The Seven of Calvary Read online

  At last Mary spoke. “For heaven’s sake,” she said forcibly, “let’s not all be such ninnies. We all know that the poor dear old man is dead, and we all know how Cynthia and I feel about finding him. So why not be open?”

  A feeling of relief passed over them all. Cynthia set down her cup and reached for a cigarette. She even managed a smile. “Well,” she asked evenly, tapping the cigarette, “well, Paul, do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Know anything about that symbol?”

  “It’s very strange that you should ask me that. I think that I am quite possibly the only man in Berkeley who does know.”

  The calm statement produced all the sensation which Paul could conceivably have desired. After a moment Martin amended, “The only other man, you mean. There is, of course, the person who left it.”

  “I don’t know, Martin. I think it quite possible that he himself did not know the full meaning of the Seven of Calvary.”

  At the word Calvary, Martin suddenly knew why the symbol had at first made him think of a cross. He saw in his mind the heraldic device of a cross mounted upon three steps. “The Cross Calvary,” he murmured.

  “Exactly,” Paul agreed. “I was keeping quiet because, as Mary correctly put it, I was a ninny. But since we’ve broached the subject now, should you like to hear the story of that symbol?”

  There was a general assent, and a momentary pause for the lighting of cigarettes and pipes, during which Martin fingered reflectively the gold key in his pocket. Then Paul began his narrative.

  “I warn you,” he said, “it’s a long story—good for the rest of the afternoon. Anyone not feeling up to that can walk, or preferably run, to the nearest exit. No one? Then here goes:

  “I found out all this business when I was at the University of Chicago last summer doing some research work. Some of you know how much I’ve always been interested in the heresies of the early Church, to give them their usual name—although I must say that some of my studies almost lead me to call the Church itself the Pauline heresy.”

  “Bless you, Paul Lennox,” Cynthia interrupted, grimacing at Martin as the sole available representative of the Church. “For that I’m going to ask you home to dinner some time. If Dad heard that, he’d have piebald kittens right at the table.”

  “Thanks, Cyn. Well, one evening in Chicago I was sitting up late over various bottles of beer with a young fellow named Jean Stauffacher. He was a Swiss from somewhere around Lausanne, an exchange student. And heresies were something of a hobby of his, too. We had been wandering along in our discussion from Neminians to Mandaeans, from Manichaeans to Catharists. I think it was in connection with the Neminians that he suddenly asked, ‘and have you ever heard of the Vignards?’

  “It is a confusing name spoken aloud. Most of you probably think I said Vineyards, and that is exactly what I thought when Stauffacher spoke. ‘Whose vineyards?’ I asked. ‘Naboth’s?’

  “‘No, no, no,’ he reproached me. ‘Not vineyards—Vignards. It is a curious Swiss sect, named after Anton Vigna.’ And he proceeded to tell me a little about them, most of which he had learned from his grandfather, who had been a member of the sect and had later died as a result of his apostasy. He also referred me to a couple of rare books in the University library, where I found more corroborative details.”

  “Grandfather died, you say?” Martin asked.

  “Yes. It was in 1920, at the time of the plebiscite on the League of Nations. The Vignards—for they are active politically as well as in religion, as you shall shortly hear—the Vignards were conducting a secret campaign against the League. Grandfather Stauffacher, who had renounced his membership many years before, threatened to make certain revelations concerning the sub rosa activities of the Vignards. So Grandfather Stauffacher died.”

  “How?” asked Alex.

  Paul hesitated a moment and looked at Cynthia.

  “Go on,” said Mary. “I suppose he was stabbed in the back with an ice pick.”

  “Not with an ice pick, Mary, but he was stabbed, and in the back. Beside him was found the Seven of Calvary. His murderer was never apprehended.”

  Worthing had been silent long enough. “I say, Lennox old man,” he burst in, “just where is all this getting us? You go on talking about Vignards and Seven of Calvary’s and grandfathers and you don’t tell us anything.”

  “Be patient, Worthing,” Martin remarked. “Paul’s simply building it dramatically—my Machiavellian influence. Let him go on. You say, Paul, you found two rare books on the subject in the University library?”

  “Yes. Werner Kurbrand’s Volksmythologie der Schweiz and Ludwig Urmayer’s Nachgeschichte des gnostischen Glaubens. Both published in Germany in the late eighties and long since out of print.”

  “Pardon me, Paul,” Alex interrupted. “These rolling German titles are all very well for you and Martin, but let the rest of us in on it.”

  Paul smiled. “All right. Kurbrand’s Folk-mythology of Switzerland, and Urmayer’s Later History of Gnostic Belief. It was by piecing together bits from these books—just minor references—with what Jean Stauffacher had told me, that I arrived at some knowledge of the Vignards. I made a great many notes—force of academic habit—and naturally, when I recognized the Seven of Calvary in yesterday’s papers, I refreshed my memory. Damn this pipe; it always goes out.”

  Such was the curiosity of the group that no one spoke—not even Richard Worthing—while Paul carefully relit his pipe, lingering over the process a little longer than was strictly necessary.

  “Swiss history, you know,” he said at last, “is not nearly such a calm matter as you might perhaps imagine from its present uneventfulness. Both religiously and politically, things have been pretty complicated. This particular complication dates back to the early fourth century, when Christianity was first established in Switzerland.

  “Those early bishops had a pretty hard time of things. Not only did they have to combat the pagan worship, but they also had the devil’s own time with the Gnostic heretics inside their flocks. Then the barbarians came, and Christianity in Switzerland was fairly well wiped out—on the surface, that is—until St. Columbanus came on missionary work in the late sixth century.

  “But during all this period of apparently successful barbarian domination, Christianity survived in secret, kept up by a few priests and the families of faithful early converts. And since Christianity itself kept alive, it was only natural that in certain places Gnosticism too was cherished.”

  “Just a moment, Paul.” It was Alex again, whose scientific mind wanted to keep things straight and clear. “I’m a little vague on heresies and things. Just what is Gnosticism?”

  “My dear Alex, it is going to take me the best, or at least the largest part of an afternoon to explain Vignardism. If I start to explain Gnosticism too, you’d best ask Cyn to put us up for the night. But I can say briefly that Gnosticism—with a G—was once a noble philosophy, based largely on the works of the mystic Valentinus, which rapidly degenerated into an elaborate mythology, half Christian, half pagan, and finally became mere magical hocuspocus.”

  Alex nodded satisfied. “Thanks. Go on.”

  “Now the doctrine of the Seven of Calvary originated apparently in a small community near Altdorf, in the Canton of Uri. Here there was strong mental and physical inbreeding of a small and isolated group which had come under the influence of some early Gnostic. They had not fully understood his teachings—possibly he himself was none too clear—and as the centuries passed they built up what might almost be called their own religion.

  “It was technically Christian, though heretical—but then the Mandaeans are technically heretical Christians, even though they call Christ Nbu and think him an evil spirit. This Urian sect (they were not called Vignards yet) did not go quite so far as that, but they did relegate Christ to a comparatively unimportant post in their septenity.”

  “Septenity?” This time it was Martin who was puzzled.

  P
aul shrugged deprecatingly. “I admit I coined the word myself, in order to translate the Siebenfältigkeit of my sources. A septenity is to a trinity as seven to three—in other words, there are seven persons in their godhead.”

  “And the symbol denotes that?”

  “Yes. Most of you must have realized by now that the mark is a continental seven and not the italic F which the papers have called it. The three steps have two possible meanings—Urmayer and Kurbrand disagree there. Urmayer claims that it denotes seven triumphing over three—that is, their septenity over the Christian trinity. Kurbrand claims that it is a reminiscence of the Cross Calvary mounted on three steps. The former seems more likely, in view of the sect’s history, but its name, the Seven of Calvary, inclines one toward the latter.”

  “Is that its official name in the sect?” Martin asked.

  “So Jean Stauffacher called it.”

  “And who are the seven persons?” Mary was becoming more interested.

  “This is their mythical cosmogony. You have a smattering of such knowledge, Martin; you will notice the very definite Gnostic touches. In the beginning there was Something—the Allfather, what Valentinus calls the Deep. This sect, being too naïve to elaborate such terms as Cosmos or Urmacht, called this primordial Something simply God. This God, apparently, did nothing but think. He had no desire to create. But one day, if we can speak of days in such a connection, he had a thought which displeased him—what we should call an evil thought. He cast it from him, and it assumed independent existence and powers.

  “This was the Unholy Spirit, corresponding roughly to the Satan of the Christians. The Unholy Spirit felt the creative impulse lacking in its contemplative parent, and created the World. Moreover, through some strange parthenogenesis, it had a child. That child was Jehovah, the god of the Hebrews, who seemed to these simple folk, as he must indeed to many of us, a very evil and unholy sort of god.”

  “Two dinner invitations …” Cynthia murmured.

  “Now God—the Ur-God, that is—looked on the World and saw that it displeased him. So he cast out another thought, this time a good one, to save the World. This second thought was the Holy Spirit. After a period of warring with the Unholy One, it also had a child, Jesus Christ. Now the Holy Spirit, for all its goodness, was cunning. It made a bargain with the Unholy One—‘I will let my child die if you will do the same for yours.’ The bargain was made, and ratified before the Ur-God, who foresaw the duplicity of his Holy Offspring and approved. Then the Holy Spirit made its child flesh, so that he could die as a man but still live as a god. Jehovah, who was not made flesh, had to die as a god, although, in some manner which I do not follow, he remained a member of the septenity.”

  “But that’s only five,” Mary objected as Paul paused.

  “We now come to the most important pair. Seeing that the conflict of good and evil was wrecking the world, the Ur-God had another thought. This third thought was neither good nor evil, but wise, and her name was Sofi. She is, of course, the Sophia of Valentinus and the heroine of the Pistis Sophia, which accounts for her being definitely feminine while the other thought-emanations, especially the Holy Spirit, are vaguely neuter.

  “Sofi, naturally, carrying on the traditions of the Ur-God’s family, also had a child, named Nemo. In this name, the sect anticipated Rodulphus and his Neminians by many centuries, basing its ideas on the same passages of scripture (No man hath ascended into heaven—No man hath seen God—and so forth), in which, they claim, Nemo does not mean no man, but is a proper name. Sofi’s child Nemo, then, was to reconcile good and evil and to prepare the world for its end.

  “Centuries passed after the idea and possibly, in some earlier shape, the symbol were once formulated. Villagers moved from Uri to other parts of Switzerland and took their strange faith with them. People waited for the coming of Sofi’s child, and meanwhile sought to placate equally the children of the Holy and the Unholy Spirits. The Unholy Spirit was at first supposed to have some name which could never be spoken or written (even as his son Jehovah had the unpronounceable tetragrammaton), and was thence called Agrammatos, the Unwritten One. With the years this became Agrammax, and was looked upon as a proper name. The final x, of course, reminds one of Gnostic magic formulæ.

  “Now since the Holy and the Unholy Spirits were apparently of equal power, this dualistic concept gave rise to a sort of devil worship, for which authority was found in a misunderstanding of the parable in Luke—you know, the one about Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness.”

  “I have yet to hear a sermon by a priest who understands that parable,” Martin observed.

  “But you’ve probably never heard it twisted so beautifully as they did. They took it as a direct injunction to devil-worship, with all its concommitants of necromancy, anthropomancy, and whatever other mancies you can think of. So the sect went on, worshipping Agrammax and awaiting Nemo, until the end of the thirteenth century. Some time around then, some thirty years before the supposed episode of William Tell, Anton Vigna was born.

  “That period is perhaps the darkest in all of Swiss history—that is, darkest in the sense of most obscure. We shall probably never know definitely whether or not there was a William Tell or a meeting on the Rütli, and Anton Vigna belongs in the same quasi-legendary category. He was born near Altdorf and lived a quiet life until he was twenty-seven. He then calmly proclaimed that he was Nemo.

  “Then everything proceeded to happen that should happen when one-seventh of God comes to earth. There were miracles and conversions and sermons and parables and disciples. He had studied his New Testament well, and patterned his life carefully on that of Christ, even to the forty days’ retirement—using an Alp for lack of an available desert. But martyrdom in his thirtieth year was a resemblance which he had probably not foreseen. The Austrian bailiff, aided by a group of monks, stirred up the people against him, and he was stoned to death. As he lay dying, the mob continued to pelt him with stones, only to realize suddenly that some unseen force was pelting them. Some providential hailstorm had occurred just at the right time to be a Vignard miracle. A particularly large stone struck the bailiff on the forehead with such force as to kill him outright. And on all the stones which fell could be seen, as though carefully graven, a small seven.

  “Vigna was dead, but, largely because of this miracle, the Vignards lived on. In revenge for the death of their God, they swore toward the Christians the same hatred which the early Christians felt for the Jews. Some even pledged themselves to Agrammax if he would help them against the Holy Spirit and his son Christ. They bound themselves to destruction, and from this vow results their political importance.

  “They have survived through the years, a small group, gaining few converts outside of their hereditary ranks, but they have fomented, or at least fostered, most of the dissensions which have torn Switzerland. Vigna’s brother Leopold is reported to have been present at the Rütli. Those strange burgomasters of Zürich—Brun, Stüssi, Waldmann—are said to have been Vignards. That heroic and quixotic madman, Major Davel, was an apostate who had refused allegiance to Agrammax, and therefore failed.

  “Especially have the Vignards rejoiced in causing religious disturbances. They hated Catholic and Protestant equally, and have supported movements as various as the expulsion of the Jesuits and the formation of the Sonderbund simply for the sake of setting two kinds of Christians at each other’s throats.

  “No …” he summed up, “definitely the Vignards are not nice people. So you see, I don’t like the Seven of Calvary in Berkeley.”

  In the pause that followed, Paul Lennox calmly refilled his pipe. The others sat in silence. It was not a pretty picture, this story of the Vignards. Sofi and Nemo and Agrammax were ludicrous enough, as was the hailstone marked with a seven which had killed the Austrian bailiff. But Dr. Schaedel was dead, and Grandfather Stauffacher, and God knows how many others had lain dead, with the Seven of Calvary beside them. And how many more were yet to die?
r />   Martin shuddered slightly and reached for a cigarette. In his pocket his fingers touched once more the gold key. He was reassured. There could be no mad sectarian loose in Berkeley. As Dr. Ashwin would say, it was too early Doyle. Someone who knew of the existence of the Seven of Calvary had planted it to create a false track. And who would know? Someone from Switzerland.…

  “You know, Paul,” Alex was saying, “you really should go to the police with all that information. They’re begging for someone who can to explain the symbol.”

  “No, no, Alex. I’m in no mood for suicide. If the Vignards thought that I knew too much—No, really, Alex. Besides, the police may find out anyway. The Swiss Consul might possibly know, or some other research worker—although I could never have pieced together those bits out of Urmayer and Kurbrand if it hadn’t been for my talk with Jean Stauffacher. I think that they were a little afraid too.”

  “Dash it all, old man,” Worthing exploded, “you’ve a public duty as a citizen.”

  “Have I?” Paul smiled.

  “Don’t you want this blasted murderer-chappie hanged?”

  “Not if it should cost me my own life.”

  “Why, it’s … it’s …” The Canadian spluttered with indignation and ended lamely, “Well, hang it all, old man, it is!” And he reluctantly subsided again, but Martin could see that he was thinking very concentratedly.

  Martin and Paul took a long walk through the hills together after supper that evening. It was a pleasantly silent walk, but through it all one thought kept recurring to Martin’s mind. When, around ten o’clock, they were seated in the White Tavern with coffee and hamburgers, Martin at last spoke it out.

  “Paul …” he began.

  “I ordered black coffee,” Paul remarked on a tangent, looking in annoyance at the milk-defiled contents of his mug. “Oh, well … What is it, Martin?”