But from the chroniclers, Hal knew, as Sir John then had not, that from here the knight would go over the mountains into Italy, entering not only into more wealth than he had ever had before, but into the pages of history. Unknowingly, at this moment on this battlefield where his future looked most bleak, ahead of him lay his marriage to Donina Visconti and the most important period of his life. His name would come to mean more at the English court, once he was in Italy, than it ever had during the long years he had been in France.
The only question now might be whether Hal's case was really comparable to Hawkwood's, as his vision had implied.
It must be. The parallels were too close. As the predawn light grew, Hal's belief strengthened with it. Even though he could no more see his own future than Hawkwood at Poitiers could have seen his, what he had just envisioned assured him, once more, that his coming here had been the way he needed to go. Just as going over the mountains into Italy, with the White Company of mercenaries, after Poitiers, had been the right way in which Sir John had needed to go.
Moreover, all this fitted together with, and was reinforced by, his own strong reaction to the circle and the Law, from the moment he had first seen and heard them.
As for Tam, the instinct in Hal that had caused him to associate the older man's state of mind with the lines from Tennyson's poem on the death of Arthur Pendragon, must be trusted as well. It fitted too well with the story and character of Jathed, and the Hawkwood episode. Part of Hal's error, he told himself now, had been to ignore Tam as still an important factor in the search for the Creative Universe, beyond the point of his retirement as Director of the Encyclopedia.
Even as Hal thought these things, the sun broke its top edge clear of the Grandfathers of Dawn, on the far horizon. Procyon looked blindingly over them at him for the merest fraction of a second before he could lower his eyes from that blazing tiny circle of light, and in that same fraction of a moment he realized what he must do. What was necessary to him here was Jathed and Jathed's philosophy, even though Hal instinctively felt it was not entirely correct. What was here, that was nowhere else to be found, was the Law.
Hal could walk the circle and say the Law, as the others did. But it was not enough to use it as a tool to put himself into flights of exploration of his inner mind. What he must do was understand it - completely understand it.
"The transient and the eternal are the same
He knew what the words said. But what, in their completeness, did they really mean?
He did not know - yet. There was an understanding needed here that must be made by the deeper parts of his mind, by his creative unconscious. Sudden excitement lifted him to his feet. It might be that in this greater understanding was exactly what he had sought for so long, a way into the Creative Universe. Certainly, it had let Jathed through, and Jathed had not the reason to go there that Hal had, nor the vision of what going there could make.
Filled with wonder, the first direct rays of the sun already warming his back through his robe, he went lightly and swiftly as Old Man might have gone, back to the office where he and Amanda had spent the night.
CHAPTER 19
He reached the office and found it empty, the blanket down from the window, the bed made and tilted up into its storage position against the wall. There was something finished and over with about the room that brought a sadness like the pain from the thrust of a dull knife, deep into him. He turned and went through the office's inner door and along a corridor to the dining area of the building the office was in.
Amanda was not there. The room was all but empty of breakfasters. "Friend?" The server on duty behind the counter with its trays of breakfast foods called to him. Hal turned. "You're to go to Amid's Reception Building," said the server. "Amanda's waiting for you there, with another new visitor. " "Thanks," said Hal.
He left and went to the small building which had been the first he had entered here on the evening of his arrival. Amid was there, seated with Amanda, and not only Artur, but Simon Graeme as well, around a fireplace that now in the growing warmth of day held no fire in it, only a few blackened ends of Wood and the ashes, cold and gray, from the previous night's blaze. The pine cone paperweight gleamed on the desk in the daylight.
"There you are," Amanda said as he came in. "Come sit by me, here."
He went to the empty chair beside her and sat down. She put out a hand to him and for a second he held it and then their grasp fell apart. "How do you feel?" asked Amid. "A little washed out," said Hal. "Nothing another night of ordinary sleep won't cure."
He looked back at Amanda, and Simon just beyond her. "Hello, Simon," he said. "You look a little washed out yourself. " "Hello, Hal." Simon smiled, a little ruefully. "Mountain climbing, even down - mountain's, not something I'm in training for. "
Hal's gaze turned on Amanda. "You're leaving?" "If I can trust you to take care of yourself in that circle from now on," said Amanda. "Simon can go back to the near vicinity of Old Earth, and fire off a millisecond message to the Final Encyclopedia telling them how we're settled, then immediately jump clear of the Solar System and come back to stand sentinel over us from orbit. I've got a full district I ought to be covering locally, since no one's seen me since I left to go back and get you. It'll take a month to cover it all, but I'll never be more than a couple of days' march from here. So if you need me, signal Simon with our cloth display system, and he'll either' go get me, or pass the word to me to make it back here. What about it? Do you think you might need to stay as long as a month?" "I could, very possibly," said Hal. He looked at Simon. "Where's the ship?" "In a crack up back in the mountains, out of sight from here or anyone below," Simon answered, his heavy-boned Graeme face under its dark brown, thick hair lit up with a wry smile. "Amanda put out the signal late yesterday and I landed last night, but I had to wait for near day to climb down to you if I didn't want to break my neck in the dark." "How much of a climb is it back up to it?" "A couple of hours, at most," Simon answered. "Slower up than down."
Hal nodded. He reached out for Amanda's hand again, and felt her fingers close with his. "I hate to see you go," he said. "I know," she answered softly. "But I'm not needed here, and I am out there."
He nodded. "I guess that's it then," he said. "If anything changes or develops for me, here, I'll call you back." "And I'll not waste any time coming-oh, before I forget it again," said Amanda, turning to Amid, "I've been meaning to mention this. A few hours' walk from the bottom of our mountain, here, there's a wild little girl in the woods who came out to take a look at us but was too quick for us to catch. Someone ought to be looking after the child. Do you suppose some of the people from here could go down there and catch her? It'll take a dozen at least. She's fast, and woods-wise." "Hmm," said Amid. "Maybe I'd better let you answer that, Artur?"
The big man shifted uneasily in his chair as the rest all looked at him. "You see, Amanda," said Artur slowly, "we - I know all about that girl. Her name's Cee. Actually, she's my niece." "Your niece?" Amanda was staring at him. "Then why haven't you done something about her before this?" "Artur has, and does-" Amid was beginning, but Artur lifted a hand. "I'd probably better explain it all," he said. "My sister, her husband, and Cee - Cee was only seven years old, then - lived fairly close to here. In fact, where you saw Cee probably wouldn't be too far from where their home was."
His face clouded and he clenched one hand into a heavy fist with which he beat softly on the arm of the chair he sat in. "The trouble was, I was so bound up in the Chantry Guild - we'd just begun to use the ledge here, but we hadn't yet really moved up to it - that all those first seven years of her life, I hardly saw my sister's house, and Cee..." "There's no point in blaming yourself for what's past," said Amid. "We've discussed that a number of times." "I know. But if I'd just dropped by half a dozen times a year, just enough so that the Pirl would realize I was one of the family... only I didn't, and you're right, it does no good to keep going over and over that fact now."