Unholy Relics and Other Uncanny Tales

A FORGOTTEN ITALIAN

“Can I come in?” inquired a known and well-loved voice one chilly winter afternoon as its possessor, the owner of a humorous old mouth decorated by an outsize in curved pipes, and surmounted by a most episcopal beak of a nose, peered round the door of the already smoke-laden study in the old manor-house occupied by Alan Granville and myself.

The suppliant was our dear old Dominican friend. Father Manson, for whom there is always a chair—provided he cares to shoot its burden of books to the floor.

We both put down our work and rose to greet the priest, whom we had not seen for some weeks, and I rang for the Apostles (our henchmen), of whom James put in an appearance and was carefully impressed with the necessity of producing some of the Father’s favourite muffins for tea.

“You look puzzled. Father,” remarked Alan, “anything worrying you?”

“No, no, not worrying exactly, but very, very puzzling.” He settled by the fire, produced his pouch, and suddenly shot out the question:

“Do you know anything about a man called Giovanni-Paolo Marana, and do you know if he wrote a book called The Turkish Spy?”

Neither Alan nor I have much use for the niceties of bibliography outside our own historical studies, and we were floored. The only information even my colleague could give was a negative sort.

“Er—no,” he said slowly, “I have never heard of him, but as it happens, I did once accidently come across a reference to a book about a Turkish spy, while hunting for something quite different; but that one was written by a Frenchman named J. du Fresne de Francheville about 1740. If I remember rightly, it had to do with the alleged adventures of a supposed spy at the court of Frankfurt, and was later denounced as a bit of not-very-clever fiction.”

“Why do you want to know. Father?” I asked, after giving Alan time to see if he could recall any more about it.

“Because, Gregory,” said the Dominican solemnly, “a very peculiar experience has just befallen me. As you confided to me your Toulouse affair of the ‘unholy relics’ some time ago. I’d like to tell you about it—that is, if I am not interrupting the work in hand too much?”

“Not at all, Father!” I exclaimed, “you know that you above all people are always welcome here—as for the litter, have your ever seen this den clear of it? Well, here comes James with the tea, so tell us over your favourite muffins.”

“Well,” he began, gazing reflectively into the fire as James did the honours with the tea, “as you know, we priests set our faces resolutely against any of the blasphemous rubbish with which money-making charlatans deceive the public under the name of spiritualism. That attitude, as you realise, is not incompatible with the Church’s teachings, but this time an experience has come my way which has caused me to think deeply, especially as there is absolutely no suggestion of charlatanism in the matter—indeed, the very reverse.”

“You mean that no attempt is made to profit, by the person concerned?” asked Alan.

“Exactly,” the Dominican agreed. “Last week, I had to go to Northampton for a private conference on matters connected with Church organisation in the Midlands, and as I was delayed half a day by having to attend a dying parishioner of my own, I found that the Priory, where I generally stay, was full up.

“However, I met an old colleague from Nottingham Cathedral, with whom I had attended the same seminary as a youth, and he persuaded me to go along with him to some excellent ‘digs,’ to which he had been recommended, not far from the place of conference.

“This shelter was the home of a Mrs. Shelley, a moderately well-educated woman who through adverse circumstances—her husband was a good but poorly-paid craftsman, and left practically nothing when he died—has been compelled to augment her income by letting apartments, chiefly to theatrical people. She isn’t at all the usual landlady type of woman, and over supper we found it quite a pleasure to talk to her. I may say that, although a staunch Anglican, she was not averse either from taking us in or from having a friendly discussion on theological problems. Then after supper, the two principals from one of the local theatres came in, and we found them most pleasant folk, in spite of their rather bohemian and unorthodox attitude to life.

“The next day was a Friday, I remember. After tea Mrs. Shelley, my colleague, and myself sat talking over the fire, when I happened for the first time to glance up at the pictures which hung round this particular room, and, with my interest in art, I at once noticed something rather peculiar about them—especially one, a little piece in oils on a wooden panel, which looked, at that distance, to be a sixteenth or early seventeenth century painting of a man in a scholar’s black robe, with a flat cap on his head, and holding under his arm a book covered in red plush or leather, stamped G.P.M.

“‘Excuse my being rude, Mrs. Shelley,’ I observed, ‘but you have some rather strange old pictures up there. Are you a collector?’”

“‘Ah, no,’ she smiled, ‘but as you have mentioned them I suppose I must tell you about them. I painted those pictures.’”

“I was astounded, and remarked that she must be a very fine artist, and one of very mixed styles, for some of the pictures looked almost post-impressionist, while that of the scholar was absolutely in the manner of a Renaissance old master.

“‘Wrong again, Father!’” said Mrs. Shelley, settling herself comfortably with some knitting. She went on:

“‘Now, you two gentlemen are priests; I know well the view the Catholic clergy take of spirit matters, and you may stop your ears at what I’m going to tell you.

“‘Normally, I can’t even draw a straight line, let alone mix colours or paint a picture; but with the passing of years—I am now 54 and don’t mind admitting it—I have experienced a strange power, a growing ability, to do this, under some influence that I at any rate cannot explain.

“‘Let me say at once that I am not a spiritualist, in the ordinary sense. Indeed, after going one night, much against my inclinations, to a public meeting of these people, I have been utterly disgusted with their ways.

“‘Even as a little girl, though, I had some psychic gifts; but what I saw was so pooh-poohed by my strict church-going parents that in the end I ceased, as a sensitive child will, to confide in them, and kept it to myself. For instance, going up to bed one night, I distinctly saw a coffin in the doorway of one bedroom I passed on the way to my top landing; and in that room my brother died suddenly a fortnight later.

“‘Well, some time after I had married and come to this present house, a woman I knew persuaded me, more as a joke than anything, to go and see an old fortune-teller in the town who was reputed to be rather good.

“‘I went regarding the whole thing as nonsense, but as soon as the old dame set eyes on me, she said intently that if I took up a pencil, it would ‘write by itself,’ but that I must do this in a spirit of reverence.

“‘Frankly, I thought this just piffle—in fact, I thought no more about it; but some months later, going into the drawing-room to water the plants, I saw on the table a pencil and paper, both of a kind which, I knew, belonged to no-one in the house; and we had had no visitors for a long time. While I was standing wondering how they got there—for I’m a very tidy person—the old seer’s words came back to me.

“‘Still treating the matter jokingly, I thought: I wonder if the thing will do automatic writing? So I took up the pencil lightly, without putting any pressure on it, and let it move of its own accord over the paper. The result was a picture of the most weird trees and animals, like nothing on earth. I found out long afterwards, when my gifts had developed and I started investigating the things I had drawn, that they depicted plants and creatures long-extinct.

“‘After this, on several occasions when suddenly impelled to take up a pencil, I got messages; one foretold accurately that my mother would die on a certain date.

“‘I now began to treat the matter seriously, and ultimately something told me to buy brushes and oil-paints, of all things! I did. For some months they remained untouched.

“‘Then one night, I had a peculiar dream, and it was repeated for several nights afterwards. I dreamed I saw a dignified, hawk-faced man in a black robe, with a flat cap on his head, walking slowly down a huge flight of palace steps in Renaissance Italy, carrying under his arm a book bound in red, with the initials G.P.M. stamped on it in gold letters. Then the scene changed abruptly and I saw the same man in what looked like an oriental palace, dressed in baggy Arabian Nights costume. All the time he was muttering to himself in Italian—which language I don’t know—but somehow I seemed to know that the words meant ‘Turkish spy’.

“Naturally I couldn’t make head or tail of it, but a few evenings later I fell into a queer, half-trance sort of mood, and without consciously realising what I was doing, I got out the brushes, oil-paints, and a smoothed panel of wood that was lying about. It was rather laughable, really, for my dear husband next morning was looking all over the place for it. You see, he was an engraver, and he’d got this plaque ready for some client’s name-plate. I laugh now sometimes when I think of the look on his face when I had to explain what had happened to it!

“‘Anyhow, I, who had never in my life touched oils, and knew not the first thing about the mystery of their technique, found myself painting the picture you now see up there.

“For weeks afterwards I questioned friends and acquaintances more educated in literary matters than myself, as to whether they had ever heard of a man with initials G.P.M., connected with a book about a Turkish spy. None of them had, but a cousin finally made the sensible suggestion that, as she had promised me a day in London with her, we should take it, and go to the British Museum reading-room. ‘If that book exists, dear’, she said, ‘you can bet they’ve got it catalogued there.’ She was the only person, apart from my husband, to whom I had revealed the real reason for wanting to know.

“‘Well, to the British Museum we went, feeling very nervous in that deadly atmosphere of brainy silence, with irritable old scholars glaring up as we walked down to the great central circular desk of the reading-room. The official who came forward, however, was courtesy itself, and soon had his nose in their colossal catalogues.

“‘He ultimately came back with the information that the Museum library actually does possess a book called The Turkish Spy, written and published in the seventeenth century by a man named Giovanni Paolo Marana, otherwise known, in the French edition, as Jean-Paul Marana. He added that it was a very rare work, of which few copies are known.

“‘Well, there is the story of my panel. How on earth was I, a middle-class town housewife, who cannot even read French or Italian, and have no knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, to know that such a work had been written by a man of that name—the man of the initials in my picture? I can’t explain it. I don’t attempt to. All I can say is that I regard the gift of the brush as one sent from God.’”

“So, you see,” concluded Father Manson, “that’s why I wondered if you, a couple of historians of wide knowledge, had run across this obscure work. I have verified Mrs. Shelley’s statements at the British Museum, by the way.

“Somehow, you know,” he added, “I can’t think that even the Church would say this woman was possessed of an evil spirit. You see, another of her pictures is a striking pastel of Our Lady, signed with the name of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and five art experts whom I have taken to see it swear both picture and signature are genuinely his work. Have you any more muffins left, Gregory?”