“Germany?”
“Yes, dancing on the summit, and fucking, too, because Midsummer’s Eve always pulls in a much bigger crowd than Beltane, Imbolc, or Walpurgis Night—”
“Walpurgis Night!” Catherine felt herself reeling. “You’re a witch!”
“Well, who in hell else would be up there jigging naked in the freezing snow? It feels like you’re wearing a goddamn ice-shroud on that goddamn peak from September to May.” Her eyes sparkled yellow as the low-slung moon and Catherine suddenly knew she was actually seeing the devil’s own hot-eyed mirth glimmering there.
“Get thee gone, demon!”
Margaret began to laugh; her shoulders and midriff shook and the laughter became a whoop. “Demon… ha ha… oh my,” she wiped a tear from her eye. “Demon. Oh that’s rich. No, Mistress Catherine, I’m not a demon. I’m merely a servant of the Lord—”
“The Dark Lord, the devil you mean—you blasphemer!” She crossed herself. “What’s the difference, anyhow? You’re a witch—it’s the same thing—”
“It isn’t. Let me show you.”
She saw Margaret wave her hands once, twice, thrice… and the stony throat of the cell seemed to disappear—but gradually—like mist rising off the Dee River then scattering as the sun rose higher on calm summer mornings.
Margaret led her to the street window. She made no movement that Catherine could discern, but the shutters crashed open against the outside stone walls. Catherine winced at the sharp clatter. The carved grate dissolved, and the translucent cloth that let in the light through the tracery vanished—wavering only for an instant before it became glass-clear.
Catherine’s vantage point looked down through thick fog to a plinth of square granite boulders. She appeared to be watching the capering fire-lit figures from perhaps twice the height of a man—as if, she thought, she were a guardian angel hovering above an earthbound charge.
But the leering red faces crowding the altar—if that’s what it was—were far from angelic. To her ears the sounds they made were growls and gibberish, but now and again, she heard the word “Brocken-spectre”—that eerie wavering human shadow projected through the mist against a light source. To the observer it seemed like an apparition. A ghost. A haunting. But it was a common, well-documented illusion and nothing more, she thought.
Then a low gasp went through the crowd, rippling from the rear of the group toward the altar. In the flickering red-orange light of the fire-glow, she saw the naked people suddenly bowing. Some threw themselves to the ground and covered their heads with their hands and arms.
She heard the ponderous thud of footfalls. And maybe—but, no, her imagination was deceiving her—the sound of weighty hooves striking solid rock.
*
Tambourines fluttered and tinkled. Mockery of the Sanctus bells rung upon the altar as the miracle takes place in the Holy Communion.
An impossibly huge creature with the face of a gargoyle stood wearing a black archbishop’s mitre that rose up high between two tall curving horns. Spread in front of him was a young woman, screaming at the sight of his clawed hand lifting to cast an airy pentagram over her white breasts. It was blasphemy… it was worse… it was the dream—her dream!—the one Margaret claimed confounded her! She’d brought out those unholy cards that opened a first portal… and now this sad, terrible travesty, Catherine thought.
The warlocks, the demon—each with his manhood bared, pawing and grunting over the terrified woman—the sacrifice.
And then, all of them began to caress one another; men and women turning to the nearest body, heedless of who or how. The demon thrust himself again and again into the spraddled girl, then suddenly emitted a long shouting howl.
The witches and warlocks stopped all movement at once. Their eyes, red with lust in the firelight, looked up, seeking his muddied citron gaze.
Then—although she saw no outward signal—as if their minds were inextricably linked, all of them turned as one, and baring teeth and nails, they crowded in and fell on the girl.
Soon—too soon—her shrieks bled into silence.
*
Her memories of that hideous Midsummer’s Eve were confused with other journeys through the air to the Brocken on Lammas and the Autumn Equinox that Margaret showed her. But Catherine could never be certain if she’d merely witnessed the sickening rituals or had participated. Now Margaret told her the Witches’ Year was coming to a close on Samhain—or All Hallows’ Eve, as Catherine had known it in what seemed another lifetime. Was another lifetime, she amended, as she sat—dazed and listless—on a crude three-legged wooden stool surrounded by the stone walls of the anchorhold.
Life certainly was—if nothing else—paradoxical, she thought. Six months or so earlier that year, she’d thought it was tremendously ironic that the rectangular bronze plaque that bore her husband’s name and had been fastened against the outside stone wall of the anchorhold wasn’t visible to the inhabitant when Margaret was the one confined to the filthy, malodorous cell.
Ironic indeed.
“My dear sister anchorites, love your windows as little as you can. For from sight comes all the misery that there now is and ever yet was and ever shall be...” So said the Ancrene Wisse, the handbook for anchorhold dwellers. And, it was more than true, more than ironic, Catherine thought. Through her little windows she’d seen Margaret having sex on the altar with the short, chubby bishop. It didn’t matter, Catherine supposed, that Margaret might’ve bewitched the poor cleric. What mattered was that afterward when Margaret appeared belly a-bulge (and who knew who—or what—fathered the growing child) the bishop, the archbishop—the whole congregation—believed it was Immaculate Conception. How else to explain the circumstances of a woman barred inside a cell who was pregnant? They were waiting to hear officially from Rome (from the Vatican! From the Holy Pontiff himself!) about whether the whoring witch and her bastard were a genuine miracle. In the meantime, Margaret was regarded as a saint. Saints, according to the clergy, had to be available at all times and completely to their devotees. So Margaret was whisked out of the anchorhold.
At the same time, Catherine had the stone circle dream almost every night. After the terrifying night rides to the Brocken on the Witches’ Sabbaths, the refuge the dream offered seemed not like mere escape or safety, but a slice of Heaven itself. It had nothing to do with Margaret’s wiles, Catherine told herself, because the stone circle dream belonged to her. She’d underestimated Margaret when her lady-in-waiting read the cards, but she never doubted it was her own idea to return—full circle—as it were to make amends for her crime. For her mortal sin. Penance needed to be made.
She had paid for the construction of the stone anchorhold and, she’d told the bishop, she wished to retreat to the cell to pray ceaselessly for the soul of her husband and all the faithful departed.
Now she moved from the wooden seat to the bed. She knelt to pray. She remembered thinking when they walled her in and she looked toward the street just before they fastened the shutters, this may be the last time I see the setting sun. The last time I watch wind trammel grass and redden human cheeks. The same gusty drafts once again billowed the clergymen’s cassocks, sent their embroidered silk stoles flying on the horizontal, and fanned the hair of the little blond girl who stood alongside her mother. The only difference was that it was autumn now…
And she was safe for a while.
Until the randy bishop began to visit her…wanting Catherine to supply what Margaret in her hugely pregnant state was no longer able—or willing—to give him.
Catherine didn’t care. She’d tried to out-maneuver the wily Margaret, but instead had been broken emotionally on the wheel. Betrayal paled compared to the gloom, the sense of utter helplessness she felt in the face of Margaret’s witchery.
And she might have been content. Locked in the anchorhold, forgotten by all from the moment the priests chanted the rite of the dead. But the bishop would not leave her alone. She begged them to brick in the doorway
and she had felt something like relief when she heard the thick, slapping sound of the mortar and the last stone was locked into place.
She no longer wished to see anything or anyone.
They can’t get in now, she’d thought. Mistakenly, as it turned out. She heaved a sigh. She was beyond tears… there was only a dull leaden feeling left inside her.
Was there something in that scold’s bridle, (the brank!), some unknown, unimagined alchemy or power that drew in the world of the occult?
She didn’t know.
She only knew that from the moment they intoned the De Profundis, she felt an inward trill—and she shuddered; it was then Catherine noticed the metal mask exactly resembled the Brocken-devil’s face. The long curving horns, the slit mouth filled with rows of tiny sharpened teeth—
She had taken it off, but it was too late.
Time and again Margaret and the bishop, too, had slipped like smoke into the anchorhold. Gasping, she’d watch the flute of smoke plume between the stones, expand like a pig’s bladder, then settle toward the floor. A second later, the sparkling smoke was gone and one or both of them stood in front of her. Sometimes, they came to jeer and taunt. Mostly, they appeared in order to bend her to their will. She was powerless and, whether her head was bent and her mouth full of the fat bishop’s manhood, or Margaret laughed while Catherine licked the stone floor, she was their puppet and they did what they wanted. Sheer deviltry, she thought.
Once she had wondered if the anchorites who stayed inside their cells even while the flaming rafters fell in on them, had lost the mental capacity to obey the instinct to survive. Now, she thought, it didn’t matter. She no longer cared. She was tired unto death of Margaret’s humiliations and her blasphemous witchery.
Death, Catherine thought, was sure to bring her respite—release.
She stood up from the rat’s nest of a bed and reached into the pocket of the tattered woolen smock she was wearing. Inside was the flint and steel.
She would be steel now.
She stuck them together over and over, and the sparks fell in a glittering shower onto the dried twigs… a little flame…. and then the smoke.
She lay down on the floor at the other end of the cell.
This was smoke she could welcome.
These were flames that would sing her brightly—and inexorably—to her final rest.
11
the wheel of fortune
jeff depew
Upright: Destiny, fortune, luck, felicity
reversed: Increase, abundance, superfluity
October, 1944
It was all happening so fast, Captain Heinrich Gruber thought, gazing out at the Greek countryside rolling past. Too fast. Just yesterday,he had been sitting in his familiar office (his familiar comfortable office) in the German Headquarters in Athens, checking over ration reports. Now, here he was, in a four seat kubelwagen, leading a troop transport over a narrow bumpy road towards a village he had never even heard of.
He leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “How much farther?”
The driver’s eyes never left the road. “It should be just over this ridge, Herr Captain.”
It was a nondescript village near the western coast of Greece. In an area called Foloi, known for its woods and oak forest, apparently. This was in the documents that had been hand-delivered yesterday, along with orders to leave at 0600 that morning.
This was all new to Gruber. He was a bureaucrat, not used to the outdoors. He already missed his office with its richly panelled walls and large desk. That’s where he should be right now, drinking a hot mug of kaffee while he began his daily paperwork. He was not a field commander. But he wasn’t going to say anything. Orders were orders, especially these days. Since the Allied invasion in France last June, tensions had risen. He had seen the stress in the faces of many of the officers he worked with, and to be honest, on more than one night he had awakened in his villa, heart pounding, to the sound of planes flying overhead. Is this it? He would ask himself, waiting in the darkness for the inevitable explosions and sirens and shouting. The end is near was the prevailing unspoken feeling. Between the Allies and the verflucht Russian army, it seemed to be only a matter of time. Of course, if you believed Goebbels’ propaganda, the German Army would emerge victorious by the end of the year.
And every so often, one of his superiors would not show up for work. No messages, no notes. The rumor was that most were headed for Argentina.
Gruber lifted his briefcase from the seat beside him and opened it, pulling out a thick file folder. The phrase streng geheim was stamped across it in larger red letters. Gruber had never even seen a top secret folder, let alone been given one. And this one... it seemed like madness. He opened the folder and looked through his orders again. Impossible. The Fuhrer must be getting desperate. He shook his head. I know he’s been searching for sacred and holy relics... but this is too much. But if there was even a chance of finding... No. It was impossible. He leaned forward again, turning to Krause, the sergeant he had just met this morning.
“What do you know of these orders? This mission?”
Krause turned around from the passenger seat beside the driver. He was older than Gruber, his face lined and serious.
“I was ordered to give you the file and accompany you to the village. The men and I are to follow your orders for the duration, sir.”
Gruber gazed at him a moment. “The duration? Of what?”
Krause remained silent.
Gruber tried another tactic. “Do you know why we’re here?”
“No, sir. I only know we need to find a local to guide us to our destination as soon as possible.”
Gruber nodded and sat back. “Our destination,” he repeated under his breath. He read over the file again. Unfolded a map. Maybe he had missed something. It just didn’t make sense. He took out a pack of photographs. There were several grainy images of ancient documents containing lines of Greek letters and symbols. Gruber gazed at them for a moment before he put it all away and closed his briefcase. He glanced up as the vehicle slowed and stopped.
“We’re here, sir.”
The village of Kavos was smaller than Gruber could have imagined. The main thoroughfare was dirt, now mud, and the vehicles had to stop twice because of goats wandering through the streets. Narrow stone buildings, mostly two story, lined the streets on either side. People filtered out of doorways and stared as the motor cars entered their village. Old women wearing black shawls and men with heavy moustaches gazed with curiosity and, in a few cases, open hostility at the Germans. A young boy shouted something at the vehicles and ran away, laughing, followed by a barking dog.
“Orders, sir?”
Gruber started. He looked around. Krause was standing at attention. He had opened Gruber’s door. The other soldiers were climbing out of the back of the truck. They spread out around the transport, their eyes watching for trouble. These were hardened men, Gruber thought. Veterans. He glanced at their field grey uniforms. All of them SS. And he was supposed to lead them? Him? I don’t belong here Gruber thought again as he turned to face the men. He looked up as rain began to fall. I should be back in my office.
Gruber sighed. “Let’s get inside.”
*
Twenty minutes later, he sat at a rough wooden table in what served as both the city hall and the mayor’s home. The mayor, a thin, tired-looking old man with a white stubble on his chin and bushy eyebrows, stared insolently from across the table. Several other villagers stood behind him, their dark eyes full of fear. Gruber played with the small cup of bitter coffee they had offered him. He rotated it slowly around in his hands.
Private Kohler, a slight, short bespectacled private, was serving as interpreter. He stood on Gruber’s left. Krause and a half dozen soldiers were standing silently around the room. Two more were standing guard outside.
“Mayor Stavros bids you welcome and requests that you make yourself at home. He has offered his own house to you, Captai
n Gruber.”
“Yes, thank him. Tell him I apologize for not speaking for myself. I can read a little Greek, but cannot speak it very well, I am afraid.”
Kohler nodded and translated.
“Hey, Kohler, ask him if he has any daughters to offer us.” A burst of rough laughter.
Gruber spun around. The speaker was Werner, a tall, stocky ruddy-faced private. His eyes met Gruber’s, he grinned, and muttered something to the man next to him. Before Gruber could respond, Krause rose and stomped over to Werner, grabbed him by a lapel, and led him outside. Gruber turned back to Mayor Stavros.
“Tell him I apologize for... uh my men. I mean no disrespect and want to be as little bother as possible to the mayor and his people. We will not stay very long. We just need some information. And a guide who knows the area around the village. We are looking for a temple.”
Kohler translated this and Gruber watched Stavros’s expression carefully. The man’s lined face paled, and he shook his head and rattled off something in Greek. The men behind him began speaking quietly to themselves. One turned and removed his hat, nodded at Gruber, and quickly left the room.
Gruber turned to Kohler.
“What? What did he say?”
Kohler took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He replaced his glasses.
“He says that there no guides here. He says there is nothing to see. They have nothing we want. We are free to search the entire village. But he also said—” He paused, looking carefully across the table at the mayor.
“He said we are in danger if we leave the village to seek the temple.”
Gruber’s heart leapt into his throat. This was exactly what he didn’t want. He was not a warrior, not a tactician. He was a scholar who, because of the war, had become a minor bureaucrat. He took a deep breath and looked around the room. The soldiers behind him were all paying attention now, eyes firmly on the Greeks.
Never Fear - The Tarot: Do You Really Want To Know? Page 23