Lord of the Hollow Dark (28 page)

“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 frequented 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.

“What do you mean?” Marina stammered. “What are these cards?”

Madame Sesostris riffled through the pack, giving Marina glimpses of a host of marvelous symbolic figures, a Comus’ rout of fantastics. “These, my dear, are called inaccurately the
tarocchi
of Mantegna. They are said to have been created by Parrasio Michele of Ferrara, about 1470. I have here copies of the originals, of course. In Haggat, on the eve of coming here to the Lodging, I trained myself to tell fortunes by them-recklessly tampering with magical things, perhaps. But there’s no time just now to tell you the history of these cards, or what their function may have been originally. There’s some reason to suspect that the Warlock Laird of Balgrummo, or the Bohemian alchemist he kept with him, may have possessed a set of these, and used them: there’s a mention of ‘evil cards from Mantegna’ in Morton’s denunciation of the Third Laird. Another piece of chance, this, or part of a pattern covering four centuries?”

Marina clutched at Madame Sesostris’ arm. “The old man with that poor baby-who is he?”

“The card itself, my dear, identifies him as Saturn. But actually Kronos is meant: Kronos, or Cronus, or Zurvan-Ahriman-he’s had many names in many lands and ages. He is Time, Time the Destroyer, Time the Devourer of Life. He has been called the Lord of Destiny, and the Lord of This World. The other day, Marina, I hinted that you might do well to read the Gnostics, and Luther. They say that the Prince of This World is the Evil One.”

Marina shuddered all over, staring at the naked baby in the clutch of Kronos. “Why did you draw that card?”

“Because Melchiora said that we know who Apollinax is.”

“No, Apollinax is a man,” said Melchiora, “whatever he thinks he is.” But she did not say this with any force.

“We’re going to have to dine with them again tonight,” Marina said aloud. Could she endure it? Perhaps for Michael’s sake, on the chance that the Archvicar might have another card than this one up his sleeve. She was the General’s daughter: she must keep telling herself that.

The February dark was descending upon them rapidly. Already, away there below them, Balgrummo Lodging had begun to fade into shadows, as if made of smoke. Marina left Michael to the insistent Fresca-Melchiora-she must trust her, if anyone-and followed Grizel in the descent toward the Lodging.
Facilis descensus Averno.

“I sorry for you,” said Mr. Hakagawa.

At these dinners, she and the others were expected to sit next to different people every night: the Master had said that all should know one another well now, because they would be joined forever in the Timeless Moment. Tonight Marina found herself placed between Mr. Hakagawa and Mr. Bleistein.

At Mr. Hakagawa’s commiseration, Marina—who had been silently turning over the unpalatable food on her plate, in the faint hope of discovering some edible morsel-sat up straight and paid attention to this dinner companion. Was he about to become indiscreet and hint at her part in the “liturgy” tomorrow night?

“Why do you say that?” She spoke softly, inviting confidences.

“Because you have baby.”

This wasn’t what she had expected. “Oh, but my Michael is all I have, and without him I wouldn’t want to live.”

Mr. Hakagawa smiled politely. “No baby, you free. Babies for foolish people. You pretty, you smart, have fun.”

This was the pidgin-English version of Harry’s moral philosophy. Marina felt like crying, but she said, coldly, “I’m not looking for fun.”

“I own many clinic,” Mr. Hakagawa went on, unrepulsed. “You in trouble two time, I fix: all lawful now in civilized time. In my country, old time, if not want baby, get rid, like kitty or puppy. Maybe soon some time, law change more, everywhere any girl not want keep baby after born, change her mind, then send new-type clinic, baby finished-like no want kitty, send to vet. Then girl like you free to choose.” Marina turned away in horror from this liberator. Was the man joking? No, he wasn’t. He still was talking, although to the back of her head: “Most baby turn out no good anyway when grow up.”

She found herself looking into the heavy face of Mr. Bleistein, with whom she had not spoken before.

“Well, hello there!” said Mr. Bleistein. He sounded as if he came from New York, but the Master had told them not to ask such questions. “Say, if the Master puts this show on the road, he might have the biggest thing going in the religion line, moneywise. It all depends on the thrills we get tomorrow night: if it’s the real stuff, there’s a market, a hell of a big market. Religion plus thrills, first-class thrills, that’s unbeatable, and you got the First Amendment on your side against the cops. I understand you’re going to be our superstar, honey. Had much practice with these kinds of things?”