‘I’m not in the habit, Sir.’ Klosterheim spoke like a Quaker invited to the Balum Rancum as Guest of Honour. ‘Nor have I been for the past two hundred years.’
This further amused the fox. ‘A fellow more full of ennui than myself. What a novelty! What a mismatched trio of otherworldly travellers you are! A spider-shanked cadaver, a foppish minikin and a doxy looking like a rome mort who’s just pissed on a nettle!’ This won the laughter of his crew and put us all more at ease. ‘Where are ye from and how did you come here?’
‘We’re Germans, Sir,’ said I. ‘Come here by air.’
‘So! Your ship’s moored out there, eh? Your credentials are perfect!’ He turned to his gaudy ruffians. ‘Nix on the crash, nor fleecing, nor lumping, nor fuddling, ban out wen starats!’ And they had his orders we should not be harmed. I was certain he would be obeyed. He said in more conventional language to them: ‘Have ye listened, ye stains, you whoremongers?’
‘On record, your worship,’ said one, fingers to forelock, single calculating eye on us.
‘What names d’ye want?’ asked another, his mouth red in his blue-black beard. He opened a dog-eared ledger and licked a quill.
For my own part I could not resist giving: ‘Tom Rakehell!’ which would be, in London at any rate, an acceptable alias. But Libussa went the whole hog, with all family names and qualifications: ‘Alchemical adept, member of the Council of Prague, Elder of the Brothers of the Sacred Triangle, First of the Triumvirate.’ She paused. ‘I have degrees from several Universities. And my blood is the blood of Ariadne, older than Time.’
Lord Renyard was pleased (she had read him right) and said: ‘We’ve that in common, at least, Duchess. I trust you’re not here in quest of some other poor manbeast to murder? Or is a mere fox unworthy of Ariadne’s cunning and Theseus’s bludgeon?’
‘No violence at all is intended, my lord. We’re in the Lesser City for your help. If necessary to trade.’
‘Trading rarities? I’m devilish partial to rarities.’
‘Knowledge,’ said she.
‘Rare enough.’ He re-sat himself, evidently never comfortable in that chair. ‘Give me half an hour for my duties, and we’ll talk.’
‘Klosterheim,’ said the ex-Captain of Hell, and the brigand noted it in his ledger.
We arranged ourselves beside a table at the back and watched as the plaintiffs came and went. Lord Renyard allowed this cut-purse a licence, while that one was sentenced to ‘the top’ (which was hanging) for some mysterious transgression of the Vagabond Code. Half the proceedings were conducted in the canting tongue, half in such refined language it went over the heads of most of us. For all his graces, he was a fox: high-pitched, staccato – but a fox whose authority was unquestioned, even by those he sent to their deaths. When the Court was over we were summoned forward once more. His followers fell back, most of them looking at us with wariness and disguised dislike, as if somehow we threatened them by parleying so with their master.
‘So you’ve read D’Alembert’s Dream?’ said he to me. ‘And the Encyclopaedia?’
‘Not every word, Sir.’
‘I’ve read all seventeen volumes, Tom Rakehell. Thus I know all there is to know of your world. I long to visit it. But it would be foolish, eh? Here, I am already a sport. There I’d be a Monster! You’re familiar with current theories of spontaneous creation, are you?’
‘Not exactly current, Sir, those notions. Fifty years ago…’
‘A Golden Age, Sir,’ said our Fox, ‘a better age than this, Sir. Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, Daubenton, Montesquieu, d’Alembert! How I should have loved to have conversed with them!’
‘I’ve known several who did, Sir. I served at Catherine’s Court where, as you know, Diderot and Voltaire spent much time.’
‘You knew Diderot?’
‘Only slightly, Lord Renyard. He was leaving for France as I arrived.’
‘Your date of ’74,’ said the Fox with a knowing nod.
‘Just so. I was very young.’
‘But he impressed you?’
‘As a lively, sweet-natured, curious man.’
‘So I’ve heard.’ The fox eased his strange body in its chair once more. ‘He alone reached through intellect what the rest of us know by experience. In Bougainville, for instance, he asks us “Who knows the early History of our Globe? How many stretches of land, now cut off from each other, were once joined?”. A mind as lively as Voltaire’s, Sir, but more humane, eh?’
‘Quite,’ said I.
The fox stood up. ‘This way.’ He pointed to the steps leading to the dais. We mounted obediently. His men surrounded us, all sweat and woman’s perfumes, and we were escorted off along a passage, down a flight of steps, to a great underground kitchen where servants roasted meat and prepared vegetables over trembling open fires. Running the length of this chamber was a great oaken table and benches, like a monastery’s. ‘We’ll feast,’ said the fox, his red mask enlivened by the fire, ‘and we’ll converse. To ape Catherine’s banquets, eh?’
We were set with me on his right, Libussa and Klosterheim on his left. Then his delicate muzzle sniffed at beef bones, though he was hard put to lift them in his strange paws and his lacy sleeves fell always in the juices. The meat was unremarkably cooked, a little on the raw side. The vegetables were short of salt. But the conversation was one of the strangest I’d attended. He was a thorough student of our Enlightenment. He knew them all by heart! He quoted Voltaire: ‘Destroyed or degenerate Suns make a graveyard of the Sky!’ It was, said the fox, as if Voltaire had actually journeyed to this Mirenburg and seen the firmament for himself. Did we know that ‘Autem Star’ in the local argot meant ‘Church Prison’ or ‘God’s Enclosure’? He wondered if it was a name coming from the fate of the Sebastocrator, waiting in his palace for a signal which would never come and believing, therefore, that it was God, not himself, who was trapped? Libussa was barely interested in that. Her own obsessions filled most of her mind. Klosterheim, too, listened without much attention. Libussa was hard put, in her pride, to show patience with philosophers who did not share her somewhat more romantic views. Rousseau was now touched upon:
‘Did he suffer the pox, d’ye think, or d’ye believe what he wrote on the subject in his Confessions?’ The fox ate daintily while all around was such a snorting and snuffling, such a clatter of knives on plates, sucking, burping, guzzling, such a gabble of coarse jests and observations, it was sometimes hard to hear or be heard. Lord Renyard seemed sublimely oblivious of his lieutenants’ bestial manners.
Klosterheim, though a twice-damned ex-servant of Lucifer, still disapproved in his way of all those non-churchmen and their Godless notions. He would have no part of it. But Libussa aired her considerable knowledge. When she allowed it in herself she displayed a greater taste for metaphysics than I, and was soon in her element. Yet always she steered a course relentlessly towards the Grail, cheerfully inventing references to it by every name the fox revered until she’d arrived in this port: ‘And didn’t Diderot, Sir, consider the Holy Grail’s scientific properties in one of those lately published posthumous works?’
‘I do not recall that, Madam.’ He was apologetic. ‘It takes many years, sometimes, to receive books from your world.’
‘Yes, Sir – an essay on sentience, Sir, and its manifestations, active and latent. He wonders if an inanimate object is capable of volition. The legendary Grail’s his example – its tendency to come and go apparently at its own will, to exercise a healing property, to impose peace and order within its influence, to guide, maybe, the affairs of men or choose to remain dormant. He suggests such an object exerts a change upon its environment for its own survival and is thus the chief instrument of harmony: perhaps the very pivot of our universe. This Grail (if there be only one) maintains the Rhythm of the Spheres, yet also aids mankind to act in concert. If God created Unity, Diderot suggests, perhaps He also created something to preserve that Unity. Another school says that Grail and God are one, possessing power and s
entience, but not moral intellect.’
‘God, Madam, has abandoned this planet,’ said the fox, matter-of-fact. ‘Is the news so late in reaching you?’
‘Most refuse belief,’ murmured Klosterheim.
‘So,’ continued Lord Renyard, ‘maybe another force than Satan seeks to fill God’s place. Reputedly, Satan’s no pursuer of Order…’
‘Satan renounced the easy means to Order,’ said Klosterheim. ‘By His will and His severity, He could rule now. But He refuses. He seeks unity with the very being He once defied, and thus abandons all His followers.’
The fox looked startled, licking his snout before opening his mouth to speak, but Klosterheim interrupted with: ‘Satan alone rules our planet.’ He was oblivious of the effect he had. His white face bore the marks of strange tensions within him. ‘The war when it comes shall be against Him. With the Grail in my hands, Sir, I’d soon have Hell in full rebellion. Then mankind would be sole master of its destiny!’
(More ‘destiny’, thought I. Why had I heard so many differing descriptions as to the exact nature of this inevitable destiny? How could they all be inevitable? Destiny was apparently a word describing an individual’s desperate need for certainty.)
‘You’d lead this rebellion?’ The fox was deeply curious. ‘In the name of Enlightened science?’
‘In the name of Man,’ said Klosterheim. ‘That is our intention.’ He was unaware of the fox’s ironic glint at the word ‘Man’. ‘Sir, if you possess the Grail, your advantage would be served as well as ours!’
Libussa almost winced. Klosterheim had cut across her pretty seductive tune with a flat horn. But the fox was amused as he answered Satan’s ex-captain: ‘How can that be? What rational world would permit the existence of such monsters as myself?’
‘It would be a rational world, Sir,’ said Libussa quickly. ‘A world setting high store on liberty and self-direction. A world based firmly on the belief that equality’s the bedrock of happiness.’
‘But France’s revolution argued the same.’ The fox put paw to muzzle, frowning down into gravy-stained lace. ‘And now unreason is observed at every turn! Intolerance and tyranny…’ His lips curled back again from pointed teeth, a vulpine smile. ‘Worse than mine!’
‘Von Bek here was a Deputy in France, Sir.’ Libussa hardly knew which tack to take, she was so discomfited. ‘He’ll tell you why the Revolution did not succeed.’
‘Von Bek?’ Lord Renyard was delighted. ‘Follower of Cloots?’
‘Tom Rakehell, Sir, if ye don’t mind.’ I prayed he would respect the Rogue’s Code and not make enquiries of me.
‘Forgive me, Tom. You were saying, Madam?’
Libussa was baffled. Then, grimly, she said: ‘He’ll confirm they lack wisdom.’ She took a breath, furious with both Klosterheim and myself. ‘And, Sir, they lack the Grail! ’Tis insufficient that a few lawyers form a parliament and make fresh laws. If mankind would change, great upheavals are in order; a new age born from the destruction of the old. One tiny nation’s floundering revolution, in which only half the population’s represented (if that), is useless. Of course it must collapse! We must have fundamental change, Sir! Out of Chaos shall come Order – that order based upon a harmony hitherto unguessed at, whose great symbol is Hermaphrodite: the Woman-Man! Theseus and Ariadne combined against the Beast. Not a Beast like yourself, Sir. The Beast is all that’s stupid, brutal, unthinking, greedy in Man. The Beast is selfish, unjust, cruel. It’s swaggering posturing and the simple pleasures of war! It’s harem-keeping. It’s using the female sex to maintain the vanity of the male, at women’s great expense. Today the Beast speaks in the accents of civilised democracy – but he is still the Beast!’ (Klosterheim grew puzzled, as if unsure she’d understood what he required of her when the Grail was theirs.) ‘Hermaphrodite, Sir, is more terrifying to the Male race than ever you could be!’
‘I’m flattered, Madam.’
‘Hermaphrodite shall be the leader of this true revolution. A leader as strong, as eloquent, as divine as Jesus. Hermaphrodite must take the same terrible path as Christ, for that is the price paid if one’s to influence the course of history. A leader who no longer spreads the word of God, but spreads the word of humanity! This being shall incorporate the experience, the hopes and idealism of our whole race: the sum of male and female experience, the sum of all we’ve learned. The Grail’s our true salvation, Sir!’
The fox picked up a chicken and lifted it to his sardonic mouth. ‘No room for monsters.’
‘No room for those who’d fear singularity, Sir!’ She was glib. ‘Any reasoning world would reckon itself rich with Lord Renyard in it!’
The fox looked hard at me. I would support her, but I knew not how. He gave Klosterheim a stare. The skull-faced ex-priest attempted to absorb the meaning of Libussa’s rhetoric. ‘Good flattery, Madam,’ said Renyard, chewing, ‘but poor observation. We all know how one species will destroy another, by whatever logic the times require. As for those hybrids like me, we’re lucky if we’re merely isolated. And isolation produces a kind of inescapable madness, though it adopts a guise, like mine, of rationality and breeding. Your sexes are not equal, as you say. Your colours war against one another. The Arab race, calling itself the white race, despises red and black; the red race, calling itself the white race, despises brown, black and yellow. The yellow race, calling itself the favoured race, makes war upon another yellow race, also calling itself the favoured race. Can all that be banished by your Grail?’
She was sincere. ‘Aye, Sir.’
He put down the torn chicken, ‘I can’t believe you, Madam. This new messiah would not do for me. I’m better off upon the edge of Chaos, in my criminality and my kingship over thieves and whores. My rufflers are easily understood. Those who fear the singular also fear the sword.’ His glance towards his gorging captains and their doxies was meaningful and tolerant.
‘You support your vanity, Sir, by consorting only with inferiors,’ she said. ‘That’s your argument, I think!’
‘Madam, I have no equals.’
‘The Grail shall change the world, Sir, so all stupidity is banished and we’d begin as equals.’
‘Your case remains unproved, Madam. It does not attract me.’
‘’Twould put an end to your boredom, Sir.’
He placed both paws before him on the table and laughed again, as field foxes laugh, with a little bark and head half lifted. His tail would have fanned if he’d had one (I wondered if he’d docked it to fit his fancy breeks). ‘I’d fear your price, Madam,’ he added softly.
She had a puzzled smile upon her own lips and seemed not entirely sure of him. ‘But you’d take a risk, Sir, if offered?’
His head came forward bearing its huge, scarlet hat and a host of ostrich plumes, so his face was hidden again. He spoke from beneath the brim. ‘I owe you something, to be sure, for this entertainment.’ Raising his head again he reached for damask and wiped his greasy muzzle. Then, unconsciously, he licked his nose. ‘I do not possess your mystic cup.’ He smiled and his freshened whiskers fluttered. ‘Otherwise I might well barter it for some of those recent volumes you’ve mentioned. Indeed I hope there’s still room for trade between us. But if you’ll make me a promise I’ll be glad to help you towards your goal. It seems we are, if not of mutual interests, at least of mutual intellect…’
He now reached under his buttons and pulled a small, leather-bound sextodecimo from the back of his pantaloons. His paws fumbled a little. They were hardly fitted even for turning the pages and I guessed his forelegs shook with the strain of seeming easy. His brain was not at odds with what he read, though his body was indeed at odds with his brain’s commands. I began to understand his claims of isolation.
‘The promise, Sir?’ I felt considerable respect for this mysterious creature. He showed me the book. I opened it. It was wonderfully printed in sharp black type on pure white paper, with red decorative capitals and so forth. It was called, in German, A New Understanding of
the Universe, and I did not recognise the author at all. It was an impressive mouthful, more associated with the seventeenth century than the eighteenth: Philarchus Grosses von Trommenheim. I wondered where he had obtained such an unusual book in that condition. ‘I don’t know it, Sir,’ I saw it was printed in Mirenburg and dated AB 339 (meaningless to me). The prose was exquisite, perhaps a little stiff; some sort of essay on perception. ‘I’m surprised I’ve never come across it, Sir. It’s not the usual dull stuff.’
‘Keep it, Sir.’ Lord Renyard gestured. ‘’Tis by myself. A single copy was printed and there’s only me to read it here. My real name’s on it. And my real vocation, I suspect, is displayed. You’ll keep the promise?’
‘Of course, my lord.’ Libussa was eager as she leaned forward. Perhaps she thought there were secrets in those pages. Lord Renyard waved his paw at me again and I slipped the little book into my shirt lining. ‘What must we swear?’ she asked.
His bright eyes still regarded mine. ‘To remember me,’ he said. There was unusual pain in his expression. Next he was looking at Libussa, his chin up, sly and charming. ‘I’d want you to send books you think would interest me. Goethe’s work whets my palate for more. And certain Englishmen: Burke, for instance, and the North Briton Hume. Though my reading in their language is inadequate.’
‘It will be impossible, Sir, not to remember you!’ Momentarily Libussa forgot diplomacy and could not flatter.
‘Without remarking my appearance?’ He took a pewter chalice of wine in both paws, drinking deep. ‘Is a gigantic fox a scholar first or a freak? And a speaking fox at that! Make him a fox dressed in foppish flounces and commanding a nation of rogues in a city which scarcely ever sees ‘lightmans’ (as day’s known here) – why, how could you resist retailing this wonder? A marvel, a sensation! Oh, I’ll live on as a performer in some distant Circus of the Imagination, and ’twill become impossible to tell if I was ever really fact or fiction. This Upright Fox, they shall announce in voices loud enough to drown out already shrieking dinner guests, was, moreover, an enthusiast for the Encyclopaedists!’ He paused, then: ‘A man in a mask, surely? they’ll say next. A hoax. Some poor creature with a hideous deformity? Well, perhaps one’s memory is not all it might be. Perhaps Lord Renyard was merely a cripple using his disfiguration to control the brigands. He could become quite human before the century’s out. Remember me!’ He drank again. He smiled at Libussa, he winked at Klosterheim. An ear twitched and his hat fell slightly to one side, giving him a still more rakish look.
The City in the Autumn Stars Page 27