Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

It was startling, after the long exhortations in an incomprehensible tongue to hear Baradi cry in a loud voice: “Children of the Sun in the Outer, turn inward, now turn in. Silence, silence, silence, symbol of the imperishable god protect us, silence. Turn inward now, turn in.”

This injunction was taken literally by the initiates who reversed their positions on the cushions and thus faced Baradi and the centre of the pentagram. Looking across, diagonally, to the Black Robe, Alleyn saw that Raoul had not moved. The exhortations, being in English, had meant nothing to him. Alleyn dared not look up at Baradi. He could see his feet and his white robe, up to his knees. Between drifts of incense he caught sight of the other initiates, all waiting. It seemed as if an age went by before the Black Robe rose, turned and reseated itself. He saw Baradi’s feet shift and his robe swing as he faced the alter.

Baradi intoned in aloud voice: “Here in the Names of Ra and Of the Sons of Ra—”

It was the oath Alleyn had read. Baradi gave it out phrase by phrase and the initiates repeated it after him. Alleyn spoke on the top register of his very deep voice. Raoul, of course, said nothing. Miss Garbel’s thin pipe was unmistakable. Annabella’s trained and vibrant voice rang out loudly. Carbury Glande’s sounded uncoordinated and hysterical.

“If I break this oath in the least degree,” Baradi dictated and was echoed, “may my lips be burned with the fire that is now set before them.” He gestured over his brazier. A tongue of flame darted up from it.

“May my eyes be put out by the knife that is now set before them.”

With a suddenness that was extraordinarily unnerving, five daggers dropped from the ceiling and checked with a jerk before the five initiates’ faces. A sixth, bigger, fell in front of Baradi, who seized and flourished it. The others hung glittering in the flamelight of the brazier. The women gave little whimpering febrile cries.

The oath of silence was taken through to its abominable conclusion. The flame subsided, the smaller daggers were drawn up to the ceiling, presumably by the Egyptian. The initiates turned outward again and Baradi settled down to a further exhortation, this time in English.

It was the blackest possible kind of affair, quite short and entirely infamous. Baradi demanded darkness and the initiates put out their candles. Alleyn dared not look at Raoul, but knew by the delayed flicker of light that he was a little slow with this. Then Baradi urged first of all the necessity of experiencing something called “the caress of the left hand of perfection” and went on to particularize in terms that would have appalled anyone who was not an alienist or a member of Mr. Oberon’s chosen circle. The Egyptian had returned to his reed and drum and the merciless repetition of a single phrase had its own effect. Baradi began to pour out a stream of names: Greek, Jewish, Egyptian: Pan, Enlil, Elohim, Ra, Anubis, Seti, Adonis, Ra, Silenus, Ereschigal, Tetragrammaton, Ra. The recurrent “Ra” was presently taken up by the initiates, who began to bark it out with an enthusiasm, Alleyn thought, only to be equalled by the organized cheers of an American ball game.

“There are two signs,” Baradi intoned. “There is the Sign of the Sun, Ra” (“Ra,” barked the initiates), “and there is the sign of the Goat, Pan. And between the Sun and the Goat runs the endless cycle of the senses. Ra.”

“ Ra !”

“We demand a sign.”

“ We demand a sign. ”

“What shall the sign be?”

“ The sign of the goat which is also the sign of the Sun which is also the sign of Ra. ”

“Let the goat come forth which is the Sun which is Ra.”

“ Ra !”

The drumming was increased to a frenzy. The initiates beat on the floor and clapped. Baradi must have thrown more incense on his brazier: the air was thick with billowing fumes. Alleyn could scarcely make out the shape of the altar. Now Baradi must be striking cymbals together.

The din was intolerable. The initiates, antic figures, half-masked by whorls of smoke, seemed to have gone down on all fours and to be flinging their hands high as they slapped the floor and cried out. Baradi broke into a chant, possibly in his own language, interspersed with further strings of names — Pan, Hylaesos, Lupercus, Silenos, Faunus — names that were caught up and shouted in a fury of abandon by the other voices. Alleyn, shouting with the rest, edged round on his knees, until he could look across the pentagram to Raoul. In the glow of the braziers he could just make out the black crouching figure and the black gloved hands rising and falling like drumsticks.

“A Sign, a Sign, let there be a Sign!”

“ It comes .”

“It comes.”

“ It is here .”

Again the well-staged crescendo that ended, this time, in a deafening crash of cymbals followed by a dead silence.

And across that silence: bathetic, ridiculous and disturbing, broke the unmistakable bleat of a billy goat.

The smoke eddied and swirled, and there, on the altar for all the world like one of old Marie’s statuettes, it appeared, horned and shining, a silver goat whose hide glittered through the smoke. It opened its mouth sideways and superciliously bleated. Its pale eyes stared and it stamped and tossed its head.

“It’s been shoved up there from the back,” Alleyn thought. “They’ve treated it with flourescent paint. Ça s’illumine. ”

Baradi was speaking again.

“Prepare, prepare,” he chanted. “The Sign is the Shadow of the Substance. The Goat-god is the precursor of the Man-god. The Man-god is the Bridegroom. He is the Spouse. He is Life. He is the Sun. Ra!”

There was a blare of light, for perhaps a second literally blinding in its intensity. “Flash-powder,” thought Alleyn. “The Egyptian must be remarkably busy.” When his eyes had adjusted themselves, the goat had disappeared and in its place the sun-burst blazed on the altar. “Car batteries,” thought Alleyn, “perhaps. Flex soldered at the terminals. Well done, Mahomet or somebody.”

“Ra! Ra! Ra!” the initiates ejaculated with Baradi as their cheerleader.

The door to the left of the altar had opened. It admitted a naked man.

He advanced through wreaths of incense and stood before the blazing sun-burst. It was, of course, Mr. Oberon.

iii

Of the remainder of the ceremony, as far as he witnessed it, Alleyn afterwards prepared an official report. Neither this, nor a manual called The Book of Ra . which contained the text of the ritual, has ever been made public. Indeed, they have been stowed away in the archives of Scotland Yard where they occupy a place of infamy rivalling that of the Book of Horus and the Swami Viva Ananda . There are duplicates at the Sûreté. In the trial they were not put in as primary evidence, and the judge, after a distasteful glance, said that he saw no reason why the jury should be troubled to look at them.

For purposes of this narrative it need only be said that with the appearance of Oberon, naked, in the role of Ra or Horus, or both, the Rites took on the character of unbridled Phallicism. He stood on some raised place before the blazing sun-burst, holding a dagger in both hands. More incense burners were set reeking at his feet, and there he was, the nearest approach, Alleyn afterwards maintained, that he had ever seen, to a purely evil being.

His entry stung the initiates into their pitch of frenzy. Incredible phrases were chanted, indescribable gestures were performed. The final crescendo of that scandalous affair rocketed up to its point of climax. For the last time the Egyptian’s drum rolled and Baradi clashed his cymbals. For the last time pandemonium gave place to silence.