The Weekly Machen
This week, we present one of Arthur Machen’s lesser-known war stories from the pages of the Evening News. It was never collected or republished during his lifetime and has received virtually no attention over the decades. Yet the tale has merits, including a shocking premise. As with his other war narratives, Machen is not concerned with faithfully recreating events, but focuses on the cosmological implications of the conflict. “The Calvary at Azay” was published two years, almost to the day, after “The Bowmen” and two weeks before the first installment of “The Great Terror.”
The Calvary at Azay
by
Arthur Machen
September 28, 1916
A few weeks ago, a French officer, Colonel Vincendeau was sent over to England on a special mission of some importance, connected, it is believed, with certain approaching developments in French artillery, which it was desirable to lay before the English authorities. Colonel Vincendeau had received part of his education at an English public school, and had friends of some influence in London.
When he had fulfilled his mission he asked me to show him the byways and coulisses of London.
I told him he would be terribly bored, that one grey street was very like every other grey street. Still if Vincendeau liked I would do my best to guide him.
I conducted him through the dark labyrinth of Soho: showed him alleys and narrow passages, Georgian houses once magnificent, now dreary, streets chocked with costers’ barrows, dismal little restaurants, small wine-merchants’ shops where the choicest vintages of France were for sale at prices which made the Frenchman laugh.
We came out of the maze somewhere near the Palace Theatre, and turned up Charing Cross-Road. As we walked on the eastern side Vincendeau caught sight of the crucifix which hangs high above the pavement on the wall of St Mary’s Church. He started, and paused, looking up intently at the Figure, and crossed himself.
‘Though, of course, it is much smaller,’ he said ‘it is exactly like the Calvary of Azay, where I was born.’
We went on our way and we saw something of the grey immensities of London, and in the evening Colonel Vincendeau told me the story of the Calvary of Azay.
Colonel Vincendeau’s Story
‘You know,’ he began ‘after I had done my service I became a priest. I received the sacred order four years ago on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. A Christian priest is not superstitious: he leaves all those antique fooleries very gladly to the Freethinkers. Still I think you will find something of a coincidence between the title of the festival on which I received the order of the priesthood and what I am about to tell you.
‘My relations had some interest with the Monseigneur, and I became vicaire—or curate as you say here so oddly—to M. l’Abbé Ménard, the curé of Azay. I was thus enabled to continue amongst my own people: I ministered to a flock which I had known since my boyhood. In that part of France the people have remained pious: the mayor and the municipal council were good Christians and interposed no obstacles in the path of the Church and its pastors.
‘It was a beautiful and peaceful land: gentle valleys and gentle hills and woods where one gathered violets, and a stream where the people fished all day long. One ate a most excellent friturs at Azay: life went there very easily and very pleasantly. M. l’Abbé Ménard was growing old, and I hoped to succeed him at the end of his days, and so pass the rest of my life ministering to those excellent parishioners. Then came the war. It was off with the cassock and on with uniform. I was lieutenant when we fought round Nancy in those early days, and they made me Captain in February 1915. We were moved here, we were moved there. We held hard: we had resolved that there must not be another 1870.
In The Old Parish
‘Well, early this summer my regiment was moved up north, and I found myself quartered in my old parish of Azay. M. l’Abbé Ménard was dead: they said it was grief that killed him,¯grief at the sight of his church in ruins and the village like a rubbish heap, and his poor sheep slaughtered. For the Boches had come over Azay like a flood in the first days of the war. It is impossible to describe the infamies they had perpetrated; it is a horror to think of it, of the little children that they offered up in sacrifice to their gods, like the heathen of old.
‘And it was terrible to me to see this land of my childhood laid waste in a manner that cannot be described. I have said that the church where I had so often offered the Holy Sacrifice was now in ruins; the very altars had been blown to pieces, and the statues of the saints were lying in fragments on the broken pavement. And the land itself, once so peaceable, so charming, so smiling, it had become a great sepulchre, a place of yawning graves, of hollows of corruption, of pits where the dead lay unburied.
‘My regiment was stationed a little in advance of what was left of Azay, towards the German lines. Our foremost trenches were on the eastern bank of the river by the bridge, and from this point the road goes gently winding up the slope of the hill, where it branches off to Melincourt to the left and to Sombrois on the right. Our guns commanded the summit of the hill and the level beyond, and further on were the German trenches. And I must tell you that at the top the hill, where the road divided, was the Calvary of Azay, high on a mound of earth. The figure was looking eastward; it was as I said, exactly like the crucifix outside the church in Charing Cross-road, only it was lifesized. It was there that we had the principal repanoir on the Féte Dieu. I venerated this symbol of our most holy faith; I had venerated it from my childhood.
‘But when we came marching into the ruins of Azay I had no hope of seeing the Calvary in its old place. From the ruin and desolation on every side I was quite assured the cross must have been long broken into fragments by the fire of the two armies. I was astonished when we took up our position by the river to see it still standing there, high over the land of that most horrible desolation. It was as if one had gone down into the abyss of hell and seen that there was also God. The Calvary of Azay was like the crosses of Albert and Arras of which I had been told: it stood untouched and unburnt in the midst of the furnace.
The Colonel’s Plan
‘One day my colonel sent for me and told me that he had a piece of work for me to do. He said:
‘“You have doubtless remarked that the Calvary of Azay is still standing on the summit of the hill, by Burnt Wood?”
‘I told him I had seen this not without astonishment. He went on:
‘“A plan has been conceived. The cross, as you know, looks towards the enemy lines. It is plain anyone occupying that position would be able to survey the German trenches and to gain the most valuable information as to the effect of our artillery. But there is this objection: anyone occupying that position would be shot to pieces immediately: his discoveries would die with him. This is the plan, then. We have prepared a figure similar in all respects to that of the Calvary. But it is hollow: it opens at the back with hinges: there is room inside it for a man: placed inside this figure it would be possible for a man to make these observations which would be of such value to the cause of France.”
‘He paused and looked at me steadfastedly. Then he said:
‘“Captain”—that was my rank then—“the affair is in your hands: the time is tomorrow, or perhaps I should say tonight. You are a skilled observer: you have very special knowledge in the matter of artillery: and if the Calvary should enjoy its good fortune for another day I should have no doubt you will be able to provide us with knowledge of the utmost consequence some time after next sunset.”’
‘And the colonel proceeded to give me minute instructions as to the precise hour of the night at which I was to set out, with a file of half a dozen men to carry the sham figure that was to be substituted for the real one.
‘I was horribly perturbed. I was not afraid of being killed, for in most cases a solider soon learns to be a soldier. He thinks more of his soup than of his death. But it seemed to me that I was ordered to commit sacrilege. And I was a priest: I was to lay profane hands on the image of Christ. The sweat poured down my face, and I told the Colonel what was in my heart.
‘“Yes” said he “but it is for France. Should a soldier know anything but the cause of France?”
Obeying Orders
‘“Colonel,” said I, “your orders shall be executed.” I saluted and went out.
‘My heart was filled with horror at the thought of what I was about to do. I could not sleep. I chose half a dozen men: they were all of Azay: and two hours before dawn we found ourselves at the top of the road, close to the Calvary. The men bore the figure with them. I had examined it before we set out, and in truth it was an exact and perfect copy.
‘I gave the order to detach the Christ from the cross. The men knew I uttered the command with loathing, and I heard one whisper to another that such an impiety would bring evil fortune upon us; still they obeyed orders, as I was obeying orders. The figure was taken down and laid in sacking a little way down the slope of the hill, where it would be invisible to the Germans. It was now my business to place myself in the counterfeit Christ, and the men were to hoist the image with me inside it, and fasten it to the cross. We had for this purpose certain fine and very strong cords with us; they had been painted so as not to show anything against the flesh-colour of the wrists or the brown of the cross. This done, the men were to steal back to their own lines, leaving me within the hollow Christ.
‘Everything was ready. But I did not stir. I was in agony. How could I, a priest of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, commit such an abomination? How should I dare minister again at the altar? It was for France: yes; but one could not serve France by blaspheming God. Yet if I disobeyed the order that had been given to me—it was not that I would be shot: that was nothing—my memory would be execrated as that of a traitor to the sacred cause of France. I trembled from head to foot; I prayed for death as the only deliverance.
‘Then the night began to grow pale: the dawn was approaching. I heard a faint sound, a kind of stirring or rustling that seemed to come from the German trenches eastward. I still crouched beneath the empty cross with my men: the counterfeit figure was there ready for me. I did nothing. I perceived that the men looked at one another, wondering, no doubt, what was going to happen. Still I hesitated in my anguish. Which was I to serve, God or France?
The Attack in the Dawn
‘The dawn came up, such a dawn as I had never seen. There were shining mists and patches of thick darkness, and the mist moved and drifted, and every object as it became visible seemed to bear an incredible shape. It was as if one were in a world of phantoms and monsters. It was not like the earth that God has made.
‘Then I heard again that sound of men stirring in the enemy lines; I crawled up to the summit of the hill and saw the Germans swarming out of the trenches, far away there in the east. And then I knew that I had sinned against God and against France also. I had desecrated the Calvary by ordering the Christ to be taken down: and it was now too late to carry out the rest of the order I had received. The Germans would take our forces by surprise: I had betrayed to the foe the blood of my comrades and the honour of France. I could see men by hundreds, by thousands, creeping out of the trenches before me, and to right and to left they were already advanced to some distance. They were going to enclose Azay, to surround it. Our position there would be enfiladed and untenable, and I was convinced my disobedience had brought about an irreparable disaster.
‘Then something—I know not what—possessed me. A moment before I had felt that I could move neither hand nor foot, I had tried to rise, but I could not stir. I tried to speak, but my throat was parched by the agony I had undergone, and no sound came from my lips. And then it was as if a flame passed through me, and I leapt to my feet.
‘I put my arms about the figure that was lying on the ground beside me, and I raised it up on high, I called out in a ringing voice to my men: ‘Follow me, my children!’ and then I set forth toward the enemy, who were swarming from every side. I have spoken of the strangeness of the mist, and so now I saw the German soldiers, here as if they were floating on clouds towards me, there as they waded through a white sea, only a part of their bodies being visible, and then again the fog would drift, and whole companies would be blotted out: one would have said a curtain had been lowered before them. I marched against this army of phantoms, holding the Christ exalted before me. And in a great voice that seemed to me to fill the whole world I began to intone the hymn:
Vexilla Regis prodeunt:
Fulget Crucis mysterium,
Qua vita mortem pertulil,
Et morte vitam protulit.
The royal banners forward go,
the cross shines forth in mystic glow;
where he in flesh, our flesh who made,
our sentence bore, our ransom paid.
‘My men joined with me, and so I say we went in procession against the enemy among the lists of the dawn.
Conclusion
‘I saw nothing. I heard nothing but the sonorous plainsong of the hymn. But the men told me afterwards that cries of terror came from the enemy. No doubt this procession of ours had an extraordinary and terrible appearance. It is likely enough my body was invisible in the sea of mist: that only the figure I held appeared to the Germans, coming towards them as it were in the clouds. Doubtless the figure would seem to appear and then disappear; it would be visible to one man and be concealed from another. One of my soldiers who understood a little German said he heard a Prussian bawl out that the Lord Christus was coming terribly against them. As I say, I heard nothing of all this, I still sang,
Arbor decora et fulgida.
Oh Tree of glory, Tree most fair,
Ordain’d those holy limbs to bear,
How bright in purple robe it stood,
The purple of a Saviour’s blood!
‘When I came to myself we had advanced far over the plateau. The Germans were no longer advancing; they were running away in all directions. It seemed that the panic had spread; one company had infected another, terror began to run through a regiment, this regiment taking to flight broke up that regiment which was advancing in support; and so at last the whole centre was in disorder and retreat, though perhaps not one man in ten knew why he was retreating. And then the wings, seeing the centre fell back for some unknown cause, retreated also. In brief: there was no attack, no surprise.
‘I told my colonel everything. And then I gave him my sword. I looked for no mercy. But the tears coursed down his cheeks as he gave back my sword.
‘“After all, captain,” he said, “one must confess that God rules the world.”’
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