“Do you think to comfort me from that book?” asked Lanark.
“It has more than comfort,” Jager assured him. “It has guidance.” He found what he was looking for, pulled down his spectacles again, and read aloud:
“ ‘Two wicked eyes have overshadowed me, but three other eyes are overshadowing me—the one of God the Father, the second of God the Son, the third of God the Holy Spirit; they watch my body and soul, my blood and bone; I shall be protected in the name of God.’ ”
His voice was that of a prayerful man reading Scripture, and Lanark felt moved despite himself. Jager closed the book gently and kept it in his hand.
“Albertus Magnus has many such charms and assurances,” he volunteered. “In this small book, less than two hundred pages, I find a score and more of ways for punishing and thwarting evil spirits, or those who summon evil spirits.” He shook his head, as if in sudden wrath, and turned up his spectacled eyes. “O Lord!” he muttered. “How long must devils plague us for our sins?”
Growing calmer once more, he read again from the book of Albertus Magnus. There was a recipe for invisibility, which involved the making of a thumbstall from the ear of a black cat boiled in the milk of a black cow; an invocation to “Bedgoblin and all ye evil spirits”; several strange rituals, similar to those Lanark remembered from the Long Lost Friend, to render one immune to wounds received in battle; and a rime to speak while cutting and preparing a forked stick of hazel to use in hunting for water or treasure. As a boy, Lanark had once seen water “witched,” and now he wondered if the rod-bearer had gained his knowledge from Albertus Magnus.
“ ‘Take an earthen pot, not glazed,’ ” Jager was reading on, “ ‘and yarn spun by a girl not seven years old’—”
He broke off abruptly, with a little inarticulate gasp. The book slammed shut between his hands. His eyes were bright and hot, and his face pale to the roots of his beard. When he spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper:
“That was a spell to control witches, in the name of Lucifer, king of hell. Didn’t I say that this book was evil?”
“You must forget that,” Lanark counseled him soberly. “I will admit that the book might cause sorrow and wickedness, if it were in wicked hands; but I do not think that you are anything but a good man.”
“Thank you,” said Jager simply. He rose and went to his table, then returned with an iron inkpot and a stump of a pen. “Let me have your right hand.”
Lanark held out his palm, as though to a fortune-teller. Upon the skin Jager traced slowly, in heavy capital letters, a square of five words:
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
Under this, very boldly, three crosses:
X X X
“A charm,” the preacher told Lanark as he labored with the pen. “These mystic words and the crosses will defend you in your slumber, from all wicked spirits. So says Albertus Magnus, and Hohman as well.”
“What do they mean?”
“I do not know that.” Jager blew hotly upon Lanark’s palm to dry the ink. “Will you now write the same thing for me, in my right hand?”
“If you wish.” Lanark, in turn, dipped in the inkpot and began to copy the diagram. “ ‘Opera’ is a word I know,” he observed, “and ‘tenet’ is another. ‘Sator’ may be some form of the old pagan word, ‘satyr’—a kind of horned human monster—”
He finished the work in silence. Then he lighted another cigar. His hand was as steady as a gun-rest this time, and the match did not even flicker in his fingertips. He felt somehow stronger, better, more confident.
“You’ll give me a place to sleep for the night?” he suggested.
“Yes. I have only pallets, but you and I have slept on harder couches before this.”
Within half an hour both men were sound asleep.
X
Enid Mandifer Again
The silence was not so deadly the following noon as Lanark and Jager dismounted at the hitching-rack in front of Enid Mandifer’s; perhaps this was because there were two horses to stamp and snort, two bridles to jingle, two saddles to creak, two pairs of boots to spurn the pathway toward the door.
Enid Mandifer, with a home-sewn sunbonnet of calico upon her head, came around the side of the house just as the two men were about to step upon the porch. She called out to them, anxiously polite, and stood with one hand clutched upon her wide skirt of brown alpaca.
“Mr. Lanark,” she ventured, “I hoped that you would come again. I have something to show you.”
It was Jager who spoke in reply: “Miss Mandifer, perhaps you may remember me. I’m Parson Jager, I live south of here. Look.” He held out something—the Long Lost Friend book. “Did you ever see anything of this sort?”
She took it without hesitation, gazing interestedly at the cover. Lanark saw her soft pink lips move, silently framing the odd words of the title. Then she opened it and studied the first page. After a moment she turned several leaves, and a little frown of perplexity touched her bonnet-shaded brow. “These are receipts—recipes—of some kind,” she said slowly. “Why do you show them to me, Mr. Jager?”
The ex-sergeant had been watching her closely, his hands upon his heavy hips, his beard thrust forward and his head tilted back. He put forth his hand and received back the Long Lost Friend.
“Excuse me, Miss Mandifer, if I have suspected you unjustly,” he said, handsomely if cryptically. Then he glanced sidewise at Lanark, as though to refresh a memory that needed no refreshing—a memory of a living-dead horror that had recoiled at very touch of the little volume.
Enid Mandifer was speaking once more: “Mr. Lanark, I had a
