Lammas night

by Katherine Kurtz

  William made no reply to that, though he nodded understanding, but when he bent to buckle on his Garter for the next part of the ritual, Graham had to look away. Though he knew Ellis had been right to insist he take the high priest's role tonight, that knowledge was not making it any easier to deal with what came next. He almost wished someone else could take over the rest, though another part of him knew he would have killed to keep the privilege.

  He crouched beside Alix by the altar, glad for the extra hands as Ellis joined them and helped clear it of everything but the cloth and the two lit tapers, black and white like the pillars of the tree of life. He was very much aware of William watching him from the edge of the circle, Michael standing at his elbow.

  After Alix arranged all to her satisfaction, she picked up the vial of oil again and glanced at him. Ellis, with a sympathetic squeeze of Graham's shoulder, withdrew to stand on William's other side.

  "I realize this part will be especially difficult for both of you," Alix said in a very low voice. "Do you think he realizes you've reconciled your objections?"

  Graham turned his head away slightly, to stare into the flame of the white taper.

  ''Have I reconciled them?"

  "I think you know you have, insofar as anyone can."

  "Then perhaps I have. I've resigned myself to bowing to his will at least. I'm glad you and Wesley made me see how it would have hurt him not to have done what I'm doing tonight."

  "No one could ask more. Gray. I don't envy you your choice."

  As she touched his hand in comfort, he took hers and pressed it to his lips, giving her a fleeting smile. Sighing, she stood and turned to face the prince, the altar at her back and Graham moving into place at her left hand. At Alix's nod, Ellis and Michael brought the prince forward the few steps where, at Alix's second nod, he knelt. In his white robe, surrounded by their black, his fair hair bright gold in the candlelight, he already looked the young god incarnate.

  "William, I am oath boimd to ask you once more before we proceed," she said gravely. "Are you certain this is what you wish? It isn't too hte to turn back. None of us will think the worse of you for it. No one is forcing you to do this besides yourself."

  William's voice did not falter, though the formality of his words might have covered an understandable apprehension.

  "My lady, it is not what I would have sought out for my end, but I have come to believe in the past weeks that circumstances leave me no other option. For.my brother's sake as well as the sake of the land, I feel it necessary at this time that I at least offer up my willingness to stand in the King's stead. If circumstances should change—and I pray they will—then I shall be the first to welcome the removal of this cup. But if that is not to be, then it is meet that I—and he"—he nodded toward Graham—"enter this obligation properly prepared. I beseech all of you to support me in my decision."

  The prince's answer did not surprise Graham, though the royal glance touched his soul with ice. To spare both their nerves—since it was obvious there was to be no reprieve from this part—he inclined his head in reluctant submission and backed off a few paces to await his next cue, the crown of the homed god weighty on his head.

  "So be it," Alix murmured. "Brethren, let us prepare the sacred king for his anointing."

  In numbed fascination, Graham watched Ellis and Michael open the neck of William's robe and ease it back from his shoulders, baring his chest and upper arms. To words hallowed by usage down the centuries, Alix anointed the sacred king.

  "Be thy hands anointed with holy oil," she murmured, signing each palm with a circled cross.

  "Be thy breast anointed with holy oil."

  Her thumb traced the sign bold above his heart.

  "Be thy shoulders anointed with holy oil."

  She traced the sacred symbol between his shouder blades as he bowed his head.

  "Be thy head anointed with holy oil, as kings, priests, and prophets were anointed: and as Solomon was anointed king by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet, so be you anointed, blessed, and consecrated King over the Peoples, whom the Lord your God hath given you to rule and govern. Selah. Amen. So be it."

  "So be it," Ellis and Michael responded.

  They helped the prince to rise then, drawing his robe back into place before they led him between Alix and Graham to stand before the altar. There, with the oil still glistening on his upturned palms, he was enthroned between the pillars of severity and mercy, the sacrifice set upon the altar in symbol. A little timidly, his eyes sought Graham once more.

  But it was Dm, the high priest of the ancient ones, who sustained Graham now as he stepped before the prince and paused to bow. All the power and majesty of the godhead he assumed with his office blended with the resigned sorrow of the man as Graham reached slowly to his head and removed the homed god's diadem.

  "You are the Sacred King, the God Incarnate," Alix said softly, kneeling expectantly at William's right hand as Graham moved closer to the prince, turning the homed crown in his hands. "You are the fitting substitute for another anointed king who sits a different throne not far away."

  Outwardly dispassionate, Graham raised the crown above the royal head in salute and held it there for several heartbeats, hands steady as he gazed into William's eyes, then lowered it gently. William shuddered a little and closed his eyes briefly as the weight settled on his head. He did not seem to notice as Graham bowed again and began slowly backing off, arms crossed on his breast, until his back encountered the trellised wall.

  "We acknowledge you as Lord, here in this sacred circle," Alix continued. "Here, before the ancient ones and all the gods and goddesses—who are all but facets of the whole—we pledge you our homage and our service, as our forebears pledged to yours when the land was young." She took off her crown of flowers and laid it at his feet in tribute. "We acknowledge that the sacrifice may be required and that the decision is yours alone. Whatever assistance you may require, we are yours to command."

  As though through a fog, Graham watched Alix wipe her long hair over the prince's palms to cleanse them of the sacring oil, then lay the sword across them. William kissed the hilt before resting it across his knees. Graham averted his eyes as Alix placed her hands between William's, but he could not shut out her words.

  "In heart as well as hands, I am your servant," Alix said, affirming her own acknowledgment of the oaths first sworn at Laurelgrove. "Faith and truth will I bear unto you, to live and to die, against all manner of folk. And may my powers desert me and my weapons turn against me if I break this, my solemn oath. As you command, so mote it be."

  "So mote it be," Elhs and Michael echoed.

  Graham forced himself to pay attention as Ellis and then Michael went forward to repeat the homage, drawing unexpected comfort from their example, but when all three of them had retreated to the doorway and knelt once more, trying not to look too pointedly at him, Graham knew he could delay no longer. Awkwardly, he went before the silent prince and eased down on both knees, almost holding his breath. As he held out his right hand alone, Wilham's eyes flicked to it in faint surprise.

  'Take my hand. Will," Graham whispered, flinching a little as he caught the prince's gaze again. "Take it as you took it that night you asked to come with me to Buckland and all of this began."

  A little puzzled but obviously remembering, William joined his right hand to Graham's as if in handshake, covering its back with his left. Graham relaxed a little and allowed a tiny, wry smile to pass his lips.

  "You invoked a feudal bond between us even then, you know," he murmured, feehng his way carefully through what he wanted to say. "I have no idea whether you were aware of it when you first asked your question, but I'm certain you must have realized by the time we'd parted. You knew I was your man and that I couldn't refuse you—even though it took me a while to realize that. We'd never talked about it before that night, and we certainly had sworn no formal oaths, but the bond was there. I couldn't even begin to tell you when it started.
Perhaps that first day a green young naval lieutenant walked into my office—though I suspect, from what we've both been remembering, that it started long before this life."

  William's head dipped in hesitant agreement. "I think you're probably right."

  "What I want to do, then, is to make it official, the way it should have been that other night," Graham said, bringing up his left hand to slip it between William's two, palm to palm with his own.

  "To you, my prince, I would have given my fealty any time you asked it—even though you never asked. Now that it seems you are destined to be the sacred king as well as my prince and you wear that crown, the traditional words of the oath are perhaps particularly fitting: I, John Cathal Graham, do become your liege man of life and limb and of earthly worship." He had to pause to swallow before he could go on; he could see William's throat working, too.

  "I don't suppose we'll ever know how many times that oath has been true in a literal sense," Graham continued softly, glancing again at the crown he had lately worn, "but it's certainly true now. Your early Garter Knights understood it that way, I feel certain. Incidentally, I don't know how to put this last bit into formal words, but there are no reservations or restrictions to the commitment I've just made to you. I will do whatever you ask me to do for you— whatever you ask."

  He could not keep his eyes on William's anymore at that, and sensed that his voice would break if he tried to say anything else, so he ducked his head and kissed the royal hands instead. As he rested his forehead heavily against their joined hands, he realized that William was trembling as badly as he was.

  "Thank you," he heard his prince whisper as William's head dipped to rest briefly against his own.

  Then William drew himself erect once more, and Graham as well, the two of them embracing in the formal kiss of peace with a sense of relief that surprised both of them. As William raised him up, Graham knew that whatever lay ahead, they would approach it with as much of the joy of tonight as could be mustered. They were equally conmiitted now. Nor would the cup pass.

  Chapter 25

  "THE GRATITUDE OF EVERY HOME IN OUR ISLAND, in our empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion," Winston Churchill told a packed House of Commons two days later. "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

  Though Churchill was speaking of the RAF and was right to do so, it appeared to an even smaller few in the days that followed that the direction of battle might also be shifting due to other causes. The few at Oak wood had hoped that William's mere act of offering himself as a potential sacred king and going through formal preparations might serve to satisfy whatever fate was directing events. For nearly a week, that did seem to be the case.

  Poor weather cloaked most of Britain in rain and cloud until the following weekend, severely hampering enemy reconnaissance and confining bombing to the coast and Channel. Dover endured an eighty-minute barrage from the big guns at Cap Gris-Nez at midweek as well as the usual air raids, but no massed attacks penetrated far inland. With improving weather on the twenty-third, the Germans bombed over South Wales, particularly in the vicinity of Pembroke Dock, but a guarded communication from Richard indicated that no great damage had been done.

  The twenty-fourth brought clear weather and a tightening of German air tactics that at first caught the RAF unprepared. The introduction of "stepped" raids set incoming bombers at staggered altitudes before they split off in real and feint attacks, conftising radar interpretation and making fighter interception far more difficult. The forward airfields of Homchurch and North Weald were pounded severely, and Manston was so heavily damaged that it had to be abandoned. That night, the largest German bomber force yet amassed was dispatched to attack the vital factories and supply facilities of the South.

  London itself had not been on the night's orders. Up until then, the Luftwaffe had limited its raids to strategic targets whose destruction would obviously hasten the demise of the RAF and clear the way for successful invasion. But ten of the nearly two hundred bombers sent out that night made a navigational error as they approached their assigned target, east of London. Instead of hitting the oil storage facilities at Thames-haven, they destroyed old St. Giles Church at Cripplegate and other historic and residential buildings in the heart of London. The very next night, grim, determined pilots of RAF Bomber Command retaliated with a daring raid on Berlin, with more following in the days and weeks ahead.

  Hitler was outraged, though it took two weeks to feel the full fury of his anger. To penetrate to Berlin was a gross insult to a man who had been telling his people for months that German cities could not be bombed. As he had threatened early in August when he reserved to himself the right to resort to terrorist tactics, he unleashed the Luftwaffe for indiscriminate bombing in the future. No longer would civilian noncombatants and historic buildings be spared. London, in particular, was to be singled out for punishment, the morale of its citizens shattered through a war of frazzled nerves, sleepless nights, and destruction.

  "The British will know that we are giving our answer night after night," he ranted early in September, just before the blitz began in earnest. "We shall stop the handiwork of these night pilots."

  Meanwhile, as Hitler's rage grew, German raiders continued to hammer daily at the ring of forward fighter bases and sector

  stations defending London—Keniey, Biggin Hill, Rockford, Lympne, Hawkinge, Croydon—massing over France each morning and afternoon to hurl new assaults against a gasping countryside. In the fortnight that followed the fateful London bombing, the Luftwaffe made more than thirty major raids on airfields and factories, seeking especially to draw the last reserves of Fighter Command into the air for destruction..Increasing numbers of fighter escorts came with the bombers— a thousand or more per day—all taking their toll of the dwindling defenders.

  The defenders held fast, but the edge was slipping. Though Fighter Command accounted for nearly four hundred German aircraft during that period, they lost nearly three hundred— figures that did not reflect damaged aircraft or the grim statistics of pilot wastage: more than a hundred killed, and as many wounded, from a total strength of little more than a thousand. Training of new pilots could not account for half the dead. Such replacements were green, unblooded, all too easy pickings for German aces. Quickly, they either acquired survival instincts or died.

  The pressure was as great on Graham and William and the others of Oakwood as August drew to a close and each day seemed to bring them that much closer to the brink. Some of the personal immediacy of the Nazi menace came through for Graham on the morning after the first London bombing. As he and several of his intelligence team sifted through the smoking rubble of a bombed-out MI.6 office near Cripplegate—drafted to help salvage some of the files—Graham unexpectedly ran across the translation of a Nazi loyalty oath.

  By this oath, we again bind our lives to a man through whom — and this is our belief — Superior Forces act in fulfillment of Destiny .. .

  Fulfillment of destiny.. .. The words flayed him in ironic challenge, a brutal gauntlet flung across the miles from the hated man in Germany, for whose stopping a prince was preparing to lay down his life in sacrifice.

  Not for the first time, Graham was seized by doubt, as well as dread—trying to deny the fatal necessity. Were they really doing the right thing? And how did anyone ever know for certain?

  Then he flashed—as he had so often since that Lammas night—on the spectre of Hitler's face, contorted with rage as he approached the dying Dieter and raised a pistol ... the victim who looked like William, bowed before the satanic throne with throat presented to the sacrificial blade ... the predatory eyes of Hitler's black magicians watching from behind their masks ... the blood of other sacrifices in the photos Dieter had sent them. And he knew
that the man responsible must be stopped, whatever the cost—even if it meant William must die. That night, he was more than usually silent as he dined with William at the brigadier's club, all too aware that a decision must soon be made on the manner of William's death.

  Consideration of the subject had been reluctantly under way since William's intentions first became known, while Graham still dared to hope he might not have to carry through. From the beginning, all of them had been acutely aware that a sacrificial slaying must be laid out with meticulous attention to detail. Though William might be prepared to die for the welfare of the people and the land as sacred kings had died before, the circumstances of his death must be such that even Wells's Thulist confederates—at large once more for want of evidence—would not dare to raise unwelcome speculations about the King's youngest brother. Just as the King's own name must be kept immaculate for the sake of the millions of his subjects who looked to him and his queen for courage and inspiration, so must any taint of the unconventional or the scandalous be diverted from William and any of his close associates—or William's death.

  "Thank God I have you and Michael to help me winnow down the options," Graham told the brigadier later that evening after William had gone home. "It's a bloody awful tightrope I'm walking. Part of me is resigned and very coolly calculating about the whole thing. The other part wants nothing more than to go gibbering off in a comer to hide. I hardly even know where to begin, Wesley."

  Ellis nodded, sucking at a pipeful of unlit tobacco as he poured cognac for both of them.

  "You begin by discarding the methods that are totally unworkable, and then you go on from there. Fortunately, the actual ritual requirements are rather minimal: the blood of the victim must be spilled, and you must be the active agent of death—though that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be present when it occurs." He cocked his head at Graham. "Has William expressed any preferences—or prejudices?"