The relationship complications lasted days and weeks, even months in some cases, feeding the gossip machines of New York, Paris, California and London. Apocryphal stories recycled for years, few of them as sensational as the truth. Helena’s main complaint about our stay in the Delaware Valley was that she could never get into the toilet alone. When she did make it, there was usually someone there, hanging from the ceiling in a bizarre state of dress. If we hadn’t already reached a sort of equilibrium that year we might have enjoyed it a little more. But we wanted to be together.
We couldn’t have left anyway. Neither of us had a valid driving licence and there was some sort of transport strike. We were stranded in an amateur performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show without the music or the jokes. Mostly they wanted advice—or that was how it started. Now, tell me Michael, should I fuck Buck and chuck Huck and should I only suck Chuck or should I settle down and get stuck with all of them? Anyway, how are you fixed for now? We only had to sit in that one set, the kitchen, from which led a double staircase, until the next lugubrious guest would come down after a row or in search of water and almost immediately propose to you. What’s more, most of the proposers were pretty unattractive. So we were stranded there until a train reached Middletown one Monday afternoon, signaling its imminent arrival from the bridge and causing us to flee down the hill to the station not caring what we left behind. Until then we’d had very little sleep. They’d given up invading our bed early on the second Friday evening, so that wasn’t much of an issue during the last week or so. The worst thing was definitely the endless gossip and analysis. You couldn’t get yourself a bowl of cornflakes without some bunch or other wanting to promote their own gloomy Aquarian wisdom. By that Monday I was pretty sure Andy Warhol was hidden somewhere directing it all. Script by Feydeau on acid. The ultimate boring formulae, twice as boring as any previous piece of boring cinema.
We realised that we had stumbled on a significant moment in American history: the Age of the Orgasm. The Discovery of Sex had occurred a couple of decades earlier, during World War II. Relativity prefigured relativism and here we were. The right to come led our sexual fashions. Helena and I stumbled on a key moment in America’s public sexual experiment. In a couple of years the United States had gone culturally from low-contrast black-and-white to vibrant colour. We wished them well but now the buggers, like teenagers, wanted to tell the world what most of it already knew.
The Swarm had never ceased, even in America, but I had been able to ignore it better. We were knackered by the time we got back to Blighty, but were probably happier together than we had ever been. We had never been so thoroughly affectionate about our marriage. Everyone was delighted to see us back and of course we had brought all kinds of stuff for the girls. My mum said they’d all had a wonderful time. The girls had thoroughly enjoyed the visit from their auntie.
Auntie? We were puzzled. I had no brothers or sisters. Helena had one brother and a great-aunt. When we asked more my mum became a bit vague.
Did this auntie have a name?
Funny name, my mum said, beginning to look uncertain. Reeny? Ferny? Something like that. The girls were safe and evidently unharmed. Where had the lady taken them? Helena asked coolly.
‘It was like a really old bit of London,’ Sally told us. ‘Like a country village.’
Helena frowned. She was furious with my mother. Mum was normally never short of common sense. How could she allow her own grandchildren to go off with a stranger? Could the girls remember anything else?
It soon became clear to me that Freni Melody had turned up while we were away and somehow persuaded my mother to let her take my children to Alsacia where they had met Molly and some of the other inhabitants of the Sanctuary. Helena decided they had been to somewhere like Lewes or one of the other towns around London that still had the characteristics of an older settlement, but the more I listened, the angrier I got. My mum was close to tears. She kept apologising. ‘I don’t know what got into me. It’s as if she hypnotised me! How could I let them go off like that? Honestly, I feel I’m losing my head!’
‘Well,’ said Helena sharply. ‘I suppose there was no harm done.’
Both Mum and I knew Helena would never again leave the girls in her sole care. Helena thought one of my ‘hippie friends’ had been responsible. She had always been mildly unhappy about my taking the children to gigs. Guessing the truth, I was much angrier than she was. Next day, saying I had to see an editor, I took a taxi to Carmelite Inn Chambers.
32
ROLLING IN THE RUINS
And so I went back to the Alsacia. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, when the Fleet Street area was pretty much deserted. I half expected the gates to be hidden from me again. But there they were! Slowly, with growing uncertainty, I pushed open the heavy old creaking oak. When the gap was wide enough to admit me I slipped through.
After a moment or two my sense of anticipation left me. I stared in horror at the scene. Perhaps a bomb had hit the Sanctuary. A bomb of modern proportions. Like something from my own childhood. Everywhere I looked buildings were blackened and spoiled. Houses and shops were rubble. The Swan With Two Necks had come under heavy cannon fire, with the whole of its front destroyed. The south wing, where I had lived with Molly, had partially collapsed. Furniture, decorations, a long bar on the ground floor and a good part of the stables were all half-demolished. I clambered through a gap in the wall. This was like the Blitz. The place was evidently looted of all valuables. I stopped. I bent down and picked up a piece of bloodstained silk. What remained of the wall behind me bore a great splash of dried blood. People had died here. People I had known and cared for. One of the women I had loved. Shot, stabbed and dragged away, living or dead, to suffer further indignity, sorrow and pain. Thank God there had been so few children here! Now, again, I understood the wisdom of the Alsacia’s inhabitants.
‘Nixer!’
Turning, I saw the abbey was also blackened. Her fine glass was cracked, her vines and bricks sooty. I saw nothing alive. Previously furious with Molly and her mother, I now became terrified for their safety. I ran towards the abbey door. It was locked and barred. Sealed from within. Perhaps the monks refused to open their doors for fear of risking further assault? I beat as hard as I could with the iron knocker on that old timber but nobody answered. The air itself was dead. I heard nothing, not even the scuttling of a rat or the rustle of a pigeon in the guttering. The Swarm, however, had completely gone from my head, as if rewarding me for my return. At that moment I hated the Alsacia. The stink of burnt timber and blackened stonework infected the air. There was no easy way to tell when the Sanctuary had been raided. The ruins could be a year or more old.
‘I shouldn’t have left,’ I said to myself. I was angry. How could this have happened? Too much loose talk? Too much coming and going? Maybe the Alsacia couldn’t sustain the whole thing on the energy it had left? ‘Is everyone dead?’ I spoke aloud against the dreadful silence. At that moment I regretted ever coming here, ever meeting Molly and the rest. And my sorrow was still mixed with anger. What horrors might my girls have witnessed if Mrs Melody had brought them here while the place sustained the attack? I picked my way over the ruins. There were no corpses. No body parts. A relief. The door of the abbey was shut. Had Nixer’s Roundheads taken everything, including the corpses, away?
The only building left in reasonable condition was the abbey. Fighting had gone on around it, but whoever defended the monks had fought a long, hard battle. Every shrub was trampled down and musket balls had made heavy indentations in the masonry. But still no bodies.
There was nothing else to do. Returning to the abbey, I picked up the big, blackened knocker and hammered with it on the door. I’d break in if I had to! In the silence not even a bird called and the echo of the knocker was very loud.
At that moment I heard someone behind me. I turned, yearning for a pistol.
‘Who could by industrious valour climb, to ruin that great work of time,
and cast the kingdoms old into another mould…? You must be sorry not to find your friends here. And all this destruction! Rehearsing the End of the World, perhaps?’
I looked back and at once recognised Captain James St Claire, the swarthy, brown-eyed soldier who had saved me from the Roundhead thief takers and joined us in that earlier fight at the Inn. A bit of a mystery. Now unwounded, he stood leaning on a wall just across from the abbey. What was he babbling? Some seventeenth-century play? He was dressed much the same as when I had first seen him, though he had added a few bright pheasant feathers to his hat. This shaded his face at an angle and made me wonder if he were perhaps a survivor from some battle between the Scots and the English. The Scots were as divided amongst themselves as the people on the other side of the border. This man’s accent was educated, from the northeast. Durham, maybe? As before, his long, basket-hilted sword was scabbarded at his side. He had pistols and a big sheathed knife in his belt. He looked like a man just back from a long journey through dangerous country. He did not appear to have found much plunder. Rather, he had the bearing of a soldier in some defeated cause. Part of the army Cromwell had finally scattered for good?
‘Did you see any of this?’ I asked. He knew what I meant.
He shook his head. ‘I’ve learned little more than you. I came here looking for Prince Rupert, to offer help dragging his Cosmolabe from the rubble and repairing it.’
‘But you disappeared after the fight,’ I said. ‘Where did you go?’
‘I had some urgent business elsewhere. As now. War’s made rogues and liars of us all.’ He bowed his head. ‘I’ve seen savagery in these days, but never a whole town destroyed and its inhabitants with it.’ He looked up suddenly. ‘I’ve left my horse outside. She’ll be agitated. I should be going.’ His Yorkshire brogue was deeper, as if he anticipated seeing his native Hull. He took off his feathered bonnet and bowed again. Then he said: ‘If you do not ride the silver roads, I would suggest you wait until—ah!’ He saw something behind me. I heard a noise from inside. I glimpsed a pair of dark eyes looking through the little window in the door. Then, squeaking, the bolts were drawn back.
‘Silver roads?’
The door opened. Friar Isidore was there, smiling shyly. ‘I had hoped you would come. If only to reassure us of your safety. Would you like some tea?’
He spoke only to me. I turned. James St Claire had gone. Back to his horse?
‘Oh, what the hell!’ I said to myself, accepting Isidore’s invitation. And I followed him through the door of the abbey.
33
DICING WITH THE DEITY
Friar Isidore took me back through the darkened passage and chapel and into the abbot’s room. Was the old man expecting me? His features were a little drawn but hadn’t evidently aged. His pale fingers emerging from his sleeves, he gestured for us to be seated. As Friar Isidore poured freshly brewed tea, Father Grammaticus offered teacakes and crumpets. I could be in one of those English school stories, having tea with the headmaster. Stalky & Co meets Mr Chips. The abbot asked after my health. How was I ‘making progress’ in the ‘outside world’? He seemed surprised when I mentioned my children. Hadn’t Mrs Melody brought them here?
In spite of my anger I was concerned for Molly and the others. What had happened to the Alsacia and her inhabitants?
‘Oh, it’s of no concern, my boy. Time’s rays, you know. The Cosmolabe. Really, it will all be put to rights.’
I was baffled. ‘What has happened to Molly? Captain Turpin? Captain Duval? Prince Rupert and the rest?’
‘There was a further attack on the abbey. Captain Nixer’s hatred of us is unreasoning. He calls us papists and other dangerous names. He believes we hide a great fortune in gold and gems. We were in some danger, true. But the worst was averted. I am certain that none of our friends were harmed and they will all rejoin us here soon.’
‘But what happened, Father Abbot? There were living people here! At The Swan With Two Necks, for instance!’
‘We grew spiritually weak. We let the men of violence break through. Of course, they never harm the abbey. Or, I should say, they have not harmed us yet. We were expecting an attack. The soldiers failed to breach the abbey.’
‘They attacked? Was it Nixer and his Roundheads again?’
‘No doubt.’
‘They took prisoners, I suppose?’ I suggested. ‘There were no dead that I saw.’
‘We did all we could to resist them in our own ways. But many defended the Swan until the soldiers killed them.’
‘Don’t you know why there aren’t any remains? Why everyone has disappeared?’ Frightened, I was unnaturally aggressive.
‘Remains? They hid themselves, I suppose.’ The abbot smiled somewhat vaguely.
‘Turpin, Duval and the rest? My Molly? Her mother? How? Where?’
The abbot shook his head, smiling gently. ‘Some of us seek to choose our own destinies. Some of us insist on attempting to control that destiny. Your friends are their own masters.’
‘But they followed the prince,’ I said. ‘You know that. They defended the abbey, Father! I saw the evidence. The rubble.’
‘Oh, no, my boy. We gave them sanctuary.’
‘You let them be wounded, killed, abducted!’
The abbot was surprised. ‘Of course not. You forget what this place is. Within the Sanctuary they are immune to mortal wounds. As they are to ordinary mortality. Here, as I’m sure you know, our longevity is that of the earliest prophets.’
‘You control such things?’ I could not believe I understood him.
‘We do our best.’ Exchanging a look of troubled amusement with Friar Isidore, the abbot settled more comfortably into his chair. ‘You have seen the wonderful things we have done to protect the meaning and spirit of Holy Sanctuary. In Alsacia, thanks to our prayers and our learned wisdom, we have created a place where men and women, in lives of quiet contemplation, can study and learn to help their fellows.’
‘I do understand that, Father. But I do not understand how an enemy can get in and do the damage I saw out there. Who did this? Our friends and acquaintances are all gone! Was everyone taken prisoner? You can’t leave me with so many questions unanswered. Where’s your Christian charity?’
The abbot seemed shocked. ‘Master Michael. I thought you knew we are an ancient order. We studied in time-begrimed Ur and survived the rise and fall of empires. In direct line we are at least as old as Persia. We came to Carmel long before Christ. Yet we acknowledge Christ, as we acknowledge all true prophets. But we have gained knowledge which Christians fear and call the Dark Arts!’ He smiled. ‘We have been hated by so many—so many … yet we continue to serve God and mankind and keep our word as best we can. As an adept, you must know—’
‘Adept? I’m a writer, that’s all. I am concerned for my friends! Do you not take vows? I understood the Carmelites to be a Christian order!’
‘Indeed they are, to the world at large. We never claimed to be simply Christian. Here, we retained our old practises, neither denying the divinity of Jesus Christ nor the wisdom of his message. We also acknowledge Abraham and Mohammed. We accept the teachings of Buddha and Confucius, of Shinto and Hindu and Jain, of Jat and Copt and Catholic and all our worlds’ spiritual beliefs. That which divides mankind must be that which unites it. We acknowledge all faiths.’
‘But you let people think you are Christians!’
‘In these parts, anyone wearing habits such as ours is taken for a Christian.’
‘So you are liars and hypocrites?’
‘Is it not better to love God than merely to fear or worship Him? Jesus Christ taught that. We keep our knowledge secret. We live as Christians but tell no lies to protect ourselves. Since we all believe in the same ideals, we are saddened at the way the love of God is recruited in a hatred of others.’
‘I saw Hasidic Jews visiting you,’ I told him. ‘Do they think you are Jews?’
‘No.’ The abbot made a sign. Friar Isidore refreshed our
tea, offering chocolate digestives and Fig Newtons. ‘No. They came to see our Treasure.’
‘The Fish Chalice?’
He chuckled. ‘Is that what you call it?’ His grey eyes met mine suddenly. ‘It is not the Holy Grail, my boy.’ He smiled at my astonishment. ‘I know your obsessions!’ His expression was one of innocent delight. ‘I am sure one or two of the Grail myths come partly from our chalice. We’ve enjoyed our stewardship of the Cup for more than two thousand years, first in Palestine, then in England and France. Our fellow Carmelites gradually allowed themselves to come under the discipline of Rome. While embracing our stewardship of the Chalice and our guardianship of the Treasure, we continued to draw strength from all metaphysical ideas.’
Suddenly, he grew extremely sober. ‘My boy, you are a natural psychic, as you no doubt know. And you come from a line of adepts, carriers of the old knowledge. That is how you always find us. You would not be here otherwise.’
I was confused. ‘What about the prince? Was he also psychic?’
‘Indeed. Psychics and changelings can come and go pretty much as they please.’
‘Changelings?’
‘Native born, they are put out to foster and they, too, can come and go pretty much as they please. The majority of Alsacia’s children have your gift. But they find themselves unable to live ambiguous lives. They choose to dwell in one place or the other. Not both.’
I was increasingly impatient. ‘But what on earth happened out there?’ He was trying to distract me, I was sure. ‘Was the Sanctuary breached by enemies hunting for your so-called Treasure? Are these enemies no longer ruled by any decent code of conduct? By law? Or God? Or honour, if you like?’
‘Or chivalry? Another ideal we so rarely live up to.’ Friar Isidore shook his ancient head. ‘That is why some of us become friars, to study the old wisdom and counter the powers of the material world. These include statesmanship, speech, singing and, sometimes, swordsmanship. “Touché!” Thus you acknowledge your opponent’s successful lunge.’ And he pantomimed, with sudden humour, a passage of blades.
The Whispering Swarm Page 32