XI
Picus and Scylla went out of the house along the green road, walking separately. They sprang up the hill, the air from the sea fortifying them, against the midday, against the desire to anticipate in thought a distance their muscles must cover.
They came to the coast where Ross had sat and painted, his back to the house. “This way,” said Picus, and turned through a gate into a tunnel of hawthorns where a bird had flown out before Ross. There Scylla paused, but he took no notice, and she fell behind him, following his stride.
The way became hard, no way at all, but climb and drop over unmortared stone walls, bound with bramble and thorn. They crossed them, without reference to each other, steady as hunting dogs. In time they came to the edge of Gault.
“Let’s go down!”
“How?”
“On the soft side, where the landslide was last winter. Can you do it?”
“I suppose so.” She looked where a coast-path ran to the edge, straight out into midair.
Some time later they were in the unvisited wood under Gault, where the low trees grow to the edge of the sea. Where there is no bay, no beach, no landing-place, no way round. Taking advantage of a great fall of earth, Picus had created a way down.
From the immense crag water dripped, and ran out under the roots of a thorn over the tidemark of the open sea. They followed it up to where it ran over pebbles across a circle of grass enclosed by low trees. Greenwood within whispering distance of the unharvested sea. She said:
“What have you found here?”
“What d’you mean?”
“The way down—and this—”
“Foxes, badgers, fifteen ways of looking at a finch. They don’t mind you here.”
High over them the gulls squalled like sorrow driven up. At long intervals the water tapped the rocks like memory driven away. She knelt over the stream and washed dust and clay and a smear of blood from her bare arms and neck. Pulled a trail of thorns from her skirt. Threw away her hat.
“This is Bari,” she said, “the warm wood.”
“Which one was that?” said Picus, off his guard.
“Baldur’s wood,” she said, very carefully, not to make a mistake with him.
Gault Cliff hung over them, a terror to look up at, its seamed head raw in the light, but dark underneath and broken into bog and scree, interlude between the earth of pure stone, and the earth of wood and spring. No interval between the wood and the sea, it was that made the place incomparable. They lay on the grass on each side of the foot-wide brook, paddling their hands.
“Not bad for a naked sword,” she said. He kissed her over it. “Hush!” A bird appeared. She cried out: “That’s a Great Black Woodpecker.”
“I’ve been looking for it all my life,” he said. “Chuck!” said the bird at them and went off. They saw the scarlet ribbon on its head.
“What else is there here?”
“There’s a badger that bit me, and a vixen I can almost nurse—there’s the skeleton of a man—”
“We won’t look there now—”
“Not today, love.” She crossed her hands on her breast. He had given her all he had. This place. A fountain where saga and love were mixed. She looked up into the sky at Gault Cliff, where the mica glittered like sweat.
Again Picus said: “Hush!” She listened, loving him. The bird was back, the largest and rarest of the woodpeckers.
“I saw him when I was looking at the skeleton. In a tree.”
She said: “He was a famous bird once, Picus Martius. He was Zeus.” He nodded, as if he was saying: “I thought as much.” But she had turned the corner where love sees. When she saw that she was lying by the same thing. That what she had said to confuse them prettily, to hide love by revealing, had been about this. Between the tree and the skeleton there had been the bird who had been god. He had seen it, who was called Picus the Woodpecker, who was a man, who was the same thing. Now she knew, who was her lover. And what was she now, the lover of a bird?
Even Leda found a blue egg. She laughed. How long was this going to last? What was this? It was all right; worth whatever it hatched.
Only he must make love to her there.
He had rolled up the sleeves of his blue sweater. He put out his arms, one marked with a badger-bite, across the stream and slung her over.
It was late afternoon. They were lying again on either side of the stream. Gault over them, a little blacker with the sun turning behind it.
“How did you come to find this place?”
“Last spring, looking for young gulls. I looked down and thought if I found a lover—”
“Any lover?”
“I have only found one.”
She kissed him over the ribbon of water. He said:
“There’s a nest in every crack of the rock. It’s still pretty full.” That took away her fear of Gault. For the terrible crag was soft with birds, and where the birds ended the spring rose. None of the sequence without grace.
They were coming out of the trance of love into a time which would have to be put up with until luck turned them birds again. He had given her his treasure. If he rose and strangled her, she had that to remember to him. There was trouble in his face, the old trouble, Picus’s grief. That was not named or rational or tamed or shared. Untractable, inexplicable, near to wickedness.
The water divided them. She crossed it. He moved his hands as though he would be rid of them.
“Show me the skeleton!” He shook his head.
“Make the bird come back! I want to see him again.”
“Woodpecker-Zeus,” she said, “leave your skeleton under the tree. Stop flirting with us. We know who you are. Eagle. Kingfisher. Swan. We have met you before. I am Leda. You know best who he is.”
She waited, hoping for the best.
“There it is,” said Picus. She could not see it. The shadow of the cliff was moving towards them.
“In the thicket.” She clapped her hands, and the bird flew out.
“There,” she said, and saw him suddenly pleased and changed.
Then he said:
“Wonder what that chap Carston’ll make of it?”
“Make of what?”
They were looking at the other out of the corner of their eyes. Picus paddled one hand in the stream.
Scylla said:
“There is one thing which may have surprised him already. His room’s between ours.”
“Well, that ought to interest him.”
“Only,” she said, “if he wanted me.”
“He may be wanting you. Perhaps you’d better sleep with him. It would be better than his coming down here. Where nothing has been spoiled, love.”
“I see. Mais comme tu taquines éternité.”
She thought again: I have no business to be glad that Clarence does not know, nor ask if he will be taken here. I came first. This was an excuse, not only in honour, but in letting life alone.
He got up and drew her on to her feet. He walked her along the grass between the thickets and boulders, so that her feet never touched a stone. Up the landslide she hardly felt the slant of the earth, held as if he were walking with a tree. At the top of the cliffs he gave her no time to look back. In their triumph they walked alone a little separate from each other.
At a gate he caught her up.
“What y’ thinking about?” She saw his head on one side.
“Carston and the cup. That ought to get him going more than us.”
“Perhaps it will.”
“Picus, demon, where did you hide it?”
“Hush! love.”