Lammas Night (51 page)

“I—meant what I said,” Richard murmured, his voice catching in his throat as Graham regained enough presence of mind to pull back a little and look across at him dazedly. “I want to help. I know there are things you can't tell me, but I want you to know I'll be with you, whatever you have to do. I love him, too.”

Still shaking a little despite the other's support, Graham drew a long, shuddering breath and nodded, forcing himself to swallow and get himself together as he looked into his son's eyes.

“Thank you,” he murmured, breathing again and feeling himself untense a little more. “And thank you for staying. If I—shouldn't make it back tonight, promise you'll serve him the way I've tried to.”

“Even if you
do
come back, sir,” Richard whispered, tears glistening in his eyes. “I promise.”

“Bless you, Richard,” Graham murmured, averting his gaze, feeling awkward now that the moment was past. “You'd better go get some sleep now. It's going to be a long night.”

Reluctantly, Richard left him, turning to gaze back with a wistful but proud hesitation before pulling the door closed behind him. After a few minutes, Graham went up to the room he used when he stayed at Oakwood. The brigadier was sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed, waiting for him.

“Did you tell him?” Ellis asked.

“No, but he knew. Not the details, but he knew.” Graham sat wearily on the bed and pulled off his boots. “He's one hell of a kid, Wesley. I guess he must take after his grandfather.”

Ellis came around to Graham's side of the bed and gently pushed him back against the pillows.

“I think he takes after his father,” he said softly, “and I think you should get some sleep.”

“I can't. There's too much to think about.”

“You can—and I'll insist if I have to. Let me help you, Gray. Just relax and let me handle this part.”

Graham did not really want to sleep, afraid of what he might dream again, but Ellis's touch was insistent and the offer of escape too tantalizing to resist. Sinking back into the pillows, he let himself plummet into deep, dreamless slumber, awakening refreshed shortly after dusk. He thought he remembered Ellis talking to him for a while, but the sense of whatever he had said was blurred—probably at Ellis's suggestion and certainly with good effect, for he was no longer haunted by active fears for William or himself even though his mind knew the dangers were no less real.

When he joined the others for a light meal, the talk was all of the details of the war and speculation about the other groups joining the work tonight. Expectation grew as darkness settled and the appointed hour approached.

C
HAPTER
21

Lammas Night, 1940

The appointed hour approached. Not only Oakwood prepared. Outward appearances as well as the stated beliefs of the participants might differ from place to place, but the intent was always the same: the invasion must be prevented; Hitler must be stopped.

In Plymouth, men and women whose forebears danced the sacred round with Drake to stop an Armada foregathered on a wooded promontory across the sound from Devil's Point, for the old meeting place was habited now by gun emplacements and sentries. Some carried picnic baskets and blankets like any other folk on summer holiday, but one man lugged a wide, flat Irish
bodhran
, reminiscent of a larger, older drum at Buckland Abbey. Some of them sang or hummed under their breaths as they approached the ancient wood, calling soft greetings to one another as they came. Perched on a tree stump at the meeting place, a young boy piped a haunting melody on a penny whistle.…

A ceremonial magician in a Yorkshire attic, aloof and solitary, stepped into a chalked circle and bowed his head in reverence, then spread his arms in the opening salute of the Qabalistic cross, summoning the forces of light to guard and guide him in his work:

“Ateh … Malkuth … Ve Geburah … Ve Gedulah … Le Olahm … Amen,”
he intoned as his hand traced out the ancient sign.

In a grove atop Chanctonbury Ring in Sussex, witches of a coven old before the coming of the first Conqueror huddled around a fallen tree-trunk altar to shelter from the wind as their priestess scribed a circle around them with her athame and earthed the ritual blade with a cry. In that instant, the wind died down in that area alone, not to resume until the work was finished, the power contained and sent.

In a Gnostic Christian temple in Scotland, twelve Anglo-Catholic canons and their master prayed in preparation, fingering the seven-colored cords called quipus, whose mystery held awesome powers.

Far to the south, on the island of Anglesey, where Druid priests and priestesses had cursed the Roman invaders across the Menai Straits nearly two millenia before, white-robed contemporary Druids gathered by a ring of standing stones. At their head, their flamen held a ceremonial sword aloft by its point, proclaiming the readiness of all of them to suffer, if need be, in the cause of truth. As they processed from the ring and into the sacred grove, circling a center stone, they raised sprigs of oak and mistletoe aloft while the chief bard sang an invocation:

“Grant, O God, Thy protection; and in protection, strength; and in strength, understanding; and in understanding, knowledge; and in knowledge, the knowledge of justice
.…”

A depression in the rock held rainwater, sacred from its source. A priestess in white linen robe and headdress dipped a pine cone by its stem and sprinkled each participant as he or she passed. Consecrated fire burned on a flat hearth near the water, sheltered from profane eyes outside their sacred site.…

At selected Masonic temples, aproned worshipful masters enjoined hand-picked brethren to join in prayer and meditation upon a worthy work:

“Now may the Wisdom of the Great Architect of the Universe be upon us and prosper the Work of our hands and minds upon us.…”

In Glastonbury—for untold centuries a seat of Britain's Mysteries—an adept known as Dion Fortune closeted herself as she had each day since the outbreak of war and went out on the Second Road to summon ancient guardians: the four great archangels towering from the sea surrounding Britain, patrolling her shores, overshadowing the land with the protection of their wings and barring the way across the water with fiery swords.

In Hampshire, near Christchurch, Dame Emma and a dozen other men and women picked their way down a stony path toward a cove on the Solent, where others already laid the kindling for a bonfire, sheltered from view by sea or air. On the cliffs above, others kept watch for the Home Guard and other regular patrols, though one of their number was a warden and had ensured that they would not be interrupted.…

It was nine o'clock, and the guardians of England were settling down to work in scores of places and in scores of different ways. For the next four hours, their combined abilities would build and augment one another's strengths, uniting in a commonality of will to make a madman doubt himself. It had been done before; it could be done again. As the minutes ticked by, more of them joined the growing group mind, the promise of power discernible to those who knew how to look, as it spilled onto the Second Road.…

At Oakwood—the source of the night's effort—Sir John Graham roused groggily from his astral scouting, confident that the work was progressing satisfactorily, and slipped a skein of scarlet silk into the pocket of his robe before going outside with the brigadier. The rest, save Selwyn, were grouped around the heavily shielded lantern that Alix had set just outside the entrance to the maze, and they made room for Graham and Ellis without speaking. The silk in Graham's pocket might have been cold iron, so heavily did it weigh on mind and soul. He was very much aware of Richard's presence in the shadows to his left.

No light showed at any window of the house. The moonless night grew steadily darker as they waited in silence, each alone with his or her own thoughts, steeling nerves and souls for what might come. Black-robed bodies were but shapes of denser dark against the variegated greys of the shrubbery, averted faces paler blurs inside cowled hoods as each meditated on the work to come.

A door opened and closed softly in the direction of the library. The muted crunch of gravel underfoot announced an approach, and then Selwyn was moving easily among them, smelling faintly of soap as he touched hands and shoulders in reassurance and made his way to Alix's side, slipping an arm around her waist.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said to all of them as he glanced around the circle. “In view of everything that's happened and the importance of tonight's work, I wanted to leave Jennings with instructions that were more than usually complete. Gray, I've told him not to interrupt for anything unless he checks with Denton in London first, and Denton says he should. Will that cover your department?”

Graham nodded. “It should. I've given Denny strict instructions myself.”

“Very well, then. Geoffrey, have you and Richard checked all the gates?”

“All in order,” came a reply from beyond the faint circle of light.

“I think,” said Alix after a slight hesitation, “that we're ready to walk the maze, then. Even more than usual, let's use this time to good advantage.”

Picking up the lantern, she took her husband's hand and led them slowly into the darkness between the yew hedges, the others falling in behind in customary order: first Richard and Geoffrey, then Audrey, and finally the brigadier and Graham. The dim light did not penetrate far beyond Alix herself, especially once she entered the maze, so each person laid his or her right hand on the shoulder of the person ahead for guidance, though the path was well known to all of them. Graham pulled the outer gate shut and locked it before linking with Ellis, then closed his eyes and let himself be drawn physically and psychically into the labyrinth. He tried not to think about William or what else might lie ahead.

He felt the gravel smooth and cool beneath his feet as he walked, the brush of leaves against one sleeve, sniffed the faint summer scents of jasmine, roses, and sun-warmed earth. He knew when they had passed the first internal gate by the distinctive tingle that began to build at the base of his skull as they doubled back along a series of switchbacks—a faint itch of psychic hackles stirring along his spine, familiar yet ever new.

He had first walked the maze as a very young man more than twenty years ago, but repetition had never dulled the experience. The effect defied all rational explanation, for to most Oakwood visitors the maze was childishly simple, remarkable only in the precise beauty of its close-clipped yew hedges. Unless the proper gates were pivoted to new positions inside, the path among the seven-foot hedges meandered in pleasant but unspectacular fashion until it came out before a quite conventional Victorian gazebo.

The path they walked tonight, however, was not the one on which visitors strolled by day. The pattern was ancient; no one knew how old. Norman ancestors of the Jordan family had brought the design with them from France at the time of the Crusades, long before there had been earls of Selwyn, and cut the original maze in turf. Hedges and the camouflage of false paths had come with the repressive atmosphere of the Tudors and Stuarts, the current hedges dating only from the 1800's.

But once the gates were changed, the usually simple maze was transformed into a complex labyrinth that, when walked with magical intent, became an analog of the sacred dance, weaving unseen barriers to prevent the entry of outside psychic forces and to contain those raised within them. So powerful was the completed network of energies that often they did not even bother to cast an additional circle at the temple, though they would do so tonight.

The patterning intensified as they wound back and forth and around, finally peaking and leveling out as they emerged into the flagstoned center of the maze. The gazebo glowed very faintly from inside, lit by three more shielded lanterns like the one Alix carried, trellises nearly obscured by climbing roses and ivy trailers. As Alix and Selwyn mounted the weathered steps hand in hand, disappearing inside, Alix set her light just inside the entrance. In silence, the rest of them waited at the foot of the steps for the circle to be purified and cast.

Though lattice and roses permitted no clear view inside, Graham did not need to see with his eyes to know what was being done. He had stood in as Alix's high priest when Selwyn was away, as had most of the other men. He could follow their progress by memory and the faint sounds of movement within, quite aware when they raised the circle's boundaries and invoked the guardians at the four quarters. The rites were even more ancient than the pattern they had walked.

Shortly, Selwyn appeared at the threshold transformed, sword in hand and a staghorned crown on his head. His lean, hard body gleamed against the faint back light like the polished stone of classic statues, for he and Alix both had shed their robes for the opening of the temple. In that moment, Selwyn
was
the Horned God of forest and hunt, consort to the Goddess who moved into place at his side. Alix's hair tumbled to her hips from a garland of wheat and wildflowers, veiling her breasts like misty sunlight. A silver crescent moon was bound upon her brow, and in her hands she held an earthen goblet and a tuft of pine needles.

The response that rippled among those who waited was almost a physical ache of awe and joy. Dry-mouthed, Graham watched as the others began to move in turn to the top of the steps and seek admittance, drinking in the beauty and majesty of the pair and trying to put from his mind the possibility that this might be the last time he would enter such a circle. The skein of red silk weighed more heavily than ever as the others left him, one by one.

Incense drifted lightly on the chill air and mixed with the scent of roses as challenge was given and answered and the company admitted. At last, only Graham remained, to climb the four steps and pause before the threshold. The psychic silence was almost deafening, for he was truly alone between the worlds now: within the maze, yet outside the circle's womb. As the point of the god's sword pressed against his throat, steel against flesh, he could feel the power resonating through the blade from the one who challenged.