Banquet for the Damned

Hart takes a breath. 'Well, I'm looking into witchcraft in the area.

This town. A history and so forth, and Eliot recommended I check out his most recent studies. He said that everything he knew, you knew, if that makes sense.'

Rhodes seems flattered; he smiles. 'Well, he's probably referring you to his last project. I assisted Eliot's research for some time. For his second book, you know. Five years in the making, although I doubt whether it will ever be finished. But it was a fascinating theory.'

'Really?'

'Yes. I acquired several resources for him, from all over the place. Particularly from the continent, if my memory serves.' Rhodes wanders across the office and holds the second door open for Hart. It leads to the reading room. 'What is it you are studying? Something in conjunction with Eliot?'

'Er… There seem to be overlaps. I take the anthropological angle on folklore. Nightmares particularly.' Hart pauses and watches the man's face for a reaction. Rhodes waits for more. 'Umm, what I call night terrors connected to witchcraft.' Hart watches his face keenly again, eager to spot give-away signs.

'Witchcraft?' Rhodes says, smiling enthusiastically but innocently.

'Then Eliot's your man.'

'Were you two friends?'

'In a professional capacity we were close. Though I wouldn't count myself fortunate enough to be called a friend. Eliot has always been a very private man. He has his interests and they are sufficient, I imagine. One of the last true scholars.'

I bet, Hart stops himself from saying. He follows the librarian into the reading room and stands beside a large rectangular table. 'Please take a seat, and I will be with you shortly,' Rhodes says.

Hart removes his jacket and settles into a chair. Rhodes pulls a small grey footstool across to a row of shelves and pulls two bulky volumes down. Pieces of torn paper are visible along the top of the books to indicate pages marked for later reference. 'What was Eliot's angle, for the new book?' Hart asks.

'A history, I suppose,' Rhodes says, over his shoulder. 'Of the witch's familiar. There was more material than I imagined once we got started. So much of it held in private collections, though. Little still in print. But we tracked down some valuable resources. We began tracing the origins of a certain fourteenth-century Hungarian cult, although they may have been around since the earliest Manichees. Eliot seemed to think so. He actually traced, if not their influence, a similar pattern of events, all over central Europe. Eventually, his reading led him to Scotland. Very academically rigorous, Eliot, despite what you may hear from other quarters. That is, as long as the subject interested him. Eliot has the strangest tastes, as I'm sure you know.'

'Uh-huh,' Hart says.

Rhodes places the two massive leather-bound volumes on the table before Hart, the smell of old books puffing around his face like dead pollen. 'Bit of light reading. Those winter nights must have flown by,' he mutters to himself. It will take days to read them both. He doesn't have the time. 'Was there a certain part in these that Eliot focused on? I appreciate you sorting them out, but I'm on a really tight schedule.'

Rhodes strolls around the room, unhurried, his hands clasped behind his back, while his face becomes a parody of an intellectual's delight in an opportunity to express his expertise. Hart smiles. 'Well, I suppose I can offer a brief outline of his initial study. Although it will be brief,' Rhodes says. His eyes are shining and seem bigger and not so sleepy anymore behind the lenses of his glasses. 'As I mentioned, I only assisted Eliot's secondary reading.' He wafts a hand about, distractedly. 'Assembled his bibliography and assisted with the footnotes. And those two volumes, both written in the late twenties, provide a fair summary of Eliot's original speculations. And yes, they'll take some reading. Rather heavy going from a historical perspective, like the Reverend Summers. But I liked working with Eliot, because his own travels gave him more precise insights than the authors of these two books, who I assume wrote in a cloistered environment without the benefits of fieldwork.'

'Amen to that. You don't have to convince an anthropologist. But why did Eliot come here, to St Andrews?'

'I can only suppose it was in the interest of continuing his work. I never thought he was a man interested in a conventional career. The lecturing, it's fair to speculate, would have been secondary to the further cultivation of his interests as an explorer. We have amassed one of the best occult collections in Britain here at the library. Most of it bequeathed, but all of immeasurable benefit to him. I believe he had friends here too, who secured a lecturing position for him. I think the scandal over Banquet for the Damned had subsided sufficiently to make him a safe bet, if you follow.'

Hart nods. 'Can you tell me anything about these books? You know, why he'd be so interested in them specifically?'

'I can certainly help with the Blackwood, who by the way wrote in a slightly antiquated style and it's heavy going. That of the gentleman dilettante, not unlike C W Ceram, but without the wit. Blackwood had time at his disposal to amass an extraordinary compendium of occult occurrences. He rants a little, we felt too, from a very orthodox Catholic standpoint. You know, convinced that Satan or some such nonsense was behind every evil in the world, but his historical material is really very, very good. Indispensable. The particular section that interested Eliot concerned the Hungarian society, or witch cult. Made particularly poignant by its dependence on the familiar.'

Hart frowns in concentration while Rhodes paces about the reading room, occasionally glancing across at him, as he continues with his recollections, flushing at times with a topic that obviously enthralled him in the past. 'It was the summary of the Kresnik inquisitors' findings, at a celebrated trial held in the northeastern region of Hungary in the late 1400s, that really excited Eliot. You'll find it in chapter five. I remember copying it for Eliot. Fascinating piece. You see, as the trial progressed, the witnesses began giving statements about the witches' exceptional powers for divining and summoning, following the use of strong hallucinogens prior to ritual. Ecstatic ritual. I daresay, you are aware of Eliot's own digressions with these substances, a long time before it became fashionable?'

Hart nods.

'Well, it was claimed that the nine accused had spread an epidemic of animal disease, tempests to ruin the crops, human illnesses and so forth. We can assume someone had to be blamed for natural consequences, as was the way of things at the time. But what enthralled Eliot was the evidence stating that the coven was served by, and indeed served, an emissary. An ancient spirit with something of an appetite for sacrifice. From that, allegedly, their power came.

'There is a passage in the Blackwood describing how the coven delighted in a rather gruesome practice of —' Rhodes pauses, his eyebrows rising over his glasses '— of dismembering their victims, and removing the skin or bones prior to a cannibalistic orgy. All rather distasteful. And their Sabbaths involved dreadful inversions of Christian services. You can feel the author holding back on specific details, and he loses his impartiality by vehemently condemning the accused and, would you believe, taking sides with the inquisitors.'

Hart moves around on his seat, uncomfortable and unable to feel the benefits of the radiator's warmth.

'But what is also extraordinary about this case is the leader. These weren't the usual unfortunate crones on trial here. No, the leader of the cult was a woman of noble birth. It was her influence that must have prolonged the coven's activities. Her name was Kazparek, I think. You see, it was some time before the church put an end to the activities of her coven. She'd had something of a field day until the ecclesiastical authorities were compelled to intercede. Forced to, because of the monstrous nature of her crimes.