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Magnum Innominandum

By: Bramblethorn



This one's my take on a "weird tale" in the vein of Robert Chambers or Algernon Blackwood... which means it's slow-moving and there's nary a psycho killer or tentacle monster in sight. Also, there's not a lot of sex here, so if you're looking for fast action this may not be your thing.

* * * * *

From September of 1928 a weekly advertisement accompanied by a portrait appeared in all the major European newspapers:

REWARD OF $1000 OFFERED — to any person providing information leading to the location of Josephine Hart, late of Massachusetts, daughter of Mr and Mrs Joseph Hart. Miss Hart is aged twenty-three, five feet eight inches tall, with brown hair and green eyes. Small round scar on back of left hand, beauty mark above left eye. Last seen in Paris, July 19th. Reward may be claimed at any office of Hart and Hayworth Shipping, Inc.

The affair became something of a nine days' wonder in those same papers, for the details might have been calculated to provoke public curiosity. Miss Hart was the sole surviving heiress to her father's considerable fortune; her mother had died in 1927, and an older brother had gone missing in action in the Great War. She had attended Vesey, a respectable ladies' college in West Massachusetts. After graduating cum laude she had embarked on a tour of Europe, escorted by two of the family's trusted servants. In Paris she had slipped away from her guardians to visit an unidentified acquaintance and had returned distraught, then vanished into thin air two days later.

Beyond that, the facts of the matter were unclear, but the journalists and letter-writers of the day were more than happy to interpolate. Week after week the papers embraced one speculation after another. Miss Hart had eloped to Munich with a penniless novelist — or perhaps to Moscow with a Bolshevik. She had been kidnapped for ransom — no, by white slavers.

The publicity and the size of the reward attracted a great many applicants offering information on Miss Hart. Many were simple cases of mistaken identity, and some were obvious frauds or fantasists, but a few told stories that seemed credible. A well-dressed woman with a beauty mark had been seen boarding a train in Munich. A brunette speaking very bad Swedish had lodged for a week in Stockholm. Gendarmes in Vienna brought up a drowned woman of the right height from the Danube, her face unrecognizable.

Hart and Hayworth employed private investigators to follow up the most promising of these leads, but in every direction they were disappointed. The Viennese woman's clothes matched those of a local actress who had fallen out with her husband. The Stockholm woman had departed with no forwarding address. Nobody had noticed where the woman from Munich had left the train.

By the end of the year, interest in the case had waned. Even after the events of October 1929 dealt a drastic blow to the Hart fortune, the advertisements continued to run — although less frequently and in smaller type. They ceased only in 1938 when old Joseph Hart passed away.

And there, for more than seventy years, the matter rested.

* * * * *

Northern Sweden, 1928

Josephine had passed from a world that was white and empty and achingly cold, into a dream of cool implacable vastness. After that, she was not sure when — or even if — she had drifted from the dream back into waking. She was conscious enough to think that the cold was less than it had been. There were other aches still, buried under the chill until now, but she was still too torpid to remember them... and there was a presence nearby.

"Are you there?" she whispered. "Is somebody there?"

"I am here." A light touch on her ankle, on her arm. She tried to sit up, but her limbs might as well have been made of lead.

"Where..." Her consciousness sharpened, she tried to open her eyes, but there was a flare of such brightness and pain that instantly she gasped and closed them again.

"You have snow-blindness. Let me cover your eyes."

Was it a man's voice? No, it sounded more like a woman's, although low and soft. Something across her face — snow perhaps? Cold enough to quench the fire in her eyes, anyway.

Her hair. She had cut it short, smudged her face to pass as a lad. Did her savior realize? "Josephine. Josephine Hart."

"I am called Karin. You lay down on the glacier, a few miles just after Norrkvarn. Now you are in my home, in my bed."

"Oh. Thank you." Piecemeal memories of a foolhardy journey, overconfidence fueled by the powder a pharmacist had given her to fend off sleep. Walking too fast, impatient with the goggles that had seemed unnecessary on a cloudy day. She had reached the first shelter near midday and continued on, determined to make two days' journey in one. She might have made it if she hadn't mistaken the path and wasted an hour in retracing her steps...

"Thank you... you live here? Are you a Lapplander? But you speak English?"

A low chuckle. "There is a little Saami in me, a little bit of everything, but I am not Saami. My family, we wander all over Sweden and beyond when the mood takes us. We are always going down to the sea and coming back here, and so we speak all the languages of the sea."

"In Norrkvarn they told me there was nothing out here but snow and ice and reindeer and Lapps."

"Oh, they know of me. My family have been living around here a long time. I stay here all year long. I lie here in the mountains all winter and I don't even get up to piss until the spring thaws. But we have no use for them and they don't like to speak of us. They think we're unlucky."

"Your family are here?"

"Here? Only me, in this valley, but I have cousins nearby. My brother lived in the next valley, carrying water and stone. But one summer he went down the river to Luleå and the sea took him."

"Oh, I am sorry... I know what it is to lose a brother. Mine was killed in the Argonne, two weeks before the Armistice."

Distant recollections of Mama crying over a telegram, swiftly displaced by more recent memories: bad weather closing in, a short-cut to make up lost time. A treacherous foothold, and a sudden slip down a scree slope. An instant's terror, visions of jagged rocks and splintered bone, and then nothing worse than a thump and a wrenched knee. She might still have propped herself up and limped along — but then the sudden weariness, the thought that this would be as good a place as any to sit a few minutes, and rest, and sleep forever without dreams...

"I thought I would never be warm again."

A touch on her cheek. "You are not warm yet. Give me leave and I will lie with you."

Josephine murmured her assent. The bed shifted, the covers moved, and then she could feel the stranger's bulk against her.

Karin was big, powerfully built, and Josephine felt an instant of fear in her embrace. But only an instant. For all Karin's strength she was gentle, cradling Josephine like a stray lamb. Soon her shivers began to subside; she still felt a chill, but it was something to be held, when she had thought to die alone in the wilderness...

"Josephine? Why are you here, so far from home?"

"I can't talk about it. I really can't." But she wanted to, she realized. She had been carrying it too long, all alone. "You wouldn't believe me. You'd despise me if you did."

Karin rumbled with laughter, and it rippled through Josephine's body. "I have seen a great deal in my time. I have heard many secrets, and I keep them all to the grave. I do not judge, Josephine."

"Well." She shifted back, pressing herself against Karin. As she began to speak, her teeth chattered. "If you promise..."

* * * * *

Massachusetts, 1923

I don't even remember when I first met Ruth Summers. I must have seen her around when I started at Vesey, for we had several of the same classes. But she was a mousy, inconsequential sort of woman — or so I thought — and I was a princess from Boston money. I had no time to notice a country clergyman's daughter who mended her own clothes.

But we had a connection. My mother was a suffragist and bluestocking, one of Mrs. Gardner's circle, and she endowed a scholarship for gifted young ladies of limited means. That was how Ruth came to be at Vesey; if I didn't know her, she sure knew who I was.

Back in school I thought I was pretty smart — well, I was, and I ought to have been. After Peter died in France my parents pinned all their hopes on me. I had Mama's brains and the best tutors my parents could buy. I took it for granted I'd always be top of the class. But at Vesey, without Mama at my back and living away from home for the first time... let's just say my mid-year examinations came as a nasty shock. The Dean hauled me over the coals, and Mama did worse when I got home.

That's when I remembered that Ruth Summers owed my family a favor. I would have paid her — I was going to offer — but as soon as I mentioned that I needed a little help she blurted out 'yes, of course'. She was like a puppy-dog, delighted just to be noticed.

Truth be told, she wasn't a very good tutor at first. It wasn't that she didn't know her stuff, far from it! No, she was so far ahead of me that she had trouble slowing down enough that I could keep up. And she'd stutter terribly when I asked anything.

Still, after a couple of weeks we settled into it. She got my Greek verbs straightened out and taught me the difference between iambs and trochees, even sharpened up my geometry. Her specialty was history and languages —not just the classics, she was teaching herself Finnish and Russian and two different kinds of Chinese — but her knowledge ran broad as well as deep. There seemed to be nothing I was studying that she couldn't help me with.

We were spending several hours a week together, and I could see she was having trouble making ends meet. A couple of times I offered to pay her, but she knocked it back. At first I didn't understand why; heaven knows she could have made better use of the money than me.

In the end I was so perplexed, I mentioned it to Mama in a letter home, and she made sense of it for me: "The girl doesn't want to be your employee, she wants to be your friend." I hadn't thought of it that way. You have to understand, I grew up with a nanny and half a dozen servants in the house, and all the friends I'd had were from my kind of upbringing.

After that I found other ways to help Ruth. Even little things like pencils — I made sure that I brought a few new ones every time I visited her room, and left the extras behind, so she wouldn't have to buy them. I passed on some of my old clothes — she wasn't my size but she knew how to resize a dress — and I made sure she was eating properly. I even tried to get her out of her shell, bring her along to a ball or two. She drew the line at that, said she'd be quite out of place.

I was sorry to hear that. I didn't just mean it as a kindness, I'd come to enjoy her company. I think she worshipped me a little, and I didn't mind that at all, but it wasn't just that. Though I didn't let on to her, I was starting to feel awestruck myself. I don't think anybody else at Vesey really saw quite what they had in Ruth Summers, she was such a little mouse that they just looked straight through her.

Me, I'd spent enough time with her that I'd started to see glimpses. I read books from cover to cover and learned one fact after another; she had merely to glance through them and she'd notice deeper patterns that held those facts together. Listening to her talk was like watching a great steam engine at work, all gleaming brass and whirring machinery, complex and powerful.

Only when it was just the two of us, mind. Around anybody else it was stammering little Ruth again. None of my other friends understood what I saw in her, and I couldn't have explained it even if I'd cared to do so.

At the end of my freshman year, when they posted up the results, I was pretty pleased with myself. Thanks to Ruth's coaching and my own hard work, I could hold my head up in front of Mama and the Dean. But Ruth was right there in the middle of the pack. In English composition she'd finished below me! I felt sorry for her and I couldn't understand how it might have happened, so at the start of the summer break I borrowed my father's Pierce-Arrow and motored down to Connecticut.

Ruth had told me she lived with her widowed father in Avon, where he was the pastor to a tiny Episcopalian congregation. They didn't have a telephone so I didn't call ahead. No matter; I guessed, correctly, that Ruth would be at home and glad to see me no matter when I showed up.

When I arrived the Reverend Montgomery Summers was in his study beavering away at a sermon, Not To Be Disturbed, so Ruth and I walked out in the garden and talked. I thought she might be feeling pretty sore about the results, so I sounded her out as delicately as I could, but she laughed it off. "I did well enough to keep my scholarship. That's enough for me."

"But Ruth, I know you have more than that in you. You could be valedictorian if you wanted. You should be ahead of us all."

"Me? M-m-m-me?" She was mocking her own stammer. "Jo, you'd be a splendid valedictorian, if you work for it. I'm content with what I have."

At the time I thought she might have had the same trouble with the examiners as when she started tutoring me: taking too much for granted, not coming down to the level they were looking for. Maybe that's true, and maybe she just got bored. But looking back on it, I wonder if there was more to it. Was she deliberately handicapping herself, trying to bring her grades down to my level, to shrink the gap between us?

At any rate, she didn't seem to mind about the exam results, so I let it go. As we walked, Monty came out to meet us and invite us in for tea.

He was an odd little fellow. He had Ruth's stammer but he didn't let that slow him down, it just filled in the gaps where somebody else might otherwise have squeezed in a word. For he only really had one topic of conversation, and there his enthusiasm bordered on monomania; I think he talked for an hour with barely a pause for breath.

I don't know if you've heard of Frazer's book 'The Golden Bough'? No? Well, James Frazer collected myths from all over the world and put them together to find common themes, like the old sacrificial king representing the harvest-god who dies and is reborn every year. Well, Monty was fascinated by that approach. Problem was, Frazer treated Christianity as just another religion with its own echoes of the same myths, and Monty couldn't abide that.

He was convinced that if he only dug deep enough and wide enough, he'd be able to show that Christianity was the source from which everything else descended. Odin hanging on the tree to purchase knowledge of the runes for mankind — to Monty, that was nothing but a confusion of the Crucifixion and of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He set out to transcend Frazer's work and put it on a Christian footing.

Problem was, poor old Monty wasn't much of a linguist. He had difficulty enough with the Latin and Greek that a man in his occupation ought to know, let alone anything else. Fortunately for him, Ruth's mother was the daughter of missionary parents who'd worked in Hong Kong and India, and she could read about a dozen different languages. They worked together, her providing the translations and him figuring out how it tied in with Scripture.

It was a perfect partnership, but she died of T.B. in 1912, when Ruth was only eight, and that brought things to a crashing halt. Ruth was already showing her mother's gift for languages, so Monty decided to get her educated so she could act as his amanuensis. He encouraged her to learn every language she could, and all the history and theology and anything else that would help with this project. That's how she came to be at Vesey.

Afterwards I asked her how she felt about it — did she really want to dedicate her life to this obsession of her father's? She shrugged her shoulders. "What else would I be doing, Jo? We can't all keep busy fending off handsome suitors." That was a good-natured jab at me; I'd had a couple of would-be beaux vying for my attention that year, both quite eligible young men. (I wasn't especially interested and it'd been all I could do to keep them from one another's throats long enough to tell them so.)

Ruth went on: "And d'you know, it's not just Father's work now. I've been reading a lot this summer — some books from St. Petersburg that we've had since before Mama died. I've been developing some ideas of my own. Poor Father, he made up his mind thirty years ago about what he was going to discover, before he looked at the evidence himself. Well, I think he got it wrong... there are other strands there, things that have no relation to the Bible."

"Have you talked to him about this?"

She shook her head. "Jo, if I'm going to tell my father he's been barking up the wrong tree for thirty years, I want to be absolutely sure of myself. I don't know if he would ever speak to me again, if I broke with him on this. And... oh, this sounds mercenary, even with the scholarship I can't stay at Vesey without his support. I need time to think about it."

"Well, let me know if you need anything. Anything at all."

She squeezed my hand. It was the first time I can remember her making a gesture like that, quite at odds with her usual reserve. "I will."

I had things to occupy myself during the rest of the break — social commitments, and my own reading for next year. But I thought of Ruth often. Every time I got stuck on a difficult idea, I thought how much easier it'd be with her to help me through it. Even when I worked it out for myself, I found myself missing the look of pride that Ruth would have given me; I knew it warmed her heart to hear me say "I understand it now!" and that knowledge, in turn, warmed mine.

I wrote to her and she wrote back. Her letters were short and formal and said little, and I wondered if I had somehow offended her. But when we both returned to Vesey as sophomores she embraced me without hesitation.

That year she began to blossom. Her shyness didn't altogether disappear, but it faded considerably. The professors began to notice her, and she made new friends among her classmates. I was surprised to feel pangs of jealousy as I realized the jewel I'd discovered in her was no longer my secret alone, but those pangs disappeared whenever we met up in my rooms or hers, and spoke about her work on mythology. That, I knew, was still ours and ours alone.

I had no great expertise in the area, but from time to time she'd use me as a sounding board. She'd read me similar stories from different cultures and ask what I thought, then tell me her interpretation. We didn't always agree, but I felt all the closer knowing that I could contradict her without giving offense; she'd merely push her spectacles up (they were forever sliding down her face) and think about what I'd said, then tell me what I'd missed — or on rare occasions, admit the possibility that I had a point.

I didn't follow the detail of her work but I caught enough to make out the gist of it. She had succeeded in dividing most of mythology into half a dozen families. It wasn't always easy to classify them, but after looking at enough of the stuff you started to feel a sort of flavor to each of them. There was Judaism and its successors, with an all-powerful god and all steeped in notions of sin and purity. Then there were pagan gods, representing human foibles on a grand scale — drunkenness, hunting, lechery, you know the sort. And then there were beliefs rooted in a notion of balance between opposing forces: the four humors, yin and yang.

Before those, there were nature-spirits like the Nixe of Germany and the trolls of Scandinavia. Although they might pass for humans sometimes, they had a kind of alien sensibility — godless, if you like, standing outside of notions of good and evil. At least, Ruth said, that's how the oldest versions went; later on they got modified to fit in with Christianity, the sprites turned into angels and devils.


Magnum Innominandum



But Ruth was convinced there was something else. Here and there she saw hints of another myth-family, perhaps once widespread, that had been concealed by its adherents and violently repressed by its rivals. She was unable to describe it to me directly, because it had been so thoroughly suppressed that she was unable to find clear accounts of its beliefs and customs. Instead, she said, it was tangible by its very absence, by the voids it left behind. She told me about Egyptian statues of a certain era, their names and faces obliterated to extinguish the memory of some unorthodox cult, and of heretical sects that had been so thoroughly eradicated by the Inquisition that even the nature of their heresy was now forgotten.

She told me of two obscure saints, separated in history by thousands of miles and hundreds of years, whose hagiographies held some peculiar parallels: they came and went without being seen, they wore masks to symbolize the seven deadly sins, they blighted any who dared touch them.

"So you think they're a Christian interpretation of something older?"

"It wouldn't be the first time. Remember Saint Brigid? She was a Celtic fire-goddess, and when the Church couldn't stifle her worship they reinvented her as a Catholic saint."

I trusted her instincts, but both of us knew the world of academia would require something more concrete. She was determined to find proof, and certain that there must still be living remnants of this tradition in some forgotten corner of the world.

During the Christmas break of 1924 I invited her to come stay at my parents' house in Boston. I am sorry to say that it was not altogether a success. Despite Papa's best attempts at hospitality, poor Ruth was so overawed by my parents' social standing that she could barely look them in the eye or speak above a whisper. For her part, Mama — who had once been arrested for bloodying a policeman's nose with a suffrage banner — held Ruth's meekness in disdain. When she spoke to me in private she would refer to Ruth only as "the girl".

If Ruth's introduction to my family was a failure, the rest of her stay in Boston went beyond all expectations. She acquainted herself with the city's libraries and archives; she haunted the Geographical Society. She befriended the curator at the Marine Museum, a retired Irish sea-captain, and by mentioning my family inveigled him into letting her stay there after hours (another cause of annoyance to my parents, who believed in regular dinner-times). One night I found her there long after closing-time. The fire was low and the room was bitterly cold; she seemed not to notice it at all, rapt in a pile of old manuscripts and log-books. Later the same fellow introduced her to the Seamen's Friend Society, where she spent many more hours talking to the old sea-dogs.

She continued these researches after our return to Vesey, and through the year that followed. Most of this she did through the post, although she also made occasional forays to New Haven and Providence. I had to argue forcefully with her to get her to pay adequate attention to her official course of study, and even so she did the bare minimum necessary to achieve a respectable but not remarkable grade.

First and foremost she was seeking travelers' tales, and she must have collected hundreds. Some were related to her directly by grizzled seamen; others she had from the archives and museums, or from old men contacted via the Geographical Societies. Almost all were chaff as far as she was concerned, but here and there she found enough substance to whet her appetite.

An ancient sailor told her of a remote coastal tribe in West Australia, their language and customs abruptly unlike those of the neighboring peoples who shunned and detested them. They celebrated their feast-days according to no solar or lunar calendar, at the bidding of a shaman who concealed his face with leaves and feathers and furred masks.

Elsewhere, in the papers of a Hungarian doctor, she found accounts of a seldom-visited village on a dead-end mountain road. The details of their beliefs were difficult to make out. Hungarian wasn't among Ruth's many languages, so she'd spent a week with an inadequate phrasebook at hand as she labored at translating Dr. Olah's spidery handwriting. Her notes here were full of speculation and blank spots, but it appeared that the locals sacrificed old clothes and dyed them to create a ragged effigy of a saint who watched over shepherds.

There were others like this, each more fragmented than the last. None of them offered a compelling proof for Ruth's thesis, and yet when taken together they formed a suggestive pattern. A veiled oracle, intermediary between humans and some hidden mystery, the recurring emphasis on certain colors and certain constellations — all of it hinted at a relationship that spanned from Patagonia to the Arctic Circle.

But all of these accounts were distorted and incomplete, written by men who viewed foreign customs through the lens of their own customs and beliefs. Even Dr. Olah, a man of letters, had sought to emphasize the 'degeneracy' of the practices he witnessed, and the sailors Ruth interviewed were prone to embellishing with lurid stories of cannibalism and debauchery.

She declared — and I agreed — that the next step must be an expedition, to revisit some of these peoples and observe their traditions with fresh and impartial eyes, searching for better evidence of a common underpinning.

To my parents' displeasure, I spent Christmas with Ruth and her father. She was inordinately delighted when I gave her a saffron-yellow cashmere scarf; in return she gave me a piece of bone, carved by an Irish sailor into a pendant that was half-way between a dragon and an elaborate fish-hook.

Looking back on it, the time we spent there in old Monty's drafty library was perhaps the happiest of my life. We lost hours together, huddled under a moth-eaten blanket against the cold, poring over a great multi-colored atlas and laying our secret plans. What time of year would be best for the Andes or the Alps? What photographic equipment should we bring? Should we employ local guides and armed escorts? What aspects of the myths should we look for, and how should we go about interviewing the locals?

It was a lovely dream of adventure... and in hindsight, never more than a pipe-dream. Ruth could barely afford to have her boots mended to keep out the slush, and I? Well, I was rich enough, but my money wasn't my own; Mama and Papa held it in trust for me. They had suggested that once I completed my studies I might like to travel, and so I wrote to them boldly explaining what we had in mind and what we'd require... silly girl.

Had I been less absorbed in Ruth's grand visions I might have realized how my request would sound to them, might have seen how to recast it in order to secure their approval — what to emphasize and what to omit. But I went in head-first, and by the time I discovered the gravity of my error, the damage was done.

"You would be her assistant? And she wants you to fund the whole enterprise?"

And that was that. It was one thing for Mr and Mrs Hart to endow a scholarship for poor girls of good character; it was quite another to suppose that their own daughter should take direction from this "little church-mouse". I wrote an angry reply, but was forced to back down when Mama intimated that I might jeopardize Ruth's position at Vesey if I pressed the matter further. I didn't know whether she was bluffing but I couldn't take the gamble.

Ruth and I returned to Vesey together; she was in a blue funk and barely said a word the whole way. I did my best to cheer her up: "It's not the end of the world. You could take a position here when you've finished your degree. Why, Ruth, you've enough ideas in this for a doctorate!"

"Oh, r-really? And w-w-who would p-p-pay for a w-w-w..." She gave up trying to finish the sentence and shook her head angrily.

"They can't keep my money in trust forever, Ruth. Sooner or later I'll have access, even if I have to butter them up. And when I do, I promise."

"That's sweet, J-jo. But..." She trailed off and shook her head again, and that was the end of the discussion.

I called by as often as I could. Every time I knocked she was sitting in her room, just thinking, surrounded by a pile of research that looked not to have been touched since our return. I tried my best to cheer her up, and she went along with my suggestions, but the best I got out of her was a dejected smile and sad thank-yous.

Then, three weeks after the beginning of term, I dragged her along to a guest lecture about the discovery of helium. Professor Hildeman talked about how Lockyer and Janssen had discovered a new element in the spectrum of the Sun during the eclipse of 1868, and how it had not been detected on our own planet for another 27 years. "It was always here," he said, "but so unreactive and inert that it was able to hide from us."

Up to that point Ruth had looked morose and distracted — her usual expression at that time — but at that, I saw her frown and adjust her glasses. Then she wrote in her notebook a single cryptic comment: "Don't need to go to the Sun?"

After that lecture she was in good humor once more; somehow, I knew not how, the spark had rekindled. I asked about it and she only said "Not yet, Jo — I need to make sure of a few things first. Then I promise I'll tell you." The only clue I could find was that her reading material had changed. She had tidied away the notes and travelers' journals from Boston, and over the next few months they were gradually replaced by an assortment of more contemporary reading. There were a few works that I recognized from her earlier studies — she still had Frazer, and a couple of works by Crowley with contemptuous remarks pencilled in the margins in Ruth's hand.

But to my surprise most of it was fiction. Volumes of stories by Chambers and Machen, two novels by Huysmans, Wilde's "Salomé", all sorts of things; Ruth had never shown an interest in this sort of work before. I chaffed her about it but she deflected my jokes with good humor and some cryptic remarks. "You think it's all gas, Jo? Well, maybe, but that's where they find helium!"

That was all I could get out of her, so I had to content myself with the knowledge that she was happy again. Since she had no need of my assistance I took the time to catch up on my own studies, for I'd fallen a little behind while I was trying to divert Ruth from her disappointments.

Soon after that my mother was taken ill. I was occupied with writing to her and Papa, so that I didn't keep up with Ruth as much as I had been. In May Mama's condition worsened, and at the end of my junior year I traveled down to Boston for an extended visit. Papa told us she would recover, with rest and time, and I did what I could to comfort her.

A few weeks into my stay I had a telegram from Ruth asking if she might visit, for she had business to attend to in Boston. To my surprise, Mama and Papa made no objection; I suppose they had other things to worry about, and were satisfied that Ruth's expedition had long since been knocked on the head. For her part Ruth showed great consideration for my mother, volunteering to push her around in her chair and attending to her comforts, and Mama began to treat her with a little more grace.

When not attending to Mama, Ruth was frequently away from the house. She told us she was down on family business — something to do with her own late mother's estate — but I found that difficult to believe, for she was cagey about the details. When I pressed her she said "Not yet, Jo. Soon, I promise!" I confess I was a little hurt that Ruth should keep me out of her confidences, even for a little while, and I wondered if our friendship had run its course. But I put my trust in her and did my best not to notice her comings and goings.

After a couple of weeks my patience was rewarded. She took me aside one morning and said, "Jo, I need your help. I'm going somewhere a little queer tonight, and I'd feel better if I had a friend along to watch out for me."

I touched her hand, and the look she gave me melted away all the resentment I'd been feeling about her secretive behavior. "Of course I'll come. But Ruth, where are we going?"

"It's a little place on Causeway Street. Better if we take a cab, I think the Pierce-Arrow would draw quite the wrong sort of attention. I'm told Causeway can be rough."

"That it can." I was familiar with the district; before falling in with Ruth, I'd spent a good deal of time in the company of earlier friends who had broadened my education through an introduction to Boston's speakeasies.

We dressed down to make ourselves inconspicuous among the crowds. Ruth had on the scarf I'd given her, "in case you should need to spot me"; meanwhile, I stowed a little pearl-handled revolver in my purse, a present from an uncle for my eighteenth birthday.

As the cab slipped away from our house, Ruth's tongue loosened at last. "I suppose you won't be surprised if I tell you this isn't about Mother's estate."

I squeezed her hand. "I'm not quite that stupid."

"I'm sorry for holding out on you, Jo. I just thought it'd be harder for you if I told you and then you had to keep it back from your mother. I know it's a difficult time."

"Well. I think I might forgive you, if you tell me about this new bee in your bonnet."

She laughed. "It's the same old bee, but in different clothes. You remember Hildeman's lecture about helium? About how we detected it in the sun, and then found out it was right here on earth with us, keeping a low profile?"

I nodded, and she leant over, close to my ear. "That got me thinking, maybe we don't have to go to darkest Peru to find what I'm looking for. The early Christians didn't run to the edge of the Roman Empire, they concealed their churches among the pagans; well, what if some of the people we're looking for did the same?"

"For two thousand years? Without detection?"

"Not always. We know some of them were stamped out... after that, I daresay the rest got careful. Wouldn't expect them to advertise in the newspapers! But I realized there might be another way to find them."

"Hm?"

"Every religion expresses itself through art. Usually it's overt stuff, requiems and icons. But for a religion that couldn't show itself overtly... I thought perhaps it might show through in other forms of art. So I talked to some of the English faculty about symbolism, said I was interested in fiction with certain themes. They gave me some recommendations, and I found a few that seemed suggestive. Then I made enquiries about those authors and that got me a few more names. Most weren't in the library, so I wrote to half a dozen booksellers to make enquiries... one fellow here in Boston sent me quite a peculiar reply."

"Oh?"

"He said he could get them for me — all of them, even some that had been out of print for many years. And then he asked in a roundabout sort of way if I had any reason for my interest in those particular books, and if I happened to be a member of his extended family."

"His family — oh. You mean to say —"

"I do! I wrote back and said I was interested in some of the motifs that were common to those books, and while I wasn't a member of his family, I thought I might have come across them in the course of some research. He invited me to come visit and discuss matters at his shop. So I stopped by last Tuesday."

"Ruth, if these people are trying to keep themselves secret that could be really dangerous."

"Oh, I thought about that, but — well, I couldn't pass it up, could I now?"

"You lived to tell the tale, I see."

She nodded emphatically. "I met him in his shop, and I made sure I could run for the door if need be. He wasn't menacing at all, just a quiet little Dutch fellow. Oh, his beliefs may well be dangerous in their way, but he didn't seem like the sort to go around throttling girls in a shop. No, he was quite polite. He wouldn't tell me much, just gave me hints — some of it matched what I already knew — and he said if I wanted to see more, I should come here tonight."

It was an unobtrusive sort of place, a side door in an alleyway, shielded from view by a staircase. Ruth knocked, the door opened, and a large fellow with a sturdy walking-stick beckoned us into what looked like a small store-room.

"Who are you? I don't know you."

"The b-bookseller sent m-me," Ruth replied. "I'm Ruth. He s-said to come tonight."

"Didn't say there'd be two of you."

"This is my f-friend Jane." I wondered why she'd given a false name for me but not herself, then realized she would have given away her real name when she first wrote to the bookseller. "You can trust her as you trust me."

"As you like. But you go in blind, and you go in alone." He turned to one of the shelves, and when he turned back he held two thick strips of cloth. Blindfolds.

I started to reach for my purse and what it held. Ruth shook her head at me. "I'll go. You can go back and wait for me, if you don't want to do this. I'll be all right."

"I said I'd come with you. I meant it."

We let the man blindfold us, and then I heard Ruth being led away. It wasn't long before he came back. He told me to hang on to his arm for guidance. We took a confusing route, climbing wooden stairs that squeaked underfoot and then after a series of turns descending stone steps so steep that I would have toppled without my guide's assistance. I suspected he was leading me in circles, but it was hard to be sure, and by the time we came to a halt I was well and truly disoriented.

"Who are you?" A no-nonsense female voice in front of me, as my guide's hand on my shoulders indicated that I should stand where I was.

"Jane. Jane... Miller."

"Jane." I couldn't tell whether she believed me. "Why are you here?"

"For my friend. To look out for her."

"You had better look out for yourself first." I heard her move beside me, and then her finger tapped at my mouth. Her voice was soft in my ear. "Say after me." And she whispered, and I repeated her words, and although I only spoke them once they are stamped indelibly in my memory.

"In this place I swear to the god who is not a god and the goddess who is not a goddess, the Pale Lady who may not be worshipped and the Silent King who may not be named. May their secrets lie caged within me forever, may my tongue wither and shrivel in my mouth before I speak them to any man. May my fingers rot from my hands, may my ribs crush my heart before I betray them. May I eat only salt and drink only dust should I waver in my duties. Silence is my promise and secrecy is my oath."

Soft footsteps behind me. Unseen hands took my wrists and drew them back, bound them at my back with something soft, even as other hands tied my ankles and my knees. Then they released me. I stood unsteadily, and there was a glassy clatter in front of me as if somebody had tipped a hundredweight of broken bottles on the floorboards.

She whispered in my ear again. "Fall forwards." A light pressure between my shoulders, and instinctive fear called on me to resist. Instead, I allowed myself to topple, face-first and unprotected. Just as I felt sure of hitting the floor I was caught by a dozen strong hands and set back on my feet.

"Drink this." A cup was pressed against my lips, and I obeyed. It tasted bitter-sweet, like honey and herbs. The cup was only removed when I had drained it completely. By then I could feel my lips and tongue tingling.

"You have crossed the first threshold. The next you must find for yourself."

Then the hands released me. Blindfolded and bound, I tottered and almost fell again, but managed to stay upright.




Magnum Innominandum



"Hello?"

Silence.

The tie on my wrists was loose enough that I was able to work my hands free without difficulty. Nobody stopped me.

"Hello?"

I pushed off the blindfold, and was immediately dazzled by an electric glare that seemed to be all around me. I squinted and set about removing the rest of my bonds as I took stock of my situation.

I was in a room about the size of my bedroom, quite alone. A candelabrum hung from the ceiling with four bright bulbs; the walls were paneled with mirrors that multiplied the effect. Beside me was my purse, the contents untouched. There was nothing else on the floor but my discarded ties and a heavy rug, which concealed only well-worn timber boards.

There were no visible doors, but since I remembered walking into the room I knew there must be something, and I found it soon enough; the mirror behind me was hinged. It appeared to be locked from the other side, and after some fruitless rattling I explored the rest of the room and found another like in the opposite wall. This one was unlocked. I had no other option, so I walked through it.

I had a glimpse of a lifeless room full of indistinct gray objects; then the mirror-door swung shut behind me — I heard it latch — and after the brightness of the last room I was plunged into darkness. But not silence; there was a soft but continuous buzz of conversation, many voices speaking indistinctly. At first I thought I was surrounded by people talking in darkness, then I realized the hubbub was coming from above. Glasses clinked, feet tramped, somebody laughed raucously: unless I missed my guess, I was directly underneath a speakeasy, perhaps even one of the ones I'd visited with my friends.

As my eyes adjusted once more, I found the room was not completely dark. There were chinks of light coming through the floorboards above, and off to one side there was a high window that let in a little light, although it was too dirty for me to tell whether it was a street-light or the moon, or even bright starlight.

Once again I made out the gray shapes I had glimpsed before. This time I began to make some sense of them. They had the semblance of furniture, all covered with dust-cloths: the shape of a grandfather clock here, a writing desk there, a tall object that was most likely a wardrobe. In amongst them stood less well-defined shapes, as tall as myself. After a little thought I guessed these to be coat-racks that had been hung heavy with clothes and then shrouded with more of the same dust-cloths.

Although the evening was still young, I felt as if I had been stumbling around this place for hours, and I was becoming light-headed. It seemed a good time to stop and compose myself. I sat down on a settee and thought about how I was going to find Ruth.

As I sat there, the feeling of light-headedness only grew, developing into a kind of euphoria that had me believing I might float away entirely if I didn't hold onto my seat. Some part of my mind told me that the drink must have been drugged, but I found it hard to be alarmed by this thought; I was filled with a sort of fey abandon that said to me, What will happen, will happen.

My head spun; up above me, a piano began to play something lilting and slow. As I tried to marshal my thoughts, one of the coat-racks moved, half-hidden behind a table.

No, not a coat-rack. A figure, veiled from head to foot. It shifted forwards, very slightly, as if trying to escape notice.

Was it alone? At the edges of my vision, flickers of movement. But when I looked directly at the other draped things, they were still. My mind playing tricks on me?

"I see you," I whispered.

And the figure shuffled out from behind the furniture that obscured it, and began to move in earnest. It was a peculiar type of motion, so completely shrouded by the thick drop-cloth that I couldn't be certain what I was seeing, not even whether I was looking at this person's front or back. Now and then I thought I had it figured out: a bulge that must surely be a hand, an elbow, a knee; the next moment, the shape underneath would twist and flow, leaving me wondering if I'd been looking at nothing more than a chance fold in the cloth, a victim of pareidolia.

But whatever the detail, it was moving to the beat of the music upstairs. As it swayed and turned, a muffled female voice:

"Josephine."

"Ruth? Is that you?" Who else here could know my name?

The voice matched the piano's rhythm. "I am the first facade. I am Concealment, Sentinel, Protection. I grant shelter from all foes."

The words sparked a cascade of thoughts in my mind: the hidden entrance to this place, the blindfolds and misdirection, all to shelter it from outsiders. Hiding from storms under my childhood blanket.

But I had to know: was this Ruth, acting out some ceremony she had uncovered? Or was it another? For all I could tell through the cloth, it might as well be a speaking orang-utan. I reached out, grasped the drop-cloth, stepped back, and it slid off her form to pool forgotten on the floor.

Beneath it — had I expected to uncover Ruth's face so easily? — the figure was covered in paper, aged and crackling, sheets stuck together to form a single piece.

"I am the second facade. I am Knowledge, History, Memory. I unlock secrets, I teach the rituals." As she spoke, I could see that it was made up of pages from dozens of different books. The words collided in my consciousness, evoking memories of learning. Battles past and statesmen now dead; the discovery of helium; Euclid's axioms. As she danced the paper folded and unfolded, granting glimpses of other words that were gone again before I could be sure of them. Once I thought I saw my name; another time, I was almost certain I glimpsed Ruth's handwriting.

"Ruth! Don't play games!" I snatched at the paper and it tore, coming off in ribbons that fluttered away like moths. Beneath it another layer — thin cotton or linen? It was pale, and although it was hard to see color in the faint light, I thought it was green.

"I am the third facade." With two layers gone I could make out more of the shape now. It was close to Ruth's height, about her build, but I had never seen her dance like this. "I am Mastery, Fortune, Riches. I command empires. Gold and slaves are in my gift." The third veil felt like money between my fingers. More flashes of memory: a gift of a brand new dollar-note for my tenth birthday; the day we moved into the Boston mansion; seeing a great ship coming into harbor and understanding that my father owned it.

I tugged it loose and cast it aside. "Ruth, please." I wondered if this would go on forever, until there was nothing at all left. Underneath was satin, iridescent and sparkling even in the gloom, and where the previous layers had concealed the figure beneath, this one accentuated it. Her movements were impossibly graceful one minute, awkward and familiar the next.

"I am the fourth facade! I am Beauty, Charm, Delight! I am more glorious than the sun, more splendid than the peacock!" It glittered as I touched it, visions of colored fire sparking a powder-train in my mind. My mother's jewels, flashing diamonds and deep sapphires. My eighteen-year-old face in the mirror, primping for some beau long since forgotten. And then, crowding them out...

Ruth. Ruth, with that look of distracted inspiration that sometimes came to her in the middle of solving some great puzzle, like a mystic in a trance.

I was almost spellbound, reluctant to remove this veil. But I had come to this place with a promise to keep. The cloth was smooth and almost slipped through my fingers; when I let go, it fell like a cascade of sparks, fireworks dissipating into the darkness, and was gone just as quickly.

Underneath: white gauze, so thin as to be almost invisible. Beneath it I could make out the shape of limbs, the outline of fingers, flowing in hypnotic patterns.

"I am the fifth facade. Josephine, I am Desire... Infatuation... Lust. I am never denied." The veil looked like gossamer, but felt like warm and living skin. My head spun; I was losing my balance, falling sideways into memories that I'd never fully acknowledged.

A second cousin, rather less of a gentleman than anybody had guessed, smoother with his words than with his hands. We'd been interrupted before things went very far, and in the cold light of day I realized I had no interest in him... yet the experience had left me wondering what it might be like, to be touched and held by the right somebody.

Furtive experimentation on my own, as I puzzled over whether the "sin of Onan" applied to women too or whether we had earned our own female patron. It was pleasurable enough, but didn't sate me; nor did two cautious and short-lived dalliances with eligible young men. I had been aware of clandestine Sapphism among some of my dorm-mates at Vesey but had never thought to look for it in myself, for even the most elegant among them never quickened my pulse one iota.

And yet, all the time...

Ruth. Mousy little Ruth, so far from my notions of how Beauty would look that my slowly-blossoming infatuation had taken me quite unawares. I had thought of love as something that happened with fanfares and sudden palpitations, not something to grow so subtly inside the house of friendship. My admiration for her intelligence, the pride I took in her praise... when had these things taken fire? When did my heart cease to become my own?

"Oh, Ruth." I spoke it aloud. "What would it be like?"

My fingers still grazed the veil as we danced to the piano, now leading, now following. My partner had a certain clumsiness of gait, it must be Ruth, could only be Ruth. I pulled away the fifth veil...

Black, utmost mourning-black. It covered only her head and face, but I could not tell you how the rest of her was clad; the drink had left me addled, my attention concentrated to a pin-point. Were there flickers of movement elsewhere in the store-room?

"I am the sixth facade. I am Death, Terminus, Nemesis. I bring the end to things that are past their time."

It drew near, seeming to approach me without visibly moving, and I shrank away. Visions of mortality clamored for my attention. A bird I had found as a child, still warm but mortally wounded by our cat. Mother, confined to her sick-bed, grayer and thinner by the day. And Peter — I was never told how he had died, but in my nightmares I had seen it happen in every possible way. Now the phantasms came one on top of another: impaled on barbed wire, choking through gas-wrecked lungs, blasted into pieces by artillery, shivering from infection.

I hesitated to touch the black veil. In my distracted state I no longer knew what the rules were. Was there power in this mumbo-jumbo? Might I be struck down?

But I had come here for Ruth, and I knew only one path to that goal. When I grasped it, the black veil was no more than soft crepe, and it went the way of the other five easily enough.

As I discarded it, the light changed; the moon had risen, and was shining bright and full through that high-placed window. She stood before me, perfectly still. She had Ruth's figure, but her face was wrapped in saffron-yellow, rippling as she spoke. "I am the seventh and only. I am the final facade. Before me lies all that is false. Behind me lies all that is true. I am the gate to the Pale Lady, I keep the name of the Silent King."

"Ruth." I watched for an acknowledgement of her name. Nothing.

"Ruth, I want you." Still she stood there, impassive. I reached for her, fingers trailing down her cheek... it felt like the cashmere of Ruth's scarf. Very much like. All evidence and reason told me it must be Ruth who stood veiled before me.

Why, then, was I so afraid to expose her face? Why this blind fear that if I removed the veil I would find my Ruth gone?

"Ruth." I caressed the covered face, I stepped in and kissed her through the cloth, felt her arms settle around me. I was lost now, unable to make sense of the shadows moving around us, unable to think of anything but the face that was so close to touching mine, and of keeping my hands on her cheeks to hold the veil in place...

When I came to, I was quite alone. The piano had stopped and there was a clamor above me, heavy boots and breaking glass, men shouting. I made out a hoarse voice calling out "The bulls!" and I realized there must be a raid on the speakeasy.

I didn't know whether the police would find their way downstairs and I didn't wait to find out. I scrambled past a thousand shrouded objects, familiar shapes made alien in the moonlight; below the window, as I'd hoped, there was a door to the street. It was locked, but the wood was old and half-rotted, and the screws rusted; I wrenched the handle back and forth until the lock broke loose from the woodwork and I was able to make my exit, well away from where I'd come into the building.

I made my way back to Causeway Street and blended in with the crowd who'd gathered to watch the spectacle. There were officers in the alleyway where we'd entered and more standing guard up front, as their colleagues stomped around and hauled out the speakeasy's patrons to be loaded into a wagon. I scanned every face, looking in vain for Ruth, wondering if she'd made her escape or if she was already in the wagon by the time I emerged.

Eventually the wagon drove off, and the crowd began to disperse. I was still watching the exits, trying to figure out whether I could afford Ruth's bail without letting on to my parents, when somebody touched me on the shoulder.

"Hello, Jo."

I spun around. "Ruth! Oh, you made it!"

She looked as if she'd had a tight squeeze to escape. Her hair was mussed and she had cobwebs on her shoulder, but she still wore the yellow scarf around her neck. "Come on, Jo. Let's go home."

The next day she asked me what had happened that night after we were separated. My answers were limited; it was hard for me to be sure how much had really happened and how much had been my imagination, provoked by the unfamiliar setting and whatever had been in the drink. I told her that I'd seen a veiled woman and she'd spoken a series of invocations, but I held much back. From her questions she seemed to have at least some familiarity with the invocations, but when I asked her if she'd been there with me, she evaded the question.

Silence grew between us, blossoming into resentment on my part. One thing I knew beyond a doubt — I loved Ruth, I wanted more than friendship with her. But what to say about it? If she knew, if she had already heard my protestations, what reason could there be for her evasion? Only that my advances were unwelcome. And if not... the thoughts chased around in my head like summer-maddened dogs, yapping and snarling, driving me to distraction.

Ruth went out alone more and more, and I soon learned not to bother asking. I spent my time attending to Mama; for all our past quarrels I was very fond of her, and I was glad that we were able to settle some of our differences. I accompanied her to some of Mrs. Gardner's "dos" and met many of the movers and shakers of Boston.

At night I lay awake, thinking of Ruth, wishing I had never accompanied her to that wretched place. I was angry with her, but I loved her no less for that, and I racked my brains trying to think of a resolution. Sometimes, on the rarer and rarer occasions when we were home together, it was on the tip of my tongue to say something. But I couldn't broach the subject without encouragement, and she gave me none.

Our estrangement did not lessen after our return to Vesey, but it became more bearable when we were no longer in such close quarters. Ruth was busy with her own private work — in which I was no longer invited to assist — and I had my studies.

I was determined to work hard that year, to vindicate myself. (To Mama, to Ruth, to myself? I don't know.) And in truth, I had little else to occupy my time; over the last two years my involvement with Ruth had grown so much that I had neglected all other connections, and I had no appetite now for making the effort to repair them.

So I set myself a regular schedule and kept to it. I woke early; I studied, and made do without Ruth's tuition; I went to bed by ten every night, even if sometimes I lay awake for hours after. Twice I dreamed of that gray store-room and the veiled figure. Once it said "I am Ruth"; once it said "I am not Ruth". Both times I woke aching with regret.

I wrote to Mama and Papa once a week. At first they wrote back together, but soon Mama took to writing her own letters. She thought Papa and her doctors were keeping the truth from her, that her condition was worse than they were letting on, and I suspected she might be right. I visited again at Christmas and was shocked by how drawn and tired she had become.

In March 1927 I received a letter from Monty Summers. He was concerned about Ruth. He had heard almost nothing from her since the previous September; her only letters to him had been to ask for books she needed. He was concerned that she might be ill, or overwhelmed by her studies, and asked if I could give him any reassurance. Last of all, as an afterthought, he asked me to thank my parents once again for the hospitality they'd extended to Ruth over the Christmas just gone.

That was the final straw. I made my way to Ruth's room and banged on the door until she opened it.

"Jo, what's the matter?"

I waved the letter. "I have this from your father. He seems to believe you spent the Christmas break with my parents."

"Yes, I told him that. I'm sorry, I didn't think it'd come back to you."

"And what am I supposed to say to him?"

"I don't know. Tell him — oh, tell him what you like. It doesn't matter. Just give me a week, two weeks, before you reply. That's all I ask."

For the first time I noticed her face: pale, hollow-eyed, thin. Her room was a mess, notebooks open all over the place filled with line after line of her hand, the waste-paper basket overflowing with crumpled pages that had been torn out.

"Ruth, what is all this about?"

"Oh, Jo..." She began to reach out a hand to me, thought better of it. "I wish I could tell you, but I mustn't. Please don't be angry. Wait two weeks, and I'll give you whatever answers I can. I promise."

I left, looking over my shoulder, hoping she would say more. But there was nothing.

I saw nothing of her the next week. I asked around and learned she was absent from her classes and from meals; somebody thought she'd left town. To visit her father? I thought not. In the second week I knocked on her door daily, morning and night, and there was still no sign of her. I began to regret agreeing to her request; she was clearly not herself, and perhaps I should have let her father know as soon as he asked. I began to entertain a horrible fear that she had run off and drowned herself. It was all I could do to keep my composure.

On the Saturday night I decided I could not postpone my duty any longer. I sat down at my desk and began to write.

Dear Sir,

I must apologize to you for my delay in replying to your letter. This has arisen because...

Ten minutes later I was still considering how best to complete that "because", when I was rescued by a knock on the door.

"Hello?" I opened it. "Ruth!"

"May I come in?"

"Of course."

She was as pale as she had been two weeks ago, and shadows below her eyes suggested she hadn't slept much lately. But under it there was energy, a restless spark that I remembered from happier days. "Ruth, are you all right?"

"Listen to me, Jo. Please hear me out. I know I've hurt you. There are reasons for what I did. I'm mixed up in something and I don't want to drag you into it."

"Oh, Ruth. Whither thou goest, there I will go..."

She shook her head sadly. "I know you would, if I asked you. But not this time, I can't. Some doors can't be closed... last year I started on a path and I have to follow where it leads. To the end, no turning back. But you mustn't try to follow me. It would be a terrible mistake."




Magnum Innominandum



"Ruth, what are you saying?"

"It's not just mumbo-jumbo and fairytales, Jo. There's more behind it than that... I know you've never wanted to tell me what happened that night at Causeway, but I think you saw a little bit of it then, didn't you?"

I nodded slowly. "There were... some things I didn't tell you."

"We didn't know what we were getting into. Please believe me when I tell you it's better if you don't know. Jo, please promise me you'll do your best to forget the stuff we worked on together. Don't try to dig it up."

"Ruth, what are you saying?"

"I'm leaving Vesey. I have to go. It's better for everyone."

"But Ruth, you've only got two months to go. At least finish your exams, get your degree."

She shook her head, laughing, but the laughter didn't reach her eyes. "That doesn't matter any more. Not for me. But I want you to knock 'em dead. For my sake."

"Oh, Ruth. You're one in a million. I can't... you could have done anything, been anything. Why did it have to be this?"

"I think... I think I knew there must have been a reason why these things were forbidden. That's why I pursued them." She gave me a sad smile. "Because I fell in love with the forbidden, years ago, before I ever heard of the Pale Lady and the Silent King. I've always wanted what I can't have."

"I don't understand."

"Since I met you, Jo." There was no mistaking her meaning. "And now I've said it, you may send me away. But I needed to tell you."

My mouth was dry. "Ruth, I... back at Causeway, I didn't know if it was you. Under the veils. I thought it was you, and I kissed... through the last veil."

"Oh, God, Jo." She was standing very close to me.

"Ruth, who was it that night, under the veils? Was it you?"

"Don't ask me that, Jo. Just know, it's me here tonight. No veils, just me and... nobody else. You don't want to know what it took to arrange that, but it's done. Jo, if I'd known... I kept it a secret so long, never thought you'd feel that way. Thought the only way to hold your interest was to impress you with my work."

She looked up at me, questioning, and I kissed her. No veils. On the lips. She hugged me to her, fierce as a bear, and kissed me back. Someone was shaking, sobbing, and I realized it was me... no, it was both of us.

"Ruth, I love you, I would have loved you..."

I was about to say, I would have loved you without any of this. But was that true? Wasn't her brilliance, even her obsession, part of what I had fallen in love with?

"Hush. Just us. Just tonight. What's done is done. This is all I can give you, but I give it with my whole heart." She kissed me again, and after that there were very few words.

I remember us like fire, twisting and devouring one another in the dark, writhing images that still sizzle and burn behind my eyes in afterglow. I was voracious and tender by turns and she gave herself to me wholly, a tangle of legs and fingers and lips and tongues. I thought myself worldly, but she taught me otherwise, bringing me to voiceless begging until I snarled and grabbed her by the back of the neck and required her to complete what she had started.

Afterwards, my rougher urges sated, I held her to me, stroking her all over, marveling in how snugly our bodies fitted together. Whatever magic the world might hold, this was enough for me: the ley-lines of her body, the cadences of her breath, the pulse of her heart, all governed by two sacred names: ours. And when she too was spent we collapsed together, the last of the walls between us vanished.

But when I woke, Ruth was gone. On my writing-desk she'd left a brief note: I love you. Please don't try to follow. — R.

She'd been seen at the railway station that morning, wearing a yellow scarf, headed for Boston. Her room was neat and empty with nothing left to show she'd ever lived there, save a great pile of paper-ash in the fireplace and a letter addressed to her father.

The letter was brief and to the point: she'd fallen in love with a young man who didn't reciprocate her affections. She had decided to end it all, with apologies to her father and friends. From Alpha to Omega, the whole thing was a lie — except perhaps for the apologies — but it was enough to fool everybody but myself.

Poor Monty was shattered. For all his obsession with his own work, he had loved Ruth dearly, and to lose her to suicide — as he thought — was a hard thing to bear. I considered telling him the truth, but what good would it do? Ruth was gone, that much was certain; I felt sure that she had spun him the kindest story she could conceive of. Debunking it would not do him any favors. Besides, the memory of my oath of secrecy still sat uncomfortably in my mind.

I did my best to console him with reminiscences of Ruth: her intelligence, her kind nature, her passion for her father's work. (Of her disagreements with his conclusions, I said nothing.) I told him that he was to keep in touch, and that we would always be connected by our memory of Ruth.

But I was soon to be distracted from all this by other matters. The night before the last of my final exams, I received an urgent summons to Boston: Mama was dying. I rushed home, just in time for a few words with her, and then she slipped away; at least it was painless at the end.

At her funeral, an aunt asked me what I intended to do once I had graduated from Vesey, and I realized I had no answer to give. All my plans had been tangled up with Ruth, and I had not made new ones to replace them.

I occupied myself for a while in replying to the hundreds of letters of condolence that had arrived for Mama; every time the post came, I half-expected to see an envelope in Ruth's familiar hand. After that I assisted Papa in managing some of the details of her many bequests. Still my future felt directionless and empty; it was all I could do not to laugh when a cousin suggested I should think about marrying.

In the end I made up my mind to travel. Perhaps a change of scene would do me good; although I found it hard to imagine that anything could ever mean as much to me as Ruth and Mama had done, I knew that others before me had moved past bereavement, and I hoped that after a year abroad things might look different.

I made arrangements for a long tour of Europe. All the grand names I'd heard in childhood stretched before me now: Athens, Rome, London, Vienna, the Alps, Prague, Berlin... with money behind me, there was no obstacle to my seeing them all. Now and then when I looked at the map, I felt a little twinge, remembering another time when I had made plans with Ruth. But I stayed to the road well-travelled and made no plans to visit that little dead-end village in Hungary, or the shrines to certain obscure saints that dotted the backwoods of Germany and Poland.

Since Papa was in the shipping business, I consulted him for advice on traveling. Much of it I could have figured out for myself, however with him still in mourning for Mama, I saw no harm in keeping his mind occupied. It was after one such visit, a week before my departure, that I had an unexpected encounter with a grizzled old sailor sitting in the sun outside Papa's offices.

"Hello, Miss Hart! Top of the morning to you!"

"Hello there! How d'you do... John, is it?"

"That it is, miss. I hear you's going abroad!"

"That I am! To Liverpool first, and then on to the Continent."

"Will you be meeting up with your young friend, miss?"

"My... who?"

"The young lady that was always with you? I remember her from t' Seaman's Friend, she was always about, asking the old fellas for stories."

"Ruth? No... I'm sorry, John. Ruth's no longer with us. She passed in April."

"Dead? Oh, Miss Hart, I'm terribly sorry! So young and such a good heart, she had. It must have been somebody else, then. Saw her boarding one of the old steamers, round about the start of May. Thought it must be Miss Ruth, looked so much like her. But I'm terrible sorry."

I told him to think nothing of it, and made my exit. At the back of my mind I had always thought that Ruth was still out there in the world somewhere, but it was disconcerting to be reminded of it... and that she might have gone in the same direction I was headed. The thought continued to prey on me until the day I stepped onto the "Carinthia", bound for Liverpool.

Then and there, I resolved to put Ruth out of my mind. Even if I were to look for her, how could I possibly find her, a nondescript needle in a haystack the size of Europe? It was hopeless, not worth thinking about.

Papa had deputized two of the household servants to travel with me, and I was glad of Mr and Mrs Cotton's company. They distracted me from the thoughts that still visited me when I was alone, and they knew better than to talk about Ruth or Mama. There was much else aboard the "Carinthia" to keep me occupied: I played tennis, I conversed with the other passengers, and above all I was kept busy dealing with a veritable army of well-dressed young men. I couldn't tell which ones had honorable intentions and which were attracted by the lure of Papa's wealth. Fortunately, it made no difference, since I had no romantic interest in any of them. At first the attention was entertaining; after three days it grew wearying, and during a patch of rough weather I retreated to the ship's library for a spell of peace and quiet.

There, while looking for something to read, I happened across a copy of "Salomé". I had more sense than to open it; even so, it suggested another train of thought. Perhaps there was a way to find Ruth after all...

I did my best to put those thoughts aside; I departed the library and occupied myself with other pursuits for the remainder of the voyage. Once we disembarked at Liverpool there was plenty more to divert my attention: the sights of London, the ferry to Calais, and then — after stopping to lay a wreath at the Argonne — all the great cities of Europe. I attended the opera, I collected postcards of landmarks, I burdened the Cottons down with armfuls of shopping.

Still my mind worked, provoked now and then by suggestive experiences along the way. In the British Museum a broken statue of Harpocrates, the old Greek god of silence; in Paris a heptatych by Alfonse Mucha, depicting a series of veiled women. There were few overt clues, yet all across Europe I encountered countless hints. News of a novel recently suppressed for obscenity; a hostile and bewildered review of a play based on Machen's supernatural works; even a poster for cigarettes, drawn in a very particular style that I had come to recognize.

In the end, Ruth had found what she sought through art; well, perhaps I could find Ruth the same way. I began to cultivate the company of artists, buying a landscape here, commissioning a minor work there, probing — ever so carefully — for information. Gradually I found it, a trail of whispers and allusions, each clue as tenuous and insubstantial as a single strand of spider-web. I spent months uncovering the edges of that web, and when at last I had enough I took hold of those strands and went in search of the center.

Nearly a year after arriving in Europe, I returned at last to Paris. On the seventeenth of July I gave the Cottons the slip and made my way to a dingy and unremarkable-looking theater at an address I will not name. The ticket-seller tried to turn me away — "Mademoiselle, we have no seats left", which I thought unlikely to be true. When I greased his palm and told him that my friend Ruth Summers had asked me to meet there, he waved me in.

Following his instructions, I navigated a labyrinth of narrow corridors and a spiral staircase, and found myself at last in the theater. It was tiny — the stage was at floor level and would easily have fit inside the bedroom at my hotel — and I was the only person there. Not even an usher was to be seen. But I had no doubt that I had come to the right place. I sat in the front row in front of a red velvet curtain and made myself comfortable as I waited.

After perhaps ten minutes an old lady came shuffling across the stage, sweeping as she went, then returned to place a series of candles at the foot of it. She said nothing to me, merely vanished back into the wings, and I continued to wait. The candles had a strong smell to them, bitter but not unpleasant. I was in no hurry.

Eventually the ceiling lights dimmed. From somewhere behind the stage a crackly gramophone began to play a jazz number. Then the curtain opened and she was in front of me, draped all in gray as I'd known she would be, dancing in a rhythm that slid in between and underneath the notes of the music.

She spoke over the jazz. I cannot remember whether it was in English or in French, but I remember the sense of it: "I am the gray veil. I am Hide-Away, Never-Found, Lost-Forever."

Phantasms of Peter, trodden face-down into the mud, buried altogether and planted over by farmers. Of Ruth and myself, afraid to speak what was in our hearts until much too late.

Then the grey veil was gone, and another took its place. Newspapers, pasted together, already torn and ragged. "I am the paper veil. I am Scandal, Ridicule, Disgrace." I made out some of the headlines: "WILDE CONVICTED, SENTENCED TO TWO YEARS HARD LABOR", "BANKER SWINDLES CLIENTS, SHOOTS SELF", "ARBUCKLE IMPLICATED IN YOUNG WOMAN'S DEATH."

Nightmares of exposure: was it possible that Ruth had left hints of her love for me in some forgotten journal? If her father were to find them, would he seek to disgrace me for leading his daughter astray? I shook my head, trying to ignore the visions. I was here to find Ruth, not to frighten myself with what-ifs.

The dance became faster now, twisting, contorting. The papers began to fall apart. There was something rough and noisy underneath, metallic; as it moved it snagged and ripped and chewed the papers, emerging through the shreds. Coins, drilled through and linked together by wires. "I am the veil of gold and silver and iron, thirty coins times thirty." Her voice sounded so much like Ruth. "I am Poverty, In-Debt, Shackles."

I had spent money like water this past year, secure in the comfort of my father's deep pockets. But how solid was his empire? I had heard whispers that some of the elite were beginning to pull their money out of Wall Street for fear that it was a house built on sand... and if the rumors spread and the fear grew, what would that mean for us?

"Ruth. If you're there, please say so." I would go anywhere with Ruth. I would live penniless with Ruth, and count myself blessed.

The wires were giving way under the weight of the coins, loops coming open, bindings falling apart. Coins fell away, clattering on the floor, one by one and then faster until the sound blended into a racket of metal on metal, and the veil was gone.

Shimmering satin and gemstones, red and green and blue. But the satin was old and perished, the gems obvious fakes. "I am the veil of ruin." So very like Ruth's voice. "I am Skin-Deep, Harlot, Once-Was."

I had my mother's good looks, and some of her tricks of charm; in my time they had drawn many men to me... and Ruth? But could I hold her fascination when they began to fade, as time dictated they must? At the end of it all, would she regret wasting her life on an infatuation with me, unable to match her intellect and her gentle nature? Did I deserve her at all?

No, I told myself, there was more. Whatever Ruth saw in me, it was not the glamour alone. Perhaps one day I would understand what it was.

Now it was the satin's turn to tear, pulling away in scalloped tatters under the weight of the stones and the strain of her movement. The form underneath pressed against the cloth; I thought it looked like Ruth's knees, slightly lumpy, comfortably familiar.

Wispy silk, layer upon layer, billowing out into a great cloud, light from behind silhouetting a dark shape in the middle. "I am the veil of mist. I am Infatuation, Weeps-In-The-Night, Wants-And-Consumes."

The cloud grew impossibly wide, seeming to engulf me. I thought of my own selfishness; Ruth had told me not to follow, and yet here I was against her wishes, driven more by my desire for her than by any thought of rescue — for how could I possibly think of saving her without even understanding the path she had taken?

"Ruth," I said, "I want you and I have been selfish in it. But there is room in our love for errors and forgiveness. Please."

And the cloud billowed further outwards, silk brushing my face as it passed, expanding into nothingness... underneath, a female figure, veiled now in impenetrable black.

"I am the black veil. I am Oblivion, Negation, Night-Without-End." She fell silent, stood still; the jazz had ceased some time earlier, without my noticing, and now there was only the hiss of the needle in its final groove.

I had been a fool to come here. If Ruth had been undone by these secrets, Ruth with all her acumen, what hope did I have? To go further was to court utter destruction.

I stood. She was so close to me that I could reach out and touch the black veil. But just as I touched, my perception changed, like a child looking at a trick-picture: there was no black veil at all, just a shadow created by clever lighting. Even as I understood this, an electric limelight came on overhead, and the shadow was gone.

"I am the yellow veil. I am all that was and all that is and all that will be. Behind me is the truth that never lives and never dies, the Magnum Innominandum."

"Ruth." I ran my fingers over the veil, trying to feel the shape of her face. "Ruth, I love you. Just tell me it's you."

She was silent.

"Ruth, please, answer me." But by now I understood there were rules to this, only one way the veil would surrender its secrets. Trying to ignore the rising feeling of dread in my chest, I took a fold of the yellow cloth in between thumb and forefinger, and began to pull...

As the veil began to fall, I felt an instinctive terror such as I had never encountered before. In a split-second — too late to arrest its fall — I turned my face away, averting my eyes as if I had met the very Gorgon.

"Josephine." She was just behind me, her voice calm.

"Ruth. Tell me you're Ruth."

"Josephine, look at me."

"Tell me you're Ruth!"

"Look at me, Josephine..."

I felt her moving, a touch on my shoulder... and I ran. Ran for the door, tumbled down the staircase, ran through that labyrinth. I am not Orpheus; I did not look back, and I did not stop until I was out in the sunlight.





Magnum Innominandum



"After that... well, I used to have an old nanny. She was the widow of a Swedish sea-captain. When he died, Mama and Papa took her on to look after me. She came from near here, and she used to tell me stories about the old spirits. Trolls and bear-spirits, all kinds. She said nature was full of spirits, and that they didn't care whether you believed in them or not."

Karin rumbled once again. "Does a hungry bear care whether you believe in it?"

Josephine nodded, shivered. "Ruth mentioned those myths too, but she never followed them up. I traveled to Stockholm, visited the libraries and talked to the professors there, trying to find out whether the old faiths still survived. They told me, if anywhere it would be in the far North beyond the reach of Christianity and even the old gods of the Edda.

"I was going to stay a little longer, but I had a close call one day... I was reading in the library and I felt someone behind me, so close and quiet, just waiting for me to look around. I closed my eyes and shouted for the librarian, I didn't open them until he promised me I was alone. He must have thought I was mad.

"After that I cut my hair and disguised myself in men's — I don't know whether I was trying to avoid Ruth's people, or my father's. Then I caught a boat north, and when I found nothing in Norrkvarn I set out to try my luck with the Lapps. And then I fell on the glacier, and you found me."

Karin was silent.

"Karin, do you know of these spirits?"

"I know something of them. But they are dangerous, child, very dangerous indeed. Some of them can pass for human, but they are no more human than a tree or a rock or a glacier."

"Can they help me? Can you help me deal with them?"

"What do you want from them? Do you want to forget your Ruth?"

"No! I loved her. I love her... at least, as she was. I don't know what she is now. But the love we had, that was sweet and good, and I'm not ashamed of it. No, I want to be free of... the other thing. The thing behind the veils. Karin, is it possible?"

Another long silence, then: "It is possible. Yes, if you wish it, I can do this thing. You will stay with me through the winter and dreams will not trouble you. In the spring I will carry you down to the town, and then perhaps you may return home. But there is a price, there is always a price."

"What is it?"

"Undress, and give yourself to me."

"I — I can't —"

"It is an old magic. Even older than your veiled lady. There is no sin here, and no unfaithfulness to your Ruth. You will lie with me in my bed, and we will become one. Eventually we will part, and you may go on to whatever awaits you. But this is the only way I can do what you require."

Karin's hold on Josephine loosened; there was an loud creak as she shifted in her bed. "Or you can go now. I do not compel you. Only if it is your will, you may stay."

Josephine considered. It was true: there was no sin in finding comfort in another's arms, no betrayal of Ruth. Even without love, there would be comfort and rest. Already she was feeling a flush of warmth as blood returned to her fingers and toes.

"I accept." Her eyes still stung a little, so she kept them closed as she sat up, unbuttoned her clothes, slipped out of them and set them down beside her. Then she lay back in the big white bed, and Karin was there, wrapping her all around, and at last her heart was quiet.

* * * * *

NORRKVARN, Sweden (AP), July 17, 2009 — A body found two months ago in a glacial moraine in the far north of Sweden has been tentatively identified as that of Josephine Hart, an American heiress who vanished from Paris in 1928.

The body was found naked, with clothes and personal effects nearby. It is speculated that Hart lost her way while attempting to visit a Saami village north of Norrkvarn and died of exposure on the Karin Glacier; the flow of the glacier would then have carried her body downhill to be released in the spring melt.

Initial identification was based on personal effects, and the body was in an excellent state of preservation allowing comparison to archival photographs. Police are seeking surviving relatives to confirm identification via DNA matching.

How Hart came to be in Sweden is the subject of (cont. p. 12)

The End

-

Author's note: This story started out with a fragmentary dream of a scene corresponding to Ruth and Jo's final night together at Vesey. I put it aside for a couple of years because I didn't have the rest of the story.

Then one day I got to thinking about parallels between Lovecraft's "Magnum Innominandum" (i.e. "that [great thing] which must not be named", often identified with Hastur), and Lord Douglas' "the love that dare not speak its name", invoked at Oscar Wilde's trial. Lovecraft treats the M.I. in the same way the newspapers of the day treated homosexuality: a force of evil so dangerous that it can only be described in oblique language, lest it corrupt the listener.

This might not be a coincidence. After looking at what Lovecraft borrowed from Chambers' "The King in Yellow", and at how TKiY is influenced by Salomé and works by Wilde's associates, it seems quite likely that this particular nameless horror is an echo of real-life fears. It certainly wouldn't be the first time Lovecraft had done that!

On a side note: Ruth and Jo's attitude towards other cultures and religions should not be mistaken for mine! In particular, although the terms "Lapp"/"Lapplander" were in common use in the '20s, they have a problematic history and should be avoided in favor of "Saami". Jo uses them because she doesn't know any better.

Thanks to my partner for proofreading, and to NaokoSmith for suggesting some much-needed edits!