devilstone chronicles 01 - devils band (18 page)

“You’ll remember My Lords, that Abrasax is a demon of the First Principle and destined to rule all three hundred and sixty five heavens, just as you are destined to rule your kingdoms, but though he’s a powerful demon in Hell, here on Earth he can only survive by entering the body of a chicken. Abrasax will therefore speak to us through this humble creature.” said Thomas solemnly. Albany glanced at the cockerel. Anything less demonic could hardly be imagined but he was so terrified by the site of the shadowy robed figure standing before him he dared not speak.

“Are you ready to embark on the dangerous road that leads to the gates of The Abyss?” Thomas asked. When both Albany and de la Pole nodded dumbly Thomas went back to the brazier and filled an iron pail with glowing embers and ash. He carried the pail to the cage and stood over it whilst the bemused capon clucked and fluttered its wings. When the bird fell silent he began to chant:

Ho! Sax, Amun, Sax, Abrasax
,

For thou art the moon, the chief of the stars
,

he that did form them
,

Listen to the things that I have said, follow the

words of my mouth, reveal thyself to me
,

Than, Thana, Thanatha, otherwise Thei
,

for this is thy correct name
.

When he’d finished the incantation Thomas took a shovel full of hot ash from the pail and sprinkled it the over the cage as a priest sprinkles holy water in a blessing. The room was filled with the acrid stench of burnt feathers and the pleasant aroma of roast chicken. The poor cockerel began to shriek and claw at its cage as the hot ashes singed its flesh but the necromancer was merciless.

“Silence Demon Abrasax! Such pain from earthly fire is nothing compared to the pain of the fires of hell from which I now release you. Be grateful for this brief respite from your torment and in payment for your moment of blessed relief I command you to answer my questions!” Thomas cried as he opened the cage and took hold of the cockerel by its spurs.

The bird squawked and flapped in annoyance as Thomas held it upside down in his right hand whilst extending the fore and index fingers of his left hand in a V shape in front of the creature’s beak. He began to moan softly then slowly moved his outstretched fingers towards the cockerel’s eyes The bird fixed its gaze on the approaching hand … it became calm … then completely still. Gently Thomas laid the bird on the floor in front of the cage where it remained utterly motionless.

“Understand this Demon Abrasax, I have the power of the Holy Spirit to release you from your torment but I will only do so if you answer my questions truthfully,” Thomas whispered. The recumbent cockerel clucked once but otherwise it remained completely still.

“I now control Abrasax but he’ll only answer yes or no to three questions. He’ll cry out if forced to reveal the truth he guards so jealously but remain silent in the presence of any lie. So, My Lord Albany, ask what you will,” Thomas announced to his astonished audience.

“Is it … is it possible for a boat to sail under the water?” stammered Albany.

“Answer Demon Abrasax!” commanded Thomas and he stroked the bird in one smooth movement from its head to its tail. The cockerel squawked loudly then fell silent.

“Abrasax answers yes,” said Thomas.

“Can the magician Thomas Devilstone construct such a vessel?” croaked the duke. His mouth was so dry with terror he could barely speak.

“Answer Demon Abrasax!” said Thomas and he stroked the bird again. The cockerel duly squawked, and fell silent a second time.

“Again Abrasax answers yes,” said Thomas.

“Will the bitch-whore Margaret Tudor still rule in Scotland at the year’s end?” said Albany, gripping the chair’s arms with whitened knuckles.

“Answer Demon Abrasax!” commanded Thomas and he stroked the bird a third time but now the cockerel was silent.

“Abrasax answers no. Now my Lord de la Pole you too are permitted three questions but no more,” said Thomas.

“Will the Tudor usurpers prosper?” said de la Pole eagerly. The bird was silent.

“Will I regain my crown?” he asked. The bird squawked.

“Do you speak the truth?” he said. Again the bird squawked. De la Pole begged to be allowed a fourth question but Thomas refused and shut the door of the bird’s cage.

“You’ve answered well Demon Abrasax, I shall now release you until I summon you again. Return from whence you came and rejoice that one day the love of the Lord Jesus will free you from your torment forever,” said Thomas soothingly and he snapped his fingers. The cockerel revived from its trance and apart from a few charred feathers seemed to be none the worse for its ordeal.

“Are you satisfied Albany? Even the powers of hell are certain I will regain my throne!” cried de la Pole triumphantly.

Albany did not know what to think. Had the chicken really been possessed by a demon from hell? Or was the necromancer standing before him merely a crude mountebank who had duped the credulous White Rose by telling him exactly what he wanted to hear? All that was certain was that Richard de la Pole was a madman and only a fool argued with a madman.

“I should report you to the Holy Inquisition for your foul heresy but even King Saul consulted the Witch of Endor. Very well, let Master Thomas construct his underwater ship. When it returns from the deep safely, I shall be convinced of the truth of what I’ve seen in this chamber. For now, it’s late and I wish to retire to my bed. Please release me from this diabolical place or do you mean to hold me here by spells and enchantments?” said Albany.

“You’re free to leave, Abrasax has returned to The Pit and all danger has passed,” said Thomas. With great sigh of relief Albany rose from his chair and left the room with as much dignity as he could muster. Thomas and de la Pole listened to the sound of the Duke scurrying down the tower’s stairs as fast as his noble legs would carry him and laughed. The White Rose felt utterly elated, as if he’d finally conquered a chaste maiden. Not only had he confounded the Duke of Albany, he was certain the illustrious name of Richard de la Pole was now known and feared in all nine circles of Hell.

“You’ve done well my friend and when I am king I shall make you Archbishop of Canterbury!” he said, clapping Thomas on the back.

“You do me great honour, My Lord, but to serve my lawful king is reward enough,” Thomas replied with a polite bow but beneath his hood he smiled to himself. Sending chickens into a trance using only his fingers was a trick known to every peasant poultry farmer whilst the needle concealed in his satin glove’s fingertip had been sufficient to make the creature squawk on demand. Incredibly these simple devices had deceived not one but two princes of the Royal Blood.

After the success of the ritual to summon Abrasax, the White Rose immediately appointed Thomas his official court astrologer and alchemist at a generous salary of twelve guilders a month. He was given new clothes, lavish apartments and all the paraphernalia a student of the Secret Arts required. In just a few short days, Thomas had recovered all he’d lost and all he had to do in return was build Leonardo da Vinci’s underwater craft as soon as possible. The only cloud on his horizon was the fact that he still couldn’t decipher the complex code that held the secrets of the boat’s construction.

During
The Steffen’s
journey up the Moselle Thomas had continued to try to make sense of the strange symbols that the great artist had scrawled across the margins of
The Munich Handbook
but Leonardo’s mysterious language had remained as impenetrable as Egyptian hieroglyphics. At least de la Pole had given his new alchemist a week to prepare the drawings the shipwrights who’d build
the vessel would need so, alone in his chamber, Thomas carefully laid out the unbound pages of
The Munich Handbook
on a table and prayed to the ghost of the great cryptologist Johannes Trithemius to help him crack the da Vinci code.

The leaves of vellum had acquired a few more stains during their journey to Metz but the sepia symbols and drawings were still clearly visible. The sketches of the undersea boat showed the craft as if it had been taken apart, as well as complete, but the pictures gave no clue as to how the different parts fitted together. The diagrams either omitted crucial details or showed things that were so evidently wrong Thomas assumed the errors were deliberate and just another way Leonardo protected his secrets. The more he stared at the pages, the more he appreciated the enormity of his task but he refused to be discouraged.

He decided to begin with first principles so he drew simple charts to show the frequency of each symbol in the hope he could discover the signs that represented common letters such as ‘e’ and ‘s’. During his travels, Thomas had learned French, Latin, Italian and several other languages but after two days he had to admit defeat. If the original language was Italian, the code seemed to use a dialect that was completely unknown to him. Next he tried to apply Trithemius’
Tabula Recta
and when this failed he moved to
Polybius’ Square
but nothing seemed to work. The days slipped by and by the end of the week he was no nearer to unravelling the code than when he’d started.

For the first time since he’d left London, Thomas began to feel desperate. If he couldn’t read the code, he
couldn’t build the boat and kings, even in exile, usually punished those who failed them with extreme cruelty. By the morning of the last day he could think of nothing except that the cipher’s key might be written in invisible ink and that this ink would be revealed by the bright morning sunlight. Hardly daring to hope, he held one of the vellum pages up to his chamber’s window and, like St Paul on the road to Damascus, the scales fell from his eyes. There was no secret ink, there was no cipher, there was only the reflection of the page in the window’s glass and it was that which showed that the da Vince code was nothing more than mirror writing.

For a moment Thomas could scarcely breathe he was so excited but he quickly recovered his wits and sent a serving wench to fetch a proper mirror. Ten agonising minutes later, the maid returned with a looking glass. Thomas snatched if from her hand, tossed the bewildered girl a penny and dismissed her from the room. As soon as he was alone he held the polished surface over a page of the book and the code melted away like a debtor’s friends. Thomas could now look into the mind of Leonardo da Vinci and the first thing he read confirmed that the code and the misleading drawings were designed to protect the secret of the master’s inventions. In a note scrawled beneath the undersea boat, da Vinci informed his students that
he did not wish to make war more terrifying or allow men to make their assassinations on the bottom of the ocean
.

Thomas ignored the warning and gradually unravelled the secrets of constructing the marvellous boat. Just as he’d told Albany, Leonardo had designed a watertight
shell with two long, thin bladders that could be filled with air. Inflating or deflating these air bags would allow the vessel to float just below the surface. The turtle shaped craft had a squat tower, which remained above the water so the helmsman could see where he was going, and was propelled by two paddles shaped like a frog’s webbed feet. There was also a rudder at the stern and a pair of square boards projecting from each side of the bow like a seal’s flippers. According to the decoded notes, altering these flippers’ angle of pitch would drive the vessel deeper under the waves or back to the surface.

The paddles, rudder and flippers were operated by a system of cranks and levers that filled most of the boat’s interior, however another drawing showed a different method of propulsion using oars protruding from the hull through waterproof gaskets. Thomas reckoned these would be much easier to make than the paddles, and create more room inside the vessel to carry fully armed soldiers, so he decided his vessel would use oars.

Besides construction and propulsion the greatest problem of underwater travel was how to let men breathe beneath the waves so Leonardo’s boat showed a system of flexible snorkels attached to floats on the surface of the water. The ends of these airlines were disguised as a driftwood but the more Thomas considered this solution, the less convinced he became of its practicality. Leonardo had designed his craft to attack Turkish ships threatening Venice and whilst such a device might work well in the still waters of the Venetian lagoon, in a fast flowing river like the Thames a large log floating
upstream
would be spotted immediately.

For this reason, Thomas decided to discard the helmsman’s tower and the leather air bags as these would be far too visible from a riverbank. Instead he decided to incorporate two lead lined tanks in the upper hull, just above the line of oars. These could be fitted with simple brewer’s taps and filled by the pressure of the surrounding water when necessary. Once full, the tanks’ weight would submerge the boat but careful calculation would be needed to ensure it sank to the required depth, not plummet to the bottom. There’d be no way to empty the tanks once underwater but Thomas was certain he could devise a way to use detachable stone ballast to refloat the vessel.