The Rite of Spring: The First of the Cock

The Rite of Spring: Fragment 23

The First of the Cock
in which the House of the Cock welcomes an unwilling guest

I was meditating, alone in my cell, when a novice knocked and told me that the Hand had delivered a woman, and that she was in the barred room. People forget - I suppose most people never knew - that this building was once the House of the Eye. The original plan of the City had all the Great Houses lined up along the river bank. In those days before the coming of the Yachorach there were only ten houses. Then the Eye, growing in power and ambition, built their present house on the other side of the Place of Judgement from the Ear and the Mouth. This is why the present building of the House of the Eye is different from, and so much bigger than, the riverbank houses. After they'd built the new building, the Eye - who in those days practically ruled the Place - used this building as a prison, and a centre for their secret watchers. Consequently, there are a lot of places in our cellars where the ghost of old blood still hangs in the air, not as something you can see or smell, but as something you feel in your scalp or your spine or the pit of your stomach. The worst of them are walled up, now; we have no need for them. The rest we use as treasure house and stores.

It isn't only the cellars that were prisons, however. You can see from the way the stone is cut that all of our cells, on the upper floor of the main block, once had immensely strong doors, with massive hinges and locks; they were prisons too. But all that remains is a room in the tower, which is divided into two parts with a grid of iron bars. There is a gate in the partition, but it had never been closed in my time. However, when I went through the doorway into the outer part of the barred room, I saw gate was closed and locked, and beyond it lying bound on the palette was a woman dressed in the manner of the Hand. She was rigid with anger.

Two of the Hand stood in front of the partition, as though on guard, and Conan, Third of this House, who was looking apprehensive. I said, quite sharply, to the Hands

"You may leave now, she is in our care." When they had gone, I asked Conan where the lock was from. He replied that it was a spare lock from the treasure house, and that the Hand had insisted on her being locked in. I did not like that. I said

"very well. Lock me in with her, and then leave us alone for one turn of the sand."

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