Lord of the Hollow Dark Page 28

  “

  Sweeney tried hard to make sense of all this. “What was he after? Was he trying to escape from house arrest, when he was over ninety years old?”

  “Ah, no, Sweeney: a man so clever as Balgrummo could have escaped from the Lodging many years before, if he had chosen; why, the senior keeper had become Balgrummo’s devoted helper, ensnared by Balgrummo’s charisma. Balgrummo was bound here morally, by his sworn promise never to leave the policies; Balgrummo had never broken his word to anyone.

  “And had he burst through at the last, why, the ‘back door’ would have been opened only within these policies, it appears: out of the jail into the jail yard. No, I told you that Balgrummo was trying to work out his salvation with diligence. He was enacting an allegory. What he really sought was liberation from sin—from the guilt of worshipping false gods, of sacrilege, of homicide. His slow and painful ascent through the labyrinth of the Weem was the physical equivalent of a purgatorial moral pilgrimage. If physically he could traverse the underworld and burst into the light, then morally his soul might make the parallel journey from the abyss of sin to the blinding light of salvation.

  “That perilous physical groping in the darkness of the labyrinth, corresponding to the peregrinations of the stained soul, was what the more spiritual among the medieval pilgrims had sought in Saint Nectan’s Weem. Lord Balgrummo was the last of those pilgrims. The allegory of Purgatory: to fulfill that became his passion. But, strong though he was and long though he lived, Balgrummo failed at the last-in the physical order, in the moral order. So he is here still, in the dark, in Balgrummo’s private Hell, and the Weem is sealed still. What’s Hell, Sweeney? Why, Hell is a Purgatory in which one has fallen and cannot crawl on.”

  “I don’t follow you exactly,” Sweeney ventured, “but I understand that he got a lot farther into the Weem than we have so far. How? He went through that water we saw? The stream is six or seven feet deep, you say, according to his notes?”

  The Archvicar pulled himself back to particulars. “The depth isn’t the chief difficulty: the true problem is the swiftness and power of the underground stream, that Styx. He must have dealt with that somehow, and several times-yes, many times. How did he keep from being swept away Lord knows where, and ending drowned beneath the Fettinch Moss? You saw last night how the burn goes straight under the rock, with no air space between water and stone. In his journal is a puzzling entry apparently referring to a particular spot in the bed of the stream, if it may be called a bed. I don’t understand what that notation means, but presumably it’s the clue to this especial riddle of the Weem. All we can do is try.”

  And all I can do is to go along with this old wild man, Sweeney reflected. Better to drown, probably, than to be polished off by Apollinax and his devil-boys. Sweeney was perfectly certain that after Apollinax had done what he meant to do down below, Apollinax would let no witnesses escape. And those witnesses, to judge by what he had learned from the Archvicar about Apollinax’s plans, would go the hard way: that was all part of the ‘liturgy,’ the Ceremony of Innocence. It would be better to drown with the Archvicar than to endure forever, a shrieking ghost, in Apollinax’s Timeless Moment.

  “You talked with Apollinax this morning, before they roused me,” Sweeney said, “and learned a lot you hadn’t known about his plans. What did he want from you, mostly?”

  “For one thing, Sweeney, he asked me who Coriolan is: Coriolan disturbs him, not fitting into his scheme.

  “‘A wanderer between realms,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe that he can be harmed, not really.’

  “He was unsure what I meant, probably; for some reason he didn’t pursue the subject. ‘He can’t escape from the Weem, except through the way you entered?’

  “‘No living man could, not now,’ I told him.

  “‘Why did he lose himself down there?’

  “‘I can’t account for anything he does; he doesn’t know how he came here, or why.’

  “‘He’s served my turn.’ Apollinax went on to something else. ‘You can summon Balgrummo tonight? I must have him: he shall be the Bridegroom.’

  “‘If anyone may, I can; his essence draws near to us now, Master. I think he will come, for your ritual is like the ritual of his Trouble, you know. Yet perhaps his appetite must be roused. I needn’t remind you how Ulysses slaughtered a sacrifice in the underworld, and only then did the shades come crowding up to drink the blood that might give them some moments’ illusion of living once more.’

  “‘Balgrummo shall be given blood to drink.’

  “Sweeney, when Apollinax said those words-I had lured him into them-I knew that what I had suspected of this Ceremony of Innocence would come to pass. I was careful not to show surprise or disgust.

  “Then Apollinax went on to instruct me about the rituals; I’ve told you part of that, Sweeney. As he takes it, I labor under the delusion that I am to emerge from the Weem his faithful servant, when the ceremony’s over, no worse in body and mind than I am now. I told you before that Apollinax’s perceptions have their bounds.

  “Afterward, I went down with him to the Weem, and we collected you, and took him through the first chamber and the second chamber, but not into the labyrinth proper. You know how pleased he was with what he saw.”

  “Yeah, we made him happy, all right. There’s a few things I haven’t figured out. For one, why doesn’t he give us kalanzi, or make us take it-the six of us, I mean? He doses the disciples and the acolytes with it daily.”

  “The kalanzi is meant to facilitate their mystical passage into the Timeless Moment; and from my own limited experience with that drug, it does seem to take you to another world, with the risk of not getting out again. I suppose that the Timeless Moment isn’t meant for the six of us outsiders: we’re to stand by and watch the elect be transfigured-not that the physical end will be different for us.”

  Sweeney swallowed hard. “And what will Apollinax do with those beams out of the carpenter’s shop that he had the acolytes lug into the Weem?”

  “The acolytes will make crosses of them,” the Archvicar said, crossing his forefingers to make an X. “They’re to be Saint Andrew’s crosses, this ritual of ours being celebrated in Scotland, where Andrew is patron saint.”

  16

  The Dry Mock of Ash Wednesday

  “Oh, where is he?” Someone had touched Marina, and she had awakened with a fearful start, missing Michael. In a nightmare, the moment before waking, someone had held up Michael in one hand, and had taken a sickle in the other, and had been about to divide Michael in two, a Solomon’s judgment.

  But there the baby was, in Fresca’s arms. Marina took him and hugged him; he smiled beautifully. “Perhaps you should feed him now, Marina,” Madame Sesostris was saying, “and then put on that bridal gown, and the white robe over it, for it’s nine o’clock.”

  One hour left to them! How had she contrived to sleep in a chair for a while, when the end was so near? Marina looked round upon the pale faces. Only the Archvicar, florid under his swarthy skin, did not seem much distraught. He, she knew, had seen death in many terrible forms, for many years, in many lands.

  Was this to be her wedding night—for her, who had a baby but no wedding ring? What ghastly foolery was this, and who was to be the bridegroom? “There, there, my dear,” Madame told her, “we must do as the Archvicar says, and not resist them-not just yet. ‘Resist not evil,’ you know, though I confess I never wholly understood that precept. You can use the lavatory over there to feed the baby and to dress. Fresca will help you with the gown-it’s lovely, isn’t it, even if yellowed with age? It must have been worn nearly eighty years ago. Oh, one thing more: we’re all to go barefoot in our gowns-that was the Ash Wednesday custom of the seventh century, you know, when sinners walked barefoot to the bishop, repeating the seven penitential psalms. I do wish this were a true wedding for you, or else a real Ash Wednesday procession.

  “As for the wedding, Marina, if we come well out of this night-w
hy, His Excellency and his Pomegranate mean to take you to Haggat with us, if you’ll consent, and there we’ll find a hero of a husband for you, the kind you deserve, someone rather like your father the General. I have a Captain Kowaleski in mind: he’s still not forty, and gallant, and kind, and rather handsome, even if he has lost half an ear and two fingers on one hand, serving with His Excellency’s Interracial Peace Volunteers. He’d cherish you, and Michael too: there aren’t many eligible partners in Haggat now, with what most of the French colonial-administration families having gone back to Europe. But I mustn’t set your head in a whirl, you having to concentrate on being brave just now. Call Fresca when you’re ready to have her dress you.”

  Indeed her head was in a whirl! She was supposed to behave like a heroine or a martyr, but Marina was sick with fright. Yet the old lady’s nonsense was some comfort: she had spoken as if there were to be a future for any of them, marriage and giving in marriage, African capitals, patrons and patronesses, faith, hope, charity, life! But in a little while they all would be going under the hill.

  The Archvicar was speaking. She left the lavatory door ajar a trifle, to hear him.

  “I must prepare you as best I can, friends, for what’s to come,” the Archvicar told them. “I don’t know all; this must suffice. We are about to be drawn into blasphemy and sacrilege. I have my part in that: try to forgive me, for tonight I must be all things to all men. When they come for us, we are to march in procession, in these robes, to the ruined chapel in this house. In the chapel will be committed a straight-faced burlesque of Ash Wednesday rites.

  “Ash Wednesday is the day of penitence before Lent. Apollinax has already mocked ancient Christian custom by decreeing a fast in this house-the wretched food that was put on our plates—and total fasting since this morning. We were ordered to fast and be continent before Lent. The disciples and the acolytes expect to spend Lent in feasting and frantic incontinence, all ‘inhibitions’ swept away, their reward for the asceticism of these past few days.

  “Everything is to be ritualistically inverted tonight. The penitential psalms will be chanted in Latin, but their meaning turned upside down. As a priest in valid orders-so Apollinax thinks—I shall smear ashes upon the foreheads of everyone. But these will not be ashes from last year’s palm leaves: what I shall use is mold dug up from the old monks’ graveyard by some of the acolytes. The Master will preach to us one of his peculiar sermons, more startling than those we have heard already. Then he is to exhibit to us a certain picture, at the back of the altar, which had been kept covered ever since Lord Balgrummo’s Trouble. That picture—I never have seen it myself-will serve as a representation of what will occur next in the Weem.

  “For the ritual in the chapel is only a prelude. That done, we shall be marched in procession down to the Weem, and there will take place Apollinax’s Ceremony of Innocence. I have not been told everything that is to happen in the Weem-not the details. I know that there is to be a form of marriage first, symbolizing the union of past and present time, guilt and innocence. There will follow, according to Apollinax’s liturgy, some sacrifice of the mass-again, an inversion of the Christian symbols.

  “Either as the sacrifice is in progress, or just after it is concluded, the disciples and the acolytes are supposed to enter into their Timeless Moment. I do not know how that will be accomplished, or what will become of us six and the baby when the others enter upon their timeless state. The Ceremony of Innocence will be consummated in the first chamber of the Weem.

  “You must expect obscenity, blasphemy, sacrilege: summon up your courage. Do not be swept away by the chanting and the dancing; at least we six will not be intoxicated by kalanzi. Our first necessity is to give inner consent to nothing of this. You can’t imagine consenting? Well, I remind you of Apollinax’s occult powers, which are formidable. In Adam’s fall we sinned all, and in every age some Simon Magus draws many into his net. Apollinax means to entice you, as well as to compel you. Resist.

  “This Ceremony of Innocence is a mingling of certain rites of the extreme Gnostic sects with Mithraic liturgy. It celebrates the triumph of the Lord of This World-of Time the Devourer, or Satan, or the Antichrist, that Lord in his various aspects. It is a mockery of Christian rites, and its very name is a dry mock.

  “I have a part, you know, in the ceremony. I am to raise up a spirit, and to wed death and life, sin and innocence. The dead Gerontion would have done these things with delight. I pretend to do them, in loathing.

  “This is Apollinax’s design. You have known it fragmentary before. You know our strategy of resistance. Everything depends upon your presence of mind and your swift action. Even if we go unharmed from the ceremony, there will be terrors for us after that, and trials of strength. I do not know whether we shall succeed. I am a man of blood, no saint. I shall try to be good at need.

  “We must struggle ‘with the devil of the stairs who wears the deceitful face of hope and of despair.’ In what little time remains to us before we are summoned, we can pray.”

  No one had interrupted him; no one spoke now. Fresca had been getting Marina into her bridal gown, hurriedly. They went back into the Muniment Room, with its shutters and draperies closed against the yellow fog outside. Marina put Michael-there was a tiny white robe for him, too, a sardonic gift-upon the carpet, and knelt, Fresca kneeling beside her. They all went down upon their knees, even Sweeney.

  This was a Timeless Moment. No sound came except a subdued mumbling of prayers by Madame and Fresca, who moved her rosary beads rapidly through her fingers. Marina understood at last what was meant by “grace in death.” This moment of appeal, Marina knew, would be hers forever. Perhaps it was worth the price which might be paid. She did not care how many minutes passed, minutes meaning nothing now; all six of them in this room prayed, in this shadowy place, to the Light. Marina understood prayer now; it had been only a form before. She prayed for resignation. Who had written that it is almost true that we should pray not for especial things, but only “Thy will, not mine, be done?” Then she lost herself in prayer altogether, beyond thought.

  The door swung open. Grishkin was there, pitiless, la belle dame sans merci, mocking piety in the scarlet robe that clung to her curving body, looking as Simon Magus’ Helena must have looked, thinking herself the First Conception. Into the Muniment Room poured much sound, a penitential chant in barbarous Latin, from the throats of the disciples and acolytes awaiting them: Tunc acceptabis sacrificium justiiae, oblationes, et holocausta: tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos.

  Marina had known that psalm well once, in dear dead days, when she was little and Latin had not been cast out of the Church; then she had known it in the cloister, until it had ceased in Latin there, too. What was the English? “Then shalt Thou accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations, and whole burnt offerings: then shall they lay calves upon Thine altar.”

  So beautiful, once, so Hebraic, so adoring! Apollinax had not altered the words of this verse. He had not needed to: for all that had been required was to invert the significance. It had been made a hymn to the Lord of This World, and justice was being sacrificed, and she and Michael were the burnt offerings.

  “Get up!” said Grishkin.

  Sweeney walked barefoot with all the others, up the grand central staircase toward the chapel. An armed acolyte marched on either side of him: one was Sam, who had banged his foot at the pend; the other, Pereira, whose face he had punched only this morning. The two of them were chanting unmelodiously.

  They were chanting in English now, an inversion of one of the penitential psalms:

  “With bit and bridle bind fast their jaws:

  who come not near unto Thee.

  “Many are the scourges of the righteous;

  but mercy shall encompass him that sinneth in the Lord.

  “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye unjust:

  and be joyful, all ye that are corrupt of heart.”

  Sweeney being no pillar of the Church, nor even a flyi
ng buttress, this blasphemy did not especially vex him. What did send shivers up his spine were the inflamed eyes, the swollen faces, the jerky movements of all the disciples and acolytes in this procession. Grishkin, who brought up the rear, seemed only her usual Coppelia self. But all the rest, excepting only his own five friends and the Master, had taken such doses of kalanzi as no human constitution could endure. He knew how that powder worked—unlike any other hallucinogen—and he could tell from these faces that the disciples and the acolytes were not long for this world.

  For the first three or four hours, kalanzi in this concentration, and taken in a certain manner, would send whoever took it into a delirium of euphoria and fancied strength. The victims would be dangerous during that period, wild with arrogance, fearless, fierce, shorn of all doubts and scruples. At Haggat, Gerontion had experimented on beggars, and five of those who had taken such concentrated doses had died within twenty-four hours: Sweeney had seen the report. For after the initial invigorating effect of kalanzi, degeneration was swift. The brain and the cardiovascular system would be catastrophically affected, promptly. Coma ordinarily followed in not more than six hours; and then, with few exceptions, death. Apollinax, heading this procession, knew that. This was the Timeless Moment of disciples and acolytes. For one of the few occasions of his life, Sweeney felt pity. Hoo-ha!

  Apollinax had more disciples and acolytes where these had come from. The enormity of this betrayal staggered even Sweeney, who had not often walked in paths of righteousness. And they didn’t know, these victims, they couldn’t know! Over Sweeney swept a still vaster dread of Apollinax.

  But away with this moralizing! Now was the time to look out for Number One. At any moment, one of these acolyte-boys might take it into his “expanded” mind to fire a pistol or a shotgun into an infidel such as Sweeney. He did wish he hadn’t punched Pereira; happily that doomed young man was intent, for the moment, upon his penitential chanting.