A Dangerous Energy Read online

  ‘Goodbye, Tobias. I hope you will be happy in your new life. You must always strive for that.’

  ‘I will, Father.’

  ‘But how do you define happiness, eh? Tell me that.’

  Tobias was not going to be caught. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘No, I would not expect you to be; at your age you may have your own idea of it, but it will not be the correct one, so I will tell you. True happiness lies in loving and therefore serving God. It is the only way. You must be obedient to your new master … but never forget that there is a Master over us all and our first duty is to Him. Only through and in Him can we find happiness in this part of our story, Tobias; our best interests lie solely in that direction.’

  ‘Of course, Father. I hope one day to appreciate that as well as you do.’

  ‘It’s an easily learnt lesson, Tobias, but it’s best not to have to learn it, far better to draw on someone’s experience and make an early decision on that basis – so much less painful. You see’ – Mori leant forward with sudden emphasis – ‘there is a right-hand path and a left-hand path and nothing in between; no middle ground or grey areas. There is right and there is wrong.’

  Right is where my advantage lies, thought Tobias.

  ‘I realise that, Father.’

  He was only sixteen and this ruthless and cold attitude he had been taught was all tied up in his mind with appearing manly and stern. This was not an exclusively elvish phenomenon but a common and unappealing trait of the age.

  ‘Good, my boy, I hope you do. In the years to come you may find it difficult to do so but you must always strain to see this truth of truths absolutely clearly.’

  ‘I will endeavour to, Father.’

  ‘And remember that the vigilance over you never ceases.’

  ‘God watches over all of us, Father.’

  ‘Precisely so; but for added security bear in mind that two others will continually consider your wellbeing, myself and another. Now go, and God be with you in all things.’

  He laid his palm on Tobias’ forehead and gave a blessing and a simple, symbolic warding spell.

  ‘Thank you for your guidance and especially thank you for the book, Father.’

  ‘I shall write to you, Tobias. Take this and now be off with you.’

  Tobias went quickly out into the street and headed for London Bridge. After a few minutes he paused by a pie shop and opened the envelope Mori had just given him. It contained a brief sheet of magical geometry, expanded and put into English in places for Tobias’ benefit. A note was added beneath. ‘I have found that an efficacious trigger-motivation for the power-word in this conjuration is to visualise a fair maiden staring at you in terror from a bridge. Attach this vision and the formulae above to any word you may have by you and the rite of cheerful subjugation might well be within your grasp.’

  Tobias tried this using a spare and partially worked power-word he had in his memory. To his surprise and delight it almost worked; perhaps one more evening and the whole thing might be ready. It was a truly marvellous farewell gift and for the first time Tobias felt the intoxicating novelty of being one step ahead of the beginners’ spell manuals.

  Good old Mori, thought Tobias. He was sorry to lose him. Perhaps in a week or two he would settle down and write the old chap a letter. Meanwhile, exciting new prospects had first call on his mind. He resumed a brisk pace towards the Thames.

  What had Mori meant by ‘another’ concerning his welfare? Could he possibly know about Joan? It was rumoured that senior magicians could read minds and hear thoughts as easily as ordinary mortals used their eyes but Tobias had never felt such a power, not even in a latent form. Even if Mori did know all the truth it was very doubtful that he would report him. After all he was a friend. Putting aside such fruitless speculations, Tobias strolled on to Southwark.

  The original plan was for Guido Mori to accompany Tobias and two other young magicians, currently waiting in London, down to Dover. He would be expected to give them a modicum of instruction on the journey and in the period before their ship set sail for France. Similarly, other couriers would meet and travel with them as they passed through France, the Holy Roman Empire, Tuscany and thus at last to Rome and their journey’s end. Father O’Malley, however, thought it wisest to alter this, and he allocated another man to the job of seeing the remaining two youths on their way. Instead Mori was ordered to go to Reculver and collect a young girl-magician, lately revealed and said to be terrorising her Parish. It was thought that this would take Mori’s mind off things and keep him fully occupied. For, by all accounts, the girl was thoroughly enjoying herself and it was likely that coercion would be necessary.

  In the event higher powers in the Church, having learnt of the Southwark transfer, changed Mori’s plan yet again. A letter from Canterbury, which found him at his prayers in his room, outlined a very much more peaceful and placid future for Guido.

  CHAPTER 4

  In which our hero’s new home, new friends and further education are described.

  Although still naïve and unversed in that form of accepted vice known as the way of the world, one walk through Southwark’s streets was enough to make Tobias feel all was not as it should be.

  It was midday and so he escaped any approaches or solicitations, but the people looked sharp and dressed even more sharply. Most of the men, although not nobility, carried swords and thus technically broke the law (but against so many, the watch would be slaughtered in pitch battle if they tried to enforce it). Furthermore, the taverns looked as if they had been open for many hours already and drunkards of the worst kind abounded. Pausing, he got his knife out of the pack and fixed it prominently to his belt. Any one of the proud pimps or tavern-toughs he passed could have cut him to shreds (unless he used magic), but the blade touching his flesh made him feel more secure.

  This mood of orientation was soon knocked out of Tobias when he arrived at his new home, a three-storey timber building opposite the aptly grubby little cathedral. A broken-toothed man in the Bishop’s livery at the gatehouse slowly read his papers of introduction and grinned at the lad like a lunatic in what seemed to be an ecstasy of welcome. Once past this obstacle, he was sent to an office at the head of a flight of stairs. Here worked the junior officer of the Southwark security staff, a round ball of a young man who introduced himself without any formality or restraint as Wally Faulkner or ‘Sir, if any God-botherer is about’. He welcomed Tobias and expressed the hope he would have a happy time in ‘Mucky Hall’.

  ‘There’s four apprentice magicians here (including you) plus one senior Rome-trained man called Geoff Staples, and of course Sir Matthew Elias, but you’ll never see him. You’re in room G2, no women in the building at any time so make your own arrangements. No excessive drinking or swearing (or at least not in public); in short, don’t screw us about and we won’t screw you, OK? Talking of that, watch the mercenary guard in G8 – he has an eye for young boys; otherwise he’s a good bloke. I’ll give you your equipment now, sort out your grub with the other witch doctors, report here seven-thirty Monday for your duty list. Best o’ luck, now push off.’

  All this had been said in nigh on one breath and Tobias stood mentally open-jawed trying to take it in.

  Faulkner turned to a nearby locker, opened it and pulled forth an armful of objects. He dumped them on the table and Tobias mechanically picked them up and left, having said nothing at all.

  Five minutes later he sat in the bare cell of G2 (bunk, table, chair and bookcase) and for the first time looked at his equipment. There was a huge (it seemed) flintlock pistol and holster with an accompanying bullet mould and lead pegs. There was a metal-capped belaying pin, an enigmatic bowl of red-coloured bees-wax, various lengths of stripped wood, some needles and a surcoat of thin cloth bearing the Bishop’s insignia (two unicorns supporting a crucifix).

  Tobias was bemused; just what sort of church had he joined?

  Some clue was received when Tobias got his duty list. Along with
the daytime programme were three evenings per week of ‘Peace Promenade’. At first this was enigmatic but his three fellow journeymen eagerly put him straight. The Bishop, they explained, had a wry sense of humour; he also had a burning desire to ensure that a modicum of decorum was kept in Southwark. The old men, or bar-room boasters, of the watch were unequal to driving the township’s hedonistic populace to propriety, so the Bishop undertook the task and by all accounts achieved it with characteristic singlemindedness. The peace promenades were for the journeymen to practise the skills taught during the day. If one of them from time to time got his head cracked in so doing, well that was sad and his companions would make sure that he had many people to accompany him to the infirmary (or even, on occasion, to the Chapel of Repose).

  Tobias was not clear how he felt towards this side of his obligations. On the one hand he liked the idea of being able to practise the magic he already knew; on the other, his companions’ bloodthirsty tales of the promenades filled him with not a little trepidation. Yet he was also aroused by the frisson of excitement and bravado such tales gave him. For he was a sixteen-year-old youth, away from home for the first time and bursting with untested potential.

  Still his control remained with him and he showed nothing of any insecurity he might have felt. More speculation he could put aside until it bore fruit or died of neglect. In this way his increasingly incisive brain was left free for more profitable use.

  His first week at Mucky Hall was made deliberately easy. With the Bishop an impossibly remote figure and Sir Matthew Elias totally absorbed in his dreamings, Geoff Staples was able to run a very relaxed and amenable regime. Tobias’ duty roster was not dated to start until his second week and so he had plenty of time to ‘fit y’self in and look around boy’, as Willy Faulkner had instructed. He toyed with the idea of exploring the town on his own but was advised against it and for once decided to accept someone else’s judgement.

  One afternoon was spent at the Bishop’s tailors over the bridge in the Hebrew quarter where he was fitted out in an acolyte’s long gown and sugar-loaf hat in the purple that signified his possession of the talent to journeyman standard. To his delight round the right arm was stitched a design of yellow stars (a product of some past Bishop’s fancy). Surveying himself in the tailor’s long mirror he thought he cut just as much a dash as any papal magician and although he did not know it yet the band of stars was at least as much feared and respected in the London area as its papal counterpart of smoky red. In some areas it was hated just as much as well.

  The last real conversation Tobias had taken part in was with Father Mori two days before and so he was glad to respond when the tailor proved to be chatty. They exchanged names and so Oakley met Jimmy Bergman.

  Everyone distrusted the Jews, everyone needed the Jews. Several early Popes had ruled emphatically against usury amongst Christians (despite fervent lobbying by commercial vested interests) and whilst not universally observed, the ban had a smothering effect on the flow of funds available to hard-up Kings and proto-industrialists. The Jews, however, were not so bound, and moreover they were businessmen – as they needed to be in a hostile world – and generally honest to boot.

  In time, therefore, it was largely left to the Hebrews to provide financial lubricant for the stirring giant of Capitalism and the ambitions of monarchs and Popes. And if, on occasion, they were not repaid on time – or not at all – they had to be philosophical about it and see the loss as the price paid for tolerance of their heretical presence.

  For, as stated, they were not popular. Plague outbreaks, vanished children and sickening animals were blamed on the Jews. Beside which they had an annoying habit of becoming prosperous despite the odds against them, and in any case they did kill Christ, didn’t they?

  The higher and better elements of the Church enjoined Christian charity towards the Jews. There were even occasional papal Bulls and pronouncements compelling it, but to little avail.

  Ugly riots and sometimes pitched battles had killed or dispersed most of the Jewish communities in the rest of England but London’s Hebrew quarter survived because of the Jews’ second major quality, namely that they could give battle like lions. On one occasion in the last century when the mob, enraged by the ravages of plague, had decided to deal with the ‘corruption in their midst’, the Hebrews had fought back to such a degree that they were effective masters of much of central London for nearly a day, during which time they took adequate recompense for past injuries. The Archbishop of London had restored the status quo using papal troops (and, to be fair, excommunicated surviving ringleaders), but the painful memory remained and the metropolitan Jews had since been left in blissful cultural isolation.

  And they did not abandon their religion: neither did they seek to encompass others within it.

  Jimmy was a fair example of his community but he did not make enough money to consider lending it out. Instead his skill lay in his hands and by pure chance (that is to say the working of the Bishop’s mind) he received the commission for the Cathedral’s clothing needs. Never being one for questioning Jehovah’s beneficence (since he could so often be cruel) Bergman gave thanks and settled back to a secure and reasonably prosperous life.

  Tobias knew none of this and would have held it of little account in any case. He told Jimmy (who was three times his age) of some of his life and a little of his expectations. The tailor, all the time passing measurements to his son-cum-apprentice, listened as he knew he should and put in his own thoughts when they were not controversial or specifically Hebrew idioms. Then it dawned on him that the boy had brains. And at about the same time Tobias thought, this man’s not being obsequious, he’s really curious about us.

  Thus, true to the peculiar alchemy of human relationships, a certain warmth and lowering of guards ensued and the seeds of a good friendship were sown.

  So Tobias left with a new uniform of which he was proud and an invitation to dine with the Bergman family, concerning which he was intrigued.

  Of this curious cross-pollination, more later.

  Willy Faulkner presented no front to the world; he was as he seemed through and through. To him priests were ‘God-botherers’ and magicians were ‘witch doctors’. Lacking breeding, decorum and ‘the talent’, he would never be either. However, he had other talents which made him admirably suited to be a security officer in the most colourful district of England’s most colourful town. Tobias heard many horrifying stories about him (the majority exaggerated or untrue) and Staples once jokingly said that he had been born without a conscience. Nevertheless his ideas of discipline and proper behaviour were immensely elastic and he and Tobias never had a cross word (for the youth was frightened of him).

  Geoff Staples had qualified from the Holy Thaumaturgic College four years ago and somehow found himself in this specialist backwater. He took his priesthood seriously enough to attempt to conceal his vices but was otherwise always completely open, cool, calm and humorous. Intermittently, he taught the journeymen very well. At other times he was abstracted; Tobias never found out why. By the overall standard of the Southwark establishment he was noticeably normal.

  The mercenary in G8 was a Scot who made a pass at Tobias within a week, but was not in the least offended when the lad politely sidestepped his proposal. Much to Tobias’ relief he found that the man only liked willing bedfellows. Even better, it emerged that Alan Lumley (which was his current pseudonym) was a very pleasant companion. It was said he knew every permanent or semi-permanent resident of Southwark and that every one would ‘shit a hedgehog rather than face his temper’, as Faulkner put it.

  Naturally Tobias’ closest companions were his three fellow journeymen. It was the first time he’d had to face the close and inescapable proximity of his contemporaries since he’d left school some three years ago, and he was not good company to begin with. He often spent his free evenings poring over Arthur Waite’s book on magic, and accordingly easily kept his head-start in matters magical. Alternativ
ely, very conscious of his prestigious uniform, he would cross London Bridge to visit the Bergman family, his new firm friends.

  Like Tobias, the three other young men had been bound for Rome at various intervals when Southwark’s net had grasped them. There was a Londoner, noble by birth, and at the other end of the scale a Welshman from Swansea who was an ex-serf to one of the great Irish noblemen that ruled that area. The talent had been his passport to another, lighter, bondage and the Church had paid handsomely to free him of his feudal obligations. The third came from Derby and was a bland nonentity bemused at the turn in his life and bemused by the gift invested in him.

  Between them they arranged meals and everything was amicable enough. Although all had been there longer than Tobias he was accorded some deference for he had already developed a certain presence which politely requested, if not yet commanded, respect. Besides, among themselves, all considerations of social status, strength and education were as nothing compared to the great equaliser of magical ability.

  Given these heterogeneous beginnings, the four rarely had their lessons together, save for thaumaturgy. Tobias and Hugh Redmayne of Derby were roughly of a standard in education and sat at their books for long hours in a lonely classroom at Mucky Hall. After a while Tobias grew to loathe his silent bumbling companion; although he knew this was both unkind and unworthy.

  Elijah Green from Dyfed had to venture out over the bridge during the mornings for he was illiterate and attended a monastery lay-school where the rudiments of letters were hammered into the sons (and sometimes daughters) of the reasonably well-to-do.

  Rather unfairly perhaps, because of his good education, Simon Skillit from London was left free of elementary lessons, ‘free’ that is to attend as page-servant to Staples and occasionally Sir Matthew. Of the four youths he was probably the hardest worked.

  Whatever their place of training, be it Rome, Avignon or one of the national colleges, the Church was determined that all its priests should possess the elements of erudition. Thus Tobias learnt Latin, a little geography (such as was reliably known), something of history (which diplomatically skimmed Europe’s temporary fall from grace due to the teachings of the demon-spawn Luther) and a lot of geometry and mathematics (the basic notation of efficient sorcery). Once a week all four went to the Cathedral and were taught Church rituals, services and so on, as well as the duties of a priest to his flock. Tobias listened only to as much of this as he needed and then devoted his mind to learning the service of exorcism. He had heard that, with very little modification, this could be condensed into a very useful spell whose effect was somewhat more ‘catholic’ than the original service, particularly in the field of the control and summoning of unclean spirits. Anyway he felt he could afford to ignore the old priest’s instruction since he already had his own idea of the rôle of the priesthood. In truth he did not really believe in God’s existence; he considered that Joan’s teaching had made him too analytical and sceptical for that, but the age in which he lived did not encourage philosophical debate on alternatives to belief and so he had nothing with which to replace the Christian ethos. Nevertheless he felt part of an elite, privy to secrets and thoughts which set him apart from the mainstream and their beliefs.