Thirteen
A Spy in the House of God
Glenys Godwin knew about what was happening in Geneva because Oakley Street had an agent in the Magisterium. His name was Leenart Karpelin, and he worked in the cathedral archives. He was known to his employers and his few friends as a diligent scholar and a quietly pious individual whose only interest outside his work was choral music; his tenor voice was not powerful, but it was always secure.
The conference on the regulation of doctrine was not exactly held in secret, but it was clearly understood to be a clerical matter, a professional examination of technical and philosophical questions not likely to be of great interest to the simple believer. For example, Marcel Delamare had been working on his notes about the deceptive and baleful nature of the imagination, and was intending to deliver a speech on that subject in a closed symposium. However, there were a few sessions open to the general public, and one of those was the lecture to be given by the celebrated novelist Gottfried Brande. The President’s secretariat had arranged it with immaculate skill. It was scheduled at a time of the day and the week when most delegates and other attendees would be tiring somewhat, and more likely to relish a nap than a lecture. It was untitled, because the title Brande had given it (a quotation from the philosopher Hegel) was unfortunately too long to fit in the program, so no one could tell what it was likely to be about. Furthermore, the speaker’s late announcement of his intention to appear had made it difficult to advertise the event with the full effectiveness it no doubt deserved; and finally, in the biographical note, Brande’s famous novel The Hyperchorasmians was mistitled The Hyperboreans.
Leenart Karpelin noted all this, and wrote it down to tell Oakley Street. He turned up in good time for Brande’s lecture, and took his seat in the narrow and badly lit Chapel of the Sacred Presence and watched patiently as the twenty or so other audience members arrived. The chapel could hold nearly a hundred, and the empty seats would, Karpelin knew, carry the Magisterium’s message clearly to the speaker.
When it was obvious that no more members of the public were going to turn up, a cleric Karpelin didn’t recognize came to the lectern and tapped it for silence.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. His words were almost lost in the lamentable acoustics, and either he didn’t realize, or he didn’t know how to do anything about it, because he made no effort to adjust his voice. “We are very privileged today to welcome a most distinguished speaker, a philosopher and, er, novelist known to countless readers in Europe and beyond. Professor Gottfried Brande’s work has, ah, been praised for its originality and force both in the academy and in the world of, er, popular fiction…”
Karpelin was watching Brande, who was sitting just behind the speaker. At the words “popular fiction” the philosopher clenched his fists and ground his teeth almost audibly. Karpelin could see the dæmon lying at his feet, a large dog of some kind, try to tuck her head further under a paw than it was already. There was something strange about her, but Karpelin couldn’t work out what it was, and meanwhile, the speaker was concluding his introduction:
“We are, as I say, deeply privileged in this conference on the regulation of doctrine to hear the thoughts of such an eminent and internationally renowned speaker. Please welcome Professor Gottfried Brande.”
He stood aside as the audience clapped politely. Brande stood up and came to the lectern, tall, gaunt, grim-faced, in a faded black academic robe. Karpelin saw and only just heard him snap his fingers, and saw the German shepherd dæmon slink forward after him, belly to the floor, almost timorous. Karpelin thought that they were the unhappiest creatures he had ever seen.
Brande watched the dæmon lie down again and close her eyes. Then he turned to the audience.
“I have tried all my life to speak and write plainly. I deplore the human tendency, from which I myself have long struggled to break free, to express its thought in metaphor or figurative language generally. To that end I have made a practice of expunging any examples of such loose thinking when I correct the first draft of a piece of writing. I begin by saying this merely because I want you to remember that what I say this afternoon is to be taken literally. It is not an exercise in florid rhetoric. It is far too important to be weakened with imagery. I have come here because a great and convulsive change in human life is about to take place, and I want to describe it with cold and simple accuracy.”
His voice was so much clearer than that of the cleric who had introduced him that Karpelin at first thought that Brande was simply speaking more loudly. But it was more than that; everything about him was intensely present to the senses of sight and hearing. Perhaps because the whites of his eyes were very white, his facial expressions could be read easily even in the poor light of the chapel, and his voice cut through the heavy air like that of a powerful singer; he was simply more in focus than anyone Karpelin had seen for a long time.
“There’s something wrong,” his mouse dæmon whispered.
“Shh. Just listen.”
Brande was standing absolutely still as he spoke. His hands grasped the sides of the lectern, his feet were firmly set on the stone floor. His voice continued steadily, a resonant baritone, clear in every syllable:
“This gathering, we have been told, has been summoned to discuss the regulation of doctrine. Never has there been a time when such a project was both so necessary and so superfluous. Necessary, because we are not brutes, and we cannot live without a common understanding about fact and reason. Superfluous, because all the elements for such a common understanding are already in place, and have been for some—for sunin front of him—have been for—”
He stopped as if he was out of breath. Then he cleared his throat and tried again:
“The elements of common understanding have been in plate—ah—ah—no, not now, no—”
He clutched both hands to his chest and fell down heavily, striking his head on the lectern before hitting the floor.
Karpelin could see everything clearly, because the seat in front of him was empty. He saw the cleric who had introduced the event rise from his chair uncertainly and look around before moving towards the stricken Brande; he saw the shepherd dæmon half rise and then stumble away, tail between her legs; he saw some other members of the audience, half a dozen or so, stand up involuntarily, but then pause, because there was clearly nothing anyone could do: Brande was dead, still as marble, eyes wide open.
But his dæmon—
She was loping from one side of the chapel to the other, in abject fear, whining, yelping a little, belly almost on the ground, wild-eyed.
The cleric, bending over Brande with one hand extended as if to stroke his head, became aware of the dæmon with a start of terror and almost leapt over the body to get away from her. He stumbled off the dais and nearly fell full-length himself, but was caught by a man in the front row.
And now everyone was watching the dæmon, who should have vanished, whose continuing existence was contrary to nature, who was as horrifying as a decapitated corpse getting up and stumbling about sightless. Karpelin felt a surge of horror so profound he almost fainted. Everyone was on their feet now, all pressing back and away from her, some uttering cries of fear. Their dæmons were the most fearful of all, clinging to their people, hiding their faces, yelping or whining or shrieking—
And the dæmon herself was running, loping, scuttling, pawing at the door, howling. Karpelin and his dæmon felt a profound compassion mingled with nausea at the utter wrongness of what was happening.
“Open the doors!” someone shouted.
“Let it out—quick—”
It, who a minute before would have been she, must have been a creature of the darkness, an evil spirit, a night-ghast. Behind Karpelin someone was being sick. A man more desperate than the rest dashed for the chapel door, but before he reached it the dæmon in her panic and misery sprang up at the handle, and the man cried out and pulled back.
The sounds the dæmon was making were almost like language, but not German or French or indeed any European tongue. Karpelin found himself imagining the survivor of some appalling catastrophe howling in the ruins of her village, her children lying dead around her.
Then the man at the door tried the handle again and this time pulled it open, and at once most of the audience rushed towards it and jostled and shoved to get through. The cleric who had introduced the speaker was among the first of them. The dæmon fled to a dark corner of the communion table and huddled beneath it, thrusting her head down hard, as if to bury her face under the stone floor.
Karpelin, curious as a human being as well as a spy, was last to leave the chapel.
His mouse dæmon whispered, “Why isn’t she looking at him? Why isn’t she clinging to him? She’s afraid of him more than of anyone.”
Karpelin knew what she meant. “She was afraid when he was alive,” he murmured in reply.
“There was something wrong with them,” his dæmon whispered back.
Outside they could hear raised voices arguing, explaining, demanding. Any moment now someone in authority would come in. A thought occurred to Karpelin, and he sank to his knees and raised his hands together in an attitude of prayer, just in time; because there were other faces now in the doorway, and uniformed bodies, and weapons.
They might have been police, but they looked more like soldiers. Karpelin could see the shoulder-flash of the Office of Right Duty, which was similar to that of the old and much-feared Consistorial Court of Discipline.
The first of the men looked around, noticed Karpelin, but then was shoved aside by another, who was pointing at the trembling dæmon under the table.
“There it is! Look!”
It, again. Four or five men, rifles raised, advanced towards the table, spreading out to cover a wider angle. Their dæmons, dog-formed themselves, were clearly unhappy about the matter. Two of them tried to hang back, unsuccessfully.
“Hey!” called one of the men. “Come out here!”
The dæmon tried to force her head down even further.
Another man in a sergeant’s uniform made his way towards Karpelin, casting glances back at the table all the time.
“Sir,” he said. “Sir. Got to leave the building, please.”
Karpelin opened his eyes and looked up at him, but kept his hands clasped.
“I’m telling you to leave,” the sergeant said more harshly.
“Yes, all right,” said Karpelin. “I understand. But don’t hurt her, will you? She’s just terrified.”
“No one’s going to get hurt. But you’ve got to leave. Come on, hurry up.”
Karpelin stood up carefully, and edged his way to the end of the row of chairs. Then something frightened Brande’s dæmon. She howled and leapt up, and raced out of the shelter of the communion table, and one of the soldiers was so startled that he fired his rifle, missing the dæmon but smashing a window.
The dæmon was in a passion of fear and misery; she ran with all her force directly into the far wall, as if she thought it was made of paper, and fell back, with the bones of her face smashed and splintered, but still alive. Now pain was added to the terror; the poor creature must have been nearly mad, thought Karpelin, and his own dæmon was sobbing pitifully; and in came two more men in different uniforms, carrying a long pole with a noose of wire rope at the end.
By now the sergeant had given up on Karpelin, and was more interested in the process of capturing the dæmon. Karpelin could hardly bear to watch, but thought someone ought to witness what was happening, so forced himself to stay, holding his own little dæmon in both hands close to his breast.
The dead man’s dæmon was struggling fiercely, but without any sense of where she was or what was happening to her. Her claws kept slipping on the stone floor, and when the men tried to get the wire noose around her neck she screamed and howled and sobbed exactly like a—like a human being, Karpelin thought, but then she was human, of course she was human, and her man was lying dead, and she couldn’t die, and Karpelin’s own dæmon was pleading with him, begging him to do anything to help, anything at all.
But they had her in the grip of the noose, and there were four of them, big heavy men, dragging her towards the door. It was impossible for her. The doorway was crowded with people shoving and peering and staring wide-eyed, exactly as Karpelin imagined the spectators at a public execution would behave. The soldiers were wielding batons, striking left and right to clear the way to the door for the men hauling the stricken dæmon as she struggled and choked in the noose, and then they were outside and every brutal human face went with them, leaving Karpelin and his own little dæmon to collapse onto the nearest chair and sob with helpless grief.
They brought the news to Marcel Delamare as he enjoyed a glass of wine with some important guests in the garden of La Maison Juste.
“Stay here, Matthieu,” he murmured to his private secretary. “I must see to this.”
Rumors were already flying through the city like sparks from a careless bonfire, ready to ignite any tinder they touched. The grim and lurid personality of Gottfried Brande and the bizarre circumstances of his death combined to produce a sensation that was more than the Magisterium could silence. When Delamare arrived at the headquarters of the Office of Right Duty five minutes after the news reached him, he found a small crowd already jostling outside the main entrance.
“Monsieur le Président!” he heard someone call, and recognized the voice of Théophile Engelmann, a journalist who specialized in religious affairs. An instant calculation unreeled in his mind: to talk to him—better or worse?
He stopped and nodded gravely. “Good afternoon, Théophile,” he said. “A troubling business.”
“Did you know what Gottfried Brande was going to say in his lecture, Monsieur Delamare?”
“No. We are not in the business of censorship. Good heavens! Professor Brande was of course at perfect liberty to say whatever he wished, and we would have listened with profound attention to the words of such a distinguished scholar.”
“And his dæmon—”
“You’ll forgive me, Théophile, but in the present circumstances I can’t say anything until I’ve examined the case myself.”
Other voices: “Are you going to have it killed?” “Are you going to put her down?” “Is it dead or alive?”
Voices were coming at him from every part of the crowd, which was already growing. Delamare held up a hand, shook his head, smiled sorrowfully, and allowed his escort to clear a path through the doorway and into the building. His owl dæmon raised her wings and flapped them once or twice in a rare display of annoyance.
“Well?” Delamare snapped at the officer in charge.
“This way, Monsieur le—”
“Still alive?”
“Yes, but in great distress. She can’t—”
“There is no doubt that Brande is dead?”
“None whatsoever, monsieur. An apoplexy killed him at once.”
“And the dæmon is injured? Who caused that?”
“My understanding is that she ran so hard into a wall that she caused it herself. Possibly trying to—”
“Take me to her at once.”
Delamare followed the officer down the stairs and into a room designed for the interrogation of prisoners. A table and two chairs were bolted to the tiled floor; there were no windows, just a glaring strip light overhead.
And the dæmon, than whom, or than which, Delamare had never seen any creature more pitiful. He had noticed the “it” from the voices outside, and recognized the effect it had.
He sat on one of the chairs and watched as the creature tried to hide in a corner, under the table, in another corner, forcing her agonized face against the wall, uttering all the time a choked and stuttering wail.
“Leave me,” Delamare said to the attendant.
“But she might—”
“She can do nothing. Leave, now.”
“I’ll be just outside, Monsieur le Président.”
He closed the door carefully as he left.
“Can you understand me?” Delamare asked, speaking very clearly.
No response except a constant quiet note of anguish. Delamare’s own dæmon spread her owl wings and glided from his shoulder to the table, to peer down at the demented being and her poor shattered face.
Delamare tried in German: “Do you know where you are?”
No response.
“My name is Marcel Delamare. You are in the care of the Magisterium, in Geneva. Do you know what happened to your person, to Gottfried Brande?”
She uttered a groan that was half a growl. She recognized his name, then. Delamare went on: “We can try to heal your injuries. We can certainly make you more comfortable. Can you speak at all? Can you utter words in any language?”
The dæmon forced a sound out of her throat, and Delamare’s owl dæmon said something in response.
“Persian, I think,” she said to Delamare. And then to the dæmon she uttered a phrase in that language, which Delamare recognized as a greeting.
The dæmon did nothing but put a paw over her face, and flinch from the pain, and then take it off. Her eyes were tightly closed. A long soft moan, hardly audible, was the only sound she made.
Delamare tried again in German.
“I think you must have spoken with Professor Brande in this language, but if you would rather speak in a different language and can tell us which, we can arrange for an interpreter. Meanwhile, is there anything we can provide for your comfort? Would you like some water? Would you like a rug?”
No response. Apart from the constant quiet moan of pain and misery, she might have been asleep, or dead, he thought—but no, not dead. She would have vanished. Was she perhaps not a dæmon at all?
“Don’t,” said his dæmon.
“Don’t what?”
“You were going to touch her.”
“Simply to see whether—”
“Don’t do it. She would die at once.”
“Die of what?”
“Of shame.”
“That would settle the question.”
“But dishonorably. She’s certainly a dæmon. Don’t touch her.”
Delamare sat back to watch the stricken creature. She seemed like someone at the very limits of exhaustion and agony, who knows she is alone, and no one will ever help.
“But not his dæmon,” Delamare said suddenly.
“Ah!” said the owl dæmon. “Then…whose?”
He sat forward and said in German, “Gottfried Brande was not your person, was he?”
The dæmon curled her spine and tried to put both front feet over her face, but had to stop, because it clearly hurt so much.
“Tell me. How did you come to pose as his dæmon? Why did he pretend you were?”
Delamare regretted, now, that he hadn’t attended Brande’s lecture, spoken to him beforehand, watched how he was with the dæmon.
She made no attempt to respond, but tears were spilling from her eyes.
He said, “I think you understand me. You are alone now, and in great pain. I have offered to try to relieve it. We have experts here in the treatment of ailing dæmons. There are medications, there are practitioners of the talking cure, there is even surgery. No dæmon need suffer a moment longer than necessary.”
The tears were pooling on the floor beside the dæmon’s broken face. Delamare was convinced now that she understood him.
“If there is anything you’d like to say, perhaps about your original person, perhaps about your homeland—”
The dæmon raised her head and murmured, “Nichts.”
And then she vanished, as if she’d been made of smoke. All that remained was the pool of tears.
“What did she say? What was that last word?”
“Nothing. She had nothing to say and she said it.”
Delamare sat back in his chair. “So much for that,” he said. “Well, we shall learn from it. You think it was Persian, whatever it was she said?”
“The last word was German, but yes, the rest was Persian, I think.”
Delamare stood up and opened the door. “She died,” he told the attendant.
He set off along the corridor, and after a moment his dæmon glided to his shoulder. Delamare gave orders as he left the building, summoning various officials and aides to a meeting at La Maison Juste, to begin immediately. A golden idea was already forming in his mind.
Leenart Karpelin to Oakley Street:
The sensation caused by the death of Gottfried Brande shows no sign of fading. The official narrative says that Brande was struck down by an apoplexy, the shock of which caused his dæmon to tear herself away from him, mad with fear. She was given refuge in La Maison Juste while doctors attended to Brande, but despite the best medical care he and the dæmon died within the hour, simultaneously.
The text of his lecture has been carefully preserved by the Magisterium, and they are said to be considering the possibility of publishing it in his memory.
The dæmon business remains a mystery. Everyone who saw the event knows that Brande died at once; no one believes that his dæmon was in any sense “normal.” Stories of her behavior after his death spread and multiply. Some say she still haunts the Chapel of the Sacred Presence. A service of exorcism has been requested by a delegation of the faithful.
A small observation. Marcel Delamare, whose style and bearing are proverbially immaculate, is becoming careless with his dress. A small stain on his lapel, which I noticed yesterday, is still there today, and his fingernails were dirty. I mention this purely because it is so unusual.
“Publishing it? Really?”
“Oh, not as it is, of course not. But I can see several advantages in a rewritten version, echoing and even anticipating various views of our own.”
Delamare and his dæmon were in his private rooms at La Maison Juste, examining the text of the notes Brande had with him when he died. His hotel room had been searched, and other pages of manuscript found in his luggage lay on the desk in front of the President.
“When have we got time to do that?” said his owl dæmon.
“A young scholar—Maximov, say…”
“I don’t trust him.”
“Someone else, then. A postdoctoral student would jump at the chance.”
“Same objection applies. Marcel, the only mind that could possibly put this confused and contradictory rant in order is yours. But why would you take time out of—”
“Because there are insights here that are quite new. What he says about language…”
“Steal them, then. Simply take them. Then burn the papers.”
“He was going in our direction, that’s the point.”
“Put it all in the safe. Lock it away and come back to it when the girl is dealt with.”
Delamare leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Yes,” he said. “This evening the girl will arrive in Baku, and then that will soon be over.”