17
THE HORNED ONE
What did you mean by that?’ asked Bryant angrily as soon as the meeting had dispersed. ‘You tricked me into coming back here by telling me about the stag-man, and now you try to prevent anyone from helping me find him.’
‘I didn’t trick you,’ said May. ‘If you remember, Meera volunteered the information quite by chance and you seized upon it. We only have a short time to solve an extremely nasty murder, and we’re not equipped to do the job. I can’t have you directing the others to go gallivanting off in search of someone who’s obsessed with stag nights.’
‘A girl may have been abducted.’
‘We don’t have proof of that. This witness, Izabella what’s-her-name—her boyfriend wouldn’t back her up so we only have her opinion about what she saw, and no-one has reported a missing girl. I’m not saying you can’t investigate it, just that you can’t use the others until we get a grip on the case we’ve been hired to crack. This is another chance, Arthur—no, another last chance. Have you got your mobile?’
‘Of course, and it’s charged up, although I miss my old Storno, don’t you? Fine piece of equipment, never went wrong.’
‘Well, we’re in the twenty-first century now, and stop changing the subject.’
‘All right, I can see I’m going to have to explain why I’m so interested in our antlered abductor. Come to my office.’
‘You haven’t got an office. None of us has.’
‘Don’t be pedantic. Come back to the space which I plan to turn into our centre of operations.’
They walked together into a dingy, cobwebbed front room overlooking the Caledonian Road. ‘Pull up a crate,’ said Bryant magnanimously. He seated himself in his cracked leather chair and lifted a yellowed scroll of paper from the floor, wiping dust from it. ‘Right, this is King’s Cross during Mesolithic times.’
‘Dear Lord, do we have to go back that far?’ asked May, fearing the meeting would be a long one. He knew that the disturbing myths and mysteries of old London were Bryant’s obsession. Besides, it was getting toward lunchtime and he’d had no breakfast.
‘Now, we know there was a Mesolithic settlement just up the road from here, on Hampstead Heath, but most pre-Christian tribal activity was in the district we now call King’s Cross, near the Battlebridge Basin. The area was still unspoilt countryside a couple of centuries ago, filled with meadows, streams and wells. Water drained from Hampstead Heath down to King’s Cross, which was then the Bagnigge Wells, then to Sadler’s Wells and Clerkenwell—all wells, you see, and very healthful because they contained so much sodium, iron and magnesium sulphate, although they can’t have tasted very nice.’
‘I get the idea. You’ve told me all this before.’
‘Just checking that you were paying attention.’ He threw open a filthy, dog-eared book and stabbed at a lithograph. ‘In the Middle Ages, the area of St Pancras was part of the great forest of Middlesex. The last remaining piece of that is Caenwood—what we now call Kenwood—in Hampstead. Where you get water, you get villages, crops—and fertility rites. Now, around 1550 a fable resurfaced about the Pindar of Wakefield. The pindar warns that no-one may trespass upon his land, is challenged, and acquits himself by winning a sword fight. He appears in folk songs and his story forms the basis for part of the Robin Hood legend, where he becomes a man named George-a-Green, and his challenger is Little John.’
‘I really don’t see what on earth this has to do with a bloke abducting girls outside a nightclub.’ May was exasperated. ‘What is a pindar, anyway?’
‘He’s a man who keeps the village’s stray cattle in a pen, or pinfold. The pindar’s story goes back much further, all the way to Paleolithic times, because he’s based on a pagan British god, the lord of the forest beasts, the stag-headed “Horned One.” This character reappears throughout our history as Herne the Hunter, and represents the fertile male power of nature. In prehistoric times he would be portrayed by a shaman dressed in deerskins and a headpiece decorated with stag horns, a man undergoing transformation into a god.’
‘You think we’ve got someone who knows his history.’
‘Or his pubs. After catching our pub killer, you’ll agree that I know an awful lot about houses of refreshment. Now until recent times, the inns in Highgate still practiced Swearing on the Horns, a debased fertility rite for visiting strangers who were required to worship the god and kiss a maiden. The Pindar of Wakefield pub nearby in Gray’s Inn Road only changed its historic name in 1986, to The Water Rats. But here’s a strange thing. In 1517 when it was built, the landlord’s name was George Green. The whole area is associated with the most ancient pagan god in British folklore. There was even a pub called The Horns right on the site where this stag-man has been spotted.’
‘What on earth can he want?’
‘Well, there’s a sinister side to all of this.’ Bryant’s blue eyes glittered as he found another lithograph. ‘ George-a-Green, or Herne the Horned One, is also Jack in the Green or the Green Man, the spirit of vegetation. The Green Man is a story that predates Christ. Uniquely, it has its roots in both pagan and Christian history. The legend tells how the dead Adam had the seeds of the tree of knowledge planted in his mouth. From this mix of fertility and soil grew a sinister god, the Oak King, the Holly King, the Green Man—the symbol of death in life. The Green Man is found in a great many English churches. I understand that there are over sixty Green Men in Exeter Cathedral alone. He appears both in church carvings and at May Day celebrations, as a sort of primeval trickster, a symbol of spiritual rebirth, but also as a vengeful rapist and bloodsucker. Look at this.’ Another etching, this more disturbing than the last. ‘The Green Man is a forest creature with the power to wipe out cities and return them to nature. He destroys men by unleashing natural forces upon them, and reappears when the earth is threatened. He can be benign and healing, but there’s a wildness about him, a dangerous cruelty—and a terrible madness.’
May studied the pictures. He opened his mouth and shut it again. ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘I’m not going to buy into this, Arthur. You always do this to me, you sidetrack me from the business at hand. The sighting and the killing are not connected. We’re after someone who has been punished for flogging dodgy drugs or black-market fruit machines, not some—vengeful god.’
Bryant wasn’t listening. His face was transformed with youthful excitement. ‘Don’t you see? The stag-man is being perfectly clear about his intentions. It’s all in the flyer he’s been handing out. The rivers will rise forth from oblivion’s bed and manifest their vengeance to mankind. He wants to reclaim the ancient woodlands.’
‘But it hasn’t been woodland for two hundred years.’
‘Hasn’t it? Take a look at the area between St Pancras Old Church and the new rail link. Apart from the odd warehouse and a few streets that were knocked down during the war, there’s nothing there.’ He thrust his hand in the direction of the window. ‘The land behind King’s Cross is finally about to be concreted over and densely populated. For the first time in two and a half million years—humankind’s entire time on earth—the forest will become a town. Someone is trying to stop that. And they’re prepared to kill in order to do so.’