The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (16 page)

Hard to describe the professor's library to one who has never been there. It's a small, windowless room, no more than a dozen feet in any direction, and all of it given over to books: folios, quartos, parchment-covered duodecimos, piled vertically, and horizontally, dangling off shelves, sprawled on the floor. Still open, many of them, to whatever page the professor was last reading.
Pawpaw was already scaling the shelves. Within half a minute, he'd bagged his quarry and hauled it down to earth. A massive volume bound in black leather, with silver clasps. The professor gave it a pat, and a plume of dust rose through his fingers.

"De Lancre," he said. "Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges. Do you read French, Mr. Poe?"

"Bien sur."

Poe gently peeled away the first sheet of parchment. Cleared his throat, puffed out his chest. Prepared to recite.

"Please," said Pawpaw. "I cannot bear being read to. Kindly take your book to the corner and read in silence."

Of course, there was no furniture in the corner, or anywhere else. With a shy smile, Poe dropped onto a brocaded pillow, while the professor motioned me gravely to the floor. I chose instead to lean against the shelves as I pulled out a pigtail of tobacco.

"Tell me about this de Lancre fellow," I said.

Wrapping his arms round his ankles, Pawpaw rested his chin on his knees. "Pierre de Lancre," he said. "Redoubtable witch hunter. Found and executed six hundred Basque witches over a period of four months, and left behind the remarkable volume that Mr. Poe is now perusing. A pure delight. Oh, but wait! What sort of host am I?"

And he was up on his feet and out the door, to return five minutes later with a platter of apples--the ones I'd seen roasting in the hearth. They were unknowable now: blistery and wounded, oozing sap. Pawpaw looked a bit offended when I declined.

"As you like," he sniffed, cramming one into his mouth. "Where were we? Yes, yes, de Lancre. Now, the book I wish I had to give you, Landor, is Discours du Diable. Written by one Henri le Clerc, who exterminated seven hundred witches before he was done. What makes his story unusual is that he experienced a midlife conversion. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, except that le Clerc was moving in the other direction. To the dark side."

A line of apple sap had worked its way down his chin. He fingered it away.

"Le Clerc was himself captured and burned at the stake in Caen in 1603. In his arms, it's said, he held the aforementioned volume, clothed in wolf 's skin. As the flames rose higher, he said a prayer to his--his lord, and cast the book into the fire. Onlookers swore that it vanished in a trice, as though someone had plucked it from the very heart of the furnace."

"Well, I can see why--"

"The story is not finished, Landor. Word soon spread that le Clerc had left behind two or three other volumes identical to the one that was destroyed. None has ever been conclusively identified, but in the intervening centuries, the task of recovering these lost books has become the idee fixe of many an occult collector."

"One of them being you, Professor?" He grimaced. "I don't especially covet the volume myself, though I can see why others might. It is said that le Clerc left behind instructions for curing incurable illnesses, and even for securing immortality."

Just then I felt the smallest of breezes on my hand. I looked down to find an ant crawling over my knuckles.

"I think I will have one of those apples," I said.

And behold, it was good. The black crust tore away like paper, and the inside was a molten wonder, sweet and sticky-clean. I could see Pawpaw smiling at me, as if to say, You doubted?

"Perhaps," he said, "we should ascertain our young friend's progress."

Only a few minutes had passed since we left him in the corner, but Poe was so still that a frond of dust had already settled across his shoulders. Even as we approached, he forbore to raise his head. I had to look over him to see what he was studying.

It was an engraving, stretching across both pages: the portrait of a feast. Droopy-breasted hags astride great hairy rams. Winged demons dragging aloft the bodies of still-living babies. Bonneted skeletons and dancing fiends and, rising up in the center--in his golden chair--the master of the feast: a mannerly goat, with fire coming out of his horns.

"Remarkable, isn't it?" said Poe. "One can't stop looking. Oh, Professor, might I have leave to read aloud from just one section?"

"If you must."

"This is from de Lancre's description of the sabbath ritual. Excuse my stumbling, I'm still translating. It is commonly known among the ... fraternity of evil angels that the--the contents of a witches' sabbath feast are confined to the following sundries--to wit, unclean animals such as are never eaten by Christian peoples ..."

I felt myself drawing closer.

"... as well, the hearts of unbaptized children ..."

Poe stopped and, looking first at the professor, then at me, began to grin.

"... and the hearts of hanged men."

Narrative of Gus Landor

13

November 3rd to November 6th

We were silent, Poe and I, all the way back to the Point. It was only when he was dismounting, about a quarter mile short of the guard post, that he saw fit to speak again. "Mr. Landor," he said. "I have been pondering where next we should direct our enquiries. It occurs to me that if we wish to locate a secret enclave of..." He hesitated but a second. "... Of Satanists, well, then, we should address ourselves to those who would be most sensitive to such an enclave's presence. Their opposite number, as it were."

I gave it some thought.

"Christians," I said warily.

"Christians, yes. Of the most devout flavor."

"You don't mean the Reverend Zantzinger?" I asked.

"Oh, Lord, no!" cried Poe. "Zantzinger wouldn't know the Devil if it sneezed on his alb. No, I rather had in mind the prayer squad."

It made perfect sense, I recognized that straight off. This was the very squad that Leroy Fry had briefly joined, a voluntary association of cadets who found the West Point chapel too Episcopalian and wanted a straighter road to their God.

Until today, of course, Poe had held this squad in nothing but contempt. "Now, Mr. Landor, I think we might put them to good use, if you would permit me."

"Of course. But how do you--"

"Oh, you leave that to me," he drawled. "In the meantime, you and I must find a better means of communicating. From my end, it's relatively simple: I need but slip into your hotel and leave messages under your door. You, however, would be best advised not to leave any notes in my barracks quarters, as my roommates are the nosiest devils. I would suggest instead Kosciusko's Garden, do you know the place? You'll find a natural spring there and, on the southern perimeter of the spring, a loose rock--igneous, I believe--large enough to conceal any piece of paper, provided it's sufficiently folded. Simply leave your missives there in the morning, and I shall take pains to retrieve them in the interval between--. What? Why are you chuckling, Mr. Landor?"

In fact, I was feeling just a little vindicated. No spy of my acquaintance had ever taken to his work with such flair, and I couldn't wait to sing his praises to someone--even if that someone was only Hitchcock. He and I duly gathered in Thayer's parlor late the next day (Thayer, good deity that he was, absented himself ), and we drank coffee larded with lumpy cream, and ate dodger cakes and pickled oysters. The scent of Molly's pot roast tickled the air, and Hitchcock talked about a book he was reading-- Montholon's Memoirs of Napoleon, I think--and it was all very light and full of grace, even if this grace came out of great compression. For the chief of engineers had just demanded a full accounting of my enquiries, and this was to be forwarded to the secretary of war, and it was said that the president himself had taken an interest in the matter--and when the president takes an interest, it can safely be said that things are teetering, and it will take some timely action to set them right again. That was what lay beneath all our pleasantness: a ticking, as pronounced as the clock in Thayer's downstairs study, which at the five o'clock hour came chiming through the floor.

I felt for Hitchcock, I did my level best for him. Told him what I knew and didn't know and what I supposed. I even told him about Pawpaw, whose quirks are hardly the sort to warm the military mind. I lived up to every one of our terms, or so I thought, and then I saw Hitchcock rise and peer into a glass cabinet full of war totems, and I realized my job was just beginning.

"So, Mr. Landor. By virtue of some--some holes in the ground, you are now persuaded that a diabolical--what should we call it, society?"

"That would do."

"Society or--or cult is in play somewhere in the vicinity of West Point. Within the Academy's own walls, very possibly."

"It's possible, yes."

"And you're further persuaded that this individual--"

"Or group."

"--or group of individuals is under the sway of some medieval--I was going to call it twiddle-twaddle..."

"Go right ahead, Captain."

"... and that consequent to this, Leroy Fry was killed and his heart removed, all to satisfy a bizarre devotional exercise. Is that what you're trying to tell me, Mr. Landor?"

"Now, Captain," I said, smiling gently, "you know me better than that. Have you ever heard me say anything outright? All I can tell you is there's now a chain of possibility. A series of markings at the crime scene that may have occult meaning, and a very specific set of directions--occult directions--that could pertain to our crime."

"And from this you deduce... ?"

"I don't deduce anything. I only say that Leroy Fry was killed in just such a way as to make his heart useful to a particular class of worshipper."

" "Useful," "class of worshipper'--those are fine euphemisms, Mr. Landor."

"If you want to call them bloodthirsty demons, Captain, be my guest. It doesn't bring us any closer to learning who they are. Or whether they are working toward larger ends."

"But if we're to accept your--your "chain of possibility," Mr. Landor, then it seems increasingly likely that one party was behind both crimes."

"As I think Dr. Marquis was the first to theorize," I said.

It was a measure of something--my boredom? despair?--that I felt the need to claim an ally. And in fact, Hitchcock didn't care a rap about Dr. Marquis; he cared only about jabbing holes in my theory. Peck peck peck, on and on, until at last I said:

"Go to the icehouse yourself, Captain. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me the holes aren't there, the letters aren't there. Tell me they don't form the pattern I've described, and I won't trouble you with my theories any longer. And you can find yourself another whipping boy." It took this--the threat of rupture--to quiet him. To quiet me, too. When I spoke again, my voice was much softer:

"I don't know what you expected, Captain. Whoever took Leroy Fry's heart was in terrible earnest about something--why not that?"

Well, it came down to this, Reader: Hitchcock had a report to file, and this report had to have words in it. And so, after a few more questions for the sake of "amplification," and some groping for the right language, we pretty soon had all we needed for the chief of engineers-- for now, at least. And since that was the real purpose of our meeting, I was congratulating myself on my escape and preparing to leave... when I made the mistake of bringing up my young friend.

"Poe?" cried Hitchcock.

You see, he'd just about got used to the idea of my engaging Poe. But that this same Poe had become an active partner--that I proposed to go on using him in light of these latest developments--these things, Hitchcock hadn't foreseen. It brought him back to his feet, and once again he was cramming my head with in loco parentis and congressionally mandated this and statutory that. Somehow, in the midst of all this, I looked into the heart of what he was saying and came to a realization: Hitchcock was afraid.

"Captain," I said. "All will be well."

Which, come to think of it, was the kind of thing my daughter used to say to me, even in the direst circumstances. I wondered if it sounded as convincing coming from my lips.

"But surely," said Hitchcock (all tracks round the mouth), "surely, if such a--a society exists, then its members are not to be trifled with."

"Certainly not. That's why Mr. Poe is tasked only with gathering information. That's the beginning and the end of his responsibility. All other risks will be borne by me."

Oh, these Army men and their stiff quills! Won't take direction from a civilian if they can possibly help it, not even from the president (especially not the president). And so they push and push, and finally I had to say:

"Please, Captain. I have told Mr. Poe in no uncertain terms that he's not to place himself in peril, or even the hint of peril."

In fact, I had yet to say such a thing to Cadet Poe, though I fully meant to. Taking advantage of the chink I'd made in the conversation, I added, "As always, he is to make academic duties his first concern."

"Health permitting," said Hitchcock.

The air was most definitely chillier.

"Health?" I asked.

"I do hope you'll wish Mr. Poe a speedy recovery from his recent illness," said Hitchcock. "He's already on the mend, I believe."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"I'll tell him you asked after him."

"Please do," said Hitchcock. "Please tell him I asked after him."

As we were quitting the superintendent's quarters, Hitchcock paused in the act of shaking my hand and gave me a look of the purest skepticism.

"To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Landor, not one member of our faculty, not a single cadet officer or soldier has ever uncovered evidence of Satanism at the Point. How do you expect Mr. Poe to find what has eluded everyone else?"

"Because nobody else has been looking," I said. "And no one else can look in the way that Poe does."

Always, after I had finished talking to Hitchcock, I made a point of visiting Leroy Fry's body at the Academy hospital. I'm not sure why. I think, in retrospect, I must have been testing my constitution. For Dr. Marquis had, in recent days, begun injecting the corpse with potassium nitrate, a chemical commonly used to preserve ham and sausage. The results were clear: a body growing greener by the day, and a ward that stank overwhelmingly of rank meat. And flies everywhere, shaking with lust.