“I think so, too,” said Urban Horn.
Circulos overheard the conversation and moved soon after. He gathered up his straw and plodded, like a bald old pelican, to the opposite wall, where he made a new pallet, far from the others. Soon, the wall and floor were covered in hieroglyphics and ideograms. Signs of the zodiac, pentagrams and hexagrams predominated, but there were also spirals and tetrads, and the mother letters—Aleph, Mem and Shin—were a recurring feature. There was also something resembling the Tree of the Sephiroth.
“What do you say to that devil’s work, gentlemen?” Tomasz Alpha nodded towards Circulos.
“The Inquisitor will take him first,” stated Bonaventure. “Mark my words.”
“I doubt it,” said Scharley. “I think, on the contrary, he’ll soon be released. If they really are releasing the dimwits, then he fulfils the conditions perfectly.”
“I think you’re wrong in his case,” countered Koppirnig.
Reynevan thought so, too.
Herring was the prevailing feature of the fast-time menu and soon even Martin the rat was eating it with visible reluctance. Reynevan, meanwhile, had made his decision.
Circulos paid no attention to him and didn’t even notice when he approached while he was busy painting Solomon’s Seal on the wall. Reynevan cleared his throat. Once, then again, louder. Circulos didn’t turn his head.
“Get out of my light!”
Reynevan squatted down. On the circle surrounding the seal, Circulos had evenly scribbled the following words: AMASARAC, ASARADEL, AGLON, VACHEON and STIMULAMATON.
“What do you want?”
“I know those sigla and spells. I’ve heard about them.”
“Oh, yes?” Circulos only now looked at him, and said nothing for some time. “And I’ve heard of spies. Begone, snake.”
He turned his back on Reynevan and resumed his scribbling. Reynevan cleared his throat and took a deep breath.
“Clavis Salomonis…”
Circulos froze. He remained motionless for a while, then slowly turned his head, causing his goitre to bob.
“Speculum salvationis,” he replied, his voice still suspicious and hesitant. “Toledo?”
“Alma mater nostra.”
“Veritas Domini?”
“Manet in saeculum.”
“Amen.” Only then did Circulos grin to show the blackened stumps of his teeth and look around to check that no one was listening. “Amen, young confrater. Which academy? Krakow?”
“Prague.”
“Mine was Bologna.” Circulos smiled even more broadly. “Then Padua. And Montpellier. I also spent time in Prague… I knew doctors, masters, scholars… They didn’t fail to remind me of that during my arrest, and the Inquisitor will want to know the details… But you, young confrater? What will the Defender of the Catholic faith hastening here want to learn from you? Who did you know in Prague?”
“I didn’t know anyone.” Reynevan recalled Scharley’s warning. “I’m innocent. I ended up here by accident. It was a misunderstanding—”
“Certes, Certes.” Circulos waved a hand. “Of course. If you are convincing in your saintly innocence, you’ll get out alive, God willing. You have a chance. Unlike me.”
“What do you—”
“I know what I’m saying.” Circulus cut him off. “I am a recidivist. A Haereticus relapsus, understand? I won’t endure the torture, I’ll incriminate myself… The stake is a certainty. Which is why…”
He gestured towards the symbols on the wall.
“Which is why,” he repeated, “I’m doing what I can, as you see.”
A day passed before Circulos revealed what he was doing. A day during which Scharley expressed his categoric disapproval of Reynevan’s new friendship.
“I don’t understand why you’re wasting your time talking to that madman,” he concluded.
“Oh, leave him alone,” said Horn, siding unexpectedly with Reynevan. “Let him talk to whoever he wants to. Perhaps he needs a change?”
Scharley waved a hand dismissively.
“Hey!” he shouted as Reynevan walked off. “Don’t forget! Eight and forty!”
“What?”
“The sum of the letters in the word ‘Apollyon’ multiplied by the sum of the letters in the word ‘moron’!”
“I’m devising,” Circulos lowered his voice, looking around vigilantly, “a plan to get out of here.”
“Using…” Reynevan also glanced around, “magic, correct?”
“There’s no other way,” the old man stated unemotionally. “At the very beginning, I tried bribery. They beat me. I tried to threaten them. They beat me again. I tried pretending to be a complete halfwit, but they weren’t taken in. I would have feigned being possessed by the Devil, and if old Dobeneck, the Wrocław prior at Saint Adalbert, were still the Inquisitor, I might have succeeded. But that new, young one, he can’t be fooled. What’s left to me?”
“My question exactly: what?”
“Teleportation. Travelling through space.”
The following day, Circulos, glancing around vigilantly to check that no one was eavesdropping, introduced his plan to Reynevan, supporting it, of course, with a long lecture about the theories of sorcery and goetia. Teleportation, Reynevan learned, was quite possible, easy even, on condition, of course, that one sought the assistance of a suitable demon. Circulos revealed that there were several such demons, and that every decent book of spells offered its own kinds. Circulos’s lengthy studies, Reynevan learned eventually, inclined him to follow the instructions of The Grimorium Verum. And The Grimorium Verum recommended the summoning of the demon Mersilde.
“But how to summon him?” Reynevan dared to ask. “Without instruments, without an Occultum? The Occultum must meet a series of conditions, the creation of which in this filthy dungeon would—”
“Orthodoxy!” Circulos interrupted angrily. “Doctrinairism! So harmful in empiricism, so narrow-minded! The Occultum is a trifle when one has an amulet. Am I right, Master Formalist? Of course I am. Ergo, here is the amulet. Quod erat demonstrandum. Just look.”
The amulet turned out to be an oval disc of malachite, more or less the size of a farthing, engraved with glyphs and symbols filled with gold, of which the most conspicuous were a serpent, a fish and a sun inside a triangle.
“It’s the talisman of Mersilde,” Circulos said proudly. “I smuggled it in here out of sight. “Take a look. Go on.”
Reynevan held out a hand but quickly withdrew it. Faint traces of a dried-on, dark substance on the talisman betrayed its hiding place.
“I’m going to try tonight,” the old man said, unmoved by his reaction. “Wish me fortune, young novice. Who knows, perhaps one day…”
“I still have…” Reynevan cleared his throat, “a request. I’m looking for answers… regarding a certain… incident…”
“Go on.”
He expounded the matter quickly but thoroughly. Circulos listened quietly and raptly, then began asking questions.
“What day was it? The precise date?”
“The last day of August. A Friday. An hour before Vespers.”
“Hmm… The Sun in the sign of the Virgin, which is Venus…
The ruling dualistic phenomenon, in Chaldean: Shamas, in Hebrew: Hamaliel. The Moon, it looks from my calculations, was full… unfortunately… The hour of the Sun… could have been better, could have been worse… Just a moment.”
He brushed away the straw, rubbed the floor with his hand, scribbled some graphs and digits on it, added, multiplied and divided, mumbling something about ascendants, descendants, angles, epicycles, deferents and quincunxes. Finally, he raised his head and his goitre swayed comically.
“You mentioned that spells were used. Which ones?”
Reynevan began to quote them, trying his best to remember. It didn’t take long.
“I know The Arbatel,” Circulos interrupted, waving a careless hand, “although it’s crudely muddled up in your recitation. It’s a wonder
it worked at all… And there were no tragic deaths? Never mind. Were there visions? A many-headed lion? A rider on a pale horse? A raven? A fiery serpent? No? Interesting. And you say that when Samson awoke… He wasn’t himself, yes?”
“So he claimed. And there were certain… grounds for believing him. This is precisely what I’d like to find out—whether anything like that is even possible.”
Circulos said nothing for some time, rubbing one heel against the other. Then he cleared his nose.
“Space,” he said finally, pensively wiping a finger on his lap, “is a perfectly organised whole and a splendid hierarchical order. It is an equilibrium between generatio and corruptio, birth and dying, creation and destruction. Space is, as Augustine teaches, gradatio entium, a ladder of existences, the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial. Space is also like a book—”
“I asked if it’s possible.”
“Existence is not just substantia, existence is at the same time accidens, something that occurs unintentionally… occasionally magically—”
“Is it possible or not?” interrupted Reynevan bluntly.
“Possible indeed.” The old man nodded and pouted his blue lips. “Certainly, it is. In the given case, one must remember that any spell—even the most apparently trivial—requires a pact with a demon.”
“So it was a demon?”
“Or a cacodaemon.” Circulos shrugged his thin shoulders. “Or something we give that name to symbolically. What precisely?
I can’t say. Plenty of individuals enter the darkness—”
“So the monastery simpleton entered the darkness,” asked Reynevan, “and a negotium perambulans became incarnated in his corporeal body? They changed places?”
“Balance,” Circulos confirmed with a nod. “Yin and yang. Or, if the Kabbalah means more to you, Kether and Malkuth. If a peak exists, then a trough must also.”
“But can it be reversed? Revoked? Can the exchange be repeated? So that he would return…”
“I don’t know.”
They sat for a moment in a silence disturbed only by Koppirnig’s snoring, Bonaventure’s hiccoughing, the gibbering of the lunatics, the murmur of voices conversing at the Sign of the Omega and the Benedictus Dominus, quietly rattled off by the Camaldolite.
“He,” said Reynevan finally, “I mean Samson, calls himself the Wanderer.”
“Most apt.”
They were silent for some time.
“Such a cacodaemon,” Reynevan finally said, “must certainly possess some… superhuman powers…”
“Are you wondering whether you can expect him to rescue you?” asked Circulos, showing his perspicacity. “And whether, now that he’s free, he’s forgotten about his captive companions? You wish to know if you can expect his help. Don’t you?”
“I do.”
Circulos said nothing for a while.
“I wouldn’t,” he finally declared with brutal frankness. “Why should demons differ from people in that respect?”
It was their last conversation. Whether Circulos managed to activate the amulet smuggled in up his arse and summon the demon Mersilde would remain forever a secret. But beyond reasonable doubt, nothing came of the teleportation. The following morning, Circulos was still in the tower, lying on his back on his pallet, stiff, both hands pressed against his chest and fingers digging into his clothing.
“O Blessed Virgin Mary…” grunted the Institor. “Cover his face…”
Scharley draped a bit of rag over the ghastly visage, contorted in a paroxysm of horror and pain, the twisted mouth, flecked with dried-on foam, the grinning teeth and the dull, glassily goggling eyes.
“Call Brother Tranquillus.”
“Oh, Christ…” groaned Koppirnig. “Look…”
Martin the rat was lying belly-up nearby, convulsed in agony, its yellow teeth showing.
“The Devil broke his neck,” judged Bonaventure with a knowing expression, “and took his soul to Hell.”
“Aye, no doubt,” the Institor replied, nodding. “He painted devilish signs on the walls and got his comeuppance. The old wizard summoned up the Devil, to his own undoing.”
“An evil power, touch wood…” said Bonaventure. “We should rub out all those scribblings and pour holy water over them. Say a Mass before the Evil One gets his hooks into us. Call the monks… What are you laughing at, Scharley, may I ask?”
“Have a guess.”
“Indeed,” yawned Urban Horn. “It’s laughable, the drivel you’re talking. And your agitation. What are you getting excited about? Old Circulos has died, kicked the bucket, popped his clogs, shuffled off this mortal coil, gone to the Asphodel Meadows. May the soil lie lightly on him and may lux perpetua shine on him. And let it be the finis. I declare the mourning over. And the Devil? To Hell with the Devil.”
“Ooh, m’Lord Mommolem.” Tomasz Alpha shook his head. “Don’t make fun of the Devil, for his work is visible here. Who knows, perhaps he is still at large, hidden in the gloom. Hellish vapours hang over this place of death. Can you not smell them? What do you think that stench is if not brimstone? What gives off a smell like that?”
“Your britches.”
“If it wasn’t the Devil,” said Bonaventure crossly, “what do you think killed him?”
“His heart.” Reynevan spoke up, somewhat hesitantly. “I’ve studied cases like this. His heart broke. A plethora occurred. An excess of bile carried in the pneuma caused a tumour, and a clog—or infarction—occurred. There was a spasmus and his arteria pulmonalis burst.”
“Do you hear?” said Scharley. “Science has spoken. Sine ira et studio. Causa finita, everything is clear.”
“Is it?” Koppirnig suddenly spoke. “And the rat? What killed the rat?”
“A rotten herring,” said Scharley.
The door slammed open above them, the stairs creaked and a barrel trundled down the steps.
“Praise the Lord! Your meal, brothers! Come on, time for prayers! And then bring your bowls for fish!”
Brother Tranquillus dismissed the request for holy water, a Mass and an exorcism over the deceased’s pallet with a highly ambiguous shrug and a highly unambiguous twist of his finger to his temple. That fact greatly enlivened the post-prandial discussion, and bold theses and conjectures were put forward. According to the boldest, Brother Tranquillus was himself a heretic and a Devil worshipper, for only such a person withholds holy water and spiritual ministry from the faithful. Tomasz Alpha, Bonaventure and the Institor began to delve deeper into the subject, ignoring the fact that Scharley and Horn were in hysterics. Until—to general stupefaction—the most unlikely person joined the discussion: the Camaldolite.
“Holy water,” the young clergyman’s voice was heard for the first time, “would have availed you nothing if the Devil really did appear here. Holy water is powerless against the Devil. As I well know, for I have seen it, and am here because of it.”
After the excited hubbub had subsided and a deathly silence fallen, the Camaldolite went on.
“I am a deacon at the Church of the Assumption in Niemodlin and secretary to the Reverend Piotr Nikisch, the dean of the collegiate. The thing I shall tell you about occurred this year, in the month of August. Around noon, the Honourable Master Fabian Pfefferkorn, mercator and a distant relative of the dean, burst into the church. He was greatly agitated and demanded that the Reverend Nikisch listen to his confession forthwith. They began at once to shout at each other in the confessional, using words of a kind I may not utter. As a result, the Reverend did not absolve Master Pfefferkorn and Master Pfefferkorn went away, calling the Reverend all sorts of coarse names and blaspheming both against the faith and the Roman Church. When he passed me in the vestibule, he yelled: ‘May the Devil take you, you damned priests!’ And the Devil appeared.”
“In the church?” Scharley asked.
“In the vestibule, by the very entrance. It descended from somewhere high up. Or rather flew down, for it was in the form of a bi
rd—I speak the truth!—and soon it assumed a human form. It was holding a shining sword, like in a painting, and stabbed Master Pfefferkorn straight in the face with it. Blood splashed on the floor… Master Pfefferkorn flapped his arms like a rag doll.” The deacon swallowed loudly. “I scooped up some holy water from the stoup and flung it at the Devil. And what do you think happened? Nothing! It ran off it like water off a duck’s back. The hell-fiend blinked and spat out what had entered his mouth. And looked at me. And I… I am ashamed to admit it, I fainted out of fear. When the brothers brought me round it was all over. The Devil had disappeared and Master Pfefferkorn lay lifeless, his soul gone—no doubt carried off to Hell by the Evil One.
“But the Devil hadn’t forgotten me, it took its revenge. No one believed what I had seen. They called me insane, saying I’d lost my wits. And when I told of the holy water, they silenced me, threatening me with punishments reserved for heresy and blasphemy. The affair got out and was dealt with in Wrocław itself, at the bishop’s court. And the order came from Wrocław to silence me and lock me up as a madman. But I know what Dominican in pace is like. Would I let myself be buried alive? I fled from Niemodlin without a second thought. But they captured me near Henryków and put me in here.”
“Did you manage to catch a good look at the Devil?” Urban Horn asked in the hushed silence. “Can you describe what it looked like?”
“It was tall.” The Camaldolite swallowed again. “Slim… Long, black hair, falling to his shoulders. Nose like a bird’s beak and eyes like a bird’s… Most piercing. An evil smile. Devilish.”
“No horns?” called Bonaventure, visibly disappointed. “No hooves? Didn’t have a tail?”
“It did not.”
“Eeeeeh! What rot!”
Discussions about devils, devilishness and the Devil’s doings wore on with varying intensity right up until the twenty-fourth of November. Right up to suppertime, to be precise, when Brother Tranquillus shared some news with the inmates after prayers.
The Tower of Fools Page 52