The Devil's Mask

by Christopher Wakling

  ‘What in the name of –?’ I broke off as the knife-tip nipped me again. There was something awful in the man’s restraint. I’m not pressing hard – it said – yet.

  ‘Keep moving. There’s nothing to be gained from stopping here.’

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘It’s for your own benefit. Get in.’

  We had approached a carriage waiting on the northwestern corner of Queen Square. I felt myself folded forwards and sideways at the knife’s behest. The hand on my elbow slid up to guide me into the cab’s recesses by means of pressure exerted upon the back of my neck. I pitched forwards on to my knees. Then the man was thrusting something over my lowered head. It was a sack. I felt myself struggle, but in truth I barely shuddered, the prospect of the knife being more than enough to snuff out my protest before I’d begun it in earnest.

  ‘Good chap,’ said the voice. ‘Sensible.’

  The bag was made from thick hessian and admitted no light. In the darkness its rough texture was exaggerated, so that tree bark or glass paper seemed to be pressing against my brow and cheek. There was something else, something repellently reassuring about the sack. It had a smell so familiar and appealing that I could not at first place it. The carriage rattled from the paved street which ran around the square on to the uncertainty of a pitched road, and took off at a pace. Immediately I had no idea which way I was headed. The smell was warm and full and rounded. Coffee! A burning sensation worked in my throat.

  ‘Take what you want! My billfold, pocket-watch. Just let me go. I beg you.’

  There was a burst of laughter. It sounded oddly under-confident. Then the growl came again. ‘Pull yourself together. I’m not here to take anything from you. On the contrary, my orders are to give you something.’

  ‘Fine. Give it to me. Then set me down. I’ll breathe no word of this. I swear.’

  This plea was met with more staccato laughter, followed by, ‘Ever the optimist. Just sit pretty. All will be explained.’

  I gripped my elbows and hunched forward on the seat, which attempt to protect myself only increased the horrible sensation of vulnerability. The man still had hold of my arm, the knifepoint was still pressed into my side, though lightly now, perhaps to accommodate the jolting of the carriage as it churned the rutted streets. Uphill. That didn’t narrow things down by much: Bristol is all hills. On we dragged, to the sound of the road-noise and wind. The man did not speak again. In time the raw fear faded. It was replaced by a low panic which still rendered sensible thinking impossible, so that although I tried to imagine how best I might escape unharmed, I could not. Absurdities flitted about me instead. I wouldn’t have time to attend the barber’s today, not now. Why wasn’t I more resolute about improving my drawing? And how could Lilly’s wide-eyed smile be at once adorable and infuriating?

  The coffee smell. I focussed on that. Maybe I imagined it, but there seemed to be something else behind the smell, the sharpness of strong alcohol. Christ! I coughed and shook my head and steeled myself by listening for the sound of the wheels grinding on.

  Twenty-one

  Up we went, up. The horse was blowing between the shafts, and the carriage rattled upon its axle, wooden-wheels slipping and biting and clattering over the broken road. Then we were slowing and twisting and heaving over what felt less like a road than earth and rocks. The man had a rough hold of my collar to steady me against the movement, which solicitude I could not help feeling as a kindness, even as I crouched there in the black shadow of the sack. Finally, the seat beneath my thighs bounced to a stop.

  ‘Down you get.’

  The hand and the knife-tip steered me through the carriage door. I felt gingerly for the step. Beneath it my boot stumped into something wet. I squelched my way forward, the wind tugging at my coat-tails, and then there were planks beneath my feet and my footsteps acquired an echo which, taken together with the yawning stillness above me, told me that I had entered a building. I was manhandled to a staircase and prodded to climb it, feeling for each step. From the curve of the landing, I could tell the stairs belonged somewhere big. Up and up we went. Finally, I was jostled on to floorboards which flexed and clattered as I crossed them. They had not been nailed in place. Fearing a hole in the floor, I baulked, but the knife digging into the small of my back would brook no resistance. Rough wood snagged beneath my leather soles as I scuffed my way forwards.

  ‘Good man. Steady. There’s the spot.’

  The point of pressure at my back eased and I stopped shuffling. I could still sense the man looming behind me, and a fearful nothingness before me; though I locked my knees they were shaking unreliably, as were my hands. I clasped them together and clamped my teeth shut so hard that my ears rang.

  ‘Look straight ahead. Don’t turn around.’

  The man attempted to jerk the bag off my head, but his fingers took hold of a chunk of my hair along with the hessian. I winced and swung my head from side to side and the hand pulled and finally, as my eyes pricked full of tears, the bag came off.

  I was standing on the edge of a precipice! I gasped and blinked and reached to steady myself against the stonework. There should have been a door here on to a balcony of some sort, but there was none. Just a ragged opening in the wall of a house perched high above the city, with a sheer drop down the front of the building on to broken stone and earth sixty, no, eighty feet below.

  The voice growled in my ear again. ‘Don’t look around, or my face will be the last thing you have the good fortune to see.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘Just look, and listen.’

  The view before me swam into focus. The whole city seemed to tumble away from the foot of this half-built shell of a building. Braced against the bare casement, I glanced left and right at the sweep of windowless, roofless terrace either side of where I stood. It looked like a wave of stone about to break upon the town. Though I’d never been inside it before, I understood now that I was standing inside the great unfinished crescent on the brink of Clifton Hill. The sky burned dull white for an instant as the sun tried to break through a seam in the canopy of cloud above me, then the wind swept shadows over the hill and the light turned grey again. Beneath the scudding cloudbank stood another, yellower layer of smoke which pulsed from the factories and tanneries and smelting houses and lay ragged and yellow in the basin of the city. From up here I could even make out a dirty slice of harbour stabbed full of masts, and, in the distance, monochrome hills gritted with sheep.

  I flinched as the man laid a hand upon my shoulder again.

  ‘Well?’ he growled. ‘What strikes you in the scene? What do you … make of it all?’

  ‘Strikes me? It’s, it’s, it …’

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to say!’

  ‘Say what you see!’

  ‘It’s … the city. It’s Bristol. And beyond, the hills.’

  ‘The city and some hills. You can do better than that!’ There was something almost comical about the rumbling depth of the man’s voice. It seemed put on. ‘For a man of your sensibilities, a professional man,’ he continued. ‘I expect something more evocative! This is the top of the world!’

  ‘Clifton Hill then. And an almighty drop! Rubble, piles of stone, timbers, unfinished buildings. And beneath us the factories, and the smoke, the docks, and … For God’s sake! What do you want from me?’

  ‘What are your thoughts concerning the rubble?’

  ‘I … don’t … it’s just rubble!’

  ‘Just rubble! No, no, no. Think again! What does it signify? What’s it for?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Building works I suppose.’

  ‘That’s it.’ The knife pushed me further into the opening. ‘You suppose right. And that’s why I have brought you here, to survey these half-cocked building works and to take in this scene.’

  The wind beat against my face. My feet were inches from the stone threshold. The man’s demeanour seemed less
threatening than it had in the carriage. But my knees were still trembling beneath the hem of my coat.

  The man went on. ‘You see, this great half-cocked edifice is just part of the problem. Like so many other noble works, the spat with Bonaparte has condemned it to stand unfinished these how many years? War has sapped the city of funds. Without money everything grinds to a halt. I’ll tell you a secret. Thieves come here at night to strip the shells of these houses of everything valuable: stone, tools, even roofing lead! But the owners have had enough. They have sprung mantraps in the basements! Men of action won’t be stopped, you see. The war has slowed them down, but with the end in sight they are stirring again. The city needs money. Men of action make it. They will complete these buildings, and set those factories to work, and keep our ships floated above the sucking silt. They are the force behind this city, you understand, the heart which pumps its sustaining blood.’

  A gull hanging in the wind above the great crescent now dropped a wing and veered sideways and away. It screamed in my face as it went.

  ‘But what has this to do with me?’

  ‘What the men of action want is for the benefit of the city, not just for themselves. Yet their ends are frustrated. By the war and by parliament, forces they have been all but powerless to resist. Now they find further … petty … obstacles in their way. Your meddling in the affairs of the dock is not welcomed.’ The voice had risen half a notch: ‘Not welcomed at all.’ The knife-tip dug into the small of my back, forcing me forward and on to the edge of balance; the barest push would have sent me toppling through the gap. ‘The last thing anyone wants is for you to investigate the rubble beneath us at close quarters. But …’ fingertips bored through cloth and muscle, then jerked me back a step … ‘but I have been sent to warn you that this is your last chance.’

  I tensed from toe to jaw and rocked backwards on to my heels. My fists tightened to hammers. I was a half-beat from spinning round to assault this man, knife or no knife, and he knew it. His voice was hot against my ear again, very low again, insistent, and yes, sharp with spirits. ‘Don’t fight, Inigo. You’ll only make things worse.’

  I dared not breathe. I lowered my chin on to my chest and shut my eyes and heard the wind rise across the face of the building. My shoulders slumped, my hands hung open and the wind rose higher and then dropped again. In time footsteps behind me jarred the planks. I listened and listened and did not turn around until their report had disappeared.

  Twenty-two

  Dusk was turning the grey sky a dirty green before I set off for home. Even after I was certain the man had gone, I could not bring myself to move from the uneven floorboards. I felt peculiarly calm. Nothing that bad had happened. I’d thought it might, and had nearly brought disaster upon myself by fighting, but had held back. The man said there were mantraps sprung in these half-built mansions. Was that really the case? No matter, the danger had passed. Now I could sit and look at the view through this jagged gap without fear. Sky, hills, city, docks, trees, building works, rubble, sheer wall. The matchstick masts of some ship or other inching its way into port. I’d kept my head. I would not be painting the rubble with my own blood any time soon.

  Such had been the intended lesson, surely, that I was master of my own destiny?

  I lost the moving masts among the clutter of those others already moored in the harbour. Where had the new ship come from? What did her cargo comprise? What precious stuff, packed tight in her hold, would the stevedores soon be busy unloading? And how much of it would the ship’s owners declare?

  ‘Anchovies, alabaster, alum,’ I recited out loud. ‘Argol, arms, arsenic.’ I shook my head. What did I care?

  I stared long and hard at the city bubbling beneath its cloud of grime. It was as full of scheming and scamming as the next place. Why risk everything, or anything even, battling against so commonplace a corruption? From up here you could see where the town ended and all else began. I had experienced so laughably little of the rest of the world. Though sharp, the knife had barely scratched me. Abducted! A melodramatic word. The memory of the fright served only to prove how thoroughly … intact … I was now.

  Eventually, I stood up and shook out my limbs. Despite the long walk that morning and the fright of what had happened since, I felt light and abuzz and strong. I took deep breaths, savouring the fresh air. A church bell tolled in the distance. Its chimes did not resonate so much as evaporate above the city. I missed counting the hour, so checked my pocket-watch for the time and gave a start upon seeing that it read six o’clock. The poetry recital! If I paced it out, there would still be time to change my shirt and make it to the Alexanders’ house within the hour.

  Twenty-three

  The poet was a woman. Her name was Edie Dyer. Upon making this discovery Mrs Alexander was all for turning around and going home, which reaction others seemed to have had as well, for visitors to the recital rooms were as yet thin on the ground. But the prospect of a spoiled evening so worked upon Lilly – her wide eyes set to quick-blinking, and the gloved fingers of her right hand fluttered before her mouth – that her father, Heston, overruled the proposed retreat immediately. ‘Man or woman, poetry’s poetry,’ he explained to the audience members assembled in the foyer. This seemed magnanimous, but the shrug the merchant gave as he spoke betrayed his opinion that neither sex could redeem the activity from being, at heart, a waste of time.

  Lilly recovered her composure admirably once the evening was no longer in doubt. She put her head together with Abigail, their eyes darting this way and that. My fiancée looked younger today. Something to do with being beyond the sanctuary of her own house, perhaps. I felt a surge of protectiveness and took a step in the girls’ direction.

  ‘Bombazine? Bum-be-seen rather!’

  ‘And shouldn’t someone explain that sleeves these days are trimmed and puffed?’

  Lilly’s laughter was a note higher than her sister’s. I drew up short.

  ‘A brooch and earrings that matched might not hamper her cause, either!’

  ‘I think the poor thing is a little beyond that.’

  Following their gaze, I caught a glimpse of a slender young woman in an oddly old-fashioned, dark dress. She was quickly obscured behind moving backs. Before I could think of anything to add to their conversation, Lilly and Abigail had turned their attention to others amongst the guests, and I was left staring at my boots. They were dirty, dull despite the gleaming foyer lamps. I recalled the yawning drop that had stood before them earlier and my stomach turned over.

  ‘You look pale, Inigo,’ said Mrs Alexander. ‘You’re not feeling unwell, I hope?’

  Something in her tone suggested that an affirmative response would not have disappointed her, and not just because it would have afforded an excuse for the party to go home.

  ‘Thank you but no, I’m fine. Tired, perhaps. That’s all.’

  ‘I always find the entertainments are more bearable on the back of a hard day’s work,’ Heston Alexander said.

  ‘Enjoyable rather than bearable, dear, I’m sure.’

  ‘Hmm? I suppose. What have you been up to that’s driven the wind from your sails, then?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think Inigo wants to relive his day now. Once was surely enough!’

  I shot my mother-in-law-to-be an enquiring look, then wished I hadn’t, for it registered in the wobble of her head. The woman liked nothing better than a chance to register a perceived sleight. She knew nothing of anything anyway. Lilly was still tittering with her sister – about another woman who was wearing kid gloves the wrong shade of yellow – behind me. Weariness welled up.

  We stuttered through to the recital room, an expanse of red and gold burnished by lamplight. Concentric rings of plush chairs held a small stage at bay. I stood to one side and let the family jockey for position; Lilly eventually triumphed over her mother in her conspiracy to secure us seats together. This victory left me curiously flat until, as I sat down, Lilly took hold of my hand, and the warmth of her pa
lm pressing through her silken glove stirred me to glance her way. She has the finest profile. A gentle chin, sweet lips, a pretty nose, and her skin, in this flickering light, was a coral pink. The chatter whispered itself silent like a breeze through meadow grass. I confined myself to a single pump of Lilly’s hand, hard enough for the delicate bones within to flex and rub across one another. I felt her stiffen for an instant in her seat before I let go. A figure climbed on to the stage. Before Lilly and her sister had clashed heads in their urgency to whisper their recognition, I suspected what was coming: the poetess, Edie Dyer, was the thin woman in the black dress about whom they had been gossiping in the foyer. She was young, but appeared undaunted. A chair had been set on the stage. She picked it up mannishly and moved it into the shadows. There was something brazen about the woman, apparent not just in her unconventional dress but in the set of her bones. She was all angles, with a mile of gawky neck, and raw-looking wrists, and long fingers – no gloves. She took in the audience unhurriedly and without smiling, waiting for the final murmurings to die down, and pushed a strand of fallen hair – there was no way it could be termed a ringlet – away from her forehead before reading her first poem.

  I listened.

  I was drawn in and forgot myself.

  Had I been asked to explain what the poems were about at the end of the reading I could not have done so, but word by word, line by line, verse by verse, they made sense. They were like dreams, realer than real in the moment before waking, then gone. The rustle of Mrs Alexander’s skirts and Lilly’s flower-water scent and the fact that my knees were skewed sideways to avoid the back of the seat in front of me, none of it had the power to distract me while the woman read. There was something oddly direct about the poems. The crags and buzzards and herdsmen and pastures and brooks in them were just crags and buzzards and herdsmen and pastures and brooks. Where were the satyrs? The heroes? The gods? By failing to invoke them and writing so … straight … the woman’s verses were confrontational and mesmerising. Pain was hurtful; impoverishment was miserable; glimpsed hope was enough to make a heart soar. The woman’s verses were infuriatingly good. It was well into the recital before I realised none of the lines rhymed.