Lord of the Hollow Dark (36 page)

No one had interrupted him; no one spoke now. Fresca had been getting Marina into her bridal gown, hurriedly. They went back into the Muniment Room, with its shutters and draperies closed against the yellow fog outside. Marina put Michael-there was a tiny white robe for him, too, a sardonic gift-upon the carpet, and knelt, Fresca kneeling beside her. They all went down upon their knees, even Sweeney.

This
was a Timeless Moment. No sound came except a subdued mumbling of prayers by Madame and Fresca, who moved her rosary beads rapidly through her fingers. Marina understood at last what was meant by “grace in death.” This moment of appeal, Marina knew, would be hers forever. Perhaps it was worth the price which might be paid. She did not care how many minutes passed, minutes meaning nothing now; all six of them in this room prayed, in this shadowy place, to the Light. Marina understood prayer now; it had been only a form before. She prayed for resignation. Who had written that it is almost true that we should pray not for especial things, but only “Thy will, not mine, be done?” Then she lost herself in prayer altogether, beyond thought.

The door swung open. Grishkin was there, pitiless,
la belle dame sans merci,
mocking piety in the scarlet robe that clung to her curving body, looking as Simon Magus’ Helena must have looked, thinking herself the First Conception. Into the Muniment Room poured much sound, a penitential chant in barbarous Latin, from the throats of the disciples and acolytes awaiting them:
Tunc acceptabis sacrificium justiiae, oblationes, et holocausta: tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos.

Marina had known that psalm well once, in dear dead days, when she was little and Latin had not been cast out of the Church; then she had known it in the cloister, until it had ceased in Latin there, too. What was the English? “Then shalt Thou accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations, and whole burnt offerings: then shall they lay calves upon Thine altar.”

So beautiful, once, so Hebraic, so adoring! Apollinax had not altered the words of this verse. He had not needed to: for all that had been required was to invert the significance. It had been made a hymn to the Lord of This World, and justice was being sacrificed, and she and Michael were the burnt offerings.

“Get up!” said Grishkin.

Sweeney walked barefoot with all the others, up the grand central staircase toward the chapel. An armed acolyte marched on either side of him: one was Sam, who had banged his foot at the pend; the other, Pereira, whose face he had punched only this morning. The two of them were chanting unmelodiously.

They were chanting in English now, an inversion of one of the penitential psalms:

“With bit and bridle bind fast their jaws:

    who come not near unto Thee.

“Many are the scourges of the righteous;

    but mercy shall encompass him that sinneth in the Lord.

“Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye unjust:

    and be joyful, all ye that are corrupt of heart.”

Sweeney being no pillar of the Church, nor even a flying buttress, this blasphemy did not especially vex him. What did send shivers up his spine were the inflamed eyes, the swollen faces, the jerky movements of all the disciples and acolytes in this procession. Grishkin, who brought up the rear, seemed only her usual Coppelia self. But all the rest, excepting only his own five friends and the Master, had taken such doses of
kalanzi
as no human constitution could endure. He knew how that powder worked—unlike any other hallucinogen—and he could tell from these faces that the disciples and the acolytes were not long for this world.

For the first three or four hours,
kalanzi
in this concentration, and taken in a certain manner, would send whoever took it into a delirium of euphoria and fancied strength. The victims would be dangerous during that period, wild with arrogance, fearless, fierce, shorn of all doubts and scruples. At Haggat, Gerontion had experimented on beggars, and five of those who had taken such concentrated doses had died within twenty-four hours: Sweeney had seen the report. For after the initial invigorating effect of
kalanzi,
degeneration was swift. The brain and the cardiovascular system would be catastrophically affected, promptly. Coma ordinarily followed in not more than six hours; and then, with few exceptions, death. Apollinax, heading this procession, knew that. This was the Timeless Moment of disciples and acolytes. For one of the few occasions of his life, Sweeney felt pity. Hoo-ha!

Apollinax had more disciples and acolytes where these had come from. The enormity of this betrayal staggered even Sweeney, who had not often walked in paths of righteousness. And they didn’t know, these victims, they couldn’t know! Over Sweeney swept a still vaster dread of Apollinax.

But away with this moralizing! Now was the time to look out for Number One. At any moment, one of these acolyte-boys might take it into his “expanded” mind to fire a pistol or a shotgun into an infidel such as Sweeney. He did wish he hadn’t punched Pereira; happily that doomed young man was intent, for the moment, upon his penitential chanting.

Sweeney cannily counted the acolyte-boys. All eight were in this procession, which meant that the gate at the pend would be unguarded, though doubtless locked. He might find a ladder and clamber over the dyke! That was a hell of a lot better prospect than the Archvicar’s nutty scheme, if only he could slip through the Lodging before they all were thrust into the Weem. It would have to be sly, for one mustn’t provoke these trigger-happy acolytes. Pray for luck, Sweeney! Oh, he didn’t mean to desert his friends, not Sweeney Regenerate: he’d get to the constables at the housing-scheme in nothing flat, even if he had to run there barefoot. Dreams of glory suffused his fancy, even in this dreadful pickle. He’d be back with armored cars, in the nick of time, and Marina would hug him gratefully, and...

Yes, Marina. There she was in the midst of the procession, Dusty and Doris on either side of her, gripping her arms. What a blonde peach, in that Edwardian wedding gown! Oh, it’s wedding bells for you and the peach, Sweeney, my boy. Arcane, the Archvicar, has all the money in the world except seven cents: he’ll set them up. They won’t call you Apeneck after this, you young hero.

Yet acolytes to the right of him, acolytes to the left of him, acolytes in front of him-at his rear, too-might volley and thunder. Play it cool, Sweeney, kid. Here we go into the chapel, with walking dead boys on either side of you. Wait your chance, Sweeney.

The chapel looked as if a tornado had struck it. Chairs were overturned and broken, candelabra lay on the dirty floor, and the stench of dry rot was sickening. Half the wainscoting on one wall had been burnt or scorched; the draperies were missing or in tatters, and several of the windows smashed; dead birds lay beneath those windows. Up in the ceiling was set a scary round painting, Saul and the Witch of Endor and Samuel’s ghost, the Witch reaching out as if to snatch at everybody below.

This chapel would have held three or four times the number here tonight. Enough chairs had been set up toward the altar to accommodate the thirty members of this crazy congregation. Even with all of this
kalanzi
in circulation, some order was preserved by the Master and Grishkin: the disciples and acolytes stumbled to their seats, and Sweeney found that Sam and Pereira had enough sense left to force him into a chair between theirs.

Apollinax was at the lectern. He wore a purple gown, and on his head a soft purple cap, with a sixteenth-century look to it. Apollinax was wasting no time: Sweeney had been told by the Archvicar that the Timeless Moment would be attained at midnight, and there were these two ‘services,’ above stairs and below stairs, to get through.

“In the name of the Lord of This World,” Apollinax proclaimed loudly, “this Ash Wednesday night we do praise all sinners!” All the disciples and acolytes, and Grishkin, and even the Archvicar, crossed themselves in a peculiar way. Or was it a sign of the cross? Might it have been some other gesture?

“My brothers and my sisters,” Apollinax was saying, “it is thought seemly on this day for creatures of the flesh to remind themselves of the unworthiness of the body, and the supremacy of the spirit, by marking their foreheads with ashes; for all flesh is grass. We mark ourselves this night with the ashes of the monks who dwelt here long ago, taken from their ancient burial ground high up the Den. In their time at this place, those monks may have sought in the Weem beneath us what all of you seek there now: emancipation from the tyranny of Time.

“We have in our company a learned priest known to you all, Archvicar Gerontion, who will minister unto us in this rite.”

The Archvicar stood behind the marble altar rail. Apollinax raised both hands high, and disciples and acolytes burst fervently into another penitential psalm.

Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum:

Et in peccatis conceptit me mater mea.

Sweeney, summoning up the Latin he had learnt for his course work in archaeology, put this into the vernacular: “For behold, I was conceived in iniquities: and in sins did my mother conceive me.” The mob chanted this not in sorrow but in exultation; and for once these bastards were uttering the truth, Sweeney reflected.

The chanting ceased. At the altar rail, the pseudo-Archvicar held a silver vessel full of some earthy substance. “Come forward, all justified sinners, and be marked with the mark of Cain!” he shouted.

Up they came, slipping and staggering, some of them; and they brought with them his five friends, and even baby Michael, to have their foreheads marked. Sweeney was prodded forward by Pereira: he hastened to comply. Up they went, the Cammel hag, Bleistein, the von Kulp woman, Hakagawa, Silvero, de Bailhache, vicious Volupine, Eugenides, the Channing-Cheetah female horror, the Tornquist witch, the ratty professor, the old Equitone mumbler.

They all were dead, in effect, but they didn’t know it yet. Oh, they’d be out of time, all right, give them three or four hours for the
kalanzi
to send them into coma. Sweeney was looking at ghosts, walking, chanting, breathing ghosts. The terror of this procession struck him again, so that he almost forgot Pereira behind him and Sam in front of him.

“Remember, O creature, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return, unless thou becomest pure spirit,” the Archvicar was intoning as he marked a Saint Andrew’s cross on the forehead of each disciple. Some moaned, some giggled, some snorted.

Now the acolyte-girls came forward to receive their dust, sandwiching between them Marina and Madame Sesostris and Fresca with the baby. Pale Marina shuddered visibly as the mold was touched gently to her forehead by the Archvicar. Fresca paused and look long into the Archvicar’s face. The baby, on being daubed with the graveyard stuff, burst into sobs. Madame tottered to the rail as if about to expire on the spot. Rachel, one of the acolyte-girls, brutally shoved her on; Lil, the youngest acolyte-girl, nearly fell as she received her mold, so the
kalanzi
powder must be working swiftly in her. Sweeney could see why Apollinax must get this show over by midnight.

Now for the devil-boys and their prisoners: first Albert, then little Phlebas, then Sam, now Sweeney himself. “Be a man, Sweeney,” the Archvicar breathed, barely moving his lips; Sweeney nodded as his forehead was smeared. Pereira swaggered behind them, then Klip, Alfred, Krum, Arthur, Snow, hellions all.

Grishkin swept up to the altar rail. Marking her forehead, the Archvicar said something to her softly, almost entreating: she glared at him. Last there approached the Master himself, compact with power: the Archvicar ceremoniously drew the St. Andrew’s cross on that high forehead, bowed, and withdrew.

Apollinax went up into the high baroque pulpit, In that ill-lit desecrated chapel, his eyes were like torches. A seven-branched candelabrum was set on either wing of the huge pulpit, and all the candles were alight.

“Brothers and sisters,” Apollinax cried, “chosen ones, soon will you know the timeless state, first of all of those who shall receive it from me. Here above ground, we still make some faint obeisance to the Law, if in mockery only. It shall be otherwise below. Therefore am I brief here.

“Know this: you must go naked to the naked Lord of the World. For you to rise above the dust that is marked upon your foreheads, you must strip away all that is flesh from the spirit; you must discard the husk, expose the essence. Strip away clothing from flesh, strip away flesh from bone, strip away bone from soul, strip away soul from spirit! Then, pure spirit, shall each of you be wedded to a spiritual bridegroom, an eternal pure spirit, an angel of the Lord of This World.

“What fools have condemned, we praise this Ash Wednesday night. What the Law has forbidden, we embrace this Ash Wednesday night. What none dared do before, this Ash Wednesday night we begin to do for all eternity.

“There was a craven, dwelling in this house, for whom a splendid picture was bought: but when he looked upon the picture, a dread of the Law fell upon him, and he rent his wise brother and his wise sister limb from limb. None has seen that picture since, but this Ash Wednesday night we shall behold it.

“What you shall see represented in the picture, that shall we do in the darkness beneath this house. We shall do these acts, and you shall rejoice in them, timelessly, knowing that perfect sin brings rich rewards of pleasure, even when this phantom world has passed away. If any one among you reject this picture, then let him be anathema, unworthy of the Timeless Moment. Let the veil be rent!”

Behind the altar, curtains of some heavy, rich cloth extended all across the reredos. These draperies were joined at the middle, where they met, by heavy metal clasps, and on each clasp was a tiny padlock. But already the padlocks had been opened, dangling on their clasps.

The acolytes Krum and Snow came forward; one took hold of the right-hand curtain, the other of the left-hand curtain; and they ran, clutching the draperies, in opposite directions. The rotting cloth tore loose and fell to the floor in great swathes. That picture was revealed altogether.