Chapter 28

The night air was chill about them, but to Marcus, it was fresh and invigorating. He knew that this was a plan born out of pure madness, but he did not care. The idea of being married to Selina had become a fixation to the point of monomania when he had realized, while hopelessly pacing the study, that he was only prevented from marrying Selina according to the strictures and conventions of society. Well, that society could not stop them from loving each other. Could not stop them behaving as man and wife. But it was not enough for him to be Selina's lover, for them to act the part of a married couple. Something within him wanted more than that. The memory had come back to him of the stone circle in Cumbria that had been his haunt since childhood.

He had found it alone, amongst the trees, and long forgotten by all. The stones were ancient and mossy, half buried, the shape they delineated almost impossible to detect. But once the young Marcus had discovered it, he could not help but think of it as a place of great power. For the boy he had been, it was a sanctuary on the night he had stumbled upon it, a place where he could leave behind his reality of being exiled by a family who had not loved him. Leave behind his troubles and his worries, if only for just a night.

I do not need to believe in the so-called societal rules that dictated my ancestors and my father's ideologies. I believe in the smallness of human institutions and the rules of so-called society. I believe in myself and I believe in Selina. We will be married in a place just as ancient as that unnamed stone circle in Cumbria, in the eyes of a God far older than the institutions of today.

"Do you have somewhere in mind?" Selina whispered as they followed a track across a dark hillside.

"Why are you whispering?" Marcus asked.

Selina laughed aloud, the sound ringing out across the open landscape. It was curious without echo, as though the blackness of the night muted it.

"I don't know. It feels as though one should whisper when surrounded by the dead of night."

"Nonsense," Marcus said. "And yes…in a way. This track will take us to the top of the Gop, which is what this hill is known as locally. We follow the ridge to the right and we'll find a path down into a valley, with a wood and a pool."

Selina gasped. "It cannot be. The Lost Valley? The Fairy Dell?!"

Marcus frowned. "I don't know those names but they have the sound of the kind of thing children would come up with."

"Arthur and I had a place which was just ours. Our secret. It was a narrow valley within which was a wood with a pool at the center."

"And a standing stone?" Marcus asked.

"Yes!" Selina cried, forgetting her own prohibition on talking too loudly in the dead of night.

"I stumbled upon it as a boy. I did not know that Arthur had also found it. He never mentioned it," Marcus replied.

"I have looked for it twice. Once, the rain overtook me and I met Dai. The other time my father found me. I feared I would never see it again," Selina said.

"I don't know anything about it but I've seen enough ancient sites in Cumbria and Scotland to know the feel of a place where…I may seem mad, but…where magic exists."

Selina was looking at him silently. They rode close enough to see each other's faces in the light cast by their lanterns. She was frowning, studying him as though she did not truly know him.

"What is it?" Marcus asked.

"That is the kind of thing that Arthur would have said," she said finally, "I have not heard you talk in such terms before. I had taken you for a man far more practical."

"And is that a disappointment?" Marcus asked, a touch of anxiety entering his voice.

"No!" Selina hastily replied, "it is a most pleasant surprise."

Marcus hoped that he did not disappoint. The trail he followed was one dimly remembered from childhood. His landmarks were the remains of a lightning-blasted oak on the ridge, one crooked and blackened branch seeming to point the way. Once they had crested the hilltop, he looked back towards the glowing light of Valebridge in the distance, the shape of the castle a dim darkness against the greater blackness of night.

"I hated it when I lived here as a boy. Never wanted to see it again. But when the chance was offered to be its master, I jumped at it. And now…"

"It could be so beautiful. It could be magnificent. But it has so many bad memories, I can see that," Selina said.

"A lot of ghosts to be laid," Marcus half-murmured.

Then he shook himself, recalling himself to the present, and continued along the hilltop.

"My father forged for us a rivalry, made us compete over every little thing. Did Arthur ever tell you about that?"

"No," Selina murmured, "he made no mention of a brother at all."

"We fought for our father's praise. Fought to be better than each other at everything. Riding, hunting, reading, writing. Our childhood was one long exercise in proving ourselves worthy of the Dukedom. I hated Arthur more than I hated my father."

He looked across at Selina, aware that she had loved Arthur.

"I can see how you would. Did Arthur feel the same?" Selina replied, reaching out across the gap between their horses for Marcus' hand.

He took it and they rode hand in hand for a moment.

"I don't know…I never asked. Never stopped to wonder. The contest was all-consuming. Now, I wish I could go back and tell that boy not to try so hard. Not to fight. That his father was not worth the effort," Marcus said.

Selina squeezed his hand, holding on tightly.

"I wish Arthur were here."

Marcus looked at her sharply and she squeezed his hand again, leaning over in her saddle to kiss his cheek.

"Not for that reason. So that he could see the man you've become. So that the two of you could see that you were never really enemies. I think as men you could have learned to be brothers. Maybe friends."

For a long moment, Marcus held her hand, looking into her shadowed face. It was a romantic notion, the brothers reconciled, but it was one he was skeptical of. Too much had happened. But then there was the question of what kind of man Arthur had become. According to his father, Arthur was the lowest of men. The kind of man who would incarcerate his own mother in a lunatic asylum. And then pay for the upkeep of said asylum? It didn't fit. They rode on, Marcus following his dim memories toward a place that he wasn't even sure existed outside of his dreams. A cluster of granite poking through the grass provided another landmark. Beyond that outcrop was a steepening of the slope down to dark woods below.

"This is familiar to me," Selina said, excitement in her voice, "this way."

She took the lead, turning left at the rocks and beginning to descend the far side of the hill. Marcus had a vague memory of clambering over the rocks, pretending it was a castle. He had been trying to storm the ramparts that Arthur held.

I never succeeded. Even our games away from father were a contest.

"We fought with sticks instead of swords for those rocks," he said quietly, "Arthur beat me back and I kept coming. I wouldn't give up even when he caught me crack over the head and drew blood."

"An accident?" Selina said.

"No, desperation. I was about to reach the heights that he stood on. For the first time. It was his last roll of the dice and it worked. I fell. That is the true reason for the scar," Marcus replied, pointing to the thin white scar on his face.

"The Arthur I knew wouldn't have done something like that deliberately. He was a gentle boy," Selina said sadly.

"Perhaps he became so after my exile," Marcus replied.

There came a sound from behind. It was a scuffing sound, as though someone were climbing onto the rocks they had just left behind. Marcus turned in his saddle, whirling his mount.

"Who's there?" he barked out.

There was no reply and no repeat of the sound. After a moment, there came the bark of a fox and the noise of paws scrabbling from rock to grass and then away. Selina brought her horse to Marcus, putting a hand to his shoulder which made him jump. He slumped in the saddle when he realized it was her.

"I am jumping at shadows. It is the talk of Arthur. I know that he is a pleasant memory for you but not for me. I would ask that we do not talk about him anymore tonight."

"Very well," Selina replied, stroking her hand back and forth across his shoulders.

They resumed their journey into the dark, following the slope and gradually coming within earshot of a stream. A dark mass of trees stood to their right and the stream sounded as though it wove its way through the trees. Another few minutes and a larger copse appeared in front of them and the slope petered out. They rode among the trees, moving cautiously and with heads ducked to avoid invisible branches. Overhead, unseen clouds began to part and a shaft of brilliant moonlight suddenly flowed down from the night sky. They stepped into a wide clearing, at the center of which was a still pool, reflecting the full moon perfectly. It was obsidian black with a perfect blade of white light reaching across its surface to end at the reflection.

Tall trees ringed the clearing and a wide circle of soft grass separated them from the water. Marcus stared in stunned silence, seeing a memory from his childhood brought to life. As more clouds parted, the moonlight illuminated a tall finger of stone. Its shadow reached the water's edge, touching the bar of white light that was the smeared reflection of the moon across the water. And a dark figure stepped out from behind the stone.