The Residence at Whitminster

As an avowed admirer of this writer of genius, I must puzzle only at his occasional choice of story titles.  Despite finely yclept tales of Scandinavian curses, a Scandinavian devil-worshipper, a British tale of seaside treasure, and something even less wholesome on the British seaside, we find curious captions that generally draw upon old houses – of worship or extremely ill repute, such are our two extremes.  Why do decrepit abodes make for interesting ghosts?  Because all earthbound bodies need a box, and all beasts among men a cage.  I could go on and on in this vein, of course: many are the metaphors of unrestful captivity.  But we had best keep such dread thoughts to ourselves and turn to this unusual and magnificent work.

We begin in "the year 1730, the month December" in mid-afternoon at the house of Doctor Thomas Ashton, Doctor of Divinity.  A "man of some fifty-five years, of a sanguine complexion, an angry eye, and a long upper lip," Dr. Ashton will die peacefully after an extended life of learning and privilege (we should all be so lucky).  But before he passes to dust or dimension, he will harbor two young boys in his sprawling quarters.  The first, Frank Sydall, is the son of his wife's deceased sister; the second, is the Viscount Saul, heir to the Earl of Kildonan who had studied with Dr. Ashton at university.  Why Saul is sent to Ashton of all people – the official explanation is quickly mentioned, but seems unsatisfactory and arbitrary in retrospect – should not concern us overmuch.  Where our attention should be directed, however, is to the heir himself:

So he came, one night in September.  When he got out of the chaise that brought him, he went first and spoke to the postboy and gave him some money, and patted the neck of his horse.  Whether he made some movement that scared it or not, there was very nearly a nasty accident, for the beast started violently, and the postilion being unready was thrown and lost his fee, as he found afterwards, and the chaise lost some paint on the gateposts, and the wheel went over the man's foot who was taking out the baggage.  When Lord Saul came up the steps into the light of the lamp in the porch to be greeted by Dr. Ashton, he was seen to be a thin youth of, say, sixteen years old, with straight black hair, and the pale colouring that is common to such a figure. He took the accident and commotion calmly enough, and expressed a proper anxiety for the people who had been, or might have been, hurt: his voice was smooth and pleasant, and without any trace, curiously, of an Irish brogue.

Since Frank is four or five years Saul's junior, we are hardly surprised to learn how quickly he falls under the older boy's spell.  What does come as a shock is the weird activity in which the boys, at Saul's behest, engage.  After a black rooster with nary a white feather is found in its the barest remains, some hint of ritual surfaces in Ashton's broad mind.  Then there is the incident with a glass – a looking-glass that looks at something we dare not mention – and, sad to say, Frank's sudden illness which no febrifuge could stave off.  His death, unfortunately, is just the beginning of the matter.  These otherwise inexplicable events will conclude – if that is really the right word – a few generations past the lifetime of the genteel and broad-minded Dr. Ashton, whose mind will be pushed to the limits of its expansive breadth.  

We race ahead in time almost a hundred years to "1823 or 1824," when the family Oldys becomes the residents of Whitminster.  And it is the niece of the proprietor, Dr. Henry Oldys, who develops in her mind and on some fine letterhead the very odd notion of sawflies after also coming across a looking glass.  On this topic one missive to a female coeval will suffice:

What I saw, seated in my bedroom, in the broad daylight of summer, and looking into the crystal depth of that small round tablet, was this.  First, a prospect, strange to me, of an enclosure of rough and hillocky grass, with a grey stone ruin in the midst, and a wall of rough stones about it.  In this stood an old, and very ugly, woman in a red cloak and ragged skirt, talking to a boy dressed in the fashion of maybe a hundred years ago.  She put something which glittered into his hand, and he something into hers, which I saw to be money, for a single coin fell from her trembling hand into the grass .... Next, I was looking upon two boys; one the figure of the former vision, the other younger.  They were in a plot of garden, walled round, and this garden, in spite of the difference in arrangement, and the small size of the trees, I could clearly recognize as being that upon which I now look from my window.  The boys were engaged in some curious play, it seemed.  Something was smouldering on the ground.  The elder placed his hands upon it, and then raised them in what I took to be an attitude of prayer: and I saw, and started at seeing, that on them were deep stains of blood.  The sky above was overcast .... I then saw blood upon the grass, a little pile of bricks, and what I thought were black feathers scattered about.  That scene closed, and the next was so dark that perhaps the full meaning of it escaped me.  But what I seemed to see was a form, at first crouching low among trees or bushes that were being threshed by a violent wind, then running very swiftly, and constantly turning a pale face to look behind him, as if he feared a pursuer: and, indeed, pursuers were following hard after him.  Their shapes were but dimly seen, their number – three or four, perhaps, only guessed.  I suppose they were on the whole more like dogs than anything else, but dogs such as we have seen they assuredly were not.

Those ellipses omit some details that absolutely need not be revealed on these pages – or, perhaps, on any pages – but such discretions devolve to the reader.  One wonders what a young boy would be doing with an "old" and "very ugly" woman garbed in red, especially one who seems to have a few too many familiars at her disposal.  And what of Saul, who apparently succumbs shortly after Frank?  While the younger boy has some brave words before he goes ungently into that good night, Saul seems to wither and fade like some bloodless beet.  Which would not explain the final letter written to Lord Kildonan about his heir, having to do with the great ring of a church door, one that was never quite opened in time.  And maybe Lord Kildonan will remember another Saul and another old and ugly woman and rip that letter into the tiniest shreds. 

The Terror of Blue John Gap

The inspector entered it all in a large book and bowed me out with commendable gravity.  But I heard a burst of laughter before I had got down his garden path; no doubt he was recounting my adventure to his family.

                                                                                                                            Dr. James Hardcastle

I don't think that as a child I ever believed in unicorns.  Perhaps because their horns were clearly vestigial and served no purpose other than to distinguish them from the plainest of ponies; perhaps because young boys tend to cherish less delicate critters.  Mermaids, fairies, and other soft metaphors of femininity were likewise devoid of appeal.  Common is the child who will reject these earthbound fantasies for the beasts of beyond, for interplanetary spies and spectacles, for impossible odds and still more impossible evens.  But these gimcrack scenes have never attracted me, in no small part because I identified them long ago as shadows of our own melodramas, puppet theater for those who seek the actions but not the morals.  What did fill me with wonderment and joy, however, were the innumerable tales of what we have come to call, faute de mieux, cryptids.  And while I would now be unlikely to deem these creatures possible, some long neck, some claw's print, some unpalatable howl shattering a dark, clear night still revives a childhood fear.  Which brings us to this tale.  

Our hero will prove his mettle over the course of a few crazed months in the Derbyshire hills, but he shall pay dearly for this display of courage.  His name is Dr. James Hardcastle, "a man of a sober and scientific turn of mind, absolutely devoid of imagination, and most unlikely to invent any abnormal series of events."  Those of us who can enjoy Conan Doyle's genial phantasmagoria know that it is invariably from among such souls – the smug, the skeptic, the materialist – that his protagonists are selected.  Were incredible events to befall someone already mindful of phenomena beyond man's meager ken, we would have a corroboration, not a metamorphosis, and corroborations, as we know, do not stimulating literature make.  Thus for fairness and fairness alone we should present the man as he saw himself in advance of the happenings of the summer of 1907, which left livestock dead and local residents terrified:

How absurdly easy it is for a legend to arise in a lonely countryside!  I examined him as to the reasons for his weird belief.  It seems that from time to time sheep have been missing from the fields, carried bodily away, according to Armitage.  That they could have wandered away of their own accord and disappeared among the mountains was an explanation to which he would not listen.  On one occasion a pool of blood had been found, and some tufts of wool.  That also, I pointed out, could be explained in a perfectly natural way.  Further, the nights upon which sheep disappeared were invariably very dark, cloudy nights with no moon.  This I met with the obvious retort that those were the nights which a commonplace sheep-stealer would naturally choose for his work.  On one occasion a gap had been made in a wall, and some of the stones scattered for a considerable distance.  Human agency again, in my opinion.  Finally, Armitage clinched all his arguments by telling me that he had actually heard the Creature – indeed, that anyone could hear it who remained long enough at the Gap.  It was a distant roaring of an immense volume.  I could not but smile at this, knowing, as I do, the strange reverberations which come out of an underground water system running amid the chasms of a limestone formation.  My incredulity annoyed Armitage, so that he turned and left me with some abruptness. 

We suspect it is of no small coincidence that the panicked yokel, a staple of such stories, is called Armitage, but I digress.  What we have not mentioned is the "weird belief" itself, which I'm afraid may sound silly to modern ears so accustomed to dismissing rustic rumors.  Possessed of that typical British fortitude that immediately finds caves and lagoons fascinating, Hardcastle betakes himself into the breach – in this case literally, as he enters a canyon from where this mineral is harvested.  Something untimely will happen to his candle, as well as to the matchbox in his pocket, and James Hardcastle will spend an unforeseen period ("it may have been for an hour, it may have been for several") in moist, stony darkness.  And with the sense of sight entirely unavailable, it will be his other senses that will betray him, although betray may not quite be the right word.

Even if he will always be remembered for this magnificent creation, Conan Doyle's other works, apart from some lengthier subscriptions of mystical experiences, should not be ignored.  The world of Holmes and Watson enthralled us because their creator found a way to combine, in a most genteel partnership, the arrogance of science and the faith of the human soul.  The result was the most successful tandem in literary history; yet to have both currents converge, as they do upon the battlements of Dr. James Hardcastle, is perhaps too much for one mortal to handle.  Indeed, after the comeuppance of his cavernal visitation, Hardcastle becomes broken and emotional.  The caption to his hysteria may give away more than we should:

You can imagine that it was not long before I had shaken the dust ... from my feet and returned to the farm, cursing all unimaginative pedants who cannot conceive that there may be things in creation which have never yet chanced to come across their mole's vision.

Other pedants (please read me out of such a congregation) would consider the usually careful creator of Holmes, Watson, and a multitude of other riveting beings, and wonder at the cacophonous echo of "imagine" in this passage.  But then again, we are allegedly absorbing the tale of and by a man of science, and a shaken one at that.  A man of science who may have to choose between spreading "mad alarm over the whole countryside," and facing consignment in a house for those who spread mad alarms that turn out to be mere figments of their alarming minds.  And perhaps it may behoove us to recall that little aside about heaven, earth, dreams, and all our philosophies.   

Baudelaire, "Au lecteur"

A famous work ("To the reader") by this French poet.  You can read the original here.

Errata, avarice, sin, and fool's bets  
Will occupy our minds and bodies whole: 
Regrets are nourished by our grateful souls,  
Just like the beggars feed their vermin pets.  

Our sins are stubborn, our repentance faint;
And our confessions rob us more than free:
As we return in joy through muddy street,
Believing such vile tears could cleanse our taints.

On evil's pillow sits Trismegistus,
That Satan so long lulling our rapt minds; 
And the rich metal of our will unbinds,   
All vaporized in that wise chemist's ruse.  

The Devil draws us to emotions' depths!  
In horrid objects will we find strange charms;  
Each day descending slowly to Hell's arms, 
Through reeking shadows, fearless, by one step. 

As might a poor debauch'd fool taste and kiss  
The martyred bosom of some ancient whore,  
So do we glide to secret pleasures' shores, 
Which, like a rotting orange, press our lips.

In serried swarm a million helminthes feast,  
A demon folk in riot in our brains;
And when we breathe, into our lungs Death strains,
Just like a river, with muffl'd moans, unseen. 

If violence, poison, daggers, or fire's blaze
Have not portrayed us yet in their doom's draft, 
That woeful canvas of our sad fate's path,
Alas, to this our souls remain unbrazed.

Amidst the jackals, panthers, and she-dogs,
The monkeys, scorpions, vultures, and base snakes,
That, barking, screaming, crawling, grunting, make
Our infamous menagerie of flaws, 

He is the ugliest and wickedest! 
Although bereft of noiseful gestes or shrieks, 
He would reduce the earth to mere debris, 
And in a gaping yawn our world ingest! 

He is Ennui!  Wet eyes unwill'd despair, 
His houkah's smoke dreams but of gallows' crease.
O reader, you know this exquisite beast!
My reader-hypocrite, my peer, my frere!

The Werewolf in Lore and Legend

From time immemorial skeptics and dull-minded empiricists have tried to thwart any belief in the preternatural: if none of our five senses can perceive it, it must not exist, a credo which remains our most lamentable form of arrogance.  Since the advent of space exploration and a heightened awareness of our universe's dimensions, however, these same doubting Thomases have been readily assured that the orbs they behold in their manmade telescopes are realer and truer than any ghost, spirit, or heavenly swath of consciousness.  What has obtained is a belief system in a reality that created itself at some point in the distant past by means and motives unknown to us, a reality that appears endless and beyond all immediate comprehension, a reality that while gazillions of miles in size (there is probably no way to quantify it) could not possibly contain some higher, benevolent force at its origin.  Why does this unending darkness, as unproven and unprovable as any deity or miracle, appeal to the modern mind?  Because unlike a spiritual explanation for our beginnings, faith in the cosmos has no moral consequences.  We gaze upon the unresponsive emptiness around us and see a reflection of our own souls.  Now it is no longer of any import how we treat others, what choices we make, and how we decide to raise our children because in the end we are all amoebae battling for survival in a massive autonomous laboratory.  The upshot of such an argument is and can only be bitterness and strife, feelings that are exacerbated with age.  Instead of a slow march to eternity and, perchance, immortality, we grow more aggressive and impatient at missed opportunities, at the hopefulness of younger generations, and, most horrifically, at the adherence to any sort of lofty ideals.  After all, we are nothing but mammals, so let us behave as such and tear at each other's throats for the last piece of grub.  And both man and beast are conjoined in unprecedented eloquence in this rather extraordinary work.

A brief flip through the appended bibliography should be warning enough to the uninitiated: beware, you are dealing with a polyglot of exceptional ambition. Summers's opus is a joy to those who appreciate original research, old books, and a concatenation of centuries of wisdom – an unholy trinity for many modern readers who like plain and simple explanations for their plain and simple categories.  Nevertheless, the constant citations in the classical languages, French, German, Italian, and Spanish (from his sources, it is evident that Summers also had some Slavic and Scandinavian training) can only enrich your experience should you decide to bother looking up a few key words and may even encourage further, independent study.  If I sound snooty, it's because the world has changed.  College-educated persons in our privileged societies with access to a library card and the internet should no longer be allowed to use ignorance as an excuse for fear, prejudice, and misunderstanding.  Never in the history of mankind has the average citizen had this level of opportunity to acquire information, and never has the average amount of acceptable education – for those, admittedly, allowed to attend school, not always a universally held right in olden times – been lower.  Some may call this the price of democracy; but to be truthful, it is more likely attributable to a rise in human pride, a complex of superiority born from a puerile dissatisfaction with not knowing everything about everything.  All the greatest minds in history have implacably sought as complete a survey and probe of information as time and effort permitted them, and almost all came to the same conclusion: full knowledge is impossible.  Yet deep and wide knowledge buttressed by an invincible moral framework lets us make decisions based on prior experience and, should we indeed be immortal, gives us the basis for understanding the other world into which we may well pass. 

For that reason will something like a book on the history of werewolves quoted in the original languages and written with an archaic flavor reminiscent of late 18th-century Gothic novelists either greatly attract or repel its readership.  Summers has set himself a bold task: examine the development of lycanthropy and its related manifestations in Europe from Ancient Greece to the modern day, with the assumption that shape-shifting into animals is not only real, but also evidence of some pact with the Devil.  The most common refutation of this premise, apart from a dismissal of all possible attestation in dozens of countries from thousands of witnesses, is that many of the crimes imputed to werewolves – and, to a lesser extent, vampires – have also been found in the foul stench of the twentieth century's version of the Devil, the serial killer.  Yet what is never mentioned is how greatly the crimes of these mass murderers resemble one another, with sadists who could not have possibly known the details of each other's gory sins having almost identical rituals and practices – almost as if they were being directed by some overarching evil power. 

It is precisely this pattern that Summers seizes upon in the first two parts of his book, "Lycanthropy" and "The Werewolf: His Science and Practice."  Here three potential explanations for shape-shifting are discussed: there is no actual transformation, and onlookers are deceived by virtue of some diabolic spell (Summers uses the older word "glamour," etymologically linked to "grammar" and "grimoire," or occult learning); the subject falls asleep, entranced by a demon, and his spirit takes over an animal and runs amok; or, what we have come to see in film and modern literature, the subject actually undergoes a physical change in form, often through the application of "certain ointments and words" (not through, it should be said, the lunar cycle, which is a more modern conceit).  Each point is elaborated with copious examples from literary sources and accorded almost equal plausibility, with the third explanation appealing most to Summers's taste.  Importantly, it is the Satanic nature of the wolf itself that makes this transformation or curse all the more compelling:

Not without reason did the werewolf in past centuries appear as one of the most terrible and depraved of all bond-slaves of Satan.  He was even whilst in human form a creature within whom the beast – and not without prevailing – struggled with the man.  Masqued and clad in the shape of the most dreaded and fiercest denizen of the forest, the witch [what Summers calls all persons in pact with Satan] came forth under cover of darkness, prowling in lonely places, to seek his prey .... If he were attacked and sore wounded, if a limb, a paw or ear were lopped, perforce he must regain his human shape, and he fled to some cover to conceal these fearful transformations, where man broke through the shell of beast in horrid confusion.  The human body was maimed or wounded in that numerical place where the beast had been hurt.  By this were his bedevilments not unseldom betrayed, he was recognized and brought to justice.  Hateful to God and loathed of man, what other end, what other reward could he look for than the stake, where they burned him quick, and scattered his ashes to the wind, to be swept away to nothingness and oblivion on the keen wings of the tramontane and the nightly storm.

The key word here is "justice," what any believer in any spiritual realm maintains is the aim of existence on earth and which, if not achieved then, will become the atonement that each shall face in the afterlife.  The view is very Christian, as are Summers's arguments throughout his work, a prideful fortress that has alienated many readers whose attention can only withstand what is casually referred to as "pure science."  As in this tome, reviewed earlier on these pages, Summers is seeking a logical and religious root for such an unusual manifestation, and after devoting half of his book to such a theory, he culls dozens of legends and attestations from England to Russia, Greece to Spain, all rather remarkable in their uniformity even in the days when the exchange of folklore was hardly widespread (such as the belief that a man with linked eyebrows was definitely a werewolf, as in this well-known film).  One may fillip a dismissive finger at the approach and system of credences that linger behind The Werewolf in Lore and Legend, but as an academic work it has no peers in its field.  And apart from being edifying, Summers and his resolutely Romantic views are always a stylistic pleasure, the labors of a poet who has traded wine, women, and song for a wall of oaken shelves.  Yes, it may seem counterintuitive to aver that horror and nightmares have always attracted Romantic minds, but from the most sublime of poets to the most notorious to this master of horror this has indeed been the case.  As Summers himself states:

Where there is mystery beauty may always lie hid.  There will be wonder, because wonder always lurks where there is the unknown.  And it is this longing for beauty intermingling with wonder and mystery that will express itself, perhaps exquisitely and passionately in the twilight moods of the romantic poets, perhaps a little crudely and even a little vulgarly in tales of horror and blood.

And for your own well-being it may be best, in those twilight moods, not to think of the beasts that may lurk in the hearts of man.

The White People

Have you ever wandered through the British countryside in the early springtime's glory?  Or kissed the white lilies that line the pagan hillock paths?  Or watched the moon sit upon some crooked autumn branches, bare and baleful like a claw?  Or considered a sylvan scene that should never be considered, even if it be, for some, "that wonderful secret in the secret wood"?  And who are these some?  The some should not be known to you and me, or, in fact, anyone who wishes himself a happy, normal life.  For those, however, who long to be reft of the gladsome daytime sun and cast into a realm where every object seems animated towards an ulterior, not in any way beneficent purpose, there have always been methods and means to that end.  And hints about that perilous wish are strewn generously throughout this famous work.

All stories of the supernatural or uncanny need a skeptic, and we attach this regrettable agname to the very British and very serious person of Mr. Cotgrave.  Cotgrave the Skeptic sounds precisely like a lifelong fool, although this may change with the course of our narrative.  As we begin, however, he still counts himself among those allegedly learned minds who will never believe anything their five senses cannot relay within the thin framework of their realities.  What is particularly laughable about such types is that they often fancy themselves profound men of philosophy, as if philosophy, like beauty, were only skin and fossil deep.  For that reason Cotgrave has strong misgivings about the wisdom espoused by his host, a mysterious man by the name of Ambrose, who disabuses him of his notion of the nature of evil:

I think you are falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it.  The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint.  Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant.

One wonders how rapidly theologians would cavil at this generally accurate statement for fear of then equating great evil with great good, but we can and should put aside these cares.  The paucity of true saints, Ambrose argues, implies there are even fewer true sinners because the latter path is considerably more cumbersome.  The easy vices of everyday life, sloth, lust, and its merry companions, are just that – easy: the lazy and sensual recourse of those who only care about themselves and their basic terrestrial pleasures.  As loathsome as these people can become, they are not terrifying or even particularly flagitious; instead, their lives are shallow, dull, and fickle, a vacuous pendulum swinging between satisfaction and some lack thereof.  True evil requires an extraordinary desire to poison life, since the world generally guides minds away if not to good, then to (vicious) indifference.  And true evil has already been revealed to Ambrose in, of all things, the diary of a teenage girl with the innocuous title of "The Green Book."

The interpolation of this logbook creases our tale in three, but we should restrict comment on what it contains for the very simple reason that the author herself does not seem to know – at least not yet.  Once upon a time, when she was eight or thereabouts, she was taken by her nurse to some lovely country field where she saw something she shouldn't have seen, and it reminded her of something she believes she has always seen, namely "little white faces that used to look at me when I was lying in my cradle."  Our narrator informs us that everything about these creatures – their houses, their mountains, and their clothes – had the same colorless hue.  That is to say, white is the amalgamation of all color: it is black that has no light.  But in "The Green Book" there are also patches of black; take, for example, her twice-told tale about a young local woman:

Once upon a time there was a poor girl who said she would go into the hollow pit, and everybody tried to stop her, but she would go.  And she went down into the pit and came back laughing, and said there was nothing there at all, except green grass and red stones, and white stones and yellow flowers.  And soon after people saw she had the most beautiful emerald earrings, and they asked how she got them, as she and her mother were quite poor.  But she laughed, and said her earrings were not made of emeralds at all, but only of green grass …. And one day she went to the Court, and she wore on her head a crown of pure angel-gold, so nurse said, and it shone like the sun, and it was much more splendid than the crown the king was wearing himself, and in her ears she wore … emeralds, and [a] big ruby was the brooch on her breast, and [a] great diamond necklace was sparkling on her neck …. And she was so lovely that everybody said that her eyes were greener than the emeralds, that her lips were redder than the ruby, that her skin was whiter than the diamonds, and that her hair was brighter than the golden crown.  So the king's son said he would marry her, and the king said he might.  And the bishop married them, and there was a great supper, and afterwards the king's son went to his wife's room.  But just when he had his hand on the door, he saw a tall, black man, with a dreadful face, standing in front of the door, and a voice said:

Venture not upon your life,
This is mine own wedded wife.

Then the king's son fell down on the ground in a fit.  And they came and tried to get into the room, but they couldn't, and they hacked at the door with hatchets, but the wood had turned hard as iron, and at last everybody ran away, they were so frightened at the screaming and laughing and shrieking and crying that came out of the room.  But next day they went in, and found there was nothing in the room but thick black smoke, because the black man had come and taken her away.  And on the bed there were two knots of faded grass and a red stone, and some white stones, and some faded yellow flowers.

I suppose there are more hideous passages in the annals of literature, but not many.  Our young narrator seems to comprehend the true meaning of these events, yet believes they could not possibly befall her for one very good reason: she, unlike the bride bedecked in jewels, would be a far more willing mate.  Several other anecdotes arise, all of them almost inconceivably wicked, yet all of them inconceivably delightful to our narrator.  One involves moonlight dances and "secret things ... brought out of some hiding place," a scene where, "sometimes people would suddenly disappear and never be heard of afterwards, and nobody knew what had happened to them."  Another sequence details the hunting of a white stag of boundless energy and ends in what the pursuer believes is a kiss, even though we know otherwise.

Machen's shadowy world has garnered him both recognition and scorn (alas, the two are common companions), but even the most impartial of observers cannot deny the beauty of the English countryside, a beauty that has set off a thousand poets' imaginations.  There are numerous moments in The White People of such startling vision, filtered through the diction and imagery extant to a teenage child, that one shudders at what that same child's mind would have produced had she lived long enough to carry out her deeds.  A last, unremittingly horrible passage has to do with a woman known as Lady Avelin, although she was also known as Cassup, and her ritual of forging an object called the glame stone.  And what can you do with a glame stone?  The same thing, one supposes, you can do with a statue "of Roman workmanship, of a stone that with the centuries had not blackened."  If you happen to know what to do with that.