“For how long?”
“For more than a year. Perhaps a little less than two years.”
Of the little less than two years, there will be given no more here than a scant abridgement. Though it is now more than a hundred years (and somewhat less than two hundred) since, there are still restrictions on part of the data.
Why the restrictions? Surely all the persons then living are dead now, are they not?
No. We cannot even be sure of that.
Some of the items and facts are hard to come by, but what is available will be given.
VI
SON OF THE DEVIL
In the paintings of Fragonard, there are trees that are unreal. Sometimes they seem to be a curious heaping up of elements of oak and elm and yew trees, but not according to any rational botanical system. Sometimes they seem to be massive studio montages made out of clustered purple grapes and bird feathers. Yet one traveller wrote that there really were groves of these impossible trees in Dauphine and Piedmont in the eighteenth century. One grove of them had, in fact, survived into the nineteenth century; Dana Coscuin and Malandrino Brume had just come through it afoot.
In the novels and plays of Marivaux, there are men who are not real. They seem to be a curious heaping up of elements of Old Roman and Old French, with inconsistent modish attitudes, and the dated smell called Moment of Time. Sometimes these men seem to be studied mélanges of shepherds and princes and rogues and pedants. Yet one student of the period has written that there really were such impossible men in the eighteenth century. At least one of these unlikely men had, in truth, survived into the nineteenth century. Dana Coscuin and big rough Brume had just come to visit this unlikely man who lived on the fringe of the too-blended, too-arty grove.
“Yes, certainly I am Ashley,” the man opened the conversation to them in English. “Who else would I be? Who else would be worth coming to see here? How is it odd that an English line should be living in this border region for three hundred years? The English are a special people in the earth and we enjoy uncommon privileges. I believe that the world is kept functioning by about a thousand of us who live at some thousand crossways of the world. We are the sponsors, we are the overseeing spirits. We sustain the world in its weak districts. Without us it would slope and stagger and fall. In our special office we are like angels among men.”
“You are not an Englishman,” rough Brume said.
“But I am,” insisted the man who called himself Ashley. “I am of that special species, although I have never been in England. Is a Moscovy Duck the less of a Moscovy if he has never happened to wing his way over Moscow itself? Strangers, you come against me today with pistols and knives as if to take me for a robber. Yet, I have taught in the world for many years and nobody has taken me.”
“You are not Christ either,” rough Brume said. “I believe that you have some strange creatures under your roof, man named Ashley. I intend to kill two or three of them.”
“With short sword and pistol?”
“Yes, with short sword and pistol.”
“Come and see then,” said the unenglishman who used the name of Ashley.
He led them down cool hallways (it was summer again now) that were lighted by sky-blue patches where chink-rocks had been left out or removed from the arched roofs.
The man Ashley was certainly not real. He had in him something of the Old Frenchman, yes, and something of the Old Roman (they were most likely on the Italian-Piedmont side of the often obliterated border now), with a more modish attitude that sat nervously upon him. He was a mixture of shepherd and prince and rogue and pedant. There was another element in Ashley that could not be named at the moment: never mind, the name would come. If it was true that such men had lived in the eighteenth century, it was not likely that one had survived into the nineteenth. No, the unwilling host here was a somewhat dated mask rather than a genuine man.
Ashley brought them to a dim room with a rancid and musty stench. But it was not something to be regretted. It had its stark animality and uncommon earthiness. Curiosity lept up in Dana Coscuin like bay trout.
The dim room seemed surrounded by a ring of light. There was a little concourse running clear around the dim room, and the concourse was lighted by patches of sky. There was a stone table with benches there. Brume and Dana Coscuin sat down with the man Ashley.
The dim room that was surrounded by the concourse was really a pit. How much lower its floor was than the stone floor of the concourse could not be ascertained. It might be very deep. There was the smell of rotting food and rotting insects, of shrewd connivance and of slow murder. There was a sheen like fabricated mist, sheets of it, waves of it, mere breaths of it, whole complexities of it. There was the assertion here of that personality that stands rankest of all, except possibly that of the snakes.
Spiders.
Spiders as big as a pin-head, spiders as big as a soldo-coin, spiders as big as a house-cat. Every sort of insect was attracted by the rotting food that hung in mesh-bags in the middle air of the dim room. And there was every sort of web there, each designed to intercept its own precinct of dim slanted air. Every spider there ruled his own web and extended it.
The name for the unnamed element in the man Ashley: Spiderish. “If you would understand spiders,” Ashley said, “you must first understand that they are counterpoints of people. I have named a great number of my spiders — aptly, of course. The parallelism between spiders and people is so strong that there must be a paranatural force at work here. See that very large and fleshy-appearing spider there! I take him to be Mastai Ferretti, the new Pope, Pius the Ninth, Pio Nono. He has been spinning very rapidly, but he has been at it for only seven weeks. I have always loved these papal tapestries that my Pope-Spiders spin. They all have the basic design that is ordained for them. But each one superimposes his own signature-motif on this. See the glint of gold in his spin! Is it not magnificent?”
“I am puzzled by this rather large spider with the very small web,” rough Brume was saying, “and yet is has long anchor lines set out as if he were quite ambitious. And the glint in his eye is familiar.”
“It is amazingly familiar to anybody who is acquainted with high men,” the man Ashley whispered in soft admiration. “Not even the pencil of a master caricaturist could catch the resemblance so closely. He is Lord John Russell, or so at least I have named him. He has been spinning for even a shorter time than has Pio Nono. And, no, I don't believe that he is particularly ambitious. The English ministers also inherit a basic weave. I tell you though, strangers, that very many of the weavings here in my spider room are prophetic. Their correspondences in the outer world in some cases have not happened yet. There is Mazzini, there, the especially spiderish spider. His Roman Republic is explicit in his web, but in the exterior world it is merely implicit as yet.
“There is Cavour. He has hardly begun in the world, but look how well-developed his web is. There is Lord Acton in England. There is Montalambert. There is poor Lamennais who will officially go to Hell. There is Mordecai or Marx who has been spinning a web in Paris and other places. Notice the exceptionally long anchor lines of his web, though the body of his web will always be paltry.
“There is the innovating web of Frederic Ozanam who is possibly a saint. There is that of Archbishop Vincent Pecci which gives the illusion of having caught the whole world like a fly in it. There is the rather antique, and yet archetypical web of one spider to whom I have given the name of Count Cyril Prasinos.”
There was the hint of a scuffle in the concourse behind them. It was not a noise exactly. It was a guessed sound muffled in spider silk. Either Brume or Ashley could have turned his head and seen what was going on, but neither did. Then it was as if one thing, and later a second thing, was eased down onto the floor stones. The man named Ashley exhibited sudden nervousness, but he still did not look around. The man named Brume showed no nervousness at all, but neither did he glance behind him. And the man named Dana Coscuin, whether nerv
ous or not, was no longer there. He had disappeared from his seat at the stone table in the concourse.
“Some small spiders have large webs, and some of the greatest spiders have only scanty systems, old spider man,” rough Brume said. “I am interested in how you have set this up.”
“It is only a cavallino, a hobby-horse of mine, this cultivation of the spiders,” Ashley mumbled. “It isn't a vital thing. The hobby is a gelding and not a stallion, and I ride it for my amusement only. The correspondences between certain individual spiders and certain individual leading men in the world are in my mind only. I extract these images as another man might extract fancies and images from the depths of a log fire at night. Fancies, sir, fancies only, of no interest to any one except myself.”
“But they are of great interest to me,” Brume said. “Who is this arty and elegant spider here?”
“That is Chancellor Metternich of Austria who rehearses his fall from power again and again and again. He is in love with his own drama. He considers it from every possible aspect. He obliterates sections of it that do not satisfy him, and he substitutes other more dramatic scenes in the tapestry of his weaves. What is the present year? I myself become confused when I am among my spiders. On no, the fall of Metternich has not happened yet, but it will be well done when he is done.”
“Who are those two odd swollen spiders who seem to share one web?”
“Frederick William of Prussia who does not have the intelligence to become a successful spider, and von Bismark who does.”
Rough Brume reached across to Ashley and helped himself to a cigar from that man's breast pocket. He fumbled out one of the Sauria phosphor matches and lit it by scrunching it on the sole of the boot on one of the bodies on the stones behind them. Had there been bodies lying on the stone floor behind them all of this time? Not all of this time, part of this time.
“There are man's bones deep in the spider pit,” Brume said. “They are plucked clean of any adhering shreds and are dusted over now.”
“I suppose so,” Ashley said. “I believe they have been there a long time.”
There was a noiseless noise in more distant parts of the building, and the man Ashley was becoming very nervous about it.
“I believe there is real counterpoint between outside happenings and the happenings of your hairy spirits here,” Brume said. “A life has just been extinguished in the world, then another; likewise one strand, then another, of one of the webs was snapped at the same time. What is the name of that spider there?”
“I will not tell you his name,” Ashley answered with the first show of stubbornness.
“And yet you are one of the strands of his web,” Brume pursued. “If you should happen to be extinguished a moment from now, one strand of his web would be snapped at that same moment.”
“I suppose so.”
“Who are these three spiders here with the King Sign on them, Ashley?”
“In France, Louis Philippe who comes to the end of his web, and Louis Napoleon who comes to the beginning of his. I have the fancy that a future historian may someday confound the two of them. And that is Tzar Nicholas of Russia, a well-meaning spinner of little talent.”
“And who are these commoner spiders, these uncommon commoners?”
“The are everybody, sir, everybody. There is Palacky; there is von Moltke; there is Tocqueville who has his great histories already sketched out in his mind, and he will insist that the world conform to them. Nobody will ever say ‘I was there’ so often as this man will; though it won't always be true that he was there or that the events were so. There is a different spider, Newman in England; he has abandoned a web and has begun another less material one. It will have style, though! There is Ledru-Rollin, a Frenchman of today. I suppose he will be doing something tomorrow or he wouldn't be here among the great ones; although he hardly seems to have the ability for it.”
A voice was heard in a distant room of the building singing My Name is Dana Coscuin, a song that Brume had heard before, and Ashley had not. The singer seemed to be dragging things behind him over the stone floors.
“Is it not true that most of the spiders are really struggling against each other, or attempting to influence or preempt each other?” rough Brume asked. “Might they not be called proselytizing spiders?”
“I suppose so,” Ashley gulped; he had become quite scared.
“What are the segmented spiders?” Brume asked.
“They are the groups, the societies, the clubs, the institutions, the movements, even the journals: the generative happenings. There is Paulskirche, there is the Society of the Seasons, there is the Petrashevtsy, the Mountain (really, it should be called the Second Mountain), the Carbonari, La Reforme, Rights of Man, the Families, the Congrega d’Inferno at Sinigaglia, Circolo Romano. Many others.”
Dana Coscuin then came to Brume and Ashley dragging by the heels two bodies that had been men. Ashley looked completely shattered. One might almost feel sorry for him, such a one as could feel sorry for snakes or spiders or devils. Dana dragged the bodies in beside the other two that already lay there in the concourse.
“What will I do with them, old Ashley, toss them into the spider-pit with the other old bones?” Dana asked heartily.
“Please do not,” Ashley begged. “Leave them here with me. Oh Antitheos, Enantitheos! Leave them with me for a while.”
“Have I not an apt pupil, Ashley?” Brume asked. “Had you so apt a one?”
“I had thought so, yes,” Ashley said in tormented words, and indicated one of the dead men with the nod of his head.
“Are there other men in the house, Dana?” Brume asked.
“I believe that there is one in the walls, but I cannot say quite where.”
“No, that is a woman,” said Brume. “Is it not a woman, Ashley?”
“A woman, yes. There are no other men alive here now.”
“Shall we kill the woman, Ashley? And shall we kill you?”
“No, do not, Brume. You don't understand how it is with us. What life we have is already more fragile than you would imagine.”
“There is a lot of evil that comes from your spider-pit and from your guests,” Brume said. “This had been one of the devil's own way-stations. How shall we stop it if we do not kill you also?”
“Do not toy with me, Brume,” said the shaken Ashley. “You intend to have my house used for a trap. You intend to use me as the bait for that trap. So you will not kill me today.”
“Would it not be neater, though, to toss the cadavers into the pit?”
“No. Leave them, Brume, I will take care of them. There is something intimate to me in these that young Coscuin has slain.”
“What? Have the demons real affection for each other? Are they subject to bereavement?”
“Oh Sathana! Yes, we are.”
Dana and Malandrino met several such unusual persons on their unusual journey. It was another country then, in another day and month, perhaps in another year. It was a rough and pleasant country. That part of the mountains on which they laid their heads was named Gennargentu. That part of the ocean which they could see distantly was named Orosei. This was the island of Sardinia, ruled (as was also the Piedmont) by the House of Savoy. And there was something stirring that would use the House of Savoy as an instrument.
In the months gone by, Brume and Coscuin had been in Bruges; something was stirring in Bruges. They had been as far as city Prague and as country Brandenburg. They had been in Moravia, and in the Tyrol, and in Congress Poland. They had been in Carinthia and in Lombardy and in Rome itself. Something was stirring in each of these places.
While in Rome, Dana Coscuin had discovered to what species of creature Brume actually belonged. Rough Brume, who had always seemed to be made out of the mountains, was a Roman. It was an enormous thing and hard to believe.
They had been in Paris. They had been in Geneva. They had been to Marseille. And something had been stirring in each of those places also. They had, by un
usual condition and kaleidoscopic circumstance, shed blood in every one of the places they had visited, except Bruges.
But what could possibly be stirring in sleepy and mountainous Sardinia? Sleepy and back-mountain, and back-woods and back-bay Sardinia, the isolated and useless and forgotten island, was one of the vital centers of what was stirring in the world. In its mountainous center was the center of the secret society of the Charcoal-Burners. It was a suspect society, and congress with it was forbidden by Christ's Vicar, the Pope. And at the hidden center of the Charcoal-Burners was a further core secret society that was so guarded against intrusion that not one Charcoal-Burner in a hundred had even heard of it; yet the Charcoal-Burners were directed by this unknown center of theirs.
How had Malandrino Brume and Dana Coscuin penetrated this inner secret society? How had they learned its parole, its words and its signs? Oh, they were sharp as serpents and slick as cats; they could learn these things, they could enter these things. Well, how could they, as Catholic men both, enter into that congress? How could they give those signs and words? Perhaps they did things that they shouldn't have done.
“We cannot even say with clear conscience that we are working for clear good,” Brume grumbled to Dana Coscuin as they lay on a slope of the mountain named Gennargentu one day. “The most we can say, and that with mixed conscience, is that we are working for mixed good. This is a shadowy land, between good and evil, and we must be two shadowy men to work in it at all. For all that he is a late-sucking parasite, the devil is into all of the present fields before us. There are things growing here that we cannot let grow till the harvest time, Dana. Or it may be that this is the harvest time come already.”
“I'm going back to Spain immediately,” Dana said.
“The very mountains in Spain are musty, Dana. That is not where things are stirring. You have learned the fundamental things of Ireland. You have learned the fundamental things of Spain. The battle will now be in more subtle fields.”
“My own next battle will be in Spain again, and I am already afraid that it is far too subtle a field for me.”
The Flame Is Green: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 1 Page 11
