by Mervyn Wall
Albert shifted on to one fat ham, raised a leisurely paw and began to scratch his ear, still looking at Fursey over his shoulder with a self-satisfied smile. Before Fursey could express himself as to this seemingly insubordinate conduct, a thin hand was laid on his shoulder.
“Why are you loitering here?” asked the black-clad attendant. “I said that familiars were to be stabled under the tree.”
“Yes, sir,” said Fursey hurriedly. “Come on, Albert.”
Albert clambered off the rock and ambled up the incline in Fursey’s wake. There was a curious collection of freaks sitting in a circle under the oaktree. Monstrous cats were washing their faces, or spreading their formidable claws and smiling at them. There were moles, hares, rats in great abundance, ferrets and greyhounds. The horse-faced familiar was there, and there were several imps with ears like elephants, and a brace of dwarfs. Albert walked into the circle and sat down demurely. Fursey observed Cuthbert’s familiar Tibbikins leering at him from a branch overhead. So Cuthbert had arrived. Fursey wondered where he was.
“This way,” said the man in black. Fursey followed him with foreboding. They had not far to go, and as they approached the place where the torches threw a fitful glare, Fursey beheld with trepidation a man clothed so as to resemble a giant goat, sitting on a solitary rock in the centre of the circle. He wore a headdress ornamented with curling horns and to his hands were affixed a pair of alarming claws. Around him circled in a wild dance a horde of the most hideous witches and wizards, each one whirling a cat by the tail.
“Why do you hang back?” asked the attendant suspiciously.
“I’m not hanging back,” squeaked Fursey. “What do I have to do?”
The man in black produced a sack from which there proceeded the most uncouth squawking. He drew out a cat by the tail and handed it to Fursey.
“Join the circle and dance.”
A moment later Fursey was on the ground wrestling with the cat.
“What are you doing?” asked the attendant impatiently. He recaptured the animal and deposited her in the sack once more while Fursey mopped the blood from his face.
“You saw it yourself,” he answered indignantly. “She nearly tore the clothes off me. I’m lucky she didn’t take out one of my eyes.”
“You should hold her taut and keep her at arm’s length,” explained the black attendant. “Thus you will escape injury. Try it now.”
Fursey took the cat’s tail gingerly, tightened his grip, pulled her suddenly from the bag and swung her round his head.
“That’s right,” said the attendant, “keep her taut. Go on now, join the circle.”
Fursey capered across the sward trying to imitate the weird cavorting and prancing of an aged witch-hag in front of him. Around and around the central figure they danced, while the goatman looked down on them from his rock throne. Fursey, as he capered past, desperately whirling the cat over his head, threw one terrified glance at the sneering mask which covered the goatman’s face. It was an awe-inspiring scene, hideous with evil and contorted faces appearing and vanishing in the glare of the torches as the dancers twisted and twirled this way and that in the ungainly measure. The air was full of a horrid hubbub, the wild cries of the dancers grating on the screeching of the cats, who seemed to be all of one mind in disliking the part which they were called upon to play in the business. Before Fursey had completed the circle once, he was quite convinced that he had lost the greater part of his scalp; but when on completion of the second circuit, the attendant deftly took the cat from him, he was amazed to see that there were only a few handfuls of his hair adhering to her claws. The sable attendant dropped her quickly back into the sack among the other cats, where, to judge from the sounds proceeding therefrom, she continued to express her indignation.
“Supper is served one hundred and fifty paces to the left,” said the man in black, and Fursey stumbled in the direction indicated wondering miserably what fresh horror awaited him. As he approached the table he recognised some of the wizards from the mountain, but with difficulty. Men whom he had known as courteous, dapper sorcerers were guzzling food with an air of frenzy, their beards and hair awry, their faces scratched and their clothes torn to shreds. Horrific witches sat at the table screeching stupid feminine jests across at one another, hags whose ugliness was of such a revolting character that one glance at their visages was enough to convince the most passionate man that, when all was said and done, celibacy was best. Fursey had never before found himself in such alarming company. On his arrival at the table a one-eyed wizard whose hair hung about his shoulders like a wreath of snakes, raised a shout: “The meat course has arrived!” It would not have surprised Fursey to have found himself suddenly seized and dragged on to the table, but his momentary panic was allayed when an incredible hag made room for him beside her with a kindly “Don’t be frightened, lovey”. He seated himself smiling wanly.
Fursey was a man who enjoyed food, and his eyes nearly fell from his head when he saw what he was expected to eat. There were huge dishes on the table loaded with strings of entrails, carrion and putrid garbage. The black-clad attendant had set up a brazier beside the table, and when anyone seemed diffident about consumption of the food placed before him, he was immediately threatened with red-hot iron plates. To convince the delinquent that he was in earnest, the attendant directed attention to a leg-crushing machine in the background. Fursey ate with difficulty as the hag beside him had apparently taken a fancy to him and retained one of his hands in her lank claw all during the meal. Between courses she made love to him cackling girlishly. Fursey wished earnestly that he was elsewhere, as smiling politely, he gently repulsed her advances with an affectation of boyish shyness. He could see no sign of Cuthbert anywhere.
When at long last the unappetising meal was over, he managed to slip away from the amorous witch. She followed him a little way cooing seductively, but her chase of him was considerably slowed down by the necessity she was under of proceeding with the aid of two sticks on account of a fallen hip. No sooner had he removed himself to a safe distance than he found the ubiquitous black attendant standing at his elbow.
“You do not act wisely in rejecting the advances of Arabella,” he said meaningly. “She is a most powerful witch, and she could easily deprive you of your life by shooting a flint arrowhead from the nail of her thumb.”
Fursey took one look at the appalling specimen of womanhood in his rear.
“I prefer death,” he said simply.
The attendant shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
“Take your places for the homage,” he announced.
They lined up, and one by one paid homage to the great goatman, still sitting seemingly indifferent and immovable on his great stone seat. Fursey, when his turn came, did as the others: he went on his knees, bowed his head to the earth and swore allegiance. When this ceremony was over, there seemed to be a pause in the proceedings, and Fursey had time to look about him. There appeared to be about a hundred people present. It was hard to estimate the number as there was an incessant scurrying to and fro of shadowy figures in and out of the wavering light shed by the torches. He knew that a coven consisted ordinarily of thirteen persons, and he guessed that there were nine or ten covens present, perhaps not all in full force. Covens were rarely complete on such occasions, due to illness, some untoward accident such as had befallen Festus Wisenuts, or the activity of the authorities in sending the less agile wizards up in smoke. If the sorcerers and witches would only have remained still for a few moments, Fursey would have essayed a count, if only to keep his mind from occupying itself wholly with his fears, but the lakeside was a veritable bedlam: men and women skipped and tumbled with no apparent object, distorted faces emerged suddenly from the darkness and as quickly disappeared, witches sprang from rock to rock their faces intent, while others rolled in the heather, and a coven from the County Cork paraded back and forward walking on their hands. The screaming and the shouting united into a clamorous din, a
s if a hundred cats were being trodden on simultaneously. Several sorcerers, their eyes wide with excitement, spoke loudly to Fursey, boasting of their malice and the extent of their wickedness. Before he could answer they had run off to find other listeners. A torch in his vicinity spat a shower of sparks, and in the sudden glare he detected a small man leaning dejectedly against a rock. He looked reasonably harmless, so Fursey moved over in his direction.
“Very fine Sabbath,” remarked Fursey ingratiatingly.
The stranger raised a pair of melancholy eyes.
“Yes, but I’m in no mood to enjoy it.”
“Dear me,” said Fursey, “that’s too bad.”
“Domestic trouble,” sighed the little man. “In the course of an experiment this afternoon I accidentally exploded the wife. She was a very good cook.”
“This world is a vale of tears,” said Fursey shaking his head sympathetically. “I’ve a little worry on my mind myself.”
“Is that so? Maybe I could be of help.”
“Well, as yet I’m merely an apprentice, but to-night I’m to be initiated as a fully-fledged sorcerer. I’m completely in the dark about the ceremony of initiation. Could you tell me whether it involves much pain or discomfort?”
“Not much,” answered his companion. “You will be required to take your stand before the goat-man and place one hand upon your pate and the other on the sole of your left foot, and you must vow all between, that is your whole person, to his service. You will be required to swear complete obedience to the master of your coven and renounce the Christian and all other faiths. He will initiate you by baptising you with a new name, perhaps your own name spelt backwards, and by pricking you twice with a needle on the wrist. It is usual for him also to place his seal on the candidate by giving him a sharp nip on some part of his body. The resultant bruise will never disappear, and the spot will ever afterwards be insensitive to pain. The ceremony will probably conclude with a sermon by the goat-man on Evil’s age-long struggle for empire.”
“It could be worse,” said Fursey with a sigh of relief.
“I beg your pardon,” replied the wizard suspiciously.
“What I mean,” said Fursey hastily, “is that while I’m quite prepared to surrender life or limb in the service of Evil, I’m naturally glad that neither is yet demanded of me.”
“Hm! You know, of course, that if the candidate is adjudged unworthy of the honour to which he aspires, he is simply thrown into the lake.”
“Thrown into the lake?”
“Yes, it removes all traces, and there are no embarrassing questions afterwards. The lake by which we are standing, is the terrible Lough Dagea. Anything which breaks its waters, is never seen again.”
Fursey smiled nervously and moved nonchalantly a pace or two, so as to place his companion between himself and the brink.
“Why has this long pause occurred in the ceremonies of the night?” he asked by way of changing the subject.
“A pause has not occurred. The goat-man is making a circuit of the revellers requiring of each a recital of his wicked deeds. In any case in which the amount of evil done since the last Sabbath, is not satisfactory, he scourges the delinquent with a wire whip. I observe that he’s coming in your direction now.”
Fursey started and moved back against a crag as he saw the great horned figure striding towards him. The melancholy wizard slipped away unobtrusively and was lost in the darkness. Fursey shook in every limb as one part of his mind remembered the proximity of the fatal lake, and the other part strove to assemble his little share of wit so as to confront the danger. The goat-man had taken his stand some paces distant. He was of normal height, but his goat mask and formidable horns conferred on him a terrible majesty. He held in his hand a most efficient-looking whip of woven wire, with which he carelessly flicked the tips off the heather. Fursey was dimly aware of a semi-circle of white faces, as other sorcerers and witches pressed around watching breathlessly.
“State your name and rank.”
“Fursey, apprentice sorcerer.”
“Your address?”
“Knockmealdown Mountains.”
“To what extent have you established your claim to be one of this noble company?”
“I’m a man given to all manner of wickedness, sir.”
“For example?”
“Church burning, calumny, detraction, uncharitable conversation, envy of my betters, sloth, gluttony, drunkenness and the telling of lies.”
“What churches have you burnt?”
“The whole monastery of Clonmacnoise.”
“You’re a liar,” said the goat-man coldly. “It was Vikings who burnt Clonmacnoise. All you did was to run round making a fool of yourself.”
“That just goes to prove,” gasped Fursey, “that as a teller of lies I’m at the top of the profession. I can’t myself believe a single word I say.”
The goat-man raised his whip alarmingly and cut a gorse bush in two with a sudden flick of his wrist.
“Why have you so scandalously denied your familiar his proper meed of blood from your person?”
Fursey’s limbs had turned to water, and he would certainly have fallen only for the rock against which his back was pressed. The sweat coursed down his face as he strove desperately to think of an answer, but relief came from an unexpected quarter. The dark-robed attendant stepped suddenly into the circle.
“I have viewed the familiar in question,” he said. “He’s certainly not suffering from malnutrition. In fact, he presents every appearance of being not only well-fed, but even pampered. Our information on that point must have been unreliable, my lord.”
The goat-man paused uncertainly. Fursey passed his tongue over his lips and strove desperately to bring his knocking knees under control. When the goat-man had first spoken, Fursey had recognised the voice of Cuthbert, but with the goat mask Cuthbert seemed to have assumed another personality. Fursey felt that he had no reason to expect mercy on account of mere acquaintance.
“What’s that I see on your face?” demanded the horned figure. “Brackish tears?”
There was a gasp of horror from the onlookers.
“Yes,” squeaked Fursey with a break in his voice.
“What has caused them?” thundered the goat-man.
“Fright,” whimpered Fursey.
“It’s a well-authenticated fact,” announced the goat-man in a terrible voice, “that no witch or wizard can weep. You’re not all that you would have us believe,” and raising his whip he cut at Fursey. Fursey yelled and tried to escape, but there was no getting out of the circle. He capered madly as the whip was dexterously wielded, inflicting on him many a sore stroke. His howls were truly terrific, and when the goat-man desisted, it was not through any sympathy for his victim, but because of a sudden counter-clamour which attracted general attention. All hell seemed to have broken loose under the blasted oaktree. One could see, even in the dim light, fur and feathers flying in all directions, while yelping and gruff barks pierced the night. With one accord the company, led by the goat-man, hurried towards the tree, while Fursey aching in every limb scrambled after them, making a circuit however, so as to lose himself somewhere in the crowd. When he reached the vicinity of the oaktree, a remarkable sight met his eyes. The monstrous cat stood against the bole, her back arched, spitting fire. Albert was tumbling on the ground fighting with the horse-faced familiar, while the two dwarfs clung to his back kicking him wherever they could. Smaller familiars scurried back and forward barking shrilly. A hare and a mole were up on their hindlegs squaring up to one another, while rats ran in and out of the fighting, nipping everyone they encountered.
“This is unprecedented,” shouted the goat-man. “Stop it at once, the whole of you.”
There was an immediate lull in the fighting. Albert made use of the unexpected armistice to turn suddenly and aim a swipe at one of the dwarfs, knocking him sideways. In a moment they were all at it again. Various witches and wizards now intervened, ordering their r
espective familiars to vanish according as they became involved, until at length only Albert remained, squatting on a carpet of fur and broken claws. He swung his eyes intently left and right watching for the possible re-appearance of an enemy.
“Whose is this ungainly monster?” demanded the goat-man, choking with rage.
“Fursey’s,” cried a dozen voices.
“Where’s Fursey?”
For a few moments there was silence. Then a thin voice came quavering from the fringe of the crowd.
“I’m here, sir.”
“Come forward and take possession of this wild beast of yours.”
The crowd parted, and Fursey crept halteringly through the passage.
“Someone will pay for this sacrilegious disturbance of our Sabbath,” said the goat-man grimly.
“Yes, sir,” said Fursey.
By the goat-man’s directions the other familiars were summoned by their masters. The air trembled and condensed as they came one by one into existence. Albert, his head leaning forward from his bull-neck, fixed his red, smoky eyes threateningly on one of the dwarfs, who after the manner of small men, had his tongue out and was making faces at him.
“Keep them separated,” commanded the goat-man. “Now, who began it?”
“He did,” squalled the brindled cat glaring balefully at Albert.
“Yes, it was Albert,” cried a dozen of the familiars.
“What did he do?”
“Making nasty remarks about everyone,” shrilled the cat. “Putting on superior airs; looking for fight, that’s what he was. He trod on one of the dwarfs.”
There was a chorus of assent. Albert had assumed a hangdog look. “It was an accident,” he said sheepishly.
“No accident,” screamed the horse-faced familiar. “He’s been elbowing us all and goading us ever since he arrived.”
“He said his bear’s claws were superior to mine,” snarled the cat.
“Feminine envy,” muttered Albert.
