by F. G. Cottam
No politicians were talking about casualties, but Sky News had got a statistician in who knew about population density. He said that in his rough estimation, the death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands. For many of the drowned, the flood had just been too deep and rapid to escape.
Dawn liked that phrase, rough estimation. She liked it so much that she wrote it down, wondering whether she could find a context for it in her own written work.
Dawn’s secret ambition was to become a writer. She knew she had a good, if rather dark, imagination. She suspected that she might lack a little bit of empathy, but even the most gifted writers didn’t have everything in their creative arsenal. And she could fake empathy, she thought. There was plenty of room for manoeuvre, after all, as to where the fiction started, and where it finally stopped.
She heard a clatter above her head and then a soft thump in her grandpa’s garden and went out through the kitchen door to see what had caused the commotion. There was a large bright unnatural fabric thing collapsed on the lawn, which she quickly realized was actually a small parachute. It was made of nylon, or something similar. Some polymer anyway, light and tough.
Dawn gathered up the parachute and saw that there was a wooden crate underneath it. She went and fetched her frozen grandpa’s Swiss Army knife and pried open the crate. It was filled tightly with water bottles and tins of food and packets of dried soup and stew. No brand names on the packaging. From that she assumed army rations.
She had done a big shop only the previous day. She thought the public-spirited thing to do would be to knock on doors and hand this stuff out to neighbours with fewer provisions than she had. But Dawn didn’t know the neighbours and didn’t wish to get to know them. She didn’t really do neighbourliness. And she didn’t want them to get to know about the secrets stored in her cellar and garage. There was still room in her kitchen cupboards. And though there was still a couple of thousand pounds in Grandpa’s account, his debit card would not go on working for ever.
Standing there in the garden, Dawn was extremely tempted to dig up her spell book and go to work on Grandpa. She was curious to see what could be achieved with him. He’d been a bit crotchety sometimes, and never in the best of health because of the war wound and the smoking. But he’d been much more intelligent than she’d ever thought her brother to be. She thought he might come back closer to the full shilling than her brother had. And he wouldn’t bite her. His false teeth would fall out if he tried.
But sore as the temptation was, she didn’t dig up her spell book. Instead she stored the army provisions away neatly in the kitchen cupboards. She put the water bottles in the fridge, slightly amazed that she still had electric power. There was no point distracting herself with the spell book until she had clarification one way or the other about her school tests.
Dawn revised until seven p.m., when the power did go off. Her big concern when that happened was whether it would be restored before her grandfather had time to thaw out. Light wasn’t a particular problem because, like most old people, Grandpa had a stock of candles – big, waxy, wicked cylinders she’d seen in a kitchen drawer with a full box of Swan Vesta matches. And it was almost the longest day, so it wouldn’t be dark anyway for all that much of the night.
She closed her Spanish vocab textbook with a snap and fetched and lit a candle, just for the flame and the scent of melting wax and the atmosphere. She went to turn on the TV and catch up on the flood news, but remembered that without power, the TV wouldn’t work either. Unless she wanted to watch the Pete channel, which she didn’t, particularly.
She sat instead in the candlelight and thought of ways in which she could get even with Handy Andy Baxter. It wasn’t at the top of it, but it definitely featured on her list of things to do.
Behind her, in water which, in the absence of electric light, glowed with phosphorescence, the surviving terrapins roiled and slathered. They were down to twenty or so, snapping hungrily at one another. And the survivors had grown. It was natural selection, the survival of the fittest, which was Darwin rather than Malthus, but still something Dawn knew about. She was oblivious now, though, to the cannibalistic conflict being waged at her back. Her mind was wholly on Andy.
TWENTY-TWO
October 15, 1528
I am returned from Jerusalem, a hazardous place to travel to by land and sea, but I still possess the amulet given me by Cordelia Cortez and saw enough of what the countess is capable of to believe wholly in the power to protect with which she invested it.
I went there in search of treasure. The talisman I sought is perhaps the most highly prized in Christendom. It is the fragment of the One True Cross seized by Saladin at the calamitous Battle of Hattin in the Second Crusade.
This relic, in Muslim hands, was subsequently lost to history. But Mary Nye saw it in one of the black visions that sometimes assail her and apprised me of where it might be found. Soaked in the sacred blood of Christ, used properly – or rather, improperly – it possesses enormous power. And my journey was worthwhile, for I found the item where she said I would, in a small casket secreted in a chiselled hollow shaped for it on the rear side of a stone fronting a section of the old city wall. This sheltered casket, hinged and fashioned from gold, had kept the priceless wooden fragment perfectly preserved.
I recovered it in the small hours and thus in darkness, armed with a sketch demonstrating the correct section of wall. I would not have attempted to do it by day. But the stars are bright in the East and the sketch formidably detailed. I found what I was looking for after just over an hour’s search.
Blasphemy is a great spur to occult power if the blasphemer has the courage and willingness to go to true extremes of degradation. I will use this relic more than once in rituals I have yet to devise. They will be an insult both to the crucified Christ and to Christianity itself. I take my sacrilegious acts as seriously as, conversely, I take my acts of worship.
On the way back to Hanover I diverted to the Netherlands to press Tiberius van Vaunt into contributing his arcane knowledge to the eventual creation of the Almanac. I had no need for a demonstration of van Vaunt’s prowess at the esoteric arts. For seven years, in my own youth, he was the master and I was his pupil.
The one criticism I would make of my former tutor is that it is to him that I owe my own unfortunate habit of tinkering sometimes with the dead. Neither of us has the talent for this that Lorenz Hood, in the Tyrol, proved to possess. Though Hood has the advantage of the cold to preserve his corpses. And at least I am innocent of Hood’s lustfully unsavoury motives for reanimation.
Tiberius van Vaunt was intrigued by the proposition of the Almanac, by its ambition and by the quality of its contributors. He had heard of Cordelia Cortez and Mary Nye and Lorenz Hood. There is an occult underground, necessarily secretive and mostly encoded. But it is there and its whispers carry and resonate throughout the continent.
And of course he knew about me. ‘My most talented and distinguished pupil,’ he said, ‘always the bravest in the extremes of your experimentation.’ This last observation was as much admonishment I think as praise, but I was still proud to hear it from someone with his powers.
I did not require him to provide me with proof, as I had the others. I knew the potent extent of what my old master could accomplish. But I was treated to a demonstration nevertheless.
My new-found prosperity was probably what prompted this. We walked from van Vaunt’s Amsterdam home for dinner at a tavern he said was safe from prying eyes. The food was good and the beer even better and we gave nothing away to anyone eavesdropping on our blandly innocent conversation. But my clothing now is rich enough in cloth and cut to make me look a prosperous man, and when I insisted on paying the reckoning for our repast I brought forth my purse, fairly bulging with coins.
We were not immediately aware of being followed out of the door. But followed we were, by three ruffians armed with stout clubs and a short maritime cutlass. All three had knives in their belts and en
ough scarring on their faces in the bright moonlight to suggest a familiarity with street and tavern brawls.
They said nothing. They were skilled enough thieves to confront us at an isolated spot, late, with a high wall blocking any hope of retreat or escape. We were cornered. There was a leer on each of their faces and the one armed with the cutlass gestured with the fingers of his free hand for us to surrender our valuables.
I reached resignedly for my purse, wondering whether our attackers would beat us after robbing us, just for the sport. I looked around for a missile. One of my skills is to move objects with my mind at considerable velocity. A brick or pebble, a piece of cartwheel, a plank of discarded timber or clay flowerpot would have made a destructive weapon. A loose cobble I could pry from its bed using the power of thought; but there was literally nothing to hand.
My old tutor pulled out a pocket watch. He held it forth by its chain in front of him. It was heavily engraved across both sides with what looked to me like runic symbols. It began to spin, gaining in the speed of its revolutions until it was a glimmering moonlit blur. And then van Vaunt began to chant something in a language that sounded coarse and ancient.
I expected one of our assailants to snatch the watch. I thought it likely that it was the work of Peter Henlein, the master locksmith and clockmaker of Nuremberg, the man credited with inventing these small and elegant timepieces about four or five years ago. Items of such intricate rarity are almost priceless. But no move was made to take it. The three would-be thieves simply stood transfixed. Then they simultaneously dropped their weapons to the ground.
A cutlass and two clubs clattered to the cobbles. Their knives followed. The watch continued spinning, my old master continued incanting in that strangely broken monotone. Then the men began to sob, almost like a trio of tearful children. And then at once, they turned from us and walked away, each with the same identical gait to their movement. Almost as strung puppets depending from invisible strings, their feet appearing weightless across the ground.
‘Why did they weep?’
‘Self-indulgence, Gunter. They were grieving their own deaths.’
‘Where are they going?’
‘To the canal. Into the canal.’
I waited to hear three splashes. But of course, there was only one. They went in together.
‘Was it hypnotism? How did they follow what you said?’
‘It wasn’t hypnotism. I merely robbed them of their will and then commanded them. I was speaking Dutch but had to make the language alien to your ears, so you wouldn’t be compelled to go too.’
‘Will you teach me to do that?’
‘The enchantment, or the cloaked language?’
‘Both.’
‘Tomorrow. The beer and the spell casting have conspired to make me tired.’
‘How deep is the canal?’
Van Vaunt laughed. ‘Deep enough,’ he said.
‘I didn’t know you profited from your work to the degree that enables a purchase such as that timepiece of yours.’
‘The watch was a gift from someone grateful for what I did for his eight-year-old daughter. Cholera, Keller.’
‘Ah.’
I didn’t ask whether the disease had been arrested, or the child revived. My old tutor had many talents, but he was no physician. Sometimes discretion is called for and this was such a moment. And so we strolled, unmolested, back to his comfortable home.
I do not know precisely what price was paid for the magic that delivered us from our would-be attackers. But I believe it might be one rich in irony. It transpired that they were sailors from a merchant vessel. Their deaths made the ship short-handed and it was delayed putting to sea, I later heard, while their replacements were recruited. When finally she did embark, the Esmeralda sank with all hands three days into her voyage.
I have decided on salt. A single salt crystal placed between each of its pages will divest the Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom of all power. Sometimes I am too reckless. There will be no recklessness concerning the Almanac. It cannot fall into the hands of someone intent on using its power in a bountiful or compassionate way. Christ’s miracle with the loaves and fishes will remain a legend of the gospels, not something to be repeated by an individual armed with ideals and the power to summon magic. The sole and secret purpose of the Almanac will be to provoke apocalypse. I am intent upon it.
It was the last entry. Paul Beck read it aloud, ten minutes before the university library was due to close. By then he’d decoded the notebooks; his earlier supposition that they were spells and formulae Keller would boil down for the Almanac had proven correct. Their exhausting day had given them not a single clue about the book’s possible location at the present time.
‘What now?’ he said.
Juliet blew a loose strand of hair away from her face. ‘Honestly?’ she said. ‘I feel like getting drunk.’
They had not yet heard about London. Fifteen minutes later, utterly incredulous, they would see the carnage from their bar stools on a wall-mounted flatscreen TV.
TWENTY-THREE
They were on their second beer and pretty much in shock when Juliet took a call from the Home Secretary, desperate, to go by the sound of his voice, for some glad tidings. She had to confess that there weren’t any of those coming from her direction.
‘What do you know about the Blitz, Juliet?’
‘Not my period,’ she said.
‘Several facts about it aren’t really discussed. Everyone knew by the late 1930s that Nazi arms escalation was making war inevitable and that it would be an aerial war, a war of bombing. Yet the British built no air raid shelters. Do you know why?’
‘No.’
‘Because our psychologists said that a population sheltering safely from bombing raids would never come back up to retaliate. The people denied shelters weren’t invited into the Underground, either. That’s a cosy myth. The Underground was stormed by civilians with nowhere else to go.’
‘I see.’
‘Sheer good fortune that a line under the Thames wasn’t bombed. The Bakerloo line. Carnage.’
‘Where is this going?’
‘The Germans had psychologists too. They were consulted by the Luftwaffe. The first bombs used were firebombs, small and dropped in clusters to ignite a seriously combustible city. Everything burned, from the horsehair stuffing the furniture to the paraffin in the stoves. But it didn’t work.’
‘I’m sure there’s a point here, sir.’
‘My point is what came next. The psychologists said, if you bomb their landmark buildings to rubble, they’ll forget what they are fighting for and give up. Level St Paul’s and the Houses of Parliament, bomb Tower Bridge into oblivion, and they’ll lose their national identity. Without those reminders, they’ll no longer know who they are.’
‘And that’s happening now?’
‘The flood waters are receding. But much of London is irreparable, including some of its most treasured and iconic buildings. Have you seen Nelson’s Column yet?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Came down half an hour ago. Subsidence at the base, caused by the flood waters. It was pushed to an angle where the engineers said it could no longer support its own weight. It’s in three pieces, and the man it celebrates is now in two halves.’
‘Jesus.’
‘How’s Romeo?’
‘How’s who? Oh, I see. Paul’s fine, sir. We didn’t get anywhere today, but that’s through no lack of effort or willingness on his part. He cracked Keller’s code. Did you know his grandmother was at Bletchley Park?’
‘Of course I did. I want you back here tomorrow, both of you, if he’s going to be useful. There’s an army base you can fly from; I’ll send you directions. You’ll come back aboard a Hercules.’
‘Why a military plane? Seems a bit unnecessary. Flying into where?’
‘Flying into Heathrow. Heathrow’s been requisitioned by the military. All civilian flights have been cancelled. The country’s in a state of
emergency.’
‘I won’t be bringing Romeo, sir. He’s got a leave of absence.’
‘I think not, Juliet. I think you’ll find he’ll volunteer for this.’
She had walked out of the bar to take the call. Inside, through the picture window facing the street, she could see neon signage and subtle lighting and Paul Beck watching the images shot in London earlier in the day on the flatscreen above the bar. London didn’t resemble Venice, under the water. The water was mud-coloured and looked as if it would stink. Bodies floated inert in it among an impossible litter of other debris. The images were surreal until your mind made sense of their magnitude and chaos. Then they became apocalyptic.
‘How close are we to war, Home Secretary?’
A mirthless laugh was emitted from her phone. He said, ‘You need a cocktail of anger and indignation and hatred to declare a war. You require optimism to win one. Right now, we have precious little of that. The situation in the South East of England is close to anarchic. You’d think an enemy power would take advantage. I doubt, from an enemy point of view, there’s ever been a more advantageous time.’
‘The country on its knees?’
‘On the ropes,’ he said. ‘Always a puncher’s chance, Juliet.’
‘That stuff you told me about the Blitz?’
‘Yes?’
‘Not my period, like I told you. But I know quite a lot about medieval history. By some accounts, the Black Death claimed the lives of sixty per cent of Europe’s population. Famine was widespread in northern Europe in the aftermath, because there weren’t the peasants left to gather the grain harvest, so people had no bread.’