Wickedness (6 page)

So she went into the kitchen, opened the dresser drawer and took out the envelope. She hesitated.
I’ll just hand them the envelope
, she thought,
and say,
“Copy the papers inside please.”
And I won’t even have to touch them.
She steeled herself. Slid her fingers inside the envelope. Registered the dry, crackling, whispering sound as she pulled the papers half out. Struggled still to read the first few lines. But Margrat’s name leaped out clear now. She found she could make out a few of the other words too. Saying them out loud helped her decipher them, “My name is Margrat Jennet. I live now in the house of Nicholas Robert Benedict, physician. My mother and father are both dead. I live in fear…”

She felt her heartbeat falter and for a minute she couldn’t catch her breath. She was shaking as she pushed the papers hurriedly back inside the envelope. And she was still shaking as she stuffed
the envelope into her backpack and went out of the door, down the road and across the common.

She’d been going to look at the papers again, now that she’d had them photocopied. And she had looked at the photocopies later when she was in bed and alone. Had made out a few more words and sentences. But the effort of it had made her feel so tired, she’d fallen asleep and when she’d opened her eyes again it was the next morning. So she decided she would wait now until she had the translation… typed out on clean, fresh, uncontaminated paper. And maybe that wouldn’t take too long, because her dad had just rung her mobile and said, “I’m turning into the road. I can see a space at the end by the postbox. I’ll stop there.”

She listened carefully. She could hear the wheezing hum of the vacuum cleaner. Her mum was cleaning furiously still. And she knew Micky was upstairs, playing with the train set. She had the track snaking all around her room and she was busy making station buildings out of cereal boxes.

Claire pulled her clothes on quickly, picked up the photocopies sealed in a big brown envelope with her name and Grandma’s address on it, and tiptoed downstairs. Putting the front door on the catch, she slipped out.

“Dad!”

He was standing next to the car, leaning against it. His tie was loose. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. He looked hot and tired. “Who’s my best girl?” He gave her a hug. Lifted her off her feet. A faint odour of sweat, the plastic smell of planes and airports and the sharp scent of an aftershave she didn’t recognise. “Now what’s this you want me to do?”

It was then that she noticed there was someone sitting in the car. A woman. Short dark hair framing a thin angular face. Not pretty, but young. Younger than Dad anyway. Younger than her mum.

He saw Claire looking, but when she looked back at him, his eyes slid away from hers and he pretended he hadn’t noticed. “Is this it?” He held
out his hand for the envelope. “Can’t promise I’ll get anyone to do it. But I’ll try. Right. Must be off.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. Got back in the car and waved a hand out of the open window as he pulled away.

The woman in the passenger seat turned her head to look back. She was smiling.

Claire stood totally still for a moment, watching until the car had turned the corner and was gone. Then she walked slowly back towards the house, the sun full on her face, making her screw up her eyes, so the tears were squeezed out and trickled down, cool against her hot skin. Spoke sharply and out loud to herself. “Stupid cow. What are you crying for?”

Wiped both cheeks roughly with the back of her hand and as soon as she was indoors, she went up to Grandma’s room, closing the door quietly and carefully behind her. She wanted to be alone to think about what this might mean. Another woman? Did her mum know? Would she care anyway, because
she
had left
him
? Or… and this wasn’t something she’d thought about before… was that
why
she’d left him?

She went and lay on the bed, face down, feeling
the cool silk of the bedspread on her cheek and the palms of her hands. She didn’t want to think about her dad with someone else. Someone younger. Her mind raced ahead. She saw her dad with another family and forgetting all about her and Micky. And the thought caused her a real physical pain, which rippled out until her fingertips ached with it. And if she felt like this, how must her mum be feeling, really?

It would explain a lot of things.

Oh God
, she thought,
how easy it is to get things wrong.
Misjudge people, misread their motives for doing things. Maybe her mum wasn’t as cold and selfish as she thought. Maybe Grandma hadn’t been either. Claire sighed. Well it was too late to be nicer to Grandma, but she could be much kinder to her mum. Maybe the manuscript was somehow a key to that. Maybe that was why Grandma had left it for her. Well, as long as her dad found someone to look at it, maybe she would soon know.

Fearing that, as the Doctor had warned, I might be plucked from the street by the sect and never seen again, my mother would not let me out of her sight… even to stand on the doorstep to take the air! But after a while she grew careless. There were errands to run and when Jane tripped and hurt her ankle, no one to run them. So one morning, in late March, she sent me out alone to the candlemaker’s. I was pleased, for I was tired of being confined to the house or the shop and always in the company of my mother, or father, or Jane.

It was true that the Doctor was a frequent and welcome visitor to the house; always arriving unexpectedly and at any time of the day or evening, catching me off guard and causing my heart to beat fast and my hands to tremble. But we were never alone for more than a few moments, before my mother, hearing his voice, was there with us.

Once he had asked if he might take me to visit the menagerie at the Tower. But my mother said she had never been there and so came with us. If the Doctor – now he said we must call him Nicholas – was vexed, he didn’t show it, though I was very cross. In truth he seemed pleased, paying my mother a great deal of attention the whole day.

I thought she would never stop talking of it. If a chicken had cackled so much, I would have quickly wrung its neck.

I made my way up Sopers Lane. The weather was mild and sunny. There was a lightness in my step at the unexpected freedom. A smile on my face as I stopped by the baker’s and breathed in the rich heady smell of meat pies. I bought one, ate it and was already licking my fingers clean as I turned in to Toure Roual. The streets were crowded. Everyone was in high spirits, bustling and loud. So at first I did not notice that I was being followed. Even then I saw no one. It was more a prickling of the hairs at the back of my neck. A shiver passing down my spine. The day seemed suddenly colder. The voice of the crowd now shrill and harsh.

Several times I stopped all of a sudden and spun round, but saw nothing strange. I had just started to
breathe more easily; was walking down past the church of St John’s and was nearly at my destination, when a hand reached out and I was roughly pulled into the stinking, fetid blackness of a nearby alley.

I felt a rat brush against the hem of my skirt and run over my foot. I began to scream, but no sound came out, for a hand was pressed against my mouth. A voice I knew said, “Do not be afraid. I will not hurt you, but you must listen to me, for you are in grave danger.”

As if I did not know that already. And I meant to flee from it and him, as soon as I was able. But he pinned my arms to my side and held me fast. “It is I, Christophe. The rope-walker you took pity on.”

I was struggling hard now, but though he was not much taller than me, he was a great deal stronger.

I fought as desperately as any cat tied up in a sack and tried to bite his hand.

“The ring you wear on a braid about your neck…”

I grew still. I felt his grip loosen and he took his hand from my mouth. I was able to twist round. My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark and I could see his face, just a breath away from mine.

“When you found it…”

He knew. How?

“Were there other things… scrolls… a casket? An emerald-green casket?”

“My father gave me the ring, for my 13th birthday. The 23rd day of December, in the year of our Lord 1664.” A lie, but I thought such detail would make him believe me. “I know nothing about any scrolls.”

More lies, but I had promised the Doctor I would tell no one about them. How was it this boy knew of them? The rope-walker frowned.

“Or any casket?”

That at least was true. The Doctor had said nothing about a casket. And if it had come into the shop with the scrolls, then I should have seen it.

“But the Doctor knows that you have the ring?”

“He does,” I said, for what harm could come of telling him that? “He… Nicholas, said that I must keep it always about me, for it would protect me from the plague. But that I should never wear it on my finger…”

I reached for the ring now, but the rope-walker took my hand and held it tight. “But as long as he does not have the Emerald Casket, then all is not lost.” His eyes glittered with such ferocious intensity that I shrank away from him and tried to pull my hand free. “Listen.

What I have to tell you… when my father first told me, I did not believe it.” He looked quickly around. His voice had sunk to an urgent whisper. “I am a
rope-walker
. My father was a rope-walker and his father before him. Once, a very long time ago, our ancestors lived in Egypt, where they were both feared and worshipped for the colour of their hair. Not as pure a red as yours, but red still. They were priests and priestesses at the Temple of the Lady of Red Linen, the goddess Sekhmet.”

“And you are her servant still and Nicholas is right, you are wicked….”

“Not a servant, Margrat. A guardian. Of a great secret. My father told me that the ring he wore on the third finger of his right hand was special; twin to a ring that was the key to unlocking the most powerful spell in the world. In truth, I did not believe him. Then one day, late in September, three years past, we stopped in the square of a little town outside Paris. We set up the poles and the rope, and when a small crowd had gathered, my father started his walk. You must be master of your thoughts to do it or you will slip. My father was such a master. I had never seen him fall. But that day was different. All of a sudden he stopped and stood quite still. Then he began pulling on
the ring. He looked as if he was listening to a voice that only he could hear. He hurried to jump down… slipped, and fell. He lay there on the cobbles, in terrible pain, unable to move, while the crowd pressed in around us. I knelt beside him. His hand, wearing the ring, reached up and pulled me down so my ear was close to his mouth. Then he told me the story of the scrolls. How they contain all the knowledge and wisdom of the great god Thoth.”

I held my breath.

“How the first 20 scrolls contain powerful spells. Whoever recites them can keep sickness and death at bay. But it is the
21st
spell that is the most powerful of all. So it was placed inside an emerald casket, made from a substance unknown to alchemy. And to keep it safe, a young red-haired girl called Nefertaru, a dancer at the Temple of Sekhmet, was chosen to wear the key… which took the form of a ring. And only she could carry the casket and the spells, safe into the afterlife…”

Nefertaru! And now her mummy was on show for all to see.

“If that were true and she had carried them safe into the afterlife,” I said, thinking I had found the flaw in his logic, “then how is it that you believe the Doctor
has the spells and I wear Nefertaru’s ring…?” But then, all at once, I remembered what the Doctor had said. That the door to the afterlife had been locked tight against her, because someone had written NefARtaru and not NefERtaru. And I could have told Christophe that… but I kept my mouth shut.

“I only kno
w what my father told me… that she was buried with them in a tomb deep under the floor of Sekhmet’s temple and the tomb was watched over by guardians, each wearing a ring bearing the same hieroglyphics as Nefertaru’s. Not keys to the casket, yet rings with great power. But time passed. The Temple of Sekhmet fell into ruin. The guardians, exiled from Egypt, became rope-walkers, jugglers, acrobats, scattered across the world. If there were other guardians still wearing their rings, then my father did not know of them, but our ring had been passed down faithfully through our family, the eldest in each generation wearing it. One day, my father believed, the 21st spell would be in danger and a ‘guardian’ would be called upon to help save it. For should the spells and the Emerald Casket ever fall into the wrong hands, the ring would tell the guardian. There would be a sign.”

“How can any ring do that?” I said scornfully.

“I did not believe it either. But with his dying
breath, my father told me to take his ring, which slipped easily then from his finger, and put it on. So I did. ‘Does it burn?’ he whispered, clutching at my shirt and pulling me in close.
‘Mon dieu,
how it burned. That is the sign and you must heed the prophecy:

At first I did not understand what it meant…” Christophe faltered.

But
I
saw at once what it signified. That it was psalms from the
Bible
joined and twisted and turned upon their heads and I began to say, “It is not
Nicholas
who loves wickedness…”

But Christophe’s hand stopped my mouth. “My father
told me ‘Follow where the plague leads and let the ring guide you.’ So I did, to Egypt, then to Alexandria and the Doctor, who was well known there. Seeing my ring, he knew at once that I had come for the spells and the casket and he fled from me. I followed and found him again in London, but the ring stayed loose on my finger. It did not tighten and burn as it had before. I did not know what that signified and I was at a loss to know what I should do next. I feared I had failed my father. Then, knocked down from the rope and beaten by the mob, you saved me. I did not even have to open my eyes and look at you to know you wore Nefertaru’s ring. For I felt my ring tighten and burn on my finger, the minute you came close. Then I looked up and saw the colour of your hair…”

Now there was silence. Did he really wish me to believe that I was the red-haired maiden? That I held the key to the greatest spell on earth? Who was it that told the truth? Nicholas or this rope-walker? If one of them was wicked, which one was it? It did not seem in the least clear, for in many ways I was my parents’ child. Raised by my father to have respect for men of learning and by my mother to have none for those who were poor and lived on their wits.

Appearances. I knew that they could deceive.
That a man might seem compassionate and kind and yet be wicked to his core. For that is how the Devil works in this world. He seeks out our weaknesses and uses them to trap us into sin. I had been told it was so many times. And I had many weaknesses. For one, I told myself that I was seduced by Nicholas’s fine words and clever talk; his reputation and wealth. But in my heart I knew it was something much darker than that. Something I had no word for as yet. But I felt it when he came close. It made my breathing quicken. It made me feel I was drowning and glad of it. I thought that if he should even brush his hand against mine, my whole body would be flooded with a pain so exquisite, I would be ready to endure it for all eternity. Though I feared the strength of these feelings, I had never wanted anything in my life so badly before. So, I turned to Christophe, saying, “Go away. Leave me alone. I cannot help you. Nicholas… the Doctor… is a
well-respected
man. You are just a boy, a nothing, a prancer on a rope.” I pushed past him and he did not try to stop me. I walked fast along Cheapside towards the candlemaker’s and I did not once look back.

But I thought about the meeting constantly. When Nicholas called later that day, I studied him intently. I saw that he made sure I was close by when he said to
my father, “I was surprised, John,” (Such intimate terms, though I noticed that my father, in deference to the Doctor’s status, did not call him by his first name.) “to see Margrat come out from the candlemaker’s this morning and all alone.”

Had he seen me then, with Christophe?

I watched as my father’s face coloured up and he started to bluster. He turned to my mother, who, always happy to tell a lie if it made her life more comfortable, said “Sir. Shame on you. Would we risk the life of our only daughter?”

There was the briefest of silences. It was clear that Nicholas did not doubt that she would.

She held his gaze brazenly and to my great surprise, he looked away first, saying, “I apologise, Catherine, for I must be in error.”

A triumph then for my mother, but in truth not much of one. For we all knew that Nicholas had not been mistaken and was really the victor. From that day on, I was never allowed out alone again.

But I was not the only one who would grow wild at such close confinement. For the plague was growing worse by the day.

In early April, a fiery comet lit up the sky, causing
fear and dread, for it was a clear omen of evil and a portent of sickness.

At first, though, there was only a trickle of deaths; a smattering of houses closed up. (And those to the west of where we lived, in the parishes of St Giles-in-
the-Fields
, St Martin and St Clement Danes.) We felt safe.

But by July, the ripples from the flood of deaths lapped at our toes. Searchers, examiners, watchmen and nurses were appointed to seek out, diagnose, care for and confine those dying of the plague. Their houses were to be marked with a cross and none allowed to leave them. Entertainments of any sort were prohibited. No beggars, players, jugglers or rope-walkers were allowed in the streets.

That is good, I thought. Christophe will have left the city and I need not think on him again. Yet I did think of him. Would I ever see him again? But though my bedroom window looked out over the lane and I spent a great deal of time looking out, I never did catch a glimpse of him… at least not from there.