The Magus - John Fowles [217]
and over the bare shoulder. Next, a black circle, some two inches in diameter and cut in adhesive tape, was fixed like a huge patch on the middle of my forehead. Finally with one last domesticating gesture he put a close-fitting, excellently fitting, mask over my eyes. I wryly remembered that early incident, when Conchis had measured my head; even then. I was more and more inclined to struggle; but I had missed my chance. We moved off. We marched along the cistern. They stopped me at the end and Adam said, "Slow, we go up stairs." I wondered if "up stairs" meant "into the house"; or was just bad English. I toed forward and we climbed into the sun. I could feel it on my bare skin, though the blindfolding mask occluded all but the thinnest glints of light. We must have walked some two or three hundred yards. I thought I could smell the sea, I wasn't sure. I half expected to feel a wall against my back, to find myself facing a firing squad. But then once again they halted me and a voice said, "Down stairs now." They gave me plenty of time to manoeuvre the steps; more than those leading to my cell, and the air grew cool. We went round a corner and down yet more steps and then I could hear by the resonance of the sounds we made that we had entered a large room. There was also a mysterious, ominous smell of burning wood and acrid tar. I was stopped, someone fiddled with the mask. I could see. I had expected to see people. But I and my three guards were alone. We were at one end of a huge underground room, the kind of enormous cistern, the size of a small church, that is found under some of the old Venetian-Turkish castles that are crumbling away in the Peloponnesus. I remembered having seen one very like it that winter at Pylos. I looked up and saw two telltale chimneylike openings; they would be the blocked-off necks at ground level. At the far end there was a small dais and on the dais a throne. Facing the throne was a table, or rather three long tables put end to end in a fiat crescent and draped in black cloth. Behind the table were twelve black chairs with an empty thirteenth place in the middle. The walls had been whitewashed up to a height of fifteen feet or so, and over the throne was painted an eight-spoked wheel. Between table and throne, against the wall to the right, was a small tiered bank of benches, like a jury box. There was one completely incongruous thing in this strange courtroom. The light I saw it by came from a series of brands that were burning along the sidewalls. But in each of the corners behind the throne was a battery of projectors trained on the crescent-shaped table. They were not on; but their cables and serried lenses added a vaguely reassuring air of the film studio to the otherwise alarming Ku Klux Klan ambience. It did not look like a court of justice; but a court of injustice; a Star Chamber, an inquisitorial committee. I was made to go forward. We marched down one side of the room, past the crescent table and up towards the throne. I suddenly realised that I was to sit there. They paused for me to step up onto the dais. There were four or five steps leading to a little platform at the top, on which stood the throne. Like the roughly carpentered dais, it was not a real throne, simply a bit of stage property, painted black, with armrests, a pointed back and columns on either side. In the middle of the solid black panel was a white eye, like those that Mediterranean fishermen paint on the bows of their boats to ward off evil. A fiat crimson cushion; I was made to sit. As soon as I had done so, my guards' ends of the handcuffs were unlocked, then immediately snapped onto the armrests. I looked down. The throne was secured to the dais by strong brackets. I mumbled through the gag, but Adam shook his head. I was to watch, not to speak. The other two guards took up positions behind the throne, on the lowest step of the dais, against the wall. Adam, like some mad valet, checked the handcuffs, pulled down the shirt I had tried to shrug back onto my left shoulder, then went down the steps to the ground.