“We’re not as easily hoodwinked as some people think,” he said. “One of the first things we do nowadays is to conduct a lab analysis. In the case of The Obsidian Cloud, the paper, the ink, the glues, and the bindings are completely genuine. So if any fakery’s involved, it’s certainly not in the materials the book’s made of.”
But what about this fantastic cloud at the core of the book? Surely, in the natural world, such a thing couldn’t really have happened? I put those questions to him outright.
“For myself, I don’t have the slightest doubt,” said Soulis.
He saw the look of surprise on my face.
“By that I mean I, personally, don’t have the slightest doubt the cloud’s nothing but a figment of Macbane’s imagination,” he said. “But, just to make sure, I had to see if there was any possible historical basis for it.”
He knew I wanted to hear much more on this, so he dug around for another paper amongst the pile on his desk and told me what he’d found out.
A PROFESSOR IN THE university’s history department, who took a special interest in the effects of weather-related events on history, had assured Soulis that some cases of exceptional weather did indeed make themselves so noteworthy as to be well documented. The great drought of the year 530, for example, was the direct cause of the massive outbreak of bubonic plague that devastated the Roman Empire. Then there was the unexpected hurricane that struck the Spanish Armada in 1588 and thus changed the entire course of European history. Another famous instance was the period known as the Little Ice Age, which brought about the Salem Witch Trials of 1692—the women who were hanged were found guilty of causing the unseasonable cold.
But most other “weather matters” were, from the standpoint of historians, recurrent and predictable. It was a quite normal Russian winter, for example, that was in large part responsible for wiping out Napoleon’s armies in 1812. Those Cape Horn tempests we hear so much about? They had, for centuries, sunk flotillas of ships and hindered exploration and trade. No ship’s captain with a modicum of competency could complain he was taken by surprise if he ran into one.
As for what might be called non-scientific accounts of history, there were any number of symbolic, or mythic, or allegorical appearances of weather events — Noah’s Flood, or the Parting of the Red Sea, to cite well-known instances. Indeed, religious literature was prone to searching for omens in sea and sky, or for any other obliging antics by the elements.
In short, the professor of history concluded, The Obsidian Cloud surely belonged to this latter, non-scientific category, for he had found no record in any reliable historical source of such an event ever having happened in the skies over Duncairn, or Scotland, or anywhere else on this earth.
I PRESUMED THAT settled the weather matter: Macbane’s cloud was an invention, as we’d already suspected. But I could see from Soulis’s expression that there was more to come.
“The professor’s conclusion would have satisfied me completely, but I was in for a bit of a surprise,” he said. “You see, I’d also written a letter to the Royal Meteorological Society in London to request an opinion on the cloud. I eventually got a lengthy response from the society’s nubionomist — that’s what they call their expert in cloud formations.” On his desk, Soulis found several pages stapled together. “Here it is. I’ll just summarize it for you.”
ACCORDING TO THE nubionomist, Macbane’s cloud certainly ought not to be dismissed out of hand as a piece of fiction. “A black cloud that acts as a mirror to the earth beneath may seem astonishing,” he wrote, “but like a magnitude ten earthquake, or a tsunami the height of the Eiffel Tower, it’s certainly in the realm of theoretically possible natural phenomena.”
In his mind, it was quite feasible that silica dust from some distant volcanic eruption, carried by high atmospheric winds, might indeed bring about what could be called an “obsidian cloud.” The high concentration of shiny particles in it might well be similar to the mirror effect produced by those tinted windows in some modern buildings. And if a cloud of that makeup were later to dissolve into rain, that rain itself would in all probability have black properties.
Even the rather grisly notion of eyeballs bursting during the height of the occurrence would be consistent. “In extreme weather situations, sudden catastrophic increases in atmospheric pressure are common,” the nubionomist explained. “In hurricane conditions, for instance, doors and even walls have to be protected to prevent implosion — the external atmospheric pressure is greater than the internal. Also, ear barotrauma, which laypersons know as ear-popping, is frequent during hurricanes. It is just possible that in an extreme case, something as fragile as the human eye might indeed be vulnerable, in the same manner as air can be sucked out of a glass container.”
The nubionomist did, however, finish this astonishing letter on a cautionary note. Yes, an event like an “obsidian cloud” was possible—in theory. But, to his knowledge, in the entire history of nubionomic scholarship no such phenomenon had ever been recorded. “Surely,” he wrote, “especially in more recent times and in a small, populous country such as Scotland, any happening of this sort would have been observed and reported in appropriate publications by any number of qualified persons. That it should have been recorded in only one little book of dubious origins and that it should cite no credible scientific witnesses give cause for a warrantable skepticism.”
The nubionomist promised to keep Soulis informed if any future developments were to moderate his findings.
“THE CLOUD SPECIALIST probably didn’t know just how right he was about the credibility of the witnesses named in The Obsidian Cloud,” said Soulis. “I’d already checked them out, and they weren’t what you’d call credible, by any means.” He looked at his watch. “I can tell you about them briefly if you like.”
I urged him to go ahead.
He glanced at another paper on his desk.
“Do you remember that Dr. Thracy de Ware who was supposed to have seen the cloud?”
I did remember the name.
“In the book he’s referred to as a ‘well-known naturalist and astronomer,’” said Soulis. “And it’s quite true that de Ware was well known in the early nineteenth century — but as an astrologer, not an astronomer. He used to go round the rural parts of Scotland predicting the future on the basis of the movement of the stars and planets. Nor was he a stranger to the justice system. I found his name in a number of court documents in connection with fraud — some of his clients lost fortunes on the basis of his predictions. In other words, he’d hardly be what scientists would call a credible witness.”
Soulis looked at his paper again.
“The book specifically mentioned the name of only one other witness — Meg Millar,” he said. “She was a poet and folklorist in Ayrshire around the same time as de Ware. According to one of the histories of Upland literature, she was called ‘The Moorland Minstrel.’ She compiled a collection of local legends and myths, which is very interesting. She also wrote hundreds of sonnets about the flowers of the region.” He rolled his eyes. “Only a few of them have survived, and maybe that’s just as well.”
I told Soulis I’d recognized Meg Millar’s name, too, when I first saw it in The Obsidian Cloud. I’d once read a story of hers about a disappointed man looking for a pot of gold. I didn’t tell Soulis that it was Miriam who’d given me the story, in Duncairn, and that the night I’d read it I was so full of love for her I’d no idea of the crushing disappointment she had in store for me. I’d sometimes wondered, looking back, if giving me the story was to prepare me for the blow.