A Dangerous Energy

by John Whitbourn

  Father Guido, however, did not possess the Church’s millennia-long perspective and thought his travails to be solitary and unremarked upon. To him, Tobias was no different from the rest – a brief, bright splash of colour soon to be a blurred memory.

  Acolyte Bodu was also engaged in mental conflict and turmoil, although on an altogether less exalted plane. In fact he was deeply concerned for the sanctity of his priestly skin, for Sister Theresa had missed her second period, and it seemed a branding was in prospect unless he could lie very hard and very convincingly …

  In this way, engaged in disparate thoughts, the trio came to Father Allingham’s door.

  Father Allingham feigned surprise and was all deference and amiability. Tobias tasted sherry wine for the second time and went through the mockery of a discussion about his future. His final confession was heard and the provisional documents of indenture signed. The next time he came this way he would be a priest, and Allingham would, in all probability, be in the bosom of God’s care. To Allingham himself this was an eminently attractive prospect compared to a rather stark and lonely existence as the shepherd of Clarkenhurst. The existence of a magician in the village was just another irritant and a problem he would be well rid of. He was a man who, rather late in life, had discovered a burning need for warmth and compassion, but it seemed clear to him that he would have to die before he would find them. Accordingly his faith was vastly increased.

  Tobias was still young enough and human enough to feel a tear in his eye when he bade farewell to his family. His father had added his perfunctory signature to the relevant document, and his seventh child became, body and soul, Church property – which meant one less mouth to feed, hugely increased prestige in the neighbourhood and yet a gap in his fussy but essentially good heart.

  Their farewell was the first genuine affection between father and son for years. Long after such emotion was no longer available or possible, Tobias remembered it warmly.

  Mounted behind Bodu, young Oakley, apprentice magician, rode from Clarkenhurst, leaving behind both negative and positive achievements. On the one hand a dubious, even evil reputation and a near-dumb Parish Remembrancer. On the other an embryonic version of himself currently nestling, unguessed at, in Betty Lockwood’s womb; and a relieved priest, left in peace to the thankless task of ushering the villagers to heaven.

  All in all, quite a respectable legacy for a sixteen-year-old.

  CHAPTER 3

  In which our hero goes to London and is obliged to remain there.

  Destiny was evidently a cautious, subtle creature mused Tobias as he sat beside a large fire in a Church lodging house in Whitehall. This was not a revelation to him at all; the same idea had presented itself after the very public announcement of his talents via the Fitzsimmons incident. No rapid advance in his interests had attended that particular drama, so he should not have expected overmuch from his meeting with Father Guido Mori. His disappointment was, however, only a natural youthful thing and not at all deep. His tuition had clearly taught him that progress rarely came in leaps and bounds; generally speaking it was concealed in the slow and tedious unfolding of time. This thought was a ready consolation and comfort for any present sorrow.

  The journey to London occupied a day and a half of unhurried travel through small villages like Clarkenhurst and intervening woodland. Bizarre and inimical creatures were supposed to live in the forests, but none of them materialised for his entertainment. It was a pity, he thought: to see a real papal magician in combat with a slavering demi-demon would be both educational and diverting.

  In only a short time Tobias had grown to like Father Guido; he seemed to have a genuine empathy for young people, and Tobias was not to know that this was mixed with no small amount of sympathy. Unlike most adults, gowned in prestige and position, he seemed prepared to discuss rather than issue proclamations from on high. Tobias felt his own special abilities granted him enhanced status over and above that of his contemporaries, and so was not afraid to attempt conversation with a man obviously his superior. Mori seemed inclined to indulge his charge in this minor presumption and so they talked, in question and answer form, for most of the journey, whenever circumstances permitted. Occasionally Mori would weary of it and wave Tobias to silence and they would ride on in peace for a few hours; then he would remember the charity enjoined upon him and permit conversation once more. Invariably Tobias would single-mindedly confine his questions to the realm of magical theory and this surprised Mori, in two respects. Firstly, he was impressed by the boy’s precocious knowledge (although laughably homespun and faulty in parts) and secondly, he noticed an entire lack of the usual stock questions about life in Rome and the Thaumaturgic College. Either the boy was dull and incurious about his fate or (and this was the theory he accepted after consideration) he was mature enough to make full profit from association with a qualified sorcerer and leave Rome as a bridge to be crossed in due and inevitable course. The coolness of thought this betokened seemed to be in keeping with what else he knew of young Master Oakley. But it had taken him a long while to perceive this, Mori thought; nowadays his attention seemed only too ready to slip. Generous by nature, Mori obliged Tobias by relating to him several ideas and magical formulations that were the product of his own personal research. From one magician to another it was a great personal favour. For the entire final half-day before they entered London, Mori and Tobias went over a currently controversial spell that was yet to be included in the official basic grimoires – ‘the rite of cheerful subjugation’ as Mori called it. The magician-priest patiently expounded, and the apprentice-to-be probed on the points he did not understand. Such was the latter’s absorption, that he was in full sight of London’s massive walls before he noticed where he was.

  The first sight of London, ‘Babylon the Mighty’ and home to Kings and Papal Legates, shocked him for all his later coolness. He even allowed Mori’s spell to fall from his mind for a little while.

  Piled high within constraining walls and bastions were tenements, palaces, barracks and factories, termini and quays, the heart and mind of a nation-state. Smoke lay heavy over all, thinning only slightly over the few spacious accommodations: the papal citadel and royal dwellings at Westminster (conveniently close for communication and beady observation), the park where the Tower used to be, the Guildhall and a few other protected sites.

  Elsewhere, hemmed in by the Church-protected walls – modern work upon Stuart, upon Plantagenet, upon Saxon, upon Roman endeavours – steam-and-water-driven industry lived cheek by jowl with housing and each made the other miserable with smoke or noise or complaints. One day the pressure might cause the boil to burst and ease itself and spread, but not while the papal word lay against it. No man, it had long ago been decreed, should be more than the merest walk from the works of God displayed in Nature. Accordingly, green fields, albeit smoke-blackened and refuse-strewn ones, crept up to the very sides of the metropolis.

  Tobias did not particularly mark these miraculous survivals: pasture was nothing noteworthy to him. Instead he marvelled at the spires and chimneys, the ships and trains and thought that nothing could ever prevail against the power manifested there. It was the forgivable mistake of the ignorant.

  The enspiked heads over the great Western gate excited rather than repelled him. Magic of King or Pope kept them perpetually fresh and proclaiming their crimes.

  ‘Levellers and Mohammedans’ explained Father Mori, not wishing the boy to be distressed.

  Later that night in his tiny bed (he shared a room with acolyte Bodu) Tobias utilised a mind-clearing technique taught to him by Joan, and began work again. He took that part of Mori’s knowledge which he had managed to understand, and tried to attach it to a new power-word he was in the process of creating. After an hour of trying he temporarily gave up. Spells, especially new ones, did not spring into existence easily or quickly, that he already knew. He could afford to take his time in their creation, and it was an old adage that the more painstakin
g the construction was, the more efficacious the spell. As it was the spell did not attain life in his mind (and thus would not work), but the priest’s information had definitely brought him closer and he felt a degree of gratitude. Not for the first time, he realised the inestimable value of experience.

  Turning over to go to sleep, Tobias noticed in the gloom the bulk of the acolyte Bodu. He seemed to be having a bad dream. In the short time they had been together, Tobias had never really got to know the man, for he always seemed preoccupied; perhaps, Tobias thought, one of the religious-fanatic types. Then Tobias slept, unaware that, not a mile away, south of the clean and busy Thames, fate was preparing a change of destiny and, indeed, destination which was dramatic and clean-cut enough even for his tastes.

  Sir Matthew Elias, Master of Magic to his Grace the Bishop of Southwark, was seated, brooding, in his large tatty office. The aftermath of untold experiments was strewn anarchically about, and such furnishings and decorations as were visible above the wreckage were remarkable for their complete lack of good taste. It was very late, his candle was low and a meal lay cold and forgotten beside him. Sir Matthew had delved very deeply into arcane matters on his various masters’ behalf, often into subjects that magicians deemed perilous, and due to this he was very nearly mad. Putting the matter into simple terms and avoiding the use of such concepts as soul and horror, it could be said that he had seen far too much to remain humanly stable, and had come to a mental accommodation of a particular idiosyncratic nature. Not surprisingly, people tended to avoid him.

  Nevertheless, he was an outstandingly able magician and when in conventional residence his mind was extraordinarily sharp and perceptive. It was entirely possible that magic had eroded his logical faculties, for vast jumps of intuition, invariably correct, were his widely acknowledged speciality. He habitually experimented with hallucinogenic herbs.

  On this particular night, Sir Matthew was puzzling over a personal problem. Journeyman Hobbs had taken a strong fancy to a woman from over the river and instead of resorting to the usual arrangement, had chosen to renounce his vows and marry her. Sir Matthew, among others, was curious as to where this humble magician had found enough money to buy himself out of the Church and the Bishop’s service; perhaps an unofficial, slightly dubious magical commission? No matter; he was to be replaced; that was the only important feature in the story and rather a pity since he had been a straight, no-nonsense chap and no bother at all.

  Supposedly there were only a few, regulated, ways of recruiting magicians, all of which required prior approval of the Church Universal. However Sir Matthew no longer recognised convention; indeed he did not ever think of it, which made him a useful servant and a dangerous enemy, and this fact allowed a wider range of solutions to the problem. There was nothing but rules and convention to stop him venturing forth into the countryside, to search for a lad or lass with the required temperament and talent – nothing that is, bar Sir Matthew’s own temperament. The difficulty was that the matter would require his own personal attention, for it needed very finely attuned magical perceptions to spot the right kind of embryonic talent. The thought caused Sir Matthew to shiver with distaste; after so many years in Southwark’s vice and squalor his tastes had become very specialised. He needed tall tenements and narrow busy streets, and the thought of empty fields and smiling healthy bumpkins filled him with unresolved dread. No – definitely not the country, he thought.

  This impelled him to find a town-based solution which meant, being so close to the ever-watchful eyes of the Archbishop of London, a reasonably orthodox solution as well. Searching for inspiration, Sir Matthew took from the drawer beside him a battered and bound set of papers. He flicked through and two-thirds of the way down, on a page entitled, ‘PAPAL THAUMATURGIC COURIERS. SECONDED TO ARCHBISHOP’S STAFF – LONG-TERM TEMP’, he noticed the name of Father Guido Mori. Sir Matthew knew this name from somewhere and with a shaky hand noted the man’s contact address. He’d be worth a try – maybe he was en route already with someone suitable for Southwark’s needs.

  Relaxed now, the previous task immediately and completely forgotten, he leaned back in his wicker chair and stared out of the window at the brightly glowing Southwark night. He liked to sit and speculate on what was going on out in the township he had made his home; in an obscure but pleasing way such thoughts emphasised the wide and growing gap between him and the rest of humankind. This corrupting private communion was one of his favourite pastimes, but its joys were of a sad and limited nature. Eventually, therefore, he felt in need for something stronger and he called for a pot of tea to be brought to him. To this he would add some dried and powdered fly agaric mushroom and thereby escape.

  In the due course of time and fate, Sir Matthew wrote a letter. Father Guido Mori’s immediate superior during his secondment period in London, one Father O’Mally, received it, read it, and drafted another himself. Mori received this second missive whilst enjoying a large English breakfast, one of the few points of foreign culture he found superior to his own, but the reading of it rapidly deprived him of any pleasure to be found in his food. He looked around him with some agitation, an outward sign of inner turmoil, but no one seemed to notice his loss of appetite. Tobias was at the same table (possessing the talent immediately bestowed a degree of status, however base one’s origins) and was fully absorbed in his first encounter with that most prestigious and exclusive beverage, coffee. Mori had told him how the beans were shipped at enormous expense from the vast but precariously held papal plantations in the Southern Americas, and while Tobias had only the most tenuous grasp of the geography involved, he fully appreciated the value and mystique it conferred on the simple drink. It was the start of a life-long love affair, one that would linger on when all his other loves were dead. And just as no one noticed Father Mori’s distress, similarly this momentous occasion in Tobias’ life went unremarked upon.

  Acolyte Bodu was toying with some food but, as usual, fully occupied with his own problems, he impinged very little on the flow of events.

  Mori’s mind was full of confusion but seemed, of its own accord, to be making decisions that frightened him. His years in London had given him some degree of familiarity with Southwark and an even greater understanding of the specialist rôle its spiritual establishment played in the English Church. It was all coincidence, a chance of time. If Father Allingham at Clarkenhurst had written his letter a week earlier, if Tobias had defenestrated Fitzsimmons a month sooner, Sir Matthew’s disordered thought-processes might not have settled on poaching Mori’s young charge.

  And it just so happened that something in Father Guido snapped this time. No, not this one, he thought, pushing his meal aside. Not Southwark of all places!

  Pierre Bodu, attuned to his master’s moves, hurried off to fetch the good Father’s outer cloak.

  Father Guido had to wait forty minutes to see Father O’Malley and therefore had time to muster and amend his arguments. In his somewhat cooler mood, he realised how rash and unthinking he had been in attempting to change, if not flout, direct orders. Outrage and concern were good motives but poor explanations. He had always been an obedient priest and magician, so why, he thought in a nervous, cautious moment, rebel at this late stage? But even after forty minutes for second and maybe third thoughts, he still possessed ample resolve to carry him through O’Malley’s study door, and to fight the last tempestuous battle of conscience versus duty.

  O’Malley was a short, fat man with an air of urbanity achieved only by the ruthless rooting out of all traces of his Irish-Welsh origins. To rise as high as he had in spite of his serf-born status, he had adopted the sophisticated, cosmopolitan manners of the higher Church officials, and now, save by name, he was almost indistinguishable from them. It was a very notable achievement in a world that disapproved of undue social mobility and one he endeavoured to enjoy to the full. With the pleasure came the burden of concealing from scrutiny his early career.

  His father had not only been a slav
e in all but name to the great Irish landowners in the Dyfed peninsula but, even worse, O’Malley was not a magician of the Roman school. His magical training had come in early youth from a local tribal wizard and general malcontent who had hoped to train sorcerers in order to raise rebellion and thereby lift his people from their centuries-old servitude. O’Malley had seen his tutor captured, and burnt by Royal troops put up to the job by a cartel of frightened landowners. The sight firmly taught him the worldly wisdom and realism he had previously lacked. Duly impressed and convinced by the lesson, he had soon after presented himself at the vestry door of Llandaff Cathedral as a lad of nineteen years, an accomplished magician and willing to carry out the commands of the Church. The Church in its turn could ill afford to ignore such a gifted person so predisposed to their rule, and accordingly a deliberate blind eye was turned to his dubious antecedents. This was not an enormously uncommon occurrence and could plausibly be justified by saying that it was far better that these individuals were gathered under the Church’s wing (and surveillance) so that guidance might be given and service received where it would otherwise not be. Better this, in the Church’s eye, than to let them wander ‘free’.

  Being a person of natural ability and diverse skills, O’Malley rose fast and learned even faster. As assistant Master of Magic to his Grace the Archbishop of London, he had done, seen and heard a very great deal, some of which, given a free choice, he would rather not have done, seen or heard. Even so, unlike some magicians, this did not graft a hard edge on to his sensitivities; rather he became more tolerant and compassionate to the strange people that were his charges.