by Mervyn Wall
The shrill droning of the Civil Service ceased, and Ethelwulf awoke from his day-dreaming. He turned his eyes to where the Civil Service was bowing and smiling blandly so as to secure his attention. When the little man saw that Ethelwulf was listening, he puffed out his chest importantly, unrolled a scroll of parchment, and announced in ringing tones: “Request from Cormac Silkenbeard, King of Cashel, for the extradition of the unspeakable sorcerer, Fursey, recently fled to Mercia in Britain.”
“Where’s Cashel? ” asked the King suddenly.
“I have searched my encyclopaedias,” replied the Civil Service, “and discovered that it’s a small kingdom in Ireland.”
“Where’s Ireland?” enquired the King.
“It’s an island lying far distant in the Western Sea.”
“I’ve heard of it,” said Ethelwulf grimly. “A land of abhorred pirates, who constantly raid these coasts for the purpose of carrying off honest men into slavery.”
The Irish delegation stirred uneasily. The Civil Service, well aware that the King was as likely as not to order the immediate removal and hanging of the delegation, proceeded hurriedly:
“Cashel is an inland kingdom many miles distant from the seas. The delegation is a most respectable one. Step forward, gentlemen, and state your name and condition.”
Two men moved forward to the foot of the throne. The elder was an ecclesiastic, whose dress proclaimed him a man of some rank. Although he was advanced in years, he held himself upright and moved with simple dignity. His face was the face of a student; there were tiny lines about his eyes, the legacy of long hours spent by taperlight poring over illuminated manuscript and obscure scroll. Ethelwulf noted the gentle dignity of the face and the noble carriage of the head. When the King spoke again, his voice was subdued.
“You are welcome,” he said. “You may speak without fear.”
The ecclesiastic bowed slightly. “My lord king,” he began, “there is in the island of Ireland a great river which we call the Shannon. Beside that river, in a lonely countryside of marsh and low green hills, a place remote from men, there is a famous monastery called Clonmacnoise, where for more than four hundred years simple men have sought to serve their God in quiet, far from the strife of mankind. My name is Marcus: I am the abbot of that monastery.”
There was a hush throughout the hall. There seemed to flow from the silver-haired abbot a winning grace, which affected every one of the savage warriors present. They, to whom gentleness was weakness and old age a joke, looked across at the stranger, their fierce countenances strangely softened as they watched the changing light and shade in his face.
“My companion,” continued the abbot, “is Magnus, an honest soldier. We have come to your court, my lord king, he to request the return of his bride lately carried off by a deplorable sorcerer named Fursey; and I to request the surrender of the sorcerer’s person so that he may pay the penalty of the law for his crimes and for his misfortunes.”
Ethelwulf glanced from the abbot to the brawny young soldier who accompanied him. Then he sat back in his great chair.
“Relate your story,” he commanded.
“What I shall relate,” began the abbot, “is a strange and marvellous tale. Scarcely three months ago the terrible Emperor of Night, Satan himself, grown rabid with hatred of our holy settlement, launched a determined and sustained attack upon the monastery. To forward his unhallowed purposes he drew on all the dread forces which surround mankind. The assault began with certain curious and unaccountable happenings. By daylight showers of fish fell from the heavens like hail. At night the bedclothes were suddenly switched away from the beds in which my monks were peacefully slumbering. The monastery echoed to the baying of giant hounds, a sound all the more dismal in that it appeared to proceed from some invisible source. As these happenings are out of the course of Nature, we began before long to suspect that there was devilry afoot. It was not, as you may imagine, that the monastery is situated in a particularly sorcerous neighbourhood. On the contrary, a clear, cool air of unmistakable sanctity pervades the entire territory. We gave ourselves to fasting and prayer, but the Evil One in his struggle for empire redoubled his efforts. In every corner of the monastery pestiferous demons could be heard snorting and snuffling most hideously. There were no bounds to their detestable behaviour. An unspeakable company of female devils of the most luscious character imaginable strove sedulously to tempt my hard-praying brethren to improper thoughts. When this damnable behaviour proved ineffective, we were plagued with demons of hideous aspect in the form of loathsome worms and hydras. Ounces and pards came sloping down the corridors and used my unfortunate brethren most foully. For three long weeks Satan haunted the settlement, contriving all manner of wickedness, until at last by prayer and exorcism we drove him and his evil-working minions forth.”
As the abbot paused to wipe from his forehead the small beads of perspiration which had broken out at the recollection of these terrible happenings, his fascinated audience stirred and breathed again. The abbot’s voice dropped as he turned once more to face the King.
“I have said that we succeeded in ridding the monastery of these unwelcome visitants. That is not altogether true. In one cell they remained. There was in Clonmacnoise at that time a laybrother named Fursey, a man of sparse intelligence, though nimble and courteous in the performance of his duties. It’s my belief that he was a good man, but definitely thin-minded. This unfortunate fellow had an impediment in his speech; and being so circumstanced, was unable through sheer fright to pronounce the necessary words of exorcism, so that in Fursey’s cell the demons knew themselves to be safe. There was only one practical solution: we expelled Fursey from the monastery. He went; and their bridgehead gone, the demons went with him.”
Once more the abbot paused, whether to weigh his own responsibility in the matter or to conquer his emotion, his hearers could not say. When he took up the thread of his story again, he spoke so low that only those near at hand could hear him.
“He was an unfortunate man, this Fursey. After he had left the monastery, he permitted himself through stupidity to be married to a witch, an aged, spent and decrepit hag; and, through a deplorable lack of attention to what was happening around him, he inadvertently inhaled her sorcerous spirit as she lay dying, and so became unwillingly a sorcerer himself. That is the story which Fursey tells, and I believe it. Others, including my companion Magnus, deny its truth and assert that Fursey has been a complicated villain from the very beginning.”
Magnus the soldier spoke for the first time. His words came out in a low growl.
“I don’t believe that tale. Fursey is nothing but a malevolent wizard of the lower sort. Didn’t he carry off my bride on the very day of her marriage? The whole countryside saw the two of them ambling and capering through the air on a broomstick as they flew eastwards to this country.”
Ethelwulf stirred so as to obtain a less uncomfortable position on his carbuncle-studded throne before addressing himself to the abbot.
“I don’t quite understand the character of this man Fursey,” he said. “From what you assert he appears to be some sort of doting monk, yet he has enraptured at least two women in as many weeks. Is he then a man of such resistless charm that no woman can look on him and preserve her virtue?”
“On the contrary,” answered the abbot gloomily, “he’s a man whose brain is naturally moist. I have said already that he’s thin-minded. Nor can it be truthfully claimed that he’s a model of manly beauty. He’s about forty years of age, small and plump. His hair is snow-white, and his visage is one of exceptional foolishness.”
“How then,” queried the King, “do you account for the fact that in the course of several weeks he won for himself a wife, albeit she was a witch; and succeeded in so enchanting the bride of this well set-up young man that she fled hither with him from your interesting country?”
“His wife,” replied the abbot, “was nigh on eighty years when she married him, and was very nearly blind. H
ow he persuaded the maiden Maeve to flee with him, passes my comprehension.”
“He beguiled her with his extravagant wizardings,” growled Magnus.
“Do you know aught of this remarkable man Fursey?” enquired Ethelwulf, turning to his Civil Service.
“Yes,” answered the Civil Service importantly. “I have had diligent enquiry made. He runs a small grocery business at the edge of the wood just beyond the town. I detailed two graduates from our College of Spies to watch him over the fence for the past couple of weeks. He seems to be plentifully supplied with foodstuffs, though where he procures them nobody can say. He does little business, due, I am informed, to the science of economics, which is defined as the relating of supply to demand; but he has every appearance of prosperity. He is always prepared to undercut our own traders by producing, seemingly from nowhere, vast quantities of food and drink, which he readily exchanges for articles of lesser worth. Last week he deprived a passing charcoal burner of a pair of pigskin trousers, giving as payment countless hogsheads of wine.”
“These things I can explain,” interrupted the Abbot Marcus. “Fursey, although he possesses the powers and capabilities of a sorcerer, has only learnt how to practise two forms of sorcery. He is able to fly on a broom, and he can produce an infinite quantity of food and drink by the simple operation of throwing a rope over the branch of a tree and pulling on it. In all other forms of wizardry he is quite helpless. These things he has confessed to me himself.”
“Does he present in his manners or conversation any symptoms of frenzy?” enquired the King.
“No,” replied the Civil Service. “I’ve seen and spoken to him myself. He is friendly, anxious to please, and of a somewhat scattered intelligence.”
“Remarkable,” said the King.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” concurred the Civil Service.
“Have you aught more to add?” asked Ethelwulf, turning once more to the abbot.
“I have, my lord,” answered Marcus. “As long as Fursey continues to live, my people in Cashel will shake and sweat with fear. We are civilised men, and we live according to the rule of law. It’s a well-known fact that to cure a man of being a wizard is beyond the competence of the most skilful leech or surgeon. Only by the cleansing action of fire can a cure be effected. Fursey surrendered himself to the authorities of the Kingdom of Cashel, and made a full confession of his affliction, asserting that he had become a sorcerer by accident; but no sooner did we inform him of our charitable intention of securing the safety of his immortal soul by burning him on a pyre, than he began to behave in a manner altogether at variance with his known character for gentleness and humility. He immediately proceeded astride a broom to the roof of the Bishop’s Palace and set flame to the thatch with such thoroughness as to gut completely that valuable and desirable residence. Not content with having wrought this great mischief and evil, he swooped on a neighbouring church, interrupted a marriage ceremony, disabled the bridegroom by a sudden kick in the stomach, and carried off the bride to the great distress of her friends and relations.”
“Maybe,” said the King mildly, “he was not unnaturally incensed at your high-handed proceeding in deciding to burn him without consulting his convenience in the matter.”
“But, my lord king,” remonstrated the abbot. “It is the law. We are a civilised people living according to the rule of law. Surely in your enlightened kingdom you also put sorcerers to death by fire?”
“Not always,” said Ethelwulf absently. “Sometimes they have their uses.”
“Uses, my lord?”
“In warfare,” answered Ethelwulf. “Let us suppose a king were contemplating warfare, a wizard might be useful in raising an enchanted fog on the battlefield. Even the sight of a sorcerer muttering spells powerfully affects the morale of the opposing forces.”
“I have no more to say,” replied the abbot shortly. “I demand the extradition of the sorcerer Fursey, that he may return with me for condign punishment in his own country.”
There was a silence in the great hall. Ethelwulf sat back slowly in his chair and contemplated the abbot.
“No doubt your suggestion is,” he said sweetly, “that I should send twelve of my hatchet-men to apprehend him.”
“Something of the sort,” replied the abbot, “but permit me to add that my studies have taught me that in order that wizards may be bereft of their execrable powers, it is necessary to remove them from contact with the earth. Therefore, when Fursey is arrested, he should be carried away in a basket or on a plank.”
The King sat suddenly upright.
“Presumptuous cleric!” he thundered. “Do you realise that you have used the word ‘demand’ to me, Ethelwulf the Unconquerable? Your request is refused. Fursey remains in my dominions. Show the gentleman out.”
The abbot seemed about to remonstrate, but four of the royal hatchet-men moved in upon him and conducted him to the door. Ethelwulf watched, and the thundercloud slowly drifted from his brow. When he turned his head again he saw that the soldier Magnus was on his knees before the throne.
“My lord king,” pleaded the soldier, “do what you will with the unspeakable Fursey, but give me permission to take my bride back with me to my own country.”
Ethelwulf looked at Magnus. He noted with approval the great hands and muscles, the broad shoulders and the bullock-like simplicity of countenance of the born soldier, the sort of man he understood and with whom he felt at home.
“Marriage is a folly,” he said sympathetically, “but it’s a respectable one. Take the woman if she is willing to go with you, but do the sorcerer no violence.”
Beyond the town, but not quite as far as the fringes of the forest, a small, plump man sat under a tree pondering the problem of human happiness. He was a tubby man with a fresh-complexioned face, round and moonlike, crowned with a wealth of prematurely white hair. Nearby was a snug cottage with walls of cunningly interwoven rods and twigs carefully plastered over with clay. A trickle of smoke drifted meditatively from a hole in the thatched roof. The track from the town passed the door and wound away into the forest, already aglow with the mellow loveliness of autumn. Some hundred paces from where Fursey sat were the cliffs, which fell sheer into the untranquil sea.
For some moments the little man sat listening to the seas fussing among the rocks, then his thoughts came back again to the problem that was exercising him. “I have a neat house,” he said to himself, “the best of food and drink, and a pleasant woman on whom I am sore assotted. And yet I am not conscious of being actively happy.” He sighed, and his eyes strayed across to the long line of cliffs against which the sea was tossing its white breakers, and thence to the winding track and the chequered countryside, coming to rest finally on the stretch of nearby trees, the outposts of the forest. He noted appreciatively the autumn colouring, green, amber and gold. “Nature is beautiful,” he said to himself. “If any man should be happy it is I, who possess all that I can possibly desire—and yet I am not conscious of happiness. I am only conscious of sitting under a tree thinking about these things.”
He shook his head gloomily and began to think about his friend the molecatcher. It had been a beautiful friendship. Twice a week he had walked over to the molecatcher’s hut to sit at the molecatcher’s feet and listen to him talking philosophy. But on the previous Wednesday when he had gone over to put to his friend the problem of human happiness, he had been surprised to find the molecatcher hanging from the crossbeam over his own front door. Fursey, knowing that it was unlucky to meddle in matters which did not concern him, had crept away without a word. But for the past few days a certain depression had weighed upon his spirit. He had begun to worry not only about human happiness, but about the uncertainty of continued existence. His thoughts were interrupted by a clear, pleasant voice from the cottage:
“Fursey! Supper’s ready.”
Fursey rose obediently and ambled across the grass to the little wickerwork hut. He ducked his head in the low doorway and ente
red the cottage. Inside there was a woman bending over the fire, her face somewhat flushed from the heat. She straightened herself and glanced around as he entered. She was about thirty-two years of age, fresh and gracious in appearance.
“What’s for supper?” enquired Fursey pleasantly.
“I have made you a pie of escallops,” she replied, pointing with the ladle to the place where he was to sit at the table. Fursey rubbed his little, plump hands contentedly.
“A beaker of ale is needed to make smooth its passage to the stomach,” he remarked, and going to the corner he gave a sharp chuck to a rope which hung from the rafters. Immediately a beaker of ale appeared from nowhere, slid down the rope, was caught deftly by Fursey and conveyed to the table. Maeve threw a glance at him over her shoulder, a slight frown upon her face.
“I hate to see you engaging in sorcery,” she said.
“Why?” asked Fursey blithely. “Isn’t it the foundation of our fortunes? Anyway, producing food is practically the only sorcery I know. I know nought of conjurations or any kind of complicated wizardings.”
“Sorcery of any sort doesn’t seem to me to be very respectable,” retorted Maeve.
“But we’ll starve unless I produce food and drink.”
“You could get a job.”
“A job!” ejaculated Fursey, his mind becoming immediately engloomed.
“Yes,” continued Maeve determinedly. “Now that the molecatcher is dead, I’m sure you could get his job if you asked for it.”