For it appeared to Sirob the Duke as though he had remained, entombed, incarcerated and immured within the stony chambers of the scriptorium for many years, labouring upon papers of state; though the interstices of time, marked by the desolate and distant chimes from the chapel, and tolling in the empty spaces where the devout had once, but no longer, knelt, designated that the period of his isolation was in fact no longer than a mere mortal hour. From somewhere, deep within the entrails of the castle, came the wail of a child, its voice and cry high, wavering and prolonged, like the unresolved chord executed by the player of the great organ in the umbrageous cathedral. Was the child, perhaps, one of his own? So many had he spawned, so prolifically had he sowed his seed, so generously cast his pearl, that his litter was legion, and no hovel in the dukedom so base but that upon entering it in pursuit of some fair female flesh, he might be surprised by the consanguinity of the howling brat within its walls. At the thought of the fair flesh of women, Sirob’s brow grew yet more fevered, and he leant his head for weariness upon the sheets of memoranda from ministers, the vellum tender and white in his mind as the snow white bosom of the Abyssinian maid; as he gazed at them, his mind began to wander, and the words swirled, whirled into a turbulence, until they appeared no longer recognisable as English but, rather, the esoterica of the cabbala, mysterious enchantments to lure his soul away from his everyday and irksome labours and towards some other pastime, of a more hedonistic bent, his fancy forming images of sultry maidens bearing chalices, full of the true, the blushful hippocrene. Overcome by the strength of the vision which had possessed him, Sirob rose from his work, finding the words of the ancient monastic drinking song rise, unbidden to his mind, as though inscribed in letters of the bloodiest red- Much travail sans Plaisir/doth Sirob a dull boy make; and, seizing a candle, he began his traversal of the great passage which lay between him and the castle’s pleasure gardens. Here, sequestered in their separate niches, cast in calcified stone, were displayed the effigies of those who had preceded him, their faces by turns gaunt or triumphantly mocking, as they were illumined by the guttering of the candles in their sconces. As he crept timorously forwards, one, that of St Theresa of the Wheatfields, appeared to smile upon him, a smile not of kindness, but of the profoundest pathos, the very stone itself appearing to his gaze to change its form and assume preternaturally expressive qualities. But then, the candle flickered sulphurously, and he became aware of the gouts of wax sliding in their reptilian manner, bringing to his fevered mind the adder he had observed in the grounds of the estate, entwining itself around the ancient, decaying trunk of an ash - ah! Horrible! But then, as though some spirit had decreed that the sum of horror was not yet attained, the face changed again! Where there had been a smile, now naught remained but the chilly satirical sneer of stone; and, most awfully, the stone lived, and the stone spoke: “Look on my works ye mighty and despair”; and he felt, laceratingly, the derision of St Theresa. Near to fainting, yet unbowed, he stumbled towards the light; ahead of him, the doorway, beyond which, he knew, lay the sybaritic pleasures of the garden, its perfumes and fragrances filling the balmy afternoon air; and, Sirob was able to perceive, guarding that sacred portal, limned by the sunlight which poured down beyond them, from that other world, the gracefully sylph-like forms of women, beckoning him beyond. One of the women, he perceived as he approached, was wreathed in seaweed, glistening and iridescent, and held in her hand- or was it a claw?- a golden beaker, running over with sweet wine; the other, more severe in mien, clad all in grey, clutched- too dreadful!- the very sheets of vellum from which he had fled not a moment earlier; and, as he watched, she twitched towards him as though jerked by invisible strings, and her face hardened, turning, horrifyingly, into that of a man- and no other was it than St Dominic of Cummings; he, indeed, skinny finger extended, scowl upon that face so familiar and so fiendish. And as Sirob gazed, that visage itself shrunk until it was naught more than a mouth, shaping well known words in song: Much travail sans Plaisir/doth Sirob a dull boy make … did he travail, or did he enjoy? Did he work, or did he play? How was he, Sirob, to know? How could he, Sirob, know? And who could possibly tell him? Was he even real, or merely a simulacra of a human being, a two dimensional character in a Gothic novel? And again, how, how, how, could he hope to know?
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