Saxon's Bane

by Geoffrey Gudgion

  Fergus was content to be quiet and enjoy the novelty of being in the open on horseback. Ahead of them the Downs were taking shape through the cloud. Already the sky was almost blue overhead, fading to soft grey where mist swallowed the trees above the hedgerows. In front of them the path opened into a short valley that carved a green notch into the band of woodland beneath the Downs. A large bird of prey circled over the grass, making a high, plaintive, keening wail, like a farmer whistling for a lost dog. There was something unearthly about the call.

  “Red kite,” Eadlin said, pointing her riding crop at it, then grinned across at him, calmer now. “Let me show you somewhere special.” She nodded up the valley to where its two-field width narrowed to one, which in turn ended in an angle under the trees, still opaque in the distance. Eadlin set off towards the trees at a canter, then let out a whoop and lifted out of the saddle to crouch jockey-like as she put her horse into a gallop. Fergus watched her little thoroughbred pull away from his docile mount the way a sports car accelerates past a truck. By the time he caught up with her in the angle of the field she had already dismounted and was grinning widely.

  “Sorry ’bout that, leaving you behind, like.” The smile and flushed face belied her words. “Horse therapy. It clears the mind. Hold the horses, I’ll shut the gate. The farmer won’t mind if we let them graze for a while.”

  Fergus lowered himself out of the saddle, reconnecting with his limp after the exhilaration of the canter. Eadlin led him on foot into the outskirts of the woods, following the banks of a small stream, and making no compromise for his pace of movement so he struggled to catch up. Where the hill steepened around them, the stream emerged from its source in a marshy tangle of roots beneath ancient trees.

  “Come and sit.” Eadlin patted a root lying along the surface, as thick as a tree trunk and furred with moss. “Mind the bluebells. They’ll be lovely in May.” The area was carpeted with the green starfish shapes of young plants. As Fergus sat, Eadlin squatted on her heels by the stream, folded over her riding boots, and splashed water on her face in a way that appeared to be more a cleansing ritual than refreshment. From her pocket she drew a crumpled paper bag and emptied the contents into the palm of her hand before scattering them on the surface of the stream. They looked like dried herbs, and a faint floral fragrance drifted up to him. Eadlin sang quietly to herself as she lowered her hands into the water, washing the dust into the stream.

  “Some kind of offering?” Fergus asked as she sat beside him.

  “Think of it as a mark of respect. Can you feel this place? It’s probably been sacred since the earliest tribes came, long before Christ.”

  Fergus looked around him, seeing a woodland dell, mainly brown and bare but splashed with the latent greens of spring. He was not sure what he was supposed to notice, or feel.

  “It’s very pretty.”

  “Sod pretty. Relax, shut your eyes, empty your mind. Tell me what comes to you.”

  Fergus closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

  “I hear things.” It may have been his imagination, but his hearing felt sharper in this place. “The kite, a woodpecker. There’s a breeze coming, clearing the fog. It’s stronger above us, out of the shelter of the valley.” He surprised himself with his eloquence.

  “Good. What else?”

  “The smell of the earth. Rich.” Fergus decided not to mention the waft of animal droppings. “And I smell you. Horse smells and femininity.”

  “Thank you. Don’t flirt, not now. Forget the senses you know about, what do you feel?”

  Fergus let his mind empty. It was there, on the edge of sensation. It may have been planted by her suggestion, but he felt a hint of something old yet strong, a pure gentleness at the heart of all things.

  “Vitality. Harmony.” There was a note of wonder in his voice.

  “That’s it. Breathe it. Open yourself to it.” Without opening his eyes, Fergus knew from Eadlin’s silence that she too was absorbing the moment and the place. He felt he was being given a glimpse of Eden, and in his mind he reached for it but the vision faded, fragmenting beyond his touch as if it had been a reflection on a lake and he had thrust his hand through the water’s surface.

  “Don’t try too hard. Open your mind, be peaceful, and it may come to you, but it can never be commanded. If it comes to you, and if you can find that focus, you’ll find more wisdom there than in a whole world of books. You can open your eyes now.” Below them the horses grazed quietly in the field, the kite was still circling, but they now all felt connected in a universal harmony. Eadlin’s smile was wholesome and somehow at one with the landscape.

  “I was right, you are sensitive. Maybe you’ve always been, but never discovered the gift. Maybe it’s something that stayed with you when you touched the shadow world.”

  Fergus fumbled for words, unable to describe what he had glimpsed, but only one word fitted the moment.

  “Peace...”

  “Some people can find that peace anywhere. For most of us it’s easier in certain places. Springs like this one, even churches. Some people never find it at all. I doubt if Jake has.”

  Fergus felt as if a fragment of distant music had called to him, but faded before he could listen properly. The silence became companionable; the sighing of the wind through the trees above them was all the communication that was required.

  “You mentioned once that Jake had found his own path,” he said eventually. He guessed that here, in this place, she wanted to talk.

  Eadlin nodded. “His family were part of the Old Way, but we’ve always been a bit too peaceful for him. Last year he started experimenting with Wicca.”

  “Wicca. That’s another name for witchcraft, isn’t it?”

  “I think its appeal to Jake is that Christians see it as the Enemy. He was caught stealing from the church, you see, when he was a kid. Long before John Webster came. He had form, as they say, so Jake did time in a young offenders institution. I don’t know what happened to him there, but he came back hating the organisation that put him there.”

  “So what does Wicca involve?” Fergus was fascinated.

  “Actually Wicca is pretty new. People are trying to re-invent something out of scraps of old knowledge. I’m sure some Wiccans are perfectly decent people, but Jake’s found a darker form. Somewhere along the line he’s picked up some pretty nasty ideas.”

  In front of them two pigeons strutted an elaborate courtship ritual on a branch overhanging the field. Their neck-rubbing and cooing was in harmony with the place in a way that talk of witchcraft would never be.

  “Is that why you split up?”

  “Partly. He started killing things. Sacrificing them.” Eadlin started pulling at the crumpled paper bag in her hands, shredding it distractedly in her fingers so a fragment dropped into the stream and spun slowly away. “No follower of the Old Way would do that. We’ve too much respect for nature.”

  “So who or what are they worshipping?” This place made everything possible. A month ago he’d have reacted with derision.

  “The Horned God and the Goddess.” Eadlin paused, and swallowed. “Christians would call the Horned God ‘Satan’.”

  In front of them the pigeons had started to mate, flapping furiously on the branch, their tails entwined. Fergus started to wonder what sort of world he had arrived in, where a woman would greet the sunrise halfnaked on her lawn, then talk in matter-of-fact terms of Satanic worship as if it was as natural as the pigeons having noisy sex in front of them.

  “There was something else.” She balled the remains of the paper bag in her palm. “Wiccans believe that the Gods use people as proxies, like, so the priest and the priestess in a ritual actually become the Horned God and the Goddess.” Eadlin paused. She seemed embarrassed. On the branch the pigeons had finished copulating and were sitting side by side. Fergus could swear one of them looked smug.

  “Go on.”

  “In some of their ceremonies, the Horned God screws the Goddess. ‘Ritual uni
on’ Jake calls it, which is a fancy name for a public fuck. Last year Jake asked me to play the part of the Goddess, at Halloween or Samhain as he calls it. Now I’ll make love with someone because I love him, or maybe even if I only fancy him, but there’s no way I’m going to have sex in front of others, particularly as part of some nasty ritual that I don’t even believe in.”

  “I don’t blame you. What happened when you refused?”

  “We had a row, and I didn’t go to his party, or sabbat as he insisted on calling it, but he found a substitute. Jake has never had a problem finding women. I told him if he ever did that again I’d chop off his balls.”

  One of the pigeons strutted nonchalantly down the branch and flew off across the field. Its mate watched its departure without apparent concern.

  “Ostara.” Fergus remembered Jake’s satiated smirk the morning after the equinox.

  “Yeah. ‘Just a bit of fun’ he says, but he’s starting to take it very seriously. Especially since you arrived.”

  Fergus straightened on the root, alarmed.

  “’Fraid so. At Samhain he killed a stag, you see, some poor beast he’d caught after it’d been injured in the rut. The next day they dug up the Saxon with a stag tattoo on his face. When stories started to go round about the Saxon’s ghost being seen, Jake let rumours circulate that he was responsible, like he was some kind of warlock. Then you came back and told us that a stag caused your crash, so he’s strutting round the place saying that’s proof. You’re his, like, trophy.”

  Fergus stared at the stream below them, his thoughts tumbling over themselves like water over pebbles. There was too much that he didn’t understand. Seeing the Saxon in the wreckage. Hearing the power of Eadlin’s chant. The memory of his fight back towards the light. A glimpse of pure harmony, in this place.

  “Eadlin, I still believe that I’m only alive because you brought me back. Does Jake have power, in that sense?”

  “You brought yourself back. I just helped a bit, and nah, no way does Jake have any special power. He doesn’t have the aptitude. Whatever skills I have are handed down through the generations. It takes years of study, practice, and sometimes a bit of self-denial, and I have no idea how to do the things he’s claiming to have done. I suppose Jake might have stumbled on something, but he sure as hell won’t know how to use it. Maybe that makes him dangerous.”

  “Where’s all this going, Eadlin? What does Jake want to achieve?”

  Eadlin shrugged. “Dunno. Jake needs to control people. I think the blood on the church is like a challenge. The frightening thing is, these days he believes in his own power, and he’s got enough ego for some people to follow him, ’specially the ones that are easily led like Hagman. But it feels like it’s more than Jake; there’s a tension building up all round us. It’s as if the village is sickening with something so you know it’s going to get worse even if right now there’s only a slight headache, like. Places like this,” she lifted her chin towards the source of the stream, “are the pulse of the land. You can feel its health. There’s a place up the valley from Allingley, around where your car crashed, a place that used to be as sacred as this. But now Jake uses it for his rituals and it feels sick, even mad.”

  Eadlin hunched forward to squat by the stream, letting the water trickle over her fingers, with her body folded into a Z of riding boots and leg and torso, and her breasts pressed against the tops of her thighs.

  “Thanks,” she said, turning her face to him and resting her cheek on her knees.

  “What for?”

  “Listening. For not laughing at all these silly ideas. For being around. It helps.”

  A strand of copper hair had fallen forward across her face and Fergus reached forward to push it back behind her ear.

  “Fergus, don’t. Don’t get too close, not in that way.”

  “Why not? We get on well.”

  “We get on too well, sometimes, but you don’t belong to this place. I’ll spend my life here, but one day soon you’ll go back to being a businessman or whatever it is that you do.”

  “Maybe, but I like it here. Who knows what the future holds?”

  “You’re like a kid that’s just been let out of school. You’ve barely been here a couple of weeks, and the weather’s been good. Try running a stables in winter when you’re sliding around in freezing mud earning the minimum wage for ten hours a day. Besides, our outlook on life is totally different.”

  “In what way?”

  “You’re used to having money. You need stuff like your flash car and those designer jeans you’re wearing.”

  “Well, I used to earn a good income, so what?”

  “People like you tend to want all kinds of things, maybe even think you have to have those things before you can enjoy life.”

  Fergus shrugged. Eadlin’s comment was a bit stark, but not unfair.

  “You think that you need all things to enjoy life. But I think you have been given life so that you can enjoy all things. It’s the opposite starting point.” Eadlin softened her words with a smile.

  There was silence while Fergus absorbed what she’d said, a silence broken only by the distant scream of the kite.

  “That sounds a bit profound for me, but even if you’re right it doesn’t stop us being friends while I am here.”

  “Fergus, I hope we’ll be friends for a very long time, but I think we’re more likely to be friends for a long time if we’re not lovers for a short time. I know we flirt a bit, and that’s good for my ego, but I don’t want to lead you on.”

  Fergus sighed. “It seems to be my luck to fall for untouchable women.”

  “You haven’t fallen for me. You just fancy me, and you probably haven’t had sex for a very long time.”

  Fergus looked away.

  “... besides,” she continued, “for all you know, I might already be seeing someone!” Eadlin jumped to her feet and brushed her hands against her jodhpurs, suddenly energetic. “Come on, don’t look so glum.”

  Eadlin pulled him to his feet and ran down the stream bank ahead of him, skipping lightly as if she had dropped a burden, and vaulted the fence into the field. Fergus followed more slowly, unbalanced on the uneven ground and grabbing at trees for support. When he caught up with her beside his horse, Eadlin put both hands on his shoulders and stood on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Friends, right?”

  “Friends. But you’ll still have to help me up.” Fergus nodded sideways at the horse and she dropped into her knees-flexed, basket-of-hands posture to help him into the saddle. Eadlin grinned at him and lifted an eyebrow as she crouched.

  “I love it when you do that.”

  “Look, but don’t touch.” Eadlin vaulted him into the saddle and mounted her own chestnut.

  “How do you like hacking out?” she asked.

  “I could get a taste for this. Maybe with a horse that’s a bit more, er, lively?”

  “Good. I think it’s time you tried Trooper, to give you the feel of something sharper. We’ll keep you in the school for a while, until I’m sure you can handle him.”

  Fergus’s grin as they rode off was exuberant.

  Several hundred yards away, in the trees above the far side of the valley, Jake Herne swore as he watched their departure through pocket binoculars. As they cantered out of the valley, he wheeled his horse with a vicious yank on the reins and trotted away in the opposite direction.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  EASTER TUESDAY. ONE month exactly since he first came to Allingley in search of Eadlin. No crutches today, no stick, just a walk like Quasimodo. Oh, and a few aches. Fergus decided to reward himself with a pub supper, and walked up the hill to the White Hart. His spirits lifted at the sight of Clare sitting on a bench near the church. She was staring over the green towards the Downs, with her head moving slowly as if she was scanning the landscape in search of a distant landmark.

  “Good Easter?”

  She turned to look at him. For a moment her stare wa
s blank, until she snapped into focus and smiled.

  “Sorry, I was daydreaming. Yes, thanks.” Clare spoke as if her mind was still far away.

  “Can I join you?” Fergus started to settle onto the seat, glad of the rest.

  “What do you believe in, Fergus?”

  Fergus paused in the act of sitting, surprised by the direct question.

  “Why’s everyone asking that around here?”

  Clare turned her head away to look into the distance, more as if she were looking through the landscape than at it. “Because I’ve only ever believed in things that can be tested, things that follow a proven, scientific principle. Anything else is a hypothesis or a fairy story.”

  “Do I see the road to Damascus over there? What’s changing your mind?”

  The corners of Clare’s mouth flickered briefly, showing more politeness than amusement as she took off her glasses and polished them on a handkerchief. For the first time, he noticed that she had flecks of green in her eyes. They gave her a faint air of mystery, of something hidden.

  “These dreams. I’m trying to work out why I’m getting them.”

  “A lot of people dream about their work. Maybe you’re getting too close to it. Do many archaeologists carry pieces of dead people around in their pockets?”

  Clare lifted her arm and let it drop back on her knee, as if irritated by his comment. “These are more than dreams. The detail is unsettling. Either I’m going mad or...”

  “Or?”

  “Or I’m being shown something, ludicrous as that might be for an academic to say.” Clare pushed her glasses back onto her nose and stared at him, wide-eyed. He sensed her fear of ridicule. That gamine look was child-like and vulnerable, triggering an urge to help.

  “And what are you being shown?” Fergus feared he was being sucked into a conversation he didn’t need. Tonight he wanted wine and laughter, not spooks and visions.

  “So far it’s all logical. Archaeologically believable, that is.” Clare waved over her shoulder towards the church. “I see an early Saxon settlement based around a great thatched hall where the church now stands. There’s a defensive palisade around it stretching down to the bank of the Swanbourne, you see? And I could prove it. I bet if I dug a trench starting over there, I’d find a line of post holes marking the perimeter.”