What Manner of Man: Chapter 9 🦇

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LETTER TO VERA ARDELIAN

Dated April 11, 1950.

Dearest Sister,

At last I believe I am soon to be repaid for all my faithful effort. The blessed warmth of spring — “A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning / In Eden garden” — has revived me. My rest is no longer troubled by nightmares; I feel vital, brimming with renewed strength of purpose. All along I have known the Lord would guide me, if only I stayed true to Him.

At times I do find myself longing for home. To celebrate the Mass by oneself, though permissible, is a rather lonesome affair. (How strange to think that I have spent all of Holy Week in near solitude! Never, when I set out, did I imagine I should not find myself home by this time.) There was one moment, however, during my solitary Easter Vigil — as I lit the blessed candle, I felt a glorious, invisible presence by my side. When I looked up, there was no one there, but I am as certain as I can be that He was with me that night.

It is with His blessing that I feel ready to act. I have found in an unexpected place — an old, moth-eaten diary which I discovered among some books in the library — an important hint concerning ruins that lie somewhere beneath Whithern Hall. I intend to explore them the moment I can be reasonably certain that Lord Vane will be occupied; I feel it is of vital importance that I do this without his knowledge.

Today I write with all confidence that both I and my letters shall be with you soon.

Yours in Christ,
Fr Victor Ardelian

JOURNAL ENTRY

Dated April 14, 1950.

There can be little doubt that Lord Vane is one of the wisest, most learned men I have ever met — the depth and breadth of his knowledge of ecclesiastical matters alone staggers me. Humbling though it is to say, Lord Vane knows far more about the history and minutiae of the Church than I do myself. Even on those occasions when we disagree (and they are frequent; I am coming to understand that, whatever else Lord Vane may be, he is certainly no Catholic) I cannot help but admire the eloquence of his thought.

I must save him, this brilliant soul whom I seem to glimpse as through the bars of a cage. Oh, how I long to tell him that his liberation is nearly at hand — but to speak of the matter openly would only alert the demon that holds him prisoner.

I feel more assured of my purpose than ever after the evening I have just passed, though there were certainly a few perilous moments in the conversation I had with Lord Vane as we walked over the ground that lies between far side of the manor and the cliff.

It was early evening, but the days grow longer and the sun still hung low overhead. Usually he spends these hours before we dine confined to the private sanctuary of his conservatory. I often pass the closed door and notice the warm glow of lamps coming from within, but I have never yet ventured to intrude upon his solitude there. It came as a surprise, therefore, when he asked me to accompany him on a stroll around the manor.

As I feared, the demon is gaining perceptibly in its ascendance over him with each passing week. As we walked together, he seemed to waver between the man I have come to recognize and the serpent which I know coils within him.

The area between the eastern wall of the manor and the sheer drop into the sea must have once extended quite a bit farther. The remains of the cathedral foundations — which continue through and beyond the manor — disappear off the edge of the cliff at the place where the back of the choir must once have stood. A poignant reminder that we stand on vanishing ground, someday even Whithern Hall itself must surely be claimed by the ravenous sea.

He spoke of the history of the island with a richness of detail that thrilled me — everything from the time of the Roman invasion to the period when Swallow’s Rest served as a haven for Catholics fleeing persecution during the reign of Elizabeth I (though he did not seem to know what had been the ultimate fate of those communities.)

“I must admit, Father — I find it touches me to hear you express such a lively interest in my home. I had all but forgotten what it was like to feel the breath of life between those walls. There’s something about you, I don’t know precisely what, that I find strangely liberating.”

“Living completely alone amid all this — the ruins, this great, decaying house — I wonder that it hasn’t driven you mad.”

“What makes you think it hasn’t?” he said with a wry smile. “Never mind about me, though. Look, here’s what I brought you here to see. The ruins of the old cathedral sanctuary are all around us. You’re currently standing upon what remains of the chancel, and that stone over there —”

“That’s the altar?”

Even before he spoke, I had recognized it for what it was. I could imagine the immense, cracked slab had once been polished smooth, though it was impossible to tell after so long a time. It beggars the imagination to picture it as it must once have looked; draped in silk and surrounded by the trappings of worship — for at present it sits very nearly at the cliff’s edge, humbled by time and the sea.

He nodded. “The whole structure can hardly have been long completed when, according to family legend, the worshippers came together as a body and set fire to the place. Supposedly it was something they discovered about their priest — conducting Black Mass or some such thing. My venerable ancestor — the old sinner — hauled away the stones to form the foundations of Whithern Hall soon afterwards. Properly gutted the place; not much of the original structure survives, but he elected to keep the facade and connected outer walls, as you have seen, to form a courtyard. I don’t know why he kept the altar — sentimental value, perhaps.” He smiled derisively at this. “You can still see the mark on the stone where, legend has it, the blood fell when they opened the cleric’s breast.”

“The material antagonism of evil,” I murmured, “Black still marks the spot in the castle of Wartburg where Martin Luther is supposed to have flung his ink-horn at the Devil — though, officially, of course, I have to say he was a heretic.”

He smiled at my evident enthusiasm. “What ever made a man such as you choose the life of a priest, Father?” As I met his gaze, then, his eyes seemed to darken with a shadow I was coming to recognize.

My eyes fell from his face to his graceful gait as he stepped lightly around the altar, and suddenly I became aware that I had been careless; that this was the demon I was speaking to. I had to keep a closer watch on my tongue.

“To learn to see the soul for what it is — that part which elevates us above the level of beasts,” I said. “So that I might better understand the means by which the Devil gains entrance into the hearts of men.”

The low reverberation of his laugh sent a shiver up from the base of my spine. “Dear boy, you must know that no such thing exists; not, anyway, in such terms as you express it.” As he said this, I felt as if I were being challenged to some game. I knew better than to play along. “Tell me, then,” he continued, “What did you see in the hearts of your fellow men during your stay in St Silvan’s Head?”

The memory of the act I had witnessed as I walked near the village that day was more unbearable to me now than ever. “Nothing that I have not seen in my own.”

His next words came in a low, insinuating purr. “And what have you seen in mine?”

My gaze fell demurely downward, knowing better than to take up this challenge. I stepped over to the shattered altar and lightly traced a finger around the dark stain that spread across its surface. Though the sun was warm, the stone felt cool to the touch. “The evil presence in this place is ancient, then, if what you say is true.”

He strolled toward me. “This whole island is a last bastion of a time before civilization, salvation, and the rule of law. That ancient anarchy echoes through the corridors of Whithern Hall — have you not heard it?”

He had found it; the hook in my heart. I could feel its pull upon me; that temptation to know, to see with my own eyes that which was done away with by God and the Church — this, here, was the black chasm into which I must not fall. Lord Vane had come by my side now, I could feel him encroaching on me as a cold flame. My hand fell to my ring on its chain beneath my cassock.

Lord Vane stood very close now. When he spoke again, it was almost a whisper. “Have you noticed any change in me since you’ve come here?”

This took me aback as I had been wondering when those streaks of white had appeared in his hair; at his temples. When I had arrived he had certainly been raven-haired.

“That for which I brought you here is swiftly encroaching upon us — I feel it all around,” he said.

There are certain set questions which one is meant to ask when interviewing a person possessed by a demon; I felt there was safety in cleaving to those. “When did this feeling of evil first come to you?”

Something in him broke, then — I am not sure what, but either the question or the way in which I had asked seemed to move him. “When?” he repeated, his eyes straying out over the clifftop to the sea. “So long ago that I no longer remember. I’m not sure I’ve ever been without it.”

Had it grown up with him, then? This darkness could not be so fully entangled with him as to be inextricable. No, it if was indeed the man, now, whom I was speaking to, I know it’s not uncommon for the possessed to not be able to articulate the means by which the demon entered them. “The potential for evil exists in all men. You’ve simply been unfortunate.”

“Would that I were strong enough to free myself.” These whispered words struck at my heart. It was closer to an admission than I’d ever hoped to get.

When he opened his mouth to speak again, for a moment, no sound issued forth. When finally it did, there was a catch, a creak in his voice, as if he had to force the words past some barrier. “I can show it to you — the source of all this. It’s deep beneath the manor, a natural cavern that was transformed by the ancient peoples of this place into a grand temple. It’s a beautiful place. If you’re interested in archaeology, you would regret missing it even without these circumstances.”

Some part of me had been waiting for this; the devil’s offer that my colleague had described in his diary so long ago. (Proof, surely, the evil remained the same, though the man had changed.) Yet when the moment came, I was unprepared. “Oh, no — I can’t.”

Lord Vane’s eyes narrowed for a moment in sharp attention. “Dear boy, why ever not?” he asked, “God hasn’t issued an ultimatum against archaeologists since I last checked, has he?”

I had no reply to this. In the moment, I felt that if he were to somehow find out I’d read that diary — inferred in any way that I had access to such a source of information, it would destroy the slim advantage I held. I blurted out the first words that came into my mind.

“You asked me why I chose to enter the priesthood — there was another reason.” I cursed myself for the slip. I had successfully diverted him, he was transfixed — but at what cost? I was trapped, backed up against a wall of the unsayable. As the torrent of memories came back, I trembled dangerously on the edge of opening the floodgates of my heart.

“And what is that?” The purr had returned to his voice.

“I —” I fought desperately to think of some answer but my mind had emptied of all else. There was only the cave, the darkness. “I gave myself to God partly out of a desire to atone for a great crime committed in my youth,” my lip trembled as I spoke the words, “A crime which resulted directly from too-great an interest in ancient and pagan things.”

And with that, the demon had found the chink in my armour. I could see the gleam of victory in his eye. He had me. If he could twist from me this kind of admission, then what else could he wrench from me? Despite myself, I was almost in awe of him. Of the workings of Satan, the devices of evil. Of how easy it is to fall.

Heaven knows what I would have admitted next, were it not that in that moment we were interrupted.

We both turned as a voice called out our names. There, coming towards us from the direction of the east wing, was Danny.

P.S. FROM 2024:

Hello! 👋 What you’re reading is a draft version of What Manner of Man. This scene is heavily reworked in the final edition. More dialogue! Better dialogue! Seriously, their conversation makes way more sense in this version! (Also: there’s a new, rather intense moment toward the end of which I am particularly fond.)

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