Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) (2 page)

“Bring what?”

He fairly leaped to the table where he pulled the cloth from the rectangular bundle, revealing a book.  Even from across the room, even with his failing eyesight, Tomás knew this was like no book he had ever seen. 

“This,” he said, lifting the candle and bringing both closer.  He held the book before Tomás, displaying the cover.  “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Tomás shook his head.  No, he hadn’t.

The covers and spine seemed to be made of stamped metal.  He squinted at the strange marks embossed on the cover.  They made no sense at first, then seemed to swim into focus.  Words…in Spanish… at least one was in Spanish.

Compendio
ran across the upper half in large, ornate letters; and below that, half size:
Srem
.

“What do you see?” Adelard said.  The candle flame wavered as his hand began to shake.

“The title, I should think.”

“The words, Prior.  Please tell me the words you see.”

“My eyes are bad but I am not blind:
Compendio
and
Srem
.”

The candle flame wavered more violently.

“When I look at it, Prior, I too see
Srem
, but to my eyes the first word is not
Compendio
but
Compendium
.”

Tomás bent closer. No, his eyes had not fooled him.

“It is as plain as day:
Compendio
.  It ends in i-o.”

“You were raised speaking Spanish, were you not, Prior?”

“As a boy of Valladolid, I should say so.”

“As you know, I was raised in
Lyon and spent most of my life speaking French before the pope assigned me to assist you.”

To rein me in, you mean, Tomás thought, but said nothing.

The current Pope, Alexander VI, thought him too …what word had he had used? 
Fervent
.  Yes, that was it.  How could one be too fervent in safeguarding the Faith?  And hadn’t he previously narrowed procedures, limiting torture only to those accused by at least two citizens of good standing?  Before that, any wild accusation could send someone to the rack.

“Yes-yes.  What of it?”

“When…”  He swallowed.  “When
you
look at the cover, you see
Compendio
, a Spanish word.  When
I
look at the cover I see a French word:
Compendium
.”

Tomás pushed the book away and struggled to his feet. 

“Have you gone mad?” 

Adelard staggered back, trembling.  “I feared I was, I was sure I was, but you see it too.”

“I see what is stamped in the metal, nothing more!”

“But this afternoon, when Amaury was sweeping my room, he spied the cover and asked where I had learned to read Berber.  I asked him what he meant.  He grinned and pointed to the cover, saying ‘Berber!  Berber!’”

Tomás felt himself going cold.

“Berber?”

“Yes.  He was born in Almeria where they speak Berber, and to his eyes the two words on the cover were written in Berber script.  He can read only a little of the writing, but he saw enough of it growing up.  I opened the book for him and he kept nodding and grinning, saying ‘Berber’ over and over.”

Tomás knew Amaury, as did everyone else in the monastery
– a simpleminded Morisco who performed menial tasks for the monks, like sweeping and serving at table.  He was incapable of duplicity.

“After that, I gave Brother Ramiro a quick look at the cover, and he saw
Compendio
, just as you do.”  Adelard looked as if he were in physical pain.  “It appears to me, good Prior, that whoever looks at this book sees the words in their native tongue.  But how can that be?  How can that
be
?”

Tomás’s knees felt weak.  He pulled the chair to his side and lowered himself onto it.

“What sort of deviltry have you brought into our house?”

“I had no idea it was any sort of deviltry when I bought it.  I spied it in the marketplace.  A Moor had laid it out on a blanket with other trinkets and carvings.  I thought it so unusual I bought it for Brother Ramiro
– you know how he loves books.  I thought he could add it to our library.  Not till Amaury made his comment did I realize that it was more than simply a book with an odd cover.  It…”  He shook his head.  “I don’t know what it is, Prior, but it has certainly been touched by deviltry.  That is why I’ve brought it to you.”

To me, Tomás thought.  Well, it would have to be me, wouldn’t it.

Yet in all his fifteen years as Grand Inquisitor he had never had to deal with sorcery or witchcraft.  Truth be told, he could give no credence to that sort of nonsense.  Peon superstitions.

Until now.

“That is not all, Prior.  Look at the pattern around the words.  What do you see?”

Tomás leaned closer.  “I see crosshatching.”

“So do I.  Now, close your eyes for a count of three.”

He did so, then reopened them.  The pattern had changed to semicircles, each row facing the opposite way of the row above and below it.

His heart gave a painful squeeze in his chest.

“What do you see?”

“A…a wavy pattern.”

“I kept my eyes open and I still see the cross hatching.”

Tomás said nothing as he tried to comprehend what was happening here.  Finally…

“There is surely deviltry on the covers.  What lies between?”

Adelard’s expression was bleak.  “Heresy, Prior…the most profound heresy I have ever seen or heard.”

“That is an extreme judgment, Brother Adelard.  It also means you have read it.”

“Not all.  Not nearly all.  I spent the rest of the afternoon and all night reading it until just before I came to your door.  And even so, I have only begun.  It is evil, Prior.  Unspeakably evil.”

He did not recall Adelard being prone to exaggeration, but this last had to be an overstatement. 

“Show me.”

Adelard placed the tome on the table and opened it.  Tomás noticed that the metal cover was attached to the spine by odd interlacing hinges of a kind he had never seen before.  The pages looked equally odd.  Moving his chair closer, he reached out and ran his fingers over the paper
– if it was paper at all – and it felt thinner than the skin of an onion, yet completely opaque.  He would have expected such delicate material to be marred by wrinkles and tears, but each page was perfect. 

As was the writing that graced those pages
– perfect Spanish. It had the appearance of an ornate handwritten script, yet each letter was perfect, and identical to every other of its kind.  Every “a” looked like every other “a,” every “m” like every other “m.”  Tomás had seen one of the Holy Bibles printed by that German, Gutenberg, where each letter had been exactly like all its brothers.  The Gutenberg book had been printed in two columns per page, however, whereas the script in this compendium flowed from margin to margin.

“Show me heresy,” Tomás said.

“Let me show you deviltry first, Prior,” said the monk as he began to turn the pages at blinding speed. 

“You go too fast.  How will you know when to stop?”

“I will know, Prior.  I will know.”

Tomás saw numerous illustrations fly by, many in color.

“Here!”  Adelard said, stopping and jabbing his finger at a page.  “Here is deviltry most infernal!”

Tomás felt his saliva dry as he faced a page with an illustration that moved…a globe spinning in a rectangular black void.  Lines crisscrossed the globe, connecting glowing dots on its surface. 

“Heavenly Lord!  It…”  He licked his lips.  “It moves.”

He reached out, but hesitated.  It looked as if his hand might pass into the void depicted on the page.

“Go ahead, Prior. I have touched it.”

He ran his fingers over the spinning globe.  It felt as flat and smooth as the rest of the page
– no motion against his fingertips, and yet the globe continued to turn beneath them. 

“What sorcery is this?”

“I was praying you could tell me. Do you think that sphere is supposed to represent the world?”

“I do not know.  Perhaps.  The Queen has just sent that Genoan,
Colón
, on his third voyage to the New World.  He has proven that the world is round…a sphere.”

Adelard shrugged.  “He has proven only what sailors have been saying for decades.”

Ah, yes.  Brother Abelard fancied himself a philosopher. 

Tomás stared at the spinning globe.  Although some members of the Church hierarchy argued against it, most now accepted that the world God had created for Mankind was indeed round; but if this apparition was supposed to be that world, then the perspective was from that of the Lord Himself.

Why now?  Why, with his health slipping away like sand – he doubted he would survive the year – did a tome that could only be described as sorcerous find its way to his quarters?  In his younger days he would have relished hunting down the perpetrators of this deviltry.  But now… now he barely had the strength to drag himself through the day.

He sighed.  “Light my candle and leave this abomination to me.  I would read it.”

“I know you must, dear Prior, but prepare yourself.  The heresies are so profound they will…they will steal your sleep.”

“I doubt that Brother Adelard.”  In his years as Grand Inquisitor he had heard every conceivable heresy.  “I doubt that very much.”

But no matter what its contents, this tome had already stolen his sleep.

After Adelard departed, he looked around at his spare quarters.  Four familiar whitewashed walls, bare except for the crucifix over his bed.  A white ceiling and a sepia tiled floor.  A cot, a desk, a chair, a small chest of drawers, and a Holy Bible comprised the furnishings.  As prior, as Grand Inquisitor, as the queen’s confessor, no one would have raised an eyebrow had he requisitioned more comfortable quarters.  But earthly trappings led to distractions, and he would not be swayed from his Holy Course. 

Before opening the
Compendium
, he took his bible, kissed its cover, and laid in in his lap…

The full chapbook is available here:
The Compendium of Srem

1923-1924

Aryans and Absinthe

…introduces us to Ernst Drexler.  His connection to the super-secret Septimus Order is never mentioned in the story, but he’s obviously got an agenda.  He plays a pivotal role in the shape of the twentieth century, and his foppish son, Ernst II will be a major player in the last few decades of the Secret History.

As for the story itself:
Early in the summer of 1993 Douglas E. Winter called to invite me into his latest anthology. 
Revelations
would consist of a novella for every decade of the twentieth century, each story centering on some apocalyptic event.  He told me to pick a decade.  I chose the 1920s – Weimar Germany, specifically.  The arts were flourishing but the economic chaos and runaway inflation of the times were so surreal, so devastating to everyone’s day-to-day life that people – Jew and gentile alike – were looking for a savior.  A foppish little guy named Hitler came to prominence presenting himself as that savior. 

I did extensive research for “Aryans and Absinthe.” Charles Bracelen Flood’s remarkable
Hitler: The Path to Power
(Houghton Mifflin, 1989) was a major source.  I wanted to get the details right so I could make you feel you were
there
.  I was pretty high on it when I finished.  I thought I’d captured tenor and tempo of the times, felt I’d conveyed an apocalyptic experience. 

The opening segment follows:

Aryans and Absinthe

(sample)