The Rose Above the Sword Volume IV of the Glastonbury Chronicles

By S. P. Hendrick

It’s been three generations since the Sacred King last poured out his blood to heal the planet Brittania. In the interim, the usurping "Common" government has driven the Old Ways to ground with its pseudo-science. The Windsor line has been hunted to extinction, records of the Old Faith and Sacred King destroyed, all religious practice forbidden, and the people are starving physically and spiritually.

As the Sacred King and his Knight Protector Awaken in this dismal world, they quickly discover that the Gods have been very creative in preserving the bloodlines, history, and rites of the Sacred King. They even left a road map for them, but at least one copy has fallen into the wrong hands. Luckily for Geoffrey Spencer Robinson, Phillip MacGregor, and the people of Britannia, the old saying holds true: man plans while the Gods laugh.

"If Robert Heinlein and Neil Gaiman had ever collaborated on a book series, it would probably look a lot like The Glastonbury Chronicles."
"Hendrick blurs the lines of...well, everything...to delicious effect: time, space, the mystical and the mundane, gender, and relationships, to name a few."
Laura Davis, Examiner.com Los Angeles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pendraig Publishing
• Release date: Feb 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781936922185

Book preview

Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

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Other Fiction Novels from Pendraig Publishing

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Dedication

To Joseph Campbell,

who taught me to follow my bliss,

and started me on my own Hero’s Journey

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Chapter One

In all the Universe there could not have been such a green jewel as Britannia. The lush patchwork of crops blanketing the country side, the verdant forests deep and dense and teeming with life, even the small backyard gardens in the villages and towns brought forth their abundant bounty in a manner past generations had only dreamt of. This was the lush and fertile splendour the original colonists had envisioned in their hearts and souls when they had undertaken the long journey to settle upon their new world; their shades would have sighed forth their gratitude and contentment to see it so joyously realised.

Yet while the planet bloomed and blossomed its people found no contentment within themselves, for there was a blight upon their souls, a canker at their very hearts and they led lives as grey as the rocky desolation of the Grey Hills.

The hills themselves were haunted…everyone knew that. At certain times of year the great winds blew and the phase lightning ravaged man and animal alike, and it all seemed to emanate from those hills, hills which were barren still except for four tall oak trees which stood in a cluster at the top of the one called by some the Mound of Annwn, by others Dun Babhdh, but most just called it the Tor. Legends…there were plenty…of how the last King had been slain by four Knights and all had perished in a quake, stories of a weeping Queen who walked the hills in black attire looking for her lost love, taken from her side on her wedding night…

Some of the more romantic of us believed the tales were true, but the lesson taught by overzealous and fearful tutors was that the traitors had been caught and executed by the forces of the Commons and that Walter Blunt’s Rebellion had brought peace and plenty to this nation-world. The overthrow of the oppressive Monarchy had freed the people to work more industriously for the benefit of all, and Science, not Magick, had been responsible for the greening of Britannia.

Anyone who thought differently was welcome to dangle from a rope.

Against this background I, Geoffrey Spencer Robinson, came of age in the village of Hernegate on the edge of the New Forest, almost within the shadow of the Tor. New Glastonbury lay far on the other side of the Grey Hills, New London farther still. We kept the Old Ways and the Old Beliefs in silence, knowing the laws set down by the High Council and that the other laws set down before by more ancient hands than theirs were dearer still and far more binding. Any death they set upon us for breaking their laws would be for one life only; any death we set upon ourselves for breaking the older laws might be for all time.

There was a King within the Land, deny him though they might try. There was a King within the Land, and he would return to us some day, though Blunt had all but exterminated his entire house. There was a King within the Land, and we must be ready to follow him.

There were whispers, whispers only, whispers guarded in symbols too sacred to be profaned by the eyes of most men, though it was rumoured the old Order still lived, still thrived, even walked undetected in the midst of us all. Chapterhouses remained, disguised as inns and alehouses, and those who were Of The Blood knew their locations. Rumours abounded and from them sprang up a new mythology, part Gods and Heroes of Lost Earth, and part Martyrs and Kings of Britannia. The Tradition was entirely oral, for such fantasies and speculations were punishable by torture and death. It was talk of treason, and Blunt’s heirs had eyes and ears everywhere, even in a village as obscure as ours.

There was a small river which ran through Hernegate. It came from somewhere in the Grey Hills, meandered through the New Forest, and was the power source for the old mill which turned faithfully on its west bank. Each harvest-tide when the three moons conjoined in the heavens the men of certain families would bring their sons who had come of age in the past year to the mill to celebrate. The custom was as old as Hernegate itself. We all knew about it and yet it had never been the topic of much discussion, no more than an idle curiosity to those who were not involved. Most families in these parts had some kind of clan tradition which they alone celebrated, and none thought more of one family’s workings than another’s, nor were they wont to speculate.

I, however, had no family, no tradition. My father had been The Green Man, so the tales had been told, and my mother the daughter of a Priestess, executed for treasonous speech against the government. I had been brought to this village as an infant, fostered by Ian MacGregor and his wife Emily and raised in the old mill house, raised as their own but not their own, keeping the name I had been called at birth. I had been privy to all but the Clan secrets, for I had not been of that Blood. What blood was in me I knew on one side only, for Science had refuted the idea that The Green Man was Divine but only a role played by a masked player during primitive fertility rites which had since been forbidden.

The body of the planet may have been healthy, but its soul was sallow, as sallow as the face of the man whose pictures now decorated walls and placards commemorating Walter Blunt and his glorious contributions to the freedom of us all from the tyranny of Monarchs and religion.

How could a movement without religion have a patron saint?

And still we, in our secret hearts, held other truths to be self-evident.

There was a King within the Land.

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Chapter Two

Our world had come to the crossroads of the year, that Harvest-tide wherein the roses bloomed their brightest and the smell of them was on the evening air, that sweet and poignant balance between the seasons, before the hoarfrost came and the breath of man and beast blew white and hung before their faces. Such was the time of the massing of the Four Clans in Hernegate. Each inn and alehouse was filled beyond capacity, for many were the lines that had descended from the four original families, and those which had come through the mother’s blood were traceable only in the traditions of the families. Since the Archives of the Order of the Sword and the Rose had been lost, some say destroyed entirely, such records were set down only in the mind.

They knew who they were. The oral traditions had reinforced what the blood did not remember, but it had been written in the blood and if words should fail, the blood would not.

I often wondered what tale my own blood would tell.

Science, despite Blunt and his fanatics, was not the be-all and end-all of the Universe. Some things could not be explained by the simplistic ideas they had rammed down our throats with our porridge. Things they could see were one thing; the unseen, however, were another. Each explanation they had formulated over the millennia in regard to forces at work had always seemed to lack a piece and like an archway without a keystone, each theory had eventually crumbled.

Our people had squawked back the theorems and formulae to the ears which demanded them, but they were words learned by rote. The real meanings of things were deeper and could not be taught by formulae, for words alone, like their science, did not contain the Will to make things so.

It was in this frame of mind that I watched from the sidelines as the men began to gather in the town square around the old stone Celtic cross which marked the centre of Hernegate. The cross had been constructed by the first settlers of the town, its base of the local rock from the Grey Hills, surmounted by bluestone from the Preseli region of Wales on old Earth, painstakingly carved with intertwined holly and ivy leaves along the arms and base of the cross with acorns and oak leaves adorning the circle surmounting the juncture of the horizontal and vertical arms of the cross. Such crosses had been common in parts of Britain for centuries, marking town centres and historical monuments and having little to do with religion, lest it would have been torn down by Blunt’s disciples.

The Maiden and the Crone were already in conjunction in the heavens as the last rays of daylight faded from the skies. I watched as the Mother had joined them, their combined light shining almost as brightly as the light of Earth’s moon, or so I supposed. It was enough of a light to cast shadows, and to reveal the faces of the gathering crowd.

I should not have been surprised to see the face of my foster brother Phillip nor my foster father there. Phillip had turned twenty in the lambing season and had missed the last gathering because of illness. It was well past his time. The realisation, however, hurt me deeply. Phillip had always been like a real brother to me. We had always shared everything, never using the word foster in our relationship. He had been my brother, pure and simple, and now there would always be a distinction between us. He was Of The Blood. I was not.

I waited and watched as they filed along through the town square, followed in the distance as they walked along the riverbank leading to the mill, and dutifully returned to my room above the mill as they headed past into the forest and in the direction of the Tor. I could only imagine what they were doing. My honour was too important to follow them further.

That whole night long I lay on my pallet listening to the rush of the river, the creak of the wheel, and the pounding of my own heart. Just before dawn they returned. There was something different about Phillip; I could tell it in the way he walked, in the carriage of his body, the length of his stride, even the way he plopped himself on the pallet next to mine. He seemed older, taller, more confident…and more burdened. We were the same age, almost exactly, yet there had been no coming of age for me, no secrets shared between father and son.

Still, I could not in all good conscience complain. They had been good to me, taken me in, and until that night I had been treated no differently than Phillip. I had learned the trade and would eventually with Phillip take over the mill. It was far more than any fosterling could have hoped for, a fosterling without the bloodline of a father…a fosterling whose mother had been executed for treason.

Geoff…are you awake? he whispered.

How did you guess? I asked.

Your breathing. You breathe differently when you’re asleep.

I turned over to face him.

Was it wonderful?

Yes. But something happened, and I’m not at all certain it was supposed to happen. I sort of fainted at one part of the ritual. It scared a lot of people, and it seemed to make a lot more of them really uncomfortable.

Are you all right?

Yes. But I’m not sure Father is. He seemed very concerned. He cried.

Father did not cry. He had not cried when Phillip’s mother, the only mother I had ever known, had died. He had not cried when the new millstone had crushed two fingers on his left hand as he had moved it into position. Father did not cry.

What happened?

I’m not supposed to tell, but then this wasn’t a part of the ritual, so I guess I can tell that much…they say I went into some kind of a trance and just lay there twitching and then silent for several minutes. I saw things…oh Geoff I saw so many things. I can’t explain them to you. They were things from long ago, some things from Earth, even and I didn’t just see them…I felt them, touched them all, and Geoff…I lived them. They were me. And there was something else…

What?

I can’t tell you, but later on today I want to take you to the Tor. I’m hoping you can see it for yourself. That way I will have broken no oaths, and…I couldn’t really tell you anyway.

My heart was full. He was still my brother, and my best friend. The bond between us had not been destroyed by the ritual as I had feared it would have been, and he was willing to share what he could with me, as much as he could without betraying his honour.

Honour was the essence of everything. It was the promise the Land made to the People to be bountiful, and the promise the People helped the Land keep by holding up their share of the bargain…by tilling and caring for the soil and its plants, and by letting parts of it go fallow to rest for the next planting.

Walter Blunt’s proclamations to the contrary, Honour was the gift that the Gods had given Men, and the gift that Men returned to the Gods. The contract between them was absolute; we all knew in time the Old Ways would no longer lay fallow and all that had been ploughed underground would once again be harvested.

We knew.

We believed.

We waited.

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Chapter Three

We busied ourselves that morning with the usual chores and early on had finished enough that Father had bidden us be off. There would be no more to grind until the next day and all the sacks we had on hand were full to bursting anyway. A pack of food and drink for each of us and a few other sundries upon our backs and we were off as the sun still climbed upward in the sky.

We followed the river into the Grey Hills as the men had followed it the night before; the tracks of many feet were unmistakable along the way. Still I let Phillip lead me, for this adventure had been of his making and I was happy that he had wanted to share as much of it as he could with me. We walked in silence except for the sounds of our feet crunching the sandy riverbank, the light wind blowing past our ears, and the ravens calling overhead.

The weather was mild for a day so late in the season and the sun hot upon our faces. The only shade was high upon the Tor; the only shadows beneath it were those we made ourselves. The Grey Hills were bleak, but beautiful to my eye. One who really looked at them could see how varied were the shades of grey of which they were composed, from the pale whitish-grey of wood ash to a deep charcoal, from the green-grey of something resembling slate to a shade which came close to the bluestone of the Preseli Hills from which the Sacred Stones of old Earth had been hewn. Grey was a complicated colour, a colour of infinite possibilities and nuances, of all manner of shades between white and black, much like the degrees of life itself.

Phillip left the river course and veered to the left, up into the rocky part of the Tor, up the face of the hill, past boulders and smaller rocks, up toward the stand of oaks at the top. It was steeper than I had originally thought it would be and the stones over which we traversed a lot looser and more apt to roll away beneath our feet. I nearly slipped more than once, marvelling at Phillip’s sure-footedness in the rough passage.

You’ve been here before, I commented.

Believe me, it’s a lot trickier by moonlight, even if there are three moons and you’re with a group of people who are walking ahead of you.

How much further?

All the way to the trees. Then we rest.

I was winded by the time we got there; he was still filled with energy which seemed to increase as we reached the top of the Tor. I struggled to keep up with him, especially those last few moments when he seemed to scurry over the rocks with the sure-footedness of a goat or a deer. At long last we plopped ourselves and our packs down between the ancient oaks and sat, facing each other, our backs leaning against two of the trees.

Can you feel it? he asked, a serene smile on his face and his eyes fairly glowing.

I sat as still as I could, trying to feel something out of the ordinary, puzzled as to where all of this and all the walking and climbing before had been leading.

What am I supposed to be feeling? I asked after a long silence.

The trees. Feel the trees, Geoff. Feel how old they are.

I knew they were old. They had been planted there more than a hundred years ago, shortly after the overthrow of the Monarchy.

Legend has it they are even older still, the acorns of their ancestors taken from the New Forest in England. They have their own version of bloodlines, Geoff. They go back as far as we do.

The remark seemed odd at the time, for I had no idea of his references. At length he sighed a long deep sigh and set about making a small fire from the twigs upon the ground and set the kettle on to boil. While we waited for the tea I unpacked the barley cakes, set them near the fire to warm, and decided to have a walk around.

From the top of the Tor the village and the forest stretched out before me, green vegetation, grey stone buildings and golden thatched roofs. The river wended its way out of sight into the forest. I could even spot the mill and see the motion as it turned with the flow of the river. It was a stunning sight, and I wondered why I had never climbed the Tor before.

The whistle of the kettle brought my attention back to Phillip and the prospect of tea and barley cakes. Uillean tea took little time to steep, so I sat myself down by the fire, cross-legged, and waited for him to pass me the bowl. He drank deeply of the tea before handing it to me and as I took the bowl from him I noticed I had accidentally knocked one of the barley cakes into the fire. I set the bowl down and retrieved the blackened cake and popped it into my mouth, washing it down with the sweet, hot liquid.

There was something familiar about it all, something familiar about the look on Phillip’s face as he smiled at me and took my hands. Something familiar in his eyes as the world began to spin and go away, as other faces, other places, other times began to superimpose themselves upon the world I knew.

Five men rode into a forest as the sun began to set, torches blazing against the dark blue sky. I stood against the oak tree, saw the white stag from the corner of my eye as the arrow sped toward me, arched my back to meet it…looked into the bluest eyes I had ever seen, Phillip’s eyes, as the gladius arced up and into my chest and gratefully collapsed into his arms…fell through the sky with him over the sacred Stones and never felt our bodies hit the ground below…one image after another in a disjointed time, for the sequence did not matter, until at last I found myself seated on the ground with him holding me, the fingers of our right hands interlaced as they had been the last time I had remembered flesh.

Welcome back, Sire, he whispered as he rocked me in his arms.

It’s good to be back, Anmchara.

Of course he had been right. This was something he could never have told me in words, a secret that could only have been experienced. I knew all too well why Father had cried, to have his son Awaken during the ritual…to have it all happen in his lifetime. I had no idea when the Tyrell line had crossed into the MacGregors, nor did it matter. The Order was alive and well, and coming out of its long slumber.

Phillip steadied me as I rose and looked out at the green land below, as rich and lush a green as England had been; the only blue to be seen was water and sky. The sight of it took my breath away. This was our doing…I could feel it within my soul. The bond had been made between the King and the Land and the Land had responded.

And now the Land called for something