Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (8 page)

           
I'm a-going to find out,

           
All over this world so wide . . .”

 
          
“That's
not much of a song,” vowed Scylla when I'd done.

 
          
“On
the contrary, it's very much of a song,” said Harpe. “It's an exercise in
self-revelation for John.
John the wanderer, John the
seeker.”

 
          
“I'll
clear up,” Scylla sniffed. “I'll leave you men to yourselves here.”

 
          
She
stacked the dishes on the tray and went a-stomping off with them. Harpe drank
some blockade.

 
          
“I
asked you for your story,” he said, “and it's only fair play for me to tell you
mine.”

           
“Let's begin with an ancestor of
mine," Harpe said. “We've mentioned his name already.
Micajah
Harpe—Big Harpe, who frightened the whole old frontier."

 
          
“I’ve
heard some little about him," I said.

 
          
“I'll
tell you all about him. He was bom in
Orange County
,
North Carolina
, somewhere about 1765. His parents were Scots emigrants, Tories in the
Revolutionary War. He and his father were with Patrick Ferguson on
Kings
Mountain
in 1780."

 
          
“Patrick
Ferguson," I said the name after him. “I've read about him and his battle
back then. Didn't he invent some kind of breech-loading rifle?"

 
          
“He
did,"
said
Harpe, “but the British didn't have
the sense to adopt it and manufacture it. He told his troops that he was king
of
Kings
Mountain
, and all the devils in hell couldn’t drive
him off."

 
          
“The
devils in hell nair made the try in person," I said. “It was a bunch of
mountain men who got up there and killed or captured his whole British
outfit."

 
          
“You
know history, you continue to amaze me," said Harpe, with a smile. “Though
at that, they didn't drive
Ferguson
off. They killed him up there, shot him full of bullets. What's that
you're playing on your guitar?"

 
          
“Just
a little old country song I hear sung now and then."

 
          
“Let’s
hear it, I like your songs."

 
          
So
I did what he said. I sang:

 
 
          
“Johnson
said to
Dixon
, one cold October day,

           
'Let’s go up on
Kings
Mountain
and drive the foe away;

           
A host of British Tories, up there
they take their stand,

           
Because they rule the mountain,
they think they rule the land . . .”

 
          
“Bravo,”
Harpe cried out when I’d finished, and clapped his big hands. “You’re right,
John, they killed or captured all the Tories. They killed Micajah Harpe’s
father and they captured Micajah, but he managed to slip away when they marched
their prisoners off. He found his younger brother Wiley at home, and they went
to live with the Cherokees and founded the profession of American outlawry.”

 
          
He
said it right proud, as if Micajah Harpe had founded the profession of American
doctoring or the profession of American poetry-writing. He went ahead with his
tale:

 
          
“They
learned Indian methods and Indian wisdom; from the Cherokees and other tribes.
Not just woodcraft; Indian medicine—Indian magic. They knew enough to get out
of the Cherokee town of
Nickajack
, just before Andrew Jackson destroyed it. After that, they were their
own tribe, that pair of brothers.” “That pair of brothers,” I repeated after
him. “I’ve read that they were someway supernatural—they killed like werewolves
or vampires, the book said.”

 
          
“The
book you refer to is over there on my shelf. It’s called
The Spawn of Evil,
it’s a history of the early American outlawry
the Harpes started—names like Mason, Ford, Murrel, and so on. But those later
men only imitated the Harpes.” His voice rose again, with that pride in it.
“The bravest frontiersmen of
Tennessee
and
Kentucky
feared the very name of Harpe. But at last,
in 1799, Micajah Harpe was captured and killed. They had a very, very hard time
killing him, and he died game. His head was cut off and stuck to the branch of
a tree. The place still bears his name—Harpes Head.”

           
And the
pride with
that, too, like
as if Ruel Harpe gloried in it.

 
          
“His
brother got away that time,” I recollected.

 
          
“Yes,
all the way to the
Mississippi
. But he was identified and killed, too, and his head cut off, too, and
set in a tree on the Natchez Trace.” He studied me with his smokey eyes. “While
the Harpes lived, they were kings in a country that feared them.”

 
          
“And
you're a Harpe, too.”

 
          
“I'm
a Harpe, too. Micajah Harpe had women with him from time to time. One of them
was Betsy Roberts, and she’d borne Micajah a son. She also happened to have
this amulet.”

 
          
He
held out the thing on his neck-chain. It was no
crucifix,
it was T-shaped, gold, with a twisty thing a-climbing on it, a dark thing that
might could have been a monkey or either a lizard.

 
          
“If
Micajah had been wearing it when they closed in on him—” said Harpe, half
dreamily. “But he hadn’t. After he was killed and his head cut off, Betsy
Roberts married a man named Sol Hofstetter. By all accounts, her husband was
what you’d call a fairly honest, ordinary fellow.”
A bit of a
sneer to say that.
“And the boy was called Joe Roberts, and grew up and
joined the army.”

 
          
“So
far as I know, the boy’s story runs out there,” I said.

 
          
“No,
it doesn’t. He was at some frontier fort, and he deserted and joined an Indian
tribe, like his father before him. Like his father before him, he learned
Indian wisdom, Indian medicine,
Indian
magic. Finally
he went to
New
Orleans
,
called
himself
Joseph Harpe there. He
married,
he had children of his own. He taught them what he
knew, what his parents had known.”

 
          
“Indian
magic, you said.”

 
          
“All
kinds of magic,” he said. “There are all kinds, as you’re well aware. You know
several kinds yourself, as I’ve heard.”

 
          
I
made myself as easy as I could in my chair.
“How come you to
know things about me?”
I wondered out loud.

 
          
“We’ll
take that up later Just
now,
I’m telling you about my
ancestors. Well, the Harpe family went on.
On and on and on.”
Again, he sounded almost dreamy. “And each generation studied all those kinds
of magic, sometimes used them. And finally I was bom, and took up the studies,
and did extremely well at them.”

 
          
“I
see.”

 
          
“Do
you, John, really? I think you do see. Now we’re down to my part of the story,
my autobiography if you want to call it that. I hope I don’t bore you, talking
about myself.”

 
          
“I
don’t reckon that’s likely,” I said. “So far, it’s been right interesting.”

 
          
“A
cool one, aren’t you, John?”

 
          
“I
have to be cool, now and then.”

 
          
“I’ll
go on,” he said. “I’m not sure where I was
bom,
it
must have been about fifty years back. I think it was in
New York
. But by the time I was three, my parents
had taken me to
Chattanooga
, and that’s when they took me to join a coven.” “I see,” I said again.
“Witches want new members as young as they can get them.”

           
“Very
true,
and very sensible. I got older and went to school —one way and another, I had a
good education,
I even got a master’s
degree at
Vanderbilt. I studied a number of foreign languages and literatures. I also
picked up a good grounding in occult matters. I was able to study important
books. Over on the shelf there you’ll find Barrett, you’ll find the
Grand Albert,
you’ll find a copy of a
very rare and informative manuscript called
The
Book of Abramelin.
Here, I’ll fetch it.”

 
          
He
got up and crossed to the shelf and wagged back a book bound in old dark
leather, A-sitting down again, he opened it. I saw writing in both red and
black, pen-and-ink writing.

 
          
“This
is a copy of the original, in the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal at
Paris
. There's been an English translation, but
not a complete one—I think the translator thought there were certain passages
better left out. This is the entire work. Do you read French, John?"

 
          
“Not
right well. I
learned
me some French when I was a
soldier, that's all."

 
          
He
laughed. “I know about that soldier French, you learn it from girls for the
most part. It's like Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories. All you can say is
that you love only them, and will come back when your military service is over,
right?"

 
          
“More
or less," I admitted, and he laughed again. He thumbed through the book,
a-looking at a page here and there.

 
          
“Abramelin’s
wisdom was noted down by a scholar of the occult named Abraham," he
allowed. “Abraham started to travel in search of secret wisdom about the end of
the fourteenth century. He went to
Germany
and
Greece
and
Constantinople
, finally to
Egypt
, where he studied with a magician named
Abramelin." He closed the book and looked at me. “This is all new to you,
of course."

 
          
“Not
quite," I said back. “There's something about that book in
The Mysteries and Secrets of Magic
, by a
fellow named Thompson."

 
          
“I
continue to admire the way you've instructed yourself."

 
          
“Lots
of what I read is against the belief of a heap of educated folks," I had
to admit. “They accept other things."

 
          
“Paul
Valery once said, 'That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere,
is almost certain to be false,'
" he
smiled at
me.

 
          
“Who
was Paul Valery?" 1 asked him.

 
          
“Ah,
at last we come to someone you haven't read. Valery was a fine poet and a
penetrating essayist, and he reads much better in the original French than in
translation. But to go on: Like Abraham, I’ve traveled here and abroad in
search of wisdom. I’ve conferred with distinguished scholars and practitioners
of the black arts. I winnowed out some clumsy imposters, and profited by
genuine wielders of great powers. Along the way, I met Scylla, and she became
my”—he broke off, just a moment—“my associate, my partner. I brought her here.”

 
          
“To
Cry
Mountain
.”

 
          
“But
I was here first. I’d heard rumors about
Cry
Mountain
, how people stayed away from it, didn’t
talk about it. I came alone, and exerted my methods to make a safe, habitable
place here.”

 
          
“You
set it up?” I said.
“You all alone, the stockade and all?”