard the door open. Angharad found him in his favorite armchair with side chairs drawn up all around him to serve as tables. He’d left himself an aisle for getting through, but it seemed as if the entire contents of the six boxes were stretched out within arm’s reach. Not quite true, she corrected herself, as she peered past him and saw the piles on the library floor.

“You’ve been busy,” she said. His dogs thumped the ground with their tails when they heard her voice.

He looked up from the document in his hand. “I’ve only just started reading,” he said. “It’s fascinating. She seems to have kept everything.”

“Tell me,” she said. She found an unoccupied chair beyond his reach, and made herself comfortable. Imp jumped up and claimed her lap and she stroked him casually. His purrs vibrated through her clothing.

“Well, I grabbed all the correspondence,” he waved his hand around at the chairs, “and started to sort it chronologically. I won’t bother you with the earliest stuff for now, the start of her trip and her time in Ireland, except for one item. She mentioned casually to her mom that it was too bad she never met her grandfather.” He raised his eyes to Angharad. “Gwyn, that would be.”

She smiled at the thought of the dignified Gwyn’s sojourn of twenty years in the human world.

“She was wrong, you know,” he said. “Gwyn told me he met her several times when she was a child, out on her pony at Bellemore. To her, he was just some stranger.” He shook his head, smiling.

“But you’ll find the Welsh material interesting,” he continued.

“Hmm?” she said, encouragingly, her hand busy rubbing Imp’s neck.

“You can imagine, she didn’t tell her parents everything, or her friends. So I’ve had to read between the lines.”

He straightened up in his chair. “But then I realized something. You know, she was trying to become a writer.”

She nodded.

“Most of what’s in there,” he pointed his chin at the piles in the library, “That’s what she was working on. There are short stories, a novel, bits that look like the start of other books. What you might expect.” He glanced at her to make sure she was following him. “I haven’t read those yet.”

“But there was also something else, not letters, not books.” He pointed at the very small pile on the chair closest to him, just a few pages. “These are notes, maybe for a work or works in progress. But you know what I think? I think it’s personal. I think it was a way of recording her own experiences in a form she could use later for her writing. Not a diary, exactly, but sort of the shadow of one, transmuted.”

He cleared his throat. “I have to keep reminding myself that maybe none of this happened, that maybe she was fictionalizing it for other use, or making it up altogether.” He paused, and Angharad heard the change in his voice. “But maybe it’s true.”

“What sort of things does she describe?” she asked.

“Well, there are some initial notes about a man in the woods, appearing to her like Pan.” He looked up. “That’s like saying some sort of ‘wood-sprite.’ Pan has horns, too, little goat ones. She goes on about the fascination of his eyes, the silence of his movements. All typical romance stuff—that’s a type of book,” he told Angharad, “a tale of love and adventure.” He pursed his lips. “But, you know, I’ll bet that’s a reference to my father.”

“What else does she say?” Angharad prompted. He’s right, she thought, that’s a sketch of a real thing. That rings true.

“There’s one sequence, it’s very disturbing. I want you to read it.”

He frowned as he handed her a page, and wouldn’t look her in the eye.

She took the sheet from him and began to read.

A fun evening and too much to drink. Green-flavored, like May wine, and heady. Dark in the room. Tall, so tall. His head strange and my head spinning. Scrapes on the ceiling. A fur coverlet on the bed? Checked the ceiling in the morning and found marks.

Like that other time, years ago.

“What do you think…” she started, and George shushed her.

“Don’t talk about it out loud.” He winced.

Cernunnos, she thought. He doesn’t like this. That’s why George wanted me to read it myself. What does this fragment mean? Corniad, not in human form?

She raised her hand to her mouth and looked at her husband. She feared to ask him, with Cernunnos listening. Our private family joke about fawns, she thought—maybe that’s not so funny after all. She read it a second time and gave him an uneasy glance, and his eyes widened as he realized what she must be thinking

“I would never…” he protested, and winced again.

She sat in silence for a moment, considering.

“Twice, she says, in this.” She lifted the page.

“And it’s dated a few months before she died. Then there’s this.” He gave her one more sheet to read.

Already used “George.” Ought to be his parents’ turn next. Why won’t he tell me their names? What happened to him that he won’t discuss his childhood?

“Pregnant? She was pregnant? What happened to the child? Was she pregnant when she died?”

As she spoke, George raised the palms of his hands to his forehead and bent over, with a gasp.

She stood up, dumping Imp, and knelt beside his chair. “Stop it, Lord Cernunnos. Don’t bully him like this.”

George grimaced in pain, but snaked one arm around her in reassurance, and straightened up again, determined to continue.

“One more thing,” he said. “I found this in the last box.”

George steeled himself for what was sure to follow and handed Angharad the old newspaper clipping. It was an account from the local paper in Wales.

He’d already read it, though it had taken three attempts to get through it as Cernunnos blazed at him in fury for his disobedience.

He didn’t care. He’d almost had a brother—that’s what mattered to him. A boy, the article said. If his mother never got her husband to divulge his parents’ names, then she might have named him for her own father, Gilbert. He decided that would be his name, when he thought of him. Gil. Gil the Ghost. And if Cernunnos doesn’t let up, maybe I’ll be joining him, he reflected ruefully through the throbbing of the room around him in time to the pounding in his head.

He glanced over at Angharad, kneeling next to him, and tightened the grip of his arm around her. He knew what she was reading, but he tried not to think about it to get some release from Cernunnos. That was a losing battle—all the fragments of information he’d gotten when he’d stolen a look at the policeman’s notes as a child were now made real and vivid, impossible to suppress.

The article reported a car accident, not far from his childhood home. He’d always heard they’d been out for a walk. The vehicle had plunged into the river. His mother, strapped to the passenger seat, had died in shallow water, not by drowning but from head injuries, and there were traces of blood on the driver’s side, too. But the details… boar tracks all over the scene, the driver’s door open, seatbelt not used. Most of all, his mother pregnant and his father—missing, body not found.

Cernunnos’s strong displeasure tore at him, and George huddled in his imaginary mental shelter, wishing for stronger walls. The god could kill him, he was very well aware of it, and their brief working history together would probably not deter him. Cernunnos allowed him the illusion of privacy, most of the time, and tolerated some disagreement, but this was more than a warning. He’d seen this anger before, but never directed at him. He knew he was defenseless if Cernunnos decided to take direct action.

The message was clear—Cernunnos was insistent that he stop. I can’t, he called out to the thunderstorm raging around his fragile defense, hoping for understanding. I’m sorry, but this is my father. I have to find out, you know I do. Why are you so furious about it?

A veil was drawn over the storm and it was swallowed up as if it had never been. He probed, hesitantly. Lord Cernunnos? Silence. As if he were gone.