The Pendragon Legend (30 page)

It was all utterly confusing. At the back of my conscious mind lurked the anxieties of the actual world: what might be happening to the Earl, and what would be the outcome of this adventure. But in reality I could think of nothing but the complete uncertainty of my route, and what direction I should take. And the only thought I had on that subject was to follow my instincts, however unhappy and uncertain they might be.

I am not exaggerating their demerits. For the first fortnight after arriving in London I lost my way back to the hotel every single day, though it was a mere ten minutes’ stroll. What hope had I now of finding my way in the great Celtic Forest, where I had never been before? My situation was as comically painful as it had been at school when the maths master got carried away, deriving one formula after another and covering the entire blackboard in scribbles, while we grinned and sniggered at one another in despair, having lost him at the second step he had taken.

My spirits steadily sank. The forest was becoming more and more hostile as my weariness grew and the darkness deepened. I was forced to sit and rest briefly on a tree stump. I lit a match and looked at my watch. It was eight o’clock. I had been walking for a whole hour.

When I looked at my watch again it was eight-thirty; the next time it was nine. I sat down, then stood up again. I pushed on stubbornly and miserably, and always it seemed to be through the same bit of forest.

At last I caught a glimmer of light, and hastened towards it. Ahead of me lay a sort of luminous clearing. As I drew closer I realised it was a lake reflecting the moonlight. The trees dipping their branches in the water conveyed an inexpressible grief, and the little reeds endlessly sighed.

It was Llyn-Coled—or its twin.

I recalled what Cynthia had said: the five hundred Welsh
soldiers
thrown into the lake in the days of Llewellyn ap Griffith; the waters grieving all night in Welsh. And yes, the reeds were
whining
, whimpering, sighing in the wind, so human-like …

The old woman was still sitting by the shore, spinning, spinning her net, as if she were Fate itself; from time to time she threw a pebble in the water. It did not occur to me to ask her the way. In fact, the very thought that she might see me filled me with horror. I turned and retreated back into the woods.

Weariness and hunger infused my thoughts with a mild
delirium
, tinged with nausea. I was no longer walking: I was fleeing.

I was in the Celtic Forest, where every improbability becomes possible. Every ten minutes held a new terror. A bush would take on the precise appearance of an old hag, a rock became a
crouching
giant: worst of all were the ink-black brooks, the hollow trees and the sudden, loud flurry of owls taking flight.

It was now eleven o’clock, and I was wandering over a plateau. Here at least there were no woods: no trees, no owls, only
moonlight
. There was no Birnam Wood to come to Dunsinane, but little piles of stone scattered about as though the very bones of the earth were thrusting up beneath its skin. Ahead, to one side, stood a much larger pile, perhaps a Celtic burial site, I guessed, from pictures I had seen.

Approaching nearer I realised, with a sort of half-pleasure, that it was a building. The pleasure was qualified because, on a remote upland like this, I could imagine that the old peasant couple
dwelling
there might not be very friendly. I did my best not to think of any of the many phantom possibilities, and resolved to be brave.

I had now reached it. It couldn’t really be termed a house; it was rather an immense cube. I could see neither windows nor a door. I found none on the next side, or indeed on the third. When I had gone all the way round and ascertained that there were none at all, I was filled with an unspeakable terror. Nothing is more
frightening
than the completely inexplicable.

I was desperate to get away. Even the trees were better than this man-made enigma. But—I can’t say whether through sheer fatigue or my overexcited imagination—I stood rooted to the spot, as paralysed as a man in a dream. I just stared, hypnotised, at the whitewashed wall.

Then the wall moved. With infinite slowness, it slid to one side. Behind it was utter darkness. Out of this darkness stepped a man, very tall, dressed in black from head to foot, with only his hair and ruff-collar glinting white. I uttered a terrible scream.

Tiny circles were spinning before my eyes, like little flashes of lightning; they grew in size, turning lilac-coloured and carmine; then one small spot became larger, larger, and unbearably bright.

I was enclosed by four walls. It was pitch-black, and only by groping about could I establish that I was incarcerated. The silence was so deep it was almost tangible.

I wondered: how could I be sure I wasn’t dead? I lay down on the stone floor and sank into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

My memories of what followed are extremely confused. Even in normal circumstances my dreams tend to be vivid, and I sometimes mistake them for things that have actually happened. Already during this strange adventure I had totally lost my sense of reality. As I don’t wish to distort or exaggerate I shall need to exercise extreme caution when narrating what occurred next.

My exhaustion and unbearable mental stress were intensified by the fact that, as I always do, I had caught a cold in the endless rain and was slightly feverish. My inner censor was working only fitfully, and every fevered vision took on the solidity of fact.

For instance, it seemed to be entirely real that from time to time I would eat and drink, though I do not ever remember feeling
hunger or thirst. What I ate, and how I came by it, have quite escaped my memory.

Quite understandably, I have no sense of how long my ghostly imprisonment lasted. My watch had stopped. The place in which I was incarcerated had no windows, so I was unaware of
changing
night and day. My periodic recurrences of sleep were no guide either. I dozed in patches, lay in a half-dream or felt superhumanly alert. There must have been hours which I experienced as
minutes
, and minutes which felt like hours. It is of course well known that fever alters our sense of the passing of time.

When I think of that episode, my most lasting memory is also the first, that of a certain smell: the smell of some kind of smoke that pervaded the entire building. It was not unlike incense, but more bitter, and prone to induce giddiness. I know that all sorts of herbs are burnt in magic rituals, and this particular blend must have been one used for liturgical censing. I believe it was one of those I had read about in occult tomes—verbena, myrrh, carib grass or ambergris, perhaps—but I really don’t know: I had only read about them and could in no way identify any by name. However it was the same smell that had enveloped me when the midnight rider galloped past, on the road from Corwen.

… A strange, greenish light filled the room and a tiny figure swayed and tottered before me. It is difficult to describe what it was like—rather as I always imagined gnomes to be. It wore a kind of miner’s outfit, with something like a pilot’s cap on its head, which only intensified the clever, malevolent, thoroughly
unpleasant
look on its face. The most real thing about it—or him—was the screeching voice.

But even then I realised my visitor was not flesh and blood, because—this was really grotesque—his size changed constantly, flaring up and dying down, like a flame. Occasionally he flapped his wings and crowed, and sometimes he had no wings at all.

“Greetings, Benjamin Avravanel. I shall bring your robes at once.”

“There must be some mistake,” I said. “I’ve never been called Avravanel. And I don’t recall ordering any robes.”

“It’s no matter,” the gnome retorted, and crowed shrilly, which by now seemed entirely natural.

He was sitting on a high stool, which hadn’t been there before, and he was flickering—steadily and continuously flickering.

“Honour and glory to the Great Adept,” he declared.

“As you say,” I answered, not wishing to offend. “Honour and glory.”

“The Great Adept is preparing to complete the Great Work. It is the Will of the Stars, the Stars, the Stars … ”

Strangely enough, I could see everything as he described it. One moment the stars were revolving in the sky, and the next they had suddenly, and significantly, stopped.

“The Great Adept requires an assistant,” the gnome continued. “He has chosen you for this task, Benjamin Avravanel, Scholar.”

“But excuse me, I know nothing of these mysteries,” I
remonstrated
.

“You know rather more than most, and much more than the people of Merioneth.”

I took this as a great compliment.

“But, damn, damn, damn,” he exclaimed.

He fluttered and sizzled, like damp wood when you try to light it.

“The Great Work has been arrested at some point. We cannot proceed!”

Again I was able to see what he meant: a vast apparatus had appeared, glowing with its own light. It consisted of alembics, glass tubes, moving pistons, spirit lamps and bowls assembled in a wild Heath Robinson manner, though the overall effect was rather pleasing, like the body of a fine animal. Along the tubes, and down into the basins and alembics, flowed a golden liquid.

“This is where the Great Work has been arrested,” the gnome said, indicating part of the mechanism. “Here. It has stopped moving. Do you observe how golden is its colour? But it is not yet gold. Not yet gold.”

Then the gnome and the apparatus both vanished, leaving me with an intensely painful headache.

After some time the gnome and the apparatus appeared again. He was now dressed in black, and immensely solemn.

“Lean closer to me, Benjamin Avravanel. I have a terrible secret to whisper in your ear. The Great Adept has been compelled to
turn to Black Magic for the Great Work to proceed. The Highest declined to help, so he has called upon the Deepest. You, oh wise master, are the assistant. You must participate in the ceremony. Rise, and prepare the sacred site. The hour has come, the hour has come.”

An hourglass shimmered before my eyes, its last few grains
running
out. I rose and followed the gnome.

We were in a pentagonal room, lit from above by a luminous body identical to the one I had seen in the depths of Pendragon.

I was wearing a black, sleeveless robe and immensely heavy shoes, made, I should think, of lead, with astrological symbols embossed on them.

I immediately began preparing the room. There was a wand, the end of which I dipped in some blood-coloured liquid in a bowl and used to draw two large concentric circles on the floor. Inside these I drew a triangle, and inside that three further circles, not concentric.

I placed an incense burner in one of these last, and a black, crescent-shaped candlestick in each of the others. I then nailed a dead bat to a point along the line of the outermost circle, and that was the North; and to another point a skull, and that was the West. To the South went the head of a goat, and to the East the corpse of a black cat.

Meanwhile the smell wafting up from the burner was growing steadily heavier, and I staggered back to my room. The whole building was humming and vibrating like an organ. In my room stood a large, comfortable couch, covered in black, and I lay down on it.

How shall I account for this strange episode? I did not do so at the time: I lived it. It all took place as naturally and self-evidently as furnishing a new flat. Since then I have thought about it
constantly
, and have come up with two possible explanations.

The first, and simpler, is that I dreamed it. The business of preparing the site, the drawing of circles and the ancillary items are all minutely described in a book by Eliphas Levy, or to give him his proper name, the Abbé Alphonse-Louis Constant, with the addition of the fantastical circumstance that the candles were made of human sweat, the black cat had been fed for five days on
human blood, the bat had been drowned in blood, and the goat was one
cum quo puella concubuerit
, as Levy rather delicately puts it: ‘with whom a maiden had conjoined’. And the skull would have been that of an executed patricide. I had read this particular work of Eliphas Levy a year or two prior to the events in Wales, though I had of course forgotten the details. It may well be that the strange surroundings and fantastic events I had been experiencing had stirred up all these images and made them part of my dream. In dreams we sometimes remember whole poems read decades before and long since forgotten.

The second explanation is that I might have been in a state of hypnotic suggestion. What I identified as a gnome was my own subconscious mind, which, in trance, became detached from my ego and took on a life of its own. Such a divided ego has often been described by psychologists as part of the condition experienced by spirit mediums.

… Beyond the walls of my room the whole house was awake, filled with some hideous, teeming life, like an anthill. Footsteps could be heard, heavy objects being dragged about; something was sizzling, something else was whistling, and every so often the deep voice of a gong made the whole place tremble with its black renunciation.

The wall opened and a woman in a black cloak entered. As soon as she saw me she put her hand to her face and began to scream, “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?”

I recognised the voice. It was Eileen St Claire. I rushed over to her and seized her.

She screamed again, wrested herself from my grip, and fled to the far corner of the room.

“Don’t be afraid, “I said. “You know me. Look at me. I’m János Bátky, the Hungarian who took your ring to the Earl of Gwynedd.”

She stopped screaming, and for some time gazed at me intently. Her every gesture betrayed a mind unhinged.

“Of course, you’re the little scholar with the manuscript,” she exclaimed, and burst into hysterical laughter.

“How did you get here?” I asked, and repeated the question. “And what are you doing here?”