Angel of Ruin (37 page)

“I don’t understand,” Mary was saying, impatient with all this information. “’Tis just a
poem.
Why does anybody care? Why is it your fault?”

“Mary, I do not necessarily expect you to understand. Pandemonium is a different place with different rules. But in Lucifer’s eyes, I am guilty for not stopping the progress of a work which will sully our name for centuries.” He dropped his head. “He has named my punishment.”

“You are to be punished?” Anne’s heart beat a little faster.

“Yes, imprisoned.”

“But you have been imprisoned ere now. It is not so bad, is it?” Anne realised she sounded desperate. “You will soon be free again.”

He shook his head, met first her gaze then Mary’s. “I am to be imprisoned for a century.”

“A century?” Mary had grown pale. “But … I’ll be dead when you are released.”

“Yes. Such a punishment I could endure, were it not that it means … the end of …”

Anne’s head suddenly felt light. Everything directly in front of her was sharply focussed, but around the periphery of her vision shadows collected. “I …” She stood, and a loud ringing started in her ears.

“Anne!” she heard Lazodeus cry, right before the floor rushed up and she swooned.

Consciousness seemed to grind back down on top of her, and she became aware of Mary roughly pinching her cheeks.

“Be gentle, Mary,” Lazodeus said. “She has already hurt herself by falling.”

“Come, Anne, don’t be a dolt. Wake up.”

Anne’s eyes tried to focus. What had happened? Then she remembered: her angel was leaving and she was no longer to see him. Her grief was too profound for ordinary tears and sobs.

“I can’t breathe,” she said.

Lazodeus gently scooped an arm beneath her shoulders and helped her sit. “Yes, you can. Come, in and out.”

She took a few deep breaths.

“Anne, don’t be a fool,” Mary said. “He has been given until midnight on Tuesday to destroy the manuscript.”

“Tuesday …?” Today was Friday; they had four days.

“Wait until she is better, Mary. Can you not see that she is still in a swoon?”

Relief crept into her fingers. “Is it true? Do you merely have to destroy the manuscript?”

“And any copies, but
you
have to do it. The two of you. Lucifer is afraid I will hide in the mortal world. I am expected back in Pandemonium in moments, to be taken to my cell. As soon as the poem is destroyed, you may call me and let me know.” He pressed an object into Mary’s hand. “Here. This should help.”

Mary opened her palm and Anne peered over to see what was in it. A round, clay disk with a complicated symbol on it; all geometric lines contorted together. “What is it?” Mary asked.

“It is a fire charm,” Lazodeus said. “For the manuscript when you find it. In case there is no fire nearby.”

Anne was pained with jealousy. Why give the charm to Mary and not her? She was the eldest.

Mary, pleased with herself over this bestowal of favour, fixed Anne with a serious gaze. “Now, Anne, can you remember which publisher Father said was going to print the foul thing?”

Anne shook her head. “I was not present when he imparted the news to you.”

Mary chewed her lip. “If only I could … wait. Simmons, I think his name was.”

“A common name in a city this size, Mary. We should ask Deborah.”

Mary snorted. “Deborah will not tell us, you idiot.”

“Think hard, Mary,” Lazodeus said, grasping her hands in his.

Anne could not stop staring, assessing his grasp for any evidence of favour. Why did he hold Mary’s hands so? Did he prefer her sister?

“Simmons at … Yes! Aldersgate! I remember, next to the Golden Lion.”

“Well done,” Lazodeus said. Mary turned her face up as though expecting a kiss, but Lazodeus ignored her and stood. Anne took great satisfaction in the downturn of Mary’s disappointed mouth. “Now, you must destroy all the drafts of the poem.”

“Yes. Anne, you search Deborah’s closet, and I shall search Father’s study. We must be quick, they could be home soon.”

Anne nodded. “Lazodeus? Can you stay to help us search?”

He shook his head sadly. “I am afraid I must go to my incarceration. But I trust you, both of you. I know the love you bear me, and I trust you to help me.” He touched Mary’s hand again. “If nothing else, you have this charm to remember me by.”

“Of course you can trust us,” Anne said, her voice desperate.

“I shall not let you down,” Mary said, with a competitive glance towards her sister.

“Nor shall I,” Anne added.

Lazodeus placed a hand over his heart, the movement slow and mesmerising. “I thank you,” he said. “For now, goodbye.” The shimmering which signalled his disappearance began to emanate from his body. “Let us hope we meet again very soon.”

Mary wished she could do this alone.

Most of all because then Lazodeus’s favour would be hers only, and not stupid Anne’s. She could not understand why the angel paid her pinch-faced sister so much attention. She was ugly, she was dull, and she always wore a slack-jawed expression of incomprehension which drove Mary wild with impatience. The other reason she would prefer to be alone was because she knew she would be more efficient. So far, Anne had baulked at scaling the back fence — “I have only just learned to walk properly, you mustn’t expect me to climb” — so they’d had to sneak past Father’s study where he sat snoring. Then Anne had been hesitant about walking down dark alleys at night. Did she not understand that if they walked through the glow of lanterns in windows they would be seen and perhaps recognised later? And now this, standing there wringing her
hands together, biting her lip, pleading with Mary to be careful.

“One cannot break a latch with care, Anne. One must break it with force.” She hefted the rock again and brought it cracking down on the edge of the door of Simmons’s printery. She was rewarded with a loud snap. “There. Now we shall go in.” Mary kicked the door gently, and the bottom half swung in. “You first.”

“I …”

Mary rolled her eyes and groaned. “Lordy, you are no use to me at all.” She ducked under the door and found herself standing in the office of the printery. Anne soon joined her.

“What if someone has heard us?”

“Do you want Lazodeus to spend the rest of our lives in prison?”

“I do not want to be imprisoned either.”

“Stop worrying. There is nobody living here. The windows upstairs are boarded up.” Mary edged around the side of the desk and towards the doorway to the printing workshop. “And the neighbours won’t care. If they hear anything they’ll think we are armed thieves and stay well away.”

“You’re right. I should be of more use to you,” Anne muttered, for the third time so far that evening.

Mary stopped and fixed her sister with an exasperated gaze. “Honestly, Annie, how have you managed to get through life thus far? What is most important in this matter?”

“Lazodeus.”

“And why did we burn the drafts from Father’s study today?”

“For Lazodeus.”

“And what if we don’t find the manuscript?”

Anne hung her head. “Let us search for it then.”

The printery was a large room with a profusion of benches and tables laid out at even spaces. The floorboards were bare and stained with spilled splotches of ink. Dark, iron boxes were stacked on the floor. A large black contraption stood next to the doorway, with a heavy handle and drawers on all sides. Fresh printed pages lay in tidy piles next to it. At another table were gridded boxes full of letters, rows and rows of them. Behind the table was a wall of shelving, and packed neatly into each shelf were manuscripts.

“There,” Mary said, pointing.

Anne approached the shelf and started to leaf through the manuscripts carefully. Mary joined her and pulled a manuscript from the shelf. It wasn’t Father’s. She scattered it across the floor.

“Mary, what are you doing?” Anne asked, horrified.

“If a single manuscript is missing, Anne, they will know someone came for it deliberately. But if the whole printery is in chaos, they will suspect vandals rather than thieves.” She violently pulled another manuscript from the shelf, checked it, then threw it behind her.

Anne followed her lead, but much more cautiously. “It seems a shame to upset everybody else’s work.”

Mary rounded on her. “You are simply not passionate enough, Anne. Do it for Lazodeus. Forget about everyone else.”

Anne set her jaw and was soon creating as much chaos as Mary. After a few minutes, the two of them stood in a mess of paper, but Father’s manuscript was nowhere to be seen. Mary, enraged by this, glanced around her. “Where else could it be?”

“I see no other … Mary!”

Mary had strode to the press and was pulling the freshly printed pages from the bench beside it. She
glanced at them, tore them up, scattered them. She pushed a box of letters over, and they rattled to the floor. How dare Father write something which endangered her relationship to the angel? How dare this idiot Simmons think it a good idea to publish it? She turned more boxes of letters over. P’s and M’s crashed into piles of B’s and K’s; Roman letters mingled with italics; and numerals and foreign characters consorted. It would take the printers weeks to sort the mess out. Damn them. Damn them all.

She turned to see Anne watching her with her big, dull eyes.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Mary said. “I’m behaving badly again.”

“The manuscript is not here.”

“He must have it at his house.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

Mary shook her head. “No, I don’t. But we shall find him. We shall return tomorrow and we shall follow him home after work.”

“And then?”

“Simple,” Mary said, blowing an untidy curl away from her cheek. “We shall burn his house down.”

D
eborah hated being in the kitchen in this hot weather. She could feel sweat in damp patches under her arms and across her stomach as she helped Liza prepare soup for the evening supper. This job should have been Anne’s, but both her sisters had wandered off together just after dinner and hadn’t been seen since.

Jealous. That’s what she was. She wiped the back of her hand across her perspiring brow and tried to concentrate on cutting up the potatoes in front of her. Her sisters were friends with each other and she was excluded. She had never felt this way before. Anne and Mary had never been particularly close. Deborah had always seen herself as the connection between the two of them. But everything had changed, as Anne had warned them all it would, a long time ago when Deborah had still thought it a good idea to call an angel into their service.

Everything had changed.

“Miss Deborah, could you check the water?” Liza said. If Deborah was suffering in the heat, Liza was finding it worse. Most days she was confined to the
kitchen with the fire, scouring the stone floor, or out in the blazing sun freshening rugs, linen and tapestries. There was no escape for her from the awful heat, which still refused to fade. The dry gusty winds still roared over the eaves, banging shutters and setting errant tiles free.

What Deborah wanted more than anything was to wade fully clothed into the brook near Grandmamma’s house, let the cool, deep water close over her, make her feel alive again. She savoured the fantasy as she turned to the fire to see if the water was boiling in the big hanging cauldron, but was distracted by something which caught her eye at the edge of the fire.

Her handwriting. On a piece of paper.

She gasped, leaned forward.

“Carefully, Miss Deborah, you’ll burn yourself.”

“Liza, were these pieces of paper here this morning?”

“I know not, Miss,” Liza said, peering over her shoulder. “I didn’t notice nothing. Is it important?”

Deborah grabbed the poker and coaxed the clump of burned fragments out onto the hearth. Leaned close to examine them. It was her handwriting, but her tired, messy scrawl; this was not the fair copy. Had Father burned the drafts? Surely not, he was not such a fool. To have only one copy of so many years of work was unthinkable.

“Liza, I have to go and see Father for a few minutes,” she said, pulling off the cloth she had tied around her waist and dumping it on the big wooden table.

“But the soup —”

“The soup can wait. This can’t.”

She hurried to Father’s study. He had moved his chair under the window in the hopes of a breeze. The window was open wide, but only hot air blew through it.

“Deborah?” he said, his head cocked to one side listening.

“Yes, Father, it is me. I’m looking for something.”

“What is it?” he asked.

She walked directly to Father’s desk. The drafts should all be collected in the lower drawer. “An old inkwell I used to use. I’ve been trying to remember what was carved on it. Mary and I have a wager.”

“A wager!”

“Not money, just chores,” Deborah said distractedly as she pulled open the drawer.

Empty. Completely empty. Her heart thudded hollowly in her chest. She looked over her shoulder at Father, who gazed back at her oblivious. She could not tell him. How frantic would he be, knowing only one copy of his life’s work existed? And that in someone else’s care?

“Not here,” she said, closing the drawer.

“You didn’t look very hard.”

“Father, can Simmons be trusted to take good care of your manuscript?”

Father smiled a tight smile. “I find your concern charming. Of course he can.”

“But he doesn’t live above the printery. What if …”

“He has it at home with him. He came by this morning to tell me how much he’s enjoying reading it.”

“It is not at the printery?”

“He sleeps with it under his pillow,” Father chuckled. “At least, that’s what he said.”

Relief. Mary and Anne did not know where he lived. If they wanted to destroy it, they would go to the printery and be disappointed.

The window slammed shut in a strong gust of wind. “I wish we had made two copies,” she said idly. She moved to Father’s side, pushed the window open again and secured it with a rod.

“Deborah, child,” Father said softly. “You must not worry.
Paradise Lost
is destined to be published. No impediment will arise. The manuscript is protected by divine intention. Trust me.”

Hearing his gentle conviction was almost too much for her. There was so much he did not know, so many enemies he did not recognise. Tears were suddenly on her lashes.

“Yes, Father,” she said, trying to keep her voice under control. “I shall be in the kitchen with Liza if you need me.”

“Is it not thrilling to be alive, Annie?”

Anne watched her feet carefully as she trod upon the cobbles. It was so dark it seemed that each step she took was into oblivion. She thought being alive at this moment frightening. Mary danced ahead of her, full of energy and excitement. But setting fire to someone’s house was not Anne’s idea of an early morning’s entertainment.

“Annie, think you not that it is thrilling to be alive?”

“I know not, Mary,” she replied. Nearby church bells rang out the hour, startling her. Two in the morning. The tolling was snatched up and carried away on a gust of wind.

“That is because you are not really alive,” Mary muttered.

“I am alive.”

“You are so full of fear that you cannot even feel your heart beat.”

“My heart is so far up my throat that I can barely breathe.”

Mary doubled back and grabbed Anne, pressed her hand to her chest. “Ah yes, ’Tis in there somewhere.”

“Be not so cruel, Mary.”

“I’m not being cruel.”

“You are making a joke of me.”

“Anne, we go to avenge our angel. We are saving him from a century of punishment. If you feel so uncomfortable about it, perhaps you should return home and leave the job to me.”

Anne shook her head resolutely. “No, I shall not.” She had an awful suspicion that Mary’s plan to burn Simmons’s house down was to discourage Anne from helping. Then Mary could take all the credit for saving Lazodeus. Anne wouldn’t let that happen. “But must we burn down his house?”

“Yes. For the manuscript is in it, and it must be burned.”

“Why can we not just steal it and burn it elsewhere?”

“Anne, you poopnoddy. It is one thing to break into an unmanned printery, another thing to creep about a person’s house while he sleeps. We would be caught.”

“But what if he burns to death?”

“Then it serves him right for printing the stupid poem.”

“He may have a wife and children.”

Mary made an exasperated groan. “Anne, once again you put the lives of others ahead of the life of our angel. I shall tell him, you know. When we have saved him, I shall tell him that the whole time you moaned about the needs of anonymous people.” She stopped abruptly. “We’ve come too far. We should have turned right at the last corner.”

Anne followed as she doubled back. The previous afternoon they had waited outside the printery for Simmons to finish work, and followed him to a house on Pudding Lane with a bakery beneath it. They sat across the street for two hours to make sure he did not come out again: to burn down the wrong house would be
foolish, and they had no time to make foolish mistakes. The manuscript had to be destroyed by midnight Tuesday and the sun would soon rise on Lord’s day.

Anne found herself breathing more rapidly as they came to a halt outside the building. The bakery window was shut, the windows of the three storeys above it were all dark. Anne almost imagined she could hear the slow breathing sounds of sleep, but when she strained her ears, all she could hear was the creaking of wind in the eaves.

“Here we are,” Mary said, turning to face her in the dark. Anne could not quite make out her features.

“Do we have to go inside?”

Mary shook her head. “I have the fire charm.”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“No. But I soon will.” She fiddled around in her placket, then pulled the charm out. It glowed warmly, giving a little light to their scene. “Now, let me see.” She clasped her hands together over the charm, then gasped.

“What is it?”

“’Tis so warm, ’Tis almost …” She held out one of her hands. Her palm glowed orange. “It grows hotter. Ow. It is burning.”

“Quick, let us run down to the river to extinguish it.”

“No, you fool. We don’t want to extinguish it, we want to use it.” She flung out her empty hand in the direction of the bakery’s window. A glimmer shook inside, then an amber glow began to reflect back at them.

“Ha!” Mary said, looking at her palm which had returned to normal. “I did it!”

“Are you sure?”

But Mary had pocketed the fire charm, and was already up against the window, pressing her face and
trying to peer in. “Oh, yes, I’m sure. ’Tis spreading already.”

“We should go.”

“No, we should stay and make sure it keeps spreading.”

“Then perhaps we should call out to wake up those in the upper storeys.”

“Then what if Simmons wakes and saves the manuscript? Anne, you simply must let it go. Nothing is too much for the angel to ask us, you know that.”

She did know it. She wished, though, that dealing with the angel was more to do with making love and speaking in hushed voices in the park, rather than running about in the dark breaking laws and endangering lives. But perhaps this was what being a woman meant: that pleasure only came at a price. And that price was surely not too much to pay, when the well of pleasure she drew from was so very deep.

“’Tis not moving very fast,” Mary was saying.

“How fast should a fire move?” Anne asked.

“I —” A crash inside interrupted her. The flames suddenly burned much brighter. Mary scurried back to the opposite side of the road. “Something just gave.”

Anne’s heartbeat thudded in her ears. “We should leave.”

“Just a moment longer.”

Anne glanced at her sister, her face turned up to the building, clear in the fireglow. Mary was enjoying this. Glass suddenly shattered, and the fire curled out of the window and caught on the side of the building. They seized each other in shock.

“Now can we go?”

“Yes, yes,” Mary said, backing down the street, but not tearing her eyes from the scene.

Anne found herself similarly transfixed. The fire was racing up the outside wall, and inside she could see the
bright flames hanging ravenously from beams. A sudden blast of wind roared overhead, and for the first time Anne saw Mary show concern. Her brow furrowed as she watched the wind feed the flame, and a great arm of fire licked out and danced.

“Let us leave,” she said breathlessly, turning on her heel and hurrying down the street. Anne followed her close behind. As she reached the bottom of Pudding Lane, she heard a cry.

“Was that someone screaming?”

“Anne, that’s a good thing. It means they are awake, and will now save themselves. But the fire is so advanced, they will not be able to save the manuscript.”

They rounded into Thames Street and ran straight down Cocks Key to the river. The strange sour, metallic smell of it was comforting after the close, hot lane. They stood on the sludgy bank, looking out over the water. Anne gulped big breaths of air, but could not seem to fill her lungs.

“Mary, what have we done?”

“We have saved Lazodeus from imprisonment. We have ensured that we will see him again.”

A soft rushing grew behind them. Anne turned and looked back down the key. “Can you hear that?”

“’Tis just the wind.”

“I believe it is the fire.” She was rewarded by a long, low creak and then a crash. “We must go back. We must go back and help to put it out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“But the houses are so close together. The whole street will burn.”

Mary grasped Anne by the shoulders. “Calm down. The city has engines which shoot water upon the flames. Within no time, the fire will be out. Besides, what could you do if you went back? Piss on it?”

Anne clutched her stomach. “I think I may throw up.”

“No, Annie,” Mary said, turning to the river. “Guilt and nausea may feel the same, but only one can escape your stomach. We should call Lazodeus and tell him what we have done.”

For the first time this evening, the promise of comfort came to her. “Yes, you are right. For he will be free now, I expect.”

“Lazodeus,” Mary called, and the wind snatched her words and sent them echoing down the river. He did not respond.

“Perhaps it takes time for his release to be effected,” Anne suggested.

“Perhaps … oh!”

Anne whirled around to see what sight had caused an expression of horror to appear on Mary’s face. A squat, pig-faced creature stood behind them. She let out a short, sharp scream.

“Be not alarmed,” the creature said. “I am a messenger from Lazodeus.”

“Why does he not come?” Mary said, and Anne noticed she had slowly backed towards her. Her sister was terrified of the creature, and that terror suddenly became contagious. Usually Mary feared nothing.

“What are you?” Anne gasped.

“’Tis a demon, Anne,” Mary said, reaching for her hand.

Anne could only stare as the creature spoke again.

“He does not come, my ladies, because he is in prison.” The demon smiled as though it relished the thought. “He cannot go anywhere for a hundred years.”

“But we burned the manuscript!”

Suddenly the smile disappeared and the creature shook his head. “You didn’t burn a manuscript, you burned a bakery.”

“No, Simmons lives above! We waited and watched for hours.”

“He was visiting his sister’s husband.”

“Then the manuscript …”

“Was not there.” The creature looked around, drawing Anne’s attention for the first time to the orange smoke which slowly rose from Pudding Lane. “But haven’t you made a nice fire?” it said, its voice thick with sarcasm.

“Go away, wretch,” Mary said.

“No, wait. Where is the manuscript?” Anne asked urgently.