Corbenic

Chapter Nineteen

Everywhere he went he found the streets waste and the houses in ruins.

Conte du Graal

“This do?” The truck driver braked.

“Oh . . . Yes. Thanks.” Jolted out of a half sleep, Cal opened his eyes and hastily grabbed his bag. They were in a busy street, packed with people.

“It’s Market Day,” the driver said, changing gear. “Can’t stop.”

“Right. Thanks again.”

Cal scrambled awkwardly out of the cab and stood back in the doorway of an empty shop, while the truck wheezed and hooted its way down the congested street.

People were everywhere. They walked in the road, chatted, waved. There were young girls dressed in fashionable clothes, old couples, boys on skateboards, farmers in a uniform of dark green worn coats and caps. This was Abergavenny. He’d never been here before.

He picked up his bag wearily and slung it over one shoulder, and pushed along the pavement. The pressure of the crowd, its laughter and life, was warm; it caught him up and swept him into the market, and he wandered aimlessly among the bleating of sheep and the stalls, looking at antiques and old amber jewelry and books and china.

He was so tired. Last night he had tried to sleep in a small hotel in Hereford, but something had been tapping on the window all night; it had woken him from broken dreams, and he had got up with a groan and staggered over. When he’d pulled back the curtains the osprey had been there.

It wouldn’t fly away. All night it had shuffled and roosted on the windowsill; he had lain awake watching it, its yellow eyes open as if it slept like that, fixing him with fierce, unblinking scrutiny. Accusing him. Even when he had drawn the curtains again and turned his back on it he had felt that gaze, tried to shrink from it, hide under the blankets. But it was still there, like the hatred he had for himself.

Then he had thought, if the bird was here, surely Corbenic must be near.

Now, in the noisy, echoing racket of the street, he rubbed his face and longed for some coffee. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d give this up. He’d go back, right now, to Chepstow, and to the neat black-and-white bedroom at Trevor’s; he’d wear his suit and go to the office and to hell with them all, and their crazy disappearing castles. He’d dump the sword. He’d do that right now.

He took it out, still in its plastic bag and thrust it blindly into a bin on the street and marched away; before he’d taken three steps a shriek of pain skewered him from behind.

A little girl was standing by the bin and screaming. Her mother ran up, and swung the girl up in terror. “What’s the matter, darling?”

“It bit me.” The child wailed, holding out a cut finger.

“What did?”

“It! That man left it there.”

The woman grabbed the bag, opened it and stared in disbelief. Then she looked up and eyed Cal. He wanted to run but couldn’t. Passersby flowed around him, turning curiously.

“What a stupid place to put something that sharp!” Furious, she flung it down on the pavement, a metallic crash.

With great control, tense in every muscle, Cal bent and picked the bag up. He turned and walked away, hearing every syllable of the woman’s comforting of the child stab him like a knife in the back.

“I’ll dump you so deep in the river,” he murmured, “you’ll never, ever trouble me again.”

The sword settled in its bag smugly.

At the cashpoint he put his card in, glancing quickly around in case anyone was watching. He punched the numbers; the machine made a small chuntering noise. Then, with shocking finality, it swallowed his card.

Aghast, Cal stared. A stark, printed message came up on the screen. THIS CARD IS WITHHELD. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR BRANCH FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

For an instant the implications didn’t hit him; when they did he turned and ran, down the street, around the corner, up a steep ramp into what seemed like a park, checking at every turn no one was following, sprinting up a flight of steps between wintry ruined flowerbeds and collapsing onto a park bench.

Trevor had stopped his card. Furious, he ground his hands into fists and then thought, no, maybe not. Maybe he had just run out of money. In either case, the result was the same.

He searched his pockets, dug out his wallet from the rucksack, gathered coins and notes. Fifteen pounds forty-two pence. Not enough for another night’s stay anywhere. Maybe enough for the train fare home. All his money gone and nothing to show for it! He thought of how he had once gloated over the bank statements. How he had felt so good about that.

He put the money in his pocket and sat back, looking down on the flat, waterlogged river meadows that stretched out below him, their flooded paths iced to shining deathtraps where kids slid and screeched, tiny voices rising to him.

He would not go to Otter’s Brook.

He shivered, the cold wind cutting him. He had sworn he would find the Grail and he would find it. The osprey was here. The castle must be close. He got up and wandered along the path, thinking hard. He’d have to watch every penny. Eat carefully. Chips. Anything cheap. And sleep out. In January! The thought of that was appalling but he made himself face it. That was where he was going wrong. To find Corbenic he would have to give up everything, to walk right out of the world of towns and bed-and-breakfasts. To do what he had sometimes dreamed of sleepily on long train journeys, to walk into the greenwood and not come back.

Wherever it was it was near, and far. Like Bron had been. Like his mother had been.

The park curled around a castle. He stared up at the gray walls in dull, wry appreciation, not even surprised anymore. This whole borderland was a line of castles; they were passing him from one to the next, but none of them was the right one.

He took a buttered roll from his bag and ate it; it was hard and crusty, left over from breakfast, but it was all he was allowing himself for now.

Under it, still wrapped in its box and tissue paper, was the pale gray tie. Cal brought it out and opened it on his knee. The tie was beautiful. Its silk shone. It smelled of Thérèse’s expensive perfume. It was all the things he had ever desired, all the comfort and elegance and taste. For a long moment he let himself enjoy it, remembering the pleasure of buying it. Then he folded it up, his hands shaking with cold. He still had the receipt, and there was a branch of the shop just around the corner. It was one way to get some money.

With the cash he bought cheap fruit in the market, and water, and matches and looked at the sleeping bags in the hiking shop, but they were too expensive. By the time he walked out of the town on a back lane that led up past farms and under the railway line into the countryside, it was past three and already getting dark. The osprey swooped overhead, a shadow in the growing twilight. Then it flew off to the west, and was gone.

A mile or so down the lane he came to a stile on his right; above it a leaning metal post pointed. PUBLIC FOOTPATH, it said, in Welsh and English. Beyond it a scrubby ungrazed field stretched down to a small wood. Nothing moved in its stillness; no birds sang, there were no cattle or sheep. In the dim twilight over the trees a few faint stars shone.

Cal climbed the gate, and entered the Waste Land.