Someone takes a big slurp of ale, sets down his glass, and belches.
“Keep going, we’re on pins.”
“During that first month I was part of a team that followed reports of far-flung Nazi agents studying obscure tongues — Ket in Siberia, Na-Dene in Arizona, Vandalic in Prussia. I remember some jokester in our group passed around a compilation of Burrough’s language of the Great Apes, as spoken by Tarzan. Things soon got very serious, however, when I was unexpectedly approached, at my Oxford office, by two gentlemen. They claimed to be scholars of Norse mythology. They said they wished to explore the connections between Beowulf and older Norse legends. They spoke in particular of a collection of ancient documents that told of rings and elves and orcs. I told them such were staples of ancient Norse and Old English texts. They added that these documents displayed a ‘living language’.”
“At their urging, I looked briefly at one example, an apparently ancient document. It was fascinating but something told me not to let on. I told them I could not fathom its meaning. I reported the encounter to my superiors. One of the men that debriefed me was Philby, already a shadowy triple agent it seems, with known links to Von Ribbentrop and others in the Third Reich. He asked about their collection of documents. Sometime later, having completed my pending projects, I was relieved of duty without explanation. I didn’t ask questions, and happily returned to Oxford.”
“And then?”
“My life was very busy with teaching and writing. I didn’t think any more of my S.I.S. experience until recently … yes, Clive?”
“Sorry to interrupt, but Sarah tells us we are past our curfews.”
“Excellent, for there’s little else for me to tell.”
“Next Tuesday, then?”
“Ah, yes, Clive will be reading. We’ll no doubt forget where we were just now.”
“Goodnight all. Don’t forget your hat, Jack.”
Shuffling and packing up and goodbye sounds.
The following teletype was discovered in declassified files of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), now a museum, at Bletchley Park, north of London:
September 6, 1939. Field Report. Station X. Documents referenced in Tolkien, J.R.R. interview retrieved from subjects Glaus and Spearman. Said subjects, formerly members of Anglo-German Fellowship Union, likely Nazi operatives. Documents in their possession comprised of archaic parchments and scrolls with much runic text, believed stolen from historical collection of Lord Grivenhall at Ashburnham. They are deemed unlikely to contain “ubersprache” sought by Hitler under his Seigfried Directive. Subjects turned over to S.I.S. for interrogation. Tolkien status with GC&CS compromised. Documents retained in original barrister’s case and stored at Loch Uiguenal with notation for possible later delivery to Tolkien, who will be relieved of duty. Philby, H.A.R. 794XGCCS.
Post-script: Spearman had in his effects several 8 1/2 × 11 b&w photos, apparently movie-production stills, signed by Leni Reifenstahl, with her compliments to Joseph Goebbels. Her inscriptions translates to: “I trust we can soon complete the Fuhrer’s movie project, Nacht der Dökkálfer.” That means “Night of the Dark Elves.” Unlikely this is a code, so I consider it to be a curiosity for another time.
The movie stills, and the referenced movie, have never been found.
Chapter 10
OCTOBER 18
Barren had been in New York City for one day. At first, he hid in a doorway, covered in a filthy blanket, studying the onslaught of noise that was as the clash of arms on a furious, never-ending battlefield. He traced the many sounds, each to their sources. He even saw the rampaging red beast of a machine that emitted wails and whoops as if it had been wounded and refused to die. He had an infallible instinct for danger, and here he quickly felt safe. More important, there was little magic to be worried about. He moved into the streets. The things that surprised him most about these people were … well, where to begin?
Their faces were an obscenity, scrubbed and as bereft of hair as the arses of babies. Most of these moonlike visages were topped by hair that framed the face in ridiculous lengths and shapes, and the hair itself was often painted with dyes. As if that were not enough, some humans wore devices like sticks tied together and holding pieces of glass or obsidian before the eyes. Many wore blinking shell-like objects, clinging to their ears as they talked insanely to themselves.
The smells were worse. They were overpowering, so redolent of alchemy and artifice that it gagged him. The faces all carried an odorous trail of exotic unguents to make the natural stink of man and beast seem like perfume on a warm spring night. Barren was used to reeks that would shame a buzzard off a gutcart, but this was worse. He would, as always, adjust.
He stood, draped in his blanket in a long underground grotto filled with people scurrying like a disturbed nest of termites. His study was progressing well. These beasts were soft, obsessed with themselves, assaulting each other with the obscene displays of their faces, but seeing precious little, so that he could move among them without worry.
Later that day, he waited in a partially wooded expanse, surrounded by the noise and crowds. Swans and geese swam in a small lake. Autumn still grasped root and branch as it was pulled once more into the coldness of the earth to make way for the oncoming Snow Giants.
Here he was as invisible as a tree in a dense wood, and for just a moment he closed his eyes and let rest enfold him. He dreamt at the edge of sleep, hearing bulldrums echo and talk in the far distance. Summons to an ancient mustering.
But his instincts told him otherwise. He roused to wakefulness and studied this park.
It reminded him of a place he’d been as a boy, long before a troupe of dark minstrels had come to his hamlet. A place he knew before he had gone away, half voluntarily, half seduced by the wonder of escape from the drudgery of long toil and early death that was his family’s lot.
Once in that long ago, on a brilliantly hued autumn day with smells that were colors all their own, he sat beside a lake. He half-reclined in a bed of straw grass three feet high so that he was almost hidden at the very edge of the water. The sun dipped toward day’s end. The sky was so blue and beset with soaring cloud ranges of white and pink and purple that it made him ponder the very miracle of each slow and sonorous breath. A flight of elusive Lórien ducks, bespeckled in black and white with eyes of gold, circled and then came down in formation, cupping their wings and landing without a sound on the water not ten feet from him. Their leader looked at him with eyes like yellow diamonds in the angled sunlight and floated sideways, drifting with the slight breeze. At that moment, through the mutual submission of their gazes, he knew he could master any animal — for the hunt or the table, but most of all for the sheer communion of taking life.
That was the day that defined the axis of his being.
Today, however, had present duties. Some deep instinct, informed by the Dark Lord’s direction, told him where he might search. It is time, he thought, to dress and act as these fools do.