Lord of the Hollow Dark

by Russell Kirk

  Why, this rose garden could have been a graveyard. What a macabre thought to come into her head! Could this spot enclosed by ancient dykes indeed have been the old monks’ graveyard? Now why did she fancy that, without evidence?

  Or was there evidence? She looked about her. The area enclosed by these ancient walls was large, remarkably large for a rose garden, more like that of an orchard. The garden sloped upward, toward the terminal cliff of the den head. This lower part of the garden apparently had been laid out, rather in French fashion, late in the eighteenth century-or so she judged by the almost-obliterated formal walks, the remnants of tiny hedges, the little bridges, and the Gallic Father Time. Could the lower garden have been a hedge-maze, once? But the upper part of the garden looked quite different, overgrown and rocky, with two yew trees at its upper corners, and a third yew overhanging a rather low, roofless structure set in the middle of the wild upper portion of the walled area.

  The roofless building drew her: she clambered to it through brambles and bracken, Michael cooing contentedly.

  The small ruined building was Scots Gothic-real Gothic, of course, not Gothic Revival. The walls and tracery of the windows were virtually intact; indeed, this picturesque ruin seemed to have had its masonry pointed in recent years. She entered; of course the door had vanished long ago.

  Why, this must have been a burial chapel, or chapel of ease, or something of that sort! There was a great slab tomb, probably fourteenth-century work, raised upon mossy limestone masonry about two feet above the level of the pavement. Barbarous Latin characters had been inscribed upon it hundreds of years ago, but the lettering was so strange that it might as well have been ogham writing; and anyway, the rains and snows of many, many years had so worn the face of the limestone slab that most of the inscription was indecipherable. It did seem to be the tomb of a prior-perhaps the first prior?—to judge by three or four words she could just make out. It had some worn ornamental carving in each corner, too: she bent close to study it; perhaps she would come up one day and make a tracing or rubbing. The sun came out again: now she could see the designs better. In the upper left-hand corner, an hourglass; in the upper right-hand corner, a sickle or scythe; in the lower left-hand corner, a skeletal Death with a dart; in the lower right-hand corner, a multifoliate rose.

  These sepulchral symbols were conventional enough; she had seen them often in old Lincolnshire churchyards. Yet in this solitary place of ruin, with the tall statue of Time lower down in the graveyard or garden, they had a strong pathos. Now what was this carving, on the lower part of the tomb slab, obscured by lichen? It was a later inscription, although very old in itself, deeply cut, with some abstract design, it seemed, just above it. She had in her pocket a nail file; she used it now to scrape at moss and lichen. The Latin characters of this later carving were easier to recognize. She spelled the lines out:

  IBANT OBSCURI SOLA SUB NOCTE PER UMBRAM

  PERQUE DOMOS DITIS VACUAS ET INANIA REGNA

  She summoned up her schoolgirl Latin; the classics mistress had found her a fair pupil. Was this Vergil? In substance, these lines told of a nocturnal journey through the shadowy realm of Dis, vacant and lifeless.

  Did the design just above have some connection with this inscription? She scraped away at concentric circles. But not concentric circles only: also straight lines traversing the circles, and then short segmental curved lines within the circles, and at the heart of the design a round empty space.

  Abruptly it came to her what all this was: the representation of a labyrinth! It was no map or plan, simply a conventional medieval maze, such as still could be found in tiles or stones on the floors of a few surviving medieval churches, signifying perhaps the tortuous path to salvation. She never had seen any symbol of this sort on a tombstone before, although with the General in his latter years she had poked about innumerable cemeteries. And she thought at once of the Weem, somewhere deep below this spot.

  That thought distressed her. She scrambled up from beside the prior’s tomb with a certain aversion, and made her way out of the roofless building. Might there be other gravestones?

  Yes: still higher, she could see a large upright stone tablet, a few rods away, looking down like a sentinel upon the little medieval chapel. She reached it without difficulty. This tall stone must have been erected in recent years, surprisingly, for little lichen grew upon it. A modest decorative border was carved round its edges, and deeply graven in the middle of the stone were Roman characters:

  TAMEN AD MORES NATURA RECURRIT

  DAMNATOS FIXA ET MUTARI NESCIA

  Could this be, “But our nature, fixed, unchangeable, turns back to condemned ways?” The “damnatos” was distressing, here at Balgrummo Lodging-though of course in Roman times the word couldn’t have signified what it does in Christian theology.

  The wind swooped down upon her from the den head, chill, carrying along with it a few drops of spray from the waterfall, to which she stood quite close now.

  Might there be another inscription on the far side of this tall stone? There was:

  HIC JACET ALEXANDER FILLAN INCHBURN

  FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNO

  NOCTES ATQUE DIES PATET ATRIJANUA DITIS

  SED REVOCARE GRADUM SUPERASQUE EVADERE AD AURAS

  HOC OPUS HIC LABOR EST

  This surely was Vergil: “Easy is the descent to Avernus; the gates of Dis stand open night and day; but to ascend that slope, back to the light, is a work of much travail.” Marina felt proud of her rendering, even though it didn’t rhyme.

  Was the last Balgrummo buried here? And had he ordered those dreadful lines to be inscribed there—about himself? Well, he had chosen a peaceful spot, from which one could overlook—if one had vision—a vast long prospect of the rose garden, the Den, the Fettinch Water, the Lodging, the Moss, the trees beyond, with no glimpse of anything ugly. It was as if he were on watch... for what, for whom?

  But Marina could not trouble herself with such inquiries. It was almost warm in this corner, between tombstone and garden dyke, and she had slept little last night. Why, she could stretch out in her cloak upon the heather, thick here, with Michael lying upon her. She did...

  “Lend me your hand,” someone said.

  She did so.

  “Lend me your ears,” someone said.

  She did so.

  “Lend me your eyes,” someone said.

  She did so.

  His white beard brushed her cheek as he rose to his full height.

  “You are quite safe just now,” he said. “It is others I look for.”

  She could not reply.

  He stood beside her, tall, tall, tall. “The virtue works slowly,” he said, “but it comes. Keep your child from those who sharpen the tooth of the dog.”

  Then he was gone, without trace.

  But two things bent over her. One was a crocodile, the other a leopard.

  “She must be told now,” said the Crocodile.

  “Can she bear it?” asked the Leopard.

  “She is the daughter of a brave man,” said the Crocodile.

  “Will she go into the hollow dark with us?” asked the Leopard.

  “There is no other way,” said the Crocodile.

  Something was placed upon her forehead. She woke shrieking...

  “Now, now, Marina, don’t let them hear you down at the Lodging,” Madame Sesostris was telling her. She patted Marina’s cold hand. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you; we thought that perhaps you’d been locked away somewhere.”

  Marina pulled her wits together. She had been dreaming here in the walled garden. The baby! Oh, Fresca was standing there, too, holding Michael. Marina snatched him back.

  “I had one of my own,” Fresca said, with a flitting smile, in perfect English.

  “I suppose I should present you, Marina,” Madame Sesostris said. “This young lady’s name is not really Fresca, and she isn’t really my maid. She’s called Melchiora, actually, and she is the wife of His Excellency Manfre
d Arcane; but we’d best continue to call him the Archvicar and her Fresca, for the present.”

  Something else topsy-turvy! Marina stared at the old lady: “Then who are you?”

  “An old friend of theirs, and I keep the keys for His Excellency and Melchiora at their house in Haggat. I’m Grizel Fergusson, but of course you’re not to tell anyone that. Mr. Arcane needed someone hideous and withered to impersonate Gerontion’s wife-though she’s dead, actually, of natural causes. So I was fetched here as a reasonable facsimile.”

  “Really, Lady Fergusson, it’s absurd of you to speak of yourself in that way,” Melchiora-Fresca objected, with a protesting wave of her hands. But Marina reflected that this Grizel Fergusson did look rather like a crocodile.

  “I speak of myself as little as possible,” the old lady answered. “Shall you tell Marina, or shall I?”

  “What is it?” Marina had her back against Lord Balgrummo’s tombstone. She had scarcely waked up from her nap in the garden, and all this confused and confusing mass of information was heaped upon her. She had rushed from dream to a bewildered state worse than dreaming.

  “It is about your prospects here, and ours,” said the Sicilian girl with that beautiful command of English speech.

  “Be strong,” said the old lady. “What do you think Mr. Apollinax is?”

  “Before I came here, I thought he was a saint. Now I don’t know.”

  “What do you think the disciples are?”

  “They’re very strange people.”

  “Why do you think you’ve been brought here?”

  “I thought I was to share in a Timeless Moment, and be cured of my-my unhappiness.”

  “We must speak to you in terms that you may understand,” Melchiora told her. “There is more to Apollinax and the disciples and your situation than we can explain easily, but we put our warning into words that have an old meaning here in Scotland, especially. Such things arose here in the Third Laird’s times, or so it was said. They arise here again now.

  “People say that I’m blunt,” the old lady broke in. “I utter hard truths, and feel compunction later. I must be direct with you, Marina, because we have little time. You may not believe me, but what I am about to tell you is true.”

  “Mr. Apollinax is the prophet of a peculiar cult,” Melchiora said. “London has many such, they say, today. Most of them are silly and obscene-nothing more. But Apollinax possesses much knowledge and much power. Also his acolytes have guns.”

  There came a pause. “Go on,” Marina urged them, pale though she was. “I’ll believe you.”

  “Will you?” said the old lady. “Well, then—Apollinax is a warlock. He does not call himself that, but he is a warlock, as the Scots put it.

  “The disciples are his witch-coven. They do not quite know that, but they are such.

  “You have been brought here, Marina, you and your baby, as their intended sacrifice to Time the Devourer.

  “There’s far more to this ghastly business than I know. It sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But ‘absurd’ doesn’t mean comical; it means the false. And in an era when falsity is common, my dear, repressed evil things creep out of their old prison.” Marina closed her eyes and sank against the tombstone. Hadn’t she suspected this hideous truth for at least two days, though rejecting her intuition as mad? She opened her eyes and looked at the cliffs of the Den: she saw no way out.

  “What are they going to do to Michael and me?” By speaking slowly she was able to utter those words quite distinctly.

  Melchiora gently took Michael from her, lest she drop him. “My husband isn’t certain,” Melchiora said. “He tells us all that we must play this play out. He tells you to be brave, to trust him, and to wait on opportunity; he says that you must be warned now, and that you must not show fear, or much of it, to Apollinax and the disciples and acolytes. He says that we must not draw the first blood in any struggle-not in Balgrummo Lodging, because something would scent it. When the time is near, he or we will give you instructions.”

  “His Excellency knew your father, my dear,” said the old lady, “not well, but they talked more than once. When His Excellency obtained access to Apollinax’s dossiers, he was taken aback to learn that General Fitzgerald’s daughter would be here at Balgrummo Lodging. But really coincidence doesn’t exist, His Excellency has found: everything is labyrinthine design, he says.”

  “How could he have known my father?” Marina made the inquiry dully; nothing could astonish her now.

  “I believe I told you yesterday, my dear, that His Excellency Manfred Arcane is almost a grand vizier in Hamnegri. He used to see your father years ago, when they both were military men. Mr. Arcane has known nearly everyone who has held power. He knew my husband, too, Sir Fergus Fergusson, in Kenya; and when Fergus was murdered, His Excellency made a place in Haggat for me. He groans that he has given too many hostages to Fortune; yet he’s forever snatching more people from the jaws of destruction.”

  “Myself among them,” Melchiora-Fresca added. “He means to save even that Sweeney. Will he do something for any of the disciples or the acolytes, do you think, Lady Grizel?”

  “I’ve talked with them more than you have.” Lady Fergusson wrinkled her leathery face in distaste. “I have amused them with my wicked deck of cards, too, and have frightened some, Mrs. Equitone especially. In the process of fortune reading, I have wormed information out of them. All are quite beyond saving; and even to hint to them that anything’s afoot-why, they’d betray us to Apollinax immediately. The Archvicar, quoting Aristotle, says that many people are slaves by nature. These disciples are such slaves, though they have enslaved yet others. Whatever Apollinax does to them, they will praise him. They are lost.”

  It was all so like Alice’s adventures, and yet so deadly real! Marina, like Alice, furtively pinched herself: yes, she was awake. “Will you tell me, Madame—will you tell me, Lady Fergusson-why this Manfred Arcane came here?”

  “‘Madame Sesostris,’ if you please, Marina, until the play’s played out. We haven’t time, I fear, for a full account of that; but I’ll be as summary as I can.

  “In Hamnegri, His Excellency has jurisdiction in cases involving foreigners. One such foreigner, calling himself Archvicar Gerontion, claiming to be a British subject, was sentenced to death for unlicensed dealing in narcotics, and resulting homicides. He appealed to His Excellency Manfred Arcane.

  “His Excellency took this old criminal Gerontion into his house in Haggat, and interrogated him for several days-oh, no, not by torture; His Excellency frowns upon torture. Gerontion betrayed his confederates, who were in Britain, except for that Sweeney, Apollinax’s courier. Sweeney too had been arrested in Haggat, at the time Gerontion was caught. But His Excellency permitted Sweeney to be set free, so that he might be tracked by secret police to his principals in London. He was so tracked.

  “Meanwhile, my dear, Gerontion died, from an overdose of his own wicked powder called kalanzi. He poisoned His Excellency, too, and His Excellency was months in recovering. Mr. Arcane had spent so much time in studying Gerontion, while he had the poisoner in his house, that he found himself able to impersonate his old guest-enemy.

  “Now His Excellency learned from London that Gerontion’s chief confederate in Britain, buying all that kalanzi drug from Gerontion, had been someone called Apollinax. His Excellency had kept Gerontion’s death secret-the old wretch’s body was cremated in His Excellency’s courtyard. He corresponded with Apollinax, pretending to be the dead Gerontion. His Excellency, being fond of new adventures, meant to entrap Apollinax’s whole crew. And the more he learned about Apollinax’s cult, the more interested he became.

  “Can you imagine His Excellency’s amazement when he was informed that Apollinax intended to hold some sort of gathering at Balgrummo Lodging, His Excellency’s father’s house? For His Excellency always had kept his own origin secret. He was even more startled by this news than he had been on learning from Gerontion that the old poisoner had frequen
ted Balgrummo Lodging in his youth. But His Excellency believes that coincidences don’t exist: everything is design.

  “And Apollinax actually summoned His Excellency, as Archvicar Gerontion, to Britain, with instructions to lease Balgrummo Lodging for him and prepare for an especially significant ‘retreat-bringing with him a good supply of kalanzi. Well, you’ve glimpsed the rest. His Excellency, having no urgent duties in Hamnegri at the time, obeyed the Master’s orders. He’s bored unless he’s involved in some risky adventure. He brought Melchiora and me with him, because we insisted—he’s rather uxorious, isn’t he, Melchiora?—and Phlebas, one of his black foster sons, too. Phlebas’ real name, incidentally, is Brasidas, which isn’t much less peculiar than ‘Phlebas.’

  “So His Excellency thought that the Lord had delivered his enemy into his hand: so curious a series of coincidences must be providential. But now His Excellency says that he may have played Volpone once too often; the biter’s bitten, the trapper trapped; and the Lord who does the delivering may be the Lord of This World.”

  Marina had sunk down with her back against the tombstone until now she was sitting on the ground.

  “We’ve one advantage,” said Melchiora-Fresca, “this: Apollinax doesn’t know who we are, while we do know who he is.”

  “Do we?” The pretended Madame Sesostris drew from her large purse her thick pack of strange cards, dexterously thumbed them, extracted one card, and held it up for inspection.

  Marina bent close to examine it. The card was not at all like an ordinary playing card, nor yet like tarot cards that she had seen at silly parties. On the card’s face was the well-drawn figure of an old man, bent, bearded. In his right hand was a sickle; also a serpent, biting its own tail, writhed in that hand. By the grim-faced old man’s feet sat four very small children.

  But what set Marina’s heart pounding was the naked baby in the old man’s left hand. The little thing was shown struggling, and the old man’s mouth was open, as if to devour it. At the bottom of the card were printed the word “Saturno” and a number.