The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy

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by Brian Stableford


  And he continued watering the flowers and going to the well to re-fill his can.

  Carpophorus and Ursicinus had not recovered from their terror; but it was spiced with a certain delight, for were they not about to witness some dreadful proceeding on the part of the Evil One? Meanwhile, they kept at a respectful distance from the idol, and splashing holy water right and left, and swinging censers backwards and forwards, they set up a hymn in a shaky voice, not without some lapses of grammar. But the idol took notice of none of it; she shone out white in the gathering twilight, and on her bent finger, on her closed hand, twinkled the little gold circlet.

  When Eudaemon had finished his watering, he let the bucket once more down in to the well, and took a deep drink of water. Then he dipped his hands, ungirt his white woollen robes, the day’s work being done, and walked leisurely down the bowling-green, calling the birds, who whirled round his head; but taking no notice of his fellow-saints and their exorcisms. Before the idol he stood still. He looked up, quite boldly, at her comely limbs and face, and even with a benign smile. “Sister Venus,” he said, “you were ever a lover of jests; but every jest has its end. Night is coming on, my outdoor work is over; it is fit I should retire to prayers and to rest. Give me therefore my ring, of which I bade you take charge in return for the hospitality I had shown you.”

  Carpophorus and Ursicinus quickened the time of their hymn, and sang much at cross purposes, looking up at the idol with the corner of their eyes.

  The statue did not move. There she stood naked and comely, whiter and whiter as the daylight faded, and the moon rose up in the east. “Sister Venus,” resumed Eudaemon, “you are not obliging. I fear, Sister Venus, that you nurture evil designs, such as mankind accounts to your blame. If this be, desist. Foolish persons have said you were wicked, nay a devil; and like enough you have got to believe it, and to glory, perhaps, in the notion. Cast it from you, Sister Venus, for I tell you it is false. And so, restore me my ring.”

  But still the idol did not move, but grew only whiter, like silver, in the moonbeams, as she stood above the green grass, in the smoke of the incense. Carpophorus and Ursicinus fixed their eyes on her, wondering when she would break in two pieces, and a dragon smelling of brimstone issue from her with a hideous noise, as a result of the exorcism.

  “Sister Venus,” Eudaemon repeated, and his voice, though gentle, grew commanding, “cease your foolish malice, and, inasmuch as one of God’s creatures, obey and restore to me my ring.”

  A little breeze stirred the air. The white hand of the statue shifted from her white bosom, the finger slowly uncrooked and extended itself.

  With incredible audacity Eudaemon ran into the trap of the Evil One. He advanced, and, rising on tiptoe, stretched forth his hand to the idol’s. Now indeed would that devil clasp him to her, and singe his flesh on the way to Hell!

  But it was not so. Eudaemon took the ring, rubbed it tenderly on his white woollen sleeve, and stuck it slowly and pensively on his own finger.

  “Sister Venus,” he then said, standing before the statue, with the finches and thrushes and ortolans perching on his shoulders, and the swallows circling round his head, “Sister Venus, I thank you. Forget the malice which foolish mankind have taught you to find in yourself. Remember you are a creature of God’s, and good. Teach the flowers to cross their seeds and vary their hues and scents; teach the doves and the swallows and the sheep and the kine and all our speechless brethren to pair and nurture their young; teach the youths and the maidens to love one another and their children. Make this orchard to bloom, and these rustics to sing. But, since in this form you have foolishly tried to give scandal as foolish mortals had taught you to do, accept, Sister Venus, a loving punishment, and in the name of Christ, be a statue no longer, but a fair white tree with sweet-smelling blossoms and golden fruit.”

  Eudaemon stood with his hand raised, and made the sign of the cross.

  There was a faint sigh, as of the breeze, and a faint but gathering rustle. And behold, beneath the shining white moon, the statue of Venus changed its outline, put forth minute leaves and twigs, which grew apace, until, while Eudaemon still stood with raised hand, there was a statue no longer at the end of the bowling-green, but a fair orange-tree, with leaves and flowers shining silvery in the moonlight.

  Then Eudaemon went in to his prayers; and Carpophorus and Ursicinus returned each in silence, one to his cavern and one to his column, and thought themselves much smaller saints for ever in future.

  As to the orange-tree, it still stands on the slope of the Caelian, opposite the criss-cross reeds of the Aventine vineyards, beside the little church with the fluted broken columns and the big cactus, like a python, on its apse. And the pigeons are most plentiful, and the figs and clove-pinks most sweet and fragrant all round; and there is always water in plenty in the well. And that is the story of St. Eudaemon and his Orange-Tree; but you will not find it in the Golden Legend nor in the Bollandists.

  RICHARD GARNETT (1835-1906) worked for the greater part of his life in the British Museum Library, serving as Supervisor of the Reading Room and as Keeper of Printed Books. Most of his writings were scholarly, but he produced one extraordinary book of stories, The Twilight of the Gods, which is one of the landmarks of British fantasy. It was first issued in 1888 but was enlarged from sixteen stories to twenty-eight in the second edition of 1903. Most of the stories in it are romances of antiquity or historical fantasies, often based in obscure legends; they are carefully embellished with all manner of exotica, stylistically highly-polished, neatly ironic and brilliantly witty. The title story, which describes the later career of Prometheus, reprieved from his horrible punishment following the abdication of the Olympians, is one of several parables which subtly champion liberal humanist values against the excesses of ascetic religion - although such cautionary tales as “The City of the Philosophers” insist that we must be sceptical even of our best and most humane intentions.

  The urbane and flirtatious surfaces of Garnett’s stories excuse the fact that their subject matter is mischievously and extravagantly opposed to Victorian ideas and ideals. “Alexander the Ratcatcher” was first published in The Yellow Book in 1897; it is one of several cynical anti-clerical satires recalling the most calculatedly heretical of the tales in Anatole France’s The Well of St Clare (1895; tr. 1909). Vernon Lee’s fantasies in a similar vein are restrained by comparison, and those of Laurence Housman are even more so.

  ALEXANDER THE RATCATCHER

  by Richard Garnett

  “Alexander Octavus mures, qui Urbem supra modum vexabant, anathemate perculit.” Palatius. Fasti Cardinalium, tom. v. p. 46

  I

  “Rome and her rats are at the point of battle!”

  This metaphor of Menenius Agrippa’s became, history records, matter of fact in 1689, when rats pervaded the Eternal City from garret to cellar, and Pope Alexander the Eighth seriously apprehended the fate of Bishop Hatto. The situation worried him sorely; he had but lately attained the tiara at an advanced age - the twenty-fourth hour, as he himself remarked in extenuation of his haste to enrich his nephew. The time vouchsafed for worthier deeds was brief, and he dreaded descending to posterity as the Rat Pope. Witty and genial, his sense of humour teased him with a full perception of the absurdity of his position. Peter and Pasquin concurred in forbidding him to desert his post; and he derived but small comfort from the ingenuity of his flatterers, who compared him to St. Paul contending with beasts at Ephesus.

  It wanted three half-hours to midnight, as Alexander sat amid traps and ratsbane in his chamber in the Vatican, under the protection of two enormous cats and a British terrier. A silver bell stood ready to his hand, should the aid of the attendant chamberlains be requisite. The walls had been divested of their tapestries, and the floor gleamed with pounded glass. A tome of legendary lore lay open at the history of the Piper of Hamelin. All was silence, save for the sniffing and scratching of the dog and a sound of subterranean scraping and gnawing. />
  “Why tarries Cardinal Barbadico thus?” the Pope at last asked himself aloud. The inquiry was answered by a wild burst of squeaking and clattering and scurrying to and fro, as who should say, “We’ve eaten him. We’ve eaten him!”

  But this exultation was at least premature, for just as the terrified Pope clutched his bell, the door opened to the the narrowest extent compatible with the admission of an ecclesiastical personage of dignified presence, and Cardinal Barbadico hastily squeezed himself through.

  “I shall hardly trust myself upon these stairs again,” he remarked, “unless under the escort of your Holiness’s terrier.”

  “Take him, my son, and a cruse of holy water to boot,” the Pope responded. “Now, how go things in the city?”

  “As ill as may be, your Holiness. Not a saint stirs a finger to help us. The country-folk shun the city, the citizens seek the country. The multitude of enemies increases hour by hour. They set at defiance the anathemas fulminated by your Holiness, the spiritual censures placarded in the churches, and the citation to appear before the ecclesiastical courts, although assured that their cause shall be pleaded by the ablest advocates in Rome. The cats, amphibious with alarm, are taking to the Tiber. Vainly the city reeks with toasted cheese, and the Commissary-General reports himself short of arsenic.”

  “And how are the people taking it?” demanded Alexander. “To what cause do they attribute the public calamity?”

  “Generally speaking, to the sins of your Holiness,” replied the Cardinal.

  “Cardinal!” exclaimed Alexander indignantly.

  “I crave pardon for my temerity,” returned Barbadico. “It is with difficulty that I force myself to speak, but I am bound to lay the ungrateful truth before your Holiness. The late Pope, as all men know, was a personage of singular sanctity.”

  “Far too upright for this fallen world,” observed Alexander with unction.

  “I will not dispute,” responded the Cardinal, “that the head of Innocent the Eleventh might have been more fitly graced by a halo than by a tiara. But the vulgar are incapable of placing themselves at this point of view. They know that the rats hardly squeaked under Innocent, and that they swarm under Alexander. What wonder if they suspect your Holiness of familiarity with Beelzebub, the patron of vermin, and earnestly desire that he would take you to himself? Vainly have I represented to them the unreasonableness of imposing upon him a trouble he may well deem superfluous, considering your Holiness’s infirm health and advanced age. Vainly, too, have I pointed out that your anathema has actually produced all the effect that could have been reasonably anticipated from any similar manifesto on your predecessor’s part. They won’t see it. And, in fact, might I humbly advise, it does appear impolitic to hurl anathemas unless your Holiness knows that some one will be hit. It might be opportune, for example, to excommunicate Father Molinos, now fast in the dungeons of St. Angelo, unless, indeed, the rats have devoured him there. But I question the expediency of going much further.”

  “Cardinal,” said the Pope, “you think yourself prodigiously clever, but you ought to know that the state of public opinion allowed us no alternative. Moreover, I will give you a wrinkle, in case you should ever come to be Pope yourself. It is unwise to allow ancient prerogatives to fall entirely into desuetude. Far-seeing men prognosticate a great revival of sacerdotalism in the nineteenth century, and what is impotent in an age of sense may be formidable in an age of nonsense. Further, we know not from one day to another whether we may not be absolutely necessitated to excommunicate that factor of Gallicanism, Louis the Fourteenth, and before launching our bolt at a king, we may think well to test its efficacy upon a rat. Fiat experimentum. And now to return to our rats, from which we have ratted. Is there indeed no hope?”

  “Lateat scintillula forsan,” said the Cardinal mysteriously.

  “Ha! How so?” eagerly demanded Alexander.

  “Our hopes,” answered the Cardinal, “are associated with the recent advent to this city of an extraordinary personage.”

  “Explain,” urged the Pope.

  “I speak,” resumed the Cardinal, “of an aged man of no plebeian mien or bearing, albeit most shabbily attired in the skins, now fabulously cheap, of the vermin that torment us; who, professing to practise as an herbalist, some little time ago established himself in an obscure street of no good repute. A tortoise hangs in his needy shop, nor are stuffed alligators lacking. Understanding that he was resorted to by such as have need of philters and love-potions, or are incommoded by the longevity of parents and uncles, I was about to have him arrested, when I received a report which gave me pause. This concerned the singular intimacy which appeared to subsist between him and our enemies. When he left home, it was averred, he was attended by troops of them obedient to his beck and call, and spies had observed him banqueting them at his counter, the rats sitting erect and comporting themselves with perfect decorum. I resolved to investigate the matter for myself. Looking into his house through an unshuttered window, I perceived him in truth surrounded by feasting and gambolling rats; but when the door was opened in obedience to my attendants’ summons, he appeared to be entirely alone. Laying down a pestle and mortar, he greeted me by name with an easy familiarity which for the moment quite disconcerted me, and inquired what had procured him the honour of my visit. Recovering myself, and wishing to intimidate him:

  “ ‘I desire in the first place’, I said, ‘to point out to you your grave transgression of municipal regulations in omitting to paint your name over your shop.’

  “ ‘Call me Rattila,’ he rejoined with unconcern, ‘and state your further business.’

  “I felt myself on the wrong tack, and hastened to interrogate him respecting his relations with our adversaries. He frankly admitted his acquaintance with rattery in all its branches, and his ability to deliver the city from this scourge, but his attitude towards your Holiness was so deficient in respect that I question whether I ought to report it.”

  “Proceed, son,” said the Pope; “we will not be deterred from providing for the public weal by the ribaldry of a ratcatcher.”

  “He scoffed at what he termed your Holiness’s absurd position, and affirmed that the world had seldom beheld, or would soon behold again, so ridiculous a spectacle as a Pope besieged by rats. ‘I can help your master,’ he continued, ‘and am willing; but my honour, like his, is aspersed in the eyes of the multitude, and he must come to my aid, if I am to come to his.’

  “I prayed him to be more explicit, and offered to be the bearer of any communication to your Holiness.

  “ ‘I will unfold myself to no one but the Pope himself,’ he replied, ‘and the interview must take place when and where I please to appoint. Let him meet me this very midnight, and alone, in the fifth chamber of the Appartamento Borgia.’

  “ ‘The Appartamento Borgia!’ I exclaimed in consternation. ‘The saloons which the wicked Pope Alexander the sixth nocturnally perambulates, mingling poisons that have long lost their potency for Cardinals who have long lost their lives!’

  “ ‘Have a care!’ he exclaimed sharply. ‘You speak to his late Holiness’s most intimate friend.’

  “ ‘Then,’ I answered, ‘you must obviously be the Devil, and I am not at present empowered to negotiate with your Infernal Majesty. Consider, however, the peril and inconvenience of visiting at dead of night rooms closed for generations. Think of the chills and cobwebs. Weigh the probability of his Holiness being devoured by rats.’

  “ ‘I guarantee his Holiness absolute immunity from cold,’ he replied, ‘and that none of my subjects shall molest him either going or returning.’

  “ ‘But, ‘I objected, ‘ granting that you are not the Devil, how the devil, let me ask, do you expect to gain admittance at midnight to the Appartamento Borgia?’

  “ ‘Think you I cannot pass through a stone wall?’ answered he, and vanished in an instant. A tremendous scampering of rats immediately ensued, then all was silence.

  “On recoverin
g in some measure from my astounded condition, I caused strict search to be made throughout the shop. Nothing came to light but herbalists’ stuff and ordinary medicines. And now, Holy Father, your Holiness’s resolution? Reflect well. This Rattila may be the King of the Rats, or he may be Beelzebub in person.”

  Alexander the Eighth was principally considered by his contemporaries in the light of a venerable fox, but the lion had by no means been omitted from his composition.

  “All powers of good forbid,” he exclaimed, “that a Pope and a Prince should shrink from peril which the safety of the State summons him to encounter! I will confront this wizard, this goblin, in the place of his own appointing, under his late intimate friend’s nose. I am a man of many transgressions, but something assures me that Heaven will not deem this a fit occasion for calling them to remembrance. Time presses; I lead on; follow, Cardinal Barbadico, follow! Yet stay, let us not forget temporal and spiritual armouries.”

  And hastily providing himself with a lamp, a petronel, a bunch of keys, a crucifix, a vial of holy water, and a manual of exorcisms, the Pope passed through a secret door in a corner of his chamber, followed by the Cardinal bearing another lamp and a naked sword, and preceded by the dog and the two cats, all ardent and undaunted as champions bound to the Holy Land for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre.

  II

  The wizard had kept his word. Not a rat was seen or heard upon the pilgrimage, which was exceedingly toilsome to the aged Pope from the number of passages to be threaded and doors to be unlocked. At length the companions stood before the portal of the Appartamento Borgia.

  “Your Holiness must enter alone,” Cardinal Barbadico admonished, with manifest reluctance.

 

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