Guardian of the Green Hill Read online

  “Ye killed me,” Bran said again, “and brought me back to life. I was the Midsummer sacrifice of the seventh year. I was supposed to die, for the land.” Or I was, thought Meg. “That’s what it’s all about, ye know. Since the hand of man first set a seed in the earth, blood has been shed to keep the earth fertile.”

  “That’s crazy,” Silly said.

  “That’s what fertilizers are for,” Finn said with contempt. Bran looked at him like he didn’t belong in the conversation.

  “What d’ye think makes the best fertilizers? Bones, ground up … blood meal … manure … all things from the body of a living beastie. Man or beast, life must be given to the soil, or it will not give life back. Every seven years a man is slain on the Green Hill so that things will stay the same—the corn will grow, the hops will sprout, the apples pip. But it didn’t happen that way this time … and things will not stay the same.”

  “I messed it up, didn’t I?” Meg asked, miserably. “You mean, now things won’t grow?”

  “The barley’s high, and you ate gooseberries yourself yesterday. Of course things are growing, ye daft girl. The blood was shed, the sacrifice made. That part was taken care of. But ye did something else too. Ye brought the dead back to life. That doesn’t happen, or if it does, so rarely it becomes the stuff of legends. If killing can bring life for seven years, what have you wrought with resurrection?”

  Meg had no idea, but felt a little shiver of trepidation at the thought.

  “Bran,” Phyllida said severely, “tell us clearly what you mean, please. What has happened?”

  “Daughter, I don’t know.”

  “But you said—”

  “I don’t know, I only feel. There’s something stirring in the earth.” Meg had visions of worms writhing under her soles. “I thought at first it was only me, that I wasn’t quite used to the world yet, the world above the fairy lands, or the world beyond my own death. I’ve had this feeling, like something waking up, something moving and stretching for the first time in centuries. And Meg’s the one who changed everything.”

  Meg didn’t know if she liked this and was just as happy when Rowan asked, “Why didn’t the Ani-thingummy thank you, Bran? You’re the one who came back to life. If something happened because of that, shouldn’t you get the credit?”

  “And not our dumb old sister,” James added under his breath, just loud enough for Meg to hear.

  “Och, it’s just luck it happened to me. Could have been any one of you brought back to life—that’s not what matters. I was the fiddle, Meg the fiddler. It wasn’t any of my doing.”

  “You volunteered to fight for the Unseelie Court,” Meg pointed out. “You volunteered to die. If you hadn’t done that, none of the rest would have happened.”

  “Ah, weel, men die willingly every day. Not so much in that.”

  “The truth is we don’t know,” Phyllida interrupted, tired of competing possibilities. It made her head hurt a bit, rather like when Lysander tried to argue politics with her. “The Cherokee spirit went away, right? Well, I say unless it comes back, we don’t have to trouble ourselves with it.”

  “But what if that’s not all that woke up?” Bran asked. No one had an answer they were willing to speak aloud.

  “Well,” said Silly at last, “if we don’t know for sure the weatherstone was meant for Meg, can I have it?”

  Of course Meg wanted to keep it for herself, but of course she said yes, and Silly grabbed her treasure and took it to the doorway, comparing the cloud puffs to the floating specks of white in the stone. They were an exact match.

  “Did you find Moll?” Meg asked, willing to bring up that unpleasant subject if it took some of the attention off her.

  Phyllida shook her head. “They had search parties out all night, and not a trace of her. Cain’s uncle has a hound that’s supposed to be a prime tracker, but he’s in Penzance, so it will be a while before they can have a try. I know she’s looking for the Green Hill to ask the fairies for a boon, but it does us no good to look there, since she doesn’t know where it is.” She turned to Dickie and Finn. “You can’t find the Green Hill unless it wants to be found. Only my family can find it whenever they like.” Which Finn already knew from experience, Dickie from research and conjecture. “I called on the Seelie Court for help, but they wouldn’t answer my summons.” That wasn’t unusual. The fairies, capricious and only rarely concerned with human matters, couldn’t be controlled even by their own Guardian.

  “We’ll help,” Rowan said authoritatively. Meg managed to hide her annoyance. Last night when she asked for his help he preferred to eat and sleep than comb the woods. Now, in front of Phyllida and Lysander and Bran, he looked all good and noble for volunteering to help in the search. No one seemed to care that she was the only one to brave darkfall and storms and Cherokee spirits and … wasn’t there some other danger too? It seemed there was, but—funny—she couldn’t recall.

  Now Rowan was mustering the forces like a general and bossing everyone. No, she had to admit it wasn’t really bossing. Her brother had a knack for leadership which Meg entirely lacked. It wasn’t that she was a follower by nature, only that she couldn’t rouse and inspire people to her own way of thinking. She frequently had good ideas, but it was up to the others to decide whether they should follow them. If not, she either had to pursue them herself or follow someone else against her better judgment, giving ominous warnings like poor mad Cassandra.

  They were clearing the breakfast dishes and discussing their search strategy (with Meg muttering I was going to go anyway, you know) when Wooster came in and announced, “There is a, ahem, gentleman here to see you, my lady.” Even the children, who as egalitarian Americans did not recognize the British class distinction of gentleman, could tell from Wooster’s tone that he thought the visitor was anything but.

  Phyllida raised her eyebrows. “A tenant? Someone from the village?”

  “No, my lady. An artist.” He paused a moment to let this sink in. “And a goat.”

  James, who had heretofore been busy drinking cream directly from the pitcher, gave a sputtering chortle. “Perfect,” was all he said. “Just perfect.”

  They filed to the stately front door. As a rule, guests were admitted into a special parlor near the entrance hall that served as a receiving room. It was pretty, but not furnished as delicately as the family’s main parlor. After all, Phyllida said, so many of her visitors had mud on their boots. This time, however, she intended to be just polite enough to maintain her reputation for benevolence, then promptly shoo the interloper away. They had enough sketches of their own manse and neighboring ruins. She would probably buy one without even looking at it, on the theory that this would both make her visitor happy and get rid of him all the more quickly. Such business was best performed at the threshold, where a thank you very much could be immediately followed by a firm good-bye and a slam, if need be.

  Meg trailed behind with some trepidation. She didn’t remember her second encounter with the artist, but she was still faintly unnerved by the first, when she had seen him rise like a mummy, or a zombie, dead and not dead, from the hill tomb … for surely it must be the same artist.

  “Now, don’t act interested,” Phyllida said under her breath as Wooster was about to open the door. “If he thinks you’re an easy mark, he’ll never go away.”

  Wooster flung open the door, and before he could announce the visitor, the cadaverous man eased his way inside, holding before him a piece of parchment like a shield. To Meg’s surprise, Phyllida said, “Oh, please come in, right this way,” and led him not to the rough reception room but to the rosy, cozy family parlor. Before the front door closed again, she glimpsed a large reddish-brown goat with a dark manelike cape of fur on his shoulders, eating pink foxglove flowers.

  The train snaked behind Phyllida, and they gathered around the man as he set up his wares. Meg could see now why Phyllida let him in. On the creamy piece of paper was Phyllida’s face, looking warm and welcoming.
It was obviously a quick sketch, almost eastern in its understatement and fluid simplicity, but it captured Phyllida’s essence. It was more than good enough to work a charm as simple as getting invited inside.

  “Oh, lovely! How delightful!” Phyllida said, going into raptures over each sketch and watercolor drawing the man laid out. Meg, craning her neck around the shoulders of the others, had to admit there was a certain vim to the paintings, a lifelike quality that was something more than mere realism. There was the ruined church, evidently done the night before in the setting sun’s red haze. Washes of color dominated form—the tumbled stones and crumbling walls themselves were only suggested, while the air around them looked heavy with light. Like the others, it seemed to have been done quickly, capturing a moment, a fleeting impression. She didn’t know if it was good—it was certainly nothing like the Old Masters she’d seen in books or the modern art in New York City—but it made an impression on her. There was an ink drawing of the line of cedars that led to the Rookery and a charming charcoal of the little bridge that arched over the stream. The water rippled exactly as if a pike had brushed the surface with his dorsal fin a moment before.

  There were a few faces she didn’t recognize, and then … oh! An intent little countenance gazing out of an antique carriage window. Meg saw herself in soft pencil lines. It wasn’t a very magical portrait, but few can resist a compelling and flattering portrayal of themselves. Then, too, some of the artist’s last spell lingered on her, so she felt drawn to the picture and, thus, to its creator.

  “Do you like it, little one?” he asked. “I saw you and your illustrious relations in that charming equipage, and I couldn’t resist a quick drawing. I hope I have not been presumptuous.” He made a peculiar crouching movement evidently meant to be a bow.

  “It is so like me,” Meg said. “I saw you on the roadside. It couldn’t have been for more than a second or two. How did you do it?”

  “Oh, I have a knack for such things,” he said lightly. “Take it if you like it.” Meg held it reverently.

  “We must pay you for it,” Phyllida insisted.

  “No, no, wouldn’t hear of it.” He stretched his long thin lips into an ingratiating smile. “Tell you what you can do, my lady. I’d like to paint your portrait.” He held up the sketch of Phyllida. “I took this from the Gladysmere Gazette. I saw a photo of you at some festival, and I thought, What a kind face, what a gracious lady she must be.” He slid the sketch across the table toward Phyllida, who took it up automatically. “But that hardly does you justice. There’s only so much I can do from a flat picture in the paper, a copy of a copy of a copy, without the zest of the living woman.”

  Yes, only so much, but that was enough to have made her weak and uncertain, confused about her duty and careless of her obligations, for the two weeks he’d been executing trial sketches. Not quite enough to make her give up altogether and hand over the Guardianship to him. It would take a masterpiece, perhaps the work of weeks, to accomplish that. “Now I see you in the flesh, I know what a paltry thing this daub is, and I hope, I dream, I yearn to be permitted to pay your lovely face the honor it deserves.” He crunched himself into that bow again, a flattering, charming courtier.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Phyllida demurred, but he could tell she was only protesting for form’s sake. She was entranced at the idea of being immortalized.

  The artist whipped out a fresh sheet of paper and pulled a charcoal stick from a worn leather satchel slung over his shoulder. “Here, let me try from life.” Under the gaze of the audience young and old, he shifted his keen eyes from Phyllida to the paper and back again, making quick, light strokes. His lips moved as he drew, but he didn’t make a sound. He was of course casting a spell to make Phyllida assent to this, the first step in her overthrow. There was no particular ritual, no magic words, just the unyielding will and determination to bend her, to make his creation on paper and the living woman one and the same thing, blank and featureless save for what he chose to bestow on them. As the lines and shading appeared on the page, he concentrated his thoughts, his power hard-won in the East, on one very small thing: Phyllida must agree to have her portrait painted.

  He sealed the spell with his scrawled signature in the corner and passed it to Phyllida.

  Lysander leaned over her shoulder. “It is you! Exactly you!”

  “Yes,” Phyllida said, frowning slightly. “Exactly.”

  Poor Gwidion. For all his artistic talent, for all his Persian magic, he was only a man, and, like every man, occasionally clueless about what will please, or more importantly, displease, a woman. It is true that this new portrait was much more accurate than the one taken from the grainy black-and-white photograph. This one captured every line of her face, every line. It caught the slackness in the flesh of her cheeks, the sagging of her once-firm jawline, the lengthening of her earlobes (a sign of enlightenment in a Buddha, but only of gravity in the rest of us), and the age spots that dotted her neck. Yes, it was exactly like her, and that is a thing very few women are happy to see.

  Phyllida was a beautiful eighty-four-year-old woman, but she was still eighty-four. When she pictured herself in her mind’s eye she was twenty, or thirty, or perhaps even a hale and vital forty. She never quite remembered she was old until she looked in the mirror, and then she could compensate somewhat by holding her head just so, looking up slightly, dimming the lights. This stark reminder worked a spell on her far stronger than any of Gwidion’s conjurings. She stood abruptly, pushing the parchment away.

  “You are a very fine artist, I’m sure,” she said coldly, “but I do not need any such frivolity as a portrait. I’ll buy this”—if only so she could destroy it—“but then you must be on your way. Perhaps the historical society would like your picture of the church. Good day.”

  Gwidion’s jaw dropped in his skull-like face. What a powerful woman! What resistance! He hadn’t thought it possible she could defy that spell. He concentrated for a moment, focusing his efforts on Meg and the ideas he’d planted the night before in the bluebell wood.

  “Oh, please, Phyllida,” Meg said, leaning against her arm affectionately. “I would so love to see a portrait of you.”

  But Phyllida, her pride piqued, was steadfast.

  “Can’t he paint one of us, then?” Meg asked.

  “We don’t need such fripperies.” She wasn’t inclined to reward the man who reminded her she was no longer young.

  “But he paints so beautifully,” Meg persisted, appealing as a kitten. “I only wish I could paint so well.”

  Gwidion pounced on the opening.

  “I give lessons too, m’lady. That is in fact my specialty. For the children, or for you.” He kept his attention on Phyllida, not realizing she was already a lost cause. Vanity would keep her safer than a legion of bodyguards.

  “Please, Phyllida,” Meg said.

  “Oh, please!” chimed Silly.

  “We’d like to very much,” Rowan said more soberly.

  Finn didn’t say anything. He was looking at the sketch of Meg, thinking it was really rather good.

  “It may be pleasant for the children,” Lysander said. “Give them some distraction from…” He had been about to say from wars and danger and death, then remembered there was an outsider among them and let the sentence trail off. “What do you say, old girl?” He put his arm around her.

  Old girl? It was really too much. Lysander had used that term of endearment for his wife since their early calf-eyed courting, and it always made her smile, but not today. She stalked out of the room with a backward wave of her hand, saying, “Do whatever you like.”

  You’ll Pay for That

  AND SO THEY DID. It was arranged that Gwidion should stay in an empty keeper’s cottage on the grounds and give the children art lessons each morning. No time was fixed for his departure.

  “Can we start right away?” Meg asked.

  “Why not?” Gwidion said. What did it matter if Phyllida refused to be painted? He was
now a member of the household and would have the leisure to study her even without her consent. In the meantime, here were the children of her bloodline. Perhaps some use could be made of them.

  He declared that they would paint al fresco, and when Silly asked, “Who’s he?” Gwidion explained it meant outside in the fresh air.

  Finn snorted (though he hadn’t known who al fresco was either) and said snidely, “The ignorant children can fingerpaint.”

  Carried away by this new, unexpected diversion, they forgot about searching for Moll (which was mostly an excuse for adventure to everyone but Meg) and fluttered about like titmice, gathering folding tables and bits of broken pencils. Dickie remembered a bottle of India ink in his sanctuary, the library. When he finally found it and shook the bottle, half of it spilled down his shirt, and he saw that the other half was dried into a cake. Meg ran off to Phyllida to ask if she had any proper paints for them to use.

  She found her in the little sitting room that adjoined her bedroom. She was perched at an aptly named vanity, staring into a silver-filigreed mirror. Phyllida’s back was to the door, but Meg could see her great-great-aunt’s reflection, distant and autumnal, looking at some far-off place, or time. Phyllida started when Meg called her name softly.

  “Oh, Meg dear, come in, come in.” She smiled and patted the plush seat beside her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Of course. Just indulging myself in a bit of sentimentality. Did that artist fellow stay? Well, it may be good for you, as Lysander says. You’ll never want for beauty if you can make your own. I’ve done a bit of painting myself.” She gestured to the wall at a postcard-sized painting of violets with a slug crawling up the stem. “Without much success, as you can see. My tutor told me, ‘If you can’t paint but must paint, stick to flowers.’ Even the ugly ones are pretty; if you do them badly, people will know what they are, and as a last resort, you can always say they are abstract.”