Lammas night

by Katherine Kurtz

  Movement caught William's eye, and he looked up with a start. The countess had finished her briefing. As she and the brigadier removed velvet wrappings from a heavy, gilt-framed mirror and set it upright at the end of the table. Gray pushed back his hood and slipped into the Drake chair, pulling a tartan lap rug around his legs and lower body. He and Selwyn spent several minutes adjusting the angle of the mirror and trying different placements of the candle the countess brought closer; then Gray glanced over his shoulder at William with a reassuring quirk of a smile before settling back in the chair. Selwyn lowered the drum to a cushion on the floor close by Gray's right and sat on a stool with it braced between his knees, hands resting on the rim. The countess and the brigadier withdrew to stools on Gray's left and facing him. After that, no one moved.

  Not a sound broached the silence. William sat a little straighter and watched the candlelight flicker and crawl along the carving of the gilt mirror frame like something alive. Gray's image shone darkly in the blackened glass, the hazel eyes hardly blinking, the face stilled and devoid of emotion, perhaps already in trance. William tried to imagine what Gray might be seeing Breathing out in a faint sigh, Graham let his body relax and settle and began to put the others out of mind, gradually shuttering off outside distractions. He could see his face in the mirror, smell the incense lingering on the air, sense the others watching, but he paid them less and less attention, even William. Stilled, he let his mind begin to drift with the candle flicker, gradually detaching himself from the eyes that gazed back at him. Almost, he could touch that Other, waiting to pull him into the past. Joining it was now only a matter of time.

  Resolutely, he settled down to the business of bringing it through. He drew a slow, deep breath and let it out with a conscious effort to clear his lungs of all of it; drew another like it, and another, until he felt the beginning tingle of over-breathing in lips and fingertips. His trance was deepening steadily, his vision taking on that curious tunnel aspect that was a sure sign of stilling and readiness—passive, receptive—and he let the breathing shift back to a shallow, easy rhythm, dismissing further consciousness of any of his bodily processes as a factor for concern. He lingered there at the balance point for an endless several seconds, neither willing nor desiring anything further, until he felt Alix touch his wrist in old signal.

  That started him back along the road of time and memory and past lives. This, too, was familiar, though he had never done it before with such specific intent. To his right, Selwyn began to tap softly on the drum—slow, slow, soon catching and holding the rhythm of his heartbeat in a cadence ancient before the Romans came to Britain—expectant, compelling. As the complexity of the drumming increased, though not the volume, Graham sensed himself sliding into even greater depths of trance, relaxing, centering, balancing.

  His right hand began to twitch then, to Hfl, and he knew immediately where it would go. A part of him watched quite dispassionately as it rose from the chair arm and drifted jerkily to the side, so separate from his conscious control that it might not have been his hand at all, guided by something deep beyond his consciousness. Unerringly, it sank toward the drum, his conscious will receding as the distance closed. The touch of the vellum and the smooth wood of the rim was an almost electrical tingle shoving him deeper, a catapult flinging him back in time as the drumbeat went on, answering his rising pulse beat.

  He gasped, his head jerking against the chair back as his eyes half closed, for the speed was dizzying, disorienting, and he could not seem to focus. After an eternity bound up in a heartbeat, the backward flight slowed, and so did the drumbeat. As he gazed into the mirror again, images began to materialize from mist and fog that only he could see: vague, hazy at first, taunting, teasing—something about the mirror, which for an instant was not the one that physically stood before him.

  Then, in a blink, all was changed.

  He was Drake, and exultant. The drum was under his hands, throbbing and potent, as he drunmied out the ancient rhythms and the dancers whirled. On a moon-drenched hilltop he sat with the drum braced between his knees, wind whipping his hair and mantle around him in growing frenzy. The very ground reverberated with the power being raised, the energies pulsing with his heartbeat and shuddering through his body in an ecstasy that was part pleasure and part pain. Around him, the dancers leaped and twisted as the bonfire surged and receded—nearly a hundred dark shapes circling the round of which he was the center, raising the righteous power to rend the Spanish fleet.

  He was their chief, at least for this night—their man in black, their leader—he who publicly had been recognized as such a seven-year ago, in praetematural anticipation of their need, this fateful year of 1588. He had summoned the grand coven, and they had come from the far comers of England in answer to his lawful call—the Wicca, die wise, they whose ancestors had long kept the old faith, which reverenced the land and the power that made it fruitful, and danced the sacred rounds with their lord and lady to marie the wheel of the changing seasons.

  The old faith had been, long before the Christians' narrow view of God. The Sacrificed One in his White Christ aspect was but another incarnation of that vast creative Whole so often made manifest in human form, in different times and different places. Jesus himself had danced the sacred dance with his disciples in that other coven, twelve plus one.

  I would pipe: dance ye, all.... Eight singeth praise with us... Twelve danceth on High... The Whole on High hath part in our dancing... Whoso danceth not, knoweth not what cometh to pass.. .. Now, as thou respondeth to my dancing, behold thyself in me even as I speak, and seeing what I do, keep thou silence on my Mysteries. Only thou that danceth may perceive what I do: for thine is this passion of the Humanity which I undergo... If thou wouldst know concerning Who I Am: know that with a word I danced all things and I was in no wise shamed... I leaped and danced, that thou shalt understand the Whole...

  Yes, the White Christ had known—and many of his priests knew, too—that the dance was a great sorcery, yet another means of reaching toward the Source. The blind forbade it, fearful of the power that came of surrendering mind and will to the sensual movements of the body, seeing it as a triumph of flesh over spirit, of Devil over Christ; but the Wicca knew otherwise, and some of the White Christ's priests danced with them here tonight. Those who understood the Whole still shepherded their flocks along the Path, keeping the old worships alongside the new, from lowly peasant lad and lass to high-bom lord. Even kings kept counsel with the Whole, marking the seasons and the seven-years. Not even a king would deny it—or a queen!

  The chanting surged and rose and fell with Drake's ever more insistent drumming: ancient words to summon ancient powers. Faster now the dancers whirled, weaving the spell, binding it to will, stamping out the steps and the patterns that could make even winds obey. He could feel the power growing, could almost see it as a faintly glowing cone towering above the circle like a beacon as the dancers danced—a tight-wound living spiral, surging like the lunar tides, winding up the energies, sending forth their will to spare the land—and he laughed with the joy of it!

  Flashes of the future, then, though he knew he drummed yet on that Plymouth hill. The routed Armada fleeing with shortened sail before unprecedented August gales—in August, one of the sacred months of sacrifice! The vast superiority of Spanish numbers, Spanish guns—the scudding thunderheads, grounded ships breaking up, the wind ever shifting to the English advantage.

  While the English fleet found sheltered harbor in Kent and other ports along the Channel and rejoiced at their deliverance, the storms drove the Armada north and west to shatter on the Scottish coast or be driven ashore on Ireland as they tried to round the isles and get back home. Not before or since had a fleet been chastened thus.

  A beat, a ripple in the mind-flow, a shift to an older time and place. Suddenly, Graham was no longer on the hilltop above Plymouth, drumming up the Spanish defeat. He was still Drake as he blinked, hand twitching on the drum, but instead of the hil
l's fair moonglow, he was plunged into sunUght so bright he had to squint. He almost raised his hand to shield his eyes, a minute part of him wondering why the others did not shrink from it.

  The chair commanded now, not the drum, though the drum was not far away. The chair was made from timbers of his ship, the Golden Hind, and he stood on her quarterdeck at a dock at Deptford, on the Thames, waiting for his queen. It was the fourth of April, 1581, and he was just six months' returned from circumnavigating the globe.

  He did not know what the royal visit would bring, though he thought the Queen was pleased. On his return, before the year turned, he had spent six long hours alone with her at Richmond and still was not certain where she stood. Up until that meeting, he had thought her relatively unsympathetic to the old ways, though her court had always abounded with men steeped in the Art—Dee, Walsingham, Sidney, and others, too highly placed to name. Only recently had he learned that she, too, knew the secret connections of that great order of knighthood in which she was sovereign—knew the power there that even she would not deny, else deny her royal blood.

  They had spoken of the Spanish invasion threat, increasingly real since the tinie of her father, and she had told him she feared the inevitability of war with Spain. Doctor Dee had read it in the stars, she said—Dee, who had also chosen the most auspicious moment for her coronation nearly thirty years before. She had asked of the things he had found on his voyage, and he had brought her gold and silver and emeralds the size of a man's finger and set in a crown that she wore at New Year's court.

  She said the Spanish ambassador called him freebooter, corsair, and even outright pirate; thkt the King of Spain demanded his head for the raids he had carried out so successfully on Spanish ships and storehouses along the South American coast. What did he think of that'}

  He had told her he was no pirate, but privateer, and the Queen's good servant. She had laughed delightedly and sent him back to Plymouth to tally up the booty.

  Now he paced back and forth on the deck of his gallant little ship, men and vessel alike all set in order for the royal visit—flags and pennons hfting on the spice-laden breeze, crew drawn up in proud salute. Trumpets blared their greeting, strident in the morning sun, as the royal party approached. Drums beat out a brisk tattoo.

  He met her at the rail and bowed her aboard. The royal standard was broken, leopards and lilies snapping brightly defiant against the London sky. As he knelt to kiss the slender white hand and raised his eyes to hers, he thought he read approval and a sly amusement, but her words conjured quite another impression.

  "So, Captain Drake. The Spanish king demands that we send him your head," she said loudly, pivoting so that all might hear. "What think you of that?"

  As Drake remained on one knee, believing her goodwill of earlier on yet fearing her caprice, she cocked her red-wigged head at one of the men who had accompanied her. He was the emissary of the French king's brother, who sought her hand. He was also Spain's enemy.

  "How say you, my lord of France?" she asked him pointedly. "Shall we give our Spanish cousin what he demands?"

  As the French ambassador demurred, Elizabeth laughed.

  "I see I shall have to take matters into my own hands, shan't I?" She extended an imperious, ring-bedecked hand toward her captain of the guard, suddenly solemn. "Give us a sword. Sir Christopher, and it mind you, see that it is sharp!"

  A hush descended on the ship, Drake's officers and crew stiffening, though no one dared lift a hand to interfere. The Spanish observers in the Queen's party craned their necks for a better view. The Queen's captain, Sir Christopher Hatton, moved forward obediently, though he was Drake's friend and patron and had helped to finance the maritime venture. The very ship on which they stood had been named in his honor, for the great stag in Hatton's family crest. Hatton had shared in the spoils when Drake returned—as had the Queen.

  But Hatton's patronage could not save Drake now, if the Queen meant to slay him. As the sword hissed from its scabbard, gilded hilt shimmering in the sun, blade aflame, Drake knew a queasy moment of dread—though he was quite prepared to die if it was to be at her hand. He had died for kings before....

  The Queen took the weapon and hefted it experimentally, letting the moment gather full effect as Drake's heart pounded. Then she flashed a crafty smile and gave it over to the Frenchman, hilt first.

  "Nay, his head is precious to us, my lords. We could not give it up to Spain. Sir Ambassador, would you assist us? For it is our intention to knight Captain Drake in token that he hath opened up bold new horizons to our English seafaring!"

  As she put the hilt in the astonished Frenchman's hand and laid her own atop it, the ship's company and assembled crowd went wild with joy. Drake gasped.

  His vision blurred momentarily, and he hardly felt the blade touch his shoulders, or heard her words, "Arise, Sir Francis," or the renewed cheers as the Queen raised him up and led him slowly around the crowded deck to show him off. They paused once when she sUimbled, his arm supporting her while she rubbed at her ankle and said that it was nothing. As they moved on, however, something glittered on the deck where she had stopped. Silence fell as she turned in apparent amazement.

  It was one of the royal garters—purple, not blue as the Garter Knights wore, but the gold of its embroidery was very like theirs, and the buckle nearly identical. The resemblance could hardly be coincidental—or the losing of it.

  Leicester and Howard, and Burghley, the Queen's secretary—Garter Knights all—bristled defensively and eased their way closer to their royal mistress to watch intently. The Frenchman started to pounce on the garter, for he had sent similar prizes to his royal master in the past as tokens of the Queen's esteem, but something in her look and in the faces of the Garter Knights stopped him in confusion. Smiling, the Queen turned her glance to Drake in pointed favor.

  Her meaning could not have been clearer. With a bow, Drake knelt and picked it up, touching it reverently to his lips before offering it back into her keeping. She took it and allowed him to kiss her hand again. As he rose, Burghley and then the other two favored him with stiff little bows. The royal mandate was confirmed. Those with eyes to see could not miss the implication.

  The trumpets sounded a new fanfare, and the drums struck up a flourish to cover the moment—Hatton's sense of showmanship to the rescue—but the beat of the drum came through above the others, yanking Graham away before he could puzzle out what it all meant—out of Deptford and even out of Drake.

  Before he could even draw confused breath, foundering in a between-time during which he was— other —he was slammed backward in time again—this time to other lives, other roles. The flashes were so rapid, one after the other, that he could only grab onto the arms of the chair and try to ride it out, eyes screwed tightly shut against the images that came cascading into consciousness, intense and often terrifying.

  Blood. Blades flashing by light of sun or moon or fire. Deeds done by stealth or, more often, infiiU view of witnesses. Judicial murders — or sacrifices....

  Sometimes he was the slayer, sometimes the slain—but always, what he did was in the service of the Whole. Whether the king must die, or sacred substitute, it was meet that consecrated blood should spill upon the land from time to time. The living god must die for the good of the people; he who struck the sacred blow was as much a part of the plan as the divine victim himself. Sometimes he was the friend of the victim and knew with his friend that the time for sacrifice had come A forest... summer .. .fitting bolt to crossbow as a king turned to his fate and smiled, ready target, red hair bright against the shadowed trees. The bright blood soaked the spongy forest floor as the King pitched forward and fell on the bolt, ensuring a mortal wound And Graham — though that had not been his name then — gathering the dead King briefly in his arms to weep before the lonely flight to France A name came to Graham then— Tyrrel —and Graham, too, wept at Buckland, in a body far removed from that other man mourning in the August stillness of the New Fore
st,...

  Other names had he borne, too, in other Hves: a knight named FitzUrse in a darkening Kent cathedral; a monk named John at a place called Swineshead Abbey, set to slay a namesake king with poison of a toad; a knight named Wallace; a prince named George; Drake, of course, and others, closer to the present—though more recent memory seemed to elude him.

  At all times and in all those places, he had carried out his appointed destiny, keeping the cycles of sevens, when kings or their substitutes must die for the good of the land. The best ones went willingly to their deaths, some of them even joyful, well aware for what purpose they died.

  The land must be renewed, the virility of the sacred king ensured. In its time and season, it was a right and proper thing for the anointed king or his surrogate—the man made God— to die for the common good. Even the White Christ had said it: Greater love hath no man....

  He felt a touch on his shoulder, as though from far, far away, and the vision rippled, wavered. His body cringed from the contact, but his mind reached out to it.

  He had not sought these other lives; he had intended only to seek out Drake, for very specific information. He must abandon these other disturbing memories and get back.

  He felt the touch again, solid, more insistent, and he reached out with one blind hand, grasping for its source and finding a woman's softness. He fastened on her hand and crushed it to his lips, a living lifeline helping to warp him back. Another hand gripped his from the other side—strong, sure—a hand he had known before in many lives. Between the two, he clung like a drowning man, forcing his way back across the centuries to finally surface with a gasp.

  He heard Alix's relieved sigh as he turned his head and brought her into focus. With a sigh of his own, he raised his other hand to brush her cheek trembhngly and confirm that she was real. Selwyn's explosive snort at his right was one of relief and disapproval mixed. Graham tried not to look as shaken as he felt as Selwyn moved the candle closer and turned him toward its light.