Wormwood

by G. P. Taylor

  Abram Rickards had woken Blake from a dark sleep filled with blackness and death and with one sweep of his arm had banished the nightmare from his mind as he pulled open the thick curtains to let in the light. He had refused the several cups of thick black chocolate offered to him by Blake as the doctor had sat quietly and listened to him.

  ‘Keys mean very little,’ Abram said. ‘A lock is meant to be overcome, and I am entrusted with your welfare. I am your guardian.’

  ‘From what do I need protection? I can look after myself and I have a sword to rid me of quarrelsome fools.’

  ‘I protect you from yourself and some of your friends,’ Abram replied as he looked out across the square.

  ‘So what gives you this right to protect me?’ As Blake bit hard on the cheese, the scurrying mites covered his lips.

  ‘Remember as a boy when you fell into the river? You couldn’t scream as the water sucked you under. Then as the sun broke through you saw yourself floating down and down. Did you realise you were dead, that you were passing from one world to the other?’

  Blake spat the cheese on to the bed. ‘How did you know? I was alone and told no one. I waited until I was dry before I went home. You meddle with my mind.’

  ‘I meddle with nothing,’ Abram shouted as he hit the wall with his fist and plaster dust fell from the ceiling. ‘It was I who pulled you from the depths. What man can save himself from the power of the grave?’ Abram held out his hands towards him. ‘See these? They saved you from the watery tomb and pulled you from the murky depths. It was these hands that brought life back to your dead, breathless corpse, my breath that filled your lifeless lungs. I have watched you grow. Wept for you, spoken for you in high places and pleaded your case in time of trouble. What of the time when you tried to turn lead to gold and blew the roof from your house? Who protected you from the fire? What spirit banished the creatures you conjured and could not get rid of with your failed magic as you danced in your silk cuffs?’

  ‘You meddle with everything,’ Blake shouted back. ‘What you know of me has been tricked from my mind, robbed whilst I slept.’ He threw the plate on the floor and jumped from the bed. ‘Now you come to me and torment me like some Shibbetta that throttles the life from my bones. You’re a warlock, a demon –’

  ‘I am an angel. I am your angel,’ Abram said quietly.

  Blake stared at his reflection in the gold-framed looking-glass that hung over the fireplace. His face began to change as if another merged with his. It slowly cracked with a smile that grew broader as a laugh bellowed from the pit of his stomach. ‘An … An …’ He tried to speak the unspeakable, his laughter breaking forth from his mouth and filling the room. ‘You are a liar and should leave now,’ he said, bent double with the fever of mirth that weakened every muscle. His body shook and quivered as he fell backwards laughing and giggling. ‘An angel! The man says he’s an angel! A charlatan, a vagabond, a Huguenot rogue come to steal my money. These things yes, but an angel? No.’

  ‘Then how do I know that you still weep and mourn your mother’s death? That you poisoned your cat with mercury to cure it of fleas, then stuffed the corpse under the floor of your bedchamber to stink for weeks? I know these things because I was charged with watching you, and at every turn you have done your very best to go your own selfish way.’ Abram grabbed Blake by the throat and lifted him from the floor, holding him with one hand above his head. ‘What did you think when I healed the dandy after the duel, that it was a trick?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Blake meekly as his feet kicked the air like a lifeless puppet.

  ‘I knew it,’ exclaimed Abram, throwing Blake to the floor. ‘Not even if someone was brought back from the dead would you believe. Don’t you trust your own eyes? Can you not see the truth or has the god of this age blinded you with unbelief?’ Abram turned and walked to the window. The atmosphere of the room suddenly changed, and Blake felt a desire within his heart to listen to Abram. ‘There is a plan for your life, a plan to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future. These are not my words but from the one who sent me, but you have to obey. Gone are the days of rebellion, of going your own way. Listen to me.’

  ‘You’re a master of words and a craftsman of cunning, but you don’t fool me. Look at you. You are barely my age and yet you say you have known me since I was a boy. Do you take me for a fool? You’re not an angel, you’re a frog-eyed Frenchman on the run from your king. I don’t want or need an angel.’

  ‘So shall I leave you to your fate? To a comet that will bring poison to your sea and destruction to the city?’

  ‘You know of the comet?’ Blake asked as he walked towards the window. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know, because the time was set long ago, as was the purpose. I know that you have read the Book of Nemorensis and have been taken in by its lies, and I know that even you don’t want to see the destruction that is set to come.’ Abram faced Blake eye to eye as they spoke. ‘So can I still be of no help to you?’

  Blake stared at him, searching the lines on his face. If this is an angel, he thought, then why does he look so like a man? ‘I don’t know what to think,’ he replied, walking back to the bed. ‘There is so much at stake, so much to lose.’

  Abram ignored him. He walked to the door of the chamber, opened it and looked into the long passageway. He closed the door and turned the key in the lock. ‘We can’t be too careful. You are being watched by a creature sent to find the Nemorensis.’

  ‘I have met the beast when it tried to kill me last night.’

  ‘The Dunamez tried to kill you?’ Abram asked.

  ‘Where were you then, O guardian of my blood? Thankfully Bonham shot the thing and it now lies dead in the observation room.’

  ‘Dunamez can’t be shot, they are spirit and have no substance.’

  ‘This had substance, lots of it. Green mud-like substance that stank like a full privy. It knew who I was and was intent on killing me. It is a Sekaris.’

  ‘Let me see your hands,’ the angel asked as he took hold of Blake and inspected his fingernails. ‘Did you clip these?’ he asked.

  Blake didn’t reply. It felt like the start of a nightmare. He knew what would come next and in his mind pictured the scene that would spill out before him. He shook his head and looked at the floor, feeling like a scolded child in front of his father.

  ‘When did this happen?’ The angel asked, letting go of the hands and searching through Blake’s hair. ‘Do you have a mark? It is the shape of a moon. A burn on the skin?’

  Blake held out his hand. ‘Is this what you search for?’

  Abram looked at the wound and smiled to himself. ‘Did it hurt?’ he asked. Blake nodded in agreement. ‘Good! Next time you will think twice about offering your hand to a woman.’

  ‘I had no choice, Lady Hezrin Flamberg is quite persuasive.’

  ‘So that is what she is calling herself, I know her by another name, though she has many. Igrat … Kettevmiria … Lillith … Yerzinia … Like a dog she answers to any of them.’

  ‘You speak as if you know her well,’ Blake answered.

  ‘She is a collector of angels and any other trinket that takes her fancy. I have known her for an eternity, century to century, Paris and Rome, Constantinople and Babylon. The thing with Igrat is that she never changes, always those same deep, beautiful eyes that capture the soul – and hands that will tear out your heart.’ There was a long silence as Abram looked about the room. He sniffed the air and looked closely at the skirting board. ‘She isn’t human, far from it,’ he said, as Blake was about to ask that question. ‘Lady Flamberg, as you know her, has gorged on the blood of noblemen since the beginning of time and you are entranced by her.’

  ‘How do I know what you say is the truth?’ Blake asked, following Abram as he paced about the room.

  ‘Just look at your hand. That burn is a beacon to her treachery. It is a mark to tell the whole of hell that you belong to her. Look at it, man, closer.’<
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  Blake stared at the fine black line that surrounded the deep red burn in his palm. He could see that in amongst the deep black were flakes of white and red that formed linear squiggles and appeared as words on a page.

  ‘You are right in what you are thinking. It is text. A language seldom spoken by men or angels.’ Abram answered Blake’s next question before it was asked. ‘You will find that these are the words of the Nemorensis. They bind you to her, she has access to your heart.’

  Blake stared at the wound, trying to read the miniature inscription that encircled the red moon on his palm. ‘You are a liar, she would never do that to me.’

  ‘She would have you dead. The creature with the stink of mud is a Sekaris. It was sent to kill you. Your bones brought the Sekaris to you.

  Mud, blood and bone.

  Breath of the fallen one to bring life to stone,

  Chanting the name of a waxing moon.

  Sekaris, Sekaris, do what’s to be done …’

  ‘Rhymes and magic is all I hear,’ Blake replied. ‘The Sekaris was sent to kill me, but I don’t want to believe it was Lady Flamberg. You may be my guardian, you may know all about the future and the comet, but knowing you have been my nursemaid makes me feel cheated in life. I feel that you have lifted me up in your hand so that I would never strike so much as my toe against a rock. When I fell in the Fleet I thought I rescued myself, and now I know it was an angel. You are as good for my pride as a rusty mirror glass.’

  ‘So you would have me leave you to whatever peril is to come?’ the angel enquired.

  ‘Yes,’ Blake replied firmly.

  ‘Very well, until you ask again I will leave you be.’

  ‘I will never ask again, my blood shall be my concern.’

  The angel turned the key in the chamber lock and opened the door, stepping into the hallway. ‘I would like to see the Sekaris. It has been a long time since I last saw one … Prague, I think, 1662. That too was Lady Flamberg, or did she call herself Baroness Manrique de Moya?’

  Blake walked with Abram to the observation room. His eyes quickly explored the room. The table was empty; there was no sign of the creature.

  ‘It was here!’ Blake said as he wiped his finger across the top of the muddied table. There was a thin layer of green algae and spawns of minute fungus that clung to the damp wood. ‘It was dead, truly dead,’ he said unable to believe his own eyes. He looked for some excuse, some reason why the creature was not there. ‘I saw Bonham shoot it. The Sekaris dropped to the floor and its skin grew like baked clay. I know it was dead.’

  ‘Now it is alive, or Bonham has taken it for himself,’ Abram said. He walked to the large window and looked out over the city. ‘The Sekaris has gone, but the comet has come …’

  High in the dawn sky, the comet was visible to the naked eye. It hung like a small moon, a diamond set in a clasp and surrounded by seven smaller lights that flickered against the rays of the sun. Blake hurried to the window.

  ‘It will drive them all to madness. They will fear for their lives and think the appearance is a sign from the heavens. I must tell the truth to the Chronicle,’ Blake said as he rubbed his face feverishly. ‘Yeats will tell the world and they can escape.’

  ‘The comet is only two days away. It will strike on the night of the full moon. Fear not, Blake. Fear not.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you always say, “Fear not”? It may be good enough for shepherds and young girls, but I am a man of science. My fear is proven by fact, calculated by reason and with very little place for faith in angels.’ Blake looked out over the city. ‘I will see Yeats today and in the morning he can warn the people.’

  ‘There is more at stake than the comet. Yerzinia has a plan, and you are a key to that plan. She has friends who plot and scheme and –’ Abram paused and looked at Blake. ‘Find the Book of Nemorensis and bring it to me, it is something that you can do alone. I give you one warning: do it alone, trust no one.’

  ‘Where do I find you? On a pinhead? Hiding in my pantry?’

  ‘Speak my true name.’

  There was a sudden and loud rush of air as the door to the observation room slammed shut. The fragments of the battered door fell to the floor, leaving the frame empty of everything but the brass hinges. Abram scanned the room as if he searched for a rat in a grain store.

  ‘You have a guest, Doctor Blake, and finally it shows itself.’ Abram ran to the far corner of the room and pressed himself against the wall. Blake stood silhouetted by the shaft of sunlight that burst through the window. He was wrapped in a blanket of swirling dust that hung in the sunlight like a swarm of bees.

  ‘I see nothing, what’s there?’ he asked as he looked about the room.

  The scurrying came again, louder and to his right, as if a creature ran against the side of the wall and dragged itself across the floorboards. Abram gave chase, knocking everything out of his way as he swiped his hands at the floor as if to grab some small but invisible beast. In the swirling dust Blake caught a glimpse of a small beast that scrambled along the floor like a small dog.

  Abram grabbed at the creature, laughing as he ran after it. ‘They are such good sport,’ he cried as he chased round and round the room, caring not for what he smashed. Blake hung on to the brass telescope for fear of it falling over. ‘Join me, Blake, this is fun …’ Abram jumped on to the chair near to the window and swung from the curtain before crashing to the floor, struggling with something invisible in his hands. ‘Never in the whole of eternity was there anything better than chasing a Dunamez,’ he cried out gleefully, holding on to a writhing mass that slowly began to materialise before Blake.

  ‘What is it?’ Blake asked.

  ‘This is proof. Proof that I do not lie. It’s a Dunamez, sent to invade your brain, inhabit your body and steal the book. It would have waited until the right time and then jumped your bones and pushed your soul into a corner of your mind. Then it would have walked you down the stairs into your carriage and away to its mistress. And, knowing the Dunamez, it would have drunk all of your best wine before it went.’

  The creature began to grow in size as it took form. It grunted and pulled against Abram as he tightened his grip. It growled and snorted through its thin nose and small mouth filled with long sharp teeth.

  ‘What can I give you to let me go?’ it said, trying to turn its head to look at Abram.

  ‘There is nothing that I want from you,’ he replied sharply, twisting his grip on its neck. ‘I am going to send you away to a place where you will do no more harm.’

  ‘No – not for me. I mean no mischief, I was charmed and told to come here for this creature, promised his warmth and his body as a sepulchre,’ the creature wheezed.

  ‘Who commands you?’ Abram asked as he twisted the neck even tighter.

  ‘I cannot say the name, she could reach me in hell and do to me more hurt than anything your hands can do.’ The Dunamez winced as the angel held it in his strong grip.

  Blake weakened at the sight of the beast. He realised he had seen it before, carved in stone. There before him was the face of the gargoyles that lined the roofs of Newman’s Row. They had stared blindly down upon him every day with their long noses and thick squashed eyes and he had given them no thought. Now one was before him – living, breathing. His heart raced with several beats at once as the panic of blood rushed through the veins in his neck.

  ‘What else is there for a man to see? Does heaven hold more surprises for my eyes?’ Blake asked as the Dunamez struggled to be free. ‘What of the Sekaris? Where will it be?’

  ‘Your friend took it, I saw him.’ The creature gloated as it spoke in its raucous voice, slobbering over each word. ‘Whilst you slept he picked it up and carried it from this place. Talked to himself as he went down the stairs … I followed and listened. He took the creature to a Society, said it would make him famous, said that the Chronicle would make him rich …’

  ‘They lie, Blake. I wouldn’t believe a word,’ Abram said, p
icking up the Dunamez from the floor with one hand.

  ‘It’s the truth,’ the creature cried as it became even more visible and solid. ‘The other man even searched the room before he went, took out some kind of instrument and tried to pass lightning through the beast.’

  Blake looked at Abram, his eyes confirming the existence of such a machine.

  ‘Your friend isn’t as trustworthy as you have always believed,’ Abram said. ‘I will return, there is much to tell you and so little time. First I have to take this creature to its appointed place, from where it will never return.’ He gripped the beast even tighter, almost choking what life it had left from its body.

  ‘No, no, no!’ the Dunamez screamed as Abram began to disintegrate in front of Blake. He watched as the angel appeared to grow opaque and beams of sunlight absorbed his flesh. He faded and faded, carrying the creature with him, until he finally disappeared.

  Blake looked around the room. It felt cold and foreboding, the morning sun casting stark shadows over the wooden floor. It was then that he saw the flake of mud wedged in the doorway. He noticed for the first time a trail of living fungus footprints that led from the room towards the dark spiral staircase.

  20: Morbus Gallicus

  The wooden windows of the carriage shut out all but one small chink of light as its metal-bound wheels rattled over the cobbles and through the muddy ruts of the London streets. Agetta sat crunched against the carriage frame, pressed in by Rumskin, his cold fur itching against her skin. The smell of the Diakka filled the dark coach and hung in the air like the taint of some dying animal. Komos puffed on his long white pipe, the bright amber glow of hemp tobacco lighting his eyes and forehead.

  ‘Where do you take us?’ Tegatus asked as he was squeezed against the door.

  ‘To a palace … of joy and pleasure … beyond your imagination,’ Komos replied between each draw on his pipe. ‘It’s not far and the view is quite amazing. But where you are to be lodged will be somewhat mean and lowly and not what you are used to.’ He laughed, coughing on the smoke. The Diakka made a noise like the giggle of a small child gurgling on warm milk.