beneath it, I could make out a chant that soon overwhelmed every other element of the noise. “Who is it? Who is it!
“Amy Maureen Haskel.” I smiled. “Neophyte Haskel!”
The doors flew open and I blinked. This was by far the most elaborate of all of the tableaux. It looked like a carnival inside, and it was obvious I was the main attraction. The round room had a domed ceiling painted dark blue and dotted with tiny golden stars. Around me stood players, all masked, in the most outlandish costumes. They were all shouting my name.
The two hooded figures shoved me against a carved teak desk and pushed my head toward a piece of parchment.
A man in a gold, jewel-encrusted robe put down wizened hands on either side of the page. His half mask had hexagonal eyeholes and was covered in real roses, and above it his hair was gray. “Read it! Read it! Read it now, or look your last upon the Inner Temple!”
This is the vow I took:
I, Amy Maureen Haskel, Barbarian-So-Called, do hereby most solemnly avow, within the Flame of Life and beneath the Shadow of Death, never to reveal, by commission or by omission, the existence of, the knowledge considered sacred by, or the names of the membership of the Order of Rose & Grave.
When I read it aloud, everyone cheered. They picked me up and whirled me around to face a tiny engraving of a woman in a Doric chiton, holding a skull in one hand and a flower in the other.
“Behold our goddess!” shouted one, and the others set up a chant.
Persephone, Goddess of Spring. Daughter of the Goddess of the Earth, Demeter, and wife of the King of the Underworld, Hades. According to what I remember from my World Mythology survey class, she was doomed to spend half of every year as the Queen of the Underworld—one month for each pomegranate seed she’d eaten in his gloom-filled garden. The other six months of the year, she was able to return home to her mother, who was so happy to see her daughter that she brought life back to the earth. Suddenly, the “rose” and “grave” of Rose & Grave made perfect sense.
I was yanked back to the desk bearing the oath, with another injunction to “Read! Read!”
“I, Amy Maureen Haskel, Barbarian-So-Called, do hereby most solemnly avow, within the Flame of Life and beneath the Shadow of Death, never to reveal, by commission or by omission, the existence of, the knowledge considered sacred by, or the names of the membership of the Order of Rose & Grave!” When I read the oath of secrecy this time, I was louder, more sure of myself.
And then back to the engraving, which was set by itself on an altar in a little wooden cabinet. The plaque shone with the patina of age and care.
I pictured the scores of men who had come before me—raised in their fancy, rich boarding schools, destined to become captains of industry and leaders of nations. Good thing they took a vow of secrecy. Bunch of heathens. What would their constituents and boards of directors have thought had they known these guys had spent their senior year of college professing to worship a minor goddess of ancient Greece?
I read the oath one more time before they took me to another side of the room. On the wall hung a glorious oil painting of a nude with a come-hither look in her eye. A figure dressed as the pope and wearing a white bird’s mask pumped his fist in the air. “Behold, Connubial Bliss!”
“Yeah, looks like it,” I said, noting the woman’s ample curves. God bless 19th century ideals of feminine beauty. If the men of today had commissioned that portrait, she’d have as much meat on her as one of the skeletons.
This time, when I was returned to the teak desk, there was a different parchment waiting for me.
“Read it! Read it!
I, Amy Maureen Haskel, Barbarian-So-Called, do hereby most solemnly avow, within the Flame of Life and beneath the Shadow of Death, to bear the confidence and the confessions of my brothers, to support them in all their endeavors, and to keep forever sacred whatsoever I may learn beneath the seal of the Order of Rose & Grave.
Aww, that’s sweet.
The company cheered again after I read it, and they rushed me around the room three times. I began to feel dizzy and more than a little breathless, and they deposited me on the ground in front of another skull full of red liquid. This time, when I drank the sweet “blood,” I recognized the flavor immediately. Pomegranate juice. How fitting.
Two more trips back to the oath of constancy—and in between, one trip around the room, then two—and they deposited me in front of the golden-robed man with the gray hair.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said in a booming voice. “I am Uncle Tony Cthony Carnicks Carnage Carthage Parnassus Phinneas Philamagee Phimalarlico McPherson O’Phanel.”
“Say it!” They all shouted at me. “Say it! Say it!
“She can’t say it! She can’t! She can’t!” A figure bounced up, dressed in red and painted to look like Lucifer. He swung his long, forked tail at me, whipping my face and arms playfully as he taunted me. Beneath the grease paint and prosthetic hooked nose, I noticed a set of sparkling white teeth.
They shoved me toward a guy dressed in 19th century garb, holding a leather-bound book marked all over with the Rose & Grave seal. He showed me the book—upside-down Greek. I think.
“Read it! Read it! Read it!”
Yeah, right! But this time, they hardly gave me a second before beginning to cry, “She can’t read! The neophyte can’t read!”
Their teasing seemed to have reached a crescendo, though, and I suspected it was because they were drawing to the end of the allotted time to issue such abuse. The golden-robed Uncle Tony propelled me back to the teak desk, where there stood a third and final oath. The oath of fidelity. “Let’s see if she can read this!” he shouted.
I, Amy Maureen Haskel, Barbarian-So-Called, most solemnly pledge and avow my love and affection, everlasting loyalty and undying fealty. By the Flame of Life and the Shadow of Death, I swear to cleave wholly unto the principles of this ancient order, to further its friends and plight its enemies, and place above all others the causes of the Order of Rose & Grave.
Ah, this was the oath that the conspiracy theorists loved to point at. This was the reason they attacked the President for being a member of Rose & Grave. I admit that even I, who was not a leader of men and had no intention of ever being so, faltered at the wording of the vow. Did I know these people enough to cleave wholly unto their principles? What
Nah, probably not.
I spoke the oath of fidelity three times, and as the final words fell from my lips, the room seemed to crackle with the power of my promise.
(Although, in these pages, I have broken the first two vows, I have kept the third, and always shall, until the end of my days. Those of my brothers who believe my transgressions unforgivable, look again at my oath, and tell me if I am indeed forsworn.)
They lifted me up and placed me gently at the feet of a man dressed like Don Quixote. He wore a suit of ill-fitting armor and had scraggly gray whiskers beneath a long-handled saucepan hat. He lifted a rusty, ancient-looking sword and tapped me on the left shoulder. “From this moment on, you are no longer Barbarian-So- Called Amy Maureen Haskel. By the order of our Order, I dub thee Bugaboo, Knight of Persephone, Order of Rose & Grave.”
Someone struck a tocsin thrice, once, and twice again, and everyone shouted, “Diggers!”
And that was it. I was a Digger.
Named
6. Party
When I stepped through the doors into the two-story Grand Library (room 311, since the Inner Temple had claimed the sacred designation of 312, according to the intelligence I gleaned from the two thirty-something alumni who showed me the way), everyone looked up and gave me a little toast with pomegranate juice–filled punch cups. There were already close to twenty people in the room—maybe ten college students and a handful of older men in suits.
“So you’re number eleven,” said a stocky black girl with hair the color of my Friday night date panties and a woven hemp shirt. “Welcome to our loony bin.” I knew this girl by reputation—I’d seen her protests and her rallies—Demetria Robinson.
“You’re Lydia’s friend, right?” A guy with reddish-brown hair stepped up next and glad-handed me. “I think we met once, sophomore year.”
I nodded in recognition. Leave it to Joshua Silver, political
“Now, there’s a society name!” I wrinkled my nose. “I’m
“Could be worse,” Demetria said. “Some soon-to-be-dickless fuckwad thought it would be funny to christen me Thorndike.”
Josh/Soze sniggered and Clarissa Cuthbert materialized by my side, holding two silver punch cups. She handed one to me. “It’s a historical name. You should be proud of it. President Taft was a Thorndike.”
“President Taft was a fat white fuck,” Thorndike replied.
Clarissa clinked her glass against mine. Her HELLO MY NAME IS sticker read
