Orpheus on the Underground and Other Stories, page 4
And he treated me to the demented spectacle of him parading around the chamber on two stout poles, wrapping a long cloak around himself as he went so that the woodenness of his legs was concealed and he appeared a man of average height.
The other gargoyles capered in his wake, a nightmare vision indeed!
I sat on the floor and recovered my breath, my head pounding, my bones and flesh denser than before, my shadow horribly mutilated in the firelight.
A distant rumble quite unlike thunder shook the castle, but the gargoyles were too besotted with their dreadful parade to notice. As the stilted dwarf came near me again I snarled at him:
‘Your poor fool! You have chosen the wrong victim this time! Did you really take me for an ordinary man, a simple human traveller?’
He stopped abruptly and the line of inelegant gargoyles tripped over each other and sprawled like stunned insects, grossly magnified. ‘You are not?’ he hissed, keeping his balance atop his stilts by delicately shifting his artificial hooves back and forth. The rumbling outside grew louder; the logs on the grate jumped and scattered sparks.
‘I am a fugitive!’ I yelled. ‘On no honest business did I enter this forest. I am fleeing from one who pursues me. He is coming now to reclaim me . . .’
‘What was your crime?’ whispered Demetrios, his face pale.
I snorted in contempt. ‘Do you suppose there is only one Castle Gargoyle in this menacing world of ours? Wilton is an alias. I was already a gargoyle before you turned me into one. In my unhappy life I have now been shrunk twice!’
‘Twice?’ He shuddered and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. ‘But this means you were originally a giant and that—’ His voice became a mumble.
I nodded and folded my arms across my chest.
(viii)
I lack sufficient ability in the art of literature to convincingly describe for the reader’s edification how the roof of an eccentric castle can be pulled off by two enormous gauntleted hands and a vast head in a plumed helmet peer into the exposed chamber at the suddenly revealed occupants, and how huge eyes partly obscured by clots of a strange mist could select the tallest figure inside as the one it was seeking.
Baron Demetrios Gibbon was snatched up by a mailed fist before he had any opportunity to flee. I remain here in his place, waiting for a traveller who never arrives, for the vapours are as easily deluded as the giant and assume I am the rightful owner of the castle. They will not let me venture beyond the clearing. And so I will seal this document in a box and conceal it in a cupboard under the spiral staircase that is a living tree.
THE DESPICABLE BUNGLING OF YORICK PORRIDGE
THE STORM TOPPLED an oak which knocked down the back wall of my house. Although the thunder and lightning and rain had abated somewhat, I was still in an unhappy situation. Fierce gusts howled through the rent and swirled my papers into the air, knocked books off shelves, overturned chairs, broke open my wardrobe door and liberated the shirts inside so that they flew around the house like well-dressed but hysterical ghosts.
I locked myself in the study and poured a glass of claret. Reaching for the telephone I discovered that it still worked. I made various calls but none of them improved my mood. Then there came the groaning, twanging and crashing of a falling telegraph pole; the lines had snapped, the connection died. The pole crushed my garden shed. The only course of action was to descend into the cellar and wait in darkness.
In preparation, I drained a second glass of claret, and was startled by a furious knocking on my front door. ‘Merely the wind,’ I said to myself, but the rhythm of the rapping was too quirky, too human, for this to be the case. Then I heard a voice calling my name. ‘Monty Shoar!’ it shouted, and it was oddly modulated, as if the wind had whipped all the letters out, dizzied them, then put them back in an unsystematic manner.
I poured a third glass, but the pounding resumed, so I unlocked the study and strode to the front door. I flung it open, fully expecting the wind to pelt me with a torrent of rubble and other debris, but not caring, because my nerves had broken as cleanly as the telephone lines. Instead the air had calmed to an extraordinary degree and the tempest was almost over. I found myself staring down into the excited and boyish visage of Dapper Tapper, my neighbour.
‘You are still in the realm of the living, thank goodness!’ he panted.
‘I believe so,’ I said. ‘You too?’
‘Yes, yes, I am not yet dead. But for a moment—’
‘It was a mighty storm,’ I agreed.
‘The worst in sentient memory, indubitably. But Monty, I came because I heard an almighty bang and fretted you might have blown your brains out with a shotgun. Don’t laugh! Such things have been known to occur. Wind drives a man mad, makes him do unprecedented things.’
‘Suicide is hardly unprecedented,’ I pointed out.
‘For you, it is!’ he persisted.
‘Dapper, my friend,’ I replied. ‘Please come in.’
‘I will, and thank you kindly.’
In truth I cared little for his company at any time, but it seemed impolite and thoughtless to keep him standing on the threshold, especially as he had felt enough concern for my wellbeing to brave the elements. He could not have known the wild storm would die as abruptly as it had arrived. I showed him to my study and passed the third, untouched glass of claret to him. I no longer intended to get drunk but to repair all the damage to the best of my ability.
‘Your decor has suffered more than mine,’ he observed.
‘The wind gained entry thanks to the collision of a tree and my wall. That is why everything is scattered over the floor.’
‘That’s bad.’
‘I agree. How could it ever be good?’
‘You misunderstand, Monty. I meant that your wall was plainly a bad wall, poorly constructed, a shoddy piece of work, if it was unable to withstand the impact of a tree. The quality of masons in this country has declined badly. When was your house constructed?’
‘In 1771, and the tree was an oak.’
‘That is still a fairly recent date; and the species of tree is irrelevant. Masons have been shadows of their former selves since the fifteenth century. All trades have become similarly debased. I made a study of the subject once: studying such subjects is feasibly the onlydiscipline that has improved with time.’
He grinned at me, then turned his attention to the claret. As I listened to his slurping, I cast doleful eyes at the telephone.
‘You wish to call someone? A lover, perhaps?’ he asked.
‘No. The line is defunct. I managed to make several calls before the pole, fell but the results were frustrating and unhappy.’
He leaned forward. ‘Who did you contact, Monty?’
‘Not that it’s any of your business, Dapper, but I called two or three building firms based in this town. I wanted them to come out and do an emergency repair of my back wall. They replied that yes, they could do that, but at a price I consider crippling and prohibitive.’
‘Typical modern masons! Cheats and buffoons!’
‘I am sorry to say there are no labourers dating from the fifteenth century or earlier anywhere in this locality,’ I sighed.
‘No, that would be impossible. But I can help you.’
‘Can you?’ My voice was bleak.
He nodded and plucked at my sleeve. ‘Certainly. There is a place where men still take extreme pride in their calling, where working with stone is regarded as the loftiest of all disciplines, where cutting corners is only ever a practical action, never a metaphor for doing a less than perfect job.’
‘Where is this place? In the capital, I suppose?’
‘No, right here in New Miletus.’
‘I have never heard of such a guild and I flatter myself that I’m acquainted with everything of any interest in the everyday life of our wider community. How is it, Dapper, that you know something of which I’m ignorant?’
‘Calm yourself. They are a secretive lot; and I only discovered them by pure chance. Almost nobody is aware of them.’
‘They seem a curious and idiosyncratic breed and their services must be of exceptional cost, even higher and less pleasing to my pocket than that of the conventional building firms I have already approached. I can afford no higher a sum than £2500 and I would prefer to spend less than half that. I was saving up for a meteorite that fell into the sea near here. A team of dredgers were willing to retrieve it for only three grand.’
‘A worthwhile hobby indeed, the collecting of ugly space stones, Monty, but let me further encourage you by stating that the services of these fellows require the spending of not a single penny.’
‘Then what am I expected to do? Become a bonded servant for a specified period of time? I am reluctant to do that.’
‘You need do nothing in return.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘So do I; nonetheless, that is the way things are.’
‘They are a sort of charity?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, yes, that’s right. I was lost in thick fog a week ago and accidentally wandered through the obscure portal of their meeting place. That’s how I came to learn of their existence. I spied on one of their meetings without being noticed. Then I left very furtively.’
‘You think that if I contact them they will help me?’
‘Worth a try, isn’t it?’
I had to admit that yes, it probably was. Dapper nudged me in the ribs with a bony elbow and winked at me. His boyish customs were always irritating, but I didn’t react to this provocation. I merely said, ‘Perhaps you will tell me the address of their meeting place?’
‘Even better, I will take you there!’ he cried.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Now!’ he chortled, nudging me again.
I protested that it was night, that the destruction wreaked by the storm would make it perilous to walk the streets, that no society would be holding a meeting on an evening as treacherous as this—but he was undaunted by my arguments and insisted that we had nothing better to do, unless getting drunk on claret among the splinters of smashed furniture was a worthwhile pursuit. I considered the matter and was forced to agree that he was right.
I pulled on my coat and followed him outside.
‘It is not far,’ he added.
We reached the end of the garden path and passed through the gap where the iron gate had once stood. The street was littered with the trunks of fallen trees, grounded chimney pots and roof tiles, sparkling glass from windows. I picked my way through them cautiously and Dapper made expansive gestures to indicate some new novelty: an overturned vehicle or twisted television aerial. There was something unwholesome about his excitement.
New Miletus is a town that feels much older than it is. It was easy to pretend we were exploring the ruins of an ancient metropolis. As the turbulent clouds rushed away, the sky cleared and the hard stars shone without twinkling. Such an inspiring spectacle was a rarity here, for our community was mostly shrouded with dense fogs and mists, an unfortunate consequence of our position near an extensive marsh. Dapper pointed at a pattern of stars.
‘A folding ruler!’ he gasped. ‘A mason’s measuring tool in the sky. That’s a very positive sign, Monty.’
‘That constellation is Cassiopeia and has no association with manual work. Be less frivolous,’ I grumbled.
We continued the walk in silence, turning numerous corners and approaching the central square of the town, where all the streets converge. It was quiet and there was nobody else about. I found this both unnerving and liberating. Then he abruptly tugged my elbow and indicated the mouth of an alleyway I had never noticed before. It was an extremely narrow thoroughfare and unlit, but there was another reason for its forbidding atmosphere.
I am unable to analyse precisely what that reason was, but it had clearly been designed not only to discourage casual investigation by any passing pedestrian, but to be inherently difficult to focus upon. The angles of the entrance weren’t correct; the perspectives were subconsciously troubling. All my instincts were telling me to continue walking, to move away from the alley, to put as much distance as possible between me and it.
‘Down there?’ I asked bleakly.
‘The door to the meeting place is halfway down on the right side. You can appreciate how thick the fog must have been when I wandered down there by mistake! No man would willingly choose to step over the threshold of that lane . . .’
‘After you, Dapper,’ I said.
He shrugged. I kept right behind him. It was darker than a shrouded metaphor and only the appalling faint gleam of the pale nape of Dapper’s neck permitted me to convince myself that he hadn’t raced off and left me alone with my soul. Then he stopped and I walked smartly into him. With a vicious hiss, he said, ‘Shhh! This is it!’
‘The door? But surely it is locked?’ I croaked.
‘No, Monty, the members of the society are holding a meeting at this very moment. I can hear voices through the wood. We are in luck. Let us enter silently and approach them.’
He depressed the unseen handle and the door swung inwards. The faint glow beyond came as a blessed relief to my light-famished eyes. He went inside, waited for me to join him, and closed the door softly. We were in a lobby of extremely modest dimensions and a solitary candle burned on a spiked bracket on the stone wall. A doorway covered with a dusty red tapestry lay ahead.
‘They are in the next chamber?’ I hissed.
‘Not necessarily. The rooms seem to be linked in a long sequence. Although I didn’t proceed very far through the suite, I suppose there might be a dozen rooms one after the other. Let’s find out, shall we?’
I nodded; he yanked the tapestry back revealing an empty room lit by a grand total of two candles. There was another doorway covered with a blue tapestry.
Now I could hear the voices. They were chanting unintelligibly, but any speech muffled in such a manner would be difficult to understand. Dapper pulled aside the blue curtain and we entered a third room with four candles illuminating it, but it was also deserted. Beyond was a yellow tapestry. The voices were slightly louder. We pressed onwards.
The next room was larger and had eight candles. A central pillar was the only architectural feature of note but it was impressive enough and augured a new development: all the rooms that followed would be bigger than the previous one and festooned with more and more pillars in a mathematical series I was unable to determine. As for the candles, each subsequent chamber had double the number. That was easy enough to work out.
‘This is as far as I came last time,’ Dapper said.
‘There’s nobody here,’ I answered. ‘They seem to be in a deeper chamber for this gathering. Tonight must be a more important meeting than the one you attended. Let us keep going.’
The colours of the curtains encompassed the basic spectrum, including black and grey. At last we stood in a room that dazzled our eyes with more than two thousand stubs of blazing tallow. It was like entering a very long oven. We removed our coats, unbuttoned our shirts, and peeped around one of the many columns that littered the place. Far away, at the other end of the space, were assembled chanting figures in robes, tiny at this distance.
I frowned and squinted.
‘They appear to be conducting some sort of bizarre ceremony,’ I said, ‘with a naked man stretched out on a kind of altar.’
‘Amateur dramatics, do you suppose?’ Dapper asked.
‘They are hitting him with rulers and hammers. I think the pain is real. This isn’t acting, Dapper, but pure sadomasochism.’
‘Ah, they are decadent libertines, perhaps?’ Dapper was embarrassed. Then he cleared his throat and added, ‘They weren’t doing anything like that when I was here before. They were listening to a fully clothed man giving a talk about building temples in hot foreign lands and how to work one’s way through the ranks from apprentice to master craftsman. That is how I know they are masons and want no money for their services. They seemed friendly.’
I cast a dismayed glance at him.
‘There was no buttock hammering at all,’ he insisted.
‘Well, there is now. The poor chap on the altar has lost consciousness, or possibly expired altogether. It’s best if we leave as unobtrusively as we entered, and never return to this weird place.’
‘Nonsense! I’m convinced they are a charitable organisation who will be delighted to aid you by rebuilding your back wall for free. After all, that is what they call themselves. Freemasons! The clue is in the name. Watch as I approach them with a formal request for help.’
And before I could prevent him, he strode out from our concealing pillar and walked at a brisk pace towards the men who stood near the altar. Halfway there his presence was noted; a head swivelled, then another. Soon all the robed figures were patiently awaiting him. He stopped before them, bowed stiffly and began talking. I suppose he was explaining what he wanted, but I heard only a gabbling.
Suddenly, one of the men ran forward and hit him on the head with an object, a tool of some kind. Dapper sagged to his knees and another figure approached him ready to strike a second blow. There was symmetry in the assault, for the impacts were to his left and right temples.
A third figure walked up to him. This fellow was carrying a hammer, and I knew that the assault was about to become far more serious, even murderous. I had to act immediately! So I turned on my heel and scurried for the tapestry that shrouded my means of retreat. I planned to escape with my life intact; I am no hero at the best of times, to say nothing of the worst.
A shape darted from behind a pillar and intercepted me.
I wanted to shriek but was unable to.
Pulling my arm, my assailant dragged me down into the shadows. Then he put a fat and blistered finger over my lips. ‘Shh!’
