Christopher Priest - I, Haruspex

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I, Haruspex

Christopher Priest

The morning of that January day was icy cold with bright but slanting sunlight, the blue sky

lending an electric radiance to the hoar frost that lay sharply on the grass and shrubs of

the Abbey grounds. Earlier I had taken a brief walk across the Long Lawn, but the

pre-dawn chill had driven me indoors again after a few minutes. Now I waited in the

draughty main entrance hall of the Abbey, behind the closed double doors, listening for

the sound of tyres on the gravel drive outside.

The car sent by the solicitor arrived punctually, only a few seconds after the clock in

the stairwell had finished chiming nine o’clock. I snatched the doors open as soon as I

heard the car come to a halt. The frozen air swirled in and around me.

The simple formality began.

The chauffeur climbed out of the driver’s seat, lowering his head to one side to avoid

dislodging his cap, then straightened his full-buttoned jacket with a jerking motion at the

hem. He stood erect. Without looking in my direction he walked smartly to the rear

compartment of the car, and held the door open. He stared into the distance. Miss Wilkins

stepped down: a brief vision of silken stockings, a tight black skirt, glossy shoes,

mousquetaire gloves, a discreet hat with a wide brim and a veil. She was clutching the

small, box-shaped parcel I was expecting.

As she climbed the double flight of steps towards the main door the chauffeur

followed. He stood protectively behind her as she confronted me. As usual she did not

look directly at me but held out the package for me to take. She was looking down at the

steps, a parody of demureness. Intoxicating waves of her civet-based perfume drifted

across to me, and I could not suppress a relishing sniff.

I took the package from her, and also the release form that required my signature, but

now I had the parcel in my hands I was no longer in any hurry. I shook the package beside

my ear, listening to the satisfying, provocative sound of the hard little pellets rattling

around inside. All that potential locked within! I stared directly at Miss Wilkins, challenging

her to look back at me, but her expression remained frightened and evasive. She could

not leave without my signature on the release, so naturally I made her wait. I like to see

fear in another person’s face, and in spite of her seeming composure, and her deliberate

avoidance of my gaze, Miss Wilkins could hide her apprehension no better than she could

conceal her youthful allure. She was trembling, a hint of convulsive movement that induced

a terrible bodily craving in me. As usual, she had gone to manifest efforts to make herself

unattractive to me. The jacket and skirt of her suit, made of heavy, businesslike serge,

and of forbidding stiffness, for me only served to emphasize the hint of feminine ripeness

that lay beneath. The delay I was causing interested me, the fear in the young woman

stimulated me, and her scents were all but irresistible.

I said softly, “Will you enter my house, Miss Wilkins?”

Beneath the veil, her steadfast gaze at the ground was briefly interrupted; I saw her

long lashes flicker.

“I dare not,” she said, in a whisper.

“Then—”

The moment was interrupted by the chauffeur, who shifted his weight in an impatient,

threatening manner.

“Please just sign the receipt, Mr Owsley,” he said.

I did not mind him intervening, although I resented the sense of intimidation. He had

his job to do; I expected only that he should do it civilly. I gave the young woman an

appreciative smile for bringing me my pellets, hoping to excite another response, perhaps

even a glimpse of her eyes, but during the many brief visits she had made in the last few

months she had never once looked straight at me. I fussed with my pen, making it seem

that it was unexpectedly dry of ink, but I must have tried this once before in the past. Miss

Wilkins had another pen at the ready, concealed in her gloved hand, and she moved deftly

to provide me with it. I took it from her, contriving to brush my fingers against the soft

fabric covering the palm of her hand, but once I had the thing in my hand there were no

more excuses for delay. I signed the receipt for the package, and Miss Wilkins seized it

from me with a fearful sweep of her hand.

There was a momentary unavoidable collision of her fingers with mine, but she turned

back to the steps and at once hurried down them to the car. The chauffeur strode beside

her. Her last scents briefly swirled around me, and I darted my face through them, sniffing

them up: not everything of the flesh she exuded was concealed by the bottled perfume.

I went to the parapet to watch her, again admiring her silk-clad legs as she climbed

elegantly into the rear compartment of the limousine. Although blinds obscured most of

the windows, I could make out her head and shoulders as she settled back into the seat. I

could not fail to notice the shudder that convulsed her when the chauffeur closed the door

on her. He hurried to his cab, climbed stiffly inside, and started the engine at once.

Neither of them glanced back at me or the Abbey. Miss Wilkins lowered her face, brought

a folded white handkerchief to her eyes, held it there.

The silver-grey Bentley Providence swung around the ornamental sundial, then

accelerated down the drive towards the gates. Gravel flew behind it. I could hear the

sound of the tyres long after the car had passed behind St Matrey’s Stump and out of my

sight.

Aware of the importance to me of the day, Mrs Scragg had arrived at work early that

morning and was already in the kitchen, waiting for me to bring the pellets to her. What

she did not know was that I had mystical evaluations of the pellets to perform first.

I hurried as quietly as I could to the conservatory at the far end of the East Wing and

locked the connecting door behind me. I glanced in all directions from the windows to

make sure I was unobserved.

Across the Long Lawn, in the hollow beyond the trees, morning mist hung in evil

shroud above the Beckon Slough. I stared across at it for a moment, trying to detect any

sign of movement from within the cover of thick trees. It was a windless day and the mist

was persisting well into the morning, the sunlight as yet too weak to disperse it. I shivered,

knowing that I would soon have to venture that way.

I was in the cooler part of the conservatory, the one that faced down towards the

Slough. In the normal course tropical plants could be expected to thrive in a glass

enclosure on the south face of any house in this part of England, but here on the Beckon

Slough side the air was inexplicably chilly and condensation usually clung to the panes.

No specimens from the equatorial rain forests would grow in the mysterious dankness, so

here were kept the pots of common ivy, the thick-leaved ficus, the fatsia japonica in its

huge cauldron. Even hardy plants like these had to struggle to maintain life.

I squatted on the floor beneath the fatsia, first checking the most basic of facts, that no

error had been made and that the package was appropriately addressed to me: Mr

James Owsley, Beckon Abbey, Beckonfield, Suffolk. Of course it was correct; who else

would receive such a package? But like everyone else I had my fantasies.

Inside, as I rocked the parcel to and fro, I could feel the loose movement of the pellets,

their deadly weights knocking about in their separate protective compartments. The

medical staff at the Trust had for some reason sealed up today’s consignment more

securely than usual, itself an intriguing augury. I was forced to tear at the stiff brown

sealing tape, accidentally bending back the nail of my middle finger as I did so. Sucking

at it to try to assuage the pain I got the lid open and shot a glance inside to be certain as

quickly as possible that everything was in order and as I required.

A faint chemical smell, with its hint of preservatives masking the truer stench, drifted

promisingly around my nostrils. Beneath it, the darker, headier fragrance of putrid

organics. The muscles of my throat tightened in a gagging reflex, and I felt the familiar

conflict of terror against rapture, both hinting at different kinds of oblivion.

The sixteen compartments on the top layer, four by four, each contained a pellet,

brown-red or grey-pink, the exact shade indicating to me from which part of the source it

had been removed. Every pellet had undergone primary compression by the Trust staff,

bringing it down to the approximate size of a large horse-chestnut, but their methods had

not yet become systematized or a matter of routine and the results were uneven in shape

and size. I knew that the compression was one of the means by which the staff tried to

distance themselves from their work, but I cared only about the vital essence. Each pellet

was the result of individual sacrifice and surgical endeavour.

Satisfied already with the contents of the package, I pushed my fingers down the

sides of the box and with immense care lifted away the top layer. I placed it gingerly aside

on the stone-flagged conservatory floor. Underneath was the carton’s second level, also

arranged four by four, and here the pellets were less well formed than the ones on the top,

closer in shape to their clinical origins. Rapture and terror again took hold of me. I touched

one of the pellets at random and found it bewitchingly hard and resilient to my touch, as if

it had been allowed to dehydrate. I picked it up and pressed it gently beneath my nostril,

inhaling its subtle fragrance. The hardening process had made the release of its essence

more reluctant, but even so I could sense the death of the person who had grown the pellet

for me. I knew that this pellet had struggled for months in the silent but unceasing contest

of decay, and as a consequence it was empowered with the ineluctable life-rage of the

dying.

I returned the pellet to its tiny compartment, then lifted aside the second layer. Two

more layers were below, also arranged in sixteen square compartments. All of them were

filled. For once the Trust had sent me not only quality and diversity, but quantity too.

Sixty-four pellets were more than enough to get me through the week that lay ahead. A

new and surprising sense of optimism surged through me.

I wondered: could this be the time I had been waiting for, perhaps? If I regulated my

appetites, partook steadily of the pellets, varied my intake, started with the most powerful

to make up for the unsatisfactory week I had recently endured, then gradually moderated

my intake so that I used only the grey slices of tissue until I had the pit under control, then

took the rest in a rush, dosing myself until insensate on the most potent of the reddish

ones...?

Could the nightmare reach its hitherto unimaginable end?

This sudden rush of optimism came because I knew my strength was starting to

decline. I could not continue to struggle alone much longer.

Many aspects of my life were a source of consternation to me. My father, who as a

young man had been employed as a sin eater in the six parishes in the vicinity of the

Abbey, often spoke of his wish for me to follow his way, while warning me of the attendant

dangers. As he saw me growing up with a greater haruspical power than his own I knew

he realized that I was overtaking him. The conflict of parental hope against fear helped

destroy him, and in his last years he slumped into hopelessness and melancholy. In the

final twelvemonth of his life his madness took hold completely and he taunted me with

grotesque descriptions of what befell those who perceived the powers of entrails in their

efforts to control past and future. That I was already one such was a fact he could never

entirely accept. He had had his own arcane methods; I had mine. It was the duty and curse

of the male line of our family to stand on the brink of the abyss and repel the incursion

from hell. When he perforce abandoned the struggle, I took his place. I remain in that role,

following my ancestors, until someone else replaces me. There is no alternative, no end to

the struggle.

I was brought out of my reverie by a staccato rapping sound on the glazed door that

led back into the house. Mrs Scragg was standing beyond it, her hand raised, the bulging

signet ring she had used to rap on the glass glinting in the daylight. I moved my chest and

arms around to shield what I had been doing and quickly returned the trays of pellets to

their carton.

I stood up and unlocked the door.

“Mr Owsley, I must speak to—”

“I have obtained some more supplies, as expected,” I said, walking through and

closing the conservatory door behind me. I proffered the parcel of pellets to her. “You

know what to do with them. The rest may be kept in the cold store until later.”

“Mr Owsley. James...”

“Yes?”

“Whatever you instruct, of course,” she said. She glanced at the parcel in her hands,

and I heard a deep intake of breath. “I am ready for that. Also, should you—”

Our eyes met and her unspoken meaning was clear. The arrival of the packages from

the Trust often had a disturbing effect on us both, and sometimes, unpredictably to

outsiders had they been there to see it, but memorably for us both, alone together in the

house, violent sexual coupling would follow in the minutes after I received the pellets. Our

physical encounters were so spontaneous that they often occurred wherever we

happened to be: once against a bookcase in my library, another time on the snooker

table in the Great Hall, actually beneath the eye of the hagioscope hidden there.

We rarely alluded explicitly to the darker side of our relationship, so this morning’s

invitation from her was a novelty. Normally, we played the roles of master and servant, she

with an undercurrent of resentment I was never quite sure was genuine or assumed, I with

a lofty disdain that sometimes I truly felt, sometimes I put on for her benefit or mine. It was

my place to make the first move, but today I was full of haruspical hope, not bodily lust.

“No, Patricia,” I said as gently and quietly as I could. “Not today.”

Anger briefly flared in her eyes; I knew she hated sexual rejection. But I was feeling

calm and positive, excited by the realization of what the new pellets would mean for my

destiny.

“Then allow me to cook for you...sir.”

“If you would.”

“Do you have a preference today?”

“A ragout,” I said, having already considered the various choices. “Do you have a

suitable recipe?”

“Mr Owsley,” she said. “Don’t you recall the stew I cooked for you last week?”

“I do,” I said, for it had been a memorable experience. “I do not wish you to try that

recipe again.”

“It was not the method but the ingredients.”

“But it is the ingredients I must consume,” I said. “No matter what your damned

method might be, I require the pellets to be appetizingly prepared.” She walked away

from me with bad grace.

At times like this I cared little for her feelings, because I knew she was being well

remunerated under the terms of the Trust. The mortgage on her house had been repaid in

full to the loan corporation and invalid John Scragg, her husband whose health had been

ruined during his service in the Great War, was more comfortable than he could ever once

have dreamed of. I was the greatest good fortune to the family Scragg. In this light the

additional pleasures I took with her were a small price for her to pay. None the less, she

continued to resent me. My father once told me that he and my mother had also had

problems with servants, until they found the remedy.

With the domestic arrangements taken care of for the remainder of the day—indeed,

for the rest of the week—I was determined that my optimistic mood should not be broken.

I felt that if I could not confront the mystery of the Beckon Slough on a morning like today,

then I might never in any conscience be able to again. I found my warmest coat, and left

directly.

The day was bright, icy and shimmering with the promise of deeper winter weather to

come. The frosted grass crunched enticingly under my shoes as I strode down the slope

of the Long Lawn. I knew I was counting on the buoyancy of a passing mood to bear me

through the dread of what lay ahead. As I passed from the blue-white, winter-sunlit slopes

of frosted grass close to the house, and went along the cinder track that led into the dark

wood, the cooler fears of my mystical calling returned. My pace slowed.

Soon the first tendrils of mist were reaching out above my head. Around my ankles

eddies of whiteness dashed like slinking fish. The temperature had dropped ten or fifteen

degrees since I had left the house. Above, in the gaunt branches of the trees, rooks

cawed their melancholy warnings.

The slope was steeper now and where the path lay in permanent shadow the frozen

soil was slippery and treacherous. Brambles grew thickly on each side, the dormant

shoots lying across the path, their buds and thorns already worn away in several places by

my frequent passing.

The Beckon Slough was ahead.

I smelt it before I could see it, a dull stench drifting out with the mist, a dim reminder of

the pellets’ own putrid reek. Then I could see it, the dark stretch of mud and water,

overgrown with reeds and rushes, and the mosses and fungi that surrounded it.

Life clung torpidly and uselessly to the shifting impermanence of the bog. Saplings

grew further back around the edge of the marsh, although even here the ground was too

sodden to hold the weight of full-grown trees. The young shoots never grew to more than

twelve or fifteen feet before they tipped horribly into the muck below. Roots and branches

protruded muddily all around the periphery of the consuming quagmire, along with the

sheets of broken ice, slanting up at crazy angles, broken by the sheer weight of the

intrusion from above, the machine that had descended so catastrophically into the

vegetating depths. It remained in place, an enigma that fate had selected me to unravel.

About a third of the way across the Slough were the remains of the crashing German

aircraft. Now it rested, frozen in time. It was painted in mottled shades of dark brown and

green, and it had made its first shattering impact. It had been immobilized as it

rebounded, rising in plumes of icy spray from the frozen muck. The plane’s back had

broken, but because the process of disintegration was still taking place it remained

recognizable. A few seconds into the future the plane would inevitably become a heap of

twisted, burning wreckage amongst the trees, but because it had been immobilized in

some fantastic way it was for the moment apparently whole.

The wing closer to me had broken where it entered the fuselage. It and its engine

would soon cartwheel dangerously into the trees as the terrible stresses of the crash

continued. The propeller of this engine was already broken: it had two blades instead of

three, the missing one apparently trapped somewhere in the mud, but the spindle was still

rotating with sufficient speed that the remaining two blades were throwing a spray of mud

in a soaring vane through the mist above.

The other wing was out of sight, below the surface, its presence evinced by a swollen

bulge of water, about to break out in an explosion of filthy spray.

The perspex panes of the cockpit cover were starred where machine-gun bullets had

left their trail across the upper fuselage. Mud had already sprayed across what was left of

the canopy. Inside, horribly and inexplicably, crouched the figure of the man who waved to

me.

He waved again now.

I stared, I raised one hand. I raised another. Uncertainty froze me. What would a wave

from me mean? What would it imply?

I briefly averted my gaze and lowered my arms, embarrassed by my weakness of will.

When I looked back the man inside the aircraft waved again, pointing up at the perspex

canopy with his other hand.

I had been visiting the scene of this frozen crash for several weeks and by careful

measurement and reckoning had worked out roughly where the plane’s final resting place

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摘要：

I,HaruspexChristopherPriestThemorningofthatJanuarydaywasicycoldwithbrightbutslantingsunlight,theblueskylendinganelectricradiancetothehoarfrostthatlaysharplyonthegrassandshrubsoftheAbbeygrounds.EarlierIhadtakenabriefwalkacrosstheLongLawn,butthepre-dawnchillhaddrivenmeindoorsagainafterafewminutes.NowI...

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