The Return of Fursey

by Mervyn Wall

  “I assure you, sir, that you’re making a mistake,” choked Fursey.

  “What?” thundered the magician. “Can it be that, like the others, you are nought but a false seeming and that my suffumigation has once more gone awry? That is soon proved.”

  He picked up a blade and tested the point with his thumb while Fursey looked desperately to left and right.

  “You have nought to fear,” declared Festus. “This is a new and unused knife. It cannot hurt an elemental essence, as I judge you to be; but if you are a mere figment, your natural antagonism to new steel will cause you to disappear, probably in a thin smoke.”

  “Such action as you contemplate can only have tragic consequences,” said Fursey faintly. “I’m human. I beg you to believe me, sir.”

  “Human! Nonsense!” snapped the magician. “I’ve just conjured you into existence. I admit that you’re not my idea of a sooty Moor, but in these hard times we have to be content with what we can get. Approach until I test your quality.”

  “Honest to God, sir, I’m human. To stab me would be a great mistake.”

  “How can you be human?” cried Festus in a sharp, shrieking voice. “You’re standing within a circle fortified with mysterious characters of which the import is known to me alone. There was no one within the circle when I began the spell. If you are human and have since crossed it you would have received a shock which would have killed you.”

  Fursey desperately rubbed some of the black from his face with his sleeve.

  “Can’t you see I’m not a tawny Moor?” he said imploringly. “I’m Cuthbert’s apprentice, and I came to you to borrow a parricide’s skull.”

  Festus stood in the centre of the cave breathing angrily through his nostrils.

  “If you’re deceiving me,” he declared menacingly, “I’ll inflict you with violent fits.”

  “I never deceived anyone in my life,” said Fursey pitifully. “I haven’t it in my nature. I’m only a simple country boy. I beg you to believe me, sir.”

  Festus flung his knife suddenly on the ground and turned aside with a gesture of angry impatience. Fursey saw his chance and, darting from the cave, fled down the hillside as if all the powers of darkness were in close pursuit. He did not slacken in his flight until he was once more climbing the rise to Cuthbert’s cave. Even then he was afraid to stop to recover his breath, but continued to stagger forward with one hand pressed hard over his heart in an attempt to stay its frenzied beating. As he re-entered the cavern, Cuthbert cocked a lively eye in his direction. Fursey sank on to a stone and breathlessly told his story.

  “Never mind,” grinned Cuthbert, putting down the empty flagon. “We’ll do without the parricide’s skull. I’ve since thought of another way of annihilating your enemy Magnus. We’ll damp him out by the antagonism of fire and water.”

  “I wish you had thought of that before you sent me near Festus,” complained Fursey.

  “Never mind,” said Cuthbert soothingly. “At least it was an experience for you, and your life is the richer for it.”

  It was fully half-an-hour later before Fursey felt himself capable of rising to his feet preparatory to taking his part in the black ceremony which was trembling in Cuthbert’s well-stocked mind. Even then he only dragged himself to his feet because he noticed that his companion was advancing steadily in inebriation, and he feared that if the weaving of the spell were any longer delayed, Cuthbert would become completely incapacitated. As it was, the master sorcerer was rather unsteady on his legs and very talkative. He began by making Fursey kneel down while he crowned him with a wreath of wild parsley and vervain. Then he spent some time rooting in a corner amongst a heap of elf-shots, rowan twigs and holed stones. At last he found what he was looking for, a flint pebble, which he handed to Fursey, instructing him to go outside into the open air and cast it over his left shoulder. When Fursey had done as he was bid, he returned and found Cuthbert standing in the centre of the cave with one hand resting on the rock table. The sorcerer’s pallid countenance was overcast by a film of thought.

  “It won’t work,” he said. “I forgot completely that four black cats are required and a bat who has been killed by lightning, as well as the nails from a murderer’s coffin; and that all must be set up at a crossroads on a suicide’s grave. Moreover, the proper time is during the waning of the moon. The still hours of the night are best, and it doesn’t do at all to select a spot where spectres are addicted to appearing.”

  “It seems to me,” said Fursey impatiently, “that we won’t get anything at all done to-night.”

  “Trust me,” said Cuthbert with a drunken hiccup. He disappeared once more into the recesses of the cave and reappeared with a fresh wax taper.

  “Over there on the shelf of rock,” he said, “you will find a box containing sticks which I have gathered at midnight from four points equidistant from a suicide’s grave. Yes, that’s it. Now we must kindle a fire.”

  The sorcerer chatted amiably while Fursey wearily heaped the sticks in the cave mouth and struck fire from a flint. Soon the sticks were crackling merrily.

  “The fire must be periodically renewed in proportion to the length of the business,” declared Cuthbert. “That will be your duty. In addition you must cast on the flames from time to time a handful from this bag of calcined bones, but not so much as to put out the fire. And above all, don’t let that vervain crown fall off your head.”

  Fursey re-adjusted his wreath and took the bag which Cuthbert handed him. Then he squatted on the floor beside the fire. Cuthbert held the wax taper towards the flames until it slowly softened in his hands and he was able to knead it into the rough image of a man.

  “Does that look like Magnus?” he asked.

  “Not very,” admitted Fursey.

  “Not a bad likeness all the same,” remarked Cuthbert blithely, “when one takes into consideration the fact that I have never seen him. Well, we’ll trace his name on it so that there’ll be no mistake.” He produced a needle and with its point carefully lettered the image. “Now,” he continued, “you must concentrate your will power on Magnus. Concentrate on him with every faculty of your being.”

  Fursey’s countenance assumed a dogged, far-away expression as he strove to carry out the sorcerer’s instruction. Cuthbert, in the meantime, retired to the back of the cave and began to chant an incantation. It was a lonely sound, and Fursey was glad to see him re-appearing from the shadows with the image still held in his hand. He advanced slowly towards the fire, mouthing foul and baleful jargon. Then he knelt and traced a circle round the fire with his finger. Further muttering and mumbling followed until Fursey began to feel the air thickening and becoming greasy with wickedness. At last Cuthbert stopped. He made a few mysterious passes in the air as if he were milking an imaginary cow, then he turned his face to his apprentice.

  “Now,” he whispered, “I have charged the element. Hand me that needle and keep concentrating on your enemy.”

  He took the needle from Fursey’s trembling hand and, heating it in the fire until it was red-hot, he jabbed it viciously into the stomach of the waxen image. There was a sudden screech from outside the cave. Fursey and Cuthbert straightened and looked at one another.

  “What was that?” enquired Cuthbert.

  “I don’t know,” replied Fursey.

  They listened for a few moments, but the uncouth sound was not repeated.

  “An animal I suppose,” remarked Cuthbert, and, bending forward once more, he heated the needle in the flame. When the steel had again reddened he withdrew it and carefully stabbed the image a few times, finally drawing the needle out at its back. There immediately burst upon their ears a series of the most fearful howlings. Cuthbert paused and once more looked at Fursey.

  “There it is again. It seems to proceed from the alchemist’s cave. Maybe you ought to go and see what it is. Perchance there is something amiss.”

  Fursey scrambled to his feet and trotted the intervening fifty paces to their neighbour�
��s dwelling. When he peered in he was astonished to see the alchemist, his face ashen, lying doubled up on the floor, with his two hands pressed against his stomach.

  “What’s wrong?” enquired Fursey.

  The alchemist turned on him a pair of bloodshot eyes.

  “Sudden, strange, unheralded pains,” he gasped.

  “Oh, is that all?” said Fursey, and he turned and trotted back, anxious not to miss any part of the quenching of Magnus. Cuthbert was busy turning a poker in the fire, bringing it to a red-hot condition.

  “Indigestion,” he commented when Fursey told him what he had seen. “If it were a mental malady, we could perhaps cure it with soft music; but there’s nothing to be done about indigestion.”

  He withdrew the glowing poker from the flames, blew on it once, and thrust it into the stomach of the image. From the direction of the alchemist’s cave the most pitiful lamentation smote the air. Cuthbert paid no attention; but, uttering a baleful verse, cast a handful of calcined bone dust on the now mangled image and worked the dust into its stomach with the poker. Suddenly there appeared at the mouth of the cave a distraught figure raving and cursing in a most fearful manner. It was the alchemist, and as Fursey and Cuthbert rose to their feet in astonishment, he fell on his back and rolled about on the ground.

  “He appears to be in great sweat and agony,” remarked Cuthbert. “Go and see what’s wrong with him.”

  “He’s ill all right,” replied Fursey, trying to hold the alchemist in the one place by pressing his shoulders against the ground.

  “Great nuisance,” commented Cuthbert. “Just when we were getting on so well too.”

  “He won’t stay still,” shouted Fursey as he struggled with the wallowing alchemist, “and he’s vomiting a marvellous diversity of objects. Already he has brought up four pieces of coal, a brass mirror and two hilted knives.”

  “Indeed?” replied Cuthbert admiringly, and he approached to view the phenomenon. The alchemist seemed in evil case: he had broken out in so great a sweat that the very fat seemed to be running off his body. Cuthbert glanced at the wretched man and his face at once fell. He rushed back to the cave and grabbed the waxen image, which he laid down before the fire and which was slowly melting away.

  “I shall try to disenchant him,” he shouted. “Keep a tight hold on him.”

  Fursey wrestled manfully, one knee on the alchemist’s chest and the other on his forehead.

  “He’s retching in a most formidable manner,” he cried. “He has just brought up a handful of human bones varying greatly in size and character. Do you think they’re his ribs?” he added anxiously.

  “Keep holding him,” shouted Cuthbert. “I’ll try to turn off the magic, but I fear that I may be unable to prevent the spell taking its ordained course.”

  The alchemist’s struggles grew less violent as Cuthbert hastily kneaded the wax image into shape again, stamped out the fire and started enunciating the spell backwards. When the disenchanting formulary was at last completed and he emerged again from the cave, his unfortunate victim had ceased to struggle altogether and lay on the ground looking up at the sky with glassy eyes.

  “Poor fellow,” commented the sorcerer. “You’d better help him to his feet and bring him in for a drink. It’s the least we can do for him.”

  The alchemist allowed Fursey to assist him to rise and seemed to be glad to have someone to hold on to, as he was hardly able to keep his legs under him; but when he realised that he was being led towards Cuthbert’s cave his eyes became round with horror. He was incapable of speech, but he resisted Fursey desperately. He broke away at last and made off staggering across country with only one apparent wish, to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the cave of the master sorcerer.

  “A strange affair,” remarked Fursey; “but to return to matters of greater moment, do you think that we have successfully annihilated Magnus?”

  Cuthbert had sobered considerably. “I do not,” he replied solemnly, “and I’m not going to try it again.”

  It was some hours later, when he was turning restlessly on his heather bed, that Fursey realised what had happened. He lay still for a while listening bitterly to Cuthbert’s alcoholic snoring; then he turned and buried his face in the pillow.

  On the following day the alchemist was found in an exhausted condition in a distant boghole. He was conveyed back to his cave by some of his acquaintance and carefully put to bed. Cuthbert did not fail to do the gentlemanly thing. He made a formal call and offered his apologies. The alchemist listened to his explanation with a wan smile.

  During the ensuing weeks Cuthbert avoided the subject of Magnus, and when Fursey at last summoned up courage to ask him to make another attempt, he replied coldly:

  “You must learn to do these things for yourself and cease relying on me for everything. When you are a fully qualified sorcerer you can set the matter in train yourself.”

  “But when will I be fully qualified?” asked Fursey despairingly. “I seem to be learning nothing.”

  “You’re too impatient,” answered Cuthbert. “Why, as yet you’re merely a novice. I’ll see about having you initiated at the Sabbath on May Eve. In the meantime you should devote yourself to a life of wickedness. As far as I can see, you don’t seem to be doing any wickedness at all. A man in your position should perform at least one evil deed every day.”

  While Fursey was most anxious to do everything proper to a novice in the Black Art, his difficulty was that he couldn’t think of anything wicked to do. Such things as uncharitable conversation about his fellow sorcerers or theft of their goods were out of the question, for he was in mortal terror of the possible reaction of his victims. He had a wholesome fear of exciting their malice, having no wish to find himself suddenly transfixed by a spell and perhaps turned into a toad or something equally loathsome. The mathematicians seemed the least dangerous, and he spent a whole day making a circuit of their caves, searching for the smallest and weakest of their number so as to pick a quarrel with him, and then suddenly fall upon, kick and otherwise belabour him. But they all looked so grandfatherly with their flowing white beards that he hadn’t the heart to interrupt their calculations; and so ended by doing nothing. He experienced a certain satisfaction from the fact that he was slowly starving the lugubrious Albert, but he was very much in doubt as to whether or not this would be in his favour when he had to make confession of his wickedness at the forthcoming Sabbath. He had not summoned Albert for many months, and he often wondered whether his familiar had by this time faded away altogether through inanition. He doubted it; after all, Albert was pure elemental spirit; and Fursey had a shrewd suspicion that he couldn’t fade away, however shadowy and intangible he might become.

  One of Fursey’s regrets was that he very rarely saw Turko the crystallomancer, who spent all his spare time on angling expeditions. The promised second sitting before the crystal had never materialised. When Fursey met the cow, he had gone over on the following day to tell Turko all about it, but the crystallomancer had manifested no interest whatsoever. Fursey had left the cave very hurt and had not sought his company since. He realised that Turko’s was a mercurial disposition, sometimes he was glad to see a visitor, but at other times, especially if he was working, he greeted with a scowl anyone who approached him. A man as shy and tender-hearted as Fursey was grievously hurt by an unfriendly reception, and after experiencing Turko’s uncertain temper once or twice, he was unwilling to seek the crystallomancer’s company again without positive invitation.

  Fursey’s main pleasure now was feeding the cow, who had grown so fat that she could hardly walk. She didn’t want to walk anyway. She seemed content to spend her life eating the wall of hay with which Fursey kept her provided and reflecting about it afterwards. She even slept standing up with her chin resting on the rampart of hay, while she contentedly inhaled its aromatic sweetness.

  Spring came late to the mountains, but padding rains and fitful sunshine brought it at last.
The flaming yellow gorse ran in thin columns up and across the hillsides, and birds made their appearance, fluttering from bush to tree. The air was dry and sweet, and the constant breeze heady like new wine. The exiles in the hills emerged from their caves rubbing and scratching their beards, and perambulated blinking in the sunshine and smiling affably at everyone they met.

  “It wants but a week until the Witches’ Sabbath on May Eve, when you will be formally initiated as a sorcerer and become a recognised member of a coven,” said Cuthbert to Fursey. “It would be a good thing for you to become socially acquainted with the more influential members of our community before that date, therefore I have decided to give a party.”

  Fursey was deeply moved by this evidence of his master’s kind interest in his welfare and, as he was himself very fond of human society, he lent a willing hand in the preparations. First the invitations had to be issued. Cuthbert, after careful thought, decided on twenty guests, and writing the invitations on small pieces of sheepskin, he despatched Fursey with them to various caves and holes in the mountain. The invitations indicated that Cuthbert would be “At Home” at sunset on the following Saturday night and that formal dress should be worn. Then master and apprentice hung up their ropes in the cave and set to with a will producing delectable foodstuffs and an adequate supply of drink.

  “We have no pottery,” said Fursey suddenly. “What will they drink out of?”

  “My dear Fursey,” smiled Cuthbert, “we are going to do this thing in style. We shall borrow from an old warlock friend of mine his much-prized set of robbers’ skulls.”

  On the morning of the party Fursey took a besom and swept the cave, while Cuthbert nailed a forked branch of wild hazel over the entrance. Then the master sorcerer tastefully arranged a few feathers from the wing of a black cock and some belladonna in a small bowl, which he placed in the centre of the rock table.

  “What do you think of that?” he asked, stepping back to admire his handiwork.