by Daniel Mills
There were scenes of murder, theft, and rape; couplings with man and beast; and violence of the meanest sort directed toward a pair of maidens in white, much of it inflicted with a barbed whip. The actors—if actors they were—comported themselves with such zeal that many members of the audience crossed themselves and averted their faces, while others watched, enraptured, unable to look away.
Anna belonged to the latter group. She detailed the characters’ exploits with obvious relish, giggling to herself as she described the violation of the maidens, which was followed in turn by the hearty consumption of communion wine and the spirited desecration of the Host.
The play ended shortly afterward, to the surprise of many, for there were no punishments dispensed to the sinners, nor blessings awarded the virgins. Nonetheless, the applause that greeted this non-ending was tumultuous, and the Count’s satisfaction with the performance became widely known.
For a time, such entertainments were held daily, even on Sundays, when the whole of the city crowded itself into the amphitheater. All went to the theater, and all spoke of little else—all save for myself and my brothers in Christ, who were forbidden to attend. But from Anna we learned of its many excesses and depravities, the old crone dispensing gossip each morning as she waited for bread, and it was from Anna that we learned of the competition.
It was to be held on the Feast of Midsummer and could be expected to last through the day. Until then, all performances of morality plays were suspended on pain of death. Though modeled on the agon of old, we learned that the Count was desirous not of tragic drama but of ballads old and new. All singers and musicians, man and woman alike, were invited to participate, and some, we learned, made the journey from places like Florence and Vienna.
Excitement was general. As Midsummer approached, a strange fever came over the city, and an atmosphere of riotous jubilation prevailed. One evening, late in May, a crowd gathered in the cathedral square, several hundred strong, to demand access to the Bishop’s store of wine. His Grace petitioned the Count, requesting the intervention of the City Watch, but to no avail. When the gates were breached, and the marauding crowd poured into the palace, the Bishop took flight before them, finding shelter in the sanctuary of his church into which they dared not enter.
Fires erupted from within the palace and gutted the building’s interior. Later, when the smoke had cleared, hundreds were found dead inside, charred and melted together in attitudes of orgiastic frenzy. The Bishop, with typical gravity, declared it an act of Judgment from the Lord.
The riots continued throughout the early days of summer, incited by drunkenness and sustained by the Count’s general insouciance. The Jewish quarter was demolished, the gypsies driven from the Square of Saint Mark. At no point did the Watch interfere.
Throughout this time the rhythms of life within our four walls continued to change and adapt, despite the Prior’s attempts to maintain a comforting consistency with all that had come before. He tried first tolerance; but when our numbers continued to dwindle, he was moved to enforce a strict discipline, ruling over us with a rod of iron—or a rusted ladle, as was the case, with beatings administered to any found lacking in their devotions. This had no better effect, and it shortly became clear to us that something had changed, irretrievably so, and that neither faith nor kindness nor rigor could restore to us our lost brotherhood in Christ.
The first tragedy befell us in June, a fortnight before the Feast of Midsummer. The unrest was then at its peak, and sleep came not for fear of the chaos that lived—and bred—beyond the Abbey walls. Sometime after midnight, Brother Thomas ran screaming down the hall, so mad with fright that it took four of us to restrain him, and calm him, and coax from him the story.
The Abbott was dead. Thomas had found him in the Scriptorium amidst a mess of tattered vellum. His wrists had been opened by his own hand, his eyes reduced to black ash inside his skull. Nearby lay the bloodied knife and candle with which he had performed the deed.
We buried him in the garden, consigning him to the earth at the southeast corner in view of the skeletal oak. It was a lovely morning, as I remember, but I found no consolation in the clear skies overhead, nor in the temperate winds that sighed through the alder bushes.
With the Abbot dead, my dear friend departed, and my own faith in ruins, I saw no reason to keep my Vows; and yet I was much too frightened to forsake the Abbey walls, to exchange one kind of emptiness for another as our Abbott had done—for he would know nothing but suffering in the darkness that had been prepared for him.
The Feast of Midsummer fell upon the Sabbath. On the evening before, while helping the Almoner, I received news of Friedrich. The story came from Anna, who had gone to the castle to beg scraps from the Count’s kitchens. Anna, who confessed herself greatly excited for the next day’s entertainment, sneaked from the kitchens to the great hall, where dozens of tables were set, with close to one hundred singers and musicians seated around, dining on meat and wine.
These were the agon competitors, all of whom were boarded in the castle at the Count’s insistence. Among them, she recognized Brother Friedrich, though he had traded his monk’s robes for a yellow traveler’s cloak, such as might be worn by a minstrel, and his face, too, had changed. He looked older, she said, but could add nothing more.
That night, in the hour before Matins, I slipped through the east gate, as Friedrich had done half-a-year before, and wended my way across town as the sun began to rise. Long shadows crept over the blasted ruins left by the summer’s riots, darkening the flagstones over which I stepped, silent as a ghost in that dim and purple twilight.
In time, I arrived at the castle, where I cried out for entry, only to learn from the guard that the balladeers had left an hour before so as to reach the amphitheater at dawn. With much thanks, I took my leave of him and ran to the city gates, surprised to find them open at this early hour. The watchman waved me along with a shrug and I passed through, joining the winding procession that stretched from the gates to the amphitheater half-a-mile away.
Although well-acquainted with Anna’s stories, I had not myself lain eyes upon the structure before. Even at this distance, I could see it was an object of gargantuan proportion, as tall as the Bishop’s cathedral and yet far grander in scale, with six terraced arcades fashioned from white timber. And though I feared what I might find inside, I understood that I could no longer turn back, having come so far.
The line moved with painful slowness. I attempted to cut ahead, apologizing to those I passed, assuring them my intentions in doing so were Godly and honorable. I thought my robes might afford me some protection, but I had gone no more than ten yards before a man seized me round the neck and cast me to the ground. There he proceeded to rain blows upon me until the line lurched forward once more and he tired of his sport.
It was half-an-hour before I managed to stand, by which time the line had moved well past me, so that I had no choice but to seek out the end once more, and to shuffle forward, blood-blind in one eye, while the sun poured down its heat and the ever-present stink of sweat and piss thickened with the resulting humidity, so pungent it brought me near to tears, until at last, with much relief, I passed into the long shadow of the amphitheater.
Inside, the agon was well underway. Even in the atrium, the noise was deafening, compounded of the cries and jeers of ten thousand persons in proximity, so that I could not even hear the singer upon whom they heaped their scorn. Once I was certain that I was not observed, I ducked to one side and made my way along the outer arcade until I came to a flight of wooden steps leading down to the undercroft.
At the base of the stair, I came to a heavy door secured with iron bands. The wooden slide shot back, and a voice inquired of me what I wanted. I told him I was a musician; that I had been accosted and robbed and such was the reason for my lateness.
He asked me to sing from the piece I had prepared. When I demurred, he slammed shut the slide and would not consent to open it again, no matter how mu
ch vigor I applied to my knocking. Eventually, I turned round in defeat and joined the crowd in the amphitheater.
All seats were occupied, but I found room to stand on the second terrace, some fifteen yards from the theater floor and located just above the Count’s curtained box. No one remarked on my battered condition. No one paid me any mind at all, held rapt as they were by the performers on stage.
First came a dwarf who played the hurdy-gurdy and sang with breathtaking earnestness of the woman who had abandoned him. This drew from the crowd a chorus of taunts, culminating in a thrown stone that cut the dwarf’s performance short and sent him running below with the broken instrument tucked beneath his arm. The stones lay in plentiful supply around us, provided by the Count, I assumed, so as to better measure the popularity of each singer.
Next came a lad of ten or eleven in urchin’s rags. He sang of the Teutonic defeat at Grumwald with the melancholy of a man much older. Vividly could I imagine the doomed knights with crosses on their breasts, and the Poles on horseback, advancing with swords and lances gleaming. He was not yet halfway finished when the first shouts resounded, and the lad fled in terror of his life as the stones fell around him.
Throughout these performances, we had no glimpse of the Count, though word soon reached us that he was much displeased with the competitors thus far.
Only the harlot Iliana was awarded with applause. She was a woman of uncommon beauty, who appeared in red silks and sang of her many talents, choosing a melody like none I had heard before—so strange and haunting that I cannot now forget it.
Friedrich appeared on stage shortly before dusk. He wore a yellow cloak frayed from long travel, and his face appeared similarly careworn, scarred and creased, so that I would not have recognized him, save that his eyes were the same shade of gray. I shouted to him, but he did not hear. The noise of the crowd was overwhelming, many of whom desired the return of Iliana—at least until Friedrich opened his mouth, and a restless quiet descended.
The piece he chose was a song of praise, familiar to me from the hours we had spent in shared prayer. He sang in Latin, a language I doubted any one of the audience members understood, but they did not throw stones, nor jeer him offstage, nor even dare to speak: shocked into silence by the beauty of his song and the heartrending pathos with which it was performed.
Friedrich sang of the Lord’s majesty and wisdom, of His unerring faithfulness and devotion to His people. He offered up this praise not to heaven, but to the curtained box before him, wherein sat the Count and from which Friedrich’s eyes never strayed, not even when he had uttered the final note and the stillness lingered.
It was a thing of pure and bracing emptiness, so much like the darkness into which we had awoken, all of us, on the night the oak had burned. For the Lord had come at twilight, and left us again, so that we knew not in which way to turn for succor, and could only continue, sustained by the memory of a song which faded more each day and would soon be inaudible.
Friedrich produced a dagger from his cloak. He unsheathed the blade and held it aloft so all could see. And then, with one rapid motion, he jerked the dagger across his throat, the noise of rending flesh blotted out, mercifully, by the roar of applause that followed.
He collapsed and lay twitching, the life-blood pooling beneath him. Still the cheers continued. His corpse was dragged away, but the din did not cease, the crowd rousing itself to new heights of adulation when word reached us, slowly, that the Count was greatly pleased by this last performance. The competition was over; Friedrich was the winner.
At this, anger stole over me, and I could not quell the rage within my breast. I snatched a stone from the ground and leapt to the terrace below. The Count’s box was unguarded, the Watchmen having joined the others in raucous cheering and applause. I threw back the curtain and readied the stone, steeling myself to do violence to the merciless leper inside, who had, I was sure, brought this madness down upon us.
But the box was empty. It did not hold the Count, nor could it ever have done so. The heavy curtain hung from three sides of the square box, while the fourth and final wall consisted of nothing more than unpainted timber. I dropped the stone and fled the roaring crowd.
The sun had set by the time I reached the Abbey. I slipped into the garden through the east gate, grateful to find myself alone, if only for a moment. I collapsed to my knees before the oak and looked up past the empty branches. Dusk lay over the world, heady with the fragrance of roses and wood-ash, the odor unfaded since the autumn.
The Prior found me there. He did not scold or shout but merely took me by the arm and helped me inside. I reminded him, he later said, of Saint John, my namesake, as he knelt before the cross and waited, breathlessly, for night to fall.
PUBLICATION CREDITS
“The Hollow” originally appeared in Phantasmagorium 4, ed. Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Gorgon Press, 2012).
“MS Found in a Chicago Hotel Room” originally appeared in A Season in Carcosa, ed. Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Miskatonic River Press, 2012).
“Dust from a Dark Flower” originally appeared in Fungi, ed. Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Innsmouth Free Press, 2012).
“The Photographer’s Tale” originally appeared in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction *36, ed. John Greenwood and Stephen Theaker (2011). Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23, ed. Stephen Jones (Robinson, 2012).
“Whistler’s Gore” originally appeared in Mighty in Sorrow, ed. Jordan Krall (Dunhams Manor Press, 2014).
“The Wayside Voices” originally appeared in Black Static 30, ed. Andy Cox (The Third Alternative, 2012).
“John Blake” is original to this volume.
“The Falling Dark” originally appeared in Shadows Edge, ed. Simon Strantzas (Gray Friar Press, 2013).
“Louisa” originally appeared under the title “Wolf Hour” in Supernatural Tales 20, ed. David Longhorn (2011).
“The Tempest Glass” originally appeared in Supernatural Tales 23, ed. David Longhorn (2013).
“House of the Caryatids” is original to this volume.
“Whisperers” originally appeared in Aklonomicon, ed. Joseph S. Pulver, Sr and Ivan McCann (Aklo Press, 2012).
“The Naked Goddess” originally appeared in Delicate Toxins, ed. John H. Smith (Side Real Press, 2011).
“The Lord Came at Twilight” originally appeared in The Grimscribe’s Puppets, ed. Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Miskatonic River Press, 2013).
