Gog

by Andrew Sinclair

  “And if we know all knowledge, why do we conceal it? It is because wisdom is like the seasons, it shows itself in its own due time. For instance, we know how the people of Atlantis destroyed themselves. I would tell you, indeed. But then you would ask, What weapon did they use? Horror it is, that you should all ask the wrong questions and make us hide the truth and the wisdom from you. You do not want to know what happened to Atlantis, you want to know what was the machine that destroyed it, so that you can make it again to destroy us all.”

  Here Evans pauses, and a shadow crosses his face, as if a raven has passed over him in flight.

  “Ah, but the infernal machine that destroyed Atlantis is already discovered again. We pray to stop its use, but it will be used. In a few days. Pity it is, and terrible it is, but they will not listen, they will use it.”

  “It will destroy two cities in the Far East soon, won’t it?” Gog says.

  Evans the Latin looks at Gog with surprise and suspicion. “How know you?” he says. “You’re no druid.”

  “I’m half-druid, perhaps,” Gog laughs. “Actually, someone called the Bagman told me.”

  Evans’s face grows dark and the froth on his mouth becomes spume. “That apostate! That false druid! That traitor! Broadcasting our secrets to alien ears. Judas Iscariot was a saint compared to Wayland Merlin Blake Smith. Why talk you to such lying fools?”

  “He talked to me,” Gog says. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

  “He was a maggot in the oak-apple, a blight in the grove. He wormed his way in, deceived us by fair words. Then he tried to set himself up as our false priest, and we expelled him. Since then that mad villain has paraded about, blabbing all the sacred secrets­ to limey ears. Lucky it is the limeys are so mad themselves they do not like to know the truth when they hear it, the holy wisdom of the druids. But if I ever see that traitor again, I’ll quarter him in four parts and stick his bloody names on each bit of him, Wayland on his arms, and Merlin on his black heart, and Smith on his legs, and Blake on his rotten head. Ah, Griffin bach, that he should claim those marvellous old names. William Blake, he was the archdruid and some of our teachings are revealed in his writings . . .”

  “I know,” Gog says, “that poem of his about Jerusalem being once where London now is. The Bagman quoted it in the underground hangar. It begins, doesn’t it?

  “The fields from Islington to Marybone,

  To Primrose Hill and Saint John’s Wood,

  Were builded over with pillars of gold,

  And there Jerusalem’s pillars stood.”

  “Right you are, bach,” Evans the Latin says. “Haven’t you heard that lying tongue tell you Blake’s magnificent truth, All Things Begin and End in Albion’s Ancient Druid Rocky Shore?”

  “I have,” Gog answers. “The Bagman always says he said it, when he was William Blake in a previous incarnation.”

  “The lying sod,” Evans yells. “Of course, we druids believe that there is no death, we all come again and again in the form of all living things. But that apostate never was Wayland, never Merlin, and never never William Blake. He may be Smith, that’s a dirty filthy limey name. You can’t just choose who you were in the past. You were who you were. It’s all in the archives, and I have the key to all the archives. All is in the archives, who everyone was and is and will be. And that filthy Smith, he wasn’t William Blake. And when he comes again, he’s going to be a toad, and I’m going to tread on him, I am.”

  “If everything’s in your archives, all the past and the present and the future,” Gog says, “they must be pretty big.”

  “They grow,” Evans says. “They always grow. We don’t write down all the truth, mark you. Only what’s necessary to be written.”­

  “And what’s necessary?”

  “What men should know at this time.”

  “But you said you knew what men were going to be.”

  “We do. And we will write it when they are. Always in our minds, the archives are, as well as in our pens. But we can’t spend our whole lives writing, can we now? So we only write down what’s necessary for today, though the archives know it all.”

  “If you know it all,” Gog says, “and you even know my future, who do the archives say I am and was and will be? I’ve been looking for that on my tramp, you know.”

  “I can’t tell a non-druid what the archives say, not even a bastard druid.”

  “Then can I become a druid?”

  “No. Not like that. You’re a druid only when you know and we know you’re a druid.”

  “And if I did know I was a druid, and you did . . .”

  “Unlikely it is.”

  “But if I did become a druid, then could I consult the archives and find out just who I am? Everything about myself?”

  “I told you,” Evans says, “you don’t ask the right question. So how shall you receive the right answer? You want to know about your selfish self. But the druids, learn you, they ask only the holy questions, and these the archives answer. Our records aren’t available for personal peeking and prying.”

  “So your archives, in fact, don’t tell you anything interesting about yourself?”

  “They tell us all things interesting to druids, which are all things interesting, excluding mere selfish curiosity.”

  “So if I want to see the archives to find out about myself,” Gog says, “I must become a druid. But if I become a druid, I can’t ask the archives about myself.”

  Evans the Latin nods. “You take the first step towards the true wisdom, indeed. And more than that. Though we know all wisdom, and though everything is rediscovered by others because we have discovered it first, yet we only write down a discovery in our archives when others have rediscovered it. Else those filthy limey spies might steal our written archives and destroy us all with our wisdom wrongly used.”

  Gog gives a wry smile. “I see why the druids are the source of all wisdom,” he says. “No people have ever been wiser after the event.”

  “Oh, Griffin bach,” Evans the Latin chides his old pupil, “that’s the limey unbeliever speaking in you. We are wise before the event, wiser when the event is happening, and wisest when it is over.”

  A series of shrill pips pierces the still evening air, then a familiar voice begins to deliver his message from somewhere within the ring of ancient stones.

  “This is the voice of Wayland Merlin Blake Smith, broadcasting briefly from fabled Stonehenge, where the wisdom of the druids is revealed to me, the voice of the Almighty. And the Lord saith, Give my servant the airwaves, or else I will smite the ungodly . . .”

  “I will smite the ungodly,” howls Evans the Latin, rushing back into the circle of sacred stones, his broadsword cleaving the air as if he would cut the very atmosphere into a thousand pieces.

  “Owing to unforeseen circumstances, your warning voice from the hereafter must break . . . Aaah.” The voice of the Bagman yelps with terror, as there is a mighty clang of sword on stone, and the dark interior of Stonehenge is lit by a comet’s tail of sparks.

  Gog walks forwards into the most famous sanctuary of the druid faith to a noise that would not disgrace the Ragnarok, the final battle of the gods of the north against the giants. And Gog sees the Bagman capering around on top of the lintel of a mighty trilithon. The Bagman skips and hops, while Evans the Latin thunders his long sword overhead into the stone, trying to slice off a foot or a knee of the prancing Bagman. Never would Gog believe that such a venerable prophet with hoary locks could dance such a jig, never would he credit that the frail Evans could swing his broadsword twenty times over like the avenging Arthur and twenty times strike a cataract of flame from the sarsen stone. But fear is pepper to the Bagman’s toes and fury is salt on Evans’s wounds.

  Yet, as Gog watches, the wily Bagman decides on a counter­attack. He whips off the long aerial of the jeep radio, which he has mounted on the trilithon, and he pokes it down at his enemy’s face, as Evans is on the long backswing of the broadsword. And he draws b
lood at once, twitching a patch of skin off Evans’s forehead. But his shrill cry of glee is nearly his last. The broadsword arches up like a jag of lightning and lops off his beard close to the chin, so that his white locks are thistledown on the holy soil, and the rusty iron cross on its chain round his neck is cut off to bed itself in earth. With a shriek of fear, the Bagman tumbles backwards off the lintel stone onto the ground.

  That would be the chopping-block for the Bagman, if Evans the Latin did not forget to lower his broadsword as he gallops between the two upright stones to finish his enemy. As it is, his death-dealing weapon is raised so high for the final execution that it catches on the lintel and jerks the heels of the charging Evans from beneath him. So he lands on his sheeted arse, while the Bagman rises and jabs at him again with the aerial, opening his eyebrow so that his blood obscures his vengeful right eye. But then Evans is up again and slashing, while the Bagman’s scarpering round the ring of stone giants as fast as his old hams and pins will take him. So Gog sees the two enemies vanish into the night, the iron force of ancient wisdom trying to amputate the whippy rapier of the perennial rogue, while the stone giants watch the chase round and round their perimeter with all the indifference that the great feel for the little, the enduring feel for the passing, and the stone feels for the metal which can only sharpen itself on stone.

  Gog walks away through the gathering night towards the south again, fearing to involve himself in the battle. It is not his quarrel, for neither prophet can tell him about himself. He does not stop to rest in the woods that occasionally flank his path. It is as though he has a rendezvous somewhere in the night. As though he knows someone is waiting for him in this stumbling darkness. As though there is a pit a few yards ahead, just at the limit of his eyes, and into this pit he must fall to discover his fate. As though he is walking down the unlighted gangway of a cinema while the screen is black and the film of the next episode of a serial about to begin.

  The meeting Gog expects does not come for many miles. The moon is high and Gog has crossed the Avon, when he comes upon the two fates waiting for him in the castle of Old Sarum. He has climbed down and up the huge ditch and rampart of the outer work, over the sprawling cross of Bishop Roger’s fallen cathedral, down again into the inner moat and up again over the jabbing flints of the walls of the Norman keep. Maire and Jules are sitting on a pile of their stones, the flints of war; they are equally dangerous in black cloaks and white faces; each of their hands holds a nickel-plated revolver sharper with threat than any stone. They lead Gog down and back to the River Avon, where a black barge sits on the black water, that is both mirror-bright and opaque under the moon.

  And Gog says, “I thought you were going to leave me alone until London.”

  And Maire replies, “I was. But I got bored with no one to play with. We have a game to play, the most interesting game of all, the only true game, and the only wise game. If you win it, you will be free for ever. And if you lose it, you will solve everything. Will you step into my cabin, said the black widow to her mate?”

  “Black widow?” Gog says. “You’re not that yet.”

  “Not yet,” Maire agrees.

  XXVIII

  The cabin of the black barge is plated with silver paint and furnished by couches with gilt legs and off-purple upholstery, by lamps each made from a single false baroque pearl, by carved pine tables touched up to resemble Carrara marble, and by twin Corinthian pillars supporting a frieze of nymphs and satyrs which swings open to reveal a stainless steel cocktail cabinet. Choice viands such as salt beef and native luxuries such as pease-pudding add a gourmet’s touch to the queenly surroundings.

  Gog says nothing and begins to swallow the beef and pudding as fast as the muscles of his throat will operate. Maire watches him, smoking a black sobranie marked Red Army. She takes off her cloak to show herself wearing a skin-tight pyjama-suit of white satin, which fits tight as the skin on a melon at breast and belly and buttock, but which flares out in wide bell-bottoms below the thigh.

  “I specially stocked peasant fare to suit your taste,” she says. “It does.”

  Gog pauses for long enough between mouthfuls to ask, “Where did you get the barge?”

  “From a bargee. Where else? You should have heard the language – mine. I paid him half what he wanted, so I had to swear twice as much. Then I added the woman’s touch to the cabin. How do you like it?”

  “Very tasty, Cleopatra,” Gog says. “Duly honouring the bard on his home river. The barge she sat in like a burnished throne, etcetera. I hope you’ve got an asp in aspic ready for your creamy ample bosom when I die.”

  “You do remember a lot these days,” Maire says, “remembering Shakespeare. And don’t fret, my pet. You’ll die all right. What do you think you’re here for? Now you’ve finished the condemned yokel’s dinner, we might as well start the dice.”

  “Dice?” Gog says. “I didn’t know dice was your vice.”

  “The truly vicious,” Maire says, “have all the vices. And all the virtues as well to make their sins even more shocking.” She takes six dice out of her pockets. Three are white with black spots, three are black with white spots. “Choose your set. Most people play with two dice, I prefer three. It’s luckier. All the dice are loaded – with nothing but hazard.”

  “What are we playing for?”

  “A literary man like you?” Maire laughs. “Don’t you know what you’re on? A black barge. For carrying a body.”

  “Like the barge that carried King Arthur’s body away from his last battle to Avalon? I’ve just come from there. That’s Glastonbury. You can’t carry me back there. The Avon flows the wrong way.”

  “Look out of the porthole,” Maire says. And as Gog looks out through the circular silver filigree that surrounds the purple glass of the portholes, he can see the dark banks of the Avon rushing past.

  “I can’t hear an engine,” Gog says. “And we haven’t any sails. Why are we moving so fast?”

  “The air is cut away before us,” Maire says innocently, “and closes from behind. Now do you know who you are, you fool, and what boat you’re on?”

  “No,” Gog says. “It must have an engine.”

  “Ten little nigger boys are running round and round a treadmill in the keel turning a rubber paddle-wheel. You really do say the obvious, Gog. Of course, there’s a silent engine. And you’re the Ancient Mariner, idle upon the painted ship upon the painted Avon. And I’m Lady Death-in-Life and I’m playing dice for your life. And you’d better play with me and you’d better not lose. Or, brother, this barge is going to become a hearse.”

  “You’re mad, Maire. What do I get if I win?”

  “My life,” Maire says. “You’re always wanting to get rid of me so that you can be on your own. You’re always complaining that I won’t ever let you go. So I was reading old Samuel Taylor Coleridge and I thought, Why not the Death-in-Life Game? At least, it’ll rid one of us of the other. I don’t see how else we can.”

  “You’re being very extreme as usual, Maire. What are the rules? They’re sure to suit you.”

  “Not this time. The first to throw seven or eleven with three dice wins. Eleven’s better than seven. Three sixes mean a free turn.”

  “And if you win?”

  “Then the other person’s got to do what you order him. And you must give him something dangerous to do. I mean, he doesn’t have to die doing it, because that’s murder, but it’s likely he’ll die. That’s life, isn’t it? And war, especially. No one ever survives in the end. We have to die, sooner or later. I just want to accelerate the whole process so we can be free of each other before we suffocate each other. So the dice is chance and the dangerous order’s our will and the carrying out of the order’s our skill at survival. That’s existence, don’t you think?”

  “No,” Gog says. “I don’t. But I’ll play the game. If you promise to leave me alone till London.”

  “For ever,” Maire says sweetly, “if you lose.”

  G
og tosses both the sets of dice to check that both fall at haphazard, and both seem to do so. He selects the set of white dice with black spots, and he hands the black dice with white spots across to Maire on the other side of the false marble table.

  “Let her roll,” Maire says. “You can start. You can’t beat me at games of chance, because I never give anyone any.”

  Gog rattles the dice against each other between his cupped palms, then rolls them across the painted wood. Three black spots up, three black spots up, the last dice spins and hangs and falls, one black spot up. “Seven,” Gog says. “You won’t beat that. I wonder how I can best get you to risk your neck?”

  Without even bothering to reply, Maire rolls her black dice out of the side of her right hand. They fall smoothly into place one behind the other, four white spots, four white spots, three white spots. “Eleven,” Maire whispers, passing her fingers in a blessing across the cubes of bone. “Who would believe such luck? The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!” She whistles three times and laughs, as Gog grabs the dice and throws them again to see if they are weighted. But no. However often he throws, he never makes up eleven.

  “I’ve got a keel-haul ready on deck,” Maire says. “Jules and I are going to strap you on and winch you slowly under the keel of the barge. We may take up to five minutes to do so. So you’ll have to hold your breath for that long. One or two of Nelson’s sailors did it and survived, so they say. And one murderer in an American gas chamber is meant to have held his breath for six and a half minutes, while the prison governor and the reporters watched him through the plate glass window growing purple in the face as he tried to prolong his agony for yet another few seconds. But, in the end, he had to breathe in, like you will.”

  “If you really want to go through with this,” Gog says, “I won’t survive. I don’t like living enough to fight so much to live.”

  “You may change your mind,” Maire says, “down under the keel.”

  So it is that Gog is stripped and strapped to a leather harness attached to a rope on a winch. Jules and Maire slowly turn the spokes of the winch so that Gog is dragged headfirst over the edge of the deck, his back to the wooden sides of the barge. His last view of the world is topsy-turvy, with the night sky as earth and the tree-tops their own black roots into heaven. But as the waters of the Avon touch his hair, Gog takes a deep gulp of air and manages to close his mouth just as his lips go under the surface.­