Call of the Kings
Title Page
CALL OF THE KINGS
Book three of
The Venefical Progressions
By
Chris Page
Publisher Information
Call Of The Kings 2
nd
edition published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Chris Page
The right of Chris Page to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Quote
Rex et bellum, etriam atque etriam
Kings and war, again and again
Dedication
To Olivia Lucy Page
Beata filiola
Veneficus
To walk among the medieval mist of an autumn equinox at Stonehenge is to progress through the remains of every bad life that ever lived before us in the region of Wessex. Each minute teardrop of floating humidity is the vaporized soul of a cowerer, a once-human inhabitant who lived out its term of prostrated avoidance in the vicinity wherein it now swirled and screamed in a silent, tortured cloud. A powerful legend of medieval Britain has it that only one type of live species can walk among these silently raging equinoctial mists and commune with the tortured souls therein. Such a communer is a very rare and special person described variously by deeply superstitious, sign-making Celtic and West Saxon folk as a hybrid of sorcerer, magician, alchemist, wizard, oracle, and wax-pale ghost.
A veneficus.
Introduction
Beneath the great Destiny Stones of Avebury the ten-thousand year-old collective venefical conscience stirred. Brought together by a Celtic past and shared occupancy of the Wessex enchantments, together with the duty of subduing the cowering mists and passing on the venefical gifts, the absence of the next-in-line was becoming, once again, a matter of concern.
An image of a tall, aging, but still handsome woman with silver-gray hair and piercing green eyes, called the Pale Sybil in her days as holder of the enchantments, and accompanied by a companion maid called Santa, walked slowly but regally to the top of the nearby Silbury Mound. Reaching the summit the two women looked for a while at the eighty-five-year-old new growth of the once mighty Savernake Forest to the north before turning their gaze to the southwest and the ring of Destiny Stones at Avebury. The tall one pointed her index finger in the direction of the Wessex heartland and uttered a single word.
‘Now.’
Then their image disappeared.
On a ruined castle rampart in the Summerland Levels, a powerful, long-limbed sorcerer from the previous age pointed to the northeast. The small, sharp-eyed hawk perched on his shoulder followed his long finger toward the horizon.
‘It is time,’ the long magus said quietly.
His task completed, he faded gradually into the high landscape with a sad smile on his bearded face.
An old but strong-voiced, black-eyed veneficus called Twilight leaned against the wind on the top of Glastonbury Tor. Looking down at the twin rivers below, he remained deep in thought for a long time as he remembered past deeds witnessed from this very spot.
The venefical call was once again being taken up as the resident and past holders enjoined in the search for the next holder. Somewhere, someone, perplexed perhaps, unknowing of the reasons behind the self-inflicted actions that caused such personal discomfort and pain, lived out a young but difficult life. As always time was of the essence. The paths that shape the direction taken by the next holder of the enchantments must be favourable and lead to the heart of Wessex. They must also be traversed soon, for Twilight was entering his sixty-eighth year, and no one knew better than he how important it was to complete a full term of learning the enchantments. The mere seven years of instruction he’d received at the side of the mighty Merlin had not been enough; too many mistakes had been made in the early years due to his inexperience. It must not happen again.
No man or woman, girl or boy, had come forward. There had not been any rumours of ‘odd’ happenings from the settlements and hamlets around Wessex and no one had been sent to him for correction because of behavioural problems .His own children did not manifest the traits required. His pica, skilled in the way of detection of the required abilities, had ranged far and wide throughout the Celtic lands and not found anyone with the required aura.
The dark figure of the current Wessex veneficus, remembering how the unbounded joy that his own boyhood presence had been greeted with by the mighty Merlin, known in those far-off days as the long magus due to his great height, raised his old but still deep black eyes to the horizon and slowly turned a full circle before speaking loudly.
‘Please come soon. Wessex and the Celtic nation need you . . . and so do I.’
Chapter 1
‘I will never forget you, young lady, but be careful, there are many out there who will not understand your gift.’
They were going to kill her beloved child. Katre Brogan had just been told by the abbot at the monastery and several village elders that her daughter was beyond all recall and would be thrown into the Devil’s Pit at first light the following morning. It was a certain death - no one had ever survived. The Devil’s Pit was a huge, high rocky bay on the West Atlantic coast of Ireland into which pagans, heretics, apostates, and nonbelievers of any and every sort were dispatched by the devoutly Christian community. With a sheer drop of seven hundred feet, the throwing was always done at low tide when the jagged rocks were most exposed. The dashed and shattered bodies were then washed out to sea, and the area was purged of whatever evil spirits had inhabited them.
Katre was in great distress, especially as she had no one to turn to because her husband and various other senior members of the family, including her own mother, were among the loudest voices for little Tara’s death. Her mother, indeed, had actually volunteered to do the throwing. Tara, a sweet, slight little girl with red curly hair, bright green eyes, freckles, and an impish smile, was Kate’s only child. Because of her actions, she was said to be inhabited by demons so pagan that she was, even at just eleven years of age, considered to be the very worst kind of witch.
The Ireland of the Dark Ages had gradually assumed the mantle of Christianity until those of any other religion, cult, or deity were considered heretics and pagans and dispatched without a second thought. Slaughter of nonbelievers abounded and was considered just.
Like sweet-looking little red-haired, green-eyed Tara Brogan.
With nowhere to go, having been cast out of their family home, Katre and Tara had been living for the past six months in old Jonnie Jump’s hovel, a run-down place on the edge of a particularly evil-smelling bog down the coast. Jonnie Jump, dead some three years now, had been a recluse and light-headed sort who had come close to getting cast into the Devil’s Pit himself. He lived by the evil-smelling bog because it kept people away from him. Called Jonnie Jump because every few steps he would give a whoop and a little jump in the air, he took a particular delight in setting fire to things, piles of mown hay being his favourite. Eventually the locals had got fed up with having their summer hay destroyed and decided to punish the recluse with a visit to the jagged rocks of the Devil’s Pit. When he heard them coming for him, Jonnie jumped into the stinking bog with a whoop and was never seen again.
It was said that on dark nights when there was a full moon, Jonnie Jump’s whoop could still be heard coming from the bog. It was also said that anyone living in his old hovel was doomed to the Pit, but Katre and Tara had nowhere else to go. At daybreak the following morning, Katre decided that she wasn’t just going to sit there until they came for her daughter, and so they set off along the windswept coast to try and put as much distance between them and the hamlet bordering the Devil’s Pit. Katre had no idea where they were going, having never left the area in all her twenty-seven years, but anything was better than sitting and waiting.
Only to find their way barred by village elders, her husband, mother, and three cloaked monks from the monastery with their cowls pulled well down over their eyes.
Kate’s mother was the first to speak.
‘So you’ve decided to make a bolt for it, eh, my girl? Well, no one can blame you for that, but she stays. It’s the Devil’s Pit for that one today and no mistake.’
She pointed a crooked index finger at Tara.
The pointing index finger was crooked because Tara had broken it. Of course, nobody but Katre had believed Tara’s story that she had caught her grandmother stealing Kate’s one and only item of jewellery, a small, golden neck clasp in the shape of a ring of four-leafed clovers that she had found when sitting in the meadow with the then eight-year-old Tara, who was actually looking for four-leafed clovers. Half buried in the centre of a perfectly formed green ring of ten clovers, each with four leaves, Katre found the golden clasp. It was a beautiful and special talisman in a beautiful and special place. Made of wrought, delicate gold, the clasp had obviously been there for a long time. Katre also felt that her clasp was a unique sign from the past because it was ringed in real four-leafed clover stems. The fairies perhaps? A clasp of an ancient queen used to fasten her long cloak against the chill winds of Western Ireland? A goddess? Katre and Tara spent endless hours turning it over and over in their hands, speculating on the clasp’s provenance.
Some five years after Katre had found the clasp, her mother, an embittered, husbandless, and miserable woman, came to their hovel and stole the clasp when Katre was getting wood from outside for the fire. Kate’s father had long flown the coop in the face of her constant and bitter carping. Kate’s mother had always coveted the clasp, and she seized it, believing no one was looking. But Tara saw her and asked her nicely to put it back, whereupon the grandmother denied she had it and began to walk away. A sudden crack of her right-hand index finger caused the clasp to fall to the ground, where it was retrieved by Tara and returned to its rightful place. Screaming in pain, the grandmother had sworn that Tara was a witch and would pay for her trickery. The truth was that she had been caught stealing from her own daughter.
Standing next to Kate’s mother was her husband, Coyle Brogan. Coyle’s complaint with his daughter was simple; she had turned him instantly bald. As a ladies’ man, losing all his shoulder-length glossy black hair was devastating. Tara’s take was, having gone through the hand-joining ceremony with her mother and then fathering her, he shouldn’t be a ladies’ man. Although she didn’t fully understand it, Tara knew that running around the area with other girls was, apart from upsetting to her adored mother, Katre, morally wrong.
Besides, he beat her at every opportunity and always for nothing.
So, when little ten-year-old Tara’s finely tuned nose smelled the body odour of Cintra Kelly, a hamlet trollop of some standing, on her father for three days running, she told him he was being a very bad person, and if he continued all his hair would fall out.
He reacted by beating her black and blue with a birch rod. Two days later he was again lying in the long grass with Cintra, and that’s exactly what happened. Cintra Kelly ran away screaming, and none of the other girls gave him a second glance after that. Now, with his completely bald head hidden under a linen hat, he, too, pointed the Devil’s Pit finger at his daughter.
That left the abbot of the monastery, sure to be one of the three monks with their cowls pulled well down over their faces. He was a particularly odious specimen who had tried to put his hand up Tara’s rough linen tunic when she was sent to the monastery by her mother to deliver some flowers. At first the confused little girl was unsure what was happening, but she didn’t like the probing, pudgy, be-ringed fingers and knew it was wrong. The screams of the abbot as all four of his fingers suddenly dropped from his right hand, leaving just a thumb and four bloodless stumps, brought every monk in the monastery running as fast as their sandals would carry them. As the abbot’s fingerless rings clattered to the hard stone floor, Tara ran home to Katre.
Telling everyone she cut his fingers off with a knife, the abbot went to war on little Tara. As usual, no one but Katre would believe her anyway. That had been the last ‘incident’ some two months ago. Since then the abbot had always worn a woollen glove over his right hand and harassed everyone constantly to declare Tara a witch. Abbots are powerful enemies; they have the wrath of the Almighty on their side, a weapon this one threatened all and sundry with if they didn’t back his call for casting Tara in the Devil’s Pit.
And here they all were, together with the village elders, ready to enact their false redemption. Kate’s mother pointed the crooked finger, Tara’s father nodded his bald head, and the abbot waved his gloved stump at his two monks to grab Tara.
As Coyle Brogan advanced toward them Katre screamed.
‘Take my hand, Mummy,’ said Tara calmly.
All Coyle Brogan got when he grabbed at her was fresh and empty Irish air. Somehow it matched his barren head, inside and out.
For seven days Katre and Tara walked south following the coast. Katre had no plan or destination; she just wanted to get as much distance between them and her daughter’s persecutors. As always seemed to be the case with Tara, unusual things happened on the way. Katre knew Tara was special, she’d always known right from when she was a baby. It wasn’t the normal mother’s feelings for her only child, Katre certainly had those, but an inner sense that her little redheaded, freckle-faced impish girl could do things others could not. Animals, for instance, would follow Tara about and sit at her feet. There were two particularly fierce wolfhounds kept by one of the local landowners and used for hunting. They could bring down a deer or charging wild boar in the blink of an eye and were forever snarling at anyone who came anywhere near them. At five years of age Tara, who could walk clear underneath them without bending down, was riding on their backs with each one of them vying for her carriage. If anyone came near her the wolfhounds would chase them away, even their owner. Birds would land on her hand and take small pieces of bread, and the clouds would roll away if she waved at them. Add the finger of her thieving grandmother, the bald head of her father, and the missing four fingers of the abbot and it all began to suggest a specialty.
But to what end? Was it indeed witchcraft?
Tara herself always said to her mother that she ‘could do things that were in her head’ and that she knew she could fly.
‘Sometimes,’ Tara said to her mother, ‘I wish things and they just happen, especially when something bad is about to take place.’
It seemed to Katre that flying was precisely what the two of them had done to escape the Devil’s Pit committee. Katre had clasped Tara’s hand and seconds later they were in a field well down the coast.
How they came to be there together she had no idea, but one thing she did know.
It was all little Tara’s doing.
Begging scraps of food as they went, sleeping in the summer hay piles and washing and drinking in the clear streams, Katre and Tara gradually got well away from their old hamlet. After seven days they approached the larger settlement of Cork and began to see more and more travellers on the road. A woman and girl will attract attention, the wrong sort of attention, especially in a large settlement, so they kept off the track as much as they could. Finally, exhausted, dirty, and hungry, they found a small copse with a stream running close by and sat for a long while with their feet in the water. With the smoke from the fires of Cork on the skyline, they huddled together at the base of an old elm tree and hungry, but too tired to look for food, they slept.
With the dawn a gray glimmer on the horizon, they were awoken by the bellowing of an ox interspersed with the loud cursing of a male voice. A little further downstream from them a drover was frantically trying to pull a dark brown ox, with large flat spots on the side of its head where its horns had been cut, from a muddy part of the stream. The more he pulled on a thick jute rope around the animal’s neck, the deeper the bellowing ox sank. With the cloying mud up to the undersides of the animal, the drover finally gave up, sat down on the bank, and held his head in his hands in despair.
Then he saw Katre and Tara standing there looking at him.
‘I was taking the animal to the market to sell,’ he said to them resignedly. ‘Thought I’d give it a drink and a rubdown in the water. Make it look nice and clean. Get a better price for clean animals. Now look.’ He gestured at the animal sinking even lower. ‘It’s going and nothing will get it out of there, that’s quicksand.’
Then he sat down and burst into tears.
Tara knelt down by him.
‘I might be able to help,’ she said simply.
The drover looked at her and then Katre with tears running down his face. A woman and a girl, dirt-ingrained faces, bare feet, and very well-used clothes. Some hope. He went back to crying.
Tara walked toward the cow. Quiet but wild-eyed with the mud now creeping up its flanks, it seemed to have accepted its fate. Tara held her hands out in front of her and raised them slowly upward.
With a great sucking and gurgling of cloying quicksand and mud, the animal came slowly up out of the stream until it was clear of the rapidly filling hole. Tara then moved her hands sideways and downward, and the ox was deposited gently on the bank. She tied the jute rope to a tree and the animal stood there trembling but alive.
The drover couldn’t believe what he had just seen. He looked frantically between Tara and Katre, then began to mumble, dribble, and cry all at once. Finally he went over to the ox and began patting it all over as if he didn’t actually believe it was real. Then he turned to Tara.
‘Thank you,’ he said sincerely. ‘What I get for this animal will keep my family fed for three months. I have seven children; they would have starved if you hadn’t done that.’
For the next hour the three of them cheerfully scrubbed away at the mud-caked ox with handfuls of grass until its dark brown coat shone, then, having cleaned themselves, sat down to share the drover’s round loaf of rye bread.