“Yet she owes you nothing and is not forsworn to you.” My mother was actually standing up for me?
Lilith grinned, which I found terrifying. “You may hate me, but you keep your place and stand apart. You are impartial. Yet this puny egg, laid from your own rebirth, takes side and fights openly for Him. So I will claim them both.”
Lilith was fingering the air, commanding the shadows, shaping ribbons of shade and fountains of darkness, until we were all enclosed. The trees had gone, and the pool, and the grasses, herbs and sweet moonshine. All the bodies of the dead had gone and their scattered weapons, the clotting and mangled remains of their varied endings, the spread of their blood and the echoes of their lives. The wind had gone and even the little breeze. The sky had gone and the stars and the huge white moon. We were, truly, very much alone, standing on short tufted gorse which was all that Lilith had left of our glade. In less than a minute, she had destroyed Vespasian’s nemeton. But behind us and very close in our confined space, was a plinth of some dull stone, a plain block of something colourless and rank. It was entirely undecorated but was high and wide and sad.
“It is the altar of Lilith,” said Vespasian, “and I have seen it before.”
“Indeed, several times,” agreed Lilith. She had shrunk back to human size and stood to my right, almost a woman, pig faced and crocodile skinned, who spoke clearly and had the light of unfathomable expectation and delight in her eyes. My mother had moved behind the block and simply watched. Lilith continued to speak to Vespasian. “I am always present when my worshippers sacrifice to me, even if I am not seen. I know your past, Baron de Vrais, once a more precious priest of mine than the sycophant Arthur d’Estropier could ever be. I know what you did for me and respected you for it. But then you turned away. In ignominy and the platitudes of pathetic guilt, you changed direction. Now I intend reminding you of what you lost.”
I remained speechless. Vespasian said, “You have broken the seal, but I am not without other powers, and not all of them learned from you. I can hurt you before you kill me.”
“A new experience. There have been few with that ability,” crowed Lilith.
“She fears only the wrath of the One,” said the veleda, from her distant stance. “She has forgotten how to be afraid.”
“It is a shame,” said Lilith, ignoring my mother, “not to kill the man first, and see the suffering of the watching woman.” She was speaking to herself, but the speech was for Vespasian. She wanted him broken. “But the gatekeeper must be subdued,” Lilith licked her lips. Her tongue was blue. “Once the female is subjugated, her power is also denied to the man who would otherwise claim it. Without her, he will simply become himself.” Lilith looked up, staring at Vespasian. “You should appreciate my artistry. You once tortured her yourself. I’ll show you how it should be done.”
She was still speaking, but the sudden echo of a whistle pierced me and the darkness, within which we already stood, became a far greater darkness. Before I could even be conscious of fear, Lilith’s touch or the beginning of the last journey, I was abruptly removed.
There were rooms in my head, all empty. Some were filled with light and others were deeply lost in shadow, while one was sinister with murmurings and huge corners. I wandered through them all, calling someone’s name, but I had forgotten who I called. I could not feel my body and I supposed I was naked. I circled endlessly, restlessly wandering, continually searching for a purpose that I could not any longer understand. It was in the chamber all dazzling in brightness that I stopped at last. I sat in the middle of the spangled floor to watch, while all the glorious light became a crimson sunset and then a burning so fierce that its colour became a thousand shades of white. The flames swept up from the base of the walls and sucked out the air. The fire didn’t worry me and I curled my toes, bathed in light and drank in the heat.
Before me, resting on the ground and between my legs, I saw the coil of the wooden serpent, the ouroboros which had stayed with me now for so long. I reached out in affection to touch it and hold it to my face, but it caught the little licking flames and all around it flickered blue, falling slowly into the tiny black scattered ashes of absolute disintegration.
I cried then, because I had lost what Vespasian had given me and had told me to keep safe.
Then there was neither pain nor pleasure but a delicious knowledge of release and overwhelming peace. Now I could breathe again. I breathed freedom and lassitude and the promise of forgetfulness. Death seemed such sweet contentment.
Someone was screaming at me. I recognised those screams from before, from many dreams and many awakenings. I recognised the voice. It was my own. The screams shattered the peace, ordering me to escape the flames and search for the water. I smiled to myself. There was no water. The advice was absurd. I couldn’t find water in rooms which were dry of life and love and held only the lost fingerprints of past effort, now utterly pointless and buried deep in pale regret. I lay back, stretching my spine against the hard floor, feeling the stone under my shoulders and the heat on my breasts. Then I looked up, eyes wide open, as the roof became a rivered conflagration and streaming, flying ashes all alight. I was still smiling as they fell around me, thinking, now I shall never be cold again.
Someone slapped my face with such force that I swore. The room tumbled away from me and the walls shivered into splinters and above me was sky, not flame nor sun nor moon but sweet fresh, fresh breathing air, and Vespasian yelling in my ears.
Instead of the warmth of somnambulism and death in delicious apathy, I was pummelled back into wakefulness and an awareness of a cold wind and one bright star above the tree tops. I gulped in the air I had forgotten how to breathe and turned, sudden spasms of pain jolting me from dream-state into a reality I had no wish to join.
“It will hurt like the devil,” said Vespasian, “but you must now return and endure it.”
I could see him clearly. More, I could feel him, for now I was in his arms. The hot stone of my bed had gone and was replaced by a cradle in motion and the support of his body against my cheek. “Why?” I whispered. I was surprised at my own voice, which I could barely hear, sounding like a little child’s moan, just a feather puff of lost weariness.
“Because, if you leave me now, the world will never be the same,” he whispered back to me, words drifting on the warmth of his breath. “And though our world would be the better for change and should not be the same indeed, without you in it, it has no chance of reconciliation for me.”
He could not be talking to me. I was lost anyway and had no idea who I was, or could be, or had been, and whether I wanted to be anyone at all. “I would like to go home,” I managed to say.
“All in good time,” he said gently, “when I discover where home is to be.”
Chapter Fifty Three
Memory came back very slowly and some of it I was never to remember at all. And that was a very good thing.
We were still in the restricted glade, confined within the limits that Lilith had created, a bubble within Vespasian’s sacred nemeton. The altar remained. It was a vile, stained block of threatening stone, and I had lain there until Vespasian had carried me away, cradling me on the ground within the crook of his arm. I was wrapped tight in his cloak and the fur was wonderfully soft and pleasant against my skin. I was uncomfortably aware that beneath it, I was wearing no clothes of any kind.
But there was no sign of Lilith, nor of my mother. Besides myself and Vespasian, just two others knelt amongst the scrubby grass and smiled at me. One was Gerald, and the other was Richard.
He was so beautiful and so alive, that I knew at once Richard must be a ghost returned, even before I remembered the drama of his death.
I turned back to Vespasian. His eyes reflected such terrible exhaustion that I wondered if he was dying himself. There was no glitter of wise knowledge and bright intelligence, nor of humour or even of malice. There remained a tired glaze of caring patience but his face seemed bloodless. Instead, beneath
me, I was aware of the strength and support of his arms and knew that in spite of it all, he was still in control.
Gerald thrust his bright tousled head down beside me. “I can’t believe you’re alive. My God, Tilda, you should be dead. But then,” and he grinned back at Richard, “what do we know about death, after all? It’s not what I thought it was.”
“Gerald,” Vespasian informed me softly, “has been more fully unconscious throughout the past hour than even you have been. Lilith can produce deeper trances than I, and Gerald knows nothing, as usual, of what happened. Though even when awake, his consciousness can be a little mute, as we are all aware.”
Gerald continued to grin wide enough to catch dragonflies. “That creature Lilith knocked me out. Well, how can a monster like that be anything but a dream? But I felt the blow alright. I came to just a little while ago and found Richard sitting beside me like a candle flame, all shining. I thought I had to be dead myself and then he started talking and everything began to make sense after all.”
“Forget about sense,” Vespasian told him, “of which you know nothing in any case. This is all about truth and that is a very different matter.”
“You mustn’t avoid explaining what happened to me,” I begged, gazing up at him, trying to put more feeling into my eyes than I could manage in my voice. “You won’t protect me by telling me nothing. I have to know or my own imagination will send me mad.”
“There is time,” murmured Vespasian. “Perhaps once the pain is passed.”
“I was lost in rooms in my head,” I struggled up a little, speaking as clearly as I now could. “I’m still not really aware of pain. At least, it comes and goes. Did the veleda put me under another spell?”
His eyes were kinder than I remembered them. “No. The spell was mine,” he said. “I told you there were places in your head, where pain could not reach you. Once before, when you were to face Arthur’s torture, I put you into trance. This time the trance was of necessity a little deeper.”
Richard came closer then, and put out one tentative finger and touched my cheek. I felt his warmth. Gerald had been right. Richard was a candle flame. “Vespasian and Richard rescued you between them,” said Gerald, still unable to contain the grin now inhabiting his face. “Vespasian’s amazing. He did strange things like a magician and he called Richard. Sort of conjured him up. But I only saw the last bit. That’s just as well. I couldn’t have borne seeing you hurt.”
“I came through the door you opened,” Richard said to me. His voice glimmered like starlight and was not the child’s voice I remembered.
“Vespasian opened it,” I said. “He took that right.”
“You must forgive him for that,” smiled Richard. “It was well intended. He was able to call on me and I challenged Lilith.” I thought his face so charmed and thrilling that I didn’t expect anything could brighten it further, until he smiled, and showed me that it could. But he was still in child’s form and looked even younger than before. I could not believe he had challenged Lilith.
“How?” I asked.
His bright red hair flopped down into his eyes as it had when alive. “Oh,” he said, “that’s nothing special. I brought a message, that’s all. I don’t even know who the message was from, though of course it was from the other side. What you call Paradise. It told Lilith she couldn’t have either of you. She was forfeiting her own power, by trying to take one of His.”
“How do you bring a message from Paradise?”
“Well, not on parchment,” laughed Gerald, “though I wish it had been. Now there’s a keepsake I’d prize forever.”
“The message didn’t need to be spoken or written,” said Richard, brushing his bright hair back from his forehead. “It existed just in my presence, and in facing her, coming from His realm. My appearance was the message. That was enough.”
“You always wanted to do something gloriously chivalrous,” I said, attempting a smile. “Now you’ve done something far more exciting and romantic than anyone could ever have imagined.”
“I could do it, because I always loved you,” said Richard. “It doesn’t have much to do with chivalry. After all, Lilith couldn’t kill me, could she?”
“She could have carried you off to Hell,” I said, remembering the tarot cards.
Richard shook his head. “I already have my place allotted elsewhere.”
I was getting better at the smile. “I think you’re telling me you saved my life. That makes me feel I matter. And best of all – it’s wonderful to see you again.”
Richard nodded. “For me even more. But I have to go. Samhain’s filtering into dawn. I can’t outstay my time.”
I had the strength of Vespasian’s cradling arms. “You don’t miss the life you had?” I said. “The souls that came back at midnight, all the multitude I saw pressing on the gates, they wanted so much to come back.”
“Not me,” smiled Richard. “They carry guilt or sorrow, love left unspoken and duty left undone. It’s been beautifully satisfying to see you again, Tilda, but where I live now, it’s more beautiful by far. Will you come then, and see me off?”
I looked up at him. “I’m the gatekeeper, not the boatman,” I said. “I think I’ll never see you again.”
The dawn touched the tree tops in a shimmer of pale rose, a cold tinge of promise. Light then leaked back into the sky with such pale hesitancy that I wasn’t sure if it was truly sunrise, the moon’s aura returned, or maybe just the echo of the stars. But when I looked back, Richard had gone.
Gerald was rubbing his eyes. “Was that all real?” he whispered.
“One day,” Vespasian said, “you’ll learn to make your own definition of reality. In the meantime, my child, I wish to talk to Tilda alone. You must rest, before a long journey.”
“Rest?” complained Gerald. “But I’ve been asleep for an hour or more.”
“Being knocked unconscious is hardly the same thing as sleep,” said Vespasian with a welcome return to the acerbity I enjoyed. “And you will do as you are told, or I shall knock you out again. Take your cloak to the edge of the tree line, stay there and close your eyes. Don’t worry, I shall not forget you.”
Gerald grinned, trudging off to the roots of the trees now faintly visible in the growing light. The birds were wakening and the leaf flutter was dew lit. I watched Gerald’s small shadow diminish into the taller shadows. All the grove and its glade were shifting, again encompassing the magic of Vespasian’s creation. I heard the soft ripple of water catching the first breezes.
As the early rose deepened into soft lilac and the bird song began all around us, I looked back to Vespasian. “Please tell me,” I said.
“If I described it all,” he frowned, “there would have been little benefit in removing you from it and putting you in trance in the first place. I shall tell you only the indispensable.”
“It doesn’t frighten me,” I said, though the pain was now filtering back.
“I understand,” he said, watching me. “The pain will return and while it’s as its worst, I will not move you. We’ll stay here until you’re strong enough to travel. Then I’ll open the glade and take us out, back into the world you recognise as real. In the meantime, you’re utterly safe. Neither Lilith nor the veleda can return here.” He held me tighter, as if with his strength he might stop my bones falling apart. Over his shoulder the low winter sun now spread a sallow and greenish light behind the trees. The colours coagulated into a sickly morning, releasing the distant forest from its silhouettes.
The pain was spasmodic but I shuddered as it took me. I said, “So tell me now, before it gets any worse, what Lilith did.”
He shook his head slightly. “She meant to kill you,” he murmured. “She attempted to ruin your body and absorb your soul. But she was stopped. Is that not enough?”
“No,” I whispered. “Or it will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“Very well,” he sighed. His eyes were all huge black pupils and I could see the throbbi
ng pulse at his temples. “I must tell you something first, Tilda, which is not now easy to speak of, but who I am and have been is unfortunately an integral part of this explanation. So simply this. Perhaps I’d always been wilful as a child. I found it easy learning skills and strategies, and that is dangerous for a young boy. I also had a certain talent for hedonism, among other things, and I believed in indulging my potential. At university in Italy where my father sent me, I discovered there was more to power than a long sword and a sack of money. I began a study of alchemy which took me across half the world and into the deepest esoteric delights of magic. My tarocchi card is Judgement. For long years, I did not judge, even between good and evil. I accepted a world in which all things seemed equal. I worshipped the old religion, which condones many of the mysteries so frightening now to the church. I discovered Lilith.” He was watching for my reaction, but I was too tired to make one.
“Because of that, when I returned to England after my father’s death, I met d’Estropier,” he continued. “I was titled and rich, though money meant nothing to me by then, since I could create my own. I knew more than Arthur. I taught him. That is a terrible thing to admit, and it disgusts me, to have instructed the perverted in the black arts. Tonight you and I between us, Tilda, killed all those who were once my own students, and I their tutor.”
I looked away. “I killed no one,” I mumbled. “I was paralysed.”
He smiled. “You may believe that if you prefer,” he said. “Though you ask for truth and should accept your own, as I do mine. For we took the search for spiritual power on Earth too far, Arthur and I, and I chose to reawaken the veleda.”
That was a subject I wasn’t so sure I wanted to understand any further. “For greater power. Alright, I know. She told me herself. Tell me about tonight.”
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