by Mervyn Wall
“But I don’t know anything about catching moles,” bleated Fursey.
“You could learn,” replied Maeve tartly as she turned once more to the fire. “At least it’s much more respectable than being a wizard.”
Fursey relapsed into abstraction, his spirits much affected by this sudden suggestion. He ate his pie in silence, for he could think of nothing profitable to say. Besides, he had learnt during the two months he had lived with Maeve that a woman fussed by her household duties is a different sort of creature altogether from the girl one remembered standing beside a lake with the wind blowing through her hair. But the silence in the room became at last so painful that when he had finished his beaker of ale he ventured to speak once more.
“I was talking to the charcoal burner yesterday,” he said, “and he told me that the world is going to end in the year 1000. It’s the talk of the town, he says.”
“It’ll probably last out our time,” snapped Maeve.
“It’s a very serious thing for humanity,” said Fursey, shaking his head.
Maeve did not deign to reply, but sweeping the pie dish from the table, began to scour it thoroughly. When she spoke again, she astonished Fursey by her sudden change of subject.
“I wish you wouldn’t sit round on the grass,” she said. “You’ll ruin your new pigskin trousers.”
It was Fursey’s turn to be silent, and he sat for a long time brooding on the sore change that had so suddenly befallen their relationship. He was aroused from his thoughts by a sudden commotion outside the cottage. All at once the door was kicked open and, as the startled Fursey rose to his feet, he beheld the man whom he had wronged, outlined in the doorway. Magnus appeared to be struggling to break from the restraining grip of the two other men, the Civil Service of Mercia and the Abbot Marcus.
“Is this the abode of the accursed sorcerer?” shouted Magnus. “Let me go. I am resolved to make a skeleton of him.”
At these alarming words, Fursey sprang across the kitchen as if to burst through the far wall and so make his escape; but, finding no exit that way, he fled into the corner and hid behind Maeve. Magnus continued to give tongue to the most gross and horrid epithets of abuse and insulting comparison, but made no real attempt to break from the feeble grip of the two elderly men and precipitate himself into the sorcerer’s cottage. He seemed to be struggling in the most furious and formidable manner, but in fact he deemed it wise to keep as great a distance as possible between himself and a man of such unwholesome fame as Fursey.
“Go in and restrain Fursey,” said the abbot to the Civil Service. “I fear me that if these two come to grips the combat will be terrific beyond all description and will doubtless result in their mutual destruction.”
The Civil Service did as he was bid, but when Fursey felt the persuasive hand laid on his arm, his confusion of mind was such that he fell on the floor. When Magnus beheld the sorcerer on his hands and knees he did not doubt but that an operation of a magical character was imminent, and he was with difficulty restrained by the abbot from taking to his heels. In this scene of indescribable confusion, Maeve seemed to be the only one to keep her head. She stepped lightly across to the door.
“You are welcome, gentlemen,” she said. “Won’t you come in and take a seat?”
Marcus inclined his head politely and, keeping a tight grip on Magnus’ arm, entered the kitchen. The soldier was put sitting on the edge of a chair, panting heavily. Fursey was helped to his feet and stood leaning against the far wall, from which he cast agonising glances across at the door. Fursey knew himself to be in evil case. He knew that one cannot carry off a bride from the foot of the altar, live with her for two months, and then on one’s next encounter with the outraged bridegroom expect him to behave with courtesy and reason. He knew Magnus to be a man of hard temper, and he was under the most painful apprehension as to the outcome of the affair. It seemed to him that he would be lucky if he escaped with no worse hurt than a couple of broken limbs.
“Yes,” said the abbot to the Civil Service of Mercia, “this is Fursey, the unfortunate man to whom the Devil manifested himself in Clonmacnoise, and who afterwards became unwillingly, he asserts, possessed of sorcerous powers. Those powers are fortunately of a very limited nature.”
As the Civil Service contemplated him with interest, it was borne in powerfully on Fursey that his one hope of safety lay in convincing his hearers that he was a man more formidable than they imagined. He passed his tongue over his dry lips and addressed himself to the abbot.
“My lord,” he quavered, “since we last had the pleasure of meeting I beg you to believe that I have become most learned in occult devices. I regret to say that my disposition has altered for the worse, and I am now a man prompt to violence. I am subject to sudden storms of rabid fury.”
The abbot stared at Fursey doubtfully, but the Civil Service moved back his chair hurriedly.
“It may be,” he said in an awestricken whisper, “that this man, to all appearances tame and tranquil, is in fact possessed of a wily, treacherous and fierce disposition.”
A ghastly smile spread over Fursey’s visage as he strove to assume a look of preposterous depravity. Magnus rose shakily to his feet.
“Let us go,” he whispered. “His countenance and complexion are scarcely of human aspect.”
Maeve laughed suddenly, and Fursey experienced a stifling feeling as he felt the tension in the room relax.
“What is this nonsense, Fursey?” said the abbot, bending forward. “Sit down, Magnus. Would you forego your bride?”
“I can ill endure his presence,” muttered the soldier. “He seems to me to be forming some atrocious design, he sits there so still.”
The abbot shook himself impatiently. He arose and taking Maeve gently by the arm, drew her into a chair.
“My dear lady,” he said, “why did you run away with this man?”
Maeve glanced up at him with surprise. There was such a winning kindness in the old man’s face that she suddenly knew that she could not tell him a lie. She flushed slightly and looked down at the floor.
“It all happened very quickly,” she answered in a low voice. “I thought he needed me. He seemed so helpless and without friends.”
The abbot nodded understandingly.
“You know,” he said gently, “your life with him here is not very respectable.”
Maeve flushed again. “I suppose not,” she admitted in scarcely audible tones.
“Not respectable at all,” repeated the abbot. “If people thought you went with him voluntarily, they’d be inclined to talk.”
Again Maeve looked up at the old man with surprise.
“Do they not know that I went voluntarily?” she asked.
“Oh, no. They believe he bewitched you by an insidious spell and carried you off against your will. Everyone has the greatest sympathy for you. If you return to Cashel, no one will think any worse of you.”
Maeve put her head down suddenly on the abbot’s shoulder and began to cry. He patted her arm soothingly.
“Respectability is a very precious thing. The good opinion of our neighbours is worth more than gold. This young man, Magnus, is willing to take you back.”
Maeve raised her head and looked with streaming eyes at Magnus, who nodded to her awkwardly.
“Do you think that Fursey still needs you?” whispered the abbot.
“No,” wept Maeve. “He can get everything he wants with that magic rope of his. And I don’t know that he even cares for my company. He spends half his evenings out drinking with a disreputable molecatcher.”
The abbot made a sign to Magnus, who arose and put his arm around the weeping girl.
“Take her to the boat,” said the abbot. “I will follow you.”
As they went through the doorway, Maeve threw one glance back. Through a film of tears she caught a glimpse of Fursey sitting dead still in the corner, his face ashen and his forehead damp with sweat. Then the door closed behind them.
&nb
sp; “Our journey to this land has not been altogether in vain,” said the abbot. “One wrong at least has been righted. Fursey, I have little to say to you. I demanded of the stiff-backed ruler of this territory that you should be surrendered and go back with me to Cashel, there to stand trial; but my reasonable request has been refused. The King seems to think that he can make use in warfare of such knowledge of the darker arts as you possess, though I did my best to persuade him that you possessed none worth talking about. I must now take my departure; but before I go I urge you once more to repent of your manifold crimes. Goodbye, Fursey.”
When the door closed behind the abbot, Fursey gave vent to a moan that accorded with his forlorn situation. The Civil Service of Mercia coughed importantly and addressed himself to the little figure huddled in the chair.
“With reference to what has just taken place,” he began, “I am instructed to inform you that the application for your extradition to the Kingdom of Cashel has been refused. I am to inform you further that you are forbidden to quit this territory under pain of His Majesty’s displeasure. You will hold yourself in readiness at all times to give service and to perform such duties as may be assigned to you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” replied Fursey. “My spirits are in too great disorder.”
The Civil Service regarded him disapprovingly. Then he relaxed and seated himself on a chair.
“If you will oblige me by removing that wild and vacant look from your face I shall endeavour to explain your position to you. His Majesty has saved you from the fate of most sorcerers, death on a funeral pyre, an end which is without comfort or honour. You will be grievously lacking in courtesy and gratitude if you fail to place at his service the experience which you have gained in the practice of the darker arts.”
“But I’m no good as a sorcerer,” wailed Fursey. “All I can do is produce food by pulling on a rope.”
“Is that all?” asked the Civil Service suspiciously. “I find it hard to believe you.”
“I can fly on a broomstick if it’s ready prepared and anointed for me. But I’ve no magical oils or ointments, and I don’t know how to make them.”
The Civil Service breathed severely through his nostrils as he rose to his feet.
“You would do well to make rapid progress in your studies,” he said coldly. “The King has little patience with charlatans. Last summer he employed a most well-spoken wizard with a satchelful of testimonials, but the wretched man failed lamentably to live up to our expectations. In the first battle in which he was employed, although he succeeded after much labour in inducing a shower of thunder-stones, they fell, not on the enemy, but on our own commissariat two miles in the rear. His ability to produce an enchanted fog when required cannot be called into question, but the poltroon was unable to control it, and it kept floating up and down the line of battle, impeding the vision of our slingsmen.”
“I suppose His Majesty was annoyed,” ventured Fursey.
“Annoyed! The fellow was nothing but a quack, and he got his deserts—a fate worse than death.”
Fursey swallowed. “I see,” he said.
The Civil Service paused at the door. “I’d brush up my magic if I were you. You know not the day nor the hour when the King may call upon you.”
Alone in the cottage, Fursey rested his arms on the table and buried his face in his arms. He sat for a long time thus; then he stirred and placed his right hand on his heart as if to support its intolerable weight. It felt like a heavy stone in his chest.
“For a week,” he said dully; “I was so idle that I had nothing better to do than try to explain to myself the nature of happiness. Now I know. Happiness is no more than the absence of unhappiness, and it is a sufficiently blessed state.”
As he sat alone hour after hour the realisation of his grievous loss waxed until it possessed his whole body. He squirmed as he thought of the woman he loved so dearly, and he beat his fist impotently on the table—hard, hopeless blows. Then he was still, and bitterness crept into his mind as a thin sliver of light creeps across the surface of a lake. He remembered what she had said, that she had only gone with him because he seemed helpless and without friends. It was pity that had stirred her, not love. For a moment he felt that he hated her, but something suddenly broke down inside him. The tears coursed down his cheeks and he knew that he could never hate her. But feeling the necessity to hate someone, his thoughts stretched out and encompassed Magnus—a strong, self-confident bully, he told himself. And he began to hate himself for his weakness. “I’m a born coward,” he reflected bitterly, “without the strength or the courage to put out my hand and take what the world has to offer, without even the resolution to hold what I already have.” But self-hatred is a whip from which we turn and twist until we escape, and Fursey began painfully to justify himself in his own eyes. After all, he had never in his life willingly done any wrong. He had been expelled from his monastery, released from his vows and flung into the unfriendly world because a horde of unwelcome demons had attached themselves to him. Through no fault of his own he had swallowed the sorcerous spirit and powers of a witch, and when he had made known his misfortune, the authorities, instead of striving to cure him by spiritual or surgical means, had coolly set preparations in train to burn him. And at last, when he had seemed to find happiness in another land with a dear, good woman, they had coaxed her away from him with talk of respectability and virtue.
“Damn respectability and virtue!” exclaimed Fursey, and suddenly took his resolution. “Henceforth I will serve Evil. I’ll become a most depraved character. I’ll turn really wicked.”
He sat for a moment, his troubles forgotten as he turned over in his mind this new idea. After all, his entire life had been spent in the pursuit of goodness, and where had it got him? Into a proper fix, with the probability of having to face at any moment “a fate worse than death.” He rose to his feet and swaggered across the room. He looked around the kitchen as if challenging opposition. Then he seized the pie dish and smashed it to pieces on the floor. He was rather startled at the crash it made and skipped hastily out of the way of the flying pieces. But he recovered himself quickly and kicked the broken shreds across the floor. Then he seized the ladle and flung it into the fire.
“I’ll show them,” he said. “I’m tired of being the football of destiny. I’ll earn for myself a terrible reputation as an evil-working fellow. I’ll behave in a preposterous manner so that people will say that my like for depravity has never been seen in the world before.”
He took up a chair and, opening the door with one hand, flung the chair out on to the grass outside. Then he came back and seated himself at the table so as to think out a plan of campaign.
“There are three things I must do,” he said. “I must recover Maeve. I must do Magnus an injury, and I must remove myself and Maeve to some place where we shall be secure. No, there’s a fourth thing, most pressing of all—I must remove myself with the utmost despatch from the dominions of this monarch before he starts asking me to do magical sleight-of-hand for him. The results of any such attempts on my part would certainly be deplorable.”
Fursey shuddered as he remembered the beady eye of the Civil Service as the words “a fate worse than death ” were enunciated. He spurred on his thoughts to think out a course of action, but despite the simmering inside his head, of which he was conscious, no plan presented itself. Then he remembered that he was a sorcerer and as such never entirely alone. He bent forward and whispered a name. “Albert!”
For a moment nothing happened. Then there was a thickening of the air beside the fireplace, and ever so slowly there appeared a creature like a large dog, covered all over with rusty black hair. It was tailless and had the paws of a bear. The creature was of an unnatural leanness and seemed in very poor condition. It fixed on Fursey a pair of smoky red eyes of unutterable melancholy.
“Is that you, Albert?”
The stranger opened his snout, and his voice came out in a
hoarse croak.
“Who the hell do you think it is? Haven’t you just summoned me?”
“Don’t be impertinent,” said Fursey.
“You called my name,” the creature insisted obstinately. “What did you expect to appear? A buck rabbit with a ribbon round its neck?”
“See here,” said Fursey severely. “You’ll have to learn to be more respectful. You’re my familiar, and a sorcerer’s familiar should treat his master with respect. It’s not sufficient that you should always be at hand to carry out my orders. I expect you to be courteous as well as nimble in my service.”
Albert’s smoky red eyes regarded Fursey mournfully, but he volunteered no reply.
“What have you been doing with yourself during the two months since I last saw you?” enquired Fursey. “You’ve allowed yourself to become very emaciated.”
The light of indignation flickered for a moment in Albert’s red eyes and then was suddenly drowned in a look of watery despair. Two large tears welled up and ran down each side of his snout.
“Oh, Albert,” said Fursey, bending sympathetically towards his familiar.
Albert took an uncertain step forward and laid his chin on Fursey’s knee. Great husky sobs came up from the depths of his shrunken chest and he slobbered all over Fursey’s new pigskin trousers.
“Accursed be the black day on which I first became attached to you as your familiar. I’m slowly starving to death.”
“But I thought,” said Fursey diffidently, “that spirits feed on quintessences and other matters of an ethereal nature.”
The look which Albert threw at him was so full of pathos that Fursey’s heart turned over within him.
“You know perfectly well,” said Albert heartbrokenly, “that a sorcerer must feed his familiar with his own blood. I explained it all to you when you first became a wizard. It’s your criminal neglect that has reduced me to my present lamentable state.”
For a little while Fursey sat brooding sadly while Albert slowly mastered his emotion. At last the familiar raised one of his bear’s paws and dried his eyes.