London Falling (37 page)

She heard locals still talking about Anne, about how she’d lived here, and Mora would say under her breath, as she passed them, ‘She wasn’t a witch.’ Some wench was now
on the throne. On a couple of occasions, the people she passed happened to be talking of witches, and they looked at her and saw her in some strange way, and started to chase her, terrified but
eager.

At some point, without ever really deciding on it, Mora accepted that she now probably was a witch. She had become this thing that her mistress had never been. She had been led to it by her
mistress’ honest wish for motherhood. Mora had had no choice in the matter. It was like a wheel running downhill.

She took to hurting the people in secret, to going about absolutely unseen, learned by constant experiments with the gestures of her hands, copied from the musician, and flashing a knife from a
pocket, hurting them with small cuts, killing their dogs and cats, and pledging them like she had the swine; sending them on somewhere and feeling the tide washing hard into her at the moment of
their deaths.

The locals started to talk about her again. And it seemed that someone at court had remembered, because one day when Mora had returned to her sty and was standing there in pain
during the night, she heard the gates open again, and soldiers entered.

That night, Mora learned that her power was not as great as she had thought it was. Now that she had stretched the weave to let herself move out and about, so others could move her too. They
were here to kill her, ultimately, but first they raped her many times, having to straighten out her curled-up older self to find the soft young girl concealed inside.

They were so pleased with themselves at having conquered the witch that they decided to keep her captive, and made one of the stables into a cage where they could visit her. They put her in
chains of cold iron forged in London, and those felt as if they would hold her, at least for a while. The house was opened up again, and the mob came back to see her, too. She seemed to be a
gibbering old lady, she realized from inside herself sometimes, whenever her mind came to the surface. The mob handed her food, which she put down beside her. She felt that taking it would lead her
back to normality, where she might be destroyed even more, split apart on the rocks of expectation. The mob seemed to like her as a thing they could come and view.

One day a child, a little girl, came along to see the witch. Mora smiled at her, and took the bread she offered. She complained that the chains were so rough on her, and she
was so weak and would be dead soon, and asked if she could be set free of them, just for a few moments. That wicked, cunning child went and found the key, perhaps off her father, and she took off
Mora’s chains.

Mora killed her with her bare hands, and dedicated the child’s death with the correct gestures, enjoying the feeling of what had been the child’s mind being swept off to face
punishment. And so much more strength flooded into her then, more than she had ever felt before. She could suddenly see it all, see the tides and the angles, see how buildings and people altered
them.

She killed all the soldiers, one by one, dispatching as many of them as she could as sacrifices. She became something even greater with every moment. And now she was able to glimpse who she was
sacrificing to, and to hear a distant laughter. Mora didn’t care. They deserved it. She raped those who had raped her, and then sentenced them to die forever.

When they were all dead, she closed the gates of this charnel house behind her, and walked out through the wall, invisible and mighty, into the white sepulchre that was London.

With the Sight, she could see that the soil she carried would let her go no further than the bounds of the city. But, by carrying it, she could travel anywhere within it. She was like a great
predatory fish being let loose into a large lake. She was master of this expanse and no further.

She turned to look back at the locked gates of the house. ‘She wasn’t a witch,’ she announced for the last time.

Centuries passed, and Mora experienced too much life. London grew around her too, astonishingly, her small pool becoming full of more and more of ‘the mob’. In a
tavern one evening she counted the years of kings and queens, and realized she was seventy. And though she now looked it, and looked back to her youth as a woman of seventy would, she had not a
single new ache that had crept up on her, only those that were old friends. The same was true at age one hundred, and then passing through the decades to two hundred, and then she let thoughts of
that go too, and forgot she had an age.

She would take three children, and make a good sacrifice, and feel life flooding back into her, and she wanted to laugh at the mob at the same time, knowing that she again had vengeance on them
for what they had done to their Queen, and to Mora herself. They claimed they so loved their children. They loved them enough that they would kill innocents like her mistress to have more. So she
loved giving them fewer. She would sacrifice adults too now, in a way she had learned when the city burned . . . and she had stayed among the flames, dancing and learning the skill of giving
someone whole to the flame, so that the moment of striking and of sacrifice became one, spending and receiving in the same instant. That was like being in love with the destruction, having congress
with it.

In order that people would know what she was about when they glimpsed her, she learned what the people most feared from such as her, and made herself into that. She therefore fabricated herself
a cat out of so many sacrifices that she lost count, all of them boiled together at once in a cauldron that she stole from the back of a cart, and then infused it into a dead mog she’d found
lying in the street. She made it as something that would reflect what she herself was back at her, something that would not argue, not offer her any distraction that might lessen her purpose or
stay her hand. It was to provide all the good things about having company, and none of the bad. It was nothing like a child, for it was nothing of her, and yet only her.

In the aftermath of the Great Fire of London, she gradually became aware that, in this small pond, there were starting to be others who did as she did. They came with all the buildings that were
now shutting out the sky. Some of them hid in the shadows, as she did, but some walked around in silks and hats. With civilized gestures of the right hand, they described to their servants where
they would place such a building, while crafty, secret gestures of the left hand were making sure the angles of that building were right for the unseen tides which only they and Mora knew of. Mora
herself did not feel inclined to meet those of either kind, but she feared the latter more, seeing immediately that they worked for kings and had the stuff of kings about them. She hated kings half
the week, and the mob for the other half. She recognized the irony that, as people flooded into the small pond she was trapped in, they all seemed to feel the same, thus hating themselves as being
part of the thing they hated, or at least all of them did a little. As more of them came, more buildings appeared, and so more of the crafty architects who knew the same secrets as she did arrived,
until Mora found herself feeling limited. It was as if they were fencing off more and more of the tiny space she survived in.

So she was on nobody’s side, remained just the thing that took away children, and she took steps never to be revealed, which meant the parents seldom realized. Hers were the children that
got lost in the cracks of the city. She was on no side until, returning one day, as she often did, to her mistress’ house – which had come to be called, to Mora’s great pleasure,
Boleyn Castle – to take more soil from its grounds, she saw a group of men outside it, kicking a ball. That also gave Mora great pleasure, because it would have angered the King mightily to
see the game he had forbidden being played over one of his properties. They weren’t playing at archery now! She therefore stayed in shadow and let those men live, and made sure always to seek
out her sacrifices far away.

As the years passed, what the men did there grew and grew. One day they stuck in the ground a flag with an image of a castle on it, which was now to be their emblem. The spot where they played
became known as ‘the Boleyn Ground’, and when they built a stadium for spectators, it had big towers standing outside it. Mora had long since started to attend these matches, hidden at
first, and then later in disguise and having paid money. She was increasingly tempted to support them with her craft, and to ensure they were always victorious, but she managed to resist that urge.
In truth, she didn’t want to diminish the joy at genuinely winning and, yes, also the sorrow of losing. They became increasingly bound together, occupants of the same soil, and the
team’s victories were also Mora’s. When wireless became commonplace, she saw those around her in the stands listening to it, so she stole a set for herself, and started to listen to the
commentaries, and eventually to other things that told her stories about the old world. She switched it off rather than hear of the new. The new was what limited her and bricked her in. The cat
even started to talk with the voice of the radio, but still only told her the news she wanted to hear.

She hated witnessing the team’s defeats, hated the loud celebrations of the filthy scum that scored against them. So every now and then, but taking care not to do it too often, she would
send the worst of those shits to Hell early. She became well known to a few of the spectators, and in time had stories told about her.

It was only a few years ago that Mora started to have a distant feeling that something around her was changing. The secret tides of London were moving almost imperceptibly in some new direction;
only one as sensitive as she was might have noticed. One autumn morning she was gathering soil near the stadium when she realized that someone who should not be there was watching her. She turned,
ready to send a force slapping against him from her palm, but then realized immediately how little such a tiny reflex would mean to him. He was smartly dressed, having the stuff of kings about him,
yes, but he was common too. So he was either both of those things she hated, or neither. But he was smiling all over his face, and that made her choose neither. He was smiling
about
her,
which was something Mora was only used to, sometimes, on her beloved terraces. He told her she had made a contribution to what he called his stocks, and that he applauded her. And he did applaud,
and every clap of his hands sent joy flooding through her, and she realized who he was. And finally she knew that here was the creature that, with her visions of Hell, she had long suspected
existed. He told her there was a possibility that soon, because of all they were doing to contain and limit London, the descendants of those men in fine gloves, who were always meddling, would stop
her from being able to reach her beloved ground.

Mora was horrified. He asked her whether she would owe him service if he removed, as he was planning to do, those who might block her from the Boleyn Ground. She told him with certainty she
would. He told her that a man who’d made him good sacrifice had just, at his suggestion, bought the season-ticket seat next to hers. She was to work for him for ten years, and then stop, and
the work would serve a higher purpose than it seemed to. He licked his palm and held it up; Mora saw a streak of blood there. Hesitantly, but aware that she was in the presence of, for the first
time in centuries, a power that could harm her, a power that asked very little and was being civil, Mora kissed the palm offered to her and tasted blood like water and ashes.

And then he was gone, and Mora found herself weeping, shedding black tears that scorched her face and marked her beloved soil. Because she had now met the power of another king, and, just like
that, he had reminded her how she was a victim.

But she did what she was told, and she met with the man Rob Toshack. She even told her name to him, so that he might know it. She found that, despite her anger and hatred at her own weakness,
they had much in common, that this was easy work indeed, and that she could therefore remain herself. And so she let herself forget that she was merely a victim. Except at somewhere close to her
heart, where she always remembered. ‘She wasn’t a witch,’ she would still insist. But now she didn’t know whether she referred to her mistress or herself.

As the cat came to the end of its story, Ross felt a terrible fury inside her. ‘That doesn’t
excuse
her,’ she began. ‘That doesn’t . .
.!’

But looking at the faces of the listening coppers, she realized that none of them thought so either, and she turned away. The ridiculous voice of that cat, talking so nicely about Toshack and
the sacrifice of her dad . . . She wanted to hurt it for how it agreed with her.

While the cat ate a second tin of food, Sefton followed the others to the Ops Board. ‘It’s not just that she’s only got special powers in London ’cos of
the soil,’ he said, ‘but she can’t bloody leave!’ He amended the board to reflect that, but felt frustrated rather than triumphant. With her everywhere around, it was more
like
they
were stuck in here along with her.

‘And we heard about the old law again. But they were got rid of not long ago,’ observed Quill, making a new addition to the list of concepts.

‘And . . .’ said Costain, reaching out with a marker for the photofit of the smiling man, ready to write a new name underneath.

Sefton grabbed his arm and stopped him. ‘We don’t know if she’s right. Putting the name up there would be suggesting we
knew
. We don’t do theology.’

Costain glared at him, but finally put the pen down.

Ross spoke up then, sounding angry at both of them. ‘Listen, if we can only manage to nick her, and we can convince a judge that it’s against the public interest for her to be kept
in the city, and we can then get her sent somewhere else to be detained before trial . . . I’d like to find out what happens to her as that prison van heads up the M1. That’d be one
solution to Objective seven on the Ops Board: bring to trial or destroy.’