Masters of the Maze

by Avram Davidson

  “Things aren’t the way they were when old Joash Bellamy would bring the Amelia into port and fill her up with whatever looked like a good buy and take her back to the old home port and unload her at his brother Ned’s wharf and warehouse and fill her up with whatever was on hand for another cruise — if he felt like it — or go kill trout at Spikin’ Duyvel if he felt like it, instead.

  “They aren’t the way they were when Ned’s son Tom used to sit in the old three-story countinghouse on Wall Street, either.

  “But there is one thing that is just the same as it was in my Grandfather Tom’s day, though. And in old Captain Joash’s day, too, and all the way back to the days of John Edward Bellamy. You know, I suppose, that he was the first of our line to live in America. You probably don’t know that no record exists of how he came to America — do you? Or why? No. Of course you don’t.

  “I mentioned the word duty a little while ago. The Bellamys have had a duty, a singular duty, I might say — nothing to do with making money. But money is essential to the doing of it….”

  His cold eyes stared through his nephew and he appeared to have fallen into a kind of reverie. The day was warm, the noon meal heavy. When Joseph’s head snapped up, some indefinable time later, he found the apology he had begun hastily to form was addressed to an empty chair. A little leather-bound book lay on the desk, facing his own chair, and on it was a note in Uncle Charles’s writing. It said, in curt entirety, Read this.

  Later that day, only one place was set for dinner (“Mr. Charles will not be down tonight, sir. He asks you to excuse him.”) and after dinner an unsealed envelope was set beside his coffee cup: actually, on a silver salver. It contained a list of people and places he, Joseph John Edward Bellamy was to visit, and an approximate time-schedule for the visiting. It allowed him, he noted, with mingled curiosity and resignation, approximately one year.

  It was not till that year was almost over that nephew realized that he had on that day seen uncle for the last time.

  It was over the coffee, the brandy, the dark cigar, that the little book was read; baffling from the very beginning on the age-speckled title page.

  Relation of Sir Ezekiel Grimm, the Muggletonian, concerning a Daemon or Monster which appeared to him in the Night. Together with a Discourse on the Nature of a Garment which the said Apparition left behind him. And the full Text of a Sermon intituled Muggletonianism described, exposed, and refuted. Preached by Mr. Macdougal at the Scottish Free Presbyterian Chapel in Gold-beaters’ Lane. Printed by Jno Piggott at the Old Blackamore’s Head, Mitre Court, 1723

  The men (they were all men) on the list of visits came in a considerable variety of ages and shapes and types. As the year went on, though, Bellamy was able to observe certain features which they had in common. Had each been seen in a crowd, he might not have stood out; had all been met rapidly, nothing might have been noticed about any. Young Bellamy possessed perhaps not the keenest mind around, but with the powerful hint which consisted in their all being in some way connected with his older kinsman, he was not too long in noticing the signs. There was a certain chilliness about them, for one thing, a degree of tenseness, a kind of sublimated fatigue. They were inclined to be bookish, pale, and sedentary. And there was a … a something else, on which he was a long time settling.

  He thought he had it, at one point, toward the end of the first quarter of his year’s tour. Mr. Gottfried Schtoltz gave the impression of having made his money in beer or perhaps sausages — and of having conscientiously and frequently sampled his own goods in order to assure of their being wholesome. He was also given to grunting as a conversational aid. Schtoltz shook Joe’s hand, giving it a distinctive and peculiar pressure, and holding it a moment. Then he released it.

  “Mmpf. You haf no mother,” he said.

  “Why … yes … I do. Mother is very much alive. Why — ?”

  “I mean, you haf not travelt.”

  “On the contrary, I’ve traveled considerably.”

  Schtoltz ceased to speak in mysteries. “I mean,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “you are nodt, mmph, a vreemazon.”

  “Oh. No.”

  “Your ungle iss a vreemazon.”

  To this Joe had nothing to say, except that he believed that this was so. His host made one or two remarks which seemed equal non sequiturs, then began to discourse on the duty which man as an individual owed to man as a race — remarks rather similar to those made by the few other men already visited. Then he turned the conversation to music and the phonograph. Was Mr. Joseph Bellamy fond of both? Mr. Joseph Bellamy had not given the matter much thought? He would do well, then (mmpf), to give it much thought — and to build up a collection of phonograph records of good music … one could grow tired of books, said Gottfried Schtoltz.

  The subject (not phonography) came up again. And it came up again. Finally, more than a bit bemused by this whole enforced caravan, and determined to seize hold of the one bit of tangible evidence — something which could be measured and scrutinized — he paused to purchase a number of books, most of them embossed on the cover with the design of a compass and a square. He read them as his train sped across the plains, alternately impressed … amused … and, once again, confused. The aims of fraternity, philanthropy, benevolence, seemed certainly unobjectionable. The oaths, or, as they seemed to be called, obligations, with their frightful penalties of physical mutilation, appeared more in keeping with a gang of boys playing cowboys and Indians than with an organization supposedly dating back to Hiram, the Master Craftsman of Tyre (according to one view); or to the cult of the dying god (according to another).

  “You are not a freemason, I take it,” said Major Jack Gans, by and by, when the year was half over.

  “I have begun to think about becoming one. People have asked me if I were one, but no one has actually asked me to become one.”

  “The craft does not solicit. It is solicited.”

  And so Joseph Bellamy solicited. And was sent, with a letter, to a man not on his uncle’s list. A man not at all like those who were — thus destroying Joe’s theory that perhaps another thing they had in common was an awareness of belonging to the same society — a warm, hearty, outdoor sort of man.

  “Well, hey! Captain Jack asks me to make you a mason on sight! Yes, I can do it, that’s a Grand Master’s privilege, President Taft, you know, he was made a Mason on sight. Moving around, are you? — and will join a regular lodge when you settle down. Not a good enough reason, in my opinion — generally speaking. But — Major Jack asks it, that’s a good enough reason. Known him, oh, for years. Don’t know anyone who knows more about the Brethren and their history than he does — more than I’d care to know, impression I used to get.”

  And so it was done. No great illumination followed immediately therefrom. But it was as if a door, a great, sealed door, of whose existence in a shadowed wall he had gradually become aware of, had opened … just a crack. Yet, the crack continued to widen. And Elias Ashmole proved the key.

  • • •

  From the very later Middle Ages when — all persiflage to the contrary — the first mention of a “mysterie” (or a ceremony conveying secrets) among stonemasons appeared, down to the early Eighteenth Century, the freemasons or workers in freestone had been just that: a sort of guild or union of workers with stone. From the Eighteenth Century onward the associations of “operative” masons had been no different from any other associations of craftsmen; and the “mysterie” had passed over into the masonic lodges known today, where the members did not actually work with stone, but employed an elaborate language of allegory drawn from that work and intended to teach a variety of moral truths.

  The link, the bridge, was Elias Ashmole.

  Before him, the ancients. After him, the moderns. But in him, both. Before him, too, the world so little changed from the days of Justinian; after him, the world which would never cease changing. He was born into the realm ruled by the mystical priest-king by divine right; he died in
the world ruled by Newtonian law and logic. All of this his quick, keen, and supple mind had clearly grasped: and it was not likely that it had failed to grasp the implications contained in the primitive and disorganized freemasonry of his day. It was not till a generation after his death that the first grand lodge of freemasons was organized; after that, the old ways were gone forever.

  It seemed though that somehow the ground had been prepared: for scarcely had the form of organized, official freemasonry with its established ritual and its three degrees, come formally into existence, when a host of other forms sprang, so it seemed, from nowhere … from the air … from the ground … Masonry in all forms proliferated like yeasts. Popes proscribed it. Kings suppressed it. In the clamor and the controversy little distinction was made between genuine and fraudulent, “regular” and “irregular,” and “fraudulent” and “clandestine” forms; by the time some of the smoke had cleared away (it hadn’t happened, even yet, that the scene was completely clear) — by that time some of the “clandestine” and “irregular” forms had become “regular” and “official.” Others never had. Some vanished forever; some went underground.

  An example of masonry unrecognized, even at first attacked, by official freemasonry, which later made good and found a place for itself alongside the older form, was the so-called Scottish Rite. Its well-organized pyramid of thirty-three degrees had developed out of a much larger number of independent degrees: but the first three degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason were not “worked” in the Scottish Rite. One first had to go up through these in the so-called York Rite of the Grand Lodges. Equally independent was the Royal Arch, and the entire system of the nights Templars, as well as such groups as the Shriners: not part of the basic system of freemasonry; one had still to have gone through the basic system before being able to go through the others.

  And what others! Multitudes of them, with ornate titles, and a variety of purposes. Some were almost Byzantinely Christian, others were vehemently supradenominational; some were militantly antimonarchial, others were themselves headed by monarchs … So it went.

  “Prior to the formation of the first grand lodge, certain trusted friends of Elias Ashmole had been making masons and passing on not only the mason word but a certain tradition which he, Elias, had told and taught them. After the formation of the first grand lodge, between 1717 and 1719, these same decided that henceforth they would make no more masons, but would take in only such as had been made masons according to the rules of the grand lodge,” said a certain Mr. Eric Wiedemyer to Joseph Bellamy.

  “And … this ‘certain tradition’?”

  “That — in modern terms — they continued to work as a sort of side degree. And, during the period not long after, when a lot of French … old French … pseudo-French … crept in all over masonry, this group adopted the name of Esquires Eslu, or, Elu, or Elected, do you see? of Esquires Eslu of the Sword. It cannot be said that this degree is either irregular or clandestine, as those two words are known in masonry; but it is not worked publicly. As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Edward Wiedemyer, carefully, looking closely at Joseph Bellamy, “it is not known publicly that it still exists…. Do you understand?”

  “And my uncle belonged to it? And all the others on his list, the ones I’ve been visiting, they all belong to it? And you as well?”

  “To all your questions: Yes.”

  The young man gave a melancholy smile. “There is something almost ritualistic in the way that I am gradually being led into membership myself. Well, well. Very well. If my uncle and his friends and you are all members and sharers in the secret tradition of Elias Ashmole, then I am content … indeed: flattered … to become a member myself. At any time and in any place named.”

  And then he learned that more than mere membership was involved. That he would, if he joined, spend his whole life until replaced and released, in a Vigil comparable in some ways to the vigils of certain religious orders. On watch, forever on watch. On guard, perpetually on guard. Accepting a duty on behalf of and because of the whole human race. One which could not yet and perhaps never could, and certainly not in his lifetime, be revealed to the whole human race.

  Bellamy slowly nodded. More and more, more and more, the figures of the pattern continued to fall into place.

  “My post of duty … It would be, I suppose, at Darkglen? So I thought. Very well. I accept. I — I am not being presumptuous? I am to be accepted?”

  “You have already been accepted, right worshipful compeer. An initiation will follow. But it will be no mere form. Come.”

  And he was taken and given the Obligation and shown the Gate into the Maze, and the ward which was the key to the Maze and the object called the Sword which was the guard of the Maze.

  Concerning this last, he was told, “It isn’t ornamental or vestigeal, like the tiler’s sword at a Blue Lodge meeting. It’s functional. It disseminates … ‘broadcasts’ is a useful new word which might apply … it broadcasts what is known as anger of a Sire.”

  Bellamy repeated the phrase. Then, “What does that mean?” he asked. But Mr. Wiedemyer had already begun to speak of something else. “We — the Esquires, I mean — we’ve already had our inevitable schism. It occurred shortly after the Revolutionary War, when a General Frederick Flint broke away … was expelled, too: locking the barn door and all that. He set up his own organization, working their own degree and ritual. They adopted, as so many similar groups have done, a spurious title and a spurious history to go with it. Knights Lancers Elu of Livonia. Dropped from sight, more or less, but not from our sight, completely. However, membership seems largely confined to the Flint family. KLEL. Yes. Its original aims were not good.

  “The Maze is not ours to use, do you see, compeer? We do not use it. We merely watch it. We were taught how. We serve … We serve.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nate Gordon pawed through the piles of manuscript on his work-table, a door-sized slab of mahogany-veneered something which served as desk. His practice was to make three copies of everything: a white-paper one for the magazine, a yellow second-sheet one for his files, and a blue-paper one just in case either of the others should get lost. Sometimes they got lost. Jamie Swift’s innumerable young men assistant-apprentices were always loosing typescripts, filing a carnal account of a newly found lost tribe of white women in with the income-tax returns, for instance; or dispatching a practically stop-press report on the latest drag-races, not to the sports “book” in Chicago that was sweating for it, but to an imitation “Yank mag” in New Zealand which had ordered 3,000 words on Chicago gangsters. Jamie’s young men tended to have their minds on other things than efficient agenting, and sooner or later he was reluctantly obliged to let them go, which permission they generally received with a good deal of sullen screaming, leaving poor Jamie so upset that he had to take the following day off (“I’m sah-ree,” the answering service woman would explain to callers, “but Mister Swift is-int in, he’s down with a virus — attending a stockholder’s meeting — at the chiropodist’s — voting — on jury duty — observing Yom Kippur — Reformation Day — the Vigil of St. Bridget of Sweden — I’m sah-ree, Mr. Swift is-int in today — ”). Sometimes Lew Sharp, the editor of Brute, lost stories. Usually he lost them in The White Horse, The Cedar Bar, Stanley’s, or similar humanitarian dispensaries on the seacoasts of Bohemia, whilst engaged with one of the Ivy League girls who descend upon the New York publishing industry like lemmings on a Lappish fjord. “See what you think of this one,” he’d say, breathing like a drunken yoga and pulling any of the day’s submissions at random from his ditty-case; “guy’s got the um potentiality of being another Tom Wolfe, Christ you’ve got lovely eyes, only it seems to lack what I can’t just quite put my finger on … You see what I mean? But let us not ruin those lovely eyes trying to read in this light, editors live by their eyes, Peni — Meni — Dixi — Domini — ” or whatever the hell her name happened to be. As long as he got the girl up into his ap
artment, Lew didn’t give a shit what happened to the typescript. It was replaceable. So Nathaniel Gordon pawed and pawed and pawed.

  Somewhere in the mass and morass was a chapter and a half of a novel that he was looking for. He paused to read an item done on IBM Executive typeface, From the desk of Sydney Sherman. “Once again, as he is obliged too often to, Mr. Sherman finds it needful to draw contributors’ attention to his very minimal standards for manuscript presentation. Mr. Sherman does not require manuscripts intended for his establishment to be engraved in copperplate on cream-laid paper with deckled edges; although such items are admittedly pleasant to receive, Mr. Sherman has not received any since he left the staff of Delineator late in the Coolidge Era. However, he draws the line and will continue to do so at items typed single-spaced with a red ribbon, on yellow or orange or blue construction paper, particularly when it is a worn red ribbon. Mr. Sherman also objects to MSS. mailed rolled up, as they require four hands to hold them flat and Mr. Sherman only has two — much as this may surprise such contributors. He did indeed at one time employ a chimpanzee to scrutinize such MSS., but it was found that the animal lacked editorial discernment, and it was persuaded to take a civil service appointment at the information window of the Main Post Office instead. Stories and articles, cobbled together with paper clips, Scotch or Irish or bicycle tape, surgical sutures, or even wholesome old-fashioned library paste, meet with a gentle but a rather unenthusiastic reception from Mr. Sherman. He wishes this were more widely known. Mr. Sherman is a devout supporter of the United Nations, and it is a source of much anguish to him that he is unable to retype and translate MSS. inflicted by threshing machines on extra-thin onionskin paper, well as he understands how high the postal rates are from Catalonia and Bhutan. He hopes that this inability will not cause political unrest in such renascent nations, for whom he will continue to entertain the highest regards, you should know. During the years 1919 and 1920 Mr. Sherman frequently took off his hat as parades dedicated to the cause of female franchise passed by, and he sincerely trusts that his positive refusal to peruse MSS. on which the baby has wee-weed or the childrens’ luncheon jam been dropped will not incite supporters of the suffrage movement to place bombs in his mailbox or — ” Nate dropped this and continued to shuffle the papers on his desk.