The Magic Circle (68 page)

“By order of Hitler himself, Monte Cassino was defended fanatically,” said Zoe. “Just as he wished to seize Mount Pamir in Central Asia in his invasion of Russia, Hitler was assured by his dowsers and geomantic scientists that Monte Cassino in Italy was one of the key points on a massive power grid girdling the earth.”

“Yes, it’s what I was telling Ariel about, only last night,” Wolfgang said. “It seems these places are all connected with the coming aeon. And Hitler’s actions as well.”

“Indeed,” Zoe agreed. “An important event confirms it. Since Lucky’s horoscope foretold he could only be destroyed by his own hand, he was known among his intimates as ‘the man who couldn’t be killed.’ The last attempt on his life, at his Wolf’s Lair headquarters on July 20, 1944, was led by Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, a handsome war hero, an aristocrat and mystic. Because his name connects symbolically to the coming age—
Schenk
means cup-bearer and
Stauf
a tankard—Stauffenberg was regarded by many as the coming ‘pourer’ who would usher in the age by destroying the Great Adversary. Of further importance was that, like Wotan, Stauffenberg had lost—or perhaps given!—one of his eyes in the war.

“But once again, Lucky lived up to his nickname,” Zoe added. “Later, when he took his own life, he underwent cyanide, a bullet, and the flame—symbolic too—the Celtic triple death, like
die Götterdämmerung.
”

“That’s a pretty glamorous description for a guy who was your basic homicidal maniac,” I pointed out. “Just take a look at the actual deaths of Mussolini and Hitler: the first was hung up in the town square like a stuffed sausage, while the other got cremated with a can of gasoline. I’d hardly describe those as heroic or noble ways to die—much less a ‘Twilight of the Gods.’ Not to mention how many millions of people Hitler wiped out before himself, in the Holocaust.”

“Do you know the meaning of the word ‘holocaust’?” Zoe asked.

“
Holo-kaustos,
” Wolfgang said. “It means totally burned, yes? In Greek, if an animal offering was thought a good sacrifice, they called it ‘completely consumed by fire.’ It meant the gods had accepted everything that was sent them. For the Greeks, though, this was more of a thanks offering for gifts already received, where for the Semites such things were expiation of the past sins of the tribe.”

What in God’s name were they saying? I reminded myself I was
related
to both these individuals who were sitting here chatting so calmly, even blithely, about the world’s largest-scale mass murder as if it were some atavistic religious rite. Wasn’t it enough to suggest that Hitler had arranged to have himself torched like a marshmallow—that he undertook a pagan ritual involving six children, a dog, and a handful of miscellaneous friends in an underground bunker on
Walpurgisnacht
—just so in death he’d resemble some self-sacrificial Teutonic hero? That was sufficiently disgusting. But if I understood correctly, what they were now implying was even worse.

“You can’t be serious,” I said. “Surely you’re not saying Hitler’s death was part of some god-awful rite involving slaughter on a massive scale—trying to purify the earth and everybody’s bloodlines because of some prophecy about an avatar of a new age?”

“It’s a bit more complex than that,” Zoe informed me. “When you arrived, I said I’d explain the magus missing from the
deux magots
. Some think it’s Balthasar, who brought the gift of bitter myrrh, for tears of repentance. But in fact it was Kaspar, whose gift was incense: an offering of sacrifice.”

“Like Kaspar Hauser’s death,” I said, recalling Wolfgang’s tale on our drive to the monastery of Melk.

“Have you ever visited Kaspar Hauser’s grave at Anspach?” Zoe asked. “It’s a small stone-walled cemetery filled with flowers. To the left of his grave is a tombstone that reads
Morgenstern
—in German ‘morning star,’ the five-pointed star of Venus. The stone to the right is
Gehrig
—‘spear-bearer,’ or the celestial centaur Sagittarius, from the Old High German word
ger
, spear. Coincidence? More likely a message.”

“Message?” I said.

“The centaur sacrificed his life to trade places with Prometheus in Hades,” she said. “He’s still associated with the Sufis and the Eastern mystical schools. The five-pointed star of Venus was the symbol of the sacrifice required for initiation into the Pythagorean mysteries. I think the message to be read at Kaspar Hauser’s grave is that at the turn of each age, sacrifices must be made, willingly or unwillingly.”

Zoe smiled strangely, her cold aquamarine eyes looking through me.

“There was such a sacrifice in our story: the death of Lucky’s niece, his sister Angela’s child. Perhaps the only woman Lucky ever wholly loved,” she said. “She was an opera student, like Pandora, and might have become a fine singer. But she shot herself with Lucky’s revolver—though the reason was never adequately explained. Her name was Geli Raubal, short for Angeli, ‘little angel,’ from
angelos
, messenger. So you see, as in the case of Kaspar Hauser, it may have been the symbolic messenger who died for what others were seeking.”

“What were they seeking?” I asked.

“The knowledge of the eternal return—Pandora’s magic circle,” Zoe said. “It is, quite simply, the power of life after death.”

THE MESSENGER

The belief of [the Thracians] in their immortality takes the following form.… Every five years they choose one of their number by lot and send him to Zalmoxis as a messenger … to ask for whatever they want.… Some of them hold javelins with speartips pointed upward, while others take hold of the messenger’s hands and feet and swing him aloft onto the points. If he is killed they believe that the god regards them with favour, but if he lives they blame his own bad character, and send another messenger in [his] place
.

I’ve heard a different account from the Greeks:… Zalmoxis was a man and lived in Samos where he was a slave in the household of Pythagoras.… After gaining his freedom and amassing a fortune he returned to his native Thrace … where he entertained the leading men and taught them that neither he nor they, nor any of their descendants would ever die
.

—Herodotus,
The Histories

And those of the disciples who escaped the conflagration were Lydis and Archippos and Zalmoxis, the slave of Pythagoras who is said to have taught the Pythagorean philosophy to the Druids among the Celts
.

—Hippolytus, Bishop of Romanus Porto,
Philosophumena

And I only am escaped alone to tell thee
.

—Job 1:15, 16, 17, 19

Camulodunum, Britannia: Spring, A.D. 60

FRACTIO

Jesus took bread, and blessed it
…
and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he took the cup and gave thanks … saying, Drink ye all of it. For this is my blood
.

—Matthew 26:26–28

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death
.

—Isaiah 25:6–8

The grass spread beneath her was a thick carpet of rich emerald green that soothed her soul after another long, hard winter under the Roman yoke. She stood tall and proud in the wicker chariot perched high on the grassy knoll, holding the reins lightly between her fingers, her wild red hair lifted from her broad shoulders and tumbling to billow about her waist in the early morning breeze.

This past year had been far worse than the previous fifteen years since the Roman occupation, for the young emperor Nero had proved far greedier than his stepfather, Claudius, whom the rumors said Nero himself had poisoned.

Now native Britons were being brutally dispossessed by floods of opportunistic Roman colonists backed up by garrisons of legionary troops. Only a few months ago, when her husband died, she herself—proud queen of royal blood of the house of Iceni, and her two young daughters—had been raped by Roman officers, dragged out of their home and publicly beaten with iron rods. Her vast holdings of land were seized on behalf of the emperor Nero and her family’s wealth and treasured possessions, as with those of so many others, carted off to Rome. But despite these tragedies, she knew she had fared better than many others: Britons were everywhere being captured and sold into chain gangs to build Roman towns, Roman garrisons, Roman aqueducts, Roman roads. What was the choice now left them, really, as Britons? Only liberty or death.

With her daughters beside her in the chariot, as the horses stamped the turf and blew air through their nostrils, she stood in silence surveying the throngs below, all massed there in a broad circle around the borders of the vast open field, all gazing up at her—all waiting for what she would do.

When at last they fell silent, she knotted the reins on the pommel and opened the folds of her multicolored tunic. She lifted out the rabbit and held the creature high above her head for all to see. It was a snow-white sacred hare, bred and raised by the Druids for precisely this purpose. From the eighty thousand men, women, and children thronged there on the green, not a single breath was heard. Only the whinnying of a horse broke the endless silence. Then she released the hare.

At first the animal sat there on the grassy knoll in stunned confusion as thousands of humans stood below, planted like forests of stone, waiting in silence. Then it pelted in a wild burst down the knoll and made a beeline across the open field, a small white blur against a drop-cloth of green. The direction it ran was southwest—away from the sun—and when the crowds saw it, with one voice they burst into a warlike scream of cheers, tossing their tartans into the air like a blizzard of plaids from the sky.

For they had seen that the prophetic hare had dashed straight in the direction of Camulodunum. Boudica’s armies that were gathered here could reach it, on fast march, by nightfall. And by dawn, sixteen years of abuses against the Britons and their land would be washed away in an orgy glutted on Roman blood.

Mona Island, Britannia: Spring, A.D. 60

CONSIGNATIO

Here at the world’s end, on its last inch of liberty, we have lived unmolested to this day, defended by our remoteness and obscurity. Now the farthest reaches of Britain lie exposed … nothing but sea and rock and hostile Romans, whose arrogance you can’t fool by compliance or modest self-restraint. Predators of the world
…
[Neither] east nor west has satiated them … to plunder, butcher, steal
—
these things they falsely name empire. They’ve turned the world into a wasteland, and they call it peace
.

—Tacitus,
Agricola
, quoting British chieftain Calgacus on the Romans

It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth
.

—Winston Churchill,
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

It wasn’t merely a question of achieving short-term control or submission among the natives, as Suetonius Paulinus well knew. He’d begun his career in the Atlas Mountains putting down uprisings by the Berbers against Roman occupation. Having weathered many such campaigns, Suetonius was well prepared to wage warfare over difficult terrain, or to meet fierce hot opposition in hand-to-hand combat.

But in the two years since the emperor Nero had appointed him governor of Britannia, Suetonius had come to understand that these Druids were something else. As both rulers and seers, whether male or female, they held the highest priestly offices in the land and were regarded by their people nearly as gods. Suetonius knew without question that in the long run there was only one way to deal with them: they had to be utterly destroyed.

Their chief sanctuary was located just off the coast of Cambria on the isle of Mona—the cow, a nickname for Brighde, a Demeter-like moon goddess of fecundity. They believed they were protected by this goddess, and that their warriors who were slain in battle would be rejuvenated from her cauldron of rebirth. The underground passage to the cauldron was located beneath a lake that lay near Mona’s sacred grove.

It had taken Suetonius Paulinus two years of stealth and trickery to determine exactly when was the most propitious moment to strike at this offshore stronghold, without chance of defense or retreat. At last he learned that all the principal druidical priests were present each year on the first day of the Roman month of May. This was the day the Celts called
Beltaine
for the
taine
or fires they lit the night before to cleanse and purify the sacred woods in preparation for the Great Mother’s yearly visit to usher in the month of fertility. This was the holiest day of the year, when the Druids neither worked nor bore arms—and therefore, Suetonius could hope, the day they would very least be anticipating an attack.

He had a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats built to bring his troops across the narrow but often violent strait from the mainland. At dusk on May Eve they crept through the sea foam, rounding the coast along the southern tip of the island for a landing away from the mainland, in the west at Holy Head.