Friday, 28 August 1942
Gabrielle has never been frugal, but I am still appalled by the way she has mismanaged this estate. We are fortunate in that she does not know what Ercole and I had kept hidden from her, mostly because the greater part of it was his-but I am his, and this land is his, and the children are his, so he does not begrudge me anything, although I know that he still cherishes a secret wish that we will win the war and return to Italy some day, leaving Lucius and Bellissima here as sacred king and queen. And he says that we have what we have because of my industry and my carefulness-that had he managed it himself there might be nothing left. But I still feel that I must be careful with what we have. For what is not his, is the tribute of other peoples, peoples whose ties with my ancestors go back longer than any of the many names this family has ever chosen to use in the mortal world.
But I think he realises that even if we win the war in Italy as well as in Britain, I will never be able to live anywhere else. I died, and the body into which I was reborn came out of the earth: this earth, and none other. And I do not believe the apple tree I planted in Rome still survives. Ficino is a beast but he is not a fool. He brought me a branch and a root, hewn from the tree with cold iron. Evola knew that I was a faerie-the ‘foreign influence’. Even today he says that it was I who ruined Ercole, who drew him away from the oldest of Rome’s old gods and into the mystery cults. And yet I think he would have gone to the Gallae, and the taurobolium, anyway. Ercole is a man of the city, a man of the Empire where many worlds become one. Evola’s religion and Evola’s magick were meant for soldiers and farmers. Ercole’s were meant for a world which had conquered by strength and by guile, in which the best of every art and science came together. And so it is an irony that Evola is in Rome, with Mussolini, and Ercole is here, a sacred king in the British countryside.
But we have agreed together that we can have art and science here. For as Londinium is the heart of British commerce, Tintagel is the heart of British magick. Stonehenge is a giant artifice, a clock and a weapon for those who know how to handle its power; but that is for Will, not for me. The Avalon Institute was Gabrielle’s cause, and Artemisia’s brainchild; but it will be our university, someday.
Someday, but not today.
Today I have to figure out what we are going to do. There are families in and around the Bois-squibs and hedge-wizards, farmers and hunters-who are not precisely magickal. Rarely do their children get letters from Hogwarts; many of their children hardly have letters at all. They are not of the Muggle world; its progress has passed them by. They do not have motorcars, nor do I wish them to have-I do not want the Muggle world to encroach any further onto our ground than it already has.
I have to feed these people. I do not want them hunting stags or boars in the Bois, for that is a ritual act with consequences; but I am not Gabrielle, I cannot find it in my heart to try and stop them from setting snares for hares at its edge. We live very lavishly here, because the land loves us. Marcus Weasley has always pointed the finger at that; I do believe the fool thinks it would be an excellent thing for us to send faerie apples dusted with silver into the Muggle markets-and there are times when I think he is not quite wrong, but it should not be an act of thoughtless compassion, but rather a considered decision. What are the consequences likely to be? If the consequences are more motorcars in Tintagel, and a shrinking of the space into which too many people must already live, then I cannot condone it. If the consequences are a rising of magick, a sense of the immanent gnosis of flesh in the world and a new respect for the earth, then so mote it be.
That is the crux of the matter, the crucifixion of the world. Albus Dumbledore is a carnival wizard who hopes to fool the Muggles with philosophy and naked goddesses. It is a dangerous game, but not as foolish as Marcus Weasley’s belief that if we simply drop the curtain and reveal ourselves upon the stage they will accept that it was our ancestors and not us who have profited by the deception. Aleister Crowley is out to break the hold of Christianity upon the Muggle imagination, but Thelema will never supplant it, because it requires too much from the average Muggle. Dion Fortune, I think, genuinely believes that by spreading an enlightened, gnostic view of the world among Muggles she can make them more than they are. And I know that if they eat of our food and drink of our drink they will become things they were never meant to be, but it is the nature of Faerie to reinforce things as they are, not as they ought to be, and it will do them no good to gain the Sight if the first creature they see with it plucks out their eyes!
And I must contemplate all this while I determine how to feed my people. Some of them are Muggle enough to have ration cards and registered grocers. Some of them are not. Some of them are barely human at all and living quite well.
But if Grindelwald sends the Alfar against us, if he can rally the Folk of his own lands-then we will not be. They will steal our cattle, they will hunt our stags, they will raid our groves. They will open up the gates to Hell and there will be tithes and changelings and all the old madness again.
If the goblins ever cease to be neutral we’re sunk, and I have done more than anyone else to keep them so. It has made things very difficult for Evola and Grindelwald that they cannot command them. They are native to the mountains, and we cannot lose them.
I have told Kyteler these things, and Dion Fortune as well. There are few others in the Ministry, in the Wizengamot-that-was, who would even understand.
Once the children are gone there will be no more lavish luncheons here. Not until Christmas. We cannot afford it. I have to impress upon Bellissima and Dimity and Mercutio, and most of all upon Lucius, that they are not to speak disparagingly of what there is at Hogwarts while they are there, that it will make the other students hate them, for what there is at Hogwarts may be nothing very much, but it is certainly more than most of the others have at home. As Charis and Dalton have reacted, so will others react, and it will not be good for us.
Gabrielle had intended to send Lucius many packages of luxury goods, the which with to secure favours and to make his alliances. I am not sure that this is a wise course of action. Some nice things, yes, to share with his friends-and for meetings, secret and open. But not enough to make his classmates keenly aware how much we have that we cannot share, and never enough to make anyone think that we would not share if we could-if they can even understand why we cannot. For a hungry man will eat an apple if he can find it, and if you tell him it may grant him Sight as well as ease his hunger he will laugh and say that this is a benefit. He will not understand that it will be Sight he cannot control and was not ever meant to have, that it will drive him mad before he dies of it.