Master of Magic

By Pierre Cochrane

Readers of ‘Master of Magic,’ the first book in this highly anticipated fantasy-adventure series, are swept up into Jaxt Johansen’s world (13th century Europe), where they meet a cast of amazing characters whose compelling stories embroil this young wizard in a series of fascinating adventures .
“Jaxt world is a magical world,” said author Pierre Cochrane. “Jaxt uses his magic in a host of inventive ways to banish evil and disorder, plagues and mutiny, discontent and chaos and bring about a cosmic order which allowed the laws of nature to function as they should.”
The villains Jaxt confronts are bold, merciless, deadly and unrelenting. Olearius the Great is an evil wizard who has lived nine lives and is intent on taking possession of Jaxt’s body. In this new body he can once again be a magnificent magician, as mighty as a god, gorged with power, honour and omnipotence’. Jaxt has to defeat his master of be consumed.
Count Manfred von Berlichingen has murdered his three wives and his Gypsy mistress and hung them from meat hooks in his dungeon. Jaxt turns him into a goat.
Beatrice Queen of Poisons, made half-woman, half-spider by a god-borne of an ancient sun, is the most evil of all mankind. Jaxt defeats her in a desperate battle.
Prince John Stockmar 5th Earl of Dalmatia, Ambassador to Constantinople and 9th in line to the throne is thoroughly Machiavellian as he plots to assassinate everyone who stands between him and the throne.
Rigorously researched and beautifully illustrated ‘Master of Magic,’ is a fast paced fantasy-adventure by a master storyteller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pierre Cochrane
• Release date: Feb 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458045058

Pierre Cochrane

I was born in Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea in 1952. I wrote my first play when 14 years old. My second play won three awards. My first screenplay won an AWGIE and I have won several international poetry awards.After 25 years in advertising and PR in Sydney, I moved to Brisbane and began to write full time. I have written nine stage plays, four musicals, five screenplays, four novels, a book of song lyrics and poetry and a number of stories for young children.

Book preview

Master of Magic

by

Pierre Cochrane

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

Pierre Cochrane on Smashwords

Copywrite 2011 by Pierre Cochrane

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Discover other titles by the same author:

Madonna of the Mountains

Grage Band Legends

Brolga and the Lost Babies

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Olearius the Great, Wizard of the Blue

Chapter 2: Life on the Farm

Chapter 3: The Wizard’s Apprentice

Chapter 4: Alchemy

Chapter 5: Astrology

Chapter 6: Mirandolina Weaselling, Mistress of the Junior School

Chapter 7: The Earthquake Spell

Chapter 8: Princess Esmeralda

Chapter 9: Prince John’s Proposal

Chapter 10: Courtly Love

Chapter 11: A Wizard Transformed

Chapter 12: King Maker

Chapter 13: The Queen’s Council

Chapter 14: The Royal Wedding

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Chapter 1: OLEARIUS THE GREAT, WIZARD OF THE BLUE

Born in Rhodes, in Germany, Olearius the Great, Wizard of the Blue, had experienced three great loves that flowered then withered. In his prime he had sported with kings and emperors, performing proud, audacious deeds of magic. Then decade-by-decade, century-by-century he grew old. Suffering from melancholy, he locked himself in his tower, dedicating his life to researching and writing the Corpus Magicus – an encyclopaedia of magic in twenty-six volumes.

Olearius’ long blue robe was dusted with stars and astrological symbols in the old style of wizards. He sat close to a hearth of glowing firestones, for he felt the cold in his feet and in his ink-stained fingers. Staring into the fire he saw his spirit wandering through a labyrinth of sorrows in a land of really loathsome ghosts. His heart was made anxious by this vision.

Olearius set aside his supper of hard-boiled eggs. ‘I hate being old, my mind fatigued, my body feeble, my eyes weak, my ears deaf, my teeth rotten, my bones aching and my nose stopped up so that I cannot even breathe. The misery is the same whether I am standing or sitting’.

The wizard’s magic staff, an Egyptian artefact of carved ebony, was a head taller than its master. ‘Death will come when it comes. There is nothing you can do to avoid it’.

‘My work is not yet done’, raged the small, wizened magician in a grating voice. His great age showed in his hooded eyes, reddened by the strain of working by candlelight. The eyes themselves were clouded and cold, secretive and self-contained and had deep purple bags below, crosshatched by webs of wrinkles. The unruly eyebrows above were white as frost. ‘I would be reborn in a strong new body that has escaped the plague’, he asserted emphatically.

Staff saw to it that Olearius remembered to eat occasionally but was not otherwise disturbed.'Perhaps it is time for you to leave this life and join the Council of Wizards in the next’.

Olearius’ heart was hard, his wits sharp as flint, his intellect intense and white-hot as dragon flame, his will absolute. ‘In my new body I would be a magnificent magician, as mighty as a god, gorged with power, honour and omnipotence’.

The wizard searched through the list of spells in the table of contents of his encyclopaedia.'There must be a way, some magic to perform, an incantation to get me a new body’. He found a short paragraph describing the 1,000-year-old Demotic Magical Papyri that contained an assortment of dark magic incantations. Finding a Greek translation of the scroll in a locked cabinet, Olearius opened the ancient text and set about summoning a vile succubus from hell, intoning:

‘AMOCHL ZARBANESG KRIIPHI MICHMOUMAOPH ...’

‘Master, do not fool with necromancy!’ staff rebuked. ‘No one can control demons, not even you’.

Olearius would not listen. He continued with the spell:

‘ASRISKINOU BRITNEI STOMA ... ’

(COME TO ME A FALLEN ANGEL CAST DOWN FROM HEAVEN ... BY EARTH, FIRE, WATER AND AIR RISE UP FROM THE PITS OF HELL ... FLY PAST THE RED-FACED MOON, THE WHIRLING PLANETS, THE RAGING RIVERS ... ATTEND ME!)

A magic breeze reeking of sulphur blew through the room. With the crack of doom Olearius brought into existence a devil without arms or legs, with a split snout that blew fire and hooked fangs and poisoned claws that oozed venom.

‘Why have you called me from the depths?’ slobbered the succubus, drooling viscous, vile-smelling saliva.

‘You are too ugly to look upon. Take the form of a comely young woman, for that shape becomes a devil best’.

The succubus changed into a beautiful woman wearing a flame-red dress, her hair was molten gold, a ring of pale blue stars encircled her head. Her figure was full-bosomed and sensual but she could not disguise the beguiling evil that dwelt within her eyes.

Olearius saw in this illusion his half-forgotten first love. He felt the confusion of pain renewed, of love, anger and betrayal. ‘That stench of sulphur, change to the scent of rose petals!’ he ordered.

The seductive succubus complied, asking in a voice laden with syrup, ‘What is it you desire my love?’

‘I would live eternally. On being dead, be raised to new life to enjoy again the health of youth, the love of women and the esteem of kings’.

‘There are means: they are long and complex and the cost is your soul’.

‘I will pay any price’.

‘So be it’, the ravishing succubus said. ‘You must obtain a baby boy, let him live for four-and-twenty years in scholarly endeavour, training him as your apprentice in the arts of magic. You must treat him as you would yourself, feed him bread and meat for his noonday meal and let him feast on all the fruits of the world. Then when he is ripe, place this fragment of a pharaoh’s skull upon his brow and utter an incantation from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. A portal will open for you to enter and take possession of the youth’s body. He will enter your body and consequently die. Thus you will have all you desire’.

‘Agreed!’

The succubus offered Olearius a parchment. ‘You must sign my contract in blood’.

‘Sign nothing’, staff warned. ‘Nothing can reclaim your soul once that deed is signed’.

Swollen with cunning and self-conceit, Olearius signed the contract with a goose quill dipped in his own blood.

The succubus gave the wizard a fragment of the pharaoh’s skull, then melting the flagstones she stood upon into a pool of lava, returned through the shades to the flames of hell.

Olearius took the Eye of Odin from his chest. It was his most treasured possession. He had found the eye in a magical fair in old Cathay. The Chinese witch selling the orb knew it to be a relic of great antiquity, but did not know it was the eye of the one-eyed Norse god Odin, slain by the wolf Fenrir at Ragnarök.

When Olearius looked into the eye he could ride the winds, seeing into the minds of men and women, close by or as far to the west as the sea, south to the Royal Palace of Saragossa, or north and east to the castles of the Franks, and in the sighing of the wind he could hear whispered fragments of prophecies.

Olearius made a quick study of the city of Wertenberg but could not find what he was seeking there. He visited the palaces of the Prince of Parma and the mad King of Saragossa, soared over provinces looking in herders’ crofts, farm houses, manor houses, merchants’ homes and in castle keeps.

After three months of relentless searching, Olearius came to the drawbridge of Altdorf Castle where he saw Count Manfred von Berlichingen returning from a hunt with John Stockmar, Prince of the Royal Blood, fifth Earl of Dalmatia and Ambassador to Constantinople.

The count was a swarthy brute with dark hair and large mustachios dressed with bear’s grease. His hunting bow was slung over his shoulder and he carried a spear in his left hand. His clothes were russet and he wore knee-length boots equipped with golden spurs.

The two men galloped across the drawbridge through the outer gate, under the upper gatehouse, through the inner gate and into the bailey.

‘An excellent hunt’, the count said, dismounting by the stables. ‘A wild boar to fill our bellies and a brace of runaway serfs. Tomorrow’s sunrise will see them impaled above my gate’.

The Eye of Odin followed the count and his royal guest across the courtyard and into the old keep, fashioned in the Gothic style. The count had built his castle with blood-drenched stones, timber and ironmongery got by tearing down bridges and churches and demolishing the castles of less warlike neighbours. The thick walls were damp at the base and rimed with moss in crevices and clefts. The bleak, grey, stone walls rose to fire-blackened battlements above. The only gentle touch in this oppressive stronghold was the herb garden by the stables, a patchwork of vegetables, flowers and climbing vines.

The table in the great hall was laid for supper. Candles at each end of the oaken boards shone in the gloomy shadows. Arrow slits in the rough stone wall let in glimmers of moonlight. Wind rumbled in the chimney. The count’s hunting dogs snarled and fought over bones on the rush-strewn floor.

Prince John stretched his long legs, resting his gold-buckled shoes on a bench by the fire. He had good legs and was vain about them. He admired his brown hose that fitted sleek and close and was of good texture. He yawned then inquired, ‘Is the Countess Doreen in?’

‘Most likely reading The Lives of the Saints in her apartment above’, belched his drink-sodden host.

‘Is she diseased with some pox or other foul distemper that makes her unfit to greet me?’

‘Not so! She enjoys robust good health’.

‘She didn’t join us for dinner?’

‘She declined’.

Prince John admired the rings on his long, elegant fingers. One was set with emeralds, another with glittering sapphires, the third was a heavy gold signet ring engraved with his coat of arms, the split tower.

‘Why?’ Prince John asked in a silken voice.

‘Womanish obstinacy. I got an earful of scolding for my pains’.

The prince had a pleasant voice tinged with a slight foreign accent. It was a voice that commanded effortlessly but could be cutting, incisive, wounding, dark, concealing, satirical, ironic or deadly.

‘How can a commanding officer who has served against the Moors with such distinction fail so dismally in making his wife comply with the courtesies my royal rank demands?’

‘I doubt Hercules could get my beloved to do what she will not’, the count grumbled.

The prince had a duplicitous face capable of expressing the subtlest emotional shadings, or hiding behind expressions of mild perplexity or bright fixed attention.

‘Are you master of your household, or is she?’

‘I love her so. I would happily die upon her bosom but am not skilled in courtly love’.

The prince’s hazel, grey, blue-green eyes were ephemeral chameleons. They could convey lust, desire, greed, anger, blaze with hate or emote nothing at all.

‘Courtly love, bar and humbug!’ he sneered. ‘I prefer to take a beautiful woman then discard her, for my intent is to have all the prettiest women in creation – the proud, the vain, the conceited, the exotic, the whole mad menagerie’.

The lovelorn master of Altdorf Castle finished off his straw-covered flagon of Tuscan wine and fell asleep, snoring in his chair. Prince John took his keys and prowled up the stairs to the countess’ bedchamber.

Doreen was beautiful as day, pure and bright, with eyes blue as heaven. She was blessed with a natural spirit, gay as free-soaring eagles. But her soul was sorely moved, for as much as she loved her husband, she was distressed by his brigandage. She sorrowed that the high summer of her love for him was inexorably turning into winter blizzards. She found little comfort in the pages of the Bible that rested on her knees.

Doreen huddled in front of the hearth. The dark, cherry-red glow of the fire danced in her ebony curls that cascaded down and over her back and shoulders. Her gold embroidered nightdress was caught in at the waist by a belt of tasselled green and gold brocade. She peeled an apple with a small paring knife while dwelling on her unhappy and undeserved fate.

Doreen looked up as Prince John entered, locking the door behind him. She knew him to be a degenerate, sexual predator. Hiding her knife in the Bible she said, ‘It is not seemly for you to come alone into my chamber, sire’.

‘Christ, Doreen’, the prince swore as he strode across the cluttered chamber. ‘When a prince of the royal blood visits, your duty is to greet him with courtesy, then run and fetch a jug of wine, cheese, bread and fruit. Yet you see fit to humiliate me by hiding away in your closet like a cursed cat’.

‘Pray leave! I will call my husband!’

‘We both know you won’t’.

Pale with fear and anger the countess snapped, ‘I will!’

Prince John grabbed Doreen by the throat, pinioning her against the mantelpiece.

‘Let go, vile scoundrel’, she screeched, struggling to free herself.

The prince tore away her chemise, ripping it from breast to hips.

‘By God, you make me horny’, he mocked, pulling free the lacings of his jewelled codpiece, which fell to the floor. ‘I look upon you and see perfection’.

‘I see you naked and am not tempted in the least!’

‘I swear I love you’, the prince said, cupping a breast and kissing it.

Doreen blushed deeply as her nipples hardened. ‘This is lechery, not love’.

‘I have had to school my heart to hide its feelings lest Manfred suspect my love’.

‘I hate you – you Antichrist!’

The prince’s lust was red hot. He would not be denied. He forced his hand between Doreen’s thighs.

‘I swear on my life you shall never have me’, she cried, slashing at him with her paring knife.

Prince John caught Doreen’s hand, taking her knife with such casual brutality it caused agonising pain. In that instance his game changed from brutal seduction to bestiality. He threw Doreen onto the bed and bound her wrists to the bedposts with the torn chemise. ‘Such stubbornness is not wise’, he snarled. ‘Manfred would have an heir before we set off to fight the Barbary pirates. He asked me to father a boy to carry on his ancient name’.

‘My husband would never dishonour me so’.

Prince John’s eyes glittered as he mounted Doreen. ‘Manfred would have a son. I have a dozen bastards littered about and he has none’.

Doreen kicked and struggled and wept in fear and pain as the prince forced his sword inside her.

‘You are the vilest of friends to cuckold my husband!’

‘I swore an oath. May I be turned to stone if I betray his trust’.

Olearius watched Prince John rape Countess Doreen repeatedly while her husband slept on in a drunken stupor. Not one of the countess’ servants or the count’s men-at-arms dared intervene. The garrison of the castle stayed at their posts listening to Doreen’s screams.

Olearius listened to the whisper of prophecies on the wind, convinced he had found his baby, then taking out several astrological charts he cast a horoscope for an infant conceived under the influence of Mars. To his amazement and delight the stars said this was the boy.

The seasons turned. When Countess Doreen’s confinement approached, Olearius visited Altdorf Castle and sat with Manfred in the hall of the keep, drinking mead until far into the night, when at last they heard the baby’s cry.

Manfred ran up the stairs and burst into his wife’s chamber. He saw Doreen wan, exhausted, lying in a blood-soaked nightgown, on blood-soaked sheets, holding a purplish-red baby in her arms.

The baby cried lustily.

The countess smiled. ‘It’s a little boy – a lovely little boy – as big as his father’.

‘My son, my son’, the count said, holding out his hand. The baby grasped Manfred’s finger and held it. ‘He has a strong grip’, the count said, his face wreathed in smiles.

‘Isn’t he lovely?’

‘Fat as a kitten’.

‘Pick him up and hold him. He is a whole new life, separate from us but part of us’, Doreen said.

The count picked up his son timidly and held him against his chest. The baby stopped crying.

‘I am so happy, Manfred, so full of joy. Let us give thanks to God for this miracle’.

‘Thank you, God’, Manfred prayed with feeling, his first real prayer in a long, long time. ‘This is what I have always wanted, a son to bear my name’.

Manfred passed his son to the village midwife who washed the baby and dressed him in swaddling clothes.

He helped his wife sit up in bed. ‘You look tired, my love’.

‘I ache.

‘We shall call him Johannes after my father’.

‘A heroic name’.

‘I will ask Father Wendell to come and christen him. I don’t want to wait’.

The midwife gave Countess Doreen her son and left the bedchamber.

Doreen gave her breast to her baby. His mouth pursed into an ‘O’, he shut his eyes, curled his toes and made little grunts of satisfaction as he sucked.

‘He’s hungry’, Doreen said, smiling tiredly.

Manfred watched his son feed, overcome with the joy of fatherhood.

Suddenly, in a swirl of sky blue and the frosty glitter of stars, Olearius was in the chamber.

‘What do you want, wizard?’ Manfred asked startled.

‘Nothing to alarm you’.

‘What then?’

‘I come for the boy’.

‘No! No! You shall not have him!’ Doreen screamed.

‘Let me see him’, the wizard demanded.

‘Manfred, save us from this monster who would take away our baby and kill him for some fiendish sacrifice!’

Olearius laughed. ‘I will not hurt the boy’.

‘Then why?’

‘His destiny calls him away’.

‘What destiny?’

‘He is to be my apprentice’.

Manfred, much perturbed, turned on the wizard and said, ‘No, he is to be a true knight and ruler of my castle and estates after me’.

‘Permit me to tell you the truth. Manfred von Berlichingen, this baby is not your son’.

‘By all that is holy!’ Doreen implored vainly.

‘He is Prince John’s bastard’.

‘Woman! Is this true?’

Doreen burst into convulsive sobs. ‘Why do you torture me cruelly with such wretched accusations?’

'Manfred, you dullard, can you not see his eyes are Prince John’s eyes, his face the very image of the prince, his hair is John’s ...’

Doreen cried out in ever-increasing anxiety and despair, ‘Vile Olearius, I hate you, you demon!’

Manfred examined the infant closely. The baby’s chubby cheeks, pushed in by the trauma of birth, hid his true identity.

‘Tell me, Doreen’.

‘The truth is I love you, Manfred’.

‘Swear upon all the saints! I will believe you’.

‘In all things I have been your loving and dutiful wife’.

‘Swear upon your life that this boy is my son!’

Hiding her tear-stained face in her hands, Doreen whispered, ‘Prince John came by stealth into my chamber and raped me when you were drunk’.

Broken by grief, Manfred fell back into a chair, his eyes fixed on Doreen.

‘You slander the prince! He is my friend!’

The countess struggled with her emotions. ‘I beg for mercy. I could not tell you of my horror, my bitter grief, because I was worried you would forsake me and kill my baby’.

Manfred pushed Doreen aside and stood.

‘I implore you, husband’.

‘Doreen, my heart bleeds for you. You are too beautiful, too enchanting to live’.

Count Manfred von Berlichingen swung his sword high and with one terrible stroke cut off Doreen’s head. Then berserk with rage and the anguish of heartbreak he lifted the baby by one leg and was about to dash out its brains when Olearius intervened, grabbing the infant.

The Eye of Odin saw all and recorded all, for the Norse gods were curious about Jaxt Johansen’s birth. They were the only ones to see a dangerous shade of crimson and a look of fury flush across the newborn’s face as Olearius carried him to a high window and disappeared into the night.

Chapter 2: LIFE ON THE FARM

Olearius landed by the Johansen’s farmhouse in the dead of night. A welcoming candle burned in the window. Lightning flashed along a distant ridgeline. The baby, wrapped in the wizard’s cloak, howled for he was hungry, wet, cold, tired and very cranky.

Olearius was about to knock when farmer Johansen opened the door, flanked by his wife Genevieve.

‘I have brought the infant’, the wizard said.

‘We have been expecting you these past weeks and have made all ready’, the farmer replied.

‘Good!’

Genevieve slipped past her husband and took the screaming baby. She carried him inside the house.

'We have your promise, wizard? My wife is to have a baby of her own’.

‘I will petition the gods, for only they can persuade a reluctant baby spirit to enter into a barren womb’.

‘We are counting on you’.

‘I will do all that I can’.

‘Thank you. We will take good care of your boy’.

‘I will come for him when he is ten years old’, Olearius said, then with a swirl of his blue robe and the flash of glittering stars the wizard vanished.

Genevieve sat in a rocking chair by the hearth examining every inch of her baby. He had masculine features, ginger highlights in his curly brown hair, hazel eyes and a strawberry-shaped birthmark on his bottom.

‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ she cooed, overwhelmed by feelings of love and joy. ‘His skin is so smooth’.

‘He is small and has frog’s legs’, farmer Johansen teased.

‘No, he hasn’t. He’s beautiful, isn’t he, Gran?’

‘I think him a tad undersized, a bit pigeon-chested and a little bandy-legged’, the sharp-eyed grandmother said, happy to have a grandchild at last.

‘I think him very handsome and without blemish’, Genevieve replied.

‘The boy has a good set of lungs’, the new father said, besotted by his boy.

It took Genevieve an age of cuddles, soothing kisses and gentle caresses to get the angry infant to stop crying. When she tried to feed him warm goat’s milk he made it very clear he didn’t like it, but hunger drove him to suck his fill. He made lots of snuffles and snorts while learning to suck on the bottle’s teat. When he stopped feeding he looked a little bit drunk, his eyes swaying sleepily, then he regurgitated half his dinner down Genevieve’s front.

Eventually, exhaustion made him fall asleep.

After long discussion the Johansens called their baby, Jaxt. Once he had settled in he ate well, slept well and smiled beautifully.

Farmer Johansen’s first name was Werner. He was a broad-shouldered, red-faced man with large, sticking-out ears. Jaxt loved to pull his bushy salt-and-pepper beard and tweak his big Gascoigne nose. Werner’s aged mother was called Christina but all knew her as Gran. Only his wife Genevieve went by her Christian name. Genevieve was a happy person who smelt of cheese. She had big, brown, smiling eyes set in a cheerful face and long chestnut hair done in plaits, curled into a bun.

The Johansens’ farm occupied a narrow valley. Cattle, goats and sheep grazed on the hillside pastures fringed with forest. Wheat, barley and oats grew on the river flats.

In summer, Jaxt slept in a cradle beside his mother’s bed, in the main room of their two-roomed croft house. In winter he slept with Gran in the loft which was warmed by the cattle and sheep lodged in the stable below.

Search as they might, Genevieve and Gran could find no hint of magical ability in their baby. He seemed to be a normal boy. Feed him and he slept. When awake he looked around. Fascinated by a candle’s flame, he stared at it for ages.

After several months he could hold his head up. He began taking an interest in everything. He loved being carried on walks around the farm, looking at all the farm animals, the field of wheat and the trees. He liked feeling textures and being stroked and bathed.

At four months he had chubby cheeks and could blow raspberries. At six months he was striving to sit up and could roll over by himself. At nine months he could crawl. He started to talk before he was one and could stand at fourteen months.

Jaxt’s adoptive father, mother and grandmother knew they would have their boy for a short while, but that made no difference to the love and affection they showered on him. Perhaps it gave a sharper edge to their feelings.

Genevieve’s relationship with her husband changed. Jaxt brought them closer together, strengthening their emotional attachment to each other and to Gran, who loved the boy as much as they did.

It was obvious from a very early age that Jaxt had a way with animals. As soon as he could walk he would run boldly up to horses or cows or pigs or chickens and pat them, and the amazing thing was they loved him. He could pat their snout and not get bitten or pecked, pull their tails, jump on them, ride them and wrestle with them.

He was fascinated by insects, loved to eat fruit, swing on trees, hang upside-down, jump, run, play chase and hide and seek. He screamed if he didn’t get told a bedtime story or if his candle blew out at night. When he fell and grazed his knee or was stung by a bee, he insisted on kisses and cuddles to make the hurt all better.

In spite of his ordinariness, Gran became convinced fairies watched over Jaxt at night, protecting him from the evil beasties that prowled the dark, because she could hear them scurrying through the thatch above his bed. She would leave out little fairy treats by Jaxt’s candle and every night the fairy treats vanished.

Jaxt grew quickly into a bright, alert boy whose head was full of imaginings. He played with a pet sheep called Cuddy, a dog called Buster that dragged him about and licked him with wet, slobbering licks. He loved the nanny goat whose milk nourished him and Grandma’s ginger cat, Pumpkin, who chased its tail, clawed the furniture, pounced on Grandma’s knitting and played tug-of-war with Jaxt’s socks.

Each morning farmer Johansen and his son would stride up a steep path to the top paddock, open the gate and bring down a clannish bunch of cows for milking. Most mornings Jaxt rode down on a cow, pretending to be a knight spearing bloodthirsty Moors with his lance or smiting dreaded Barbary pirates with his wooden sword.

One morning, farmer Johansen caught Jaxt riding Zephyr, their big black bull. Rather than punish the boy he traded a calf, a pig and five chickens for a black pony with three white socks, called Giuseppe.

Jaxt became skilled at trick riding, standing on Giuseppe’s broad back, doing hand stands, riding backwards, jumping off then clambering back on as his short-legged pony cantered through the long grass.

A favourite game was pretending Giuseppe was a tall, majestic war-horse, and he was Christendom’s most famous knight. He’d gallop off on a raid, skirmishing with Genghis Khan’s Mongol archers or fighting Turkish Janissaries.

Jaxt loved to play in the creek. Buster hated water and would run away whenever Jaxt tried to throw him in. Pumpkin fished the shallows while Jaxt splashed about in the swimming hole, slid down the rapids on his bottom, or lay between boulders in the middle of the stream letting the cascading torrent flow over him. Come sundown, Jaxt’s job was chasing the chickens into the hen house and feeding them kitchen scraps and grain, then he had to feed and water all his pets. Grandma would bathe him and dress him in his nightshirt and cap. After dinner, Genevieve would teach her boy numbering and lettering, then his father would read stories from the Bible and they would all go to bed.

As Jaxt grew, his parents’ concern over his future became more intense. When he was nine years old they left him with Gran and set off to visit a kinsman in the free city of Aquila. Rather than take coin they took a wagon load of aged and smoked cheeses to sell in the town market, for it was a long and arduous journey and the way was beset with rogues and bandits.

After a tedious journey the Johansens arrived in the walled city, arranged lodgings at the Tavern of the Three Swans, then set out to find a philosopher called Frederick the Wise. An unkempt poet told them that at this hour they would find him in Ragueneau’s Bakery.

The bakery was easy to find – an enticing smell of baking bread wafted down the street. In the front room a pastry cook bustled about making sweet breads, cakes, pastries and tarts.

Farmer Johansen entered the bakery, approached the pastry cook and asked, ‘Can you direct us to a gentleman called Frederick the Wise?’

The pastry cook put