Lord of the Hollow Dark (9 page)

“That sounds so long, long ago!”

“It was, my dear young lady. To what did those monks, and those pilgrims who came, pray in the Weem? Although medieval belief was collapsing throughout Europe; though even the arm-bone and finger-bones of Saint Andrew the Apostle at St. Andrew’s Cathedral no longer drew miracle-seekers-why, all the same the closemouthed monks of the Purgatory of Saint Nectan still welcomed pilgrims who went down into the living rock. One of the marks of a decadent age is superstition, Marina.”

“What did they hope for, Archvicar?”

He looked at Marina fixedly. “What Apollinax’s disciples and acolytes are seeking, I suppose: glimpses of another realm of being, prospects of their future state.” He flung the stump of his cheroot into the shrubbery. “When an orthodoxy decays, the old dark gods, the savage gods, win back their burnt offerings.” The Archvicar paused for some moments, as if brooding.

“Do we know what they actually saw down there?” Marina prompted.

“The prior instructed them not to wander far from the first large chamber of the Weem,” he resumed. “I gleaned something from a rare early pamphlet I encountered once. Some pilgrims found ‘sancts’ below. One visitor described the unspeakable tortures-unspeakable for us, that is, not for him-of lost souls in the abyss beyond the Weem itself. Another pilgrim lamented at length, and vividly, the advances of the tempters, and especially the temptresses, who had plagued him below stairs in the Purgatory. Several, it seems, were appalled by ‘rushing Styx,’ presumably a fierce underground river. Others were most moved by incredible sounds, the shrieking and wailing and pounding and chanting of the lost, condemned to dance forever and a day to devils’ tunes. One is reminded of the second book of
Paradise Lost
:

‘At length a universal hubbub wild

Of stunning sounds and voices all confus’d,

Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear

With loudest vehemence: thither he plies,

Undaunted to meet there whatever Pow’r

Or Spirit of the nethermost abyss

Might in that noise reside,...’”

Marina felt that she had turned pale, but the Archvicar did not appear to notice.

“It was rumored that some of the pilgrims did not ascend again,” he added, “rather like that brace of burglars twenty years ago. Oh, it was not quite the Bight of Benin, where ‘few come out though many go in,’ but the kith and kin of some pilgrims did not behold them after. One old man was said to have died of fright in the Weem, and a crippled veteran of the wars to have tumbled into a pit from which he could not be extricated. By the year 1500, the archbishop of St. Andrew’s, primate of Scotland, on urgent inquiry from the pope, had become uneasy enough to order that the Purgatory be destroyed. Whether or not much damage was wreaked within, certainly the broad stair was blocked up in that year.

“Did the place remain altogether sealed? Possibly not. At any rate, about the beginning of the Reformation in Scotland it was declared by Knox’s people that uncanny things were occurring at the Priory of St. Nectan. These rumors were used to justify the suppression of Saint Nectan’s cult, and a lay commendator was appointed for the Priory.

“This commendator of ecclesiastical property-not a very profitable holding, this, once the pilgrims ceased to come-was a hardfisted bonnet laird out of Carrick, good at need, reputed zealous in the Reformed cause. His father had been a tall man of low degree who in the troubles of the time had secured for himself, perhaps by violence, a Carrick farm called Balgrummo. This second Laird of Balgrummo, now master of the sinister Priory as well-John Inchburn was his name-soon drove out the few remaining monks and called his new holding Balgrummo Lodging. Mary of Guise unseated him and made a priest the commendator. But when Mary the Regent died besieged at Leith, John Inchburn of Balgrummo swaggered back into possession. ‘They shall take who have the power, and they shall keep who can.’ The place has been Balgrummo Lodging ever since.”

“It’s so confusing!”

“Like all Scots history, my dear-a long chronicle of ambition and feud, with little discernible pattern in it. The Second Laird did not long survive his triumph, so that the Carrick property and the Lodging passed to his son, David Inchburn, also a man of blood, who had ridden for a time with the Lords of the Congregation, and had fallen in and out of friendship with Kirkcaldy of Grange, Maitland of Lethington, and other mercurial worthies of the time. Like his grandfather and father, the Third Laird was good at need.”

“Was the Third Laird a Catholic or a Protestant?”

“David Inchburn of Balgrummo fought for his own hand. There was little money to be had out of either his property in the west or his property in the east, so he sought his fortune in the Continent, like many another Scots captain, and was said to have found it.

“The Third Laird returned to Scotland during the regency of the Earl of Morton. Inchburn’s old friendships with Grange and Lethington, Mary Stuart’s last champions, made him suspect to the Regent. Also rumor had it that the Third Laird had brought back from the Germanys a whole ship’s cargo of silver, and besides that a beautiful witch or succubus, and her father who could transmute base metals into precious.”

“I love stories about wizards and witches!” Marina said. “So long as they don’t come true, Marina?” Madame Sesostris asked softly.

“Don’t disquiet the girl, Grizel. Well, Morton, the wickedest man of a wicked time in Scotland, had clever ways of ridding himself of enemies by bringing them to trial for witchcraft-and enriching himself in the process. He denounced Inchburn of Balgrummo, and the same day rode out of Edinburgh with a strong force, to take the Third Laird in his sins at the Lodging.”

The Archvicar rose to stretch himself. Madame had fallen asleep on her bench, but the Sicilian girl was watching the Archvicar almost as if she could understand. “I must be boring you with these legends of old bones.”

“Oh, no, Archvicar; please tell me the rest!”

“Very well; there’s time enough before lunch.” He sat down again. “The Earl of Morton was after Inchburn’s supposed silver, meaning to take it all as he had taken other men’s. But a principal pretext was the accusation against the Laird of Balgrummo that ‘beneath hys lodging lies ane low sellair whar Inchburn doth keep and cherish ane monstrous Head of ane soldyer Monk frae auld lang syne wha he and hys company do worshipp.’”

“Mightn’t the Laird and his lady and her father have been venerating the skull of Saint Nectan, and nothing more than that?” Marina asked.

“Possibly; but by 1578, even the veneration of relics was criminal in Scotland. Moreover, the lady’s father had died a few days before Morton’s march on the Lodging, and it was charged that he had perished in an occult experiment. Unquestionably the Third Laird, assisted by his Bohemian alchemist, had contrived to open a way into the old Purgatory. When the Third Laird entered that dread place-why, did he find lost and dead pilgrims in the depths? And what else may he have found? Did some power draw him down, so to speak?”

Despite her dread, Marina could not stop herself from asking, “You said that the Third Laird, the one you called the Warlock, died
under
the house. How was that?”

“The fight itself was interesting, but I must spare you most of the details, my dear Marina. You can find little about the whole affair in the standard histories, Lang’s included, for Morton had plundered and destroyed grander folk than the Inchburns of Balgrummo. David Inchburn had done high deeds in the Germanys, but in his own house he was unprepared for this sudden assault, from front and back at once. Some of Morton’s men came down from the den head, as I mentioned, and the Laird’s people were too few to hold the Lodging-which, after all, had been a priory, not a castle-against a better-armed and bigger force headed by the Regent himself, storming both entrances.

“For all that, the resistance must have been far sharper than Morton had expected. Balgrummo had at the Lodging a few companions from the wars, and below stairs somewhere a considerable body of miners-Scots miners and salters were serfs then and for long later-who came swarming out of the depths like so many ghostly Picts, swinging mattocks in the Laird’s cause. There seems to have been a desperate defense. A long timbered gallery ran along the front then, and Balgrummo’s veterans fired from it, but the Regent’s soldiers had more guns. The woman from Bohemia-wife, mistress, or succubus-was struck by a bullet from an arquebus. At that, the Laird and most of the men left to him, carrying the lady, fled down into the Weem.

“When Morton’s men tried to follow them into the abyss-one gathers that the victors had difficulty in finding the way down-Inchburn lit a train of powder that destroyed the entrance, brought down much of the vaulting and masses of the native rock, and entombed himself, the woman, and his men. They never emerged.”

Marina stared wide-eyed at the Archvicar. “They’re still down below? That man and that woman I saw in the painting?”

“Bones lie under cellars in many old houses, Marina. Their bones may be in the Weem still, if the Purgatory still exists down there. And who knows what else might be found in those caves or halls?” The Archvicar touched a match to another cheroot. “The Laird’s silver, if ever it existed, was not discovered in the Lodging. Morton raged, but the very approach to the underground chambers was so blocked, and so dangerous to tamper with lest the whole Lodging fall in upon it, that he could not mine to seek out his enemy and his enemy’s treasure. Besides, Morton’s own men looked blackly mutinous on being told that they must crawl down into the dark Weem to fight with desperate warlocks and confront long-dead ‘sancts.’

“All that Morton could carry off from Balgrummo Lodging was it plenishings, among them the painting you saw in the gallery-his souvenir of the two he had thrust under the hill. He could not bring the fleshly Warlock Laird to the stake on the Castle Hill, nor exhibit the Bohemian succubus stripped of her finery and subjected to torment. His men had put to the sword the Balgrummo miners and fighting men who had not been able to reach the Weem, so Morton took back with him to Edinburgh no prisoners at all. Pity the Regent in his chagrin. Did the Laird laugh down below?”

“I don’t pity the Regent in the least,” Marina began, all pale from the Archvicar’s story, and tears on her cheeks. “Talk of devils...”

“Ah, but Morton was paid out,” the Archvicar interrupted her. “He fell from power a few days later. John Knox had preached against him, and—”

But then the Sicilian girl thrust the baby upon Marina and cried out something, urgently, to the old man, pointing toward the place where the den wall lay nearest to them. All looked toward the cliff.

On its face, only a few hundred yards distant, the unknown hill-walker had appeared, trying to descend without ropes. He was nearly halfway down, but seemed trapped there. His left foot sought in vain for some projection of rock a trifle lower.

“By God, bide where you are, my man!” the Archvicar roared, once more in his chilling voice of command. Out of the corner of her eye, Marina saw the shock-headed acolyte from the stables running across the little bridge in the direction of that cliff face.

Then occurred the most astonishing event of this crowded morning. Shooting up like a coiled spring, the Archvicar flung off his coat and went leaping and dashing, with incredible agility and speed, toward the cliff—springing over boulders, bursting through shrubbery, more like a predatory animal than an old man. The Sicilian pomegranate, feline again as she had been last night, kicked off her shoes and went flying after him. The two of them vanished within the tangle of the overgrown Den.

And the man trapped on the den wall, losing his grip, fell straight to the foot of the cliff, far below.

Sweeney trotted over the bridge across the Fettinch Water, panting as he ascended the Den toward its northern wall. One of the acolyte-girls, Doris, had heard a commotion in the policies at the back of the Lodging, and had run to tell Grishkin; treating him like an errand boy, Grishkin had interrupted his lunch and sent him scurrying to settle the matter. He’d make that well-endowed Grishkin dance if ever he got the chance.

From the kitchen, Doris had pointed out the direction of the disturbance. Sweeney could hear voices. Right at the foot of a cliff, he came upon a curious tableau.

A big man, blood-streaked, lay on the ground, his eyes closed, his ripped rucksack a few feet distant from him. This man wore a threadbare kilt and a shabby tweed jacket. He seemed to have fallen straight from the sky.

Bending over him, as if to try to force him to sit up, was Pereira, one of the acolyte-boys. The Archvicar, stick in hand, was shouting at Pereira, and that Sicilian maid stood flushed, panting, and barefoot beside her master. Madame Sesostris and Marina, with her baby, were a little beyond the fallen man.

“What in hell...” Sweeney gasped. At that moment the fallen man opened his eyes.

“Get up! Come on, damn you, get up!” Pereira was saying to the stranger. The fallen man tried to speak. Pereira pulled a pistol from his jacket and prodded the stranger in the ribs, and at that Marina screamed.

He prodded the stranger only once. With astonishing deftness, the Archvicar swung his heavy stick and brought it down with a crack upon Pereira’s wrist. Crying out, the boy dropped the revolver, and tried to rise from his stooping position. The Archvicar struck again, forcefully, upon Pereira’s head, and the acolyte tumbled in a heap and lay still.

Sweeney reached hesitantly for the revolver in the heather, but the Sicilian girl, darting as a cat, was before him. Snatching up the gun, she handed it to the Archvicar.

“Thank you,” a faint voice said. The stranger had contrived to sit up, and was feeling his bare legs below his kilt as if to learn whether they were broken. He wore heavy battered brogues on his feet, and a
sgean-dhu’s
hilt protruded from one of his stockings. A sporran hung about his waist. He was tanned and muscular.

What Sweeney wanted was the weapon. “Let me have that,” he told the Archvicar, hoping that he sounded firm. “Somebody took my own gun.” He meant to make his way out of this bedlam today, if he possibly could, and he might need the gun at the pend. He stretched out his hand to receive the pistol.