Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen (27 page)

“Can you do magic?” she said, wide-eyed after planting a big wet kiss on his cheek. “Mum says you are a sorcerer and you can talk again. Can you make me a piebald pony? I’ve always wanted one.”

Not to be outdone, six-year-old Annie joined in with her requirements. With the two girls chattering away, Guinevere holding one of his hands, his mother holding the other, and Merlin bringing up the rear with his brothers, Will Timms and his rediscovered family made their happy way to the front door of the leper house.

There was a great deal to be said and much reacquainting to be done. It was a long way from the wattle and daub dwelling house they had lived in as a poor family at the wolf-ravaged settlement of Malmesbury.

And Will had become Twilight, the silent, brooding settlement boy who could do magic.

Guinevere had split her own private rooms in one corner of the leprosaria into cramped quarters for all of them. Guinevere, Leah, and the two girls slept on straw pallets in one cramped small room, the three boys shared another, and, in deference to her rank as a princess and to help her get over the shock of her new surroundings, Rawnie had a small, converted store cupboard as her quarters. For the Timms family, having two rooms, however small, was an improvement over their settlement hovel where they had all slept, cooked, and lived in one.

As soon as they got inside, the long magus and Twilight went to speak to Rawnie. She had tried to escape earlier that day by stealing a boat and attempting to row to the mainland. Being completely inept at rowing and steering at the same time, she had blundered around in circles just off the jetty, much to the amusement of the watching lepers, before being swept up the shingle beach alongside by the incoming tide. As a punishment Guinevere had confined her to her small cupboard for the rest of the day, where she had resorted to alternate banging on the locked door and screaming until exhaustion had driven her to sleep.

Now, freshly awake as she had been the first time Twilight had seen her in Cadbury Castle and spirited her away, she blinked in blue-eyed suspicion at the two of them crowding into her small cupboard. Once again the boy found his heart pounding in her presence and a peculiar dryness to his mouth.

Merlin explained that in response to her kidnapping and certain defeats in battle, her father had agreed to return to the north with his army and had left Cadbury Castle that very morning. She would be returned to him and her mother when the last soldier had crossed the border into Northumberland.

The young princess obviously found it hard to believe that her all-conquering father had been sent back.

“I don’t believe you,” she said flatly. “You have no army, no men at arms. How could you defeat my father the king in battle and force him to return to the north?”

The long magus smiled and nodded. “You are aware of the enchantments and the venefical mastery of their powers?”

“Yes, but that’s just bits of magic. Party tricks don’t win battles. It’s armies of well-armed and trained soldiers that win battles. Besides, my father had his own veneficus. Elelendise and her wolf packs were there to counteract any venefical challenges he met.”

“Ahhh yes, Elelendise. Unfortunately, your father and the repellent wolf-woman had a falling out, and he sent her away. We are preparing now for her return. As for what you refer to as our party tricks, perhaps my young companion will explain.”

The boy looked at her directly and tried to still the incessant beating of his heart.

“If used correctly, the enchantments can be a powerful force in an armed conflict. Your father had twelve thousand soldiers. Clumsy, armored men at arms needing constant water, food, sleep, transportation animals, and shelter. I will give you an example of how these necessities are an inherent restriction in battle and can be turned to our advantage …”

Quietly, succinctly, Twilight outlined the problems that her father and four hundred and fifty soldiers had faced at Bradley Hill.

“That they and your father were not all drowned was entirely due to this boy’s intervention,” added the long magus when Twilight had finished.

She looked at Twilight with a softer expression. “Thank you,” she whispered. “How long will it take my father and his army to cross the Northumberland border?”

“We estimate about three weeks,” said the boy. “The hawks in ligamen to the long magus here are tracking their progress. We will know within one day of their arrival and will return you immediately to them.”

He felt a strange sadness at the thought of her return.

Later that evening they all sat down for an evening meal in the communal area outside the cramped rooms. Normal leper life went on the other side of the separating wall as the one hundred or so residents prepared and ate their own evening meal before retiring to their dormitories, which they shared at around twenty to each. Guinevere put copious dishes of fruit, boiled vegetables, and leavened slabs of bread on a large trestle table, gave each one of them a thick earthenware plate and water holder, and bade them eat and drink.

“We try to have fresh fish from the drift nets at least twice a week. Today is not a fish day. Do you still eat?” She addressed Twilight. “Or are you like the old astounder here and manage on fresh air alone?”

“I still need food, although it’s gradually becoming less important,” replied the boy.

“Do you mean that venefici don’t require food?” Slapping Jack’s hand away from the apples Leah began to put equal-sized portions on her children’s plates as she asked the question. The long magus looked at her.

“Nor water or sleep, or pretty much anything else that most humans require to sustain them,” he said gently.

Silently, slowly, Princess Rawnie joined them and helped herself to some food.

“How on earth do you keep body and soul together?” said Leah.

“Ahhh yes,” replied the long magus, “the body stays intact through the nutrients contained within the enchantments themselves. As for the soul … now that’s a difficult one. Perhaps your eldest son and the tyro veneficus himself could venture an answer …”

Everyone looked at Twilight. He was silent for a long moment before offering an answer.

“
Anima humana.
The human soul. A winged free spirit without a shadow, an illusion without appearance, the essential mirror of acts and reflections binding each of us to a passionate identity that may - or may not - propel us into the afterlife.”

He stopped and looked around the table, rather pleased with himself.

“Mmmm …” Merlin frowned.

“Very … er … Celtic.” Guinevere smiled.

“Eala!” exclaimed his mother. “He can certainly talk now.”

Princess Rawnie sniffed regally.

“We had fish yesterday. It was nice,” said little Meg, picking on the last word she really recognized. Squeezing in beside her new hero brother with her heaped plate, she stared up at him before tugging at his arm.

“Do me some magic, Will, go on, do me some magic.”

Twilight looked across at his mentor inquiringly.

“Well, go on then, skirmisher, do little Meg some magic. Add a little crinkum crankum to the proceedings.” The long magus chuckled. “Although there isn’t room in here for a piebald pony, I’m sure you’ll think of something appropriate.”

The boy turned to his little sister, looked deeply into her eyes for effect, and tapped on the table. Her plate of fruit, bread, and vegetables suddenly disappeared. Then he tapped again, and it reappeared balanced on top of the princess’s head. Another tap and it moved around the table, stopping for a moment on everyone’s head. Little Meg watched its progress with her eyes and mouth wide open in wonder. A final tap and it reappeared back in front of her, causing her to squeal and clap her hands in rapturous delight. The pattern for the evening was set, and from that moment on all manner of detritus appeared and reappeared in odd places. Finally, exhausted with screaming in wonderment and the excitement of the occasion, the two girls went happily to bed closely followed by their brothers. The princess, caught firmly in the aura cast by Twilight’s manipulations - she preferred that to Will, so much more mysterious - retired to the relative privacy of her cupboard.

Leah, her arm wrapped protectively around the shoulders of her rediscovered wonder son, Guinevere, and Merlin talked long into the night. Guinevere talked quietly of her love for Arthur, her dalliance with Mordred, and their subsequent fight to the death. She wept unashamedly at the memories and regret for what had once been hers, her still beautiful dark eyes spilling unchecked tears down her cheeks. Arthur, she said, had been more than a love of a lifetime; he had been that lifetime. She told how the long magus had transformed her and the mortally wounded
Dux Bellorum
to this island and shrouded it in thick mists whilst she tried to nurse him back to health. After ten days of clinging to life by the thinnest of threads, he’d died in her arms. Her biggest regret was that she did not have a child with Arthur to comfort and remind her of him, and continue his noble bloodline. Without Arthur she was incapable of feeling; had she not been brought up to abhor the taking of her own life, she would have gladly done so. In her innermost thoughts this island would always be known by the secret name they gave it to keep others from finding them. It was Avalon. Their Avalon. Salvation had come in the form of a suggestion from the long magus that she stay here and work with lepers. It had given her life some meaning and purpose, a mask to the great hurt that she had caused. Penitence, self-denial, atonement, purgatorial cleansing, she wasn’t sure, but the fact that her memories still cut her to the quick every single day when she awoke, even now, after more than fifty years, attested to the strength of her love for Arthur. She would take his blazing, undiminished beacon to her grave. There was just one small sprinkling of stardust in the dark firmament of her life. Her beloved king was still here with her, his bones placed in a casket buried in a secret place on the island. Before Guinevere uttered the next sentence Twilight knew what was coming.

“There is something else in the casket with him. He is buried with the chalice known as the Holy Grail.”

The long magus looked at the boy and his mother in turn as they digested this information.

“So now you both know one of the great secrets of Celtic lore, the whereabouts of the bones of King Arthur and the Holy Grail itself. Grail Seekers, of which there are many of all denominations, would give everything and anything to have that knowledge. They scour the land for the location in the belief that the myth that goes with it - that of the reincarnation of Arthur to his former glory - can be achieved with the chalice. Believe you me, it cannot. As you can see from the strength of her emotions, this gentle lady would be the first to bring him back if it were possible. Guard this information with the utmost care. It must not be known outside of the four of us here.”

Emboldened by Guinevere’s frankness Leah began to talk of her life in the settlement of Malmesbury before the wolves came. Although they had been known as free cultivators under the old Roman system of land allocation, meaning they owned the right to cultivate the small parcel of land allocated to them known as a hide, their holding would not support two adults and the six children who arrived in the first eight years. Life was hard and a constant struggle, and then there had been Will’s silence. Six years during which he had not uttered a single word or even grunt. Even so, the day that her husband Sam decided to take him away to the long magus had been, for her, a very black one indeed.

As she spoke, Twilight cast his mind back to the parting. Leah had refused to let the old cob with him and Sam Timms on its back go and had clung to its neck fiercely. Only after Sam Timms had dismounted and struck her down did the old horse move on. He could still hear the heart-rending shrieks with which she had wailed them into the distance. Yet he hadn’t fought it. Somehow he knew it was the right decision despite his beloved mother being beaten into the dirt.

Leah’s arm tightened around Will’s shoulders as she looked at him.

“From that moment on something inside me died as well. You’d think with six children I wouldn’t miss one, but even though he had not spoken for six years I knew, with a mother’s certainty, that there was nothing wrong with him. He was special, gifted, different, and it was because of that difference Sam Timms, advised by the Settlement Council of Elders, wanted to put him with the long magus. They thought he was mad, demented, called him a devil child and a pariah because of his silence and ability to move things and apparently make people do things against their will. As it turned out, going to you, long magus, was the right thing to do.”

“And you have also had that rare and beautiful ability to communicate with each other over great distances,” said Merlin. “Something that I have never had with anyone.”

“That happened just before the wolves came. Suddenly I was communicating with Will in my mind.”

Leah looked at the long magus for a long moment, opened her mouth, and then, as if deciding that what she was about to say was too controversial, snapped it shut. The old astounder smiled at her, nodded, and then spoke gently.

“Go on, Leah, it is time.” All the old private doubts and insecurities welled up in her. The great secret that she had squirreled away in her innermost consciousness for fourteen years and hardly dared to even contemplate was about to be revealed. Trembling she looked at Guinevere, who nodded encouragement. Then, almost reluctantly, she engaged her son’s black opals and took a deep breath.