A Dangerous Energy Read online

  From Tobias’ point of view, his return to Joan was ensured, for all small boys dearly love to cause mischief, and so much the better if it can be done without a clipped ear at the end of it. This was the bait that she held before the lad to entice him on and further in. He was special she said, not like other mortals; and if he did but concentrate, he could play many games, both malicious and amusing, on the villagers. As a special ‘pretty’ when he returned at the new moon she gave him an ugly little arrow-shape of rowan wood: as instructed he had covertly directed the point at the retreating back of his chosen target and concentrated. In consequence Father Allingham, the parish priest, was confined to his bed (and its environs) for a fortnight with a looseness of the bowels which the village surgeon had termed ‘quite remarkable’.

  Accordingly, young Tobias Oakley had escaped the boredom of church attendance and Sunday Bible instruction for that glorious period, since no replacement for Allingham could be secured at such short notice. A less happy consequence of Tobias’ actions was that old Grannie Hammond, aged ninety-one, a devout church-goer and much in fear of death, died in her bed without the solace and benefit of the Church’s last rites.

  He was not a naturally vicious boy, but with all the ruthlessness of childhood he was greatly disappointed when the arrow failed to work a second time. In this case his target was his father, who had anointed Tobias’ ear with a large hand for liberating a meat patty from the family larder. It was only then that he realised these things did not come as easily as he had imagined, and that if he wished to learn (and he did) he had to persevere with the fearsome lady’s teaching.

  His sleep in the intervening ten days had been interrupted and uneasy, but it was not the agony of indecision that kept him awake, rather an elementary struggle of conscience with the decision he had already made. Seven years old was too young to appreciate the spiritual pitfalls along the path to salvation, despite Father Allingham’s bellowed threats in the pulpit every Sunday (or nearly every Sunday). With all the sheer practicality of childhood, Tobias’ main stumbling-blocks were fear of physical harm to himself and the invention of excuses plausible enough to explain his absences to his suspicious family. In the end, because he was both a courageous child and a convincing liar, conscience was driven mumbling to its bolt-hole in the inaudible distance.

  He had presented himself at the new moon, a little way off from the original meeting place, and laid in wait. Just in case, he had sharpened his knife specially for the occasion and had appropriated his brother Jeremiah’s prized boar-spear, even though the latter was far too heavy for him to use properly. Within the security engendered by these implements he felt both confident and grown up.

  This fragile bubble was soon burst when, despite his efficient (he thought) concealment, he felt a sharp pain in his backside and turned to see Joan, and a grinning elf (one of the previous party? It was impossible to tell) who was lightly gripping the spear with which he had just been jabbed.

  That night Tobias learnt a great deal that (if he did but know it) scholars and magicians of the Papal Thaumaturgic College itself would have given their first son or favourite maid to know. Joan told him all that her protégés needed to know of her people. That proved to be very little, but just sufficient to settle Tobias’ spirit of curiosity. She did this so that his mind could be duly turned to more apposite matters. Reviewing his knowledge at a later date, Tobias was to find it added up to next to nothing. The elves, the heath people, call them what you like, were not human stock; ‘newcomers’ was what they called the larger folk with whom they shared the land and the term carried an implied sneer. He heard names that meant nothing to him: Bassion, Rhegged, Suth-Rege and Bins-Kom: once mighty kingdoms that were no more. These elves were the remnants, embittered custodians of displaced glory, nursing cold dreams of restitution. They were whimsical, strong and violent; they did not worship the crucified God and were, in sum, wise and cruel beyond the measure of men. They came and they went, and no one knew the manner of their passing. Everyone knew of their existence and nearly all (especially the Church) sought to forget this knowledge. This was quite easily done, for the elves normally had nothing to say to man and he, in turn, had no desire to converse with them. In this way the elves lived only in the dark corners of winter fireside-conversation or in mysterious window tappings at the dead of night.

  Tobias learnt a trifle more than this, but not one hundredth part of the truth (if indeed that was known by anyone on earth) and, despite all the arcane knowledge he came to accumulate during the course of his long life, he did not ever significantly add to Joan’s few disclosures that night of the new moon. Only later did he come to appreciate that the elvish people were spiritually dangerous and, from then on, he no longer despised the common sort for their unrationalised fear of them.

  On the occasion of that second meeting he listened for some twenty minutes to what Joan had to say. All the while the crouching spearman continued a cold appraisal. At the end he was given the ‘pretty’ that was to so ravage Father Allingham’s internal workings. After a characteristic dismissive wave from Joan’s shawl, Tobias was obliged to drag a slow, meditative way home under the milky gleam of the slender moon. Already his childish thoughts were being inexorably drawn down trackways unknown to those of his school-room contemporaries, and his rowan-wood arrow gave him an acute sense of power. Compared to the arrow, the clumsy, mundane spear he carried seemed by far the inferior weapon. Now he would show them.

  He was, however, quite wrong: there was no showing to be done. Joan alone held the real power and all she passed on to him in their subsequent meetings was information. Even the dramatic attack on the priest’s health and dignity had been solely due to Joan’s skills, not to those of Tobias. New moon after new moon he spoke to the old woman; all the time she patiently edged his blossoming mind along, forward and (most important of all) sideways, yet she truly taught him nothing at all. Eventually he rebelled and threatened to tell the priest of her existence, so that the Holy Office would be called in and then she’d be sorry, because she would be caught and tortured and burnt …

  Joan shouted a word by way of reply and Tobias instantly felt such anguish that its very memory could raise cold sweat for years to come. It felt as if someone had gripped his heart and the thing (soul – call it what you will) that made him what he was – and then squeezed very hard. The elves were not careful or considerate with their charges, and the ever-present spearmen had laughed long at Tobias’ writhings. Later on that night, at home in his bunk, he had tearfully sworn never to contact the sorceress again.

  But at the next new moon he was at the appointed place, sullen and curt perhaps, but there all the same.

  Farmer Todd Williams had buffeted young Tobias the week before for trespassing in his orchard. That night, rather than push her charge too far, Joan gave the boy a talisman which, placed strategically in a paddock, caused the farmer’s precious ten-beast dairy herd to sicken and die. The following year was hard to the Williams family, for they had become reliant on the income from these useful animals. They were obliged to call upon the ‘Church-dole’ and two of their daughters had to go away into service to supplement the family’s diminished earnings. One returned soon after, pregnant by (it was alleged) the master of the house.

  Once again though, to Tobias’ disgust, the talisman, stealthily retrieved, was ineffectual when produced for a second outing. Nevertheless he did find himself in trouble with the villagers in other ways arising from his secret education. Joan’s attentions had so imbued him with the concept of his own superiority that he came in time to believe in it and to act the part. With no complementary power to back up his airs and graces, Tobias found that life became quite hard until he learnt to hold back his tongue and keep his ideas to himself. After a while he could effortlessly maintain a façade, behind which he lived out, unknown to anyone, his private and real life. This is just how the elves would have it, and as a result Tobias found village life less trying. His par
ents were pleased that his inexplicable delusions of grandeur had turned out to be a mere passing phase. Thus everyone was happy with his progress.

  By the time of his ninth birthday. Tobias had all but irretrievably moved away from his peers – noisy, brawling brats for the most part – and people commented on what an unusually quiet and polite boy he was. Some went so far as to say that he was unhealthily reserved, and in this the bitter, old maiden aunt and melancholy neighbour in question were wiser than they knew. Tobias rarely expressed any opinion and was never seen to be boisterous. Yet behind his shield of reticence, he forgot or forgave nothing, and a mighty ledger of grievances grew in size day by day, awaiting full and correct payment. He became a bitter youth, but his act was so polished that no one noticed.

  Tobias’ father could both read and write, and so was of some standing in the village. Less happily he was also a small, pedantic and fussy man, but these minor cavils aside he was a good father to his children. Like his father and grandfather before him, Mr Oakley worked as the local clerk to the Papal tithe-commission based in London. The term ‘tithe’ was a misnomer; his Holiness’ requirements were more lenient. This body levied a penny in each shilling from the earnings of all but the highest in the land and then transferred the revenue collected on to Rome. In due course much of the money found its way back to England to maintain the national Church’s work and to alleviate poverty. Hallowed by age, the imposition was commonly known as ‘Peter’s Pence’. It was also bitterly (if secretly) resented. It was therefore a tribute to Tobias’ father that his transparent fairness and moral rectitude prevented any of the tax’s unpopularity transferring itself to its local record-bearer. In cases of serious hardship it was not entirely unknown for Mr Oakley to overlook certain small debts, or even pay them himself, and for this the villagers repaid him with respect.

  Having nine other products of his loins to consider, Mr Oakley could devote little attention to Tobias save to ensure that the rudiments of education were driven into his head. The patriarch of the Oakleys entertained fond hopes of installing all of his male offspring into posts within the vast and complex machinery of Church government. Such employment would be their passport to an assured lifetime of moderate prosperity and respectability and so was much to be desired.

  Tobias’ father also considered it his duty to ensure his children lived according to the tenets of the catechism and the Bible. To this end, every Sunday saw Mr and Mrs Oakley with their progeny behind them like ducklings, off to be uplifted by Father Allingham’s ministry. At some time during the evening of the Sabbath the family would also gather together to hear Mr Oakley read from the only book the household possessed, a large and battered Bible. The reading would be hesitant and stumbling for the text was in Latin and Mr Oakley’s grasp of that language was far from complete.

  When not about his various duties, Tobias’ father’s only visible pleasures were his pipe and an evening spent reading the Albion Journal (several weeks old and lent to him by the schoolmaster, Mr Pegrum). One of Tobias’ earliest memories was of his father sitting in his crow-black frock-coat and high white collar, separated from his family by bluish coils of baccy smoke and ‘tut-tutting’ at the outrages he read in the out-of-date newsheet.

  Mrs Oakley, by comparison, was small, worn out by childbirth and very quiet. She had never lost her sense of gratitude at marrying slightly above her station (for her family were churl-status and a literate husband was therefore a notable catch) and she showed this in a life of utter devotion and obedience to her spouse. Thanks to her good husbandry of their income, the family ate better than most on rye bread, soup, fat-bacon and eggs. On High and Holy days, they even ran to fish and poultry. Even so, to survive, all members of the family had to cooperate and so the children were kept industrious. There were certain periods of free time, however, and no one saw fit to question the fact that Tobias chose to spend his in early evening wanderings …

  By the time he was twelve he had absorbed most of what Joan had to tell him of the elves’ peculiar views, and with understanding came agreement. Intellectually he embraced the cold, ironic morality of Joan’s people, although at no time was he pressed to do so. To him the elvish stance seemed enormously stern, hard and manly, and so he was glad to adopt it. At this early stage in his life the elf-influence did not run particularly deep and his humanity was not displaced very far. Often he weakened and was warmhearted.

  It is said that roving seamen, because of their contact with widely varying social mores, tend to become amoral or immoral, depending on one’s point of view. By travelling a few hundred miles they can see that what might be counted right in one place is regarded as sinful in another. If, therefore, Right and Wrong are determined solely by longitude and latitude what application could either possibly have to a peripatetic life? So the reasoning went.

  In the same way, Joan showed Tobias the parochial nature of his village’s morality and, beyond that, the similar arbitrary constraints in his nation and the civilisation which gave it birth. This was all unfamiliar and heady stuff but, bit by bit, unhampered by ethical considerations his ideas and scope of thought widened.

  Therefore at the age when his society first deemed him to be a man (at fourteen years old, for life was brief and childhood, of necessity, short), his personality was considerably more developed and mature than his years would suggest. Around this time Joan’s teaching finally appeared as a consistent whole to Tobias, whereas before it had been largely unconnected fragments of disturbing, fascinating knowledge. It came to this: Joan had taught him no cure-all conjurings, no spectacular bolts of lightning such as he had fondly hoped for at first. Instead she had brought to life whole areas of his mind hitherto dormant; areas otherwise destined to remain forever passive. The comparison that occurred to him was a homely one: that of a heavy blanket being slowly lifted off a person in bed; the body once relieved of this unnoticed burden feels a new freedom of action and lightness of spirit. The simile perhaps showed his lack of experience outside the realms of village life but it was an apposite one nevertheless.

  New ideas floated behind Tobias’ savage self-control; he freely entertained concepts which, expressed publicly, would have drawn upon himself the baleful attention of the Holy Office. Yet the powers demonstrated by the fate of the robin and hinted at in most of the moonlit meetings remained steadfastly Joan’s alone. He did not feel cheated because of this for he knew (on the basis of a somewhat uncritical assessment) that he had been given, if such a thing were possible, a powerful, energetic and tightly controlled intellect. The ‘common masses’, his parents, his schoolmates, troubled him not at all, for Tobias knew he was superior and whatever else Joan cared to teach would be based on this sound foundation, and would come in her own good time.

  In actual fact the ‘good time’ in question came at the very next new moon after Tobias had reached the above conclusions, abstracted and brooding at the back of a wearisome Friday divinity-lesson. The old fool Pegrum had wittered on about the estate of man and how God’s wishes were manifested in the arrangement of society. Tobias very quickly concluded that Joan had summarised that particular proposition far more accurately and with infinitely more sensitivity several years ago. Accordingly he blocked out the schoolmaster’s bleating (a job made easy by years of constant practice) and moved on to more profitable, private trains of thought.

  On the evening of the new moon, Tobias waited with weakening patience for the family meal to end. After this was over he was obliged to help his brothers repair the fencing around the compound which housed the family pig. By the time this was finished he had to hurry away if his usual meeting was to be completed before the light faded totally. Joan did not approve of his bringing a lantern and would only permit it on the very shortest days of winter. He often had to stumble and feel his way to the general area, and wait in the pitch darkness for Joan to arrive. The elves never seemed to have the slightest difficulty in finding him and usually appeared silently at his side directl
y after his arrival.

  His father and brothers did not question his quiet slipping away that night or any other for that matter. He had become a taciturn boy, obedient enough but capable of iron resolution in rebellion. His father had once or twice entertained thoughts of making a point over parental authority with the lad, but no one incident had ever merited such a confrontation. According to the nature of these things the matter drifted and the patriarch of the family retained his position unchallenged but untried.

  Sometimes Joan would be alone on the heath, at other times there would be up to a dozen of the silent males. Very occasionally another female would arrive alongside Joan, but no one save the old lady would ever speak to Tobias. With all this in mind the young lad chose at random a small hummock beside a line of scrub bushes and sat down upon it. Dusk prevailed now, and in the village, visible to Tobias between two stunted trees, lights were beginning to be lit. He had long since ceased to gaze at the new moon; it had been his constant companion since the dawn of his childhood memories and had become one of the accepted, invisible objects of familiarity to him. The heath itself was held in similar regard since he quite often came out for evening walks on it, if only to make his regular new-moon visits less conspicuous. People eventually assumed he had an obsession with the charmless place and ceased to regard his behaviour as necessary of remark.