The Two Confessions

by John Whitbourn

  The soldier they'd left in charge was full of protest and explanation.

  ‘I had to clock him,’ he told them. ‘He was scrabbling at my breeches. Bastard mollyfrock!’

  ‘I doubt that,’ Samuel contradicted. ‘He has a wife and children.’

  ‘So did King James the Scot...,’ came the muttered reply. An educated soldier, no less. This really was a day of perverse wonders.

  However, the 'lost sheep's look at Samuel, the way his eyes shone, added weight to his guardian's testimony. The prisoner was cruising way offshore ‘normal’.

  ‘Hold him in the chair,’ Samuel told two of the security staff.

  The man writhed and smiled under their grip. They held him, though with difficulty and strange expressions of distaste.

  ‘What's the matter now?’ Trevan barked at them.

  They looked from one to another, not wishing to be the first to speak. The older's nerve broke first.

  ‘It's just... well, he don't feel... like, clean.’

  ‘He's all sort of... cacky,’ said the other, ‘only you can't see it.’

  Samuel dismissed their nonsense with an impatient shake of the head.

  ‘Where-did-you-go-to?’ he asked the man, as though addressing a child. There was no answer. He seemed absorbed in a world of his own, more interesting than the one before him. It was also pretty clear what was going on in that world.

  By dint of much shifting about Trevan caught his gaze and held it.

  ‘Talk to me or I'll have your hands bound.’

  That got through. Fearful of losing the means to pleasure himself, he desisted and paid attention. His captors were bathed with a rapturous look.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don't know what came over me.’

  ‘Really? No idea at all?’ said Trevan.

  ‘My mind's a... blank,’ the man answered - and seemed particularly pleased with the choice of words.

  ‘See if it is,’ Samuel told the Wizard.

  The magician lurched forward and applied his outstretched fingers against the man's brow. Futile attempts were made to lick them.

  ‘It seems normal enough,’ came the verdict, ‘I sense only dull stuff. Deeper in there might be... aaaaaa!’

  The Wizard hurtled back against the cabin wall. The wood protested. He held his arm tight against him, as though the funny-bone was jarred. His face was twisted with disbelief.

  ‘Yuks!’ The magician's pink tongue protruded from a grimace. He looked like he'd tasted something unutterably vile.

  ‘I was in the dark,’ the prisoner told them, quite softly, speaking sensibly. ‘I embraced the dark. I love the dark….’

  ************

  He got out in the night, somehow clawing and chewing his way though all the bonds and the thick planks of the cabin. There was blood and fingernails left where he'd worked away like a wild animal.

  The first they knew of it was his return at dawn, wrapped in coils of rope and chain, dragged behind a group of horsemen. The riders were cold-furious and armed. Yet he was still smiling, though both mouth and fingers were mere red ruins. Samuel was roused out of bed to meet them.

  ‘We want justice!’ said their leader - and they meant to have it as well. The air crackled with imminent violence. Trevan's men closed ranks behind him

  ‘What for?’ Samuel asked - though he could guess. The prisoner was naked and marked by passage through mud and briar. He seemed proud of it.

  ‘For my niece’s buggering!’

  ‘And my serving-girl the same!’

  There was a babel of similar complaint from about half the houses in Welcombe. The escapee had had a busy night.

  ‘And this window-creeping monster's says he's one of yours,’ added their leader, dumping all in Trevan’s lap. Silence awaited Samuel’s acceptance of delivery.

  It might have gone either way at that point. All sorts of taboos had been broken and third-party dignities rubbed raw. They wanted satisfaction every bit as badly as their prisoner obviously had. A lynching was one way of achieving it, as was shaking someone else into action. For a few seconds yet they had a narrow preference for the latter. Samuel saw the sense of that. Better this should go no further or get out of hand.

  ‘And so he is,’ he said, openly, unresisting. ‘Or was. We sorrow with you - and we shall deal with him before your eyes, this very day.’

  Trevan was taking a great deal on himself. Even the caught-red-handed were meant to go to the assizes and through due process of law. And sodomy was no longer a capital crime, not for decades now, for all that they never got reprieved. Strictly speaking, the man should end up bridegroom to an oar.

  For the moment though, it did the trick. Fingers relaxed from hilt and trigger. They released the captive into Trevan's care. To reassure them, he had the man battered around a bit. He appeared to enjoy it.

  Whispered orders were given for the drinks store to be unlocked and a generous breakfast prepared. Within an hour the powder-keg was defused and an almost jovial atmosphere prevailed.

  ‘It's not like she lost her maidenhead,’ confided one huge and florid farmer, speaking of his niece, cider-flask in one hand and cutlet in the other. ‘A sore bum's no grounds for breaking off her betrothal. She can still marry.’

  And then to round off festivities - and to bind them into his illegality - Samuel had them stand witness as the rapist was kicked headfirst (and radiantly cheerful) down the mineshaft. Though geared up to applying the final boot over the edge himself, in the end he delegated the task to the nearest soldier. So far in his quest Trevan hadn't killed; though doubtless that would come. He was ready and willing - but this just seemed a poor place to start.

  'Helen of Troy,' he thought, 'and Melissa of Lewes. The things love makes us do….'

  They heard the man impact against the sides two or three times, prior to a long delayed splash. Justice was appeased. They had sent him back to his Maker - and his makers.

  ************

  The pigeon flew from the camp like an arrow, free at last from imprisonment and then Samuel's ungentle hands.

  Animal seconds can be endless, unsullied by spoilsport past or future. It enjoyed the faithful power of huge breast muscles, the warm bath of the sun and the glitter of the distant Bristol Channel. Those pleasures were experienced for an equivalence of eternity. Likewise, alas, the subsequent insertion of talons and the stab-pause-stab of the hawk's beak. Pain and terror also went on like forever, and then so did death.

  The bird of prey knew fear in one limited respect only: via the displeasure of its rearer. Therefore it did not directly rend and feed, but took the cooling dead-food back to base. 'Base' was one particular black gauntlet; protection for the feeble flesh of ‘rearer’. Rearer gave pain and praise and permission to obey instinct. Rearer was both the beginning and end of life; each was in his power.

  The pigeon's leg - and the message attached to it - were torn off and then hawk had the rest. She had done well and every strip of meat peeled away tasted the better for it.

  It took some while but Samuel's code was eventually broken. Interested parties noted that 'the time was too soon' and 'the unknown too great' for him to proceed. They smiled.

  Then what hawk didn’t want was gathered and reassembled, re-united with leg and message, and magically raised to un-life. Fleshed out by other bird donors it would last long enough to deceive and complete its interrupted mission. For necromancer-magicians had discovered that, however small the animal residue they worked with, the primal urge (like homing instincts) always remained. Which just went to prove the old country adage: ‘what’s bred in the bone, comes out in the meat’. Which in turn surely supported some even higher wisdom – but sorcerers were rarely theologians and vice versa. So, the correct, staring-you-in-the-face, conclusions had not been drawn yet.

  Meanwhile, mind a relaxed and wiped blank-slate, the avian Lazarus was released to resume its journey.

  ************

  Trevan never knew the full ins
and outs of it, but he'd expected something similar. He’d given the pigeon mock last rites before setting it free.

  His true message to the Sicarii; an expression of readiness authenticated by pre-arranged mark, was all this time wending its uncunning (and thus so very cunning) way to Llanthony by ordinary post.

  U[U[U[U[U[U[U

  cHAPTER 35

  ‘One day and one hour: that is all. Then the cap goes on. Recall that your purpose is limited. Was deconsecration achieved? Discern that and be content. Smooth the path for others better fitted to follow. Do not think that because you carry arms-....’

  ‘We've been through all this,’ Samuel told the Sicarii. Had anyone ever interrupted him before he wondered? Possibly not, judging by the resulting rare twitch of the lips. That persona of lightheartedness was wafer thin.

  ‘This is as much for me as you, Trevan. I shall be able to say you were instructed to the last.’

  ‘Then I don't actually need to be around to hear it, do I? Lower away.’

  The priest that accompanied the Sicarii said a blessing. Some of the men in the tub with Samuel crossed themselves.

  In fact, it was the unacknowledged air of finality that fuelled his daring. If this was to be his last glimpse of the light he wished that look to be his usual stroppy one. It was only fitting.

  The winding gear dropped them down, its cacophony drowning any other farewell. Samuel stared up at the dwindling circle of dusk above and said his own provisional goodbye. It comprised, he recognised with some shock, more curses than thank you's.

  There were twelve of them in total, split into tub batches. Some had even been honoured with the truth, though none now remained deluded that this was just normal mine work. Wulfstan said he'd known all along. Allegedly, Trevan’s generous wages had sedated his and others' suspicions.

  Samuel’s tub was the last down. Those who'd gone before were waiting bunched up in the small space available at the former pump station. With that engine's demise the water level had risen again and now almost lapped the tunnel's edge. Samuel didn't mind: he'd despaired of finding an unguarded delving, even if they drained down to the earth's core. There were grounds for confidence that others had already obligingly cleared a dry-shod path.

  The Wizard was with them, taking up more space than he ought. Samuel had taken pleasure in ensuring that and in seeing the Sicarii crush the man's mutiny with a single word. Wulfstan and an assistant were also present to advise and map their progress. The rest were just muscle and light-shedders: familiar faces from London or strangers from Llanthony, all mixed up. Mere orders had put the soldiers down below but Samuel's employees required dousing with coin. Then, to prevent trouble and forge a team, he'd had to treat the military likewise. It grieved Trevan's heart to be so spendthrift and the coffers were almost empty now. Thinking of it, he was semi-reconciled to not returning.

  There was no room in the tunnel. This last group of four had to wait on the plank jetty. Even the short carbines and half-pikes were getting in the way in such confinement.

  ‘Come on then, Wizard, I shouldn't have to tell you.’ They had indeed rehearsed it to exhaustion. Trevan wanted to minimise the need for noise and orders.

  ‘We were waiting for you,’ the man wheezed back, but left it at that, though more was plainly said in his head. Already to the fore, he stepped up to the unseen barrier and drew out a set of pince-nez to study it more closely.

  ‘Wonderful work,’ he said admiringly, to both everyone and no one. ‘It's geometry of being is perfectly flush with our world's prosaic atoms. You'd never see it.’

  Absence of response told him his appreciation wasn't appreciated. He moved on.

  Rolling up his sleeve right to the starry armband denoting his magical school, the Wizard slowly extended a thick right arm, palm outstretched.

  ‘God is great!’ he reassured himself - and then dived his hand in.

  The up to now unseen was flushed out and agitated into frenzy. What appeared to be a wall built of slurry began, first sluggishly, then with baffling speed, to turn; spiralling in on the Wizard's arm. A vile smell emerged, like the opening up of a long-sealed slaughterhouse. They all gagged on it.

  Eyes clenched tight, the Wizard was sweating from the hairline down. The barrier was draining up into his arm, causing the flesh there to bubble and swell, attempting escape from the bone. He sought solace in description of the experience.

  ‘A cesspit...,’ he told them, ‘full of fat scorpions…. Be quick, please....’

  As soon as there was a gap between the barrier and tunnel wall they slipped through, shrinking away from the spinning edge. In his desperation, the Wizard urged them past with sweeps of his foot. ‘Go! Oh God! Go....’

  He couldn't wait for the last one to be fully past, but spun himself round the gap, shoving the man forward with his bulk. He came to rest, chest heaving, against the wall and vomited the absorbed material back out. It left his arm at furious speed, re-seeking its proper place. The spiral formed again, filling the tunnel, then slowed, then vanished.

  ‘Realignment,’ puffed the Wizard, and hawked some nasty taste from his mouth. ‘If we can't see it then it went back just right.’

  ‘Terrific,’ said Trevan, sarcastically. He couldn't enthuse about having that between them and home. It was the agreed plan but even so....

  ‘We go,’ he told them, and led the way.

  The glass-bubble tar-torches slow roasting the back of his head shed light about five paces into the future. Held perfectly still by bearers with both hands free, they might just have been adequate. As it was, Samuel had entrusted them to men with other duties as well. There was room for two to walk abreast. Wulfstan was beside Trevan, making close study of their path and assessing its safety. He made frequent reference to a handheld compass. Behind them were two torchmen with pistols at the ready. The Wizard followed on alongside Wulfstan's assistant who traced their progress on special waxed paper - human memory being too fallible to trust with recalling the way back through a labyrinth. Behind them were the soldiery and more torches. Samuel had drilled all to move in slow steps, treading softly.

  They didn’t need a mining expert to discern that the tunnel sloped down. The water level should soon have been there to meet them, but dusty dryness persisted. Samuel didn't query that particular unanswerable, but he did wonder about the nature of their route. Why the smoothness of the walls? How come the lack of props? Wulfstan detected the silent question in Trevan's expression.

  ‘Not man-made,’ he whispered. ‘Melted, not cut.’

  Before Samuel could decide if that was good news or not, facts came along to contradict it. The tunnel took a hard right turn. They edged cautiously round it and arrived at a junction with a more grandiose downward route. The torchlight picked out shaped stone and brickwork succeeding the bland curves, reuniting them with the work of human hands. A single glance identified it as both old and church-style. They'd found what they were looking for - or at least the start of it. Samuel punched the unoffending air in glee. No one else seemed so pleased.

  Dutifully they took the descending option. Their footing was no longer as easy; rocks and pitfalls dotted the floor. There was abundant dust; so much that it stiffened the already soupy atmosphere. Wulfstan held forth the caged bird and observed its unaltered despond.

  ‘The air's still sweet,’ he hissed, and smiled for once. Samuel presumed this to be some highly specialised use of the word. To him it smelt like history – minus the happy moments.

  Then there were stone steps, broad and ancient, worn down in places by the passage of feet. The engineer directed torchlight at one particular point.

  ‘See? Repairs.’

  That was certainly what they looked like. Where fragments had fallen away on the edges of some steps, crude hard-core-and-pebbles had been rammed in to make good. This careless work appeared far more recent. Wulfstan overlooked that to run appreciative fingers over the original sides.

  ‘Fire your pop-guns as yo
u may,’ he told them, in a voice touched by awe. It was obviously a point that had been preying on him. ‘Shoot 'em all but this won't come down. 'Er's fine: solid: proper job!’

  The reassurance was noted in silence. Samuel counted fifty steps down and then shied from tall figures revealed by the advancing pool of light. Behind him two pistols came up to the aim position.

  Fortunately, there was no need to deafen Trevan by firing from right beside his ear. The objects of alarm were not at all hostile - quite the contrary. The steel beams sunk into floor and roof were passive in intention, merely an incomplete barrier against entry - or perhaps exit.

  Samuel went up to them. Each column was as thick as a man's leg and the space between likewise. Save for a slim central gap, only a rat would be able to squeeze past. They were fixed into pools of Portland cement - which was revealing in itself. That was only made or sold by archbishop's licence, because of its instant-castle-making potential. Therefore this project had had 'friends-in-high-places'. Samuel was duly advised and regarded it with new respect - until the engineer showed it up as a failure.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘They never finished.’

  Over in the darkness by the tunnel wall was a final beam lying prone. About it were the tools and buckets and jacks to accomplish its erection. There were even some stacked bags of cement dust, their smoky-red papal seals still intact.

  ‘The 1702 lot,’ said Samuel, speaking his judgement aloud. No one dissented.

  ‘They got close,’ added Wulfstan's assistant, pointing to embryo-excavations in the central gap. The intention had clearly been to seal this way forever. So, either the workmen had left in a hurry - or maybe never left at all.

  Well, that was sad for them but salvation as far as Samuel was concerned. Even with the right gear it would be a day's work cutting through just one of the columns. Save for the providential gap they'd be heading back now.