The Face In The Frost Revisited
Appendix N Revisited, Part 2
Hello, and welcome back to the second installment of my "Appendix N Revisited" project exploring the books of Gary Gygax's "Appendix N" in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. This time, I'll be reviewing The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs.
John Bellairs (1938-1991) was an American-born author who apparently regarded his true calling as writing gothic mystery novels for children, but it best known for this odd fantasy novel. He apparently spent a lot of time traveling in the UK, and began this novel while living in the UK after reading Professor Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a novel it does not much resemble! He is quoted as saying "I was struck by the fact that Gandalf is not much of a person - just a good guy. So I gave Prospero, my wizard, most of my phobias and crochets. It was simply meant as entertainment and any profundity will have to be read in." Indeed, the wizards in this book are human, all too human, not the angelic beings of Tolkien's Middle Earth. In 1973, Lin Carter (another Appendix N author!) described The Face in the Frost as one of the three best fantasy novels to appear since The Lord of the Rings. Despite all of these noted connections to Professor Tolkien's work, I cannot stress strongly enough that if you haven't yet read The Face in the Frost, do not go into it expecting anything Tolkien-esque! In 1973, Carter noted that John Bellairs was working on a sequel to The Face in the Frost, but it was never completed - an unfinished sequel called The Dolphin Cross was published as part of an anthology called Magic Mirrors in 2009; I have not yet obtained a copy of this book as of this writing (the Ides of February, 2017).
John Bellairs (1938-1991) was an American-born author who apparently regarded his true calling as writing gothic mystery novels for children, but it best known for this odd fantasy novel. He apparently spent a lot of time traveling in the UK, and began this novel while living in the UK after reading Professor Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a novel it does not much resemble! He is quoted as saying "I was struck by the fact that Gandalf is not much of a person - just a good guy. So I gave Prospero, my wizard, most of my phobias and crochets. It was simply meant as entertainment and any profundity will have to be read in." Indeed, the wizards in this book are human, all too human, not the angelic beings of Tolkien's Middle Earth. In 1973, Lin Carter (another Appendix N author!) described The Face in the Frost as one of the three best fantasy novels to appear since The Lord of the Rings. Despite all of these noted connections to Professor Tolkien's work, I cannot stress strongly enough that if you haven't yet read The Face in the Frost, do not go into it expecting anything Tolkien-esque! In 1973, Carter noted that John Bellairs was working on a sequel to The Face in the Frost, but it was never completed - an unfinished sequel called The Dolphin Cross was published as part of an anthology called Magic Mirrors in 2009; I have not yet obtained a copy of this book as of this writing (the Ides of February, 2017).
Ease of Availability
This one is pretty easy to find on Amazon Kindle; that's how I most recently reviewed it! There does not appear to be an audiobook version (yet!).
Summary and Commentary - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!
OK, so, first of all, be aware that much of the pleasure in reading The Face In the Frost comes from the wonderfully eerie and brooding atmosphere that Bellairs is able to craft throughout the tale. The plot itself seems to meander and wander a bit, drawing the reader into the coils of the story without the reader even realizing they're being led in circles, because the creeping sense of foreboding that permeates the novel occupies the reader's attention. So, a warning if you've never read it - don't expect a straightforward plot, or resolution thereof.
The second aspect of Bellairs' writing in general that I wish to point out is that it is highly allusive, bewilderingly so, and the casual reader may not realize that some of the references are, indeed, allusions. When I started my re-reading for this installment of Appendix N Revisited, I initially tried to track down every allusion that I could recognize as such. This became increasingly difficult to do as I read, because there are so darned many of them!
Thirdly, Bellairs is quite obviously a fan of the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. If you haven't read Lovecraft deeply, you are likely to miss just how Lovecraftian some of the motifs are. Take that as a recommendation - read some Lovecraft, too! He's in Appendix N, too!
One last caution before we dig into the actual story. I shall be looking at the story in considerable depth. If you haven't yet read The Face in the Frost, and don't want to encounter spoilers, stop reading now!
So. The prologue introduced the fact that the two protagonists are wizards, somewhat improbably named Prospero and Roger Bacon, but not the literary/historical wizardly characters of those names ("not the one you're thinking of, either!" writes Bellairs). Prospero lives in a fantasy realm called the South Kingdom, and Roger Bacon travels the South Kingdom and North Kingdom both extensively, but spent a long time in England. England? Yes, like The Princess Bride and several other fantasy stories, this one seems set in a version of our world, but with a couple of fantasy realms added in, somewhere (like Guilder and Florin in TPB, the South Kingdom and North Kingdom exist alongside England and Egypt and such). When is the story set, then? That is deliberately unclear - it seems to be somewhere between the late Middle Ages and 19th century, made even muddier by the fact that our protagonists use magical mirrors and such to view other time periods, and make frequent allusions to events, people, and things up to the 20th century, being horribly anachronistic. It's fun, but can give the reader a headache if they want a clear time and place for the story.
So, Prospero lives a rather idle life in the South Kingdom in a house crammed with all manner of anachronisms and the "usual paraphernalia of a practicing wizard," including occult books - several titles are cataloged in Lovecraftian detail - Six Centuries of English Spells, Nameless Horrors and What to Do About Them, An Answer for Night Hags [I note that "night hags are a traditional D&D monster!], and the dreaded Krankenhammer of Stefan Schimpf, the mad cobbler of Mainz! [I note that this is a not-so-subtle allusion to the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, in Lovecraft! - the title would mean something like, "The Hammer of Illness," also alluding to Kramer and Sprenger's Hexenhammer - "The Hammer of Witches" - better known as the Malleus Maleficarum, a real book!]. Anyway, Prospero lives alone except for his "competent but somewhat sarcastic mirror in a heavy gilt frame" that is "given to tuneless humming and crabby remarks" in a house that was built, at least in part (we discover later) by Prospero's teacher, a wizard named "Michael Scott" [sic, but almost certainly a reference to the real Michael Scot (1175-c. 1232 C.E.), a Scottish philosopher and occultist.
As the story opens, Prospero is having a rather idle day about the house. His mirror tries to interest him in viewing Aurungabad (a real city in India; I admit I had to look this up). He "fribbled away the day" in minor chores, "raising the ghosts of flowers" from their Essential Salts (a very direct reference to H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward!), messing around with his spellbook [potentially an ancestor of the D&D spellbook, being highly personal, full of doodles and such], including practicing a spell he never found a use for (this actually becomes important later in the story, but Bellairs does his best to make it seem completely insignificant to the reader!). Prospero's idle day takes a more sinister turn as it begins to seem as if he is being haunted by some unseen presence lurking about, minor apparitions, etc., until at last, his friend Roger Bacon arrives unexpectedly out of the rain. Roger mentions that he actually arrived two hours earlier, but sensed something lurking about, and tried looking for it before coming to the door. Roger had been in the North Kingdom for the last 3 years, and England for 3 years before that, so has much to tell, especially of his deeds in England.
Roger tells of his attempt to create a brazen head to help him with magic (something attributed to the real Roger Bacon, c. 1219 - c. 1292 C.E., by the way, despite Bellairs' insistence that this is not the same wizard), but the brazen head was rather deaf, creating problems - e.g., we wanted to surround England with a wall of brass to keep out Danish Vikings, but the head mishears him and helps him conjure a wall of glass, which startles the first Vikings who encounter it, but the second Vikings to discover it simply shattered it with an axe, after which Roger was asked to leave England! [the Viking invasions of England run from c. 800 to c. 1066 C.E. in the real world]. After Prospero relates some bad dreams he has recently had, Roger mentions that he tried to track down a book Prospero had been seeking in England - the one "written in the cipher that no one had been able to crack" [what is described sounds very much like the Voynich Manuscript, a real book, and one that was actually attributed - incorrectly - to the real Roger Bacon in the real world!].
This mysterious, un-named book [pseudo-Voynich?] becomes a major part of the rest of The Face in the Frost, though our protagonists do not yet realize it. Roger continues to relate the results of his investigations into the book in England - that on the last page it is marked with a dolphin cross, that it contains detailed illustrations of strange plants, especially flowers, corresponding to no real plants ever seen [a feature of the real Voynich Manuscript]. Roger refers to some illustrations in the book as woodcuts, and mentions other artifacts of the printed page [so unlike the real Voynich, not a manuscript?]. Anyway, he found a detailed account of it in the diary of a monk at Glastonbury Abbey [a famous abbey in the real world said to be built on a site important in the King Arthur legend]; we read the account from the diary which reveals that the monk is slowly going mad from his research into this strange book [shades of H.P. Lovecraft, again?], though the monk does not realize this [a particular type of unreliable narrator favored by Lovecraft]. The account concludes with the book being given to a fisherman [of the Innsmouth sort, one wonders?] to drop into the depths of the sea. So the book is presumed destroyed [or is it?]
The next morning, Prospero's house is surrounded by gray-robed figures who seem to be watching the house from a distance. Prospero and Bacon think that the force responsible for the strange occurrences is moving against them, but is not yet sure of their capabilities and therefore has not yet attacked, therefore they decide not to tip their hand by using magic to attack these apparitions. Instead they escape through a secret passage in the root cellar, using a model ship to sail along an underground stream that lets out in a South Kingdom lake near the home of King Gorm III Wonderworker, a friend of theirs. The model ship is the Actaeon, "which ran -will run - aground on a sand bar during the siege of Charlestown in 1776" [a real ship] (there is also a mention of Lord Nelson at the Battle of the Nile - "You pick up the damnedest things from that mirror"). They pack essentials ("tarot cards, extra tobacco, and pocket magic books" [like D&D's "traveling spell books?"]). They use a shrinking spell to board the model ship [one that was used by a character named Mary Jane to become as small as Sniffles the Mouse in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics in 1940!], after first speculating about whether the apparitions or whoever is behind them will destroy the house (Prosero thinks not - the hearthstone was laid by Michael Scott [Michael Scot] himself, and there are spells on the house even Prospero doesn't fully understand - he here begins to mention a particular cupboard, but changes the topic - BUT THIS CUPBOARD IS IMPORTANT), and leaving a note in black crayon for the housekeeper Mrs. Durfey on the kitchen table under a bust of the the Emperor Pupienus [a real Roman emperor! - Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus Augustus, c. 165-238 C.E., emperor with Balbinus for 3 months in 238 C.E., the Year of Six Emperors, and yes, there really is a bust of him extant, despite his short reign and relative obscurity]. Got all that?
They escape to the lake (having a short battle along the way with a tiny troll in the passage), in the Grand Union of the Five Counties, Population 7200, Motto: Si quaeris terram amoenam, circumspice ["If you seek a pleasant land, look around you!" - a reference to the epitaph of Christopher Wren, or to the state motto of Michigan], ruled by King Gorm III Wonderworker who has a seneschal named Nahum who practices speaking in the form of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse [Beowulf is even referenced!]. He has a magical model of the galaxy, and mentions trouble in sector 8 - "I think we must blame the terrible black planet of Yuggoth, which rolls aimlessly in the stupefying darkness" [another direct reference to the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft]. Prospero and Roger ask King Gorm III for the key to the Hall of Records, and he agrees, commenting, "Key . . . 'there was a door to which I had no key' - very fine, Persian decadent writers" [a reference to Omar Khayyam, one of my favorite poets!].
Having obtained the key, Prospero and Roger proceed to the Hall of Records - an old cottage - where Roger keeps watch outside while Prospero does research inside. He finds the device Roger mentioned in a register of wizards and warlocks - MELICHUS - a wizard with whom we discover he has quite a history! [Note that Bellairs has quite a history with Melichus as well! Melichus, or Milichus, appears as a character in the play The Tragedy of Nero, an anonymous play from 1624 based on an account of the Roman historian Tacitus. This play was the subject of Bellairs' unfinished doctoral dissertation!] He had been living among fishermen in England to learn sea-spells [the connection whereby Melichus obtained the mysterious book? It is never made explicit in the novel, but probably!], then he returned to the South Kingdom to the town of Briar Hill, where the apparitions of several dead villagers were traced to him [practicing necromancy! never a good sign!], and he was chased into the woods, wounded by bowshot. The his pursuers set fire to the woods, and they later found his burnt body. Oddly, the register entry ends "Obiit Melichus Magister A* 697 A.U.C." - this would translate from Latin as "Master Melichus died in the year 697 from the Founding of the City [Rome] - that Roman date would be 56 B.C.E.! Given that this story seems to be set in the Dark Ages at least, if not much later, and Melichus is a contemporary of Prospero, I think Bellairs or his editor made a minor error here. Perhaps is is meant to be 1697 A.U.C.? That would fit the apparent timeframe more closely, with Vikings attacking England and such! Or maybe it is supposed to be close to the timeframe of the historical Melichus/Milichus mentioned by Tacitus? But even then, this would not be accurate, since the setting of that play is nearer 68 C.E.
Feeling uneasy to discover that he is being stalked by an old acquaintance who is supposed to be long dead and buried, he goes to fetch Roger. Though he bears Roger's staff, this "Roger" is quickly revealed to be a counterfeit, who claims to have disarmed the real Roger and sent him with 2 of Gorm's soldiers "who think they're under orders from the king to execute a warlock" - "Do you know what happens to a wizard's staff when the wizard dies?" - the staff the counterfeit Roger carries withers before Prospero's eyes - "He is dead. Go home." '[A lot of great fantasy books emphasize a wizard's connection to his staff - it is mentioned in Tolkien, of course, and appears here as well. Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, which is not in Appendix N, makes much of it as well! Much inspiration for the magical staves of D&D and the spell from the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG!] The fake Roger vanishes!
From this point on, the eerie, creepy atmosphere in the book just continues to escalate all the way to the climax of the book. Bellairs is a real master at creating atmosphere. I highly recommend you read this book and see, if you haven't already! Anyway, Roger does not give up and go home at this point, but presses on, heading to Briar Hill and the forest where Melichus was supposed to have died. He comes to a crossroads where stands a gallows tree, and sees what he thinks at first is a hanging wizard [oh no! Roger?!?!?], but turns out to be a dummy in a brown robe, to which is pinned a note, "Wizard" in the 3 principal languages of the South, along with "large, ugly runes" which he recognizes as a sort used when one wizard wishes to destroy another [like explosive runes? I am reminded of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG approach, where there are 2 runic alphabet spells, one mortal, one fey, and the effects vary depending on the results of the spell check!]. He left this dummy alone since he knew such runes were "sometimes activated when you tried to burn the effigy."
Briar Hill was still half a day's walk away, and Prospero was tired, but did not dare camp in the open so close to where his enemy had struck at him and Roger, so he kept walking. The creepy, eerie feeling is played up as he walks alone, but feels as if he is being watched. It gets stranger - as it gets dark, he sees a campfire and approaches, but no one is there. The fire behaves oddly. He sees a light glowing from the bottom of a nearby stream, and picks up the glowing object from the icy waters, and sees it is a triangular stone painted with his own face, but the stream was flaking away the paint. He brings the stone over by the campfire and attemps to examine it with a spell, but it dissolves into a mushy mess, and he throws the "pulpy thing" into the stream, which then begins to boil, and a smoky shape with arms arises for it. Prospero speaks a word [a Power Word spell as in D&D?] - one such as "sorcerers can only speak a few times in their lives" - and then invokes Michael Scott [sic - Michael Scot?] who lies buried in Melrose Abbey [a real abbey near the border between England and Scotland, where any number of notable dignitaries is buried in the real world - but not Michael Scot, as far as I know!], and commands the smoky thing to "Go, in his name, go!" The thing departs.
Next, Prospero hitches a ride with a wagon of split logs to Briar Hill. The village of Briar Hill is surrounded by a "thick, cruel-looking thorn hedge" that had originally surrounded the outer wall of a castle that had once stood here - many houses in the village were built from the stones of that castle! A sprawling briar tree grows in what was once the courtyard of the castle. There is a night watchman on duty at the gates who admits the wagon upon which Prospero is riding. Once in the village, Prospero looks at the roofless, burned-out shell of of a one-storey cottage, its front wall covered in complicated hex-signs, and above the door a Gothic "M"with many lines drawn through it in red paint - the former home of Melichus. But Prospero is not going to investigate it in the middle of the night! He is directed to the Gorgon's Head Inn, named for the stone head over the inn door that must once have been part of the castle.
Prospero goes to the Gorgon's Head. He checks in under the name Nicholas Archer of Brakespeare (the village near which Prospero lives), under which he put his customary loop-and-squiggle device in case Roger should come looking for him [I have tried to track down the allusion of "Nicholas Archer," but I never found anything except possibly a cricket player). He played some card games (including tarot cards!) with other guests in the common room, had supper, then went to his chamber. The fireplace in his room was carved to look like a toothy mouth. Through the window, he could see the ruins of Melichus' cottage. He propped his staff against the door of his room.
Prospero sat in his room and took out his spellbook and smoking pipe. He used a spell for reading light, since the room was not provided with a reading lamp (as the author notes, there is no reason it should be in a medieval world!). He opens to the section on Necromancy, a section he has never used, but dutifully copied when he was the student of Michael Scott. He reads until he falls asleep, then has some pretty terrible nightmares [but I do note that here is a possible example, not from Jack Vance, of "Vancian" magic, in which spellcasters need to study their spells from spellbooks to "memorize" them for the day].
When he wakes up in the morning, Prospero finds his staff still propped against the door, but the outer surface marred by deep gouges criss-crossing it. If something tried to get in, why didn't it come through the un-shuttered window? He finds a hex-sign on the windowsill in rain-blurred chalk, left by some previous traveler, and realizes that mere chance saved him! He finds that whatever came looking for him frightened the landlord - "Keep your witch's money!" he cries, noting that he spent the night in prayer while some horrible monster was stalking the halls of his inn, and that it's not worth the bother to burn Prospero - "they say you can come back after you're dead. The other one did." As he leaves, Prospero flips 3 gold coins over his shoulder that embed themselves in the limestone of the mantel over the fire (where they remain to this day!) and on his way out crossed the eyes of the stone gorgon for good measure!
Prospero decides that investigating Melichus' former cottage will have to wait until Roger joins him, if ever. Instead, he takes the west gate out of town, pausing to ask some farmers how to avoid the ill-omened forest (where Melichus was supposed to have met his end). He finds the forest is enclosed by a fence of closely-planted wooden poles topped by spear blades and linked by 3 tiers of rusty iron chains. There is an impressive gate with stone pillars and statues.
Prospero enters the forest through the gate. He immediately senses something wrong, about the forest. Bellairs here engages all our senses - he describes things as being out-of-focus, almost like a buzzing sound, feeling drowsy, and so forth. One imagines that the air even smelled and tasted bad! Bellairs subtly weaves a feeling of uneasiness and distortion into everything about this forest where Melichus supposedly burned. He finds the flat stone that serves as a grave marker for Melichus - in characters with strange flourishes, it reads, "Under this stone, we have placed the burnt body of Melichus the sorcerer. He did great wrong. May his soul lie here under this stone with his body and trouble us not." Prospero thinks this is a terrible curse, and as much as it seems Melichus is his enemy, he hopes that it did not come to pass, for his sake.
At this point, Prospero sets up a necromantic ritual of some sort (presumably what he was studying for at the Gorgon's Head Inn) - he makes chalk circles, sets out beeswax candles, and such; Bellairs actually describes some of his preparations with an attention to detail that suggests that he researched some of the medieval grimoires that have come down to us. He traces the name "Melichus" in the dirt carefully with his finger and fills it in with powdered chalk. He attempts to summon forth the shade of Melichus, who is supposed to be dead and buried here, after all - "Come forth, you that are dead!" But the spell seems to fail, and eventually Prospero falls asleep.
Prospero wakes up and sees a shape like a man on all fours crawling through the grass towards his protective warding circle. It speaks with the voice of a boy, not a man, and clearly in some distress - "I was his servant. They killed me. Let me go," he says, "Go north and kill him. Go north." So that mystery is resolved - Melichus did not die of being show with an arrow and burned in a forest fire - it was his servant! Those who had tried to slay Melichus had found the boy's burned body and assumed it had belonged to the sorcerer; they had buried it here with the terrible curse laid upon it, never realizing that Melichus was still out there!
Looking more closely at the extra flourishes on the gravestone inscription, Prospero realizes that they add extra layers to the curse, making it difficult to undo. "I wonder what I have done," he wonders. An eerie darkness descends which even magical light barely penetrates.
The next morning, Prospero returns to Briar Hill, and makes the startled blacksmith give him a hammer and chisel. He goes back into the forest and hacks away at the inscription to undo the awful curse. Then he returns the blacksmith's tools and sets out northbound on a journey still plagued by uncanny happenings.
Prospero comes to a spooky town called Five Dials, apparently named for a pentagonal clock, though it is missing a dial. The town feels very wrong - again, Bellairs is a master at weaving a creepy ambiance. He spends a nightmarish night at an inn with a sign of a card player (with blank cards). The whole town is apparently some kind of terrible illusion that dissolves away as Prospero flees in the middle of the night.
Later, Prospero encounters a mile marker pointing the way to a real "Five Dials," which turns out to be a lonely roadside inn, named for a clock that used to be there with a sundial on top used to calibrate the other four dials. That clock had failed long, long ago, however. It is staying here that he meets up with Roger again at last! Roger had found Prospero's "Nicholas Archer" entry in the guest book at the Gorgon's Head Inn (and asks why he didn't go with "Bishop Lanfranc" for an alias, to which Prospero replies that he didn't have his mitre [the allusion would appear to be to an 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury]).
Prospero and Roger discuss why Melichus would want to kill Prospero. Prospero believes that it all goes back to the "green glass paperweight" (which I refer to here as the GGP for short), which was a magical device constructed by Prospero and Melichus when they were students under Michael Scott. Prospero calls it a paperweight because that's what he would use it for if he still possessed it. The GGP was constructed of four green glass globes, three of which showed a snowy, desolate crossroads and an ancient stone standing nearby, and the fourth could be used as a "conventional seeing glass," used to view places that the wizard using it knew about or had visited. Michael Scott had required Prospero and Melichus to construct a magical device, so this was their project, but they could only take it from the remote house in the north where they had built it if they took it out of the house together. Since the two of them never worked together after that, they never removed it. Prospero assumed that this has something to do with the "unfinished business" between Prospero and Melichus. So it seems that Prospero and Roger are going to have to head north to the house where the GGP still rests in order to investigate.
The next morning, a troop of men-at-arms stops at the Five Dials on their way north. They are heading to the town of Bishop's Bowes to burn that "town full of witches" by order of Duke Harald. Seeing that this is only the beginning of hostilities. if not outright war, between the South Kingdom and North Kingdom fueled by fear of dark magic (this fear itself fueled by Melichus' meddling?), Prospero and Roger set out ahead of them to warn the folk of Bishop's Bowes or to try to find a way to stop a massacre. The town in named for a bridge - the "bowes" - over the river that flows between the South Kingdom and North Kingdom. The bridge is carved with the arms of "Bishop Hatto" [a real 10th century Archibishop of Mainz, who according to Wikipedia, "memory long regarded in Saxony with great abhorrence, and stories of cruelty and treachery gathered round his name"]. Roger went on to warn the people of the town (but found it already abandoned, the people apparently forewarned), while Prospero remained behind to hold the bridge, and when the soldiers tried to cross it, he destroyed it by magic.
Prospero and Roger create a carriage for themselves by magic (with some apparent reference to the creation of a coach in Cinderella), and travel north through lands haunted by strange happenings. At one point they stay with a farming family, who tell of a wizard who visited hundreds of years back and left a key for a wizard whose name would start with "P" - they give this brass key to Prospero, It is carved with characters in Welsh, which Roger reads as "Gwydion of Caer Leon made me. Turn twice" [Gwydion was a hero-magician of Welsh mythology; Caer Leon or Caerleon was a settlement in Wales by the river Usk which apparently grew up originally around a Roman legionary fortress].
As they continue to journey for many days, they hear rumors of a War Council on the Feasting Hill of the North Kingdom, with the seven kings gathering and preparing to march on the South Kingdom, and already holding both sides of the river crossing with cavalry. Unnatural cold weather has set in. They come to a fortified valley and seek a way to cross into it, a nameless monk of the Green Oratory raising exotic plants [inspiration for D&D druids?] helps get them up and over fortifications with a plant whose tendrils lift them up. The monk mentions that the village on the other side has some unique plants and flowers not found elsewhere.
They arrive at the village early in the evening, but none of the houses has any light burning. They see unusual flowers growing here, just as the monk said, but are chilled to realize some of them are the unknown plants illustrated in the strange book [the Voynich Manuscript?] that obsessed Melichus. There is a carved fountain in the market square that is not running - they examine a panel and see it is a depiction of the Witch of Endor [a Biblical necromancer]. They suddenly see a light burning in a window, and go to that house. Prospero looks in a window and sees a figure reading a book - THE book, presumably - with his back to the window. It is implied that the figure is Melichus. Prospero has the impression that the figure literally cannot tear himself away from reading that terrible book, now! He's trapped! "He's caught, but then, maybe we are too."
They travel to the north end of the village where the house stood where Prospero and Melichus created the GGP during their apprenticeship to Michael Scott. Prospero still has the key on his key ring, after all these years. The GGP is still on the shelf, sure enough. They light lots of candles and a fire in the fireplace before examining it. There is indication that Melichus has been here, perhaps many times, but has preserved the room almost exactly as it was. His handprints are visible in the dust of the shelf holding the GGP, implying that Melichus has used and perhaps attempted to remove the GGP. Prospero uses it and is able to see his house in one globe (the other three show the snowy crossroads, as always). His house is also in the grip of the unnatural cold - the "face in the frost" of the title is the face-like pattern that manifests on the frost of a window, presumably under the terrible influence of Melichus' sorcery.
Prospero declares his intention to try to speak to Melichus. When Roger objects that they still don't really know or understand what is going on, Prospero notes that "we can't just sit here fiddling with this ball [the GGP] while he scares the world to death or destroys it," so he spends more than half an hour trying to reach Melichus through the GGP, "Melichus! I call upon you by the secret name you were given by Michael Scott. That is . . ." and when he spoke the name, the room grew darker. Bellairs does not tell us what that name was. Prospero disturbs the meticulously preserved room, causing an apparition to attack him. Prospero says, "Good-by, Roger. I hope we meet again," before grabbing the GGP and crying to the apparition, "If you want this, come and get it," and running out of the house and down the path, where he vanishes.
Prospero has appeared at the snowy crossroads that always appears in the three "other" globes of the GGP. He sees someone coming, and presumes it is Melichus, so he runs in the opposite direction, hampered by snow. He comes upon the home and shop of one "M. Millhorn," and comes inside. Millhorn wears a black skullcap, and is a student of Kabbala [Jewish mysticism]. Millhorn says he can hold off Melichus, and has Prospero hand him the GGP and sends him downstairs to "find the door you want" - a tunnel filled with many doors, apparently each leading to other places in the world or worlds. He sees one that looks like the door to his own root cellar at home, so he takes that, and finds himself in the forest behind his own house.
Just as in his vision from the GGP, Prospero finds his house is frosted over in unnatural winter. He is still under magical attack of some kind, however, and he suddenly realizes that the brass key he was given might open the locked cupboard under the stairs that he has never been able to open [WHICH WAS ONLY BARELY MENTIONED IN PASSING AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE BOOK!]. He opens it and finds a small carving of a squirrel with a note clutched in its buck teeth - "USE THE SPELL, FOOL!" The spell? Oh yes - that spell he never found the use of [THE SPELL HE WAS PRACTICING AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE BOOK, BUT SEEMED IRRELEVANT TO THE PLOT UNTIL NOW!]. He races to the book and finds the spell. Just as the door opens, and something steps into the room at which Prospero refuses to look, he uses the spell, ending the attack.
The scene switches to Christmas Eve. We learn that Roger arrived back in November, in that carriage they had summoned into being. We see the mayor of Brakespeare playing with a crossbow in the back yard. The local innkeeper is mixing drinks in a beer barrel in the living room. King Gorm sits in a corner of the living room, reading the Krankenhammer. Villagers are drinking. The plant-raising monk from the Green Oratory is trying to break up a fight between his Sensitive Anaconda plant and Prospero's Creeping Charlie plant. And we find Prospero and Roger in the backyard with the mayor, throwing snowballs at a satyr statue.
Later on, after the festivities, Mr. Millhorn arrived through the magic mirror (which protests rather loudly!). He had fought Melichus with magic for nearly an hour, and confesses that he might not have won if Melichus had been knowledgeable about the Kabbala. Millhorn had known that this was coming for years, by "specular stones" and certain dark hints in his readings. Melichus was apparently destroyed, or banished for good. After the battle, he found the book, open to the last page, and found he couldn't read a word of it, but at the end was the device of the dolphin cross. The book seemed to read itself - the letters glowed, one after another, then the book "crumpled into a black ball of ashes and sank into the snow." Millhorn mentions that at the crossroads near his home, one always had the peculiar sensation of being watched.
They begin to speculate about Melichus' ultimate fate, but are interrupted by the sound of the magic mirror snoring - it had fallen asleep! - and so the novel ends!
This is not a book with which I have a long history - I read it first as an adult, because of its inclusion in Appendix N - but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It feels odd, though, with strange circles and currents and dead ends in the plot, meandering like a maze yet having a strange underlying unity of composition. And Bellairs is certainly a master of creating atmosphere, as well as being one of the most highly allusive modern authors I've had the pleasure to read. I felt rather thunderstruck that the ending hinges upon what appear to be throwaway mentions at the very beginning. The book feels complete and yet somehow unfinished and unsettling at the same time. It is a very curious story!
The Face in the Frost did not directly inspire my early gaming nor my fiction writing, but I can see how it inspired Gygax in certain aspects of the creation of D&D, and I would like to think that I have learned a thing or two from Bellairs in terms of style. I would highly recommend it to fantasy fans, with the caveat that this is almost an anti-epic, Bellairs almost an anti-Tolkien, so be aware that its style will not appeal to everyone, but I think it is enjoyable if taken as its own thing, of one's definition of fantasy literature is not overly skewed by what has turned out to be the dominant, Tolkien-inspired mainstream. Also - how can I not love Bellairs? He's clearly educated, erudite, comfortable with Latin, and deeply enough read in medieval history to be able to make allusions to particular medieval bishops. Great stuff!
Incidentally, although The Face in the Frost is the only Bellairs work cited in Appendix N, I have to believe that Gygax would have added any sequel or prequel had he been able (a lost prequel was written but never published; an unfinished sequel, The Dolphin Cross, was published in 2009 as noted above - neither were available in the late 70s when Gygax made his list). I intend to read more Bellairs as a result of my research, and especially to seek out a copy of The Dolphin Cross. For those with an interest in Bellairs and his work, there is an excellent website dedicated to him and his literary legacy called Bellairsia! Check it out!
The second aspect of Bellairs' writing in general that I wish to point out is that it is highly allusive, bewilderingly so, and the casual reader may not realize that some of the references are, indeed, allusions. When I started my re-reading for this installment of Appendix N Revisited, I initially tried to track down every allusion that I could recognize as such. This became increasingly difficult to do as I read, because there are so darned many of them!
Thirdly, Bellairs is quite obviously a fan of the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. If you haven't read Lovecraft deeply, you are likely to miss just how Lovecraftian some of the motifs are. Take that as a recommendation - read some Lovecraft, too! He's in Appendix N, too!
One last caution before we dig into the actual story. I shall be looking at the story in considerable depth. If you haven't yet read The Face in the Frost, and don't want to encounter spoilers, stop reading now!
So. The prologue introduced the fact that the two protagonists are wizards, somewhat improbably named Prospero and Roger Bacon, but not the literary/historical wizardly characters of those names ("not the one you're thinking of, either!" writes Bellairs). Prospero lives in a fantasy realm called the South Kingdom, and Roger Bacon travels the South Kingdom and North Kingdom both extensively, but spent a long time in England. England? Yes, like The Princess Bride and several other fantasy stories, this one seems set in a version of our world, but with a couple of fantasy realms added in, somewhere (like Guilder and Florin in TPB, the South Kingdom and North Kingdom exist alongside England and Egypt and such). When is the story set, then? That is deliberately unclear - it seems to be somewhere between the late Middle Ages and 19th century, made even muddier by the fact that our protagonists use magical mirrors and such to view other time periods, and make frequent allusions to events, people, and things up to the 20th century, being horribly anachronistic. It's fun, but can give the reader a headache if they want a clear time and place for the story.
So, Prospero lives a rather idle life in the South Kingdom in a house crammed with all manner of anachronisms and the "usual paraphernalia of a practicing wizard," including occult books - several titles are cataloged in Lovecraftian detail - Six Centuries of English Spells, Nameless Horrors and What to Do About Them, An Answer for Night Hags [I note that "night hags are a traditional D&D monster!], and the dreaded Krankenhammer of Stefan Schimpf, the mad cobbler of Mainz! [I note that this is a not-so-subtle allusion to the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, in Lovecraft! - the title would mean something like, "The Hammer of Illness," also alluding to Kramer and Sprenger's Hexenhammer - "The Hammer of Witches" - better known as the Malleus Maleficarum, a real book!]. Anyway, Prospero lives alone except for his "competent but somewhat sarcastic mirror in a heavy gilt frame" that is "given to tuneless humming and crabby remarks" in a house that was built, at least in part (we discover later) by Prospero's teacher, a wizard named "Michael Scott" [sic, but almost certainly a reference to the real Michael Scot (1175-c. 1232 C.E.), a Scottish philosopher and occultist.
As the story opens, Prospero is having a rather idle day about the house. His mirror tries to interest him in viewing Aurungabad (a real city in India; I admit I had to look this up). He "fribbled away the day" in minor chores, "raising the ghosts of flowers" from their Essential Salts (a very direct reference to H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward!), messing around with his spellbook [potentially an ancestor of the D&D spellbook, being highly personal, full of doodles and such], including practicing a spell he never found a use for (this actually becomes important later in the story, but Bellairs does his best to make it seem completely insignificant to the reader!). Prospero's idle day takes a more sinister turn as it begins to seem as if he is being haunted by some unseen presence lurking about, minor apparitions, etc., until at last, his friend Roger Bacon arrives unexpectedly out of the rain. Roger mentions that he actually arrived two hours earlier, but sensed something lurking about, and tried looking for it before coming to the door. Roger had been in the North Kingdom for the last 3 years, and England for 3 years before that, so has much to tell, especially of his deeds in England.
Roger tells of his attempt to create a brazen head to help him with magic (something attributed to the real Roger Bacon, c. 1219 - c. 1292 C.E., by the way, despite Bellairs' insistence that this is not the same wizard), but the brazen head was rather deaf, creating problems - e.g., we wanted to surround England with a wall of brass to keep out Danish Vikings, but the head mishears him and helps him conjure a wall of glass, which startles the first Vikings who encounter it, but the second Vikings to discover it simply shattered it with an axe, after which Roger was asked to leave England! [the Viking invasions of England run from c. 800 to c. 1066 C.E. in the real world]. After Prospero relates some bad dreams he has recently had, Roger mentions that he tried to track down a book Prospero had been seeking in England - the one "written in the cipher that no one had been able to crack" [what is described sounds very much like the Voynich Manuscript, a real book, and one that was actually attributed - incorrectly - to the real Roger Bacon in the real world!].
This mysterious, un-named book [pseudo-Voynich?] becomes a major part of the rest of The Face in the Frost, though our protagonists do not yet realize it. Roger continues to relate the results of his investigations into the book in England - that on the last page it is marked with a dolphin cross, that it contains detailed illustrations of strange plants, especially flowers, corresponding to no real plants ever seen [a feature of the real Voynich Manuscript]. Roger refers to some illustrations in the book as woodcuts, and mentions other artifacts of the printed page [so unlike the real Voynich, not a manuscript?]. Anyway, he found a detailed account of it in the diary of a monk at Glastonbury Abbey [a famous abbey in the real world said to be built on a site important in the King Arthur legend]; we read the account from the diary which reveals that the monk is slowly going mad from his research into this strange book [shades of H.P. Lovecraft, again?], though the monk does not realize this [a particular type of unreliable narrator favored by Lovecraft]. The account concludes with the book being given to a fisherman [of the Innsmouth sort, one wonders?] to drop into the depths of the sea. So the book is presumed destroyed [or is it?]
The next morning, Prospero's house is surrounded by gray-robed figures who seem to be watching the house from a distance. Prospero and Bacon think that the force responsible for the strange occurrences is moving against them, but is not yet sure of their capabilities and therefore has not yet attacked, therefore they decide not to tip their hand by using magic to attack these apparitions. Instead they escape through a secret passage in the root cellar, using a model ship to sail along an underground stream that lets out in a South Kingdom lake near the home of King Gorm III Wonderworker, a friend of theirs. The model ship is the Actaeon, "which ran -will run - aground on a sand bar during the siege of Charlestown in 1776" [a real ship] (there is also a mention of Lord Nelson at the Battle of the Nile - "You pick up the damnedest things from that mirror"). They pack essentials ("tarot cards, extra tobacco, and pocket magic books" [like D&D's "traveling spell books?"]). They use a shrinking spell to board the model ship [one that was used by a character named Mary Jane to become as small as Sniffles the Mouse in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics in 1940!], after first speculating about whether the apparitions or whoever is behind them will destroy the house (Prosero thinks not - the hearthstone was laid by Michael Scott [Michael Scot] himself, and there are spells on the house even Prospero doesn't fully understand - he here begins to mention a particular cupboard, but changes the topic - BUT THIS CUPBOARD IS IMPORTANT), and leaving a note in black crayon for the housekeeper Mrs. Durfey on the kitchen table under a bust of the the Emperor Pupienus [a real Roman emperor! - Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus Augustus, c. 165-238 C.E., emperor with Balbinus for 3 months in 238 C.E., the Year of Six Emperors, and yes, there really is a bust of him extant, despite his short reign and relative obscurity]. Got all that?
They escape to the lake (having a short battle along the way with a tiny troll in the passage), in the Grand Union of the Five Counties, Population 7200, Motto: Si quaeris terram amoenam, circumspice ["If you seek a pleasant land, look around you!" - a reference to the epitaph of Christopher Wren, or to the state motto of Michigan], ruled by King Gorm III Wonderworker who has a seneschal named Nahum who practices speaking in the form of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse [Beowulf is even referenced!]. He has a magical model of the galaxy, and mentions trouble in sector 8 - "I think we must blame the terrible black planet of Yuggoth, which rolls aimlessly in the stupefying darkness" [another direct reference to the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft]. Prospero and Roger ask King Gorm III for the key to the Hall of Records, and he agrees, commenting, "Key . . . 'there was a door to which I had no key' - very fine, Persian decadent writers" [a reference to Omar Khayyam, one of my favorite poets!].
Having obtained the key, Prospero and Roger proceed to the Hall of Records - an old cottage - where Roger keeps watch outside while Prospero does research inside. He finds the device Roger mentioned in a register of wizards and warlocks - MELICHUS - a wizard with whom we discover he has quite a history! [Note that Bellairs has quite a history with Melichus as well! Melichus, or Milichus, appears as a character in the play The Tragedy of Nero, an anonymous play from 1624 based on an account of the Roman historian Tacitus. This play was the subject of Bellairs' unfinished doctoral dissertation!] He had been living among fishermen in England to learn sea-spells [the connection whereby Melichus obtained the mysterious book? It is never made explicit in the novel, but probably!], then he returned to the South Kingdom to the town of Briar Hill, where the apparitions of several dead villagers were traced to him [practicing necromancy! never a good sign!], and he was chased into the woods, wounded by bowshot. The his pursuers set fire to the woods, and they later found his burnt body. Oddly, the register entry ends "Obiit Melichus Magister A* 697 A.U.C." - this would translate from Latin as "Master Melichus died in the year 697 from the Founding of the City [Rome] - that Roman date would be 56 B.C.E.! Given that this story seems to be set in the Dark Ages at least, if not much later, and Melichus is a contemporary of Prospero, I think Bellairs or his editor made a minor error here. Perhaps is is meant to be 1697 A.U.C.? That would fit the apparent timeframe more closely, with Vikings attacking England and such! Or maybe it is supposed to be close to the timeframe of the historical Melichus/Milichus mentioned by Tacitus? But even then, this would not be accurate, since the setting of that play is nearer 68 C.E.
Feeling uneasy to discover that he is being stalked by an old acquaintance who is supposed to be long dead and buried, he goes to fetch Roger. Though he bears Roger's staff, this "Roger" is quickly revealed to be a counterfeit, who claims to have disarmed the real Roger and sent him with 2 of Gorm's soldiers "who think they're under orders from the king to execute a warlock" - "Do you know what happens to a wizard's staff when the wizard dies?" - the staff the counterfeit Roger carries withers before Prospero's eyes - "He is dead. Go home." '[A lot of great fantasy books emphasize a wizard's connection to his staff - it is mentioned in Tolkien, of course, and appears here as well. Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, which is not in Appendix N, makes much of it as well! Much inspiration for the magical staves of D&D and the spell from the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG!] The fake Roger vanishes!
From this point on, the eerie, creepy atmosphere in the book just continues to escalate all the way to the climax of the book. Bellairs is a real master at creating atmosphere. I highly recommend you read this book and see, if you haven't already! Anyway, Roger does not give up and go home at this point, but presses on, heading to Briar Hill and the forest where Melichus was supposed to have died. He comes to a crossroads where stands a gallows tree, and sees what he thinks at first is a hanging wizard [oh no! Roger?!?!?], but turns out to be a dummy in a brown robe, to which is pinned a note, "Wizard" in the 3 principal languages of the South, along with "large, ugly runes" which he recognizes as a sort used when one wizard wishes to destroy another [like explosive runes? I am reminded of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG approach, where there are 2 runic alphabet spells, one mortal, one fey, and the effects vary depending on the results of the spell check!]. He left this dummy alone since he knew such runes were "sometimes activated when you tried to burn the effigy."
Briar Hill was still half a day's walk away, and Prospero was tired, but did not dare camp in the open so close to where his enemy had struck at him and Roger, so he kept walking. The creepy, eerie feeling is played up as he walks alone, but feels as if he is being watched. It gets stranger - as it gets dark, he sees a campfire and approaches, but no one is there. The fire behaves oddly. He sees a light glowing from the bottom of a nearby stream, and picks up the glowing object from the icy waters, and sees it is a triangular stone painted with his own face, but the stream was flaking away the paint. He brings the stone over by the campfire and attemps to examine it with a spell, but it dissolves into a mushy mess, and he throws the "pulpy thing" into the stream, which then begins to boil, and a smoky shape with arms arises for it. Prospero speaks a word [a Power Word spell as in D&D?] - one such as "sorcerers can only speak a few times in their lives" - and then invokes Michael Scott [sic - Michael Scot?] who lies buried in Melrose Abbey [a real abbey near the border between England and Scotland, where any number of notable dignitaries is buried in the real world - but not Michael Scot, as far as I know!], and commands the smoky thing to "Go, in his name, go!" The thing departs.
Next, Prospero hitches a ride with a wagon of split logs to Briar Hill. The village of Briar Hill is surrounded by a "thick, cruel-looking thorn hedge" that had originally surrounded the outer wall of a castle that had once stood here - many houses in the village were built from the stones of that castle! A sprawling briar tree grows in what was once the courtyard of the castle. There is a night watchman on duty at the gates who admits the wagon upon which Prospero is riding. Once in the village, Prospero looks at the roofless, burned-out shell of of a one-storey cottage, its front wall covered in complicated hex-signs, and above the door a Gothic "M"with many lines drawn through it in red paint - the former home of Melichus. But Prospero is not going to investigate it in the middle of the night! He is directed to the Gorgon's Head Inn, named for the stone head over the inn door that must once have been part of the castle.
Prospero goes to the Gorgon's Head. He checks in under the name Nicholas Archer of Brakespeare (the village near which Prospero lives), under which he put his customary loop-and-squiggle device in case Roger should come looking for him [I have tried to track down the allusion of "Nicholas Archer," but I never found anything except possibly a cricket player). He played some card games (including tarot cards!) with other guests in the common room, had supper, then went to his chamber. The fireplace in his room was carved to look like a toothy mouth. Through the window, he could see the ruins of Melichus' cottage. He propped his staff against the door of his room.
Prospero sat in his room and took out his spellbook and smoking pipe. He used a spell for reading light, since the room was not provided with a reading lamp (as the author notes, there is no reason it should be in a medieval world!). He opens to the section on Necromancy, a section he has never used, but dutifully copied when he was the student of Michael Scott. He reads until he falls asleep, then has some pretty terrible nightmares [but I do note that here is a possible example, not from Jack Vance, of "Vancian" magic, in which spellcasters need to study their spells from spellbooks to "memorize" them for the day].
When he wakes up in the morning, Prospero finds his staff still propped against the door, but the outer surface marred by deep gouges criss-crossing it. If something tried to get in, why didn't it come through the un-shuttered window? He finds a hex-sign on the windowsill in rain-blurred chalk, left by some previous traveler, and realizes that mere chance saved him! He finds that whatever came looking for him frightened the landlord - "Keep your witch's money!" he cries, noting that he spent the night in prayer while some horrible monster was stalking the halls of his inn, and that it's not worth the bother to burn Prospero - "they say you can come back after you're dead. The other one did." As he leaves, Prospero flips 3 gold coins over his shoulder that embed themselves in the limestone of the mantel over the fire (where they remain to this day!) and on his way out crossed the eyes of the stone gorgon for good measure!
Prospero decides that investigating Melichus' former cottage will have to wait until Roger joins him, if ever. Instead, he takes the west gate out of town, pausing to ask some farmers how to avoid the ill-omened forest (where Melichus was supposed to have met his end). He finds the forest is enclosed by a fence of closely-planted wooden poles topped by spear blades and linked by 3 tiers of rusty iron chains. There is an impressive gate with stone pillars and statues.
Prospero enters the forest through the gate. He immediately senses something wrong, about the forest. Bellairs here engages all our senses - he describes things as being out-of-focus, almost like a buzzing sound, feeling drowsy, and so forth. One imagines that the air even smelled and tasted bad! Bellairs subtly weaves a feeling of uneasiness and distortion into everything about this forest where Melichus supposedly burned. He finds the flat stone that serves as a grave marker for Melichus - in characters with strange flourishes, it reads, "Under this stone, we have placed the burnt body of Melichus the sorcerer. He did great wrong. May his soul lie here under this stone with his body and trouble us not." Prospero thinks this is a terrible curse, and as much as it seems Melichus is his enemy, he hopes that it did not come to pass, for his sake.
At this point, Prospero sets up a necromantic ritual of some sort (presumably what he was studying for at the Gorgon's Head Inn) - he makes chalk circles, sets out beeswax candles, and such; Bellairs actually describes some of his preparations with an attention to detail that suggests that he researched some of the medieval grimoires that have come down to us. He traces the name "Melichus" in the dirt carefully with his finger and fills it in with powdered chalk. He attempts to summon forth the shade of Melichus, who is supposed to be dead and buried here, after all - "Come forth, you that are dead!" But the spell seems to fail, and eventually Prospero falls asleep.
Prospero wakes up and sees a shape like a man on all fours crawling through the grass towards his protective warding circle. It speaks with the voice of a boy, not a man, and clearly in some distress - "I was his servant. They killed me. Let me go," he says, "Go north and kill him. Go north." So that mystery is resolved - Melichus did not die of being show with an arrow and burned in a forest fire - it was his servant! Those who had tried to slay Melichus had found the boy's burned body and assumed it had belonged to the sorcerer; they had buried it here with the terrible curse laid upon it, never realizing that Melichus was still out there!
Looking more closely at the extra flourishes on the gravestone inscription, Prospero realizes that they add extra layers to the curse, making it difficult to undo. "I wonder what I have done," he wonders. An eerie darkness descends which even magical light barely penetrates.
The next morning, Prospero returns to Briar Hill, and makes the startled blacksmith give him a hammer and chisel. He goes back into the forest and hacks away at the inscription to undo the awful curse. Then he returns the blacksmith's tools and sets out northbound on a journey still plagued by uncanny happenings.
Prospero comes to a spooky town called Five Dials, apparently named for a pentagonal clock, though it is missing a dial. The town feels very wrong - again, Bellairs is a master at weaving a creepy ambiance. He spends a nightmarish night at an inn with a sign of a card player (with blank cards). The whole town is apparently some kind of terrible illusion that dissolves away as Prospero flees in the middle of the night.
Later, Prospero encounters a mile marker pointing the way to a real "Five Dials," which turns out to be a lonely roadside inn, named for a clock that used to be there with a sundial on top used to calibrate the other four dials. That clock had failed long, long ago, however. It is staying here that he meets up with Roger again at last! Roger had found Prospero's "Nicholas Archer" entry in the guest book at the Gorgon's Head Inn (and asks why he didn't go with "Bishop Lanfranc" for an alias, to which Prospero replies that he didn't have his mitre [the allusion would appear to be to an 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury]).
Prospero and Roger discuss why Melichus would want to kill Prospero. Prospero believes that it all goes back to the "green glass paperweight" (which I refer to here as the GGP for short), which was a magical device constructed by Prospero and Melichus when they were students under Michael Scott. Prospero calls it a paperweight because that's what he would use it for if he still possessed it. The GGP was constructed of four green glass globes, three of which showed a snowy, desolate crossroads and an ancient stone standing nearby, and the fourth could be used as a "conventional seeing glass," used to view places that the wizard using it knew about or had visited. Michael Scott had required Prospero and Melichus to construct a magical device, so this was their project, but they could only take it from the remote house in the north where they had built it if they took it out of the house together. Since the two of them never worked together after that, they never removed it. Prospero assumed that this has something to do with the "unfinished business" between Prospero and Melichus. So it seems that Prospero and Roger are going to have to head north to the house where the GGP still rests in order to investigate.
The next morning, a troop of men-at-arms stops at the Five Dials on their way north. They are heading to the town of Bishop's Bowes to burn that "town full of witches" by order of Duke Harald. Seeing that this is only the beginning of hostilities. if not outright war, between the South Kingdom and North Kingdom fueled by fear of dark magic (this fear itself fueled by Melichus' meddling?), Prospero and Roger set out ahead of them to warn the folk of Bishop's Bowes or to try to find a way to stop a massacre. The town in named for a bridge - the "bowes" - over the river that flows between the South Kingdom and North Kingdom. The bridge is carved with the arms of "Bishop Hatto" [a real 10th century Archibishop of Mainz, who according to Wikipedia, "memory long regarded in Saxony with great abhorrence, and stories of cruelty and treachery gathered round his name"]. Roger went on to warn the people of the town (but found it already abandoned, the people apparently forewarned), while Prospero remained behind to hold the bridge, and when the soldiers tried to cross it, he destroyed it by magic.
Prospero and Roger create a carriage for themselves by magic (with some apparent reference to the creation of a coach in Cinderella), and travel north through lands haunted by strange happenings. At one point they stay with a farming family, who tell of a wizard who visited hundreds of years back and left a key for a wizard whose name would start with "P" - they give this brass key to Prospero, It is carved with characters in Welsh, which Roger reads as "Gwydion of Caer Leon made me. Turn twice" [Gwydion was a hero-magician of Welsh mythology; Caer Leon or Caerleon was a settlement in Wales by the river Usk which apparently grew up originally around a Roman legionary fortress].
As they continue to journey for many days, they hear rumors of a War Council on the Feasting Hill of the North Kingdom, with the seven kings gathering and preparing to march on the South Kingdom, and already holding both sides of the river crossing with cavalry. Unnatural cold weather has set in. They come to a fortified valley and seek a way to cross into it, a nameless monk of the Green Oratory raising exotic plants [inspiration for D&D druids?] helps get them up and over fortifications with a plant whose tendrils lift them up. The monk mentions that the village on the other side has some unique plants and flowers not found elsewhere.
They arrive at the village early in the evening, but none of the houses has any light burning. They see unusual flowers growing here, just as the monk said, but are chilled to realize some of them are the unknown plants illustrated in the strange book [the Voynich Manuscript?] that obsessed Melichus. There is a carved fountain in the market square that is not running - they examine a panel and see it is a depiction of the Witch of Endor [a Biblical necromancer]. They suddenly see a light burning in a window, and go to that house. Prospero looks in a window and sees a figure reading a book - THE book, presumably - with his back to the window. It is implied that the figure is Melichus. Prospero has the impression that the figure literally cannot tear himself away from reading that terrible book, now! He's trapped! "He's caught, but then, maybe we are too."
They travel to the north end of the village where the house stood where Prospero and Melichus created the GGP during their apprenticeship to Michael Scott. Prospero still has the key on his key ring, after all these years. The GGP is still on the shelf, sure enough. They light lots of candles and a fire in the fireplace before examining it. There is indication that Melichus has been here, perhaps many times, but has preserved the room almost exactly as it was. His handprints are visible in the dust of the shelf holding the GGP, implying that Melichus has used and perhaps attempted to remove the GGP. Prospero uses it and is able to see his house in one globe (the other three show the snowy crossroads, as always). His house is also in the grip of the unnatural cold - the "face in the frost" of the title is the face-like pattern that manifests on the frost of a window, presumably under the terrible influence of Melichus' sorcery.
Prospero declares his intention to try to speak to Melichus. When Roger objects that they still don't really know or understand what is going on, Prospero notes that "we can't just sit here fiddling with this ball [the GGP] while he scares the world to death or destroys it," so he spends more than half an hour trying to reach Melichus through the GGP, "Melichus! I call upon you by the secret name you were given by Michael Scott. That is . . ." and when he spoke the name, the room grew darker. Bellairs does not tell us what that name was. Prospero disturbs the meticulously preserved room, causing an apparition to attack him. Prospero says, "Good-by, Roger. I hope we meet again," before grabbing the GGP and crying to the apparition, "If you want this, come and get it," and running out of the house and down the path, where he vanishes.
Prospero has appeared at the snowy crossroads that always appears in the three "other" globes of the GGP. He sees someone coming, and presumes it is Melichus, so he runs in the opposite direction, hampered by snow. He comes upon the home and shop of one "M. Millhorn," and comes inside. Millhorn wears a black skullcap, and is a student of Kabbala [Jewish mysticism]. Millhorn says he can hold off Melichus, and has Prospero hand him the GGP and sends him downstairs to "find the door you want" - a tunnel filled with many doors, apparently each leading to other places in the world or worlds. He sees one that looks like the door to his own root cellar at home, so he takes that, and finds himself in the forest behind his own house.
Just as in his vision from the GGP, Prospero finds his house is frosted over in unnatural winter. He is still under magical attack of some kind, however, and he suddenly realizes that the brass key he was given might open the locked cupboard under the stairs that he has never been able to open [WHICH WAS ONLY BARELY MENTIONED IN PASSING AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE BOOK!]. He opens it and finds a small carving of a squirrel with a note clutched in its buck teeth - "USE THE SPELL, FOOL!" The spell? Oh yes - that spell he never found the use of [THE SPELL HE WAS PRACTICING AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE BOOK, BUT SEEMED IRRELEVANT TO THE PLOT UNTIL NOW!]. He races to the book and finds the spell. Just as the door opens, and something steps into the room at which Prospero refuses to look, he uses the spell, ending the attack.
The scene switches to Christmas Eve. We learn that Roger arrived back in November, in that carriage they had summoned into being. We see the mayor of Brakespeare playing with a crossbow in the back yard. The local innkeeper is mixing drinks in a beer barrel in the living room. King Gorm sits in a corner of the living room, reading the Krankenhammer. Villagers are drinking. The plant-raising monk from the Green Oratory is trying to break up a fight between his Sensitive Anaconda plant and Prospero's Creeping Charlie plant. And we find Prospero and Roger in the backyard with the mayor, throwing snowballs at a satyr statue.
Later on, after the festivities, Mr. Millhorn arrived through the magic mirror (which protests rather loudly!). He had fought Melichus with magic for nearly an hour, and confesses that he might not have won if Melichus had been knowledgeable about the Kabbala. Millhorn had known that this was coming for years, by "specular stones" and certain dark hints in his readings. Melichus was apparently destroyed, or banished for good. After the battle, he found the book, open to the last page, and found he couldn't read a word of it, but at the end was the device of the dolphin cross. The book seemed to read itself - the letters glowed, one after another, then the book "crumpled into a black ball of ashes and sank into the snow." Millhorn mentions that at the crossroads near his home, one always had the peculiar sensation of being watched.
They begin to speculate about Melichus' ultimate fate, but are interrupted by the sound of the magic mirror snoring - it had fallen asleep! - and so the novel ends!
This is not a book with which I have a long history - I read it first as an adult, because of its inclusion in Appendix N - but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It feels odd, though, with strange circles and currents and dead ends in the plot, meandering like a maze yet having a strange underlying unity of composition. And Bellairs is certainly a master of creating atmosphere, as well as being one of the most highly allusive modern authors I've had the pleasure to read. I felt rather thunderstruck that the ending hinges upon what appear to be throwaway mentions at the very beginning. The book feels complete and yet somehow unfinished and unsettling at the same time. It is a very curious story!
The Face in the Frost did not directly inspire my early gaming nor my fiction writing, but I can see how it inspired Gygax in certain aspects of the creation of D&D, and I would like to think that I have learned a thing or two from Bellairs in terms of style. I would highly recommend it to fantasy fans, with the caveat that this is almost an anti-epic, Bellairs almost an anti-Tolkien, so be aware that its style will not appeal to everyone, but I think it is enjoyable if taken as its own thing, of one's definition of fantasy literature is not overly skewed by what has turned out to be the dominant, Tolkien-inspired mainstream. Also - how can I not love Bellairs? He's clearly educated, erudite, comfortable with Latin, and deeply enough read in medieval history to be able to make allusions to particular medieval bishops. Great stuff!
Incidentally, although The Face in the Frost is the only Bellairs work cited in Appendix N, I have to believe that Gygax would have added any sequel or prequel had he been able (a lost prequel was written but never published; an unfinished sequel, The Dolphin Cross, was published in 2009 as noted above - neither were available in the late 70s when Gygax made his list). I intend to read more Bellairs as a result of my research, and especially to seek out a copy of The Dolphin Cross. For those with an interest in Bellairs and his work, there is an excellent website dedicated to him and his literary legacy called Bellairsia! Check it out!
Until next time - Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona,
Ides of February, 2017
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona,
Ides of February, 2017
Up next for Appendix N Revisited: Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett
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