Maxie’s Demon

by Michael Scott Rohan

  I watched it as I talked, and at the back of my mind I thought of that bastard Fisher again, and how people cast shadows into the Spiral, shadows of legend. I wondered which I was talking to, a man or his shadow; and I wondered what separated them. Could they ever meet? That would be like a doppelgänger – and I remembered The Student of Prague. Prague, where the Spiral was so strong. What sort of shadow would I cast in the night?

  My tale trickled away into nothingness, and I sat silent, feeling like about tuppence-worth of Kelley-coating. The rabbi also sat silent, and I squirmed inwardly. I’d been too truthful. Probably now he thought I was a total flake. Suddenly he sat up, and spoke.

  ‘So, you are truly determined to resist these creatures, these demonic servants and whatever lies behind them? Even with the power they offer?’

  I sagged with relief. Of course I’d been forgetting that a man with a home-made golem in his basement has reasons to take a liberal line on magic and suchlike. ‘Power? God, you don’t know what it’s like. Like dabbling your feet in a flood. It keeps trying to whirl me away, suck me down … No, I want to cut loose. At all costs! Whatever I might’ve … No matter what! Anything!’ I hugged myself, shivering.

  The rabbi stared at the floor. ‘This, this Spirale of yours – of such a matter I have heard, yes, though under other names. It does not altogether accord with the tenets of our faith, though according to the Zohar of de Leon some aspects of the kabalistic belief, the Sephiroth … But to travel in time, as upon a river – upstream this day, downstream yesterday, maybe no day if you don’t paddle fast enough, ai! No matter. I cannot say yea or nay. Suffice it that in these parts the art magical is stronger than elsewhere, whatever the reason, and so many scholars flock here. That much I can accept.’ He stroked his beard, and nodded.

  ‘And thence, one thing I am sure of. These things that pursue you are very wicked indeed, yes. But they are not demons as we understand them – nor, as I believe, your faith also. They have too much of a flavour of humanity. Men who have made themselves into the image of demons, perhaps; yet they command too much power for that, and move with too single a purpose. You fear for your soul, you say. Whatever is to fear from them, I do not think it is Sheol – to you, Hell.’

  I glared at him. ‘You haven’t seen them! You haven’t felt—’

  ‘No. And I did not say there was nothing to fear.’

  ‘Then … You. You’re some kind of magician, a powerful one. Can I ask you to help me, somehow? I can’t trust old Dee – he means well, sure, but if he tries this ceremony of his I just bet Kelley will skew it somehow. Dee trusts him too much. What’d happen to me then – it wouldn’t be good. Kelley’ll see to that.’ My mouth felt very dry. ‘And besides …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If Kelley gets that power, in the state he is now, I think an awful lot of people might get hurt. And even if it passes to Dee, well, who knows? Even old scholars can get corrupted. What if these creatures fasten on him?’

  Rabbi Loew looked sternly at me. ‘It seems you do not trust anyone with such power. You judge all others by your own low standards.’

  ‘Well … OK, I do. I’ve seen a lot of people, the way I live. Maybe the wrong sort of people, all right; but I look at a whole lot of respectable types, politicians, stuffed shirts, you name it, and I see them act just the same way as low-lifes, a lot of the time – what’s the big joke?’

  Loew was making that peculiar snorting chuckle, and his thin beard wagged. ‘I am sorry! Stuffed shirts, hehhehheh, that is good, very good!’ He slapped his thigh.

  ‘Look, it’s not original, OK? My father – he thought he was a pillar of the business world, but he was a bigger bloody thief than I’ll ever be. I don’t trust anybody! Not that much. Not a millionth part.’

  The rabbi was still smiling. ‘Then evidently you have gained some understanding. Of course these creatures would seek a master to serve, for that would be how they gain their ascendancy. What is a little service to them, if with every move they draw you deeper into their web? Seeking to live again through you! They spoke the truth, because that is the strongest lie. Ruling you by your own urges, always bolstering you where you are weakest, until you can do nothing at all any longer without their aid and are little more than their creature. Then the servant is the master indeed! Your life would be theirs. They would absorb you, consume you, draw you into their central will. The vrkolak that the Germans call vampir could not do worse.’

  My throat felt suddenly full of broken glass, so dry I couldn’t speak. He was putting into words exactly what I’d felt. He moved his hand a little, and his firelight shadow made a gesture of sweeping power. ‘Probably that is how they were ensnared in their turns. I can imagine them as you describe them – weak, resentful men, aye, and women, who found in that central will, whatever it was, the chance to become what they believed they ought to be. Petty criminals – you will forgive me? – often see themselves as daring, romantic bandits. Romantic to them, anyhow.’

  I winced. I could understand that all too easily. I had the updated version, so I could only believe in it behind the wheel of a car; and by a mercy those bandits had never caught me there, since the first time.

  ‘Yes,’ said Loew thoughtfully. ‘This Kelley. A rascal, but how much worse would he be if he had no fear or weakness to restrain him? And which of us shall be exempt? Is it not merciful that the powers I have found lie in the hands of a weak old man with few ambitions left in this world? You have done well to resist, young fellow.’

  ‘Then … you’ll help me?’

  Loew was silent a moment, and my heart sank. ‘Here, now, yes, I can defend you. Evil things do not cross this threshold. But this link that has been forged, this tether that draws this power to you – I know of nothing to sever that. It is in my case best that he who creates such a bond is also the one to break it. There are what you would call rites of exorcism in my faith, but they are not for Gentiles.’

  I began to feel the panic climbing up my trouser leg again. ‘Yes, look, but I’m not much of a Christian, really – I’m, what’s the bloody word, ecumenical, that’s it—’

  Loew’s smile was as firm as a frown. ‘I do not doubt it. But no. And this ceremony of your Dr Dee, it cannot but be a Christian ceremony, can it? As reb I can have nothing to do with that.’

  I sagged. Back to the sewers again, boys. Might as well go down fighting – though down in something else would have suited me better.

  Loew was still smiling. ‘However,’ he added in a kindly voice, and my spine snapped me bolt upright, ‘I can seek to banish evil with prayer from any gathering of any kind. That is always lawful. Indeed, it is my duty. I do not have to pay too much attention to whatever other gabble is also going on, do I? So, if your Dr Dee will have me—’

  I shot out of my chair and grabbed his hand. ‘Oh, he will, he will! He’s a good man too, he’ll understand! He’d bloody well better, anyway – if he wants me, he’ll have to! Thank you, I can’t say – I’ll never be able to repay—’

  He shook his head, and now he did look stern, under the cloak of that shadow, straight now against the wall and very tall. ‘Ah, ah yes, you can repay me, indeed. In advance, if you like. Richly. You see, times have been hard for us, for so long, in so many lands. And now, here, they seem to be growing a little easier. Rudolph is a better master than any other Christian monarch alive – not least because he values our money. We begin to prosper as nowhere else. And yet his protection extends only so far – not into the hearts and wills of his subjects, or most of them. So we live still behind walls, and bear a yellow badge of shame, and yet—Hope is like a limb long unused, painful to stir. Dare I ask—’ He looked down, and for the first time he seemed nervous. ‘You who comes walking out of years that are yet to be, you can tell me—’

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted him, for he looked as anguished as I must have a moment back.

  ‘You can tell me – what is to be the fate of my people?’

  I must have jus
t stared at him stupidly for a second. My brain was boiling. Pogroms; emigrations; deportations; America; Auschwitz; the Rothschilds; Stalin; lampshades; Israel; the furnaces; fundamentalists; Sobibor; the Six-Day War, all struggling to the fore.

  I drew a deep breath. ‘Well …’ I began.

  I slept that night on the hearth, warmed by the dying fire. The rabbi had only beds for himself and his family; but the straw mattress he hauled out was a lot more comfortable than your average trendy futon, and the blankets were more than enough. The lamp had guttered and gone out before I’d finished my potted history, leaving us in near darkness. But the firelight still showed me the play of expression across Loew’s narrow features, and the way he tugged at his beard sometimes. Just once he struck his brow, hard; and it wasn’t when I might have expected it. I guess I probably didn’t tell it well; but at the end he didn’t speak for quite a while, and when he did, it was of bed, and of prayer.

  The next morning I was awakened by Loew’s womenfolk, wife and daughter-in-law and granddaughter, much amused but very polite, though only the young girl spoke much German. A nice cheery trio, who could have got off a bus in Golders Green any day, except for those yellow circles. Loew and his son, also a Talmudic teacher, had apparently gone out to the school, and to send some kind of message, and when he came back, alone, he was still in a very reflective mood. About what I’d told him he said nothing; but I got the feeling he was ringing like a bell. Also, he seemed to be waiting for something; and around midday it came, with a knock on the door.

  A young man stooped under the lintel, elaborately curled locks swinging beneath his broad floppy hat, a yellow circle ingeniously embroidered into his elegant doublet. I could guess where he fitted in by the granddaughter’s reaction, instantly suppressed, and the way he glared suspiciously at me. He exchanged a quick word with the rabbi, who nodded to me. ‘They are here!’

  They? I stepped back as two others strode hastily in, muffled in yellow-circled cloaks despite the mild sun. One struck his head on a beam, but made only a noise of dignified expostulation. The other—

  I didn’t need to be told who. There was this faint, lingering pong …

  I glared at Loew. ‘He wasn’t supposed to be here!’

  Dee threw back his hood, blinking around him with the air of a duke in a public men’s room for the first time. ‘I would not come without Brother Edward. He has a right to his voice in this matter.’

  I backed behind a convenient table. ‘Has he? He was after me with a sword last night! And he’s been conning you – I mean, cozening you, all this time. You, the Emperor, J—everyone!’

  Kelley didn’t bother to uncloak. He took one step towards me, grabbing at his waist, then froze with the dagger hilt in his hand. The young man’s dagger was already drawn, a lot longer, and poised just under Kelley’s breastbone. He grinned with satisfaction at my cowardly reaction.

  The rabbi nodded. ‘My future grandson-in-law, Nathan. Wants to be a scholar. He should be so quick with his pen. Welcome to my home, gentlemen – and behave in it as you would in your own, Herr Ritter Kelley. Will you not sit down? Leah, some wine!’

  Dee settled gingerly into the rabbi’s best chair, glancing about – uneasily, but curiously, at the manuscripts especially. Kelley hawked and was about to spit on the bench, then remembered the dagger and sat down with a thud, hunched up and glowering from under the hood. They were squirming like Bible-Belters in a gay bar, afraid to so much as touch the furniture in case it contaminated them. I realised suddenly that my entire attitude had probably told Loew more about the future than any of my garbled history.

  Again, though, Dee surprised me. He hesitated only a little when Loew poured him wine, and as he took it – well, you couldn’t call it a bow, but he unstarched his neck just a fraction. ‘I – ah – am aware of your name and reputation, sir,’ he said, with almost no effort. ‘I read Hebrew, although I do not speak it, and … Whatever the – ah – popular prejudice, I have never been one to undervalue the scholarship of your people, or the virtues of their philosophy.’

  ‘Ah, exactly how I have always felt about yours,’ twinkled Loew. ‘Whatever the popular prejudice. And there is no denying your accomplishments, sir – as Master Maxie here demonstrates. I am grateful to you especially, Master Kelley, for sending him to me. But dispatching him home now, that is the trick, is it not?’

  ‘Home and free!’ I snapped. ‘Without this bloody link you’ve landed me with – and without the power going to Brother Edward here. Or to you yourself, Doc, or anyone ever again. Whatever we’re dealing with, it sure as hell isn’t angels. Even you saw that for yourself.’

  ‘Folly!’ growled Kelley. ‘Did I not make all clear to you, as it was made to me? This is a thief, a coward, a liar and lecher, a thing of the lowest vice! Small wonder the angels took an unseemly form to vent their wrath upon him!’

  Dee looked deeply troubled. ‘That alone would not explain what I saw,’ he said quietly. ‘Surely even the flaming sword before the Garden must be a thing of grace as well as terror. I saw and felt otherwise. And against this I have only—’

  ‘You have the angelic word!’ said Kelley sharply.

  ‘Aye,’ said Dee miserably. ‘But through you, Brother. As for so many things. And why should that be so? If I may stand before these creatures, why have they never spoken to me directly, even when the art of scrying came to me at last?’

  ‘That’s always the way with mediums,’ I thrust in. ‘Why should something that’s true just happen to operate like a conjuror’s trick? And to the conjuror’s benefit!’

  Dee went white. Kelley – talk about body language. His was saying a mouthful.

  Rabbi Loew’s gaze flickered about, and he stroked his ratty beard. ‘Until now, sirs, I have only seen you through Master Maxie’s eyes. As he himself admits, he is not unspotted; but I do not believe he lies. That channel of power is a false and perilous one, and should be cut off altogether.’

  Kelley exploded, but subsided as suddenly. Not because of the dagger, but because Dee motioned him silent. The old man’s mouth was working, but he spoke steadily enough. ‘What then do you counsel, Loew?’

  Loew rose, and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘What this young fellow requests. That you, learned sir and doctor, conduct your rite of exorcism; and that you, Master Kelley, take no part. And that I stand aside to … guard the ground, as it were. Against intrusions.’

  ‘You?’ Dee’s brows shot up. ‘But this is a sacred rite!’

  Loew shrugged. ‘Is it, sir? I know of inquisitors who would not agree. And your pyre would stand somewhat higher than mine, as the world reckons. For myself, it does not matter, I believe, as long as the intent is good, and I take no actual part. Save against any evil that appears.’

  Dee looked like a disappointed baby – which in many ways he was. All sorts of feelings chased across his face; but after only a moment he raised his hand.

  ‘A golden prospect!’ howled Kelley, nearly apoplectic. ‘You’re just tossing it away!’

  Dee looked down at him with something suspiciously like pity. ‘He who can do such a thing at need is truly free. We shall proceed as you advise, masters.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Emergency Braking

  EVENING WAS GATHERING as we passed through the city gates, Dee and myself together. It appeared that Jews still had more of a problem with suspicious activities like entering and leaving, and Loew was taking another route, a secret one probably. We were headed back to Dee’s preferred launchpad, the hilltop outside the walls we’d been bound for when I’d tipped Brother Ed into the brassicas; and I didn’t like that one bit, because it meant he knew the place. Dee had insisted that there was nowhere else remotely suitable, so free from prying eyes. And besides, why should Master Kelley interfere? Had he not given his solemn pledge—

  It was easier to go along with the old fellow. At least we ought to be able to see trouble coming. Probably there was a twentieth-century tourist hotel up there,
but right now it was stark and isolated, home to nothing except a wide clump of bushes and a few trees, stunted and windblown. They looked incredibly sinister against the grey clouds. I imagined a brigand lurking behind each one, about to jump out and yell SURPRISE!

  We dismounted and tethered the horses at the foot, and made our way up the grassy slope. It wasn’t that steep, but Dee was old and I was puffing and wheezing under his enormous bag of paraphernalia. ‘Christ, what’ve you brought, the bloody kitchen’ – I remembered they hadn’t really invented sinks – ‘table?’

  ‘Nay, sir,’ Dee answered seriously. ‘Only the Holy Table of my art, and the frame that bears it. I trust it will endure being thus carried.’

  ‘Great. What about me?’

  ‘Great effort is purifying,’ said Dee serenely, digging in his staff. ‘It will help to shrive you somewhat for the ceremony.’

  I was about to say something that would set my shriving back maybe a year, but he uncapped his staff. In the bleak dusk the head gleamed with a strong pearly light, far stronger than it had been even in the sewers. ‘You see? This engirdling realm you call the Spiral must impinge here most forcibly.’

  ‘I thought it had to be crossroads. Or something.’ I couldn’t manage a longer sentence.

  ‘And so this is,’ said Dee, pointing his staff at a litter of white stones beneath the bushes. ‘In Roman times – and perhaps before, who knows? – there was a watchtower here, overlooking the conjunctions of road and river, and the commerce and conquest that flowed along them. This was their nexus. There may be other forces at work also, in the clouds perhaps. From this height I have seen visions there, things of which I can say little, but may be known in your day. Great wheels and discs of light—’