Lord John and the Hand of Devils

  There was nothing so far to which Grey could point as evidence, either of guilt or depravity. Still, if evidence was to be found anywhere, it must be at Medmenham--the deconsecrated abbey which Sir Francis had restored from ruins and made a showplace for his political ambitions.

  Among the talk and entertainments, though, Grey was conscious of a silent process of evaluation, plain in the eyes and manner of his companions. He was being watched, his fitness gauged--but for what?

  "What is it that Sir Francis wants with me?" he had asked bluntly, walking in the gardens with Everett on the second afternoon. "I have nothing to appeal to such a man."

  George smiled. He wore his own hair, dark and shining, and the chilly breeze stroked strands of it across his cheeks.

  "You underestimate your own merits, John--as always. Of course, nothing becomes manly virtue more than simple modesty." He glanced sidelong, mouth quirking with appreciation.

  "I scarce think my personal attributes are sufficient to intrigue a man of Dashwood's character," Grey answered dryly.

  "More to the point," Everett said, arching one brow, "what is it in Sir Francis that so intrigues you? You have not spoke of anything, save to question me about him."

  "You would be better suited to answer that than I," Grey answered boldly. "I hear you are an intimate--the valet tells me you have been a guest at Medmenham many times this year past. What is it draws you to seek his company?"

  George grunted in amusement, then flung back his head, breathing in the damp air with enjoyment. Lord John did likewise; autumn smells of leaf mold and chimney smoke, spiced with the tang of ripe muscats from the arbor nearby. Scents to stir the blood; cold air to sting cheeks and hands, exercise to stimulate and weary the limbs, making the glowing leisure of the fireside and the comforts of a dark, warm bed so appealing by contrast.

  "Power," George said at last. He lifted a hand toward the Abbey--an impressive pile of gray stone, at once stalwart in shape and delicate in design. "Dashwood aspires to great things; I would join him on that upward reach." He cast a glance at Grey. "And you, John? It has been some time since I presumed to know you, and yet I should not have said that a thirst for social influence formed much part of your own desires."

  Grey wished no discussion of his desires; not at the moment.

  "'The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall,'" he quoted.

  "'The desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.'" George completed the quote, and uttered a short laugh. "What is it that you seek to know then, John?" He turned his head toward Grey, dark eyes creased against the wind, and smiled as though he knew the answer.

  "The truth of the death of Robert Gerald."

  He had mentioned Gerald to each of the house party in turn, choosing his moment, probing delicately. No delicacy here; he wished to shock, and did so. George's face went comically blank, then hardened into disapproval.

  "Why do you seek to entangle yourself in that sordid affair?" he demanded. "Such association cannot but harm your own reputation--such as it is."

  That stung, as it was meant to.

  "My reputation is my own affair," Grey said, "as are my reasons. Did you know Gerald?"

  "No," Everett answered shortly. By unspoken consent, they turned toward the Abbey, and walked back in silence.

  On the third day, something changed. A sense of nervous anticipation seemed to pervade the air, and the air of secrecy grew heavier. Grey felt as though some stifling lid pressed down upon the Abbey, and spent as much time as possible out of doors.

  Still, nothing untoward occurred during the day or evening, and he retired as usual, soon after ten o'clock. Dismissing the valet, he undressed alone. He was tired from his long rambles over the countryside, but it was early yet. He picked up a book, attempted to read, but the words seemed to slide away from his eyes. His head nodded, and he slept, sitting up in the chair.

  The sound of the clock striking below in the hall woke him from uneasy dreams of dark pools and drowning. He sat up, a metal taste like blood in his mouth, and rubbed away the sleep from his eyes. Time for his nightly signal to Quarry.

  Unwilling to allow Grey to risk such company alone, Quarry had followed Lord John to West Wycombe. He would, he insisted, there take up station in the meadow facing the guest wing each night, between the hours of eleven and one o'clock. Lord John was to pass a candle flame three times across the glass each night, as a sign that all was so far well.

  Feeling ridiculous, Grey had done so on each of the first two nights. Tonight, he felt some small sense of reassurance as he bent to light his taper from the hearth. The house was silent, but not asleep. Something stirred, somewhere in the Abbey; he could feel it. Perhaps the ghosts of the ancient monks--perhaps something else.

  The candle flame showed the reflection of his own face, a wan oval in the glass, his light blue eyes gone to dark holes. He stood a moment, holding the flame, then blew it out and went to bed, obscurely more comforted by the thought of Harry outside than by the knowledge of George Everett in the next room.

  He waked in darkness, to find his bed surrounded by monks. Or men dressed as monks; each wore a rope-belted robe and a deep-cowled hood, pulled far forward to hide the face. Beyond the first startled exclamation, he lay quiet. He might have thought them the ghosts of the Abbey, save that the reassuring scents of sweat and alcohol, of powder and pomade, told him otherwise.

  None spoke, but hands pulled him from his bed and set him on his feet, stripped the nightshirt from his body, and helped him into a robe of his own. A hand cupped him intimately, a caress given under cover of darkness, and he breathed musk and myrrh.

  No menaces were offered, and he knew his companions to be those men with whom he had broken bread at dinner. Still, his heart beat in his ears as he was conducted by darkened hallways into the garden, and then by lantern light through a maze of clipped yew. Beyond this, a path led down the side of a stony hill, curving into the darkness and finally turning back into the hillside itself.

  Here they passed through a curious portal, this being an archway of wood and marble, carved into what he took to be the semblance of a woman's privates, opened wide. He examined this with curiosity; early experience with whores had made him vaguely familiar, but had afforded no opportunity for close inspection.

  Once within this portal, a bell began to chime somewhere ahead. The "monks" formed themselves into a line, two by two, and shuffled slowly forward, beginning to chant.

  "Hocus-pocus,

  Hoc est corpus..."

  The chant continued in the same vein--a perversion of various well-known prayers, some merely foolish nonsense, some clever or openly bawdy. Grey restrained a sudden urge to laugh, and bit his lip to stop it.

  The solemn procession wound its way deeper and he smelled damp rock; were they in a cave? Evidently; as the passage widened, he saw light ahead and entered eventually into a large chamber, set with candles, whose rough-hewn walls indicated that they were indeed in a catacomb of sorts. The impression was heightened by the presence of a number of human skulls, set grinning atop their crossed thigh bones, like so many Jolly Rogers.

  Grey found himself pressed into a place near the wall. One figure, robed in a cardinal's red, came forward, and Sir Francis Dashwood's voice intoned the beginning of the rite. The rite itself was a parody of the Mass, enacted with great solemnity, invocations made to the Master of Darkness, the chalice formed of an upturned skull.

  In all truth, Grey found the proceedings tedious in the extreme, enlivened only by the appearance of a large Barbary ape, attired in bishop's cope and miter, who appeared at the Consecration. The animal sprang upon the altar, where it gobbled and slobbered over the bread provided and spilled wine upon the floor. It would have been less entertaining, Grey thought, had the beast's ginger whiskers and seamed countenance not reminded him so strongly of the Bishop of Ely, an old friend of his mother's.

  At the conclusion of this rite, the men went out, with considerably less solemni
ty than when they had come in. A good deal had been drunk in the course of the rite, and their behavior was less restrained than that of the ape.

  Two men near the end of the line seized Grey by the arms and compelled him into a small alcove, around which the others had gathered. He found himself bent backward over a marble basin, the robe pushed down from his shoulders. Dashwood intoned a prayer in reverse Latin, and something warm and sticky cascaded over Grey's head, blinding him and causing him to struggle and curse in the grip of his captors.

  "I baptize thee, child of Asmodeus, son of blood..." A kick from Grey's foot caught Dashwood under the chin and sent him reeling backward. A hard punch in the pit of the stomach knocked the breath from Grey and quieted him for the remainder of the brief ceremony.

  Then they set him on his feet, bloodstained, and gave him drink from a jeweled cup. He tasted opium in the wine, and let as much as he dared dribble down his chin as he drank. Even so, he felt the dreamy tendrils of the drug steal through his mind, and his balance grew precarious, sending him lurching through the crowd, to the great hilarity of the robed onlookers.

  Hands took him by the elbows and propelled him down a corridor, and another, and another. A draft of warm air, and he found himself thrust through a door, which closed behind him.

  The chamber was small, furnished with nothing save a narrow couch against the far wall, and a table upon which stood a flagon, several glasses...and a knife. Grey staggered to the table, and braced himself with both hands to keep from falling.

  There was a strange smell in the room. At first he thought he had vomited, sickened by blood and wine, but then he saw the pool of it, across the room by the bed. It was only then that he saw the girl.

  She was young and naked and dead. Her body lay limp, sprawled white in the light, but her eyes were dull and her lips blue, the traces of sickness trailing down her face and across the bedclothes. Grey backed slowly away, shock washing the last remnants of the drug from his blood.

  He rubbed both hands hard across his face, striving to think. What was this, why was he here, with the body of this young woman? He brought himself to come closer, to look. She was no one he had seen before; the calluses upon her hands and the state of her feet marked her as a servant or a country girl.

  He turned sharply, went to the door. Locked, of course. But what was the point? He shook his head, his brain slowly clearing. Once clear, though, no answers came to mind. Blackmail, perhaps? It was true that Grey's family had influence, though he himself possessed none. But how could his presence here be put to such use?

  It seemed he had spent forever in that buried room, pacing to and fro across the stone floor, until at last the door opened and a robed figure slipped through.

  "George!"

  "Bloody hell!" Ignoring Grey's turn toward him, Everett crossed the room and stood staring down at the girl, brows knit in consternation. "What's happened?" he demanded, swinging toward Grey.

  "You tell me. Or rather, let us leave this place, and then you tell me."

  Everett put out a quelling hand, urging silence. He thought for a moment, and then seemed to reach some conclusion. A slow smile grew across his face.

  "Well enough," he said softly, to himself. He turned and reached toward Grey's waist, pulling loose the cord that bound the robe closed. Grey made no move to cover himself, though filled with astonishment at the gesture, given the circumstances.

  This astonishment was intensified in the next instant, as Everett bent over the bed and wrapped the cord round the neck of the dead woman, tugging hard to draw it tight, so the rope bit deep into flesh. He stood, smiled at Grey, then crossed to the table, where he poured two glasses of wine from the flagon.

  "Here." He handed one to Grey. "Don't worry, it's not drugged. You aren't drugged now, are you? No, I see not; I thought you hadn't had enough."

  "Tell me what is happening." Grey took the glass, but made no move to drink. "Tell me, for God's sake!"

  George smiled again, a queer look in his eyes, and picked up the knife. It was exotic in appearance; something Oriental, at least a foot long and wickedly sharp.

  "It is the common initiation of the brotherhood," he said. "The new candidate, once approved, is baptized--it was pig's blood, by the way--and then brought to this room, where a woman is provided for his pleasure. Once his lust is slaked, an older brother comes to instruct him in the final rite of his acceptance--and to witness it."

  Grey raised a sleeve and wiped cold sweat and pig's blood from his forehead.

  "And the nature of this final rite is--"

  "Sacrificial." George nodded acknowledgment toward the blade. "The act not only completes the initiation, but also insures the initiate's silence and his loyalty to the brotherhood."

  A great coldness was creeping through Grey's limbs, making them stiff and heavy.

  "And you have...have done this?"

  "Yes." Everett contemplated the form on the bed for a moment, one finger gently stroking the blade. At last he shook his head and sighed, murmuring to himself once more. "No, I think not."

  He raised his eyes to Grey's, clear and shining in the lamplight. "I would have spared you, I think, were it not for Bob Gerald."

  The glass felt slick in Grey's hand, but he forced himself to speak calmly.

  "So you did know him. Was it you who killed him?"

  Everett nodded slowly, not taking his gaze from Grey's.

  "It is ironic, is it not?" he said softly. "I desired membership in this brotherhood, whose watchword is vice, whose credo is wickedness--and yet had Bob Gerald told them what I am, they would have turned upon me like wolves. They hold all abomination dear--save one."

  "And Robert Gerald knew what you were? Yet he did not speak your name as he died."

  George shrugged, but his mouth twitched uneasily.

  "He was a pretty lad, I thought--but I was wrong. No, he didn't know my name, but we met here--at Medmenham. It would have made no difference, had they not chosen him to join us. Were he to come again, though, and see me here..."

  "He would not have come again. He refused the invitation."

  George's eyes narrowed, gauging his truth; then he shrugged.

  "Perhaps if I had known that, he need not have died. And if he had not died, you would not have been chosen yourself--would not have come? No. Well, there's irony again for you, I suppose. And still--I think I would have killed him under any circumstance; it was too dangerous."

  Grey had been keeping a watchful eye on the knife. He moved, unobtrusively, seeking to get the corner of the table betwixt himself and Everett.

  "And the broadsheets? That was your doing?" He could, he thought, seize the table and throw it into Everett's legs, then try to overpower him. Disarmed, they were well-matched in strength.

  "No, Whitehead's. He's the poet, after all." George smiled and stepped back, out of range. "They thought perhaps to take advantage of Gerald's death to discomfit Sir Richard--and chose that method, knowing nothing of his killer or the motive for his death. The greatest irony of all, is it not?"

  George had moved the flagon out of reach. Grey stood half naked, with no weapon to hand save a glass of wine.

  "So you intend now to procure my silence by claiming I am the murderer of this poor young woman?" Grey demanded, jerking his head toward the still figure on the bed. "What happened to her?"

  "Accident," Everett said. "The women are drugged; she must have vomited in her sleep and choked to death. But blackmail? No, that isn't what I mean to do."

  Everett squinted at the bed, then at Grey, measuring distance.

  "You sought to use a noose for your sacrificial duty--some mislike blood--and though you succeeded, the girl managed to seize the knife and wound you, severely enough that you bled to death before I could return to aid you. Tragic accident; such a pity. Move a little closer to the bed, John."

  Never think a man is helpless, only because he's fettered. Grey flung his wine into Everett's face, then smashed his glass agains
t the stones of the wall. He whirled on a heel and lunged upward, jabbing with all his might.

  Everett grunted, one side of his handsome face laid open, spraying blood. He growled deep in his throat, baring bloody teeth, and ripped the blade across the air where Grey had stood a moment before. Half blinded by blood and snarling like a beast, he lunged and swung again. Grey ducked, was hit by a flying wrist, and fell across the woman's body. He rolled sideways, but was trapped by the folds of his robe.

  The knife gleamed overhead. In desperation, he threw up his legs and thrust both feet into Everett's chest, flinging him backward.

  Everett staggered, flailing back across the room, half-caught himself, then froze abruptly. The expression on his face showed vast surprise. His hand loosened, dropping the knife, and then drew slowly through the air, graceful in gesture as the dancer that he was. His fingers touched the reddened steel protruding from his chest, acknowledging defeat. He slumped slowly to the floor.

  Harry Quarry put a foot on Everett's back and freed his sword with a vicious yank.

  "Good job I waited, wasn't it? Saw those buggers with their lanterns and all, and thought best I see what mischief was afoot."

  "Mischief," Grey echoed. He stood up, or tried to. His knees had gone to water. "You...did you hear?" His heart was beating very slowly; he wondered in a dreamy way whether it might stop any minute.

  Quarry glanced at him, expression unreadable.

  "I heard." He wiped his sword, then sheathed it, and came to the bed, bending down to peer at Grey. How much had he heard, Grey wondered--and what had he made of it?

  A rough hand brushed back his hair. He felt the stiffness matting it, and thought of Robert Gerald's mother.

  "It's not my blood," he said.

  "Some of it is," said Quarry, and traced a line down the side of his neck. In the wake of the touch, he felt the sting of the cut, unnoticed in the moment of infliction.

  "Never fear," said Quarry, and gave him a hand to get up. "It will make a pretty scar."

  "Lord John and the Succubus"