Deliver us from Evil (70 page)

'Still she did not meet my eye. "
I
had hoped," she murmured, "that with the employment of the book, there might never have been the need for you to know."

' "The book is destroyed."

'She laughed with bitter irony. "Indeed?" She turned to face me at last. "Do you know why
I
betrayed you over it?" she asked suddenly. "Why
I
never revealed my pact with the Marquise?"

' "Yes,"
I
nodded, "Lightborn told me."

' "But not all of it,
I
swear."

‘
I
felt a touch like a frozen finger down my spine. "What do you mean?"

'She smiled again, her twisted smile of before.
"
I
had believed the Marquise's proud boasts, you see, believed and trusted in them, when she had claimed to have the mastery of the book's secret powers. For
I
had already discovered, Lovelace, that
I
did not possess such a mastery myself."

I
gazed at her in puzzlement. "You had
already
found out?"

'She nodded faintly. "Many years before. On the occasion in Mortlake, when
I
saved Lightborn's life." She paused a moment. Absently, she began to trace the curve of her breasts. "For
I
have already told you of how Lightborn took me from the brothel, to have me perform as an actress in his masques. So much was the truth. And yet, sweet Lovelace -
I
did not tell it all." '

Lovelace paused. His own smile too seemed suddenly crooked and strange. 'Naturally,' he continued at length,
I
asked her to reveal what this hidden truth had been. She answered me that she had also been an actress on a stage - that Lightborn had written not only masques, but also plays.' Lovelace paused again; he studied Lord Rochester from the corners of his eyes. 'It was to join the actors he had chosen her -the
actors,
my Lord - not the actresses at all.'

Like a serpent waking from a hot day's slumber, Lord Rochester's lips stirred and twitched very faintly. '
I
am sorry?' he inquired with a display of great politeness.

'You heard, my Lord, exactly what
I
said.'

Suddenly, Lord Rochester began to laugh. 'Of course,' he whispered in a long, mocking hiss. 'There were no actresses - no girls upon the stage - not before the reign of our own much-fucking monarch. Of course.
Of course!'
He began to laugh again; and as he glanced at Lovelace, so he laughed all the more, until the tears were coursing down his lined and withered cheeks. Lovelace himself leaned back in his chair and made a great show of inspecting his nails,
I
am glad, my Lord,' he murmured at length, 'that your decline has not affected the pleasant nature of your wit.'

Lord Rochester grinned. 'You would surely not deny me the simple pleasure of laughing at you, Lovelace, and jeering you roundly? And yet in truth, the jest could have been more amusing still. Certainly, speaking for myself,
I
would rather have a mistress who proved to be a boy than do as some fools will, and permit a mistress to become a wife. Your error, at least, was less egregious than that.'

'You are ever a profound and learned moralist, my Lord, and in your judgement, of course, you are perfectly correct.
I
had no regrets.' Lovelace shrugged. 'For even as a boy, Milady was still the prettiest woman
I
have ever known.'

'Her breasts, sir.' Rochester leaned forward. 'Dammit, sir, her breasts. How the Devil did she come by those?'

'Since, as
I
think
I
mentioned, she had been stroking them at the moment when she made her revelation,
I
was not disinterested in resolving that question for myself. And yet, of course, she had already given me the answer.'

'The book?'

'Exactly so.'

'Yet how had it occurred - the transformation?'

'You will remember, perhaps, how Father Tadeus, when he came to Wolverton Hall, had given himself the false name of Faustus?'

'Yes.' Lord Rochester frowned. 'But
I
fail to see .
..'

'There is a play of the same name. It may be, my Lord, that you have seen it for yourself? You will recall, then, how Faustus is a learned man who sells his soul to the Devil in return for great powers. A suggestive conceit,
I
am sure you will agree - especially in view of how it came to be written
..."

‘I
ndeed?'

'The author, my Lord, was none other than Lightborn - at a time when he went by the name of Marlowe. Whether it was the obsession he had inspired in Milady, or whether that their minds had somehow grown intermingled,
I
cannot say; but Milady, when she read the book - Lightborn dying on the floor beside her - found the world she had opened to be slipping her control. She could see its patterns of pure light, not as strong and mighty as those we found in Prague, but present all the same; and Lightborn - Marlowe - still lying huddled on the floor, washed by the flow of one of the lines. Milady crossed to him; except of course that she was not yet Milady, for all her gown and curling locks, but still a boy. She - he - knelt by Marlowe's side. Marlowe turned, and grinned at him horribly. Even as he did so, the flesh appeared to be shrivelling from his face. "Sweet Helen," he whispered. At the same moment, the boy imagined he was kneeling on a stage; and the very act of thinking so made it seem he was. He imagined he was garbed as he had often been, when he had performed the part of Helen of Troy, summoned from the underworld by the lust-stricken Faustus, to syrup with pleasure the dread of damnation. "Sweet Helen," Marlowe whispered again. His grin now seemed more than ever like a skull's, for the gums had rotted utterly away and the few shreds of flesh wept and stank upon the bone. "Sweet Helen
..."
he rattled a third time. He paused, his eyes rolling blindly in their naked sockets. Then he whispered as though with his last gasp of breath, "Make me immortal.
..
immortal with a kiss .
.."

'The boy bent forward. As his lips brushed the teeth of Marlowe's skull, so the flow of light began to shiver and refract, and its purity to dissolve into a myriad of colours, shifting and mutating before the boy's astonished gaze; and he found that they altered with the patterns of his thoughts. He sought to caress Marlowe with them, to bring him back to life. At once, the lights began to spiral away in infinite double coils. The boy sensed, somehow, that he should bend them to his will.

"Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss."
He did so. As he saw it in his mind, so it happened before his stare. The flesh was restored to Marlowe's lifeless skull, the gaping wound above his eye socket healed. And then the light began to fade, as though ebbing away upon the return of Marlowe's breath; and the boy blinked, and saw the room again, and Dr Dee's face, and how the Doctor seemed filled with mingled horror and awe. There was a mirror upon the table. The Doctor reached for it and, without a word, held it up. The boy stared into the glass; he shook his head - and then he screamed
..
.' 'He?'

Lovelace grinned.
'He
no more. And yet neither, not wholly -forgive the pun - a
she.'

'And it was that, then - her prick - which she wanted you to cure?'

'Who better to fulfil such a wish for her than me?'

Lord Rochester frowned. 'But she did not wish to be
..
.?'

'A boy again? No' - Lovelace shook his head - 'for she had been an almost-woman far too long to wish that. After all' - he shrugged -'why waste the practice of a century in skirts?'

'She had no regrets at all, then, for her former life?'

in one sense only.'

Lord Rochester arched an eyebrow, indeed?'

'Yes.' The grin still lingered on Lovelace's lips, but with all the amusement suddenly bled from it. 'She wished' - he paused - 'to be a mortal again.'

Lord Rochester arched his eyebrow a second time, indeed?' He drawled the word with prodigious slowness, then he nodded to himself. 'And your success, sir? Tell me. Tell me your success.'

Lovelace stretched, then rose slowly to his feet. He crossed to the window; and for upwards of a minute stood in perfect silence, gazing out at the night. 'Prodigious,' he whispered at last, not looking round,
I
swallowed no more than a mouthful of the foetus's blood; and yet at once,
I
saw the hidden lines of power revealed and, in the night outside, visions of strange and magnificent substance. What before had seemed dark now appeared dotted with lights; and upon the island of Manhattan, for as far as
I
could see, were towers of impossible beauty and height, which seemed to brush the very heavens and filled me with delight, for
I
could feel, as
I
beheld them, strange powers flood my soul.
I
turned away from the rapture of such visions, back to Milady; and
I
saw how her golden eyes seemed luminous, as though with anticipation of pleasures to come.

As she had done to Lightborn, so now
I
did to her:
I
brushed her lips with a magic-honeyed kiss. Then
I
reached with my hand up her thighs; and beyond . . . and this time - this time - she did not cry "Stop!" '

Lovelace turned round at last. 'So, my Lord - all things, you see, are possible.'

'Milady, then

is pregnant even now.' He laughed with sudden delight. 'Yes, my Lord, yes - she carries my child.'

Lord Rochester nodded with wonder and dread in his eyes; then he half-rose from his bed, and swallowed very hard. 'And her other desire?' he whispered. 'To grow a mortal? Was that fulfilled as well?'

Lovelace snorted with contempt. 'Naturally,' he shrugged,
I
might have performed it for her with consummate ease - so please, have no fears on that count. Yet it was unworthy of her, as it is unworthy now of you - and so
I
pretended, to Milady at least, that it could not be achieved . . .' He grinned; then he crossed the room suddenly with rapid, weightless steps, and returned to his chair, pulling it up close so that he could whisper softly in Lord Rochester's ear. 'For
I
will need, through the passage of eternity, a companion.
I
would not have Milady grow withered and ugly, sir, like you.'

Lord Rochester smiled coldly. 'You are resolved, then?'

'Absolutely.' Lovelace leaned back in his chair. 'For why else do you think
I
got Milady with child? The bastard will serve to keep my own youth fresh.'

Lord Rochester's smile faded. 'And Milady?'

'What of her?'

'What does she think?'

Lovelace shrugged. 'She does not wish me to become a blood-drinker, that is true enough.' He shrugged again. 'But why should
I
care? This recent womanish softness of hers - it is derived, perhaps, from that softness newly gashed between her legs. Whatever the reason, though - in the end, she will accept the nature of my choice. God knows' - he laughed - 'there will be centuries enough, and more.'

'Yet she would not transform you herself?'

I
am certain
I
could have . . . persuaded
...
her. But no, my Lord
..
.' Lovelace picked up the bag; he nursed it in his arms,
it
has to be you.'

'Why?'

'You are the Pasha's heir.'

'You still seek to become that yourself, then, sir?'
I
would be fitter in such a role, my Lord, than you.' 'Then it is still your intention . . .'

'To fight with my great enemy? To destroy him?' Lovelace nodded curtly. He leaned forward, his face suddenly twisted by a fierce and deadly passion. 'Every inch of strength
I
have,' he hissed, 'every power, every thought, is devoted to that single goal of my revenge. You, my Lord, have failed; allow me, then, to succeed. Give me what
I
want, and
I
..."
- he smiled -
I
will grant you your death.'