Chamberlain v. Chancellor

Though shaken by the quick report of fire, the speed of the CFO's death, and Pepple's impersonal looting and burial of the man's body, the Chamberlain's grateful to have survived. Even as the skies grow overcast. Even, as night falls, it starts to rain.

Collar up, huddled in wet clothes, the Chamberlain knocks on the door of the hideous shack.

The shack, made of junk timber and held together by bent nails and chicken wire, is surrounded by rusted tools, lengths of broken pipe, rain-weathered planks, ripped garbage bags, empty sardine tins, and every other bit of garbage - including a good portion of the possessions looted from the corpses of the dead (the Bhikkhuni's staff, ripped pages from the Bookseller's ruined copy of Denial of Death, and so on).

The Chamberlain hears a bar slide up, and the door opens. Pepple, shirtless, stands smoking a cigarette. He looks worse than he ever has - dark rings under his eyes, hair in disarray, crumbs and jam in his spotty beard, pimples across his face and lips and neck, spots across his chest - from disease or ticks, the Chamberlain can't tell.

Through the dim light inside the shack - everything illuminated by the red coals from the tiny mouth of a rusting, antique Franklin stove, and candles placed in peculiar fashion around a squalid little shrine around which were laid more looted trinkets (most notably the Cardinal's gold signet ring) and a bloodless painted finger - the Chamberlain spies the small face of a sick child wrapped tightly in moldering blankets and discarded clothes, and beside the boy the figure of a woman, face hidden, and nearby her, splayed out on a chair, Grubb's massive corpse. Around Grubb a great mass of books rise like mushrooms: tattered, used, of all colors and sizes, piled in free stacks.

The Chamberlain's decides against his original plan to ask for shelter for the night. He stands awkwardly.

What? Pepple asks sourly.

The Chamberlain stammers, never quite getting around finishing a sentence, never quite making any sense - only cold, and wet, and eager to leave.

Pepple backs up and shuts the door.

Thankfully, the Chamberlain turns. As he steps away, the door opens again. Pepple reaches out, handing the Chamberlain an umbrella. His face, though expressionless, hints sympathy. And so the Chamberlain takes the umbrella, thanks Pepple, opens it, and returns to the oak.

The next morning he relates the events of the previous night to Chancellor, a man dressed head to foot in specially tailored clothes from his tailor in the city.

A small shrine? asks the Chancellor.

With a woman's finger on it, yes.

The Chamberlain blows his nose with a damp handkerchief.

Hm. What a choice little morsel of regional anthropology. I should pass this along to the dean of social sciences. Of course in no way do we support desecration of the dead - far from! - but still... my gosh, just think of the press that would come from the study of this. A backwoods cult? Oh! Glossy magazine covers, a spread in the Times. Appeal to alumni for donations to fund a new department - an institute... the Institute of Alternative Mythology and Atypic Folklore. Tremendous opportunity.

Thinking from that perspective, the Chamberlain admits that what resides in that hideous shack might have been a bit interesting. In fact, the more he considers the entirety of what he saw from an objective standpoint, the more interesting it seems. Until, finally, the horror he felt is in part subsumed by excitement over his bizarre discovery.

In short, he feels conflicted.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.