Light played across the outside of the cathedral and shone dimly from its glass. I heard a chant, men’s voices marching deep beneath the wild icy sweepings and soarings of women who sang on no scale I could identify, in no language of earth.
“. . . Helfioth Alaritha arbor Neniotho Melitho Tarasunt
Chanados Umia Theirura Marada Seliso . . .”
The music was so amplified as to be audible to the very outskirts of town. And it never ended. This was a perpetual choir. Priests, acolytes, pilgrims were always on hand to step in when any of the six hundred and, one wearied. I failed to imagine how it must be to live in that day‑and‑night haze of canticle. If you were a dweller in Siloam, perhaps not even a Johnny, you’d soon stop noticing on a conscious level. But wouldn’t the sound weave into your thoughts, dreams, bones, finally into your soul?
I couldn’t interpret the extrasensation I felt, either, more powerful for every yard I approached. Wrongness?or rightness of a kind that I was simply unable to fathom?
After all, the attendant at the gate was a pleasant young man, his tow hair and blue eyes right out of folk who’d been hereabouts for more than a hundred years, his friendliness out of Walt Whitman’s own America. When I had parked my broom in the lot that stretched wide and bare into the dark, approached him, and asked, “Okay to go in?” he regarded me for a moment before answering lightly, “You’re not a communicant, are you?”
“N‑no,” I said, a bit taken aback.
He chuckled. “Wanna know how I can tell? They’ve got to the Elphue. We’d wait till Mary’s invocation was finished before we entered.”
“I’m sorry, I?”
“S Okay. Nobody minds, longs you’re quiet. In theory, you’re damned anyway. I don’t buy that myself, know what I mean? My girl’s a Methodist. I’ll go along with the red tape the priests want before they let me marry her, but I can’t believe she’ll burn.” He realized he might have spoken too freely and added in haste: “How come you’re this late? The tourists arrive in the daytime.”
I decided he wasn’t a lay brother, just an employee, and no more fanatical than the average Christian of any type‑in short, one of the decent majority you find in all organizations, all countries. I was prepared for his question. “I travel in ankhs,” I said. “Got an appointment in town early tomorrow morning before moving on. Got hung up today and didn’t reach here till now. Your choir is so famous I didn’t want to miss it.”
“Thanks.” He handed me a leaflet. “You know the rules? Use the main door. Take a seat in the Heath‑uh, the Spectators’ Corner. No noise, no picture‑taking. When you, want to leave, do it quietly, same way as you came.’
I nodded and walked through the gate. The auxiliary buildings formed a square around a paved yard centered on the cathedral. Where they did not butt directly on each other, walls had been raised between, making the only entrances three portals closable by wire gates. The offices, storerooms, living quarters were plain, in fact drab. A few cenobites move about, male scarcely distinguishable from female in their robes , and overshadowing cowls. I remembered a complete absence of any scandals, anywhere in the world, though the Johannines mingled the sexes in celibacy. Well, of course their monks and nuns weren’t simply consecrated; they were initiates. They had gone beyond baptism, beyond the elementary mystery rites and name‑changing (with the old public name retained for secular use) that corresponded to a Petrine confirmation. For years they had mortified the flesh, disciplined the soul, bent the mind to mastering what their holy books called divine revelation, and unbelievers called pretentious nonsense, and some believers in a different faith called unrecognized diabolism . . .
Blast it, I thought, I’ve got to concentrate on my. job. Never mind those silent sad figures rustling past. Ignore, if you can, the overwhelmingness of the cathedral you are nearing and the chant that now swells from it to fill the whole night. Deny that your werewolf heritage senses things it fears to a degree that is making you ill. Sweat prickles forth on your skin, tuna cold down our ribs and reeks in your nostrils. You see the word through a haze of dream and relentless’ music. But Valeria is in hell.