A Dangerous Energy

by John Whitbourn

  ‘Jolly good, very commendable,’ said Tobias. ‘Well: I must precede you, I’m afraid, to prepare the sacramental instruments for that very service. I’ll no doubt see you there.’

  ‘Assuredly, Brother,’ said the woman. With this, Tobias increased his pace and quickly drew away from them. Bloody fools, he thought.

  The Avon Street group were a constant bane to the Bishop of Rugby. They were so open, so pious and honest that they could hardly be persecuted or publicly disapproved of in any way. However, this very religious fervour was a grave embarrassment and goad to those of the faithful in Rugby who had in the course of time made acceptable compromises between their desires and their religion. Their leader was the lanky young man who had greeted Tobias – an ex-army officer from Bristol who had liquidated his meagre possessions in order to buy himself out of his regiment when religion had first claimed him body and soul. In church they sat together in a body and their sheer fervour of prayer and singing made them as prominent as a Holy visitation. No one had any real deep objection to them save the Dean Spiritual of the Cathedral. He had conceived a deep and abiding hatred of the devout brethren, for it was said (and this was the source of his ire) that in their private meetings the Holy writings and Church teachings were discussed and analysed in a disgracefully free manner. Such musings and interpretations were entirely the business of the Church and more specifically, in the context of Rugby, himself. He had despatched an experienced and trusted deacon to attend one of these meetings but his report had been disappointing. They had given him a most cordial reception, he said, and while discussion may have transcended those limits he considered to be entirely safe, he had found no fault or heresy at all. Indeed, the deacon continued, he had found the whole evening quite touching and uplifting.

  The Dean Spiritual had raised a surprised eyebrow at his old friend and had left the matter at that. Even so, on those days when his gouty leg was playing up he found his thoughts turning more and more to those damn sanctimonious upstarts of the Avon Street group …

  Tobias’ job that morning was to assist one of the priests attached to the Cathedral in the early mass. A properly trained magician was supposed to be present at every celebration of communion but since Curate Oakley was the only person answering that description within the jurisdiction of the Diocese, it was impossible for him to be at every mass. Magicians were in short supply and so this stipulation of service rubric was quietly ignored save when a Church-trained man was available, in which case the mass was invested with a special solemnity. With characteristic efficiency and concern for detail the Dean Spiritual had, in consultation with the Bishop, drawn up a rota of services at which Tobias might reasonably be expected to attend. To show willing and to expand his knowledge of Church ritual in preparation for his final priestly examinations in two years’ time, Tobias tried to attend at least a couple of extra services each week and so together with his multifarious other duties he was kept a busy man.

  He swept hurriedly past the front portal of Castle Waith and gravely acknowledged the salutation of the liveried musketeers stationed there. Passing round the Cathedral via the graveyard path, he entered the vestry at the back and found the presiding priest, a young Surrey man with whom he had a passing acquaintance, already begowned and preparing the communion vessels. Since they were equals in Church status, Tobias merely nodded a greeting and went through the motions of composing himself in prayer. Magicians traditionally did not wear special vestments for conducting services and Tobias approached the chalice, paten and corporals on the priest’s bench. The thaumaturgist’s rôle in this concelebration was firstly to perform a magical exorcism over the vessels to remove any possible taint of evil or ill-will that might have become attached and, this done, to conduct a test to see whether the instruments of communion were as they should be – plain base metal and linen, or whether they were still imbued with some extraneous force in which case they could not be blessed. Happily Tobias’ training had given him the means (‘spells’ as others called them) to fulfil both these functions. In a passing of hands and a muttered phrase he ascertained that as usual the vessels contained some form of residual power; emotions and memories of those who had touched them, perhaps. His exorcism cleanly swept this away and a further test confirmed to him that the objects before him were now fully inanimate as they should be. It was the work of a few moments and, by now, second nature. He crossed himself and withdrew and the priest stepped up to bless the instruments.

  The service was in the small Lady chapel of the Cathedral and went as usual. Since it was known in advance to be a concelebration with both full priest and magician, the congregation was slightly bigger than usual. Once the initial cleansing of the vessels was done the magician had but a slight rôle in the service. There were certain silent prayers ascribed to him at certain parts of the process of communion but other than this the rubric stated that, ‘throughout the celebration the thaumaturgist will stand beside the celebrant silent and contemplative, his arms held such as to prominently display his badge of office in order to evidence to the faithful gathered there the dominion of God as manifested in the Church Universal over all fields of endeavour, spiritual and material, natural and supernatural.’

  Tobias had of course read this and strove to maintain an air of awesome power (albeit harnessed to the Church’s will), a stance which at first had made him feel acutely ridiculous. The passage of time, however, had made the act familiar to him and he considered that he now carried it off with considerable aplomb, although he did not take this to the point of vanity. Safety, the best way he had decided, lay in moderation and the concealment of his abilities.

  By eight o’clock mass was completed and Tobias gave the blessing and the dismissal.

  By a quarter past eight he was waiting outside the office of the Dean Spiritual, one Obadiah Cocroft, to report to him his intended programme for the day. This done and since the Dean had no alterations to make on it, he proceeded next door to the Dean Temporal and related his plans to him. Dean Alan Banks saw no fault in these and quickly released Curate Oakley to go about his business.

  It was a moot point exactly to which Dean Tobias owed the greatest allegiance and to whose staff he should be attached. In theory the magician’s primary rôle was to add additional nuances of meaning and efficacy to a whole battery of Holy services and functions. In practice, magic was found to be of inestimable use to the more materialistic areas of Church operation and influence. Therefore, the Curate found himself being drawn more and more into the web of the Dean Temporal whose staff regulated those parts of Rugby life not already administered by the Crown through the Waiths of Castle Waith. In so far as he thought of it at all, Tobias was not unpleased at this general tide of events; at best his spiritual duties were a mere means of learning necessary ritual and dogma, at worst they were a sheer waste of time. More practical activities seemed to him to hold far greater opportunities for advancement and mental stimulation.

  By nine o’clock he was able to leave the Cathedral and fulfil what was, to him, his first agreeable appointment of the day – his weekly report to the Bishop. The Bishop’s relatively modest residence, somewhat incongruously termed a palace, was one of the few large buildings permitted outside the city walls, and the somewhat epicurean Bishop who was responsible for its present form had landscaped its surroundings and spared no expense to make it probably the most aesthetically pleasing structure in the area. Normally the visit would have entailed a journey of twenty-five minutes since Tobias was not yet able to afford to maintain a horse. Yet due to a fortuitous series of meetings made during his sojourn in the town, it was not always necessary to make this long slog. Skirting the base of the Castle he entered by the main gate and asked one of the guards for Haraldsson.

  The Waiths were said to be one of the oldest noble families in the country. Certainly they had survived the Spanish pogrom of the Protestant nobility as well as Essex’s equally bloody pogrom of suspected collaborators, but even so stor
ies of their pre-Norman origin were dubious. Nevertheless with longstandingness of this degree comes seemingly boundless respect and grandeur and, the Waiths being pretty decent people as the nobility went, they were duly awarded it by the people under their sway.

  Lord John Waith, nearly sixty now, was the head of the family. He had had an adventurous youth fighting abroad and serving in several of the crusades in eastern Europe, it was said, and upon returning home he became the moral and political tutor to the young Prince Charles who was now King Charles IV, King of England and Wales and Lord Protector of Cornwall and Scilly. The young king-to-be had evidently loved his teacher well, for now Waith was called in to advise on the highest matters and had the ready and affectionate ear of the Crown.

  Tobias had only met him once when the Bishop had formally presented him as the new incumbent priest-thaumaturge of the diocese. Lord John had struck him as a very large shaggy-haired man with none of the air of gentle nobility that Tobias had expected. Despite his age he still appeared powerful, and his eyes were wild and bright. Tobias thought him capable of any enormity.

  That may or may not have been a correct assessment for direct evidence of Lord Waith’s personal rule was scarce. Despite a well-known professed love for home life and the town of Rugby, he spent much of his time in London presumably engaged in high-level politics. His shadowy wife, Lady Priscilla, and his two daughters Elaine and Susannah (his only surviving children), were occasionally seen about town but in Waith’s absence town rule was somehow jointly agreed upon and regulated by a body of prominent town businessmen elected by their peers, the staff of the Dean Temporal, Lord Waith’s private secretary George Paxton and his ‘Castellan’ Maurice Fidelio (a Florentine). Although the seeds of discord were heavily sown in this arrangement they never seemed to come to germination. Somehow, invisibly and inaudibly, the decision-making process made decisions and the great bargain of Church, state and people was kept, and flourished in the little microcosm of Rugby.

  It came to Tobias’ attention that the only other professional magician in the area, a freelancer of non-Church training by the name of Phillip Chitty, was employed by the Waith family. In due course Curate Oakley officiously sought out his company and thereby met Harald Haraldsson, a Swede, a sometime-mercenary who had served the Waith family as guard-commander for ten years and more.

  Haraldsson was quite prepared to lend Tobias a docile old mare for the morning and so in less than ten minutes he was handing the horse over to one of the Bishop’s stablers. Since the honourable gentleman would be expecting him, he wasted no time and strode through once a lackey had let him in. Pausing only to straighten his gown he knocked sharply on the relevant door and went in.

  Soon after his arrival in Rugby Tobias and the Bishop had struck up a close rapport. In many ways he reminded the magician of Father Guido Mori, save that he seemed to have none of that man’s graveness and solemnity. Whereas the two deans (being Tobias’ only other superiors in the Rugby establishment) were wont to stand on their rank and dignity, the Bishop was far more approachable, or so at least Tobias had found. If evidence was needed, his greeting that morning was sufficient.

  ‘Ah, good day, Tobias. And how are you this fine God-given morning?’

  Tobias bowed deeply. ‘My Lord Bishop, good day to you. Since you ask, I am well and refreshed from this bountiful rain that the Lord has generously provided.’

  The Bishop half smiled at this gentle rejoinder. ‘Remember it is good for the crops, Tobias. Take a chair.’

  The Bishop was seated behind a large desk, its surface entirely concealed by a thick pelt of documents and letters. He was small and white-haired, and his eyes were humorous. However, Tobias had sensed right from the start that a spirit of hard steel lay not far beneath the surface in this man: in no other way could he have risen to his present exalted position. As far as possible, however, the Bishop kept his deep streams of necessary darkness hidden in reserve and allowed the lighter, more pious side of his nature free rein. Certainly he was more happy with this face presented to the world; that was how he would have been through and through if the dictates of survival had not dug out some elements of his character better left unexcavated. According to his lights he was a sincerely devout man.

  Tobias had taken his seat and, the respectful formalities completed, he was now very much at ease. He was studying the ornate panelled and tapestried room until the Bishop finished a particular piece of correspondence.

  ‘It is my custom to take a cup of coffee around this time of the morning. Would you care to join me?’

  ‘Very gladly, with your permission, my Lord.’

  The Bishop rang a small bell he kept in a prominent position on his crowded desk.

  This was equally a custom, acted out nearly every time they met – the Bishop’s was one of the few households in Rugby to be able to afford to serve coffee at all regularly. Tobias had a great partiality for the drink that he had discovered during his stay in London with Father Guido and the Bishop had somehow become apprised of this.

  A few minutes later a servant brought the beverage in and both men leaned back, savouring the opulent smell.

  Meanwhile downstairs, the under-cook was enjoying his own cup of coffee that he had wrung out of the beans allotted by the store-master for two people only. The Bishop had guessed that some such thing was going on when the coffee began to decrease, almost imperceptibly, in strength. The thought of his lowly under-cook enjoying the same standard of living as a Bishop of the Church Universal never failed to amuse him, and so long as the brew did not get so weak that it had to be helped out of the pot he would not make a fuss.

  He poured coffee for both of them, then asked, ‘What do you have planned for this week, Tobias?’

  ‘My Lord, I see that the Dean Spiritual has allotted me five masses – that is four mid-week services and high mass on Sunday. In addition I hope to make it to a couple of morning masses if I can raise my weary head in time.’

  ‘Fine, Tobias. Excellent. And, since we touch upon early mornings, how is Miss French?’

  Despite himself, Tobias blushed: how did the crafty old fox know about that? ‘She is well and bonny, my Lord.’

  ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it – convey my greetings when you see her next.’ He smiled broadly. ‘And I think perhaps you ought to squeeze in a period of confession into your weekly programme – don’t you?’

  ‘As you say, Bishop; I’ll see my confessor on Sunday.’

  The keeping of concubines was a commonplace, if rarely mentioned phenomenon among the supposedly celibate Holy Orders. It would take a man of far greater power and influence than the Bishop of Rugby to stop the practice and somehow suspend a basic urge of mankind.

  ‘As for the rest of the week, well, I’ve got open lectures at the University to conduct on Monday and Tuesday as usual. Wednesday, I’ll spend with Father Hartgroves, studying, and the inbetween times I will probably be dancing attendance on the Dean Temporal solving the more unpleasant items on his list of problems.’

  ‘That seems fine, Tobias. One other thing: I’m receiving a delegation of Chapter and Warden-Committee officials on Thursday. Just a routine exchange of views, you understand, and perhaps a little grievance-airing. There will be a private mass in one of the side chapels afterwards. I’d be obliged if you’d be here early on that morning to act as my officiating curate – those earnest tradesmen do so appreciate some good old-fashioned church pomp you know.’

  ‘I’ll be in full regalia and look as stern and powerful as possible.’

  ‘Good. Well, that’s all we need cover officially I think.’ He drained his bone-china cup and leaned back again. ‘How goes things in general?’

  ‘Well … pretty good as usual, my Lord. Er … I think I’ve got the Church rituals almost beaten now so my final exams shouldn’t present any great difficulty. My development of magical skill technically finished when I graduated from Southwark of course, but I study for myself a lot and the university lect
ures help me to clarify my thoughts in that direction, though how much gets into the heads of my victims I’m not sure.’

  ‘Quite a lot I should imagine – the university has spoken quite highly of you to me.’

  ‘That’s heartening, my Lord. As a magician I never know just how much those without the talent appreciate what I’m trying to describe. To be honest, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, the only people who can truly appreciate the nature of magic are going to be magicians themselves. I mean, it’s like trying to describe a taste, in that you invariably end up desperately grasping for comparisons that are far from exact.’

  ‘That’s well put, my boy. Incidentally – are there any magicians among the philosophy people you take?’

  ‘Well … I’ve looked quite carefully and there are several who might be, judging from their attitude or the questions they ask afterwards. Even so, they’re going to keep quiet about it for obvious reasons and I suppose they’ll learn what they can and merely practise secretive “hedgerow” sorcery. A waste of talent. Do you want me to hunt them out?’

  ‘No; the last thing I want is a bevy of recalcitrant and press-ganged magicians. If any have real ability I have no doubt they will come to our attention whether they like it or not, as did our own Master Chitty from the Castle, in which case the Church can come to a separate … understanding with them.’

  ‘Just as you say, my Lord.’ Tobias was wondering exactly how much the old man knew of his circle of acquaintances. There had been a humorous glint in his eyes when he’d mentioned Chitty and he therefore presumably knew of Tobias’ friendship with his titular rival. As the Bishop obviously knew about Diane as well, someone, somehow, was reporting on Curate Oakley’s entire life style. This was no danger at the moment since he was leading an almost faultless existence, but he filed the information away for reference. Half his mind explored the none-too-alarming ramifications of it while his interview slowly drew to an end. They discussed a programme of Bible studies to be conducted in the Mechanics Institute for the largely illiterate artisans of the town, and Tobias touched upon his own readings. At some unspecified point the Bishop must have decided himself satisfied with his Curate’s progress and their talk drew to a close.