Wormwood

by G. P. Taylor

She took Agetta up the long flight of stairs to the upstairs landing, where a small barge dog trundled along the corridor to meet them, its tail wagging with delight and anticipation.

  ‘It can see us,’ Agetta said as the dog began to bark and leap along the landing.

  ‘Not only that,’ the girl replied. ‘It is with us in this world.’

  Agetta felt the life cord pull her back with a sudden jolt.

  ‘You are being woken from sleep, there is nothing that can be done to keep you here,’ the girl said anxiously.

  Agetta reached out to the girl as she tried to hold on to this spectral sphere. ‘Don’t let me go back, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘You are being woken from your dream. You will have to go. Tell me where you sleep and I will come to you.’

  ‘I am in the priest-hole, behind the fireplace at Bibblewick’s Bookshop on London Bridge, that is where you will find me,’ Agetta said quickly as the cord was pulled tighter, as if wound by some unseen hand that stirred her from sleep. ‘Come and find me. Bring me back to this place. I need to know more,’ she said as she was pulled from her feet and dragged backwards down the stairs.

  The dog gave chase, barking cheerfully as if this were some spirit game. Agetta soared effortlessly through the air, then slipped through the door and into the street as the life cord sped her faster to her waking body. She flew through streets and alleyways, slipping in and out of the narrow streets and getting ever closer to London Bridge. The life cord began to slacken as she drew near the bridge and calmly floated along a narrow ginnel.

  Then, with a suddenness faster than the eye, the alley was lit with a bright silver light. The sky exploded as a ball of fire hurtled from heaven, falling from the northern heights. An ear-splitting roar filled the air and the buildings around her shook with the explosion as the fireball crashed into the river, evaporating its dirty waters to a bright steam that hung in the air like a funeral shroud.

  Helplessly Agetta drifted along the banks of the Thames, looking at the silhouettes of the fine houses that lined its banks, their deep blackness edged by the glow from a fire that overwhelmed the village of Hampstead to the north. In this half-dream, half-reality, she had no care for the chaos that engulfed the city. She stared at a church spire that broke from the horizon like a defiant finger pointing in rage at heaven. It was as if the buildings had been designed for darkness, that their creator had known that this hour was to come and that only at this time and in this place would their true beauty be perceived. She stared to the pinnacle of the stars and watched the quick flash of fragments of rock and ice as they broke free from their source and were sucked to earth. The broken dome of St Paul’s lay as a testament to its failure of salvation. The place that once echoed to the sound of traditions made by man now resonated to the low hum of the ice boulders as they stormed through the outer layers of the high heaven towards the earth. The comet was being drawn closer, the world was luring its slayer nearer with each turn.

  In the distance, etched by the moon, Agetta saw the girl running along the banks of the river and the small dog jumping by her side. The girl waved and shouted out in words that were stolen away as Agetta was pulled silently through the air. Her heart raced, knowing that her friend had sought her out and that she would see her again in her sleep. In her floating slumber Agetta tried to move her arms in a gesture of reply.

  Then there was a sudden tug on the cord and Agetta crashed quietly and painlessly through the thick stone walls of the bookshop and sunk back into her cold body with a long shudder.

  Tegatus shook her to bring her back to wakefulness. She held her head and rubbed her face groggily.

  ‘Ga-al et ha-shamayim,’ Tegatus repeated again and again, as if reciting a charm. ‘You have been talking in your sleep. What place were you in?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Agetta said quietly as she tried to gather her thoughts. ‘I saw another sky-stone strike the earth and the northern sky lit by a fire. I was at a house near Conduit Fields, a large house with marble steps. I met a girl, a servant just like me, she said she could walk in her sleep as if she was a ghost and I did too. It wasn’t a dream, was it? And the words you spoke were written on my hand.’

  ‘You have a seeing-stone. Maybe this would be a time to discover for yourself,’ Tegatus said as he slumped down next to her.

  Agetta took the crystal from her pocket and placed it carefully over the scar with its black-etched letters. She looked on as the small black shapes changed before her eyes. ‘The heavens he has redeemed,’ she said quietly, staring at the words. ‘So that is what you were saying when I woke up. What does it mean?’

  ‘It means you are safe and away from danger. You are the centre of something even beyond my understanding. It is as if all this is for you. While you slept Sarapuk was killed and his spirit taken captive by a demon with a blue face. They have now left this place.’

  ‘Danby!’ Agetta gasped, realising the ghost of the highwayman had found their hiding-place. ‘He was a friend of my father, a cheat and a murderer, and now in death he stalks me.’

  ‘Fear not, child. There is a chasm fixed between heaven and hell that no spectre can cross and I know the name of one who can cast this creature to the pit for ever.’

  ‘He said he would kill me to punish my father, and he will,’ she said desperately. She got to her feet to run from the hiding-place.

  ‘No. There is something I must do before you go outside.’ Tegatus grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back into the room. ‘I will go first and do what is right for Sarapuk. Even though he is a dog he cannot be left to rot in this place.’

  Tegatus left her in the chamber and went into the shop, where the urchin was stretched out on the back of the body as if reclining on a fashionable French sofa. ‘He won’t be needing this any more,’ she said as she saw the angel. ‘I wanted to get inside and see what it would be like to live in a body again but all the life had gone. It’s what my master has done to us all, he captures our spirit then tips our bodies through the trap door and into the Thames.’

  ‘The book-keeper knows more than books,’ he replied.

  ‘He is a master of many things and has many friends. He knew the girl was coming here. I listened to him talking to the woman with the carriage. They wanted the book you carried and the girl together and they want them here tonight. You thought you were helping her escape and you have brought her to the place and to the time. Perhaps you are not such a clever creature after all.’ As she spoke the spirit faded to almost nothing but a thin outline.

  ‘They will be searching the whole of London. This is the best place to be, somewhere they don’t expect us.’

  ‘She has been dream-soaring. I was on the roof, I saw her. Tell me this, angel – she didn’t teach herself to fly, so they must have charmed her out of her body. If they did that they will know where she is …’

  ‘Then we will leave and you can tell your master that we have gone,’ Tegatus said, stepping towards the urchin and pushing her from Sarapuk’s stiffening body. ‘Now tell me where the entrance to the river is hidden.’

  The urchin pointed to a thick brass hoop that was fitted neatly into the wooden floor by the fireplace. Tegatus lifted the ring and pulled the three boards that formed the trap door. Beneath, the thick brown waters of the river bubbled between the narrow arch of the bridge.

  ‘Brings back memories, that does,’ the urchin said as she looked on. ‘I remember the night it happened to me, I watched as my body went into there. Best thing that ever happened. Miserable life, miserable death, what’s the difference?’

  Tegatus picked Sarapuk from the floor with one hand and dragged him across the room. Without ceremony or comfortable words he tipped the body through the trap door, listening for it to splash into the surge. There was nothing, no sound but the bubbling water and the clattering breeze that whistled above the river.

  The urchin vanished through the floor, then materialized moments later next to Tegatus as he peered throug
h the trap door.

  ‘He’s not gone,’ she said in her shrill voice. ‘He’s stuck, hanging from an old beam. He’ll be there till Christmas, or till he rots and the seahawks pick him clean,’ the girl said cheerfully.

  ‘Then hang he will until Christmas and let the dead take care of the dead,’ the angel replied sternly. He lifted the trap door and slammed it shut in a smoulder of thick dust. Far below, the body of Sarapuk dangled like a forgotten puppet as the quick breeze blew it back and forth.

  Tegatus turned and called out to Agetta. ‘It’s done,’ he shouted. ‘Come, we have to go before we are found. The urchin saw your flight and fears you were followed by those who seek you.’

  Agetta appeared from behind the fireplace. Her face had changed, and the angel thought how much older she looked, aged by the tribulation and now a woman.

  ‘I was followed … by the girl in the dream … and her dog. I want them to find me, they will do me no harm. I want to know more of her magic.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ asked the urchin.

  ‘I saw them by the church with the spire towards Blackfriars.’

  Tegatus ran to the window and looked out. To the north the glow of the fire filled the sky, etching the houses in deep black. He could see no one.

  By the gate to the bridge a small barge dog snuggled into a discarded coat and, turning several times, made its bed. With one eye closed it peered sleepily across the cobbles to the entrance of the shop it guarded.

  *

  In the house by Conduit Fields, Hezrin Flamberg discarded the shadow of the girl as she woke from her sleep. She clicked her fingers, and Morbus Gallicus crawled like a dog before her.

  ‘I will leave Rumskin where he is. I am sure he will tell us if they try to leave. Go to Thaddeus Bracegirdle and take him to London Bridge and make sure they never escape.’

  26: Hamartia

  ‘Think, man, think,’ Abram said as he pushed Blake through a narrow alley that had been wrecked by an exploding fragment of celestial ice. ‘Do you not having any feeling in your bones as to where the book is?’

  ‘I can’t think, there is too much to think about,’ Blake replied. A cascade of slates fell from the roof of a nearby house, crashing into the narrow alley and splattering in the dung that littered the ground. He looked around in the half-light. Every weakness was here to see. ‘Just look at us. What do you think, you’re an angel from another world, what do you think of this wonderful creation?’ Blake shouted, his harsh words echoing through the darkness.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to know what I think,’ Abram said as he pushed Blake further on. ‘I have tramped the sewers of this world too often, lifting the drunken carcasses from the morass and putting them back on their feet. And what thanks do they give you? None. Maybe you yourselves are to blame for all of this. You were given free will to do what your hearts desired, and you desired to care only for yourselves. If only he had broken your selfishness then Yerzinia and her dogs would have had no one to feed on. Your kind are easy meat. From generation to generation I have seen you grow in knowledge – I was there when the first wheel was made from twisted wood, I have seen your kind create new inventions and wonderful machines. Yet you have spread your diseases of murder and greed wherever you go. Perhaps there is more hell in you than heaven.’ He stepped over the corpse of an ass that lay across the way. ‘I often wonder if you would all be happier if we left you to the devices and desires of your own hearts and didn’t strive to bring you that which you call goodness. I once said this to the creator – but then he had seen my thoughts before I spoke them, he never replied he didn’t have to. It was all in his eyes, those all-seeing, all-knowing eyes that strip you bare – they said it all, spoke of some deep, strong bond that only he knew.’

  The angel slipped into melancholy as he took hold of Blake’s arm and they turned into a deserted street that ran along the back of Fleet Street. ‘We’re jealous of your kind,’ he said. ‘We can’t understand why he feels for your world so much, but then we soon realise that we are messengers, his messengers, and unlike you we can stare into his face and live.’

  ‘Then why all this?’ Blake said urgently as the thought of the book began to burn in his mind. ‘The city is torn by madness, struck from the sky by a comet predicted in an old book, and the world is to be the conquest of a harlot. Doesn’t the all-seeing, all-loving care about that? Is he so impotent that he’s unable to help us?’

  Then his feet suddenly stuck to the cobbles as if they had been charged with a shot of lead, and his body convulsed and writhed in pain. Blake fell to his knees as icy fingers pulled at his face and a harvest of dead hands groped up through the stones and mud, clawing their way to the surface from the pit that had been their tomb since the first plague.

  Kicking at the hands that grasped his feet, Abram strode towards Blake, who was being dragged closer to the sodden earth. ‘It’s a plague pit come to life!’ he shouted, taking hold of Blake by the shoulders and lifting him from the bony fingers that tore at his flesh. ‘She has done this. Graves will give up the lost and the streets will be filled with the souls of the dead. It will soon be time, Blake, and she knows you will try to stop her. We must leave this place.’

  Abram pulled Blake from the ground and carried him along the alley, blood streaming from his face, a broken finger embedded by a long brown nail hung limply from his skin.

  ‘Where are they from?’ Blake asked as Abram propped him against the broken door of the shoemaker’s shop and pulled the corpse nail out of his face.

  ‘She has called the dead. They will rise from the grave from now until the time of her transformation. Lady Flamberg will try to stop us from finding the girl, she knows there is a force against her. We have to discover where your servant is being kept and then I will find Tegatus and we can put an end to this whole event.’

  ‘And you have the power to do this?’ Blake asked as he drew his breath and looked back on the writhing mass of tormented hands that swayed back and forth like a silent crop of corn. ‘Look, they reach out like blind men and still the grave holds them to its breast.’

  ‘Given time they will break free and pull themselves from the pit, trapped in a half-life of rekindled madness. Evil is not limited to people, there are wicked strongholds that occupy the land itself. Every act of violence or tragedy charges the very particles of the earth with its presence. There are powers that feed on this and pitch their tent, making their dwelling place amongst men. Then you wonder why the trials of the ages repeat themselves time and time again in the same place, every generation cursed like the one that went before. Whatever people do makes an impression in the land. Wherever you tread you leave behind the scent of your sweating feet. So too with the spirit, its groanings are absorbed by the stones, to be played again and again.’

  Abram set off to walk, casting a look back to the swaying mass of hands that reached out towards the dark sky. ‘Come, my dear scientist, we have the city to search, and the Nemorensis will call out to you as the moon begins to rise. On a night like this it will want the adoration of its followers.’

  Blake turned his gaze to the alleyway. Long shadows cast by the northern lights danced across the rooftops as the swathe of dead hands struggled to be rid of the earth that entombed them. They made no sound; all that could be heard was the grinding of the stones as the loathsome bones rubbed one against the other. Blake was transfixed. Never had he ever thought he would see such a spectacle.

  ‘Does this not frighten you?’ the angel asked Blake as they watched the plague pit slowly give up its dead.

  ‘I wish I had seen this long ago. My quest would have altered and I would not have wasted so many years searching for that which would never be attained. To me this is the proof that I have longed for, proof that my scientific magic never gave to me.’ Blake laughed. ‘Who would believe that I would stand in the presence of an angel and the clambering hands of the dead in a Fleet Street alleyway?’ He touched his face and wiped away the smear of
blood that trickled across his skin. ‘I am even marked by their presence.’

  ‘There is more than this,’ Abram said as he took hold of Blake by the arm and turned him away from the alley. ‘Some days ago an attempt was made to destroy the world. The first sky-quake and the madness of the animals was a sign of what happened. Far to the north I fought with Yerzinia’s brother. He desired a golden statue, a Keruvim, with which he would have overturned the throne of heaven. He failed in his undertaking and cannot trouble us here. But Yerzinia is far more wicked than he will ever be. She is a plague on the human soul, and will not rest until she has conquered heaven and the heart of every man she desires. She wants the world to bow at her name.’

  ‘Then tell me this,’ Blake asked, striding alongside the angel as they picked their way through the tormented street littered with the bodies of those who could not keep up with the human tide that had fled the city. ‘Why does this evil seem so powerful and good so weak? If you are all-powerful then why can’t she be destroyed in the twinkling of an eye? I have seen the power of the sea. I have watched as lightning crashes to the earth with such force that even buildings crumble with its power. So why not her?’

  ‘It is not for power that the universe was created, but for love. Each abides by its own rules. Power seeks itself, and those too weak to follow the way of truth it corrupts, eats away like a vicious cancer of the mind. Choose power over love and soon you will believe phantasms as truth and delude yourself for ever. The ways of the creator cannot be understood, and I sometimes wonder myself the reason for this madness, but I know that what we now see is the last fight of wickedness as it clings to this world.’ Abram stopped and looked around the street. It was as if he could hear a sound pitched beyond human ears. ‘There are others … they are hiding from the comet.’

  Blake strained to hear what Abram had discovered. All he could hear was the distant echo of the crackling blaze far to the north and the faraway rumble of houses crashing to the ground. Abram walked on, led closer to the sound. A thin silhouette crossed the street and clung to the shadows of the houses and shops that ran in broken file towards the river. Abram pointed to Blake and bade him be silent. Together they hid in a doorway.