‘It does not matter, so long as you are advancing,’ brother Hoptoad said. Drakeforth gave a snort.
‘For the initial experience we suggest you remain as our guests for two or three days. This allows your mind to clear and for the light of our Lord to resonate within you,’ he continued.
‘That sounds lovely,’ I said, wondering if I would have to stab Drakeforth with the pencil to get him breathing properly again.
We signed the forms and were asked to make a cash donation. Credit sticks made cash superfluous, but any transaction using a stick could be traced and we were trying to stay off the mesh.
‘Surely you have a stick-reader?’ I asked, determined to play the role of a city-born technophile.
‘We shun modern technology. Devices powered with empathic energy are not permitted here.’
‘How on earth do you live?’ Drakeforth asked, completely ignoring the irony of the cash he had used to pay for our food and room.
‘In peace and at one with our true natures,’ Hoptoad replied. ‘We can, if necessary, provide you with a manual promissory note and take an imprint of your credit stick.’
‘How barbaric,’ Drakeforth quipped as he handed over a thin wad of the bank notes he carried in his pocket. The monk didn’t even blink.
‘How would you add obscurity to clarity?’ Hoptoad asked.
After our donations were accepted we returned to the circular hall. The room was filling rapidly with men and women of all ages. Each one knelt at a point around the spiral, creating a third dimension to the pattern. They faced inwards, all faces attuned towards a central point. Hoptoad indicated we should take a place within the gathering. We knelt with the others and waited to see what would happen next.
Hoptoad went to the end of the spiral and began to walk around it. Passing in front of each Arthurian he circumnavigated the room a dozen times, coming closer to the centre with each pass. Finally he reached the central point and turned in a full circle.
‘I am with us,’ he began. ‘I am within all of us. I am the clothes we wear. The food we eat. The water we drink. I am all of us. I was, I am, and I will be. So Arthur counselled his disciple Saint Forefoot when she asked him what would become of the Octarch when their perception of him altered. Arthur teaches us that nothing exists except change and that it is only our perception that changes. The things we experience are distanced from us by the physical embodiment of our notions. Once we doubt the surety of our senses we can perceive the multiverse. Arthur spoke the truth. With the passing of that which his disciples perceived, he became the earth, the grass, the flesh, the water, the sky. We who strive for a pure understanding of his truth know we must tear ourselves free of our preconceived ideas. There must be emptiness to be filled …’
Hoptoad went on in this vein for over an hour. My feet went numb first, and I could feel the paralysis creeping up my legs. I wondered what would happen when it reached my head. I pondered whether it were possible to die from numbness-induced asphyxiation.
The elderly monk did not speak using any overtly obvious persuasion techniques, and yet he held the audience in rapt attention with his every word. They nodded and stroked their beards in agreement with his many points.
From what I had read and seen on television, Arthurianism seemed to be a religion based around the sort of odd ideas that aren’t normally taken seriously outside of an advanced theoretical quantum physics laboratory.
Hoptoad preached a mix of pseudo-science and rhetoric, sprinkled with instructions on how important it was to be nice to everyone.
Of course, there have been occasions in history when Arthurianism was not characterised by a bludgeoning sense of niceness and had been all about taking up the sword and going on zealous missionary missions.
Hundreds of years ago, militant Arthurians had rampaged across entire countries, converting terrified natives with what became known as the Kebab Choice. That is when a blood-stained lunatic holds a sword to your throat and asks if you have thought about abandoning your current false dogma for the up-and-coming One True Religion of Arthurianism. It proved to be a remarkably successful crusade and Saint Kebab’s campaign ran at a conversion rate of nearly a hundred per cent. It would have been a perfect score, if not for an unfortunate cultural misunderstanding with the Took people of the wild and windswept tundra plateau of Upper Besex. The Took shook their heads when they wanted to indicate yes.
I looked for Drakeforth. To my surprise he was curled over, his hands flat on the floor and his face almost touching the polished timber. ‘What are you doing?’ I mouthed.
Drakeforth inhaled through his nose and turned his head to grin up at me. ‘Patchouli oil,’ he whispered.
Chapter 7
I had to wait until Hoptoad finished his sermon before I could crawl on hands and numb knees over to Drakeforth.
‘Patchouli oil,’ he said with barely restrained excitement as the faithful rose to their feet and slowly moved out of the hall. ‘The floor reeks of it.’
‘Maybe they polish the wood with it?’ I frowned at the floor.
‘It’s patchouli oil, not linseed,’ he said giving me a scathing look that he had probably prepared earlier.
‘You are welcome to eat with us,’ Hoptoad said softly, gliding up on soft-soled sandals.
‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ I replied for both of us and accepted a hand up off the floor from Hoptoad. My legs tingled painfully and the usual aches and numbness in my extremities seemed amplified.
‘Do the Arthurians have any dietary restrictions?’ Drakeforth asked. His tone of sudden respect and genuine interest took me by surprise. Hoptoad didn’t seem to think it strange, but then he hadn’t spent an hour with Drakeforth yet.
‘We do not consume processed foods that we have not processed ourselves. We will dine on all that walks, crawls, flies, and grows from the ground, the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air.’
‘So sea birds are off the menu?’ Drakeforth couldn’t help himself.
‘Not at all, we enjoy Albatros a l’Orange every Sunday.’ Hoptoad winked at me in a grandfatherly way that gave me a sharp pang of reminiscence for my own parents.
‘You grow all your own food, vegetables and other consumables?’ Drakeforth continued with his subtle interrogation as we left the grand hall on slippered feet and made our way to a clutch of smaller buildings beyond the vegetable patch.
‘Yes; fruit, vegetables, livestock and cheeses. The only thing we import is salt and sweetener. Fortunately we have monasteries in suitable climates for growing stevia and others in coastal regions with evaporation ponds for salt gathering. Our local specialty is herbal extracts and oils.’
‘How simply fascinating,’ Drakeforth said.
In the dining room, long tables were laid with bright bowls of salads and platters of sliced meat. Bread, cheese and jugs of what turned out to be beer were being passed around. The room was filled with amicable chatter and smiling people. We took our seats and our plates were promptly filled. I inhaled the bouquet of fresh herbs, seasoned vegetables and roast chicken. No doubt the hens I had seen earlier furiously foraging for spilled seeds and insects on the monastery grounds were beginning to wonder why this plump lady hadn’t been around for the last few days.
The lunch was delicious and the conversation quite ordinary. It seemed Arthurians liked to discuss mundane things over meals: the weather, chicken recipes, and the annoying way that you couldn’t hear yourself chew over the noise of all these people talking in the dining hall.
The afternoon was to be spent in further instruction. We met one of Hoptoad’s fellow believers, a middle-aged woman with greying hair and a tanned face wrinkled with smile lines.
‘This is sister Buddleia,’ Hoptoad said.
‘The future is the continuity of an expression of life,’ Buddleia said, smiling warmly at us and squeezing my hand between two that were caked in dirt.
‘Hello, I’m Charlotte, and this is my friend Vole,’ I replied.
‘Perception is the path to incredible energy,’ Buddleia said and led Drakeforth away to inspect the oregano, the basil and, I fervently hoped, the patchouli.
‘Let’s go sit in the shade and have a chat,’ Hoptoad said. I nodded and followed him, not having anything else to do. We took seats in chairs carved from sawn lengths of trees. Hoptoad swept his long hair around his shoulder like a tattered cotton scarf. A jug of iced tea was brought out of the dining hall and set on a wooden table between us. It all felt very civil and entirely unlikely.
‘What is your story, Charlotte?’ Hoptoad asked gently.
‘I – well, I’m just curious I guess. Always looking for an answer to life’s big mysteries. Why are we here, where do we come from, what does it all mean, why exactly do we have earlobes …’ I trailed off, realising I was babbling.
Hoptoad pondered his feet for a moment. ‘You are here because you are searching for something. You came from the city. It means exactly what you think it means, and there are two main theories. One is that some distant ancestral mammalian quadruped used them to keep the dirt out of the ear canal and the other is that they may be something to do with sex. Which personally I find a far more intriguing theory, but one perhaps grounded more in wishful thinking than empirical evidence. However, my question was referring to your personal history. You have an air of sadness about you that is tempered by a grim determination.’
I took a deep breath. If half of what Drakeforth had told me was true, grim determination might be what I needed. Besides, I mused, what else do I have to live for?
‘I believe, no, we believe, that the Godden Energy Corporation is somehow involved in a conspiracy. It has to do with the discovery of empathic energy. I think my parents may have been murdered because of a desk that has been in my family for generations. I suppose none of this means anything to you, being self-sufficient and off the mesh and everything.’ I winced internally. Do shut up, Charlotte. You are sounding like a complete idiot!
Hoptoad nodded. ‘Thirty years ago I walked away from a career in widget management to answer the call of Arthur. I was overweight, divorced, miserable, and my career seemed to be going nowhere. There was so much wrong with the world we lived in that I ran away. I arrived here, much as you have, and here I stayed.’ Hoptoad’s gaze went to some distant horizon of memory. ‘I had so many questions, just like you. As for the answers … well, Arthur had only one.’
I felt myself leaning forward to hear the wisdom he would share.
‘Nothing matters, everything matters.’ Hoptoad drank some iced tea and we sat in silence. A thousand thoughts circled a dark centre in my mind like a fleet of tiny paper boats caught in the vortex of a drain.
I felt guilty watching the Arthurians working in the warm sun while I sat here in the shade and drank delicious tea.
Drakeforth’s head appeared occasionally between the rows of herbage. Together he and Buddleia were like a pair of meerkats popping up from behind the chives and garlic. They would speak briefly, exchange leaves of various shapes and colours and then vanish again. I’d not seen Drakeforth look this relaxed before. If it wasn’t for his raging intolerance of all things spiritual, the life of an Arthurian would have suited him perfectly.
‘What do you do here, Hoptoad? Other than giving sermons and overseeing everything.’
‘I’m not in charge. No Monastery of Arthur has a leader. We are simply a group of like-minded individuals who have come together and share a common understanding. We await the fulfilment of Arthur’s Tellings.’
‘You think Arthur will return?’
‘He might. He might have never left. He might be among us right now. You might be Arthur.’
‘I don’t think so.’ I blushed slightly.
‘Arthur was a man who made a great assumption. He then devoted his life to proving that assumption to be correct. The core tenets of our faith are curiosity, peace and the acceptance that we are, have been, and always will be, energy in a transient state. Arthur was the first among us to transcend the physical form and attain a different state of existence. We seek to emulate his path and perceive ourselves in a state of existence without boundary or dimension.’
‘It sounds very challenging,’ I said, not quite understanding what he was talking about.
‘It’s quite simple really. You just have to realise some truths about whichever of the infinite number of universes you wish to inhabit, and then accept that reality isn’t all that it is cracked up to be.’
‘Reality.’ I grasped the one term I could make sense of in his speech. ‘Let me tell you about reality. It’s random and objective and completely uncaring about anything as complex as a person’s life.’ To my surprise, Hoptoad nodded and stroked his beard.
‘Or,’ he replied, ‘reality is a construct of your perceptions. If you think, and here I quote the common vernacular, reality barks like a dog in a well, then you need to take steps to change it.’
‘Oh, right. How silly of me. Instead of my parents dying, I should have just changed reality so they didn’t.’
Hoptoad nodded again. I felt a sudden flash of anger. How dare he sit there and blame me for not changing what happened?
‘You cannot be seriously suggesting I could have changed my own past?’
‘Many of us have a strong desire to change actuality. What we must accept is that the time to change that which is remains in the time when it still might be. To put it another way, at this moment, and every other moment, you stand at an infinite crossroads. Stretching out from you are an endless number of probable actions, encounters, events and perceptions. Each one represents a different reality, entirely valid in its own wave function. The only time you can choose which of those probabilities you will actualise is before they have come to pass. Once a probability is actualised and becomes your new reality, the others either cease to exist mathematically, or they go off on their own tangents and are experienced by a different you. It all depends on your interpretation of Arthur’s Tellings.’
My fury subsided somewhat, ‘So … you are saying the only way to change the future is to choose a different course of action in the present?’
‘Exactly.’ Hoptoad beamed at me through his whiskers.
‘I give up.’ I waved my hands in exasperation. ‘The Arthurian doctrines seem horribly fatalistic. I can certainly take responsibility for my own actions, but the idea that my future was basically my fault seems a bit unfair.’
‘Not at all,’ Hoptoad responded. ‘Arthurianism simply suggests you take more care in your current choices.’
‘But how do I know that the choice I make is the right one?’
‘Exactly,’ Hoptoad said again, leaving me completely baffled.
Drakeforth came striding out of the garden, his white robe damp and dirt-stained in the knee regions. ‘Can you believe they have allfoot and coffee plants growing back there?’
I smiled agreeably at him. ‘Coffee?’ I asked.
‘A bean that can be dried, roasted and ground. It makes an interesting alternative to tea,’ Hoptoad explained.
‘I think I’ve heard of it,’ I said.
‘Buddleia tells me you make your own patchouli oil.’ Drakeforth’s eye flickered as if he were trying to drop me a wink and only succeeded in looking as if he had a nervous tic.
‘Indeed. Perhaps you would both be interested in seeing our botanical oils plant?’
We nodded and once again followed Hoptoad across the wide farmyard inside the monastery’s walls. He unlocked a heavy door set in the outer stone wall. From there we passed into cool shadow and started down a long flight of stone steps.
Drakeforth’s hand dropped on my shoulder. I nearly screamed. ‘Paranoia,’ he whispered. I nodded. The dark and narrow passageway had the hairs on the back of my neck craning for a better view. Ahead of us a match flared and grew into the softe
r glow of a lamp. Hoptoad’s face loomed out of the darkness.
‘Mind the last step. It’s a bit odd,’ he said. Turning his back, Hoptoad unlocked a second door. This one had been strapped in bands of iron like an old barrel. The monk held the lantern up until we joined him on the other side of the door. He closed it in our wake, twisting a key in the lock and hanging it up on a wall hook.
Walking on, Hoptoad said, ‘We produce a range of herb and plant oils. We use most of them in our rites and rituals.’ Hoptoad paused and bent down to stare carefully at a set of wooden shelves laden with clay jars and glass bottles of all sizes. He reached in and fossicked among them for a moment. ‘Some are just the thing for adding a little zing to your bathwater.’ He straightened up and took us deeper into a series of round chambers, their layout and design mirroring the meeting chamber we had communed in before lunch.
‘Here is where we manufacture our oils.’ We stood under a domed roof of fitted stone blocks. Around us were vats, presses and racks of drying plants. The smell rolled over me, a cloying miasma of every perfume I had ever worn.
‘Where is the patchouli?’ Drakeforth turned around, scanning the room before marching off into the thick of it all.
‘This, I am afraid, is going to hurt you a lot more than it is going to hurt me.’ Hoptoad raised his arm. The object he had lifted from the shelf outside the room slid out of his loose sleeve. The hand that held it pointed, unmoving and perfectly level, at my chest.
Chapter 8
‘Is that a gun?’ I asked, not having seen a real one before.
‘Yes,’ Hoptoad replied. ‘Yes, I believe it is.’
‘Isn’t that illegal?’ I felt the moral high ground was my best defence at this time.
‘Defending ourselves against your kind of tyranny is no less legal than the application of the tyranny itself,’ Hoptoad said.
‘Pudding, they have enough patchouli oil back here to – oh …’ Drakeforth stepped back into the circle of lantern light and took stock of the situation.
Engines of Empathy (Drakeforth Series Book 1) Page 7