Lord of the Hollow Dark (2 page)

Phlebas vanished as soundlessly as he had come, one of Marina’s cases on his head, the other carried easily in one hand; he was surprisingly strong. The Arch vicar nodded.

“Quite right: no unusual amenities there, but fairly secure, I think, even if she is around the corner from us. There’s a crib somewhere in the old nursery; have it fetched, if you will, Grizel. One mustn’t keep Apollinax waiting, for his time is worth a thousand pounds a minute.” The Archvicar showed white teeth in a sardonic smile. “I’ll return to you within the hour, I suppose.” Archvicar Gerontion nodded to Marina and crept down the passage by which Phlebas had entered.

Up the tall stair Marina went, Madame Sesostris clambering stiffly beside her. Phlebas must have taken the servants’ stair. The wainscoting on the landing seemed to have been repaired recently, but that scent of rot still hung about the stairwell. “I don’t mean to be a bother, but will my baby be warm enough here?”

“What did you say?” Madame had paused, her hand on the balustrade, as if listening. “One thinks one hears so many sounds in this house. Did you glimpse anyone peering over at us from the floor above-up this stairwell, I mean? For a moment I thought something peered and whispered. No? Your eyes and ears are better than mine, my dear. Ah, yes... there have been no infants at Balgrummo Lodging since time out of mind, Marina, but we shall manage. Phlebas is to lay a coal fire in the grate for you. I’m afraid there are few proper bathrooms, for Lord Balgrummo was perfectly indifferent to creature comforts. But Phlebas will fetch you hot water. He’s not half so savage as he seems, and understands English well enough, although he doesn’t speak more than a few phrases of it. I suppose you’d relish a sandwich or two, and a pot of tea? Of course. And milk for the little darling? Oh, you nurse him still: so quaint, so healthy, I’m sure! We can contrive something more for him-look, his tiny eyelids are opening!-if you like. Now here we are on the first floor, a long pull for old bones, that, but nothing to a slip like you, I suppose, my dear.”

How this great house rambled. “Contrived corridors” indeed! It was much larger than her convent had been, Marina guessed. They moved slowly through a long gallery, the light too dim for Marina to make out clearly the tall pictures in their splendid frames. Then they ascended a shorter staircase, turned to the left, next to the right. There were Oriental carpets on the floors.

“We are in the older regions now,” Madame Sesostris was telling her. “This was badly burnt in the Regent Morton’s sack, the Archvicar says, but restored after a fashion by the next laird—the Warlock’s son, you know.”

Marina said that she didn’t know.

“Really? You must cajole the Archvicar into antiquarian-ism; cherish him. Well before that, this building was a kind of monastery, and the Warlock Laird’s father was made lay commendator in the Reformation. Still earlier, this, or whatever part of the buildings stood then, was a house of the Templars. And before even that-but I’ll leave the rest to the Archvicar. He found interesting papers in the muniment room; we had several days’ leisure here before Mr. Apollinax arrived, you see, and the Archvicar put that time to good use. His church Latin actually is excellent.”

Madame Sesostris halted before a door. “This will be your room, Marina. The bed has been warmed, and there are candles on the night table, if the gas should fail. We’re just down the corridor, and might hear you if you should cry out.”

It was a snug enough room, Marina found, with a tapestry on one wall and a portrait of a bare-shouldered grand lady—could it be by Lely?—on the wall opposite. Marina felt a trifle more at ease. “It’s frightfully good of you to show me up here.” She hesitated. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, Madame Sesostris, but the Archvicar-is he Catholic?”

“Roman, you mean to say?” Madame Sesostris patted her hand. “You were a Roman sister once, weren’t you-there, there, I don’t know more about you than I must. Why, the Archvicar’s orders are quite valid: Mr. Apollinax inquired into that. The Archvicar had himself reordained by the Bishop of Utrecht, ever so long ago, to make sure of it. He was an Old Catholic once, and then Church of South India. But there came troubles... Don’t let anyone tell you that the Archvicar was defrocked, silly phrase. Nowadays he is archvicar in the Church of the Divine Mystery. Hadn’t you heard of it? There is a following in Madras, in Hamnegri, and elsewhere in Africa: a remnant aware that the Archvicar has lit a candle in the darkness. By the way”—the old lady closed the door and lowered her voice—“the Archvicar dissents in some particulars from Mr. Apollinax’s doctrines.” Marina knew that her eyes widened. “How does he disagree? Mr. Apollinax’s system seems to explain everything. When he talks of that Timeless Moment...”

“Quite, quite, my dear.” Madame pursed her thin lips. “But it’s rather late for theological discussion just now, don’t you think? Do keep close to the Archvicar, when possible. Let me see... do we have a key to your room? Apparently not, and the bolt’s wanting, too. You can put a chair back under the knob, can’t you?”

Phlebas was lighting a fire in the grate, taking more coals from a handsome copper scuttle. How many years might it have been since anyone slept here? But the chimney seemed to draw well enough, and there was a pretty pink counterpane on the ancient bed. Tomorrow Mr. Apollinax would talk with her again, bringing fresh significance into her life.

Madame Sesostris was rattling on. “You needn’t be uneasy: this may be one of the quiet nights, and the other people are in a different part of the house. Look, your tiny Michael is smiling at us! Does he resemble his father? But what am I saying? Perhaps you’d not wish him to. Call me Mrs. Mala-prop, do. It’s no great matter nowadays, I suppose, my dear: many a fine man has been conceived on the wrong side of a blanket, the Archvicar among them. Sleep late, if you like, for Mr. Apollinax never sees anyone before noon. The others will breakfast together, but you can be excused for tomorrow morning, at least. Phlebas will have your tea and sandwiches ready in a twinkling, and someone will bring you breakfast on a tray. It might be well for you to have your meals in your room whenever possible; but we shall have to see about that. What have you been brought here for, I wonder? Do sleep well.”

When the old woman had tottered out, followed by Phlebas, Marina busied herself in unpacking. There was an antique wardrobe with infinite room for her dresses and the baby’s things. Then she fed the baby; and when Phlebas came back with the tea, she found it good. The little black man bowed his way backward out the door with a grin presumably intended to be polite and deferential, but looking lupine.

Had that Madame Sesostris meant to unsettle her? Surely, despite the atmosphere of decay and melancholy about this house, the vitality of Mr. Apollinax would be transmitted to the others invited to this gathering, whoever they might be-and especially to her.

Weary though she felt, Marina made some inspection of her room. Two small windows were behind heavy draperies; she raised the sash of one. It was far too dark to make out much, but her room seemed to face upon a large wild garden, almost a park; the silhouette of a tall monkey-puzzle tree was not far distant, beyond outbuildings. She thought she caught a glimmer from a pond, beyond which the ground seemed to rise sharply. It looked a long, long way from her windows to the ground.

She turned back into the room. Beyond Michael in the old crib that Phlebas had brought, a small door was set into the wall, presumably opening into a closet. Or could it be that, after all, she had been assigned her own bathroom? The little door was a sticky one, and when she had wrenched it open, she was startled.

This was no closet, but the entrance to a stair. It curved both upward and downward. Was her room situated in a portion of the medieval buildings on this site? The little stair, with a monkish look about it, seemed a kind of incrustation upon a mass of ancient masonry: Marina perceived that the stair must twist around the chimney stack into which her room’s fireplace was let. Did the stair go up to the top of the house, and down to the cellars? Niche and stair were marvelously cobwebby, as if no one had come this way for a great while. Perhaps the stair was blocked somewhere above and somewhere below. She didn’t wish to rummage about other people’s houses, and she was quite worn out. She closed the little door again, noticing, in the act, that curiously enough the door had a heavy bolt and socket on its inner side, but no fastening by which she could lock it from within her room.

Sinking into her bed, Marina discovered that Phlebas had put an earthenware “pig,” filled with hot water, down between the sheets, thoughtfully meant to comfort her feet. What slaves we are to creature comforts! Indeed this was a damp, chill house; she’d not wish to sleep here always. Yet however odd the choice of site for this gathering of disciples, at Balgrummo Lodging there might occur that Timeless Moment, and all of them might be transfigured.

Sweeney had lost himself somewhere between his bedroom and the east drawing room, where he was supposed to meet with Apollinax. Such damned bad lighting, so many closed doors, so many aimless flights of stairs, such corridors that led nowhere, here at Balgrummo Lodging! And there was no whiskey served in this house; it was against Mr. Apollinax’s rules, he had been told. Of course there were the three bottles prudently carried in his luggage, but they might have to last him a week; he would open the first after the conference with Apollinax. Now should he go through this green baize door on his right, or take the short flight of steps just ahead of him?

At that moment he heard the tapping of a stick in that damask-hung corridor, and started sharply.

“Rather like the doors in Bluebeard’s castle, aren’t they?” said the Archvicar.

That bland old crepuscular person was not precisely the companion Sweeney would have chosen for a dark corner; it would have been more entertaining to have encountered here that pretty prude Marina. But the Archvicar did know his way about, purblind though he was, for he opened the green door and led Sweeney down a short passage, into the east drawing room. Below the Jacobean chimneypiece a fire was dying on the hearth.

“Do take a chair,” the Archvicar invited him. “Grishkin, giving ‘promise of pneumatic bliss,’ told me a few minutes ago that Mr. Apollinax won’t receive us for at least another quarter of an hour.”

“Where’s everybody else?” Sweeney stirred the half-consumed billets of wood with a baroque brass poker nearly as tall as himself.

“Most of them, except my people, are in the great hall, I believe-which, by the way, was the monks’ refectory before the Dissolution. An odd lot, aren’t they, these disciples of Apollinax?”

“Odder than you?” Sweeney grunted.

“Oh, surely, and odder even than you, my friend. You and I are moved by natural vices: you by the concupiscence of the flesh, I by avarice. These grotesques in Apollinax’s collection have run through the disappointing litany of the Seven Deadly Sins, have found those limited diversions wanting, and now seek sensation beyond the ordinary senses.” Archvicar Gerontion seemed to be trying to find a tolerable position in the corner of the sofa for his twisted back.

“How do you mean?” This old man, Sweeney had reason to know, ought to be the last person to set up as censor.

“I refer, my friend, to the twelve older men and women that our Master has gathered together. The twelve neophytes, the eight boys and four girls who hew our wood and draw our water for this conference, aren’t old enough to be totally blasé, I suppose, but they’re well on their way. You are here because you’re useful in one fashion; Grishkin, useful in another; I in a third, with Madame and Phlebas and Madame’s maid, my necessary props in my decrepitude. But the twelve worn-out disciples—faugh! I take it that you’ve not seen them yet. However do Miss Marina and her infant fit into this puzzle?”

The Archvicar’s chin rested on the carved head of his ebony stick, he looking altogether like a swarthy gargoyle. It was impossible to make out his eyes behind those peculiar goggles of his. His stare had kept Sweeney nervous in Haggat; it perturbed Sweeney here. And this might be a perilous conversation, what with Apollinax’s imperious habits and his short way with dissenters. Was the Archvicar trying to draw him out and entrap him, for some malign reason?

“You’re sure this room isn’t bugged?” asked Sweeney,
sotto voce.
He could not resist trying to find out what the Archvicar might know that he did not know.

“Perfectly sure. I hired this house myself, through my old Scottish connections, and arrived here days before Apollinax did. There’s no one in his crew capable of installing such devices, although time was when I could have done such work with these my own hands.”

Had it not been for the hint of chi-chi, the curious archaic turns of English, the goggles, and the insinuating manner of this old gargoyle, Sweeney scarcely would have recognized in this gaunt, bent figure the drug dealer of Haggat, in Africa. Had there been any gods to thank, Sweeney would have sent up the smoke of burnt offerings to them for sparing him from the Hamnegri prison into which the Archvicar had been flung a year ago; it had been a close call, that.

In his mind’s eye, Sweeney saw the two of them sitting, face to face like this, in the fusty back parlor of the Archvicar’s chemist’s shop down a dirty lane in the Armenian quarter of Haggat, the Archvicar prudently counting the big notes that Sweeney had delivered to him in exchange for those precious little parcels of a substance which no one else could procure for Apollinax. But it had been beastly hot in Haggat that evening, and it was ghastly chill in Balgrummo Lodging this evening.

It had been hotter still next day, when the Hamnegri security forces had caught Sweeney in his hotel and the Archvicar in his shop. They had detained Sweeney only a week, putting him to no especial pain, and then had expelled him from the country. They had kept the Archvicar for nearly a year, and had cracked his spine for him.

“How’d you manage to get out?” Sweeney inquired, glancing aside from the Archvicar’s impenetrable goggles.