That at least was true. The man had known his death was imminent, which suggested that he’d known his murderer too. Was it Pie’oh’pah he’d been expecting? It seemed not. The assassin was referred to, but not as Chant’s executioner. Indeed, in his first reading of the letter Gentle hadn’t even realized it was Pie’oh’pah who was being spoken of in this passage. But on this re-reading it was completely apparent.
You have made a covenant with a thing RARE in this DOMINION or any other, and I do not know if this death nearly upon me is my punishment or my reward for my agency in that. But be circumspect in all your dealings with it, for such power is capricious, being a stew of kinds and possibilities, no UTTER thing, in any part of its nature, but pavonine and prismatic. An apostate to its core.
I was never the friend of this power - it has only ADORERS AND UNDOERS - but it trusted me as its representative and I have done it as much harm in these dealings as I have you. More I think; for it is a lonely thing, and suffers in this DOMINION as I have. You have friends who know you for the man you are, and do not have to conceal your TRUE NATURE. Cling to them, and their love for you, for the Place of the Succulent Rock is about to shake and tremble, and in such a time all a soul has is the company of its loving like. I say this having lived in such a time, and am GLAD that if such is coming upon the FIFTH DOMINION again, I will be dead, and my face turned to the glory of the UNBEHELD.
All praise to HAPEXAMENDIOS.
And to you, sir, in this moment, I offer my contrition and my prayers.
There was a little more, but both handwriting and the sentence structure deteriorated rapidly thereafter, as though Chant had panicked, and scrawled the rest while putting on his coat. The more coherent passages contained enough hints to keep Gentle from sleep, however. The descriptions of Pie’oh’pah were particularly alarming:
‘A RARE thing … a stew of kinds and possibilities …’
How was that to be interpreted, except as a verification of what Gentle’s senses had glimpsed in New York? If so, what was this creature, that had stood before him naked and singular, but concealed multitudes?; this power Chant had said possessed no friends (it has only ADORERS AND UNDOERS, he’d written) and had been done as much harm in these dealings (again. Chant’s words) as Estabrook, to whom Chant had offered his contrition and his prayers? Not human, for certain. Not born of any tribe or nation Gentle was familiar with. He read the letter over and over again, and with each re-reading the possibility of belief crept closer. He felt its proximity. It was fresh from the margins of that land he’d first suspected in New York. The thought of being there had made him fearful then. But it no longer did, perhaps because it was Christmas morning, and time for something miraculous to appear and change the world.
The closer they crept - both morning and belief - the more he regretted shunning the assassin when it had so plainly wanted his company. He had no clues to its mystery but those contained in Chant’s letter, and after a hundred readings they were exhausted. He wanted more. The only other source was his memory of the creature’s jigsaw face, and, knowing his propensity for forgetting, they’d start to fade all too soon. He had to set them down! That was the priority now; to set the vision down before it slipped away!
He threw the letter aside, and went to stare at his Supper at Emmaus. Was any of those styles capable of capturing what he’d seen? He doubted it. He’d have to invent a new mode to reproduce what he’d seen. Fired up by that ambition he turned the Supper on end, and began to squeeze burnt umber directly on to the canvas, spreading it with a palette knife until the scene beneath was completely obscured. In its place was now a dark ground, into which he started to gouge the outline of a figure. He had never studied anatomy very closely. The male body was of little aesthetic interest to him, and the female was so mutable, so much a function of its own motion, or that of light across it, that all static representation seemed to him doomed from the outset. But he wanted to represent a protean form now, however impossible; wanted to find a way to fix what he’d seen at the door of his hotel room, when Pie’oh’pah’s many faces had been shuffled in front of him like cards in an illusionist’s deck. If he could fix that sight, or even begin to do so, he might yet find a way of controlling the thing that had come to haunt him.
He worked in a fair frenzy for two hours, making demands of the paint he’d never made before, plastering it on with palette knife and fingers, attempting to capture at least the shape and proportion of the thing’s head and neck. He could see the image clearly enough in his mind’s eye (since that night no two rememberings had been more than a minute apart) but even the most basic sketch eluded his hand. He was badly equipped for the task. He’d been a parasite for too long, a mere copier, echoing other men’s vision. Now he finally had one of his own -only one, but all the more precious for that - and he simply couldn’t set it down. He wanted to weep at this final defeat, but he was too tired for that. With his hands still covered in paint he lay down on the chilly sheets and waited for sleep to take his confusions away.
Two thoughts visited him as he slipped into dreams. The first, that with so much burnt umber on his hands he looked as though he’d been playing with his own shit. The second, that the only way to solve the problem on the canvas was to see its subject again in the flesh, which thought he welcomed, and went to dreams relieved of his frauds and pieties, smiling to think of having the rare thing’s face before him once again.
Though the journey from Godolphin’s house in Primrose Hill to the Tabula Rasa’s Tower was short, and Dowd got him up to Highgate on the dot of six, Oscar suggested they drive down through Crouch End then up through Muswell Hill and back to the Tower, so that they’d arrive ten minutes late.
‘We mustn’t seem to be too eager to prostrate ourselves,’ he observed as they approached the Tower for a second time. ‘It’ll only make them arrogant.’
‘Shall I wait down here?’
‘Cold and lonely? My dear Dowdy, out of the question. We’ll ascend together, bearing gifts.’
‘What gifts?’
‘Our wit, our taste in suits - well, my taste - in essence, ourselves.’
They got out of the car, and went to the porch, their every step monitored by cameras mounted above the door. The lock clicked as they approached, and they stepped inside. As they crossed the foyer to the lift Godolphin whispered:
‘Whatever happens tonight, Dowdy, please remember - ‘
He got no further. The lift doors opened, and Bloxham appeared, as preening as ever.
‘Pretty tie,’ Oscar said to him. ‘Yellow’s your colour.’ The tie was blue. ‘Don’t mind my man Dowd here, will you? I never go anywhere without him.’
‘He’s got no place here tonight,’ Bloxham said.
Again, Dowd offered to wait below, but Oscar would have none of it. ‘Heaven forfend,’ he said. ‘You can wait upstairs. Enjoy the view.’
All this irritated Bloxham mightily, but Oscar was not an easy man to deny. They ascended in silence. Once on the top floor Dowd was left to entertain himself, and Bloxham led Godolphin through to the chamber. They were all waiting, and there was accusation on every face. A few - Shales, certainly, and Charlotte Feaver - didn’t attempt to disguise their pleasure that the Society’s most ebullient and unrepentant member was here finally called to heel.
‘Oh I’m sorry …’ Oscar said, as they closed the doors behind him. ‘Have you been waiting long?’
Outside, in one of the deserted ante-chambers, Dowd listened to his tinny little radio and mused. At seven the news bulletin brought a report of a motorway