Iron Chamber of Memory

by John C. Wright

  Ahead in a round place surrounded by a ring of slender pillars, was a table and two chairs, a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread, and tableware of silver and gold. There was a quietude here, a silence, that reminded him of the most solemn halls at Oxford, of the most ancient libraries nestled away in some mountainous retreat, vast and somber. When the being of light stepped next to the table, she blazed more brightly and drew aside a part of the darkness with her hand, so that he could see.

  Harry saw his father Henry standing there, hale and whole and alive.

  Behind his father stood smiling in silent joy his four grandparents, one of whom he knew only as a child. And behind them, in older clothing, his eight great-grandparents, and in the light he saw a great crowd of people standing, rejoicing silently, in concentric ranks around him, each in costumes older than the previous rank. Only the front two ranks he recollected from photographs in family albums. Those further away came from times before photographs.

  And the memory crashed in on him that at his father’s funeral, his father had been standing next to mother in her wheelchair, speaking to her, and she speaking back. Father had taken her hand, and they had danced on the grave, laughing, defying the empty victory of death.

  Later, Father took the widow into the Black Iron Moly Chamber in the center of the church where the ceremony was, and spoke to her of many things, sad that she, for a short time, while she lived under the delirium of mortal life, would not remember seeing him. But he came by every day for lunch, and spoke with her, and read to her from the newspapers, and when he touched her hand, she remembered herself and her wits no longer wandered. Because of her love, she left her wits in the rose and silver chambers, to see him and be with him, well aware that her son thought her senile.

  And not just his father.

  The young man looked deeper into the chamber and deeper into his memory, recalling his own marriage. Adam, the father of the noble race of Man, a man of heroic build, tall and handsome, dressed in nothing but his own glory, had met with Arthur and Lanval after the battle of Badon Hill. Adam brought the marriage gift to the bride, to Tryamour the fair sea-fairy, by welcoming her back into his family and lineage, and Saint Guthlac had blessed the union.

  It was Guthlac who, much later, after the supposed death of Lanval’s wife, when duty called Harry to England on the mission—for he was in the armed services, merely not those of America—had introduced Harry to the Drake who ran the smoke shop. This drake had woken from the dragon-dream of greed and avarice after baptism, but he was still cunning and mighty, and schooled Lanval carefully on his struggles with Vodonoy, who delighted in drowning the hopes of students.

  And now Harry remembered walking the campus, and seeing all the masters and professors of Oxford back to the cowled monks who been ordered by Alfred the Great to found the school wrestling against the sea monsters who now possessed it.

  All the people thought dead were still alive, still walking on earth, building, talking, making, doing, and only from time to time, in special chambers where the mists of forgetfulness were forgotten, did the mortals see the ancestors who lived among them.

  His father held the chair and sat him down, and poured the wine for him. Then his father broke the bread and blessed it, and put a morsel before Harry, and before the empty chair.

  All at once, the light was gone, and the vast chamber was empty, though the peace and solemnity remained. The only light came from a seven-branched candlestick in the middle of the table. The roar of unseen waters was still about him, but distant.

  But now Manfred sat across from him, all his wounds healed, a look of peace and ease such as he had never imagined grim Manfred could wear shining from his smile.

  “You seem happy,” Harry said.

  Manfred said, “I remembered all my family who I thought dead. They walk among us, and talk to us, and, when we see them, we remember. And we remember we have felt no loss. All the chambers of my mansion are occupied, and if I am not with an aunt or uncle or forefather from the Middle Ages when I step into the study, I will meet Semiramis or Iapetus in the kitchen. As soon as my eyes were turned away, however, I was lost and hopeless again. Such was the curse of forgetfulness.”

  “What crime brought that curse on mankind?”

  “Ask Adam. It is for forgetfulness Methuselah prayed at the locked gates of paradise when Adam died. I will not say it is not a curse, but I will say far greater good comes out of it than even the most wild optimist has dreamed. I am not going away to my palace beyond the stars in the heaven above heaven now that I am–”

  “Dead?”

  “Awake. You are still a sleepwalker. The Earth is wounded and is suffering amnesia until her soul heals. Then the bandages will come off, and the perfection we were meant to dwell inside will be visible to all, remembered and unhidden. No one is dead. No one has ever been dead.”

  “And Tryamour? If the mermaid I married in the Middle Ages is still alive, I should have resigned myself to being chaste in my affections, rather than dreaming of marrying Laurel du Lac, so as to avoid unremembered bigamy.”

  “Marriage, of course, ends when the dream called mortal life ends. That is the wording of the vow. We who are awake neither marry nor are given in marriage, but the joy we have so far exceeds carnal pleasures that what you have is merely a pleasant dream. We have the reality. She will be far closer than any wife when you return here on Doomsday, and holier than matrimony. Erotic love is singular, because it is precious and sacred, but divine love can be shared, because it is more precious and more sacred.”

  “Tryamour is why I volunteered, isn’t it?” For more memories were coming back to him. “It was Tryamour who urged me to go. My sister heard my dead wife’s voice, and that is why I was sent away from my mother, despite how the family needed me!” He shook his head sadly, glad that each time he reviled himself for his heartlessness, he had been innocent as spring rain.

  Manfred nodded. “My marrying Lorelei actually acted to grant her a soul. The dwarves gave her the ring of tears, and with it, even a witch in the silver chamber can cry. She will come to love this house, since, once fully out-of-doors, she will recall only that she loved Manfred, and that he died on the wedding day.”

  “I suppose she will be angry that I stabbed her mother. Or was that a dream as well?”

  Manfred said, “A sleepwalker does take real steps, and sometimes he stumbles. Lorelei will remember that the horse drawing the bridal carriage down the car-less road of Sark was startled by a gaunt, thin bum, who was trampled, and the carriage overturned, killing an old duke, a young count, and Mrs. du Lac. And me.”

  “What happens to Laureline, now that she is a widow?”

  “Her anger and resentment will be recalled only if she goes into the Red Crystal Chamber. She will there recall that you and she conspired to kill him, and know she had a hand in his death. Perhaps by an overdose of morphine, or perhaps you beat me over the head with your iron-hearted walking stick: the chamber will decide. Her true evil nature will be recalled only if she goes into the White Lotus Chamber. But she will recall one other thing as well.”

  “What is that?”

  “I will tell you at my funeral. I have already used my spirit to suggest to her that she go find the Old Gardener, who is the only one who knows how this mansion is set up. Living with the Old Gardener, and wearing a soul freshly bestowed, she will come to love this house and this life, and the human world, and will no longer busy herself with destroying it.”

  “But in the silver version of reality—whatever reality might be—have not the dark powers won control of the chamber?”

  “Do you think she will allow any of them back into her house, now that it is hers? Their victory would never have been possible, in any case. All the terrors and powers of the Night World, we recall here, in the Iron Moly Chamber, that they are no more than thoughts and inclinations, temptations, appetites, suggestions. To harm Man the law does not allow. But they may, by their dark suggestions, by
their soft and secret words, they may persuade a man to destroy himself. That, the Law does not forbid.”

  The young man sat for a moment. They said grace, ate the bread and drank the wine. Because he was warned the bread was very precious, he held his napkin under his jaw to make sure not a single crumb fell and was lost.

  After the meal, he sat with his head in his hand, looking down. The floor here was dark stone, but every flagstone was cut with the image of the moly flower. Manfred neither moved nor fidgeted. He supposed that the imaginary limitations of life within mortal and impatient flesh could not annoy nor tempt his friend, now that Manfred was awake, and the long nightmare of ignorance, pain and loss was over.

  Eventually he spoke again. “It still hurts. It was still terrible. We took desperate risks. I was so tempted, so confused, so confounded. I could not tell right from wrong. I tried to kill myself. I hated you. I broke my vows. I never did do that stupid paper.”

  “You did it the first month in the Rose Crystal Chamber and promptly forgot it. In the Silver White Chamber, you remember the gifts your late fairy wife Lady Tryamour gave you, and so you had a purse forever full of gold. Here in this chamber you have a treasure more precious than gold which never runs out.”

  “Which is why I could buy motorcars and yachts and still be a penniless student.”

  “You were never truly a student. Oxford has fallen to the enemy, and you were there to protect me.”

  “And what about my mother? What was the truth there?” But it was coming back to him now: Elaine, who was also a champion of the light, was beset by winter storms and evil hounds, and by her own husband, who had sold his soul to darker powers. His inner self served the wild wine-god of ancient Greece; his outer self had a drinking problem. His father had put his mother, one of the greatest champions of them all, into a dark house where her bright light had been dimmed.

  “I will be traveling to talk to your mother, who can see me, and to your sister, who cannot.” said Manfred, “Pray for us that we might prevail, for hers is a battle as grim as yours. What is your question?”

  He had only one question. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why was I allowed to be placed under this love charm by this green-eyed witch? Why all this risk? All the pain? What was it all for?”

  Manfred said: “To save her soul.”

  All for a Lone Soul

  He waited for Manfred to say more, but Manfred merely sat there with the unearthly patience of a man who recalls that he is immortal.

  He said, “All this we went through? It was for that horrible woman? To save the soul of a night-world creature?”

  He intended the words in anger, but even as he spoke, he could hear the note of awe and wonder in them.

  Manfred said, “Is that not enough, to save a soul? She is a young woman, no more, no less, though one who thinks herself a witch.”

  “Then is there a great red dragon wrapped around the world, or not?”

  “The dragon is far more terrible than that! He is larger than worlds; he is wrapped around every human heart. The world-serpent we recall when we step into the silver chamber is far gentler than the terrible iron truth. You would go mad and perish if you saw him as he truly is, a spirit invisible and impalpable, as bright as the morning star, and far more fearsome than his children, Sin and Death.”

  “But even if the metaphorical stuff is false–”

  “Not false! It was a sacrament, a symbol for a reality too deep for your eyes to see or your mind to grasp. You saw her naked soul. Poor girl! She believes herself to be a monster, a seducer, a siren who lures the unwary innocent to destruction on the rocks of her indifference! This was her sin, and she was proud of it. It was real. It merely was not literal.”

  “All right, so it was real, but not literal, but even so, what was it all for? Even if I am not literally a knight of Arthur, then why do I feel so much pain?”

  “You are the knight of a nobler prince by far. Who do you think provided us this bread and wine?”

  “But why all this pain?”

  “It was so that my bride would shed a single tear over my corpse.”

  “It was so much pain, too much! For one girl? For one tear? Is that all?”

  “Is that all? That tear is heavier than the weight of all the Earth.”

  He started to answer, but his voice was choked. Now the wonder he heard in his voice was broken by a sob. He sank to his knees and wiped the tears from his cheeks, saying, “Thank Heavens! Thank the Heavens!”

  And he saw a light smaller than the morning star rising in the east, yet it was brighter than the sun.

  He beheld the place where he stood. He was in a pond of many little islands, some paved with stone and some bright with green grass, connected by little arching bridges. All around the pond was a garden of flowers and grape trellises, arbors of cherry trees.

  A second star rose, and it was also as bright as the sun, and he squinted, half-blinded. Beyond the groves and gardens were hills of beauty, a green land where the glory of spring and summer and autumn were all combined, for the many-colored leaves of fall grew on the same branch gay and brave with the buds of Eastertide. The whole land was garden. Great forests of ancient trees were arbors, and nowhere was there thorn or canker, rotting bark or dry branch. It was as if every unfruitful branch had long ago been cleared away and burned.

  A third star rose in the east, and he was dazed by the brightness of it. Yet, dimly, blinking, he saw the mountains looming in the west, scarp on scarp to peaks so white the snow seemed like flame in a furnace. And in the east, an ocean. He longed to trek the miles and leagues toward that ocean and plunge himself in it, for somehow, without knowing how he knew, he knew the waters of that sea were living and alive, deep with passion and power unguessed.

  More stars arose, and the whole arch of the Milky Way, and each of the ten billion stars, was brighter than the sunlight of a cloudless noon. The heat from them pierced him through, as if each cell in his body were alive for the first time. He covered his eyes, hoping he was not blind for once and all, and he fell forward on his face.

  For the stars were singing; singing for joy. He heard the voice of his father in the chorus, and of other friends and loved ones he had hitherto thought were gone forever. Their joy echoed from the mountains, and the mighty voices of the Seven Seas replied.

  A single soul alone is saved! Rejoice!

  Which hellish power a briefest hour purloined.

  Each light of Heaven, lift pure thy voice.

  An endless soul to endless joy is joined!

  The Iron Chamber of Memory

  Perhaps he fainted, perhaps he slept, but somehow, he found himself on his feet again, and Manfred holding his elbow.

  “Hold still,” said Manfred. He felt something cool and sweet touch his eyes and ears. “This is the juice of euphrasy and rue, a flower that grows in paradise, as on earth. It will restore the strength of your senses, which are overtaxed.”

  He opened his eyes. It was dark again, but he could still hear the lapping of the waters on the island where he stood. He could see Manfred, and a small circle around him, but no more.

  Eventually he found words, “And what happens now?”

  “Life goes on!” said Manfred with a smile. “You may exit the chamber through this door, the door of forgetting.”

  He pointed and there became visible a distant crystal sphere, set with stars, which held the pathway back up to the Silver-White Lotus Chamber. “And will I go though there, the Gates of Glorious Memory.”

  Then there came were visible in the distance, hanging between two pillars, a gateway set with the sign of an amaranth flower. The bars were gold and intricately wrought. “From the Chamber of Golden Amaranth, I can return to the world of men with no memory loss. I will be able to see and talk to you, and we can meet at lunch times, or during times you will later believe to be dreams. We shall still be friends, you and I, even though, to you, I will be wrapped in a mist.�
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  “That does not seem a very good deal for me.”

  “Will you not rejoice for my joy! I have won the race! I have passed the test. I gave my life for my friend, and now many crowns and triumphs and ovations await me.”

  “It will be lonely.”

  “Only for a while. Only as long as the dark dream of mortal life and the fear of death remains. Come now, even the pagan sages speak of the lives beyond this one. Even now, you forget what you are!”

  “What am I?”

  “A deathless champion of deathless light. You, of course, will be saddened by the loss of me, even as you come to realize that you love Laurel. She, likewise, will hear the small, still voice inside her, reminding her she loves you. In time, you will have everything you dreamed of. Almost everything. The Grail is in this room, and you cannot see it, and may never again. Sorry. Some of the things out there in that world of many deceptions are real.”

  “Is that why this chamber is dark again?”

  “This chamber is not dark. We are in the light of a thousand suns. Your eyes are being held, so that you do not look on what you are not allowed to see. I wanted you to speak with your father, but you are only allowed to talk to me.”

  “Because of my suicide attempt?”

  “That, and other things.”

  “But I will just go back to that horrible dream-world of delusion and forgetfulness and commit more wrongdoings!”

  “Not if you stop breaking your word, and live like a man. No one forced you surrender to your darker impulses but you! But, hidden in the mists, there is forgiveness to be found too, and the path back to the light. It is a hard path, but you will receive the help you need at every step. The vision of the Grail is at the end of that path, and also Him whose cup it is.”