Popes and Phantoms
- Автор: Whitbourn John
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Альтернативная история
Электронная книга - «Popes and Phantoms». Краткое содержание книги:
sixteenth century, a pirate might be followed by the corpse of his victim,
walking across the ocean, until putrescence claimed it. Or an interview with
the Pope might be mirrored, exactly, by one with the Devil. Reality shifts
could cause a King to see his capital city shimmer into another Realm
entirely.
Through such scenes of macabre hallucination, mayhem and murder, Slovo is a
man alone, set apart by his stoic beliefs from the rigours of human fears and
passions. As such, he was a valuable find for the Vehme, a clandestine,
subversive society that ensnared its members from an early age, securing
loyalties by the expedient methods of blackmail, bribery and barbarism.
But Slovo is more than a Vehmist puppet, and whether as a brigand on the high
seas, or emissary to the Borgias, or as the Pope’s Machiavellian Mr Fix-it, he
plots a course that suits his own ends as much as those of his paymasters. He
knows that, in the words of his mentor Marcus Aurelius, in a brief while you
will be ashes of bare bones; a name, or perhaps not even a name. And there
are few things that cannot be solved by a stiletto in the eye.
This invariably took place in some vast underground cavern or vault, often a great distance from the victim’s home. After the questioning, sentence would be pronounced, always at midnight. Then the blindfold would be removed and the justified or condemned man would see his first and last sight of the ‘Masked Free Judges in Black’ – for a second summons could only bring death, as did non-appearance. Numerous stories recount the fate of the recidivist or coward, found slain under the very noses of their guards, with the Vehme’s terrible cruciform dagger buried in their chest and the proclamation of sentence attached. It is also said that they relentlessly pursued a faithless or refractory member, even to the throne of King or Bishop, with steel and cord.
The actuality of the Vehme is attested to by the ‘Code of the Vehmic Court’, found in the archives of the Westphalian Kings and published in the Reichstheater of Müller, under the grandiose and fulsome title of Codes and Statutes of the Holy and Secret Tribunal of Free Court and Free Judges of Westphalia, established in the year 772 by the Emperor Charlemagne and revived in 1404 by King Robert who made these alterations and additions requisite for the administration of justice in the Tribunals of the Illuminated, after investing them with his authority.
Quite what is to be made of this is by no means clear. Whilst it is the one single mention of the Emperor Charlemagne in connection with Vehmic origins, other, equally compelling – or dubious – authorities attribute their founding to the Roman Emperors Hadrian or Julian the Apostate. What is significant about the Müller codex is the reference to the ‘illuminated’ who alone, it was explicitly stated, could look upon the writings or face of the Vehme. Quite what ‘illumination’ was shed, on what subjects, and for whom, is nowhere elucidated and looks likely now to remain forever unknown.
The post-war Nazi ‘Werewolf’ organization claimed to carry on the Vehmic tradition but in reality it seems likely that the group, conspiracy, belief or whatever it was, did not survive the social tornado of the Reformation and Thirty-Years War.