A Dangerous Energy

by John Whitbourn

  His attention slid away from his bogus geographical tome and he listened to the noises he had been ignoring up to now. From outside the clamour was at much the same level as it had been for hours now, a blended mixture of human misdoings reflected in speech and cries and odd sounds of destruction. From upstairs he could hear the noise of his particular band of ‘the common sort’ enjoying themselves; there were various bumps and cries, and occasionally the woman screamed. Tobias found that he was thoroughly enjoying the situation. It was sufficiently far removed from his normal experience that it seemed endowed with an exhilarating freshness and novelty.

  At length he consulted his timepiece, stubbed out his cigarette and from the bottom of the stairs, called time on the soldiers.

  When they brought the Leveller woman down with them (seemingly unharmed in body), she appeared to be almost surprised to find the priest still there. Then her eyes glazed over once more and her mind withdrew from the whole affair.

  In fact the unfortunate girl now expected nothing but death; in part she almost wished for it. She felt as though dirty hands had dabbled with her soul.

  However, to her mounting astonishment, Tobias dismissed her soldier ravishers and led her, not to the Crusader camp and thus torture and death, but through the town to the London Gate as he had promised. Several times they were accosted on their progress by officious or rowdy Crusaders but a few brief words and stern looks dispersed them. Apart from these incidents Tobias seemed oblivious of her existence or anyone else’s for that matter, but she was bound to him by cruel necessity. She felt low and animal-like.

  Before the heavily damaged London gate he bribed a cavalry trooper to give him his horse. She was unable to see how much this cost him but it seemed as if a large number of coins changed hands. Thus provided, and her clerical collar covered by a blanket from the saddlebag, she was waved past the half dozen drunken and sullen guards at the gate who were full of resentment at having the ill-luck to draw guard duty at such a momentous time. Tobias had not bothered to concoct a story other than to hint at a necessity for secrecy. It did not matter – no one would know, for the guards did not care and the words of a magician priest were not to be lightly contradicted.

  And so, hardly crediting it, the woman went free and rode off along the road like thunder and out of Tobias’ life.

  However, as he had intended, in one sense they never parted – for each was to recur frequently in the other’s mind, although cast in very different roles. In some obscure way which he did not bother to rationalise, it was necessary for him to know that the Leveller woman continued to wander the earth somewhere. In this way his memories of her and what he had done to her would be living things. It also pleased him to know that someone, somewhere was thinking of him, long and often.

  In fact the woman successfully escaped from the area and after an initial period of confusion resumed her underground activities with one of the fanatical Gideon Groups which the surviving members of the Levellers’ command council had formed subsequent to the Reading debacle. Comprising men and women who had survived the uprising or who had not been called into service, these small groups practised assassination and sabotage ostensibly as a means of destabilising Babylonian society. In reality the council members used them as instruments of angry revenge on behalf of their fallen comrades and to punish the world for not seeing the blinding truths of the councillors’ beliefs.

  After the shattered chains of command were reconstructed and the scattered brethren regathered, the frustrated anger of these essentially pious men began to be felt in the towns and villages of England once again.

  But serious and widespread consideration of the earthly equality of man, the morality of wealth and one Church’s monopoly of the means of salvation were things that awaited a more relaxed and gentle future era. When it eventually came, in a form no one suspected, all the protagonists in the Levellers’ tragi-farce were dust and bones, long forgotten by all bar God.

  At first the Gideon Bands achieved some measure of success; then they provoked too far, and the drastic repressive measures destroyed most of them. The survivors bided their time, reorganised, became a power again, were smashed … and so on, and on and on.

  The Leveller woman enjoyed by Tobias became a leading light and eventually ‘pastor-leader’ of a group that operated around Guildford and whose trademark was the capture, castration and killing of priests. While attempting the assassination of the Bishop of Farnham, she and a number of compatriots were captured and sentenced to be burnt at the stake.

  Awaiting sentence in Guildford Gaol, she went mad; but she was burnt anyway, howling and wailing just like the sane ones, on the 2nd of September 2000 AD, aged thirty.

  CHAPTER 7

  In which our hero refreshes himself in a tavern.

  That was not the last of Tobias’ exploits that day. In another house he found and had a pretty boy, although the use of brute force was necessary in this case. This was another practice he had long been curious about and he found it not unpleasing.

  His physical energies at last sated, he sought and found a tavern back at the town square. The original landlord, although much battered and abused, had retained possession by the dispensing of his stock to the victorious Crusaders. His tavern maids and his wife had also been plied into service but the owner dared not protest, for at any moment these animals might decide to slit his throat and help themselves. There was no reason why they should not. His one hope was to keep them all befuddled with drink and so far he was succeeding.

  Accordingly when Tobias edged through the door he entered upon a riotous scene. Soldiers of all type and degree were there, ranging from a small group of frivolously drunken English gentlemen-volunteers to the survivors of a double file of Irish gallowglasses who had reached a stage of maudlin religion. The latter crossed themselves when they saw Tobias.

  The tavern was tightly packed with people at, or under, long benches. A great number were very gone in drink; some had captured local girls, most of whom seemed not unwilling partners. A few, all sense of propriety gone, rutted away quite heedlessly on the floor; no one seemed to notice unduly save to urge them on occasionally. The noise was enough to drown out the sound of the greater entertainment outside.

  Moving regally through the mob, Tobias raised his hand to signal the harassed landlord. When at last the man arrived, he said, ‘A table alone, cigars and a bottle of good whisky if you please.’

  A small table slightly raised on a small dais at one end of the room was found, and Tobias used his rank and profession to order its two Welsh bowmen occupants away. Shortly after, he was nicely settled with a large carton of cigarettes (‘All I can find, Father’), and a reasonable bottle of single malt. Tobias thought it would be ungrateful to cavil at the provisions and so thanked his host gravely. ‘If you find yourself in serious peril, landlord, call upon me for help.’

  ‘Much obliged – God bless you Father, thank you.’

  The man felt a tinge of hope; perhaps he would see tomorrow and if so, he swore before Mary and all the saints he would never swerve, not a single inch, from the Church’s path, not ever again.

  Tobias relaxed, leant back and mulled over the events of the day. He watched the soldiers at play – drinking, swearing, shouting, screaming, fornicating – and he thought them the lowest of the low. Because his pleasures were taken in a calmer and more considered way and because they were, he thought, of a more discriminating nature, he felt very superior to the cavorting humans before him. And yet much of what he had found pleasurable today would have struck the common soldiers as base and bestial. Tobias now entirely lacked self-doubt and the ability to appreciate other viewpoints. He was truly the single-minded man he had wished to be.

  After a while he drifted off into reverie, rousing himself only once when he saw that the landlord was in great danger of his life. Tobias caught the eye of the principal offender and an impatient gesture was enough to halt the dangerous horseplay.

  In
fact Tobias’ vacant, brooding eyes, roaming over the scrum, acted as a considerable dampener on the collective spirit so all were glad when he decided that he had drunk and seen enough, and he stepped out into the early evening. Or nearly all.

  Soon after, the unfortunate landlord was seized, bound and put to cook on his own roasting spit.

  CHAPTER 8

  In which our hero ponders upon the nature of things and arrives at two great truths.

  It was early evening when he emerged and he envisaged returning to the camp rather earlier than originally intended. However as he walked on, his attention was caught by a large crowd in and around the Castle and the nearby abbey. He went to investigate.

  Unlike Rugby, Reading was (or had been) a ‘free town’ without any feudal patron. Therefore the Castle was already in a state of advanced decay before that day’s savage fighting. A disciplined, elite group of white-coated Leveller soldiers holding the tumbledown gatehouse had had to be destroyed almost to the last man before the stronghold fell. Inside had been a newly raised regiment of Leveller sympathisers, mostly townsfolk who, largely lacking proper weaponry, surrendered after some token resistance. Faced with so large a number of captives, five hundred or more, the senior officer at the scene had suspended the no-quarter signal, partly for practical reasons and partly through a personal Christian dislike for killing. ‘Lord knows,’ he’d muttered, ‘there’s been enough of that today.’

  Later, however, he had been obliged to move to another part of the town and was succeeded at his post by a man of much coarser moral sensibilities whose religious drive was less demanding. More prisoners were crammed into the Castle and after a cull of the fittest-looking men, deemed worthy of service in the Mediterranean galleys, the slaughter began.

  The remaining men (and some women) were forced on to the rampart walk of the Castle and thence into its highest surviving tower. From there, they were prodded out of a high window with a pike to plummet to the ground, perhaps seventy or eighty feet below. At the bottom of the tower, outside the wall, a group of unsolicited volunteers made sure, with dagger and spear, that the process was completed.

  Tobias came upon the scene when it was already well underway and the setting sun’s weak beams were making the painful sight less stark. A constant low keening arose from the condemned, peppered with the occasional scream. The audience buzzed with conversation, ironic laughter and applause at the failed flights.

  Tobias stood at the back of the crowd for a while and watched unobtrusively. Humans constantly amazed him; how could these people just stand there patiently waiting to be led to their death? Why not attempt a break-out, however hopeless? Try and take a few of their killers with them and perhaps die wounded from the front like a man: that’s what he would do. Pathetic milk-and-water sheep; not the same men who smashed us at breach four, and contested the Cathedral and town square until we were pleased to give the survivors’ quarter. They were all dead or escaped and Tobias wished them luck in either case.

  However, as always, death drew him, helpless to resist, like one of his opium addicts to their pipe and he ordered his way through the crowd to the front of the Castle. There was a heavy guard of regular soldiers at the gatehouse. For the most part the remains of the previous Leveller detachment remained in their posts also, an honour they well deserved prior to being flung into the communal lime-pit along with all the rest. The living garrison declined to challenge him and Tobias strode through into the Castle yard.

  A junior officer looking very calm and collected spotted him and came over. ‘Good evening, Father; can I be of any assistance?’

  Tobias looked him up and down and did not like what he saw at all. A mere youth, but all puffed up with the arrogance born of lifelong privilege. He affected to be a dandy as well and had adorned his blue line-infantry uniform with gold lace and silks. Tobias put on a look of utter disgust and distaste.

  ‘Name, rank, regiment and senior officer.’

  The young officer was quite abashed and dropped a portion of his self-satisfied look.

  ‘Timothy Savage, junior officer, Sir Malachai Ferry’s regiment of horse, Colonel Sir Henry Melrose, Father.’

  ‘Right, expect to hear more of me very soon, Savage; in the meanwhile, get me an escort through this mob and up into the tower.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  That should deprive him of a bit of sleep thought Tobias. Upper-class puppy.

  Four musketeers were found, rather needlessly, to club a path through the horde of captives for Father Oakley and very soon he was ascending the circular steps of the tower. A curious scene at the place of execution greeted him. Two heavily bearded characters, probably pikemen in normal Army life to judge by their clothing and armour, stood at the door and ferried the individual unfortunates to the gaping window. Two more brutal-looking types stood by and wielded the half-pikes that persuaded the doomed to advance their last one or two footsteps upon this earth. Soldiers with muskets or pistols standing ready were ringed all around the walls and continued in a line down the staircase.

  Supervising this efficient operation were two officers seated in comfortable armchairs pillaged from the town. They had obviously ceased to watch the process of death as the novelty wore off and were chatting lazily to each other. Both sprang up as they noticed Tobias’ entrance, but he wordlessly waved them back to their seats and watched, entranced, the unfolding and repetitious drama.

  In the twenty minutes or so that he stood there, abstracted, he came to see (because the lesson was hammered home again and again in a way it had not been before) that the prospect of individual extinction was only real to humans a few brief moments before it actually happened. Hence the surprising passivity in the courtyard below. He further came to appreciate that once the awful realisation was made, humans either found life inexpressibly beautiful (too late to appreciate their enlightenment) or were consumed with fear at the prospect before them. In either case amazing things were said and done in order to live perhaps a few seconds longer.

  Tobias found this experience enormously valuable, perhaps more so than anything else that day. Life was not the cheap thing he had always thought; it was priceless – irreplaceable, mystical and unique.

  However, this revelation did not make Tobias baulk at the prospect of future bloodshed. Quite the contrary: it endowed the idea with a profound significance, a ‘thrill’ that was now his closest approach to emotion. Killing a fellow man, he could now see, was not an occasionally necessary expedient and perhaps pleasure, but a great cosmic act of the will.

  Tobias felt very much the richer for this knowledge, but he was so far gone in his blindness that he could not see that the whole thing, a lesson so expensive in human life, could be interpreted in an entirely different way.

  After watching Grimes, a very cool individual and supposedly the chief heretic General, being prodded off the wall, a contemplative Tobias descended the stairs. Perhaps a quarter of the way down he noticed a captive somewhat different from the rest, a relaxed young man with long hair tied into a pony-tail and an ugly battered face. He sought and caught the priest’s attention.

  ‘Do you happen to have a cigarette you could give me, Father?’

  Tobias eyed him for a moment and could see no trickery or mockery, and so said. ‘By all means.’

  And he lit and gave the man one of his stolen smokes. Unusually enough, he felt sufficiently curious and at ease to pursue the conversation. ‘You’re very unperturbed considering, young man.’

  ‘Am I?’ he replied politely and in a naturally melancholic voice, ‘Yes, I suppose I am, surprisingly enough.’

  ‘Were you active in the rebellion?’

  ‘Yes, as a volunteer dragoon.’

  ‘Then are you still heretic?’

  ‘Never was, Father; just starved of excitement that’s all.’

  Obviously this struck a chord with Tobias, ‘Then you are still true Church?’

  ‘Would it save me if I was?’

  ‘
No.’

  ‘Well, I am anyway.’

  Tobias made the sign of the cross over him, ‘Then I absolve you from all your sins so you go to death pure as at baptism, if God wills.’

  Several others became agitated, some hurling basic theological abuse and others pleading similar shriving. Tobias ignored them.

  ‘It seems strange,’ said the man, ‘that this is the end of me. I went to university you know. Ronald Butcher, BA, late of Oxford. All that time educating me, my parents raising me, having me for that matter: all that painful growing-up. What a waste of time.’

  ‘Is that what you feel?’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘Well,’ said Tobias in a profound tone, ‘nothing lasts for ever, that’s for sure.’

  Then he gave the man another cigarette and set off down the stairs.

  CHAPTER 9

  In which our hero admires a view.

  Back at camp Tobias waited patiently in his wagon-cum-bed until the last brick of his tower tumbled and then he slept the clock around. Just as unnaturally, he awoke with a start and for a moment thought himself back in time before the great assault. As then, Sykes the file captain was squatting before a cooking fire and several soldiers he recognised were also lolling around. The difference which at last re-established his sense of time was that there were a lot less soldiers than hitherto and one was swathed in bandages.

  Any hangover he might have deserved had come and gone during his oblivion, but still Tobias felt stiff and generally rather grim.

  ‘Hello, Sykes; you survived then.’

  The stumpy man looked round. ‘Oh, hello, sir – yes, I’m OK. I see you got scratched.’