Deliver us from Evil (44 page)

Lord Rochester inclined his head. 'You were indeed,' he answered, 'a thing of skin and bone.'

The Pasha smiled bitterly as he dabbed his finger into his blood again, and held it back up to the stars,
I
too,' he murmured, 'like you, Lovelace, have sought to overthrow Azrael - even, as you can see, to the very point of death. And yet for a while, since
I
had emerged alive from our great fight - albeit only barely -
I
had hoped it was my enemy who must have died instead.' He licked his finger-tip thoughtfully. 'And then Lord Rochester wrote to me. He told me the news of his meeting with you.'

He paused, and his eyes began to widen. They were blazing; and Robert felt them suddenly searching deep into his thoughts, as though his mind were a darkness being scanned by lanterns. He saw, unbidden, his mother consumed by the dancing flames; his father swaying as the rope swung in the breeze, to and fro beneath the lintel of the stones, to and fro, as the blood dripped slowly down; and then suddenly, Robert cried out and held his arm across his eyes, for he imagined that a hellish figure was rising before him, its form emerging from beneath its melted shell of flesh, and that it was searching for him, reaching for him, freezing him to death. He screamed. ... he could feel the pain in his stomach again, like a spitting shard of ice; and then the bottle, as before, being placed against his lips.

He drank the
mummia
and the pain began to fade, but it still lingered in his blood like the echo of a chill. He opened his eyes. Lord Rochester was kneeling by his side, and the Pasha's stare was hooded once again.

Robert rose to his feet.

'You are leaving us?' the Pasha murmured.

if there is no hope,' answered Robert, 'then
I
see no purpose in remaining here.'

I
did not say there was no hope.'

'You acknowledged it yourself, that he cannot be destroyed.'

The Pasha shrugged faintly. 'Not destroyed, perhaps. But injured, Lovelace, injured almost to destruction.'

'No.' Robert shook his head violently,
I
saw him amidst the stones; he was recovered, restored. Whatever wounds you once inflicted, they are now wholly cured.'

'Not wholly - not yet'

I
tell you,
I
saw him.'

'And
I
tell you that if he were not still wounded, then all of your country, and far beyond its shores, would already have been drowned under oceans of blood, and survivors would be gazing upon the slaughter and saying that the time of universal desolation had arrived, that the Apocalypse was come. So please - take your seat.' The Pasha gestured with his hand; and as he did so, he gasped and seemed seized again by pain,
I
have much to tell you.' Then he doubled up in agony, and could say nothing more until he had been given the bottle of
mummia
again and had drained it to the dregs.

He lay back at last, and closed his eyes. Silence filled the room, heavy like the perfume of the incense clouds. 'There is no weakness,' the Pasha murmured at last, 'but to cringe and despair because one thinks oneself weak. For so long as one's will is undefeated one is strong, for so long as the desire for revenge still endures. You see me, Lovelace' - he parted his robe, and gestured to his wound -
I
do not talk from ignorance. For it may be that as mortals are to my breed, the sport of our humours and appetites, so we are to beings higher than us - yet still, it would be the basest of abdications not to believe that
I
might surpass them in the end and, in doing so, achieve much good -much good . . .'

As he said this, the gleam in his eyes began to cloud, and his voice trailed away into silence again. Robert leaned forward and licked his lips. 'What beings are they, then,' he whispered, 'who are mightier than you?'

I
cannot be certain,' the Pasha answered, 'whether they even exist, for it may be that even Azrael was once just a creature like myself, and that the rumours, the whispers, of these beings
I
have heard were nothing but the echoes of my own thoughts and fears.'

'Yet you do not believe so?' Lord Rochester asked.

The Pasha shook his head. 'Whatever they may be - angels, demons, the deposed ancient gods -
I
have no choice but to trust they may be found, for with their wisdom, their powers, what might
I
not do?
I
might escape my thirst for blood.
I
might love, and not destroy the minds of those
I
love.
I
might gain the strength - who knows? -even to defeat Azrael, and destroy him forever.' He smiled faintly at Robert. 'A worthy prize,' he whispered, 'would you not say?'

Robert sat frozen. 'And are you any nearer,' he asked slowly, 'to gaining it for yourself?'

Still the Pasha smiled, it may be,' he whispered.

The silence suddenly seemed paralysing. Robert forced himself to part his lips, to speak. 'No more secrets,' he whispered. 'Tell me all! Please.'

The Pasha stirred painfully, propping up a cushion so that he might rest his head; then he gathered his cloak about him and, so doing, began to tell his tale.

'But most of all, Rabbi Loew feared the priest Tadeus, who hated the Jews, and was a devotee of the magical arts
...'

Traditional Jewish Folktake

‘I
t happened,' the Pasha said, 'in the latter years of the previous century, that
I
was the guest in Paris of the Marquise de Mauvissiere. We had been -
I
will not say friends - but occasional partners, perhaps, in a common quest to penetrate the mysteries of our nature. The Marquise was not then what she has since become, a slave to her own superstitions, for her studies were yet to lead her to her present belief that there is a Prince of Hell who is the God of all the world - and so we were able to imagine that our interests might be shared. It was in such a spirit that the Marquise told me of reports she had received from Tadeus, a priest of a bold and ambitious character, whom she had chosen not long before to make a creature like ourselves. This Tadeus had been writing to her from his native Bohemia, describing strange plagues and rumours abroad in the countryside -but darkly, as though reluctant to specify what such rumours might be.
I
was not greatly intrigued. As
I
have said, the man had once been a priest - it had ever been his work to forge mysteries out of nothingness. Yet for all that, since
I
was planning to return to the East and would have to pass through Bohemia,
I
determined
I
would turn aside on my journey and pay a visit on him, to see if his dark hints might be anything more.'

The Pasha paused, and seemed to fall into silence. But though his lips no longer moved, Robert could still hear his words - sounding, he imagined, from the depths of his own brain. 'Tadeus had written,' Robert heard the Pasha seem to say, 'from a place named Melnik, to the north of Prague.
I
arrived there at length one winter afternoon.' At once, Robert saw in his mind an image of the place: there was a castle and a church on the edge of a great cliff, and a mean village straggling down the side of the hill. A strange aura of suffering and desolation seemed to hang in the air, and Robert sensed at once that it was touched by some great evil. He blinked and rubbed his eyes; and when he opened them again, it was to see the Pasha gazing as though into the distance.

I
approached the church.' The Pasha spoke, as before, without moving his lips. '
I
could see that the doorway to the crypt was open, and
I
heard a strange noise, like that of things being scraped, rising from the depths beyond.
I
dismounted from my horse and passed into the crypt. From ahead of me,
I
could see the glimmer of something pale; and then
I
realised, as
I
descended the steps, that the crypt was filled with skeletons, so that it was almost overflowing with skulls and jumbled bones. Two groups of men were camped in the ossuary, and it was they who were making the scraping sounds, for they had great piles of corpses next to them and were shredding the flesh, so that the bones would be clean.'

'What were they doing?' Robert asked.

The Pasha smiled faintly. 'Naturally,' he answered,
‘
I
asked them that at once. They seemed half-crazed by fear, as well they might have been, and scarcely able to talk.
I
beckoned a man from the first group to me. As he rose nervously to his feet,
I
saw that he was wearing a Jew's yellow hat.
I
gazed at him in astonishment, wondering what he could be doing in such a place of death, so far from the ghetto and in a Christian church. When
I
asked him, he stammered that he and his fellows were working to the orders of their Rabbi in Prague; and then, as though terrified that
I
might not believe him, he turned to the second group of men and appealed for confirmation. None of them answered; but
I
knew the man had been telling the truth, for
I
could see now that the second group were local peasants, who would never have allowed Jews into their church without a previous specific command. So
I
crossed to them, and asked them in turn who had given them their instructions. The nearest man swallowed, then whispered, "Father Tadeus."
I
nodded, and asked him where the Father might be found. At this, the peasants and Jews alike glanced at each other nervously; then one of the peasants spoke a village's name. "But the plague there has been more deadly than anywhere else," he cried. "Do not approach it, for it is stamped with the Devil's mark!" His warning intrigued me; and
I
asked him if the bones he was perched upon were those of other victims of the plague. He nodded; and at once both groups of men began to redouble their work. For, as one of the Jews explained, the bones had to be cleansed of corrupted flesh, so that the plague might not spread and infect all the world.

'
I
wondered what his Rabbi had told him, to make him dread such a cataclysm, and to believe it might be stopped by shredding flesh from victims' bones; and even more,
I
wondered what the Rabbi's business could have been with a Christian priest - and a blood-drinker at that.
I
knew, though, that Tadeus was the best man to answer such questions; and so
I
left the church and set off to discover him. The journey was not far; yet it was a difficult one, for whenever
I
would ask for directions, people would shake their heads and look away, or seem never to have heard of the village at all. Nor,
I
was soon to realise, had they necessarily been lying; for when
I
finally found myself approaching the place,
I
discovered that the road was overgrown, as though it had been abandoned for many, many years.' He paused; and Robert imagined he saw a scene of desolation before him such as he recognised at once. 'Nothing stirred,' the Pasha murmured, 'not even an animal, not even a bird among the trees; and around the village itself there was a ring of stakes, and then a mighty wall, as though it had been built to keep the world away.'

'And those inside the village as slaves,' Robert said. 'For
I
witnessed the same when
I
journeyed to Woodton - overgrown roads, and a wall around the village.'

The Pasha gazed at him unblinkingly. 'So Lord Rochester has told me,' he said. He stirred, and leaned forward from his couch. 'Listen, then,' he hissed. 'Learn what Woodton's fate may be.
I
discovered no village left beyond the wall - nothing but a wasteland of rubble and ash. Half-rotted corpses were strewn across the fields. There was a castle still standing; but as
I
rode towards it,
I
felt that aura of stillness, of evil and death, which
I
had first sensed in the church at Melnik, and which was now unbearably strong, as though
I
had reached the very heart of a spreading ring of darkness.
I
passed into the castle. At once,
I
felt a terror such as
I
had not known for many, many years - for centuries, perhaps. But it does not require me to conjure it for you, Lovelace; for
I
know that you have felt such a terror yourself.'