So it’s just me, really. Maybe I’m the problem. But I’m just trying to help, you know. I do my best . . .
Is that it? What Marvo said: “It’s always about you, Frank, isn’t it?”
Caxton puts her glasses on again. She steps back and I can see her eyes sharpen as she gets me in focus.
“You mess up everything you touch.” She glances at Marvo. “Everyone, too.”
She’s hunting through her pockets. “Anyway, you’re no damn use to me.” She pulls out her notebook and opens a clean page. “And if you don’t go now, I’ll have you arrested for obstruction.”
I’m halfway down the stairs when she calls after me, “And I’ve written to the Society.”
I’m kicking myself. Not just because I’ve got myself thrown out and I’m in even more shit with the Society, but because I meant to ask Caxton if anyone knew where Kazia was, and I didn’t. So I decide to play Boy Detective again.
It’s getting dark when I finally roll up at the palace lodge, and a uniformed jack is standing in the way. To my relief, my security ring works for him. I ask him where Knock-knees is and he tells me, in the hospital. Apparently there’s been a break-in. Just after lunch, a couple of vans came charging through, knocking the porter for six. Up at the palace, ten or twelve armed men piled out, ran inside, beat the staff up, and ransacked the place . . .
I trot up the drive and find more jacks standing around.
Who am I? OK, I remember the answer to that one.
What am I doing here?
“I wanted to talk to Kazimíera.”
“I don’t know where she is,” mumbles the housekeeper, keeping a safe distance and fingering her amulet furiously. The left side of her face is swollen up like a soccer ball.
“When did you see her last?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” she says after a moment.
OK, if I was unconscious for thirty-six hours that means Kazia got home safely from the Hole. But what’s happened to her now?
The housekeeper turns to the jacks. “Can I go?” She kisses her amulet and turns away.
“Wait,” I say. “Your face—I can fix it.”
Terror struggles with pain. Terror wins. She moans and runs off up the stairs.
According to the jacks, the invading army burst into the house, waving guns, and ran through all the rooms, rounding up the staff and dragging them downstairs. Their leader was a thick-set middle-aged man in sunglasses—I just nod at this point—who pushed the staff around a bit, then barked orders at his men in some foreign language. Russian or Polish or something. Anyway, they charged around the palace for fifteen minutes or so, throwing furniture about like they were looking for something. They got into the attic, the cellars, and the outbuildings. They grabbed a few bits of jewelry and silver, jumped into the vans, and galloped off down the drive.
“So it looked like a burglary,” I say.
The jacks look at me. “Don’t be stupid; it was a burglary. Now get lost.”
Over at the mortuary I show my ring to the security elemental outside the autopsy room. The door doesn’t open.
“What’s going on?”
He just stands there like a statue.
The door opens. Marvo steps out. Inside, I can see Ferdia bent over the slab.
“How’s it going?”
“None of your business.” Ferdia doesn’t look up from Alice’s body.
“C’mon, let me have a look.”
“You should be worrying about that hearing tomorrow,” says Marvo.
“Piece of cake.”
Ferdia makes this sort of snarking noise. “Doesn’t sound like a piece of cake. From what I hear, you could be in real trouble.”
“What do you care?”
“Just don’t want to see you on a bonfire.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Like I said, not what I hear.”
“Did they ask you about me?”
He finally looks up at me and nods.
“So what did you tell them?”
“I told them you’re an idiot. They said they knew that.” He goes back to work.
“So what you gonna tell them?” says Marvo.
“I’ll think of something. And Matthew will be there.”
“Don’t count on it,” says Ferdia.
But I know Matthew’s the one person I can count on. And maybe Marvo . . .
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “I mean Alice. She chose to hide out—”
“Maybe I could’ve looked harder.”
“Don’t beat yourself up.” Behind her, Ferdia’s still doing his best to pretend I’m not here. “Look, you gotta let me in.”
She shakes her head.
“What is it with you two, anyway?” I say. “Love?”
She looks at me for a moment, then she says quietly, “Get lost, Frank.”
The door closes.
Chapter Twenty
Doctor Death
“Hang on, Charlie, let me get this straight. Alice Constant was sleeping with Groce, but she was having it off with Wallace . . . ?”
“At the same time. Right.”
Charlie’s sitting opposite me in his favorite dive: the Russian Tea Room, just across the road from the mortuary. It’s this windowless maze of booths and staircases, lit by black candles. There’s nothing even remotely Russian about it, apart from a framed, yellowing page from a newspaper, reporting the Tsar’s state visit to London a few years back. I don’t know where the tea’s from, but if it’s from Russia no wonder they’re rioting there all the time.
Mr. Memory’s here too: the makings of a conspiracy.
I’m struggling to make everything stack up. “So Caxton reckons Groce found out about the affair. He’s got it in for Wallace anyway, because of the book, so he kills him . . .”
Charlie nods. “Amber Trickle—you know, the drunk—”
“How could I forget her?”
“Anyway, she identified the bodies as the man and woman she saw entering the palace on the night of the murder.”
“And the guy in sunglasses?”
Charlie shrugs. Mr. Memory just looks blank.
“Did Groce or Alice have a dog? And why was she just wearing a nightdress?”
Charlie turns to the elemental, who shakes his head.
“Caxton can’t have it both ways. If Trickle’s a drunk, nothing she says is reliable and we can’t be sure it was Groce and Alice outside the palace. If we believe her—”
“We?”
“All right, if Caxton believes her, she has to explain the rest of what Trickle says she saw.”
“Well, the way Caxton sees it,” Charlie says, “Groce follows Alice inside, interrupts a bit of you-know-what, sees red, and kills Wallace. Alice panics and makes herself scarce . . .”
Yeah, I remember when me and Marvo caught up with her: she was certainly jumpy about something.
“Groce tracks her down and kills her,” Charlie says. “Then he tops himself.”
The candles gutter as the café door opens. I look up to see a chubby, rosy-cheeked little man heading for our table. He grins and raises his hand, like I’m his best friend and he’s delighted to see me again.
I know him. He doesn’t have a name, but I gave him one anyway: Doctor Death.
“You don’t think Groce killed Alice?” Charlie hasn’t noticed that we’ve got company yet. “Ferdia’s got contiguity between her and Groce’s knife. OK, so he doesn’t have an exact time of death—”
I move my pentagrams along the table as Doctor Death sits down beside Mr. Memory. Charlie stares across the table at him. “Already?”
Doctor Death smiles. “Case closed.” He lays his hand on Mr. Memory’s shoulder. When I grab it and pull it away, it’s as cold as ice.
“Is there contiguity between Groce’s knife and Wallace?” I ask.
Mr. Memory’s face has gone gray. He shakes his head.
“Groce and the book? The candlestick used to break the window?”
&n
bsp; This time Doctor Death shakes his head in unison with Mr. Memory.
“I need to see the bodies again.”
“And prove what?”
“I dunno. Maybe that Groce didn’t kill himself.”
“Too late.” Charlie checks his watch. “He’s on his way to the suicides’ plot right now.”
That’s an area of unconsecrated ground just over the wall from the cemetery out at Wytham. No markers, just coarse grass with mounds over the city’s suicides and the occasional excommunicant.
“That’s fast,” I say.
Charlie makes a face. “The Church doesn’t like suicides. It really doesn’t like suicidal clerics.”
“What about Alice?”
“Alice Constant is on the 3:45 train . . .”
Mr. Memory’s voice trails off as Doctor Death puts his hand back on his shoulder and finishes the sentence: “. . . on the 3:45 train to Southampton for her funeral.”
“I didn’t ask you!”
He just smiles.
I’ve found yet another losing battle to fight. A basic data elemental like Mr. Memory is instantiated for a single case. If the country isn’t to be overrun by well-behaved little men in baggy suits they have to be . . . well, terminated, when the case is solved. So we’ve got characters like Doctor Death, who’s lived—sort of—in an office on the top floor of the jack shack ever since it was built, and retains all the data for long-term archiving. If you want to know about any crime committed in Doughnut City over the last fifty years, talk to him.
“Charlie,” I whisper, “none of this makes sense. If Groce killed Alice because she was sleeping with Wallace, why all the business with the head?”
“Trying to muddy his tracks?” Charlie’s voice is unsteady as he watches Mr. Memory.
“Then where did he kill him? We never found any blood. And what about the security elemental at the back gate? You said it yourself, it looked like sorcery—”
“Mad rector. Theological bone to pick. Finds his girlfriend sleeping with the enemy. Sees red—”
“Case closed,” say Mr. Memory and Doctor Death in unison.
“Frank, the real reason you won’t accept that Groce killed Wallace . . . Isn’t it because that makes it all dead stupid and simple, and it means your contiguity test had to be wrong?”
“That doesn’t follow.” It’s true though.
“Caxton’s not unreasonable. Go home, stay out of trouble. Go and see her in a week or so.”
That’s good advice.
“And stay away from the blonde bit.”
That’s more good advice. I put my hand on Mr. Memory’s sleeve.
“Kazimíera Siménas. Tell me about her.”
Mr. Memory looks back at me with an expression of infinite sadness. There is already a hint of transparency about him.
I yell at him, “Stick up for yourself, damn it!” But Mr. Memory just closes his eyes.
Doctor Death smiles. “Kazimíera Siménas. Age seventeen. Daughter of Vitas and Maria Siménas . . .”
I’m angry. I hate what he’s doing to Mr. Memory and I want to punch and bite. But I listen . . .
It seems the trouble started ten years back, in a farming district just outside Kernave, in southeast Lithuania. Bad weather. Disastrous harvests. People borrowing cash from a local moneylender who wound up dead under mysterious circumstances. The police said it looked like an accident. The widow said it was murder and started naming names. There were a couple of arrests. Animals were found dead. Barns burned down. More human deaths . . .
And people started accusing each other of witchcraft. The government rounded up everybody in sight and handed them over to the Inquisition.
Doctor Death reaches into his pocket and pulls out a black leather wallet. He takes out a newspaper clipping and places it on the table. I can’t read the story; it’s in Lithuanian or whatever. But I can make out the date, ten years ago, and there’s a picture of a man, probably in his late thirties although the police mug shot makes him look older.
Charlie turns the clipping so he can peer at it. “Recognize him?”
“Dunno.” He isn’t wearing his sunglasses.
His name, according to Doctor Death, is Vitas Siménas. At the time the story was written, he was married, with a daughter. The newspaper describes how he and his wife are accused of being the leaders of the coven of witches and sorcerers currently on trial.
He has confessed. Not to sorcery, but to being aware that his wife was practicing witchcraft. He describes how she killed two neighbors who she thought had cheated her out of money.
Doctor Death describes the spell that Vitas claims his wife used and I recognize it as one I came across in a sixteenth-century Polish grimoire while I was at Saint Cyprian’s. I had a go at it myself—I was nine years old and totally narked off with one of the other novices. It doesn’t work.
Mr. Memory is fading away like a dream. Charlie wipes his sleeve across his face.
Doctor Death pulls another newspaper clipping out of his pocket. It’s in English, thank God: an interview with the British Society of Sorcerers’ official representative at the trials. He says the proceedings have been conducted in an exemplary fashion and that the outbreak of witchcraft has been contained. He welcomes Vitas Siménas’s confession, but regrets the fact that seven people—two men and five women, including Siménas’s wife—have been found guilty of unlicensed sorcery and witchcraft and condemned to be burned at the stake.
His name is Matthew Le Geyt.
Before Charlie can open his mouth, I turn to Doctor Death. “So what happened to Vitas?”
The elemental just shakes his head as he gathers up his clippings.
“And the girl, Kazimíera?”
Doctor Death smiles and produces another piece of paper. “Matthew Le Geyt adopted her and brought her back to England with him.”
I grab the paper: some sort of official document, in Lithuanian, but I can make out the names and dates. How do I feel about this? If she’s Matthew’s daughter—OK, just adopted, but even so . . . Well, that idea I had about them . . . it must’ve been wrong, I guess. Even so, why didn’t Matthew tell me? Because this is, you know, quite a big thing.
I hand the document back to Doctor Death. “Long night ahead?” I ask.
He nods and smiles.
“Coz you look pretty exhausted to me. Like you need a rest.”
I raise my hand, palm open, and move it down in front of his face. His smile softens. As his eyes close, Charlie says:
“Le Geyt was your Master.”
“It makes sense. Matthew probably couldn’t save her mother, but he could keep her out of her dad’s hands . . .”
“You recognized him, didn’t you? The picture in the newspaper.”
“He was leading the gang who beat me up in the Hole. He wants his daughter back.”
I’m putting this together in my head. For me, Matthew has always been this sort of symbolic figure: my Master. It’s like every time I pick up my instruments I can feel him watching me: approving . . . shaking his head . . .
But I’ve never really thought about what goes through his mind when I’m not there—unless it’s to do with me, of course. I’ve got this sudden sense that he was a kid like me once, with parents who didn’t make much sense to him, and maybe sorcery wasn’t what he wanted. Maybe what he really dreamed of was to get married, have kids . . .
To struggle to see clearly, like any normal person. Like Caxton or Ormerod. I shudder.
I’ve got this picture in my head of Matthew looking across a Lithuanian courtroom at a little girl whose parents are on trial for their lives. It’s not the Matthew I know; it’s this more complicated person who decides to save somebody from the wreckage . . .
Matthew was a member of a religious order living under monastic discipline. There’s no way he could have looked after Kazia. He must have persuaded his old pal Henry Wallace to pass her off as his orphaned niece and keep her safe as a member of his household . . .
And now the past has come for her. I get up. “I’ll talk to Matthew.”
“One thing, Frank.” Charlie hesitates for a moment. “Your pal Marvell . . . She’s asked to be transferred to another division.”
Doctor Death is just sitting there, eyes closed, the beatific smile still blanketing his face. Beside him, Mr. Memory—no more than a ghost now—stares blankly down at the top of the table.
I don’t feel so real myself. I mean, I don’t know why I should feel so upset. Marvo and me . . . we just worked together and most of the time she’s been more trouble than she’s worth. I don’t want to think about her going blind.
I can take this lying down, like Mr. Memory. Or I can kick and scream. I’ve got that bloody disciplinary hearing tomorrow and the subject of Cimerez is bound to come up. Which kind of means I’ve got nothing to lose.
“Charlie, could you round up a couple of resurrection men for me? I feel an exhumation coming on . . .”
When I slip out a few minutes later, there’s just Charlie and Doctor Death sitting there.
Chapter Twenty-One
Discipline
The important thing about power is, who’s got it?
Exercise books out for another history lesson. It’s 1555 and anybody who’s anybody—the French, the Turks, the Germans, the Spanish—has got an army on the rampage in Italy. There’s this huge Spanish army camped outside the city of Siena, lobbing explosives over the walls. The situation inside is desperate . . . until someone manages to come up with a couple of sorcerers. Just kids, but keen to do some damage. Next thing you know, there’s this huge bloody storm—thunder, lightning, a mighty flood, and a great wind from heaven—and ninety percent of the Spanish army is lying on its back with its feet in the air.
A catastrophe like this concentrates minds wonderfully. Everyone’s standing there with their mouths open thinking, who’s next? And the pope has this brilliant idea: I’ll make sorcery legal . . . and the Church will run it. There’s a bit of jostling—good-bye Milan, good-bye Venice—but everyone very quickly realizes that it’s safest for all concerned if someone takes charge.
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