Beneath Ceaseless Skies #110 Read online

  Issue #111 • Dec. 27, 2012

  “‘His Crowning Glory’: a new tale of the Antique Lands,” by Noreen Doyle

  “The Giants of Galtares,” by Sue Burke

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  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  ‘HIS CROWNING GLORY’: A NEW TALE OF THE ANTIQUE LANDS

  by Noreen Doyle

  Adherents to one faith often look for opportunity in the geographical territory of another. Good seldom comes of it. Often opportunity takes the form of war, with great libations of blood and choice cuts of limbs. But not always. Sometimes it takes the form of thievery, outright or subtle, and the erection of grand museum halls or the publication of philosophical treatises. But not always. Sometimes it takes the form of ornamentation. Not always, but that is how it happened in this particular case.

  The Research Club had instigated this particular “ornamentation,” namely, the restoration of the Pink Chapel, and Jon Fox could but watch. This was in Qáreyá, labyrinthine capital of Ópet, jewel in the tarnishing crown of the sultan. The task of overseeing the late stages of the work, begun by another member several years before, had fallen to one of Jon Fox’s colleagues, Walter Pendergast, Ph. D. All the members then resident at the Research Club Qáreyá Branch were quite young. None had attained thirty; the seniors among them were Pendergast and (with reservation) Jon. With reservation: Jon Fox was out of sorts with the R. C. at this time, for matters that need not detain the present account. Pendergast and the others lived and worked off Club funds (frugally, it must be said). Meanwhile, Jon had to rely on his own meager economy, which he created by selling a few photographs and by tutoring the restless offspring of ex-patriates.

  Save for his lapsed membership, Jon maybe would have shouldered the full burden of completing the restoration of the Pink Chapel, and things might have turned out very different. However, Pendergast had worked with the esteemed Albert J. C. R. Wenfreys on the restoration of several buildings on the Parthenian Acropolis and knew his business. An Ópetian foreman twice his age oversaw the practical work. Success seemed thus assured and was, furthermore, guaranteed to Baker & Son, major patrons of the project, by means of a strict contract. It was this contract—and only this contract—that gave Jon some peace of mind regarding his present position with the Club.

  This day, Jon walked onto the breezy veranda of the Hotel Royale, which overlooked the street, the Corniche, and the Fiáró River beyond, to find his fellow Emerishmen having tea as Pendergast orchestrated a conversation on the results of yet another inventory review. Two other members sat in attendance: Parker Reed Farrington and Hirshel Klein. At such times, Jon’s presence as a lapsed member introduced a certain awkwardness. Although the season, as measured by the Emerish calendar, was autumn, the Ópetian summer heat had returned full blast that day. Unwilling to move on account of the discomfort, Pendergast elected not to close down the meeting. Both he and Jon were, after all, Harbridge men. That university connection created certain obligations that Research Club by-laws could not eclipse. Jon gave Pendergast due credit for that.

  “The inventory is done, then,” said Pendergast, “but it can’t be.”

  “I’m sorry to say that it must be, Walter,” said Klein, who managed the books, correspondence, and similar administrative details. “We’ve dug as far as we can, and the sponge-diver we hired from the coast brought up everything the Fiáró cared to offer even with the river at its lowest. And we’ve taken inventory three times now. There is no mistake.”

  “Not of ours, at least,” Farrington said unhappily, dripping sweat into his glass of tea.

  The Pink Chapel promised to be, in virtually all respects, a splendid sample of a proper Ópetian temple—pylon, court, hypostyle hall, sanctuaries, and all the rest of it—being reduced in size by three fifths. It was remarkable that the remains had not, by this late date, been shipped off to Ilyonton or Lutet or some other foreign capital, and perhaps even more remarkable that more of the rose-colored granite and brilliant white alabaster had not been taken away for modern buildings in the two thousand four hundred or so years since its construction.

  However, it had not passed the centuries unmolested. The Fiáró had drawn closer and flooded it now and then, knocking down some walls. The religion had changed. Which had knocked down other walls and, in the sanctuary, tipped over statues of King Ósorathó as the god and Queen Meratoor as the goddess, and installed assorted other blemishes onto the property. Fishermen commonly drew up there, to lay their catch for sale among the toppled columns of the hypostyle court, but only on the days when it was not in use by the launderers. Then, a long while later, along had come the khedeev (the ruler installed by the sultan) and the Corniche (designed for the khedeev by a famous Provench architect) and, five hundred yards or so downstream, a Baker & Son travel office.

  Baker & Son were up for something new in this part of the Antique Lands, so the company had expressed a great deal of interest when Pendergast’s predecessor made two announcements. First, he concluded after much contemplation of the iconography and texts, the ancient god of the lower case honored in the Pink Chapel was none other than the God of the upper case, at least, insofar as Calosianism identifies its Deity: Kalos Theos, the Good God, Who Let the Devil Slay Him That Mankind Might Learn Its Lesson. (In Ópet and the rest of the Antique Lands the Sun is God, called in Harábese “ál-Reyá,” and the belief that God dies, even at sunset, is apostasy of the most profane sort.) Second, Pendergast’s predecessor concluded, the Pink Chapel could be restored to its full glory.

  With the assistance of the Pretish consul and little resistance from the Autorité des Antiquités, Baker & Son made arrangements for the appropriate government stamps and seals and signs. These were magical signs, after a fashion. One of their several effects was to drive away the fishermen and the launderers. Anyone who wonders why the Ópetians and their rulers, most of whom follow the solar faith, would tolerate such foreign activity contrary to their own religion need only be reminded of the old saying: “Those who live here do not care about the faith of passers-by, so long as the passers-by pay hommage to the gatekeepers.” And to the goldsmiths and to the barbers and to the & c. & c.

  Now, although Pendergast’s own investigations supported his predecessor’s claim about the God, his every survey came to a different, unhappy conclusion regarding the claim about the restoration.

  Jon might have sympathized with Pendergast’s plight if only he had been allowed to share some of the burden and whatever reward might come of it. These he was denied on account of his lapsed membership. He ought not to have taken this personally—there were valid points against him in the by-laws—but he did, because Jon Fox had never in his life known much difference between personal and professional. One existed for the other, and little more. This peculiarity, one not uncommon among academics, did fortuitously lead Jon to offer something Pendergast needed rather more badly than sympathy.

  As Klein shook his head over the inventory and Farrington continued to sweat into his tea, Jon stepped forward. The three men leaned back from the wrought iron table. Jon tried to insert himself into their attention, but then Pendergast reclaimed the table with a drawing pad produced from a valise at his feet. And the three heads plunged in again, to watch him as he sketched.

  “The northern and southern walls—so-called, taking alignment with the river rather than the celestial course of the sun for east-west—are in good, ah, standing,” Pedergast said. “The reliefs are intact, but for some damaged noses, that sort of thing. And that’s not a ‘blemish,’ per the contract with Baker. That’s proof of antiquity. Must give them some of that, or else we c
ould just put up a new building of our own devising.”

  Jon guffawed, quietly. The others agreed—with Pendergast.

  Pendergast nodded vigorously and pressed on with his pencil. “Yes. It’s the eastern wall, the pylon, that’s the problem.”

  “What about the hypostyle hall?” Farrington said.

  “The—yes, some of the column capitals are missing. Hoozeyn” (that was the foreman) “can make them easily enough, if Baker insists. See one palmiform capital with pendant ducks, you’ve seen ‘em all. But here—here’s the ruin of us, the pylon! Key pieces of these reliefs, missing from the very front of the building. Look, some loss is poignant, eh? Arouses one’s sensibilities to the vast passage of time, the carelessness and callousness of history, all that. But this...!”

  He stabbed at the offending area with his pencil, breaking through the paper and snapping the lead. Then they all sat back while he took out a small knife and began to whittle a new point.

  Jon seized this opportunity to force acknowledgment of his presence by placing his hand on the ruined paper. Pendergast pushed it at him, daring Jon, an outlier, to do anything about something as important, as difficult, as urgent, as contractual, as this.

  The sketch was half representation of what existed, half representation of hypothesis; much of the physical work was already done, Jon knew, though it was veiled behind tarpaulins. On one half of the pylon, Queen Meratoor presented a table heaped with offerings before the Mother of the Son of God, St. Cathisma (whom the ancient artists had graced with the Queen’s own features). This portion was well preserved and restored. Blocks from the uppermost courses were missing, but these had been nothing more than a frieze of repeated cobra heads, which Hoozeyn’s men could cast in tinted concrete (this chapel’s species of rose granite being extinct in the quarries).

  It was the other half of the pylon that presented the genuine difficulties. Here King Ósorathó stood before God, the Lord of All, who was represented, in the ancient convention, as swathed in the wrappings by which St. Cathisma and the Apostle St. Guinefort had bound his earthly corpse. That much was evident from the inventory. But there were ghastly lacunae. Ósorathó’s outstretched hand was missing; likewise segments of his leg and feet and portions of the irregular ground (hills, in Pendergast’s hypothesis) on which he stood. Crucial parts of God had not been spared, either.

  Also missing crucial pieces—chiefly the head—was whomever Ósorathó presented to God. Pendergast had hypothesized, with considerable evidence, that the king’s heir had stood there as a prophecy of the coming of God’s Son, who would not be born into the world for another three hundred years. (Such representations are common throughout Ópet and the other Antique Lands, and Calosians, anticipating the eventual return of God’s Son, are quite keen on them, for the obvious reasons.) Hoozeyn had inserted blank blocks of tinted concrete so that the pylon could at least be made into an architectural whole, but Baker & Son had expressed discontent with this solution. They wanted the scene in full, most especially the Son of God.

  “Needles, and all of Qáreyá is our haystack.” Pendergast pushed back from the table and, tipping the chair, hooked hands behind his head.

  “If the missing blocks even still exist,” said Klein.

  “See,” (Pendergast gestured violently into the air), “it’s realism like that that keeps the R. C. solvent! If we truly believed that we could find every little objet of our dézire, as the Provenchmen say, in our quest we’d break the bank. Baker & Son will come to realize that. They’re businessmen, for God’s sake.”

  Farrington agreed, but Klein remained skeptical. “There is the matter of the contract.” Baker & Son had been promised, they all knew, a complete chapel, a jewel of unblemished pulchritude for the exclusive wonder of Baker’s Special First Class tourists, who would have (by grace of those stamps and seals and signs, aforementioned) “special” access to the site.

  Pendergast muttered improprieties: about the contract, which he, after all, had not signed; and about his predecessor, who had signed the contract and, after a couple of years of hard work, skipped off with a new firman to excavate in the Levantine.

  Klein suggested that, if they failed to complete the restoration and had to remit the fund, the Club might be able to sell off enough of the loose blocks allotted to them by the Autorité to repay Baker & Son. The Pretish Museum and several other institutions had expressed interest. “We’ll never be able to repay the private subscribers; however, they might not mind our failure. After all, how many of them will really make the voyage all this way from Emerland? They ought to welcome viewing at home what their donations have rescued from obscurity in Ópet.”

  Pendergast pronounced this notion brilliant. It might just be permitted under the terms of the government stamps, seals, and signs.

  “Oh,” said Jon Fox, who, absorbed in Pendergast’s drawing of what-should-be, had scarcely heard what the other men were saying, “I’ve seen such a piece as this.”

  Pendergast’s iron chair came down hard on the tile floor of the veranda and he swept a glass of tea up to his trim moustache. He saw that Jon was pointing to where a certain delicate portion of God ought to be. “You have not!”

  “I have.”

  From Jon’s low tone, all present knew that those three simple words uttered by Pendergast had caught Jon Fox at his weakest: he would go to great lengths to prove himself right. But before Pendergast could take advantage, Farrington intervened eagerly and without malice: “Where, man?”

  “In the northern tower of the Bab-ál-Láhem.” This is one of Qáreyá’s fabled seventy-two gates.

  Pendergast protested. “I’ve been there a dozen times at least and never seen it!”

  “That’s no fault of mine,” Jon said. “Go up fifteen steps from the bottom—that’s the inner, not the outer, steps—, turn about, and it’s there at eye level, built into the far wall.”

  Pendergast called for one of the Royale’s servants. The Bab-ál-Láhem was not terribly far from the hotel. It would take the youth half an hour to walk there and another to return. Pendergast, not trusting Jon’s hand, sketched that part of God that the servant was to look for and also wrote out, in Harábese, a request to the gatekeeper to allow the servant to look for it.

  The four men shared little talk over the table during this span. Jon was, at least, offered tea, which he took, and, finally, claimed a seat, which, as a Harbridge man, Pendergast let him keep. When the servant returned, considerably more than an hour had passed.

  “I could not see it, messieors,” he said (employing the Provench title most commonly used to address foreigner men). This briefly led Pendergast to pound the table and wag a finger under Jon’s nose. Jon’s face and fists hardened as Pendergast dressed him down.

  Klein put a hand on Pendergast’s shoulder and said, “Hold up, now, Walter. The boy’s not done speaking. Say that again, lad.”

  The servant cleared his throat and said, “Messieors, I could not see it, so I asked the gatekeeper. And he told me that at night, when certain torches are in their brackets, and others have not yet been set, the image can be seen quite clearly. It was too much trouble to throw cloths over the windows and light the torches to show, so he let me up a ladder and I could feel it. Monsieor Fox is right. Though I think I would have said sixteen steps.”

  “Ha!” said Jon, wadding Pendergast’s sketch and hurling it at its artist.

  And so Jon had the last exclamation, Farrington and Klein had a laugh at Pendergast’s expense, and Pendergast had the first of several moments of small embarrassment that would eventually bring about a curious turn of events.

  * * *

  Although the block—its existence confirmed by the members of the R. C. personally at soonest opportunity—could not be removed from the wall of the Bab-ál-Láhem, arrangements were made for a squeeze to be taken. Farrington did it: laid wet paper over the stone and, when this dried, took away an impression. From this paper cast, Hoozeyn’s best craftsmen cre
ated an accurate facsimile of that portion of God. And, for a little while, that was the end of that.

  But Pendergast’s inventory was still not complete, far from it, as Jon was well aware. When opportunity arose, Jon pointed out two column capitals from the Pink Chapel that had been sunk into the ground and used as millstones two miles upstream. (He sometimes bought bread from a woman nearby.) Another section of relief, showing the legs of a figure smaller than that of king or God, turned up as a barber’s favored seat a hundred yards from the chapel. Jon inconvenienced Pendergast with these and several other such gifts that gladdened Hoozeyn, who liked a challenge, both the obtaining and the fitting of these newfound elements. To the agents of Baker & Son and to the subscribers, the R. C. Qáreyá Branch appeared extraordinarily well informed with the local urban topography. Jon Fox was thanked publicly for that, because scrupulous Klein edited and largely wrote The Pink Chapel Newsletter.

  This might have been cause enough to reinstate Jon’s membership in the Club, and Klein would have obliged if Pendergast had not persistently raised technicalities and reservations. Still, Pendergast assuaged Klein’s evident unhappiness: “Look at him! He’s happy as a clam at high tide already. Let him soak there a while yet. After all, we don’t really know how Jon has come upon these finds, do we?”

  “Walter, they’re in plain view—”

  “Even so, what is he doing getting his hair cut by a street-barber and buying his bread from just anybody? The Club has contracts.”

  Klein might have pointed out that Jon Fox’s membership being lapsed meant that Jon Fox did not have Club contracts to honor, but it hardly seemed worth the bother, even to the scrupulous Klein.

  It was not long after one of these conversations—less than an hour, in fact—that Walter Pendergast had reason to be very glad for Jon’s contributions. The senior Baker & Son agent, Taggett, dropped by the Research Club office, above a rug-seller behind the Royale. He had just been under the tarpaulins at the Pink Chapel and wanted to congratulate the Club on its progress in general. He also wanted to inspect the fund accounts, which was his right to do, according to the contract.