Wake up! Listen to the sermon! Again I tried to concentrate. Christ this—Christ that—who was this Christ he was talking about? Not the one my father had preached. But Lucian didn’t really preach—he delivered commercials: Christ, the All-in-One, buffered, antihistamine, antacid, multivitamin tablet to be taken before meals and at bedtime…
Greg’s arm pressed against mine, doing little to keep my attention on the sermon. My blood pounded and my hand clamored to be held.
“Now if anyone today should desire to give his heart to Christ,” Lucian’s voice was husky with emotion, “if he or she will come forward…”
He waited. No one moved. “Don’t put it off,” he urged. “We had a warning this week. A fine young member of this congregation was taken from us suddenly and tragically. He had been saved, praise the Lord! We have that blessed assurance that he is now with Jesus, hallelujah! But had he not—”
There was a muffled sob somewhere at the back of the church. Elspeth! My nails dug into my hands. Did he think he could console the Osburns this way? I could forgive him for that, if that was his intent. But he’d known the truth about Junior—he’d admitted that to me himself. How could he be so hypocritical about a boy who tortured helpless animals, whose last act had been one of unadulterated cruelty? It was false witness!
“Jesus stands at the door and waits,” Lucian was saying, “holding his arms out to you, sorrowing because you hesitate. His eyes rested on me, trying to draw me forward, his will battling mine. I fought against this sinister, hypnotic power that had nothing to do with his words. Our eyes locked in a mortal struggle as we hung suspended in an atmosphere charged with something almost unendurable, something that almost, but not quite, unlocked a memory…
“Do you worry that choosing Jesus might cause consternation in your family? That they might object to your allegiance to someone above and beyond them? Christ gave you no alternative. If you would come into His fold, you must be willing to hate your mother and your father—”
He hadn’t been talking to me at all! I heard footsteps behind me—saw heads turning and nodding approval. Rowan came down the aisle and knelt at his feet.
Chapter Nine
Although I wasn’t entirely convinced Rowan’s “re-birth” was genuine, I had to acknowledge there were fringe benefits. She seemed less afraid of me, as though going forward had put her beyond my reach. But better than that, she was thoroughly accepted now in Peacehaven. Whatever demons had seized her in the woods that night were considered exorcised. The story had been told and retold, but if any stigma had been attached to her it was gone now. The most accepted theory was Charity’s suggestion that the men’s failure to lift Rowan had been the result of mass hypnosis—induced, possibly, by Dana and I or Dr. Brun.
But a saint around the house is a cross for anyone to bear. Matters came to a head one day while I was pinning a hem for her in front of the full-length mirror in the dining room, and a sudden move on her part ran a pin into my thumb.
“Damn!” I exclaimed without thinking.
My daughter responded with cloying sweetness. “If only I could bring you to Christ!”
“Your grandparents did that when I was a little girl.”
She was dubious. “Did you go forward?”
“Turn around!” I said, rapping the yardstick on the floor.
“Well, did you?”
“I did when I joined the church.”
“Pooh! Everybody does that! That doesn’t mean you’ve made a commitment.”
“Doesn’t it? It meant that to me.”
“But did you see a blinding light? Did Jesus hold out His hand to you?”
“Is that what happened to you?” I asked.
“Yes! I said, ‘Dear Lord Jesus, take me!’ And the roof of the church opened up and there He was, smiling at me, while underneath me Satan cursed and sank into his fiery pit. He had dark hair and He—well, He looked kind of like Lucian, except he had a beard and a white robe.”
“Satan?”
She stamped her foot. “No, Mother! Jesus!”
So Lucian had become a Christ figure in her mind in a sort of spiritual kidnapping: “If you would be my disciple, you must hate your mother!” I was surprised she hadn’t identified Christ with her father, but then Lucian had worked hard at his own image.
“So your whole life will be changed from now on?”
“Naturally,” she replied, then, suspiciously, “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ll have to do your tasks cheerfully and—oh yes—you’ll read a whole chapter in your Bible every day.”
“Well…”
“And you must be very courteous to people—Dana, for instance. You haven’t been very nice to her.”
“Did she say that?”
“No, she wouldn’t, but I’ve seen how you avoid her and sometimes you’re almost rude.”
“I don’t trust her. She’s a witch.”
“Who said that?”
“Everybody does.”
“I thought witchhunts were forbidden in Peacehaven.”
“Not against real witches. Iris read the tarot for me and said I must beware of a woman of foreign blood who is a witch.”
“American Indian is hardly foreign,” I scoffed.
“She’s English and Welsh, too,” she parried.
“So are we.”
That stopped her for a moment. “Well, anyway, everyone is positive it was Dana who bewitched me.”
“You weren’t bewitched. You had a nightmare.”
“Nightmares don’t glue you to the ground. People say she put a hex on me.”
So the rumor had progressed from hypnotic suggestion to downright sorcery! My mind reeled. Was this the twentieth century?
“Did you see The Exorcist, Rowan?” I asked abruptly.
“You wouldn’t let me.”
“But you did anyway?”
“No, I wanted to until I heard how people were throwing up.”
I repressed a desire to laugh. “But the kids talked about it?”
“Yeah. The bed went up and down and her head went round and round and—” her eyes widened. “Did I do that?”
“No, of course not,” I assured her. “It was nothing like that. Those were only special effects.”
“Aunt Charity says I did.”
“Aunt Charity says a lot of things. So Iris reads the tarot as well as palms.”
“Oh yes, and she’s promised to make an astrological chart for me and she goes into trances and talks in a funny language.”
“And you call Dana a witch!”
“That’s different. Iris is divinely inspired—Lucian says so.”
“I thought he didn’t approve of such things.”
“Mostly he doesn’t. But he says Iris uses them to the glory of God, especially when she talks in tongues, like in the Bible. And he’s the one who got me to go forward. Ouch! You stuck me!”
“Sorry about that.” I reached for the yardstick with a shaking hand. “Stand still!”
“I don’t have to obey you—you haven’t been born again.”
Damn Lucian! No, God, I don’t mean that!
“What do you have against Iris?” Rowan asked abruptly.
I longed to tell her, but I knew she wouldn’t believe me. “I don’t know her very well,” I began.
“Yes, you do,” she interrupted. “You’re afraid of her, aren’t you? She might tell the truth about Uncle Gareth.”
I grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. “What are you talking about?”
The blue eyes faltered. “I—I don’t know what she meant. She wouldn’t say, except that—that—”
“Except what?”
“That Uncle Gareth drowned when he was tryi
ng to swim out to your boat.”
I was deathly cold. “And what else, Rowan?”
“That’s all. She said you wouldn’t want her to talk about it.” She drew a quivery breath. “Did you curse him, too?”
“Of course not!” So that was what Iris was hinting! “I tried to save him.” Something in my face touched Rowan ever so slightly. Her hand brushed my arm.
“Everyone knows about Junior,” she said, “but I didn’t tell. And I would never say anything about Daddy.”
My eyes misted and I reached for her hand, but she moved away. “I don’t talk about family matters,” she said flatly, and ran out the door, nearly crashing into Dr. Brun.
“You’re just in time for a cool drink,” I told him. “Why don’t you go out and sit in one of the lawn chairs on the eastern side where it’s shady? What will you have?”
“A shandy, bitte. I’m just back from Gays Mills and I’m thirsty.”
“Gays Mills is pretty far away,” I observed as I carried out a couple of shandies, Macduff padding after me with an enormous milkbone in his mouth. “I thought the cave was supposed to be near our river, not the Kickapoo.”
“Ja, but I’ve been through all the caves around here.”
“What about Bogus Bluff?”
“That also. What a place. Like the Minoan labyrinth. I had to use Ariadne’s trick or I would have been lost.”
“Counterfeiters hid in Bogus Bluff during the Civil War—that’s how it got its name. The Feds had a hard time chasing them out.”
“All the more reason for that not to be the cave. They would have found what I’m looking for.”
“Just what are you seeking?” I sipped at my shandy. “I never have heard the whole story. All I know is that it has to do with my amulet and a Welsh prince named Madog.”
“I’m on the trail of a myth my Welsh mother used to tell me. I thought it was nothing more until I learned that in legend lies the truth of our past. Heinrich Schliemann, using the landmarks Homer described in the Iliad, dug down and found Troy. Archaeologists using the Bible as a guide have discovered places like Ur and Jericho. To be a good archaeologist one must believe in the myths.”
His attention was distracted by a honeybee crawling out of the coral orifice of one of the blossoms on the trumpet vine that wound up the stone wall of the house. The bee, frowzy with pollen, hovered a moment, then took off.
“There, you see? It is as I said,” Dr. Brun exclaimed. “She is going home to her hive to tell the others a myth about all the beautiful flowers here, full of nectar. Now, if they were humans they’d say, ‘Ja? Trumpet-shaped goblets? How far? Ten miles? Very funny! Tell us another.’ But all this little bee has to do is to tell her myth in a little dance like this—”
To my astonishment he hopped up and began to slap his knees and spin this way and that, for all the world like a gnome in Lederhosen. I couldn’t keep from laughing.
“Ah, now! The smiles come out!” he cried as he resumed his seat. “When I came, something was wrong, I think? So, as I was telling you, the bee dances her myth and the others come for honey. I, too. I saw your amulet and I believed.”
“It’s incredible. This little scrap of silver was enough evidence to bring you back here again—halfway around the world.”
He shook his head. “Nein! I am crazy, but not that crazy. I did other research. Many archaeologists like myself believe that Columbus was not the first European to come here.”
“Then you think Leif Ericsson reached mainland America.”
“Natürlich! And many others much earlier. I have found carvings in South America that lead me to believe the Phoenicians were engaged in a lively commerce between the two hemispheres as early as 2000 B.C. Then there’s the myth about St. Brendan who sailed west from Ireland in the sixth century and discovered a wonderful island. Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn’t, but there are standing stones in your state of Maine with some strange inscriptions on them. Once thought to be runes, they’ve recently been identified as old Gaelic, and some scholars claim there are many Celtic words in the Algonquin language.”
“That fits in with something Dana said,” I told him. “The Winnebagoes don’t believe they come from Asia. ‘We originated here!’ they insist.”
The blue eyes twinkled. “They’re not the only Indians who believe that, and they may be right. Maybe the Orientals are descendants of Indians who followed the sun. Who’s to say this wasn’t the Garden of Eden? But we’ll leave that for another time. Let’s get back to 1170 A.D., when, according to the story, Prince Madog sailed west and landed at Mobile Bay. Leaving part of his men in the company of friendly Indians, he returned to Wales to get more colonists. A record exists that a ‘Madawc’ sailed from the Isle of Lundy in Bristol Bay in 1171. Ironically, the Spanish made Prince Madog historically important by their very efforts to prove the story a fabrication. At the same time, Henry VII of England, a Tudor and a Welshman, strove to prove the truth of the tale to give England a prior claim over the Spanish to the Americas.”
“Did anyone ever find any proof either way?”
“There are ruins of forts in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee that were constructed with a kind of concrete peculiar to the early Welsh. The Daughters of the American Revolution even erected a monument to Madog at Fort Morgan on Mobile Bay.”
“But I can’t see what any of this would have to do with a cave in Peacehaven.”
“It’s thought that the Welshmen were absorbed into the friendly Indian tribe, which migrated westward over several centuries. You see, when Englishmen began to explore this country, they kept coming back with tales of Welsh-speaking Indians. Finally, in the last century, a painter by the name of Catlin—”
“George Catlin? The one who painted Indians?”
“Ja. He became convinced that the Mandan Indians in North Dakota could be descendants of Madog’s men. He compiled a list of similar words in Mandan and Welsh and pointed out that the Mandan ‘bullboats,’ which were made of wicker frames covered with hides, were much like the Welsh and Irish coracles. Their pottery resembled Celtic pottery and they had blue glass beads similar to those found on Lundy Island, from which, you will remember, Madog embarked on his second voyage. The Mandans had a Noah story in their mythology which they could have derived from the Christian Welsh, and they honored a ‘big canoe,’ sort of an ark, in their ceremonies, in which they believed their ancestors had arrived from the east after a great deluge. Catlin also noted that Mandan Indians were lighter in complexion and often had blue eyes.”
He reached over and took my amulet into his broad hand. “Now we come to Peacehaven and this. It is very old.”
“Could it be carbon tested?”
He shook his head. “Alas, the carbon 14 test works only on organic materials. But the runic characters, if that is what they are, of an ‘M’ and a ‘D’ intrigued me. Might that not stand for ‘Madog?’ I asked myself. Indians treasure their relics. But how could it be found in a Wisconsin cave when the Mandans live in the Dakotas? Then I asked—did they all go up the Missouri? Might not a band of them have continued up the Mississippi until they reached the mouth of this river, then followed it until they came to what is now Peacehaven? And since this is Winnebago territory, is it not likely there was commerce—or warfare—between the two tribes? This might explain another mystery—why there are similarities between Mandan and Winnebago that are not found in other Siouan tongues.
“As for the cave—was it a burial place? Not likely. The Mandans never used to bury their dead. They placed them on scaffolds. No, I think this was a scene of disaster—pestilence, starvation, tribal wars—who knows? It’s all conjecture, I realize, but I am at the time of life when I believe in catering to my whims. Besides, I have the quiet here that enables me to write my book.”
Macduff had fallen asleep in my lap. Stroki
ng the puppy wool thoughtfully, I said, “I assume you’ve explored our cave.”
“Aber natürlich! First of all. It is a beautiful cave, but I found nothing, even though I trained lights into the dropoff at the entrance. There was only sheer wall and rubble. As for the chambers, they are empty of everything but rock formations and that is disappointing, because I felt—” He hesitated.
“You felt what?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “You’ll think me foolish.”
“You? Never!”
“Then I tell you. It’s hard to describe, but there is a feeling about that cave—a tragic chill. Most caves are cold, but this wasn’t a matter of temperature. Still, I found nothing.”
“Maybe Dana’s father removed everything.”
“Dana’s father!”
“Yes. He gave Aunt Bo the amulet.”
“I didn’t know that. Dana doesn’t talk about herself. No, an Indian would not have disturbed such a place.”
Macduff stirred and yawned. Sharp puppy teeth nibbled at my arm. I tapped him on the nose and pushed him off my lap.
“I wonder if you’ve noticed…” I began, then stopped. I’d been about to ask him if he’d noticed the indentations in the walls of the crevice, then I remembered Dana’s warning. If he should fall and be hurt or killed, I’d never forgive myself. And it could happen, I was convinced of that. Superimposed upon the incessant humming and industry on a late summer afternoon was the sensation of something else, something that brooded and bided its time. Had it only just come? Or had it always been there?
“You were about to say?” Dr. Brun was looking at me strangely.
“Never mind. I—I forgot.”
The question was still on his face, but we were distracted by a car door slamming. Rowan came running out of the house.
“Hi, Lucian! Hi, Lucy!”
It was a timely interruption.
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 17