UMBRA SUMUS

“Master Caseman?”

“Aye, Amos, what is it?” The printer internally shook his head once more at parents who could name a son “Amorous”, when sprung from a line of Harts no less. There was trouble waiting there. And a telling, perhaps. None of his concern, but he might venture a query when keeping the father apprised of his boy – if the apprenticeship faired well and the discourse was convivial.

“You said you’d tell me of that broken house at the corner if we completed that Hebrew volume for Master ben Ezra.”

“So I did, and so we have. Though it’s not Hebrew, as you should know well enough by now, and Master ben Ezra would take offence if he heard you say so. It’s older than his language, and for any similarities it’s a different one. I thought you’d attended me better. You’ll take the time to learn the Enochian forms properly and set them back in their cases when we return home, and there’ll be no excuses.”

He paused, and his demeanour lightened. “But I’m a man of my word, and we’ve both earned a pie and a posset – so to speak – for our work on St. Stephen’s Day. I’ll not disappoint you of the yarn.”

There once was a gentleman lived in the rooms on the corner, by the name of Bamber Byron, a kinsman of the Devil Byron. You may judge for yourself which lays better claim to that name, but if there’s one thing known about Bamber Byron, it’s certain that he’s no Angel. But all that lay far in the future, and when he lived here he seemed a modest gentleman – of middling means, and little note.

He had an allowance of his father, who lived in the country, but gentlemen often have need of more than providence extends them, and he supplemented it with other business. He joined a charitable society that met in Kent’s – a grand club on The Strand now, but thirty years ago it was a coffee shop with patrons who were no better than they needed to be. To be sure, some of them were respectable gents you’d doff your hat to, and even Lords, but there were ragamuffins too and everyone in between, so long as they could afford the price of a cup of coffee. Or prevail on someone else so far!

There was some strange business around the Society for Effectual Redress, which is what they called themselves. They claimed to be ever so moral, and would knock a cup of gin from your lips as soon as pass the time of day, but trouble seemed to follow them around. Well, I suppose it will if you separate an honest man from his hard-earned tipple. Your health, boy!

Anyway, Master Byron was known to be one of that Society and involved in their secret doings in the name of the Law – man’s Law more than GOD’s if you take my meaning. Still, he seemed respectable enough. Which is to say, he had a sufficiently deep pocket to pay his bills not too much in arrears, and to reassure anyone who questioned his bona fides. He had a few eccentricities, like any gentleman – an aversion to cats, for example, but give me a dog for preference myself. No-one thought much of it, though urchins took advantage of it for their japes, as you may guess.

After a time, the Society became less active, or at least Bamber’s part in it did, and he resorted to giving advice to other gentlemen – those perhaps more favoured but less learned. None of them went from rags to riches – for you can be sure none of them were in rags to start with – but it did seem that for the most part they had good fortune if they consulted with Master Byron. Their financial affairs went well ; and they were seldom troubled by business rivalries, or even footpads.

From a young gentleman of high spirits and troubling habits, as he entered middle age he settled down and became, you might say, a pillar of the community, and a good prospect for a man of business who might have dealings with him.

But truth will out, and the Ethiopian can’t change his skin nor the leopard his spots, as Jeremiah says.

You’re too young to recall, I suppose, but when I was your age we didn’t have instant messengers that would go and contact our friends at the turn of a dial. That’s all come from the honest works of industry – like that Stossenkopf & Co. I suppose, even if it is owned by a sausage-muncher. There were rumours, though, of dark unnatural acts to achieve such before the language of angels was discovered, and it seems Bamber Byron was a dabbler.

At first we didn’t believe it, but tales began to be told of blue flashes from his windows at night, and the more you hear such tales, and the more respectable the tellers become, the harder it becomes to doubt them.

Before things came to a head though, and the mob had their say, for I’m sure it would have come to no less, a crisis in the gentleman’s secret affairs seems to have arisen and with a mighty thunderclap one night the sorceror and his whole apartments were torn from existence. Aye, lad, it was a dark and stormy night, why do you ask?

No trace of his corse was found and so we thought the matter concluded, GOD’s good earth cleansed, and the cabalist dragged off bodily to the fire everlasting. The building was as good as destroyed, his neighbours departed as swiftly as they might, and no man since has thought to occupy the property or build anew.

It was not the end, for all we thought it at the time.

No more than a month had gone by when news reached us that Byron’s father had given up his spirit at a similar time, and that his son had been chief mourner at his funeral. Accompanied by an enormous Stosshund, he was – a warhound with eyes the size of dinner plates, that hasn’t left his side since. As we thought the son dead and gone, and his fear of cats with him, this caused us no little dismay. GOD be praised, though, all else I’ll relate has happened at a distance – more or less – and he’s troubled us directly no more.

He didn’t burn or shrivel at the clergyman’s word, so perhaps not all we had thought of him was true, but no-one wished for his return – not even those who might have had an accompt to present.

From that day almost to this, the son became a recluse on his father’s estate and built up a great library of Enochian texts – some say the greatest in Christendom, though I’d wager Master ben Ezra’s exceeds it. Perhaps old ben Ezra doesn’t count as Christendom though, in which case it may be true. All was quiet once more, and the explosion in Master Byron’s rooms forgotten – except around these parts.

Until a few short years ago, when all the world heard of Bamber Byron.

Aye, even you son, though you may not know it.

There came another dark and stormy night – aye, I see you’re not so lightsome this time on the subject – and another cataclysm occurred. This time, his father’s estate was torn asunder in the middle of the night, a great stone manor that had stood for hundreds of years, and Master Byron was gone again.

This time we didn’t wait so long to hear of him. He made a stir in London before we even heard news from the country that he’d gone.

In broad daylight, a great whirlwind came out of the north and passed through London until it came to stop outside St. Paul’s. There was a huge cloud, with flashing lightning, and surrounded by brilliant light. In the heart of the cloud there was a great light like molten metal, and moving in it there were four creatures. As the crowd watched – and I happened to be there that day – they came out of the cloud and stood on the steps and they were accompanied by a man in black and a great metal hound.

And I knew him, Amos, though it had been years since I’d seen him. You can bray a fool in a mortar, but his foolishness won’t depart.

You’ve never seen the like. They had feet like a calf, and wings, and arms, and they were made all of brass. And each of them had a face it was hard to look on and be sure what you saw; and they shone, and flew around on shields. Two carried swords, one a staff, and one trumpet. Not one of them spoke, though everyone was waiting for it.

But he spoke. Bamber Byron. And he said they were the archangels Michael, Gabriel Raphael and Uriel, come among us at the intercession of Metatron, with the ten lost commandments; commandments that had been forgotten and remembered (if I remember myself), after being cast down and broken at the feet of the golden calf.

And they all trooped into St. Paul’s and the spectacle was over, and after a bit of a wait to see if anything more was going to happen, we went about our business. I had a book to deliver south of the river, and I needed to find a sedan willing to take me there.

Damned if I know what to think. Some people reckon they really are angels, some reckon they’re devils incarnate, some that they’re just automata that he made himself.

I was told later they’d left and made their way their way across Europe on a great pilgrimage; first by the old Way of Tours to Santiago de Compostella, then back by the Way of St. James, through Switzerland to Altotting in Bavaria, where I heard they venerated the Black Madonna, which sounds all wrong to me, but seemingly she brought someone back to life. You can see how that might draw the likes of Byron.

From there they went south to Rome and were granted an audience with the Pope. When Byron was first here, we’d thought he was a good Anglican, but with all that’s happened and Madonnas and such papishness, who knows what’s what any more.

From the Pope in Rome, I hear tell they went to Ethiopia, and the old Empress gave them safe conduct to a place called Aksum where they say the Ark of the Covenant’s hidden. The rumour is that there’s a Guardian of the Ark who’s the only person allowed to see it, and they gave him the two “missing” tablets. As far as I know, no-one else has seen them, which makes them a mighty fine set of commandments indeed. Even if the other ones have been hidden there all these years, at least any Tom, Dick or Harry with his letters can read them in a Bible and know what they ought or oughtn’t do.

Since then, it’s been hard to know where they are. The rumours say they’re in India, or Cathay, or the American colonies, and I believe it all, especially the last, for isn’t there trouble there too now? And we keep hearing they’re on their way back for to revisit old England, but they may take their time for I’ve no wish to clap eyes on Bamber Byron again.

“You should write a memoir, Master Caseman. The Black Man and the Golden Angels, that would be a seller wouldn’t it?”

“I’ll think on, Amos, I’ll think on.”

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