Something light as a feather brushed Eszterhazy’s mind. He knew that, usually, he had only to wait a bit, emptying his mind of other things and that fairly soonly whatever the new thought was would silently enter and fill the space. He was mildly surprised that what came, soon enough, to fill the space, was the thought, newspaper cuttings. There was a plain, shallow box of some exotic wood on a shelf near his desk and in it he was accustomed to place any quick-cut items from periodicals which he had not immediately time to dispose of more thoroughly; he rose and looked. Sure enough. From the Gazette. VERY IMPORTANT NEW INVENTION was one. That would go under, hm, under, ha ha, Invention. In his scrapbooks. With a crossreference under Science. And under Commerce? He chuckled. “Investment possibility,” ha! And now for the other items so casually cut out a while ago, OUTRAGE AT THE SACRED GROVE. Someone, whilst putting an axe to a tree in the so-called Sacred Grove of the Olden-Time Goths at the headwaters of the Little River had had his head cloven by another axe. There was considerable unrest among the peasants. This one —
This one would require cross-references under History, Ethnology, National, Goths, Religion, Little River, and — what for its main classification? And did he really want to bother with all of it now? Ought he not now, now, in fact, to be in his music-room, doing work on the Mixo-Lydian Mode or the Later Italian Harpsichordists? Was music and mathematic really the same thing? How one thought led so easily, swiftly, to another! — and yet and still the feather brushed his mind; what, what? Why? Was there, then, more to it than merely boxing the newspaper cuttings? Evidently. So much as a sigh he allowed himself, then he went to looking up things in his books, not his scrapbooks, though perhaps he might find himself in them before he was finished.
The so-called Addendum to Procopius had been printed once, at Leipzig, perhaps fifty years ago; but the text was defective. Eszterhazy had tracked down the original, was able to satisfy himself that it had not been forged by the notorious Simonides — who knew more, probably, about Old Greek Paleography than the old Greek paleographers had known, and did such things as much for pleasure as for profit... if not more — and had it painstakingly photographed. It was a very late Byzantine MS, full of abbreviations, ligatures, and flourishes (and lacunae and, more simply, holes); and it had taken Eszterhazy a long time to establish exactly what was the text: then he had translated it himself. The Faculty of the University of Bella, to whom anything in the way of a Greek text even as late as the New Testament was of but moderate interest, had ignored his work. But he had received letters (one each from Caius College at Cambridge, St. Andrew’s in Scotland, and Kansas near Kickapoo in the American Province of Mid-vest) with such praise as more than made up for local neglect. So:
Another reason which justified Justinian’s waging war upon the Goths was their savage rites and customs, totally against religion and morality. For example, in the mountains of Eastern Scythia in a sacred grove by a sacred well or spring, the barbaric Goths are wont to select certain prisoners by lot and to let them loose and to pursue after them. The wretches unfortunate enough to be captured are not alone immolated [immolated, an interesting word, although of course all words were interesting; why not more simply say sacrificed ? Immolate . . . mol. . . mol. . . surely a cognate with the Magyar molnar, miller? and with what else? Meal? Mill? With a click of his tongue he reached for the dictionary, immolate : ah, here: im-mo-late, verb transitive, from Latin immolatus, past participle of immolare, in + mola, spelt grits; from the custom of sprinkling victims with sacrificial meal; akin to Latin molere to grind — see MILL. 1. to offer in sacrifice; especially to slay as a sacrificial victim. 2. KILL, DESTROY. .. . Hmm. Hmm. Interesting. Very interesting. Now back to the text.] immolated to the demons who dwelt in the place sacred to them, but portions of their flesh are cooked and eaten. Others say, eaten raw. It is true that some so-called Christians who should know better maintain that though such a cruel rite once pertained there, it had been abolished after the Gothic incursion, and that the Goths themselves
merely made effigies of meal and honey and it is these which they consume. Shame upon the so-called Christians who presume to speak well of the enemies of God and the Empire, they are probably Monophysites or Pelagians, may they be accursed and may they all be burnt alive.
Eszterhazy gave a snort of rueful amusement. The Addendum may not have been, probably was not, authentic. This of course did not mean that there had been no Goths, no Justinian, and so on; and certainly it did not mean that there had been “in the mountains of Eastern Scythia” no sacred grove, no sacred spring or well. In fact, it was rather sure that there had been. Very likely; more than one. Of each. Of most, reference to the precise site had been lost to both oral and written tradition, and of those sites of which this may not have been so, only one was still known as, and still regarded as, “the Sacred Grove.” It was near the headwaters of the Little River. One might have liked it better if the (so-called) Addendum —- probably never written by Procopius, that spiteful, scandal-loving lawyer — had made a definite reference to a river. One could not have everything. And anyway, the absence of such a reference was a sort of testimony to some sort of authenticity of the text: that the MS was of late Byzantine times did not mean it had been authored in late Byzantine times; had this been so, it likely would have mentioned a river, in order to add verisimilitude. No ... probably it was older than the Middle Ages, if not (perhaps) as old as Justinian and Procopius, and its author, whoever its author had been, merely repeated what others had said. And others had not been interested in providing geographical coordinates.
What then? about the Sacred Grove? Of the Sacred Grove?
Eszterhazy had been there, once, briefly. Though the oaks were indeed massy and ancient, of course they could hardly have been that ancient. He thought once of the lines of the English poet, Chaucer: a grove, stonding in a vale
This grove was indeed standing in a vale; it was deeply sunken into the vale. The spring was still there. The river was not the Little River, it was one of its tributaries. A Christian shrine, itself of great antiquity, was there; but the attempt to take the pagan quality away had hardly succeeded. Had not, certainly, entirely succeeded. On every bush and low tree round about, and on whatever low-enough branches of the higher trees, was tied a profusion, a multitude of bright-colored rags, strips of cloth. The people came and the people said their prayers by the proper shrine. And then the people went and made their wishes, and as they did this they tied a strip of bright cloth to a branch. It was a custom so old that it had passed out of anyone’s power to rationalize.