The Demon Redcoat

by C. C. Finlay

  Proctor calmed himself. And walked to the doorway.

  Three men stood inside the room: Grueby, Gordon—still wearing plain clothes and an air of despair—and a third man dressed more like the French noblemen Proctor had seen. He assumed he was the earl of Shelburne. The walls were lined with furniture of elegant proportions, all spaced evenly and regularly.

  Gordon shrank away from the sight of Proctor. “Restrain him at once,” he ordered Grueby.

  Proctor knotted his hands into fists.

  But Grueby shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t feel like it.” With a look at Proctor, he said, “Thought you would get here eventually. Didn’t think it would be so fast.”

  “Mr. Grueby was just describing your remarkable escape from the Bloody Tower to us,” Shelburne said. He was a handsome man in his forties, neat and orderly, with a calm and rational tone to his voice.

  “Did they tell you why I needed to escape?” Proctor said. He took a step forward. His hands were still knotted into fists.

  “I’m sorry,” Gordon said. “You carried a token of the Covenant. I had to be sure you were not one of their allies.”

  “Fighting them, trying to stop them—that wasn’t enough?” Proctor asked.

  “You have to understand,” Gordon explained. “A witch appeared, out of America, with more knowledge and power than one would expect from such a place. There is no one there to teach you, no one but the Covenant.”

  “You don’t know Deborah,” Proctor said.

  “And then you came from France, which is Britain’s enemy. And you—”

  Proctor held up his right fist, turned so that Gordon could see the bloody scar of his missing finger. “I’ve bled to stop the Covenant. Have you? Because I would be glad to help you.”

  Gordon fell silent. Grueby rolled his tongue through his cheek.

  “You can attack us if you wish,” Shelburne said calmly. “You can expend your first breath of freedom and possibly your last breath in pursuit of revenge—”

  “I was thinking of it in terms of justice,” Proctor said.

  “Fair enough,” Shelburne answered. “Or you can use your power to help us defeat the Covenant. It is why we are here today. Mister Brown—and please forgive me for forgoing the formalities of introduction—I appeal to your rational side.”

  Proctor slowly unballed his fists and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m listening.”

  “We have come here today to save the king. Your talent and experience may be of practical assistance.”

  Proctor boggled. “What cause do I have to save the king?”

  “The cause of freedom. You oppose the Covenant. I have spent my whole life fighting the machinations of that occult cabal, just as my father did before me. Yet they are closer now to taking their next great step to power than they ever have been before. For almost two hundred years, their goal has been to build an empire that circles the globe. If they can possess His Majesty’s will, as is their intention, nothing will stand in their way.”

  “Nothing but the will of the American people to be free.”

  “You may believe that if you wish. And given the evidence of your own desire to be free, and your ability to achieve it, I would hesitate to underestimate our American cousins. But if His Majesty’s will is possessed by the Covenant, you can be sure they will turn all their attention to subjugating America.”

  “It seems like that was exactly what was happening when His Majesty’s will was his own,” Proctor said.

  There was a tap at the door.

  “They’re here,” Grueby said.

  Gordon looked as if he wanted to run to the doorway, but was afraid to pass Proctor. He cupped his hands to his mouth and called, “In here.”

  Shelburne met Proctor’s eyes. “I appeal to your own self-interest. I appeal to your love of your native country. If you will not help us, do not hinder us. But the choice, of course, is yours.”

  “It always has been,” Proctor said.

  Shelburne took this rebuke with magnanimity, bowing his head slightly and opening his palm.

  Two men appeared in the doorway, one of them cloaked and hooded. Proctor recognized him at once from the visit to the Tower, even before he removed the hood and revealed the leering demon squatting on his shoulder. The demon chuckled. He had one ethereal arm plunged into the back of the man’s head. He was accompanied by an Anglican priest.

  “Your Majesty,” said the three men, all of them bowing.

  “One of them is looking at me,” the king whispered to the priest. “Why is he looking at me?”

  “I don’t know who he is, Sire,” the priest said.

  “He’s an American, Sire,” explained Shelburne.

  King George pounded his fist into his palm. “Americans. Y-y-you’ve been a thorn in our side these past few years—”

  “Sire,” the priest said. He was a compact man with sun-darkened skin; despite his delicately framed spectacles and scholarly air, he appeared to be someone who spent more time out of doors than secluded in some dark chapel or musty library. He also held great power. “We are here for a reason. We don’t know how long our attempt will take. Perhaps we’d best get started.”

  “Yes, right, of course, that’s why we’re here,” George said. “Where are we going to do this?”

  “In the dining room, Sire,” Shelburne said, indicating the way with a gesture of his hand. “We have been preparing it for several months.”

  King George’s face fell. “I thought it might be best to do it at some sacred place of great power like Stonehenge.”

  “Stonehenge is aligned with the stars,” Shelburne admitted, “which does give it great power. But it was built thousands of years ago, and I am reliably informed by our astronomers that the stars no longer align.”

  “How can that be?” the king asked.

  “Given a great enough span of time, everything changes.”

  The men spoke as they followed Shelburne through the halls. Gordon stayed close to the king and the priest. Proctor followed at the rear, behind Grueby. He felt lost, as if he had walked into the middle of not just a conversation, but one in a different language.

  The king sighed. “So even the firmament is not so firm as we once believed. But isn’t that where our friends have been at work on our behalf?”

  “If you mean the white horse at Cherhill, Doctor Alsop has seen to its completion,” the priest said.

  “I’m sorry,” the king said, pausing at a closed door. “We seem to have forgotten introductions. Do all of you know the special secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury?”

  “Your Reverend,” Shelburne said, with a smaller bow of his head than he had offered the king.

  Gordon extended his hand, but the priest did not take it. “I’m sorry, Your Reverend,” Gordon said. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I have no name,” the priest replied. “I exist only as an office.”

  Gordon laughed nervously. “The office of secretary?”

  “A secretary is one who keeps secrets,” the priest answered. “And no secret is more important than this. Again, I suggest that perhaps we should not waste our time.”

  “No, of course we shouldn’t,” Gordon agreed. He looked to Shelburne and indicated Proctor with a nod of his head. “Should we include him in this?”

  “I want to be included,” Proctor said.

  “Yes,” said Shelburne. “If he wants to help us after the great injustice that has been done to him.”

  “What injustice?” the king asked.

  Gordon stared at the floor. Shelburne pushed open the door to the ballroom, saying, “It is no concern of yours, Sire. It was done, it has ended, and it will be remedied.”

  “Any injustice that happens within the compass of my realm is my c-c-concern,” the king insisted. His face had grown red, and the words came out haltingly, turning into a stammer by the end. The demon stirred on his shoulder. In the daylight, it was hard to see the creature. Proctor was not ev
en sure that anyone else could spy it. He drew power into himself to take hold of it if he could.

  “Interesting,” murmured the priest with no name. He looked straight at the demon. So two of them knew what they faced. The priest held out his palm, indicating to Proctor that he should stay back. “Be calm,” the priest commanded.

  The king drew a breath. The demon’s twitching subsided.

  “How did … that happen?” Proctor said.

  “He’s looking directly at me again,” the king whispered to the priest.

  “He doesn’t know any better,” the priest said. “But you may answer him. When he saw the danger, his first instinct was to come to your aid.”

  “Dee, the necromancer, has been plotting this a very long time. He attempted to possess my father first, only it killed him, and I ascended to the throne in-in-instead.”

  Shelburne opened the door and entered the room ahead of them. It had high ceilings, with marvelous natural light. A large crystal candelabra hung from the ceiling, catching and refracting light throughout the room. The ceiling was decorated with elaborate plasterwork. The same patterns were picked up in the imprints of urns and vines spaced evenly around the walls. The walls without windows were set with nine niches. Each niche held a life-sized statue, carved in marble, as beautiful as the ones that Proctor had seen in the gardens of Paris. The neutral paints were chosen to bring out the natural color of the statues. Chairs and serving tables lined the rail along the wall.

  “Yes, yes,” murmured the priest in satisfaction.

  As King George entered the room, his knees buckled. No one dared catch him, but he caught himself on the priest, who stood as still as a doorpost. “M-m-may we be-begin this business?”

  “Are you well enough to continue, Sire?” Gordon asked.

  “Yes,” the king said. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, pasted a smile on his face, and struggled to sound normal. The demon struggled, just as it had at the doorway to Proctor’s room in the Bloody Tower. “Is that Tyche?” the king asked, pointing to one of the statues.

  “Yes, Sire,” Shelburne replied.

  “The god of luck,” the king said to the priest. “Though we all know there is but one God—may He have mercy on our souls—nevertheless I think I shall prefer to be seated where I can look on Tyche and he can look on me.”

  “I think that’s very logical,” the priest said.

  “This whole house is designed as a tribute to rationality and the great works of man,” Shelburne said. “When we embrace the rational and scientific view of the world, we will weaken and perhaps destroy the power that Dee and others like him gain by drawing on the unwitting contributions of the ignorant and superstitious.”

  He grabbed one of the chairs from against the wall and swung it into position in the center of the room.

  The king started to sit down, then popped up again immediately as if it were hot. “It-it-it wants me to l-l-leave—”

  “Calm,” the priest said, with the same motion of his hand at his waist.

  The king sat, but he seemed very twitchy, as if he was fighting the urge to rise. “Is this going to hurt? I’ve heard that Gassner strikes his patients on the head.”

  Proctor wanted to ask who Gassner was, but refrained. “Maybe if we hit him hard enough, we can knock that creature loose.”

  “He’s joking, Sire,” Gordon said. “No one is going to strike you on the head.”

  “I will not call the German exorcist a fraud,” the priest added quickly. “But I have observed him at work, and the good he does is as much by chance as it is by design. Like many men, he neither comprehends nor holds in leash his own power.” He stared meaningfully at Proctor. “Sire, we need to begin by speaking with your guest.”

  “What good will that do?” the king asked.

  “I intend to ask it to leave.”

  “And if it says no?” Proctor asked.

  The priest leaned close to the demon, which turned and bared its teeth at him, making a sound like crackling fire. “Then I shall become persuasive,” the priest said. “Will the three of you stand over there, along the fourth wall? Just as if you were three more statues. My lord, Shelburne, if you would stand in the middle. Thank you. Mister Grueby, if you will fetch my bag from the entry, please.”

  They took their positions while Grueby retrieved a plain canvas bag. He handed it to the priest and then took up his position again as a guard by the door. The priest removed a coil of rough hemp rope from the bag.

  “I’m not going to tie you to the chair, Sire,” the priest said. “These ropes will protect you from harm if your guest tries to force his will upon you.”

  Proctor almost laughed.

  “Speak the truth to His Majesty,” Shelburne said forcefully. “He is your liege and he deserves it.”

  The priest paused for a moment, then nodded. “These lengths of rope come from the nooses of hanged men. Or rather, hanged men and women.”

  “From the late riots?” asked the king.

  The priest nodded.

  Gordon stared at the floor again. Proctor thought of Lydia. He had avoided thinking of her for months. Whether she was alive or dead, there was nothing he could do to help her. Seeing the length of rope in the priest’s hand made that feel rather selfish to him. If he had led her to death …

  “How do they work?” the king asked.

  “We hope to use them to bind your guest, but since your guest occupies a space with—”

  “I g-g-get it,” the king said impatiently. “I am not some coward. I am not some delicate flower that needs to be nurtured in a hot house. Show me the enemy, put a sword in my hand, and send me to f-f-face him—”

  The demon twisted its arm back and forth inside the king’s skull, and the words stuttered to a halt.

  “Our enemies used blood magic to set the spell, so we will use the same to break it,” the priest said. “They used the blood of those shed in the riot to bring harm to you. We will use the blood of the leaders, brought to justice for their choices, to help undo the harm.”

  “Get on with it then,” the king said.

  The priest wrapped the ropes loosely around the king’s wrists and ankles. Proctor shook his head. It was only a symbolic restraint. The king and the demon represented the merging of the flesh and the spirit. It would take symbols merged with the actual to achieve a cure. It seemed so obvious.

  Symbolic or not, the ropes had an effect on the demon. It twisted its arm vigorously in the king’s head. His eyes rolled back in his head and he began to cough and hack as if he were choking.

  The priest wore a heavy silver ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. He held it up to the demon’s face. “Who is present here?”

  “I count six men, six frightened men, six mortal men—”

  The demon’s mouth moved, but the words came out of the king’s mouth, rough and gravelly.

  “Who is speaking to me?” the priest demanded.

  “I am.” You could almost hear the mockery in the voice. If it had to answer, and answer honestly, it would also answer unhelpfully.

  But the priest seemed to expect this. He was clear and patient. “Who are you?” After a long delay while the demon squirmed and grimaced, he repeated the question. “Who are you?”

  Finally, the voice answered. “I am the footman.”

  “Whose footman?”

  “I am the footman of Balfri.”

  “Is Balfri also known as Berith?”

  “You tell me. I cannot know how others know him.”

  Gordon started forward, angry. “Tell him what he wishes to know.”

  A smile spread over the demon’s face, mirrored in a smile on the king. “He wishes to know how his wife died. Whether she died thinking of him, or whether her last thoughts were of the men who held her down and—”

  The priest had already jumped up and shoved wax plugs in his ears. He ran to the other men, shoving wax in their ears as he went. The demon talked vigorously the whole time.
The priest reached Grueby last; his usually stoic expression seemed shaken. Then the priest sat in front of the demon and repeated the same question over and over again until the demon answered it and fell silent.

  The priest was much paler when he rose again and took the plugs from his ears. He indicated to the other men that they might do the same. Proctor was the first to have his out.

  “I should have warned you,” the priest said. “This demon will answer any question truthfully, but he can speak anything he pleases to a statement directed at him. If you speak statements to him, you allow him to lie, and when he lies he can be most persuasive. Although he is one demon, he commands legions of demons, all aspects of the one. I have experience with these creatures, and I beg you let me do the speaking.”

  “May we have chairs?” Proctor asked.

  “Of course,” the priest said. Proctor retrieved a chair for each of them.

  “How can we help?” Gordon asked. “We want to help.”

  “With your permission, we may come to a point where I will draw on your power,” the priest said. To Proctor, he added, “Yours, too.”

  “Help is where we all work together,” Proctor said.

  “Someone must lead,” Shelburne said calmly. “The secretary has treated dozens of demonic possessions. We should let him lead.”

  “He can lead,” Proctor said. “But this demon, or another aspect of it, tried to possess my wife and daughter. So if I can help it back to hell, I’ll help. And I won’t ask for permission.”

  “We should remove him,” Gordon said, growing in courage the longer Proctor ignored him.

  The priest held up his hand. “I accept that,” he said. “But follow my guidance, and don’t speak to the guest directly.”

  He settled down at the king’s side again, holding up the silver ring to the demon’s face. “What will make you leave?”

  The king’s hand flew up and slapped the priest, knocking his spectacles across the room. Grueby calmly retrieved them. The priest put them back on.

  “What will make you leave?”

  The king’s fist moved with lightning quickness, clipping the priest on the jaw again. This time he held on to his glasses and forced the ring into the demon’s face.