Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02

by The School of Darkness (v1. 1)

They went together into the rear room, where a round dining table was set. They stood at their chairs while Pitt said a brief grace. Then they sat down, all but Ruth Pitt, who went away and fetched back a darkly glazed tureen and then a silver dish with sliced bread,

  “Garlic bread,” she said, “to go with the minestrone.” Pitt served everyone with big pottery bowls of the minestrone. It was strongly made, with brown, nutty-looking garbanzos and smaller, whiter beans, and lacings of green spinach and chips of carrot, cabbage and onion. Thunstone tasted his and found it excellent. There was also a salad of lettuce, sliced cucumber and tomatoes. Everyone ate and talked. Pitt’s two sons joined in the conversation. To Sharon’s questions, young Sam said that he hoped to study law someday, though just then he was absorbed in wrestling with his high school team. Dennis, it seemed, wanted to be a writer, perhaps a writer like Ernest Hemingway. Sharon asked Ruth Pitt for the recipe for her minestrone, and got a pen and a crumpled envelope out of her purse to jot down what Ruth Pitt told her. The adults had small goblets of white wine, the two boys glasses of milk.

  Ruth Pitt brought in a dessert of lemon menngue pie, over which Sharon exclaimed with happy praise. When the dinner was over, Pin led his guests back to the living room.

  “Lee,” said his wife, “I don’t see how I can be going to that show tonight, Dennis needs me to help with some difficult homework.”

  “Homework?” said Pin after her, “What kind?”

  "Trigonometry.”

  “Sooner you than me, I was always in trouble with mathematics.”

  Ruth Pin left the sitting room. Pin motioned Sharon and Thunstone to chairs and took one himself.

  "To tell you the facts, Ruth doesn’t like Grizel Fian,” he said. ""She won’t say so. but I gather that she thinks that if Madame Grizel moved to some other town, it w^ould be no great loss to Buford society, But before we three go over, let’s look at tomorrow’s program,”

  “Professor Shimada is to speak,” reminded Thunstone.

  “Yes. if w*e can find him,” nodded Pin. “I haven’t seen him all day today. He’s due to appear in the afternoon. In the morning, I’m doomed to discuss the jagged subject of the supernatural as an influence on American life and literature. and I don’t know' who’ll want to hear me. Then Shimada in the afternoon, if he can be cornered, Later, some seminars, chaired by visiting folklore professors. And after dinner at night, Mr. Thunstone, you’ll wind up everything with whatever you have to say. You’ll be the hero, so to speak.”

  "‘Ralph Waldo Emerson said that a hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is brave for five minutes longer,” said Thunstone, and Pitt chuckled.

  “Emerson was brave for five minutes longer, over and over in his life,” he said, “but you’ll be a hero for more than five minutes when you get up to speak. Now, is there anything else to puzzle us?”

  “Do you know a student named Exum Layton?” Thunstone asked,

  “I’ve known him fairly well for about six years,” replied Pitt. “He’s a native of this town, an orphan with money of his own, and he keeps taking this course or that without getting quite enough of the right hours to graduate. He’s intelligent, but he’s erratic. This semester he’s been in my folklore class, and he answers fairly difficult questions and asks fairly puzzling ones. Brings odd books along to quote from—Albertus Magnus, Eliphas Levi, even Aleister Crowley. What about Exum Layton?”

  “I’d better tell you what about him,” said Thunstone. “Tell you in confidence.”

  “In confidence,” nodded Pitt. “Very well, in confidence.”

  “This afternoon I met him in town,” Thunstone said. “I asked him where Grizel Fian lived, and he told me, but the question upset him. Later he came to my room and told me about sorcery and diabolism in town and on the campus, and swore that Grizel Fian was more or less out for my blood.”

  “He said that?” said Pitt, scowling. “How does he know such things?”

  “He said that he’d been an active member in the covens here, and that he wanted to get out. I turned him over to Father Bundren.”

  “That was the right thing to do with him, I think,” said Pitt soberly. “But getting back to Grizel Fian, just why should she be out for your blood? And how does she hope to get it?”

  “She has brought in some interesting help for that.” Thunstone decided not to name Rowley Thome, confidence or no confidence. “I’ll try to handle that aspect of the case myself.”

  “And be brave about it for five minutes longer,” Pitt added. “Countess, these things seem to worry you. You take them very much to heart, I think.”

  “I’ve told the Countess she should never have come to Buford,” said Thunstone.

  Pitt crinkled his three-cornered eyes. “Perhaps she felt it was right for her to come,” he said. “Now, I don’t suppose that we should carry these reports to any university authority. But if Grizel Fian has help on her side, you have allies like Reuben Manco and Father Bundren and, if we can locate him, Professor Shimada.”

  They talked for a while longer, on various subjects. At last Pitt looked at the watch on his wrist.

  “The show starts at eight o’clock sharp,” he said, “and let’s get there early and find good seats.”

  VII

  The Playmakers Theater, near the lot where Pitt parked his car, was small compared to most buildings Thunstone had seen on the campus. It was a flat-roofed cube of ancient brick with gray stone facings, The entry was a low porch with pillars. Pitt said that once it had been a library, before Buford State University grew big and needed a larger library than that.

  They got out of the car. Overhead, a round moon blazed above dark treetops. Sharon gazed toward a shadowed stretch on the far side of the theater. “What’s over there?” she asked.

  “The old town cemetery,” Pitt told her. “There’s a newer, bigger one on the edge of town, but there’s where old Bufordians are buried.”

  “I’ve been told that Grizel Fian lives on the far side of it,” remarked Thunstone.

  “She does indeed,” said Pitt. “Her house is alone there, and it’s a big, handsome house. If you walk through the cemetery, you’ll come right to its back door. I’ve never been inside.”

  A massive, metal-braced door stood open and they went in. Inside stood a girl in a black robe that clung to her curves, with a pointed hood drawn well down over her hair and eyes. To Thunstone she looked like the girl who had sharply questioned Father Bundren. Perhaps she was that girl. She addressed Pitt as “Professor” and handed out program sheets.

  They went past her and into the rear of an auditorium with row upon row of red-cushioned seats, an aisle at the center. At the far end hung a dark red curtain with what must be the emblem of Buford State University. Sharon, Pitt and Thunstone sat down at the end of a row of seats.

  Across from them sat Father Bundren, and next to him Reuben Manco. They smiled in recognition, and Father Bundren rose and leaned to speak to Thunstone.

  “That young man you and I know,” he said, “we had some interesting talk. I hope it was profitable.”

  “Good,” said Thunstone. Plainly Exum Layton was not to be mentioned by name. “Is he here tonight?”

  “I advised him to miss the show, and ordered him in a good dinner and said I’d see him later.”

  Then Layton remained in Father Bundren’s room at the Inn, and surely that place would be well protected against evil. Father Bundren sat down again, and Thunstone studied his program. It was a single photocopied sheet:

  The Buford Players

  present

  NIGHT SIDES OF SHAKESPEARE

  From THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY VI:

  Act I, Scene 4

  From HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK: Act I,

  Scenes 1, 4, 5

  From MACBETH: Act I, Scenes 1, 4, 5

  Produced and Directed by

  GRIZEL FIAN

  There were no casts of characters, or names of the actors portraying them.

  T
hunstone tilted his sword cane between his knees and looked at his watch. It was exactly eight o’clock. Even as he noted the time, three thudding taps sounded from beyond the curtain. Talk died down. The houselights dimmed and a

  row of footlights came up. A young man of medium height walked into view before the curtain, folded in the sort of black cloak that is associated with Count Dracula in various plays and films. He spoke in a resonant baritone voice:

  “True, I talk of dreams,

  Which are the children of an idle brain,

  Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;

  Which is as thin of substance as the air,

  And more inconstant than the wind.”

  Abruptly he fell silent and headed off to the wings.

  “From Romeo and Juliet, ” whispered Thunstone.

  “Mercutio speaking,” said Pitt.

  The curtain rose rumblingly toward the top of the arch. Music stole from somewhere out of sight, a stealthy music, slow and minor. The light was soft and blue, upon a stage set here and there with flowered shrubs. Upstage rose a wall painted to resemble masonry, with an indented parapet at the top.

  A dozen girls danced into view, to the rhythm of the music. All of them were finely proportioned, with very few clothes. Their rounded arms and legs were bare; the upper slopes of their bosoms were visible. Their faces shone pale in the dim light, like night-blooming flowers. Nimbly they danced and postured. They began to sing, and Thunstone had heard the words earlier that day:

  Cummer, go ye before, cummer, go ye;

  Gif ye not go before, cummer, let me . . .

  That ancient witch song, dating back to the time of Shakespeare and Elizabeth, perhaps before that. This dance and chorus of witches had never been mentioned in the play. Was this an actual ceremony? Who had said once, that if you witnessed such a ritual and did not protest, you yourself were a partaker in it? Thunstone shook his head to banish the thought.

  Gif ye not go before, cummer, let me . . .

  They broke off the song and fled offstage to the right, and for a moment left the stage empty behind them. The lights blinked off and then on again for a moment, and others entered at left.

  First came stalking a huge, heavy-set man in the black cassock and white bands of a medieval priest. He must have been four inches over six feet, and was massively built even for that height. He beckoned with a mighty hand to bring others into view after him—a much smaller man also robed as a priest, then a buxom woman in the loose-folded dark gown and steeple hat of the traditional witch—Margery Jourdain, of course. Behind her came Bolingbroke, caped in star-spattered black with a snug black cap. The huge priest spoke in gruff tones, identifying himself as Hume:

  “Come, my masters,” he rumbled. “The duchess, I tell you, expects performance of your performance.”

  “Master Hume,” said Bolingbroke, “we are therefore provided. Will her ladyship behold and hear our exorcisms?”

  “Aye,” replied Hume, “what else? Fear not her courage.” Bolingbroke directed Hume to mount the parapet and join the Duchess of Gloucester there. Hume flung back his cowl, showing a massive face with a tufty brown beard, and made a quick exit. Bolingbroke then ordered Margery Jourdain to “grovel on the earth” and told the other priest, Southwell, to read. Southwell produced a roll of parchment, spread it out, and began to mutter. Meanwhile, on the parapet above appeared the Duchess, instantly recognizable as Grizel Fian. She wore a splendid dress that gleamed like spun silver, so far down off her shoulders as to reveal a generous part of her bosom with the shadowed valley at its center. Hume joined her, towering a head above her, but by no means detracting from the attention she skillfully focused upon herself.

  She spoke clearly: “Well said, my masters, and welcome all. To this gear the sooner the better.”

  And Bolingbroke:

  “Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,

  The time of night when Troy was set on fire;

  The time when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl, And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves, That time best fits the work we have in hand.”

  The priest called Southwark peered at his parchment. “Conjuro te, ” he began, and then some indistinct words, while Bolingbroke rummaged in a pouch and cast a handful of powder upon the stage at his feet. Thunder rolled loudly, the lights blinked and blinked for flashes of lightning. A pallid blaze sprang up from the powder; a spotlight stabbed its beam down to reveal a figure there.

  “Rowley Thome,” whispered Thunstone, and that was who it was, recognizable for all in a cowl-like headdress and a sort of tunic that seemed made of black bearskin. The fire died down and glimmered around his feet as he rose erect. “Adsum, ” he pronounced.

  Still sprawled on the boards, Margery Jourdain bade him answer questions: “For till thou speak thou shalt not pass from hence.”

  Thome’s deep voice agreed: “Ask what thou wilt.”

  Bolingbroke then put the questions, and Thome as the spirit made answers, while Southwark scribbled. King Henry? Henry would die. The Duke of Suffolk? By water would he die. The Duke of Somerset? Let him shun castles. At last: “Have done, for more I hardly can endure.”

  Bolingbroke again: “Doomed to darkness and the burning lake, false fiend, avoid!”

  Again a deafening roll as of thunder, a glare of lightning, and Thorne vanished before their eyes. The curtain fell and the house lights came up. Thunstone and Sharon and Pitt looked at each other.

  “They cut that scene short, before York and Buckingham could show up and arrest everybody,” remarked Pitt.

  “Because they want to give us the witch dance and the spirit raising, but no reprisals,” said Thunstone.

  “What did you think of the performance?”

  “Fairly impressive,” said Thunstone. “That prophesying spirit was Rowley Thome.”

  Pitt blinked his eyes. “He’s here?”

  “I spoke to him on the campus earlier today.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “I intend to find out.”

  Bumping, rolling noises behind the curtain showed that scenery was being shifted. The row of lights gleamed, and the young man in the cape walked on behind them. All hushed to hear him as he recited:

  “ ’Tis now the very witching time of night,

  When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

  Contagion to this world.”

  Again he made a swift exit.

  “But we had that speech, just now,” said Sharon.

  “No, this is from Hamlet, with Hamlet saying it,” Thunstone said.

  Up went the curtain on a grim stretch of a fortress with a gloomy battlement upstage. Again blue light for a night scene, with a sky of stars. Francisco and Bernardo came on and spoke of the cold, then Horatio and Marcellus entered, in Elizabethan doublets and hose and cloaks. As they spoke, the Ghost came silently into view. It wore dull gray chain mail and a close-fitting helmet with the visor up.

  Horatio addressed the apparition, in the familiar terms of wonder and dread, until a remarkably lifelike cock crow sounded offstage and the Ghost seemed to fade away. Horatio and the others felt that it was the image of Denmark’s dead king, and agreed to tell Prince Hamlet of what they had seen. A blink-off of the lights and then they shone blue again, and Hamlet was there, with Horatio and Marcellus.

  “Hamlet’s ahead of time with his suit of sables,” muttered Pitt; and indeed, Hamlet wore black doublet and hose, with a mantle of the same color. The three talked about how cold it was, how it was midnight. Hamlet spoke of his father’s successor, King Claudius, just then happy among drinking companions. And the Ghost entered again.

  The suit of mail was not dull now. By some trick of lighting, and a clever one, it glowed like starlit ice.

  “Look, my lord, it comes!” exclaimed Horatio, and Hamlet recognized the Ghost as his dead father. It beckoned him sweepingly and moved away. When Horatio and Marcellus tried to keep Hamlet from following, he fairly roared h
is threat—“By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!” —then fairly raced after the Ghost. Horatio commented, rather darkly: “He waxes desperate with imagination,” and after he and Marcellus had spoken briefly to each other, the two of them moved after Hamlet.

  The stage blacked out for a moment, and when the lights came up, there was a change in the scenery. A dark wall had been put into place upstage and the Ghost stood upon it, still glittering in its mail. Hamlet gestured to it from below, and spoke: “Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no further.”

  “Mark me,” intoned the Ghost richly, and Thunstone felt sure that this was the same actor who had appeared before the curtain to introduce the scenes. If so, he must have hurried into his chain mail. Hamlet replied, and was addressed again, until the Ghost told him, “I am thy father’s spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fire, till the foul crimes done to my days of nature are burnt and purged away.” And followed with the tale of how his brother Claudius had poisoned him, had assumed the crown of Denmark and had married the widowed queen.

  All this was familiar to Thunstone and his companions, and was impressively performed. The Ghost departed. Hamlet met Horatio and Marcellus and swore them to silence on the hilt of his drawn sword. “Swear!” came the voice of the Ghost from below, both musical and chilling. And Hamlet:

  “The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,

  That ever I was bom to set it right!”

  The curtain came down, the house lights came up, and the applause was tumultuous.

  “That was done very well,” breathed Sharon. “It froze me to my fingertips.”

  “Grizel Fian is doing herself proud,” said Pitt. He looked across the aisle. “Chief Manco, Father Bundren, how do you like the show so far?”

  “Interesting,” said Manco. “Some things remind me of stories we Cherokees tell each other.”