by Лорен Уиллиг
This, she realized, was probably what Penelope had meant when she argued that Charlotte was mad to want to go back to the Middle Ages, pointing out that the stench of a midden would undoubtedly outweigh the thrill of a joust. For the first time, Charlotte had an inkling of what Pen had meant. Some things worked far better in imagination than reality. In imagination, she was intrepid and resourceful; in reality, she wished she were home, wrapped in a quilt.
Down a dark and crooked street, the unmarked sedan chair drew to a halt in front of a building where broken shutters had been augmented by the addition of boards of wood hammered over the windows. A wooden sign creaked from a pole above the door, indicating its occupation as an alehouse. On the crudely carved sign, a potbellied ape sank his teeth with obvious enjoyment into an apple whose red paint had long since flaked off, except for a few sanguinary flecks of red adhering to the monkey’s teeth. The red flecks gave the ape a decidedly carnivorous air.
Next door, an old church sank into its foundations, as if wearied by the evidence of original sin. Even the stones in the graveyard could not be bothered to stand up straight; they tilted dispiritedly to one side, worn by time and pocked with snow.
The man who emerged from the sedan chair had undergone a transformation of his own. Gone were the cracked buckles on his shoes, the tricorne, the wig. Instead, the King’s physician was enveloped in a covering of dark fabric from his ankles all the way up to his hooded head. In one hand, he held an old-fashioned lantern, shuttered on three sides.
In the dark interior of the carriage, Henrietta and Charlotte exchanged a long look. “This just gets odder and odder,” whispered Henrietta.
“Is that a cassock?” whispered back Charlotte.
“Why would he be wearing a cassock?”
“I don’t know! Do you think we followed the wrong sedan chair?”
Instead of entering the Ape and the Apple, the hooded figure crunched his way through the dead weeds and bits of cracked crockery that littered the old graveyard. The light of his lantern disappeared with him into the side of the church. There had to be a door there, Charlotte rationalized. The crackle of crockery underfoot had been too crisp for their hooded friend to be anything but corporeal.
“What could he possibly want in there?” demanded Henrietta.
“It is a little late for Evensong.”
Henrietta’s lip curled. “I don’t think that church has seen Evensong for quite some time. Just look at it.”
Whatever stained-glass windows the church had possessed had been long since broken, the empty embrasures covered with the same boards used to bolster the drunken shutters of the alehouse on the other side of the graveyard. No light showed through the gaps in the boards. The church lay dark, still, and abandoned, isolated from the surrounding buildings by the scraggly churchyard.
“Do we go in?” whispered Charlotte, contemplating the long and twisty street with disfavor. There didn’t seem to be much distinction between street and gutter in this part of the town. Even blurred by snow, the alley was pitted with ruts and strewn with debris. Dark gaps showed between the houses and shops, like slashes in the fabric of the street. They made ideal crevices for footpads to lurk, ready to pounce on unwary ladies from Mayfair.
Looking no more thrilled by the prospect than Charlotte, Henrietta set her jaw bravely. “If we want to know what he’s doing there.”
Charlotte took that as a yes. “If I go through the front, will you go around the back?”
“That seems to make the most sense,” Henrietta agreed. “You have your pistol?”
Charlotte lifted it in silent assent, pleased to notice that it didn’t wobble any more than one might have expected from its weight. Now that the moment had come, she wasn’t displeased to have it. Leaving the carriage around the corner, the two women slid out of the carriage, moving awkwardly on limbs stiff from sitting in the cold. Henrietta slipped on a slushy patch of snow, and Charlotte caught her arm before she could go skidding down into the gutter.
“Just practicing,” whispered Henrietta.
Charlotte nodded beneath her hood. “We’ll do better from now on.”
The sign of the Ape and the Apple swayed above her head, the chains creaking like a raven cawing in the night. She could hear movement within the tavern as they passed, laughter muted by the wooden boards and a sour reek she assumed must be ale, but no one flung open the sagging door and demanded to know their business. Perhaps hooded women skulking down the street wasn’t quite so unusual as one would expect. Charlotte concentrated on keeping her footing and avoiding the most suspicious-looking protrusions beneath the snow.
The churchyard looked even more derelict up close, the scraggly remains of the summer’s weeds crawling over the broken stones. The air whistled sharply through the cracks between the buildings, stirring the sodden weeds and sending broken shutters thumping back and forth. It played auditory tricks, carrying the sounds of voices and laughter from the tavern and swirling them through the churchyard like the faint cackling of malicious spirits.
Imagination, Charlotte assured herself. It was all imagination and the wind. Who would possibly be in a ruin of a church by night? Except for the King’s false physician, that was. Charlotte turned her mind from ghostly revels and tried to focus on him instead.
Freeing one arm from her cloak, Charlotte reached out to squeeze Henrietta’s hand. “Are we ready?”
“I’ll see you inside.” With an answering squeeze, Henrietta disappeared around the side of the church while Charlotte stepped gingerly onto the broken flagstones leading up to the stone stairs.
The faithful must have walked that same path to Sunday prayer once upon a time, but now the paving stones were little more than pebbles, cracked and broken, and the stone stairs sagged in the middle from the press of generations of feet. Charlotte put her hand carefully to the warped wood of the door and was surprised when it gave with no sound at all. Charlotte had heard tales of miracles of oil, but none involved hinges.
It was darker inside than out. In comparison to the snow gray sky, the interior of the church pressed down on her like a heavy fall of black cloth, textured with the lingering scents of old incense and damp stone, as though the very air had grown mold. Charlotte groped her way past the door, feeling only rough wall, bare of paintings or statues. In the blackness, space had no meaning; it was a struggle simply to determine the shape of the space around her. The church had been stripped long ago, the only sign of any habitation the looming bulk of the heavy pillars that marched double file down the center of the nave. Any pews had long since been stolen and broken up for firewood. If there had ever been a confessional, it had gone the same way. Charlotte didn’t like to think where the baptismal font must have got to.
It was dark, but not silent. All around her, Charlotte could hear the distant rumble of voices, low voices, masculine voices, talking all at once, the peculiar acoustics of the vaulted ceiling projecting and echoing the sounds like a song sung in round.
Charlotte started nervously as the first clamorous stroke of a bell reverberated stridently through the nave. The sound was almost palpable in the darkness; it seemed to be swinging straight towards her. Again it tolled and again, the noise filling the blackness, making Charlotte’s head ring even as her nose twitched with the scent of incense, which appeared, inexplicably, to have grown stronger. At nine strokes, Charlotte expected the bell to stop ringing, but it kept on, battering against the walls of the church, marking something more than the hour. It rang out a thirteenth peal before finally echoing into unnerving silence. A superstitious shiver ran down Charlotte’s spine.
There was no time to dwell on ghost stories. Before the final peal had ceased to ring, a door burst open in a flare of light. Through the incandescent gap processed a shadowy line of dark-robed men.
For an insane moment, Charlotte wondered if she had stumbled through a gap in time, falling backwards into a London of long ago, well before King Henry’s Reformation, when skirted fri
ars held their ceremonies in chapels lit by sputtering candlelight. But there were no vespers being sung by this congregation, no holy chants. Instead, Charlotte could hear the low mutter of decidedly modern conversation, scented by a strong tang of spirituous liquor below the pervasive reek of scented smoke. There was nothing insubstantial about these phantoms. Their feet shuffled and their robes scratched and their breath misted in the air.
Charlotte pressed as close as she could to the nearest pillar, molding herself to it as though she could become a part of it. Thank goodness her evening cloak was a dark color! Hopefully, if anyone looked her way, they would just think it was a particularly lumpy pillar. Charlotte drew as much comfort as she could from that thought.
Along the length of the nave, the friars had drawn themselves into double ranks. Even in the poor light, Charlotte could see that their costume was careless at best. Polished black boots protruded beneath some robes and bare feet from others. Only one or two had elected the roped sandals of their pretended order. Now, as one, they turned their hooded heads towards the glowing door.
The light lurched forward like a living pillar of flame. Charlotte ducked behind her pillar. Not a living flame, Charlotte realized, carefully peering from behind her pillar, but a living man carrying a torch nearly as tall as he was, with a center twice as wide as the head of a man. It made him look as though he were wearing a fiery headdress rather than the same monastic attire as all the others.
Striding to the center of the long line of friars, he thumped the base of his torch twice against the flagged floor, sending the flames waving through the air like pagan dancers.
Holding the torch in two hands, he raised it high above his head, his long sleeves falling back from a pair of elegant wrists, circled in barbaric gold bracelets that appeared to twist up and up and up, ending near the elbow in stylized elephant heads.
“Welcome, my brimstone brethren!” he roared, and the congregation roared back, an earthy sound that resounded through the arched ceiling and made Charlotte’s cold limbs tremble. “Well met by moonlight!”
Charlotte’s fingers tightened on the fluted stone of the pillar. She knew that voice. Charlotte had an excellent memory for voices. She had always thought it must be nature’s way of compensating for making her so very bad at recognizing faces. It was a voice more suited to Almack’s than to pagan ceremony. And it had been whispering innuendos into her ear only hours before.
“I don’t see a moon, do you?” someone called out. Lord Henry Innes! That was quite definitely Lord Henry.
“You want a moon, I’ll show you a moon!” someone else rejoined, in slurred tones that suggested he had supped on more than moonlight. Bending over, he mimed what was obviously meant to be a vulgar gesture.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” the master of ceremonies admonished, and this time there was absolutely no doubt as to who it was. “Would you defile the court of the elephant god?”
Elephant god? Charlotte felt as though she’d taken that tumble Robert had prophesied, right off her horse onto the hard winter ground in Hyde Park. Her chest felt very tight, as though all the breath had been knocked out of her, and her lungs refused to function properly. Nothing made the least bit of sense.
That was Sir Francis Medmenham. Sir Francis Medmenham and Lord Henry and the false doctor and goodness only knew who else. Charlotte froze behind her pillar, as still as a stone saint. They mustn’t find her here. The scandal surrounding Penelope’s betrothal would be as nothing to this. Whatever her defiant words to Robert, Charlotte had no desire to find herself the brimstone bride of Sir Francis Medmenham. With the torch in front of him, his face seemed made of flame, more demon than man.
Feeling her way back towards the wall, moving as softly as she could, Charlotte began inching towards the door. If she could just keep her back to the wall and silently slip out while they were all occupied with Sir Francis . . .
Charlotte bumped backwards into the wall, giving silent thanks for the shadows cast by the pillars and the general dark decrepitude of her surroundings. Just a few yards to the left and she would be safe. All she had to do was find the doorknob, turn it, and dart into the night. And then she was never going to do anything like this ever, ever, ever again. No matter what Henrietta or anyone else said. Adventure was for heroines, and Robert had proved quite conclusively that she wasn’t one.
In the center of the room, Sir Francis raised his torch high again, sending the light scorching across the upturned faces of his comrade, across the blunt features of Lord Henry and the clean-cut good looks of Lord Freddy Staines. Heavens, thought Charlotte, what would Penelope have to say about that? Did she know? Would she even care?
With profound relief, Charlotte felt the change that signaled the shift from plaster to wood, from wall to door. Her hand jammed into something hard and rounded. The knob! It was all she could do not to sob in gratitude. She didn’t even begrudge the broken fingernail.
Her arm fully extended at an awkward angle, Charlotte folded her fingers carefully around the heavy bulk of the knob. One twist, that was all that was needed, one twist and then a mad dash to freedom.
Halfway down the nave, Sir Francis was entertaining his congregation, keeping their attention focused mercifully on him rather than her. “Gentlemen! I give you . . . the sacred flame!”
It was the perfect time to flee. With her breath burning in her lungs, she sprang for the door, giving the knob a brutal twist just as light exploded through the room.
Fireworks cartwheeled through the air, streaking the air with ribbons of flame, catching Charlotte in their glare as sure as a fox in a snare.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bacchanalian orgies had never been intended for a cold climate. Outside, the snow still fell. Instead of casting a purifying veil over the scene, it turned to slush as it touched the tainted ground. Robert considered it an appropriate indictment on their activities, yet more proof that one couldn’t touch pitch without being defiled.
Inside, the illustrious members of the Order of the Lotus were stripping off in preparation for their latest orgy. It was not an inspiring sight. From the variety of physiques revealed, not everyone spent his days boxing with Gentleman Jackson. While more than adequate for one vicar, the former vestry of the Church of St. Ethelred the Unsteady was decidedly inadequate for twenty grown men, most of whom were incapable of finding the fastenings of their own trousers without the aid of a valet. There was much hopping on one foot, flailing of arms, and airing of language that turned the consecrated air blue.
Unfortunately, the close quarters worked against him rather than for him. It was nearly impossible to pick out one voice in the cacophony of the whole and even harder to identify a set of familiar features beneath the close-draped hoods. A dozen colognes clashed for precedence, along with the ghost of ancient incense, masking any one scent. If Wrothan was there, he hadn’t yet done anything to betray his presence. He might, Robert concluded, be the elephant god, which would explain why he hadn’t yet put in an appearance. Or he might simply have had the good sense to keep his mouth closed and his head down. It was impossible to tell.
A particularly hearty elbow whapped into Robert’s ribs. This elbow, however, had been an intentional elbow.
“Looking forward to the evening, eh?” beamed Lord Henry Innes.
Robert managed to duck out of the way just in time to avoid a brotherly whack on the back. For whatever reason, Lord Henry still appeared to consider himself a sort of de facto godfather to the group’s newest member. A devil father? Robert was unclear on the appropriate nomenclature. The society seemed to veer between Satanism and paganism with no clear creed from either.
Despite the pretense of anonymity, Lord Henry’s hood was thrown carelessly back. Like Lord Henry, many of the members appeared to have no qualms about their identity being known; they called one another frankly by name and chatted openly about this ball or that rout and whether the next satanic celebration could be scheduled so as not to conflict wit
h someone’s sister’s come out. “I expect you all to dance with her!” bleated the fond brother. “Or m’mother will have my head!”
There were, however, a handful of members who hung back from the general conviviality, staying close to the corners of the room, their dark robes like blots against the rough whitewash of the walls.
Robert poked Lord Henry in the arm and nodded towards the wall. “I don’t believe I’ve been introduced to that lot.”
Lord Henry shrugged with every appearance of unconcern. “Introductions ain’t quite the thing here, you know. Air of mystery and whatnot.”
“But what if” — Robert lowered his voice conspiratorially — “an intruder were to slip into our midst and spy on our revels? It would be deuced hard to tell in these robes, now, wouldn’t it?”
Lord Henry’s brow wrinkled. “Intruder? Can’t say the problem’s ever occurred, has it, Medmenham?”
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. The last thing Robert wanted was Medmenham involved in the discussion. It was too late now, though.
Medmenham smiled lazily. His teeth looked unnaturally white against the dark frame of his hood. Although he had kept his hood up, there was no mistaking who he was. The barbaric bracelets affixed to his arms proclaimed his identity as surely as any sigil. “Afraid of exposure, Dovedale?”
“If I were, would I be wearing this?” Robert gestured irritably to his robe. No need for them to know that he was still wearing his evening kit beneath it. Given the temperature of the stone floor, he wasn’t the only one to have kept his shoes on. Those brave few who had gone barefoot looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I am, however, still a stranger to society. I wasn’t sure . . .”
“How our activities would be received?” The concept appeared to amuse Medmenham mightily. “My dear fellow, the days when one might be banished from court for one’s naughty behavior is long since past. These days, there’s scarce a court to be banished from.”