Black Easter Page 5

  ‘Now you can see something of what I meant by requisite skills,’ Ware said. ‘Of course I blow much of my own glassware, but any ordinary chemist does that. But should I need a new sword, for instance’ – he pointed towards the electric furnace – ‘I’d have to forge it myself. I couldn’t just pick one up at a costume shop. I’d have to do a good job of it, too. As a modern writer says somewhere, the only really serviceable symbol for a sharp sword is a sharp sword.’

  ‘Uhm,’ Hess said, continuing to look around. Against the left wall, opposite the lectern, was a long heavy table, bearing a neat ranking of objects ranging in length from six inches to about three feet, all closely wrapped in red silk. The wrappers had writing on them, but again Hess could not decipher it. Beside the table, affixed to the wall, was a flat sword cabinet. A few stools completed the furnishings; evidently Ware seldom worked sitting down. The floor was parquetted, and towards the centre of the room still bore traces of marks in coloured chalks, considerably scuffed, which brought from Ware a grunt of annoyance.

  ‘The wrapped instruments are all prepared and I’d rather not expose them,’ the magician said, walking towards the sword rack, ‘but of course I keep a set of spares and I can show you those.’

  He opened the cabinet door, revealing a set of blades hung in order of size. There were thirteen of them. Some were obviously swords; others looked more like shoemaker’s tools.

  ‘The order in which you make these is important, too,’ Ware said, ‘because, as you can see, most of them have writing on them, and it makes a difference what instrument does the writing. Hence I began with the uninscribed instrument, this one, the bolline or sickle, which is also one of the most often used. Rituals differ, but the one I use requires starting with a piece of unused steel. It’s fired three times, and then quenched in a mixture of magpie’s blood and the juice of a herb called foirole.’

  ‘The Grimorium Verum says mole’s blood and pimpernel juice,’ Hess observed.

  ‘Ah, good, you’ve been doing some reading. I’ve tried that, and it just doesn’t seem to give quite as good an edge.’

  ‘I should think you could get a still better edge by finding out what specific compounds were essential and using those,’ Hess said. ‘You’ll remember that Damascus steel used to be tempered by plunging the sword into the body of a slave. It worked, but modern quenching baths are a lot better – and in your case you wouldn’t have to be constantly having to trap elusive animals in large numbers.’

  ‘The analogy is incomplete,’ Ware said. ‘It would hold if tempering were the only end in view, or if the operation were only another observance of Paracelsus’ rule, Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest – doing for yourself what you can’t trust others to do. Both are practical ends that I might satisfy in some quite different way. But in magic the blood sacrifice has an additional function – what we might call the tempering of, not just the steel, but also the operator.’

  ‘I see. And I suppose it has some symbolic functions, too.’

  ‘In goëtic art, everything does. In the same way, as you probably also know from your reading, the forging and quenching is to be done on a Wednesday in either the first or the eighth of the day hours, or the third or the tenth of the night hours, under a full Moon. There is again an immediate practical interest being served here – for I assure you that the planetary hours do indeed affect affairs on Earth – but also a psychological one, the obedience of the operator in every step. The grimoires and other handbooks are at best so confused and contradictory that it’s never possible to know completely what steps are essential and what aren’t, and research into the subject seldom makes for a long life.’

  ‘All right,’ Hess said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, the horn handle has next to be shaped and fitted, again in a particular way at a particular hour, and then perfected at still another day and hour. By the way, you mentioned a different steeping bath. If you use that ritual, the days and the hours are also different, and again the question is, what’s essential and what isn’t? Thereafter, there’s a conjuration to be recited, plus three salutations and a warding spell. Then the instrument is sprinkled, wrapped and fumigated – not in the modern sense, I mean it’s perfumed – and is ready to use. After it’s used, it has to be exorcised and rededicated, and that’s the difference between the wrapped tools on the table and those hanging here in the rack.

  ‘I won’t go into detail about the preparation of the other instruments. The next one I make is the pen of the Art, followed by the inkpots and the inks, for obvious reasons – and, for the same reasons, the burin or graver. The pens are on my desk. This fitted needle here is the burin. The rest, going down the line as they hang here rather than in order of manufacture, are the white-handled knife, which like the bolline is nearly an all-purpose tool … the black-handled knife, used almost solely for inscribing the circle … the stylet, chiefly for preparing the wooden knives used in tanning … the wand or blasting rod, which describes itself … the lancet, again self-descriptive … the staff, a restraining instrument analogous to a shepherd’s … and lastly the four swords, one for the master, the other three for his assistants, if any.’

  With a side-glance at Ware for permission, Hess leaned forward to inspect the writings on the graven instruments. Some of them were easy enough to make out: on the sword of the master, for instance, the word MICHAEL appeared on the pommel, and on the blade, running from point to hilt, ELOHIM GIBOR. On the other hand, on the handle of the white-handled knife was engraved the following:

  Hess pointed to this, and to a different but equally baffling inscription that was duplicated on the handles of the stylet and the lancet. ‘What do those mean?’

  ‘Mean? They can hardly be said to mean anything any more. They’re greatly degenerate Hebrew characters, orignally comprising various Divine Names. I could tell you what the Names were once, but the characters have no content any more – they just have to be there,’

  ‘Superstition,’ Hess said, recalling his earlier conversation with Baines, interpreting Ware’s remark about Christmas.

  ‘Precisely, in the pure sense. The process is as fundamental to the Art as evolution is to biology. Now if you’ll step this way, I’ll show you some other aspects that may interest you.’

  He led the way diagonally across the room to the chemist’s bench, pausing to rub irritatedly at the chalk marks with the sole of his slipper. ‘I suppose a modern translation of that aphorism of Paracelsus,’ he said, ‘would be “You just can’t get good servants any more.” Not to ply mops, anyhow. … Now, most of these reagents will be familiar to you, but some of them are special to the Art. This, for instance, is exorcised water, which as you see I need in great quantities. It has to be river water to start with. The quicklime is for tanning. Some laymen, de Camp for instance, will tell you that “virgin parchment” simply means parchment that’s never been written on before, but that’s not so – all the grimoires insist that it must be the skin of a male animal that has never engendered, and the Clavicula Salomonis sometimes insists upon unborn parchment, or the caul of a newborn child. For tanning I also have to grind my own salt, after the usual rites are said over it. The candles I use have to be made of the first wax taken from a new hive, and so do my almadels. If I need images, I have to make them of earth dug up with my bare hands and reduced to a paste without any tool. And so on.

  ‘I’ve mentioned aspersion and fumigation, in other words sprinkling and perfuming. Sprinkling has to be done with an aspergillum, a bundle of herbs like a fagot or bouquet garni. The herbs differ from rite to rite and you can see I’ve got a fair selection here – mint, marjoram, rosemary, vervain, periwinkle, sage, valerian, ash, basil, hyssop. In fumigation the most commonly used scents are aloes, incense, mace, benzoin, storax. Also, it’s sometimes necessary to make a stench – for instance in the fumigation of a caul – and I’ve got quite a repertoire of those.’

  Ware turned away abruptly, nearly treading on Hess’s toes, an
d strode towards the exit. Hess had no choice but to follow him.

  ‘Everything involves special preparation,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘even including the firewood if I want to make ink for pacts. But there’s no point in my cataloguing things further, since I’m sure you thoroughly understand the principles.’

  Hess scurried after, but he was still several paces behind the magician when the window drapes swished closed and the red gloom was reinstated. Ware stopped and waited for him, and the moment he was through the door, closed it and went back to his seat behind the big desk. Hess, puzzled, walked around the desk and took one of the Florentine chairs reserved for guests or clients.

  ‘Most illuminating,’ he said politely. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Ware rested his elbows on the desk and put his fingertips over his mouth, looking down thoughtfully. There was a sprinkle of perspiration over his brow and shaven head, and he seemed more than usually pale; also, Hess noticed after a moment, he seemed to be trying without major effort, to control his breathing. Hess watched curiously, wondering what could have upset him. After only a moment, however, Ware looked up at him and volunteered the explanation, with an easy half smile.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘From apprenticeship on, we’re trained to secrecy. I’m perfectly convinced that it’s unnecessary these days, and has been since the Inquisition died, but old oaths are the hardest to reason away. No discourtesy intended.’

  ‘No offence taken,’ Hess assured him. ‘However, if you’d rather rest …’

  ‘No, I’ll have ample rest in the next three days, and be incommunicado, too, preparing for Dr Baines’s commission. So if you’ve further questions, now’s the time for them.’

  ‘Well … I have no further technical questions, for the moment. But I am curious about a question Baines asked you during your first meeting – I needn’t pretend, I’m sure, that I haven’t heard the tape. I wonder, just as he did, what your motivation is. I can see from what you’ve shown me, and from everything you’ve said, that you’ve taken colossal amounts of trouble to perfect yourself in your Art, and that you believe in it. So it doesn’t matter for the present whether or not I believe in it, only whether or not I believe in you. And your laboratory isn’t a sham, it isn’t there solely for extortion’s sake, it’s a place where a dedicated man works at something he thinks important. I confess I came to scoff – and to expose you, if I could – and I still can’t credit that any of what you do works, or ever did work. But I accept that you so believe.’

  Ware gave him a half nod. Thank you; go on.’

  ‘I’ve no further to go but the fundamental question. You don’t really need money, you don’t seem to collect art or women, you’re not out to be President of the World or the power behind some such person – and yet by your lights you have damned yourself eternally to make yourself expert in this highly peculiar subject. What on earth for?’

  ‘I could easily duck that question.’ Ware said slowly.’ I could point out, for instance, that under certain circumstances I could prolong my life to seven hundred years, and so might not be worrying just yet about what might happen to me in the next world. Or I could point out what you already know from the texts, that every magician hopes to cheat Hell in the end – and as several did who are now nicely ensconced on the calendar as authentic saints.

  ‘But the real fact of the matter, Dr Hess, is that I think what I’m after is worth the risk, and what I’m after is something you understand perfectly, and for which you’ve sold your own soul, or if you prefer an only slightly less loaded word, your integrity, to Dr Baines – knowledge.’

  ‘Uhmn. Surely there must be easier ways –’

  ‘You don’t believe that. You think there may be more reliable ways, such as scientific method, but you don’t think they’re any easier. I myself have the utmost respect for scientific method, but I know that it doesn’t offer me the kind of knowledge I’m looking for – which is also knowledge about the makeup of the universe and how it is run, but not a kind that any exact science can provide me with, because the sciences don’t accept that some of the forces of nature are Persons. Well, but some of them are. And without dealing with those Persons I shall never know any of the things I want to know.

  This kind of research is just as expensive as underwriting a gigantic particle accelerator, Dr Hess, and obviously I’ll never get any government to underwrite it. But people like Dr Baines can, if I can find enough of them – just as they underwrite you.

  ‘Eventually, I may have to pay for what I’ve learned with a jewel no amount of money could buy. Unlike MacBeth, I know one can’t “skip the life to come.” But even if it does come to that, Dr Hess – and probably it will – I’ll take my knowledge with me, and it will have been worth the price.

  ‘In other words – just as you suspected – I’m a fanatic.’

  To his own dawning astonishment, Hess said slowly:

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course … so am I.’

  Father Domenico lay in his strange bed on his back, staring sleeplessly up at the pink stucco ceiling. Tonight was the night he had come for. Ware’s three days of fasting, lustration and prayer – surely a blasphemous burlesque of such observances as the Church knew them, in intent if not in content – were over, and he had pronounced himself ready to act.

  Apparently he still intended to allow Baines and his two repulsive henchmen to observe the conjuration, but if he had ever had any intention of including Father Domenico in the ceremony, he had thought better of it. That was frustrating, as well as a great relief; but in his place, Father Domenico would have done the same thing.

  Yet even here, excluded from the scene and surrounded by every protection he had been able to muster, Father Domenico could feel the preliminary oppression, like the dead weather before an earthquake. There was always a similar hush and tension in the air just before the invocation of one of the Celestial Powers, but with none of these overtones of maleficence and disaster … or would someone ignorant of what was actually proposed be able to tell the difference? That was a disquieting thought in itself, but one that could practically be left to Bishop Berkeley and the Logical Positivists. Father Domenico knew what was going on – a ritual of supernatural murder; and could not help but tremble in his bed.

  Somewhere in the palazzo there was the silvery sound of a small clock striking, distant and sweet. The time was now 10:00 p.m., the fourth hour of Saturn on the day of Saturn, the hour most suitable – as even the blameless and pitiable Peter de Abano had written – for experiments of hatred, enmity and discord; and Father Domenico, under the Covenant, was forbidden even to pray for failure.

  The clock, that two-handed engine that stands behind the Door, struck, and struck no more, and Ware drew the brocaded hangings aside.

  Up to now, Baines despite himself, had felt a little foolish in the girdled white-linen garment Ware had insisted upon, but he cheered up upon seeing Jack Ginsberg and Dr Hess in the same vestments. As for Ware, he was either comical or terrible, depending upon what view one took of the proceedings, in his white Levite surcoat with red-silk embroidery on the breast, his white leather shoes lettered in cinnabar, and his paper crown bearing the word EL. He was girdled with a belt about three inches wide, which seemed to have been made from the skin of some hairy, lion-coloured animal. Into the girdle was thrust a red-wrapped, sceptre-like object, which Baines identified tentatively from a prior description of Hess’s as the wand of power.

  ‘And now we must vest ourselves,’ Ware said, almost in a whisper. ‘Dr Baines, on the desk you will find three garments. Take one, and then another, and another. Give two to Dr Hess and Mr Ginsberg. Don the other yourself.’

  Baines picked up the huddle of cloth. It turned out to be an alb.

  ‘Take up your vestments and lift them in your hands above your heads. At the amen, let them fall. Now:

  ‘ANTON, AMATOR, EMITES. THEODONIEL, PONCOR, PAGOR. ANITOR, by the virtue of these most holy angelic names do
I clothe myself, Lord of Lords, in my Vestments of Power, that so I may fulfil, even unto their term, all things which I desire to effect through Thee, IDEODANIACH, PAMOR. PLAIOR. Lord of Lords, Whose kingdom and rule endureth forever and ever. Amen.’

  The garments rustled down, and Ware opened the door.

  The room beyond was only vaguely lit with yellow candlelight, and at first bore almost no resemblance to the chamber Dr Hess had described to Baines. As his eyes accommodated, however, Baines was gradually able to see that it was the same room, its margins now indistinct and its furniture slightly differently ordered: only the lectern and the candlesticks – there were now four of them, not two – were moved out from the walls and hence more or less visible.

  But it was still confusing, a welter of flickering shadows and slightly sickening perfume, most unlike the blueprint of the room that Baines had erected in his mind from Hess’s drawing. The thing that dominated the real room itself was also a drawing, not any piece of furniture or detail of architecture: a vast double circle on the floor in what appeared to be whitewash. Between the concentric circles were written innumerable words, or what might have been words, in characters which might have been Hebrew, Greek, Etruscan or even Elvish for all Baines could tell. Some few were in Roman lettering, but they, too, were names he could not recognize; and around the outside of the outer circle were written astrological signs in their zodiacal order, but with Saturn to the north.

  At the very centre of this figure was a ruled square about two feet on a side, from each corner of which proceeded chalked, conventionalized crosses, which did not look in the least Christian. Proceeding from each of these, but not connected to them, were four six-pointed stars, verging on the innermost circle. The stars at the east, west and south each had a Tau scrawled at their centres; presumably the Saturnmost did too, but if so it could not be seen, for the heart of that emplacement was hidden by what seemed to be a fat puddle of stippled fur.