There were no jabs or taunts now, just Tolland’s drink-rotted bulk lurking towards his victim to bring the man down. The Gentile stepped back as the knife came, his eyes going to the designs underfoot. They were like the pictures that filled his head to overflowing; brightnesses that had been smeared into gray dust. But somewhere in the midst of that dust he remembered another place like this: a makeshift town, full of filth and rage, where somebody or something had come for his life as this man was coming, except that this other executioner had carried a fire in his head, to burn the flesh away, and all that he, the Gentile, had owned by way of defense was empty hands.
He raised them now. They were as marked as the knife the executioner was carrying, their backs bloodied from his attempt to stem the flow from his nose. He uncurled them, as he’d done many times before, drawing breath as he chose his right over his left and, without understanding why, put it to his mouth.
The pneuma flew before Tolland had time to raise his blade, hitting him on the shoulder with such force he was thrown to the ground. Shock took his voice away for several seconds, then his hand went to his gushing shoulder and he loosed a noise more shriek than roar. The few witnesses who’d remained to watch the killing were rooted to the spot, their eyes not on their fallen lord but on his deposer. Later, when they told this story, they’d all describe what they’d seen in different ways. Some would talk of a knife produced from hiding, used, and concealed again so fast the eye could barely catch it. Others of a bullet, spat from between the Gentile’s teeth. But nobody doubted that something remarkable had taken place in these seconds. A wonder worker had appeared among them and laid the tyrant Tolland low without even touching him.
The wounded man wasn’t bested so easily, however. Though his blade had gone from his fingers (and been surreptitiously swiped by Monday) he still had his tribe to defend him. He summoned them now, with wild screeches of rage.
“See what he did? What are you fuckin’ waitin’ for? Take him! Take the fucker! No one does that to me! Irish? Irish? Where the fuck are you? Somebody help me!”
It was the woman who came to his aid, but he pushed her aside.
“Where the fuck’s Irish?”
“I’m here.”
“Take hold of the bastard,” Tolland said.
Irish didn’t move.
“D’you hear me? He used some fuckin’ Jew-boy trick on me! You saw him. Some yid trick, it was.”
“I saw him,” said Irish.
“He’ll do it again! He’ll do it to you!”
“I don’t think he’s goin’ to do anything to anybody.”
“Then break his fuckin’ head.”
“You can do it if you like,” Irish said. “I’m not touching him.”
Despite his wounding and his bulk, Tolland was up on his feet in seconds, and going at his sometime lieutenant like a bull, but the Gentile’s hand was on his shoulder before his fingers could get to the man’s throat. He stopped in his tracks, and the spectators had sight of the day’s second wonder: fear on Tolland’s face. There’d be no ambiguity in their reports of this. When word went out across the city—as it did within the hour, passed from one asylum Tolland had spoiled with blood to another—the account, though embroidered in the telling, was at root the same. Drool had run from Tolland’s mouth, it said, and his face had got sweaty. Some said piss ran from the bottom of his trousers and filled his boots.
“Let Irish alone,” the Gentile told him. “In fact . . . let us all alone.”
Tolland made no reply. He simply looked at the hand laid on him and seemed to shrink. It wasn’t his wounding that made him so quiescent, or even fear of the Gentile attacking a second time. He’d sustained injuries far worse than the wound on his shoulder and simply been inflamed to fresh cruelties. It was the touch he shrank from: the Gentile’s hand laid lightly on his shoulder. He turned and backed away from his wounder, glancing from side to side as he did so, in the hope that there would be somebody to support him. But everyone, including Irish and Carol, gave him a wide berth.
“You can’t do this,” he said when he’d put five yards between himself and the Gentile. “I’ve got friends all over! I’ll see you dead, fucker. I will. I’ll see you dead!”
The Gentile simply turned his back on this and stooped to claim from the ground the scattered shards of Monday’s chalks. This casual gesture was in its way more eloquent than any counter-threat or show of power, announcing as it did his complete indifference to the other man’s presence. Tolland stared at the Gentile’s bent back for several seconds, as if calculating the risk of mounting another attack. Then, calculations made, he turned and fled.
“He’s gone,” said Monday, who was crouching beside the Gentile and watching over his shoulder.
“Do you have any more of these?” the stranger said, rocking the colors in the cradle of his palm.
“No. But I can get some. Do you draw?”
The Gentile stood up. “Sometimes,” he said.
“Do you copy stuff, like me?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I can teach you, if you want.”
“No,” the Gentile replied. “I’ll copy from my head.” He looked down at the crayons in his hand. “I can empty it that way.”
“Could you be doin’ with paint as well?” Irish asked, as the Gentile’s gaze went to the gray concrete all around them.
“You could get paint?”
“Me and Carol here, we can get anything. Whatever you want, Gentile, we’ll get it for you.”
“Then . . . I want all the colors you can find.”
“Is that all? You don’t want something to drink?”
But the Gentile didn’t reply. He was wandering towards the pillar against which Tolland had first pinned him and was applying a color to it. The chalk in his fingers was yellow, and with it he began to draw the circle of the sun.
II
When Jude woke it was almost noon: eleven hours or more since Gentle had come home, relieved her of the egg that had brought her a glimpse of Nirvana, then headed out again into the night. She felt sluggish and pained by the light. Even when she turned the hot water in her shower to a trickle and let it run near cold, it failed to fully waken her. She toweled herself half dry and padded through to the kitchen naked. The window was open there, and the breeze brought goose bumps. At least this was some sign of life, she thought, negligible though it was.
She put on some coffee and the television, flipping the channels from one banality to another, then letting it burble along with the percolator while she dressed. The telephone rang while she was looking for her second shoe. There was a din of traffic at the other end of the line, but no voice, and after a couple of seconds the line went dead. She put down the receiver and stayed by the phone, wondering if this was Gentle trying to get through. Thirty seconds later the phone rang again. This time there was a speaker: a man, whose voice was barely more than a ragged whisper.
“For Christ’s sake . . .”
“Who is this?”
“Oh, Judith . . . God, God . . . Judith? . . . It’s Oscar. . . .”
“Where are you?” she said. He was very clearly not locked up in his house.
“They’re dead, Judith.”
“Who are?”
“Now it’s me. Now it wants me.”
“I’m not getting this, Oscar. Who’s dead?”
“Help me . . . you’ve got to help me. . . . Nowhere’s safe.”
“Come to the flat then.”
“No . . . you come here. . . .”
“Where’s here?”
“I’m at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Do you know it?”
“What the hell are you doing there?”
“I’ll be waiting inside. But hurry. It’s going to find me. It’s going to find me.”
The traffic around the square was locked, as was often the case at noon, the breeze that had brought gooseflesh an hour before too meek to disperse the fog of countless exhausts and the fumes of
as many frustrated drivers. Nor was the air inside the church any less stale, though it was pure ozone beside the smell of fear that came off the man sitting close to the altar, his thick hands knitted so tightly the bone of his knuckles showed through the fat.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to leave the house,” she reminded him.
“Something came for me,” Oscar said, his eyes wide. “In the middle of the night. It tried to get in, but it couldn’t. Then this morning—in broad daylight—I heard the parrots kicking up a din, and the back door was blown off its hinges.”
“Did you see what it was?”
“Do you think I’d be here if I had? No; I was ready, after the first time. As soon as I heard the birds I ran for the front door. Then this terrible din, and all the lights went out. . . .”
He divided his hands and took light hold of her arm.
“What am I going to do?” he said. “It’ll find me, sooner or later. It’s killed all the rest of them—”
“Who?”
“Haven’t you seen the headlines? They’re all dead. Lionel, McGann, Bloxham. Even the ladies. Shales was in his bed. Cut up in pieces in his own bed. I ask you, what kind of creature does that?”
“A quiet one.”
“How can you joke?”
“I joke, you sweat. We deal with it the best way we know how.” She sighed. “You’re a better man than this, Oscar. You shouldn’t be hiding away. There’s work to do.”
“Don’t tell me about your damn Goddess, Judith. It’s a lost cause. The tower’ll be rubble by now.”
“If there’s any help for us,” she said, “it’s there. I know it. Come with me, won’t you? I’ve seen you brave. What’s happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wish I did. All these years I’ve been crossing over to Yzordderrex, not giving a damn where I put my nose, not caring whether I was at risk or not, as long as there were new sights to see. It was another world. Maybe another me, too.”
“And here?”
He made a baffled face. “This is England,” he said. “Safe, rainy, boring England, where the cricket’s bad and the beer’s warm. This isn’t supposed to be a dangerous place.”
“But it is, Oscar, whether we like it or not. There’s a darkness here worse than anything in Yzordderrex. And it’s got your scent. There’s no escaping that. It’s coming after you. And me, for all I know.”
“But why?”
“Maybe it thinks you can do it some harm.”
“What can I do? I don’t know a damn thing.”
“But we could learn,” she said. “That way, if we’re going to die, at least it won’t be in ignorance.”
Twelve
DESPITE OSCAR’S PREDICTION, THE Tabula Rasa’s tower was still standing, any trace of distinction it might have once owned eroded by the sun, which blazed with noonday fervor at well past three. Its ferocity had taken its toll on the trees that shielded the tower from the road, leaving their leaves to hang like dishrags from their branches. If there were any birds taking cover in the foliage, they were too exhausted to sing.
“When were you last here?” Oscar asked Jude as they drove into the empty forecourt.
She told him about her encounter with Bloxham, squeezing the account for its humorous effect in the hope of distracting Oscar from his anxiety.
“I never much liked Bloxham,” Oscar replied. “He was so damn full of himself. Mind you, so were we all. . . .” His voice trailed away, and with all the enthusiasm of a man approaching the execution block, he got out of the car and led her to the front door.
“There’s no alarms ringing,” he said. “If there’s anybody inside, they got in with a key.”
He’d pulled a cluster of his own keys out of his pocket and selected one.
“Are you sure this is wise?” he asked her.
“Yes, I am.”
Resigned to this insanity, he unlocked the door and, after a moment’s hesitation, headed inside. The foyer was cold and gloomy, but the chill only served to make Jude brisk.
“How do we get down into the cellar?” she said.
“You want to go straight down there?” he replied. “Shouldn’t we check upstairs first? Somebody could be here.”
“Somebody is here, Oscar. She’s in the cellar. You can check upstairs if you want to, but I’m going down. The less time we waste the sooner we’re out of here.”
It was a persuasive argument, and he conceded to it with a little nod. He dutifully fished through the bunch of keys a second time and, having chosen one, went over to the farthest and smallest of the three closed doors ahead. Having taken his time selecting the right key, he now took even longer to get it into the lock and coax it into turning.
“How often have you been down there?” she asked him while he worked.
“Only twice,” he replied. “It’s a pretty grim place.”
“I know,” she reminded him.
“On the other hand, my father seemed to make quite a habit of exploring down there. There’s rules and regulations, you know, about nobody looking through the library on their own, in case they’re tempted by something they read. I’m sure he flouted all that. Ah!” The key turned. “That’s one of them!” He selected a second key and started on the other lock.
“Did your father talk to you about the cellar?” she asked him.
“Once or twice. He knew more about the Dominions than he should have done. I think he even knew a few feits. I can’t be sure. He was a cagey bugger. But at the end, when he was delirious, he’d mutter these names. Patashoqua, I remember. He repeated that over and over.”
“Do you think he ever crossed into the Dominions?”
“I doubt it.”
“So you worked out how to do that on your own?”
“I found a few books down here and smuggled them out. It wasn’t difficult to get the circle working. Magic doesn’t decay. It’s about the only thing”—he paused, grunted, forced the key—“that doesn’t.” It began to turn, but not all the way. “I think Papa would have liked Patashoqua,” he went on. “But it was only a name to him, poor sod.”
“It’ll be different after the Reconciliation,” Jude said. “I know it’s too late for him—”
“On the contrary,” Oscar said, grimacing as he bullied the key. “From what I hear, the dead are just as locked up as the rest of us. There’s spirits everywhere, according to Peccable, ranting and raving.”
“Even in here?”
“Especially in here,” he said.
With that, the lock gave up its resistance, and the key turned.
“There,” he said. “Just like magic.”
“Wonderful.” She patted his back. “You’re a genius.”
He grinned at her. The dour, defeated man she’d found sweating in the pews an hour ago had lightened considerably now there was something to distract him from his death sentence. He withdrew the key from the lock and turned the handle. The door was stout and heavy, but it opened without much resistance. He preceded her into the darkness.
“If I remember right,” he said, “there’s a light here. No?” He patted the wall to the side of the door. “Ah! Wait!”
A switch flipped, and a row of bare bulbs, strung from a cable, illuminated the room. It was large, wood-paneled, and austere.
“This is the one part of Roxborough’s house still intact, besides the cellar.” There was a plain oak table in the middle of the room, with several chairs around it. “This is where they met, apparently: the first Tabula Rasa. And they kept meeting here, over the years, until the house was demolished.”
“Which was when?”
“In the late twenties.”
“So a hundred and fifty years of Godolphin bums sat on one of those seats?”
“That’s right.”
“Including Joshua.”
“Presumably.”
“I wonder how many of them I knew?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“I wish I
did. I’m still waiting for the memories to come back. In fact, I’m begining to wonder if they ever will.”
“Maybe you’re repressing them for a reason?”
“Why? Because they’re so appalling I can’t face them? Because I acted like a whore; let myself be passed around the table with the port, left to right? No, I don’t think that’s it at all. I can’t remember because I wasn’t really living. I was sleepwalking, and nobody wanted to wake me.”
She looked up at him, almost defying him to defend his family’s ownership of her. He said nothing, of course. Instead, he moved to the vast grate, ducking beneath the mantelpiece, selecting a third key as he went. She heard him slot it in the lock and turn it, heard the motion of cogs and counterweights its turning initiated, and, finally, heard the groan of the concealed door as it opened. He glanced back at her.
“Are you coming?” he said. “Be careful. The steps are steep.”
The flight was not only steep but long. What little light spilled from the room above dwindled after half a dozen steps, and she descended twice that number in darkness before Oscar found a switch below, and lights ran off along the labyrinth. A sense of triumph ran through her. She’d put her desire to find a way into this underworld aside many times since the dream of the blue eye had brought her to Celestine’s cell, but it had never died. Now, finally, she was going to walk where her dream sight had gone, through this mine of books with its seams to the ceiling, to the place where the Goddess lay.
“This is the single largest collection of sacred texts since the library at Alexandria,” Oscar said, his museum-guide tone a defense, she suspected, against the sense of moment he shared with her. “There are books here even the Vatican doesn’t know exist.” He lowered his voice, as though there might be other browsers here that he’d disturb if he spoke too loudly. “The night he died, Papa told me he found a book here written by the Fourth King.”
“The what?”
“There were three kings at Bethlehem, remember? According to the Gospels. But the Gospels lied. There were four. They were looking for the Reconciler.”