by Mervyn Wall
A couple of hours passed in this manner. Fursey could not afterwards recall the substance of their conversation, but he remembered that it was the best and most brilliant talk imaginable, scintillating with wit and good humour. When at last they agreed that it was time to go, the tavern was empty except for the proprietor asleep over the counter. They let themselves out, but when they gained the roadway, the fresh night air affected them powerfully. So uncertain was Fursey’s gait that he had perforce to lean against a tree, and when he had secured its support, he was loath to leave it. He stood, a tubby figure propped against the bole, smiling blandly at the circular moon overhead, while The Gentle Anchorite capered in the middle of the road trolling forth a song of suggestive and improper import. When the hermit had finished his bawdy lay, he succeeded in detaching Fursey from the tree, and with old-world hospitality offered him accommodation in his cave for the night. Fursey thanked him earnestly and shook his hand; and the two of them proceeded unsteadily arm-in-arm down the road.
It was a night of filmy moonlight, the sort of night on which almost anything might well be abroad, one of those nights on which the dead yearn to look on the living and to accost them. The stark trees laid their moon-softened shadows here, there and everywhere. Overhead the moon sailed among her stars, suffusing the fields and the roads with soft blue light and silence. But Fursey was not afraid: one is not afraid when one has as companion a man with forty years’ experience of tying down demons. Fursey told himself that The Gentle Anchorite’s fame must have spread far and wide in the world of shadows, and it would be a hardy demon or spectre who would venture to approach him, especially when he was drunk and belligerent.
The road was long. It seemed to Fursey that they walked for hours before scrambling through a hedge and making their way over the bare hillside. It was another hour at least, an hour of weary struggling uphill through furze and bracken, before they came to the stony place where the hermit had his habitation. It was a spot bleak enough to satisfy the most exacting anchorite, a low cave in the rocks, and beyond it the bogs. The air was moist, and a small breeze blew steadily across the waste. Fursey could see here and there the glint of a moorland pool.
The hermit had grown quiet and seemed plunged in a deep melancholy. Mead is a heady brew, but its effect soon wears off with exercise. Fursey was by now more tired than drunk, and he grunted bad-humouredly when the anchorite took him by the arm and insisted that before retiring to rest, he must see the hermit’s latest conquest, the strange, shuffling demon who had been captured and tied in a bog pool that afternoon. The pool was not far removed from the cave, and after a few minutes clambering between the rocks and through the bracken they stood at its edge. The anchorite stretched out a black claw and directed Fursey’s attention to a huge rock incised with a cross, which lay at the bottom of the pool. Fursey bent over the edge and peered in. The water was only about six feet deep, and the head and four paws of some creature were discernible projecting from beneath the boulder. The creature lay spreadeagled on its back with all the weight of the rock on its chest. Fursey gazed with quickening interest—surely he had seen those bear’s paws before and that body covered with black hair. A pair of red foggy eyes looked up at him pathetically. It was Albert!
Fursey stepped back quickly and allowed himself to be led back to the cave by the hermit, who repeated his account of the difficulty he had experienced in capturing the unusual demon. Of course, thought Fursey, Albert was impervious to religious adjuration and exhortation for the simple reason that he did not belong to the Christian order of things, but was a creature of an older religion. Fursey had not recovered from his surprise, and his thoughts were still scattered when they arrived back at the cave, and the hermit conducted him into its depths.
“Now for our evening meal,” said the anchorite. Going to a hole in the wall he drew out a couple of crusts and placed them on a flat rock. “Seeing as how you are my guest,” he continued, “we will make high festival,” and with the conscious air of being a generous host, he produced a hazel nut. “We will divide it between us,” he said, placing it on the stone slab.
Fursey stared gloomily at this meagre fare and essayed to crack the crust between his teeth. His efforts did not meet with much success, and he replaced the crust upon the table and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
“Try the nut,” advised the hermit, who was crunching his crust with evident appreciation. Fursey picked up the hazel nut and gingerly brushed off the green mould that covered it.
“Ah, you’re losing the best part,” said the hermit deprecatingly.
Fursey smiled faintly and biting off half the nut, pushed the other half over to his companion. He found that it lent itself to easy mastication, and he sat ruminating on its unusual flavour until the hermit had finished his meal.
“Let us return thanks before retiring to rest,” said the holy man sinking on his knees. Fursey chose a smooth spot on the floor and knelt, resting his elbows on a rock and sinking his face in his hands. The hermit prayed for almost an hour in a loud and terrible voice, accusing himself and Fursey of all the known sins and imploring forgiveness, while Fursey on his knees slumbered fitfully. When the hermit had brought his orisons to a conclusion in a final wallow of abnegation, he directed Fursey’s attention to a neat row of disciplines hanging on the wall. There were about a dozen, and they varied in size from a narrow, lithe whip to a broad, leathern thong in which were embedded a goodly number of nails and shark’s teeth.
“We must do a little penance before we retire,” said the hermit, “a couple of dozen lashes apiece. We can confer them upon one another.”
“I always do my penance in the morning,” replied Fursey hurriedly.
“You might be dead before the morning,” urged the hermit, “and you will have lost this opportunity of acquiring grace.”
“I’ll risk it,” said Fursey stoutly. “Morning is my time for mortifying myself, and I’m not going to break the good habit of a lifetime.”
“Have it your own way,” answered the hermit huffily. “I’m not going to forego my nightly mortification of the flesh. Oblige me by giving me twenty lashes.”
An odour of sanctity swept across the cavern like a wave as the holy man peeled off his upper garment and took up his stand, stripped to the waist, with his back to Fursey. Fursey inspected the row of disciplines.
“What size would you like?” he asked.
“One of medium strength,” replied the hermit.
Fursey examined the row of disciplines judiciously, then he turned and looked at the hermit’s back. A sudden image had come into his mind, a picture of the unfortunate Albert lying at the bottom of the moorland pool with two tons of granite on his chest.
“I venture to suggest,” said Fursey, “that the thick hair with which your back is draped, affords you considerable protection against a discipline of medium weight. In a holy matter such as this, you must play fair with God. I suggest a discipline of greater striking power.”
The hermit turned his head to gaze at Fursey. He seemed to think that his sanctity was being called into question, and his reply was short.
“Use your judgment,” he said testily, and turning away once more, he hunched his back to meet the blow. Fursey picked down the weightiest discipline and tested the shark’s teeth and nails with his thumb. Then he rolled up his sleeves and let fly with all his strength at the hairy back of the hermit. The snaky thong whistled, struck with a resounding smack, and wound twice around the holy man’s body. The Gentle Anchorite emitted a howl and capered madly up and down the cave.
“What’s wrong?” asked the astonished Fursey. “You told me to hit you.”
“I didn’t tell you to take the skin and flesh off my bones,” gasped the anchorite, turning on Fursey eyes full of bale.
“I’ll use another discipline for the remaining nineteen strokes,” replied Fursey comfortingly. “There’s a nice one here with broken bits of razor embedded in the leather.”
> “I’ve had enough for to-night,” muttered the hermit between his teeth. “Already I can feel my soul suffused and flooded with sanctifying grace, but in the morning,” and his eyes met Fursey’s, “I’ll have the remaining nineteen when you are having your twenty. We shall confer them on one another. That is the most convenient.”
“Certainly,” agreed Fursey, quickly making up his mind that he would be gone before the morning.
The anchorite was still squirming as he indicated a heap of foul-smelling straw in the corner, which was to be their bed. He laid himself gingerly on his face as his back seemed to be still sore, and Fursey stretched himself alongside. Before long the cave was shrill with the hermit’s catarrhal snores which forced their way through his beard in a muffled whistle.
Hour after hour Fursey tossed on the straw unable to sleep. When a man of determined sanctity has lived in a small cave for forty years, the insect life is apt to assume alarming proportions. Bugs, resigned for many years to the thin diet which the hermit’s skinny frame provided, after one nip at Fursey scuttled off to tell their friends, and soon all the game in the cavern were making in his direction. They came in such myriads that for a moment Fursey thought that an attempt was being made to murder him. Plump fleas investigated different parts of his body in a series of gargantuan hops, while great strapping bugs fastened themselves to his arms and thighs. The smaller fry of the insect world, mites and the like, contented themselves with setting up colonies in unlikely corners of his anatomy where the competition was less keen. Fursey rolled and wallowed, but to no avail. To add to his discomfort The Gentle Anchorite woke up and seemed not only jealous of the attention his vermin were paying to Fursey, but to fear that there was a real danger of losing the external evidence of his forty years’ sanctity, so he bent over from time to time to collect as many bugs as he could from Fursey’s body and put them back on his own. This preposterous behaviour Fursey found in the highest degree exasperating. In his opinion it only encouraged the more mischievous of the bugs to greater liveliness, and it obviated all possibility of sleep. You couldn’t possibly sleep if you were turned over every half-an-hour by your host and searched.
Towards morning the hermit’s excursions became less regular, and he slept for longer intervals. When Fursey heard the muffled snores taking on a deeper note, he crawled from the straw on his hands and knees and dragged his wounded body through the mouth of the cave into the fresh air. There was a little patch of grey in the sky to the east, and realising that there was little time to spare, he hobbled quickly across the intervening space to the edge of the pool where Albert was imprisoned. He fell on his knees on the heather at the edge.
“Hello, Albert,” he whispered.
A stream of bubbles issued from Albert’s mouth. As they broke on the surface they resolved themselves into a string of very bad language.
“Sh!” said Fursey. “Don’t curse.”
Albert made another effort, and the breaking bubbles indicated to Fursey that Albert was devoted to his service, that he was the best master Albert ever had, and for God’s sake to get him out of the pool. Fursey cast a hurried glance over his shoulder to assure himself that the hermit was not yet abroad, before immersing himself in the pool, clothes and all. The cold water was a considerable relief to his bug-scarred body, and after herculean straining at the boulder he succeeded in rolling it to one side. Albert immediately bobbed up to the surface where he floated on his back. He seemed intact, though a little flattened. Fursey clambered out of the pool and taking Albert by one of his bear’s paws, hauled him on to the bank, Albert shook himself like a dog, scattering water in all directions; and then collapsed against a rock. He volunteered no word of thanks, but threw a terrified glance in the direction of the cave.
“If he comes out,” he wheezed huskily, “order me to disappear. It’s the only thing that will save me.”
“Come on,” said Fursey. “It’s time we got away from here,” and he set out at a trot down the hillside, with Albert staggering along at his heels. Fursey did not stop until they reached the road.
“I’m done up,” gasped Albert. “You’ll have to carry me.”
“We’re safe now,” replied Fursey as he helped the exhausted Albert through the hedge. The familiar sat down in the dust of the road while Fursey seated himself on the grassy bank facing him.
“You should have ordered me to disappear up there at the pool,” complained Albert. “Then I could have travelled down the hill with you in my capacity as an ætherial essence. It would have been far less tiring.”
“I didn’t want to let you out of my sight again,” replied Fursey, “until I had found out how you got into that predicament. I think you owe me an explanation.”
Albert looked uneasy.
“Come now,” said Fursey severely. “I summoned you on the road yesterday, and you failed to appear. How was that? Don’t you realise that you are bound absolutely to my service?”
Albert assumed a hang-dog look, and his eyes failed to meet his master’s.
“It’s all very fine,” he answered sullenly. “If you had a rock as big as a mountain on your chest, you’d be slow in answering a summons.”
“Don’t quibble,” said Fursey primly. “It’s not a question of slowness in answering a summons; you didn’t answer it at all.”
“I couldn’t come,” bleated Albert indignantly. “That mad fellow up there, the long, thin fellow, had got hold of me and fixed me in the pool. I couldn’t get out. You saw it yourself; what’s the use of asking silly questions?”
“You’re avoiding the issue,” retorted Fursey. “You’re bound to my service, and you’re supposed to be at hand all the time, ready to appear the moment you’re summoned. What were you doing gallivanting round the countryside getting into trouble?”
Albert fixed his foggy red eyes on his master and glared balefully, but did not reply. Fursey flushed and stamped his foot on the ground.
“If you don’t answer me,” he said, “I’ll punish you. I’ll think up something terrible to do to you. I’ll turn you into something extraordinary, a lizard or something like that. You don’t appear to realise that I’ve inherited The Grey Mare’s powers, and I’m a very formidable wizard.”
“Garn!” interjected Albert contemptuously. “You’re the most hopeless wizard I’ve ever encountered. Why, you don’t know how to do anything.”
“Don’t be impertinent,” shrilled Fursey.
“If the marrows of an unbaptised babe were put into your hands,” said Albert raising his voice so as to shout his master down, “I don’t believe you’d know what to do with them. Can you even turn milk sour? Do you even know how to plough a field with four toads harnessed to the plough? Why, you don’t even know how to do the simplest things.”
Fursey did not reply, but sat for a moment thinking of his deficiencies. When the eyes of sorcerer and familiar again met, both seemed rather ashamed of their loss of temper. At last Fursey spoke.
“How did it happen?” he asked simply.
“I’m that starved,” replied Albert sulkily, “through your refusal to supply me with my proper meed of blood, that I became desperate. I wandered off hoping to find some quiet human whom I could have a nip at when he wasn’t looking. I didn’t expect to run into a wild character like the hairy fellow up above, who chased me around the whole afternoon shouting Latin at me.”
“Let it be a lesson to you,” said Fursey reprovingly. “You shouldn’t try to bite people.”
“It’s all very well for you to talk,” growled Albert. “You look well-fed enough, but I’ve grown that meagre that if I stand sideways you can hardly see me. Really, master,” he said with a throb of emotion in his voice, “you’ll have to do something for me. My coat is all falling out. Soon I’ll look like an old, mangy, moth-eaten dog. Look.”
He put a shrunken paw to his chest and pulled out a handful of hair, which he held out for inspection. When Fursey answered, his voice was sad and far-away.
&
nbsp; “Maybe, Albert,” he said, “you won’t be bothered with me much longer. I’m on my way to Cashel to surrender myself to the authorities.”
“Why should you do that?” asked Albert astonished.
“I’ve tried life,” said Fursey, “and I’ve found it wanting.”
“So now you’re going to try death?”
Fursey thought for a moment before replying.
“Aye,” he answered at last.
“You know that you’ll be burnt?”
“Yes,” replied Fursey.
A look of genuine happiness spread over Albert’s countenance from his red eyes to the tip of his snout, but he tried manfully to hide his satisfaction.
“Maybe it’s best for us both,” he said consolingly. “You’ll be rid of the cares of living, and when you’re dead, I’ll be able to secure another master, some young wizard with a promising career ahead of him, who is fully cognisant of the care which he should bestow on his familiar.”
“I’ll miss you,” said Fursey sadly. “It’s not that you’re an engaging companion, but I’ve sort of got used to you.”
“You won’t feel the sense of loss for long,” replied Albert somewhat impatiently. “They’ll have you burnt in a couple of days.”
“I don’t imagine that we’ll see one another again,” declared Fursey. “I think farewells should be quick. It’s best that way.”