Wormwood

by G. P. Taylor

  Agetta looked at the hole in the attic roof. ‘Did you do that?’ she asked.

  ‘I need to escape, but these chains keep me tied to this world.’ Tegatus held out his hands towards her. His wrists were tightly banded in two gold manacles the size of shirt cuffs, each inscribed with small gold letters in a language that Agetta could not understand. ‘They allow me to flex my wings,’ he said angrily as he shook the manacles on his wrists, ‘but whilst I wear these I am weak and helpless.’

  ‘Hebdomada Mortium.’ She whispered the words softly to herself. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means I could be here for ever,’ Tegatus said.

  ‘I know a blacksmith who could smash them off and sell the gold,’ Agetta said as she carefully examined each manacle from a safe distance.

  He looked at her and smiled. ‘It would take more than a blacksmith to take these from me. There is nothing forged that would have the strength to remove them. They are made of more than precious metal and are locked with pride and envy for something that would never be mine.’

  She paused and took a step closer to him. Agetta was unsure as to what he was, but was afraid to ask the question that hovered precariously on her lips. ‘Are you an –’

  ‘I am whatever you want me to be,’ he said, as if he knew the question before she asked. ‘What I once was, is of no importance. My life has changed so much. I have been dragged through Europe and sold from one alchemist and thief to another. Now I am here, a guest of Cadmus Lamian.’

  ‘What does my father want you for?’ she asked, studying the labyrinth of silver wrinkles that covered his forehead.

  ‘I am to be displayed on the Strand. A guinea a time and part of a menagerie of freaks. I heard him talking to Sarapuk. Together they have plans to collect the oddest and strangest creatures from the world. I suppose I will be the oddest of them all.’ He saw the look of confusion on her face. ‘Half of the guests in this house are destined for my fate, yet they do so with free will and the urge to make money. I …’ He paused and looked to the floor, lowering his voice as he slowly spoke. ‘I have no choice, I have to do what he says. He is the keeper of the key that binds me to him.’

  Agetta fumbled in the pocket of her coat searching for the Ormuz glass. ‘Hebdomada Mortium,’ she said to herself again as she looked at the golden shackles. ‘I was given something to help me read that which I can’t understand.’ She pulled the Ormuz glass from her pocket and rubbed the clear crystal lens against her coat. ‘See! This is what I was given, Thaddeus said that it would help and help it will.’ She spoke quickly as she held the lens over the manacles and read the words that were embossed into the gold. ‘Hebdomada Mortium! It hasn’t changed,’ she said with frustration stinging her voice. She turned the Ormuz glass in her hand and stared as without warning each letter appeared to move in the crystal. There, captured by the glass, they changed shape and order, forming a long strand of words that whirled around before her eyes.

  Seven ages we are born, captured for to live and die,

  Seven ages I will stay, and watch the world through human eye.

  Seven deaths I will endure, mortal and immortal behold,

  Seven deaths of wasp and serpent; chance to decay and turn to mould.’

  Agetta spoke the words as they appeared in the Ormuz glass. ‘What do they mean?’ she asked as the writing danced around in the crystal. ‘Who do they speak of?’

  ‘It is my curse. Captured by my own heart, imprisoned by my own greed. I will wear these bands for the seven ages and then taste death.’ Tegatus rattled the chains that were wrapped around the manacles. ‘I just wanted to know what it would be like, one kiss from her, that was all. For one moment in eternity to know how it was to be –’ The creature stopped and listened as if a silent voice spoke to him. ‘We haven’t long, Sarapuk is close by. You must return to your bed. Lock me in and say nothing of this.’

  ‘I can’t just leave you here, you’re a prisoner.’ Agetta stepped forward and with all of her strength pulled on his chains, trying to free him. ‘What did you do to be put in this place?’

  ‘I ask that every moment of every day and never get an answer. There is no one listening to me any more. I am abandoned.’ The creature sighed, on the verge of tears. ‘If only I had never been born, or could die now and no eye could see me. If I had never been I would be happier than I am now, trapped by my own deceit.’ Tegatus turned his head as if he had heard some faraway sound. ‘Your father is awake, he scrapes the fire and waits for his friend.’

  ‘What about you? You can’t stay here like this, you have to get away.’ Again she pulled on the chains.

  ‘When the time is right, then you can help me. Now go. If your father finds you here then I cannot answer for your fate.’

  Agetta looked down on him as he sat with his face in his hands, staring at the floor. He looked small and frail, like an old man waiting for death by the roadside, a beggar with no one to feed him.

  Tegatus looked up and motioned for her to go, waving her away with the back of his hand. The blue moonlight coloured his skin and cast a long dark shadow across the floor like a pathway from the room. Agetta didn’t speak as she tiptoed gently across and out of the attic, locking the door behind her and standing on the top step in the darkness of the stairway. She had a sudden feeling that she was being watched, that somewhere in the dark night eyes stared at her.

  A swift draught blew coldly around her feet, sending a sharp shiver up her spine, standing every hair on end and shuddering her whole body. In the darkness of the hallway Agetta could make out the tall shape of a man staring out of the gallery window. In the pale light of the moon she could see the etched and faded lines of his tattooed face.

  Blueskin Danby. The thought flashed through her mind like a lightning bolt. The black shadow looked up, as if aware of his name being called by her spirit. His face was cold with deep, black, sunken eyes that stared like a mask of stretched parchment. A long black snake clutched to his face and slithered across the skin, through an empty eye socket and out through his mouth. ‘I’m coming back for you Agetta,’ he said, stepping towards her and holding out a thin white hand. ‘Sometime soon in the dark of night when you least expect it. Nothing on earth will save you from me. I have your hound – he’s payment for your father’s treachery. Soon I will have you and my fate will be yours. A pretty neck will stretch and you will walk the night with demons as your companions.’

  With that he smiled an empty smile, turned tail and disappeared.

  10: Handshake from a Golden Bough

  The slicing of cold damp earth fired a dull echo through Blake’s throbbing head. From where he lay in a freshly-dug shallow grave lined with straw he stared at the sky as the first shafts of October sun crept over the black horizon. A tall church spire reached into the clear sky, pointing its thin stone finger at his comet that hung in the peak of heaven.

  Blake thought he was dead, and that he looked up from the pit with the eyes of a ghost. It was the skull-splitting pain and the thick rope-burns on his wrists that reminded him he was still alive. He tried to move but his legs felt heavy and numb. He lifted his foot – it dropped back to the ground, clattering against the lid of the coffin on which he was laid. He lifted his head and saw that he had been seasoned with a garnish of rose petals and holly leaves for the after-life. Pressing his body to the coffin was the carcass of a large dead dog with broken teeth, wild staring eyes and a long tongue that fell from its open mouth.

  From the world above Blake could hear the distinct sound of a shovel that scraped the dirt, gouging chunks of fresh earth. Muddy clods shook the ground as they tumbled from a spade just feet away. He sat up, rolled the dog to the side of the grave, brushed the straw from his body and tried to understand how he had come to this place.

  All he could remember of the night before was the ball of light that had exploded around him as Hezrin had closed the looking-glass door. In a split second it had engulfed him, growing so fast that he felt
as if he would be thrust through the roof of the house and into the sky. He had been overwhelmed by its brightness as each molecule of the object beamed through his clothing illuminating his flesh in an iridescent glow. Then Blake had fallen into an inky black sleep.

  He ran his cold fingers around the deep red burn marks on his wrists and felt the palm of his right hand that bleated with intense soreness. The fingernails on his right hand had been cut to the quick. A fleeting flash of the night before ran through his mind, a brief picture of Hezrin’s steel-blue eyes and red lips as she laughed as he writhed in agony. Blake coughed and spat mud and straw, and the sound echoed through the grave and out, upwards into the world. The digging stopped.

  ‘Was that you?’ A man’s voice came from above him. It was rough and spoke of a life of street-corner fights.

  ‘You’re frit, man,’ came the harsh but hushed reply. ‘You’ll be telling me you can see the devil next. Get digging, another foot and we’ll have the body and the good doctor will have his plaything and we ten shillings.’ The man gave a pig-like grunt as he spoke, urging his friend to continue.

  Blake got to his knees to peer over the edge of the sepulchre. The body of the dead dog slipped further into the grave and slapped heavily on to the coffin with a loud thud.

  The voice came again. ‘I told you!’ it said, shriller and more frantic than before. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this. They belong to the underworld and we’ve no right to take them back.’ With that came a resolute scut as the shovel was buried defiantly in the earth. ‘I isn’t digging any more. The devil can keep his own ’cause I don’t want him coming after me.’

  ‘Dig, like I pay you to dig. It’s just a noise of the night. There are no ghosts, no God and no devil. It would take a man to rise from the dead to convince me of any of them. Now dig!’

  Blake heard the heavy slap of a hand across flesh. He slowly got to his feet and stood on the coffin lid, peering out into the churchyard with its broken gravestones and dirt paths. In the dim light of dawn Blake could see two men standing by a pile of freshly-dug soil and the discarded flower garlands of a fresh grave. Both men wore sea boots and frock coats. Their heads were freshly shaved and tinged with the blue of lice dip.

  ‘I’ll dig,’ said the tall pot-bellied man who grasped the long shovel, ‘but this is the last time. The devil’s after me for stealing from his own, and you’re not going to pay him off.’ He grasped the shovel with his spindly hands tipped with dirty nails. His coat was a size too big, taken from the back of a stolen corpse before he had handed the newly dead gentleman over to the good doctor.

  Blake looked around the churchyard. The stench of the grave filled him with despair and reminded him of his future. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said in a firm, loud voice, hoping to attract their attention. ‘Could you help me from this grave?’

  The pot-bellied man looked to the ground beneath him, believing the words had emanated from the wooden casket beneath his feet. The other leapt back, unsure if his ears had not deceived him.

  ‘Help me from this pit and I will see you well paid and make sure the devil or the King won’t catch you.’ Blake shouted in deep frustration, scrambling with his feet against the side of the crumbling hole. The sound of earth clods drummed against the coffin lid with a thump, thump, thump as he tried in vain to gain a foothold.

  ‘It’s a devil!’ cried pot-belly as he threw the shovel towards his companion and tried to run, slipping and falling. ‘It wants your soul, and mine’s not my own to give,’ he screamed, as tears streamed down his face.

  The thin man took hold of his friend by the sleeve and looked around the churchyard. He could see no one, only thick blue shadows cast by the half-light of dawn.

  ‘Don’t run, you fool!’ Blake shouted. ‘Help me from this grave. I’m alive, can’t you see?’

  Pot-belly could now see. He could see the blackened face of a dead man rising from the grave just a few feet away, shrouded in rose petals and holly leaves, and with straw billowing out from his coat neck. The hands of the corpse grasped strands of dock-leaf as if hopelessly trying to escape the bowels of hell. He felt an overpowering urgency to escape from the clutches of the emerging cadaver.

  The thin man picked up the shovel and made ready to attack.

  ‘I’ll wrap that around your neck if you don’t help me,’ Blake shouted as he slipped back into the grave with a loud thump.

  The threat from the now-vanishing carcass sent cold shivers through the man’s body. The two grave robbers turned and raced to the churchyard gate, fearing Old Leather Wings himself was chasing them.

  Blake slipped again and fell in a crumpled heap on the coffin. He stroked the fur of the somehow familiar dead dog. He knew he had seen the animal before, and there in the darkness of the pit it was his only companion. ‘Oh dog,’ he whined, ‘as you are now, so soon I’ll be. It is such a short time to live and full of misery, and to end it here talking to a dog …’ Blake gave out a deep and forlorn sigh.

  A voice rang out from high above him: ‘Then talk to me.’

  Blake, startled, pushed the dog away as if ashamed of his companion and looked up to where the voice had come from.

  ‘Graves are not the best of places to spend the night. In the middle of life we are in death, and I now come to rescue you from the pit of torment.’

  Standing above Blake, silhouetted by the dawn sky, was a tall stranger dressed in black and peering down through gold-rimmed, blue-glass spectacles.

  ‘I heard you from the street and saw the two vagabonds running away and thought they had done you harm.’ He gave a broad smile. ‘And here I find you alive and …’ The man paused and looked at the dog that lay crumpled against the side of the grave. ‘You are in better condition than your friend.’

  ‘I f-f-found him here,’ Blake stuttered as he got to his feet. ‘I woke up in the grave and he – er, it – was on top of me – dead. I fear it belongs to my servant girl.’

  ‘So I have arrived in time, to save you from the same fate. We can’t have two dogs sharing the same grave, can we?’ The stranger reached down and clasped Blake’s hand, and in one pull lifted him from the coffin lid and into the half-light of the shadowy morning. He kept hold of Blake’s hand, opened his palm and stared at the red thumbprint.

  ‘This is a very angry burn, one that will harm more than just the flesh. Where did you get it?’ he asked as he looked at Blake.

  ‘An experiment, I am a scientist, of sorts … Can we say that it was a misadventure that led me here and somewhere in the process I burnt my hand?’ Blake wanted to end the conversation and get away from this man.

  ‘You can say whatever takes your fancy, but would it be the truth?’ The man continued to hold Blake’s hand and lead him to the gate. ‘It’s best not to speak too much in places like this. I know that the dead listen more intently than the living.’

  The stranger forcefully linked Blake’s arm as he walked him through the streets of tightly packed houses with their overhanging galleries that surrounded St Bride’s churchyard. Blake felt as if he was being led to a place he had been searching for, and that here in the crowded hovels of Blackfriars there would be an answer. They walked for several minutes through the grime, stepping over the drunken bulks of sleeping vagrants that littered the streets with their blistered bodies. Blake looked up to the sky – his comet was still there in the fading night.

  The stranger tightened his grip on Blake’s arm. ‘It isn’t far to where you live,’ he said as they turned into Conduit Fields. ‘I have seen you several times in Bloomsbury Square.’

  ‘I have seen you also,’ Blake replied, believing now was his chance to find out who the man really was. ‘In fact,’ he said, his confidence growing as they entered familiar territory, ‘I have seen you come and go in the most unusual fashion. I have the impression that you have been watching me and that this meeting is not by chance.’ He tried to pull his arm from the man but to no avail.

  ‘I watch many people and
my coming and going is a trick of the light. If I were you I would be more concerned as to what I had lurking in my house than to who watched over you.’ He lowered his voice. Blake sensed the threat that filled each word.

  ‘I keep nothing in my house that gives me concern. Only a thief would trouble me with such talk.’ Blake again attempted to escape from the man, but they were locked together as if tied by invisible cords that couldn’t be broken.

  ‘When we have to go our separate ways then so be it,’ said the stranger. ‘But for the time being, Doctor Blake, you and I share the same journey, one predicted by that star that you have watched every night.’

  ‘Star? I know of no star. I am an astronomer, a Cabalist. I search for truth.’

  ‘You’re a fool and a dabbler and it will be more than your hand that gets burnt if you continue with your magic. You have put your head in the dragon’s mouth and it is about to snap shut.’ The man took hold of Blake by the front of his coat and lifted him from the ground with one hand, so that he dangled by the neck as if in the hands of the hangman. ‘I have looked over you for a long time, Sabian. Sometimes you have given me great joy, but now your stupidity fills me with despair. Yet your fate is in your own hands and the rope gathers around you and soon …’ He paused and listened to something only he could hear. ‘Soon, Sabian, the trap will fall and you will hang from a different tree.’

  ‘How do you know me?’ Blake asked, choking with the grip of the man’s hand.

  ‘I knew your father, and you could say I am the guardian of your family blood,’ the stranger said quickly, lowering Blake to the ground.

  ‘Does my guardian have a name?’ Blake asked.

  ‘You can call me Abram Rickards. It is a name that has served me well, and one which you will come to understand.’ Abram tilted his dark spectacles and stared at Blake eye to eye. ‘I don’t waste my time on people, so don’t disappoint me, Sabian. I am not someone who you should ever think of disappointing! I have my own way of dealing with people who dare to do that.’