Deliver us from Evil (35 page)

Sir Henry Vaughan was standing frozen by his desk, trapped within the glitter of Milady's stare. As Robert entered the room, he clenched his fists, and wrenched his gaze away; he turned to the newcomer; and as he did so his face, already pale, grew white. 'Ro
..
.
Robert?' A muscle in his forehead pulsed, and the skin about his lips appeared a sickly blue.

'Where is Emily?' Robert asked softly.

Sir Henry staggered backwards against his desk. 'She . . . she is dead,' he stammered. 'How?'

'We
..."
He swallowed. 'There are .
..
rebels . . . escaped - in the woods. She . . . they killed her.' 'Why?'

Sir Henry paused. 'For food, no doubt.' 'You mean .
..
?'

Sir Henry licked his lips, and stared out of the window at the rubble-strewn fields. 'Food in Woodton is in very short supply.'

Robert gazed at him in horror and disbelief. Slowly, he crossed the room. 'What is this enclosure of Death you have fashioned here?' he whispered. He shuddered; and suddenly all the world appeared to swim, as he reached for Sir Henry's throat and flung him back against his desk. Tell me!' he shouted. 'What is happening here? Why are you making a Hell of this place, a pit of desolation, which was once where
I
lived, and all
I
loved?' 'Lovelace.'

Robert felt a cool touch upon his cheek and glanced round. Milady was standing beside him. She took him by the arm. 'Leave him,' she whispered. She nodded; and Robert watched the Marquise approach Sir Henry, raise his chin with her fingertip. She stared into his eyes for a long while, watching him shiver and almost melt with his fear. 'You know,' she whispered, 'who it is we wish to see.'

Sir Henry shook his head slowly. 'No!' he wailed. 'Please, please, no!'

'Have you seen Him yourself?' the Marquise asked, ignoring his appeal.

'
I
.
..'

The Marquise waited. Suddenly, her eyes appeared to blaze: Sir Henry sank to his knees, clutching his head and moaning like an animal seized in a snare. The Marquise nudged him with the tip of her riding boot. '
I
asked you,' she hissed softly, 'a simple question.'

‘
I
have not seen Him,' Sir Henry whispered back. 'Or rather.. .' He swallowed. 'It is hard to explain
..
.'

'Nor is that surprising,' nodded the Marquise, 'for you are mortal. Go on.'

'
I
approach Him, but
...
I
sense,
I
don't see Him .
..
And that is how
I
know,' he added weakly, 'what His orders are.' 'Where does this happen?'

Sir Henry closed his eyes, and gestured with his hand. 'Wolverton Hall,' said Robert slowly, gazing out of the window at which Sir Henry had pointed, at the fog-drenched horizon, is he right?' the Marquise asked. Sir Henry nodded almost imperceptibly. 'Take us there.'

He began to moan and shudder again, and once more he was trapped within the Marquise's stare. 'Please,' he whispered. 'The danger

'And must not there be danger in every great undertaking?' The Marquise's eyes gleamed triumphantly. She nodded towards the door,
I
gave you an order.
Take us there at once!'

'Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!'

Christopher Marlowe,
Doctor Faustus

R

obert had not required Sir Henry to show him the way. Instead, he had hurried at once from the room. He mounted his horse and began to gallop through the ruined village, up the track which led back to the wood. Only at the point where the two paths separated -the one heading onwards into the trees, the other turning left towards Wolverton Hall - did he wheel in his horse, lost in sudden, unbidden thought. He remembered how he and Emily had once stood on the very same spot, gazing at the sinking sun, wondering if they dared to pursue the hoofmarks in the snow. There was no sun now, only grey, dripping mist; and no Emily. Robert glanced round. Sir Henry was approaching along the village road. He turned his face away, rather than meet Robert's stare.

'Who was it killed her?' Robert asked, crossing to join him so that they were riding side by side.

'How should
I
know?' muttered Sir Henry. 'There are many rebels abroad.'

'What - those who would not be slaves?'

For the first time, Sir Henry dared to turn and meet his stare. Anger and fear passed like clouds across his face. 'You do not understand,' he whispered at last.

'No,' said Robert. He stared out at the blackened fields, and the lines of scarecrow slaves,
I
do not.'

'There was - there is - no other way.'

'How can you pretend that?'

I
have done what
I
had to do, to protect those
I
could.'

'By turning their home into a wasteland of despair?'

'Listen to me,' Sir Henry lowered his voice and, as he leaned sideways in his saddle, Robert realised for the first time how haggardly the flesh hung upon his face, how weary his expression seemed, how haunted his eyes. 'We have no provisions here,' he whispered, 'no food of our own, for the fields have been sown with rubble and salt. What we are given to eat is provided by the . . . "grace"
..
. of Wolverton Hall. We must therefore labour as we are commanded to do, for if we do not, then all of us shall starve, and though you may think we are thin now, soon we would be skeletons, and all this place a wilderness of bones.'

'Yet you,
I
see, are not as weak as your slaves.'

Sir Henry sighed. '
I
have told you - we must each labour in the tasks we have been given.'

'And you - and Elijah - and all your men
...
your tasks have been to chain and beat your neighbours, then?'

Sir Henry rubbed a weary hand across his eyes,
I
was instructed, when the new order of things was established here, to arm and privilege the strongest amongst us, so that they might supervise what had to be done.'

'To supervise?' Robert shook his head. 'Yet
I
saw a guard flog a girl across her shoulders until she lay in the mud.'

'It may be,' said Sir Henry slowly, gazing into the fog, 'that the evil we do is devouring our souls.'

it may be indeed,' said Robert. He shook his head, and almost laughed with despair. 'And yet cannot evil be fought against?' he asked. 'Cannot even the most corrupted souls be saved?'

Sir Henry made no reply.

'Escape, at least!' cried Robert. 'Cast off the chains, unbolt the stockade gates, leave this Hell behind!' 'We cannot.'

Robert stared at him in silence for a very long while,
I
do not understand,' he said at last.

'No,' answered Sir Henry. He stared ahead of him; and his face grew twisted and pinched as he raised a hand to his mouth. 'As
I
told you,' he whispered,
I
am afraid you do not.'

He spurred his horse forward suddenly. Robert, staring after him, saw the first faint silhouette of Wolverton Hall; and then, on the icy breeeze, smelt a terrible stench, so strong that he swayed and thought that he would faint. As Sir Henry had done, he raised a hand to his nose; but the stench seemed to burn his nostrils, and to settle in his guts in a haze of venom which could not be coughed up, however much he tried. He could see now - built around the wall that bounded the gardens of the house - a vast expanse of rotting wooden shacks; and it was these, he supposed, which were breeding the stench. It was a compound, Robert thought, of every loathsome thing, of rottonness, vomit, excrement and fear; and he knew, without repeating the question he had put to Elijah, that he had discovered where the villagers of Woodton now lived.

Sir Henry confirmed him in his
supposition. 'You see now,' he
said, still clutching a hand across his mouth, 'why men will consent to brandish a whip and beat their fellows, for this is the alternative to the barracks in my house, a sty in which the weak and sick must surely die.' He gestured with his hand; and Robert saw, lying in an open yard, shivering bodies barely clothed in rags, huddled amidst the frozen ordure. 'But there are children . . .' Robert whispered. He swung down from his horse; he began to pick his way towards them. As he did so he saw, smeared with filth amidst the mud and rotten straw, what appeared to be a glimmer of gold. He bent down and picked up a bracelet of jewels, then stared about him, and saw wealth littered everywhere.

'What is this,' he cried, 'that riches should lie scattered in the midst of such poverty?'

'Why,' smiled Sir Henry grimly, 'can you not guess? That is the gold with which Faustus bought the village, to secure the death of your mother at the stake.' He laughed violently as he watched Robert fling the necklace back into the mud; then began to choke. ' "Neither cast ye your pearls before swine"!' he cried. He choked again, the laughter suddenly dead on his lips, and turned in his saddle. A bell had started to clang from beyond the wall. 'For know ye not,' Sir Henry whispered, 'swine want only their swill.' He bowed his head. 'Only their swill.'

The bell continued to toll. The bodies in the mud had begun to stir, some staggering to their feet, some crawling through the filth, some barely able to move at all.

'What is this?' asked the Marquise. 'To what are they being summoned?'

'To their feeding time.' Sir Henry pointed at the gateway which led into the Hall. Robert gasped; and even Milady and the Marquise, he saw, seemed to shrink in their saddles. For two creatures of the kind which he had destroyed the night before were emerging from the gateway; and yet, for reasons which Robert found hard to explain, they seemed in every way a thousand times more loathsome and frightful. He remembered what his father had told him of the monsters discovered in the cellars of the Hall, which had crawled in the darkness like maggots in raw meat; and he supposed he was seeing the same creatures now, emerged into the day. They were carrying a large pail, which they raised and then emptied out across the mud. Robert saw that Sir Henry had been speaking only the truth when he had called the food swill; yet the crowds of the sick reached out for the husks and vegetable tops, and fought over them, as though they had been the finest delicacies.

'But there is not nearly sufficient for them all,' Robert exclaimed, as the fighting grew worse and the liquid swill began to drain into the mud.

'They have not worked,' said Sir Henry shortly.

'But they are sick.'

'Yes, and will soon be worse.'

'But see' - Robert pointed - 'there are those too weak to seize a single scrap.'

'And there are those,' Milady murmured, 'who never shall.'

Robert looked, and saw a body lying face down in the mud: a tiny child. The dead things were crossing to it; they began to shred flesh from the bones with a heavy knife; and secrete their pickings in bags about their necks. 'No!' cried Sir Henry desperately, as Robert drew his sword. 'Do not approach them!' Robert ignored the appeal. The creatures looked up: they both hissed and bared their fangs, and Robert had to look away, for their breath was foul with a stench of rotten meat. Then he stared at them again, and raised up his sword, for he could see how they were crouching like wolves about to leap. But as they met his gaze, they suddenly shrank; and their fat, soft lips seemed almost to smile. Robert stabbed once, then twice: they both fell back. Down and down he plunged, trying to find their hearts; but no blood rose up; and the creatures began to stir again, and their fingers to twitch. They opened their eyes, and Robert saw that the smiles were still upon their lips. They dragged themselves through the mud as far as the wall, then rose slowly to their feet. They gazed about them, eyes gleaming, and smiled at Robert one final time; then they turned and walked slowly back through the gateway.

'Pursue them,' cried the Marquise, 'for it must have been one of their breed which infected the village where we stayed last night. Who can say, then, where they might not lead us to now?' She spurred her horse forward and, as he followed her, Robert found himself crossing the lawn where Hannah's body had been found, and his father and Mr Webbe had knelt together in the snow. What an eternity of horrors, Robert thought, had rolled past since then; and he gripped his sword the tighter, resolved afresh to be revenged or to die in the attempt. He stared ahead at the Hall's dark windows, and its rotted door. His companions were dismounting by the steps which led up to it, but Robert did not wait for them, for the dead things were already entering the Hall and, as he pursued them as far as the door, Robert felt the sudden touch of fear again - a shiver in his stomach which spilled out through his blood and brushed his nerves as did the sweetest pleasures. He paused on the top step; gazed into the waiting blackness beyond. There was a gleam of pale flesh, moving away, and then it was gone, swallowed by the shadows. Robert felt the shiver again, still spreading outwards but thicker and darker now, like clotted blood. He turned round to search for a lantern. Sir Henry had brought one with him, but, as he lit it with a shaking hand, he sank to his knees and began to shudder all the more. 'Please,' he stammered, appealing to the Marquise. 'Please.' But she laughed, and pointed to the blackness of the Hall; and Robert, running down the steps, seized the lantern and hurried back to the door. He raised the lantern; he walked into the Hall. At once his fear seemed a thousand times worse, as though bred from the close and foul-smelling air. As Robert looked about him, he could see nothing at all beyond the lantern's weak light; but from the distance he heard soft retreating footsteps, and then what seemed to be a distant cry.