“Follow my example,” Cromwell told us. “And heaven will wait for you.” I muttered under my breath as did everyone around me.
“He’s almost thinking he’s God. He thinks he’s the guardian of heaven.” I had been the Gate Keeper myself, although not of heaven of course. But I didn’t want to think about that anymore.
Pointless enjoyment? No – that was wicked. Swearing more than one stutter meant imprisonment. Strict fasting on Saint’s days was obligatory. A pleasant walk in the countryside on a Sunday? Never! Or accept a large fine – perhaps even sit in the stocks for a day.
In towns and larger villages there always sat the stocks, those wooden prisons where those condemned for punishment were dragged, their legs and sometimes their arms trapped and locked there for one day, two days, or even three. Surrounded by the stones, rotten vegetables and dirty water, even piss, thrown by the righteous, they were brought ale to drink but rarely food. Folk laughed as they passed, ignoring the lowered face of the miserable prisoner who had perhaps sworn at the neighbour who kicked his dog, or sung to his wife on a Sunday. If the prisoner rebelled against his punishment and jeered those who threw their rubbish at him, he might be whipped before being set free.
Avoiding the town square or the village green where the stocks usually stood prominent, I hated these public displays of punishment. These were not Cromwell’s invention, but he encouraged their use for such minor crimes including those behaviours which were obviously not crimes at all. But the damned man was a hypocrite and was reported indulging a few of the diversions he banned for others.
With a deep hatred for the elaborations of the Catholic church, Cromwell failed to understand hatred as being the first thing that ought to be banned. I’d never even met the man, but I disliked him intensely from what I’d heard. I’d never met the king either, and thought him a man of horribly rigid ideals and a poor leader, but a far nicer person and a loving family man who tried so hard to do his best in spite of his lack of confidence and bitter shyness.
And then the massacre. Although Cromwell now governed the country, the Irish remained faithful to Catholicism. Cromwell was furious. When rebellion arose, he ordered the massacre of both rebels and citizens, adults and children, both fighters and those who had surrendered. The massacre was horribly brutal, and Cromwell’s forces were encouraged to be violent. Those children not murdered were collected and sent abroad as slaves. Cromwell’s demon had reached its peak. It was a little later that Vespasian told me his story.
The Lord Protector had returned to England extremely tired but entirely exultant. He had rid the world of enough Catholics to prove his good intentions to his god.
Although I doubted he was motivated by more than the wish for freedom, Vespasian had never accepted any position on the parliament benches nor as a soldier in the new army. He had no intention of fighting under Cromwell’s orders, and remained simply an occasional friend and advisor.
It was as advisor that Vespasian sat opposite at the table, their pottage bowls empty and pushed aside, a pile of papers in their place. Vespasian, leaning back, had remarked, “So, my friend, you feel that the exercise in Ireland was successful?”
“Do you doubt it?” Cromwell looked up, frowning. “I have completed one of my greatest services to the Lord and His holy church.”
Vespasian, cold eyed, might often stay silent but never spoke an outright lie. “I cannot agree,” he said. “These people are your people. They believe in the same God even though they worship in another fashion. All humanity learns at its own pace.”
Pushing his chair back, Cromwell stood and watched as the entire table tipped and his papers were flung across the toppling chairs and the floorboards beneath. “You want me furious? I thought you my friend.”
“Which is why,” Vespasian continued, “I have the courage to question your beliefs. You are free, naturally, to convince me of your righteousness.”
“I should not need to convince you,” Cromwell said, pulling back another chair as Vespasian rose and set the table back on its feet. He did not bother to collect the scattered papers.
“I know your idealism,” he said. “But never have I known you to massacre those who have not raised arms against you, including their children. I believe this harsh. I believe it unchristian.”
Scowling, “And I believe it God’s will. Our Lord has preached against idolatry and wicked practises. The children I ordered killed, and those sent abroad, would have grown up Catholic. What I do, and what I order, is all for the Lord God. It is never for myself.”
“And I’ve heard you claim that the Lord resides in your heart?”
“He does.” Almost whispering, “Sometimes I feel His presence, and it is overpowering.” Cromwell calmed, leaned down and began to grab at the papers littering the floor.
As he bent so Vespasian rose, and walked forwards as if to help. But instead he forced both hands around the other man’s forehead and very softly said the words, “Somnum penitus.”
Alarmed and briefly indignant, Cromwell struggled, but then fell, surrendering abruptly, his eyes closed. Vespasian pressed, spreading his fingers and cupping his palms, enclosing Cromwell’s brow and head within his own power.
Waiting just a heartbeat for the demon’s distress to swell, Vespasian knelt beside him, opened Cromwell’s eyelids with one finger and replaced his hands around the other’s skull as before. He sat then, staring into the newly opened eyes, now stark green, as emerald as the jewel newly polished.
“You have proved yourself strong,” Vespasian said very softly.
The reply was a screech, half high pitched and then guttural. “I can do better,” said the voice, cackling without breath. “I have plans. I’m no fool, human, and I know my limitless capacity. Within me are twelve other demons I’ve used to create myself invincible. With twelve inside, already eaten, and this human sucked almost dry, I am a great and wondrous icon. How many have you within you, human? I’ll swear you cannot outnumber me.”
Digging the balls of his thumbs deeper into Cromwell’s temples, Vespasian smiled. “I do not wish to eat the strength of others,” he said. “I am alight with the power of my own magic, and I command you to come forward and prove yourself to me beyond the compass of the human where you hide.”
Cromwell’s body rolled, heaving, as though the thing inside clung tightly against the command to reveal itself.
Vespasian repeated the order. “Come out, or I shall call on Lilith to reclaim you. Show yourself and prove yourself.”
The green eyes swirled outwards, bulging and then glazed. For a moment they seemed to float above the man’s head, his own eyes closed once more. The crackling voice said, “If I come, I will kill you, human. Do not tempt me.”
“Tempt you?” Vespasian laughed. “I call you. I invite. I release you from your human decanter. I demand you. Come out and dare to show yourself.”
The voice diminished. “I am warm here. Why should I face you? I would enter you if I wished and take you over as I have this creature’s bulk and vision. This human sack is obedient to me and thinks me righteous and calls me his lord. I have no need for another.”
With his fingers stretching downwards, Vespasian forced open the mouth, its lips previously clamped, and abruptly breathed hot and fast into the throat. The demon gulped and fire flew from the eyes. Cromwell’s body squirmed.
A slow rattle, sounding like the self-protection of the rattlesnake, gargled from Cromwell’s mouth, and the stench of something rotten increased. Then fragments of moving black shadow squelched outwards, covering the green eyes and swallowing the light of the candles in the room.
A black fog drifted high, surrounding both Cromwell and Vespasian. It thickened and started to swirl, misting deeper like the smoke from a burning pit. Vespasian coughed, but breathed again into the throat he held open. Again, the smoke intensified, thick black, swirling quicker and plunging down towards Vespasian’s head. He permitted it to gather until it blinded him, biting into
his face. Then he blew faster and harder.
The black swathes of grit and filth rushed at him, but could not enter his mouth. It gathered, pushing at him and glowing with both soot and flame. Now the mist was no longer black and burst open with spiralling threads of furnace.
Again, it clustered, buzzing now like a wasp’s nest, but unable to enter Vespasian’s mouth. He continued to blow. But he no longer blew into Cromwell’s mouth, but directly at the cloud.
Gathering force, the cloud condensed further becoming a fat thick ball of darting eyes, red as coals, with tears like raging floods of blood from each eye socket, and pupils turning from scarlet to pitch.
And still Vespasian blew. He was muttering words, repeating over and over, and the words took shape in his own throat although his mouth was open and his breath a billowing force into the bluster beyond.
Quite suddenly with a wail of utter failure, the cloud began to disintegrate. Its compaction gradually opened. Shreds rolled off and out like pasta cooking in boiling water. The smoke drifted, and the eyes closed. Their bleeding tears simmered and dissolved. The cloud became a mist once again. It had thinned and wisps sprang away as Vespasian continued to blow.
The wisps became fragmented arms and circled both above his head and around him, seething and spitting black dust. The fragments twisted, becoming a hundred fingers, yet not one was able to grasp Vespasian’s body, and he now blew at any darkness around him, as though finally clearing a fire. He did not stop and the last trails of darkness fell to the ground as if too tired to continue the battle.
Vespasian stopped blowing. He stamped on the grains of rotting ash beneath his feet, ground them into dust and then held both hands over the last grains, as tiny as grass seed. He picked those two grains up between his fingers and spoke quietly.
“You must now be gone. You are no longer either demon or cruelty. You are the forgotten memory of Lilith’s symbolism and you cannot rise again. In the name of Zeamandrax, I banish you to the sanctuary of forgetfulness. You are no more.”
The smear on his palm disappeared entirely. His palm was clean. Vespasian turned and gazed down at Cromwell. Then he bent, and slowly helped him up.
Cromwell blinked, and leaning on Vespasian’s arm, levered himself onto the chair. He sat heavily, rubbing his eyes. Some of the papers were still tight in his hand. He blinked at Vespasian, who remained at his side, his hands beneath his arms.
“Thank you, friend,” Cromwell stuttered. “How did I fall?”
“A dizzy moment, nothing more,” Vespasian had said, which means he did sometimes lie after all. “But if you feel well enough, I must leave and return to my own duties. Shall I call your wife?”
“No.” Cromwell stood, and shook his head with a wide and unexpected smile. “No need to worry her,” he said. “Indeed, I feel surprisingly well. Better than for many months. The fighting, you know, the Irish, the king. All to be forgotten now. I am myself again.”
“Indeed you are,” said Vespasian softly, moving towards the door. “And I trust will remain so for those years remaining.”
Cromwell called after him, “A strange experience, and I have no explanation. Yet, perhaps, although it was you, my friend, who helped me up, I believe it was my Lord who spoke to me as I stumbled. No doubt it was not simply a dizzy moment, but a true call of the Holy Word. God visits me indeed, friend Jasper. You have been present during a heavenly moment, and that is also a blessing on you. Such moments are rare for most. Even I do not experience them often.” Shaking his head as though clearing some wisp of confusion he added, “Now no voice whispers to me, nor comforts me. But I know He will return for I am His son and ardent disciple. I accept that His words are rare.”
Vespasian, as he told me afterwards, had paused for just one smile, saying, “Some such experiences, Master Cromwell, need to be very rare indeed.”
Chapter Seventeen
And that’s what Vespasian told me later. Delighted and fascinated, I begged him to repeat so many details, I think he got bored.
“My dearly beloved,” he said, half grinning with a touch of exaggerated irony, “this is indeed what we came to do, and it was never expected to be a sudden or fast success. Yet now, even one less of the devil’s creatures invading our own home will be a vast benefit. If we can annihilate the second and third, we can return to Randle in peace.”
“There are others with demons,” I insisted. “I’ve met some. One vile man is dead, and I know Agnes killed him, but he was a demon himself.”
“No matter,” Vespasian said, walking across to our small mullioned window. “All those fragments set free by Lilith’s temporary destruction will congregate and suffer the absorption by those stronger. Destroying the origin of the most powerful, automatically destroys all those later taken by one which no longer exists.”
We were back in our cottage, snug and cosy, and very considerably benefiting from some small advantages which Vespasian had brought with us from our modern home, hot water, for instance, and warmth even when the frost outside turned to ice. And I felt warmer still, for now I had heard another description of how to destroy a demon.
“Time,” I said, “is a very mysterious business. I used to think it always travelled in a straight line.”
“There are no straight lines in nature,” Vespasian said, his back to me.
“But,” I muttered, “All I am doing, while you do the miracles, is teaching kids to read and plodding around trying to look pure. I can’t even make custard.”
Turning, Vespasian looked down and smiled, brushing my hair back from my eyes. “You want to prove your strength, as Cromwell does? But we are neither of us here by choice. We have come here because of circumstances, which is how all life throws itself at us, teaching us to read just as you teach your pupils.”
“Teaches us?” I objected. “You once told me everything is symbolic.” I felt like grumbling. What I really wanted to do was dance, and sing, and decorate Christmas trees, and make love with Vespasian on the grass. Most of all I wanted to prove I could kill demons and not just stir custard.
“Every house and home is symbolic of the family who lives within it. If your home is small, then you have concentrated only on certain aspects of your spiritual growth. If your home lacks personality, then either you have none, or you wish to avoid facing the personality hiding within. If you are homeless, then you have possibly failed to face your own problems, and if your home is beautiful and cosy, then you are facing your growth and working towards self-understanding. There are a million more patterns of essence symbolized by the shadows in which we live. Our home is symbolic of us, my love, and therefore easy for all beings from both worlds to trace those who, they think, set them free.”
“Oh, Vespasian dearest,” I sighed. “I’m tired of learning. Must I learn more?”
He bent over and very lightly kissed my forehead. “The physical life we recognize is entirely symbolic of who we are, and the world beyond our physical death. That, spiritual and not physical, is the reality.” This time he kissed the tip of my nose. “Enough, my beloved. We have work to do.” And he walked back to the window. “Out there,” he continued, “are the suffering victims of the demon-fed. At least some, we can help and others can be freed.”
“So we all think our solid touchable world is the real one, and the mystical is the symbol. But actually, you’re saying it’s the other way around.” I added, leaning back in my dull Puritan gown, complete with white linen apron. “I suppose that means I’m pathetic as a symbol and equally pathetic underneath. Were all women supposed to feel like servants?”
“Another age of discrimination.”
“And you already know the next problem, don’t you?” He looked up, nodding. “It’s Sarah Harrington, she’s disappeared.”
After many attempts to slip back into her mind, I had become extremely worried. I couldn’t sense her, neither awake nor asleep, and the easy avenue of her identity was now closed against me and even locked. I had started to t
hink she might be dead.
He paused, closing his eyes briefly, as though searching. Finally, “No, not dead,” Vespasian crossed back to me, looking down into my eyes. I loved that look, showing the tunnels winding deeply back from eyes to thought. “I believe you will find her,” he said, “if you continue to delve into your own past.”
Well, all right the poor girl was me, younger and powerless, with the demon-invaded husband she loathed. I had begun to really believe he had killed her.
Something was keeping me out of her thoughts, and if she was still alive, then she must surely be somehow closed off to the world, her thoughts wild and impossible to understand. Or perhaps she was ill.
But three days later, I found her. She was crying. I hurried back into her mind, closing off my own thoughts so that I might become less of myself. As usual, I felt her consciousness. Now I was Sarah Harrington again, but there was a difference.
I can see only the wooden slats of the four walls surrounding me. They are dust covered with faint wafts of spiders’ webs and the dirt of many years.
No – there are two more things that I see. I have a bed. It is narrow and dishevelled without eiderdown or pillows. I have a blanket, which is grubby with tears, and a
pillowcase stuffed with rags. Beneath the bed is a chamber pot.
There is nothing else, except the outline of a doorway. No handle of course and locked from the outside. A tiny crack at the top of the door allowed a squeezed peep outside. Sadly, this did not help at all, for all I saw was leaves. Sometimes I said good morning to those leaves. But the crack also closed at night with the frost and the bitter draughts. I clutched my one blanket and pulled it over my head.
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