Angel of Ruin (50 page)

“Well, you may dream of him no longer —”

“No, you misunderstand. I saw him for his true self. It is so clear now: I once begged you and Mary not to call him for fear he would injure somebody. And yet he came and made us all injure each other and I did not see it. I did not see it.” She despised the awful blindness that had descended upon her, and barely knew the person she had been these last months.

“Do you not love him still?” Deborah asked.

“I …” Something still moved inside her, but she could not name it. “I feel as though I have loved once, long ago, in another lifetime, and lost it. I feel it shall never come again, and it makes me sad. But I cannot see how such a feeling ever attached itself to a creature like Lazodeus.”

Deborah fixed her with a cool gaze. “And so am I to be your friend again?”

“I would like that.”

Deborah turned and wrung the cloth out in a bucket. “I would not. I cannot forget how energetically you and Mary sought to kill me.” She picked up the bucket and made for the door. “Betty’s found an apprenticeship for you in Dartford. You will leave as soon as you can walk.”

“But Deborah …” Anne started. To no purpose. Her sister was gone.

The confrontation with Father could not reasonably be put off any longer. She had excused herself from attending him by saying that Anne needed her, but his anger was growing apace. She descended the stairs with trepidation and found him sitting straight-backed in his chair, his face carved of stone.

“Father?” she said meekly.

“So you have finally decided to attend me?”

“I am sorry. Anne is in most excruciating pain and —”

“Explain yourself.”

She took a moment to catch her breath. “What would you have me explain?”

He laughed bitterly. “Why I was dragged off to Dartford by my sick wife? Why I return to find Anne’s leg broken, Mary betrothed to a Royalist and my youngest daughter gashed in the head — yes, Betty has told me — and treating me as though I am a fool!” His voice grew louder as the list went on.

“I cannot explain,” Deborah said, bracing herself for the response.

“You can and will explain!” he roared.

“Do you not trust me, Father?”

“Do you think me a fool, daughter?”

Deborah watched him for a few moments and stilled her hands. She was grown now, she was not a child, and Father’s temper need not rule her any longer. He had no inkling that she had saved his life. How blindly ungrateful he seemed in light of that thought.

“Well?” he asked.

“Father, Mary and Anne were in love with a devil and so I had to call a legion of angels to destroy him.”

The silence beat out for one minute, two minutes. His face was impossible to read, a mask. Then his
expression shifted, just a fraction, and Deborah thought she sensed in that shift some kind of surrender. She remembered the day he had hinted that he knew she was involved in magic, and wondered if this had any bearing on his abandonment of the matter.

“Deborah, if you are going to answer me with nonsense, then perhaps it is best if you do not answer me at all. Now, take a letter to Adworth. He shall have as his bride price the money that your grandmother owes me.”

Deborah was momentarily frozen by Father’s response, but then forced herself to action. She found paper and a quill, her writing tray and inkpot. Then she turned and saw him sitting there, his head tilted slightly, and she abandoned these items and sank at his feet.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Father, please,” she said, reaching for his hand.

“Please, what? What is this about?”

“Father, do you love me?”

He pulled his hand away. “What is this nonsense? Why do you ask such a thing?”

“Father, I love you so dearly and I have …” Her voice caught on a sob, and she knew she could not relate to him the awful sacrifice she had made for him. “I only wish to know if the feeling is returned.”

“Why do you vex me so with this prattle? Do you not have a place to live and food to eat? Do I not trust you with my dictation?”

“Yes, yes, Father. Only I would like to hear you acknowledge me in some fond way.”

“This is most irritating, Deborah.”

“Please. Are you not a great poet? Could you not spare a few of those grand words for me?”

He pressed his lips together and fell into the irritated silence she knew so well.

“Please, Father.”

He would not speak. She stood and kicked over her writing stool. “You are the cruellest man on earth!” she cried as she stalked out.

“Deborah, you have a letter to write,” he called in a stern voice.

“Write it yourself!” She ran through the kitchen and into the garden. What a fool she had been to ask him. Where had her reason gone? She sat heavily on the bench and put her head in her hands, breathing deep to still herself a few minutes. Then she raised her head. There was much to be done. Liza still had not returned and with Mary gone and Anne sick, much of the work fell to her. Deborah took herself into the kitchen and began to chop and wrap vegetables for supper. About an hour later, Betty leaned in the kitchen doorway.

“Your father and I are going for a walk.”

“You are feeling better?”

“Much, now that Mary is gone.”

Deborah tried a smile. “Take good care of him, Betty.”

Betty sniffed and was gone. As the front door opened, Father called out to her, “Deborah, tidy my desk while I am out.”

Then she was alone in the house, but for Anne upstairs who rested. She dumped the net of vegetables in boiling water and wiped her hands on her apron. Slinging the apron on the back of a chair, she left for Father’s study.

She saw it almost immediately. A white sheet of paper with a mess of inky letters upon it. A careful scrawl, and yet still awkward and almost childish. It could be no neater nor more precise, she knew, for its author was blind. She picked up the slip of paper and read it.

Deborah, you are my eyes.

Seized by the heart. Her breath contracted as she clutched the note to her chest and, for the first time since this last catastrophe had entered her life, sobbed like a tiny girl.

A week passed, and then another, and still Natiel did not return to name his price. Deborah was not foolish enough to believe he wouldn’t come, that she would be able to continue her life as normal, but as the days changed one to the other and life picked up a routine, she began to think that perhaps it would not be so bad after all, or that she would not hear from him for many years. Mornings would be spent with Father, and some days with Anne who was frustrated and bored from being in bed so long. Often Amelia would drop by and bring one of her herbal remedies for Anne, though Deborah still wasn’t convinced they worked as well as a surgeon’s might. Father even grew to like Amelia in a guarded way, for her Italian was perfectly fluent and she thought nothing of conversing with him for hours while a possessive Betty looked on in wariness.

The leaves had turned on the oak above their garden when, after dinner on a Friday, while Father dozed inside and Amelia read to Anne in the bedroom, Natiel finally came. Deborah sat on the stone bench cleaning candlesticks, a barrel of sand for scrubbing between her knees, when she looked up and saw him standing there. She let out an involuntary shriek.

“What is the matter, Deborah?” he asked.

“It has been so long. I thought you had forgotten me.”

“We do not forget.”

Amelia, who must have sensed his arrival, appeared a moment later, closing the kitchen door behind her. Natiel turned to her and asked, “Why are you here?”

“It is my fault this girl found herself in so much trouble,” Amelia said, standing erect and proud in her
black mourning dress in front of the angel. “I intend to share equally in whatever expense she finds herself responsible for.”

The angel smiled gently, and held out two pale glowing hands. “This creates something of a mathematical problem, for how does one halve eternity?”

Deborah saw Amelia draw pale, and a chill finger tapped her heart. “Please,” she said to Natiel, “I am terrified. Tell me quickly.”

“You have seen Heaven, Deborah Milton, and you have felt God’s love. We only ask that you describe your experience to others so that they may be drawn back into God’s truth. He loves every mortal because they were created for him to love. His love is infinite and alleviates all suffering. You know this to be true?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. This did not seem too difficult, and the weight upon her heart began to lift.

“This is your burden.”

“It hardly seems a burden.”

Natiel smiled again, and this time it was not so gentle. “However, you sought to command angels which is well beyond the station of mortals, and for your arrogance and for the distress you caused us, you must wander the world alone until your story is told, and nor will you die and return to the kingdom of Heaven until you have.”

Deborah heard Amelia gasp and she glanced up nervously. “’Tis not so very bad is it, Amelia? We can certainly find one who will listen to such a story?”

Amelia shook her head slowly and Natiel kneeled in front of Deborah. “This is a punishment, foolish girl. For you are now cursed. People will shun you, no man will marry you, no stranger will listen to you.” He touched her hand. “In other words, you may
never
find a listener for your tale.”

She felt the safe mundanity of ordinary life rolling away from her as if on giant wheels. To wander alone? To be separated eternally from that mellow twilight world of Heaven?

“Wait.” This was Amelia. “I said I would share in this payment and so I will. Deborah is a young woman, I am old. I prefer the company of my cats to the company of people. I am not afraid of living indefinitely. Let me take the first half of eternity.”

Natiel stood and turned to her. “You never touched the angel key.”

“I am responsible for this young woman.”

The angel bowed his head in acknowledgment. “A foolish sacrifice. I shall relate it to the committee. Take this burden, Amelia Lewis. Take it and make of it what you will.”

T
he old woman paused, looking down at her gnarled hands. “Deborah was too young to deal with such an immense burden of guilt and responsibility. Soon she began to freeze Amelia out of her life, sent her away if she tried to visit, returned letters unopened. Eventually, in desperation I suppose, she eloped to Ireland. Away from London, away from her beloved father, away from the woman who had taken her curse.” A huge sigh, a sound of finality.

“You’re Amelia Lewis,” I said.

The old woman looked up. “No, my dear. I’m not. I’m Deborah Milton.”

“But the demon key … Amelia had it last.”

“I inherited it with the rest of her effects when she passed on at seventy-eight. When I’d heard she had died I was at first excited, presuming she had found someone to whom the burden could pass, but soon after Natiel returned to explain to me that the angels would not let Amelia keep paying a price which was wholly mine.”

I sat back on the floorboards and looked at her astonished. “You have lived for centuries.”

“It’s not really living.”

“You mean you’re dead? Like a ghost?”

She shook her head. “I have been suspended at the moment of death for many long years now, with all its pains and discomforts. I’m not a ghost, for as you see I’m made of flesh, but yet I needn’t sleep or eat. I have waited, waited, for so long and now I’m happy to slip away. Now you’ve taken my burden.”

I fell silent for a long time. My burden now, my curse. The awful craving had evaporated, but there was no denying any more that I was in some serious supernatural trouble.

“I am sorry, Sophie,” the old woman said. “It’s a terrible thing to pass on to an innocent listener, but I am so very tired.”

Still I couldn’t find words in my mouth for her.

“Would you like me to explain some of the things I have learned about the curse?”

I nodded dumbly.

“There are two phases,” she said, stretching out both her hands. “Your life, and death-in-life. During your ordinary life span, things may seem almost normal at first. But as soon as you start asking people to hear your story, they will be repulsed by you. Gradually, all with whom you come into contact will start to shun you. But death-in-life is worse.”

“Why do you call it death-in-life?” I managed.

“Because you are at the point of death and you remain there. You don’t slip over to the other side, your suffering is unrelieved, but you are no longer a part of this world. You are no longer repulsive — a small mercy — you are now merely invisible. Only the psychically sensitive will sense your presence, but they’ll also sense the danger and keep your existence hidden from the more vulnerable. The sceptics, like yourself.”

I swallowed dryly. Long moments drew out. “Any … ah … any advice you can offer me?”

“Yes. Be ruthless.”

“In what way?”

“You need only get someone to
ask
you for your story. Once they have asked they are in the snare. So use trickery, or subterfuge, or exploit the ones you love. If your mother says that you seem depressed, tell her it’s due to a sad tale you heard. The shudder of revulsion she feels at your implied suggestion will be overridden by her natural love for you, and she may ask you to relate this sad tale. Your warning — and you must give a warning — will mean nothing to her because she trusts you. And then … then you can snap shut the trap.” She smacked her hands together and the noise echoed loudly throughout the empty building.

“Give someone I love the curse?”

“Better her than you. Eternity’s a long time, Sophie.”

“Why didn’t you do it then?”

Her head drooped. “I nearly did. When my daughter was ten she asked me what troubled me, and I nearly told her.” She lifted her head and met my eyes. “But I loved her unwisely; I always loved unwisely. Soon after, she turned against me too. I should have passed the curse on to her.”

“Your own daughter?”

She shrugged. “It’s much easier while you live. Though a consolation I can offer is that your ability to generate the compulsion grows stronger and stronger. I have been close many times in the last few years. Even psychics who should know better have been tempted to listen, though they escaped early enough. In a few hundred years, you will find that you too have the ability to weave such a spell of magnetism around your words that people will start to be tempted. Then someone, like you, will ask you to tell the story. That’s all you need, one person to ask. Once they’ve asked, once they’ve accepted the warning, it will all be over.”

A few hundred years. Ridiculous visions of the Jetsons came to mind.

“I simply can’t believe it,” I said at last.

“You do believe it. You didn’t when you first came, but you do now.” She shook her head sadly. “I am sorry, I truly am. But would you leave me by myself now? I wish to spend my last moments in contemplation of my life; of what it has amounted to and how I treated those around me.”

I stood — difficult under the circumstances. I moved unsteadily to the door.

“Goodbye, Sophie,” she said.

I didn’t reply. I walked down the stairs on legs of rubber, hit the street and headed towards the cemetery. A devastatingly good-looking man dressed in black barrelled past me, nearly knocking me over, but I didn’t give him a second thought until I was waiting to cross the road.

Something niggled me about his appearance. And then I realised: he had a scar through his left eyebrow and across the top of his lip. Lazodeus, returning to compete for her soul.

I turned and ran back towards the old woman’s house. She had been waiting so long for Heaven that I couldn’t bear the thought of her being wrenched into Pandemonium, separated from the relief which she craved so much. I raced up the stairs and to the old woman’s room, but it was empty except for the chair and the few books on the shelf. No body, no withered skeleton, no empty black dress: none of those spooky-story tropes to heighten the atmosphere. Nothing.

I hope she made it.

My newly cursed life didn’t feel particularly different at first. I had no real friends at the time anyway, and my guess was that Neal and the other Lodge members would
not be rushing to invite me for drinks any time soon. Mrs Henderson didn’t seem to notice I had changed forever, and a libidinous weirdo smiled unsteadily at me on the Tube that weekend. Clearly, I wasn’t revolting to him. The first time I tried to tell the story, however, I realised the full extent of the problem. I saw a junkie sitting in Russell Square. She had long, greasy hair and she stank like a goat, and she was wearing a Motorhead singlet top and a red kilt. I thought she was an easy target, so I sat down and said, “Hi.”

She fixed bleary eyes on me.

“Do you want to hear a story?” I asked.

“Leave me alone, you freak,” she muttered, and got up and walked away.

I tried it on a couple of other people, and they all had the same reaction, as though I had offered to sell them child pornography. Quite simply,
nobody
would listen to me, and I started to feel that I was the very freak the junkie had accused me of being. Worse, in small ways the generalised shunning began soon after. Gradually, shop assistants stopped meeting my eye, beggars stopped bothering me, nobody asked to sit with me in the pub any more, even when it was full, and I found myself playing a lot of squash by myself, bouncing that ball up and back on the wall alone.

I barely slept for thinking about it. I fantasised about Terry Butler that day in the cafe with Chloe, and how he’d asked me what was wrong. If he did it again, would he be out the door before I said, “It all started in the 1660s”? In really guilty moments, I imagined him passing on news of my misery to Martin, and Martin phoning to check on me.

What’s the matter, Sophie?

Funny you should ask, Martin …

But I couldn’t do it, not to someone I loved. I simply could not see my way out of this problem and ita
frustrated me terribly because I like solutions, I like to overcome adversity, I like to
win.

Was I frightened? Oh, yes. I often woke in the early hours of the morning, my heart racing and my palms sweating, as I contemplated an eternity of growing loneliness. I imagined seeing the world change all around me, but not being part of it, being a lonely old woman sitting in a room marked for demolition somewhere, waiting and hoping for someone to come by and listen to my story. It was not a pleasant notion. My thoughts were bent all the time towards solving the problem. The question which repeated itself over and over in my mind was, “How can I get somebody to ask me for the story?” What trickery could I use, what extortion, what coercion?

In the end, none was necessary.

I received a letter one morning from Imelda Frost, a literary agent on the Strand. I had sent her a query letter early on in my research with the Lodge, when I had yet to meet the old woman and still thought an exposé on urban magicians would make a good project. Every other agent I had written to had rejected the idea long since. Imelda’s letter read like this:

Poor Imelda. Still, it was easy enough for her to pass it on, too, what with publishers distressed by their slush piles and always asking for hot properties from
reputable agents. And then, with enough intriguing advertising and a stylish jacket, a publisher can always make a buyer think she wants it. One buyer is all it takes, really.

So, as you see, I’m off the hook. Martin and I are back together and I expect I’ve a good sixty years left in me yet, and that’s enough, that’s just fine. But what about you? This is a serious business, and you don’t want to take it lightly. I suppose you could pass this book on to a friend. If you can find one.

I warned you, you know. It’s right there on the first page. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.