The Two Confessions

by John Whitbourn

  Then the Cymric bonded-labourers claimed to have seen ghosts flitting through the camp and in the tunnels. A portion of them were so frightened as to strike. Their Irish masters had rough ways with rebellion and took some tongues out, but for once it did no good. Generations of slavery to the Hibernian 'Joint Stock Farming Companies' had cowed but not broken the poor native Welshmen. So, Samuel took over and quoted scripture at them, decrying revolt against proper authority and the vain illusions of Satan. Then he hurled handfuls of silver sixpences over their heads and stood clear of the resulting scramble.

  They were not used to either argument or kindness and so Trevan prevailed where pincers did not. Work resumed, the miners protected by as many saints' medals and charms as they cared to take from the crate-load Samuel placed by the shafthead.

  Those were just the highlights of a series of cowpats dropped in the project's path. Things went missing when needed, people acted out of character and misfortune was permanently on duty. Samuel didn't lose his temper, not even when all the tent canvas inexplicably began to rot. Instead, he sat down to think and tot his troubles up. Reviewing each mishap, set down in cold black and white, a structure to them hoved coyly into sight. For a brief moment he thought he discerned a pattern in the chaos, for all that it was elusive: a shadow glimpsed at the end of a corridor. He could almost credit these things as clever nuisances, nicely contrived to dismay. If so, it was a question of finding the common thread - and tracing it back to the spinner to supply payment in kind.

  Then the army wizard arrived and every other distraction had to be put aside.

  U[U[U[U[U[U[U

  ************

  '... The soldier-thaumaturge is an unnatural hybrid, neither one thing nor the other; welcomed by neither profession. This class of man, this career, is like unto the mule, a similar aberration; useful perchance as a living tool but an unfit vehicle for a gentleman. Recall that our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who entertained the most wretched and debased of creatures, chose a donkey on which to enter Jerusalem. Even He, infinite in love and forgiveness, forswore carriage on that which is against nature.

  To expand: when a soldier kills he does so with blade or bow or bullet: things which, though fell, are known and natural. But when a wizard slays who knows from whence the means comes - or to where his poor victim goes? I myself have seen both foemen and comrade alike crisped in blue flames that give no heat, or turned inside out by invisible forces, or in other ways die horribly without explanation. This I say boldly is not war but coward killing by strange forces. The true gentleman warrior strives with like against like, but that can never be the thaumaturge's way.

  Fortunately, these precious charges, these rare products of long training, fall prey to plain sword or gun just like any other man. Accordingly, they are usually cosseted and sheltered from the lottery of battle, kept safe from harm in the general's pavilion. There they may consult with occult powers or wrench the truth from unhappy prisoners under an honest soldier's supervision. Such is their only proper place (if indeed one may apply that term to them) in the chivalrous tournament of war.

  It is also true to say that martial wizards are often degraded wretches, barred from their usual softer and more lucrative employ by past crimes and infamy of character. My experience is that most are fugitives from the justice of G*d or man. For example, when I had the honour to command the Burgundians occupying Latvia in 1923....'

  'At the Altar of both Mars and Christ - being an instruction in the ethical pursuit of war: required preliminary reading for gentlemen volunteers of sundry Christian nations in the service of His Most Excellent Highness, The Holy and Roman Emperor Joseph IV.'

  By Pascal Gudarian. By grace of G*D, Imperial Commander of the Varangian Guard, the convert Turks and Croat hussars.

  Belisarius Press. Constantinople. The year of our Salvation 1933.

  ************

  cHAPTER 29

  ‘It's alive.’

  ‘Alive?’ queried Samuel. He peered at what could not be seen but barred the way. ‘Not magic?’

  ‘That too: but mostly alive. They all are. Sort of…’

  Trevan studied the wizard's face as best two-candle-power permitted. It was no sweeter a sight in below-ground gloom than sunlit above. The plump visage of florid curves offered nothing to interpret or supplement its owner's words. He seemed a preoccupied man; his attention focused long ago and far away. There was information to be had from him but it was like drawing teeth.

  ‘Listen to me,’ snapped Samuel, ‘are you going to co-operate or-….’

  Vaunted 'straight-talk' bounced off the magician like a sheep's growl. The man suddenly turned.

  ‘How’s your headache?’ he asked, sounding solicitous.

  Samuel shrugged.

  ‘Much the same but - hang on, how did you know I...?’

  ‘I didn’t – but do now. It comes as no surprise: everyone I’ve spoken to here gets them. Real shockers. Coincidence, do you think? Then think again. And harder. And better. They’re exercising influence against you – subtly influencing you away.’

  ‘‘They’? Who’s ‘they’?’

  The Wizard smiled.

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest. Not yet. But it’s them, you may be sure.’

  Without asking for permission, the Wizard touched Trevan’s forehead. It felt more like a spark or gnat than a fingertip. Instantly, the brain-pain cleared – and then just as promptly returned, crashing back with momentum, when the fat hand withdrew.

  ‘See?’ asked the Wizard. ‘It went, didn’t it?’

  ‘It did,’ said Samuel, ‘but only for that second. Couldn’t you make the relief more lasting?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered the Wizard: but made no move.

  ‘But…,’ said Samuel, rather than give him the pleasure.

  ‘But it would involve effort,’ confirmed the Wizard. ‘And everyone would want it. You must carry that particular cross, Mr Trevan. Accept it as flattery. At least someone takes account of you…’

  The Wizard had a way of turning his back which signalled he no longer even recalled the conversation just ended, let alone might return to it. You just had to study his broad rear view and lump it.

  ‘Lumpit’ was Trevan’s least favourite food. It made him retch. But for the moment it had to be got down.

  ‘Tell me more about the barriers,’ he asked, trying to salvage something. ‘Are they all identical?’

  No answer came. The Wizard waddled past Trevan as though nothing had been said - and leapt out into the vertical shaft.

  In the course of a laborious morning they'd visited all of the 'dry tunnels' now revealed by the labours of the steam pump. The Wizard had studied the invisible barrier blocking each, muttered, looked concerned, fiddled with his sparse rat's-tail locks - and then said nothing. The carry-tub had been up and down the now enlarged and pinioned main shaft - 'like a whore's drawers', as Samuel put it when his temper ran out - until the midday sun shone directly overhead. Come lunchtime, Trevan was still none the wiser and impatience got put into words.

  He couldn't emulate the Wizard and just levitate down to the next port of call. Mere mortals had to board the tub and order its descent, jerking gracelessly ratchet by ratchet till his companion's helmet-candle came back into view. The man was standing on thin air, his great bulk making it seem all the more incongruous, beside the lip of another transverse tunnel.

  ‘You didn't need to do that,’ Samuel reproved him, in the gentlest manner he knew. ‘You could have come down with me.’

  ‘I 'come down' enough in your company as it is.’ The Wizard wasn't really regarding Trevan or his question, but musing dreamily to himself. ‘You depress my spirits, maggot of Mammon, forever snuffling around after gain. What is the Army thinking of in servicing you? How apt it is you must writhe maggot-style round these tunnels pursuing mere gold.’

  Being used to abuse on these grounds made it easier for Samuel to hold his tongue. All the stuff about 'and you -
and your mother!' was said only in the privacy of thought.

  ‘Is there a blockage here too?’ he asked instead.

  The Wizard looked into the black mouth of the tunnel and tilted his head as though seeking a scent.

  ‘There is. One more of the same. Alive - as I said before. I will show you.’

  He trod on nothingness till it was exchanged for the firmer support of the tunnel floor. Samuel jumped across to join him. Halfway there he wondered if, should he fall, the Wizard would swoop to catch him. It seemed doubtful.

  ‘Twenty paces on,’ the Wizard confided, again twitching his nostrils as he plucked knowledge from the dark. ‘The dampness ceases and there is something perverse.’

  'Then you and it belong together’ thought Samuel - but said nothing. He followed in the Wizard's confident footsteps.

  ‘Here.’ He signalled that Trevan should halt. ‘Right here. Even your gross sensitivities should be able to detect it.’

  Samuel ignored that insult also. Even if he were as attuned as a brick his eyes would still have marked the sudden change, candlelight or no. Damp, slick walls became dry-as-bone rock. Something had long held the waters at bay from that sharply delineated line.

  But that was not all. Close to, the air was both charged and sluggish, resistant to any passage through. A meaty aroma oozed out when the vicinity was disturbed by their arrival.

  ‘Yes, I perceive it,’ Samuel told him. ‘Now you explain it to me.’

  The Wizard looked at him - or rather through him to some further and more interesting point. Trevan had observed before the famous lack of focus in magicians' eyes. He found it more disconcerting than any straightforward intimidation. Always, at the back of your mind, there was the persistent tale that wizards read men thoughts like open books. Samuel tested the theory with heartfelt murderous notions but the magician showed no signs of perception.

  ‘It is alive...,’ the man repeated.

  ‘Yeah, we've had that already.’

  ‘... though more as an... idea than a being. It is... pervasive and half awake.’

  ‘Lovely. What shall we do about it?’

  ‘I don't...,’ - he'd been going to say 'care', Samuel was sure of it - ‘…know. Isn't that up to you?’

  ‘Your advice is sought. That is why you were brought from-....’

  ‘Llanthony; yes,’ said the Wizard. ‘I saw bad things there. Mott had me torture people, even though I protested it was illegal. No, here is preferable even if you are nearby. I prefer to linger in this place. Yes, I'll advise you. What do you propose to do?’

  Samuel looked down the tunnel into the lack of light or welcome.

  ‘Press on.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise. Then I will rupture the membrane for you. I know I can penetrate or destroy it.’

  ‘It's weak then?’ Samuel liked that: both a necessary question and retaliation for all the insults. The Wizard didn't even notice.

  ‘Not weak but old; old and neglected and never tested. This is an ancient cobweb drained of its youthful virility.’

  ‘And if it's alive like you say, will the breach be noticed?’

  ‘Probably. I think it sees us even now.’

  Samuel didn't appreciate that thought - as entirely intended. He wasn't able to prevent the resulting nervous glance.

  ‘We'll proceed even so,’ he said. Then: ‘No! Not yet!’

  He had to shout that, for the magician had already stretched out his arm to probe the mystery.

  ‘Patience, Wizard, patience. We'll do it when we're prepared and fitted.’

  The chubby arm was slowly, reluctantly, withdrawn.

  ‘As you wish, businessman. What you say goes….’

  They walked back together, the Wizard without a second glance, Samuel with more than half his attention to the unguarded rear.

  ‘Look!’

  He'd skilfully got Trevan to such a pitch that the urgent suggestion made even him jump to comply. Magicians had ways of introducing 'mundanes' to the borderlands of their own uncanny world, thereby to master them.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  The Wizard pointed.

  ‘There is old-life here - in the rock. Your money-grubbing has stumbled over beauty. See?’

  There were indeed non-random forms within the wall. Samuel looked and thought he recognised some curled shell-shape protruding its back.

  ‘Pre-Flood demons,’ he said. He knew of, if not about, them. Mr Farncombe had one as a paperweight on his desk, a present from a relative in Lyme Regis.

  ‘Antediluvian, but not demonic,’ the Wizard corrected him, more gently than hitherto. ‘They are innocent beasts frozen into stone by the drip, drip, drip of time. Sometimes one finds the remains of dragons; huge monsters' bones and terrifying teeth. Hedgerow spell-casters prize and powder them for their potions.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘Actually it is, Mr Trevan; but you rightly discern there is no sordid profit in them. Some afflicted men are oblivious to the marvels strewn by God for our delectation. As the prophet Jeremiah and other sundry scripture reminds us: there are none so blind as those who will not see. Meanwhile, let us return to the light.’

  Samuel wasn't going to argue with that, but he'd had enough of the man and his contempt. The tally between them was still lamentably one-sided.

  ‘What, so soon?’ he mocked. ‘I thought you were mad keen to forge ahead?’

  Once again the Wizard 'honoured' him by actually turning his head to speak. The toes of his huge army boots protruded over the tunnel's lip and the abyss below.

  ‘Oh, but I am. It will be wonderful. You don't know the half of what I have sensed here.’

  Trevan bristled. ‘Do I not, sorcerer?’

  ‘No. My soul feels in places you do not have. What awaits us is like a long hung pheasant.’

  That was about the last simile Samuel had been expecting. His clever retort aborted before it could be born. Only straightforward enquiry was left to him.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because,’ said the Wizard, licking his lips, ‘it is old, and rotten, and rank - and delicious.’

  U[U[U[U[U[U[U

  cHAPTER 30

  ‘The most that I'm proposing,’ said the very relaxed man, ‘is an arrangement to our mutual benefit.’

  ‘I can sort of see that,’ agreed Samuel. He would have been unrecognisable to those who knew him: mild, accommodating, almost apologetic for having the temerity to be alive. The visitor, knowing no different, was taken in. ‘But I must admit, Mr...?’

  ‘Glendower,’ said the red-haired thug lolling in Trevan's own armchair. ‘Owain Glendower.’

  So, he was arrogant with it, as well as overconfident. Why did they assume that no one but them knew any Welsh history?

  ‘I must admit, Mr Glendower, I was getting worried about security....’

  He couldn't have come at a better time. Samuel had just emerged from the mine, fresh from his interview with the Wizard; enraged, clue-less and blinking at the light. To find the source of at least some of his troubles showing its face in his cabin was just what the doctor ordered. All other tasks were postponed for the duration. Now he was both enjoying himself and sorting things at the same time. It was sweet, sweet, sweet.

  ‘Your concerns are past, Mr Trevan,’ said the visitor. ‘From now on you can concentrate on what you do best. Extract whatever precious bounty you may from Mother Earth's entrails whilst others, better suited, fend off the evil-eye of this wild country. If we have your well-being as our charge, you might depend no more payrolls will go astray. No, don't gasp, we know about that. It is our business to be well informed, just as it is yours to direct the tides of commerce. Is there any more of this rather fine apple brandy?’

  There certainly was. Samuel would have this unctuous land-pirate as chatty as he cared to get. He jumped up like a skivvy and poured as he imagined a nervous man might. The visitor accepted without thanks and drank without style, knocking the tumbler back drunkard fashi
on. So there was the explanation for the red tracery on his cheeks.

  ‘Choice! Better than a wench - well, an English one anyway: no disrespect to you, Mr Trevan. Now, like I said, my associates have extensive interests in this vicinity, for all it might not be our homeland, but rather the back garden of our bitter enemy. No matter, the profit extracted is all the most tasty, plus tiny recompense for the lashing you've - present company excepted, sir - dished out to dear Cymru. Most sensible enterprises round here oblige us with donations, so don't think you're unfairly singled out. No indeed. We even have bases here, see; safe from the maelstrom made of our nation. In short, the Dragons are in a position to do you much good, as well as - just speculatively speaking, of course - the contrary.’

  ‘As with the pump spares, I suppose.’ Samuel thought his pre-emptive cringe was not at all bad.

  ‘... Just so, Mr Trevan.’

  Now, that hesitation was interesting. Either this terrorist's pimp was badly briefed or else not all Samuel's recent misfortunes were their doing.

  ‘I don't suppose I have much option, do I, Mr Glendower?’

  ‘Not if you tread the path of reason, Mr Trevan; and I've heard nothing this afternoon to indicate that's not your way. Our premiums are modest, as you've heard. Take a route around trouble if one's offered, that's my counsel.’

  Clearly well satisfied, ‘Glendower’ prepared to go, drawing his green oilcoat from the back of the chair. It dislodged the antimacassar Melissa had embroidered.