CHAPTER FOUR

That night James, in the now familiar box bed in Wulfstan’s house, had an unsettling dream. He dreamt he was back in the institution. In the ward in which he had been placed he could make out in the half-light of early morning a group of three doctor-like figures passing a document around. Each one took out a pen and signed the document. He looked again. The third doctor figure he recognised. It was his own mother! He could just make out a broad smile of satisfaction running across her face as she, with whispered but still dreadfully authoritative voice, murmured “I think that concludes things very well for us all now.” He tried to rise up from his bed but found he could not. Straps tied him down. Firm inescapable straps. He was trapped. Now they could do with him as they wished. He thought of electrodes, statutory pills, the scalpel and occupational therapy.

The dream, like so many dreams, seemed so convincing, so truer than reality that James firmly believed that he had failed to escape when the nurse he had befriended there had advised him to. “Fool”, he said to himself. “Why didn’t I take my chance? Why couldn’t I get out’! What stopped me?”

It was, therefore, with some sense of relief that he found the straps magically changed into the drapery closing in the side of his bed.

The drapery was moving but there was a breeze. Then he felt the smooth warmth of a feminine limb caress the side of his body.

“Hello stranger from the headland,” whispered Helen’s soothing voice. “Can I join you?”

“Why yes; of course. But your father?” hesitated James.

“My father wants me to know you better. After all, I am to be your partner in the salvation of our town,” Helen reassured him.

Her body smelled like a summer pasture bedecked with sweetest herbs, thought James, as Helen put her arm round his neck. He realised she too was naked as her erect nipples, so roseate in hue, proudly proclaimed.

Like two midsummer swans they necked and encircled each other and an unexpected confidence arose in James as he felt her total being ever closer to his tired, startled body. As their lips touched in warm moisture he could taste both the sun-drenched salt of the sea and the distilled nectar of the reddest rose. This was the real, the true dream, he reflected. The dream to banish the previous nightmare, with its power of redemption, of purest love.

Raised to high ecstasy of consummation they both fell asleep, the young lovers satisfied with each other’s being, happy in each other’s fulfilment of desire.

*

“Wake up,” smiled Wulfstan as he opened the drapery to disclose a picture-like scene of two idyllic lovers. . “Time to get down to business. Remember, saving our town and all that,” he said jocularly:

A large parchment chronicle and various quilled scrolls lay spread out on the table in Wulfstan’s study where James and Helen had betaken themselves.

“Read these, in particular this section,” advised Wulfstan. “If you have any queries my clerks and servants will be in attendance-for your every wish for knowledge.” 

James and Helen stuck their noses into the pile of documents. It was sometimes difficult to follow their thread, as with so many old manuscripts fact and fiction, natural and supernatural seemed to intermesh with one another so naturally. Certainly, some pages were obviously missing and the chronology in many parts did appear to be somewhat mixed up. What was not missing, however, was the care with which these documents had been transcribed, illuminated and bound. Scarcely a section but did not have its own Capital letter decorated with gold paint and illustrated with vignettes of life, from the reaping of the harvest to the hunt in the woods, all done with consummate artistry and attention to detail. James particularly enjoyed the illustration for autumn showing a drunken miller falling into a large barrel of cider. However, after two hours reading together (for Helen, unlike many of her contemporaries, could also read and had received an above-average education at the nearby convent of Benedictine nuns) a somewhat confused, but still discernible, picture of events in the area formed themselves in the readers’ minds. 

Briefly, Mortan was merely one of a succession of schismatic rebels who had tried to set up an alternative social organization based, not on the post-feudal system of services and reciprocity but on an oriental scheme of absolute despotism and slavery. This idea had been born ever since the receipt of manuscripts from central Turkestan through a devious route via merchants from Italy who had visited those regions about two hundred years previously. The idea was simple: control the water supplies, and you control the country. Of course, thanks to its rainfall this country had rather more water than the Asian steppes. However, as all inhabitants knew, for the last few years the weather had undergone a climatic change: wells had dried up, fresh water had turned salty, even some well-known watercourses had dried up altogether and ponds and small, lakes had vanished. Strange birds never before seen in these lands had started to roost here and weird fish had been caught off the shore. Summer had come in April which now had few signs of those “showers sweet” beloved of the Poet.

For evidence of the contemporary situation in ‘Mersea the two had to rely on smuggled-out transcripts and reports. Evidently, for hundreds of miles around Mortan and his entourage had subjugated formerly proud and independent people to a state of humiliating slavery. They did this by more than the force of arms and control over the water, however. A fragment of a skull was depicted in one of the documents showing clear signs of trepanning which, according to the account, was used to remove “contrary” parts of the brain “harmful” to the correct working of the state of authority. Primitive mind-control, thought James, and then reminded himself of the little violet and yellow pills force-fed upon him during his stay at the institution. It was all rather disturbing and, frankly, having experienced it once, James did not feel he wanted to put himself in a position to place himself in danger of experiencing it again.

A soft hand caressed his knitted brow. “Horrendous,” said Helen. ‘Indeed,” replied James. “But now I’ve found you what matters?”

“What matters indeed!” confirmed Helen and for a few highly delectable minutes the vivid horrors penned in the parchments were forgotten, over­come even, in the sweet embrace they gave each other.

“At least,” thought James, as he traced his finger on the contours of Helen’s downy cheek, “I’ve found my Lady of the Unicorn”.