A Dangerous Energy

by John Whitbourn

  Narcotic drugs first appeared in Christendom soon after the great Wars of Religion when overseas exploration was resumed. From Venice, Rotterdam, London, Marseilles and even Rome, they came via trade routes of quite unbelievable tortuousness. Their arrival was hotly followed by a growing battery of Holy dicta outlining quite horrendous punishments to be visited on both the body and eternal soul of those possessing or using such infernal substances. Of course they continued to be available, sometimes in abundance, at other times only in a trickle, and for a person of daring, with suitable contacts, presented an obvious area of exploration with a view to a large and quick profit.

  Phillip and Tobias admirably fitted the criteria and between them were on the way to becoming moderately prosperous. The first main problem was that of supply, but in some unguessable way which Tobias forbore to investigate, Phillip overcame this. The second barrier was safe distribution and this was where Tobias came in. As an officer of the Church Universal he was nominally above suspicion of wrongdoing and moreover came into frequent contact with people able to support this expensive habit. Setting up a network of buyers had been difficult, not to mention dangerous, but Tobias had not been so crass as to reduce the exchange to a mere merchant-and-customer transaction. In various ways he had seen that susceptible characters had been exposed to the powder as an experiment, free of charge, without himself being visibly involved at all. Thereafter it was relatively easy for him to ‘discover’ this indulgence via the sacrament of confession, or personal conversation, whereupon he could offer, albeit reluctantly, to support the continuance of the practice so as to preserve the user’s ‘mental stability’. For this he received only his ‘expenses’ and thus grew rich on a show of Christian charity. A small but significant number of Rugby notables were now in a narcotic servitude that was maintained by an obliging and sympathetic priest. Each, of course, thought themselves the only such person in the area.

  Tobias bought rare and arcane volumes and stockpiled the rest of his earnings in preparation for the next stage in his advancement, while Phillip purchased women, wine and flamboyant clothes.

  Things were going well for them both.

  And so the next evening Tobias made some excuse to visit Haraldsson in the castle, afterwards calling in to see Chitty in his rooms in the inner courtyard and shortly left again after a decent interval with a parcel neatly concealed beneath his heavy greatcoat. He made his way under the intermittent light of the gaslamps to where, with trembling hands and desperate anticipation, one of his penitents was awaiting his arrival.

  CHAPTER 3

  In which a summary of our hero’s missing years is provided, together with a description of how he fails to renew an old friendship.

  All in all Tobias had found the last three years both rewarding and instructive. He felt he had learnt, developed and advanced. Southwark, instead of the massive hurdle he had felt it to be at the time, was a dimming remembrance of necessary but elementary groundwork. The few contacts he had made there took little time to dissipate; occasionally when he was feeling vaguely nostalgic he would write to the Bergmans outlining his progress; from time to time he received a rambling homily in return, but the memories were fading fast and this habit would soon cease. He never heard from any of his fellow journeymen again, nor ever felt any impulse to initiate contact himself. Like a painter, he had learnt from an experimental painting and then wiped the canvas clean for more accomplished re-use. His Rugby canvas was now quite full. He had had to set magical studies to one side for a while so that he might fully learn the intricacies of Church Universal practice and when this dogma, ceremony and mode of life had been fully assimilated he had had to work doubly hard on his ‘talent’ to ensure he had not fallen behind. His success in this period was confirmed by several examinations conducted externally by the See of Canterbury, but his masters allowed him no respite. The Church had carefully moulded a suitable tool and now had work for it to do. He took services and confessions, taught, gave advice on matters magical and so on, and was generally glad of his bed at the end of the day. He had made several long journeys on his Bishop’s service, accompanying parties to Church gatherings at Nottingham, Chichester and even London (where, being in a misanthropic and abstracted mood, he had hidden himself away and visited none of his old haunts or companions). He had met other Church magicians (they were comparatively few and always conspicuous) on these odysseys, and so bit by bit his name and face were becoming known in their tightknit and incestuous little world. Indeed, in the field of demonology he was considered (in some circles) to be a promising researcher. Among the eccentric and bizarre family of magicians, he passed as a normal, amiable chap.

  One lingering cloud was removed from Tobias’ mind when he attended a High Mass in London (held to celebrate a great naval victory over the Mamelukes) at which Sir Matthew Elias was present. Part chance and part the dictates of etiquette threw them together after the service and Sir Matthew looked straight through Tobias and walked on without a word. The young magician took this to mean that while Elias still considered his actions reprehensible he was prepared to hold his peace so long as no further bad reports reached his ears. Once he realised this, Tobias breathed a mental sigh of relief; his immediate future was not threatened and one day he would rise above Elias both in ability and position – at which point, if necessary, Sir Matthew and his secret could be silenced for ever.

  In fact, as so often in the field of personal relations, Tobias was quite wrong. The truth was that Sir Matthew Elias had failed to recognise his one-time pupil, having completely forgotten him some two years or more back. Elias’ life was sufficiently full of morbid humours and memories to allow such a comparatively minor misdemeanour to fade away unnoticed.

  Other than this, Oakley’s life was topped up with the usual continuing commitments of existence: a small number of women discreetly passed through his clutches; he studied for his remaining priestly examinations; he drank, made friends and as easily dispensed with or lost them … and so on.

  All about him unseen interests, pressures and eyes enveloped this exceptional yet ordinary, this kindly but amoral, young man. ‘What do you make of Curate Oakley, Father?’ enquired the Bishop of the Dean Temporal.

  ‘A pit beyond the Church’s fathoming,’ he replied, for he was in a poetic cast of mind that day, ‘ … but reliably useful.’ His practicality had reasserted itself.

  ‘A most promising young priest,’ replied the Dean Spiritual on a separate occasion for, paradoxically enough, he really only ever saw the superficialities of life.

  And if the Bishop had chosen to ask others?

  Phillip Chitty: A man after my own heart – dangerous and wouldn’t trust him an inch.

  Diane French: So kind and strong and yet shy and gentle; he’s deeply in love of course.

  Harald Haraldsson: A good honest man – for a priest.

  Mrs Coley: A gent.

  Phillip Keen (aged six): A good bad man.

  As many opinions as people.

  In the summer of 1981 while a member of the Rugby diocesan contingent at a conference in Chichester, Tobias had grown bored with the apartment in the Cathedral annexe allotted to him, and similarly bored and puzzled by the magical texts he had brought with him as reading material. It was early evening and quite light. He leaned back in his chair and considered alternative entertainments – for instance smoking a pipe of tobacco or even one of opium (a recent but very occasional habit acquired from Chitty) – but his mood was suited to neither. Being away from home territories precluded any serious drinking or whoring, and so he was left to his own resources. The earnest business of the conference was infinitely above his status and any intrusion on his part would have been considered an impertinence. This was a closed gathering for Bishops and Archbishops alone.

  Diane would appreciate a letter but at this distance she seemed insubstantial, a matter of mere hearsay and fallible memory. Nevertheless the thought of Diane, her uses and inherent possibilities, di
d nothing to settle his mind. In time the boredom became Chichester itself and dispelling the one meant physically getting out of the other. So, he snatched his saddlebag and cape and went downstairs to the stables for the horse he had been allocated for the trip.

  Once he had cantered past the city gates and the sentry had saluted him out, Tobias felt renewed and curious again. On pure impulse he set out for the coast.

  In times to come this evening would always occur to his memory as a series of small vignettes rather than a continuous narrative. For instance:

  Himself: scattering a flock of sheep – riding to the very head of Selsey Bill and surveying the bland sea below, no one else in sight.

  Himself: hammering his horse at full gallop through the one street of a dirty, impoverished little lobster hamlet called Selsey in order to frighten the peasants.

  Himself: in solitude again, at Pagham dismounting, tethering his steed and then firing twenty or thirty shots at a tree with the pistol he had taken when he left Southwark. He liked such target practice, and thus amused himself whenever a suitably unobserved occasion presented itself. In so doing he had improved leaps and bounds but would never be more than a slightly below average shot.

  Finally when it was almost dark he drew near Church Norton where he had heard there was an interesting chapel of considerable antiquity with an attached monastery. He thought he would have a glance at both, mumble a few prayers for form’s sake and then ride home fast to exhaust himself. There were no habitations nearby, and so the monastery was easy enough to locate, many of its oil and rush lights already blazing. The building in question adjoined the chapel at the top of a low hill which rose out of a stunted copse. From high on his horse Tobias could see a party of monks laden with bales of faggots, their day’s labour, toiling up the wide path.

  He sat awhile and gazed: content, young, predatory and at the height of his wellbeing; well dressed and equipped. A compact unit of strong energy: physical man, magical man and strong horse. A neat force to be directed at his merest whim.

  At length he moved and, the chapel being his objective, he proceeded along the path into the copse – slowing down as he caught up and was about to pass the work party, mostly humble dog’s-body novices he noted, led by an older monk who, dutifully enough, was bowed down under a load as heavy as that of any of his charges. Tobias pulled up at his side to give a civil greeting to this fair-minded brother as befitted the due of youth to venerable age.

  Then he recognised the man as Father Guido Mori.

  Tobias had been informed by Mori himself that he was to take monastic vows and had thought little more of it, presuming that he meant an abbacy or the like, at least.

  This Mori was aged, weary and hollow within. He bore no sign that under the humble brother’s cowl was a first-rate Church-trained magician. From being Tobias’ recruiter, he had descended and become an old man under a pile of sticks.

  And now Tobias loomed above him, majestic and sleek, armed and rewarded, clad in finery and held in esteem – high on a horse looking down at a good old man.

  Mori squinted up through the gloom at the stranger.

  But Tobias was off at charge speed, splattering the party with flying dirt and gravel as he went.

  This pace was scarcely relaxed until he reached home and the horse was played out. He sent out the stable boy for a bottle of whisky and retired to his apartment where he drank half of it. Bed would be like the tomb, so instead he dozed fitfully in the wicker chair by the window. For once he set no guarding spells around himself prior to sleep.

  His behaviour was inexplicable even to himself, but Tobias felt a nothingness more profound than that which had seized him the evening he had killed Hugh of Derby.

  The movements which had put spur to his horse were but the very last twitchings of a corpse. It would not rise again and the grave was now sealed.

  In later years he always dated to that evening the final closing-down of a large section of his soul.

  Tobias, twenty-one, asleep with a half-empty bottle of whisky, before an open window.

  CHAPTER 4

  In which our hero dines out and is benevolent to his fellow men.

  It was a universal phenomenon among the more enlightened hosts of Rugby that wherever Curate Oakley was invited young Miss French was coincidentally, and separately, invited. It was in this way that the two young lovers were seated together at dinner one December evening in 1982.

  In the Mediterranean, renegade Christian and Mohammedan pirates had harried the coastline of the papal states and destroyed some superlative villas – the creative apex of joint European artistic endeavour – but most of the galleys had been intercepted by Neapolitan ships on the way out and sunk with ruthless thoroughness.

  In Poland the Governor of the Holy Roman Emperor was ordering out the vast noble retinues of armoured cavalry to combat a joint Magyar and Tartar incursion.

  Outside the towns, apostate bands roamed the night competing with non-human predators. And yet trains steamed constantly across the European network. Whilst on the main roads (maintained in good order by Church labour-gangs of criminals, bankrupts, heretics and pagans brought from ‘Crusades’), night scarcely abated the blood-like movement of goods, raw materials and people. Slowly but surely, the restrained, distrusted energies of industry were forcing the pace of life and change.

  A darkly rich, richly dark tapestry. Yet in safe, civilised Rugby sat the priest and his mistress at the home of a prosperous haulage magnate lately grown secure and respectable on railway holdings. But all the share certificates in the world could not smooth the rough corners left on him by the initial scramble for the capital to buy those shares. The first ten thousand pounds was always the toughest. Tobias was the confessor of this man, Samuel Wiltshire by name, and he was often invited to dine with the family and their circle. Tobias felt any influential friend was an asset; Diane was flattered simply to be present; Wiltshire felt some of the Church’s boundless gloss would rub off on to his reputation. And so every party had something to gain by these evenings.

  Samuel had a big, new house, richly and recently decorated, in a part of the town where residences were still decently spaced apart and patches of green were visible between them. In fact the only thing that house, household and householder needed for acceptance was a patina of age. However Samuel was impatient and loath to let any son reap his bountiful crop, and so he contributed generously to Church and charity and endured many snubs in his path to the next goal in his insatiable climb. And after that? Maybe ceaseless strivings towards a title or a royal monopoly … then on yet higher until the grave put a stop to him.

  And yet Wiltshire was no mere philistine. If so, social mechanisms designed for the purpose would have confined him within the rest of the frantically aspiring and yet unencouraged mercantile classes. He had a broad and charitable view of man so long as his own interests were not at stake, which – coupled with a permanent taste for humour – made him an often charming host. Besides which, his food was good since he had employed the disgraced ex-cook of the Laird of Dalriada on the principle that so long as what came out of the kitchen was of a high standard, he didn’t care how effeminate its creator was. Tobias was, of course, of the same viewpoint.

  So, drawn by culinary delights and glamour respectively, Tobias and Diane were chez Wiltshire that night. Also present were Mrs Wiltshire, simple and silent, a child-bearing machine, her two generously favoured daughters and the giant, hearty son. As well as Evelyn Purcell, a consumptive-looking warehouse proprietor who was much tied up in the Wiltshire family fortunes and, finally – a gamble this – a don of Loyola College, Oxford. (This being part of the protracted negotiations to ensconce Wiltshire’s son firmly in a seat of learning, however precarious his subsequent posture might be.)

  Tobias felt abnormally expansive and cooperative and, like little presents, he made gifts of conversation to each person of interest.

  Wiltshire, Purcell and the don were the pertinent ch
aracters, the rest toy-soldiers to be deployed when and if needed.

  ‘In Rugby,’ said Tobias to the don, catching his attention. ‘In Rugby, Dr Meerbrook, we have a number of small prayer-congregations who hold meetings of a religious nature separate to official celebrations … ’

  ‘Yes, I have heard of your flourishing Avon Street group even in Oxford.’

  ‘Oh, news reaches that far afield does it?’

  ‘Rest assured – only to those who look for it.’

  ‘I see; well as I was saying, do you have similar groups in the university town? I thought the gathering together of so many intelligent, burgeoning young minds would be conducive to religious enquiry … ’

  ‘Indeed so, Curate Oakley, a number of such societies exist, but so far as possible we endeavour to bring them under official guidance and leadership since young men at that age have an unhappy tendency to discover unorthodoxies and heresy. I don’t imply any repression of course, but I do feel talent unbalanced with experience cries out for direction. Indeed it demands it.’

  ‘Well, I can see that, but Master Wiltshire was telling me earlier that the college authorities have not always been so tolerant.’

  ‘Not until Vatican Two’s terms were implemented in England in ’66,’ interjected the son Wiltshire. He was no great scholar but he had an extensive knowledge of Church history, liturgy and dogma. Tobias had touched upon this in conversation with him over aperitifs earlier.

  ‘Well, on the whole you’re correct in saying that,’ replied the don. ‘But surely … ’

  Soon the two were deep in conversation and vistas of academe’s groves began to become more substantial before Mr Wiltshire’s eyes.

  One favour. Tobias smiled at the elder Wiltshire and received a wolfish grin. It then occurred to the Curate that this man had no illusions or misapprehensions about him. A good judge of character.