Timothy Ferguson's Blog, page 12

The Byland Ghost Stories

The Byland ghost stories were written into a 12th or 13th century book. They refer to the reign of Richard II as having completed. They take up the afterpage and some small gaps on the pages within the volume, and they are presumably written with the consent, or perhaps encouragement, of whoever looked after the library at Byland Monastery. The stories are all from Yorkshire in the UK, save two. One of them takes place during a pilgrimage to Compostella, which is in Spain, so it could be anywhere along the way. The other is arguably in Exeter.

They demonstrate that ghosts in this period are similar to what, in Ars Magica, we would call Reveners. That is, they have a physical shape, are able to shape shift, and can be wrestled with or carried away. Their flesh, when it is touched, seems spongy or decayed. .

These ghosts aren’t able to speak to you directly until you speak to them first. This is a process that’s referred to in these stories as conjuring. Ghosts can, however, trick you into talking to them by making cries or screaming. When these ghosts speak they don’t “speak from their tongue” The sound comes from deep in their bowels. It sounds hollow. There is also heat coming from their bowels, so some of them appear to have heat or even fire coming from their mouths.

These ghosts are able to cause greater harm than the ghosts we used to purely through their physical actions. We see them wrestling, we see one tearing the clothes of a man that it’s combating. We see another one which blows out the eye of his mistress from when he was alive. What exactly that means is not entirely clear. The podcast that put me onto this “The Boggart And The Banshee” seems to suggest that blowing out the eye is a sort of breath weapon, if I’m understanding what they’re saying, however the ‘blow’ could be a blow of the hand as well I suppose.

Seeing a ghost makes light dangerous to people. The way of avoiding this danger is to see a fire before you see a candle or a lamp. Another way it’s put in the stories is “to see a light before the light sees you.”

This gives me some ideas for an enhanced version of the Ghostly Warder Virtue. The ghostly warder in Ars Magica basically flits around, being a spy and giving you information
or advice. What if, occasionally, it could turn up as a big, spongy zombie?

A lot of these ghosts have final business which is something in Ars Magica that we’re used to. Here, however, we see something new. A ghost sincerely tries to finish its final business and cannot because of human obstruction. This gives the ghost the power to curse. There is a ghost procession in one of the latest stories. These have already been stated up in Ars Magica: the king of the ghost procession is a Criamon Magus.

The original book is one of the royal manuscripts. It was copied into a magazine by M.R. James, famous ghost story author, but he did it in Latin. It was translated from the Latin into English and published in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. I’ve cut most of the footnotes out, however, if there’s material which may be of use to roleplayers I’ve kept them in. The M.R.J. and A.H.T. which are mentioned in those footnotes are these two transcribers and translators. M.R. James puts a troll story into his footnotes which, as he admits, has little to do with the ghost stories that are around it, however I’ve included it because it might prove useful to roleplaying groups.

One: Concerning the ghost of a certain labourer at Rivaux, who helped a man to carry beans.
A certain man was riding on his horse, carrying on its back a peck of beans. The horse stumbled on the road and broke its shin bone, which, when the man saw, he took the beans on his own back, and while he was walking on the road, he saw, as it were, a horse standing on its hind feet and holding up its fore feet. In alarm he forbade the horse in the name of Jesus Christ to do him any harm.

Upon this it went with him in the shape of a horse, and in a little while appeared to him in the likeness of a revolving haycock with a light in the middle. [Footnote: in number two a ghost is said to appear as a thorn bush. In several of these stories the ghosts are liable to many changes of form, M.R.J.] To which the man said, God forbid that you bring evil upon me. At these words it appeared in the shape of a man and the traveller conjured him.

Then the spirit told him his name, and the reason of his walking, and the remedy, and he added, permit me to carry your beans, and to help you. And thus he did as far as the Beck, but he was not willing to pass over it, and the living man knew not how the bag of beans was placed again on his own back. And afterwards he caused the ghost to be absolved and masses to be sung for him, and he was eased.

Two, concerning a wonderful encounter between a ghost and a living man, in the time of King Richard II.
It is said that a certain tailor of the name of, blank, Snowball, was returning on horseback one night from Gilling to his home in Ampleforth, and on the way he heard, as it were, the sound of ducks washing themselves in the Beck, and soon after he saw, as it were, a raven that flew round his face and came down to the earth, and struck the ground with its wings as though it were on the point of death. And the tailor got off his horse to take the raven, and as he did so he saw sparks of fire, shooting from the sides of the raven, whereupon he crossed himself, and forbade him in the name of God, to bring at that time any harm upon him. Then it flew off, with a great screaming for about the space of a stone’s throw. Then again he mounted his horse, and very soon the same raven met him as it flew, and struck him on the side, and threw the tailor to the ground, from the horse upon which he was riding, and he lay stretched upon the ground, as it were, in a swoon and lifeless, and he was very frightened.

Then rising, and strong in the faith, he fought with him with his sword until he was weary, and it seemed to him that he was striking a peat-stack, and he forbade him and conjured him in the name of God, saying, “God forbid that you have power to hurt me on this occasion, but be gone.” And again it flew off with a horrible screaming, as it were, the space of the flight of an arrow.

And the third time it appeared to the tailor, as he was carrying the cross of his sword upon his breast for fear, and it met him in the likeness of a dog with a chain on its neck, and when he saw it the tailor strong in the faith thought within himself, what will become of me? I will adure him in the name of the Trinity, and by the virtue of the blood of Christ, from his five wounds, that he speak with me and do me no wrong, but stand fast, and enter my questions and tell me his name, and because of his punishment and the remedy that belongs to it, and he did so, and the spirit-painting terribly engroning said “Thus and thus did I, and for thus doing, I have been excommunicated.” [Footnote: Great paints have been taken throughout to conceal the name of the ghost. He must have been a man of quality whose relatives might have objected to stories being told about him. MRJ.] “Go therefore to a certain priest and ask him to absolve me, and it behoves me to have the full number of nine times twenty masses, celebrated for me, and now of two things you must choose one. Either you shall come back to me on a certain night alone, bringing to me the answer of those whose names I have given you, and I will tell you how you may be made whole, and in the meantime you need not fear the sight of a wood-fire.”

[Footnote: In Danish tales something like this is to be found. “After seeing a phantom funeral, the man was wise enough to go to the stove, and look at the fire before he saw candle or lamp-light. For when people see anything of the kind, they are sick, if they cannot get at fire before light…he was very sick when he caught sight of the light.”. “When you see anything supernatural, you should peep over the door before going into the house. You must see the light before the light sees you.” “When he came home he called to his wife to put out the light before he came in, but she did not, and he was so sick, they thought he would have died. These examples are enough to show that there was risk attached to seeing the light after
a ghostly encounter, MRJ.”]

“Or otherwise your flesh shall rot and your skin shall dry up, and shall fall off from you utterly in a short time. No more over that I have met you now, because today you have not heard Mass, nor the Gospel of John, namely in Principio, and have not seen the consecration of our Lord’s body and blood, for otherwise I should not have had full power of appearing to you.” [Note, this rather suggests that you might be reckoned to have kept Mass if you only came in time for the last Gospel, A.H.T.]

And as he spoke with the tailor, he was, as it were, on fire, and his inner parts could be seen through his mouth, and he formed his words in his entrails and did not speak with his tongue, then the tailor asked permission from the ghost that he might have with him on his return some companion, but the ghost said, “No, but have upon you the four Gospels, and the name of victory, namely Jesus of Nazareth, on account of two other ghosts that abide here, of whom one cannot speak when he is conjured, and abides in the likeness of fire or of a bush, and the other is in the form of a hunter, and they are very dangerous to meet. Pledge me further on this stone, that you will defame my bones, to no one except to the priests who celebrate on my behalf, and the others to whom you are sent on my behalf who may be of use to me.”
[Footnote, defaming is the formal accusation of crime which renders a man liable to spiritual censure, and puts him in a state of infamia, from which he must free himself by compurgation, or by establishing a suit against his defamer in the spiritual court. The infirmia of a dead man, resting here on his own acknowledgement, would place him outside the privilege of Christian burial, and lead to the disinterment of his remains, confer the posthumous defamation and disinterment of Wycliffe for heresy, A.H.T.]

And he gave his word upon the stone that he would not reveal the secret, as has been already explained, then he conjured the ghost to go to Hodgebeck, and await his return. [Footnote, I suppose in order that the ghost might not haunt the road in the interval before the tale’s return, M.I.J.] And the ghost said “No, no.” and screamed, and the tailor said, go then to the Byland Bank, where at he was glad.

The man of whom we speak was ill for some days, but then got well and went to York to the priest, who had been mentioned, who had excommunicated the dead man, and asked him for absolution, but he refused to absolve him, and called him another chaplain to take counsel with him, and that chaplain called in another, and that other a third, to advise secretly concerning
the absolution of this man. [Footnote: the reluctance of the priest at York to absolve, and the number of advisors called in, testified to the importance of the case, M.I.J.] And the tailor asked of him, “Sir, you know the mutual token that I hinted in your ear.”

And he answered “Yes, my son.”, then after many negotiations the tailor made satisfaction and paid five shillings, and received the absolution written on a piece of parchment, and he was sworn not to defame the dead man, but to bury the absolution, in his grave, near his head, and secretly.And when he had got it he went to a certain brother Richard of Pickering, a confessor of repute, and asked him whether the absolution was sufficient and lawful, and he answered that it was.

Then the tailor went to all the orders of the friars of York, and he had almost all the required masses celebrated, during two or three days, and coming home he buried the absolution in
the grave, as he had been ordered. And when all these things had been duly carried out he came home, and a certain officious neighbour of his, hearing that he had to report to the ghost on a certain night, all that he had done at York, adured him saying, “God forbid that you go to this ghost without telling me of your going, and of the day and the hour.”

And being so constrained for fear of displeasing God, he told him, waking him up from sleep and saying, “I am going now, if you wish to come with me, let us set off, and I will give you a part of the writings that I carry on me because of night fears.”

Then the other said “Do you want me to go with you?”

And the tailor said “You must see to that I will give no advice to you.”

Then at last the other said “Get you gone in the name of the Lord, and may God prosper you in all things.” After these words he came to the appointed place and made a great circle with a cross.

I have cut out some of the rest of the footnote here, but I am keeping this bit because it
has ritual magic in it, which may be of interest to raw players.

The magic circle plays a great part in a case of sorcery recorded in York Register, Bainbridge,
and printed in Archaeology Journal 16. It was here drawn on a huge shoot of parchment in a private house by an ingenious person who induced a number of people to combine with him in conjuring demons to reveal the hiding place of treasure at Mixindale Head near Halifax. There is no mention of its being drawn with a cross, or a cross inscribed in it. It was copied from a conjuring book. It was inscribed, however…and one deponent who arrived unexpectedly while the performance was going on saw that party had a great mass book open, before them, and wrote out what they would confer the other sacred words which the present spirit ordered his conjurer to bring with him. Are the monillia necessarily reliquaries? I should have thought that in the present case there might rather be medallions on which the title triumphalis were engraved, like the laminate of lead inscribed with figures of Oberion, Storax, and other spirits, which formed part of the Halifax conjurer’s equipment. The text seems to imply a figure of this kind. A-H-T.]

He came at length in the form of a she-goat and went thrice around the circle, saying “Ah, ah, ah!” and when he conjured the she-goat she fell prone upon the ground and rose up again
in the likeness of a man, of great stature, horrible and thin, and like one of the dead kings in pictures. [Footnote, I think the illusion is to the pictures of the three living and three dead, so often found painted on church walls, the dead and living are often represented as kings. MRJ]
And when he was asked whether the tailor’s labour had been of service to him, he answered
“Yes, praised be God, and I stood at your back when you buried my absolution in my grave
at the ninth hour and were afraid. No wonder you were afraid, for three devils were present there, who have tormented me in every way, from the time when you first conjured me to the time of my absolution, suspecting that they would have me but very little time in their custody, to torment me. Know therefore that on Monday next I shall pass into everlasting joy with thirty other spirits. Go now to a certain beck, and you will find a broad stone, lift it up, and under it you will find a sand stone, wash your whole body with water and rub it with the stone, and you will be whole in a few days. [Footnote, the need of a prescription for healing the tailor was due to the blow in the side which the raven had given him, MRJ.]

When he was asked the names of the two ghosts he answered, “I cannot tell you their names.”
and when asked about their condition he answered that “one was a layman and a soldier, and was not of these parts, and he killed a woman great with child, and he will find no remedy before the day of judgement, and you will see him in the form of a bloke without mouth or eyes or ears, and however you conjure him he will not be able to speak, and the other was a man of religion in the shape of a hunter blowing upon a horn, and he will find a remedy and he will be conjured by a certain boy who has not yet come to manhood, if the Lord will.” And then the tailor asked the ghost of his own condition and received the answer “You are keeping wrongfully the cap and coat of one who was your friend and companion in the wars beyond the seas, give satisfaction to him or you will pay dearly for it.”

And the tailor said “I do not know where he lives.” and the ghost answered “He lives in such a town, near to the castle of Alnwick.”
When further he asked, “What is my greatest fault?” The ghost answered “Your greatest fault is because of me.” and the man said, “How? And in what way?” and the ghost answered “Because the people sin telling lies concerning you, and bringing scandal on other dead men, saying the dead man who was conjured was he or he or he”, and he asked the ghost, “What shall I do? I will reveal your name?” and he said “No, but if you stay in one place you will be rich, and in another place you will be poor, and you have here certain enemies. ” [Footnote, this does not seem logically to follow upon the prohibition to tell the ghost’s name, I take it as advice to the tailor to change his abode, MRJ.]

Then the spirit said, “I can no longer stay talking with you.” and as they went their different ways the deaf and dumb and blind bullock went with the man, as far as the town of Ampleforth, whom he conjured in all the ways that he knew, but by no means could he make answer, and
the ghost that had been aided by him advised him to “Keep all his best writings by his head until he went to sleep, and say neither more nor less than I advise you, and keep your eyes on the ground and look not on a wood fire for this night at least.” And when he came home he was ill for several days. [Footnote, I do not quite understand how this fire business worked. The Danish case is cited are not quite explanatory. Presumably the spirit, whom he had helped, meant that the tailor need not look at the fire as a precaution when he went home now that it all was well, and that all he need do was to keep his thoughts under control. The force of, for this night at least, seems to be that it would be well to look at the fire another night the bullock was still about, and might be met again, A.H.T.]

Three: Concerning the ghost of Robert, the son of Robert de Boltby, of Kilburn, which was caught in a churchyard.

I must tell you that this Robert the Younger died and was buried in a churchyard, but he had the habit of leaving his grave by night. And disturbing and frightening the villagers, and the dogs of the village used to follow him and bark loudly, then some young men of the village talked together and determined to catch him if they possibly could, and they came together to the cemetery, but when they saw the ghosts they all fled with the exception of two.

One of these, called Robert Foxton, seized him at the entrance to the cemetery, and placed
him on the stile [and the other] cried…”Keep him fast until I come to you.”

The first one answered “Go quickly to the parish priest, that the ghost may be conjured, for, with God’s help, I will hold firmly what I have got until the arrival of the priest.” The parish priest made all haste to come and conjured him in the name of the Holy Trinity, and in the virtue of Jesus Christ, that he should give him and answer to his questions. And when he had been conjured he spoke in the inside of his bowels, and not with his tongue, but as it were in an empty cask, and he confessed his different offences. And when these were known the priest absolved him, but charged those who had seized him not to reveal his confession in any way, and henceforth as God-willed he rested in peace.

It is said more over than before his absolution, he would stand at the doors of houses and windows and walls, as it were, listening. Perhaps he was waiting to see if anyone would come out and conjure him and give help to him in his necessity. Some people say that he had been assisting and consenting to the murder of a certain man, and that he had done other evil things, of which I must not speak, in detail at present.

Four
Moreover, the old Ben tell us that a certain man, called James Tankley, formerly rector of Kirby, was buried in front of the chapter house at Byland, and used to walk at night as far as Kirby, and one night he blew out the eye of his concubine there. And it is said that the abbot and the convent caused his body to be dug up from the tomb along with the coffin, and they compelled Roger Wainman to carry it as far as Gore Mire. And while he was throwing the coffin into the water, the oxen were almost drowned for fear. [Footnote, when Wainman was throwing the coffin into Gormire, the oxen, which drew his cart almost sank into the town from fear. This, I suppose, is the sense of this rather obscure sentence, M.I.J.] God forbid that I be in any danger, for even as I have heard from my elders so have I written, made the Almighty have mercy upon him, if indeed he were of the number of those destined to salvation.

Five
What I write is a great marvel. It is said that a certain woman laid hold of a ghost and carried him on her back into a certain house. In presence of some men, one of them reported that he saw the hands of the woman sink deeply into the flesh of the ghost as though the flesh were rotten and not solid but phantom flesh. [Footnote, this is most curious. Why did the woman catch the ghost and bring it indoors? M.I.J.]

Six
Concerning a certain canon of Newburgh, who was seized after his death by blank. It happened that this man was talking with the master of the plowmen, and I was walking with him in the field, and suddenly the master fled in great terror, and the other man was left struggling with a ghost who…tore his garments, and at last he gained the victory and conjured him, and he being conjured confessed that he had been a certain canon of Newburgh, and that he had been excommunicated for certain silver spoons which he had hidden in a certain place.
He therefore begged the living man that he would go to the place he mentioned and take them away and carry them to the prior and ask for absolution. And he did so, and he found the silver spoons in the place mentioned, and after absolution the ghost henceforth rested in peace, but the man was ill and languished for many days, and he affirmed that the ghost had appeared to him in the habit of a canon.

Seven
So, serving a certain ghost in another place who being conjured, confessed that he was severely punished because, being the hired servant of a certain householder, he stole his master’s corn and gave it his oxen that they might look fat, and there was another thing which
troubled him even more namely, that he plowed the land not deeply but on the surface, wishing his oxen to keep fat, and he said there were fifteen spirits in one place severely punished for sins like his own which they had committed. He begged his conjurer therefore to ask his master for pardon and absolution so that he might obtain the suitable remedy.

Eight
Concerning another ghost that followed William of Breadforth, and cried, “How, how, how” thrice on three occasions. It happened that on the fourth night, about midnight, he went back
to the new place from the village of Ampleforth, and as he was returning by the road he heard
a terrible voice shouting far behind him, and as it were on the hillside, and a little after it cried again in like manner but nearer, and the third time it screamed at the crossroads ahead of him, and at last he saw a pale horse, and his dog barked a little, but then hid itself in great fear between the legs of the said William.

Whereupon he commanded the spirit the name of the Lord, and in virtue of the blood of Jesus
Christ to depart and not to block his path, and when he heard this he withdrew like a revolving
piece of canvas with four corners and kept on turning, so that it seems that he was a ghost that mightily desired to be conjured, and to receive effective help. [For three nights William of Breadford had heard the cries, on the fourth he met the ghost, and I suspect he must have been imprudent enough to answer the cries for there are many tales Danish and other, a person who answered the shrieking ghost with impertinent words, and the next moment they hear it close to their ear. Note the touch of the frightened dog, M.I.J.]

Nine: Concerning the ghost of a man of Ayton in Cleveland.
It is reported that this ghost followed a man for four times twenty miles, that he should conjure and help him, and when he had been conjured he confessed that he had been excommunicated for a certain matter of six months, but after absolution and satisfaction he rested in peace. In all these things as nothing evil was left unpunished nor contourwise anything good and unrewarded, God showed himself to be a just rewarder.

It is said too that the ghost before he was conjured through the living man over a hedge and caught him on the other side as he fell. When he was conjured he replied, “If you had done so first I would not have hurt you, but here and there you were frightened, and I did it.”
[The ghost throws him over the hedge and catches him as he falls on the other side, so the troll, who’s supposed daughter married the blacksmith, when he heard that all the villagers shunned her, came to the church on Sunday before service, when all the people were in the churchyard and drove them into a compact group.

“Then he said to his daughter, Will you throw or catch?”

“I will catch.” said she, in kindness to the people.

“Very well. Go round to the other side of the church”. And he took them one by one, and threw them over the church and she caught them and put them down and hurt.

“[Next] time I come” said the troll, “She shall throw, and I will catch, if you don’t treat her better.”
Not very relevant, but less well known than it should be, M.I.J.,]

Ten: How penitent thief after confession vanished from the eyes of the demon.
It happened formerly in Exeter, that a ditcher, a hard worker, and a great eater lived in the cellar of a great house, which had many cellars, with connected walls but only one living room. The ditcher, when he was hungry, used often to climb up into the living room and cut off slices from the meat that was there hung up, had cooked them, and eat them, even if it were lent.
And the Lord of the House, saying that his meat was cut, examined his servants concerning
the matter, and, as they all denied, and cleared themselves by oath, he threatened that he
would go to a certain, sorceress necromancer and make inquiry through him into this wonderful event.

With the ditcher heard this, he was much afraid, and went to the friars and confessed his crime, and received the sacrament of absolution, but the Lord of the House went, as he had threatened, to the necromancer, who anointed the nail of a small boy and by incantation, asked him what he saw, and the boy answered, “I see a serving man with cliqueur.”

The necromancer said “Conjure him, therefore, to appear to you, in the fairest form he can.”
and so he did, and the boy said, “Behold, I see a very beautiful horse”, and then he saw a man in a form like that of the ditcher, climbing up the ladder and carving the meat, with the horse following him, and the clerk said, “What are the men in the horse doing now?”

And the child said, “look, he is cooking and eating the meat.” And when he was asked again, what is he doing now, the little boy answered, “They are going both of them to the church of the friars, but the horse waits again outside, and the man is going in and he kneels and speaks with the friar, who places his hand on his head.”

Then the clerk asked the boy “What are they doing now?”

And he answered “They are both vanished from my eyes, and I can see them no longer, and
I have no idea where they are.”

Eleven: Concerning a wonderful work of God, who calls things which are not as though they were, things which are, and who can act when and how he wills, and concerning a certain miracle.

It has been handed down to memory that a certain man of Cleveland called Richard Roundtree left his wife great with child, and went with many others to the Tomb of St James, and one night they passed the night in a wood near to the king’s highway. Wherefore one of the party kept watch for a part of the night against night fears and the other slept in safety, and it happened that in that part of the night in which the man we speak of was guardian and night watchmen. He heard a great sound of people passing along the king’s highway, and some rode sitting on horses and sheep and oxen, and some on other animals and all the animals were those that had been given to the church when they died. [Footnote. There are multitudinous examples of the nightly processions of the dead, but I do not know another case where they ride on their own mortuaries, the beasts offered to the church or claimed by it at their decease. It is a curious reminiscence of the pagan fashion of providing means of transport for the dead by bearing beasts with them, M.I.J.] and at last he saw what seemed a small child wriggling along on the ground wrapped in a stocking, and he conjured him and he asked him who he was and why he thus wriggled along, and he made answer. “You ought not to conjure me, for you were my father and I was your abortive son buried without baptism and without name.” and when he heard this the pilgrim took off his shirt and put it on his small child and gave him a name in the name of the Holy Trinity and he took with him the old stocking in witness of the matter, and the child when he thus received a name jumped with joy and henceforth walked erect upon his feet though previously he had wriggled.

And when the pilgrimage was over he gave her banquet to his neighbours and asked his wife for his hose, she showed him one stocking but could not find the other, then the husband showed her the stocking in which the child was wrapped and she was astonished, and as the midwives confessed the truth concerning the death and burial of the boy, in the stocking a divorce took place between the husband and the wife, inasmuch as he was the godfather of the abortive child, but I believe that this divorce was highly displeasing to God.
[Evidently the wife was not an accessory to the indecent burial of the child and the sympathy of the writer is with her, the divorce does seem superfluous, since those sponsors were not allowed to marry, he is but one sponsor, but I know not the canon law, M.I.J. I cannot conceive what the grounds of the divorce were unless it could be argued that the father by standing godfather to his own child after marriage entered into a relationship which was irregular, parents could not be sponsors for their children and if the story is true, it may have been held that this irregular act dissolved the marriage and that in taking upon him the sponsorship he renounced his rights as a husband. On the face of it this was the view taken, the incident was so remarkable that it must have been hard to cite precedent, A.H.T.]

Twelve: Concerning the sister of Old Adam of Lund and how she was seized after her death according to the account given by Old Men.
It must be understood that this woman was buried in the churchyard of Ampleforth and shortly after her death she was seized by William Trower, the elder, and being conjured she confessed that she wandered in his road at night and I count as certain charters which she had given wrongfully to Adam her brother. This was because a quarrel had arisen between her husband and herself and therefore she had given the papers to her brother to the injury of her husband and her own children, so that after her death her brother expelled her husband from his house, namely from a toft and croft in Ampleforth with their appurtenances and from an ox gang of land in Hesleton and its appurtenances and all this by violence.

She begged therefore this William to suggest to her brother that he should restore these charters to her husband and her children and give back to them their land for otherwise she could by no means rest in peace until the day of judgement. So William according to her commands made this suggestion to Adam but he refused to restore the charter saying, “I don’t believe what you say”, and he answered, “My words were true in everything therefore if God will you shall hear your sister talking to you of this matter ere long.”

And on another night he seized her again and carried her to the chamber of Adam and she spoke with him and her hardened brother said, as some report, “If you walk forever I won’t give back the charters.”

Then she groaned and answered, “May God judge between you and me. Know then that until your death I shall have no rest wherefore after your death you will walk in my place.” It is said moreover that her right hand hung down and it was very black and she was asked why this was and she answered that it was because often in her disputes she had held it out and sworn falsely. At length she was conjured to go to another place on account of the night fear and terror which caused the folk of that village.

I ask pardon if by chance I have offended in writing what is not true. It is said however that Adam…the younger, mqde partial satisfaction to the true heir, after the death of the elder
Adam.

Mythic Venice #Dungeon23 #City23 April

This year I’ve been participating in Dungeon 23, which is a daily writing challenge, to get together material for a Venice Gazette here for Ars Magica or Magonomia. The first four entries for April have already been published as part of the March episode because they were to do with carnival masks, so I kept all of that material together.

April 5th, Navigum Isidis.
This mystery cult was imported into Imperial Rome from Egypt. It focuses on Isis and uses a model ship in its rituals, hence the name Ship of Isis. Its sacred days the 5th of March. Some scholars claim that the procession, the Carras Navalus, is the ancestor of carnival. This may or may not be true in real life, but it might work for us in Ars Magica. It’s a cult for seafarers and merchants, which includes most of the ruling class, the Venice.

April 6th, Liston de Maschere.
At the start of carnival, people dress up, mask and promenade in the Campos and Stefano. Later, the Liston, the promenade, moves to St. Mark’s. It was so popular it needed the largest space. On the 26th of December, since Stefano’s Saints Day, men wear a tabarro, a heavy cloak, some women do also. Women usually wear the zendale, which is a black shawl, although some men do also. The tall shoes mentioned in earlier episodes are called chopines, apparently, and the fans mentioned in an earlier episode, where I discussed fans as a replacement for wands, are called ventuoles.

The 7th of March, Fat Thursday.
Fat Thursday is the final day before Lent, feasting, dancing, ball fights and baiting, and from 1548 an acrobat walks from a ship up to the Campanile, then down again, saluting the doge on the way. I haven’t made clear there that they’re walking up a rope from a ship, which is moving with the tide, up to the top of the bell tower.

There are boating contests for both men and women. There are fights on the San Barbara Bridge, and it ends with fireworks. There is art on Italiancarnival.com.

There’s also a mention in my notes of Hunting Thursday, which is apparently a bull sacrifice.

April 8th, Cards.
Bassetta was invented in 1593, it’s a game for 3 to 4 players and a banker, 13 cards per hand, players each show a card, or more, and bet, and then the dealer shows the bottom card and pays out half bets. Then he deals four cards and pays matches, one to one, and then he deals another card and takes the matches for himself. You go until the money or the pack are exhausted. There’s also a reparlay rule for higher odds. The bank has a very severe advantage.

In English it’s called Basset. When it gets to France, only the sons of nobles are legally permitted to be bankers. It’s played mostly by the very wealthy. Its inventor was sent into exile for the destitution it bought on some of the noble families.

The Biribissi is a lottery: There’s a mention of burning lotto balls in Dante’s Inferno.. The public lottery, the Pirie e Botteghe a Rialto, was first held in 1522 and the prize was real estate.

Primiera is a late 15th century game, it’s the ancestor of poker, it has raising, bluffing, and card combinations. The cards in Primiera are as follows, four high card, a seven is equal to 21, a six is
equal to 18, a five is equal to 15, a four is equal to 14, a three is equal to 13, a two is equal to 12, a face card is equal to 10, and an ace is equal to 16.

A chorus is what we would call four of a kind.
A fluxus is what we would call a flush,
A supremus is the seven six and ace of a single suit.
A primiera is one card per suit.
Numbers are two and three of one suit.

April 9th, the first theatre and notes on keysellers.
The first modern theatre in the world is built in Venice in the Magonomia period, it’s called
the Michieli theatre.

There are no tickets, people who want what we would now call a season ticket instead are given a key to a theatre box. If you want using your box you can rent out your key for the night, there’s even a particular peddler that people trust with their keys to hand them out in haggle prices. At some point ambassadors are banned from hiring theatre boxes because these are great places for running agents.

The first opera house was opened in 1637, the Teatro San Casino. “Casino” just means “little house” by the way,

The apparati of the theatre (the sets and props) are side-lines for some famous painters.

April 10th, My shopping list
Master Alexis’s book.
Monsters and statistics.
Generic human NPCs
Covenant creation guide
Maps of significant places
Deck plans for the Bucintoro and for a generic gondola.
Deck plans for a generic galley, great galley, and a round ship..
Generic palazzo and nunnery plans,
Generic pharmacy floorplan
Stats for the mask characters: all lists of their advantages and virtues
The Pantamerone monsters I’ve been putting off for years
Consider some production details

April 11th. Master Alexious of Piedmont’s Book of Secrets, Volume 1.
It has the following spells which I am going to try and map across to Ars Magica and Magonomia.
Curing lunacy caused by double headed passion worms.
Cure for the falling sickness (which is epilepsy)
Oil of brimstone
To draw out the poison of wounds made by envenomed blades.
To draw out animal venom.
To draw out arrowheads and iron.
A perfect remedy for blows of sword or staff or stone
A water to heal all manner of wounds that every man should always have in his house
To make red oil of St John’s Wort
To cure withered limbs
Remedies for malaria, pleurisy, rabies and scrofula.
Plague cures and protective charms,
Scented waters, oils and powders, soaps, perfumes, pomanders, jams, sugared fruit, sugared place settings.
Waters that make the face look 25 or 15.
Face treatments, depilatory creams, hair and beard colours, dyes, paints, inks, silverpoints.
Powder to erase letters or mistakes
Recipes to make quicksilver, cinnabar aqua fortis and to make metals.
How to gild iron with water, foil and quicksilver.
How to gild silver
How to counterfeit a diamond with a white sapphire
How to fuse rubies or emeralds into larger rubies or emeralds
How to gild copper

April 12 The Second Book.
Spells to:
make cosmetics
make oil of vitriol
colour stone or metal gold
make iron or steel soft
harden iron or steel
make a glue that holds like a nail
cause marvellous dreams
have a good memory
make no dog bark at you
have steel cut iron like lead
make bones soft
make invisible ink triggered by water
make invisible ink triggered by fire,
make wild beasts not hurt you
be safe from serpents
see wild beasts in a dream
make an apple or ball that provokes sleep
dye copper into gold
make oil of brimstone
make sal ammoniac
dye iron gold
dye iron silver
erase letters from parchment,
make dry vinegar
cure sickness, sea sickness, deafness
create magical fish bait
remedy scorpion stings
make magical bait for fowls
cure salamander bites
cure snake bite
cure rabies
cure venomous stings
drive venomous beasts from your house
defend against poison, eaten or drunk
not be stung by scorpions
not be stung by wasps or bees
cure one who has eaten toadstools
grant safety from all sorcery and enchantment
grant safety against all lightning and tempest
grind gold and silver
imprint metals
make metals seem like silver
make a light in the night (to attract fish)
make a stone which creates flame when it is wetted with spit
make oil of laudanum,
make leather look like gold or silver
help one who cannot sleep
detect arsenic
restore letters, and equine medicine.
to brew an emetic for poison

April 13, The third and fourth books of Master Alexis of Piedmont
Cures for epilepsy, tinnitus, toothache, quinsy, throat puss, pleurisy, stomach pain, dropsy, colic, flux, and thrush
An inducer of birth
An easer of birth pain
Cures for incontinence of the bladder, swollen testicles, gravel (bladder stones), psoriasis
To staunch blood
To create opiates
To soften or harden iron
To soften or harden crystals
A solder for metals
To cast horn in a mould
To cast amber in a mould
How to capture salamanders
How to make gold using salamanders
How to make petroleum using walnuts
How to solidify mercury with aqua lunaris

Book four is all very similar with a couple of standouts like “a plaster to cure a rupture of the skull.”

April 14, Private lives in Renaissance Venice by Patricia Fortini-Brown – Knighthood

There are two orders of knighthood in Venice. The knights of St. Marco, who are virtually all foreigners, are honoured by the state and have no role in government. The knights of the
Stola d’Oro, are named after the gold sash they wear. The role is granted by the Senate to
Venetian men who have served in foreign courts and been knighted. They have no inherent power in government, but to be an ambassador you need to have political power and connections.

April 15, Pulling down palaces
The Querini Palace was pulled down after the Tiepolo-Querini plots failed. The state pulled down to thirds of the Querini Palace, because it was owned in common by three brothers, only two of whom were plotters. They bought the remaining third from the innocent brother, then designated the surviving structure as the city’s slaughterhouse. After the Tiepolo doge tried to seize the state with a popular uprising, the state pulled down his palace and made its footprint into a public park. There’s a pillar explaining the sentence,.

April 16. The fraterna
The basic commercial unit is the fraterna, which is an extended family unit. In Venice, only one or two sons in each generation marry. They live in their casa together with their parents and unmarried siblings. Married siblings may get a floor, the unmarried siblings get a room. Venetian casas are large with a shared central corridor and stairs. There are side rooms that lead into each other. This means that as the family changes, the suites can flex.

It’s a cheaper way of living than living independently, because it allows extended families to share servants into kitchen. There’s not a lot of privacy, however. Despite the lack of space, idealized versions have husbands and wives with separate connected rooms.

April 17, Mannerism, or Maniera
Mannerism is a style of art which became popular in the 1520s, vying with the High Renaissance style and ending around 1590, extinguished by the Baroque style. The term is an 18th century one, so it’s not used in period by characters, but it is useful to us.

Mannerist art doesn’t have the formality in design and perspective of High Renaissance art. The core principle is for the art to appear effortlessly elegant, so artists do odd things to sidestep problems in formal art. Limbs are elongated, they can quill weirdly, heads sometimes seem shrunken from true proportion. Space distorts. Symbols are jumbled together. It looks artificial. It’s not naturalistic, This might be our new Demon type, just humans that are done in this Mannerist style.

Mannerist art is meant to look good, as opposed to being functional or religious, much as it might be one of those two. Mannerist paintings are deliberately tense and unbalanced
compositions with twisted poses and exaggerated facial expressions. They have garish colours
and weird lighting choices.

April 18, Mannerist Gardens
The idea of Mannerist gardens and grottoes is to express the elegance, intellectualism, shock, and style of art in a navigable real world space. Oddly, some look quite like regiones, from an Ars Magica perspective. These gardens are designed for drama, so they are great for scenes and stories. In real life. They often hosted masques.
.
Water flows through the garden in a deliberate, dramatic way, often aided by water pumps. This may motivate automatons like musical instruments. They also sometimes have hidden squirters.

The best modern example is the Sacra Bosco, the Sacred Wood. Rough statues provide shocks in settings reached by paths hidden and revealed by landscaping tricks. The biggest sculpture is Hell’s Mouth, which was used for dining in the masques. Guests could eat while simultaneously being eaten by the Hell’s Mouth. There is an inscription on it which says “Abandon all thought, you who enter here.” and this is probably a deliberate nod to Dante. I have a note here that a giardino segreto might work as a lab.

April 19th, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 
This is a very popular book at the time, complete with illustrations. It’s highly symbolic, and its stories are filled with mannerist imagery. It reminds me a lot of Ars Magica’s “The Travels of Fedoso” in that it’s imprecise, and so can be read as a prophecy, as a life guide, or as entertainment. Similarly, the art is copied into real-world gardens and the processions are copied by the Venetian calza. I may steal some of the images for the final art in this project.

April 20th, Notes from “Sweets” by Tim Richardson.
Just as a note, for a long time I was working on an idea of a civil war in the Grocers’ Guild in London. In the real world, the Grocers split in half during the Magonomia period. The ones who made a great deal of money out of sugar gained their independence through various forms of legal chicanery. Eventually they gained the sponsorship of James I. This is why their symbol is a rhinoceros (which was meant to represent a unicorn) over a shield supported by two unicorns (these being the symbol of Scotland). Anyhow, because we’re using speziale, or pharmacies, so much in this project, I decided to combine the two.

We will get a lot of shapes and materials out of this for the Shape and Material table in Ars Magica.

Unicorns are known to love liquorice. Since Roman times, soldiers were issued liquorice
as a thirst suppressant. It was first planted in England, in York, in the 16th century.

A comfit is a sugar-coated seed or nut used generally to freshen the breath. Drageess, for example, are a comfit. Dragees were invented in France in the 13th century.
A pennet is a tube of sugar, sometimes twisted, and they’re prescribed for colds and consumption. Elizabeth’s brother Edward was prescribed them for his final illness.
A sucket is a candied fruit peel, originally from citrons, certainly later oranges and lemons. Preserves come in two forms, the wet form in the dry form. Wet forms are rather like jam or fruit in syrup, and dry is like old-fashioned quince paste. It can be sliced and rolled. Lozenges, originally, are the diamond shapes cut from the dry forms.

Pastilles have gum tracanth in them, and they may be post-period. The idea of that is to keep
the medicine in your mouth longer, trickling down your throat to extend the duration of the effect. Turkish delight was originally a throat medicine, too, although it uses a different mechanism.
The highest quality of fruit paste is called Paste of Genoa, regardless of where it actually
comes from.
Isinglas is sometimes used as a firming agent. That’s airbladder juice from fish.
Fruit leather exists.
What we Australians call hundreds and thousands are called non-parallels and can be used as magic dust.
Blanche powder is granulated, white sugar flavoured with spices to be sprinkled on fruit before eating. You can have blends or singled-out flavours so a diner can pick and mix at the table.
The French word for a box you keep sweets in is a dragieor.
An electuary is a syrup or jelly.
Sherbet is a mixture of sugar and fruit juice and ice.
A cordial is heart medicine in liquid form and it’s fruity.

Spice bread, rolls or cakes spiced as a potion alternative.

Sometimes colour codes flavour, but some people didn’t code by colour. They used pure white because that was seen as a sign of quality in sugar.

I have a note here to check “The names of all kinds of wares” by Thomas Newbury.

It notes that as a quick cheat, you can dip something in egg white and then shake it in sugar
to make coarse but quick comfits.

Marzipan was likely invented around 1150 in northern Italy. A movable edible prop of marchpane is called a subtlety in English, and it’s called an entrement in French and an intermezzo in Italian. They are also known as “warners” in English because they herald the arrival of the next course.

Pastillage is a multiple mix of sugar and gum tracanth.

A subtlety is top level confection work and if you needed one, you might seek out a specialist
to create it for you, rather than depending on your own servant.

April 21, Continued notes from “Sweets”

The first sugar warehouse in Venice was in 966. It imported sugar in conical loaves. Sugar comes in grades. The highest grade is “Egyptian” from Alexandria. It’s refined in Venice, and then often refined at the point of sale, and then sometimes refined again by the user. The first bulk shipment from Venice to England is in 1319 and lands at Southampton. It contains 10,000 pounds of sugar and 1,000 pounds of candy. Their return cargo is wool.

Smaller amounts of sugar are clearly present earlier. It’s clearly known from the 13th century. Candies were preserved fruit, pastes and suckets. They were easy to ship because they’re hydrophilic which makes them antibacterial. The first trace of a Venetian shop specifically for confections is in 1150 and spreads to Sicily in the North Italian cities by 1220.

Confectioners have candied fruit. Hard sweets however are found apothecaries.

Confectionery is seen as an Italian skill. Catherine de Medici brings those skills to France
creating their industry there.

April 22, Manus Christi
Manus Christi is a sweet, believed to be of great medicinal value and it differs slightly between makers. It’s a stick of hard sugar flavoured with violet, cinnamon, rose water and often flaked with gold leaf. It’s taken to maintain health. It’s not an emergency medicine. A variant of it, Manus Christi Parala has crushed pearls in it. Chests of Manus Christi are used as gifts between very rich people.

April 23, Candied fruit flowers and roots.

Candying allows out of season use. Flowers are kept from decay by candying. They retain their scent. Violets and roses seem quite popular. Blue borage, rosemary, dianthus and marigold are also preserved. Candied flowers are considered a Spanish thing in origin so “Spanish” is used as an adjective to mean “containing edible petals”.

Candied roots include ginger, parsley, fennel, elecampane, angelica, eringo and orchid roots (satyricons) are all mentioned. Eringo is sea-holy. There’s an industry in England centred on Colchester, which candies this because it’s valued as an aphrodisiac

Fruits, apples, pears, plums, quinces, damsons, gooseberries, cherries, barberries, oranges and lemons are candied. Dried fruit fills a price point under candied fruit but above honey. By the 16th century the English love to eat raw fruit as a snack in the street and this disgusts some visitors. It’s considered healthy and virtuous not indulgent.

Mint only becomes popular after the 19th century. It’s too difficult to make a strong flavour from its oil with the equipment on hand in period.

April 24th, Lady Confectioners
Confectionery, as a branch of food preparation, is part of the daily domestic alchemy expected of even well-off women. Lady confectioners have some sort of eroticism about them in some places and periods because they smell sweet, and spicy, and exotic. This might be a Fate Aspect. Also, they have sweets of course, which are considered a healthy pleasure.

The 25th, Banquets
Until the 16th century, the final course of an English feast is called a voidee. After that, it changes to a banquet (or a banquette) or sometimes a banker.

Banquet also include wafers and hypocras. Hypocras is spiced wine named after Hippocrates. The dessert course is believed to medically be good for you. The sweet dishes move from being interspersed through the courses to a dessert course in the 17th century.

April 26th, Theology of Sugar
Aquinas ends the debate on if you can eat sugar on fast days and his answer is yes.

Although nutritious, sweets are not eaten with nutrition as an intent. They are eaten to ease digestion and therefore they are medicine and therefore they are exempt from fasts.

Note that this is an easy demonic ploy. You give the conclusion then you undercut the medicinal intent. This encourages gluttony so, thanks Aquinas.

April 27th, Venetian spun sugar

Instead of marchpane, or perhaps in addition to marchpane, the Venetians use spun sugar. Its sugar strands that are made by flicking an implement across a couple of sticks so that you get sugar thread. This is used to make complicated, glassy shapes while cooling. It could possibly be animated by magic.

It can be used to make visually perfect copies of most things. At one banquet, all the items on the table including the tablecloth were made of spun sugar. This was 1,286 items in total. It can be gilded and silvered, so tableware and cutlery are popular choices. There are recipes from 1562 in alchemy manuals.

English people prefer sugar paste instead.

April 28th, Sugar for the apothecary.
Sugar is mildly hot and moist. It comes in a variety of consistencies. It preserves other
medicines. It makes other medicines easy to take. It binds other ingredients together. It aids in
the digestion of medicine. It tunes the strength of other medicines via dilution and the highest
quality of sugar may not be moist. It may be dry.

What I mean by tuning the strength by dilution is this: if you get a potent batch or a weak batch of a herb, you can cut it with more or less sugar so that the potency is correct.

April 29th, London notes
Pepperers are gathered around the Spicery of Westcheap, which is near the docks. I should check the history of the Society of Apothecaries, which was published in 1998 (Penelope Hunting.) By the 14th century, there were about 50 spices regularly traded in London. There were some itinerant traders. By the 14th century, every great town has an apothecary or a spicer. Grocers are people who engage in bulk trades. That’s where their name comes from. It’s German gross, meaning large.

Richardson says that the dispute between the apothecaries and groceries is one part of a 500 year long war that wages across the continent over monopolies on medicine. The apothecaries get their own guilds between 1294 in Freberg in Saxony and 1617 in London. Sometimes this ascendancy is joined to import restrictions on sweets, hence local specialisations and secret recipes.

Eventually in some places, confectioners break off again from the apothecaries.

April 30th, Trade changes in the 15th century.
The fall of Constantinople in 1453 blocks Venetian sugar supplies from the east. Some trade continues from Crete and Cyprus. In 1450, the Portuguese start sugar plantations in Madeira and later expand that to the Azores in Brazil. The first Madeira sugar to land in England arrives in Bristol in 1456. The centre of the sugar trade then moves to Amsterdam and then Antwerp. Volumes are very high compared to the Middle Ages, but the Spanish and Portuguese duopoly keeps prices low but stable. Eventually large brokerages in Amsterdam, London, Hamburg and Rouen form. All of this money helps fuel the Dutch-Spanish war, which is covered in the core Magonomia book in some detail.

I’m going to include May 1st with the April material because it’s about confectioners. It’s a Character Aspect for fate, or a design guide
May 1, A note on confectioners skills from the Italian confectioner 1820 translated by Tim Richardson

To make gum paste properly, great care and dexterity, much patience, some knowledge of mythology, of history, and of the arts and modelling and design, are requisite.

That’s the end of the nights from Tim Richardson’s Sweets. Next we will move on to
Venetian legends and ghost stories by Alberto Toso Fei and then go back to the shopping list.
But that will be for the May episode.

Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse by Louisa May Alcott

This week I come to you with a plot hook from a most unlikely source: the book “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott. Louisa May Alcott was a 19th century author and in addition to the novel, which has been turned into a movie several times, she also used to write what she called “blood and thunder tales”. These are short, sensational stories that she could sell to magazines. She found them easier to write than something as detailed as a novel.

In “Little Women” Jo March, who is not entirely an author-insert character but depends strongly on some of author’s experiences, is an author herself. Jo also writes “blood and thunder” tales and is fascinated by the Egyptians. The story that she may have written is meant to parallel this story. It was written simultaneously with “Little Women” and it contains a sorceress, a vis source, a curse, and possibly a possession.

Now over to our LibriVox reader, Louise Bell.

***

“And what are these, Paul?” asked Evelyn, opening a tarnished gold box and examining its contents curiously.

“Seeds of some unknown Egyptian plant,” replied Forsyth, with a sudden shadow on his dark face, as he looked down at the three scarlet grains lying in the white hand lifted to him.

“Where did you get them?” asked the girl.

“That is a weird story, which will only haunt you if I tell it,” said Forsyth, with an absent expression that strongly excited the girl’s curiosity.

“Please tell it, I like weird tales, and they never trouble me. Ah, do tell it; your stories are always so interesting,” she cried, looking up with such a pretty blending of entreaty and command in her charming face, that refusal was impossible.

“You’ll be sorry for it, and so shall I, perhaps; I warn you beforehand, that harm is foretold to the possessor of those mysterious seeds,” said Forsyth, smiling, even while he knit his black brows, and regarded the blooming creature before him with a fond yet foreboding glance.

“Tell on, I’m not afraid of these pretty atoms,” she answered, with an imperious nod.

“To hear is to obey. Let me read the facts, and then I will begin,” returned Forsyth, pacing to and fro with the far-off look of one who turns the pages of the past.

Evelyn watched him a moment, and then returned to her work, or play, rather, for the task seemed well suited to the vivacious little creature, half-child, half-woman.

“While in Egypt,” commenced Forsyth, slowly, “I went one day with my guide and Professor Niles, to explore the Cheops. Niles had a mania for antiquities of all sorts, and forgot time, danger and fatigue in the ardor of his pursuit. We rummaged up and down the narrow passages, half choked with dust and close air; reading inscriptions on the walls, stumbling over shattered mummy-cases, or coming face to face with some shriveled specimen perched like a hobgoblin on the little shelves where the dead used to be stowed away for ages. I was desperately tired after a few hours of it, and begged the professor to return. But he was bent on exploring certain places, and would not desist. We had but one guide, so I was forced to stay; but Jumal, my man, seeing how weary I was, proposed to us to rest in one of the larger passages, while he went to procure another guide for Niles. We consented, and assuring us that we were perfectly safe, if we did not quit the spot, Jumal left us, promising to return speedily. The professor sat down to take notes of his researches, and stretching my self on the soft sand, I fell asleep.

“I was roused by that indescribable thrill which instinctively warns us of danger, and springing up, I found myself alone. One torch burned faintly where Jumal had struck it, but Niles and the other light were gone. A dreadful sense of loneliness oppressed me for a moment; then I collected myself and looked well about me. A bit of paper was pinned to my hat, which lay near me, and on it, in the professor’s writing were these words:

“‘I’ve gone back a little to refresh my memory on certain points. Don’t follow me till Jumal comes. I can find my way back to you, for I have a clue. Sleep well, and dream gloriously of the Pharaohs. N N.’

“I laughed at first over the old enthusiast, then felt anxious then restless, and finally resolved to follow him, for I discovered a strong cord fastened to a fallen stone, and knew that this was the clue he spoke of. Leaving a line for Jumal, I took my torch and retraced my steps, following the cord along the winding ways. I often shouted, but received no reply, and pressed on, hoping at each turn to see the old man poring over some musty relic of antiquity. Suddenly the cord ended, and lowering my torch, I saw that the footsteps had gone on.

“‘Rash fellow, he’ll lose himself, to a certainty,’ I thought, really alarmed now.

“As I paused, a faint call reached me, and I answered it, waited, shouted again, and a still fainter echo replied.

“Niles was evidently going on, misled by the reverberations of the low passages. No time was to be lost, and, forgetting myself, I stuck my torch in the deep sand to guide me back to the clue, and ran down the straight path before me, whooping like a madman as I went. I did not mean to lose sight of the light, but in my eagerness to find Niles I turned from the main passage, and, guided by his voice, hastened on. His torch soon gladdened my eyes, and the clutch of his trembling hands told me what agony he had suffered.

“‘Let us get out of this horrible place at once,’ he said, wiping the great drops off his forehead.

“‘Come, we’re not far from the clue. I can soon reach it, and then we are safe’; but as I spoke, a chill passed over me, for a perfect labyrinth of narrow paths lay before us.

“Trying to guide myself by such land-marks as I had observed in my hasty passage, I followed the tracks in the sand till I fancied we must be near my light. No glimmer appeared, however, and kneeling down to examine the footprints nearer, I discovered, to my dismay, that I had been following the wrong ones, for among those marked by a deep boot-heel, were prints of bare feet; we had had no guide there, and Jumal wore sandals.

“Rising, I confronted Niles, with the one despairing word, ‘Lost!’ as I pointed from the treacherous sand to the fast-waning light.

“I thought the old man would be overwhelmed but, to my surprise, he grew quite calm and steady, thought a moment, and then went on, saying, quietly:

“‘Other men have passed here before us; let us follow their steps, for, if I do not greatly err, they lead toward great passages, where one’s way is easily found.’

“On we went, bravely, till a misstep threw the professor violently to the ground with a broken leg, and nearly extinguished the torch. It was a horrible predicament, and I gave up all hope as I sat beside the poor fellow, who lay exhausted with fatigue, remorse and pain, for I would not leave him.

“‘Paul,’ he said suddenly, ‘if you will not go on, there is one more effort we can make. I remember hearing that a party lost as we are, saved themselves by building a fire. The smoke penetrated further than sound or light, and the guide’s quick wit understood the unusual mist; he followed it, and rescued the party. Make a fire and trust to Jumal.’

“‘A fire without wood?’ I began; but he pointed to a shelf behind me, which had escaped me in the gloom; and on it I saw a slender mummy-case. I understood him, for these dry cases, which lie about in hundreds, are freely used as firewood. Reaching up, I pulled it down, believing it to be empty, but as it fell, it burst open, and out rolled a mummy. Accustomed as I was to such sights, it startled me a little, for danger had unstrung my nerves. Laying the little brown chrysalis aside, I smashed the case, lit the pile with my torch, and soon a light cloud of smoke drifted down the three passages which diverged from the cell-like place where we had paused.

“While busied with the fire, Niles, forgetful of pain and peril, had dragged the mummy nearer, and was examining it with the interest of a man whose ruling passion was strong even in death.

“‘Come and help me unroll this. I have always longed to be the first to see and secure the curious treasures put away among the folds of these uncanny winding-sheets. This is a woman, and we may find something rare and precious here,’ he said, beginning to unfold the outer coverings, from which a strange aromatic odor came.

“Reluctantly I obeyed, for to me there was something sacred in the bones of this unknown woman. But to beguile the time and amuse the poor fellow, I lent a hand, wondering as I worked, if this dark, ugly thing had ever been a lovely, soft-eyed Egyptian girl.

“From the fibrous folds of the wrappings dropped precious gums and spices, which half intoxicated us with their potent breath, antique coins, and a curious jewel or two, which Niles eagerly examined.

“All the bandages but one were cut off at last, and a small head laid bare, round which still hung great plaits of what had once been luxuriant hair. The shriveled hands were folded on the breast, and clasped in them lay that gold box.”

“Ah!” cried Evelyn, dropping it from her rosy palm with a shudder.

“Nay; don’t reject the poor little mummy’s treasure. I never have quite forgiven myself for stealing it, or for burning her,” said Forsyth, painting rapidly, as if the recollection of that experience lent energy to his hand.

“Burning her! Oh, Paul, what do you mean?” asked the girl, sitting up with a face full of excitement.

“I’ll tell you. While busied with Madame la Momie, our fire had burned low, for the dry case went like tinder. A faint, far-off sound made our hearts leap, and Niles cried out: ‘Pile on the wood; Jumal is tracking us; don’t let the smoke fail now or we are lost!’

“‘There is no more wood; the case was very small, and is all gone,’ I answered, tearing off such of my garments as would burn readily, and piling them upon the embers.

“Niles did the same, but the light fabrics were quickly consumed, and made no smoke.

“‘Burn that!’ commanded the professor, pointing to the mummy.

“I hesitated a moment. Again came the faint echo of a horn. Life was dear to me. A few dry bones might save us, and I obeyed him in silence.

“A dull blaze sprung up, and a heavy smoke rose from the burning mummy, rolling in volumes through the low passages, and threatening to suffocate us with its fragrant mist. My brain grew dizzy, the light danced before my eyes, strange phantoms seemed to people the air, and, in the act of asking Niles why he gasped and looked so pale, I lost consciousness.”

Evelyn drew a long breath, and put away the scented toys from her lap as if their odor oppressed her.

Forsyth’s swarthy face was all aglow with the excitement of his story, and his black eyes glittered as he added, with a quick laugh:

“That’s all; Jumal found and got us out, and we both forswore pyramids for the rest of our days.”

“But the box: how came you to keep it?” asked Evelyn, eyeing it askance as it lay gleaming in a streak of sunshine.

“Oh, I brought it away as a souvenir, and Niles kept the other trinkets.”

“But you said harm was foretold to the possessor of those scarlet seeds,” persisted the girl, whose fancy was excited by the tale, and who fancied all was not told.

“Among his spoils, Niles found a bit of parchment, which he deciphered, and this inscription said that the mummy we had so ungallantly burned was that of a famous sorceress who bequeathed her curse to whoever should disturb her rest. Of course I don’t believe that curse has anything to do with it, but it’s a fact that Niles never prospered from that day. He says it’s because he has never recovered from the fall and fright and I dare say it is so; but I sometimes wonder if I am to share the curse, for I’ve a vein of superstition in me, and that poor little mummy haunts my dreams still.”

A long silence followed these words. Paul painted mechanically and Evelyn lay regarding him with a thoughtful face. But gloomy fancies were as foreign to her nature as shadows are to noonday, and presently she laughed a cheery laugh, saying as she took up the box again:

“Why don’t you plant them, and see what wondrous flower they will bear?”

“I doubt if they would bear anything after lying in a mummy’s hand for centuries,” replied Forsyth, gravely.

“Let me plant them and try. You know wheat has sprouted and grown that was taken from a mummy’s coffin; why should not these pretty seeds? I should so like to watch them grow; may I, Paul?”

“No, I’d rather leave that experiment untried. I have a queer feeling about the matter, and don’t want to meddle myself or let anyone I love meddle with these seeds. They may be some horrible poison, or possess some evil power, for the sorceress evidently valued them, since she clutched them fast even in her tomb.”

“Now, you are foolishly superstitious, and I laugh at you. Be generous; give me one seed, just to learn if it will grow. See I’ll pay for it,” and Evelyn, who now stood beside him, dropped a kiss on his forehead as she made her request, with the most engaging air.

But Forsyth would not yield. He smiled and returned the embrace with lover-like warmth, then flung the seeds into the fire, and gave her back the golden box, saying, tenderly:

“My darling, I’ll fill it with diamonds or bonbons, if you please, but I will not let you play with that witch’s spells. You’ve enough of your own, so forget the ‘pretty seeds’ and see what a Light of the Harem I’ve made of you.”

Evelyn frowned, and smiled, and presently the lovers were out in the spring sunshine reveling in their own happy hopes, untroubled by one foreboding fear.

II

“I have a little surprise for you, love,” said Forsyth, as he greeted his cousin three months later on the morning of his wedding day.

“And I have one for you,” she answered, smiling faintly.

“How pale you are, and how thin you grow! All this bridal bustle is too much for you, Evelyn.” he said, with fond anxiety, as he watched the strange pallor of her face, and pressed the wasted little hand in his.

“I am so tired,” she said, and leaned her head wearily on her lover’s breast. “Neither sleep, food, nor air gives me strength, and a curious mist seems to cloud my mind at times. Mamma says it is the heat, but I shiver even in the sun, while at night I burn with fever. Paul, dear, I’m glad you are going to take me away to lead a quiet, happy life with you, but I’m afraid it will be a very short one.”

“My fanciful little wife! You are tired and nervous with all this worry, but a few weeks of rest in the country will give us back our blooming Eve again. Have you no curiosity to learn my surprise?” he asked, to change her thoughts.

The vacant look stealing over the girl’s face gave place to one of interest, but as she listened it seemed to require an effort to fix her mind on her lover’s words.

“You remember the day we rummaged in the old cabinet?”

“Yes,” and a smile touched her lips for a moment.

“And how you wanted to plant those queer red seeds I stole from the mummy?”

“I remember,” and her eyes kindled with sudden fire.

“Well, I tossed them into the fire, as I thought, and gave you the box. But when I went back to cover up my picture, and found one of those seeds on the rug, a sudden fancy to gratify your whim led me to send it to Niles and ask him to plant and report on its progress. Today I hear from him for the first time, and he reports that the seed has grown marvelously, has budded, and that he intends to take the first flower, if it blooms in time, to a meeting of famous scientific men, after which he will send me its true name and the plant itself. From his description, it must be very curious, and I’m impatient to see it.”

“You need not wait; I can show you the flower in its bloom,” and Evelyn beckoned with the mechante smile so long a stranger to her lips.

Much amazed, Forsyth followed her to her own little boudoir, and there, standing in the sunshine, was the unknown plant. Almost rank in their luxuriance were the vivid green leaves on the slender purple stems, and rising from the midst, one ghostly-white flower, shaped like the head of a hooded snake, with scarlet stamens like forked tongues, and on the petals glittered spots like dew.

“A strange, uncanny flower! Has it any odor?” asked Forsyth, bending to examine it, and forgetting, in his interest, to ask how it came there.

“None, and that disappoints me, I am so fond of perfumes,” answered the girl, caressing the green leaves which trembled at her touch, while the purple stems deepened their tint.

“Now tell me about it,” said Forsyth, after standing silent for several minutes.

“I had been before you, and secured one of the seeds, for two fell on the rug. I planted it under a glass in the richest soil I could find, watered it faithfully, and was amazed at the rapidity with which it grew when once it appeared above the earth. I told no-one, for I meant to surprise you with it; but this bud has been so long in blooming, I have had to wait. It is a good omen that it blossoms today, and as it is nearly white, I mean to wear it, for I’ve learned to love it, having been my pet for so long.”

“I would not wear it, for, in spite of its innocent color, it is an evil-looking plant, with its adder’s tongue and unnatural dew. Wait till Niles tells us what it is, then pet it if it is harmless.”

“Perhaps my sorceress cherished it for some symbolic beauty–those old Egyptians were full of fancies. It was very sly of you to turn the tables on me in this way. But I forgive you, since in a few hours, I shall chain this mysterious hand forever. How cold it is! Come out into the garden and get some warmth and color for tonight, my love.”

But when night came, no-one could reproach the girl with her pallor, for she glowed like a pomegranate-flower, her eyes were full of fire, her lips scarlet, and all her old vivacity seemed to have returned. A more brilliant bride never blushed under a misty veil, and when her lover saw her, he was absolutely startled by the almost unearthly beauty which transformed the pale, languid creature of the morning into this radiant woman.

They were married, and if love, many blessings, and all good gifts lavishly showered upon them could make them happy, then this young pair were truly blest. But even in the rapture of the moment that made her his, Forsyth observed how icy cold was the little hand he held, how feverish the deep color on the soft cheek he kissed, and what a strange fire burned in the tender eyes that looked so wistfully at him.

Blithe and beautiful as a spirit, the smiling bride played her part in all the festivities of that long evening, and when at last light, life and color began to fade, the loving eyes that watched her thought it but the natural weariness of the hour. As the last guest departed, Forsyth was met by a servant, who gave him a letter marked “Haste.” Tearing it open, he read these lines, from a friend of the professor’s:

“DEAR SIR–Poor Niles died suddenly two days ago, while at the Scientific Club, and his last words were: ‘Tell Paul Forsyth to beware of the Mummy’s Curse, for this fatal flower has killed me.’ The circumstances of his death were so peculiar, that I add them as a sequel to this message. For several months, as he told us, he had been watching an unknown plant, and that evening he brought us the flower to examine. Other matters of interest absorbed us till a late hour, and the plant was forgotten. The professor wore it in his buttonhole–a strange white, serpent-headed blossom, with pale glittering spots, which slowly changed to a glittering scarlet, till the leaves looked as if sprinkled with blood. It was observed that instead of the pallor and feebleness which had recently come over him, that the professor was unusually animated, and seemed in an almost unnatural state of high spirits. Near the close of the meeting, in the midst of a lively discussion, he suddenly dropped, as if smitten with apoplexy. He was conveyed home insensible, and after one lucid interval, in which he gave me the message I have recorded above, he died in great agony, raving of mummies, pyramids, serpents, and some fatal curse which had fallen upon him.

“After his death, livid scarlet spots, like those on the flower, appeared upon his skin, and he shriveled like a withered leaf. At my desire, the mysterious plant was examined, and pronounced by the best authority one of the most deadly poisons known to the Egyptian sorceresses. The plant slowly absorbs the vitality of whoever cultivates it, and the blossom, worn for two or three hours, produces either madness or death.”

Down dropped the paper from Forsyth’s hand; he read no further, but hurried back into the room where he had left his young wife. As if worn out with fatigue, she had thrown herself upon a couch, and lay there motionless, her face half-hidden by the light folds of the veil, which had blown over it.

“Evelyn, my dearest! Wake up and answer me. Did you wear that strange flower today?” whispered Forsyth, putting the misty screen away.

There was no need for her to answer, for there, gleaming spectrally on her bosom, was the evil blossom, its white petals spotted now with flecks of scarlet, vivid as drops of newly spilt blood.

But the unhappy bridegroom scarcely saw it, for the face above it appalled him by its utter vacancy. Drawn and pallid, as if with some wasting malady, the young face, so lovely an hour ago, lay before him aged and blighted by the baleful influence of the plant which had drunk up her life. No recognition in the eyes, no word upon the lips, no motion of the hand–only the faint breath, the fluttering pulse, and wide-opened eyes, betrayed that she was alive.

Alas for the young wife! The superstitious fear at which she had smiled had proved true: the curse that had bided its time for ages was fulfilled at last, and her own hand wrecked her happiness for ever. Death in life was her doom, and for years Forsyth secluded himself to tend with pathetic devotion the pale ghost, who never, by word or look, could thank him for the love that outlived even such a fate as this.

Mythic Venice March #City23 #Dungeon23

This year I’m participating in Dungeon 23, which is a writing challenge where people write each day to build up a series of rooms for a megadungeon. In the City 23 variant, which is what I’m doing, a mass of material to be used to write a gazetteer for Ars Magic or Magonomia about the City of Venice. I had to take some time off for illness, so there are only 19 entries in my journal for March.

The Ducal Palace

The cool thing about writing on real places is that real maps exist.

The Ducal Palace is now a museum, and their webpage has floor plans, so you know where the facilities are when you visit. They also have room descriptions and illustrations of the development of the palace over time. During the Ars Magica period it is the Zianni Palace, but by Magonomia it’s the 15th century Foscari Palace. See Palazzoducale.visitmuv.it. Their maps are presumably copyright, but as the palace is real, an illustrator making floor plans for me is fine because it’s real data, not artistic IP.

I could go room by room in the description, I won’t now, but I might in the final book.

There is a virtual tour on Google Art and Culture that allows you to walk through it, and also there are further maps on Wikiarchitectura.

Notes from Chromatopia by David Coles.

Colours and dyes are interesting in RPGs because they are treasures and spell components.
I’m going to use “Chromatopia” as my basic book for this, because it sorts by historical
period and is generously photographed. I may then supplement with “Colour” by Victoria Finlay and with “The secret lives of colour” by Kassia St Clair. Each of these also has a textile history for weaving magic.

There are still painters making their own materials in Mythic Venice, but they can now also buy paint, varnish and other supplies at speziale stores, which are apothecaries.

Coles introduction : notes for Shape and Material Table

Alum is used to turn dyes, liquid, into pigment which is insoluble. Note Venice has an alum monopoly because they use alum in glass making. Paint made this way is referred to as a “lake”.
Distemper is painting with a mix of warm rabbit-skin glue, chalk, and pigment, yet another use for monster hides.
Encaustic is painting with molten wax.
Gesso is a mixture of chalk and glue, made of rabbit skins and bones.
Glair is clear egg white binder used for manuscripts and paints.
Gum Arabic is acacia sap used for watercolour and gouache binder.
Natron is a historically significant alkali.
Paint is pigment plus a binder.
Pink is the historical name for a lake pigment, it’s not a colour.
Potash is the historical source for alum from burned plants.
Tempera is an animal binder, egg tempera is albumen from eggs.

Coles’s problems in affording a mill, page 6, are a background for an Ars companion or
a Magonomia alchemist.

Coles can recognise the paints he made in finished works. In game this would let you determine if there’s been a theft or a forger in some cases. Also, an alchemist may know his secret formula has been stolen but can’t prove it, because it’s not obvious to others that it is a version of his paint, which is in the painting.

The Craftsman’s Handbook by Cennini is a 15th century manual of medieval painting techniques
which I will add to the length list of books to follow up with.

Basics

When you mix two colours to make a secondary, the new colour is less bright than the originals. With weak medieval paints you can’t just get a good red, blue and yellow and then
mix out your colours the way you can with modern paints.

Blue

The further you are from a thing the paler and bluer it looks.

Blue is not a primary colour to the ancients. It becomes popular in Europe in the 13th century when ultramarine, which comes from across the sea is the name, costs more than gold. It’s a symbol of the Virgin Mary and is made of ground lapis lazuli. 96% of the mineral is lost in the purification process. It’s bright in egg tempera, dark in oil. In oil you need to add white and this is the first crack in the painter’s axiom, of the time, of not mixing colours. Most modern blues are 18th century inventions.

Egyptian blue is a lost alchemical technique that creates a glaze which was an alternative to lapis lazuli. It’s called cerulean blue but it’s also used as a generic name for sky blue from smalt or azurite.

In Roman culture blue was a low status colour for barbarians, it only gets a boost during
the 12th century when it’s considered holy.

Venetian worker clothes are a pale blue because of a vegetable dye, I don’t hear that that
may be a British invention but I can’t see where I got that from.

An artificial azurite called blue verditer was really popular in the Middle Ages according
to Coles but I can’t find a pre-16th century source, there’s some argument that it’s
all azurite until the 17th century.

Indigo is known in Europe but it’s rare, it’s a luxury product from India which is where it gets its name. You can make an identical chemical either by fermenting balls of wood in urine or by letting air get into the murex purple process but do you want to make blue when you could be
making royal purple.

Woods annoying because it destroys the soil where it grows while the dye is being made
a scum rises out of it that can be used as paint, I’m not sure if it’s colour fast.
Woe dye is clear to yellowish I believe, the clothing becomes blue as the dye oxidizes.
The biggest deposit of azurite is in Hungary, azurite is mined alongside malachite, it’s
sometimes sold as the more expensive lapis lazuli, it’s hard, it needs to be washed
and sieved many times and needs many layers to build up hue because it’s so translucent.
Still it’s the best that the artists can afford and in Venice the gruelling prep work
can be done by your apothecary.

Chrysocolla is a solder for gold, it’s found with azurite and malachite and is used
as a pale blue in watercolour and egg tempera painting. It’s also very translucent and
is sometimes called cedar green.

Smalt is a blue pigment made of grinding cobalt glass and that appears around the 1540s.
In Ars Magica, we’ve done the kobold/cobalt thing before, I expect the paint is made from bloom of cobalt, blue crystals found with the metal, which may be a vis source.

French ultramarine was introduced in 1828 and it could be a treasure as a process. The traditional method of true ultramarine manufacture is detailed in calls in page 182 which is basically an enormous amount of washing and grinding.

Purple

In Ars Magica we’ve already written a lot about Tyrian purple: dye made for murex shells and lichen from the Canary Islands. Purple dye is ridiculously expensive, in Venice you’d be an idiot to wear purple because what you wear tells people how you expect them to treat you. If you wear purple you’re asking to be treated like a king. I believe one doge was violently deposed for dressing like a king.

The modern tendency to paint shadows as violet isn’t known in period.

The technique for making true imperial purple was lost in 1204 and rediscovered in 1988. it was lost in 1204 when the Venetian sect Constantinople, so secrets can be treasured as there’s a chance that someone found something that the characters can use as a sort of reconstructive
archaeology.

There’s another dye called Orchil which reaches Europe from the Levant in 14th century, first
found in Florence.

Red

The earliest red dyes are ochres, one of which (Veneto red) is exported from Venice for use as the colour of blood in painting. That’s useful for sympathetic magic.

In ancient Greece, people manufacture red lead which is more famous in alchemical circles as the beginning ingredient for all kinds of potions.

In the 8th century, people manufacture vermilion, it’s a very bright red made from sulphurous mercury which are the two parent substances in alchemy, this is cinnabar, mercury sulphide and the name Vermilion means it looks like kermes (discussed later) Cinnabar is the older name, the king of Spain sends prisoners to mine mercury at Almedin which is a natural source of cinnabar.

Kermes dye comes from shieldbugs. In the Eastern Roman Empire decrees were written
in this red.

In Venice, red is permitted but an opulent colour. Red is so popular for merchants that
the highest quality of fabric, scarlet, now makes people think of a particular colour of red.

Cinnabar is very toxic,

Coles has dragon’s blood on page 48 but it’s mostly what’s in the “Ancient Magic” book so I won’t cover it now.

Alchemists take note, you can change yellow ochre to red or brown by baking it. This is where the ‘burnt’ colours come from like burnt sienna.

Vermillion is what magi in Ars Magica use to rubricrate texts.

The little drawings are named after lead, minium, and your gaming miniatures are named
after the colour, minium originally came from Spain.

Red lead is cheaper than vermilion so it’s the most common red in medieval painting.

Lac is made from an insect that infests fig trees. It’s first imported into Europe in 1220 which is the starting year for Ars Magica. It gives its name to lake pigments and becomes the primary red dye, alchemists mucking about with the pH level of lac can get it to go from red to orange to violet, and it’s also one of the few paints that is edible. Its downside is that it’s not light fast.

Medieval people called kermes “baca” or “berries” because under the medieval paradigm
they might be berries rather than insects. A related product was called “grain” and ‘ingrained’
comes from the colour fastness of kermes dye. It’s also the source of the names of crimson and carmine. It’s slightly purple. Cochineal comes from the Americas and eventually it outcompetes kermes.

Brazilwood is a dye from Sri Lanka and it’s very popular although not light fast. It’s what the country of Brazil is named after, it has a fiery colour and its name means “brazier” wood.

Madder is imported to Europe by returning crusaders in the 13th century. The process of turning the dye into a pigment is extremely complex: the lake process has post-game development. Dependent on the mordant (that’s the fixative) used madder can turn brown or purple.

Cochineal exports from South America begin after the Spanish invasion in 1529. The Spaniards spread the story that the cochineal is a pea-like plant, it’s not.

Crocus martinus are iron oxide colours made alchemically from the 15th century onwards and it needs aqua regia which is a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acid or iron sulphate, which needs marshal vitriol to make. It comes in red, yellow, orange and brown colours. It’s not made industrially until the 18th century and it replaces some ochres, cardinals swap from purple to red in their robes in 1464.

Orange

orange is one of those weird colours that show up late, historically. In Ars Magica, people won’t know what you mean when you say “orange”, and if you show them something that is orange, in English at least they’ll say it’s golden-red. The name orange enters English when the Portuguese traders lob up to flog their fruit during Elizabeth I’s reign. The colour becomes associated with the ruling house of the Netherlands.

That being said there were orange paints, ochres, red leads, even Vermillion is on the yellowish side of red. The main orange paint from Roman times is is realgar (other than “red” lead) which is an arsenic-laced mineral. Have you noticed that pretty much everything I’ve described so far is very poisonous. Realgar and orpiment are mined together. It’s a red crystal that grinds into an orange powder. It’s also handy as a rat poison.

It wrecks copper and lead paints. Titian was a huge fan though and we are talking Venice so you’ll see some. The Dutch flag used to have an orange stripe but they gave it up in the 17th century because they couldn’t find a colourfast dye.

Yellow

Ochre, “red” lead and gold can be used instead. There are some yellow plant dyes.

Venetians really push yellow along by inventing powdered gold painting techniques and running slave plantations to harvest saffron. Saffron needs hand pollination and each flower gives three tiny stamens. We have covered this in Ars Magica before, because making spices
how some magi make money. The Venetian spice markets are where these shenanigans can be hidden most easily. I’d note that saffron isn’t light stable and that Zoroastrian priests used
to use it to write demon banishing prayers.

Venetians also import Indian yellow which is manganese salts. The technique for making it is lost. Modern studies hint it may have been from the urine of cows fed exclusively on mango leaves. Again secrets can be treasures. Europeans don’t import gamboge, which is the Buddhist robe colour, until the 17th century. It’s plant-based and not poisonous, which is odd for a paint in the period.

Coles mentions there are no dark yellows: you can add black to red or blue but if you add it to yellow you get green. If you invent it you get a new treasure, much in the same way as the person who invented mauve became terribly rich. I’d note this is a problem even today, I’m a bit of a fountain pen fan and many people quest for their perfect yellow. The problem is that if you have a yellow that’s too bright when you put it on a page you can’t see it. The temptation by people who make fountain pen ink is to give it a bit more depth of colour by putting a little bit of red in, which makes it an orange.

There is a yellow paint called orpiment (auripigmentum in Latin). As destiny would have it that Latin name was shortened to “arphenicum” from which we get the modern word “arsenic”. Caligula said he could get gold out of it but that’s not how it’s done in most Renaissance alchemical texts. Orpiment hates other paints, it turns lead and copper based paints black.

The basic yellow of medieval painting is called giallodini. Modern scholars call it lead-tin yellow. It doesn’t mix with sulfur and literally vanished from human memory in the 18th century to recently when it was rediscovered. Naples Yellow folkloristically comes from Mount Vesuvius (likely from 1600 onwards). It’s a lead-antimony blend and it uses the same name in period as tin-lead yellow so it’s hard to tell one from the other in documents.

Arzica is made from weld, a dye or glaze. It fades in sunlight and is used as cheap opiment. Its name is likely is a derivative of “arsenic” just because the colour is similar.

Stil de gran, which is yellow madder berries, can produce yellow, orange or green dye. It’s not light fast but it’s used to illuminate books. It’s sold as a syrup in bladders not as a powder.

Green

A safe, light-fast green is a sort of alchemical holy grail. In real life, it’s a 19th century thing which is why landscapes before look so varnishy brown and then they go absolutely nuts for pastoral scenes.

There are green ochres but they’re rare and there’s lots of green plant dyes but they’re not colourfast. You can grind up emerald which is expensive or malachite which is hard to source and tends to blue or you can mix blue and yellow but then it can’t be bright. Also the good blue is made up of ground-up semi-precious stones at this point and yellow is a poisonous nightmare.

The alchemical workaround is by making verdegris. This is done by boiling vinegar under copper sheets. Long time listeners may recall this is one of the ingredients in artificial saltpetre, used to make gunpowder. Do you want to sell your salt to poor artists so they can paint things or to well-financed kings so that they can shoot people? Verdegris isn’t a great green. It’s got a lot of blue in it but it’s there. Seriously make a decent green and the world will beat a path to your door,

I’m missing one ochre there: Verona green. It’s a pale, weak green used to underpaint skin tones in medieval art. For Venetians it’s mined nearby in Verona and in Cyprus. Modern artists call it terra verde or “green earth”. It’s not toxic and it binds well in oil but it has those colour limitations.

Malachite is found alongside azurite which is why it tends to blue. Its crushed and washed and panned to get a green powder but oddly for a paint material you don’t grind it fine, because once it’s too fine it’s translucent. So it can’t hold a bright colour, many people try and many people fail. Some Renaissance paintings have brown foliage in them because there was a brief fashion for verdegris resin paint which was unstable, but only in the medium term, so the painters at the time didn’t know that centuries on we would be looking at brown foliage.

White

Lead white is very popular as a cosmetic but incredibly toxic. The basics of making it are well understood. You take clay pots which are purpose built with an internal division. Put coils of lead foil in one side and vinegar in the other. Stack them high and cover them within manure. Seal the room and wait. Coles says you wait for 90 days: St Clair says 30, I’d note that Coles has photos of the result of him doing this. One also says it’s a 15th century invention and the other one says it’s in Pliny. The point of the manure is that it releases carbon dioxide and there is heat from the decay, so it’s cooking the lead. It is ridiculously toxic so it’s replaced by zinc white in 1782, and then in modern painting by titanium white in 1916.

Most silver in Europe comes from Spanish colonies in South America and is mined by slaves.

Chalk is used to make gesso which is the plaster used to prepare wood for painting. This is phased out once canvas becomes the substrate of choice. Chalk is brittle and that means that you can’t roll the paintings. It’s also used as a paint extender.

Talc is of great interest to Caterina Sforza who uses talc water as a base for many of her preparations.

Bone white is a great way of using up monster bits. Hartshorn white is made from shed deer antlers. it is gritty and it’s used to size paper for silverpoint. Silverpoint is when you draw using a
thin silver pencil much in the same way that you would use a modern lead pencil. You can’t erase as easily and you don’t get the same sort of pressure gradings that you can with modern pencils but I’m off into the weeds. Librarian note: sizing is the spray that’s put on the surface of the paper to make it ready for ink. Modern paper uses starch which is why when you get modern books even a little bit wet they become mould farms. Bone white is toothier. (Hello anyone else who’s into stationery) That means it resists the pen more than modern sprayed starch paper.

Black

Lampblack is ancient and just turns up as a freebie in most alchemical practices. Lamp black is basically what happens when hot smoke hits a cold surface. Technically it’s bluish black and the Romans burned wine dregs to make it bluer. Modern lampblack is purer than Renaissance lampblack.

Bone black is made by roasting bones with a little oxygen to make a charcoal. This is washed and ground. A use for monster bones. Ivory black is a way of using up the offcuts of the ivory carving trade, it sounds kind of necromantic.

Vine black: You know those charcoal sticks that people sketch with? They’re made in game period from grape vines. Modern ones are made from willow. Grapes are sacred to Venice’s first saint, Guistiana, and she has this whole Diana cult thing going on. Similarly char blocks can be made from the stones of fruit, notably peaches.

Graphite is often mistaken for lead. Actual lead and silverpoint are used to draw. In 1565 a huge deposit of graphite is found in Borrowdale in England. The first pencils have string or hide jackets. It’s also used for cannonball moulds, so the Crown watches the mine
intensely.

Gall ink has been written about extensively in Ars Magica. I finally bought myself some gall ink although it isn’t made from oak galls. It’s made from tea, but it is chemically similar. I can’t put it in my fountain pens because it’ll rot them out from the inside. It’s purplish in Ars Magica, after it oxidises. Technichally gall ink is clear untile it oxidises so they put lampblack in it so you can tell where you’ve put it on the page. Mine isn’t: has a sunset yellow guide in, and it goes to a strange muddy grey-green over time.

Logwood is an early, true black that comes from the Americas in the 17th century, True black dyes appear from about 1360 onwards. Before that people just used very dark browns, which fade. Brown becomes more fashionable after black is colorfast.

Kohl is the eye treatment that you see in Egyptian art. Its active ingredient is galena. They added color and scent to it. It’s mildly poisonous, which is why it’s used around the eyes: it prevents eye infections.

Printing presses use lampblacks, which are suspended in linseed oil. Venice is the European center of printing.

Brown

I’ve discussed ochres at some length already so I’ll just skip those.

Bistre is beechwood resin from the 14th century. It’s a charcoal used on a water base. It’s called caligo in Latin.

Asphaltum is a richer brown but it’s tarry and it won’t mix with water. It’s made out of asphalt.

Sepia is cuttlefish ink. It’s used as writing ink from the Romans onwards. It’s a drawing ink in the Renaissance. It’s made from carefully-dried ink sacks, so it is transportable. It is also an example of how you can make treasures out of monster innards. The process is given in detail, in Coles on page 89.

Walnut comes from nuts. It’s warm brown, colour fast, light fast, and the full process is in Coles on page 91,

Mummy or mummet is literally made from mummies. It was originally used medicinally. Mummy was originally the bitumen they were wrapped in, rather than the bodies themselves. Eventually the demand was so high that you got bits of people. It’s used in painting from the 16th Century. Obvious plot hooks like haunting, possession, necromancy, multiple possessions by shared people eating bits from the same mummy. By preference some people use mummified animals,
so it’s a little less disgusting.

On from colour…

The shape of the empire

The empire is broken into three chunks. The bit run by the doge directly, which is called the degardo, has been covered in detail. The Stato Dio Mar, which means the state of the sea, is the navally-supported empire. The Domini de Terrafirma are the dominions of the land.

What’s in the two non-degardo bits changes a lot. In 1220, the Ars period, the Stato Dio Mar contains Istria, the podesta of Constantinople, Euboea, the Cyclades and Crete, which is a weird case. By 1600 we add Corfu, Argos, Napulia, Duazzo, Alessio, Scutari, Drivasto, Lepanto, Patras, Navarino, Cyprus and some other places. They lost Istria, then added back bits (Cres, Reb, Pag, Zadar, Vrana, Novigrad) The Domini di Terraferma spreads out over northern Italy.

The Ducal Corno

The Corno is not a crown: it’s deliberately a hat. Sure, it’s a silk hat, with a gold circle around the brim, but if you get too fancy with it, other nobles will overthrow you. Every Easter the doge leads a procession to the deeply-suspicious nunnery of San Zaccharia and they give him a new hat.

Lots of writers suggest that it’s related to the Phrygian cap. This is the signature cap of House Mercere and their ancestors, the Milvi. They are hawk-formed shapeshifters and Egyptian priests, mentioned in their housebook. A note on Wikipedia links its shape to the hedjet, which is the white crown of Upper Egypt. Could the corno be sacred to Nekhbet like the White Crown? She’s the vulture-headed funeral goddess. Does it link to the Rotting Princess? Nekbet is related to the Eileithyia, the chthonic lady of the Eleusinian Mysteries. If so, is there a shen with an annual duration in the corno?

A shen, by the way, is a protective circle of rope. The descendant of it is something you’ll see as a cartouche. So, cartouches are a name surrounded by a protective magical rope. They’re called cartouches, because when the French saw them, the shape reminded them of the cartridges from their weapons. That’s not a term that’s used in period.

The love song of J Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

I’m going to harvest this for, at minimum, a monster, and as an inspiration for split character sheets.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;

***

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Dandolo’s Wager (inspired by the history of Byzantine podcast episode 259)

We are so used to thinking of the sack of Constantinople in 1204 as fixed history that we
don’t ever seem to consider that, to the Venetians at the time, this was the final throw of the dice. Enrico Dandolo had re-geared Venice’s entire economy around the Crusade, then found out that his customers had no money. Annual trading voyages had been foregone. There was no way of getting in external money. The government had paid out of fortune in materials and labour. Could Venice go broke? What would that have done to the West?

Contrarily, what happens if the Order, or some magi, or some demons, front up with a loan for the Crusaders and say, here’s 85,000 marks. It’s a lot, but the plunder of Egypt might be worth it. Sole trade privileges to Egypt, well Alexandria, are hugely significant to the Venetians. Remember that the crusade that took out Constantinople was originally going to attack Alexandria. This was so that they had the wherewithal to sustain an army in an Outremer.

15,000 soldiers are shipped to the Lido, so they can’t attack the Venetians. Innocent III is much annoyed. The papal legate is left behind. Zara, which is one of the points of resistance on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea Sea, offers to surrender to Dandalo. When he leaves to consult with the other leaders of the crusade, Simon de Montfort tells the Zaran ambassadors that their city is under papal protection. When Dandalo returns, they have left. He chooses a siege.

As the new emperor flails about, Dandolo needs to keep him in power. If he’s deposed, Venice loses the cost of the fleet, Egyptian access, and Byzantine access. He needs to double down and he needs to do it every time something goes wrong. It ends with the sack and it claims some territory, but was a really great strategy to impoverish Venice’s largest trading partner? You can pour out Eastern treasure on the Lido shore and everyone thinks that’s fantastic, but the daily life of the people making the exports and shipping them takes a terrible battering in 1204.

The Most Holy League and the Treaty of Lodi

The Treaty of Lodi sits between the Ars and Magonomia period. It ushers in four decades of guarded peace in northern Italy, based on constantly-changing factions that seek a balance of power. Venice being rich is one of the heavyweights in this balance.

A direct effect of the treaties following Lodi is that embassies change from trips with a particular purpose to physical places with permanent staff. Venice gives its ambassadors a private budget for intelligence gathering as a matter of course. This is shocking to some of the other states, for whom spying is either irregular or done by a unit reporting directly to the monarch.

So the doge runs the Council of Ten, the doge may have agents, the Council of Ten do have agents, and they are appointed by a council which has a secret police. Then they appoint ambassadors who also have agents. There are agents everywhere. The Venetian argument is that this is cheaper than an army, and also it’s less likely to seize
power than an army.

The grand schools

A school isn’t an educational institution, it’s a cofraternity. There are “great” and “little” schools. The six great schools are supported by, and function for, the state. The little ones could be centred on a trade, a nationality, or a charitable cause. The great schools are all religiously motivated, the little schools are more flexible for PC and storytelling uses.

Scuole members are meant to be citizens but not nobles. Also, officebearers kept their role for ages, not like the patrician roles in the government, which were deliberately cycled rapidly to “prevent” corruption. Eventually, the state regulates the schools and delegates its social functions to them, so medicine, drugs, hospices, pauper burials, pilgrim support, all of that remains a government function but it’s run by the great schools. It also regulates their legal articles, which are called capitulars.

The standard structure after the state takes an interest for the great schools is that the financial members of a school elect as a board: a leader, his deputy, a treasurer, a scribe, and two staff members per sestiere, then another group to check the board’s finances on a regular
basis. Most small schools were linked to a church. Great schools each had a meeting
hall. The first floor is a large hall for business and charity and upstairs is a salon for meetings
of the members and a smaller room for the boardroom. These are sometimes lavishly decorated. Sounds a bit covenanty.

Initial thoughts on masks

I’ve been working on mask magic on and off for decades and there’s a version of it mentioned in the Istrian section of “Against the Dark”. I’ve also stated them up as a type of parasitic prosthetic in Episode 18 podcast, (yes it was that long ago). I think I was over-complicating it though, ours already has mechanics for possession, not just demons but fairies. Certainly Mormo is terrible, but it’s a model we could use. Similarly in Maginomia there’s an example of a symbiotic possessing spirit. It isn’t public yet so I’m going to stop talking about it and keep moving on.

Loosely male masks are white and female masks are black. Carnival lasts roughly from Christmas to Lent. Some people wear masks out of season. A person in a mask is socially anonymous. Even if you know who they are you are required not to say. There are rules for noppera-bo already in Ars Magica and I will probably reuse them now, Noppera-bo are a Japanese monster that has a face like an egg.

The Zanni.

This is a servant type that comes in two varieties, the foolish servant and the cunning servant.
Zanni generally wears patched clothes. After the Magonomia period this changes into the diamond shapes of Harlequin’s costume. He wears a mask but it doesn’t cover his mouth so that he can talk to his master. The longer his nose the stupider he is meant to be. This isn’t an anti-Semitic thing: it is a phallic thing. Although the gait of most Zanni emphasize that they carry heavy loads for living, they also do physical comedy and acrobatics. One of their walks is intended to indicate they are going off stage, which is a handy magical power. They also borrow props from other characters in a sort of magical way. They’re driven by their appetites.

Variants of the Zanni.
Arlechinno – see below
Scapino is an escape artist and he has green stripes on his costume.
Scaramouche is a little skirmisher, dressed in black like a Spanish Don.
Pedrolino is in all white clothes which are comically oversized and he doesn’t wear masks.
He wears infarinato instead,which is a white flour makeup paste. It’s a possible ancestor of modern clown whiteface.
Brighella is a cruel, vindictive, clever master of lies and an alcoholic who loves money. He wears white clothes and has an olive green mask.
Mezzetino is a variant of Brighella but less violent, more musical and rather more creepily flirtatious. He has a brown or rust mask and a short cape.
Punchinella has black or dark brown for a mask. He’s from Naples. Has baggy clothes which are white and carries a short stick as a weapon and a coin purse. He accidentally triumphs. He untangles the problems of others but not his own. There is a common saying in Venice: “a punchinella secret”. This is a truth widely known but not spoken of – a widely known truth, treated as a secret.
Pierrot is a late 17th century invention. He’s a sad clown and he’s a rival for Columbine’s affections. He wears whiteface instead of a mask and oversized white clothes.

Arlecchino or Harlequin

So he’s a servant but he’s a clever one. He often tricks his master and his romantic rival Pierrot. He is the lover to Columbine. He can’t do simple physical movements when acrobatic ones are possible. He often carries a wooden sword. He’s always hungry and he’s afraid of his master. He’s likely descended from a French demon, Hellequin. He’s possibly related to the Herla Cyning, the Earl King, in Walter maps book from the 12th century. There is a version of him in Dante’s Inferno. Oddly for a male character his mask is black. This could be because of his infernal origin. His mask has warts, small eyes, a short nose, and hollow cheeks. This could be a default demon.

Veccio

The Veccio are a class of characters. The name means “elderly”. They often serve as a barrier to prevent the lovers getting together. They’re generally the antagonists. Pantalone is the decadent merchant and he’s the source of Shakespeare’s pantaloon. There is a Saint Pantalone. I’m not sure that they’re related. Anyway he’s the butt of jokes. He’s usually the father of one of the lovers. He has enough money to meddle in the lives of others. He’s petty. He’s single. He does hell of a flirt. But he never marries. He’s violently over-emotional.

His costume is red with a cap, a codpiece, or coin purse. He has a sword, a medal, or a walking stick.

Balanzone, or Il Dottore, is a decadent, erudite doctor, often linked to Bologna. He is rich, vain and wordy. He’s a parody of the educated class. He’s either boring or clearly out of his depth. He wears a one-third mask and the robes of a scholar. He, optionally, has rouge cheeks, which is meant to demonstrate that he’s an alcoholic.

Il Capitano is a coward, a braggart. He tells tall tales about his exploits. He’s greedy, he changes sides. He wears a parody of military uniform, carries an oversized sword, and wears a mask with a phallic nose. The original of these is Magnifico Gloriosus, which dates back to Roman theatre. There is a competent, useful variant of the Capitano. He’s called a Scaramouchia, or Scaramouche in French.

Non-comic masks
Mattasin / Frombolatore
This is a warning costume. The person is warning you that they are armed with scented eggs.
Batua wears a classic white mask. The mask bows out at the base for speech and eating, so there is no mouth. It’s held on by a tricorn, a hat, no strap. The more I read, the more I see women wearing this, and a tricorn and a tabard.
A volto has a white ghostly mask, male or female.
A moretta is a small black female mask with no mouth, that is held in place by a button between the teeth. It’s sometimes called a virtue mask because the woman can’t talk. It’s considered very mysterious and erotic.
The De Coltra is a person who is bundled in a blanket. They are a spirit of fornication.
A Spirito Folleto is a screaming devil mask. It’s a female mask.
A Gnaga is a man dressed as a parody of a nanny.
A Viloti is a peasant or rustic mask.
A Povereto is a beggar costume.
A Vechia is an old woman.
A Bullo is a braggart in armour.
A Bernardon is a fake beggar with fake shoes. Pushed about in a barrow. He’s bandaged. He pretends to be syphilitic. He sings bawdy songs.
Salvadego is a savage man
A burritin is some dressed as a puppet.

Notes on the law enforcement for the poor. The rich get away with more.
1338, you’re no longer allowed to travel through the streets after dark wearing a mask.
1448, beggars may not wear masks.
In 1585, if you have a mask, you’re not allowed to carry a gun in the street anymore. Carrying blades is allowed.
1606, you’re not allowed to wear masks in church.
1703, you’re not allowed to wear masks while in gambling houses.
1718, you’re told to stop wearing them during the Lent

The mascheri, the mask makers, are legally speaking, painters. Masks are made of plaster of Paris, fortified with wax or leather. The leather ones are heavier and less comfortable for long-term use.


Ovi Odoriferi: Scented eggs.

These are blown eggs filled with rosewater, and they are thrown or slung at women flirtatiously, particularly during Carnival, when street vendors sell them. In 1241, they are banned from the Piazza. People were making noxious ovi, and some of them have ink inside. This is a classic splash potion.

Basically, it’s a potion grenade like a water balloon. I know there’s a modern version in Central and South America, which have confetti inside instead.

There is an odd note on italiancarnival.com, when you’re looking up these eggs. It shows a fortune-teller from Venice that’s communicating with someone by whispering through a hollow cane into their ear. I’ve got no idea why they’re doing that. I’ll come up with a good reason.

And I find that I have gone into the April material. So, let us stop there.

Dee’s Showstones from the biography by G M Hort

Ars Magica and Magonomia players are interested in how other wizards comport themselves, and how they arrange their laboratories. While I was reading through the biography of John Dee, I found a section about how his lab was laid out. He upgraded it by adding extra furniture and equipment, some of which comes from a supernatural source.

Before I read it for you, I’ll just remind you that John Dee was an astrologer and cartographer. He did not believe he had the Second Sight. He was an alchemist only in the most basic of senses and his great desire was to be a Theurgist: to speak with angelic beings. His way of managing this, since he himself could not see these beings, was to have a person with sensitivity (from his perspective) who he led into trances and then questioned. He had several of these over his career. The one he has at the start of this episode is the most notorious one, his long-term partner Edward Kelley. With that background we’ll move onto the text.

***

Angelic visions in the showstone came thick and fast now. Angelic voices sounded often in the little inner room, once a bedchamber, where the philosopher, withdrawn from the household’s comings and goings, and denied even to important guests, gave himself over more and more to the life of dreams.

There were not wanting all the ” magical ” accessories of ceremonial scrying. By the end of the spring Kelley had obtained, with Dee’s aid and approval, the so- called ” table of practice ” on which the stone was to be set, with a red silk cloth of peculiar make spread under it, and an inscribed tablet of wax to serve as a pedestal. The legs of the table itself were also to be supported by similar, but smaller, tablets of wax. Then, in late autumn, came the acquisition of another crystal, called, from the circumstances of its giving, ” the angelical stone.”

Towards sunset, in the November of 1582, in the western window of the laboratory, there came to Dee’s tranced eyes a vision of a child-angel, bearing in his hand “a bright object, clear and glorious, of the bigness of an egg.” Later, Dee spoke to the Emperor Rudolph of this crystal as the gift of Uriel, the spirit of light, and said that it was of greater value than any earthly kingdom.
It is almost certain that this showstone, however obtained, is the one still to be seen in the British Museum, together with three of the inscribed tablets of wax. Of these mystic seals it should here be mentioned that they bore, on their upper sides, the familiar cabalistic figure of interlaced triangles—the so-called pentacle or seal of Solomon—together with the seven “hidden names ” of God and the names of certain angels and spirits.

The ” table of practice,” which was made of ” sweet wood,” and was two cubits, or about 3 feet, in height, was also inscribed with sacred characters and with a mystic cruciform sign. In the accounts of the sittings, we sometimes hear, moreover, of “the curtain of the stone.” But this was seen in the crystal, and belonged, not to the material, but to the psychic, accessories. The peculiar clouding of the stone which precedes the vision, and follows after its departure, is familiar to all crystalgazers.

Stress has often been laid on the fact that Dee himself saw little or nothing. We have his own regretful statement : ” You know I cannot see or scry.” But although both the character of his gift and the imperiousness of his temper made Kelley seem the leading spirit in this strange partnership, Dee, the careful recorder, eager questioner, and learned interpreter, was still, in a sense, the dominant force. The complaint of Kelley that the spirits address him in learned tongues which are incomprehensible to him is, to say the least of it, significant. And the angelic visitants were certainly more likely to have used Dee than Kelley for such a message, addressed to the younger man, as this : ” Thou, youngling, but old sinner, why dost thou suffer thy blindness to increase ? Why not yield thy limbs to the service and fulfilling of an eternal
verity ? Pluck up thy heart and follow the way that leadeth to the knowledge of the end.” Again, on an occasion of Dee’s absence, we hear of Kelley’s unsuccessful attempt to summon a spirit known as Medicina, who had, in Dee’s presence, previously appeared in the crystal.

We have to bear in mind that the phenomena of these seances cannot be explained as mere
crystallomancy. The crystal purports to give no more than a fleeting vision of some future
or far-off event. It utters no voice ; and the figures that move in its dream-like scenes are
silent as puppets. Here the part played by the crystal irresistibly reminds us of ” the cabinet ” of modern spiritualistic seances. It is, generally speaking, a place from which materialised spirits emerge, and to which, having made themselves known and conversed for awhile, they again return. The language of Dee’s Liber Mysteriorum, or Book of Mysteries, otherwise known as the
Spiritual Diary, in which the record of the transactions is set down, is often vague and ambiguous ; but at least it leaves us in no doubt that the spiritual creatures were heard
as well as seen, and that many of them manifested themselves outside the limits of the crystal. Dee, if he never actually saw them, was conscious of their presence ; and, as we have already said, there were many occasions when he, and not Kelley, seems to have been the mouthpiece of their messages.

There is no doubt that he also had mediumistic gifts, though not of the showier order. Equally there is no doubt that he did not knowingly employ those gifts in mere necromancy. The spirits he wished to converse with were not spirits of the dead, but ” the living angels of God,” the higher ranks of creatures. But although the scrying now took up so much time and thought, and was rewarded by such frequent visions, it could not be said to be of much practical assistance in Dee’s involved personal affairs. We know that he had expected that it would be, and that he repeatedly put questions to the apparitions upon matters that troubled him ; for instance, the refusal of the Queen’s advisers to reform the Calendar according to the calculations he (Dee) had made, and the baffling characters of some manuscripts of Kelley’s which were supposed
to relate to hidden treasure or the means of manufacturing gold.

Worldly . anxieties were natural, since his debts at this time amounted to £300. But the spiritual voices answered him but vaguely. Even Michael, the spirit of wisdom, who frequently appeared in, and sometimes outside, the limits of the crystal, said little that could be used for practical guidance. He gave but mystic encouragements, and counselled faith and patience.

Nor did the scryer invariably have sight of such heavenly apparitions. ” Merry ” spirits of fantastic dress and foolish speech came and went, and vexed the grave scholar with occasional ribaldries. Yet withal Dee’s confidence remained unbroken. His profound piety probably made him blame himself that knowledge was withheld. When the spirit known as Medicina finely said
that there were” no secrets save those that were “buried in the shadow of men’s souls,” he
voiced Dee’s own belief that God desired to hide nothing from the faithful seeker. And to Kelley’s frequent outbursts of angry impatience, and threats to leave the unprofitable scrying and ” follow some study whereby he may live,” the scholar answered with firm serenity that he, for his part, was content to wait God’s time.

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

I’ve thought about doing this poem before but I’ve excluded it for two reasons. It’s far later than the medieval period, although it is in the Magonomia period Well it’s Georgian theoretically. The other reason is it’s a very popular poem here in Australia: pretty much every school child learns it. It may have taken me some years to realize that most of the listeners to this podcast are Americans and they aren’t necessarily as acquainted with Bess, the landlord’s daughter.

Thanks to the LibriVox reader.

PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

PART TWO

He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.
But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

. . .

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

A legend of Mont St Michel by Guy de Maupassant

St Michael is the patron saint of Normandy. He’s a Warrior Saint: the one who cast Satan from Heaven. It shouldn’t surprise us that the Normans chose him as their Patron, since they started as Vikings and evolved into the world’s most dangerous polo team. Mont Sant Michel, and its daughter house in Cornwall which shares its name, are both of great interest to us. Early in the writing of Ars Magica it is quite clear this is what covenants look like. If you had half a dozen magicians you wanted to store far away from the rest of the universe, this is where you’d put them.

I was originally told this story as a tiny primary schoolboy, where it was the story of a dog and a fox.

Thanks to today’s LibriVox reader Michelle Fry.

***

I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the sea. I got an indistinct impression of it as of a grey shadow outlined against the misty sky. I saw it again from Avranches at sunset. The immense stretch of sand was red, the horizon was red, the whole boundless bay was red. The rocky castle rising out there in the distance like a weird, seignorial residence, like a dream
palace, strange and beautiful—this alone remained black in the crimson light of the dying day.

The following morning at dawn I went toward it across the sands, my eyes fastened on this gigantic jewel, as big as a mountain, cut like a cameo, and as dainty as lace. The nearer I approached the greater my admiration grew, for nothing in the world could be more wonderful or more perfect.

As surprised as if I had discovered the habitation of a god, I wandered through those halls supported by frail or massive columns, raising my eyes in wonder to those spires which looked like rockets starting for the sky, and to that marvellous assemblage of towers, of gargoyles, of slender and charming ornaments, a regular fireworks of stone, granite lace, a masterpiece of colossal and delicate architecture.

As I was looking up in ecstasy a Lower Normandy peasant came up to me and told me the story of the great quarrel between Saint Michael and the devil. A sceptical genius has said: “God made man in his image and man has returned the compliment.” This saying is an eternal truth, and it would be very curious to write the history of the local divinity of every continent, as well as the history of the patron saints in each one of our provinces…Every village in France is under the influence of some protecting saint, modelled according to the characteristics of the inhabitants.

Saint Michael watches over Lower Normandy, Saint Michael, the radiant and victorious angel, the swordcarrier, the hero of Heaven, the victorious, the conqueror of Satan. But this is how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning, deceitful and tricky, understands and tells of the struggle between the great saint and the devil. To escape from the malice of his neighbour, the devil. Saint Michael built himself, in the open ocean, this habitation worthy of an archangel; and only such a saint could build a residence of such magnificence. But, as he still feared the approaches of the wicked one, he surrounded his domains by quicksands, more treacherous even than the sea.

The devil lived in a humble cottage on the hill, but he owned all the salt marshes, the rich lands where grow the finest crops, the wooded valleys and all the fertile hills of the country, while the saint ruled only over the sands. Therefore Satan was rich, whereas Saint Michael was as poor as a church mouse. After a few years of fasting the saint grew tired of this state of affairs and began to think of some compromise with the devil, but the matter was by no means easy, as Satan kept a good hold on his crops. He thought the thing over for about six months; then one morning he walked across to the shore.

The demon was eating his soup in front of his door when he saw the saint. He immediately rushed toward him, kissed the hem of his sleeve, invited him in and offered him refreshments. Saint Michael drank a bowl of milk and then began: “I have come here to propose to you a good bargain.”

The devil, candid and trustful, answered: “That will suit me.”

“Here it is. Give me all your lands.”

Satan, growing alarmed, wished to speak: “But—

The saint continued: “Listen first. Give me all your lands. I will take care of all the work, the ploughing, the sowing, the fertilizing, everything, and we will share the crops equally. How does that suit you?”

The devil, who was naturally lazy, accepted. He only demanded in addition a few of those delicious grey mullet which are caught around the solitary mount. Saint Michael promised the fish. They grasped hands and spat on the ground to show that it was a .bargain, and the saint continued: “See here, so that you will have nothing to complain of choose that part of the crops which you prefer: the part that grows above ground or the part that stays in the ground.”

Satan cried out: “I will take all that will be above ground.”

“It’s a bargain!” said the saint. And he went away. Six months later, all over the immense domain of the devil, one could see noting but carrots, turnips, onions, salsify, all the plants whose juicy roots are good and savoury and whose useless leaves are good for nothing but for feeding animals.

Satan wished to break the contract, calling Saint Michael a swindler. But the saint, who had developed quite a taste for agriculture, went back to see the devil and said: “Really, I hadn’t thought of that at all; it was just an accident, no fault of mine. And to make things fair with you, this year I’ll let you take everything that is under the ground.”

“Very well,” answered Satan. The following spring all the evil spirit’s lands were covered with golden wheat, oats as big as beans, flax, magnificent colza, red clover, peas, cabbage, artichokes, everything that develops into grains or fruit in the sunlight. Once more Satan received nothing, and this time he completely lost his temper. He took back his fields and
remained deaf to all the fresh propositions of his neighbour.

A whole year rolled by. From the top of his lonely manor Saint Michael looked at the distant and fertile lands and watched the devil direct the work, take in his crops and thresh the wheat. And he grew angry, exasperated at his powerlessness. As he was no longer able to deceive Satan, he decided to wreak vengeance on him, and he went out to invite him to dinner for the following Monday.

“You have been very unfortunate in your dealings with me,” he said; “I know it, but I don’t want any ill feeling between us, and I expect you to dine with me. I’ll give you some good things to eat.” Satan, who was as greedy as he was lazy, accepted eagerly. On the day appointed he donned his finest clothes and set out for the castle.

Saint Michael sat him down to a magnificent meal. First there was a vol-au-vent, full of cocks’ crests and kidneys, with meat-balls, then two big grey mullet with cream sauce, a turkey stuffed with chestnuts soaked in wine, some salt-marsh lamb as tender as cake, vegetables which melted in the mouth and nice hot pancake which was brought on smoking and spreading a delicious odour of butter. They drank new, sweet, sparkling cider and heady red wine, and after each course they whetted their appetites with some old apple brandy. The devil drank and ate to his heart’s content; in fact he took so much that he was very uncomfortable, and began to retch.

Then Saint Michael arose in anger and cried in a voice like thunder: “What! before me, rascal! You dare—before me!” Satan, terrified, ran away, and the saint, seizing a stick, pursued him. They ran through the halls, turning round the pillars, running up the staircases, galloping along the cornices, jumping from gargoyle to gargoyle. The poor devil, who was woefully ill, was
running about madly and trying hard to escape.

At last he found himself at the top of the last terrace, right at the top, from which could be seen the immense bay, with its distant towns, sands and pastures. He could no longer escape, and the saint came up behind him and gave him a furious kick, which shot him through space like a cannon-ball. He shot through the air like a javelin and fell heavily before the town of Mortain. His horns and claws stuck deep into the rock, which keeps through eternity the traces of this fall of Satan.

He stood up again, limping, crippled until the end of time, and as he looked at this fatal castle in the distance, standing out against the setting sun, he understood well that he would always be vanquished in this unequal struggle, and he went away limping, heading for distant countries, leaving to his enemy his fields, his hills, his valleys and his marshes.

And this is how Saint Michael, the patron saint of Normandy, vanquished the devil. Another people would have dreamed of this battle in an entirely different manner.

Shakespeare hunts the elfin deer

This week a brief extract from Tales of the Mermaid Tavern by Alfred Noyes. Some of you will already know Noyes’s work: he wrote The Highwayman. If you don’t know it, it will be an episode later in the month.

He’s making reference to a tradition here that Shakespeare moved to London because he’d been caught poaching.

***

I

Will Shakespeare’s out like Robin Hood
With his merry men all in green,
To steal a deer in Charlecote wood
Where never a deer was seen.

II

He’s hunted all a night of June,
He’s followed a phantom horn,
He’s killed a buck by the light of the moon,
Under a fairy thorn.

III

He’s carried it home with his merry, merry band,
There never was haunch so fine;
For this buck was born in Elfin-land
And fed upon sops-in-wine.

IV

This buck had browsed on elfin boughs
Of rose-marie and bay,
And he’s carried it home to the little white house
Of sweet Anne Hathaway.

V

“The dawn above your thatch is red!
Slip out of your bed, sweet Anne!
I have stolen a fairy buck,” he said,
“The first since the world began.

VI

“Roast it on a golden spit,
And see that it do not burn;
For we never shall feather the like of it
Out of the fairy fern.”

VII

She scarce had donned her long white gown
And given him kisses four,
When the surly Sheriff of Stratford-town
Knocked at the little green door.

VIII

They have gaoled sweet Will for a poacher;
But squarely he fronts the squire,
With “When did you hear in your woods of a deer?
Was it under a fairy briar?”

IX

Sir Thomas he puffs,–“If God thought good
My water-butt ran with wine,
Or He dropt me a buck in Charlecote wood,
I wot it is mine, not thine!”

X

“If you would eat of elfin meat,”
Says Will, “you must blow up your horn!
Take your bow, and feather the doe
That’s under the fairy thorn!

XI

“If you would feast on elfin food,
You’ve only the way to learn!
Take your bow and feather the doe
That’s under the fairy fern!”

XII

They’re hunting high, they’re hunting low,
They’re all away, away,
With horse and hound to feather the doe
That’s under the fairy spray!

XIII

Sir Thomas he raged! Sir Thomas he swore!
But all and all in vain;
For there never was deer in his woods before,
And there never would be again!

The Diary of Mr Poynter

This is your monster of the month. It’s from “The Diary of Mr Poynter” pointer by M. R. James. There have been a series of James episodes previously on the podcast, and I left this monster out because it wasn’t suitably challenging for magi in the Ars Magica role-playing game. Now that I’m writing for Magonomia, which has a lower power setting, this has become perhaps, suitable.

The reader for us today is David Wales, who I believe invented LibriVox. I don’t think we’ve had David on before.

***

The sale-room of an old and famous firm of book auctioneers in London is, of course, a great meeting-place for collectors, librarians, and dealers: not only when an auction is in progress, but perhaps even more notably when books that are coming on for sale are upon view. It was in such a sale-room that the remarkable series of events began which were detailed to me not many months ago by the person whom they principally affected—namely, Mr. James Denton, M.A., F.S.A., etc., etc., sometime of Trinity Hall, now, or lately, of Rendcomb Manor in the county of Warwick.

He, on a certain spring day in a recent year, was in London for a few days upon business connected principally with the furnishing of the house which he had just finished building at Rendcomb. It may be a disappointment to you to learn that Rendcomb Manor was new; that I cannot help. There had, no doubt, been an old house; but it was not remarkable for beauty or interest. Even had it been, neither beauty nor interest would have enabled it to resist the disastrous fire which about a couple of years before the date of my story had razed it to the ground. I am glad to say that all that was most valuable in it had been saved, and that it was fully insured. So that it was with a comparatively light heart that Mr. Denton was able to face the task of building a new and considerably more convenient dwelling for himself and his aunt who constituted his whole ménage.

Being in London, with time on his hands, and not far from the sale-room at which I have obscurely hinted, Mr. Denton thought that he would spend an hour there upon the chance of finding, among that portion of the famous Thomas collection of MSS., which he knew to be then on view, something bearing upon the history or topography of his part of Warwickshire.

He turned in accordingly, purchased a catalogue and ascended to the sale-room, where, as usual, the books were disposed in cases and some laid out upon the long tables. At the shelves, or sitting about at the tables, were figures, many of whom were familiar to him. He exchanged nods and greetings with several, and then settled down to examine his catalogue and note likely items. He had made good progress through about two hundred of the five hundred lots—every now and then rising to take a volume from the shelf and give it a cursory glance—when a hand was laid on his shoulder, and he looked up. His interrupter was one of those intelligent men with a pointed beard and a flannel shirt, of whom the last quarter of the nineteenth century was, it seems to me, very prolific.

It is no part of my plan to repeat the whole conversation which ensued between the two. I must content myself with stating that it largely referred to common acquaintances, e.g., to the nephew of Mr. Denton’s friend who had recently married and settled in Chelsea, to the sister-in-law of Mr. Denton’s friend who had been seriously indisposed, but was now better, and to a piece of china which Mr. Denton’s friend had purchased some months before at a price much below its true value. From which you will rightly infer that the conversation was rather in the nature of a monologue. In due time, however, the friend bethought himself that Mr. Denton was there for a purpose, and said he, “What are you looking out for in particular? I don’t think there’s much in this lot.” “Why, I thought there might be some Warwickshire collections, but I don’t see anything under Warwick in the catalogue.” “No, apparently not,” said the friend. “All the same, I believe I noticed something like a Warwickshire diary. What was the name again? Drayton? Potter? Painter—either a P or a D, I feel sure.” He turned over the leaves quickly. “Yes, here it is. Poynter. Lot 486. That might interest you. There are the books, I think: out on the table. Someone has been looking at them. Well, I must be getting on. Good-bye—you’ll look us up, won’t you? Couldn’t you come this afternoon? we’ve got a little music about four. Well, then, when you’re next in town.” He went off. Mr. Denton looked at his watch and found to his confusion that he could spare no more than a moment before retrieving his luggage and going for the train. The moment was just enough to show him that there were four largish volumes of the diary—that it concerned the years about 1710, and that there seemed to be a good many insertions in it of various kinds. It seemed quite worth while to leave a commission of five and twenty pounds for it, and this he was able to do, for his usual agent entered the room as he was on the point of leaving it.

That evening he rejoined his aunt at their temporary abode, which was a small dower-house not many hundred yards from the Manor. On the following morning the two resumed a discussion that had now lasted for some weeks as to the equipment of the new house. Mr. Denton laid before his relative a statement of the results of his visit to town—particulars of carpets, of chairs, of wardrobes, and of bedroom china. “Yes, dear,” said his aunt, “but I don’t see any chintzes here. Did you go to——?” Mr. Denton stamped on the floor (where else, indeed, could he have stamped?). “Oh dear, oh dear,” he said, “the one thing I missed. I am sorry. The fact is I was on my way there and I happened to be passing Robins’s.” His aunt threw up her hands. “Robins’s! Then the next thing will be another parcel of horrible old books at some outrageous price. I do think, James, when I am taking all this trouble for you, you might contrive to remember the one or two things which I specially begged you to see after. It’s not as if I was asking it for myself. I don’t know whether you think I get any pleasure out of it, but if so I can assure you it’s very much the reverse. The thought and worry and trouble I have over it you have no idea of, and you have simply to go to the shops and order the things.” Mr. Denton interposed a moan of penitence. “Oh, aunt——” “Yes, that’s all very well, dear, and I don’t want to speak sharply, but you must know how very annoying it is: particularly as it delays the whole of our business for I can’t tell how long: here is Wednesday—the Simpsons come to-morrow, and you can’t leave them. Then on Saturday we have friends, as you know, coming for tennis. Yes, indeed, you spoke of asking them yourself, but, of course, I had to write the notes, and it is ridiculous, James, to look like that. We must occasionally be civil to our neighbours: you wouldn’t like to have it said we were perfect bears. What was I saying? Well, anyhow it comes to this, that it must be Thursday in next week at least, before you can go to town again, and until we have decided upon the chintzes it is impossible to settle upon one single other thing.”

Mr. Denton ventured to suggest that as the paint and wallpapers had been dealt with, this was too severe a view: but this his aunt was not prepared to admit at the moment. Nor, indeed, was there any proposition he could have advanced which she would have found herself able to accept. However, as the day went on, she receded a little from this position: examined with lessening disfavour the samples and price lists submitted by her nephew, and even in some cases gave a qualified approval to his choice.

As for him, he was naturally somewhat dashed by the consciousness of duty unfulfilled, but more so by the prospect of a lawn-tennis party, which, though an inevitable evil in August, he had thought there was no occasion to fear in May. But he was to some extent cheered by the arrival on the Friday morning of an intimation that he had secured at the price of £12 10s. the four volumes of Poynter’s manuscript diary, and still more by the arrival on the next morning of the diary itself.

The necessity of taking Mr. and Mrs. Simpson for a drive in the car on Saturday morning and of attending to his neighbours and guests that afternoon prevented him from doing more than open the parcel until the party had retired to bed on the Saturday night. It was then that he made certain of the fact, which he had before only suspected, that he had indeed acquired the diary of Mr. William Poynter, Squire of Acrington (about four miles from his own parish)—that same Poynter who was for a time a member of the circle of Oxford antiquaries, the centre of which was Thomas Hearne, and with whom Hearne seems ultimately to have quarrelled—a not uncommon episode in the career of that excellent man. As is the case with Hearne’s own collections, the diary of Poynter contained a good many notes from printed books, descriptions of coins and other antiquities that had been brought to his notice, and drafts of letters on these subjects, besides the chronicle of everyday events. The description in the sale-catalogue had given Mr. Denton no idea of the amount of interest which seemed to lie in the book, and he sat up reading in the first of the four volumes until a reprehensibly late hour.

On the Sunday morning, after church, his aunt came into the study and was diverted from what she had been going to say to him by the sight of the four brown leather quartos on the table. “What are these?” she said suspiciously. “New, aren’t they? Oh! are these the things that made you forget my chintzes? I thought so. Disgusting. What did you give for them, I should like to know? Over Ten Pounds? James, it is really sinful. Well, if you have money to throw away on this kind of thing, there can be no reason why you should not subscribe—and subscribe handsomely—to my anti-Vivisection League. There is not, indeed, James, and I shall be very seriously annoyed if——. Who did you say wrote them? Old Mr. Poynter, of Acrington? Well, of course, there is some interest in getting together old papers about this neighbourhood. But Ten Pounds!” She picked up one of the volumes—not that which her nephew had been reading—and opened it at random, dashing it to the floor the next instant with a cry of disgust as an earwig fell from between the pages. Mr. Denton picked it up with a smothered expletive and said, “Poor book! I think you’re rather hard on Mr. Poynter.” “Was I, my dear? I beg his pardon, but you know I cannot abide those horrid creatures. Let me see if I’ve done any mischief.” “No, I think all’s well: but look here what you’ve opened him on.” “Dear me, yes, to be sure! how very interesting. Do unpin it, James, and let me look at it.”

It was a piece of patterned stuff about the size of the quarto page, to which it was fastened by an old-fashioned pin. James detached it and handed it to his aunt, carefully replacing the pin in the paper.

Now, I do not know exactly what the fabric was; but it had a design printed upon it, which completely fascinated Miss Denton. She went into raptures over it, held it against the wall, made James do the same, that she might retire to contemplate it from a distance: then pored over it at close quarters, and ended her examination by expressing in the warmest terms her appreciation of the taste of the ancient Mr. Poynter who had had the happy idea of preserving this sample in his diary. “It is a most charming pattern,” she said, “and remarkable too. Look, James, how delightfully the lines ripple. It reminds one of hair, very much, doesn’t it? And then these knots of ribbon at intervals. They give just the relief of colour that is wanted. I wonder——” “I was going to say,” said James with deference, “I wonder if it would cost much to have it copied for our curtains.” “Copied? how could you have it copied, James?” “Well, I don’t know the details, but I suppose that is a printed pattern, and that you could have a block cut from it in wood or metal.” “Now, really, that is a capital idea, James. I am almost inclined to be glad that you were so—that you forgot the chintzes on Wednesday. At any rate, I’ll promise to forgive and forget if you get this lovely old thing copied. No one will have anything in the least like it, and mind, James, we won’t allow it to be sold. Now I must go, and I’ve totally forgotten what it was I came in to say: never mind, it’ll keep.”

After his aunt had gone James Denton devoted a few minutes to examining the pattern more closely than he had yet had a chance of doing. He was puzzled to think why it should have struck Miss Denton so forcibly. It seemed to him not specially remarkable or pretty. No doubt it was suitable enough for a curtain pattern: it ran in vertical bands, and there was some indication that these were intended to converge at the top. She was right, too, in thinking that these main bands resembled rippling—almost curling—tresses of hair. Well, the main thing was to find out by means of trade directories, or otherwise, what firm would undertake the reproduction of an old pattern of this kind. Not to delay the reader over this portion of the story, a list of likely names was made out, and Mr. Denton fixed a day for calling on them, or some of them, with his sample.

The first two visits which he paid were unsuccessful: but there is luck in odd numbers. The firm in Bermondsey which was third on his list was accustomed to handling this line. The evidence they were able to produce justified their being entrusted with the job. “Our Mr. Cattell” took a fervent personal interest in it. “It’s ‘eartrending, isn’t it, sir,” he said, “to picture the quantity of reelly lovely medeevial stuff of this kind that lays wellnigh unnoticed in many of our residential country ‘ouses: much of it in peril, I take it, of being cast aside as so much rubbish. What is it Shakespeare says—unconsidered trifles. Ah, I often say he ‘as a word for us all, sir. I say Shakespeare, but I’m well aware all don’t ‘old with me there—I ‘ad something of an upset the other day when a gentleman came in—a titled man, too, he was, and I think he told me he’d wrote on the topic, and I ‘appened to cite out something about ‘Ercules and the painted cloth. Dear me, you never see such a pother. But as to this, what you’ve kindly confided to us, it’s a piece of work we shall take a reel enthusiasm in achieving it out to the very best of our ability. What man ‘as done, as I was observing only a few weeks back to another esteemed client, man can do, and in three to four weeks’ time, all being well, we shall ‘ope to lay before you evidence to that effect, sir. Take the address, Mr. ‘Iggins, if you please.”

Such was the general drift of Mr. Cattell’s observations on the occasion of his first interview with Mr. Denton. About a month later, being advised that some samples were ready for his inspection, Mr. Denton met him again, and had, it seems, reason to be satisfied with the faithfulness of the reproduction of the design. It had been finished off at the top in accordance with the indication I mentioned, so that the vertical bands joined. But something still needed to be done in the way of matching the colour of the original. Mr. Cattell had suggestions of a technical kind to offer, with which I need not trouble you. He had also views as to the general desirability of the pattern which were vaguely adverse. “You say you don’t wish this to be supplied excepting to personal friends equipped with a authorization from yourself, sir. It shall be done. I quite understand your wish to keep it exclusive: lends a catchit, does it not, to the suite? What’s every man’s, it’s been said, is no man’s.”

“Do you think it would be popular if it were generally obtainable?” asked Mr. Denton.

“I ‘ardly think it, sir,” said Cattell, pensively clasping his beard. “I ‘ardly think it. Not popular: it wasn’t popular with the man that cut the block, was it, Mr. ‘Iggins?”

“Did he find it a difficult job?”

“He’d no call to do so, sir; but the fact is that the artistic temperament—and our men are artists, sir, every one of them—true artists as much as many that the world styles by that term—it’s apt to take some strange ‘ardly accountable likes or dislikes, and here was an example. The twice or thrice that I went to inspect his progress: language I could understand, for that’s ‘abitual to him, but reel distaste for what I should call a dainty enough thing, I did not, nor am I now able to fathom. It seemed,” said Mr. Cattell, looking narrowly upon Mr. Denton, “as if the man scented something almost Hevil in the design.”

“Indeed? did he tell you so? I can’t say I see anything sinister in it myself.”

“Neether can I, sir. In fact I said as much. ‘Come, Gatwick,’ I said, ‘what’s to do here? What’s the reason of your prejudice—for I can call it no more than that?’ But, no! no explanation was forthcoming. And I was merely reduced, as I am now, to a shrug of the shoulders, and a cui bono. However, here it is,” and with that the technical side of the question came to the front again.

The matching of the colours for the background, the hem, and the knots of ribbon was by far the longest part of the business, and necessitated many sendings to and fro of the original pattern and of new samples. During part of August and September, too, the Dentons were away from the Manor. So that it was not until October was well in that a sufficient quantity of the stuff had been manufactured to furnish curtains for the three or four bedrooms which were to be fitted up with it.

On the feast of Simon and Jude the aunt and nephew returned from a short visit to find all completed, and their satisfaction at the general effect was great. The new curtains, in particular, agreed to admiration with their surroundings. When Mr. Denton was dressing for dinner, and took stock of his room, in which there was a large amount of the chintz displayed, he congratulated himself over and over again on the luck which had first made him forget his aunt’s commission and had then put into his hands this extremely effective means of remedying his mistake. The pattern was, as he said at dinner, so restful and yet so far from being dull. And Miss Denton—who, by the way, had none of the stuff in her own room—was much disposed to agree with him.

At breakfast next morning he was induced to qualify his satisfaction to some extent—but very slightly. “There is one thing I rather regret,” he said, “that we allowed them to join up the vertical bands of the pattern at the top. I think it would have been better to leave that alone.”

“Oh?” said his aunt interrogatively.

“Yes: as I was reading in bed last night they kept catching my eye rather. That is, I found myself looking across at them every now and then. There was an effect as if someone kept peeping out between the curtains in one place or another, where there was no edge, and I think that was due to the joining up of the bands at the top. The only other thing that troubled me was the wind.”

“Why, I thought it was a perfectly still night.”

“Perhaps it was only on my side of the house, but there was enough to sway my curtains and rustle them more than I wanted.”

That night a bachelor friend of James Denton’s came to stay, and was lodged in a room on the same floor as his host, but at the end of a long passage, half-way down which was a red baize door, put there to cut off the draught and intercept noise.

The party of three had separated. Miss Denton a good first, the two men at about eleven. James Denton, not yet inclined for bed, sat him down in an arm-chair and read for a time. Then he dozed, and then he woke, and bethought himself that his brown spaniel, which ordinarily slept in his room, had not come upstairs with him. Then he thought he was mistaken: for happening to move his hand which hung down over the arm of the chair within a few inches of the floor, he felt on the back of it just the slightest touch of a surface of hair, and stretching it out in that direction he stroked and patted a rounded something. But the feel of it, and still more the fact that instead of a responsive movement, absolute stillness greeted his touch, made him look over the arm. What he had been touching rose to meet him. It was in the attitude of one that had crept along the floor on its belly, and it was, so far as could be recollected, a human figure. But of the face which was now rising to within a few inches of his own no feature was discernible, only hair. Shapeless as it was, there was about it so horrible an air of menace that as he bounded from his chair and rushed from the room he heard himself moaning with fear: and doubtless he did right to fly. As he dashed into the baize door that cut the passage in two, and—forgetting that it opened towards him—beat against it with all the force in him, he felt a soft ineffectual tearing at his back which, all the same, seemed to be growing in power, as if the hand, or whatever worse than a hand was there, were becoming more material as the pursuer’s rage was more concentrated. Then he remembered the trick of the door—he got it open—he shut it behind him—he gained his friend’s room, and that is all we need know.

It seems curious that, during all the time that had elapsed since the purchase of Poynter’s diary, James Denton should not have sought an explanation of the presence of the pattern that had been pinned into it. Well, he had read the diary through without finding it mentioned, and had concluded that there was nothing to be said. But, on leaving Rendcomb Manor (he did not know whether for good), as he naturally insisted upon doing on the day after experiencing the horror I have tried to put into words, he took the diary with him. And at his seaside lodgings he examined more narrowly the portion whence the pattern had been taken. What he remembered having suspected about it turned out to be correct. Two or three leaves were pasted together, but written upon, as was patent when they were held up to the light. They yielded easily to steaming, for the paste had lost much of its strength and they contained something relevant to the pattern.

The entry was made in 1707.

“Old Mr. Casbury, of Acrington, told me this day much of young Sir Everard Charlett, whom he remember’d Commoner of University College, and thought was of the same Family as Dr. Arthur Charlett, now master of y^e Coll. This Charlett was a personable young gent., but a loose atheistical companion, and a great Lifter, as they then call’d the hard drinkers, and for what I know do so now. He was noted, and subject to severall censures at different times for his extravagancies: and if the full history of his debaucheries had bin known, no doubt would have been expell’d y^e Coll., supposing that no interest had been imploy’d on his behalf, of which Mr. Casbury had some suspicion. He was a very beautiful person, and constantly wore his own Hair, which was very abundant, from which, and his loose way of living, the cant name for him was Absalom, and he was accustom’d to say that indeed he believ’d he had shortened old David’s days, meaning his father, Sir Job Charlett, an old worthy cavalier.

“Note that Mr. Casbury said that he remembers not the year of Sir Everard Charlett’s death, but it was 1692 or 3. He died suddenly in October. [Several lines describing his unpleasant habits and reputed delinquencies are omitted.] Having seen him in such topping spirits the night before, Mr. Casbury was amaz’d when he learn’d the death. He was found in the town ditch, the hair as was said pluck’d clean off his head. Most bells in Oxford rung out for him, being a nobleman, and he was buried next night in St. Peter’s in the East. But two years after, being to be moved to his country estate by his successor, it was said the coffin, breaking by mischance, proved quite full of Hair: which sounds fabulous, but yet I believe precedents are upon record, as in Dr. Plot’s History of Staffordshire.

“His chambers being afterwards stripp’d, Mr. Casbury came by part of the hangings of it, which ’twas said this Charlett had design’d expressly for a memoriall of his Hair, giving the Fellow that drew it a lock to work by, and the piece which I have fasten’d in here was parcel of the same, which Mr. Casbury gave to me. He said he believ’d there was a subtlety in the drawing, but had never discover’d it himself, nor much liked to pore upon it.”

The money spent upon the curtains might as well have been thrown into the fire, as they were. Mr. Cattell’s comment upon what he heard of the story took the form of a quotation from Shakespeare. You may guess it without difficulty. It began with the words “There are more things.”

Crimson Flowers

This week a brief episode containing an infernal regione. The story that’s following is called Crimson Flowers and it’s read into the public domain by Ben Tucker through LibriVox. Thanks to Ben and his production team.

***

John Carew was working in his garden. Far away over the distant hilltops, the dying Sun hung like a huge paper lantern on an invisible wire. Against this background the small, bent figure of the old man resembled a spider weaving its web before the open gate.

Leaning on the hedge I spoke to him. “So you are at work again, Mr Carew. How are your flowers progressing?”

Dropping his shovel nervously he turned his yellow, shrunken face toward me. From the midst of the roses it looked like a misplaced sunflower. “So you have been watching me!” he cried, in a shrill quavering voice. “That is good, for people to watch me at work! It may teach them other things than gardening.”

“What, for instance?”

“Why life itself! The mind is a garden, my friend. What lies hidden there must spring to life. These flowers are crimson thoughts. See how quickly they grow into deeds, if I do not cut them each day? So must all men do if they would live in the sunlight. They must cut the crimson thoughts out of their gardens even as I!”

Once more he bent over his flowers, picking up the shears with grim satisfaction. He began cutting off their languid, drooping heads.

“But this must be a very wicked garden.” I said. “What is buried here?”

“Ah!” said he, “You would like to know that, eh? What a man my son was. You can have no idea! Such a sly one. Such a cruel one. Such a bloodthirsty one! Crimson thoughts were in his head continually, but now they grow nicely in my garden. He ruined me. He tortured me. He made my head revolve on my shoulders. Yes actually revolve, like a wheel! But now I have him here and he supports me in my old age. Each day I sell his thoughts – his evil crimson thoughts. What revenge that is. He lies there grinding his teeth because of it, and he can do nothing! Nothing! When the hangman was through with him, they gave me what was left for my garden. But have a thought lady! Have a crimson thought for a remembrance!”

So saying he rose and hobbled toward me with a single flower in his hand. A flower that glowed like a handful of the bloody sunset in the West.