That Hideous Strength

V

Merlin and the Director were meanwhile talking in the Blue Room. The Director had put aside his robe and circlet and lay on his sofa. The Druid sat in a chair facing him, his legs uncrossed, his pale large hands motionless on his knees, looking to modern eyes like an old conventional carving of a king. He was still robed and beneath the robe, as Ransom knew, had surprisingly little clothing, for the warmth of the house was to him excessive and he found trousers uncomfortable. His loud demands for oil after his bath had involved some hurried shopping in the village which had finally produced, by Denniston’s exertions a tin of Brilliantine. Merlinus had used it freely so that his hair and beard glistened and the sweet sticky smell filled the room. That was why Mr. Bultitude had pawed so insistently at the door that he was finally admitted and now sat as near the magician as he could possibly get, his nostrils twitching. He had never smelled such an interesting man before.

“Sir,” said Merlin, in answer to the question which the Director had just asked him, “I give you great thanks. I cannot, indeed, understand the way you live, and your house is strange to me. You give me a bath such as the Emperor himself might envy, but no one attends me to it: a bed softer than sleep itself, but when I rise from it I find I must put on my own clothes with my own hands as if I were a peasant. I lie in a room with windows of pure crystal so that you can see the sky as clearly when they are shut as when they are open, and there is not wind enough within the room to blow out an unguarded taper; but I lie in it alone, with no more honour than a prisoner in a dungeon. Your people eat dry and tasteless flesh, but it is off plates as smooth as ivory and as round as the sun. In all the house there is warmth and softness and silence that might put a man in mind of paradise terrestrial; but no hangings, no beautified pavements, no musicians, no perfumes, no high seats, not a gleam of gold, not a hawk, not a hound. You seem to me to live neither like a rich man nor a poor one: neither like a lord nor a hermit. Sir, I tell you these things because you have asked me. They are of no importance. Now that none hears us save the last of the seven bears of Logres, it is time that we should open counsels to each other.”

He glanced at the Director’s face as he spoke and then as if startled by what he saw there, leaned sharply forward.

“Does your wound pain you?” he asked.

Ransom shook his head. “No,” he said, “it is not the wound. We have terrible things to talk of.”

“Sir,” said Merlinus in a deeper and softer voice, “I could take all the anguish from your heel as though I were wiping it out with a sponge. Give me but seven days to go in and out and up and down and to and fro, to renew old acquaintance. These fields and I, this wood and I, have much to say to one another.”

As he said this he was leaning forward so that his face and the bear’s were almost side by side, and it almost looked as if those two might have been engaged in some kind of furry and grunted conversation. The druid’s face had a strangely animal appearance: not sensual nor fierce, but full of the patient, unarguing sagacity of a beast. Ransom’s meanwhile, was full of torment.

“You might find the country much changed,” he said forcing a smile.

“No,” said Merlin. “I do not reckon to find it much changed.” The distance between the two men was increasing every moment. Merlin was like something that ought not to be indoors. Bathed and anointed though he was, a sense of mould, gravel, wet leaves, weedy water, hung about him.

“Not changed,” he repeated in an almost inaudible voice. And in that deepening inner silence of which his face bore witness, one might have believed that he listened continually to a murmur of evasive sounds; rustling of mice and stoats, thumping progression of frogs, the small shock of falling hazel nuts, creaking of branches, runnels trickling, the very growing of grass. The bear had closed its eyes. The whole room was growing heavy with a sort of floating anaesthesia.

“Through me,” said Merlin, “you can suck up from the Earth oblivion of all pains.”

“Silence,” said the Director sharply. He had been sinking down into the cushions of his sofa with his head drooping a little towards his chest. Now he suddenly sat bolt upright. The magician started and straightened himself likewise. The air of the room was cleared. Even the bear opened its eyes again.

“No,” said the Director. “God’s glory, do you think you were dug out of the earth to give me a plaster for my heel? We have drugs that could cheat the pain as well as your earth-magic or better, if it were not my business to bear it to the end. I will hear no more of that. Do you understand?”

“I hear and obey,” said the magician. “But I meant no harm. If not to heal your own wound, yet for the healing of Logres, you will need my commerce with field and water. It must be that I should go in and out, and to and fro, renewing old acquaintance. It will not be changed, you know-not what you would call changed.”

Again that sweet heaviness, like the smell of hawthorn, seemed to be flowing back over the Blue Room.

“No,” said the Director in a still louder voice, “that cannot be done any longer. The soul has gone out of the wood and water. Oh, I dare say you could awake them a little. But it would not be enough. A storm, or even a river-flood, would be of little avail against our present enemy. Your weapon would break in your hands. For the Hideous Strength confronts us, and it is as in the days when Nimrod built a tower to reach heaven.”

“Hidden it may be,” said Merlinus, “but not changed. Leave me to work, Lord. I will wake it. I will set a sword in every blade of grass to wound them and the very clods of earth shall be venom to their feet. I will “

“No,” said the Director, “I forbid you to speak of it. If it were possible, it would be unlawful. Whatever of spirit may still linger in the earth has withdrawn fifteen hundred years further away from us since your time. You shall not speak a word to it. You shall not lift your little finger to call it up. I command you. It is in this age utterly unlawful.” Hitherto he had been speaking sternly and coldly. Now he leaned forward and said in a different voice, “It never was very lawful, even in your day. Remember, when we first knew that you would be awaked, we thought you would be on the side of the enemy. And because Our Lord does all things for each, one of the purposes of your reawakening was that your own soul should be saved.”

Merlin sank back into his chair like a man unstrung. The bear licked his hand where it hung, pale and relaxed, over the arm of the chair.

“Sir,” said Merlin presently, “if I am not to work for you in that fashion, then you have taken into your house a silly bulk of flesh, for I am no longer much of a man of war. If it comes to point and edge, I avail little.”

“Not that way either,” said Ransom, hesitating like a man who is reluctant to come to the point. “No power that is merely earthly,” he continued at last, “will serve against the Hideous Strength.”

“Then let us all to prayers,” said Merlinus. “But there also . . . I was not reckoned of much account . . . they called me a devil’s son, some of them. It was a lie. But I do not know why I have been brought back.”

“Certainly, let us stick to our prayers,” said Ransom “now and always. But that was not what I meant. There are celestial powers: created powers, not in this Earth, but in the Heavens.”

Merlinus looked at him in silence.

“You know well what I am speaking of,” said Ransom.

“Did not I tell you when we first met that the Oyeresu were my masters?”

“Of course,” said Merlin. “And that was how I knew you were of the college. Is it not our password all over the Earth?”

“A password?” exclaimed Ransom, with a look of surprise. “I did not know that.”

“But . . . but,” said Merlinus, “if you knew not the password, how did you come to say it?”

“I said it because it was true.”

The magician licked his lips which had become very pale.

“True as the plainest things are true,” repeated Ransom “true as it is true that you sit here with my bear beside you.”

Merlin spread out his hands. “You are my father and mother,” he said. His eyes, steadily fixed on Ransom, were large as those of an awe-struck child, but for the rest he looked a smaller man than Ransom had first taken him to be.

“Suffer me to speak,” he said at last, “or slay me if you will, for I am in the hollow of your hand. I had heard of it in my own days-that some had spoken with the gods. Blaise, my Master, knew a few words of that speech. Yet these were, after all, powers of Earth. For-I need not teach you, you know more than I-it is not the very Oyeresu, the true powers of heaven, whom the greatest of our craft meet, but only their earthly wraiths, their shadows. Only the earth-Venus, the earth-Mercurius: not Perelandra herself, not Viritrilbia himself. It is only-”

“I am not speaking of the wraiths,” said Ransom. “I have stood before Mars himself in the sphere of Mars and before Venus herself in the sphere of Venus. It is their strength, and the strength of some greater than they, which will destroy our enemies.”

“But, Lord,” said Merlin, “how can this be? Is it not against the Seventh Law?”

“What law is that?” asked Ransom.

“Has not our Fair Lord made it a law for Himself that He will not send down the Powers to mend or mar in this earth until the end of all things? Or is this the end that is even now coming to pass?”

“It may be the beginning of the end,” said Ransom, “but I know nothing of that. Maleldil may have made it a law not to send down the Powers. But if men by enginry and natural philosophy learn to fly into the Heavens, and come, in the flesh, among the heavenly powers and trouble them, He has not forbidden the Powers to react. For all this is within the natural order. A wicked man did learn so to do. He came flying, by a subtle engine, to where Mars dwells in Heaven and to where Venus dwells, and took me with him as a captive. And there I spoke with the true Oyeresu face to face. You understand me?”

Merlin inclined his head.

“And so the wicked man had brought about, even as Judas brought about, the thing he least intended. For now there was one man in the world-even my-self who was known to the Oyeresu and spoke their tongue, neither by God’s miracle nor by magic from Numinor, but naturally, as when two men meet in a road. Our enemies had taken away from themselves the protection of the Seventh Law. They had broken by natural philosophy the barrier which God of His own power would not break. Even so they sought you as a friend and raised up for themselves a scourge. And that is why Powers of Heaven have come down to this house, and in this chamber where we are now discoursing, Malacandra and Perelandra have spoken to me.”

Merlin’s face became a little paler. The bear nosed at his hand, unnoticed.

“I have become a bridge,” said Ransom.

“Sir,” said Merlin “what will come of this? If they put forth their power, they will unmake all middle earth.”

“Their naked power, yes,” said Ransom. “That is why they will work only through a man.”

The magician drew one large hand across his forehead.

“Through a man whose mind is opened to be so invaded,” said Ransom; “one who by his own will once opened it. I take Our Fair Lord to witness that if it were my task I would not refuse it. But he will not suffer a mind that still has its virginity to be so violated. And through a black magician’s mind their purity neither can nor will operate. One who has dabbled . . . in the days when dabbling had not begun to be evil, or was only just beginning . . . and also a Christian man and a penitent. A tool (I must speak plainly) good enough to be so used and not too good. In all these western parts of the world there was only one man who had lived in those days and could still be recalled. You . . .”

He stopped, shocked at what was happening. The huge man had risen from his chair, and stood towering over him. From his horribly opened mouth there came a yell that seemed to Ransom utterly bestial, though it was in fact only the yell of primitive Celtic lamentation. It was horrifying to see that withered and bearded face all blubbered with undisguised tears like a child’s. All the Roman surface in Merlinus had been scraped off. He had become a shameless, archaic monstrosity, babbling out entreaties in a mixture of what sounded like Welsh and what sounded like Spanish.

“Silence!” shouted Ransom. “Sit down. You put us both to shame.”

As suddenly as it had begun the frenzy ended. Merlin resumed his chair. To a modern it seemed strange that, having recovered his self control, he did not show the slightest embarrassment at his temporary loss of it. The whole character of the two-sided society in which this man must have lived became clearer to Ransom than pages of history could have made it.

“Do not think,” said Ransom, “that for me either it is child’s play to meet those who will come down for you empowering.”

“Sir,” faltered Merlin, “you have been in Heaven. I am but a man. I am not the son of one of the Airish Men. That was a lying story. How can I? . . . You are not as I. You have looked upon their faces before.”

“Not on all of them,” said Ransom. “Greater spirits than Malacandra and Perelandra will descend this time. We are in God’s hands. It may unmake us both. There is no promise that either you or I will save our lives or our reason. I do not know how we can dare to look upon their faces; but I know we cannot dare to look upon God’s if we refuse this enterprise.”

Suddenly the magician smote his hand upon his knee.

“Mehercule!” he cried. “Are we not going too fast? If you are the Pendragon, I am the High Council of Logres, and I will council you. If the Powers must tear me in pieces to break our enemies, God’s will be done. But is it yet come to that? This Saxon king of yours who sits at Windsor, now-is there no help in him?”

“He has no power in this matter.”

“Then is he not weak enough to be overthrown?”

“I have no wish to overthrow him. He is the king. He was crowned and anointed by the Archbishop. In the order of Logres I may he Pendragon, but in the order of Britain I am the King’s man.”

“Is it, then, his great men-the counts and legates and bishops-who do the evil and he does not know of it?”

“It is-though they are not exactly the sort of great men you have in mind.”

“And are we not big enough to meet them in plain battle?”

“We are four men, some women, and a bear.”

“I saw the time when Logres was only myself and one man and two boys, and one of those was a churl. Yet we conquered.”

“It could not be done now. They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived. We should die without even being heard of.”

“But what of the true clerks? Is there no help in them? It cannot be that all your priests and bishops are corrupted.”

“The Faith itself is torn in pieces since your day and speaks with a divided voice. Even if it were made whole, the Christians are but a tenth part of the people. There is no help there.”

“Then let us seek help from over sea. Is there no Christian prince in Neustria or Ireland or Benwick who would come in and cleanse Britain if he were called?”

“There is no Christian prince left. These other countries are even as Britain, or else sunk deeper still in the disease.”

“Then we must go higher. We must go to him whose office it is to put down tyrants and give life to dying kingdoms. We must call on the Emperor.”

“There is no Emperor.”

“No Emperor . . .” began Merlin, and then his voice died away. He sat still for some minutes wrestling with a world which he had never envisaged. Presently he said, “A thought comes into my mind and I do not know whether it is good or evil. But because I am the High Council of Logres I will not hide it from you. This is a cold age in which I have awaked. If all this west part of the world is apostate, might it not be lawful, in our great need, to look further . . . beyond Christendom? Should we not find some even among the heathen who are not wholly corrupt? There were tales in my day of some such: men who knew not the articles of our most holy Faith but who worshipped God as they could and acknowledged the Law of Nature. Sir, I believe it would be lawful to seek help even there-beyond Byzantium. It was rumoured also that there was knowledge in those lands-an Eastern circle and wisdom that came West from Numinor. I know not where-Babylon, Arabia, or Cathay. You said your ships had sailed all round the earth, above and beneath.”

Ransom shook his head. “You do not understand “he said. “The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from Earth their mother and from the Father in Heaven. You might go East so far that East became West and you returned to Britain across the great Ocean, but even so you would not have come out anywhere into the light. The shadow of one dark wing is over all Tellus.”

“Is it, then, the end?” asked Merlin.

“And this,” said Ransom, ignoring the question, “is why we have no way left at all save the one I have told you. The Hideous Strength holds all this Earth in its fist to squeeze as it wishes. But for their one mistake, there would be no hope left. If of their own evil will they had not broken the frontier and let in the celestial Powers, this would be their moment of victory. Their own strength has betrayed them. They have gone to the gods who would not have come to them, and pulled down Deep Heaven on their heads. Therefore they will die. For though you search every cranny to escape, now that you see all crannies closed, you will not disobey me.”

And then, very slowly, there crept back into Merlin’s white face, first closing his dismayed mouth and finally gleaming in his eyes, that almost animal expression, earthy and healthy and with a glint of half humorous cunning.

“Well,” he said, “if the earths are stopped the fox faces the hounds. But had I known who you were at our first meeting I think I would have put the sleep on you as I did on your Fool.”

“I am a very light sleeper since I have travelled in the Heavens,” said Ransom.