Аврам Дэвидсон - Peregrine - primus

He closed and treble-barred the gate, and set loose the fierce dogs. He locked the door of the house behind them, and closed

and fastened the shutters. He took them into an inner room, set a pan against the door (howsoe’er he slid the bolt) and on top of this another pan. Then he came quite close to them, and in a voice so low it was almost a whisper, he asked what they had to discuss with him. Peregrine disclosed the hilt of the broken sword. The man’s face slid long, his mouth made the shape of an omicron, and then he said, but still low, “Ah and ah and oh! It is none other than the Serpent-Sword of the Kings of the Ephts, woe art thou, O Ephtland!” and he began to weep silently, and to beat his bosom, though muffling it with his cloak’s folds so as to conceal the sound ....

“Woe art thou, O Ephtland!” continued Eugenius, after wiping eyes and nose, “And woe is thy Serpent-Tower, woe thy Serpent-Column, and . .. and . . .” But here his voice failed him.

“And woe thy Serpent-Crown?” suggested Peregrine, intending only helpfulness and sympathy. Instantly astonishment, outrage and alarm flashed upon the man’s tear-beslubbered face. “There was no such crown!” he exclaimed. “What Serpent-loving man is there who knows not the true description of the crown of the Kings of the Ephts?”

Peregrine strove at once to abate his alarm. It was too late to abate his suspicion, but dissimulation could in no event have been carried much further. “We can offer you,” he whispered, “something much better than any mere description. We can offer you,” he said, significantly, “a sight of the very crown itself

“And what,” he next asked, after allowing this to sink in, “what can you offer us?”

t t t t

Claud was later on to grumble, “Well, so what of it if he didn’t h ave no daughters nor no servant-girls? He could of bought a one or two, couldn’t he?”

t t f t

AVRAM DAVIDSON

[ 69 ]

Eugenius of Eddessa was in part incredulous, in part overjoyed, in part terrified and in part ... a very large part . . . didactic.

“ ‘Ophiolators,’ they term us!” he said, scornfully. “Or Ophites, Ophians, or Naasenes. Snake Worshippers! Do they worship their sacred pictures, signs, relics, symbols? Oh perish forbid, ignorant catechumen, they said to me; we do but venerate them. Even so. 'Tis so well-known that serpents are wise, so say their very Gospels, though sadly distorted otherwise. ‘Be ye wise as serpents,’ eh? They seek the deep, and deep is knowledge. Eh? And does not wisdom lie in the marrow of the backbone and do not these marrows become serpents, gliding from the tomb? Why, of course! So has the Holy Trinity devised it, and by the Holy Trinity, what do I mean? Why what can I mean save the Holy Trinity, videlicet First Man, which is to say, Universal God, and Second Man, the begetter and the only begetter of Christ which is the Third Man, not however being the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, which Third Place is occupied by First Female, id est She-the-Holy-Spirit, clept by some Sophia; no? And First Man conceived Second Man and Second Man begat Third Man and from Third Man and First Female came Sparks of Light and from Sparks of Light Quenched in the Supernal Fluids came Dregs of Matter and from Dregs of Matter came Ialdabaoth and Demiurgos on the one hand and Spirit Soul, alias Serpent, on the other hand, as well as untold multitudes of Aeons and other Powers and against all these cometh Second Sophia the Sister of the Christ whom some say is Prunicos and there are those who will admit that Prunicos was Eve and others who, sunken in darkness, will and do deny it, but can it be denied that Adam, or Fourth Man, attempted to deny the Serpent, whenas he fell from Grace, but Grace, who is Sophia, who is Prunicos, fighting valiantly against the subtle and sullen Demiurgos and Ialdabaoth, sent Christ from Heaven to be incarnate in the Pure Vessel to wit the body of Jesus, and so now see and do behold Jesus preaching and performing and doing wonders and miracles and making manifest the Glory of the Serpent which symbolizes wisdom and as wisdom is holy so is the serpent holy, being Holy Wisdom, and after the earthly vessel which was Jesus was lifted upon the Cross—as the Serpent of Moses was lifted in the wilderness—there came Christ from

Heaven with Prunicos His Spouse and revived and resurrected Jesus, who has never died since but goeth about from place to place undergoing fresh persecutions and at the same time working fresh miracles, now is this not all perfectly clear?”

Said Appledore, the only one of the three visitors now capable of speech, “It is more than clear. It is obvious.”

Eugenius raised his hands and eyes and made a sinuous gesture which, Peregrine was later to learn, was the Sign of the Snake. “And yet this Doctrine, clear as crystal, and seeking only the salvation of mankind from the Dregs of Matter, is today everywhere persecuted, isn’t that incredible? Only in Ephtland was it received with open arms, and of Ephtland and its illuminated Kings and Sword and Crown, I need not speak,” and he went on to speak interminably about Ephtland and its illuminated Kings and Sword and Crown, until—

“Hark!” cried Claud, who, failing to derive even the faintest glimmer of interest from the gnostical philosophy as set forth then and there, and having his senses still attuned to the Dark World of Illusion and of Dregs of Matter, had perceived that not all was well in the courtyard. “Hark! Your dogs!”

And, indeed, the dogs had set up a most beastly barking and the sounds of their bodies, as they fell, thudding to the ground, after leaping up against who knew what, at length penetrated even the awareness of Eugenius, Appledore, and Peregrine.

“Hark!” said Eugenius, somewhat redundantly. “The dogs! I am suspicious but that we may have been followed, not to say pursued. Howsomever, a life spent largely as a furtive fugitive has prepared me for all this, and I have become wise as serpents, and where do serpents go when seeking refuge? Exactly.” And, so the whole time saying, he had been moving his hands upon the surface of the wall, which wall now slid both backwards and inwards, disclosing a passageway. The Eddessan picked up a tiny oil lamp and, with a genteel “After you,” gestured his guests into the cavity and declivity, and they saw the wall return behind them. And all sound ceased.

t t t t

It was fortunate that their guide had supplied the small lamp

AVRAM DAVIDSON

with oil before beginning his discourse, for the way underground was long and winding, and, indeed, Peregrine had some notion that the tunnel was perhaps intended to represent some giant serpent. He could not prevent a groan when a gust of wind blew the guttering lamp-wick into blackness, but, in a moment, at about the same moment as he realized that winds do not blow in underground passageways, he lifted up his eyes and saw overhead the glittering stars, and in his nostrils was the scent of dampness and not the dank dampness of the underworld, but the dampness of rivers, sounds, streams, estuaries, lakes, ponds, creeks, canals, and other waterways.

“It should be right about here,” muttered Eugenius. “Ahah. It is right here, thanks to Holy Wisdom, and Her First Born Son, the Snake. I assume that you are all aware of how to handle yourself in a coracle.”

There was a long silence at this assumption, broken finally by Appledore, who said, slowly, “Well, I did at one time in my youth, when pursuing some postgraduate studies among the Druids of Northwest Gaul—”

“Yes, they don’t make bad coracles there in Northwest Gaul,” Eugenius agreed, his tone now very matter-of-fact. And somehow, by this time, they had all crept and clambered aboard the craft, of skins stretched upon a framework of wicker. Peregrine was faintly glad that it was night and the moon at present obscured, for he had a notion that this was something like taking passage on the inside of a soap-bubble. Water was not only heard gurgling beneath the bottom, water could be felt gurgling beneath the bottom.