The Auguries

by F. G. Cottam

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Recognition. Success. Reward. Wealth. All of these will come to you in the short term, Herr Keller. This is your destiny over coming years.’

  ‘And in the longer term?’

  ‘The longer term is closed to me at present.’

  I did not believe her. I think she could see my future as vividly as words written in black ink boldly on a white page. But she would not share what she saw. Perhaps some grisly fate awaits me further along the road I travel. But it matters not. She saw only one possible outcome, I think. I believe we write our own destiny. At every crossroads, we choose a path. No man’s fate is written in stone while still a mewling infant. That is not at all the manner in which the world functions.

  Most interesting was what Mistress Nye had to say about my English lord and patron. He is regarded as the greatest swordsman in Christendom, having killed a dozen men in duels with rapiers he has fashioned at extravagant cost from Toledo steel worked in Spain by the best craftsmen money can commission.

  He has a perpetual motion machine made by the artist and inventor da Vinci some years ago. Physical laws claim that energy is finite and eventually exhausts itself; but Mistress Nye insists that our master’s infernal machine is relentless in its ceaseless industry.

  He is a collector of physical trophies. In a water pool hewn from the ground beneath his castle, these are said to include a siren of the sea, half woman and half fish, her lower portion entirely scaled and with a tail fin shaped horizontally in common with the mammals of the oceans.

  ‘Have you seen this creature?’

  ‘I have heard her singing,’ Mistress Nye told me. ‘It is not a sound, sir, you would quickly forget.’

  ‘Is our new master cruel? He has killed a dozen men.’

  ‘None in cold blood. All affairs of honour. He would not kill you. You are of common birth and so would not qualify to cross swords with him.’

  Both a rebuke and a comfort to me.

  ‘Has he a wife? Children?’

  ‘Both a wife and heirs. A bastard or two is possible. He likes women, in contrast to yourself.’

  ‘Your manner borders on insolence.’

  ‘In matters esoteric, Herr Keller, we are equals.’

  ‘Prove that to me.’

  She asked for paper and a pen. I fetched her parchment and a quill and a fresh pot of ink. I sat feeling the dull throb of my tortured limbs as she scratched away, a dreamy, preoccupied look across her unimpressive features. Presently, she stopped writing and held up the single sheet upon which she had worked.

  ‘This is a list of your recent inquisitors. These are the burghers who disguised themselves in your presence for fear of vengeance.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I see things. Trust me. These are the men who had you arrested and imprisoned.’

  ‘What is the purpose of this list?’

  ‘Retribution,’ she said. ‘Choose a name. Its owner will die tonight.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I will sketch their likeness and sing them a lullaby and their heart will stop. Their sleep will become cold and eternal.’

  ‘You know what they look like?’

  ‘Masks do not obscure second sight.’

  I pondered on this, impressed. I said, ‘Sketch a likeness of each. Sing them all a lullaby.’

  Mistress Nye shook her head. ‘A connection would be made. A finger would be pointed. You would be re-arrested and would not survive the subsequent questioning.’

  She was right, of course. It did not require second sight to see that. I pointed at a name on her list, one I recognized, a wealthy corn merchant and generous commissioner of religious artworks in the city’s churches, a lay preacher and enthusiastic advocate of the flaying whip, the thumbscrews and the rack. A man I believed to have a brood of seven children under the age of twelve, whose loss would reverberate after his demise.

  He duly died that night and, after a four-day period of public lamentation, was put to rest with lavish ceremony in an elaborately sculpted tomb. By that time, Mistress Nye had set off across the German Sea on her journey back to her English home. A woman of churlish character and unremarkable appearance, by the time of her departure she had nevertheless earned my respect. And some degree also of gratitude for her timely intervention into my own troubles.

  Something simple would be the best antidote to the Almanac, something that could defuse it as a bomb can be defused before the carnage its explosion can inflict. I need to create a fitting spell for this. Something such as a grain of sand or a single crystal of salt placed between its pages to make it cease to manufacture magic. It need only be a symbolic thing, something readily available. And of course it must, to be of any use, be irreversible. I will work on it. It is far from beyond me. My new master has furnished me with a full laboratory. Its location remains secret, despite the agony of my recent ordeal. Its survival is testament, I suppose, to my own dedication.

  TWENTY

  ‘It would be interesting to know what he meant by the “wrong hands”,’ Juliet said, ‘given that he wanted the Almanac to trigger apocalypse.’

  ‘Someone good,’ Paul said. ‘Someone who wanted to see an end to famine and encourage a pacific mood in the world. They weren’t at all Keller’s objectives.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder about the objectives of the man who commissioned it,’ Juliet said.

  ‘The serial-killer swordsman?’

  ‘Don’t make the mistake of judging him by the standards of a time half a millennium away from his.’

  ‘He still sounds as though his feathers were easily ruffled.’

  ‘If we knew his identity, we might be closer to the Almanac’s present location. We’d at least have some clues. Aristocrats have a lineage.’

  ‘Mistress Nye says heirs,’ Paul said.

  ‘No guarantee they survived him. Infant mortality was extremely high then. We can’t take this material out of its specific time and context.’

  ‘Spoken like an academic.’

  ‘Well, I am an academic.’

  Paul grinned. ‘You don’t look like one.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s a compliment, Juliet. Lighten up.’

  ‘I’ll lighten up when we’ve found the Almanac and put it to bed with sand or salt. Wish he’d been more specific about that.’

  Paul closed the ledger and hovered a hand over Keller’s notebooks, fingers spread. He said, ‘I’m going to have a crack at these this afternoon. But I need some lunch first and a break from translating Latin aloud.’

  ‘Interesting stories,’ Juliet said, ‘if unenlightening.’

  ‘Pretty dark,’ Paul said. ‘Do you believe it all?’

  Juliet thought about this. She said, ‘I saw the solar eclipse. I read about the Esmeralda. I avoided the fog by a few hours and know that as a direct consequence of that weird period of weather, London is about to flood. I can’t remember a time when the superpowers have been more at one another’s throats.’

  ‘And this book’s responsible?’

  ‘The Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom was never neutralized in the way Gunter Keller suggested it could be. It’s in the hands of someone vindictive, immature and completely reckless. We’ve speculated on an adolescent child. We have to find them.’

  Paul gestured again at the notebooks. He said, ‘I think these are formulations, the spells in coded longhand which he’d have boiled down for the Almanac. I think the whole point of the spell book was that an amateur could use it. That way Keller could see it used most effectively to trigger the End Times. I don’t think any of this material is going to help us with its present location.’

  ‘An English aristocrat who was also a notorious duellist shouldn’t be all that difficult to identify.’

  ‘There could be more than one candidate.’

  ‘How many who had their rapiers forged from Toledo steel? How many regarded as the best swordsman in Europe?’

&
nbsp; ‘How many with a pet mermaid?’ Paul said.

  Juliet smiled. She said, ‘I’m assuming that particular claim to be dubious at best.’

  ‘Mary Nye takes a practical approach to magic generally. She’s pragmatic, almost dour about it.’

  ‘She couldn’t have been all that pragmatic, Paul. Less than four years after this encounter she was strung up at Tyburn for witchcraft.’

  ‘And four years after it Keller burned. Hazardous hobbies.’

  ‘They weren’t hobbies. They were the same vocation. Keller, Cortez, Hood, Nye; it sounds like a compulsion with all of them. If the rewards were enormous, so were the risks. But they don’t seem to have been able to stop themselves.’

  ‘Do you think the Almanac’s present owner shares that compulsion?’

  ‘We have to hope not, but the answer’s probably yes.’

  ‘If Keller’s aim is apocalypse, why the preoccupation with material luxury? Isn’t that contradictory?’

  ‘He hints at the answer to that himself, Paul. After a lifetime of near penury, he just wants to sample the alternative. He just wants a taste of the affluent life.’

  Paul Beck shivered. The air conditioning in that sterile reading room made it chilly. But Juliet thought it more a shudder of horror than a simple reaction to the cold.

  ‘Let’s go and get some food,’ he said.

  They walked three blocks to a café with pavement tables. They could have eaten at the university canteen. Whatever Martin Doyle had done from Oxford had seen them warmly welcomed in Berlin. But the day was bright and warm and the work grimly important and it seemed sensible to make the best of their short break from it. Besides, Juliet thought, they were enjoying one another’s company to the point where she privately wished the circumstances were very different. She’d have preferred a less stressful agenda and a Paul who was unattached. Once they’d found a table and ordered, Juliet busied herself sending a text.

  ‘Anything I should know about?’

  ‘I’m speaking to an Oxford colleague. She’s a Tudor specialist. I want her to try to pinpoint her likeliest candidate for the man who commissioned the Almanac.’

  ‘Good idea. My instinct tells me we’ll get nowhere with the Keller archive. I mean it’s an interesting insight into occult rites and amoral characters, but I don’t think it’s going to turn into a concrete lead.’

  Juliet was quiet. Paul said, ‘What?’

  ‘I was just thinking that I wish you were free to work with me on this. I rather wish you weren’t based in Berlin.’

  ‘I’m in England as of next week, Juliet. Specifically, in London.’

  ‘Why? How?’

  He’d been maintaining eye contact throughout their conversation. Now, as their waiter approached their table with drinks, he looked down as though studying his cutlery. He didn’t answer her until their waiter had retreated back inside, out of earshot.

  ‘I requested and have been granted a three-month leave of absence.’

  ‘Why three months?’

  ‘Because that’s the most time they’ll give me and the least it’s likely to take me to recover.’

  ‘You’ve been ill?’

  ‘Only if you count heartsick.’

  ‘Divorce?’

  ‘Fiancée broke it off ten days ago, which was a fortnight before the wedding was supposed to take place.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘Better offer.’

  Juliet said, ‘To be perfectly honest, you strike me as a bit of a catch.’

  ‘It’s like you said earlier, Juliet. Context is everything.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I’m a linguist. I’m a translator. I can’t compete with a love rival who plays football for Bayern Munich. Terrible pun, but that’s out of my league.’

  ‘When I first saw you this morning, that’s what I thought you were. A footballer.’

  ‘She goes for a particular physical type. But I have neither the playing skills nor the bank balance to compete.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Paul said, ‘not really. She’s shown her true colours, is all. It’s a bit disillusioning. But you’re better off knowing that kind of thing sooner rather than later.’

  The waiter reappeared, this time with their food. Juliet noticed that Paul hadn’t yet started his drink. His soft drink; they were both on Diet Coke. The Keller archive might be a cul-de-sac, but they had to be sure. And the sand/salt revelation was something, especially if the afternoon provided some information to confirm which of those it was.

  Paul Beck no longer looked to Juliet like a man particularly interested in the food presented on the plate in front of him. He was elsewhere, momentarily in the company of someone else. She thought there was an obvious discrepancy between his words and his feelings. The English phrase for it was ‘putting on a brave face’, something he would certainly know.

  Then he surprised her by saying, ‘Tell me about you. The second thing I noticed about you was that you don’t wear a wedding ring.’

  ‘And the first thing?’

  The eye contact had returned. He was looking at her coolly, openly. ‘How lovely you are to look at,’ he said. ‘Tell me about you.’

  Juliet thought briefly about using the hoary old line about being married to her work. But she didn’t do that. Instead, she told him the truth about her divorce and the farce of her subsequent internet dating experience. He laughed, not cruelly, but in the appropriate places.

  When they’d finished, Juliet insisted on paying with some of her Whitehall expenses money. Their conversation had reminded her that she was a believer in fate. And she thought they got up from their table different people to the two who had only an hour earlier sat down.

  TWENTY-ONE

  At three o’clock that Tuesday afternoon, Juliet Harrington was listening to her Tudor specialist Oxford contact, taking notes on the phone, while Paul Beck worked through the coded notebooks Gunter Keller had filled, trying to make sense of them.

  In London, at five past three that afternoon, the combination of heavy rain travelling down the Thames and a surge-tide coming up the river forced the surface to rise and swell above the height of its embankments and flood most of the West End and the City to an average depth of six feet. The commercial damage was both immediate and incalculable. No one in political office would put a price on the harm done to property and infrastructure. The metropolis was crippled. Raw sewage exploded to the surface, streets become canals and then transformed into runnels of filth and, potentially, of disease.

  The cultural impact was equally immediate. And devastating. And of course, irreversible. Theatres and galleries and cinemas awash with polluted water, precious artworks destroyed by a ruinous and stinking elemental catastrophe. Trade simply and suddenly froze. Survivors overwhelmed the heights of Hampstead and Primrose Hill in a fleeing horde. Floating bodies littered the surface lower down, too many to count, let alone to gather up and bury.

  The emergency services and the military were quickly and predictably overwhelmed. Gangs of youths in stolen RIBs began an ungovernable spree of looting. Thousands of people trapped in the upper floors of their homes or workplaces waved handkerchiefs at windows in a futile bid to be noticed and rescued.

  The rest of the country continued to be governed. The Cabinet sat exiled from the capital at Windsor Castle, having been taken there in two Chinooks by Royal Marine pilots when the event became inevitable a few days prior to the actual deluge.

  The international crisis inevitably worsened. Londoners blamed the Russians for the fog and the fog for the air crash that had disabled their proud and precious flood barrier. The few dissenting voices in government were considered weak, vacillating and gullible. They weren’t just deluded pacifists. They were appeasers in a wounded country crying out for retaliation.

  Dawn Jackson, from the relatively safe altitude of Crouch End, watched the news bulletins wondering whether the bodies decaying quickly in the flood wate
rs would bring the cholera epidemic some medical experts were predicting.

  She thought that Thomas Malthus would have enjoyed the TV coverage. It was Malthusian theory in practice: nature seeking a positive way to thin the population of an overcrowded city and succeeding ingeniously.

  She wondered at the wider impact on her studies. She knew that exam boards were regional and thought hers might struggle to find invigilators and enough school premises remaining unscathed to make her Special Studies exams a realistic proposition. It would be a great shame, she thought, if they didn’t now happen. They would be the concrete proof of her academic precocity. Accolades were important to Dawn.

  The rain finally stopped at five fifteen p.m. Twice the average rainfall for the month of October had fallen in twenty hours in June. The surge-tide slowed, stopped and receded. By five thirty p.m., the water level in Oxford Street had fallen by a full foot. Dawn thought that if it kept on falling at that rate, the streets would be under puddles only by midnight. But morning would reveal the aftermath. The buildings smeared with mud and shit and silt. The waterlogged furniture and spoiled food stocks and contaminated water supply. The thousands, maybe millions of cars that would have to be written off. The likelihood, in the absence of the flood barrier, that all this was destined to happen again.

  And the bodies. There were too many to count, let alone clean up to a timetable that was logistically safe. One commentator had said that there were too many bodies to contemplate, but Dawn enjoyed contemplation, regarding it as one of her many intellectual skills. Her dead brother had always been too shallow-minded for contemplation. She was an altogether deeper thinking individual.

  There was talk of mass burial of the flood victims. And there was contrasting talk of drying them out and burning them on huge bonfires. If they did that, the smoke would be black from body fat and it would smell like a giant barbecue. Dawn couldn’t really see it, though.

  One ingenious idea was to tow the dead out as cargo aboard barges and bury them at sea. But there was a practical problem with that in that there weren’t many barges left intact on the river. They illustrated this on TV with footage of a barge on George Street, which was the high street in Richmond upon Thames. It was berthed in the House of Fraser window it had smashed its way through. There was another adrift in Parliament Square, where Dawn remembered the statue of Churchill had bled from the eyes and mouth not long ago. A third was canted at an odd angle on the river-lapped steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. That one still had most of its cargo of industrial coke, the ballast that had moored it where it had finally ended up.