Advent

  ‘Not to me,’ Gav said. ‘So that was her before as well?’

  ‘Before?’

  ‘On the train.’

  Both her hands jerked up from the wheel. Gav lunged to grab it, terrified, as the car veered wildly to the edge of the road. One set of tyres ran into soft earth on the verge, sending them bumping and skidding sideways, thrashing wet undergrowth. He shoved the wheel over and managed to keep the car clinging to tarmac as it ground to a halt.

  Hester clutched his arm with both hands.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, hoarse, frantic. She appeared not to have noticed nearly killing them both. ‘Tell me why this happened to me.’ Her grip was beginning to hurt. ‘Please tell me why. Please.’

  The car had stalled. The only sound was her breath, racing.

  He tried to tug his arm away, unsuccessfully. ‘Um. I think we’re on the wrong side of the road.’

  For a few seconds he thought she hadn’t even heard him. Then her grip unclenched.

  ‘My God,’ she whispered.

  ‘I think’ – he withdrew his arm carefully and put as much calm in his tone as he could muster – ‘maybe it would be better if you just got home.’

  She gazed at him as if he’d suggested going to Mars.

  ‘I can drive if you like,’ he added, which wasn’t strictly true, but he’d watched other people do it and always thought he could probably work out the motions. Plus he doubted he’d be any more of a danger to their lives than she was.

  ‘What? No. Sorry.’ She rubbed her hands on her legs, pulling herself together. ‘I can manage. Yes. Home.’ She started up again and eased the car back onto the road. Gav kept himself ready to lunge for the wheel again.

  ‘How much further is it?’

  ‘Is what? Not far.’ She expelled a shaky breath. ‘It’s all right. Honestly. Look, this is the head of the river now.’

  Another village had appeared at the end of the wood. Gav saw signposts with names unknown to him, bright for a moment in the headlights and then lost. He watched Hester out of the corner of his eye. She held herself straight and tight, forcing herself to concentrate.

  Miss Grey’s other victim. Never in a million years would he have guessed there was anyone else in the world who shared anything like his torment, let alone that it would be someone like this, an ordinary middle-aged woman.

  When she at last broke the silence, it was as if she’d been sharing his thoughts.

  ‘You really heard all that, then.’ Gav thought it was safer to say nothing, though she seemed to have recovered herself. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she added, catching his eye. ‘I won’t run us off the road again, I promise. It’s just . . .’ He watched her shake her head slowly. ‘An extraordinary thing. All that shouting on the train, in the tunnel. You heard it all too?’

  ‘Yeah.’ No swerving yet, but he thought he made out a wet gleam in her eyes. ‘Yeah, I did.’

  ‘So . . . have you always . . . ?’

  She couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud, but he saw what she was asking.

  ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘that was the first time.’

  ‘The first?’

  He stared into the dark, remembering Miss Grey. ‘I’ve never heard her shout like that before. Never heard her say anything really.’

  He only realised what he’d said when the car began to slow down.

  ‘You mean . . .’ Hester began, and an edge had come back into her voice.

  Gav cleared his throat. ‘Actually, would you mind pulling over for a sec?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just for a sec.’

  ‘Promise you’re not going to jump out and run away?’ She appeared to be serious.

  ‘Promise,’ he said.

  ‘Because I couldn’t stand that.’ There was a spot where the lane widened; she nudged the car against the hedge. ‘I couldn’t bear to come so close to the answer and then never know.’

  ‘I don’t have any answers.’ They came to a stop, idling in the empty road.

  ‘Right.’ She pulled up the handbrake. ‘Safe as houses. Now you can tell me about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  She took a careful breath. ‘You said you’d never heard her speak before, which means . . .’

  He waited.

  ‘How long?’ she asked, finally.

  ‘All my life.’

  She clasped her hands tight and wiped at her eyes with the knuckles. Gav looked away, embarrassed.

  ‘So, she was . . .’ The tremble in her voice sounded desperately like hope. ‘She was there, on the train. My voice was . . . actually . . .’

  ‘Told you you’re not crazy,’ he said, and then he had to pretend to study the tangled shadows in the hedge for a while, as though he hadn’t noticed the tears.

  ‘Oh, look at me,’ she said at last. ‘Pull yourself together, Hester. I’m sorry. I’ll stop in a minute.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  She found a tissue in some compartment and blew her nose loudly. ‘There. Oh goodness. I’m all right now. You did the right thing asking me to pull over.’

  ‘Maybe we should change the subject.’

  She laughed. ‘Let’s get going at least.’ Very deliberately, she released the brake. ‘There. See? I’m all right. I can’t quite stop crying, but I’m all right. It’s not far, anyway.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Gav said again.

  ‘Oh, Gavin.’ He couldn’t remember ever having heard his name spoken with more heartfelt emphasis. ‘Please don’t keep apologising. Later on I’ll try and explain what you’ve done for me today.’ She shook her head again in wonder. ‘I’m only crying because I’m so happy. Yesterday would have been enough, but this is—’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘Being released. I thought that was all the miracle I needed. Well, it was, actually.’ She wiped her cheek with her sleeve. ‘But now to find out that all along . . .’

  Memories began to stir uneasily in him.

  ‘Released?’

  This night you go free.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Know what?’ Of course he didn’t. She thought he knew about Miss Grey, but he didn’t. He didn’t understand at all.

  ‘I’m sorry – I somehow assumed you’d know.’ She glanced at him and, seeing the blank face, explained. ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ Gav whispered.

  Old mad witch.

  Gets killed.

  ‘It was just,’ Hester peered at the dashboard clock, ‘just this time yesterday. Right after I dropped you off. I was driving just like this, along these lanes, and . . . I knew. Perhaps I won’t try and explain what it was like, but anyway, I knew. I knew it was over. She’s left me at last. My voice. Our voice, I should call her, shouldn’t I? Our voice. She’s gone.’

  Fourteen

  Late winter and spring 1537

  First love came to the magus late, but when it arrived, its effects were the same as they always have been, for everyone, young and old. He thought of nothing else. He shut himself in his house and could do nothing. He sat among his books, his heart broken. Yet however much he railed at the servant spirit, it would not return him to her again.

  ‘Take me back.’

  ‘We will not, Magister.’ The dry voice floated around him like smoke.

  ‘“Will not”? I command you. I require obedience!’

  ‘We may not lead you into harm.’

  ‘What harm can there be? Take me back! Or I will . . .’

  But for once his threat was empty, and he knew it. The spirit ruled by his staff was his agent in the insubstantial realms. He could direct it – had directed it – to afflict other dwellers in those realms, compelling them to his will, but in doing so he had surrendered a portion of his power over it. He could not make it punish itself.

  One of the first laws he had learned, at the very beginning of his arcane studies, was that there was always a cost. Everything gained from the spirits was paid for with something lost, no matter h
ow subtle the equation.

  It would have been fortunate for the magus had he borne that lesson in mind, later, but soonest learned, soonest forgotten. He had become used to authority. Growing in power over the years, mastery became his habit, and the bonds on which it rested no longer occupied his attention. Which made it all the more bitter when he now found himself unable to compel the spirit to his most urgent desire.

  ‘Great harm, Magister.’

  ‘There cannot be!’

  ‘We speak only truth. Forget her. She is a cursed thing.’

  ‘Forget!’ The magus ground his teeth in despair. It might as well have asked him to forget to breathe.

  ‘It is the gift of your kind. To forget.’

  ‘Silence!’ Even the suggestion of being taunted by such a thing was beyond endurance. ‘Silence! Answer only as I bid you!’

  The ruddy glow haunting the laboratory, embers in an invisible bonfire, seemed to waver and retreat.

  ‘You conducted me there once.’ Silence. ‘Can you deny it?’

  ‘No, Magister.’

  ‘Then do so again!’

  ‘You would not return.’

  ‘So be it!’ In the frenzy of his longing, he felt he would rather be a ghost at her side for ever than a living man separated from her by vast oceans of time. ‘So be it! Let me go and never return!’

  ‘We may not do you harm.’

  And it was true. Years before, when he had won the fiery spirit to his service, surprised by its willingness, he had guarded against the dangers attending all transactions of the sort by binding it to do him no injury. Now his own word was turned against him, and his own word was immovable. He raged and wheedled, even – to his later horror and humiliation – begged. Entreaties were as useless as commands. He could not return. There was no way back to her.

  What, then, had she meant by her whisper You will see me again?

  Legend named her a prophetess. Nothing more of her had survived to the magus’s own time. There were obscure and contradictory fragments of stories, useless to him, but he and everyone else knew that her name was a byword for the gift of prophecy. He could only pray, with childish fervour, that the legend was true, that those five whispered words were indeed prophetic and their promise would come to pass. But as the dark days and weeks passed, pelting his house with February’s freezing rain, he lost hope and sank into torpid misery. However much he tried to warm himself with the memory of her promise, he no longer believed it. He began to doubt whether she’d even spoken the words.

  So another truth she told him was buried. Her legend spoke of that too.

  The god loved her, it said. The bright god, the destroyer, god of the lyre and the laurel and the long road.

  She accepted his gift, which was prophecy.

  Then – so the legend ran – she changed her tune and spurned him. But he did not withdraw the gift. His revenge was crueller: he twisted it against itself.

  Her mouth would still speak hidden truth, but the truth would always be left hidden: secret, powerless. Never used, never understood. No one would listen. She would prophesy and no one would believe her.

  In that broken exchange rested all the magic in the world. But

  the magus was habituated to power, as we have said, and this is a mystery he would never grasp.

  He spent his sleepless nights combing the codices of his library and his patrons’, seeking any remnant of her story, searching for any clue that might open a door back to that time so unthinkably long past, that dry hill and many-gated citadel whose very name was now a legend. He neglected his observatory and laboratory equally. His heart was no longer in the work. Letters arriving at his house stayed unsealed.

  He formed twenty different schemes to force the spirit to do as he wished. These were the only times when his listlessness gave way to frantic exertion. All the efforts were equally useless. The spirit, meanwhile, offered to bewitch other women and swore they would make him forget her. It was mockery, and he knew it. Worse, he knew he deserved it. It had been just such an unworthy impulse – the urge to set eyes on the most beautiful woman in the world – which had caused the spirit to open the door through time, and so lost him his heart.

  ‘Why did you not deny me then?’ It was folly to throw recriminations at a thing possessed of neither a conscience nor a soul, but sometimes his furious grief got the better of him. ‘You deny me so obdurately now. Why did you agree so readily when I gave you that first command?’

  ‘We serve your will, Magister.’

  ‘You do not.’ He rubbed his bloodshot eyes. ‘You serve only your own malice. You glory in my despair.’

  ‘Unjust, Magister.’

  ‘Unjust? Was it justice to obey what was only a whim of mine and now to deny me when my soul hangs in the balance?’

  ‘We safeguard your soul.’ There was a sibilant relish in the dry echoes of its voice that would have made an ordinary man quail.

  ‘You wish me broken so you may go free. Is it not so? You hope to see me crushed by misery.’

  ‘We wish you preserved.’

  ‘Be gone,’ he muttered dully, and the phantom light fled from the room.

  The bell of the Vrouwekerk rang the days in and out, and gradually the furious clamour of his despair subsided, settling into a low constant ache. For want of anything better to do he resumed his work. The sun regained some of its warmth, tempting him out of doors again, and then, when the packed snows thinned, out of the city.

  The day came without any warning at all.

  It was early in March, a cold afternoon already going dull, and he was riding in a copse looking for early shoots of the blue squill, when he saw a vagrant woman crouched beside the remains of a fire. He dismounted and picked his way to her through the muddy snow at the edge of the track, thinking to ask her if she knew where to find what he sought, and to start her fire for her. She lifted her ragged head and watched him as he came. When he was close, she rose to her feet. He was surprised to see her move so easily and stand so straight; his surprise was trebled when she spoke his name. All he saw was a beggar, coarse cloak hanging off her like a scarecrow’s, a thin face worn ageless by weather, facing him as fearlessly as the proudest mevrouw in the city. The first thing he thought was that she might be a witch. She was bold; her strength seemed unnatural; she had recognised him. His grip was tightening on his staff when at last he met her black eyes directly and saw how they shone.

  The vagrant spoke in Latin.

  She said, ‘I promised you would see me again.’

  His staff dropped out of his hand, spattering slush, and a moment later he fell to his knees and shouted a great cry of thanks for the purest moment of joy that his days had ever gifted him.

  When his mouth was capable of speech again, he said, ‘Are you a phantom? Is this a blessed vision?’

  Her answer was to reach out and touch his face. The hand was rough but full of tenderness, old and young together. He felt the living heat of her, as ordinary and yet as entirely miraculous as the small warmth of the March sun.

  ‘How?’ he stammered. He was afloat in an ocean of speechless wonder. He could barely open his mouth without drinking in so much of it that he feared he might die of joy.

  ‘You came to me once,’ she said quietly, ‘and did not turn away. Because of that I have waited for you.’

  He seized her hand in his and pressed his lips to it. Her skin closed his mouth against the rising flood of words: questions, exclamations, cries of sheer delight, all pressed upwards from his heart, so thick they threatened to choke him. They dissolved against the simple sensation of her body against his, tangible as the snow and the earth. In the face of a miracle, all questions were mere air.

  She refused to mount behind him, so he walked as well, leading the horse over the frozen ruts. That became the way they always met, that spring and summer. He would find her at the fringes of the rougher land, wood or marsh or sea, and they would walk together and talk or be silent as the mood was. She
was shy of people, though the travellers and drovers and peasants outside the city walls never gave her a second glance. To every eye except his she was no more than what he had momentarily taken her for – a vagrant or a common woman, coarsely clothed, no more worthy of notice than a mule – but to him she was a miracle made flesh. Sometimes when they spoke, she told him of places and people that were as strange and marvellous to him as the fantasies of high romance, though in truth any words would have been precious to him so long as they came from her. Sometimes he wished for no more than to stand and hold her small hands in his. Her appearances and disappearances, her silences, the unfathomable air that clung to her, none of that troubled him at all next to his certainty that his prayers had been answered and his love rewarded. And sometimes when they were together it was as though the air thickened around them and the passage of time itself lost its hold, and then she was not only a beggar woman but a princess as well, the woman he had first seen that impossibly distant night, and then the magus forgot everything: his questions, himself, the whole world.

  Still, the questions could not be held back for ever.

  ‘How can it be that you are here? The world itself has grown ancient since we met.’

  ‘It is a long road.’

  ‘And you have trodden it all that time? Yourself?’

  She looked down at her hands. ‘I could not do otherwise.’

  ‘It is beyond believing.’

  ‘I know,’ she whispered.

  The land was in its drunken riot of life. Young green clothed the meadows and woods like an exhalation. The magus would have suspected himself of being bewitched with happiness had it not been for the enduring distance between him and her, a remoteness nothing could bridge. The shadow of centuries was palpable on her. The thought of everything she must have seen and endured defeated his imagination utterly, and yet every time he looked into those profound eyes it seemed all too plain.