Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (23 page)

“But…the mummy…” Stalls managed to croak. “The spell didn’t work…?”

“The ssspell did work. The fault lay elsssewhere. In order to revive a body that hasss been mummified, it mussst be made whole. The organs that had been removed mussst be replaced. For many yearsss the brethren have sssearched for the jarsss containing the remains of Nephren-Ka and one by one, we found them.”

“So that’s why you broke into my room, you needed…then I was right! The jar did contain the remains of the legendary Black Pharaoh!”

“Yesss.”

“But you’re spell still didn’t work,” Stalls said again. “You failed.”

“Not yet. There isss ssstill a chance.”

“What do you mean?” asked Stalls, suddenly aware of a pair of long, hooked instruments in the figure’s hand. Had he been holding them all the time? Why hadn’t he noticed them before?

“One of the organsss preserved in the jars was damaged but there isss ssstill a chance the ssspell will work without it, if a sssubssstitute can be found.”

His clothing damp with the sweat that now seemed to be running freely from every pore of his skin, Stalls couldn’t take his eyes from the hooks, instruments that his experience in Egyptology told him he should recognize.

“Substitute for what?” he managed to say, knowing, dreading the answer.

“The brain,” said the figure, lunging forward suddenly and grasping Stalls’ head in the huge, cold grip of its free hand.

Screaming hysterically, Stalls squirmed and writhed in an effort to avoid the descending hooks, but as the other figures moved in to take hold of him and he felt his head being tilted back to expose his upturned nose, the burnoose fell away from the figure holding the hooks.

Eyes wide in terror, his head held firmly in the grasp of cold, scaly hands, the last sight Stalls had before the painful operation began
was of the monstrous, misshapen head of a snake…

ou may know me simply as the author of a number of popular books lining the shelves of your local bookstore, but did you know that I’ve also held positions in various institutions of higher learning in the area of history, including my last position as a professor of history at Harvard University? It is all quite true, but in turning my back on academia and concentrating instead on writing books understandable to the common reader, my fellow scholars have ostracized me, turned me out of their midst and otherwise maligned my reputation. How and why has all this come about? That is the subject of this article as I attempt to describe the events that led to my decision to leave the rarefied atmosphere of the university and instead bring the light of knowledge and understanding heretofore reserved for the elitists to the general public.

My name of course, is Laughton Keen, and in the summer of 19--, I took leave of my position at Harvard to go on sabbatical to England in order to conduct on-site research regarding a subject I had long held to be fascinating and little studied. I refer to early Mediterranean influences in pre-Roman Great Britain. In particular, the area of southwestern England where the Severn River rolls from its source in Wales to its drainage at the old port city of Severnford. In expectation of my visit, I had conducted preliminary research in America involving Greek and Roman texts and even recently translated but fragmentary Mesopotamian records indicating a very early Mediterranean presence in the region.

All that, of course, I’d expected; what did come as a surprise, was information revealed in a late edition of the scholarly Italian journal,
La Vita Romano
. It reported on the discovery of new pages from the great Roman historian Tacitus’
Histories
, only the first book of which had been known to survive into modern times. Tacitus was known as an extremely conscientious researcher himself, frequently drawing upon still-earlier, now lost, historical records for his facts. Although the article concerned itself mainly with the discovery of the pages in the library of a northern Italian abbey, what interested me was Tacitus’ reference to a still earlier book called
Brittania
and its account of a Roman expedition to western England. According to the story, sometime around 116 AD, eight maniples of the VI Legion marched from Glevum to Severnium, now modern Severnford, in response to complaints from the local citizens and Roman merchants about native activities further inland. Unfortunately, that was as far as the fragment went, but it was enough for me to decide to make it the central theme around which my next paper would revolve.

Accordingly, I made my plans and duly set out for England, arriving in good time and wasting little more in renting an automobile and setting out over the country’s perilous motorways toward the city of Brichester and its university. The drive was long, but made pleasant by my passage through the bucolic countryside alive with two thousand years of history. At last, I emerged from the hedgerow-bordered secondary roads and entered the city from the east. From a rise, I could make out the tangle of its streets, testament to the city’s haphazard growth. The old cathedral sat alongside the river that bisected the town and nearby loomed the ivy covered walls of the university buildings. Somewhere, church bells sounded lauds as I maneuvered my car down a gradient that debauched into the city center. I found the Victoria Road and followed it to the university and parked in the faculty lot. Announcing myself to the rector, I asked that formal introductions be postponed until the next day to allow me the time to sleep off my jet lag.

In the morning, I was introduced to the chancellor and members of the faculty at a brunch in my honor, so it wasn’t until later in the afternoon that I was able to visit the library and begin my researches. In the following days, I had the opportunity to see how good the library really was, in particular, the university’s manuscript collection and local records. Its private collection of Severn Valley lists was quite helpful in affording me the opportunity to draw up a complete timeline of persons and events of importance from the tenth century to the present. Before the Norman invasion, records became more problematical with only scattered local histories written after 500 AD by monastic institutions in the area and preserved on microfilm. It was on the evening of the third day that I came across my most significant find. Preserved on microfilm, the
Historia Severnium
, an episodic chronicle of the Severnford area by Govin Dryth, confessor to the half-barbaric warlord of the south midlands, seemed to describe a much-garbled version of Tacitus’ account of the VI Legion’s expedition to Severnium. In it, Dryth describes, with proper clerical indignation, certain pagan rites being practiced up the Severn River from Severnium that seemed to incite anti-Roman feelings among the only-nominally conquered natives of the area. Dryth correctly identified the VI Legion, mentioning the fact that one of its maniples was made up of German soldiers, and tells of how they marched off out of sight of the farthest civilized settlement. They weren’t seen for over three weeks until they returned, pale and shaken, to swiftly embark their waiting ships and sail back to Londinium. Beyond that, Dryth had only third-hand information, supposedly given by the commander of the expedition, of the direction in which the Legionnaires had marched. Mention was made of Throne Hill and geological formations such as the Devil’s Staircase. I found no further mention of the incident and so contented myself with trying to correlate the landmarks given by Dryth with those found on modern maps. The key seemed to be in finding the Severnium Way, which turned out to be the present day Severnford Road that wound northward from Severnford along the Severn River to Wales. Apparently, the industrious Romans had built a paved road from Severnium to facilitate the bringing of local produce to market. It’d been marked at intervals with mile stones indicating its distance from Rome.

After I’d gotten everything I could from the library, I took some time to stop and think about just what it was I was looking for. There was still no hint of what the Roman expedition found; merely its effect upon veteran campaigners. Whatever it was, I felt it would be more than enough to use as the centerpiece of my new paper and even if it weren’t, my curiosity was aroused; what better way to spend a few weeks in England than by exploring the countryside for heretofore unknown Roman historical sites?

Armed with maps and research materials, I left Brichester and made my way southwest to Severnford. From there, I went to the north of the city and entered the Severnford Road. It proved to be a narrow, two-lane affair that did indeed follow roughly the course of the river. Moving very deliberately, I tried to locate those Roman milestones that still existed; when I did, I drew out my maps and sketches and tried to match the landmarks I had with the landscape before my eyes. On the second day, passing through the village of Little Dorking, it occurred to me that it could have been the settlement mentioned in Dryth’s account called Throne Hill. As it was lunch time anyway, I decided to stop for a bite to eat and to ask questions of the local citizenry. The food was good, but the cooperation of the waitress and patrons in replying to my questions was less than satisfying. They seemed a suspicious lot and I felt I was lucky to get the news that the Devil’s Staircase was only a few miles beyond the village. I decided to remain the night at Little Dorking, reaching the Devil’s Staircase — a geological formation I was surprised to see actually did look for all the world like a gargantuan staircase — the next morning. Bare of trees, the steps somehow struck me as strange and eerie and it did not take much imagination to see how the simple folk of pre-historic Britain could have attached all sorts of superstitious noti

It was after reaching the Devil’s Staircase however, that my search bogged down and I was forced into a longer, more methodical search pattern that involved exploring every road in the area. Although some were paved, many turned out to be little more than two ruts that wound about the forests and pastures of the countryside. More than once, I had to abandon my car and continue on foot, lifting low-hanging branches away from my face and waving the occasional honey bee from my hair. It was frustrating but hardly bothersome. A more relaxing way to spend idle hours could scarcely be imagined. It was summer, and the warm sunshine that broke through the leafy overhang of the surrounding woodland was pleasant against my skin. Stone fences angled away over hill and field as early seeds wafted on the gentle breeze and out over the pastures of longish grass that sloped down to lonely farm houses. White clouds hugged the horizon and in early evening as I turned back to my car, they gave way to the first stars that winked over the eastern sky.

After a week however, these charms began to pall as my options dwindled away. I had discovered a network of little-used roads, cart paths that gave access between pastures, on the far side of the Devil’s Staircase and intended to finish my search of the area there before moving farther north, where I had even less confidence of finding anything. I was beginning to feel disappointment, but not yet despair. After a hearty breakfast back in Little Dorking, I drove up the Severn Road, past the Devil’s Staircase and off onto a single lane road. Two miles up, having passed the last farmhouse, I veered onto a little-used dirt road. Pulling into a shady glade along side the path, I killed the engine and looked up. I started. There in front of me, half swathed in tall grass and creepers, was a weathered milestone. Excitedly, I exited the car and crashed through some underbrush and began tearing away at the vines that obscured the stele. I ran my fingers over its face and made out the dim Latin markings. Its presence there, and the lack of any reference to it on my new maps gave me reason to hope that here at last was new evidence, beyond the landmarks I had already identified, that Tacitus’ VI Legion might have indeed been in the area twenty centuries before.

I returned to the car and gathered my things, then stepped out onto the path and followed one of the ruts as they bent gently to the left. A stone fence meandered through the brush and trees on my right and on the other side I could see old pieces of wooden fencing amid the creepers and vines. Beyond them, fields and pastures rolled away allowing me a clear observation of the surrounding countryside. As the road emerged from the wood, it fell into open country and I looked eagerly in every direction for any sign of what could have been man-made structures. Many old Roman sites were overgrown with trees and underbrush creating little islands of uncleared land, so any lone clump of vegetation amid otherwise open fields was to be regarded with suspicion. Finally, after a while, I determined to leave the road and cross an open pasture to my right that rose steadily for a good four or five hundred yards. From the crest of the hill it formed, I thought I might have a good view of the landscape beyond.

Leaving the path, I plunged into the waist-high grasses that filled the pasture between me and the base of the hill. Grasshoppers leaped and buzzed as I drove them from their resting places and a light dust of pollen covered my clothing. Up ahead, a sudden gust of wind bent the grass in a long wave that rolled down the gentle slope of the field. At last, I came to another stone wall, heretofore hidden by the tall grass, and negotiated it with some difficulty as it was swathed in veils of thorn bushes. The face of the hill proved treacherous as the long grass hid an uneven face pocked with a scattering of stones. Then I was at the top and shading my eyes against the glare of the sun and scanning the land before me. It was a long, shallow valley devoid of any evidence of human habitation: no houses or barns or even roads. The inside slopes of the surrounding hills were lightly forested and the valley floor seemed to be covered with a carpet of short grass. All that is, save for an irregular patch of darkened ground that blotted its center. My interest was piqued and I decided right then to walk the short distance to investigate.