Day of the Arrow

by Philip Loraine

  ‘Your son?’

  But the other shook his head, staring vacantly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said again. ‘It doesn’t matter. We are neither of us God. How shall I tell you this? What do you already know . . . ?’

  And suddenly he began to talk. As if a floodgate in his brain had been opened, the turbulent waters of memory came gushing out, sweeping everything before them in a torrent of history, folklore, superstition and death. There was no order in what he said: he spoke of the ancient religion—of the dance around the standing stone, the stone that was the phallus of all the world, the dance that would make all the world fruitful; he spoke of the twin gods of the Persians—the god of Light forever at war with the god of Darkness, and the world forever torn between them; he spoke of the Persian Mithra, whose origins were lost beyond the horizons of time—and of how Mithra was born in a cave on what is now called the twenty-fifth of December, of how he was worshipped by shepherds, of how he killed the bull and gave life to the earth; he spoke of the eternal principles of numbers, and of how the number four will always return to unity, which is God, because one plus two plus three plus four equals ten which equals one, ad infinitum.

  Lindsay, staring, leaning forward in his chair and, staring, was appalled by the sense which these apparently unrelated maunderings, spoken by a man who might or who might not be in control of his faculties, made in his mind when related to Bellac.

  And still the frail voice, the hollow voice, went on. He told of how the Romans had brought the god Mithra into France: the god who was a god of soldiers, a god of men—of men without women; and he spoke also of the ancients, to whom the love of man for man was pure love, while the love of man for woman was not.

  Sometimes the words were, to Lindsay, meaningless; there were phrases which eluded him even as he grasped at them: ‘. . . the Seven Powers . . . The Eighth Heaven . . . the Soldier, the Raven, the Persian, the Lion . . .’ Twice he tried to stop the voice, to question it, but the old man could not or would not stop.

  He began now to tell of Christ, and of how, to the men of His time and of the centuries immediately after Him, there was little difference between His teaching and the teaching of the prophets who had preceded Him. Had not Christ stood for Good against Evil in the endless struggle between them for the possession of the soul of man? So had Mithra.

  And now, Lindsay knew, they had reached the heart of the matter. When the old voice told of the early heresies of the Church, he felt a thrill of recognition: the Stoics, the Gnostics, the Cathars. For there had been men who were both Christians and pagans, who argued that if God was Love how then could He have created a world so dark and sinful? The world of the flesh, of lust and greed and envy, was the world of evil; the world of the spirit was the world of God, and the two worlds were forever at war in the souls of men.

  ‘Do you begin to see?’ said the old man at last. ‘The ancient religion did not die with the coming of Christ; His teaching only strengthened it, as had the teaching of many other prophets. The old beliefs only died when the Christian Church killed them—because it would tolerate no rival; and even then they still survived in what you would now call an underground movement. Witchcraft was not evil until the Christians named it so; it had not been evil for thousand upon thousand of years; it was only the most primitive belief—the dance round the standing stone that would make the earth fertile; it still exists, everywhere; it must, because that is how life is created.’

  ‘And,’ said Lindsay, ‘at Bellac?’

  Philippe’s father bowed his head. Again, for what seemed a long time, he was silent. ‘I did not mean to defend my people,’ he said, ‘but I find that I am—and this is strange, because I hate them; they destroyed my life; they made me . . .’ He spread his hands. ‘. . . this.’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘Bellac,’ he said. ‘How I miss it!’

  A stronger gust of wind rattled the wooden shutters of the house. The old man looked up at the lantern.

  ‘These religions,’ he said, ‘which the Church called heresies because they deified the idea of evil as well as the idea of good . . . These religions were persecuted; thousands of honest and sincere men were massacred in the name of Christ. Well, there’s nothing new in that. Languedoc, in fact all Southern France, suffered more than any other region. The Troubadours, as you may know, came from Languedoc, and the songs they sang—as you probably don’t know—were nothing to do with the love of knights for fair ladies; they were hymns of the old religion, and any physical love they extolled had nothing to do with women, for, you see, the love of man for woman was of the flesh, evil: to bring more souls into a world ruled by evil was, in itself, a sin . . .’

  The dark eyes were very bright. ‘You see?’

  ‘Yes. I see,’ said Lindsay—thinking of Philippe and Christian.

  ‘But persecution and massacre could not kill the old beliefs. When have they ever killed beliefs? They lived on in secret—yes, even in England. The Grail, before it became holy, held the ancient secret of Mithra. The old beliefs took refuge in legends—and in mountains, and . . . in valleys.’

  Again their eyes met.

  ‘Christianity could absorb the old religion, making Mithra’s birthday the official birthday of Christ, making the Grail holy; but the old religion could also absorb Christianity. They have never been true Christians in the valley of Bellac; when Père Dominique celebrates Mass, the words that the people hear are not the same words that you hear . . .’

  ‘But,’ said Lindsay, ‘that means . . .’ He broke off, staggered by his own thoughts. ‘It means that Père Dominique is the center of the whole thing; he is the man who keeps it alive.’

  ‘He is not alone. You must understand that in the great schools of the church . . .’ He crossed himself and shook his head. ‘I am old,’ he said. ‘I must watch my tongue. But yes, you are right; at Bellac, Père Dominique is a man of great power—and beyond Bellac too.’

  Lindsay was remembering how he had watched the Abbé Luchard meeting this man: remembering how surprised he had been to see the deference which that wealthy and sophisticated man of the world had shown to the shabby parish priest. He realized now that in the secret hierarchy their positions were reversed.

  And, on top of this, another thought made him catch his breath. The old man looked up. ‘I was remembering . . .’ he said. ‘Les Treize Jours: the priest saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God . . .” ’

  The other gestured. ‘The Gospel according to St. John. But at Bellac “the Word” means the old knowledge, the old pagan religion.’

  ‘And on the grave in the forest: your father’s grave.’

  ‘ “The Twelve dance on high,” you mean? It is from the Apocrypha, the outcast of the Bible. Why outcast? In this case because it is Jesus Christ who is dancing, and because the Apostles were not the only dancers to be twelve in number; the inmost circle of the oldest religion—call them witches if you like—was made up of twelve: of twelve and the god round whom they danced. That was a little too obvious for the Church to Christianize. They simply excommunicated it.’

  ‘Les Treize Joueurs: the twelve dancers, and the god.’

  ‘Exactly. But you must understand that to men like Père Dominique and Luchard and my son, Bellac’s festival of the Thirteen is . . . how shall I put it? Is debased. The people have always leaned towards the old witch cult. What you saw yesterday in the village is no longer pure, yet it goes hand in hand with the deeper secrets. And . . .’ The old voice faltered. ‘And . . . at certain times, it is the people who demand . . .’

  He seemed confused or afraid suddenly. Lindsay watched him control himself. It seemed to take a great effort of the will.

  ‘It is their god who demands . . .’ He shook his head. ‘The dancing god,’ he concluded. And again he crossed himself.

  Lindsay thought, Ah yes, the dancing god. And at the memory of the song, of the golden mask half-animal, halfhuman, he could not repress a shudder.


  Then, suddenly, blazing through his muddled thoughts like a flame through dry grass, he saw where all this led. He jumped to his feet.

  The old eyes were brilliant, looking up at him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They crucified Jesus Christ. And at Bellac that too has another meaning; in all the old religions the god was killed . . .’

  ‘To renew the earth,’ said Lindsay staring out towards the distant sea, but seeing only the ruined vineyards of Bellac.

  ‘More than one of your kings in England died in this way.’

  ‘Rufus.’

  ‘Yes. Among others.’

  Lindsay turned, his eyes wild. ‘Killed by an arrow while out hunting. I must stop them.’

  ‘Don’t be a child. Philippe has elected to die.’

  ‘He can escape. You did; so can he.’

  The old man shook his head. ‘Too late. The first of August is merely the first of August to you; at Bellac it is Lammas.’

  Lindsay moved towards the French windows, but a hot, dry hand gripped his wrist. ‘Don’t you see, boy; they won’t let you stop him now. He has given them the sign that he is willing . . .’

  It was as if door upon door were opening in Lindsay’s mind. He cried out, ‘When he kissed the child! The Kiss of Peace!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was passing on his . . . his leadership, his power.’

  The old man nodded.

  ‘As your father did to you.’

  ‘As my father tried to do to me.’

  Lindsay snatched his arm away from those restraining fingers and wrenched at the handle of the French window. ‘I will stop it,’ he cried, and he was already blundering across the darkened room.

  He heard the man behind him shouting, ‘No. They’ll know who told you. Come back. Mohammed! Mohammed, where are you?’

  But the Arab must have been dozing. Lindsay caught a glimpse of him, blinking and barefooted, as he slammed out of the heavy wooden door and into the street. He heard the nurse exclaiming in her petrified genteel accent, ‘Well, I must say . . .’

  It was not until he reached Marseilles that he remembered the piece of paper in his pocket on which Françoise had written the number of her personal telephone at Bellac.

  It was now four o’clock, and he fancied that already the sky was growing a little paler, though it might, he knew, be merely the lights of the city and the port catching the undersides of the thick clouds that were billowing in from the west.

  Lammas, he thought, driving along the wide, brilliantly lit, totally deserted streets. Lammas. How absurd it sounded here and now! He spoke it aloud to the giant concrete blocks of offices, to the massive tiers of apartment houses where thousand upon thousand of ordinary, hard-working city-dwellers were sleeping one above the other like so many cards in so many giant filing cabinets. And yet, he thought again, who could tell what lurked in the minds of those thousand upon thousand of ordinary, hard-working city-dwellers—what shadows of a past of which they were no longer aware? In those apartment houses lay sleeping how many men and women who had killed, or would kill, how many who housed in their bodies those legacies of the past which have been labeled perversions? Was Lammas, was Bellac, really so extraordinary? And who, looking around him on this first day of a bright new August, would not agree with those early Christian heretics that if God was good then how could he have created a world so notably evil?

  Lammas. There were moments when he had to shake his head violently to make sure that he was not still lying in his bed at Bellac—that the whole of what he had heard on this night, the whole of what he had apparently lived, was not a continuing dream, heavily influenced by Mother Blossac’s poppy brew. It was not true—it could not be true—that Philippe de Montfaucon, a more than ordinarily civilized man, intended to die on the cloudy August day that was soon to dawn. And yet thousands of men had died for their religion. It was no longer very fashionable, but it was certainly less stupid than dying for what was euphemistically called ‘one’s country,’ which usually meant an egotistical and probably bone-headed group of third-rate politicians.

  But, no. No! Philippe de Montfaucon was not going to die because he, James Lindsay, was going to see that he didn’t. And yes, it was impossible; the whole thing was as impossible as some esoteric undergraduate spoof—half deadly serious, half bitter joke.

  Was it? Had those men in the forest been joking when they had hunted him for his life? The shadow of an old man sitting on the windy terrace under the swinging light had said, ‘But don’t you see, boy, they won’t let you stop him now?’ They! ‘Oh, they, they!’ Françoise had said. ‘Who are they?’

  Lindsay, seeing in his mind’s eye the tough brown people of the valley, knew that these were they. These had suffered from three years of famine; their crops had withered, their vines had rotted, their faith had made them turn, as they had turned for centuries, uninterrupted by the teaching of Christ’s church, towards the god who would die for them, as he had always died for them.

  Sweating with fear as he drove, Lindsay began to comprehend the ineluctable, deeply atavistic force—where the ton­sured priest and the witch walked hand in hand—that was driving Philippe de Montfaucon to an accepted death.

  He must, he must warn Françoise.

  He stopped at a garage and, while the car was being refueled, went into a telephone booth. He suspected that Françoise would not be sleeping very soundly, if at all, on this eve of Lammas.

  There was a certain lethargy of operators at the dead hour of four in the morning, but presently he heard the ringing tone, and almost immediately her voice answered. Hearing it so close to him, a little breathless, he forgot what he wanted to say—or rather what he intended to say; what he wanted to say was, ‘I love you.’ It was as well, in view of what happened a moment later, that he resisted this urge.

  He said, ‘Françoise. Are you all right?’

  He realized a moment too late that he had not been able to keep biting anxiety out of his voice. She said, ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine. James, what’s the matter? What did he say?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. The thing is . . . Françoise, how about the children? Gilles?’

  ‘They’re sleeping upstairs with Estelle. Maybe it was silly of me . . .’

  ‘No. I don’t think it was.’

  There was a slight pause. Then, her voice a little unsteady, she said, ‘Oh James, hurry back, will you? I’m frightened.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m on my way now. Listen, my dear . . . This is going to sound dreadful over the phone, but you’ve got to know.’

  ‘Know?’

  ‘I’ll be with you in about four hours, maybe a bit more. We can stop it, I’m sure we can stop it, but this is the day . . . the day that Philippe . . .’

  The click on the line was distinct, maddening. He cried out, ‘Hello, hello. Oh damn. Operator!’

  A faintly nettled female voice said, ‘You have been cut off, monsieur.’

  ‘Mademoiselle, I know that.’

  What he did not know was that he was never going to be reconnected because someone at Bellac had dealt with the matter, using a pair of wire cutters. It took ten minutes, ten valuable minutes, for him to become sure in his own mind that this was what had happened.

  He burst out of the telephone box, wild-eyed, his forehead dewed with sweat. The garage attendant gazed at him in astonishment; gazed, also in astonishment, at the enormous tip which Lindsay, unconscious to any world now but the world of Bellac, thrust upon him; gazed, gaping, at the car’s eccentric departure.

  It was as if the impersonal click on the telephone had been the click of a lock opening yet another of those doors in his mind—and this one the last. Suddenly all evasions, all reasonable doubts fell away from him. Marseilles, with its wide streets and its office blocks, became the world of unreality; the first workers trudging off to the dockyards and the first buses hissing on the wet roads were phantoms of a dream, and Bellac, where a god would die, became the world of hard fact. It was his own idiocy whic
h galled him, because he had known—as soon as he set eyes on the boy, Christian, on Cottanero, on Luchard, on the priest—that they were creatures apart from his understanding. He had known, and he had done nothing. And now Philippe would die.

  As he drove, very much too fast, taking risks which he would never normally have taken, he was aware of fact after fact falling into place in his brain. He was riding with Philippe down from the vineyards, the man on horseback coming towards them. Philippe was saying to the man, ‘The point is must we replant? Is this something in the vines themselves?’ And what had the man replied? ‘Only you will know that answer, Monsieur le Marquis.’

  There had been another incident too—something which had occurred after that ride, something to do with a groom. He could not remember what it was; and in any case his memory had seized onto the books which he had found in the library. He was appalled by his own short-sightedness, the stultifying ignorance which had failed to comprehend what they had so clearly told him. ‘In the past ten centuries,’ he had said to Françoise, ‘there’s a record here of thirty-five male Montfaucons, and fourteen of them came to grief in what I can only call suspicious circumstances.’

  How many of those fourteen, he wondered now, had died at Lammas—or on another of the old festival days? (What were they?) All Hallows, Roodmass, Candlemass. Heavens above, he himself had been struck by the fact that, whereas the Montfaucons who had died in bed or in battles were given scrupulous dates, those who had died so mysteriously were not. Surely that discovery alone should have told him half that he had needed to know? Of course a tree had not fallen on Gils, 1422—the tree, the sacred oak, had been a symbol; doubtless he had died, like King William Rufus of England, in front of the oak—so had Grandfather Edouard. And the bas-relief of Gils in the church . . . !

  Lindsay banged the steering wheel with his fist. In the carving, Gils was portrayed standing under the oak holding a cup; and the cup was the only part of the carving that was worn away: it had reminded him of the Saint’s toe in St. Peter’s in Rome. And why was it worn away? Because it was the cup of the Grail; and the Grail, the old man had said, ‘before it became Christian, held the ancient secret of Mithra.’ That was why the people of Bellac had venerated it throughout the centuries; and if those candles burning in the north transept of the old church were really there in honor of the Virgin Mary, then he, James Lindsay, was a Dutchman—for the North had been sacred for thousands of years before the East.