Dark Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  The taller of the knights now dismounted and walked over the dust and scrub, looking not at us but at his companion. They all seemed to accept our foreign appearance since all tribes, races and warriors came here to prove themselves and their ardent belief in their church.

  “I suppose they should be buried,” I muttered. “Or left out for the wolves and the eagles.”

  Were there wolves back then? Were there even eagles in the holy land? I shuffled backwards and wondered if we might be thought assassins. But death was all around us, and even those soldiers fighting for the Papacy did not seem horrified by the sight of unknown and mutilated corpses.

  The first knight who had knelt to see and touch the bodies, now stood and walked back to his waiting horse. “I see nothing familiar concerning either of these folk,” he said, dismissing them. “They might be part of some local family, distracted by some domestic feud. They might not even be Christians. I’ll not concern myself with them and have a mission far more important. Bury these poor souls if you wish.”

  He was astride now but the second knight stopped, one hand to his reigns, and looked at Vespasian. “Do I know you, sir? Something familiar calls at me from your eyes.”

  “I once lived in Granada under the rule of the Moors as they invented the system of irrigating the land. I have lived amongst the Turks and amongst the priests at the Papacy. I have lived long years in England, in France, Italy and in the island of Sicily. Once I joined an English force sent by the king and encouraged to join the battles of these crusades. You may know me indeed, sir, yet I do not remember any friendship.”

  He appeared disappointed, first hesitated, but then nodded, and mounted. I watched as the small troop was riding off, then said, “It’s around a thousand years ago, isn’t it! We’ve dumped our own misdeeds back in history.” I almost laughed but you can’t laugh with dead bodies you’ve killed yourself at your feet. “Do we bury them?”

  “No,” Vespasian said. “Leave them for the buzzards. To bury a man before he is born will not benefit him.” And once again he took my hand.

  “You knew that knight, didn’t you?” I half asked, half accused.

  “Yes,” Vespasian said. although not smiling. “He was a fool who caused the death of many. But what is passed is past, even though we stand here within it.”

  “And little Tom?” I remembered.

  “He’ll be taken into the care of your school’s headmaster, Henry,” Vespasian told me. “And Sarah Harrington will change her clothes, destroy those covered in her husband’s blood and then announce to the staff that Lord Harrington has left on some mission he refused to explain to her. She will await his return, but his return will not come. After two years, he will be proclaimed dead, and she will inherit the property and money he has left. Shortly after this Cromwell will also be dead, Charles II will come to the throne, and life will slip into a new pattern of pleasurable wealth and sexual freedom. Indeed, amongst those wealthy enough to prosper whatever the situation, there was considerable sexual abandon. And while the new king generously entitled and enriched those women he took as mistresses, many of those who had fought for him, or whose husbands had died for him, died penniless.”

  I said, “Oh, how horrid, but also how glorious. Cromwell gone, and music, dancing and loving all returned and accepted as beautiful again.” I thought I could feel Sarah smiling, hearing and knowing. Then I thought of something else. “And did they stop believing in witches and sorcerers? Did they stop persecuting the innocent?”

  “No one is ever entirely innocent,” Vespasian smiled, looking out to that incredible distant horizon of endless flat sand. “Including us, I confess. But yes, the persecution of those who had practised herbal remedies to help the sick, were no longer called wicked. Charles II was no fanatic and practised disinterest, which he called tolerance. Persecution, however, was still accepted as proper by many people. Puritan belief continued for many years. Many simple folk had been impregnated with those beliefs and could not so quickly deny them. Some remained fanatical, and loathing the new tolerance, shipped themselves off to the recently discovered continent of America where they might live as they wished. We have later called them the Pilgrim Fathers.”

  “So there were Puritans practising fanatical intolerance, while the new king danced off to his hundred whores and mistresses?”

  “A little variety is always interesting,” Vespasian said through his smile.

  That huge blazing nothingness was glorious, and I couldn’t stop breathing it in and staring out, fascinated. Now, even though death lay heavy at my feet, I could smell only the endless baking heat. But I said, “So let’s fly back to the tolerance of modern disinterest, because I love the one and only sorcerer I know. And then he can take me to bed.”

  Vespasian laughed softly. “We shall. Randle will notice nothing different. Whereas you, my beloved, will be offered neither freedom nor inheritance, since I have no intention of leaving you at any time nor at all. Once we are home, I shall fulfil my cravings, wicked or otherwise.”

  “At last? Really home? Oh, my love, I am longing to get back home, and our own bed and Randle and even stirring the custard.”

  But now, very gradually the first drifting reek of death began to claw at me. Others smelled it too, and I gazed up as I saw the stark shadows black against the gold.

  “The buzzards,” Vespasian said, and for a moment I watched them land, their wings almost floating, their bright eyes round and wide, but on the sand, they hopped, nervous, eager to leap at the sweltering delight of the food lying, inviting them. They were wishing us far away.

  I turned at once, ready to ask Vespasian for an immediate departure, but before I said a word, I was crushed into his arms, my face squeezed against him, and the heat, the desert and the stench drifted away on the breeze. He leaned forwards as the horror of those vile corpses faded into sudden moonlight and kissed me. I imagined I might still sense the vestiges of the open sands and the emptiness of scrubland and desert. But I could no longer smell death. Soon it was just the magical touch of Vespasian’s hands in my hair and his lips on mine.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lying on the long cream couch, long enough for his legs stretched out and more, Vespasian seemed asleep with both arms around Randle, who also slept, cuddled against him. The book Randle had been supposedly reading was now on the floor, open at Cinderella and the Magic Shoes and Vespasian had been listening to Grieg’s Mountain King, which was now fading into the distance as the kettle simmered in the kitchen. I made the tea and carried it back into the living room., carefully ignoring the long, uncurtained windows.

  Vespasian looked asleep but was awake. I murmured, “Where are you darling? I need you. Don’t wake Randle if you can help it.”

  “The rustle of time,” Vespasian murmured back. His eyes remained shut but the smile proved he was awake. He mumbled as though half asleep, “Is it Christmas yet, my love?”

  “You know perfectly well it isn’t,” I said. “It’s the fifth of January, twelfth night. We ought to be taking down our decorations, and it’s the tree outside I wanted you to look at again.”

  With Randle’s somewhat eccentric help, Vespasian had decorated the huge spruce in our grounds, which sat just on the banks of the lake. It was not in our direct line of vision from decked veranda to water but stood forwards at one side. Between them, they had made it splendid, crowned in silver light, twining silver leaves around its entire height, tiny balls of silver glitter and the cascading threads of metallic silver ice.

  And there, within the glorious silver sparks and sparkles, the trunk of the tree shivered with life. The thing which had nestled itself beneath the bark, like a huge lizard all dressed for the Christmas parade, was the same thing which had previously inhabited the old oak. The thing gleamed crimson through the dark trunk, spoiling our silver glory.

  The decorations were reflected in the little lake, shimmering so beautifully each night. But the demon left no reflection.


  Now, shivering in the early frost, I stood with Vespasian on the edge of the decking and pointed.

  Our little forest was still a flashing mess of ugly vendetta and enmity with nine demonic beings clawing for attention. They straddled the trees and the calm waters of our lake. Some spoke, when they could, although some slept as if waiting for the right moment to awake and attack. Now, however, realising how Vespasian had destroyed the three greatest towers of hatred, the others hated us more, and being both fearsome and fearing, either hid, quivering, or glared out as they planned revenge

  Pointing again, I said, “Can’t we get it out of that tree? Randle loved it when you first put up the lights and the decorations.”

  “Twelfth night means the silver falls today. I shall do this later. But perhaps the destruction of the nine should begin,” he was still smiling. “One by one, my love, I must admit. For although not any of these has the strength to fight me, nor even to protect itself against me, the power I need for only one entire destruction must first be nurtured. Those I destroyed in our travels were weaker by far, since we caught each during their earlier lives. But these remaining nine have absorbed so many within, each will be as if battling fifteen or more combined.”

  “Teach me properly then,” I insisted. “I didn’t tell you before because I felt rather stupid, but I tried to kill the Agnes demon before you came and did it yourself. I’d seen you. I knew what to do. I just couldn’t do it.”

  He wrapped one arm around my waist, and I loved his warmth against my shivering back.

  “The next time,” he said softly, “I shall bring you into the early stages. As the Gatekeeper, you would have done this alone, perhaps more powerfully than anyone else. But you, my little one, in spite of your courage, are deliciously human. And for an inexperienced human, this would not be easy.”

  I leaned against his shoulder. “You said it won’t be easy, even for you.”

  “None of these creatures can harm us individually,” Vespasian said, speaking more loudly than usual. His words echoed across the water and amongst the trees. “And if they combine, which is unlikely since hatred, damnation and cruelty are never friends to each other, but if it can be done and so is done, then I know myself stronger. They cannot overcome me, my beloved. We are as safe as the mice in our foundations.”

  None of that sounded as reassuring as I would have liked.

  I mumbled, “But it’ll be summer one day. Randle needs to play and swim, and I want to play ball with him and chase him through the trees.”

  Indeed, Randle was already banging on the windowpanes inside, knowing he shouldn’t leave the house without us. Immediately Vespasian led me back inside,

  Randle scrambled back onto the couch, another book back on his lap. In a low chant he began to read the words. “Jack and Jill went up the hill. Daddy, have we got a hill?”

  “No, little one,” Vespasian told him. “Our grounds are flat. Easier to explore.”

  “A hill would be nice, Daddy. I could roll down. I wouldn’t fall like Jack, honest. I doesn’t fall over no more. But them silly pink and green people out there, they falls down all the time.”

  “They will be leaving soon,” Vespasian murmured, “very soon, and leave our garden free for you to run and roll.”

  Reassured, Randle returned to his book. Vespasian and I stood together, Vespasian a little behind me, but his arms around my breasts and his mouth to my ear. “Shall I kill them for you, my little one, one after the other? And you will help me as I teach you and share my power. You have the empty goblet. It overflowed as the Gatekeeper, and that capacity can be refilled. But to keep it filled might involve something you’d dislike. So shall we call on the powers above, my love? And then I shall swing you over my shoulder, my hands on your arse, and carry you to bed.”

  I blinked over my shoulder at Randle, but he was too absorbed in his rhymes, so I giggled slightly at Vespasian. He was in one of those delicious moods which I adored. But I was worried too.

  “I have a husband who became a reluctant friend of Oliver Cromwell and then presented the Knights Templar with a couple of corpses in the middle of the desert. You can do anything my beloved. Me? I hated the Gatekeeper. I don’t want to be her again. And I’m not sure what the empty goblet means either.”

  “What we could do,” he said even more softly, “covers so many possibilities, my dearest, that I doubt I could remember all, or even half. But those I know might be what you’d call an adventure. Not becoming the Gatekeeper, since that was the work of your interesting mother. But regaining power is very possible.”

  I didn’t want to think about my mother. But that made me remember that I wasn’t just an ordinary suburban English woman and instead carried an ancestral inheritance which I couldn’t hope to understand.

  Frankly, I’d never wanted to understand it.

  A flood of strange ideas ran so quickly through my head, it seemed suddenly as though I might spend my life in ancient Egypt or flying over the Tudor Court. I would bet all the millions I didn’t have, that Henry VIII had half a dozen demons tucked inside that fat belly of his.

  So,” I ventured, trying to sort my common sense from my imagination, “what makes the better solution? Us having some sort of terrifying adventure, or you destroying these things in our garden one by one?’

  “The decision, my adorable beloved,” he said with exaggerated enthusiasm, “is entirely yours. No best or better exists in such situations, since we cannot know the future, only the past.”

  It was the constant use of the word ‘past’ that suddenly brought back the shivers. My mother. The Gatekeeper. Samhain. Vespasian as terrifying as I had ever imagined possible for anyone. Tilda. And then, abruptly, discovering the mutilated body on the side of the road. I’d never met the killer but still went to his funeral. And now I wondered why, since I don’t believe in coincidence, this had all happened at my own toes. People often ask, “Why me?” Well – why not? Why anyone else? But now I was doing the same thing. Murder on my doorstep? A copse of demons in my garden? Because of Vespasian? Or because of me? Yet none of that could be answered now.

  So I mumbled, “But I can’t make decisions anymore.” And that was true enough. “I’m so happy to let you decide everything. I’ve been gloriously happy for the past four years. I suppose I’ve melted into a sort of mummy-housewife because you’re better at everything than I am.”

  “I cannot even make custard, my love.”

  I interrupted his laughter. “Alright then. I need exercise. So – decision time. Give it another – what? – a week? A month? And then we can fly off into the wild blue yonder.”

  It was if I’d said the magic words, and immediately he slid into a different depth of thinking. “A touch more than a week, perhaps,” he said. “I shall need to study our pet demons and discover which of them can be reduced to past trivia, preferably several within the same time period. A major excursion for only one annihilation would seem inappropriate. That will take study, my love.”

  Randle was taking no notice of our conversation, which probably seemed indecipherable to him. Cuddled up on the corner of the couch, he now had a pile of books, four or five, collected from his own private book shelf. He was now studying each one. Looking up, he asked me, “Mummy. Who is Harry in a pot?”

  I had to think about that one. Vespasian interrupted, “You are somewhat young for Harry Potter as yet, my dear. Be satisfied with the Mad Hatter.”

  “The pot boy has a wand, Daddy. I like that. And I don’t think that hatter is mad anyway. He’s nice. Like you.”

  Vespasian accepted the similarity and smiled, looking back at me. “Our Randle is growing.”

  I had missed him desperately last time. So I said, “Can it be a quicker adventure? I just hate leaving Randle for so long. I’d even planned on volunteering at that little private zoo on the other side of the village. They need help. You know, they have two sloths and one has just had a baby, but she didn’t seem to notice and didn’t feed it.
I took Randle yesterday, and that baby sloth is delicious. It’s too much work for the couple of keepers they have, because it needs so much feeding and looking after. I thought we could have it at home until it can look after itself.”

  “I have never seen one,” said Vespasian somewhat vaguely. “Bring it home by all means. Whatever journeys we make, we shall be away only one minute of normal directional time.”

  I could just imagine my husband with a baby sloth hanging around his neck like a woolly scarf.

  Actually, of course, he wasn’t my husband at all. He had married Tilda a thousand years ago, and that seemed close enough for me. We couldn’t marry now since he had no birth certificate, nor even proof of identity except that tall graceful body standing in front of my nose. Identity enough? He did have a driving licence, but we’d probably have to forge papers again one day. In the meantime, we bought, sold, banked and did pretty much everything in my name, which didn’t bother him in the slightest.

  “So you don’t yet know where we might go?” I asked, without needing to wait for a reply. “Now that’s fun. But I remember you saying it had to be after Lilith’s destruction. After the year 1210? That leaves us plenty of exciting possibilities.”

  I still stood at the window and saw the sudden swirl of bare branches from the oak, followed by the shuffle of the foliage amongst the decorations on the spruce. A silver star dropped to the ground. It didn’t matter since today was the day for packing it all away, but I didn’t want demons packed in a box in our attic.

  Vespasian had wandered over to the couch and sprawled there next to Randle. He looked up. “Everything is possible,” he told me, “but none of it is essential. Look,” and he waved one hand out into the further shadows where our garden disappeared into the winter clouds. “They cannot enter. They cannot touch any of us. They cannot hurt us. They cannot even disrupt our lives.”