Trembling, she left the scene, and made her way to Rue Street, fearing the worst. She found there nothing she hadn’t anticipated. Mimi’s house had been gutted.
What was she to do now?; return to London and leave Cal – if he’d survived – to his own devices? She had no way of tracing him; she could only trust that somehow he’d find his way to her. Things were so damn chaotic, with the Kind spread across the country, and Cal missing, and the book?; she didn’t dare think too hard about that. She just turned her back on the ruins of Mimi’s house and walked away down Rue Street, what little store of optimism she’d possessed defeated by what she’d seen.
As she turned the corner, a kerb-crawler drew up alongside her, and a round face, wearing sun-glasses, leaned out of the window.
‘You’re going to get cold,’ he said.
‘Go to Hell,’ she told him, and quickened her step. He kept pace with her.
‘I told you to go to Hell,’ she said, throwing him a look intended to leave him limp. He slid his glasses down his nose, and stared at her. The eyes revealed beneath were bright gold.
‘Nimrod?’
‘Who else?’
Had it not been for the eyes she’d never have recognized him. His face had filled out, all but a hint of his good looks gone.
‘I need feeding,’ he said. ‘How about you?’
4
His appetite seemed to have expanded in direct proportion to the direness of their jeopardy. She sat across the table of the Chinese restaurant where he took her, and watched him wade through the menu, devouring not only his food but most of hers too.
It didn’t take long for them to provide each other with outlines of their recent investigations. Most of her news was stale stuff now: the Scourge was amongst them. But Nimrod had more current information, gleaned from conversations overheard and questions asked. At Chariot Street – he was able to report – no bodies had been found, so it might be safely assumed that Cal had not perished there. Remains had however been found in Rue Street.
‘I didn’t know any of them personally,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid you did.’
‘Who?’
‘Balm de Bono.’
‘– de Bono?’
‘He was at Rue Street last night.’
She fell silent, thinking of the brief time she’d spent with de Bono, and of their debates together. Now he was gone. And how soon would the rest of them follow?
‘What do we do, Nimrod?’ she murmured. ‘Do we try and hide again? Another Weave?’
‘There aren’t enough of us to fill a prayer mat,’ Nimrod said mournfully. ‘Besides, we don’t have the raptures. There’s very little power left between us.’
‘So we sit back and wait for the Scourge to pick us off? Is that what you’re saying?’
Nimrod drew his hand over his face.
‘I’ve fought about as hard as I can …’ he said. ‘I think we all have.’
He fetched a tobacco tin from his pocket, and began to roll himself a cigarette. ‘I’ve made my mistakes,’ he said, ‘I fell for Shadwell’s lies … I even fell in love.’
‘You did?’
He made a slight smile, which reminded Suzanna of the irrepressible creature he’d once been. ‘Oh yes …’ he said. ‘… I’ve had my adventures in the Kingdom. But they didn’t last long. There was always a part of me that never left the Fugue. That still hasn’t left.’ He lit the match-thin cigarette he’d rolled. ‘I suppose that’s ludicrous,’ he said, ‘given that the place doesn’t exist any longer.’
He’d forsaken his dark glasses as soon as the waiter had retired. His eyes, their gold untarnished, were on her now, looking for some sliver of hope.
‘You can remember it?’ she said.
‘The Fugue? Of course.’
‘So can I. Or at least I think I can. So maybe it isn’t lost.’
He shook his head.
‘Don’t be sentimental,’ he chided. ‘Memories aren’t enough.’
It was fruitless to argue the niceties of that: he was telling her that he was in pain; he didn’t want platitudes or metaphysics.
She turned over in her head the problem of whether she should tell him what she knew: that she had reason to hope that all was not lost; that the Fugue might be again, one day. It was, she knew, a slender hope – but he needed a life-line, however tenuous.
‘It’s not over,’ she said.
‘Dream on,’ he replied. ‘It’s finished.’
‘I tell you the Fugue’s not gone.’
He looked up from his cigarette.
‘What do you mean?’
‘In the Gyre … I used the Loom.’
‘Used the Loom? What are you saying?’
‘Or it used me. Maybe a bit of both.’
‘How? Why?’
‘To keep everything from being lost.’
Nimrod was leaning across the table now.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Neither do I, fully,’ she replied. ‘But something happened. Some force …’
She sighed. She didn’t have the words to describe those moments. Part of her wasn’t even sure it had happened. But of one thing she was certain:
‘I don’t believe in defeat, Nimrod. I don’t care what this fucking Scourge is. I won’t lie down and die because of it.’
‘You don’t have to,’ he said. ‘You’re a Cuckoo. You can walk the other way.’
‘You should know better than that,’ she said, sharply. ‘The Fugue belongs to anyone who’ll die for it. Me … Cal…’
He looked chastened.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not just you who needs the Fugue, Nimrod. We all do.’
She glanced towards the window. Through the bamboo blinds she could see that the snow was coming down again with fresh vehemence, ‘I never believed in Eden,’ she said softly. ‘Not the way the Bible tells it. Original sin and all that crap. But maybe the story’s got an echo somewhere in it.’
‘An echo?’
‘Of the way things really were. A place of miracles, where magic was made. And the Scourge ended up believing the Eden story, because it was a corrupted version of the truth.’
‘Does it matter?’ Nimrod sighed. ‘Whether the Scourge is an Angel or not; whether it comes from Eden, or not, how does that alter anything? The point is, it believes it’s Uriel. And that means it’ll destroy us.’
The point was incontestable. When the world was coming to an end, what did names matter?
‘I think we should be together,’ he said, after a pause, ‘instead of spread across the country. Perhaps we can muster something if we’re all in one place.’
‘I see the sense in that.’
‘Better than the Scourge picking us off!’
‘But where?’
‘There was a place …’ he said, ‘where it never came. I remember it vaguely. Apolline will tell us better.’
‘What kind of place?’
‘A hill, I think it was,’ he said, his unblinking stare on the white paper tablecloth between them. ‘Some kind of hill …’
‘We’ll go there then, shall we?’
‘It’s as good a place to die as any.’
II
DUST AND ASHES
1
he saints on the facade of the Church of St Philomena and St Callixtus had long since lost their faces to the rain. They had no eyes to see the visitors that came to the door in the early evening of 21st December; nor did they have ears to hear the debate on the step. Even if they had heard, and seen – even if they’d stepped off their pedestals and gone out to warn England that it had an Angel in its midst – their alarms would have gone unheeded. England had no need of saints tonight, nor any night: it had martyrs enough.
Hobart stood on the threshold, the Scourge’s light visible through the flesh of his throat and darting from the corners of his mouth. He had hold of Shadwell’s arm, and would not let him step out of the snow.
&n
bsp; ‘This is a church …’ he said, not with Uriel’s voice but with his own. Sometimes the Angel seemed to give him the right to self-government for a while, only to pull the leash tight again if its host grew fractious.
‘Yes, it’s a church,’ said Shadwell. ‘And we’re here to destroy it.’
Hobart shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t do that.’
Shadwell was too tired for argument. This was not the first of the day’s visits. Since leaving Chariot Street the Angel had led them to several sites around the country, where it remembered the Seerkind taking refuge during the last holocaust. All had been wasted journeys: the places – when they were still recognizable – were devoid of magic or its makers. The weather had deteriorated by the hour. Snow now blanketed the country from one end to the other, and Shadwell was weary of both the trek and the chill. He’d become anxious too, as each pursuit ended in disappointment; anxious that Uriel would grow impatient, and his control of the creature would begin the slip. That was why he’d brought the Angel here, where he knew there was magic, or its leavings. This was where Immacolata had made the Rake: a place part shrine, part womb. Here Uriel’s hunger for destruction would be assuaged, for tonight at least.
‘We have work to do inside,’ he told Uriel’s host. ‘The Scourge’s work.’
But Hobart still refused to cross the threshold.
‘We can’t destroy it …’ he said, ‘… God’s house.’
There was irony aplenty in the fact that he. Shadwell – raised a Catholic – and Uriel, God’s fire, should be ready to demolish this pitiful temple; while Hobart – whose only religion had been the Law – refused. This was the man who kept not the Bible close to his heart, but a book of faery-tales. So why this sudden fastidiousness? Did he sense that death was close, and it was time to repent his Godlessness? If so, Shadwell was unmoved.
‘You’re the Dragon, Hobart,’ he said. ‘You can do what you like.’
The man shook his head, and at his denial the light in his throat brightened.
‘You wanted fire, you’ve got it,’ Shadwell went on.
‘I don’t want it,’ Hobart said, his words becoming choked. ‘Take … it … away …’
The last syllables were forced through chattering teeth. Smoke came too, up from his belly. And after it, Uriel’s voice.
‘No more argument,’ it demanded.
Though it seemed to have reclaimed the reins of Hobart’s body, the man still fought to keep control for himself. The conflict made him shake violently, a display Shadwell was certain would draw unwelcome attention if they didn’t soon step out of public view.
‘There are Seerkind inside,’ he said. ‘Your enemies.’
His coaxing went unheard by either Uriel or Hobart. Either the Angel was losing its grip on its vessel, or Hobart had developed new powers of resistance, for Uriel was having to fight hard to regain total possession. One or other of them began to beat the body’s fist against the portico, perhaps to distract its opponent. The flesh, caught between man and Angel, burst and bled.
Shadwell tried to avoid being spattered, but the Inspector’s grip was fiercer than ever, holding him close. The wasted head turned in Shadwell’s direction. From the smoky cavern between his teeth Hobart’s voice emerged, barely decipherable.
‘Get … it … out of me,’ he pleaded.
‘I can do nothing,’ Shadwell said, wiping a fleck of blood from his upper lip with his free hand, ‘It’s too late.’
‘He knows that.’ came the reply. Not Hobart’s voice this time, but Uriel’s. ‘He’s the Dragon forever.’
Hobart had begun to sob, his snot and tears boiling away as they reached the furnace of his mouth.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Uriel, its tone a parody of Shadwell at his silkiest. ‘Do you hear me, Hobart?’
The head nodded loosely, as if the muscle of the neck it was carried on was half cut through.
‘Shall we go inside?’ said Shadwell.
Again, that dislocated nodding. The body was free of twitches now; the face a blank. As final proof of the Angel’s triumph, Hobart dropped his hold on Shadwell, then turned and went ahead of the Salesman into the church.
It was deserted, the candles cold, the smell of incense souring.
‘There are raptures here,’ said Uriel.
‘Indeed there are,’ said Shadwell, following the creature down the aisle to the chancel rail. He had expected the crucifix above the altar to win some response from the Angel, but Uriel passed it by without a glance, and crossed to the baptistery door. It laid Hobart’s broken hand upon the wood. The boards smouldered, the door flew open. It was the same procedure at the second door. With Uriel-in-Hobart leading the way they descended into the crypt.
They were not alone there; a light was burning at the far end of the passage along which Immacolata had come to meet Shadwell: from the Shrine, presumably. Without further word Uriel began along the corridor, ribbons of its hidden self flowing from Hobart’s torso and grazing the caskets in the walls, pleasuring in their stillness, their silence. It was half way between stairs and Shrine when a priest stepped from an intersecting passageway and blocked the path. His face was pale, as if powdered, a streak of blue dirt – some sign of obsequience – daubed in the centre of his forehead.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘Step aside,’ said Shadwell.
‘You’re trespassing,’ the man retorted. ‘Get out of here!’
Uriel had stopped a yard or two from where the priest stood, and now threw its hand out and snatched hold of one of the casket ledges, its other hand taking hold of Hobart’s hair and dragging the man’s face towards the wall as if to beat its own skull open. This was not the Angel’s doing, Shadwell realized, but Hobart’s. Using the distraction of the priest’s appearance, he was again attempting to seize control. The contested body immediately became epileptic, a throttled roar emerging from its throat, which may have been intended as a warning to the priest. If so, it went uncomprehended. The man stood his ground as Uriel twisted Hobart’s head back in his direction – bone and cartilage audibly grinding upon each other. A moment passed: priest and Angel face to face. Then Uriel’s flame erupted from Hobart’s mouth.
The effect, in the confined space of the passage, was more impressive than anything Shadwell had witnessed in Rue Street. The shock-wave threw him backwards, but he was too much the voyeur to be denied the spectacle, and hauled himself upright to watch Uriel’s lethal theorems proved on its victim. The priest’s body was lifted against the ceiling and pinned there until the flames had devoured it.
It was over in seconds, and Shadwell squinted through the smoke to see Uriel moving off towards the Shrine, with Hobart loosing a sobbing howl of horror at what had been done. Shadwell followed, dwindling motes of fiery ash falling around him. The fire had not just caught the priest, but was eating at the very brick of the passageway, and consuming the caskets in the niches. The lead of their inner linings dripped from the ledges, and the bodies came with it, shrouds burning around their illustrious bones.
As he approached the door of the Shrine Shadwell’s feet slowed. This had been Immacolata’s domain. Here she’d been all-powerful, worshipped by unmanned men whose abeyance to Christ and his Mother had been a sham; men who’d believed her a Goddess. He’d never believed that himself. So why did he have this sudden fear upon him?: a desecrator’s fear?
He stepped inside the Shrine, and there had his answer. As he surveyed the bones on the walls he knew as only a lover could know that the creature he’d lusted after, and finally betrayed, was still holding court here. Death had no hold on her. She was in the walls, or in the air: somewhere near.
‘Goddess …’ he heard himself say.
There was no time to warn Uriel. A second priest, younger than his dead brother, appeared from the shadows and ran at the Angel, knife in hand. Hobart’s cry stopped, and he turned his mutinous hands to the task of preventing a second slaughter, cl
amping them to his face to dam the coming fire. The device gave the attacker time to deliver a cut, the knife entering Hobart’s side. But as the priest withdrew it for a second stab Uriel’s benediction spurted between Hobart’s fingers, then broke out entirely, taking the flesh and bone of his hands with it. The fire caught the priest head on and flung him across the Shrine. He danced against the bones for a heart-beat, then he, like his brother, was ash.
He’d done serious damage to Hobart, but it took Uriel less time to cauterize the wound with its glance than it had taken the knife to deliver it. The task done, it turned its gaze on Shadwell. For a breathless moment the Salesman thought it meant to burn him where he stood. But no.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ it said.
It had offered the same meagre comfort to Hobart mere minutes before. The sentiment had sounded hollow then, but more so now, in the light of the way it had maimed its host. Hobart’s hands, which he’d once envisaged burning with righteous fire, had been reduced to withered claws in the act of trying to prevent that fire from doing its work. Hobart was sobbing again, as he or the Angel held the stumps up to be examined. Had Uriel left him with the burden of pain his nerve-endings must be suffering, or did he sob that his body was an instrument in these abominations?
The arms dropped, and Uriel turned his attention to the walls.
‘I like these bones,’ it said, and wandered over to the most elaborate of the designs. Tendrils, thin as sewing-thread and lightning bright, skipped from its borrowed torso and face, and ran over the skulls and rib-cages.
There was a moment of hiatus, the fire roaring in the niches outside, the ashes of the second priest still hanging in the air. In that moment Shadwell heard Immacolata’s voice. It was the most intimate of whispers, a lover’s whisper.
‘What have you done?’ she said.
He glanced across at Uriel, who was still entranced by the macabre symmetry of the wall. It made no sign of having heard the Incantatrix. Again, the question.
‘What have you done?’ she said. ‘It knows no mercy.’