Awaken_A Rose Caldwell Tale

by JM Bannon

  The physician frowned and shook his head. “I have no recollection of that I think maybe they were playing about the ruins of Saint John’s,”

  “Thank you, Doctor, it’s been nice to see you again, I just wish it was under better circumstances. Now I must go and say prayers for the girls,” Rose made her way up the stairs and found Mrs. Watts speaking with the housemaid.

  In the bedroom, the two girls lay in their beds, covered by linen sheets and comforters. Both girls were sweating and feverish but were lying quieter than the boy she has just visited. Wet cloths were draped across their foreheads which were clearly helping.

  Unlike the boy the girls were covered in clear liquid filled blisters and where they had broken, were red rimmed sores. Rose knelt between the two beds and placed a hand on each before bowing her head and hands together began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. The other two women got to their knees and joined her in reciting the familiar and comforting prayer. Rose finished, got to her feet and placed her hand on each girls head in turn.

  “God’s blessing be on you,” she murmured each time, then turned to the women.

  “Mrs. Watts, my sister told me that the girls had been playing at the old temple. Did they mention that to you?” asked Rose.

  “No. Everything was fine until two nights ago at dinner. The two of them wouldn’t eat and went to bed saying they felt ill. I haven’t been able to get a word out of them since then,” explained Mrs. Watts.

  “I have a strange request; would you have a candle and some matchsticks that I might have?”

  “Certainly Sister, Mary fetch the Sister a candle and a box of matches,” ordered Mrs. Watts.

  The housemaid returned with the requested items and passed them to Rose. She realized if she wanted to take the candle and matches away from the house she would need to come up with a convincing reason.

  “I would like to light this candle and pray with each of the children then I will take the candle to the convent chapel and light it during the vigil,” Rose promised.

  She would do so, but that isn’t why she wanted the candle. She wanted it for her next stop.

  5:00 PM, The Temple of Minerva

  Rose made her way to the field outside the town where in Roman times a temple to Minerva and other gods of the pantheon had stood.

  It was here that the vision had taken place. Unlike the shrine to Minerva, carved into the face of the quarry that had provided the sandstone for much of the town’s walls and buildings, the temple was in a sorry state of disrepair.

  The site had been excavated a number of times through the years, by both professional archaeologists and others who had more an eye for a monetary than historical value to any artifacts, but it was some twenty years since it was last the scene of serious work.

  The columns supporting the temple had fallen or been knocked down centuries ago, blocking the hallway to the inner temple with its main shrines to the gods. It had become overgrown with brambles and other weeds and slim elder branches poked through in places.

  Rose removed her cloak in an effort to squeeze in through an opening between the columns that lay like children’s pickup sticks. As a little girl, the gaps in the stone tangle seemed so big, now she worried that she would get stuck going in or worse; not be able to get out. How would she explain that to the Mother Superior? Being trapped inside an old pagan temple!

  The tangle of pillars and stones was clearly worse than when she was a girl.

  As she pushed her way into the ruins, she felt the pull of the thorns as she forced her way in and under a column that left a three-foot gap underneath it. Once inside, it was dark, not pitch black, there were small shafts of light coming through gaps, but they were faint as the day was fading.

  She remembered the lack of light inside from when she had explored the temple as a child and had prepared for this expedition by requesting the matches and candle from Mrs. Watts. She pulled both out of the pocket underneath her tabard struck a match and lit the candle. Disliking having had to lie, even a small lie, to the mother of the girls, she wanted to see if the source of the children’s sickness could be determined. If it had truly originated in this location, then she would be able to report it to Doctor Belkin and the children’s parents and maybe God would forgive her transgression.

  With the light, she could see how badly she had damaged her habit. No tears she could not mend, and she had soiled it with dirt and grass stains but explaining its state to the Mother Superior was not going to be easy.

  Rose stood, extending the candle to peer into the recesses of the temple. Long ago the statuary had been stolen or removed by archaeologists, only the alcoves remained. Walking towards the back where the largest alcove was located, her foot met air not soil and she fell forward, throwing out her hands to stop her fall, the candle sputtered out as she hit the dirt floor.

  The almost complete darkness made her heart thump faster as she groped for the candle. She was unsure if she had stepped into a hole or off a step, all she knew was that her right knee smarted and left ankle throbbed. Her breath was getting faster as her hands searched across the ground half fearful of what they might touch, and then they found the candle. She grasped it to her breast with a sigh of relief and took the matches from her pocket and relit it.

  Once the flame was burning evenly she held the candle near the floor of the hollow in which she now knelt. Three or four flagstones had been lifted and the earth beneath excavated. It was this which had cause her fall as her foot dropped into the opening. Clearly something had been removed from the temple and recently.

  Did the children discover something that carried an illness or disease?

  She lifted the candle to look around her, and painfully got to her feet in order see further into the temple. She could not see anything else that had been disturbed on the ground or in the walls. She looked down at the hole and felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as she remembered her dream from the night before. The workers and masons creating the temple around her, the shadowy shapes of the three women burying a stone….

  Here, it was here, the three women had buried the stone in this spot and now someone had dug it up and children were ill. It couldn’t be coincidence, her lucid dream of the construction of the temple with the shadow women overlaid on that work. Her little sister’s talk of ghosts and curses at the temple and the ill children. It was as if she had been led or directed to come here.

  Rose felt it in her heart that she was involved in some way that led back to her visions of the wolf and St Ostric and Ariel. Should she share this with the Mother Superior and seek her help and guidance? Would she assist and guide her or take her to task for disobedience in so many ways and her involvement in pagan matters.

  8:40 PM, Cooper’s Book & Print, Chester England

  Mr. Cooper was gently brushing the threadbare carpet running the length of the shop as the bell above the door announced Rose’s entrance. He looked up and his face showed surprise then consternation at her appearance.

  “God preserve us, Sister. Are you alright? Have you fallen or been attacked?”

  “What? No, — well yes.” She caught the alarm in his face. “No, no, I wasn’t attacked! I had a — fall, well tripped actually.” She brushed at her habit trying to remove some of the dirt and checked her wimple was still on her head. I was trying to find the reason for those poor children’s fever. You have heard about the fever? I was following clues that took me to the Temple of Minerva.”

  “Aye, terrible thing, a sick child. The temple, you say?”

  “Yes, I learned that the children who have become ill were playing in the ruined temple. I had a hunch they might have snuck into the old building the way I did as a little girl. Once inside I discovered something had been dug up. Now, I wonder if they have become afflicted by what they found in that old temple,” mused Rose.

  “You were climbing about inside the temple? Youngsters have been sneaking into that place since the Romans built it; but this is the first
I’ve heard of a nun sneaking in or it or causing anyone harm beyond getting scraped or scratched,” noted Cooper with a raised eyebrow.

  “I know. I’m too old to be crawling through bramble patches and under rocks, but I was pleased that I could still get in,” Rose replied, looking down at her soiled clothing. “Quite how I am going to explain it when I get back to the convent I haven’t quite worked out yet

  The young nun thought for a moment and couldn’t keep it inside any longer. She needed to share the mounting fears and concerns that either reality was influencing her dreams, or figure out if her dreams were somehow tied to events that were unfolding. Mr. Cooper was her friend as well as a confidant and teacher. Without him she would still be struggling to read Latin and old English. She had nothing to lose in sharing what was going on with him. Worse case he would assume she was losing her mind and Rose felt she had more than one foot in that camp already. “I need to talk to you in confidence,” she said diffidently.

  “Shouldn’t you speak with a priest?” replied Cooper.

  “No, she sighed, that could… no would, make matters worse. Maybe it’s all this reading but of late I find I have been having unusual dreams. I’ve experienced lucid, colorful, realistic and sometimes scary dreams ever since I was a little girl, but recently they have become more vivid, and I hesitate to say prophetic,” said Rose.

  “What do you mean prophetic?” said Cooper. He pushed the pile of dust into a dustpan.

  “Last night the Temple of Minerva was in my dream. Just last night. Then today I go to visit my parents and I hear the children had fallen ill. Here is the strange thing. My sister told me that the children had been playing in the Temple of Minerva,”

  “Tell me more about this dream?”

  “Mr. Cooper, I think this is more my fanciful nature and my vivid imagination. I have always been a dreamer. That’s why I needed the discipline of the Church to get my head out of the clouds. In the dream, I was here, but it was a long time ago. Everyone was helping build the temple. Not just the Romans but Celts, the Britons,” said Rose.

  “This town was originally a Roman fortress, built to hold back the clans,” said Mr. Cooper.

  Rose nodded in acknowledgement. Everyone knew Chester was situated inside ancient Roman ruins that were once part of a fortress. The city was dotted with remnants of the Romans such as the temple, and where the east side of the race course met the city walls.

  Rose hesitated. Was she ready to reveal her secret? She looked Mr. Cooper in the eyes. They were kindly and full of warmth. He had helped her so much, helped her to achieve her ambitions of reading the books at the convent. He would surely understand and be less inclined to think she was mad.

  “I have… I have had dreams since I was very little, of a wolf, a raven and a horse. There were also three women at times usually old women but the faces changes sometimes. Sometimes they were looking into a cauldron they had been stirring I was pulled to the cauldron and down into it, but last night I had a different scene in my dream of the temple. Then I visit my family to learn of children becoming in after visiting that same temple,”

  “And the dream that haunts you, what does it tell you?” asked Cooper.

  It begins with an army standing in a field at dawn. The men, they were Celts. I saw them standing in the temple field facing where the walls are now. I first saw them through the eyes of a wolf. Then I was one of them, and there facing us was a man, a single man and then the earth opened up in front of us, swallowing men, the flames of hell it seemed billowing from the ground, the screams were so dreadful…… I fled with their screams in my ears and the roar of the flames and the ground shrieking as it split open. Then in front of us floating in the air, a woman, clad in grey clothes that streamed behind her as she flew towards us.” Rose paused her narration, her eyes wide with remembered fear, “She opened her mouth so wide and her scream….” she tailed off.

  “The Bian sidhe, a Banshee, a Celtic ghost whose call or scream kills her enemies.” interrupted Rose’s mentor.

  “Mmmm, I found her in a small book on Celtic Mythology, but there’s another thing, I recently had a waking vision”, she confessed, her eyes downcast.

  “A vision?”

  “I should have told you sooner, but I was afraid you’d think I was delusional or worse mad. There was more to my desire to read the manuscripts and books, and that one about St Ostric in particular than curiosity. I needed to understand but I’m not sure I do. I caught my finger on the skull in the reliquary, just a small cut, but as I put my finger to my mouth,” she stopped for a moment this was where her life could alter if she wasn’t believed.

  “I felt faint and my legs grew weak, and then there was a monk, I think it might have been Saint Ostric who caught me and held me up. He spoke to me and he was nothing like he was described and then a lion appeared and transformed into an angel who spoke to me. The monk told me what he said as I couldn’t understand the angel,” she finished in a rush and bowed her head waiting for him to show her the door.

  Cooper moved past her and her heart beat faster as he went to the door. To her surprise he did not open it and tell her to go and get help. Instead he bolted the door and returned to her.

  “Come through to the back-room Sister” He led the way behind the counter and through a curtained doorway to a small room with a desk and filing cabinet and two chairs. “Please sit down,” he indicated one of the chairs and sat down in the other. He watched her with a thoughtful gaze as she sat and settled herself.

  “Sister, there is A long tradition of pagan rites and worship in these parts. Celtic Clans ruled here before the Romans and the Saxons. To this day, there are Welsh and English who still practice those old ways. This is border country, this was as far east as the Romans pushed, it has many legends, curses and myths from those times and before. Magic winds through those tales and this land.

  “I do not consider myself a superstitious man I treat these tales as just that, tales handed down from person to person through the years. Yet there may be a kernel of truth in them.

  Saint Ostric was a real person, who stood against the pagans and their conjurations.”

  “I don’t yet understand your connection Rose. You seem to be linked to something bigger than just your dreams. Please, tell me, is there more?”

  “These dreams have always troubled and frightened me but now I am older they are beginning to make some sense. No, that’s not true! They still make no real sense, but they have some connection to each other and now to the physical world.”

  "Rose, growing up you must have heard of the Westfield Witches?" asked Cooper.

  “My mother used to threaten to sell me to them when I misbehaved, but they are a tale to frighten children, said Rose.”

  “I fear they are far more than that Sister. The Norsemen called them Norns, three sisters, Dvalin’s daughters. The Romans called them Parcae. They are described in the Welsh Triads by Geraint the Blue Bard, as three crones who travelled about as or could summon spirits in the shape of a wolf, a raven and a horse.

  He sighed and shook his head then continued.

  “I am most concerned, Sister that you should be having such dreams, but your vision gives me hope. If it was a true vision, then I think you are destined to take up the battle against evil just as Ostric did. When he saved King Aethelred and defeated the demon,” mused Cooper.

  “It is said that the witches had their lair in Potter’s End, over by the Westfield Gate, hence their name. They have been said to have been seen there in one guise or another for many centuries, there’s a very ancient grove of trees there.”

  “Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witch Finder General was summoned here to Chester in the June of 1647 to find the witches. He ‘discovered’ a coven or so he claimed, led by three hags who held sway over the others. He had them all burnt at the stake after he ‘swam’ all of them and for some time the ‘Witches of Westfield’ were not seen, but they cursed him as they died. It is interesti
ng that Hopkins himself died in the August of that year.

  The witches have reappeared again and again, and always there have been deaths amongst the children and disappearances.

  Now it seems they may have gathered again, and you have seen them at some evil work. I think maybe you should speak to the Mother Superior or the police on the matter. The equinox is upon us, and all hallows is fast approaching, the most important night of the calendar for the devil and his followers.”

  Coopers words gave Rose pause. The situation was becoming more serious than she had previously thought. If as her mentor suggested the three witches of legend had indeed returned in corporeal form or had taken over the bodies of some local women, then it was her duty to go to the Mother Superior.

  She bit her lip in thought, if she did that then the ensuing hue and cry would be beyond imagining. That is if she was believed in the first place. They were just as likely to lock her in her cell and feed her through the keyhole!

  “I need to give this careful thought Mr. Cooper,” she said slowly, “after all it has no basis in reality, just my dreams and visions.”

  The old man grunted agreement then got up and Rose noticed him wince as he made his way to a small kitchen nook at the back of the room.

  “Mr. Cooper, pardon me for intruding into your private business, but I had the occasion to speak with Dr. Belkin. He was at the Watt’s house and mentioned that you are under his care,” Rose said with concern.

  Mr. Cooper sighed and turned to Rose, an old battered flask in his hand. “Tea?” he asked before suddenly and surprisingly beginning to curse.

  “Damn that fool of a Doctor, may he be tormented in hell by imps with pitch forks!” He guiltily looked at Rose. “Forgive me Sister, I asked him to keep my illness confidential and no one knows, not even my family, what else did he tell you? Did he tell you I have a growth, a tumor in my abdomen? No? Or that I am the youngest of seven and my father and many of my brothers have had these types of growths,” Cooper growled, as he rubbed his belly.