Beneath the Hallowed Hill

by Theresa Crater

  “Let me guess—maiden, mother, crone.”

  “A good bet usually, but not in this case. She rules over poetry, smith craft, and healing.” A cow lifted her head and sent out a deep bellow. Garth laughed. “Thank you for the reminder. She’s often depicted with a cow.”

  “Like Hathor.”

  Garth nodded. “Bridget is a fire goddess, the three crafts are all expressions of fire. We light a fire to her at Imbolc, when she is honored especially. Our country is even named after her. Britain. Brigantia.”

  Anne remembered the Imbolc ceremony she participated in on February first, and the spiritual fire they rekindled in the earth. She wished Michael wasn’t so far away.

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, finally turning onto Wellhouse Lane where they took the pathway up the Tor. Anne wanted to broach the question of Garth’s relationship with Cynthia, but felt she’d be prying. Instead she said, “I found a manuscript Cynthia was working on.” His sudden intake of breath made her regret she opened the topic.

  Finally he said, “I’m glad it’s safe.”

  “There was a note to you. I apologize for reading it.” She tried to see his face, but he had turned his head toward the small apple orchard on their right “It said she wanted to write the story as a novel, she didn’t want to be identified publicly as a channeler.”

  “I must have left the note at the house. She said she didn’t want her sister to try to have her committed.”

  Now it was Anne’s turn to be surprised. “I don’t think mother would have gone that far. Besides, Grandmother Elizabeth would never have allowed it.”

  Finally he turned to her. His face showed no sign of grief. “How is Elizabeth?”

  “You’ve met?”

  “Oh, yes,” Garth said. “A formidable woman.”

  “No kidding. I was terrified of her as a child.”

  “Surely not.” He laughed.

  “She always knew what we were up to. When I read Greek mythology, I thought she must be a misplaced Sybil.”

  “She is also strong,” he said. “Like a queen.”

  “Feel sorry for us kids then.” Anne punched his arm playfully.

  “I concede your point.”

  The steep slope of the Tor took their breath, so they climbed to the top in silence. Quite a few people milled about on the summit; some propped against the wall of the tower, others sat on the slope, and all were watching the sun as it met the ocean. Several people greeted Garth with nods and raised hands, but they did not speak. Anne and Garth sat on the western slope and watched the sunset paint the clouds orange and purple.

  When the sun disappeared beneath the waves, they rose without a word and walked back down the same way they climbed up. The hares had come out, small mounds of darkness with large ears, ancient shapes that tugged at Anne’s ancestral memory. The jackdaws cawed in the trees toward the bottom. Farther down, human voices added to the racket. A crowd of townies, vagrants, and tourists gathered at White Spring, and everyone seemed to be talking at once.

  “I told the town council we’d have to undo this mess the Victorians created,” said a man dressed in jeans and a neat Oxford shirt. “Something’s fallen in, plugged up the works.”

  “Armageddon is upon us,” shouted another man dressed in ragged trousers and several moth-eaten sweaters, his face red. “The end is near.”

  A knot of women buzzed like a swarm of bees, heads together. “The Goddess must be recognized. As long as violence against women continues…” Anne noticed with a start that her housekeeper Tessa stood in the middle of the group.

  Garth made his way to the middle of the crowd and raised his hand. To Anne’s complete astonishment, silence fell. “What seems to be the problem?” He turned to a woman who held a few plastic water jugs.

  “There’s no water.” She pointed to the spring’s outlet. “White Spring’s dried up.”

  General lamentations and opinions filled the air again, but again Garth raised his arms and the mutterings fell into silence once more. “When?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “Before that,” one of the women in the knot said. “There was no water when I came down.”

  “When was that?” Garth asked.

  “About half past two.”

  “Then we must restore the flow.” Garth’s voice rang out like a trumpet and a chill ran the length of Anne’s spine. He used the same phrase that was passed down through the Le Clair family with her crystal key; the crystals were to be used to “restore the flow.”

  “Do we agree?” Garth seemed to be addressing one of the women in the buzzing group, an ethereal blond who considered him through narrowed eyes. Anne wondered who she was…obviously someone with clout. After a minute, the woman nodded, as if giving permission for something.

  “Let’s get into a circle as much as we can.” Garth’s voice softened.

  The group shuffled into a makeshift ring. A few people walked away.

  “If you can, take your neighbor’s hand.” He waited for the group to settle again. “Now let’s take a few deep breaths.” He demonstrated, breathing in, his chest visibly expanding, then blowing air through his nostrils. He sounded like a carthorse. Anne bit her lip against an inappropriate giggle.

  After a few minutes, the group more or less breathed together. Low chanting started from several points in the circle. Garth nodded encouragement. Soprano voices matched the tone an octave higher. One vagrant pulled a reed flute from his pack and added its voice. In a matter of minutes, harmony replaced the uproar. Even the jackdaws sat quietly in the trees, their hovering presence somehow a part of the circle.

  The chanting deepened and Anne closed her eyes, leaning against the cement wall of the springhouse. She sent a silent request to the Tor for water then floated in the sound of the chant. After a minute, the crystal key she inherited from Aunt Cynthia woke up. Startled, she opened her eyes. The crystal seemed to take a breath, then sent out a stream of energy.

  Garth looked over at her, his eyes questioning. She pointed to her chest, but he shook his head, not understanding. “Later,” she mouthed, and closed her eyes again.

  The stream of energy spiraled around the circle, gathering all the voices together, all the desire of those hearts for their beloved White Spring to be healed. The chant grew louder and faster. People swayed and made gestures with their hands. One man squatted and began to draw spirals on the flagstone in front of him with chalk. The crystal modulated all the energies into one frequency, then flung it into the flank of the Tor. Anne grabbed at the wall behind her, but found no purchase. She slid to the ground.

  A shout went up from the people standing next to the spout. “Water! There’s water.” The crowd broke ranks and surged forward, heads craning to see. Someone stuck a jar under the spout then held it above her head. A great cheer when up. After a few minutes, Garth held up his arms again and the rejoicing quieted enough for him to shout. “We did it. Thank you.” More cheers greeted his words, but he called for quiet again. “I think we need to do more. I call for a town meeting in the Assembly Halls. Do you agree?”

  The crowd shouted their assent. Even the blond woman nodded, but she watched Anne through narrowed eyes while Tessa whispered in her ear.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tall orbs of golden light wavered in the darkness, pulling him forward, tickling some place deep in his brain. Try as he might, he couldn’t reach them, though his whole being yearned for them. He gave a great heave and rammed his face against an invisible but rough wall that left him bleeding and alone. Some part of him knew what this place was and what he could do once he joined those shapes of light, but he couldn’t put his finger on it; the notion teased him like a word just on the tip of his tongue and out of memory’s reach.

  Cagliostro fought the jumbled sheets, turned over in
his sleep, and found a memory he could access. He was six years old and riding in his first hunt. The stirrups were tied short to accommodate his legs. His heart thumped when the hounds sounded they found a trail. He clenched his jaw, determined he would keep his seat and not embarrass his father. He managed to hang on and crowded in when the hounds cornered the fox; it was a quivering female, skinny, snapping madly. The master of the hunt called the hounds off, pointing to the fox’s swollen teats. “She’s got kits,” he said. The man lured the dogs with meat he carried in his saddlebags and handed a few pieces to him, and he proudly fed the snarling pack, holding the meat like he was instructed to save his fingers. His father didn’t notice; he was busy talking with some visiting dignitary.

  A face appeared next, the one that haunted his dreams—deep blue eyes lit by an inner fire, a profusion of red curls snaking around finely chiseled features. She laughed, the mouth a mixture of soft promise and cruelty. His whole being yearned for her. He searched for her his whole life—longer than that, actually—and here she was. She looked at him and then turned, tossing that wild mane over her shoulder. She slipped down a path of…could those solid dark shapes be the trunks of trees? Was she lost in some ancient forest? He opened his mouth to call out to her, but her name slid away into the shadows.

  A hand was laid on his forehead, followed by something cool, and he slept peacefully again.

  * * * *

  Doctor Abernathy poured himself a drink and looked over at Michael, who settled back on the sofa with his head leaned back to admire the upper balcony. Abernathy’s home library extended to a second story of books surrounded by a banister that looked like a crow’s nest on a ship. “Sherry?” Doctor Abernathy held the decanter up.

  “None for me, thanks.”

  Abernathy put the hand-blown glass top back on the decanter then sat down in his armchair. Stacks of magazines and books bristling with yellow stickies lay scattered around his favorite spot.

  “Have you heard from Arnold?” Michael looked over at him.

  “Cagliostro left in the middle of the night and seems to have disappeared. Nobody would talk. The flight plan registered London as his destination. The plane landed in a private hanger and a car took the party to Cagliostro’s country house in Somerset, but there was no activity that we can see.”

  “Playing with his newly acquired toys, no doubt.”

  Abernathy cocked his head at Michael’s bitter tone. “Giving up already?”

  “We’re always three steps behind him.” Michael crossed his arms.

  “That’s our Cagliostro.” Doctor Abernathy lifted his delicate glass as if to toast the man.

  Michael’s eyes lit up. “Know thy enemy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know him.”

  “Knew,” Abernathy corrected. He took another sip of his sherry. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Tell me about him,” Michael said.

  Abernathy shook his head. “We need to find these artifacts and keep them out of his hands.”

  “Indulge me. I can’t see Franz Maier until Wednesday.” Michael settled in as if he expected a long story.

  Abernathy sipped his sherry, enjoying its sweet bite, then set the glass down and stared into the flames of the fire they lit—both to stay warm in the unseasonal chill and as a talisman against Cagliostro. Perhaps Michael was right. With an effort, he broke the silence. “We were the same year at Oxford.”

  Michael looked up sharply. “I thought you said he was your teacher.”

  “Oh, yes. He became my teacher.” Abernathy’s eyes tightened. “Alexander Cagliostro outshone us all.” He stared into the flames again, hesitating. What would Michael think once he knew the truth? Finally, he waded into the swamp of his memories.

  “We became fast friends after we discovered our common interests. We shared rooms our second year. You see, old man Le Clair sent me to Oxford, and he made certain arrangements for my extracurricular education.” The scene of his first meeting with Cagliostro played across his mind.

  They walked across campus, chatting companionably about classes and sports; Abernathy won a place on the rowing team. They seemed to be following the same path, taking the same turns, and Abernathy was admonished to tell no one about this clandestine meeting. As they approached his destination, Cagliostro stopped. “Good talking with you.”

  “You, too.” Abernathy waved his hand and continued on, but Cagliostro took the same turn he just took and began following him again. Abernathy looked back, trying to decide what to do.

  “I say, where are you going, then?” The white-blond ponytail Cagliostro affected shone under the street lamp.

  “Got to see one of the dons. Bloody inconvenient.” Abernathy affected the favorite British slang. “You?”

  They walked a few more steps to the door of the chapel, and Cagliostro stopped, smiling like a Cheshire cat. “Could we both have an appointment here tonight?”

  “You mean—”

  He opened the door. “After you.”

  They laughed together, their camaraderie turning a dark, lonely walk to a mysterious meeting into a daring adventure. They made their way down an aisle in the quiet of the dusky church and headed to a door in the back. “I knew there was something about you I liked, Abernathy.”

  That night they were initiated into a secret group within the Masons, one with a long history. Two nights a week, the new crop of initiates would attend hush-hush classes together. They would take separate, circuitous routes to the don’s quarters, where they sat in a tight circle listening to instruction and then putting that night’s lesson to work in meditation or ritual. Cagliostro grasped the lessons as if he were just reviewing them. His visions stunned the class, but the professor remained aloof. They took to calling Professor Forrester names to make up for his snubs. “Doctor Dolt’s jealous. He plods along. Magic by numbers,” Cagliostro sneered.

  Abernathy wondered about Forrester’s attitude. Whenever Cagliostro had a particularly spectacular experience, Forrester lectured them about how “colorful experiences,” as he called them, were not in and of themselves proof of advanced ability. “They must be tempered by wisdom.” He would fix Cagliostro with a look. “Sometimes it is better if this type of clarity comes later in life.”

  Cagliostro had a way of looking down his aristocratic nose at him that made Forrester’s mouth tighten. He collected a group of admirers that practiced and studied together. With the classes came access to the special metaphysical collection in a private room in one of the libraries. All Cagliostro had to do was wonder about something aloud, and someone would stay up all night pouring over arcane texts to find the answer. They would appear bleary-eyed at breakfast, elbowing people away so they could sit by Cagliostro and brag about what they found. Abernathy became Cagliostro’s right hand man, a position coveted by all the others.

  In their second year, the group was ushered with due ceremony into a closet in their chemistry lab. The front part of the room was indeed a closet, but behind the brooms and mops, another door opened to a spacious and well stocked alchemical laboratory. They worked among boiling beakers and test tubes full of oddly colored liquids. Abernathy preferred mental workings, but Cagliostro excelled here as well, once making a temperamental potion that took an entire lunar cycle to complete. He won grudging praise. All the Masons who taught them seemed to resent Cagliostro except one, Cornelius Waldman, a man who inspired fear in everyone except his chosen apprentice.

  Over the summer before their third year, Waldman invited Cagliostro to his home. When Cagliostro returned, he moved to the front of the class and then started studying with a more advanced group. The Masonic teachers grew hesitant to criticize him. He won initiation into the secret order that next summer.

  Abernathy stopped his narrative and sat staring into the fire. After a long pause, he con
tinued. “That’s when Cagliostro became a teacher. He helped with the first year classes. He handpicked three others—I was one—for what he called special instruction.” The words were bitter in his mouth. He remembered his own pride, how he rubbed a friend’s face in it. “We read Crowley and replicated some of his more daring experiments, but Cagliostro had to outshine even him.” Abernathy groped for his glass of sherry, took two gulps, and set it down again. A log on the fire sizzled. The ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs reached them in the quiet.

  “What do you know about his life before Oxford?” Michael’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Did you ever meet his family? He changed his name, didn’t he?”

  Grateful that Michael spared him a walk down the entire path of his regrettable association with Alexander Cagliostro, Abernathy gave himself a slight shake. “Yes, the family name is Ravenscroft…at least they took that name when they moved to England, probably in the late eighteenth century. Cagliostro reclaimed his lineage and took the original last name when he declared his independence from his father.”

  “They were in conflict?” Michael asked.

  “Oh, indeed.” Abernathy’s laugh was bitter. “He hated the old man. Not a shred of magic in his body, he used to say. Spent all his time doing business. He rebuilt the family fortune, though.”

  “Doing what?”

  Abernathy narrowed his eyes, trying to remember. “Oil and gas, gold, diamonds during the second war.”

  “I figured. Sounds like he was involved in some pretty shady business.”

  Abernathy nodded. “They had it out his senior year. He moved in with Waldman and changed his name.” The fire died down. He looked over at Michael, who was only an outline in the darkness. He reached up to switch on the light, but changed his mind. The dark suited his mood.

  “Were they lovers?”

  “Who?”

  “Waldman and Cagliostro?”

  He snorted. “Probably, but Cagliostro devoured women as fast as he went through his basic studies, and with the same relish. He never fell in love. He seemed to be looking for someone special. An equal. Never found one, though. He slept with his share of men, but he seemed to do that for form, maybe out of his devotion to Crowley.”