The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [120]
"I...remember. I went to get water..." I could see the effort that the memory cost him, but intelligence was back in his eyes, and his speech, though blurred, was clear enough.
"You were taken ill," I told him. "Don't trouble yourself now. I'll get you something to drink, then you must rest again. I have a brew here which will strengthen you. I am a doctor; don't be afraid of it."
He drank, and after a while his colour seemed better, and his breathing easier. When I asked him if he was in pain, his lips said, "No," without sound, and he lay quietly for a while, watching the lamp beyond the doorway. I made the fire up and propped him higher on his pillows to ease his breathing, then sat down and waited with him. The night was still; from close outside came the hooting of the white owl. I thought: You will not have long to wait, my friend.
Towards midnight the old man turned his head easily on the pillows and asked me suddenly: "Are you a Christian?"
"I serve God."
"Will you keep the shrine for me when I am gone?"
"The shrine shall be kept. Trust me for it."
He nodded, as if satisfied, and lay quiet for a time. But I thought something still troubled him; I could see it working behind his eyes. I heated more wine and mixed the cordial and held it to his lips. He thanked me with courtesy, but as if he was thinking of something else, and his eyes went back to the lighted doorway of the shrine.
I said: "If you wish, I will ride down and bring you a Christian priest. But you will have to tell me the way."
He shook his head, and closed his eyes again. After a while he said, thinly: "Can you hear them?"
"I can hear nothing but the owl."
"Not that, no. The others."
"What others?"
"They crowd at the doors. Sometimes on a night of midsummer you can hear them crying like young birds, or like flocks on the far hills." He moved his head on the pillow. "Did I do wrong, I wonder, to shut them out?"
I understood him then, I thought of the bowl of sacrifice, the well outside, the unlit lamps in the sacred nine of an older religion than any. And I think some part of my mind was with the white shadow that floated through the forest boughs outside. The place, if my blood told me aright, had been holy time out of mind. I asked him gently: "Whose was the shrine, father?"
"It was called the place of the trees. After that the place of the stone. Then for a while it had another name...but now down in the village they call it the chapel in the green."
"What was the other name?"
He hesitated, then said: "The place of the sword."
I felt the nape of my neck prickle, as if the sword itself had touched me. "Why, father? Do you know?"
He was silent for a moment, and his eyes watched me, considering. Then he gave the ghost of a nod, as if he had reached some conclusion that satisfied him. "Go into the shrine and draw the cloth from the altar."
I obeyed him, lifting the lamp down to the step in front of the altar, and taking off the cloth that had draped it to the ground. It had been possible to see even through the covering cloth that the altar was not a table such as the Christians commonly use, but as high as a man's waist, and of the Roman shape. Now I saw that this was indeed so. It was the twin of the one in Segontium, a Mithras altar with a squared front and the edge scrolled to frame the carving. And carving there had been, though it was there no longer. I could make out the words MITHRAE and INVICTO across the top, but on the panel below where other words had been, a sword had been cut clear through them, its hilt, like a cross, marking the center of the altar. The remains of the other letters had been gouged away, and the sword blade carved in high relief among them. It was rough carving, but clear, and as familiar to my eyes as that hilt was already familiar to my hand. I realized then, staring at it, that the sword in the stone was the only cross the chapel held. And above it, only the dedication to Mithras Unconquered remained. The rest of the altar was bare.
I went back to the old man's bedside. His eyes waited,