Lord of the Hollow Dark

by Russell Kirk

  Staring fascinated, she thought she never had seen anyone who looked so old. This face reminded her of someone’s. Whose—the Archvicar’s? Oh, no, that couldn’t be; she must fancy that merely; she was going all silly, what with the strain. Should she speak, ask for help, wake this sleeping man?

  No: what help could this poor emaciated thing under the counterpane offer against Sweeney or anybody else? Who might this be? She knew too well the faces of all the Disciples. Might this be some old servant of the Inchburns, given lodging in this tower for what life remained to him? The top of a tower was an odd place to bed an invalid. But she had more urgent perplexities.

  Turning from the bed-with a certain creepy misgiving that those wrinkled eyelids might open once she had looked the other way-she went back into the study. On the far side of that room was a stout door; it must open upon the other rooms of this tower and the main staircase downward. Would the knob turn before her eyes, as it had in her bedroom? Was Sweeney just outside? No, it didn’t turn. She grasped it. The door was locked.

  This meant that Sweeney could not get in. Also it meant that she could not get out, except by the hidden way she had come. Michael wriggled against her shoulder and settled himself back to sleep as she vacillated there.

  Logically, it was possible for her to remain in this suite, like a hermit, until morning came: there was even a couch in the study upon which she might curl up. For that matter, she might lie hid here until thirst and hunger drove her down. But someone would come to feed and tend the old man in the bed, and discover her. Something told her that she mustn’t remain up here even a few minutes longer. She must go back down that grim, dark back stair.

  But wait: there must be a key to this study door somewhere. It would have been foolish to rummage the desk and all the cupboards. There was nothing for it but to wake the poor old man and ask him for the key. She returned to the other room and approached the bed.

  She spoke softly, so as not to startle him. “I do beg your pardon, sir, but...”

  She was addressing an empty bed. There was no one in the room. There was no one in the study from which she had just now come.

  Could he have gone down the little stair below the trap door? But how could he have got past her to do that, and where could he have found the strength and agility? Astonishment overcoming dread, she peered into the dressing room beyond the bed: no one there. There remained the tall armoire. If the old man had shut himself in, he must be mad. But there was a key in the armoire doors, turned in its wards: the wardrobe being locked from the outside, she had no need to open it.

  Had that old man been an hallucination, like her nightmare of the first night in the Lodging? She felt like shrieking now, but clapped a hand over her mouth, remembering that Sweeney might be searching for her.

  If there had been any old man, and if he had gone anywhere, it could have been only down the secret stair by which she had come. Now she must descend that stair, for she could not possibly abide another moment in this high suite at the top of the world; she was gasping for breath, as if the air were rarefied. She had left the trap door in the study open, and back through it she went now.

  Sweeney might have left her bedroom by this time; she could listen sharp at that little door to tell. Or if she dared not reenter her room, she could proceed on down, looking for other exits from the stair. In her nightmare, that stair had extended far below the level of the earth; but of course that could not be. It must cease at the cellars, if not sooner. What could she do but go down?

  So down she went, down and down and down, past the lancet window, past those walled-up doorways that she could know only by touch upon the stones. Presently she was at another tiny landing, and felt about cautiously for a doorway, and found it-and also the wooden back of a door. She must be just outside her own bedroom. Oh, Michael, don’t whimper!

  With infinite pains to make no noise, she put her ear against that bolted door. Two men were talking, and she knew who: Sweeney and the Archvicar.

  “My head aches like hell,” Sweeney was saying.

  “I don’t wonder,” the Archvicar was telling him. “Rejoice, Sweeney, that the kalanzi hasn’t burnt out your brain altogether.”

  Were the two of them in ambush for her—the loathsome Sweeney, and that “brutal and licentious soldier”? Did they expect to make her their doll common? She withdrew from the door, turned back to the stair, and descended in barefoot silence, down, down, down.

  Two more stopped-up doorways; another arrow loop or gun port, the only windows in this lower part of the stair; down, down, down. Marina began to dread, irrationally, that she might find herself in the tunnel or passage which led to the hall where the naked masked figures danced.

  Yet finally the stair ended in a kind of closet, stone-flagged, damp. There was a door to it, and a little dim light filtered round the edges of the door. This door was double-bolted from within. She drew the bolts as cautiously as she could, though they were rusty; she was lucky, with her tender fingers, to be able to draw them at all. They squeaked. She opened the door.

  Then at last she shrieked, and the baby squealed too.

  A big man sat watchful at a table, regarding her. Between his fingers he balanced a short black-hafted knife, what the Scots called a sgean-dhu, the forefinger of one hand pressing against the haft, the forefinger of the other against the shining point, delicately. The hands were hairy. “He must have a very tough skin,” Marina thought, with wild irrelevance.

  Making out who she was, the big man deftly slid the black knife into his stocking top, and rose. “What a welcome intrusion!” he said. “I’d wondered these past two days what lay behind that bolted old door, and what might emerge.” He smiled pleasantly.

  It was Coriolan, that genteel tramp or whatever he might be. Any outsider, even a tramp, was safer company than the folk above stairs. “Oh, I’m glad to see you, Captain Bain,” Marina exclaimed, and then blushed all over. She was in her dressing gown, barefoot, covered all over with cobwebs, her hair a rat’s nest, and the baby squalling. Also, in that instant, she remembered that Bain, or Coriolan, was Sweeney’s partner in the subterranean work. Would Sweeney soon be down to snap her up?

  She was about to faint. Coriolan saw it, for with one stride he was beside her, taking the baby gently, easing Marina into a battered chair. “Come,” he said, “am I so dreadful looking as all that? I know: strong tea’s what you need, and I’d already put it on against Sweeney’s return. We’ve a little paraffin stove down here for such comforts-found it in a rubbish room.”

  Michael’s outcries having subsided, Coriolan bestowed him on a nearby cot, covered him with a blanket, and brought Marina tea in a tin cup. The man was so cheerful and helpful that, even in her present plight, Marina tried to think of something civil to say to him. “Your wife is a lucky woman, Captain Bain.”

  At once she knew this for a faux pas: tramps don’t have wives. But this man, or gentleman, was not vexed at all. “I never married: too footloose, you know, and too spendthrift. I say, you’ve drunk that tea already; you did need it. I’ll pour more.”

  After that, he sat down opposite her at the table, taking no tea himself. “I’ve come up from below, you see: we’ve made good headway there, and the rest of our crew went upstairs hours ago. Where can Mr. Sweeney have got to? He’ll miss his tea.”

  Certainly he took her abrupt appearance imperturbably. If she could confide in anyone in this house, it must be this man. “He was trying to force his way into my room,” Marina said. “He did force his way in, so I slipped out and ran up and down that stair.”

  Coriolan-Bain looked politely sympathetic, but did not seem much surprised; Marina was chagrined to find her misadventure taken so calmly, but perhaps this man never was excited.

  “Really! Alec Balgrummo had his shortcomings, Heaven knows, but he’d have allowed no such troubling of guests in his day. Perhaps Sweeney found drink or something worse; he’s been under grave strain, poor chap, not liking things down b
elow. He doesn’t much care for me either, I’m afraid. Ah, well, if he turns up here, I’ll have a word with him; don’t be ill at ease.” He gave her a keen glance. “You say you ran upstairs as well as down? All dust and silence there, I suppose? I believe no one’s sleeping higher than the second floor.”

  “Someone was there, at the very top-I think,” Marina told him. In this man’s easy presence, she was regaining balance. She described her hallucination-if it had been that—at the top of the house.

  Coriolan did not smile. “He looked very much like our friend the Archvicar, you said? That follows; I’d suspected—but there, you’ve had enough alarums and excursions for one night. No, your old man certainly didn’t come through that door you emerged from, and you say that the Archvicar and Sweeney were in your room, the only other exit from your little ancient stair. Well, this house is big enough for a hundred stowaways, strange enough for a hundred different illusions. I’ll say this: whatever you found or didn’t find in that room, it wasn’t meant for you: you were an unintentional interloper, so to speak. If the old gentleman is up there at all, he’ll not trouble you again, I fancy: he’ll reserve his attentions for such as Fraulein von Kulp.”

  She went very pale again.

  “Now whatever am I saying?” He was contrite. “Actually, I was jesting, more or less. I’ve no way of knowing what’s at work in this house. Why was I sent here? To be a navvy, apparently: I’d never done so much pick work in all my...”

  From somewhere beneath their feet, a thud sounded. Marina clutched the table.

  “Thinking of the Third Laird?” Coriolan smiled at her. “I see you know the legend. But as for that crash just now, there’s a natural explanation: another rock fragment falling from the roof-if it can be called a roof-of the passage we’ve just cleared out. Oh, it’s been chancy work, and the end’s not yet; Sweeney’s not to be much blamed for the state of his nerves. But given a few more hours of labor, we should be able to let even you ladies pass as far as the vestibule of the Weem. Beyond that, one guess is as good as another.”

  Marina was not particularly happy to learn that the Purgatory might be accessible: the Master’s enthusiasm for crawling far down below had not infected her. She always had thought of looking upward for eternity. Only human beings could look up, she had read somewhere; other creatures weren’t constructed that way. Could this kindly man give her a hint of what might be found below-perhaps something more cheerful than the hints thrown out by the Archvicar? “Why should Purgatory be under the earth, Captain Bain?”

  He rose to put another blanket over Michael: certainly it was clammy in this storeroom, or whatever this place was, and how could the Master expect Coriolan and Sweeney to sleep down here? Why wasn’t this man sleeping right now? But she was thankful that he hadn’t been.

  “If you’ve no objection,” he said, after a slight pause, “we might do well to use our pretend-names, Marina. His High Mightiness above stairs prefers that, and who are we to say him nay? I should like to address you as Miss Thingumabody, but ‘Marina’ must do, overly familiar although it sounds; and so let me be called Coriolan, even though I’d nearly forgotten about that writing johnny Eliot. Besides, a pseudonym, like a mask, can have a certain liberating effect, I suppose. What were you asking? Ah, yes, about Purgatory.

  “No, Purgatory’s not always under the earth, Marina, or even usually down there, I suppose. When I was at school, I played Wrath in our performance of Doctor Faustus. ‘Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it’—that’s what Mephistopheles says. Anything forever in darkness is Hell, I fancy, but there can be well-lit Hells, too. Purgatory, don’t you see, Marina, is all about us; you may encounter purgatorial figures any day, don’t you know, without recognizing them. ‘Purgatory’ doesn’t signify punishment, essentially-purging, cleansing, rather. Hell is torment; Purgatory, suffering, but with hope, and it’s not all suffering. Most of us aren’t fit for Heaven, uncleansed creatures that we are; we’d not be content with unchanging perfection; we’re restless.

  “So Purgatory’s not merely the best that most of us can expect, for ever so long, but also actually the state that most of us prefer. The purgatorial soul may experience the pangs of death over and over again-yet cheerfully enough, knowing that the end won’t be down below.”

  Marina listened wide-eyed. Why, what she had expected to learn from Apollinax, she was hearing from this kilted tramp! “Where did you learn all this, Coriolan?” She didn’t feel in the least sleepy now. “Go on talking! If the Weem wasn’t Purgatory, what was it?”

  Coriolan nodded toward the far side of this room: now Marina noticed that the flagstones had been lifted from a narrow space there. “If we sift the old legends, I suppose we can say that Saint Nectan’s Weem, or the Purgatory down there, was a place of confinement for the essences of certain people who had entrapped or entombed themselves: the conscious if disembodied essences. I suppose that all truly haunted houses are such traps. Just as the Fettinch Moss, so close to us, is a bog of earthly quicksand-well, there are bogs of moral quicksand. Down one sinks!” He made a grisly choking, gobbling noise in his lean throat; Marina cried out.

  “Forgive me, Marina: one might as well laugh as cry. I mean this: the Weem may be a repository of sunken souls.” What a quaint phrase! “You mean,” said Marina, “you mean that we’re sitting here over Hell?”

  “Over a hell, conceivably. There are many hells, and the same place may be Hell or Purgatory, depending upon the situation. Most of them are private. Do you know, when I was a boy, people about here used to call the Lodging “Balgrummo’s Hell”? They were thinking of the last Lord Balgrummo. Surely this spot, above ground or beneath, was hell for poor Alec Balgrummo, dead or alive. Well, when one goes down the ladder into that drain over there, and then proceeds through a tunnel to the Weem’s entrance—why, one can’t blame Sweeney greatly for his distraught state, even though he keeps telling himself that there’s no Hell anywhere, and never has been.”

  If anyone less iron-nerved and soft-voiced than this Coriolan had been saying all this to her, Marina might have gone into a screaming fit like the Fraulein’s. Shiver though she did, Marina was entranced by Coriolan’s flow of talk. How could any modern man be so certain of things?

  “And if there are many hells,” she inquired, “are there as many purgatories?” What an odd nocturnal conversation! Yet what else could she do than talk with this man?

  He gave her a long impassive look. “Why do you ask me that?”

  She was flustered. What was his objection? “Shouldn’t I?”

  Perhaps she was boring him by too much questioning, and certainly Coriolan must be dog-tired after digging away below all day and most of the night. More nonsense, Lewis Carroll’s nonsense again, flooded into her head:

  ‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’

  Said his father; ‘don’t give yourself airs!

  Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

  Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!’

  She trusted that Coriolan wouldn’t kick her down stairs—not down to the Weem.

  His smile returned. “It’s natural enough, Marina, your question. But how can I... Here, you’ll fancy yourself in Purgatory if you don’t get a few hours’ sleep, and this damp cellar is no place for that baby of yours. They must have cleared out of your room by this time; and if the Archvicar has Sweeney in charge, your admirer won’t return tonight. You needn’t dread the Archvicar, by the way: the Inchburns were all men of blood, but not ravishers of women. If the Third Laird hadn’t cherished his Bohemian enchantress excessively, he might have ended elsewhere than under this house. No, in general the Inchburns were uxorious, not lecherous.”

  Marina had forgotten what “uxorious” meant, if ever she had known. Did it signify some strange vice? But she was yawning, too sleepy now to ask for a definition, and perhaps it was as well not to know.

  “If you’ve no objection, I’ll show you up and reconnoiter on your
behalf, Marina,” Coriolan was saying. “I’ll go up first, if that’s all right-and up your privy stair, not the main one. I’m told that the Master doesn’t care to have me above stairs. Do I disquiet him, for some reason? I’m wretchedly got up, true, a thing of rags and patches. But let that be. Up we go!”

  With Coriolan’s torch, the narrow stair was less fearsome. Leaping up ahead of her, Coriolan vanished round the turn of the spiral. Irrationally, this disappearance distressed her. “Coriolan! Are you there, are you there? Oh, please...” She stumbled on a steep riser, scrabbled against the wall, nearly fell backward, recovered herself. “Oh, Captain Bain!” Had he dashed right up to the stair head? Had he really preceded her? Had they two really talked?

  Yet she caught up with him by her privy door; he unbolted it, and they entered.

  “All clear,” said Coriolan. The furniture had been knocked about, but Michael’s venerable cradle was intact, and Marina’s bed seemed like an old friend.

  “You’ll sleep well now,” Coriolan assured her. “If ever you’re in need, seek far enough below, and you’ll find me.” He was fastening her outer door somehow.

  “May I say something silly?” Marina asked. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Coriolan-why, what I want to say is, I wish I had met you years ago, when I was Deborah Fitzgerald.”

  Having said that, she blushed furiously. “Oh, that wasn’t quite what I wanted to come out. I mean to say, you make me think of my father, the General, even if you don’t look like him—the way he was when we lived in Lincolnshire.”

  “Deborah Fitzgerald?” Coriolan stared at her. He had been wedging her door ingeniously with big nails he had produced from his sporran; now he turned to face her squarely.