Ex Libris Judas
it’s pointless trying to find any answers in ancient languages,
there are nothing but ancient questions to be translated.
the time spent might be better employed making up questions in your own tongue,
even though it is fruitless trying to find any answers.
— from Thersites’ valedictory speech, The Iliad (Trans. R. Lattimore)
Thousands of morning birds sang tunes in the fen-edge dark for a short time and fell asleep again. In the cold night voles evaded capture by barn owls. Field mice ate their grist in hedges, with cats lurked watching in the undergrowth. In the distance, through the ground mist, a yellow-brick house sat on its haunches in its own grounds, surrounded by thick and thin leafless spiky trees pointing upwards. Raised on a low brick platform, elevating it from the marshy soil, the house had saved itself from sinking.
A sequence of coloured lights played in the enveloping gloom, a reminder of the seasonal festivities just past. As the hard wind lifted and declined to the south-west, the music of a harmonium twinned in weird melody with the rise and fall of a lone voice singing a plaintive hymn. Goodness and Mercy.
Far off, in the sky, the noise of several fast jets moving in formation. With no cloud cover, the flashing lights should have given their position away at once, but there were no lights. Afterburners crushed the air, sending heavy waves in all directions. The intense rumble cracked and distorted in the ear. Much lower than the usual night-flights. And faster. The sound diminished, leaving the silence and dark to the late lonely rural suburban traveller.
She stood astride her bike on the face of the earth, brushed and caressed by weathery breaths, and smelled silage or shit. And it grew warmer. Presently, she heard a thin, ghastly howl accompanied by a deeper cathedral organ note. Intoning as it crept the hedgeless fields, the new sub-bass filled the empty sky and grew to become a wind in its own right. The spokes on both her bike wheels hummed, made harps of by this unearthly exhalation which resonated somewhere near the pitch of human flesh. The stranded cyclist was pushed and pulled in the ebb and flow of a terrifying force, back and forth on her heels.
The charge of the light brigade thundered right over the hidden camera of her sundered consciousness. In Thermopylæ bronze shields flashed forever. The little orange bike with solid rubber wheels her dad had made her learn to ride on Christmas morning, up and down the path, crying. Lost alone in a field of sharp oats unable to see the car, smelling dusty ground. The first time she came. A fresh-baked bread roll with marge. Falling slowly, seeing the ground rise. A caged ocelot pacing. Felt it laughing.
She gazed, unfocussed, into the oncoming gusts of wind and sound, thinking only of the immensity of the power which cradled her body in its musky, eldritch arms. A colossal, invisible, silhouette. She swayed in the unnatural zephyr, swallowing hard to steady her laboured breathing. Sweat squeezed out from all her pores and, where it could be seen, it showed crystalline, on her brow and upper lip. In this strange-lit Aeolian draft.
Everything seemed to dissolve and vanish in a bright flare and then a swarming, broken panorama multiplied, seemingly possessed of a thousand eyes with which to apprehend in one instant the flowing of many aeons, the passing of countless worlds. Time was flying as she watched from a distance. The cyclorama of teeming morphologies.
Into the body of the insinuating presence her gaze was drawn. Her soul strained out of her body to follow. Circle after circle of blue, green and red revolved towards and through and away behind. The world vibrated with an alien syncopation she could not divine. Myriad clouds of colours: violet, amber, turquoise, purple, emerald, flames of gold.
An impression formed that the first thought she chose would be her answer. She felt individual thoughts rustling in conjoined consciousnesses, like a string of snot being hawked up, but caught in the throat, so that it would soon be necessary to extract the hard cord by pulling with thumb and forefinger.
She awoke, closed her new G4 Powerbook, unfurled her body, scratched. West Anglia Railways fast train from King’s Cross had taken just 45 minutes to reach Cambridge. Had she travelled from Liverpool Street she’d still be somewhere near Baldock. She preferred the West Anglian route. The East London way enforced essentialist regional boundaries, added to the sense of the City as a collective dump for moribund fictions and served to boost the property portfolios of the late-counter-cultural early bohemians, like Iain Sinclair. All-stations commuter journeys from London create stuttering property zones. Cross-country rail links promote equidistance, prolonging the empiricist lie of equivalence. Ideological reductionism is good fiction.
She sipped West Anglian Railways filter coffee and quaffed West Anglian water and wondered for how long activists could prolong the reality of notions of pre-existant resistance in the face of market immediacy that had already prompted better, more useful, critiques?
Spitalfields-Whitechapel-City has endured at least a 10-stretch of deconstruction, fiction, poetry, redivination, funding, community projects, sectioned, crossed, annotated and probed by a migrant media researching hidden history. With Sinclair’s psychic archaeology, or Home’s magico-materialist reconstructions. The mythopoetic recreation of the disputed territorites north of the City was in its infancy. Mythopoaeia was becoming more and more a part of her business.
Platform 1. The people who had Cambridge built, and those who controlled it now, inveigled the fen-edge City into world consciousness by effecting and promoting its material influence and its mythic image. She followed the rest of the punters through the station into town.
She scanned a list of the missing items: ancient Greek and Latin codexes, scientific and philosophical works in Hebrew and Arabic. Of greatest potential value were two uncatalogued ancient works that were largely untranslated. She was not surprised that no one at Judas College showed much interest in the stolen tomes apart from their value as antiquarian curiosities. They might have retained some historiographical value, but the college had an extensive library and there were a great many books which had only been summarily catalogued. No one knew what they contained and no one seemed to know or care about the research potential of the missing works.
On re-reading the college records on Target A, she found that the missing volumes, though substantially uncatalogued, had been of sufficient interest for him to attempt an English translation. This he began in March of 1938, just before Germany annexed Austria. He proposed a study of various ancient religious practices and rituals they contained, but never completed his work. He was seconded to Bletchley in 1940. It was in the Nissan huts at Bletchley Park that 21st century history was prototyped.
Target B, the post-graduate, was typical. He’d done nothing of any account except to begin cataloguing some of Judas College’s more obscure Middle-Eastern material. The only unorthodox entry on his record was as follows. One October night the previous year, he’d been found wandering by one of the porters. He didn’t appear drunk, but was soaking wet and badly cut. He said he had been knocked off his bike by a speeding van after cycling to Ely and beyond earlier the same day. He wandered around a bit and had a drink tgo calm down, but couldn’t remember how he’d got back. The duty porter reported nothing, except for a smell of sweet rotting fruit—perhaps apples, possibly cider—and singed hair.
She pedalled slowly. Birds sang and her body warmed through with constant sun. She closed her eyes and rode on. The road was straight and she felt fronds of long grass brush her sandaled left foot as she drifted the verge. A church bell chimed the afternoon hour in time with her rhythm.
Birds flew and scoured fields on spiked legs. Insects worked in roadside plants. There were no cars. It was early Sunday morning. The earth was black, the sky was colourless. Bushes, trees, darkened by the lateness of the season. Ticking of a bent chainguard, otherwise silence. Fields, light-yellow brick, telegraph poles, corrugated iron roofs, tarpaulins stretched over piles of roots, hay turning into silage. And the faintest sound of voices singing out above a regular, clanking metallic metronome.
Rooks cackled in columns in the sky, louder than the occasional van. Far sleeker than its cousin, the crow. Loads of them up in the branches in relief against the sky, becoming nodes in the network. She could not name the slender trees. A crumbly low yellow brick wall surrounded them, as they grew darker the further back from the road they got. Flakes of brick seasoned long grass at its foot.
The wall marked a boundary. The left-hand side was wooded, and to the right was a field, the grass grazed to green stubble. The house was the same colour as the wall, with a grey slate roof. Early-Georgian. Large black windows. She couldn’t see inside from the road. Seen from the right-hand side, the field side, the building looked squatter. It was longer than it was wide, constructed on a brick-finished platform raised above field-level, presumably for drainage.
She hadn’t seen the name of the village as she’d cycled up to the rookery, and this was the only house, except for a row of three small terraced houses a short distance up the road. It could be an outlier of any of the three villages nearby. She leant her bike against the metal railings.
The field was uneven, but on closer inspection there was a regularity to the grass-covered mounds. The bumps and hollows were squared off and separated from each other by roughly the distance of an outstretched arm. The remains of human habitation. A ditch ran through the site, perhaps the course of a brook, or road. None of the foundational remains were as large as the house on the neighbouring plot.
She searched around for a while, creating a mental picture of the site as it might have been. It was wooded all around and situated in a slight depression, with plenty of shelter offered among the trees—if they were there when the place was alive. She was particularly struck by the absence of a church. The nearest one was some distance away, its steeple visible above the trees. Churches on the fen edge usually sat on higher pieces of ground, signifying the importance of such sites in relatively flat areas. The highest ground in the vicinity of the dead hamlet lay ahead of her, surrounded by a low wall. It was there the yellow house stood, watched over by a huge green yew.
On looking up, she saw mist holding the horizon at bay. She didn’t known this place. Walking out of the field she sank in the sodden ground with every step. Towards the yellow house on the raised dais at the edge of the field.
She vaulted over the wall into the grounds of the house. The earth here was slightly darker than in the field, with no grass growing. Only sprouts of flowerless plants showed above the soil. Rooks reared above her head in rattling dry branches, calling all the time and beating their wings together. Walking towards the house, she set her shoulders forward. There was nothing to see at the windows except curtain backs. Turning as a small convoy of cars passed the house, she watched them go back the way she had come.
Target B was reading a ragged, bound volume behind the third window, half-lying on a Chesterfield. He did not notice her, and continued to examine the book. She dipped down slowly and sat with her back against the wall under the window. The room was done out with the usual middle class tricks. Shelves of books, few functional objects apart from lamps and a clock, and scattered artefacts. Nice and cosy. Freezing outside.
Target A answered the door double quick. She was let in out of the cold with a slight wave of the hand. So open was the offer, there was no need to spin a yarn, though she was not sure how she gained that impression. The old man’s body language was that of a young man, though physically he was the archetype of ancient academic. He pocketed his hands and leant back against the door, putting his head on one side, jabbing the inside of his left cheek. He looked her up and down, smiled at the floor and said, “There’s no need for this discomforting silence. It’s almost as if you did not expect me to be a black man! Come and sit down.”
He indicated that she should enter the same room in which she had observed the younger man reading. But it was now empty. She entered and sat in the chair next to the open fire, diagonally across the room from the chesterfield. “Have you come from town? I’m afraid the fog’s coming in thick and fast.” He sat and talked without giving her the time to reply. “I am well aware that you were looking through my windows. Why? There’s a fireside companion to your left. That’s it, would you mind poking the coals? Thank you.”
She noticed a small statuette on an antique folding card table. A rough wooden carving.
“That same god is worshipped under a different name in many parts of the world. It was known in ancient Japan and old Chiapas. Are you, ah, interested in religions?” He had answered her unasked question.
She took in the detail around the room. More carvings covered the walls. The rough lines of the small figures secreted in alcoves and on bookshelves gave them an unsettling quality. The bookcases were filled, with and more papers and books crammed among them. The air inside was damp, though the decor and the books seemed in good order.
The quiet outside was increasing with every moment, as the noise of the room’s ornamentalism declined. She patted her feet against the wooden floor in front of the fireplace. Her host was waiting. She could hear sounds outside. Birds, air, leaves, machines. The evening was drawing in, aircraft rumbling, slight breeze.
“Of course, you have come to investigate the disappearance of certain books from my college library.” Turning his head, he faced the other way and mumbled something under his breath.
She had no idea how he knew her purpose. Then her train of thought was interrupted, as upstairs she heard the sound of furniture moving and a dull thud, as if something heavy, yet soft, had fallen to the floor.
“My family have lived in this area for hundreds of years, you know. This house was built on the site of an earlier settlement that we had already inhabited for many centuries. You may have noticed that there is no church. We are not a church-going people. This holy site was saved from desecration by my ancestors. We recognise the deity of something more powerful and immediate.
“The other man you seek is also here. We have been engaged in research, pursuing a common interest in what we regard as the base religion upon which all others are founded. The books you are looking for are all here. They pertain to practices and rites known to the Sumerians, among others, and those that went before them.
“Here in Britain, the older ways were carried on for thousands of years, but though they knew its power our forefathers shunned writing until the Romans came. Here in the east their memory was written, if you like, on places. Here we have retained a sense of what it is to be held in thrall to older forces than ‘God’.
“The ancient ones retreated to the ocean depths long before Atlantis sank. And eons before that misguided Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden, drained the Fens, we kept communion with these beings, and this is one of the last places where they are remembered in these islands.
“Of course, this stuff is all old hat across the herring pond. Only they prefer to contextualise the antiquity of lost knowledge from shore to golden shore, as it were, rather than trace its spread across the face of the globe. Naturally, we should not forget that the ecology and shamanism of the old East Coast Indians was always an influence on the New World mind. Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” proved a very powerful image. But to focus on the provencance of one continent is to avoid greater matters.
“My own great-grandfather, who came from these parts, was wholly unsurprised to find echoes of his homeland mystery in the Carribean. No doubt, the ancient Fenland dwellers enjoyed a similar perspective on the sheer darkness of godhead to my vivid, forgotten African forebears. I am possessed of the kind of double consciousness of which W. E. G. DuBois spoke, but one that is informed at source by my ancestors’ dual experiences of utter alterity.
“And utter it is. Listen, I quote: ‘There will come a great tide that shall return the land to bog and marsh, then they will regain their place’. The icecaps will melt and vast cities and great engines will stir again. Ah! We shall see such wonders! From the deepest ocean trenches will return the ancient ones! We anticipate wonders from the stars! The portal shall be held ajar tonight!”
The babbling witchman dashed from the room, locking the door behind him.
A trapdoor opened in the ceiling and down came a wooden ladder. A young face peered down from above. Behind him was a light darkness.
He shouted impatiently: “Come on! Come on! The destiny from beyond the stars…! Hurry up!”
The ladder was pulled up behind her and the trapdoor dropped shut. The old don had lost the kindly face and gained a satyric cast. He was clearly a denizen of some eternal Sodom of the imagination.
“Behold the commencement of the rite which will summon an entity so vast it is capable of shepherding whole herds of Pans!”
He and his young acolyte took off their clothes while their captive stood speechless.
“Sit down,” hummed the young one, “and remove my clothes!”
She did as she was told, while the old man minced toward an ornately carved table covered with an altar cloth. An expensive stereo system was wired up to speakers in all four corners of the room. He picked a record from under the table, took it out of its sleeve, blew off the dust and placed it on the turntable. The needle caught in the run-in groove and the sound of crackling speakers boomed throughout the huge loft.
Dusty old books lay scattered all about. The upper stories of the house had been gutted and opened up into one vast space. The ceilings were painted red and gold and the walls were hung with tapestries and intricate charts daubed on animal skins. A lectern held two books, one on top of the other. Shelves crammed with bottles, books, papers and weird instruments. An old candle-holder made of brightly coloured glass panels that rotated by a clockwork mechanism in its brass base. The elder cranked a handle on the far wall. In the middle of the ceiling two panels opened revealing the evening stars, even though the mist had grown impenetrable outside.
From the first two bass notes, she recognised the tune placed upon the deck. It was Chopin’s nocturne No.2 in E Flat Major.
“Now! Begin!”
The elder man and the youth circled the enormous room, coming to rest at the lectern, where they incanted aloud in a harsh, strange tongue. The elder sprang back and hit his assistant in the face, knocking him to the floor, where he kicked him repeatedly, finally sitting on his prostrated body, flailing at him with his skinny fists and pulling his hair.
The youth moaned, “Yag-pithath! Yuthi-i! Have me! Save me!”
His mentor pulled him up and threw him over the lectern holding the ancient holy books. He kissed him full on the lips and raised the sheet that covered him. Shouting a foul curse, he fellated his pupil.
The two men chanted seemingly ancient words at the stars above their heads. Finally, they turned to her and chanted together in a low monotone.
“Kni’i’ qna’aq. Pha’adi’a’whaq, Gheva’ Darg’abon!”
The elder man pulled two silver cords and from two separate places emerged two animals: a large white ape and a huge black dog, both hobbled with silver chains. The ape was aroused and the dog was straining. The old don fainted dead away and his pupil gibbered. Glancing up at the hole in the ceiling, she noticed that the stars were mentally obscured by an eerie shape in the sky. A cloud, she thought, closing her eyes. Either that, or . . .
A new voice humming above the patter of rain.
“‘Then the water will commence to cover the new land. From the coast, the sea rises. Creatures, the first sign and spawn of the ancient ones, will swarm, travelling fast inland, along newly formed tributaries. In small boats, the dead, the known and unknown ancestors, strangers. The sea, the fog, the steam, the sweat, the breath. Swells and recedes.’”
She drew back the curtains and saw dawn rising over the roofs. She opened the small window to air the room and sniffed the freshness.
The operation ended, she had phoned in the result and packed her things. Her report would say that the theft should be referred to the CID at Parkside. There was no suggestion that either of the two men were engaged in anything other than the amateur antiquarian study of ancient religious cultures. The theft of the books would be difficult to prove, because there was no system in place to regulate the issue of uncatalogued archive material. The very idea that her employers wished to access extra-dimensional ancient powers to supplement their secret mandate filled her with terror.
Neil Palmer, 2001
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