The Magus - John Fowles [219]
hung down to the ground in a series of skirted flounces. Even the head mask was made of these rags; with a topknot of three white feathers and two huge saucer eyes. It appeared armless and legless, and indeed sexless, some ultimate childish nightmare. It shuffled forward to its place beside the vampire; added to the chorus of outrageous stares. Then came a squat succubus with a Bosch-like snout. The following man was by contrast mainly white, a macabre Pierrot-skeleton; echo of the figure on the wall of my cell. His mask was a skull. The outline of the pelvis had been cleverly exaggerated; and the wearer had a stiff, bony walk. Then an even more bizarre personage. It was a woman, and I began to doubt whether, after all, the vampire was Lily. The front of her stiffened skirt had the form of a stylized fishtail, which swelled up into a heavy pregnant belly; and then that in turn, above the breasts, became an up-pointed bird's head. This figure walked forward slowly, left hand supporting the swollen eight-months' belly, right hand between the breasts. The beaked white head with its almond-shaped eyes seemed to stare up towards the ceiling. It was beautiful, this fish-woman-bird, strangely tender after the morbidity and threat of the other figures. In its upstretched throat I could see two small holes, apertures for the eyes of the real person beneath. Four more places remained. The next figure was almost an old friend. Anubis the jackal head, alert and vicious. He strode lithely to his place, a Negro walk. A man in a black cloak on which were various astrological and alchemical symbols in white. On his head he wore a hat with a peak a yard high and a wide nefarious brim; a kind of black neck-covering hung from behind it. Black gloves, and a long white staff surmounted by a circle, a snake with its tail in its mouth. Over the face there was no more than a deep mask in black. I knew who it was. I could see the gleaming eyes and the implacable mouth. Two more places at the centre. There was a pause. The rank of figures behind the table stared up at me, unmoving, in total silence. I looked round at my guards, who stared ahead, like soldiers; and I shrugged. I wished I could have yawned, to put them all in their place; and to help me in mine. Four men appeared in the white corridor. They were carrying a black sedan chair, so narrow that it looked almost like an upright coffin. I could see closed curtains at its sides, and in front. On the front panel was painted in white the same emblem as the one above my throne--an eight-spoked wheel. On the roof of the sedan was a kind of black tiara, each of whose teeth ended in a white meniscus, a ring of new moons. The four porters were black-smocked. On their heads they had grotesque masks--witch-doctor faces in white and black and then rising from the crown of each head enormous vertical crosses a yard or more high. Instead of breaking off cleanly the ends of the arms and the upright of these crosses burst out in black mops of rag or raffia, so that they seemed to be burning with black flame. They did not come directly to the centre of the table, but as if it was some host, some purifying relic, carried their coffin-sedan round the room, up the left side, round in front of my throne, between me and the table, so that I could see the white crescent moons, the symbols of Artemis-Diana, on the side-panels, then on down the right side to the door again and then finally back to the table. The poles were slipped out of the brackets, and the box was lifted forward to the central empty place. Throughout, the other figures remained staring at me. The black porters went and stood by the brands, three of which were almost extinguished. The light was getting dim. Then the thirteenth figure appeared. In contrast to the others he was in a long white smock or alb that reached to the ground; whose only decoration consisted of two black bands round the end of the loose sleeves. He carried a black staff in red-gloved hands. The head was that of a pure black goat; a real goat's head, worn as a kind of cap,