The Sending by Geoffrey Household Page B

alone could see that he meant it and understood why he had turned up at my house out of the blue. He must have had limitless trust in Paddy and Meg, but of course had no idea how the talisman worked. Not even Paddy could charm the horse in such detail. Von Pluwig in the saddle, sensitive body to sensitive body, could do it a hundred times more effectively. Paddy’s influence in supervising training was quite a different matter.
    I watched the Puissance from my seat. The wall was up to seven feet and only von Pluwig and Felicity Brown were still in. Felicity and Anvil Challenge—both, I expect, desperately tired—knocked down a pole in the treble but cleared the wall as effortlessly as if it were a five-barred gate. Von Pluwig and Arminius flew over the treble, but for the first time the horse trailed that fatal off-hind and dislodged a brick of the wall. A gasp went up from the auditorium, all of course backing the British girl and praying that the brick would fall and that the pair would tie on four faults each. The brick hung there swaying on its point of balance but accountably it did not fall.
    After his lap of triumph I went out to see von Pluwig and congratulate him. I noticed several cold looks among the horsemen eddying up and down the alley of the stables. He led me quickly to the bar and plied me with champagne. I ordered a cold beef sandwich—Meg does not like ham—and slipped her a couple of inches of underdone.
    â€˜Meg deserves more,’ von Pluwig said.
    â€˜I don’t see why. Arminius did just what he shouldn’t.’
    â€˜I was thinking of the brick.’
    He was fingering a very full wallet as he paid for the drinks.
    â€˜Is there no charity in which you are interested?’ he asked.
    Only then did it occur to me that he was serious, or at least perplexed what to make of his luck.
    â€˜For God’s sake, man!’ I exclaimed. ‘You surely don’t believe I had anything to do with it?’
    â€˜Of course not! Of course not!’ he replied heartily. ‘What an idea!’
    But he shook my hand very warmly and inundated me with invitations to Germany whenever I liked.
    Needless to say, Meg and I had nothing whatever to do with the brick remaining at point of balance. Being on von Pluwig’s side, I hoped the brick would not fall but I did not greatly care. In any case telekinesis, the power of the mind to influence inorganic matter, is beyond the shaman, though he is on the right lines in his primitive tendency to consider living and inorganic matter as two aspects of the same thing. If mind could cause a brick to fall, the energy might be derived from such saintly unity with nature that the laws of cause and effect are in suspense. Question: poltergeists? But they do not seem to be under any rational control when they heave bricks about.
    Such interference is also beyond the power of mass concentration. There was that vast auditorium praying—if not in so many words—that the brick would fall. The massed appeal had no effect. A comparable case is that of a race meeting where an odds-on favourite is beaten by a head in spite of the condensed petition of the crowd that it should not be.
    All this strengthens my theory of how the Robin went to work: through mind to mind, his own obscurely kept in training by the familiar. That Meg could directly influence Arminius is pure superstition. That Paddy needed Meg’s actual presence is unlikely since he never took her abroad. So a sort of formula occurs to me. Paddy × Meg can be received by Arminius ÷ Pluwig. And Alfgif × Meg can be received by bullock. The ‘magic’ does not lend itself to scientific investigation, which is too cerebral and inhibits the sixth sense.
    Three inferences may be drawn: (1) the sender of the Fear to Alfgif requires a familiar; (2) he has to be sure that Alfgif is able to receive; (3) a form of the Old Religion still exists in secret and is known to