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There is no way Marjorie Bowen wasn't writing the filthiest smut imaginable about these characters in between her chapters.

The Music of Erich Zann

By H.P. Lovecraft

I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place; and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d’Auseil. But despite all I have done it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.

That my memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the Rue d’Auseil, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there. But that I cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing; for it was within a half-hour’s walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiarities which could hardly be forgotten by anyone who had been there. I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d’Auseil.

The Rue d’Auseil lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brick blear-windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone. It was always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighbouring factories shut out the sun perpetually. The river was also odorous with evil stenches which I have never smelled elsewhere, and which may some day help me to find it, since I should recognise them at once. Beyond the bridge were narrow cobbled streets with rails; and then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incredibly steep as the Rue d’Auseil was reached.

I have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the Rue d’Auseil. It was almost a cliff, closed to all vehicles, consisting in several places of flights of steps, and ending at the top in a lofty ivied wall. Its paving was irregular, sometimes stone slabs, sometimes cobblestones, and sometimes bare earth with struggling greenish-grey vegetation. The houses were tall, peaked-roofed, incredibly old, and crazily leaning backward, forward, and sidewise. Occasionally an opposite pair, both leaning forward, almost met across the street like an arch; and certainly they kept most of the light from the ground below. There were a few overhead bridges from house to house across the street.

The inhabitants of that street impressed me peculiarly. At first I thought it was because they were all silent and reticent; but later decided it was because they were all very old. I do not know how I came to live on such a street, but I was not myself when I moved there. I had been living in many poor places, always evicted for want of money; until at last I came upon that tottering house in the Rue d’Auseil, kept by the paralytic Blandot. It was the third house from the top of the street, and by far the tallest of them all.

My room was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there, since the house was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who signed his name as Erich Zann, and who played evenings in a cheap theatre orchestra; adding that Zann’s desire to play in the night after his return from the theatre was the reason he had chosen this lofty and isolated garret room, whose single gable window was the only point on the street from which one could look over the terminating wall at the declivity and panorama beyond.

Thereafter I heard Zann every night, and although he kept me awake, I was haunted by the weirdness of his music. Knowing little of the art myself, I was yet certain that none of his harmonies had any relation to music I had heard before; and concluded that he was a composer of highly original genius. The longer I listened, the more I was fascinated, until after a week I resolved to make the old man’s acquaintance.

One night, as he was returning from his work, I intercepted Zann in the hallway and told him that I would like to know him and be with him when he played. He was a small, lean, bent person, with shabby clothes, blue eyes, grotesque, satyr-like face, and nearly bald head; and at my first words seemed both angered and frightened. My obvious friendliness, however, finally melted him; and he grudgingly motioned to me to follow him up the dark, creaking, and rickety attic stairs. His room, one of only two in the steeply pitched garret, was on the west side, toward the high wall that formed the upper end of the street. Its size was very great, and seemed the greater because of its extraordinary bareness and neglect. Of furniture there was only a narrow iron bedstead, a dingy washstand, a small table, a large bookcase, an iron music-rack, and three old-fashioned chairs. Sheets of music were piled in disorder about the floor. The walls were of bare boards, and had probably never known plaster; whilst the abundance of dust and cobwebs made the place seem more deserted than inhabited. Evidently Erich Zann’s world of beauty lay in some far cosmos of the imagination.

Motioning me to sit down, the dumb man closed the door, turned the large wooden bolt, and lighted a candle to augment the one he had brought with him. He now removed his viol from its moth-eaten covering, and taking it, seated himself in the least uncomfortable of the chairs. He did not employ the music-rack, but offering no choice and playing from memory, enchanted me for over an hour with strains I had never heard before; strains which must have been of his own devising. To describe their exact nature is impossible for one unversed in music. They were a kind of fugue, with recurrent passages of the most captivating quality, but to me were notable for the absence of any of the weird notes I had overheard from my room below on other occasions.

Those haunting notes I had remembered, and had often hummed and whistled inaccurately to myself; so when the player at length laid down his bow I asked him if he would render some of them. As I began my request the wrinkled satyr-like face lost the bored placidity it had possessed during the playing, and seemed to shew the same curious mixture of anger and fright which I had noticed when first I accosted the old man. For a moment I was inclined to use persuasion, regarding rather lightly the whims of senility; and even tried to awaken my host’s weirder mood by whistling a few of the strains to which I had listened the night before. But I did not pursue this course for more than a moment; for when the dumb musician recognised the whistled air his face grew suddenly distorted with an expression wholly beyond analysis, and his long, cold, bony right hand reached out to stop my mouth and silence the crude imitation. As he did this he further demonstrated his eccentricity by casting a startled glance toward the lone curtained window, as if fearful of some intruder—a glance doubly absurd, since the garret stood high and inaccessible above all the adjacent roofs, this window being the only point on the steep street, as the concierge had told me, from which one could see over the wall at the summit.

The old man’s glance brought Blandot’s remark to my mind, and with a certain capriciousness I felt a wish to look out over the wide and dizzying panorama of moonlit roofs and city lights beyond the hill-top, which of all the dwellers in the Rue d’Auseil only this crabbed musician could see. I moved toward the window and would have drawn aside the nondescript curtains, when with a frightened rage even greater than before the dumb lodger was upon me again; this time motioning with his head toward the door as he nervously strove to drag me thither with both hands. Now thoroughly disgusted with my host, I ordered him to release me, and told him I would go at once. His clutch relaxed, and as he saw my disgust and offence his own anger seemed to subside. He tightened his relaxing grip, but this time in a friendly manner; forcing me into a chair, then with an appearance of wistfulness crossing to the littered table, where he wrote many words with a pencil in the laboured French of a foreigner.

The note which he finally handed me was an appeal for tolerance and forgiveness. Zann said that he was old, lonely, and afflicted with strange fears and nervous disorders connected with his music and with other things. He had enjoyed my listening to his music, and wished I would come again and not mind his eccentricities. But he could not play to another his weird harmonies, and could not bear hearing them from another; nor could he bear having anything in his room touched by another. He had not known until our hallway conversation that I could overhear his playing in my room, and now asked me if I would arrange with Blandot to take a lower room where I could not hear him in the night. He would, he wrote, defray the difference in rent.
 
BLACK MAGIC BY MARJORIE BOWEN CONT

CHAPTER VII.
SPELLS
Theirry found Dirk as he was passing under the arched colonnade.

“Prudence!” he quoted. “Where is your prudence now?”

Dirk turned quickly.

“I had to put on a bold front. Certes, I hate that knave. But let him go now. Come with me.”

Theirry followed him through the college, up the dark stairway into his chamber.

It was a low arched room, looking on to the garden, barely furnished, and containing only the bed, a chair and some books on a shelf.

Dirk opened the window on the sun-flushed twilight.

“The students are jealous of me because of my reputation with the doctors,” he said, smiling. “One told me to-day I was the most learned youth in the college. And how long have we been here? But ten months.”

Theirry was silent; the triumph in his companion’s voice could find no echo in his heart; neither in his legitimate studies nor in his secret experiments had he been as successful as Dirk, who in ancient and modern lore, in languages, algebra, theology, oratory had far outshone all competitors, and who had progressed dangerously in forbidden things.

Theirry shook off the feeling of jealousy that possessed him, and spoke on another subject.

“Dirk, I saw a lady to-day—such a lady!”

In their constant, close and tender companionship neither had ever failed in sympathy, therefore it was with surprise that Theirry saw Dirk perceptibly harden.

“A lady!” he repeated, and turned from the window so that the shadows of the room were over his face.

Theirry must have a listener, must loosen his tongue on the subject of his delicate adventure, so he proceeded.

“Ay—’twas in the valley—a valley, I mean—which I had never seen before. Oh, Dirk!” he was leaning against the end of the bed, gazing across the dusk. “ ’Twas a lady so sweet—she had——”

Dirk interrupted him.

“Certes!” he cried angrily; “she had grey eyes belike, and yellow hair—have they not always yellow hair?—and a mincing mouth and a manner of glancing sideways, and cunning words, I’ll warrant me——”

“Why, she had all this,” answered Theirry, bewildered. “But she was pleasant, had you but seen her, Dirk.”

The youth sneered.

“Who is she—thy lady?”

“Jacobea of Martzburg.” He took obvious pleasure in saying her name. “She is a great lady and gracious.”

“Out on ye!” exclaimed Dirk passionately. “What is she to us? Have we not other matters to think of? I did not think ye so weak as to come chanting the praises of the first thing that smiles on ye!”

Theirry was angered.

“ ’Tis not the first time—and what have I said of her?”

“Oh enough—ye have lost your heart to her, I doubt not—and what use will ye be—a love-sick knave!”

“Nay,” answered Theirry hotly. “You have no warrant for this speech. How should I love the lady, seeing her once? I did but say she was fair and gentle.”

“ ’Tis the first woman you have spoken of to me—in that voice—did ye not say—‘such a lady’?”

Theirry felt the blood stinging his cheeks.

“Could you have seen her,” he repeated.

“Ay, had I seen her I could tell you how much paint she wore, how tight her lace was——”

Theirry interrupted.

“I’ll hear no more—art a peevish youth, knowing nothing of women; she was one of God’s roses, pink and white, and we not fit to kiss her little shoes—ay, that’s pure truth.”

Dirk stamped his foot passionately.

“Little shoes! If you come home to me to rave of her little shoes, and her pink and white, you may bide alone for me. Speak no more of her.”

Theirry was silent a while; he could not afford to lose Dirk’s companionship or to have him in an ill temper, nor did he in any way wish to jeopardise the good understanding between them, so he quelled the anger that rose in him at the youth’s unreasonableness, and answered quietly—

“On what matter did you wish to see me?”

Dirk struggled for a moment with a heaving breast and closed his teeth over a rebellious lip, then he crossed the room and opened the door of an inner chamber.

He had obtained permission to use this apartment for his studies; the key of it he carried always with him, and only he and Theirry had ever entered it.

In silence, lighting a lamp, and placing it on the window-sill, he beckoned Theirry to follow him.

It was a dismal room; piled against the walls were the books Dirk had brought with him, and on the open hearth some dead charred sticks lay scattered.

“See,” said Dirk; he drew from a dark corner a roughly carved wooden figure some few inches high. “I wrought this to-day—and if I know the spells aright there is one will pay for his insolence.”

Theirry took the figure in his hand.

“ ’Tis Joris of Thuringia.”

Dirk nodded sombrely.

The room was thick with unhealthy odours, and a close stagnant smoke seemed to hang round the roof; the lamp cast a pulsating yellow light over the dreariness and threw strange shaped shadows from the jars and bottles standing about the floor.

“What is this Joris to you?” asked Theirry curiously.

Dirk was unrolling a manuscript inscribed in Persian.

“Nothing. I would see what skill I have.”

The old evil excitement seized Theirry; they had tried spells before, on cattle and dogs, but without success; his blood tingled at the thought of an enchantment potent to confound enemies.

“Light the fire,” commanded Dirk.

Theirry set the image by the lamp, and poured a thick yellow fluid from one of the bottles over the dead sticks.

Then he flung on a handful of grey powder.

A close dun-coloured vapour rose, and a sickly smell filled the room; then the sticks burst suddenly into a tall and beautiful flame that sprang noiselessly up the chimney and cast a clear and unnatural glow round the chamber.

Theirry drew three circles round the fire, and marked the outer one with characters taken from the manuscripts Dirk held.

Dirk was looking at him as he knelt in the splendid glow of the flames, and his own heavy brows were frowning.

“Was she beautiful?” he asked abruptly.

Theirry took this as an atonement for the late ill temper, and answered pleasantly—

“Why, she was beautiful, Dirk.”

“And fair?”

“Certes, yellow hair.”

“No more of her,” said the youth in a kind of fierce mournfulness. “The legend is finished?”

“Yea.” Theirry rose from his knees. “And now?”

Dirk was anointing the little image of the student on the breast, the eyes and mouth with a liquid poured from a purple phial; then he set it within the circle round the flame.

“ ’Tis carved of ash plucked from a churchyard,” he said. “And the ingredients of the fire are correct. Now if this fails, Zerdusht lies.”

He stepped up to the fire and addressed an invocation in Persian to the soaring flame, then retreated to Theirry’s side.

The whole room was glowing in the clear red light cast by the unholy fire; the cobweb-hung rafters, the gaunt walls, the books and jars on the bare floor were all distinctly visible, and the two could see each other, red, from head to foot.
 
BLACK MAGIC BY MARJORIE BOWEN CONT

“Look,” said Dirk, with a slow smile.

The image lying in the magic circle and almost touching the flames (though not burnt or even scorched), was beginning to writhe and twist on its back like a creature in pain.

“Ah!” Dirk showed his teeth. “The Magian spell has worked.”

A sensation of giddiness seized Theirry; he heard something beating loud and fast in his ear, it seemed, but he knew it was his heart that thumped so, up and down.

The figure, horribly like Joris with its flat hat and student’s robe, was struggling to its feet and emitting little moans of agony.

“It cannot get out,” breathed Theirry.

“Nay,” whispered Dirk, “wherefore did ye draw the circle?”

The flame was a column of pure fire, and it cast a glow of gold on the thing imprisoned in the ring Theirry had made; Dirk watched in an eager way, with neither fear nor compunction, but Theirry felt a wave of sickness mount to his brain.

The creature was making useless endeavours to escape from the fiery glare; it groaned and fell on its face, twisted on its back and made frantic attempts to cross the line that imprisoned it.

“Let it out,” whispered Theirry faintly.

But Dirk was elate with success.

“Ye are mad,” he retorted. “The spell works bravely.”

On the end of his words came a sound that caused both to wince; even in the lurid light Dirk saw his companion pale.

It was the bell of the college chapel ringing the students to the vespers.

“I had forgotten,” muttered Dirk. “We must go—it would be noticed.”

“We cannot put the fire out,” cried Theirry.

“Nay, we must leave it—it must burn out,” answered Dirk hurriedly.

The creature, after rushing round the circle in an attempt to escape had fallen, as if exhausted with its agony, and lay quivering.

“We will leave him, too,” said Dirk unpleasantly.

But Theirry had a tearing memory of a lady kneeling among green grasses and bending towards him with a dead bird in her hand—tears for it on her cheeks—a dead bird, and this——

He stooped and snatched up the creature; it shrieked dismally as he touched it, and he felt the quick flame burn his fingers.

Instantly the fire had sunk into ashes, and he held in his hand a mere morsel of charred wood.

With a sound of disgust he flung this on the ground.

“Should have let it burn,” said Dirk, with the lamp held aloft to show him the way across the now dark chamber. “Perchance we cannot relight it, and I have not finished with the ugly knave.”

They stepped into the outer chamber and Dirk locked the door; Theirry gasped to feel the fresher air in his nostrils, and a sense of terror clouded his brain; but Dirk was in high spirits; his eyes narrowed with excitement, his pale lips set in a hard fashion.

They descended into the hall.

It was a close and sultry evening; through the blunt arches of the window, dark purple clouds could be seen, lying heavily across the horizon; the clang of the vesper bell came persistently and with a jarring note; though the sun had set it was still light, which had a curious effect of strangeness after the dark chambers upstairs.

Without a word to each other, but side by side, the two students passed into the ante-chamber that led into the chapel.

And there they stopped.

The pale rays of a candle dispersed the gathering dark and revealed a group of men standing together and conversing in whispers.

“Why do they not enter the church?” breathed Theirry, with a curious sensation at his heart. “Something has happened.”

Some of the students turned and saw them; they were forced to come forward; Dirk was silent and smiling.

“Have you heard?” asked one; all were sober and subdued.

“A horrible thing,” said another. “Joris of Thuringia is struck with a strange illness. Certes! he fell down amongst us as if in the grip of hell fire.”

The speaker crossed himself; Theirry could not answer, he felt that they were all looking at him suspiciously, accusingly, and he trembled.

“We carried him up to his chamber,” said another. “He shrieked and tore at his flesh, imploring us to keep the flames off. The priest is with him now—God guard us from unholy things.”

“Why do you say that?” demanded Theirry fiercely. “Belike his disease was but natural.”

A look passed round the students.

“I know not,” one muttered. “It was strange.”

Dirk, still smiling and silent, turned into the chapel; Theirry and the others, hushing their surmises, followed.

There were candles on the altar, six feet high, and a confusion of the senses came over Theirry, in which he saw them as white angels with flaming haloes coming grievingly for his destruction. A wave of fear and sorrow rushed over him; he sank on his knees on the stone floor and fixed his eyes on the priest, whose chasuble was gleaming gold through the dimness of the incense-filled chapel.

The blasphemy and mortal sin of what he had done sickened and frightened him; was not his being here the most horrible blasphemy of all?—he had no right; he had made false confessions to the priest, he had received absolution on lies; daily he had come here worshipping God with his lips and Satan with his heart.

A groan broke from him, he bowed his beautiful face in his hands and his shoulders shook. He thought of Joris of Thuringia writhing in the agony caused by their unhallowed spells, of the eager devils crowding to their service—and far away, in a blinding white mist, he seemed to see the arc of the saints and angels looking down on him while he fell away further, further, into unfathomable depths of darkness. With an uncontrollable movement of agony he looked up, and his starting eyes fell on the figure of Dirk kneeling in front of him.

The youth’s calm both horrified and soothed him; there he knelt, who had but a little while before been playing with devils, with a face as unmoved as a sculptured saint, with a placid brow, quiet eyes and hands folded on his breviary.

He seemed to feel Theirry’s intense gaze, for he looked swiftly round and a look of caution, of warning shot under his white lids.

Theirry’s glance fell; his companions were singing with uplifted faces, but he could not join them; the pillars with their foliated capitals oppressed him by their shadow, the saints glowing in mosaic on the drums of the arches frightened him with the unforgiving look in their long eyes.

“Laudate, pueri Dominum,
Laudate nomen Domini,
Sit nomen Domini benedictum,
Ex hoc nunc et usque in saeculum.

A Solis ortu usque ad occasum
Laudabile nomen Domini.”

The fresh young voices rose lustily; the church was full of incense and music; Theirry rose with the hymn ringing in his head and left the chapel.

The singers cast curious glances at him as he passed, and when he reached the door he heard a patter of feet behind him and turned to see Dirk at his elbow.

“I have done with it,” he said hoarsely.

Dirk’s eyes were flaming.

“Do you want to make public confession?” he demanded, breathing hard. “Remember, it is our lives to pay, if they discover.”

Theirry shuddered.

“I cannot pray. I cannot stay in the church. For days I have felt the blessing scorch me.”

“Come upstairs,” said Dirk.

As they went down the long hall they met one who was a friend of Joris of Thuringia.

Dirk stopped.

“Hast come from the sick man?”

“Yea.”

“He is mending?”

Theirry stared with wild eyes, waiting the answer.

“I know not,” said the youth. “He lies in a swoon and pants for breath.”

He passed on, something abruptly.

“Did ye hear that?” whispered Theirry. “If he should die!”

They went up to Dirk’s bare little chamber; the clouds had completely overspread the sky, and neither moon nor stars were visible.

Dirk lit the lamp, and Theirry sank on to the bed with his hands clasped between his knees.

“I cannot go on,” he said. “It is too horrible.”

“Art afraid?” asked Dirk quietly.

“Yea, I am afraid.”

“So am not I,” answered Dirk composedly.

“I cannot stay here,” breathed Theirry, with agonised brows.

Dirk bit his forefinger.

“Nay, for we have but little money and know all these pedants can teach us. ’Tis time we began to lay the corner-stones of our fortune.”

Theirry rose, twisting his fingers together.

“Talk not to me of fortunes. I have set my soul in deadly peril. I cannot pray, I cannot take the names of holy things upon my lips.”

“Is this your courage?” said Dirk softly. “Is this your ambition, your loyalty to me? Would you run whining to a priest with a secret that is mine as well as yours? Is this, O noble youth, what all your dreams have faded to?”

Theirry groaned.

“I know not. I know not.”

Dirk came slowly nearer.

“Is this to be the end of comradeship—our league?”

He took the other’s slack hand in his, and as he seldom offered or suffered a touch, Theirry thrilled at it as a great mark of affection, and at the feel of the smooth, cool fingers, the fascination, the temptation that this youth stood for stirred his pulses; still he could not forget the stern angel he thought he had seen upon the altar, and the way his tongue had refused to move when he had striven to pray.
 
I put the author's name in the title every time to remind me that this gay bodice-ripping Anti-Christ novel was written by a woman in 1909. It's still hard to wrap my mind around it, because it's so intensely gay.

BLACK MAGIC BY MARJORIE BOWEN CONT

“Belike, I have gone too far to turn back,” he panted, with questioning eyes.

Dirk dropped his hand.

“Be of me or not with me,” he said coldly. “Surely I can stand alone.”

“Nay,” answered Theirry. “Certes, I love thee, Dirk, as I have never cared for any do I care for thee.…”

Dirk stepped back and looked at him out of half-closed eyes.

“Well, do not stop to palter with talk of priests. Certainly I will be faithful to you unto death and damnation, and be you true to me.”

Theirry made a movement to answer, but a sudden and violent knock on the door checked him.

They looked at each other, and the same swift thoughts came to each; the students had suspected, had come to take them by surprise—and the consequences——

For a second Dirk shook with suppressed wrath.

“Curse the Magian spell!” he muttered. “Curse Zerdusht and his foul brews, for we are trapped and undone!”

Theirry sprang up and tried the inner door.

“ ’Tis secure,” he said; he was now quite calm.

“I have the key.” Dirk laid his hand on his breast, then snatched a couple of volumes from the shelf and flung them on the table.

The knock was repeated.

“Unbolt the door,” said Theirry; he seated himself at the table and opened one of the volumes.

Dirk slipped the bolt, the door sprang back and a number of students, headed by a monk bearing a crucifix, surged into the room.

“What do you want?” demanded Dirk, fronting them quietly. “You interrupt our studies.”

The priest answered sternly—

“There are strange and horrible accusations against you, my son, that you must disprove.”

Theirry slowly closed his book and slowly rose; all the terror and remorse of a few moments ago had changed into wrath and defiance, and the glow his animal courage sent through his body at the prospect of an encounter; he saw the eager, excited faces of his fellow-students, crowding in the doorway, the hard and unforgiving countenance of the monk, and he felt unaccountably justified in his own eyes; he did not see his antagonists standing for Good, and himself for Evil, he saw mere men whose evident enmity roused his own.

“What accusations?” asked Dirk; his demeanour appeared to have changed as completely as Theirry’s had done; he had lost his assured calm; his defiant bearing was maintained by an obvious effort, and his lips twitched with agitation.

The students murmured and forced further into the room; the monk answered—

“Ye are suspected of procuring the dire illness of Joris of Thuringia by spells.”

“It is a lie,” said Dirk faintly, and without conviction, but Theirry replied boldly—

“Upon what do you base this charge, father?”

The monk was ready.

“Upon your strange and close behaviour—the two of you, upon our ignorance of whence you came—upon the suddenness of the youth’s illness after words passed between him and Master Dirk.”

“Ay,” put in one of the students eagerly. “And he lapped water like a dog.”

“I have seen a light here well into the night,” said another.

“And why left they before the vespers were finished?” demanded a third.

Theirry smiled; he felt that they were discovered, but fear was far from him.

“These are childish accusations,” he answered. “Get you gone to find a better.”

Dirk, who had retreated behind the table, spoke now.

“Ye smirch us with wanton words,” he said pantingly. “It is a lie.”

“Will you swear to that?” asked the monk quickly.

Theirry interposed.

“Search the chamber, my father—I warrant you have already been peering through mine.”

“Yea.”

“And you found——?”

“Nothing.”

“Then are you not content?” cried Dirk.

The murmur of the students swelled into an angry cry.

“Nay—can ye not spirit away your implements if ye be wizards?”

“Great skill do you credit us with,” smiled Theirry. “But on nothing you can prove nothing.”

Although he knew that he could never allay their suspicions, it occurred to him that it might be possible to prevent the discovery of what the locked room held, and in that case, though they might have to leave the college, their lives would be safe; he snatched up the lantern and held it aloft.

“See you anything here?”

They stared round the bare walls with eager, straining eyes; one came to the table and turned over the volumes there.

“Seneca!” he flung them down with disappointment; the priest advanced and gazed about him; Dirk stood silent and scornful, Theirry was bold to defy them all.

“I see no holy thing,” said the monk. “Neither Virgin, nor saint, nor prie-Dieu, nor holy water.”

Dirk’s eyes flashed fiercely.

“Here is my breviary;” he pointed to it on the table.

One of the students cried—

“Where is the key? To the inner chamber!”

There were three or four of them about the door; Dirk, turning to see them striving with the handle, went ghastly pale and could not speak, but Theirry broke out into great wrath.

“The room is disused. No affair of mine or Dirk. We know nothing of it.”

“Will you swear?” asked the priest.

“Certes—I will swear.”

But the student struggling with the door cried out—

“Dirk Renswoude asked for this room for his studies! I do know it, and he had the key.”

Dirk gave a great start.

“Nay, nay,” he said hurriedly, “I have no key.”

“Search, my sons,” said the priest.

Their blood was up; some ten or twelve had crowded into the chamber; they hurled the books off the shelf, scattered the garments out of the coffer, pulled the quilt off the bed and turned up the mattress.

Finding nothing they turned on Dirk.

“He has the key about him!”

All eyes were fixed now on the youth, who stood a little in front of Theirry, he continuing to hold the lamp scornfully aloft to aid them in their search.

The light rested on Dirk’s shoulders, causing the bright silk to glitter, and flickered in his short waving hair; there was no trace of colour in his face, his brows were raised and gathered into a hard frown.

“Have you the key of that chamber?” demanded the priest.

Dirk tried to speak, but could not find his voice; he moved his head stiffly in denial.

“But answer,” insisted the monk.

“What should it avail me if I swore?” The words seemed wrenched from him. “Would ye believe me?” His eyes were bright with hate of all of them.

“Swear on this.” The monk proffered the crucifix.

Dirk did not touch it.

“I have no key,” he said.

“There is your answer,” flashed Theirry, and set the lamp on the table.

The foremost student laughed.

“Search him,” he cried. “His garments—belike he has the key in his breast.”

Again Dirk gave a great start; the table was between him and his enemies, it was the only protection he had; Theirry, knowing that he must have the key upon him, saw the end and was prepared to fight it finely.

“What are ye going to do now?” he challenged.

For answer one of them leant across the table and seized Dirk by the arm, swinging him easily into the centre of the room, another caught his mantle.

A yell of “Search him!” rose from the others.

Dirk bent his head in a curious manner, snatched the key from inside his shirt and flung it on the floor; instantly they let go of him to pick it up, and he staggered back beside Theirry.

“Do not let them touch me,” he said. “Do not let them touch me.”

“Art a coward?” answered Theirry angrily. “Now we are utterly lost.…”

He thrust Dirk away as if he would abandon him; but that youth caught hold of him in desperation.

“Do not leave me—they will tear me to pieces.”

The students were rushing through the unlocked door shouting for lights; the priest caught up the lamp and followed them; the two were left in darkness.

“Ye are a fool,” said Theirry. “With some cunning the key might have been saved.…”

A horrid shout arose from those in the inner room as they discovered the remains of the incantations.…

Theirry sprang to the window, Dirk after him.

“Theirry, gentle Theirry, take me also—can see I am helpless! A—ah! I am small and pitiful, Theirry!”

Theirry had one leg over the window-sill.

“Come, then, in the fiend’s name,” he answered.

A hoarse shout told them the students had found the little image of Joris; those still on the stair-way saw them at the window.

“The warlocks escape!”

Theirry helped Dirk on to the window-ledge; the night air blew hot on their faces and they felt warm rain falling on them; there was no light anywhere.

The students were yelling in a thick fury as they discovered the unholy unguents and implements. They turned suddenly and dashed to the window. Theirry swung himself by his hands, then let go.

With a shock that jarred every nerve in his body he landed on the balcony of the room beneath.

“Jump!” he called up to Dirk, who still crouched on the window-sill.

“Ah, soul of mine! Ah, I cannot!” Dirk stared through the darkness in a wild endeavour to discern Theirry.

“I am holding out my arms! Jump!”

The students had knocked over the lamp and it had checked them for the moment; but Dirk, looking back, saw the room flaring with fresh lights and seething figures pushing up to the window.

He closed his eyes and leapt in the darkness; the distance was not great; Theirry half caught him; he half staggered against the balcony.

A torch was thrust out of the window above them; frenzied faces looked down.

Theirry pushed Dirk roughly through the window before them, which opened on to the library, and followed.

“Now—for our lives,” he said.

They ran down the dark length of the chamber and gained the stairs; the students, having guessed their design, were after them—they could hear the clatter of feet on the upper landing.

How many stairs, how many before they reach the hall!

Dirk tripped and fell, Theirry dragged him up; a breathless youth overtook them; Theirry, panting, turned and struck him backwards sprawling. So they reached the hall, fled along it and out into the dark garden.

A minute after, the pursuers bearing lights, and half delirious with wrath and terror, surged out of the college doors.

Theirry caught Dirk’s arm and they ran; across the thick grass, crashing through the bushes, trampling down the roses, blindly through the dark till the shouts and the lights grew fainter behind them and they could feel the trunks of trees impeding them and so knew that they must have reached the forest.

Then Theirry let go of Dirk, who sank down by his side and lay sobbing in the grass.
 
Second Missing Primarch said:
The Music of Erich Zann

By H.P. Lovecraft
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So THAT'S where Charles Stross got the inspiration for 'Lecter' the "Erich Zahn original" white violin made of bone harvested from living 'donors' and besides being able to kill demons (and anything lesser like people) when played was possessed by an incarnation of the King in Yellow! (The Laundry Files fuckin' rule.)

I thought I had read damn near everything Lovecraft had written but I don't remember this story in the slightest!! Thanks for posting this right after The Colour Out Of Space, one of my all time favourite HPL stories, SMP.

I put the author's name in the title every time to remind me that this gay bodice-ripping Anti-Christ novel was written by a woman in 1909. It's still hard to wrap my mind around it, because it's so intensely gay.
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@Dumbledore's Onlyfans Dude.....it's so obviously English Yaoi written by a woman 100 years befor yaoi existed it's not even funny. Thierry is very much the Seme to Dirk's Uke. He's even written like a vapouring, twittering woman who is scared to death of every little thing that gets scary. It's one of the funnies things I've read in ages, the breathless purple (nope, PINK!) prose, the living voodoo doll writhing in the hellfire while Thierry spergs out, Dirk getting the whole student body to start brawling with some racial slurs, it's GREAT!

ETA: oops, I spoke too soon! Now Thierry grows a pair and Dirk can't stick to his faith in the Devil long enough to touch a crucifix and swear he didn't have a key, and turned into a wimpering fag-hag. I can't even with this writing! :lit:

We're eatin' GOOD on your thread lately, Dizzy Lizzy! Please keep curse-spamming!
 
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BLACK MAGIC BY MARJORIE BOWEN CONT

CHAPTER VIII.
THE CASTLE
Theirry spoke angrily through the dark.

“Little fool, we are safe enough. They think the Devil has carried us off. Be silent.”

Dirk gasped from where he lay.

“Am not afraid. But spent… they have gone?”

“Ay,” said Theirry, peering about him; there was no trace of light anywhere in the murky dark nor any sound; he put his hand out and touched the wet trunk of a tree, resting his shoulder against this (for he also was exhausted) he considered, angrily, the situation.

“Have you any money?” he asked.

“Not one white piece.”

Theirry felt in his own pockets.

Nothing.

Their plight was pitiable; their belongings were in the college, probably by now being burnt with a sprinkling of holy water—they were still close to those who would kill them upon sight, with no means of escape; daylight must discover them if they lingered, and how to be gone before daylight?

If they tried to wander in this dark likely enough they would but find themselves at the college gates; Theirry cursed softly.

“Little avail our enchantments now,” he commented bitterly.

It was raining heavily, drumming on the leaves above them, splashing from the boughs and dripping on the grass; Dirk raised himself feebly.

“Cannot we get shelter?” he asked peevishly. “I am all bruised, shaken and wet—wet——”

“Likely enough,” responded Theirry grimly. “But unless the charms you know, Zerdusht’s incantations and Magian spells, can avail to spirit us away we must even stay where we are.”

“Ah, my manuscripts, my phials and bottles!” cried Dirk. “I left them all!”

“They will burn them,” said Theirry.

“Plague blast and blight the thieving, spying knaves!” answered Dirk fiercely.

He got on to his feet and supported himself the other side of the tree.

“Certes, curse them all!” said Theirry, “if it anything helps.”

He felt anger and hate towards the priest and his followers who had hounded him from the college; no remorse stung him now, their action had swung him violently back into his old mood of defiance and hard-heartedness; his one thought was neither repentance nor shame, but a hot desire to triumph over his enemies and outwit their pursuit.

“My ankle,” moaned Dirk. “Ah! I cannot stand.…”

Theirry turned to where the voice came out of the blackness.

“Deafen me not with thy complaints, weakling,” he said fiercely. “Hast behaved in a cowardly fashion to-night.”

Dirk was silent before a new phase of Theirry’s character; he saw that his hold on his companion had been weakened by his display of fear, his easy surrender of the key.

“Moans make neither comfort nor aid,” added Theirry.

Dirk’s voice came softly.

“Had you been sick I had not been so harsh, and surely I am sick… when I breathe my heart hurts and my foot is full of pain.”

Theirry softened.

“Because I love you, Dirk, I will, if you complain no more, say nought of your ill behaviour.”

He put out his hand round the tree and touched the wet silk mantle; despite the heat Dirk was shivering.

“What shall we do?” he asked, and strove to keep his teeth from chattering. “If we might journey to Frankfort——”

“Why Frankfort?”

“Certes, I know an old witch there who was friendly to Master Lukas, and she would receive us, surely.”

“We cannot reach Frankfort or any place without money… how dark it is!”

“Ugh! How it rains! I am wet to the skin… and my ankle…”

Theirry set his teeth.

“We will get there in spite of them. Are we so easily daunted?”

“A light!” whispered Dirk. “A light!”

Theirry stared about him and saw in one part of the universal darkness a small light with a misty halo about it, slowly coming nearer.

“A traveller,” said Theirry. “Now shall he see us or no?”

“Belike he would show us on our way,” whispered Dirk.

“If he be not from the college.”

“Nay, he rides.”

They could hear now, through the monotonous noise of the rain, the sound of a horse slowly, cautiously advancing; the light swung and flickered in a changing oval that revealed faintly a man holding it and a horseman whose bridle he caught with the other hand.

They came at a walking pace, for the path was unequal and slippery, and the illumination afforded by the lantern feeble at best.

“I will accost him,” said Theirry.

“If he demand who we are?”

“Half the truth then—we have left the college because of a fight.”

The horseman and his attendant were now quite close; the light showed the overgrown path they came upon, the wet foliage either side and the slanting silver rain; Theirry stepped out before them.

“Sir,” he said, “know you of any habitation other than the town of Basle?”

The rider was wrapped in a mantle to his chin and wore a pointed felt hat; he looked sharply under this at his questioner.

“My own,” he said, and halted his horse. “A third of a league from here.”

At first he had seemed fearful of robbers, for his hand had sought the knife in his belt; but now he took it away and stared curiously, attracted by the student’s dress and the obvious beauty of the young man who was looking straight at him with dark, challenging eyes.

“We should be indebted for your hospitality—even the shelter of your barns,” said Theirry.

The horseman’s glance travelled to Dirk, shivering in his silk.

“Clerks from the college?” he questioned.

“Yea,” answered Theirry. “We were. But I sorely wounded one in a fight and fled. My comrade chose to follow me.”

The stranger touched up his horse.

“Certes, you may come with me. I wot there is room enow.”

Theirry caught Dirk by the arm.

“Sir, we are thankful,” he answered.

The light held by the servant showed a muddy, twisting path, the shining wet trunks, the glistening leaves either side, the great brown horse, steaming and passive, with his bright scarlet trappings and his rider muffled in a mantle to the chin; Dirk looked at man and horse quickly in silence; Theirry spoke.

“It is an ill night to be abroad.”

“I have been in the town,” answered the stranger, “buying silks for my lady. And you—so you killed a man?”

“He is not dead,” answered Theirry. “But we shall never return to the college.”

The horseman had a soft and curiously pleasing voice; he spoke as if he cared nothing what he said or how he was answered.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

“To Frankfort,” said Theirry.

“The Emperor is there now, though he leaves for Rome within the year, they say,” remarked the horseman, “and the Empress. Have you seen the Empress?”

Theirry put back the boughs that trailed across the path.

“No,” he said.

“Of what town are you?”

“Courtrai.”

“The Empress was there a year ago—and you did not see her? One of the wonders of the world, they say, the Empress.”

“I have heard of her,” said Dirk, speaking for the first time. “But, sir, we go not to Frankfort to see the Empress.”

“Likely ye do not,” answered the horseman, and was silent.

They cleared the wood and were crossing a sloping space of grass, the rain full in their faces; then they again struck a well-worn path, now leading upwards among scattered rocks.

As they must wait for the horse to get a foothold on the slippery stones, for the servant to go ahead and cast the lantern light across the blackness, their progress was slow, but neither of the three spoke until they halted before a gate in a high wall that appeared to rise up, suddenly before them, out of the night.

The servant handed the lantern to his master and clanged the bell that hung beside the gate.
 
BLACK MAGIC BY MARJORIE BOWEN CONT

Theirry could see by the massive size of the buttresses that flanked the entrance that it was a large castle the night concealed from him; the dwelling, certainly, of some great noble.

The gates were opened by two men carrying lights. The horseman rode through, the two students at his heels.

“Tell my lady,” said he to one of the men, “that I bring two who desire her hospitality;” he turned and spoke over his shoulder to Theirry, “I am the steward here, my lady is very gentle-hearted.”

They crossed a courtyard and found themselves before the square door of the donjon.

Dirk looked at Theirry, but he kept his eyes lowered and was markedly silent; their guide dismounted, gave the reins to one of the varlets who hung about the door, and commanded them to follow him.

The door opened straight on to a large chamber the entire size of the donjon; it was lit by torches stuck into the wall and fastened by iron clamps; a number of men stood or sat about, some in a livery of bright golden-coloured and blue cloth, others in armour or hunting attire; one or two were pilgrims with the cockle-shells round their hats.

The steward passed through this company, who saluted him with but little attention to his companions, and ascended a flight of stairs set in the wall at the far end; these were steep, damp and gloomy, ill lit by a lamp placed in the niche of the one narrow deep-set window; Dirk shuddered in his soaked clothes; the steward was unfastening his mantle; it left trails of wet on the cold stone steps; Theirry marked it, he knew not why.

At the top of the stairs they paused on a small stone landing.

“Who is your lady?” asked Theirry.

“Jacobea of Martzburg, the Emperor’s ward,” answered the steward. He had taken off his mantle and his hat, and showed himself to be young and dark, plainly dressed in a suit of deep rose colour, with high boots, spurred, and a short sword in his belt.

As he opened the door Dirk whispered to Theirry, “It is the lady—ye met to-day?”

“To-day!” breathed Theirry. “Yea, it is the lady.”

They entered by a little door and stepped into an immense chamber; the great size of the place was emphasised by the bareness of it and the dim shifting light that fell from the circles of candles hanging from the roof; facing them, in the opposite wall, was a high arched window, faintly seen in the shadows, to the left a huge fire-place with a domed top meeting the wooden supports of the lofty beamed roof, beside this a small door stood open on a flight of steps and beyond were two windows, deep set and furnished with stone seats.

The brick walls were hung with tapestries of a dull purple and gold colour, the beams of the ceiling painted; at the far end was a table, and in the centre of the hearth lay a slender white boarhound, asleep.

So vast was the chamber and so filled with shadows that it seemed as if empty save for the dog; but Theirry, after a second discerned the figures of two ladies in the furthest window-seat.

The steward crossed to them and the students followed.

One lady sat back in the niched seat, her feet on the stone ledge, her arm along the window-sill; she wore a brown dress shot with gold thread, and behind her and along the seat hung and lay draperies of blue and purple; on her lap rested a small grey cat, asleep.

The other lady sat along the floor on cushions of crimson and yellow; her green dress was twisted tight about her feet and she stitched a scarlet lily on a piece of red samite.

“This is the chatelaine,” said the steward; the lady in the window-seat turned her head; it was Jacobea of Martzburg, as Theirry had known since his eyes first rested on her. “And this is my wife, Sybilla.”

Both women looked at the strangers.

“These are your guests until to-morrow, my lady,” said the steward.

Jacobea leant forward.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and flushed faintly. “Why, you are welcome.”

Theirry found it hard to speak; he cursed the chance that had made him beholden to her hospitality.

“We are leaving the college,” he answered, not looking at her. “And for to-night could find no shelter.”

“Meeting them I brought them here,” added the steward.

“You did well, Sebastian, surely,” answered Jacobea. “Will it please you sit, sirs?”

It seemed that she would leave it at that, with neither question nor comment, but Sybilla, the steward’s wife, looked up smiling from her embroidery.

“Now wherefore left you the college, on foot on a wet night?” she said.

“I killed a man—or nearly,” answered Theirry curtly.

Jacobea looked at her steward.

“Are they not wet, Sebastian?”

“I am well enough,” said Theirry quickly; he unclasped his mantle. “Certes, under this I am dry.”

“That am not I!” cried Dirk.

At the sound of his voice both women looked at him; he stood apart from the others and his great eyes were fixed on Jacobea.

“The rain has cut me to the skin,” he said, and Theirry crimsoned for shame at his complaining tone.

“It is true,” answered Jacobea courteously. “Sebastian, will you not take the gentle clerk to a chamber—we have enough empty, I wot—and give him another habit?”

“Mine are too large,” said the steward in his indifferent voice.

“The youth will fall with an ague,” remarked his wife. “Give him something, Sebastian, I warrant he will not quarrel about the fit.”

Sebastian turned to the open door beside the fireplace.

“Follow him, fair sir,” said Jacobea gently; Dirk bent his head and ascended the stairs after the steward.

The chatelaine pulled a red bell-rope that hung close to her, and a page in the gold and blue livery came after a while; she gave him instructions in a low voice; he picked up Theirry’s wet mantle, set him a carved chair and left.

Theirry seated himself; he was alone with the two women and they were silent, not looking at him; a sense of distraction, of uneasiness was over him—he wished that he was anywhere but here, sitting a dumb suppliant in this woman’s presence.
 
Interesting that she writes about the beauty of Elizabeth of Austria, Empress of the Austrian-Hungarian empire in the mid/late 1800s. She has a fascinating and somewhat tragic history of her own, and I really only learned of her during the middle part of Gary Jennings' criminally under-rated novel Spangle (downloadable in the link) which is FAR more interesting then the premise would suggest, being about a rag-tag circus troupe at the end of the American civil war growing over it's travels and years into one of the greatest in the world showing in Paris just in time for the Franco-Prussian war and all the chaos in France after.

It's a big-ass chonker of a novel, so big they had to split it into 3 parts for the paperback release and like everything else Jennings it's full of raunchy and sometimes deviant sex but it always fits the story and the story itself is so good I highly suggest anyone who loves historical fiction read it. Gary Jennings is my favourite author in the genre, his shit is meticulously researched (he joined 3 different circus troupes in Europe doing research for this book) and everything he wrote that wasn't ghostwritten after his death (all the sequels to 'Aztec'. Jennings was never a trilogy or series guy, he got everything he wanted to say out in one massive novel) is SO worth your time.

K, my reading autism is sated for a while. Spam on, Liz! (but take the time to read some really good books too!)
 
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