Deliver us from Evil (18 page)

What horrors passed, what threatening visions seen?'

The Earl of Rochester,
Valentinian

‘T
he young lady held on to the side of the carriage window. The curls of her hair were swept back by the breeze, and she had to smooth them with a touch of her slim white hand. As she did so, a shadow passed across her face. 'Why,' she murmured, 'there is almost a menace in the air.'

Her companion stirred, as though woken from a profound lassitude. He frowned. 'Menace?' he asked at length.

'See.' The lady pointed. 'We are drawing near to the standing stones.'

Her companion moved along his seat, and twisted round to stare out of the window. His nostrils dilated faintly. At once, his expression froze.

'You can smell it?' the lady asked. The man met her eye.

'
I
was not certain at first,' she continued. 'Yet
I
am right, am
I
not, that it is more than merely the aura of the place?' She shivered delicately, and reached across for her companion's hand.

The man studied her for a moment; then he leaned from the window to shout orders to the coachman. 'You may be right,' he admitted, settling back into his place. 'There does seem something almost dangerous in the air.' He closed his eyes and smiled faintly. 'Christ, but
I
had forgotten what fear might be. Is not its touch golden-fingered?
I
find that it almost ravishes me.' He shivered, just as the lady had done. 'Rare pleas
ure,' he whispered, 'to feel my
stomach so lightened.' He squeezed his companion's hand; then he turned again, and gazed through the window at the stones as they drew near.

Robert woke. Immediately, he wished he had not. The sun was unbearably bright; it made his pupils feel scalded and raw. He screwed his eyes shut, then turned and cooled his face in the dew. A hand touched his shoulder.

He screamed; he flailed out blindly, hitting air. 'No!' he cried. 'No, no!' Then he felt the hand again, now gentle and cool against his brow.

He looked up to see a lady standing between him and the light of the sun. He rubbed his eyes; he could see her clearly now. His first thought was, how like a goddess she appeared, for she seemed lovelier than that Venus he had read praised in ancient poems, risen like the surf of murmuring waves, or the dancing sunbeams of early morning, a glimpse of something infinitely beautiful, and dangerous. Her body was slim, her face sweet-turned, oval and very soft; her cheeks the colour of a damask rose; her hair raven black. Her dress was rich: edged with lace, and red like her lips. Young she seemed, and most desirable; save that her skin and her eyes, which were exceedingly golden and bright, had a gleam too cold for a girl of eighteen, which in every other way she appeared to be. Robert had seen such a stare before; he remembered the depths behind Faustus' eyes, and how they had submerged him. He gazed up in dumb horror; then, with an effort of will, he turned his face away.

'He is alive,' he heard the lady call out. Her voice was as he would have expected it to be, thrilling and soft. With a rustle of skirts, she bent down beside him. Gently, she caressed his cheeks, so that he could not help but gaze up once again into the beauty of her face. She studied him closely; a look of puzzlement creased her brow, and she reached out to touch a wound on his head, then tasted the blood. 'Mortal,' she murmured. She shook her head. 'And yet.
..'
She began to comb her fingers through his hair. 'What has happened to you?'

Robert wondered. Misery rose on his memory. He had no mother, he had no father. He was alone. He clawed at himself as he began to shudder. He felt so cold. He remembered, from the second before his mind had gone black, the jet of liquid ice. Even now, it seemed to linger in his stomach . . . Robert closed his legs at once, crossing them tightly. He stared wildly about him. He was amongst the stones; he had to escape. The Devil had been there the night before, the Pitiless One, the Lord of Flies. The Devil had been there - and God knew, might be yet.

Robert tried to climb to his feet. At First, he thought he had succeeded. His limbs, though, no longer seemed to be his own. He imagined he was moving, but the world about him was moving as well, rippling like a field of corn in the wind, and as he watched it Robert's head began to spin. He gasped for air. He felt his body arch; and then he was vomiting ice. So freezing was it that his mouth and lips grew numb. Again and again, until he was retching air, he struggled to bring up the coldness from his guts. He was sweating now, he realised, and his blood seemed on fire, but deep inside, so deep that it seemed less in his stomach than in his soul, the ice remained and would not be purged.

'Some terrible thing has happened here.'

The words were coming from a great distance. Robert imagined he was lying in a well, and that the words were falling from the young lady's lips like stones. He was in her arms, he discovered; he had not moved at all. She untucked a handkerchief of lace from her sleeve, then began to mop at his brow.

'The dead have been here.'

Another voice, Robert dimly realised: this time a man's. 'Then where are they now?'

'Burnt into ashes. Can you not smell their dust? It clings to the stones.'

The lady breathed in deeply. She shook her head. 'But who could have done such a thing? One of our kind?'

'It may be.' A pause. The man cleared his throat. 'But there is something else as well. Hanging in the air.
I
would almost say
..
.'

'What?'

No answer; only footsteps across the grass. Robert felt a shadow. Struggling to focus his gaze, he stared up, and saw a second face. The man who had just been talking: auburn-haired, with a short, well-trimmed beard; skin chalky and gleaming; eyes once again uncomfortably bright. Above one of the eyes ran a faint, pink scar.

The man puckered his nostrils; and Robert realised that he was being smelt. Just as the woman had done, the man began to frown. 'You said he was mortal.'

'And so he is. Taste his blood.'

'Then why can
I
not smell it?'

The lady shrugged very faintly. 'Perh
aps,' she suggested, 'it is for
the same reason that
I
cannot sense his thoughts. Try - but to me, it is as though they are walled around by brass.'

The man stared into Robert's eyes; for an eternity, it seemed, he did not look away; then at last he shook his head. 'But how is this possible?' he asked. '
I
cannot smell his blood.
I
cannot read his mind.
I
have never known such a thing - not since
I
was changed.' He bent down. He pinched Robert's cheeks between his finger and thumb. For a moment, a cold smile flitted along his lips. 'He is very pretty,' he murmured, 'this mystery boy of ours.'

‘I
ndeed,' the lady replied at once. '
I
would not otherwise have claimed him for myself.'

The man met her gaze; then shrugged as she reached across to recapture her prize. As she did so, she gasped suddenly; she raised a hand to her mouth, and looked away, then hugged Robert tightly in her arms. 'See,' she whispered, 'what has been done to him!'

Pillowed upon her breast, Robert knew from its rapid rise and fall that his comforter was struggling to hold back her tears. Dimly, he wondered why. He had thought he read in her eyes what she was: a demon like Faustus - a drinker of blood. Desperately, he tried to think. But fever clouds were rolling across his mind, like banks of warm fog, and he could not understand. Someone was touching his thighs: inspecting his wounds. Robert closed his legs tight. He clung to his protectress; nuzzled his cheek against the lace across her breast.

'Who did this to you?'

The words came so faintly that Robert could barely hear them at all. He lifted his head, to try to hear; but his skull seemed made of lead, and he could not support its weight. Again, he nuzzled up against the lace. His mother had worn such a piece: a wedding gift from the young Trooper Foxe. Robert smiled. She had always loved it despite herself, for she would never otherwise have worn such a thing, not having the confidence. Dimly, Robert asked himself why; for she had been very lovely. Yes, he thought - a lovely woman - as lovely as she was kind, and strong in her faith
...
his mother. He smiled.

'Who did this to you?'

The voice again. Surely it was his father, come to rescue him? Of course. Who else, at such a time, would be there to comfort him and tend to his wounds? 'Very deep, Father,' Robert muttered. 'Very deep inside.'

'Who, though? Unless you tell me, how can
I
know?' 'It was the Devil, Father.'

An intake of breath. A silence so long that Robert feared his father was gone. Then a hand upon his shoulder. 'And how was the Devil raised?'

'Faustus did it.'

'Faustus?'

'It was Faustus who summoned the Evil One.' A pause; then sudden laughter, bitter and short. 'And where is this - Faustus - now?' 'Faustus is dead.' 'No. He cannot be.' '
I
saw it, Father.'

'But he is a drinker of blood, and a great one at that. You do not understand. A creature such as Faustus can never be slain.
Never!'

'Yet is he dust.
I
saw it, Father.' Robert raised his head. He imagined that he too was nothing but ashes in the wind, spinning, spinning, round and round, borne upon the maelstrom that had swept above the stones and now seemed in his head. '
I
saw it,
I
saw it,
I
saw it. . .' All was growing dark. He laid his cheek again upon the softness of the lace. How gently it lulled him. He turned, to wipe away his tears; then buried his face upon his mother's breast.

For a moment, he remembered it could not be her at all. But then he felt himself being lifted, and the darkness deepened into black. When he woke again, his memories seemed like distant floes of ice, looming through the mists above an Arctic sea; and as though he were some cautious mariner, Robert dreaded them, for he knew that they were cruel. He shivered violently. He tossed and turned, trying not to think, to escape back into sleep; but then there was a jolt, and he opened his eyes. He looked about him and found he was lying in a carriage. Opposite him, cast in shadow, sat a man. His features could not be made out, but his eyes burned like twin sparks of flame. Robert frowned. He had been hoping for his father. 'Who are you?' he asked.

The man leaned forward. Above one of the eyes was a jagged scar which Robert vaguely remembered having seen before. 'You may call me . . .' - the man paused - 'Lightborn.'

Robert sighed. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again his father was returned. '
I
had feared you were lost,' Robert murmured.

His father smiled. His teeth were set in the grin of a skull; his face was deathly white. 'And so
I
am lost,' he whispered. 'Forever lost, my son.'

Robert screamed. He would have struggled free, but he was nestled, he realised - as he had been before - upon a gentle curve and swell of lace. He could feel the embrace of bare arms about him, hear a lullaby softly whispered in his ear. 'Mother?' he asked. He almost looked up; but suddenly, from nowhere, there rose a crackling and he felt hot, so hot, as though he were wearing a poisoned shirt of fire . . . and he remembered: his mother was burned. Silently he wept. His tears seemed to hiss and burn upon his cheeks. A hand brushed them away. Robert longed to kiss it, to hold it in his own; but he did not turn. For if it were his mother's, then its flesh would be charred upon the bone, that hand which had always been so beautiful and pale. He moaned; then, louder than before, he called his mother's name.

Dimly, through his fever, he heard Lightborn start to laugh. 'You hear what he calls you? Are you not tempted? It is time perhaps you had a son, Milady.'

'Milady.' Like a drop of water into a waste of flames, the word fell from Lightborn's lips. But who was Milady? Robert struggled to think. The sound of the name was spreading in ripples through his mind. He tried to swim with them, out, out, until they had filled all his thoughts, but then he gave up following, for the ripples were stilled and the sound was lost. On the carriage rumbled, but Robert slept; and for a while, in his oblivion, he lay in peace.

'All those that come to London are either carrion or crows.'

John Aubrey,
Brief Lives

H

is rest did not continue calm for long. The delirium soon returned and, from the margins between sleep and wakefulness, nightmares were bred. Robert imagined he was gazing from the coach. Outside stretched a city of impossible size, a mighty wasteland of dust and noise from which all that was green seemed utterly banished, so that not a tree could be glimpsed, not the barest patch of grass. The narrow streets were shadowed by night; but still, even in the darkest recesses, Robert could see the wild forms of men, some holding torches, all cavorting like the flames of the flambeaux. 'Where are we?' he whispered. 'Are we in Hell?'