Lord of the Hollow Dark Page 29

  Sweeney cannily counted the acolyte-boys. All eight were in this procession, which meant that the gate at the pend would be unguarded, though doubtless locked. He might find a ladder and clamber over the dyke! That was a hell of a lot better prospect than the Archvicar’s nutty scheme, if only he could slip through the Lodging before they all were thrust into the Weem. It would have to be sly, for one mustn’t provoke these trigger-happy acolytes. Pray for luck, Sweeney! Oh, he didn’t mean to desert his friends, not Sweeney Regenerate: he’d get to the constables at the housing-scheme in nothing flat, even if he had to run there barefoot. Dreams of glory suffused his fancy, even in this dreadful pickle. He’d be back with armored cars, in the nick of time, and Marina would hug him gratefully, and...

  Yes, Marina. There she was in the midst of the procession, Dusty and Doris on either side of her, gripping her arms. What a blonde peach, in that Edwardian wedding gown! Oh, it’s wedding bells for you and the peach, Sweeney, my boy. Arcane, the Archvicar, has all the money in the world except seven cents: he’ll set them up. They won’t call you Apeneck after this, you young hero.

  Yet acolytes to the right of him, acolytes to the left of him, acolytes in front of him-at his rear, too-might volley and thunder. Play it cool, Sweeney, kid. Here we go into the chapel, with walking dead boys on either side of you. Wait your chance, Sweeney.

  The chapel looked as if a tornado had struck it. Chairs were overturned and broken, candelabra lay on the dirty floor, and the stench of dry rot was sickening. Half the wainscoting on one wall had been burnt or scorched; the draperies were missing or in tatters, and several of the windows smashed; dead birds lay beneath those windows. Up in the ceiling was set a scary round painting, Saul and the Witch of Endor and Samuel’s ghost, the Witch reaching out as if to snatch at everybody below.

  This chapel would have held three or four times the number here tonight. Enough chairs had been set up toward the altar to accommodate the thirty members of this crazy congregation. Even with all of this kalanzi in circulation, some order was preserved by the Master and Grishkin: the disciples and acolytes stumbled to their seats, and Sweeney found that Sam and Pereira had enough sense left to force him into a chair between theirs.

  Apollinax was at the lectern. He wore a purple gown, and on his head a soft purple cap, with a sixteenth-century look to it. Apollinax was wasting no time: Sweeney had been told by the Archvicar that the Timeless Moment would be attained at midnight, and there were these two ‘services,’ above stairs and below stairs, to get through.

  “In the name of the Lord of This World,” Apollinax proclaimed loudly, “this Ash Wednesday night we do praise all sinners!” All the disciples and acolytes, and Grishkin, and even the Archvicar, crossed themselves in a peculiar way. Or was it a sign of the cross? Might it have been some other gesture?

  “My brothers and my sisters,” Apollinax was saying, “it is thought seemly on this day for creatures of the flesh to remind themselves of the unworthiness of the body, and the supremacy of the spirit, by marking their foreheads with ashes; for all flesh is grass. We mark ourselves this night with the ashes of the monks who dwelt here long ago, taken from their ancient burial ground high up the Den. In their time at this place, those monks may have sought in the Weem beneath us what all of you seek there now: emancipation from the tyranny of Time.

  “We have in our company a learned priest known to you all, Archvicar Gerontion, who will minister unto us in this rite.”

  The Archvicar stood behind the marble altar rail. Apollinax raised both hands high, and disciples and acolytes burst fervently into another penitential psalm.

  Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum:

  Et in peccatis conceptit me mater mea.

  Sweeney, summoning up the Latin he had learnt for his course work in archaeology, put this into the vernacular: “For behold, I was conceived in iniquities: and in sins did my mother conceive me.” The mob chanted this not in sorrow but in exultation; and for once these bastards were uttering the truth, Sweeney reflected.

  The chanting ceased. At the altar rail, the pseudo-Archvicar held a silver vessel full of some earthy substance. “Come forward, all justified sinners, and be marked with the mark of Cain!” he shouted.

  Up they came, slipping and staggering, some of them; and they brought with them his five friends, and even baby Michael, to have their foreheads marked. Sweeney was prodded forward by Pereira: he hastened to comply. Up they went, the Cammel hag, Bleistein, the von Kulp woman, Hakagawa, Silvero, de Bailhache, vicious Volupine, Eugenides, the Channing-Cheetah female horror, the Tornquist witch, the ratty professor, the old Equitone mumbler.

  They all were dead, in effect, but they didn’t know it yet. Oh, they’d be out of time, all right, give them three or four hours for the kalanzi to send them into coma. Sweeney was looking at ghosts, walking, chanting, breathing ghosts. The terror of this procession struck him again, so that he almost forgot Pereira behind him and Sam in front of him.

  “Remember, O creature, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return, unless thou becomest pure spirit,” the Archvicar was intoning as he marked a Saint Andrew’s cross on the forehead of each disciple. Some moaned, some giggled, some snorted.

  Now the acolyte-girls came forward to receive their dust, sandwiching between them Marina and Madame Sesostris and Fresca with the baby. Pale Marina shuddered visibly as the mold was touched gently to her forehead by the Archvicar. Fresca paused and look long into the Archvicar’s face. The baby, on being daubed with the graveyard stuff, burst into sobs. Madame tottered to the rail as if about to expire on the spot. Rachel, one of the acolyte-girls, brutally shoved her on; Lil, the youngest acolyte-girl, nearly fell as she received her mold, so the kalanzi powder must be working swiftly in her. Sweeney could see why Apollinax must get this show over by midnight.

  Now for the devil-boys and their prisoners: first Albert, then little Phlebas, then Sam, now Sweeney himself. “Be a man, Sweeney,” the Archvicar breathed, barely moving his lips; Sweeney nodded as his forehead was smeared. Pereira swaggered behind them, then Klip, Alfred, Krum, Arthur, Snow, hellions all.

  Grishkin swept up to the altar rail. Marking her forehead, the Archvicar said something to her softly, almost entreating: she glared at him. Last there approached the Master himself, compact with power: the Archvicar ceremoniously drew the St. Andrew’s cross on that high forehead, bowed, and withdrew.

  Apollinax went up into the high baroque pulpit, In that ill-lit desecrated chapel, his eyes were like torches. A seven-branched candelabrum was set on either wing of the huge pulpit, and all the candles were alight.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Apollinax cried, “chosen ones, soon will you know the timeless state, first of all of those who shall receive it from me. Here above ground, we still make some faint obeisance to the Law, if in mockery only. It shall be otherwise below. Therefore am I brief here.

  “Know this: you must go naked to the naked Lord of the World. For you to rise above the dust that is marked upon your foreheads, you must strip away all that is flesh from the spirit; you must discard the husk, expose the essence. Strip away clothing from flesh, strip away flesh from bone, strip away bone from soul, strip away soul from spirit! Then, pure spirit, shall each of you be wedded to a spiritual bridegroom, an eternal pure spirit, an angel of the Lord of This World.

  “What fools have condemned, we praise this Ash Wednesday night. What the Law has forbidden, we embrace this Ash Wednesday night. What none dared do before, this Ash Wednesday night we begin to do for all eternity.

  “There was a craven, dwelling in this house, for whom a splendid picture was bought: but when he looked upon the picture, a dread of the Law fell upon him, and he rent his wise brother and his wise sister limb from limb. None has seen that picture since, but this Ash Wednesday night we shall behold it.

  “What you shall see represented in the picture, that shall we do in the darkness beneath this house. We shall do these acts, and you shall rejoice i
n them, timelessly, knowing that perfect sin brings rich rewards of pleasure, even when this phantom world has passed away. If any one among you reject this picture, then let him be anathema, unworthy of the Timeless Moment. Let the veil be rent!”

  Behind the altar, curtains of some heavy, rich cloth extended all across the reredos. These draperies were joined at the middle, where they met, by heavy metal clasps, and on each clasp was a tiny padlock. But already the padlocks had been opened, dangling on their clasps.

  The acolytes Krum and Snow came forward; one took hold of the right-hand curtain, the other of the left-hand curtain; and they ran, clutching the draperies, in opposite directions. The rotting cloth tore loose and fell to the floor in great swathes. That picture was revealed altogether.

  For a moment there was total silence. Then came a general gasp, a loud drawing-in of breath; then shrieks, and cackling malevolent laughter.

  The background of this enormous cartoon, executed with savage fantastic skill, was Golgotha. But only two crosses had been erected upon that fatal hill, and those two crosses of St. Andrew. One cross was tall, the other short. About the crosses crowded a rout of naked ugly figures, pointing upward, thrusting upward.

  There was nailed to the tall cross a beautiful young mother, writhing naked in the last agony. There was nailed to the small cross a baby boy, too young even to have crawled.

  This was not all. The victims were ringed about by tormentors on the ground, thrusting lances into their bodies, burning them with torches, tearing them with pincers.

  This cartoon, a work of diabolical genius, was indescribably more horrid than any painting of a martyrdom ever shown in any gallery.

  “Behold the false boy-god and the false god’s mother!” Apollinax shouted. “This shall we do!”

  Up from disciples and acolytes rose a frantic laughing cry, swelling and breaking and rising again.

  “This have I promised you!” Apollinax cried, his voice rising above the laughing scream of the mob. “Down to the Ceremony of Innocence, which shall endure beyond Time!”

  They all poured out of the chapel. Marina had fainted, Sweeney saw: half dragged, half carried, by Doris and Dusty, she was swept through the doorway. He was seized and hurried along by Sam and Pereira, and his friends too propelled toward the cellars, the drain, the Weem. The Master strode before them all.

  Sweeney was pushed and prodded past Grishkin. She stood staring, fascinated, at the cartoon; and for the first time there was an expression upon her painted face, but an expression not easily identified. The Archvicar limped along on his stick, guarded by Krum and Snow.

  They all went down below, and their screaming laughter echoed through the whole Lodging, frantic enough to wake the dead.

  17

  The Infernal Ceremony of Innocence

  Through the monks’ drain they ran, some of them lurching, the disciples and the acolytes, passing into the tunnel that led to the Weem’s vestibule. They bore flaming torches of pitch or tallow. As they went past, they chanted confusedly:

  De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine:

  Domine, exaudi vocem meam!

  Marina, held up by Doris and Dusty, was conscious again. Do not consent, she kept repeating silently, even in the agony! All sped past her, even Madame Sesostris, hustled on by acolyte-girls; Phlebas, kicked and jostled by his guards; Sweeney, a pistol at his ribs; Fresca, clutching Michael. Marina wailed when she saw the baby vanish down the tunnel. Then came the Archvicar, hobbling painfully by himself; he turned his face toward her as he passed, but said nothing. She was left with Grishkin and the brute girls who were gripping her.

  Marina herself was crying out of the depths, but to another Lord than Time the Devourer, Lord of This World. Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae. O deliver me and my baby from bloodletting!

  “Now you, Bride, last of all!” said Grishkin. A burning torch in her hand, Grishkin led on.

  The girls rushed Marina along a tunnel propped with timbers, lighted up by Grishkin’s torch. She did not resist.

  They came into the wreck of a vaulted undercroft, where an acolyte-boy stood guard over a heap of pistols and shotguns. The scarlet robes had been discarded, for a pile of them lay beside the weapons.

  A low doorway loomed in the opposite wall. The girls would have forced Marina into it, but Grishkin said, “Wait!”

  She snatched off Marina’s outer white robe and flung it on the pile of scarlet robes; now Marina stood livid in her wedding finery. Grishkin took up a thing that lay near the robes, and fitted it over her own head and neck. It was a huge raven’s-head mask. Grishkin handed other masks to the acolyte-girls, and they put them on: weasel-mask, wasp-mask. Marina’s vision of Saturday night was being fulfilled.

  Then Grishkin, having handed her torch to the boy-acolyte, flung off her scarlet robe; so did the acolyte-girls. All of them had been quite naked beneath those robes. Grishkin pirouetted like a dancer in ballet, her splendid firm body corybantic beneath the light of the torch she had snatched back.

  “Now take in the Bride to her bridal!” Grishkin cried. Doris, stooping, went through the doorway; Dusty pushed Marina ahead of her. They were in another passage or tunnel, with flickering lights ahead. They dragged and prodded Marina through that passage.

  She stumbled into a crypt or cave, the underground hall of her vision. Then Grishkin the Raven, leaping high, bounded past them.

  The cave was lit by many smoky torches thrust into sockets in the rock walls. A few people still in robes huddled at the far end of the hall, beside a tremendous carved cross of stone. Marina made out Michael in Fresca’s arms, and Madame Sesostris, and Sweeney.

  This hall resounded with the chanting, but now a fast, frantic, shrieking chant. As they chanted, the creatures danced; and except for the beast-masks, all were naked. They whirled, capered, spun, strutted, jumped, reeled, wriggled, rolled, bounced, pranced, in Dionysian frenzy.

  Yet was there a pattern to their dance, despite its wildness? It seemed as if they danced in an intricate maze, weaving their besotted way through invisible passages.

  They collided with one another, fell, rose again, kicked, bumped, flung their arms high, twisted like serpents. In their ecstasy they hurled themselves about, disciples and acolytes promiscuously mingled, all masked as the beasts that perish, gaunt bodies, flaccid bodies, strong bodies, fat bodies, smooth bodies, hairy bodies, wrinkled bodies, equal in their abandon.

  A delicate high-breasted shape hovered near Marina for a moment: beneath the lizard-mask, was it von Kulp? A bare shapeless thing wearing a sow-mask wavered up close, weak yet quivering with bestial energy: “Welcome, Bride!” Marina shrank from the Equitone beast. Domine, dirige nos!

  Into the midst of these dancers bounded Grishkin the Raven, Grishkin the Coryphee, gyrating as if born for this passionate moment, shameless and superb. Drawn by her perfect agility, the beast-dancers circled about her, mowing, gurgling, shrieking. Grishkin leaped incredibly high, turned cartwheels, somersaulted like a practiced acrobat, snatching back her raven mask when it threatened to fall from her. The inspired mistress of these ultimate revels, she glistened exultant in the torchlight, burning with her hard gem like flame, naked splendor and frenetic terror wedded. Suddenly Grishkin the Raven screeched so long and loud that the others fell silent; she drooped, sank gracefully upon the stone floor, and stared toward the center of the hall; and all the others did as she had done.

  A thing with a pallid body, a leonine mask upon its head, stood in the middle of the cave. It spoke, and spoke with the voice of Apollinax. “Behold the altar of sacrifice!” it commanded.

  Beside the Master was a rough heavy butcher’s table, and upon it lay a hatchet and a gleaming sickle. “I am Kronos, Devouring Time,” Apollinax’s voice came, “and here on this altar lie my sacred instruments.”

  Kronos gestured toward the far wall. “Behold also the rood of the Mother and the rood of the Child!”

  Upon the cave’s floor, not far from the tall
stone cross, two crosses of massive timbers lay. Unlike the Celtic stone cross, these were in the form of an X, one very tall, the other smaller. They were like the crosses of that hideous cartoon in the chapel, Saint Andrew’s crosses.

  All the beast-people sat perfectly silent now, peering raptly through their eyeholes at Kronos the Master. Some had been famous, some rich, some possessed of power; now they were pure beasts, promised that they should become pure spirits.

  The lion’s jaws of his mask yawned wide, and Apollinax’s voice filled the hall. Shivering convulsively, Marina lay on the floor between Weasel-girl and Wasp-girl.

  “The place is here, the hour has come,” the Master called out to his congregation. “All of you twenty-four who have chosen me shall enter upon the Timeless Moment. In the agony of the victims, you shall know the most intense of joys, and shall know that delight forever, wanting nothing more.

  “Yet you are not alone, my disciples and my acolytes, for these others, although unworthy, shall enter with us into the Timeless Moment. They shall consent to all, and be drawn into our Moment, and divert us everlastingly, forever writhing, forever expiring, forever shamed. Through wiles or through compulsion, they shall consent to degradation, and shall never return to the phantom realm above.”

  The baby, in Fresca’s arms, wailed dismally. Marina struggled to rise, but Wasp and Weasel held her to the floor.

  “Here the Child, the false god!” the Master shouted. “He shall be divided among you. What before you have fancied only in dreams, you shall consummate most literally in this place. In our communion, we shall take and eat the flesh; we shall take and drink the blood; and let no one of you shrink from this table our altar. You shall be bound together eternally by this timeless communion.