The Devil's Poetry

by Louise Cole

  Jace was agitated the whole way. I could feel him fretting at the edges of my mind, like a cat scratching at a door. He spoke to me often, and I answered him, but I couldn’t recall what was said.

  The journey was interminable. I gazed out of the window as Ella and Jace discussed back routes into London to avoid the roadblocks and vehicle searches.

  I watched the fields of Yorkshire falling away from me, and the blander, flatter vistas of the south opened up around us. We rushed past cities and towns, too far away for more than an impression. Somewhere out there are millions of people, I thought. And they’ll never know. I might die for them today, and they’ll never know.

  I didn’t think I’d fallen asleep at all, but my mother was shouting to me, calling out, her voice snatched away by the whirlwind around her. People surged through the whirlwind, panicked and crying, violent and destructive. They smashed anything in their path, including each other. As I struggled toward her through the frantic crowd, a stone lion fell at my feet, splintering into shards of rock and dust as it hit the pavement. Mum shook her head at me, gesturing, her face distraught but her voice impotent against the gale. I fought to get closer, battling the wind and dodging my way through the human chaos until I was a few feet away, my arm outstretched to meet her fingers.

  Before we could touch, a sliver of glass spun and embedded itself in my mother. She sank instantly beneath the feet of the crowds, and when I reached the place she had been, screaming myself hoarse against the wind, there was no trace of her.

  Chapter 23

  I jolted awake as Jace touched my cheek. “We’re here. Stay close to me.” I wasn’t sure whether it was an instruction or a plea.

  We left the 4x4 in a multi-story car park somewhere in the bowels of central London and Jace, his sports bag over his shoulder, led us quickly up dank stairs and through alleys too narrow for us to walk two abreast. I followed him without thinking, and didn’t object when he turned to pull me into the middle of the alley or pressed me into the shadow under colonnades. I couldn’t let myself think now. I wouldn’t think about what I was about to do, I’d simply do it. Like an assassin or a skydiver.

  I imagined skydiving out over the city, the rushing upblast of air crushing my lungs and making my pulse hammer in my ears and then the gray slate of the spires, the flat roofs, and finally the streets surging upward to meet me.

  I walked steadily into Trafalgar Square. It looked different to when I had been there years before on a school trip. Soldiers weren’t posted outside the embassies and galleries then, standing at ease with rifles slung across their chests.

  “Don’t worry about them,” murmured Jace. “They’re not here for us, but they may deter our sniper friend. Security around here is tight.”

  I glanced up at the tops of the buildings. Is that where a sniper would hide? I wondered who he was. Who had hired him. Would it be better to die fast like Richie and never see it coming? I thought of Katniss Everdeen, prepared to swallow a handful of poisoned berries. I didn’t have that kind of strength.

  We hurried across the wide pavement in front of the National Gallery and down the steps to the plaza, with its spraying water and the leonine guardians of Nelson’s Column. Jace looked around quickly.

  “There,” he said, pointing to a building in front. “That’s Canada House.”

  I took out the book. “Is there any preamble, or do I just start to read?”

  “Come here,” he said. He tried to pull me toward him, but I made myself a deadweight in his arms. No, I prayed silently. Not now. Can’t you see this can’t help either of us now? The pool of calm I’d created last night still lapped around me, but I knew I would have to surface soon, and the thought filled me with an unfocused anxiety.

  “Callie, I need you to listen to me now really closely.” His mouth was right next to my ear, as though he was trying to pour the words directly into my brain. “You don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to do this. Come back to me now. Listen to me, Callie, please, and I will take you away right now. You’ll be safe.”

  I looked at him then, his face dark with stubble. His cheekbones were gaunt, and his eyes had livid bruising underneath as though he hadn’t slept. I felt sorry for him. He tried so hard, as though trying got you anywhere in this world.

  “Jace. Leave her alone.”

  He ignored Ella, and continued speaking as if we were the only two people in the square.

  “What about your dad, Callie? He needs you.”

  “I’m sorry.” I stroked his cheek softly.

  “Goddammit,” he said, and he shook me so hard my teeth rattled. “Enough of this crap. I’m taking her home,” he announced to Ella.

  “Jace, you can’t do that. She has to read.”

  “She’s going to die if it works, and we’ll probably all die somewhere like this if it doesn’t. I’m taking her home.”

  “No.” Ella’s harsh voice brimmed with authority. “There are more important things at stake, Jace.” She turned to me, and her voice softened, but it was still firm. “Callie, I need you to focus. I know you’re in a safe place, Callie. I know it’s peaceful there, but you have to come out now. You have to feel to read. You know that.”

  “I know.” I stared at the concrete, breathed in the fume-filled air of the city. Heard the chatter of pedestrians and cacophony of footsteps and traffic around me. The splash of water in the fountains. Laughter. Life.

  “I need to find somewhere quieter. This will be overwhelming, and I won’t be able to shield well when you start to read. I won’t be far away if you need me,” Ella said. “Think of the people you love, Callie. Think about love.”

  I drew out the book, stroked its cover with my thumb. This was it. I felt a surge of panic rise up in me, an overwhelming desire to run but I couldn’t. I had to stay here. Even if it killed me.

  I held the book tight and started to speak, summoning the words from the depths of my memory. I felt as though these were the first words I had ever learned, my native language, my mother tongue.

  “I speak of love and truth, of hands and hearts that are one with their intent.”

  I stepped into the strange world of the poetry. In my world now, London stood silent and empty. The concrete under my feet heaved and strained as though the roots of a thousand trees were pushing their way toward my feet.

  I could hear myself speaking, back there somewhere, by the fountain. I tried to focus on the words. Hands and hearts. I thought of Gavin’s conviction, his bravery and how it had earned him nothing but an untimely, vicious death.

  “My words are the tattoo of the beating heart.” I thought of how my heart pounded when Jace kissed me on the moor, the captivating depths of his eyes. I could still feel my heart beating, but it was a funeral march, slow and steady, the rhythm of hopelessness. I wished I didn’t have to be alone. But this was my world and it had always been that way. Lonely.

  “. . . to ocean depths, a reply to the emptiness of sky . . .”

  A door banged rhythmically, slamming itself against its frame. I stepped toward it mechanically, through a small gate and into a walled cemetery.

  Lonely and angry, I realized. I understood the door, battering what it could. I had been angry for so long, so often. The humiliation when Alec blanked me on the first day back at school, when Jace said I was too young, when my father ignored me. When my mother made choices which would take her away from me forever.

  I walked across the grass toward the door which boomed out into the night like a bass drum, a huge and hollow noise which could swallow you whole. I remembered the first time I had seen Jace, how he drew the Cadaveri down on me like a magnet. And now that he knew he was wrong, and he cared that the person was just a sacrifice, it was all too late. He had drawn me in, he had scribbled over my identity in highlighter for the gods and devils to recruit. I had almost seen it, for a moment, a tantalising glimpse of love, of a life with someone strong at my side, and it made me so sad I could rip this town apart with the sou
nd of my screams.

  The headstones loomed white in the darkness, and the bang bang banging of the door almost drowned the sound of my voice floating from far away.

  “ . . . that stalks all things all ways

  yearning to know to cherish and to end

  and the final and most potent love

  is in death.”

  The open tomb had a white stone altar in front, a wide flat table. There were dark marks across it, like long-scrubbed stains. I should climb on, I thought. I should lie down and wait. My legs trembled, and I couldn’t make myself do it. The darkness swirling up from the trees took form and strode toward me, and I dropped into the grass, paralyzed with terror.

  ***

  The sniper lay flat on the roof of the South African High Commission directly opposite Canada House. He had lost them after the battle at the farmhouse, but his brief gave this as a secondary location. The girl would try to conduct some protest or ritual near the peace talks. All he had to do was wait and watch.

  It was ridiculously easy these days to get access to buildings if you were a soldier or security guard. He frowned at the sentries in the square. God, how they must long for active duty abroad somewhere. If he had realized there would be this much opportunity on the way, he wouldn’t have left the army.

  He saw them as soon as they had entered the square. The big guy kept them behind pillars, tourists, walls, wherever possible. His instructions were to take the girl first. The others were a bonus. He could move, try to get a better position, or he could see if they moved. He would give them two minutes, and then he’d go to them.

  ***

  I was still speaking, far away, like an echo of a song. I was talking about love and death. I understood it now. Everyone you love can end with a thought, with a mood swing, with a gallows swing. They can take all your hopes and secrets in their palms and crumple them like tissue. Love kills. There is no hope in love. There is only death.

  The figure stood a few feet from where I huddled in the wet, cold grass.

  “Stand up,” it said and held out its hand.

  I began to weep, sobbing openly and brokenly, all my wounds pouring out through the poetry into the square and the poetry pouring out through every wound.

  I shook my head, pleading. I didn’t want to die.

  It moved across the horizon like a dark hole in the sky, a void. A human-shaped nothing, walking and talking. It dropped to the grass, legs bent sideways, one arm forward, mirroring me.

  I looked up and stared into the abyss. The abyss stared back.

  ***

  “Kashmir is India’s and will always be India’s,” shouted the Indian Foreign Secretary.

  “You ignore the voice of its people. They have been demanding reunion with Pakistan for decades. Do you deny it?” The Pakistani Foreign Minister was on his feet, leaning across the table.

  “You send weapons and your terrorists into the heart of our nation—”

  “Gentlemen, please!” shouted Brewer. “Your governments have both worked hard in the past to resolve these difficulties. Let’s not refight these wars. They are no longer relevant.”

  “My sons died in Kashmir on your orders. They were killed in Indian air strikes on its own province!” yelled the Pakistani Defense Minister.

  No one was listening. Sanders was sweating. He watched in fascination as the moisture dripped off his nose onto the briefing paper in front of him. He reached out a hand to brush it away and saw that his hands were trembling.

  I should do something, he thought. I should stop them. But he had no words. There was only a terror so deep and primal that it turned his bowels to water and rooted him to his chair. He sat, immobilized, listening to their futures drown in the sea of screams and violence, and the harsh strange music that seeped in from the floors and windows.

  ***

  I heard my name, heard myself stumble over the lines.

  The blackness took the shape of a girl. The nothing-girl held out a hand and touched me. Her tears ran red.

  “Hold me,” she whispered.

  I was on my knees now, back bent under the tears. My name came again, louder, but I couldn’t see who was speaking.

  “You have to stop. Callie.” A hand wrenched at me. “Callie.” I looked up, startled. The book fell from my hand. “Stop now. Be quiet.” Jace’s voice was fast, edgy. It was the nearest I had ever seen him to panic. “It’s not working, you have to stop.”

  “I heard you the first time,” I said, and he glanced at me sharply, surprised.

  I wiped my wet face with my hand and looked around me. This was not the square I had stepped into fifteen minutes before, tourists and city workers casually strolling or striding confidently across from landmark to landmark. The air was polluted with yells and screams. People staggered and jostled, swinging punches and cracking faces against knees. Someone wielded a brick at a suited man’s head. With a roaring crash, part of a stone wall wrenched free and landed as a plume of dust and debris at our feet.

  “Ella!” Jace yelled. “Ella!”

  “She’s over there.” I pointed. “What is this?” I asked him. “What’s happening, Jace? Is it Cadaveri?”

  “I’m sure they’re around.” He grabbed my hand, and we ran, dodging and weaving, to where Ella stood, her eyes unfocused, unblinking, tears drying on her lashes. “Ella, we have to go.”

  She looked up at us then, recognition struggling in her face. “The words . . . they were toxic. All that pain,” she mumbled, stretching her hand out to my face. She ran her finger down my cheek. “Your pain did this.”

  ***

  His targets were on their feet now, but the people around them were a fluid wall, flowing back and forth like waves against rocks. The sniper despised them all. He felt almost giddy with hatred. Little people, too dumb to make decisions and too chicken-shit to stand up for themselves. He put his eye to the sight and pinpointed the first person between him and the girl.

  He would reach her eventually.

  ***

  “I did this?”

  A woman screamed as she was dragged by her hair. A group of youths kicked at a tramp who cowered helplessly on the pavement. Sirens burst through the night sky, their two-tone whining hurting my ears.

  “We have to stop it,” I said.

  “We can’t.”

  I wanted to argue, but, truthfully, I had no idea what I could do.

  A woman barged into me and then sagged abruptly. Her forehead was missing.

  Jace reacted immediately. He shoved my head down hard. “Sniper. Move.”

  He locked his fingers around my wrist and hauled me through the crowds, skirting the worst skirmishes and pushing through the middle of milder rows. We’d made it up the steps and almost to the front of the National Gallery when I realized Ella wasn’t with us. I turned back, twisting my arm out of Jace’s grip. Two more people lay dead where I had passed just seconds ago. Blood from bullet wounds pooled around them.

  Ella still stood by the fountain, face transfixed. A slow, cold dread crept over me, an echo of my former grief, but this wasn’t mine.

  “Cadaveri.” Jace looked swiftly all around him. “They’re all around the perimeter.”

  “We have to get Ella out of there.”

  Jace pushed me through the gate of the National Gallery and pointed up the steps to the portico. “Get up there. Stay hidden, stay still.” He stashed his sports bag next to me.

  The soldiers had left their positions and were running down into the mass of people, but I couldn’t tell if they were trying to help or join the carnage.

  Jace bounded back down into the crowd. I huddled into my place behind a wide pillar and watched him shoulder-charge his way through the mob like a quarterback. The police charged up, sirens wailing and riot shields snapping into place. But instead of forming a perimeter, they rushed the crowd, which fell back like a single savage animal, pinning Ella more tightly than ever.

  I could see Cadaveri now, gathering on the edges o
f the chaos. Their darkness framed the scene where the crowd surged back and forth bouncing off the edges of the square. I scanned the crowd for her face, but there were too many people and too much confusion. Screams carried over the deafening noise of yelling and sirens, like froth on the top of a wave.

  The crowd broke around a particularly vicious fight, and I caught a glimpse of Ella’s blonde head. One man threw a punch at an assailant less than a yard from her. Her face looked glazed, somewhere beyond horror. She was a statue trapped, a captive in a private freak show. Her only movement was in occasional contortions of her face.

  Move, Ella. Get out of there, I urged her silently, focusing all my energy on her. If you have ever felt me, feel this now. Jace had disappeared into the melee, but he could handle himself. Ella, Ella, please. Move.

  I concentrated on her so hard I spoke aloud, as though she could hear me across the concrete war zone of Trafalgar Square, and for one moment she looked up, looked straight at me. She shook her head slightly as though waking and took a step forward just as the man to her right broke a bottle against the edge of the fountain; seeing no one but his opponent, he swung it in a wide, lateral arc. Ella’s eyes widened, and the blood spurted from her throat, spraying the crowd. Her hand went to the wound reflexively.

  And then she was gone, underfoot, buried in chaos.

  ***

  The sniper stopped in surprise as one of his targets went down. He would claim the kill anyway. He couldn’t see the others in the chaos, but it didn’t matter. He loosed another shot into the crowd. This was fun.

  Chapter 24

  “Ella!” I screamed and ran down the steps two, three at a time, across the palisade and onto the stairs leading to the fountain. I jumped for the bottom but an arm caught me in midflight. Jace threw me across his shoulder and ran back up the steps, grabbed his bag and sprinted. He ran down Charing Cross Road, through tiny alleyways with secret restaurants and esoteric stores, past the stage doors to theaters, while I banged my fists on his back and screamed her name.