Goat Foot God

by Dion Fortune

Mona laughed. “He's wonderful with his fryingpan; but a frying-pan has its limits, you know. I think you'd get rather tired of it after a bit. I know I should.”

  “He seems to thrive on it.”

  “He survives on it. I shouldn't say he throve. He's a darling, isn't he?”

  “He's a dashed good sort. lowe a lot to him.”

  “I owe everything to him. He's been like a father to me. I think I would have gone under if it hadn't been for him.”

  “I believe I should, too,” said Hugh, and silence fell between them.

  “I wonder what he'll say to our monastery,” said Hugh at length.

  “He'll be frightfully interested. Did you know he once studied for the priesthood?”

  “Yes, he told me. And he's still a priest at heart. You can see that. Tell me, is he a Christian or a pagan? I can't make him out.”

  “He's a Christian at heart, but he won't stand for the narrowness of Christian theology.”

  “What is there in Christianity beyond the theology?”

  “Why, there's just as much power as there is in Pan, only of a different kind.”

  “Would you call yourself a Christian?”

  “No, I shouldn't. But I'm not anti-Christian. I see it as one of the Paths.”

  “Paths to what?”

  “Paths to the Light.”

  “You wouldn't get a Christian to admit there was more than one Path.”

  “I know. And that's the pity of it. That's what spoils Christianity. It's too limited.”

  “What does Uncle Je1kes say to your pagan proclivities?”

  “It was he who put me on to them. I had a terribly strict upbringing and it disagreed with me most actively. I used to get dreadful headaches that simply laid me out. The doctors said they couldn't do anything for it and I just had to put up with it. Of course I couldn't keep a job. It was too dreadful trying to struggle round with those headaches on me. And I would sooner have died than go home again. In fact, I don't think they'd have taken me in. Father thought an art school was an abode of sin. Then I met Uncle Jelkes, and he made me understand a lot of things I'd never understood before. He made me see that my acquired self and my real natural self were fighting with each other, and that was what was knocking me to pieces. My natural self said: ‘I'm jolly well going to be an artist’; and my acquired self said: ‘It's a deadly sin. You ought to be a missionary.’ Uncle Jelkes said: ‘You'll have to give up Christianity. It's disagreed with you. It isn't for everybody.’ And he put me on to the old Greek gods, and I simply loved them. My headaches got better, and my drawing improved out of all sight. He says, and I'm certain he's right, that there is a tremendous lot in the old Greek gods. There are great truths there that we have forgotten.”

  “Does he propose to scrap Christianity?”

  “Oh no. But he thinks the Greek viewpoint is a very valuable corrective to it.”

  “It certainly needs something done to it,” said Hugh.

  “It does indeed,” said Mona. “It is not meeting the need of the world as it is at present. And it isn't just the worldly people who are leaving it. Nor the sceptical. It is people like Uncle Jelkes and you and me, who want more of God than they can find in it.”

  “What of God do you want that you can't find in it?”

  “I want God made manifest in Nature—that's Pan, you know.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means a lot, but we can't discuss it now. We must go on and see this solicitor person before he shuts. They shut awfully early in country towns.”

  They found Mr Watney as directed, and he proved to be a sprightly old gentleman who had a twinkle in his eye as he talked to them. He did not say very much, however, until Hugh had handed over to him a cheque for a hundred as deposit. Then he opened out.

  “It is a custom with country lawyers to seal a landdeal with a glass of port. I have often wondered whether it is a relic of a Christian sacrament or a pagan libation, but I have never been able to discover. Some odd old customs linger on in the law. Did you know that when a case is settled out of court, the brief is always marked with the Sign of the Cross?”

  “I know there's an odd scribble on it,” said Hugh.

  “Well, that is actually the Sign of the Cross. And did you know that no priest can be a barrister? If a parson wants to change his cloth, he has to give up his orders. We got rid of the domination of the Church, but we kept the blessing on a settled case. Odd, isn't it?”

  “You are interested in archeology?”

  “Yes, very. In fact I am the president of our local archeological society. The country round about here is most fruitful ground. We have Saxon, Roman and ancient British remains in layers one below the other.”

  “Can you tell me anything about Monks Farm?”

  “Dear me, yes, I can tell you a lot. It is one of our most interesting relics. There are some very curious stories attached to it. Do you know we had an inquest there once, on the bones of a monk who was found walled up in the cellar? Most interesting. I was able to identify him. He was a very famous sub-prior of the parent foundation. A friend of Erasmus, at any rate he corresponded with him. He was one of the first Englishmen to study Greek.”

  “What was his offence?”

  “I've no idea. It must have been something pretty scandalous because there is not a word about it in the records of the monastery. Merely a remark that he was replaced in his office by someone else. No reason given. It must have been something they did not care to put on record. Monks Farm, you know, was a kind of penitentiary. Bread and water and peas in their shoes, I believe. They had a lot of trouble at that monastery. We have never been able to find out what it was all about. The records have some very odd silences. Men removed from their offices and no reason given. A new abbot appointed by the Pope instead of being elected by the monks. Then a lot of monks distributed among the other houses of the Order and all the new officials brought in from outside. A clean sweep, as it were. But there were a number of monks who weren't accounted for. They weren't sent to other houses, their names just disappeared off the rolls. We've accounted for one of them, however, at our inquest, so perhaps the others went by the same route. You may find some interesting things if you excavate.”

  “I may find some pretty grim things if I excavate,” said Hugh. “I think I'd better leave it alone.”

  “Nonsense, nonsense, you'll enjoy it,” said Mr Watney, who suddenly seemed to realise that he had been telling too much.

  They drove back to town in the gathering dusk, and landed in upon Mr Jelkes just as he was getting his tea. It would have been difficult to have landed in on old Jelkes at a time when he wasn't brewing tea, but this tea was distinguished from all other brews by the fact that he ate a bit of cake with it.

  “Well, T. J., we've done the deed. We've bought a house.”

  “You haven't been long about it,” said the old man.

  “I hope you've not been rash. What have you let him in for, Mona?”

  “I've let him in for a monastery, Uncle Jelkes.”

  “My God!” said the old man. “Why didn't you let him in for a nunnery while you were about it?”

  “Do you think it will be a suitable place for the invocation of Pan, T. J.?”

  Je1kes scratched his nose.

  “It's suitable enough,” he said. “The psychic atmosphere has been worked up. You will have to do a kind of banishing, you know, before the Old Gods will settle down; but they'll get going all right once they make a start.”

  “Will you do the banishing for us, T. J.?”

  “No. Damned if I will.”

  “Uncle Jelkes, do you remember once telling me about the penal houses attached to the big monastic foundations? Well, it's one of those. And do you know, the prior was found walled up in the cellar, and they had an inquest on him.”

  “What's all this you're telling me, Mona? It must be the penal house attached to the big Abbey. They had a lot of trouble at that Abbey. One of the big Catho
lic historians made a valiant attempt to whitewash it of recent years. Shows there was something wanted touching up. So they walled up the prior, did they? Now that must have been for something pretty serious. They usually reduced 'em to the ranks and shoved 'em into other houses of the same Order when they ran off the rails.”

  “The solicitor was telling us that they did that with a lot of the monks, but there were some who just disappeared, and this man they held the inquest on was one of them. He was one of the earliest Englishmen to study Greek, Mr Watney said.”

  “Then that probably explains his trouble. You think what it must have meant to these monks, shut up in their monasteries, when they got to work on the Greek manuscripts that the Renaissance brought to Europe. They were careful what Latin ones they let come into the libraries, because the old abbots could read those. But they couldn't read the Greek ones, and the smart young fellows in the scriptorium got to work on them—the younger chaps, like your walled-up prior—and they must have had an eye-opener. Supposing they got hold of the ‘Bacchae,’ for instance, with the invocadons to Dionysos? That must have livened up the eloisrer a bit. Do you know what I think must have happened? This prior, Ambrosius, I believe his name was, is known to have corresponded with Erasmus. His letters are extant. There is a letter from him about the purchase of a batch of Greek manuscripts for the Abbey library. The abbot was a very old man, in his dotage, I gather, and this Ambrosius practically ran the place. A prior is the second in command, you know. Then the Pope sent a visitor to have a look at them. That made them wild, for they had a special charter that made them exempt from inspection, and they chucked the visitor out. But the next thing was that the Pope sent them a new abbot, and the civil power enforced it. The old abbot was dead and Ambrosius was expecting to get elected. But he never was. He just disappeared and they got an Italian in charge of them. Then there was that clean sweep you've been hearing about. Something pretty bad went wrong with that monastery, I'll bet. And I'll bet another thing, that the Greek manuscripts were at the bottom of it. They bought a job lot, and some of'em probably weren't exactly canonical.”

  “I say, T. J., do you suppose that poor old Ambrosius was playing about with an invocation of Pan, and got dropped on?”

  “How do I know? I can only piece two and two together. All I've read is the whitewashing and the reprint of the records. But you can guess a good deal when you put the two side by side. Why the gaps, and why the whitewashing? In come the manuscripts, and up goes the monastery. We know what Greek literature is like, and we know what monasteries are like. Then we find the smart young prior who worked on the manuscripts bricked up in a lonely grange, and we smell sulphur.”

  “Was he a young chap?”

  “He was about your age, Hugh, when he disappeared off the map.”

  “Poor devil, he has my sympathy. I wouldn't have fancied being bricked up with the best part of my life before me.”

  “I wouldn't have fancied being bricked up at any stage of my career,” said old Jelkes drily. “It's an unpleasant end.”

  Sleepy from the fresh air, Hugh got off to bed early. But sleepy as he was, he determined to try and recapture the trail of the previous experience. He felt somehow that he must do this thing regularly if he were to succeed with it. He turned onto his back, crossed his arms on his chest, and called up before his mind's eye the picture of a sunny hillside above the sea in ancient Greece. But before he knew where he was, he was sliding off into dreamland. He dragged his mind back once, but it slipped again immediately, and this time he failed to recapture it.

  It seemed to him that he was lying on his back on a narrow plank bed. It was pitch dark, and the roof seemed to be pressing down on him and the walls closing in on him. And all the time he could hear the tolling of a bell. He felt a hood of some coarse woollen material like serge around his head, and folds of coarse serge material under his hands that were folded on his breast. In his dream he sat up on the narrow plank bed and pushed the hood off his head to wipe the sweat from his face. He passed his hand over his sweat-soaked hair, and found a round bald patch on the top of his head, as if the thick hair had been shaved away. Then in his dream he lay down again and drew the hood over his face, and concentrated his mind on one idea—to die with dignity and without struggling. Then it seemed to him that the sound of the tolling bell became merged in the beating of his own heart. The heavy beats grew louder and louder, and slower and slower, and then, all of a sudden, he found himself in the fresh air and full sunlight on the Grecian hillside, and ahead of him was the figure of the woman with the satiny back and softly moulded muscles.

  He leapt after her. Round his loins was a goatskin, he could feel the rough hairiness of it, but the upper part of his body was bare. The woman ahead had a fawnskin slung over her shoulder. She had an olive skin and her body was strong and muscular. In particular was he struck by the strong firm column of the neck. He pursued, but she did not so much flee as go on ahead of him.

  Suddenly sleep left him, and he woke up to find himself in a bath of sweat.

  “By Jove,” he said to himself, getting up and groping for a towel to have a rub-down with, “this won't do. I'm giving myself nightmares.”

  His mind played over the dream-symbols. trying to pick up the threads of them after the manner of psychoanalysis.

  The first part was obvious. The story of the walledup prior had impressed itself on his imagination and reproduced itself in the dream. The origin of the second part was equally obvious. It was a reproduction of the vision that had made such an impression on his imagination the night before last. Hugh Paston got back to bed and slept peacefully till morning.

  CHAPTER XII

  REAL estate is not a thing that ever gets itself transferred from one owner to another expeditiously. Miss Pumfrey was not a person of whom one could ask favours in the way of obtaining possession, and Hugh reckoned he would find himself at a loose end for at least a fortnight.

  At breakfast next morning he said to old Jelkes:

  “I say, what do I do about paying Miss Wilton? I'm taking up a devil of a lot of her time, and I suppose time is money with her.”

  “Does she suit you?”

  “Yes, first-rate. She's a dashed good sort. I like her.”

  “Then I should put her on the pay-roll, if I were you. Give her a weekly salary, and have the call on her time.”

  “That's a good idea. There are various jobs I'd like her to do for me. What shall I offer her?”

  “Three pound a week?” said old Jelkes tentatively.

  “Right you are. I suppose she'll pick up a bit on commission from the various firms we deal with?”

  “Yes, she'll expect to do that. What are the jobs you want her for at the moment? It's too soon to start furnishing isn't it?”

  Hugh was nonplussed. He hadn't thought of any particular jobs for Mona to do. What he really wanted was to get some money into her hand without hurting her pride; the jobs had been faked up on the spur of the moment to give him an excuse for paying her. At least, so he told himself. He had often faked up jobs for people before, so why not now? God knows, the girl needed it if appearances were anything to go by. But at the back of his heart was the feeling that it would be a very empty fortnight before he could get to work with her.

  “I — er — I had an idea that she might do a bit of research for me,” he said, improvising hastily.

  “Yes, she'd do that all right. She's done a good deal of work at the British Museum for me. I can't leave the shop during business hours. What is it you want her to look up?”

  “I'd like to trace out the history of Monks Farm. I believe it will prove to be rather exciting.”

  “It's certainly made a promising start. Yes, I can put her on the track of that. She needn't go much further than my shelves for the moment. I've made rather a speciality of the queer side of monastic history. After she's got through with that, she could go down and see this archeological solicitor, and follow up the trail locally. Besides
, there is sure to be a good collection of stuff in the library of the local museum. I bet there's plenty of material available for piecing together by anyone who knows as much as we do of the queer side of things.”

  “By Jove, that's a bright idea. I'll run her down to see old Watney and we'll have a rootle round in the local museum.”

  It was on the tip of Jelkes' tongue to say: “Why don't you let her get through with my books first?” but he restrained himself.

  Consequently Jelkes went round to collect Miss Wilton, leaving Hugh in charge of the shop. Returning in ten minutes' time, he found Hugh immensely elated at having sold three books out of the twopenny bin in his absence.

  Once again the racing-car took the road north with Mona Wilton, hooded and clad in green, seated beside its driver.

  She was amused to see that he had forgotten all about his quest of Pan, and was absorbed in the pursuit of the walled-up prior.

  They called on Mr Watney first, who threw up his hands in horror at the sight of them and cried:

  “Good God, do you want possession already? What do you take me for? A steam-engine?”

  However, he was not merely pacified but enraptured when he learnt that Hugh was bent on unearthing the antecedents of his new property. The one thing Mr Watney's soul yearned for was to dig over the ground and find more corpses. Hugh, however, was interested only in the circumstances that had led up to the mysterious crisis at the monastery.

  Mr Watney gave him a list of books to refer to, and a note of introduction to the curator at the museum, and off they went. The curator, a Mr Diss, proved to be just such another as Mr Watney, and the two were apparently cronies, being respectively president and secretary of the local archeological society. Mr Diss murmured something about the printing of transactions, and Hugh took up the idea enthusiastically. After that the museum and all it contained was his to do as he liked with. There are more ways than one of corrupting public servants.

  The museum was the proud possessor of the Abbey rolls, and they had the interesting experience of looking at the actual entry of the purchase of the Greek manuscripts from Erasmus' agent. The monks had paid thirty pounds for them—a substantial sum in modern money.