Soliloquy for Pan

by Beech, Mark

  His great uncle had been of a considerable, if not an obscene age when he had expired, and had been a committed reclusive eccentric for many years, even before the demise of his father. So it had been surprising, thought Sebastian, and not for the first time, that his family had been allowed to visit the ancient hall. If he thought upon those far-off days he could recall only a haze of indistinct images and impressions that merged one into another. Yet, he remembered the house itself and many of the antiquities on display that had been packed and crated from various parts of Europe. From the decadence of old Italy his great uncle had journeyed on, alone it was said, to the thyme-perfumed bays and marmoreal ruins of Greece and what he had discovered there and returned with had affected the remainder of his days.

  Or so rumour gossiped, mused Sebastian laying down the book he was attempting, unsuccessfully, to read.

  Great uncle Fluin had married, Sebastian recalled—unlike his good self—a woman of great beauty, Avaline being her name. But she had returned to her family a little over a year later, terrified, claiming unspecified cruelties. There were no known progeny. This explained, in part, his inheritance.

  But what had he found in that distant land of great ruins, mused Sebastian. Amongst a host of no doubt fabulous speculations was the tale of a fortune in antique gems and gold, including a clutch of fabled goat-eye opals, all secured in a locked casket wrought of olivewood. If that were so their sale, along with the antiquities and the hall itself, would make him a wealthy man.

  Sebastian had no intention of dwelling in the cold desolation of the House of Pan until the black shrouds of Death descended to smother him. He had been here a mere matter of hours and he was already feeling disturbed by the oppression of the place, its encroaching shadows and the unpalatable sins they might be hiding, dark revenants from his great uncle’s past. A line came to Sebastian from the verse he had lately been trying to read: “... he sin’d, and still he would sin on.”

  Sebastian opened his eyes, which he had not realised had slipped closed, and snuffed the candle which ascended from the brazen mouth of the wyvern candleholder on the cabinet beside his bed; night filled the chamber with the whelming damask of black poppies. The heir to the House of Pan delved deep beneath the shelter of the linen and silk coverings and soon became enmeshed in the arms of sleep.

  Two:

  A Door of Woven Silk

  It seemed that not long after drifting off into slumber he was awoken by some slight sound within the bedchamber: had a voice quietly spoken, but close enough to his ear for it to have found him in the dreamless realm he had fallen into? (... they dreamt of sin, and he sin’d while they slept...) Rigidly, Sebastian lay beneath the rich silken awnings of the bed, his heart pounding madly. Eventually he willed his eyes open and was very much surprised to discover that he could now see, though dimly, within the poppy-drenched room: from somewhere behind him a faint luminescence came.

  Braver than he indeed felt, Sebastian forced himself to turn over and was astonished by what he saw: the silken reproduction of the Pan oculus, which he had secreted from view in the wardrobe, was now suspended incredibly near the curtained window, emitting a delicate silvern light. Even more disquietingly, the figure of the cloven-hoofed God had vanished from the scene of the autumnal silken woodland. Sebastian sat up in bed; the only conclusion he could come to was that he was dreaming, even though when he pinched himself on the thigh he felt the unmistakable reality of its fire.

  Eschewing the relighting of the candle, for there seemed to him enough luminance from the miraculously hanging tapestry, Sebastian extricated himself from the bed and cautiously approached the source of the light.

  It was as if a moon were now shining somewhere unseen above the dense aisles of the autumnal wood, its soft silver-white rays strangely, impossibly, intruding into his bedchamber. He glanced behind the suspended material and saw only the dark bloom of the night and the hulking beast of a tallboy, its top ghostly in the gloom with pale and delicate ceramics.

  Most odd, he thought, now beginning to feel the rising of a slight fascination through his apprehension. He parted the curtains slightly and saw the circle of the moon high in the heavens casting a halo of pearl around its circumference. He contemplated the silken scene of the wood again, reached out to touch it and before he knew what had occurred he had passed through the weave of the picture and was apparently experiencing the delicious cool of a mild autumnal night, the air fragranced with the musk of that season’s decay.

  In a panic Sebastian turned quickly expecting to see through the portal of silk the chamber he had lately left, but there was only the narrow-corridored wood, silver-illumed by a huge moon riding somewhere above the canopy of the trees that spread like the tails of peacocks burdened with the melancholy fires of autumn.

  Sebastian felt impelled to walk forward through the black moon shadows, his bare feet pressing into the soft loam of the woodland path, even the dry gold foils of newly fallen leaves feeling like glorious velvet to his soles. All around him he sensed a stealthy movement in the dense undergrowth that was limned with argent: glimmerings as pallid as marble. He felt a strange and sensual atmosphere here that began to disturb him profoundly; a distasteful air of Priapism, akin to the presence that seemed to instil the House of Pan, to seep from the masonry of that ancient place. He thought of the obscene antiquities in his late great uncle’s collection; the unfortunate but inevitable sight of them earlier was obviously still working upon his mind. He sensed the incipient fascination that he had felt for the dream swiftly withering under this highly salacious onslaught.

  But where was this place, Sebastian wondered, had he stepped through a doorway that led to the wild beech wood the carriage had journeyed through earlier in the day? But the vibrant jade of the leaves had changed to the almost untouchable beauty of the following season, the bronze and gold and wine of the oculus and its silk counterpane copy. If a mere dream, it was a terrifying and miraculous one; but then he knew that the Duchy was infamous for such fantastical things, where time moved at a slower pace, the practice of thaumaturgy was a commonplace, and the realm of Faery was often but the shadow of a tremulous leaf away.

  But for now Sebastian felt it was wise for his sanity to believe all this but a dream and suppressed any thoughts to the contrary, which he could be most adept at.

  Ignoring the occasional noises around him that sounded suspiciously like beasts engaged in frantic coitus, he wandered on to whatever end this fantasy had planned for him. He felt the silvern darkness burgeoning behind as he passed, becoming tumescent with dread possibilities. Eventually, something ahead of Sebastian made him pause. In a clearing encircled by the ghostly grey trunks of beech trees, there rose a tower with a conical roof of green copper, and Sebastian Alvanley knew that the unseen side of this building would be smothered in ivy up to the stone guttering, covering the tower’s lone window: it was the House of Pan’s incongruous gothic tower.

  He was about to move forward after this surprise when he noticed that the bright zinc of the moon’s fire seemed to be coalescing before the door of the tower and gathering into a shape: the lineaments of the face formed first and he saw that they were the features he had imagined on the old retainer Septimus when he had opened the door to him on his arrival and they were also the features he had briefly seen woven by the smoke of the extinguished candles. When the remainder of the body had formed, a naked torso upheld upon the legs of a goat, it came as no surprise to Sebastian.

  As he raptly watched, a set of pipes materialised in the hand and the figure raised the reeds to his silver-bearded lips and produced an eerie tune that blew and swirled in white-gold spirals about the wild wood, silencing all other sounds.

  As Sebastian awoke from the spell of this scene and took an initial step towards the tower, the silvery image of the goat-hoofed god suddenly dispersed into gossamer moonsmoke and flew into the fitful darkness of the autumnal tree canopy, where it became part of the wine and bronze and gold of t
he sere leaves.

  When he came to the tower he set his ear to the door of dark oak, feeling the frost of the black iron with which the door was studded burn the side of his face, for he thought he could hear a voice murmuring within, echoing down the stairs from the room above. Yes, there was a voice, but the words spoken were incomprehensible: ... in flesh, in smoke, in dream... Io! Pan! filtered down to him, repeated over and over again like a chaunt.

  Sebastian tried the door handle but found it closed to him.

  It was then that he looked down to his legs, that just showed below the edge of his long shroud-white night garment, for he no longer seemed to feel the cool of the night air upon them nor the softness of the woodland floor beneath the soles of his feet. Sebastian cried out at what he saw: a nightmare sight of the hirsute extremities of an animal ending in obsidian cloven hooves and lapped about in recently-fallen argent-illumed leaves...

  Sebastian Alvanley sat up in bed with another loud cry, filmed with perspiration, the grey pearlescent light of a cloudy dawn slipping into the bed chamber from the parted curtains. He frantically clawed away the tangled bed covering and saw with considerable relief that all appeared to be as it should be there. Whilst engaged in this inspection, there came a gentle knock upon the chamber door and a concerned Jonathan looked in: he had heard Mr Alvanley call out; just a nightmare Sebastian assured him. His man servant came into the room and as he walked towards the window to fully open the curtains, Sebastian watched as he bent to raise something from the floor. With horror he saw that it was the silken counterpane that he had stored in the wardrobe. He attempted to restrain the rising tide of cold terror that he felt.

  “Jonathan,” he heard himself saying, “Prepare for departure this morning. I must go from this house. I don’t feel it agrees with me at all.” But even as he voiced this to a surprised Jonathan he somehow knew that they would not be leaving today.

  He asked Jonathan to arrange a light breakfast and when he had left the chamber Sebastian sighed, washed and dressed swiftly. He looked from the window of his room at the view presented to him: yesterday’s pale blue skies now had a dove-grey pall drawn across them; it had been raining and the glass before him was constellated with pellucid pearls; a dense mist had descended to obscure the distance and sinuous pale scarves of it crept through the dark cypress and pine. Sebastian turned from the sight and left the room feeling more oppressed than ever in this place.

  Three:

  The Casket of Olivewood

  After breaking his fast, Sebastian resumed his erratic wandering of the manse. It was whilst engaged in this activity that he suddenly noticed the absence of certain objects in his great uncle Fluin’s collection: the obscenities which had so disconcerted him the previous evening. On asking Jonathan about the statuettes and the ceramics, he said that they had been very much in evidence when he had retired for the night, so it must have been Mr Utterington who had removed them, but that he had neither seen nor heard that ancient seneschal this morning. Well, thought Sebastian to himself in his sanctimonious manner, that was something of an improvement at least.

  He wandered the cold and enshadowed rooms, the grey shade accentuated by the morning weather. He entered the library and his eyes glanced over some the books upon the dark wooden shelves, their titles stamped in dusty and fading gold: A History of the Great Realm of Faery by Auberon, The Golden Hierophany by Marcus Valentinius, Their Hornes of Pearle, Their Hoofes of Gold: a Studie of the Noble Unicorne yn the Woodlands of Greyewal by Ampelos Alvanley. Now this last name, an ancestor of several generations removed, struck a rather unpleasant chord in his memory: Ampelos’s mother had been set upon whilst straying in local woodland, the perpetrator a satyr, judging from certain features and traits that the offspring, Ampelos, had inherited. Sebastian shuddered. He had spent most of a lifetime suppressing certain urges that stole upon him and he had always laid blame on that unfortunate event centuries previously.

  All this time as Sebastian sauntered around the medieval hall he was conscious, as on the previous evening, of the massing of jet shadows behind and above him, forming a spectral nightmare forest; the grey dust rising and curving to create the ancient boles of trees, the shades slipping from slim lightless crevices in the wainscoting, squeezing from between the tightly-packed pages of octavos and quartos and folios, the strange melody of a bird—or was it the song from a syrinx held in moon-pale fingers?—echoing through the deep adumbrations. He never turned to verify this feeling, for he knew that there would be nothing for him to see, for the revenant woodland would have fled, faded back into the books, withdrawn beneath the furnishing.

  This illusion brought back to him the nightmare that he had endured during the night, dredged up the thought of the moon-washed tower standing alone in the wood with its spreading peacock tails of silver-tinted, autumn-burnt trees. He would explore the remainder of the upper floor of the house, then the actual tower itself. But what if it was locked, as in the dream, thought Sebastian? He would require the key: so where was Septimus Utterington? This thought came to him as he had reached the top of the staircase, and almost simultaneously he thought he heard a voice whisper mockingly up from the hallway:

  “Hie thee to thy leafy den, sweet Paul!”

  Sebastian looked over the carven banisters to the shadows below, where at first he thought he saw the pallid wrinkled face of the old seneschal peering up at him from the penumbra, but which eventually seemed to reveal itself as a large ceramic jardinière.

  “Mr Utterington? Is that you?” he called down into the sere smouldering of the dull jasper and gold shades. There came back no answer, but he heard a door close: yet the sound seemed to emanate from somewhere on the upper levels of the house.

  Sebastian continued on to the gallery above. Here were displayed many portraits of the long line of the Alvanley’s, the oldest paintings encumbered with the grime and the dusts of passing centuries.

  Sebastian stood gazing into the violet eyes of Fluin Alvanley, the initial portrait he came to, the painted orbs hard and shrewd, peering from amidst the dark tangles of his long hair, his lips full and sensual, almost of a feminine aspect in the full bloom of his beard. A set of pan-pipes were grasped in his right hand, whilst his left rested upon a plain wooden receptacle, hammered gold set into its lid. Fluin Alvanley had still been fairly young when he had sat for the portrait, a fop, two dark patches upon his painted and rouged face. Next to him was a painting of his estranged wife of a year, Avaline, looking unhappy, desperate, a barely suppressed fear showing in her eyes, thought Sebastian.

  Moving on down the length of the gallery, Sebastian soon came to the portrait of Ampelos Alvanley, shown wearing a doublet of flowered red garnet, a snow-pale ruff, and a cloak of black satin over one shoulder embroidered in gold with the skin of a hart, dangling from a tree stump. Sebastian noted with horror the long, pointed ears showing through the curling hair as dark as oiled black pearl, behind his left shoulder was depicted a tall spired edifice of gleaming marble, rising like smoke beyond a wood leafed in blue jade and set against a yellow sky, a hue as delicate and facile as spider gossamer. This place was so unearthly that Sebastian could only deduce that this ethereal palace was the residence of the lord of Faery, the counterpart of the Duke of Greywall. The inheritor of the House of Pan pulled away from the fascination of this depiction, for he had reached the end of the gallery and before him was the iron-studded door to the tower.

  All was restless silence as Sebastian stood there, recalling his nightmare and the voice he had heard speaking incomprehensible things (... in flesh, in smoke, in dream...), recalling the phantom Pan figure that had formed from moon fires before this very door. It will be locked, thought Sebastian, but when he turned the handle the door was open before he had realised it. He was confronted by darkness and the scent of ancient woodland flooded his senses, like a rich and rare incense sending pale fumes up from bowls of effulgent copper.

  Even though he was experiencing a nascent apprehen
sion, he began to climb the steep steps and soon emerged into the room above. His initial thought was that he had miraculously debouched into woodland again, but Sebastian soon realised this was an illusion created by the tree-painted walls and the fitful shadows that inhabited the chamber; through the fretted screen of ivy that covered the single window a little dense green light seeped.

  As Sebastian looked about him he next noticed that the floor was littered with sere autumnal leaves and amongst these the distasteful antiquaries that Septimus Utterington had removed from their dusty places downstairs.

  But what dominated the chamber was the pillar of rough-hewn marble that was raised in the centre of the room, and upon it a casket of olivewood, antique gold affixed to its lid.

  Sebastian’s thoughts of the previous evening concerning gems and rare opals came back to him with the violence of avarice.

  He stepped towards the box, the wood stained almost as dark as pitch, and he lifted the lid. To his surprise the ingress was open as had been the oaken door below, and there revealed to him was his great uncle Fluin’s Greek plunder of green fire: emeralds and peridots and garnets, aventurines and chrysoberyls and malachites, all exquisitely planished and carved into the semblance of leaves: oak and beech and whitethorn, hazel and sycamore and elm. He immersed his hands in their smooth coolness, deeply delving, brushing them aside as if they were attached to young and pliable branches and he journeyed through a dense woodland thicket. And as he journeyed it seemed to Sebastian that all the carefully applied layers of suppression that he had built up over a lifetime were stripped away, fell and were blown about like dry autumnal leaves.

  To Sebastian the casket of olivewood appeared to be deeper than it by all rights should be, and he was again aware of the unseen forest of flickering shadow-leaves about him, until finally his frantic, cupidity-fuelled delving uncovered a large and glorious stone, a watery cabochon opal swimming with all manner of fantastic malachite flames and beryl oils, a green sun, through its centre a sliver of lustrous black like transcendent night—a fabled goat-eye opal.