The Auguries

by F. G. Cottam

  The reason she thought him stronger now was the way in which she had seen him kill the second cat. Saliva had dribbled down his chin as he anticipated his feast. With just his bare hands, her brother had ripped off the limbs and the head of the cat and then skinned it.

  Dawn switched on the television. One of the reasons that she knew she wasn’t on the spectrum was that she liked to keep abreast of world events. People who were really on the spectrum were indifferent to current affairs. Dawn wasn’t.

  The lead item was about statues. Before turning up the sound, it looked to Dawn as if some serious vandalism had been done to some of London’s most familiar landmarks. They were all male statues. There was the famous one of the Duke of Wellington on his horse and the Churchill statue in Parliament Square and the one of Richard the Lionheart around the corner from that. The Peter Pan outside Great Ormond Street Hospital’s main entrance. Red paint trickled out of their eye sockets and mouths. Someone had even got to the top of the column in Trafalgar Square and done it to Lord Nelson.

  Dawn turned up the volume. A moment later, she was incredulous at what she was hearing. The reporter on the scene at Parliament Square was saying the substance wasn’t paint, but blood. All over the capital, the statues were bleeding.

  Incredulity was turned to sadness as she watched. The statue of Nelson had reminded her of Peter’s modelling and particularly of his recent project to build HMS Victory from a kit. It wouldn’t ever be completed now. The version of Peter she had returned to life would never do anything like that. He was a base and clumsy creature, a consumer of uncooked carcasses who liked them best still warm.

  The bulletin ended, and Dawn switched off the TV. She had zero interest in Emmerdale. Later, she would learn how to make things disappear. Not become invisible like in Harry Potter, but cease to exist altogether. She would consult the book, try it on Freddy and, if it worked successfully, get rid of her brother.

  In the meantime, she had to create something diversionary to stop the school pressuring her over Peter. She thought that the sudden death of a beloved teacher would do it. She got up and switched on her laptop, confident that somewhere on the internet she’d find a photo of Peter’s form teacher, Mrs Mahoney.

  NINE

  On Monday morning, Juliet went into college only to empty her pigeon hole and pick up her gym kit to launder it. It was five days since what she retrospectively regarded as her pointlessly whimsical visit to Kingston. And it was the morning after the strangest news bulletins she had ever seen transmitted on television. They had turned all her vague and insecure doubts into crushing certainties.

  Statues didn’t bleed.

  The Auguries had begun. Someone was using the Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom. The book existed, all right. And she further thought she now understood its real purpose. It had been created to trigger the biblical apocalypse known in the gospels as the End Times.

  Like many people with empty personal lives, Juliet suffered the irony of being an early riser. So she was at college at nine a.m., where a surprise greeted her outside her office door in the shape of a sheepish-looking Martin Doyle. How long had he been standing there? If there was urgency here, why hadn’t he called? It wasn’t as if he didn’t have her number.

  ‘You’ve visitors,’ he said. His voice was little above a whisper. ‘A delegation. A deputation. I don’t know which of those is the most accurate description. There are three of them in there.’

  ‘Don’t the best things always come in threes?’

  ‘My criticism of you last week may have been somewhat premature and a little heavy-handed.’ He hesitated. He bit his lip and shifted his feet – rather, Juliet thought, like someone dribbling an invisible football. She’d never seen her department head so discomfited. ‘I know it’s your office, Juliet, but given the exalted status of the people waiting to see you, I’d be inclined to knock before entering.’

  She didn’t do that. She was too territorial, and this was her space, her nest and sanctuary. They were two men and one woman. She recognized each of the trio. The men were the Home Secretary and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The woman was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Somewhat redundantly, they introduced themselves. Ordinarily she had three chairs in here, her own and two for visitors. A fourth had been provided, probably by the newly humble Martin Doyle.

  It was the Home Secretary who spoke. ‘We want you to tell us about the Auguries.’

  ‘You’d think me a crank.’

  He smiled and glanced to left and right at his two colleagues. ‘We have a partial solar eclipse no astronomer predicted. We have the inexplicable sinking of a watertight boat. And then yesterday statues bled, which bronze and marble aren’t supposed to. Physically, biomechanically, biologically, it’s impossible. Yet it happened.’

  The Commissioner spoke next. She said, ‘An event like the Raven’s Ait tragedy can affect the national psyche in a way that’s corrosive. Morale is damaged because the sheer number of casualties seems morally wrong. But when something unprecedented like the phenomenon of the bleeding statues occurs, it induces mass panic. We’re obliged to take a holistic approach. In common with my two colleagues, I read the Telegraph piece. Tell us about the Auguries.’

  Juliet took a deep breath and then began to speak. ‘Five hundred years ago an occult compendium was put together by a cabal of knowledgeable practitioners of magic. It was called the Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom. The Auguries occur when the book is used. I don’t think their nature can be predicted. But I do know an eclipse prophesied calamity in the medieval world.’

  The Archbishop said, ‘You think it signalled the Raven’s Ait tragedy?’

  ‘It’s just a theory.’

  ‘Then what calamity do the bleeding statues represent?’

  Juliet said, ‘If I’m right, and I hope I’m not, we’ll know soon enough.’

  ‘You really believe that someone in this country is using the Almanac?’

  ‘Going on the locations of Raven’s Ait and the statues, I’d say someone in Greater London is using it.’

  ‘How do we find them?’ asked the woman.

  ‘You tell me,’ Juliet said. ‘You’re the Met Commissioner.’

  ‘Help us with the profile.’

  ‘I assumed for a long time that the Almanac would have been written in English because it was compiled in London. I now think, because the contributors were from all over Europe, that Latin is likelier. We’re looking for someone with good linguistic skills because even if it’s not a Latin text, Middle English isn’t straightforward.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘They’re going to be good at cracking codes and puzzles. Much of the text will be codified. They’d need to be numerate.’

  ‘So, someone clever?’

  ‘Someone contradictory,’ Juliet said. ‘Extremely bright, but morally bankrupt. Anyone with the remotest ethical sensibility would know that dabbling in this stuff is fundamentally wrong. You just don’t risk the consequences of messing with the natural order of things.’

  ‘Unless it’s a precocious child,’ the Home Secretary said. ‘Someone with an adolescent sensibility characterized by spite, resentment and a desire to get even. A person like that wouldn’t really care about the natural order.’

  Juliet said, ‘The Almanac would be God’s gift to the character you’ve just described.’

  The Archbishop said, ‘This has nothing to do with God.’

  ‘Amen,’ the Met Commissioner said.

  It hadn’t occurred to Juliet Harrington that the Almanac could have fallen into the hands of someone intelligent enough to use it but too immature properly to understand the ramifications of dabbling in magic. The Home Secretary was spot on. In a perverse way the book would suit an adolescent mindset. Most adults, even sceptical adults, would be too afraid to use it.

  She became aware that the Home Secretary was staring at her. He said, ‘Magic exacts a price.’

  ‘Always,’ she said, ‘traditionally. Whether
you believe in it or you don’t. All the tales are cautionary. There’s always a catch.’

  ‘If there is another calamity,’ he said, ‘we’ll be coming back to you.’

  ‘I don’t see what I could do.’

  ‘You strike me as a resourceful woman. I’m confident you’ll think of something.’

  Juliet sat at her desk after her deputation had departed and pondered on whether she could actually do anything. The trail of the Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom was secretive, clandestine, clouded by obscurity and, at 500 years old, extremely cold. Original ownership had never been claimed because anywhere in the Europe of the sixteenth century it would have earned a death sentence carried out in the most brutal manner.

  She supposed she could travel to Hanover and take a thorough look at what survived of Gunter Keller’s papers. She had never before had the sanction to do that because her head of department would have seen it as a deliberate provocation as well as an absolute waste of time and money. But his attitude seemed to have changed quite a lot. And if she was doing it at the behest of the Home Secretary, she thought Martin Doyle would use every ounce of his academic clout to get her full access.

  This left Juliet feeling slightly conflicted. On the one hand, she had dreamed for years of being granted access to the Keller archive. On the other, she didn’t want some catastrophic event to deliver her that wish.

  The phone on her desk began to ring. It was the Home Secretary. He said, ‘Is this a secure line?’

  It was too soon for him to be back at Whitehall. She thought he must be phoning from his car. A bad sign. She said, ‘I’ve absolutely no idea what that means.’

  ‘Probably doesn’t matter, but old habits and all that. I’ll call you back on your mobile in five minutes. Take the call outside and out of anyone’s earshot.’

  ‘You don’t have my mobile number.’

  ‘Of course I have your bloody mobile number.’

  On her way out of the building, she remembered that he had come into politics late. His background was a spook’s background. He’d worked at MI5.

  ‘There’s been an outbreak.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Over a hundred cases presented this morning, swamping A&E departments at four major London hospitals which have gone into crisis mode as a direct consequence. We’ve had to declare a major incident. We might have to declare a state of emergency. More than half of those cases are critical.’

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘Bubonic plague.’

  ‘The bleeding statues.’

  A bark of sardonic laughter. ‘Indeed. The one UK consultant with experience of plague says he’s never seen it spread so fast or with such virulence. The most seriously afflicted generally get attacks to their lungs and last a couple of days. He says some of these victims will be dead within hours.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘What can you do for us, Professor Harrington?’

  ‘A German alchemist named Gunter Keller was one of the people who compiled the Almanac. I’ve always had a hunch that he was its mastermind.’

  ‘A hunch?’

  ‘An informed guess. An intuition.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I could go to Hanover and look at his papers. If there was a way to begin this, logic suggests there should be a key to stopping it.’

  ‘What was Keller’s overall motive? Money? Notoriety?’

  ‘Bigger than either. I think he wanted to trigger the End Times.’

  ‘Then that might be a one-way street.’

  ‘You don’t think I should bother?’

  ‘I think you should go home for your passport and pack a bag. We’ll have you on a flight this afternoon. We’ll book a hotel room, wire you expenses money. And my next call will be to Dr Doyle. He’s going to do everything in his power to smooth that path for you over there, academically.’

  Juliet took a breath. She said, ‘We don’t really see eye to eye, me and my head of department.’

  ‘Irrelevant, frankly. If he doesn’t cooperate fully, I’ll personally see to it that by the end of the week he’ll be sweeping gutters for a living.’

  ‘Do you really believe a book is doing this?’

  ‘We told you this morning, we take a holistic approach. The army is on full alert, all leave cancelled. We’ve a COBRA committee meeting due to begin as soon as this car reaches Downing Street. Our sociologists and psychological people are saying riots are imminent.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘And in answer to your question, no, I don’t believe a book is doing this. But I’ve yet to be convinced that it isn’t being done by the person using that book.’

  Juliet did as she’d been instructed; she went home and packed a bag and retrieved her passport. A text message told her she was booked into a hotel at the other end. The Keller archive was housed at the Humboldt University in Berlin, rather than in Hanover. There was a university in Hanover, but it famously specialized in technology, which hadn’t really been Gunter Keller’s thing. The wisdom he had revelled in was ancient wisdom. He was someone who had never done anything other than go forward by looking back.

  She was in her department head’s office having a final discussion with him about the project prior to driving to Heathrow, when a call came through for her.

  ‘I’m a Catholic priest named Thomas Gould. I’d like to speak with you about the monograph you wrote.’

  She didn’t really think she had anything useful about the monograph to discuss with a clergyman. He was probably just looking for an argument. And anyway, now wasn’t the time.

  ‘I’m leaving on an unscheduled trip,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to contact you when I get back, Father Gould.’

  That wasn’t ideal, he said, sounding somewhat disgruntled. But he supposed it would have to do.

  TEN

  The school wasn’t closed because of the sudden and, to Andrew Baxter, shocking death of popular teacher Mrs Bernadette Mahoney. It was closed because all the schools were closing until what they were calling the ‘public health crisis’ was resolved by the government. Though it was Handy Andy’s personal opinion that it was the NHS which would resolve the crisis, rather than the ministers putting on frowns and their gravest voices delivering sound bites on the telly.

  Bubonic plague was infectious. Andrew had studied the Black Death in a series of history lessons he’d really enjoyed. Some estimates claimed that 60 per cent of the world’s population had perished. Whole villages and even towns had died. Crops had gone unharvested in the fields for lack of labourers to carry out the work. Basically, there’d been chaos, and it had taken the world’s population 250 years to recover to pre-plague levels.

  Bubonic plague was infectious. So was meningitis, if it was viral meningitis. But Andrew, for a fourteen-year-old boy, was a conscientious soul. He believed that good over bad was about actions rather than words. It was why he served on the altar. It was why he was going to knock on Sneaky Pete Jackson’s grandfather’s door this afternoon. Pete’s mobile seemed to be off, which was understandable. There was his slightly weird twin sister, but Andrew wasn’t even sure she had a phone – very weird when you thought about that. And of course, he didn’t have a number for Pete’s grandpa.

  He’d asked his mum about visiting Pete, if he was successful in finding out which hospital he was in. And his mum had sat him down with a concerned look on her face and said that London’s hospitals weren’t particularly safe places just at that moment, even if Pete’s meningitis wasn’t viral.

  Andrew had nodded. He got this. He wondered whether being a bit dirty encouraged diseases such as meningitis. Sneaky Pete’s personal hygiene had been all over the place since the accident that killed his folks.

  ‘Just find out what hospital and which ward he’s on and send him a nice card,’ Andrew’s mum had said to her son. ‘Something funny that will make him smile or chuckle. WH Smith do an excellent range and they’re reasonable value.’

  S
o here he now was, outside the house where he knew Pete Jackson lived with his gramps and his dippy twin sister, whose name he would have to remember in case she was the one who opened the door to him. And when she did open it in response to his knock she was pale and quite wide-eyed, wearing a large bandage on her bare right upper arm.

  ‘Dawn,’ Andrew said. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Handy Andy,’ she said. Then, ‘Dog bite.’

  Andrew blushed at her use of the nickname. He said, ‘You’re quite tall. Must have been a big dog. Unless it jumped?’

  ‘Great Dane,’ she said. ‘Like in Scooby-Doo.’

  ‘Thought they were friendly,’ he said, ‘like in Scooby-Doo.’

  She raised her eyes skywards in a gesture of exasperation. They were bright green eyes and, actually, very pretty. ‘It’s never the dogs, Andy. It’s always the owners.’

  Andrew nodded, more sagely than he felt. He didn’t really know what she meant. The bandage had blood seeping through it. He remembered his own tetanus jab. The random thought came into his mind that most soldiers wounded in the Great War died of tetanus rather than the wound itself. Dirt got into them from the trench mud and it was full of bacteria.

  ‘Why don’t you come in for a minute? Tell me what it is you want.’

  Dawn didn’t speak like most fourteen-year-old girls Andrew knew. Her perfect grammar made her sound like someone older. She’d won the German prize at school two years running.

  They went into the kitchen. It smelled stagnant from a fish tank Andrew saw was empty and slightly green with sediment. There was an unfinished model of HMS Victory on the table-top. Andrew knew that Sneaky Pete (who wasn’t truthfully sneaky at all) always spent his requiem tips on Airfix kits.