Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore (essential reading txt) 📕

I myself desire, yet only turn to people the compliant face they wish to see. If truth be told, my father’s Catholic vision was not mine, yet when he put the proposition to me all I did was nod in puppet acquiescence. Nor did I do differently with Fawkes and Winter and the rest, unfolding their phantasmagoric insurrections in the gate-house there at Ashby. While they ranted, all I did was make mild protest at the heedless optimism of their course, and never once said ‘No’. While rotting in the Tower, afflicted with a dreadful rising of the lights, each day I would politely thank my gaolers when they brought the slops I could not eat, and in this manner put a face on things. Putting a face on things was thus the principal endeavour of my mortal span, whereafter, justly, am I made a face that others put on things. Beware, ye that are loath to make commotion! Shudder, ye who would not bring attention on thyself, and see what shyness brought me, with even my gizzard now become a public spectacle. Behold, ye meek: this prong of iron is all the Earth ye shall inherit.

Testing my remaining senses: it would seem whatever curds of brain are crusted round this bone-bowl’s rim have fallen further into disrepair, so that I am more sluggish in my thoughts and doze more now; brief intervals of sleep shot through with bright and foolish dreams.

I do not dream about the life I had. In all my dreams I am as I am now, hung fixed and without sight. In one, I hang outside an older town than this, although in some queer way the feeling of it is the same. I am in company with other body-scraps hung there to dry, but to my disappointment they are only torsos, mine the sole head set amongst them. In that comic style things have in dreams, I learn the headless, limbless relics are still capable of speech, but through their lower parts. I strike up a companionship with one of them, a woman’s trunk whose talk is filled with plans and tricks and cunning, although insufficient, it would seem, to spare her from her grisly end. We hatch a plan between us to combine our best resources, with my head to be somehow set up atop her ragged neck. She tells me, grumbling through her loins, that she has heard of legs and feet that may elect to join with our conspiracy. Alas, the dream is over ere we can pursue this charming notion of completion and escape.

Another dream is simpler: I am set upon a low, flat rock, still warm from daylight’s heat although the night breeze swirls about me, howling over endless distances and heavy with the scent of desert. I am wrapped around with chanting voices, circling through the darknesses without, as if of slow, gruff men that walk about me widdershins. There is the whispered crunch of trodden sand; the creak of armoured joint. The words they moan are foreign to me, strange and barbarous names that I may not recall upon awakening to the roar of Gilbert’s dawn deluge.

‘Tis a pity. I had hoped the dreams we know in death might have more sense about them than those borne in life. These night-starts have no meaning that I may make plain, though I would note that all of them seem sprung from distant times, no doubt the Tuesday or the Wednesday that came after Father’s surely hectic Monday of Origination.

Thus I doze, and dream, and dangle, and decay.

The hour is later now, and I have company.

I was disturbed some while ago by something heavy, scraped against the stonework just below me in a clumsy fashion. An accompaniment of John and Gilbert’s gruntings from beneath allowed me to conclude at last that they were struggling to erect a ladder by which means they might climb up to join me here upon my lofty perch. At first this gross intrusion woke a panic in me, for I feared that they were come to take me down, where I would be subjected to some fresh indignity. After a time, however, their thick-accented exchanges made it plain that this was not to be the case.

‘Set ‘im aside old Charlie up there, so they’ll make a pair.’ This was from Gilbert, down upon the ground and no doubt holding fast the ladder’s base while trusting the ascent to the more nimble John. The youth’s response was come from closer by, his winded panting almost at my ear. There was a puzzling scent of rancid cheese which I at first supposed to be upon his breath.

‘I’m trying to, but this one’s fresher than what Charlie were, and not as easy in the puttin’ on. You ‘old me steady now, I nearly fell.’

This went on for a while until at last the youth called down to Gilbert with report of his success.

‘Well done, John. Now you ‘ang that pouch of ‘is about ‘is neck, else nobody’ll know the bastard otherwise.’

Cursing beneath his breath, John evidently did as he was told, for not long after I could hear the rungs groan as he went back down, where followed further scrapings when the ladder was at last removed. At this, the gate-men both repaired inside. I noticed that the smell of cheese remained.

A silence next, and then a sound like grinded teeth, a tortured gurgling giving way to gasps, and sobs, and finally to words.

‘By God! By God, where is the Captain now, and what is this stale putrefaction set beside him? Are his thousand men now fled that rallied once for Pouch and his just cause?’

Scarce had I realized that I was myself what he referred to as the putrefaction set beside him, when his ravings were renewed: ‘Fear not, lads! Pouch fights on, and though they have your Captain bound they shall not still his mighty heart! For Pouch! For Pouch and Justice!’

I had longed to