We jogged uneasily along, turning first this way, then that, through a network of nauseating fluxes that never seemed to find an end. Only the tunnels changed, from brick to concrete to stone and back again, with occasional startling variants. Victorian coloured tiles, ludicrously bright to be stashed away down here – or did they hold little picnic parties to admire them, that sanitation-minded breed?
What looked like seamless ceramic dominated one brief stretch, with far away the faint whining hum of massive engines and, much nearer, passing at speed, a clatter that suggested something with six feet. Heavy metallic feet, and fast. I told myself it could be cleaning machinery, but then I’ve always been a lying little sod.
Round another bend and, whoops, splishety-splash into a sort of broad storm drain, vast and echoing with a roof of rounded arches; Roman or medieval, maybe. Always it changed, sometimes at every turn. Only the stinking stream beneath our feet stayed the same – the lowest common denominator of man.
And the time that passed, or didn’t; and the oppressive silence. It felt like something solid, an unforgiving weight squeezing in on your eardrums, an immense mass of blackness poised over your head. Almost in self-defence we began to talk. Mostly it was Kelley and myself, he eagerly going over and over my experiences, about the twenty-first century, any and every shred of knowledge I could give him. He had charm, despite the buzzard breath, and he used it. Dee didn’t bother, but occasionally he would drop a question into the conversation with a kind of genial condescension, like an uncle listening to his favourite nephews chattering. That was how they made you feel, those questions. They told me a lot about him.
I knew the type, only too well. I could even have been one myself, I had quite a few of the qualifications. They didn’t live in ivory towers; they were ivory towers, tall pieces sweeping across the chessboard, ignoring the halting pawns and acknowledging only their own likenesses. Not the stereotype upper-class twit; they were often bursting with brains and talent. But practically from their cradle everyone had told them that; or worse, let them assume it. They’d just gone gliding along their effortless rails, into anything from the Civil Service to business, academic life, even the media, and considered it perfectly natural. So they thought just that little bit the worse of everyone who had to try.
Oh, they could be philanthropists, idealists, even; they could be kind. Terribly kind. But always from the heights to the depths, across a great divide. It was a strength, that isolation, often a frightening one; it could make them good and kind in ways ordinary people never managed. But it could also make them amazingly naïve, especially in human matters. And when they were, there were others down here waiting.
I knew. They’d been waiting for me.
Dee had just that kind of unconscious arrogance. Talking to angels! He would bloody well believe he could do that – or at least that he was entitled to, and never mind why anyone else couldn’t. He’d be the last one to think of it as overambitious, as hubris; he probably thought of himself as humble. He probably was humble – at least until you pricked his basic assumptions.
Prison visitors and other intellectual do-gooders of one kind or another, always ready to pronounce on equality of opportunity and social justice over tea and cucumber sandwiches in the back garden – only if the cucumber wasn’t sliced thin enough, God help the au pair. To do them justice, they’d invite a paroled axe murderer along, if only he could talk. They’d invite me, provided I sounded proley enough; my real accent would never have done.
Talk was what they respected, I found. They assumed, consciously or unconsciously, that nobody could talk properly without a couple of letters after their name. So when they picked up some streetwise villain with a good line in patter and a bit of second-hand erudition, they decided he was a rough-diamond intellectual manqué, and fell all over him. They were so secure in their own rightness that they couldn’t really appreciate just how wrong others could be. I knew one upper-crust female barrister who’d hopped into bed with a string of no-nos – well, me included – and finally married one appalling thug with a body count into two figures, though they’d only got him for one. A fallen angel, she’d called him.
Dee thought he could speak to angels.
Kelley I was less sure of. He was a lot more friendly, all crinkly charm and bushy whiskers, but it was harder to see what was going on underneath. When I asked him questions for a change, the answers I got were pretty general, and beyond the fact that he was born at Worcester and went to Oxford, I learned little about him. About his studies with Dee he was quite ready to talk, but it sounded like gibberish. The most I could make of it was that it was a mixture of mathematics, astrology, all kinds of elaborate summoning of higher powers, and the kind of thing comic strips used to show with a stream of daggers coming out of your eyes.
This scrying number seemed to be something like good old traditional crystal-gazing – in fact, they used a crystal ball, among other props. I didn’t try telling him the whole crystal ball bit started with Roger Bacon’s attempt to describe a primitive lens, any more than I’d tell a modern tea-leaf gazer that it should only work with Chinese tea leaves forming the patterns of the I Ching. Never argue with an idiot, the Vikings used to say; you have more to lose than he has.
Mind you, they’d scryed me out across four hundred years and God knows how many miles, and here I was; so who was the idiot now?
Things floated by. Some of them I recognised. Some I wouldn’t want to. One or two seemed to be moving under their own steam, and mercifully we weren’t close enough to enquire. Now and again there were more scufflings and cheepings, and in one long, low place, while we were ducking under corroded girders and a brick ceiling, there was a sudden swift, rush and splash, as if a heavy body launched itself in. If it did, it never came near the light.
More than once there were the sounds of sploshing feet; very faint and distant, once or twice, there were voices. But only once in all that ride did I see another person. This was passing through a fairly modern-looking stretch, where the flow would have been ankle-deep – a heavy-set figure enveloped in dark hat and heavy overcoat, quite ordinary. He ducked purposefully out of one tunnel and into another, without appearing to notice us, and was gone. That was all; but there were splashes and shouts echoing out after him, as if many others were running in pursuit. It set me thinking. I didn’t like what I could see. I asked Dee if we were getting near the journey’s end now.
He smiled indulgently. ‘Aye indeed! We have come a long few leagues in a brief compass, and the greatest step is behind us.’
‘So we could have about reached, say, Vienna now?’
He stared. ‘Why, beneath its very streets. How came you to know that?’
I stole a surreptitious glance at my watch. You could almost hear the zithers. Any moment …
The sound shivered across the low roof, jarring and explosive but still recognisable as a single gunshot. I shrugged, though my back was chilled. ‘Just asking.’
A realm of legends. All right!
I was still brooding over it when Dee’s horse halted suddenly. Luckily mine stopped too, because I was in the original brown study. Well, where better?
The stonework around us was rough but fairly solid, a narrow tunnel like most of the others, with an even lower one leading into it. Water flowed somewhere nearby, faster and stronger than any sewer, and clear droplets trickled down the mossy walls. ‘We are arrived, by all good graces!’ said Dee happily. ‘An old cistern by the river, latterly pierced to take the flows from the street kennels, and near forgotten. We must lead the beasts out. Happily ’tis dry enough, for now.’
I lowered myself gingerly down, my thigh muscles creaking and protesting, but not as much as I’d feared. We could only have been on horseback an hour or two, though it had felt like centuries. The ground beneath was slimy, but I managed not to fall over, and the side tunnel, sloping sharply upward, was dry as Dee had said. The ceiling was very low, though, and it took some persuading to get
the horses along it; the saddles scraped the roof, and Dee had to bend far down, blocking his light. Blackness swallowed us. Suddenly, though, rubble rolled underfoot, and the ceiling wasn’t there any more. I could dimly make out ruined walls, low heaps of debris with clumps of fireweed thrusting up between them, and tangles of snarly thorn-bushes. I felt the play of air about my head, and the first breeze for a while that didn’t smell like a pub cellar with the barrels being changed. It did smell of something, strongly – coal-smoke. But nothing like industrial strength, and it was clean, clean, clean. Muddy cobbles squeaked beneath my feet, and the horseshoes clinked. The horses were snorting happily.
Kelley chuckled, spat and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Well rid, good master! Here’s the end of our noisome road!’
He tilted my chin up. Dee’s light was dimmed. I could see the sky!
Just a narrow strip of it between looming buildings; but after those tunnels it seemed to glow. It was dark, clear and starry, though streaky veils of cloud sailed past the rooftops. They looked weird and archaic, tall, thin peaks topped with spikes or crosses or long knobbly bars, ending in high, crazy-looking gables that seemed to lean over and peer down through their blank little windows on to the narrow street below. It wound and kinked away on either side as if to avoid them, only to come under the shadow of more looming walls as it went, upslope but up and down like a miniature fairground ride. At every turn dark, narrow alley mouths and dank little pools gleamed under the sinking moon. A high spear-topped gable stood out against its quarter-disc. A cat slunk along it in silhouette, hissing and spitting at something down below. You half expected to see a broomstick fly past.
‘Gee, great!’ I said, a little unsteadily. Dee waved his hand and led the horses quietly forward down the street. In places it was so narrow that the upper storeys of the houses, outthrust on heavy beams, seemed almost to meet above our heads. There were carvings on those beams, painted once; fragments of what might be gold leaf caught the moonlight in places, but now they were crumbling and weird. There were no lights, except here and there a wan candle shivering behind a slatted shutter, usually, when you peered through, in front of the faded image of some saint or other. But then, quite suddenly, the street opened out like a cramped man stretching. Beyond a bare, stony expanse of rutted earth the moonlight gleamed on the rushing water I had heard – a river, wide and fast-running, black and choppy and cold. Ahead of us, high over the bank, a gatetower rose with chisel-pointed roof, and between it and its twin on the bank opposite, in stony contradiction to the fierce-flowing energy beneath, ran a massive bridge.
‘The Charles Bridge,’ whispered Kelley. ‘Stood already more than an hundred year, and good for an hundred more at the least. The guards will be asleep a’ this hour, for all the curfew.’
I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Listen, I thought I was supposed to be some sort of guest of this emperor!’
‘Aye, so, and we also,’ muttered Kelley, slightly embarrassed. ‘But better he shouldn’t know our every coming and going. Nor that we’ve hidden ways out of his walls!’
‘He is a most benign and kindly patron,’ said Dee in tones of gentle reproof. ‘True, he may seem somewhat dominated by worldly concerns. Who shall blame him if his most immediate interest is in the baser fruits of alchemy – the nourishing of wealth, the prolonging of life and, um, manly vigour, the confounding of his enemies’ stratagems, and suchlike minor matters? Still he never ceases to seek for wisdom, among the Jews even, with an ever-open mind and a generous right hand. Oh, true, he’s harsh and wrathful when he is crossed, aye! But if you do but use him with proper respect, why, he is meek as a lamb. And he has periods of great melancholy, when the troubles of the world weigh upon his head, but equally others of great exaltation, when one may speak with him almost as an equal. But he is a patron of the arts, a prince of pleasures, a lord of learning! Would that all great rulers would hold scholars in such honour as he does us! A most great and meritorious monarch!’
I nodded, but not for the reasons Dee assumed. If I wasn’t mistaken, I’d just heard a fair description of a greedy, lecherous, sensual, paranoid, superstitious and quite possibly manic-depressive son of a bitch. A spoilt brat who’d fawn on you all right as long as you kept up the posterior osculation – Dee was catching – but hell on wheels the moment you gave him the slightest annoyance. You heard the same kind of bull about the Kray twins and the other East End bosses from the old villains who remembered them. I wondered what Kelley made of him.
The hefty man shrugged. ‘Truth, his favour is like the sun’s.’
‘Too hot for comfort, and always clouding over?’
I could see his grin even in the shadows of the gate. ‘A fellow after my own mind, I wager. Aye! And so when dealing with His Majesty, the wise man wears a cloak!’
I hadn’t been looking around much till now, so as we started out into the muddy centre of the bridge the view caught me by surprise. This was a city of hills, and we were at their feet. Its skyline welled up all around us in rising waves of rooftops, a jagged row of gothic teeth, spires and towers and turrets like charcoal scratches on the sky. Hardly any two rooftops the same, sometimes bowed and concave, like little old men leaning on their sticks; sometimes domed and majestic, or high-peaked and chisel-tipped, with the pointed spires spearing up between them. Up the waves mounted ahead of us to a lowering shadow at the crest, a great sprawling mass of castle, with high cathedral spires topping it like stony lace, stark against the veiled sky. Here and there moonlight glimmering on patterned grey tiles threw a roof into three dimensions, but mostly they just looked like a backdrop out of pantomime, or a Disney movie – one of the scarier ones.
It didn’t look solid, it seemed to shift and change with every fleeting wisp of cloud. My eyes were chasing glimmers of light among the tangled gables, lights that swam in and out of focus. But it was only when I looked down at the river that they made sense for a moment, in the choppy reflection. It was as if there was another building there in the background behind the hunchback housetops, something larger, square-walled, upright, a glittering tower chequered with glowing windows. A tower of glass … Strange how fairytale that sounds, when our cities are littered with them. For a moment it stood out there, clear in the water; but when I looked up there was nothing but the faint, elusive lights and the rushing music of the water against the pillars. My sanity did a quick soft-shoe shuffle. One of the lights still winked; and in one of those windows, as always, the fluorescent tube had been flickering.
You could believe in magic a lot more easily here. A whole hell of a lot.
Then a branch of memory drifted by, and I clung on to it, hard. Suddenly, I was almost heart-breakingly grateful to Stephen Fisher.
I realized Dee and Kelley were looking at me. So were the horses. Maybe I’d been gibbering. Dee made an understanding noise. ‘Perchance you saw something, some vision that does not belong?’ He looked back. ‘Some glimpse out of another age, perhaps? Aye, indeed. We have, also, a’times; and I confess I do not wholly comprehend it. As if the city in all its ages and forms still exists behind the Prague of this day—’
‘Shadows in the Spiral,’ I said, echoing the quietly certain voice in my ears. ‘Cast in time by the living city. Shadows of yesterday’s Prague, and today’s, and tomorrow’s, all mingled to make up a greater Prague, Prague the legend. It’s waiting for us around every bloody corner.’
Dee’s bushy brows headed for his hairline. ‘You are a philosopher, sir? How is it that you seem to comprehend—’
‘I’m getting more frigging philosophical by the moment! ‘Cos the only alternative is going stark raving bloody bonkers! Somebody told me about this, that’s all. And he said it could be dangerous.’
‘That may be,’ Dee said calmly. ‘For no doubt it is the worst times will leave the strongest legends. But what good thing was ever won without risk? And we are on the work of angels.’
‘OK, fine by me. Just so long as they don’t insist I join t
hem, right?’
As we reached the further tower I looked back. I could still see them, those lights between the house roofs. They seemed redder now, though, and flickering more. That could just have been the air; but I thought of the campfires of besieging armies, the blazing rooftrees of looted farms. Hadn’t the Mongols got this far – or was it the Ottoman Turks? One of the rape-and-pillage specialists, anyhow. What if their legends were stalking the night out there?
Among the darkened streets on the far side nothing stirred. We moved beneath dark casements, holding our horses on the shortest lead-reins they’d tolerate. A low, mournful note broke the silence, a horn of some kind, and a voice chanting tunelessly. Kelley looked sharply to Dee. He shook his head. ‘The nightwatch. A long way off.’
Kelley grunted. ‘Cannot be far enough for me. Austrian mercenaries, the most of them,’ he explained to me. ‘Like the Imperial Guard, and a mightier pack of whoreson dogs you’ll travel far to find.’
‘You should see some of the Serious Crimes Squad. All arse and no forehead.’
What was it the man said – when Greek meets Greek, they smile?
We were climbing still, closer to the castle. Suddenly across the city, out of sequence, clocks began to strike the hour. Deep in the very shadow of the walls a seam of red fire opened and spilled across the cobbles. Dee and Kelley exchanged pleased noises and hurried on. The clocks clanged, the ruptured-sounding horn echoed along the street, the chant echoed off the walls. How anybody got any sleep around here was beyond me.
The red light came from an archway in the wall ahead, like a red tongue lolling across the road. It was falling through the narrow gap of a double door, and it dimmed as if somebody was continually peering out. Kelley, too, went ahead to look before we crossed the street, both ways, quickly; then he gestured sharply at the door, and led us across the cobbles, fast. The door creaked back as he did so, and I barely managed to get an impression of the street, but I saw that the gateway was in the front of a tall, narrow house, one in a row, all alike in shape but differently decorated. Tall as they were, though, they backed on to a still taller wall of huge grey stonework, roughly dressed. It gave me a sudden shiver; it was the base of that enormous castle, and the house, for all its height, seemed to crouch beneath it.
Maxie’s Demon Page 13