Memory Of A Falcon (Jake Conley Book 3)

Book summary

Jake Conley, a retrocognitive caught between ancient gods and modern zealots, faces a dangerous extremist group, Woden’s Brethren. As tensions rise after his partner Liffi builds a temple to Freya, the pair must confront terrorist threats and their own diverging beliefs. Together, they fight to dismantle the enemy while their relationship hangs by a thread.

Excerpt from Memory Of A Falcon

Chapter One

Lower Quinton, Warwickshire, 2021 AD

Liffi Wyther, neo-pagan and handbound bride of Jake Conley, paced past the tall lead-latticed casement windows of the lounge. An impartial observer might be excused for thinking the couple lacked for nothing. Jake’s vision of a Red Horse Theme Park had proved so successful that tourists and day-trippers had flocked in such numbers that it topped the charts of most-visited attraction in the UK. His role as development manager had provided them with this Grade II listed building for their sumptuous home. He had the ear of important government ministers and drove around in his customised Porsche. Yet all was not well.

Lips pinched, hands held behind her back, gripping her wrist, Liffi’s stiff posture and clenched tilted jaw were studied posturing. She meant to bring her issues to a head. When she turned at the end of another short span of pacing, Jake finally snapped.

“For Heaven’s sake, Liffi, what’s the matter with you?”

“With me? Do you even care, Jake Conley?”

With a glint of satisfaction in her eye, she saw that she’d captured his attention as effectively as if she’d given his face a stinging slap.

He rose from his armchair, where he seemed to have taken root. “Care? Of course, I do. I love you, corn head!”

He’d begun teasing her with this appellation since she’d had her hair done in boxer braids. She said it made her look like a shieldmaiden and affirmed her pagan beliefs. Although he teased her, he liked her new tight-braided bad-ass image.

“Strange way of showing it,” she said. “You’re just like all the rest! If you think I’m going to stay at home and do your washing and ironing whilst you turn your bloody dragonfly sanctuary—”

“Oh, so that’s what this is about! Let’s get one thing clear, when you agreed to marry me, I didn’t impose—”

“Clear? Do you know the meaning of the word, Jake?”

He dipped his chin and his chest caved.

“First of all, I didn’t agree to anything. We didn’t marry. We were handbound by a cunning woman, because we were meant to be together. But not like this!”

He paled and shook his head. “How then? Don’t you like our home? What is it you want, Liffi?”

“I love our home. It’s not that. I want my life back. Is that so hard for you to understand, Jake? I thought when we got bound, you’d come on my journey.”

“What journey? What are you talking about?”

“That’s just it, Jake. You have no idea, do you?”

He fiddled with the cuffs of his shirt, then pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut.

“No? I thought not. Have you made any effort to understand how I feel?”

He looked longingly at the door and sighed. “Dammit, Liffi, you know how busy I’ve been making a success of the Theme Park, and it’s thanks to my efforts—” He waved a hand around the room.

“I know. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, Jake. It’s all lovely, but I won’t become a dogsbody, a shadow of myself, for the sake of a house, dammit!”

“It’s more than a house…” He caught the steel in her blue eyes, “You mentioned a journey.” He sat in the armchair he’d made his own and folded his arms across his chest. “Tell me what you mean.”

She faced him by shifting a footstool. Her eyes softened and held his gaze. Then she tipped her head back for a moment, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“My journey? How well do you really know my beliefs? I’m going to spell them out for you before I tell you about my idea. I need you, Jake, if I’m going to set out on that path.” Her gaze fixed his again.

He didn’t have the slightest notion of what she was talking about, but he wanted to please her. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.

“You know I’ll do anything I can…”

She nodded and her lovely face brightened. “I know. But first, my beliefs. Remember the first time we met, Jake?” She smiled at the recollection.

“How could I ever forget?” He, too, grinned at the memory of their encounter in Warwick on an anti-fracking protest march.

“You told me the earth was sacred. That was what attracted me to you, apart from your bottom.”

“My bum? Seriously?”

“Seriously. For a pantheist like me, the world is sacred and imbued with a divine energy force permeating all life, you see. Your words touched the core of my being. I believe wights inhabit the landscape. They live unseen alongside us. Some are good. Others are evil, but each has its personality. I’m also a pagan and worship the old gods. This you know. But I have a particular devotion to Freya, especially after knowing you.”

“I suppose you’re convinced of the existence of elves, dwarves, and gnomes!” he sneered.

“Of course, I am! Also, I think our ancestral spirits are there to guide us through life.” She glared a challenge at him.

He looked down and scratched at the stubble at his jaw. When he looked back, his gaze was unfocused. The tugging at his earlobe provoked her.

“Jake, are you going to take me seriously, or what?”

“I am listening, honestly.”

“But are you understanding?”

“Liffi, it’s all a bit much for me. I’ve been brought up a Christian and to be a rational, logical thinker. I mean, elves? Really?”

“Just because you haven’t seen one doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Have you seen Jesus?”

“Well, no.”

She sat back and her lip curled. “Christianity is an alien faith, Jake. It’s fundamentally incompatible with the traditions of our Saxon forefathers. I don’t expect you to buy into my Heathenism immediately, but if we’re going to be together you could at least make some effort. Start by thinking through what the word heathen means. It’s the contemporary form of the Old English haeden, meaning one who lives in the country or on the heaths and in the woods. You’ve had tangible proof of the power of the gods, after all.”

He frowned. It was true. He couldn’t deny or explain some of the fortune that had inexplicably favoured him. He believed wholeheartedly in the Red Horse Curse, and he’d seen the cunning woman and benefitted from her powers.

“I promise I’ll sort my ideas out, Liffi. I’ll make a point of studying Heathenism. But for now, tell me what you want me to do.”

It worried him what she might say, but… in for a penny…

She fiddled with her braided pigtail and looked at him from under her brow.

“I told you I had a special devotion for Freya, so I’d like to build a temple where I could worship her. Once it was up, I’d gather kindred around me and we’d perform rites together.”

Jake tried to hide his astonishment and pushed the flood of objections to the back of his mind, but still one of them surfaced.

“What rites? You won’t be sacrificing animals, will you?”

“Absolutely not! That’s primitive and cruel. If you keep your word, you’ll realise there are other ways to honour the gods.”

“I will, but you still haven’t told me what you want from me.”

“Jake, if you say you’ll help, I’ll go ahead with my idea.”

“Of course I’ll help.” He had a sinking feeling.

She seized on his apparently positive response by extracting a series of other promises involving domestic reorganisation. Liffi Wyther had no intention of being a timid little housewife, as she put it. She said she’d make all the arrangements for getting a housekeeper, while he could concentrate on his career, with the proviso that he studied Heathenism.

The pact was sealed with a passionate kiss.

Chapter Two

Lower Quinton, Warwickshire, 2021 AD

The theme park had been running for more than a year, drawing crowds of visitors. Jake, whose restless character required constant stimulation, grumbled that there was nothing for the development manager to develop. This was only partly true. Grandiose ideas spun like a carousel in his head, but realistically, attempting to achieve any one of them at such a busy time would be counterproductive. Luckily, Liffi was also unsettled, meaning Jake could afford to give himself a holiday to help his partner attain her goals, even if her ideas made him uneasy.

Impressed by her commitment to seeking a site for a pagan temple, he humoured her by plunging into research about modern-day Heathenry. Seeing his willingness to learn, she steered him to the Journal of Contemporary Heathen Thought. He bought the first volume, and despite his initial scepticism, he had to acknowledge his introspective and reflective character was well-suited to the arguments laid out therein.

“Hey, Liffi,” he said, interrupting her reading, “this writer believes Christianity is an alien faith, essentially incompatible with Europeans. He makes a strong argument, too. Is that what you think?”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Christianity is a Hebrew religion. Right from the start the Old Testament proclaims man’s natural impulses and desires are evil and that we’re all sinners, born with the taint of Adam and Eve’s sins. Original Sin, pah! How can it be right, Jake? It leads to a negative view of the body, sex, and the good things in life. Do you think our forefathers believed that crap? Imposed on them by sword and fire, and thanks to Christian missionaries, the folk tradition of electing the fittest chieftain to lead, replaced by kingship.”

“I see you’ve done your homework.”

Her lip curled. “Don’t be patronising. Dig deeper and we’ll resume this conversation.”

She was right, of course. It was presumptuous of him to think half an hour’s reading might compete with her years of deep thought and study. He wondered why he had an instinct to diminish and deride the opposite sex. Anything to do with his Christian upbringing? He had innate competitiveness, too, which made him want to come out on top in any discussion. Whatever happened he would have to reach her level of preparation on this subject. He delved back into his studies with renewed keenness.

They studied in silence, Jake biting back exuberant proclamations at his discoveries, which he recognised she’d be aware of. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction!

“Jake, I’m off to Yorkshire.”

“Yorkshire! What for?”

Her grin was triumphant. “The East Riding, to be precise. I’ve found it, Jake.” She was breathless with excitement and paused to recover.

Jake stared at her. He had bad memories of that part of England, but he waited while she recomposed herself.

“Oh, I can barely believe it. It’s perfect, Jake. There’s this place on the Yorkshire Wolds Way. It’s called Goodmanham and it’s on a south-facing slope. And listen, it was the site of the high shrine of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria—the temple of Woden!”

Jake gazed at her. This was all stirring something in his memory. As an Anglo-Saxon scholar, he’d read the Venerable Bede. That was it! Of course, Godmund, 627 AD, and the famous story of the pagan priest Coifi. He famously declared to King Edwin, “I have known long since that there is nothing in this religion that we have professed… the more I sought the truth of it, the less I found… this can give us life salvation and eternal happiness… I advise that we burn the useless sanctuary—and who better than me as an example?”

“Isn’t that the temple where Coifi borrowed a stallion and a spear forbidden to him as a priest?” Jake said. “Then he hurled the weapon into the shrine, and seeing the sacrilege went unpunished, had his followers raze it to the ground.”

“The very same,” she said, her excitement still bubbling. “Coifi was a traitor to the gods. That place had been sacred since as early as the Stone Age. Don’t you see, Jake? What better place to recapture our folk tradition? It far predates Christianity, and Heathenry can restore the appropriate religion for those like me who wish to reclaim our ancestry and the land from which our people originated.”

Alarm bells rang in his head, but he couldn’t dampen her ardour. “Hang on a minute! Are you saying you want to reconstruct Woden’s temple on its original site?”

“Yes…er… no, I can’t. The Saxons built a wooden church there, and then later, around 1130 AD, it became a limestone building and it’s still there—All Saints. Bloody cheek! They did that everywhere, you know. Taking over Heathen sites for their foreign religion.”

“There’s no way you can demolish the building and stick up a temple to Woden.”

“I’m not stupid, Jake!” She shot him a glance that might have turned him into a pillar of salt had he been looking.

“I thought you said you’d found the perfect place for your temple?”

“I did, and I have! It’s only two miles or so to the northeast of All Saints. There’s a fourteen-acre farmland site for sale, and prices are dropping.” Her voice rose with eagerness, and her lovely face assumed the childlike pleading expression of a little girl begging for a new Barbie doll. “It was two fields before and is now farmed as one. It’s perfect. There’s good access, with a road right next to the confines.”

“You want to build a shrine to Woden there? Have you thought this through, carefully?”

“Of course,” she spat. “But I don’t want to build a temple to Woden.”

“You don’t?” Now he was puzzled, and he could see she enjoyed that from her mocking cornflower-blue eyes and the teasing pause.

“No, I want to erect a temple to Freya. Oh, Jake, say you’ll help. It’s a bargain at six thousand eight-hundred pounds an acre.”

Arithmetic wasn’t Jake’s strongest asset, but a few taps on his phone calculator and he looked up.

“Bloody hell, Liffi. That’s about ninety thousand pounds!”

“You can afford it, Jake,” she cajoled. “You do love me, don’t you?”