Samuel's War, Part 2.

Samuel’s infiltration of the Celtic revivalists in Scotland was an amateur affair. He had studied the occult privately, and through those studies he met the woman who eventually became his regretful wife. He took the task on himself, out of his own convictions, committing himself to uprooting what he believed to be evil. The report of another cult, within the defences of occupied France, was far beyond his resources.

His destination after Scotland was Brighton. Avoiding both the Scots and the attentions of the draft, he sought out the author Marcus Brand for advice. Brand was one of his sources on the occult, and they had been in correspondence for years. He was excited to learn of Samuel’s encounter in Scotland and the rumours of demonologists in Brittany. Brand’s knowledge of magic came only from interviews and historical documents – he was what’s known now as a magical theorist, in our label dependent age; he saw himself as an eccentric academic. In any case he could not help Samuel directly, but he could put him in touch with two of his primary sources – one of whom was Joseph de Sande in Cornwall, who warned Samuel to be careful; the invite to Brittany had been extended to all magicians with Celtic links, including himself, and possibly Pembroke. If the call was answered in strength then Samuel’s mission would be impossible. This was the first time anyone had applied the term mission to Samuel’s pursuit, but that is what it had become. I suspect this realisation pleased him rather than daunted, but I didn’t know him then.

The second address Brand supplied was my own, here in Sheffield, almost fifty years before I was born. Heading north again, by train, he sat surrounded by men of a country at war. He could never justify his avoidance of their fate, nor face his family to let them think he was a coward. He was like the sun of a distant planet, only seen as a faint star. Or at least that’s how he saw himself. My father saw him as a meteor, oblivious to the destruction it threatened to the world it would collide with. Samuel was hopelessly dogmatic in his view of demons, unable to differentiate between the wisdom of Christianity and the fears of Christian leaders (I can only assume since he told this story to Norman, that he doesn’t think he’s guilty of this now). He was refused aid, but my father let him stay in order to educate him.

I don’t know if it was Samuel’s persuasion or other news that had reached him, but after a month my father began to share in his concern. The possibility of demons set loose on a course of destruction was everything Samuel presumed was true and everything my father detested as prejudice. With his blessing for this specific mission, my father provided Samuel with a new face, a new name, a new past, with a doctor who could swear he’d known Samuel since birth and testify to a convenient heart condition.

He then returned to Cornwall, via London, where he found the sword he still carries today. At night, on the beach near St Keverne, invisible to the outposts and gunners, Samuel and Joseph de Sande walked out onto the sea. The waves carried them, making each step worth forty. The water became solid under their feet, as if sand had been gathered up beneath them, forming islands that dissolved with each footfall. By morning they had covered the hundred miles of the English Channel and they walked up past the German defences, no more than shimmers of dawn light off the sea. Then they hid, as de Sande recovered his strength, with Samuel wondering about these allies, who had amputated the man he used to be, and aided him with the same unnatural power he was duty bound to defeat.