Wormwood

by G. P. Taylor

  ‘Are you there, Sarapuk?’ Cadmus asked feebly, stumbling like a blind man trying to find a chair. ‘I can’t see you, my eyes are burnt by the ghosts.’

  Dagda Sarapuk crept stealthily across the kitchen to the door and quietly slid the wood from the doorway before slipping into the hall and then out to the street.

  ‘Dagda, I can’t see, where are you?’ asked Cadmus as he floundered around the kitchen, lurching into the table and crashing to the floor. ‘Help me, man. Help me!’

  In the darkest corner of the room, pressed against the wall, a shadow waited for Cadmus to stagger closer.

  16: Herba Sacra

  On the corner of Bishopsgate a tattered woman clutched a bundle of herbs as Agetta and Tegatus walked quickly along the street towards London Bridge. A fat candle in an open-topped bell jar lit her midnight stall. The night-light flickered and spat, casting an orange glow into the fog like the eye of a fox as her shrill voice called out into the night. ‘Vervain! Rue! Herba Sacra! Herb of Grace, keep away the scourge of death, taste the bread of repentance … All a penny,’ the woman shouted as she held out a long vervain wand with its tall, woody stalk tipped with slender, tiny blue flowers. ‘Dip the flowers in November frost, chase away the midnight ghost.’

  Tegatus looked to the ground, trying not to catch the woman’s eye. He was weary and his feet dragged in Cadmus’s boots as if he were not used to walking such a distance.

  ‘For the young lady, sir? It will protect her from many things,’ the woman said as she waved the wand feverishly at him. ‘I have a sprig she could wear as a garland, keep her safe, no charm can hurt her, nor mad dog or snake, even takes away the plague.’

  Agetta pulled on his arm and looked at him. ‘Please, Tegatus, I have always wanted to wear a garland of vervain,’ she said, rooting in her pockets for a penny.

  Tegatus clutched the book tightly and looked away, fearful that something in his expression would give him away.

  ‘Just one sprig,’ Agetta said to the woman, handing her the money.

  ‘Not much of a gentleman, making you pay,’ the woman said as she gave Agetta the garland of dried blue flowers. ‘Can’t even look me in the eye,’ she whispered. ‘Not the kind of a man to be out walking with.’

  ‘So what herb would you give for that?’ Tegatus snapped. ‘Sage, to colour my bile? Or marigolds to get rid of warts? I don’t look at you because I care what I cast my eye on.’

  The woman didn’t reply. She shrugged her shoulders at Agetta and slid the penny into her pocket. Agetta smiled and took the arm of Tegatus to lead him down the street. ‘He’s not from these parts, he’s a stranger to London.’

  ‘He’s no stranger to hell, mark my words, girl. That man has the hand of death firmly grasping his shoulder and he’ll take you with him given half the chance.’

  A large black carriage clattered through the street towards them as the coachman lashed out at the four horses with his long whip. It rattled furiously over the cobbles as Tegatus pulled Agetta out of its way.

  ‘He drives with a purpose!’ Tegatus said, stepping out with expanding pace. Agetta ran to keep up with him.

  ‘I told you the madness was coming closer,’ Tegatus said as they finally went through the great arch on to London Bridge. ‘Superstition and magic fills the heart and no one can be bothered to search for truth.’ Tegatus stopped and turned around, and for several moments he waited in the doorway of the coffee shop to see if they had been followed. ‘I sense we are being watched,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem to be human, somewhere in the fog by the arch, I feel it’s there … waiting.’

  ‘No one knows we are here, so how can they follow us?’ Agetta asked as she pressed herself against the door.

  ‘This book speaks darkness, it cries out to the night and your human ears cannot hear it. Every spirit in London will be drawn to it like a flea to a candle. They’ll come to gloat at your fate to steal your energy.’ Agetta clutched the vervain tightly in her hand. ‘That won’t protect you, it’s just a dried flower,’ Tegatus said as if he could read the very thoughts of her heart. ‘The leaves will take away the melancholy and ease the pain, but it won’t stop the devil chasing your soul.’

  ‘What did the woman mean when she said death had a hold of you? Do you think she could see anything?’ Agetta asked quietly.

  ‘It was the book speaking through her, telling her what to say. It’s mischievous and was written in wickedness. The Nemorensis has the power to change the way we think, to take control of our minds and seduce our understanding. It lies with its own ink,’ he whispered. ‘Many people have fallen for its beauty and have believed everything it has said, but with every prophecy there comes a lie. It twists the truth, adds a jot here, an iota there. It tells a man to watch for trouble by night and then surprises him by coming like a thief at dawn. I think you will hear more before this night is out …’

  ‘It told Blake it would be twenty-one days from the sky-quake to the comet’s coming to the earth,’ Agetta said as she peered out across the bridge towards Bibblewick Bookshop. ‘I heard him tell Bonham before they found me hiding in the cupboard.’

  ‘Wormwood is closer than that, I fear. It would seem that Doctor Blake doesn’t realise what powers he is playing with.’ Tegatus looked back and forth up and down the bridge. ‘I know it’s here, I can feel it, but it cannot be seen,’ he said as he looked towards the candlelit bookshop. ‘Tell me, Agetta, when was your friend expecting you?’

  ‘I said I’d be back tonight.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t think you would ever come with me.’ She paused. ‘You and Thaddeus have been the first people that I would call friends. You’ve both been so kind. In a way I have found you both by fate. I found you in the attic, and if it wasn’t for Yerzinia telling me to go to the shop I would never have met Thaddeus.’ She wrapped herself tightly in her shawl.

  ‘So Yerzinia is a friend?’ Tegatus appeared shocked by the mention of her name.

  ‘The best friend you could ever have, so fine and dandy, with her own carriage,’ Agetta said, smiling. ‘You know what, she found me. It was fate, she said I would become like her.’

  ‘She said you would be sisters and that you would never want for anything again?’

  Agetta didn’t reply but looked to the ground. She had the intense feeling that her mind was an open book, that everyone who just looked at her could read her thoughts and know her deepest secrets.

  ‘What sealed your friendship with her? A drinking-cup of fervent liquid or was it the moon mark that burns blood red on your palm?’

  ‘Both,’ she replied.

  ‘Then you are twice cursed. This Yerzinia of yours wants more than your friendship.’

  ‘I know,’ Agetta interrupted. ‘She told me, that I could leave my life behind and –’

  ‘Be sucked dry of every ounce of your life and then discarded in this open sewer you call the Thames, to be washed up on a distant strand with no one the wiser or ever caring.’ Tegatus gave a sudden deep breath as if a sharp blow had struck him. ‘I need to rest. I will see this friend of yours now.’

  He was sharp in his demands and Agetta felt uncomfortable in his presence. She even began to regret helping him escape and sharing with him the secrets of her newfound friendships. Tegatus had taken them and cast his light upon them, he had corrupted that which to her was beautiful, good and true and tainted it with deception and intrigue. She could feel a bitter resentment growing against the angel. She wished she had left him to rot in the attic, she thought to herself, trying to cover the resentment with a myriad of other thoughts to disguise her feelings so he couldn’t read her mind. She thought of her mother, of washing plates and swimming in the Thames. She allowed her mind to dance from one dream to another so that he would not be able to see the growing dislike she had for him.

  Tegatus appeared distracted, distant. His mind was far away as he stumbled across the cobbles to the Bibblewick Bookshop. He held his chest as he
walked as if a dark, painful memory had stabbed him in the ribs. Agetta followed at a distance.

  The shop door was slightly open, wedged with a piece of folded paper. Agetta bent down and pulled it from the door and instinctively put the torn parchment into her pocket. Again Tegatus stopped and peered through the mist back towards Bishopsgate. The fog swirled as two jackdaws chaffed in the darkness above their heads. The bridge was empty. In the distance they could hear the mournful, weary voice of the herb seller calling the faithful to buy Herba Sacra.

  The angel reached up and took hold of the bell and pulled it from its metal spring.

  Agetta allowed her face to speak the anger that brewed in her heart. ‘Why did –’ she whispered.

  Tegatus put his hand roughly over her mouth to stop her speaking as he slowly slid the door open and dragged her into the shop. Once inside, he held Agetta against the wall as he looked down the long dark aisle of books. She saw his eyes searching every inch of the shop, flashing from the rough wooden floor to the ornate plaster ceiling. Very slowly he let his hand slip from her mouth, gesturing with his long white finger for her to be completely silent.

  At the end of each tall aisle of books a bright candle lit the way through the maze of crammed shelves. There was a constant swirling of dust, blown through the floorboards by the breeze of the Thames that gushed up from the river below. The sound of the ebbing tide filled the shop, echoing from each wall as it flooded each narrow passageway of books with its groaning.

  It was a sound that Agetta didn’t care for, reminding her of a time past, one Christmas Eve, when she had watched as the Thames watermen had struggled to drag out a boy who had fallen through the ice and into the fierce current that rushed underneath the snow-white crust that shut in the river. They finally heaved him from the water and rested his bitter-blue body on the ice. A thickset boatman had then lain on the boy, trying to warm him through, as the child coughed and choked up the icy sludge that filled his lungs. Yet what disturbed Agetta most was the absence of kindness from the crowd that huddled around the nearby fire of the Frost Fair, where they watched a bear being baited to death by two large mastiffs. She had stared tight-lipped as the crowd laughed at the dying bear whilst behind them the child gripped on to life, cared for only by the fat boatman who gave up his coat.

  The river sounded as if it were all around them, louder than she had heard it before. Tegatus crept along the side of the bookshelves and Agetta followed close behind. She felt that something had changed. The bookshop had lost its charm. The atmosphere now shouted a stark warning.

  ‘I hear children,’ Tegatus said in a whisper, as he peered around the end of the aisle. Agetta could hear nothing but the roaring of the water as it flooded through the narrow arch beneath the bookshop. ‘They are speaking of Thaddeus … he is not here!’

  Agetta panicked – he had promised to be there. She thought that her only escape would be through him, that Thaddeus would be to her a new life. Without thinking, she ran ahead of the angel towards the tall desk in the centre of the bookshop. She had memorised each aisle, first left then right through the labyrinth of wood and paper. She ran until she reached the desk and jumped upon the waiting-plate and looked out over the shop. For the first time she became aware of how vast the bookshop was. With its vaulted ceiling and walls with thick columns growing out of the oak shelves and topped with ram’s horns and garlands of oak fruit, it was like a church.

  The angel appeared quite small as she looked down on him from the desk. She thought how he had changed since Sarapuk had stripped him of his feathers and shorn his hair. She wanted to goad him into showing her the angel-wings, to mock the featherless bones and joke that he was a Gravesend goose, plucked whilst still walking. Bitterness surged from her like a spring tide, and the closer he came to her the more she despised him.

  ‘We’ll have to hide the book,’ he said as he looked round, ‘and what better place than in a bookshop?’ He laughed. ‘Can you see the children? Perhaps they are playing games with us. They will come out when they are not frightened.’

  ‘They were here before, when the stranger came. He could hear them like you, even when I couldn’t,’ she said indifferently, wanting him to go and leave her to find Thaddeus on her own.

  ‘This man, what did he look like?’

  ‘Like you … but older. Same kind of eyes. Looked like a hawk and wanted to know my business.’ She looked around the bookshop. ‘Thaddeus didn’t like him, and I don’t think he’ll like you either.’

  ‘Did the man say what he wanted?’

  ‘He wanted a book, written by a sister or someone who’d turned their back on his family.’

  ‘Did he say his name?’ Tegatus asked as he put the Nemorensis on the bottom shelf of a long bookcase next to a dusty old volume with a crusted cover etched in green mould. He looked at the faded name printed in gold: Micrographica.

  ‘No, he never mentioned his name. Should he?’ Agetta asked.

  There was a sudden crash as a pile of books tumbled from the top of one of the shelves in the distant corner of the shop. Agetta leapt from the waiting-plate and ran down the aisle, quickly followed by Tegatus. By the front window of the shop, lit by a tall green candle and bathed in its gentle light, was a crumpled pile of books.

  Tegatus grabbed Agetta by the back of her coat and pulled her towards him. ‘Listen,’ he said sharply. ‘They are near to us.’

  They stood in silence. From behind the shelves could clearly be heard the sound of a child weeping. The angel carefully edged his way to the end of the aisle and around the corner. Agetta followed, not wanting to be left behind – the thought of being alone chilled her soul. Somehow she now felt she had been wrong about Tegatus, and she could feel her anger ebbing as she reached out and touched the hem of his garment.

  Standing before Tegatus, barefoot and ragged, was a young boy. His face was pale and drawn, with deep black bruises under each eye. Tegatus stared at the child, who could only have reached his eleventh year. The boy held his long grey fingers against his face as he tried to wipe away the salt dew from his eyes. He stared at a pool of thick red blood on the wooden floor and slowly shook his head from side to side, unaware of their presence.

  ‘Mister Thaddeus,’ Tegatus heard him whisper, as a long rumble of thunder filled the night air.

  ‘Has Thaddeus left you alone?’ the angel said, as softly as he could yet wanting to be heard.

  The boy turned and looked in his direction and peered through his deep blue eyes, unsure if he could see the creature that spoke to him.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asked. ‘What do you want? I can hardly see you.’ The boy looked on the shimmering outline of the angel and reached out as if to wipe away a mirage.

  ‘I can see you child, and hear you,’ Tegatus said as he stepped towards him. ‘What has happened to Thaddeus?’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ Agetta asked, unable to see the boy.

  The child hesitated and stepped further away. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said as Tegatus looked at the blood that was splattered over the floor. ‘They came for him, a creature from my side, looked like the gargoyles from the Tower, and a man who could speak the rhymes.’ The child stopped and stared at Agetta, who was looking out from behind Tegatus, still clutching the hem of his coat. ‘I saw her before when she came to the bookshop. Can she see me?’

  ‘No, not yet. She stands too much in her own world,’ Tegatus said as he stared at the apparition. ‘What happened to Thaddeus?’

  ‘They took him away, dragged him from the shop and into a carriage.’ He looked at the blood again. ‘I followed them to the arch, but I can’t go any further, that is the end of my world. This is where I left the earth life … Beneath this shop I drank from the water as it sucked me further and further down. I live on the Gemara, it is a place of near-completion, there are lots of us.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go on to the next life?’ Tegatus asked.

  The boy hesitated. Tegatus saw his image tremble
as if about to disappear. ‘Mister Thaddeus gave me a home. He’s a kind man. He is my family now.’ The boy looked at Tegatus even more intensely. ‘I can see you so well … You’re not from her side, are you?’

  ‘I am not from any side, I am from another place.’

  ‘You’re not human, and you’re not a Diakka creature what took Mister Thaddeus,’ the boy replied.

  ‘I heard the voice, Tegatus,’ Agetta said. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Do you have a name?’ Tegatus asked. ‘She wants to know.’

  ‘I had a name,’ the boy said, ‘but so soon on crossing to the Gemara it slipped from my mind and has not returned. It was stolen from me. If only I knew my name, then maybe …’

  There was a crashing of wheels on the cobbles outside the shop. Through the misted window and the tiny beads of rain that sparkled on the glass, Agetta could see the large black carriage. From the open window of the coach, in the cover of darkness, two small red eyes stared into the bookshop.

  ‘They’ve come back,’ said the boy, and a look of fear flashed across his face. ‘It’s the Diakka that took Thaddeus. You must hide.’

  He waved for Tegatus to follow. The angel grabbed Agetta by the hand and they both chased the spirit-boy through the shop. They weaved in and out of the aisles and between the cavernous cases of books that nearly touched the ceiling until they reached the large fireplace by the window over the river. ‘There’s a hiding-place,’ the spirit-boy said. ‘I heard Thaddeus call it a priest-hole. The girl can hide in there and we can pass to the Gemara, they won’t see us there. Press the stone at the base of the pillar and she will be safe in the wall.’

  ‘I cannot pass to your world. I too am bound to a place I don’t want to be.’