Wormwood

by G. P. Taylor

‘So who wrote this book about you?’ Thaddeus asked. ‘Maybe I know it.’

  ‘A sister … One who turned her back on the family. She was always too much of a coward to place her name on anything. Always hides behind someone else.’ The stranger looked around the shop, as if listening. ‘How many children do you have?’ he asked, looking at Thaddeus. ‘I can hear one of them calling you.’

  ‘It’s the waves crashing against the bridge, seahawks, something like that. I have no children,’ Thaddeus said angrily. ‘Is it a book you want or something else?’

  ‘A book, but I sense it is not here. My search will continue.’ He stopped and looked at Agetta. ‘Well, my girl, until I see you yet again. Our paths will surely cross – maybe, even in a dream.’

  The stranger gave a genteel bow, turned and walked briskly out of the shop. The doorbell jangled as he slammed the door behind him.

  Agetta looked at Thaddeus as she bit her lip nervously. ‘He’s following me,’ she blurted out. ‘I saw him once in Holborn and once in a dream. He wants something.’

  ‘The man’s a foreigner, they do strange things. Meeting him twice, well, London is a small place.’ It seemed to Agetta he was not telling all he knew. ‘The Huguenots are everywhere, and he is just another lost Frenchman, running from his king.’ Thaddeus laughed and then rummaged in his pocket as if he wanted to take her mind off the situation. ‘I have this, it is very special and very old, but it will help you read words you cannot see or understand. I knew you came for something, and this is it!’

  Thaddeus reached into the depths of his pocket and produced a piece of polished crystal the size of half a goose egg. It was edged with silver holly leaves that held the glass in a garland. In the light of the window it cast a rainbow of coloured light across her face.

  ‘I want you to have this. It’s an Ormuz glass, a blessing to those who have aged. It was made by Al-Hazzan, and I want you to have it as a gift of our friendship, it will help you to understand that which you cannot read.’ In three large steps he jumped from the high desk and stood in front of Agetta holding out the Ormuz glass. ‘Take it, come back next week and I will tell you some more. Who knows, maybe you will stumble on the Nemorensis and make Thaddeus a happy man!’

  Agetta had the urge to speak, to tell of her secret, that she already knew who had the book, but now was not the time. Thaddeus pressed the Ormuz glass into her right hand. It fitted the shape of the eye-burn perfectly. As she looked into the crystal Ormuz glass it magnified every line and mark on her palm. In amazement she saw every detail of the outline of the eye perfectly enlarged. It was as if each line was made up of tiny letters written so close that they looked like a solid line.

  ‘It will show you many things. It has no magic or trickery, just the wonder of science.’ Thaddeus took her by the arm and walked her to the door. ‘I expect to see you again. I have but few friends and now I have one more.’ He appeared sincere, his eyes glinted friendship. Agetta didn’t reply and stepped into the street still clutching the crystal, wondering why Blake’s book was so important.

  London Bridge was crowded. The people pressed by each other, holding tight to their purses for fear of pickpockets. Agetta looked all around, checking each doorway for the stranger. She slipped the Ormuz glass into her pocket, still holding it tight with her right hand, and picked her way through the street dirt towards Bishopsgate. Consumed with her thoughts, she didn’t notice the man staring at her through the thick dirty glass of the coffee shop. She was thinking of Thaddeus, his warm smile and startling eyes, and of the Ormuz glass. No one had ever given her such a gift as this before, and for no reason. She smiled, knowing life was changing and she was changing too. The distant memory of Absinthium danced across her tongue. She huddled tightly inside her coat and savoured the long-lost taste.

  The sun was low in the southern sky and cast thick shadows across London Bridge. From his table in the coffee shop the stranger picked up his black French hat and quickly stepped into the light. From his pocket he took a pair of golden spectacles with deep blue lenses cut from the finest sapphire and polished to reflect the sun. He pulled down his hat and turned up the collar on his coat, sliding a thin black glove over his long white fingers.

  8: Liberato per Mortem

  Blake staggered through a torrential downpour as hailstones like duck eggs plummeted from the thunder-black night sky and pounded into the mud around him. They splattered in the deep puddles and rattled on carriage roofs, beating the backs of the standing horses that jumped and twitched nervously with each blast of ice.

  He held up his hands as he ran to protect his face. A sharp jag of silver-white lightning flashed from sky to earth, striking into the street and blasting the cobbles from the ground like smashed teeth. A roar of thunder rattled the windows and knocked the breath from Blake’s body. A deep, thick, jet-black cloud rolled across the night sky, reaching down over Conduit Fields as if it were a giant fist about to smash into the earth; its edges were outlined in bright silver by the light of a struggling moon that momentarily broke through the clouds and then was engulfed again in blackness.

  The last boulders of ice slapped furiously into the mud of the street. Picking his way from house to house, Blake could see in the distance the two bright lamps that protected the door of Flamberg’s mansion in Queens Square. Guarding the door were two footmen dressed in gold braid and scarlet jackets, their white socks stained with the street mud, and holding large wooden torches wrapped in tallow rags that burnt bright yellow. He quickened his step, fearful that another bolt would crash from the sky as the storm fired its anger at the earth.

  It came quickly. From all around came a rush of wind that lifted the water from the puddles and shot it like arrows through the air and up into the sky. A flash of electricity blanketed the street, sparking off the rooftops and turning the sky dazzling white. Blake pressed himself against the damp wall of a house as the lightning bolt fired past his face with brightness so intense it shone through his closed eyes. The heat steamed his wet coat, scorching the top of his hat and leaving his face with a red glow. As the lightning crashed to the ground it blistered the road outside Flamberg’s mansion, sending the two footmen scurrying down the cellar steps, their burning torches cast aside and spitting in the mud as their light quickly faded.

  Wet, bedraggled and intensely irate, Blake climbed the steep marble staircase that took him from the dirt of the street to the polished refinement of Lord Flamberg’s mansion. Gargoyle lamps stood as sentinels beside the door. Each looked as if it had been cut from a solid piece of metal and was inlaid with fine white, red and blue glass. They were topped with the heads of helmeted snakes, and the light from thick beeswax candles shone an eerie glow through the red, cut-glass eyes. The spitting of the candles sounding like the hissing of snakes. In the centre of the oak door was a large gold tapping-handle forged from a single piece of iron in the shape of a dragon. Thick ribbed wings and green jewelled eyes shone in the lamplight.

  To the north the sky rumbled with discontent as the storm swirled away into the night and the heavens began to clear. Blake looked up. There, for the first time, he could see his star with his naked eye. Its faint light and sparkling tail shone down from the depths of space. He smiled to himself as he took off his sodden hat and shook the rain from the brim. The two footmen clambered up the cellar steps and into the street, ignoring Blake as they ran to pick up their discarded torches, and then retreated again to the safety of the cellar.

  Blake smashed the tapping-handle three times against the brass plate. The dragon felt unnaturally warm, the two eyes leaving a distinct impression in the palm of his hand. A tall, thin butler dressed in the finest blue silk coat opened the door. He had a pinched face and deep-set eyes encircled in dark, smudged skin that was crisscrossed with tiny wrinkles.

  ‘Doctor Blake,’ he said in a voice that matched the wrinkles. ‘Lord Flamberg would like to see you in the dining room, they have been waiting for some time …’ He looked down his nose a
t Blake as he gestured for him to come into the mansion.

  Above Blake’s head a large chandelier of candles lit the hallway, rocking slightly from side to side, slowly rotating and casting long moving shadows. In a large gilt looking-glass Blake somehow appeared much older than he had thought, his face lined and dishevelled.

  Lord Flamberg stepped abruptly through the door of the dining room into the hallway. ‘My dear Blake,’ he said, wiping his long grey hair from his face. ‘Thought you had been blown away in the storm. Quite spectacular. Come in, Lady Flamberg has been waiting.’

  The room was brightly lit, with wooden shutters that blocked any chink of light from escaping. Lady Flamberg was sitting in a wing-chair at the head of a long polished oak table, two horse lengths from the door. She didn’t move as Blake entered the room. Blake gasped at her incredible beauty – a black silk mantua gown was draped across her powder-white skin, and her fine, neat hands and long pure neck shone in the candlelight.

  Lord Flamberg sat at the opposite end of the table and gestured for Blake to take the several steps towards the only other chair, next to his wife.

  ‘She likes company, Blake. She’ll want you all for herself,’ Flamberg said. ‘When you are finally comfortable we will eat.’

  Blake held out his hand towards Lady Flamberg. ‘I am Doctor Sabian Blake, it is nice to –’

  ‘You may call me, Hezrin, Doctor Blake. I find Lady Flamberg so formal.’ She smiled at him with her cold, steel-blue eyes and thin red lips.

  Blake sat at the table and looked over the expanse of solid wood that stretched out like a polished fallen tree to where Lord Flamberg stared back at him.

  ‘It is such a beautiful room, with so many pretty things.’

  ‘And the prettiest of them all is my wife,’ replied Lord Flamberg as he clicked his fingers. Two servants bustled into the room carrying large silver platters that gave off a thick steam from under their rims. They clumsily crashed the platters to the table and lifted the lids in a swell of fog. In the clearing mist, Blake could see the cooked head of a large animal, its butter-glazed eyes staring at him. On the other platter was a long black fish surrounded by a myriad of tiny writhing eels that wriggled and churned like a living sea. He gulped back his disgust and wondered how he could ever swallow such creatures and keep them from jumping from his stomach.

  The smallest servant leant over the table and pointed to the dishes with the tip of a long, sharp stiletto.

  ‘Which?’ he said in a deep voice. ‘I cut, you eat. Which one?’ he asked again, impatiently.

  Blake was holding his breath, not wishing to take in the fumes from the lightly cooked fish and the writhing fresh eels. He looked to the steaming animal head, unsure as to from what strange, tusked creature it had been severed. ‘And this?’ he asked expectantly.

  ‘This is walrus – fresh, cooked walrus,’ the man said in his broken English. ‘I cut some for you. The best is the tongue or the eyes.’

  ‘I will have some fish.’ Blake said firmly. A look of disappointment crossed the servant’s face.

  ‘Fish?’ he asked again.

  ‘Fish!’ Blake replied, pointing to the mass of eels that squirmed over the body of the long scaly creature.

  ‘My husband tells me that you are a Cabalist. Does your magic help you?’ Hezrin asked as the servant slit the knife into the fish and quickly sliced and slapped a long fillet of the squirming feast on to Blake’s plate, accompanied by a large dollop of slithering eels.

  ‘It is not magic but science,’ Blake replied as the steaming plate of fish and eels was placed before him. ‘The dark ages are long dead. This is the manipulation of forces that as yet we do not understand. I believe a day is coming when every mystery known to man will be explained away in science.’

  ‘You leave no place for faith or mystery in your world. It is like art without the artist or music without an instrument. What can you do with your magic? Can you heal that fish?’ Hezrin stabbed her table knife into the walrus’s eye, gouging it from the socket.

  ‘The universe is not without design, even that which you eat had a purpose and now that purpose has changed somewhat. Magic is about finding truths. The Cabala brings the infinite with the finite, the greatest to the least, everything is held together.’ Blake looked up from the eels that now slithered from the plate and on to the fine white tablecloth, leaving behind a thick black slime.

  ‘I believe in magic, Sabian. Not as you say, but as something wonderful that can transport us from the drudgery of this world.’ Hezrin stabbed her fork again into the creature and tore off a strip of cooked skin, wrapping it around her fork. ‘We live in a world where people believe in the strangest things, but you want to explain it all away and give a reason for every action.’

  ‘He is a scientist, a discoverer,’ her husband said from his faraway place at the end of the table. ‘Blake has discovered something wonderful, and tomorrow it will be the talk of London. Yeats will see to that. The London Chronicle will tell every coffee lout in town what he has discovered.’ Lord Flamberg saw Blake looking at the writhing plate. ‘My wife has a peculiar taste in food. Sometimes I believe she would eat any creature that she turned her mind to. Why eat what beggar’s eat? Who can say they have feasted on the finest walrus?’ Flamberg said excitedly. ‘Fine wine and the fruit of the ocean. I especially like the tongue.’

  ‘Come now, Sabian. It’s quite simple, stab them and eat them whole. They are wonderful for you and give a freshness to your complexion.’ Hezrin laughed as she spoke, urging Blake to eat the eels. ‘They are sea-fresh, caught on the mud-banks and kept alive for the table, they will do you no harm.’

  Blake stabbed at the eels that writhed and squirmed and, spearing several, he quickly swallowed them whole, gulping the fish down as the taste of scales and salt gagged the back of his throat. Hezrin and her husband watched as he slowly chewed his way through half the plate before finally taking his napkin and folding it carefully over what remained.

  ‘Delicious,’ he said half-heartedly, swallowing mouthfuls of air as he tried to keep the contents of his stomach from churning. He was convinced that they were still moving, that they would never die and would be seen again. ‘So what of the Chronicle? What news will it carry of my comet?’

  ‘You are centre stage, the man of the moment. Yeats has billed you as a great scientist, the discoverer of the century,’ Flamberg replied, chewing the fat from a long white tusk and wiping walrus grease from his face. ‘They will be told that the comet will miss the earth, and that by your calculations we shall have the finest display of sky lights since the dawn of time.’

  ‘Then they’ll hang me when it crashes into London and kills half the population.’ Blake’s eyes flashed from Hezrin to Lord Flamberg, looking for some kind of reaction as they calmly continued to eat the rest of the walrus head.

  ‘Then they’ll never know!’ replied Flamberg, coughing out pieces of chewed flesh on to the table. ‘We’ll invite the King and the Royal Court to our house in the northern counties and the rest can burn,’ he said calmly. ‘My friends and I believe that this would be a good thing for London. The city is far too crowded and some of the people are not worth the air they breathe.’ Flamberg drew his hand across his throat as if to show the cutting of a knife. ‘I think you know what I mean, Blake. London transformed into a new Rome or even a new Jerusalem, with the debris of life burnt up by your comet. Divine providence!’ Flamberg laughed.

  ‘That’s not right!’ Blake exclaimed. ‘We have to tell them, we could save people.’

  ‘There would be panic, Sabian,’ Hezrin said. ‘This way we can get all those that really matter away from London, and the rest will have to take their chance. To tell them now could spark a revolution.’ She took hold of Blake’s right hand and pulled it towards her. ‘Let me see what the palm tells me of your life. I have the gift to see the future. Look at me and I will tell you what will happen.’ Her hand was warm and soft. Blake could feel his face beginning to gl
ow pink in the candlelight, and had no chance to refuse as she took his hand and turned the palm upwards.

  Hezrin took her forefinger and traced the shape of a star into the palm of his hand. Taking her glass she dripped a large bead of red wine into his palm and then rubbed it into the skin. The candlelight flickered softly.

  Flamberg folded his arms and slouched back into his chair, picking his teeth with the point of the table knife. He looked at Blake and smiled as he left him to the whims of his wife. ‘She will lead you into something you may never understand,’ he said as he chewed on half-eaten fat. Then he folded his arms and snuggled himself into the large wing-chair. He closed his eyes and rested his chin on his chest and fell fast asleep.

  Blake looked at him in disbelief as Flamberg began to snore quietly with each pained breath. Hezrin tugged on his hand, pressing her nails painfully into his palm.

  ‘I don’t like to be ignored, Sabian,’ she said angrily through her teeth. ‘You and I have a future, don’t you want to know what happens?’

  ‘For my own future I have little concern. What I want is to tell the world what will happen,’ Blake said as he attempted to take his gaze from her face.

  ‘Those who matter know what to do. My husband has been very busy with his friends, leave it to them and all will be well.’

  ‘For who? Your friends and the King? And the rest of London can burn?’ he said loudly.

  ‘What would you do? Have them all know now and thousands would die in the havoc that would follow. How would they cope? They would believe the last judgement was upon them. Would you see that happen? This way some have a chance to escape.’ She paused and looked him in the eyes. ‘Tell me, Sabian. How did you know the comet was coming? Was it by accident?’

  Blake couldn’t stop staring at her, such was the power of her fascination. She was dressed in rich purple and black, and had a deep dark beauty spot on her unlined face.

  ‘I read …’ The words froze in his mouth as if an icy hand had grabbed hold of his voice. He gasped the air as a burning pain raced through his hand, jolting pulses of torture along his arm, into his chest and up to his throat. Every nerve and muscle danced out of control. He tried to stand but the unseen force slapped him to the table and into the carcass of the half-eaten fish.