Deliver us from Evil (32 page)

'Where?'

'He was in the yard.'

'Might you not have been mistaken?'

'No, no
...
I
knew him. His face
...
I
saw it, it
...
it
...
gleamed.'

Suddenly she began to sob. Robert crossed to her, and took her bony body in his arms. He thought it would fall to pieces, so thin and fragile it seemed,
I
wish .
..'
the maid gasped, '
I
wish
...
I
could leave this place.' Then she broke from his arms, and turned, and ran. He heard her footsteps clattering down the stairs.

Robert continued motionless until they had faded quite away, and there was no sound at all save that of the gale. He frowned, then crossed to a window, and unbolted the shutters. A gust of icy rain was swept into his face. He sheltered his eyes, then leaned out to survey the yard. It seemed empty: a quagmire of water and mud. Beyond it, he could just make out the shadow of the church, half-veiled behind the storm-swept yews of the graveyard. He stared as hard as he could, but could make out none of the graves themselves. He wondered if one of them might truly be empty. He gazed around the yard again; then closed the shutters. There was still no sound but that of the wind. Robert stood frozen a moment, then he drew out his sword. He laid it beside him as he retired to his bed.

'...
Chaos, that reigns here In double night of darkness, and of shades
..
.'

John Milton,
Comus

R

obert slept badly. He dreamed that spiders, black-spotted and filled with poison, were scuttling over him, breeding and spreading until all the room was submerged beneath their webs, and he could no longer breathe, so heavy was their weight. He awoke in a sweat; and as he did so, thought he heard footsteps from the yard outside. He hurried to the window, and unbolted it again; but the yard still seemed empty and so, after a lengthy wait, Robert returned to his bed. He closed his eyes; but he could not be certain now whether he was sleeping or awake. For he imagined he heard footsteps on the stairway outside, and then a scrabbling at the door; yet when he crossed to open it, there was no one to be seen. Rats, Robert thought, falling back into his bed; and then gradually there were rats all about him, with sharp-pointed, envenomed teeth, and they were breeding just as the spiders had done - and Robert knew it was a dream, even as he felt their weight pressing down upon his chest. He struggled for breath, and opened his eyes. At the same moment, there came the sound of footsteps in the yard. This time, Robert was certain he had heard them; and then suddenly, from downstairs, there rose a girl's piercing scream.

Robert grabbed his cloak and sword. He sped from the room, and as he hurried down the stairs he heard a second, longer scream. 'No!' the girl shrieked. 'No!'; and then she spoke a word that Robert was certain he must have misheard. He flung open the door which led into the dining hall. The tiny servant girl was cowering in the corner of the room, an expression of numbed terror on her face, her finger pointing at the doorway to the yard. The door itself was swinging in the gale and, as he looked at it, Robert saw how its lock had been smashed. He crossed to it, he stared out into the night. The sleet had grown thicker, and he could see nothing at all beyond a couple of feet. He turned back to the servant girl, who was still cowering in the corner, the look of horror frozen on her face. Robert crossed to her. 'What was it?' he asked her gently. 'For
I
believe that
I
must have misheard your cry.'

She gazed up at him. 'You did not,' she whispered at last.

Robert breathed in deeply. He bent down, and took her hands.

'My father
..."
She swallowed, and stopped. 'He has been dead this half year. Dead of the plague.'

Robert rocked her in his arms. 'Are you certain, then,' he whispered, 'that it was indeed your father whom you saw?'

'He looked,' she whispered, 'just as when
I
buried him.'

Robert stared at her a moment more; then rose to his feet again. He handed the girl his dagger. 'Secure the door,' he told her, 'as well as you can. Let no one in.
No one.'
He took her
by the arm, and led her
across to the hearth. 'Light a fire, and stay by it. Do not leave it on any account. Do you promise me?'

The girl nodded dumbly. Robert smiled at her with a show of confidence he did not truly feel; then turned, and hurried outside. As he entered the yard, he heard the door slam shut behind him and bolts being drawn. He paused for a second, then began to splash his way across the yard. The mud sucked like a glue on his feet, and soon his boots were so clogged that he could barely lift them forward. He stopped to clean them; and as he bent down to scrape the mud off his heel, he thought he saw a sudden gleam of something moving through the rain. He pointed his sword, then slowly crept forward. There was a low stone wall running ahead of him. Robert reached it, and peered over its top. He could just make out a jumble of graves through the rain, with the yews beyond them, and the squat form of the church. He stared about him, then pulled himself up to the top of the wall. He could see now that one of the graves had been desecrated: soil had been scattered in mounds around the headstone, and the coffin half-dragged up from the excavated trench. Robert jumped from the wall; he crossed to the grave. The coffin-lid had been smashed open; the coffin itself was empty, and the trench was too, save for muddied, sodden strips of winding sheet. Robert frowned. He bent forward, and studied the headstone. As he had suspected, the date on it was recent. The cause of death was given - the plague.

Suddenly, Robert heard a splashing from behind him and, before he could turn round, felt hands about his neck. He swung back his elbow; he felt it hit something soft, and then he was wriggling and twisting free. He spun round. There was a dark form standing above him. Robert stabbed with his sword, but his assailant was already fleeing through the graves, its arm across its eyes. As he staggered to his feet, the creature paused once and stared back at him. Its face was a corpse's, stupid and rotted, with yellow eyes which seemed utterly dead.
It
might have been one of the soldiers, Robert thought, who had marched on Woodton at Faustus' back, save that the gleam of its skin seemed blackened with spots, and he supposed such sores were the mark of the plague. The creature turned again, as though afraid to be watched, and vanished into the darkness. Robert stumbled and slipped across the graves, but when he reached the place where he had last seen the creature, there was nothing but a bog of jumbled footprints. He cursed, and followed what appeared to be the freshest track. It led him to the yews. Their shelter was dank and dripping, but he welcomed it nevertheless. As he looked about him, the darkness seemed even more pitch than before. Robert crept onwards. He could see a light now, and it took him a moment to realise that it was coming from the inn. He bent forward further, and strained to see the door.

Then he felt a hand again, this time on his shoulder, it is bolted,' said a voice, 'for
I
only just now tried to enter there myself.' Slowly, Robert turned to look round.

A figure, black-hooded, was standing behind him. Her face was pale like that of a moon feebly shining through the clouds. 'Milady,' he whispered.

She lowered her hood. He saw, beneath her cloak, that she wore a man's riding habit. She had put her hair up, with only a single curl escaping across her cheek, so that her beautiful face, like her costume, might seem more like a boy's. It was also hard, and very cold.

'Why have you pursued me?' he asked.

'Why did you abandon me?' she replied.

I
discovered
...'
- Robert licked his lips - 'the nature of the Marquise's interest in Miss Malet - the attraction that a bloodline has to your kind.'

'What of it?' Milady shrugged faintly,
I
would have told you myself in due time.'

I
do not believe you,' said Robert, after a moment's pause. 'For you knew, once
I
learned of it, that
I
would never persist with my intention to grow into a creature like yourself.' He smiled coldly. 'And so it has turned out.'

'And yet you fled to the Marquise?' Milady stared at him in disbelief; and Robert thought he saw, mingled in her expression, pain as well. He brushed past her, though, and did not meet her eye. 'We do not have time to stand here,' he said. 'Did you not see the creature
I
was pursuing?'

'Creature?' asked Milady,
I
saw no creature.'

Robert glanced back at her with a frown, is it not one of your powers, that you can sense such things?'

She stared about the graveyard, and her nostrils flared, it may be,' she said at length, 'that the gale is too strong.'

'The Marquise's powers, though, would not be so feeble as yours?'

'Feeble?' echoed Milady bitterly. 'What is this, Lovelace, that you reproach me for being weak in those very qualities which have also made you hate me?'

Robert continued to walk forward,
I
did not say,' he murmured, without looking round, 'that
I
hated you.' 'Why then did you flee me?' 'Because

Milady seized Robert's arm and forced him to stop.

'Because
..."
he said again, and at last he met her eye, 'so far from hating you, Milady . . .'

'Yes?' she asked. Her eyes seemed bright with anger now. She reached for Robert's face; she dug her nails into his cheeks. 'Yes?' she hissed again. 'So far from hating me - what?'

Robert looked past her at the sleet-pounded graves. 'We do not have the time for this,' he said, trying to shrug off her grip. 'There is a deadly danger abroad.'

Milady's fingernails gouged even deeper into his cheeks. 'Then
I
am all the more insulted, that you did not ask me to share it with you.'

'How could
I
have done?' cried Robert,
I
knew, after what
I
discovered at the ball, that to grow a creature like you is to be worse than damned. At least
I
might be confident with the Marquise, that she would never succeed in persuading me to enter such a Hell.'

'Why not, Lovelace?'

'You know why not.'

'
I
want you to tell me.
I
want -
I
need - to hear it from your lips.'

'Because the Marquise
...'
Robert paused; he pulled Milady's hands from his face, and turned away to stare at the church. 'Because the Marquise means nothing to me.'

Milady breathed in deeply.

'That is why,' said Robert distantly,
I
was persuaded to ask for her help by my Lord of Rochester, who also, it seems, knows something of a blood-drinker's love, how overwhelming - how dangerous - how tempting it can be. For he himself, he told me, was once offered what you have offered me.'

Milady nodded to herself. 'Yes,' she murmured, 'then that might explain it, the strangeness in him that
I
felt . . .' She looked up sharply. 'Who was it,' she asked, 'who gave him such a chance?'

'He did not tell me the name. A Turk,
I
believe, whom my Lord Rochester had met upon the road during the course of his travels. And it was by means of this Turk that he also met the Marquise, for he had been given a letter of introduction to her. He therefore knew of her interests, and her powers. He took me to her, that night after the

Palace masquerade. And so it was that we have travelled here together - the Marquise and
I
- alone.'

'With the intention,
I
presume, of seeking your revenge?'

'Of course,' said Robert sharply.

'Against a spirit whom the Marquise believes to be divine?' Milady laughed. 'And have you told her, Lovelace, that it is your ambition to destroy this god of hers?'

Robert shrugged. 'She is not interested in my motives. She cares only that
I
was spared - that
I
wear, in her own phrase, the stamp of the Devil - for she believes that it marks me as somehow his creature: that
I
am suited to guide her, and lead her before him.'

'And is that not what you may indeed achieve?'