The Sending (9 page)

‘But, Mr Hollaston, the thing haunts me.'

‘I too, my dear sir, was haunted when I painted it.'

Up there beside the green fort I conceived a passing thought of revenge against nothing and rejected it. I reject it no longer. The reminder that in defence one must never neglect counterattack is due to Rita.

I asked her to lunch after Meg and I had celebrated by stealing out in the late twilight to catch a dish of crayfish, to which Meg, regardless of the season, had added an unsuspecting mallard grabbed with a leap as it rose from the rushes. The invitation seems to have happily surprised her, and when I showed her my Columns of the Sun there were tears on her cheeks. She did not examine it closely, so I think her emotion was due more to my eyes and bearing. Ginny, who is fascinated by my drawings but can't abide them funny pictures, was also inclined to be tearful. It appears that I am like a botched work of art, cherished because it has been over the mantelpiece for so long.

After lunch we sat in the garden and Rita again pressed on me her theory that the depression from which I had suffered could be a backlash from the sort of powers I was using. I denied that I had any more powers than the rest of us. I merely knew they existed because I had been on terms of close friendship with a shaman.

‘The difference between you and the rest of us is that you appear to have them,' she said.

I told her that nobody could seriously believe anything of the sort. She then announced, merry and mocking, her hands setting the scene for me, that she would have another small brandy and put me on trial in 1664 acting as prosecuting counsel within the beliefs of the time. I reproduce it as best I can:

‘Prisoner at the bar, you are charged on suspicion of the felony of witchcraft to the Great Offence of God's Law, Hurt and Damage of the King's Subjects and to the Infamy and Disquietness of the Realm. Upon the first charge of bewitching Master William Hutchins' bullocks how say you now to His Lordship and this jury? Guilty or Not Guilty?'

‘Guilty, your worships, but not with intent.'

‘So now to the second charge, sirrah, of possessing an imp in the likeness of a polecat which you did nourish with your blood. How say you?'

‘I never did.'

‘Call Mistress Rita Vernon.… Mistress Vernon, tell us whether upon the fourteenth June last you did not witness this abomination!'

‘I did indeed witness it, good sirs.'

‘Damn it, Rita! Just because I once let Meg lick up the blood where she had scratched me with her claws!'

‘Silence in Court! Guilty or Not Guilty?'

‘Well, on a technicality…'

‘The third charge is that you, Hollaston, did receive visits from the Devil and swore to be his servant. Dare you say you are not guilty?'

‘If counsel is referring to Robin's chasuble of animal skin and tail, or to his appearance as the Man in Black when dressed as any other priest for visiting his parishioners, I deny having received any such visits and know nothing of the organisation and practice of the religion. I confess to have been visited by an incorporeal devil, but against my will.'

‘Most damnable! And there is yet a fourth charge which he cannot answer, for examination showeth that he beareth upon his upper arm the mark by which the devil claimed him as his own. How now, Hollaston? What say you to his Lordship?'

‘My Lord, I have indeed been initiated by a mark, but see no more harm in it than circumcision or scarring of the face. I confess to the formality of an exchange of blood with the local representative of the Divine. His conception of sin, my Lord, was much the same as yours, plus a few extras. The scar upon my upper arm is permanent because herb juice was rubbed into the cut to keep it suppurating. And how the hell did you know, Rita?'

‘Because Ginny told me. Silence in Court! Not only does the prisoner confess to abominable practices, but would persuade us that they resemble those of Holy Church. Let him to be taken out and hanged by the neck until he is dead!'

Well, it must be fun to be alive to past and present, and a beautiful woman with it. But now she took the wrappings off the parcel.

‘Will you admit, Alfgif, that you could be taken for a sorcerer?'

‘Not unless you would call Paddy Gadsden a sorcerer, which he certainly wasn't.'

‘Your von Pluwig thought he was.'

I said that was putting it far too romantically. Paddy's receptors interacting with nature were more sensitive than mine, but that did not make him a sorcerer. And who in the world, apart from a few of the more superstitious, could possibly think that I was?

‘Somebody who in fact can use the powers you only experiment with. Somebody like your tiger brother brought up to date, so that your horrible sending wasn't a freak like Gargary's rabbit warren but a quite deliberate attempt on you.'

I had to agree that at least it was possible, since I was not invulnerable like sceptical urban man, but receptive as a tribesman whom the witch doctor can influence to die.

‘I have no enemies so far as I know.'

‘Then find him, her or it,' she said.

Absurd! Am I blacklisted because I haven't joined the union? A joke when I put it that way. Yet tiger brother did not approve of competition. He would not admit that he had anything to do with accidents, but they happened—just as to that harmless chap boring me with his chatter about abstract art. Concentrated venom could at least distract his thoughts to the point of tripping over himself. And is there any more deadly method of distraction than to make the mind consume itself, obsessed with terror?

What alarms me in the witch trials is that the judges—one can't answer for the juries—were able men experienced in distinguishing truth from falsehood and misrepresentation. Acquittals, light sentences and pardons were frequent. Accusations plainly deriving from malice or superstitious illiterates were thrown out. So what is one to make of the death sentences?

Leave out Satan and his imps, and the evidence is as straightforward as in any police court, clear, factual and obeying the rules such as they were. Wincanton witches were guilty of using a baptised image for cursing; witches of East Anglia used the familiar. Both could also heal, but not much is recorded about that. In any case, healing by means of incantations was considered no less a crime than cursing.

I can follow the baptism of the wax image. It pinpointed—a sinister word in this connection—and named the target, so that you didn't harm 39 instead of 43; then dancing or trance provided the energy for transmission.

Now a step further. The human mind can in quite common experience influence an animal; therefore the opposite ought to be true provided that the human receptors are not atrophied. However, the target must be identified and in the neighbourhood. Tiger brother vaguely claimed to be able to receive from animals in the immediate district. He would never have claimed to be in rapport with an elephant in Ceylon.

What would be the effect of receiving from an animal? Sharing its normal stream of consciousness would appear as nightmare with such an enhancement of the senses and such a lack of everyday concepts that the sufferer would be carted off to the nearest asylum. But if the unknown enemy could programme a familiar to transmit fear and nothing else, that would explain what has been done to me.

July 9

I must now record an incident which I hope is not widely discussed among gossiping horsemen with rumours reaching as far as Penminster. I don't mind being known by close friends as somewhat fey, but I refuse to be saddled with a reputation for the supernatural as if I were some medium in a back room. I can understand why Paddy kept so quiet about all his dealings which were not leatherwork.

To start off my search for the cause of the sending which had nearly destroyed me, I decided to take up von Pluwig's offer of a ticket to the International Horse Show and have a longer talk with him. He was most cordial and invited me to watch the events of the last day, when he was competing on his famous but not very dependable Arminius for the Puissance. He added that he would enjoy meeting Meg again if it was convenient for me to take her along; he was sure there would be no objection so long as she stayed quiet in my pocket.

I met him for a moment in the interval and he pressed me to visit the stables half an hour before he entered the collecting ring. I found him in the box with Arminius and his head groom, watched by a small group of cheery Germans and British who might have been hangers-on or riders in other minor events. He told me that the horse was in top form and had a very good chance of winning if only he didn't trail his off-hind. I asked him if that sort of fault was not cured in training by stretching a wire along the top pole so that the horse got a shock if he touched it. No, von Pluwig said, he had never liked the trick and seldom used it with Arminius. My late friend, Paddy Gadsden, had completely cured him, but since Paddy's death the trouble had returned.

I put Meg down on the floor of the box knowing what she would do, for I had seen her often enough with horses and cattle. She ran round the angles of the box to get her bearings, cantered over to Arminius's foreleg, smelt the hoof and then stretched up as far as she could. The horse gave a slight start at the prickling of the claws and then put down his noble head in a graceful curve to blow at her. Meg, fearless as ever, threw up her black muzzle in something like a kiss. That was her usual method of investigating the intelligent end of anything on long legs, man or animal, but to anyone who did not know her it was the oddest sight. One could have sworn they were communicating with each other; so they were in a sense, and merely satisfying mutual curiosity.

‘Meg, tell him to remember his off-hind!' von Pluwig said.

The remark would have sounded humorous to the onlookers. I alone could see that he meant it and understood why he had turned up at my house out of the blue. He must have had limitless trust in Paddy and Meg, but of course had no idea how the talisman worked. Not even Paddy could charm the horse in such detail. Von Pluwig in the saddle, sensitive body to sensitive body, could do it a hundred times more effectively. Paddy's influence in supervising training was quite a different matter.

I watched the Puissance from my seat. The wall was up to seven feet and only von Pluwig and Felicity Brown were still in. Felicity and Anvil Challenge—both, I expect, desperately tired—knocked down a pole in the treble but cleared the wall as effortlessly as if it were a five-barred gate. Von Pluwig and Arminius flew over the treble, but for the first time the horse trailed that fatal off-hind and dislodged a brick of the wall. A gasp went up from the auditorium, all of course backing the British girl and praying that the brick would fall and that the pair would tie on four faults each. The brick hung there swaying on its point of balance but accountably it did not fall.

After his lap of triumph I went out to see von Pluwig and congratulate him. I noticed several cold looks among the horsemen eddying up and down the alley of the stables. He led me quickly to the bar and plied me with champagne. I ordered a cold beef sandwich—Meg does not like ham—and slipped her a couple of inches of underdone.

‘Meg deserves more,' von Pluwig said.

‘I don't see why. Arminius did just what he shouldn't.'

‘I was thinking of the brick.'

He was fingering a very full wallet as he paid for the drinks.

‘Is there no charity in which you are interested?' he asked.

Only then did it occur to me that he was serious, or at least perplexed what to make of his luck.

‘For God's sake, man!' I exclaimed. ‘You surely don't believe I had anything to do with it?'

‘Of course not! Of course not!' he replied heartily. ‘What an idea!'

But he shook my hand very warmly and inundated me with invitations to Germany whenever I liked.

Needless to say, Meg and I had nothing whatever to do with the brick remaining at point of balance. Being on von Pluwig's side, I hoped the brick would not fall but I did not greatly care. In any case telekinesis, the power of the mind to influence inorganic matter, is beyond the shaman, though he is on the right lines in his primitive tendency to consider living and inorganic matter as two aspects of the same thing. If mind could cause a brick to fall, the energy might be derived from such saintly unity with nature that the laws of cause and effect are in suspense. Question: poltergeists? But they do not seem to be under any rational control when they heave bricks about.

Such interference is also beyond the power of mass concentration. There was that vast auditorium praying—if not in so many words—that the brick would fall. The massed appeal had no effect. A comparable case is that of a race meeting where an odds-on favourite is beaten by a head in spite of the condensed petition of the crowd that it should not be.

All this strengthens my theory of how the Robin went to work: through mind to mind, his own obscurely kept in training by the familiar. That Meg could directly influence Arminius is pure superstition. That Paddy needed Meg's actual presence is unlikely since he never took her abroad. So a sort of formula occurs to me. Paddy × Meg can be received by Arminius ÷ Pluwig. And Alfgif × Meg can be received by bullock. The ‘magic' does not lend itself to scientific investigation, which is too cerebral and inhibits the sixth sense.

Three inferences may be drawn: (1) the sender of the Fear to Alfgif requires a familiar; (2) he has to be sure that Alfgif is able to receive; (3) a form of the Old Religion still exists in secret and is known to exist not only by the active covens.

So I must play the detective and use cold reasoning. Who could initiate the sending and why? Rule out Bill Freeman, who is all Christian goodness. Rule out George Midwinter—he has a remarkably open mind and genuine curiosity but that is all. Gargary's magic comes out of a syringe. Magistrates, farmers, country businessmen and the Cricket Club are mostly good fellows who have no active receptors and would not have the remotest idea what I mean by them. Nor have I any known enemies in my society, unless it's Freddie Newcombe the seed merchant whom, as umpire, I gave OUT LBW (which he was) when he was on 99 in the opening match.