***
When Ursula first heard word of his plans, she made no protest, though her face paled and her heart ran fast. Like all other children of Glenlaw, she had been raised on stories of the evil things that lurked at the threshold of the town and was taught to be thankful for the enchantment that kept them all at bay. So embedded in her mind were the precautionary tales of townsfolk who had wandered and perished beyond the influence of their protective spell that she, like Philippe, like all the inhabitants of the town, never fancied that their lives, no matter how long, would ever carry them further than the boundary posts that marked the end of Glenlaw and the beginning of whatever strange places lay beyond. Theirs was a small world, but it was a safe and a happy one and there were few in the town who ever wished to expand the horizon within which they lived. The very thought of Philippe setting off to cross the mountains alone was a horror to her, but one she bore silently. In his eyes, she saw the desperation and longing with which he lived and against which, she could find no words to compete. “If this must be, it must be,” she whispered to him. “You are a proud man and a brave man, Philippe, and for that I love you. Come back to me soon, though. Above all things come back to me. And do not be too proud to be happy.”
Two days later, Philippe set off on his journey, every step taking him further from his childhood home than he ever dreamt he would venture. “I will not look back,” he told himself. “To look back now would be to acknowledge the possibility I might not return and that is a thought I will not allow. In just a few days I will pass these roads again with my future secure in my pocket and all my wishes fulfilled.”
On the first day, he made good progress. Following carefully the map of his route, which Murnock had handed to him, he made his way westwards and through the thick forests that ringed the mountains under which Glenlaw sat. The whole journey to the Duke’s castle, he had been told, would take only two days, three at most. “One day in forest. One day over mountaintops and a third day to spend in a grand castle in a far off land. Think of it as an adventure, my boy,” Murnock had told him. “Some wonderful story to thrill your grandchildren with.”
And for that first day it was an adventure. Every turn Philippe made seemed to unveil a new wonder, some new beautiful aspect of the world he had never seen before. He felt like a child again, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping open in a grin as he stumbled through the woods surrounded by bright flowers, strange birdsong and quick, fleeting creatures the likes of which had no place in the small world he had grown up in. That night he camped out in a forest glade under a blanket of stars that stretched further than he could imagine and brighter than he had ever seen. “Is this the strange, danger filled outside world I have been taught to fear all these years?” He thought to himself. “This is my first day away from home. What other wonders will I find tomorrow?” With these thoughts flying through his mind he fell asleep and dreamt of Ursula and all the grand things he would have to impress her with on his return.
The second day was not so glorious. Under dark clouds that let down a constant grey drizzle, he stumbled his way over the first of the mountaintops that stood between him and the Duke’s castle then down into the wide valley that stretched out to the next set of rocky barriers. Working his way across the valley floor, the road passed through a series of small villages and hamlets, each one more impoverished and run down than the last. The people in these places peered at him with narrow, suspicious eyes as he walked, the austere aspect of the area leaving him chilled and unnerved.
At the outskirts of one such village, he came across a young man just a few years his junior and realised with a start that his was the first young face he had seen all that day. Nowhere in any of the villages had there been any sign of children playing, nor even of young men and women working the fields or going about their business. All the faces that had peered at him so suspiciously were old and weather-beaten, the generation of his father or his grandfather. This young boy was an exception and even he, as Philippe noticed when he approached him, was but a poor cripple, his limbs twisted and his spine misshapen so that his head bowed down and turned to one side. He sat at the edge of the road with a large basket of apples to sell to passers by. Philippe stopped to buy one and asked him what this town was called, but in reply the boy would give only an idiot laugh, a mocking, gap-toothed cackle that followed Philippe as he walked on. “These must be the poisoned lands we were told of in school,” he thought. “Where witches and ogres take all but the old and the mad and the land itself is turned foul by the black magic cast over it. This is what Glenlaw would be, if not for the enchantment that protects us.”
He took a bite from the apple he’d bought – small and malformed, its skin pockmarked and withered – and gagged at its bitter unpleasantness. Once out of sight of the town he tossed it into a nearby ditch that bubbled black and steamed out the thick stench of decay that carried over the whole region and followed Philippe all through the rest of the day.
On the third day, he found the castle. He woke early that morning and wasted little time in gathering his things together and making his way swiftly from the dark, thick woodland he had camped in for the night. Beyond the forest lay a vast stretch of moorland, a bog-ridden terrain covered in slow moving streams and black pools of stagnant water that lay out in front of him as far as his eyes could see. No sooner had he reached this bleak landscape than the castle came into view. It hovered eerily in the early morning mist, a great dark shape that sat at the very far end of the black moor through which Philippe’s path led. This was not a fairy tale castle. Not at all. Not the fine, rich man’s residence he had dreamed of visiting, but a grim spectre that rose out of the flat bleakness of the surrounding countryside like a dark stain on a parchment or a bad thought suddenly brought to mind.
Philippe stared out across the moor for a long time, his heart sinking to see the forbidding place that was his destination. Only with a great effort did he shrug off his discomfort and, one foot placed firmly and deliberately ahead of the other, begin his journey. “Such foolishness,” he told himself as he walked. “Who am I to imagine what sort of house a foreign nobleman might build for himself? Who knows what odd ways they might keep to in these parts? It’s no business of mine to even think of it. He can live in a rabbit hole for all I care, so long as I am paid my share.”
After five hours walking on the wet path that sucked at his boots and twisted and turned in wide, bewildering curves through the boggy swamps, he stopped to rest on a large rock and took a few bites of sustenance from his provisions pack. The castle loomed over him still. No closer than it had seemed to be at the start of the day, still part obscured by the lingering mist and the thin clouds which were descending from the high mountain tops to his left and his right. Staring at the shape ahead of him, from which he had been unable to tear his eyes ever since the first moment it came into view, Philippe felt a sudden stab of fear strike at his heart. Somewhere in his mind, wearied though it was by his long trek, a voice called to him. A gentle voice, small but persistent, that called repeatedly, telling him to give up his journey now, to turn around and return home. Philippe listened to the voice, sitting on that rock for a long time while a light rain began to fall and the dark shape of the castle hovered black and insistent ahead of him. He listened to the voice until its words died away and he was left alone once more on the silent moor. Then he packed his bag together again and continued his journey.