Deliver us from Evil (74 page)

'No!' Lovelace screamed. 'No!' He ran to her. She was curled up in a tiny, motionless ball; but he could see that her blood was seeping out across the floor. She was moaning softly, hands still raised to her face; Lovelace knelt beside her and gently brushed her hands away, then bent down closer to inspect her face. It was hideously pitted: wherever, it seemed, the creature's blood had splashed, there the flesh had been corroded even to the bone. Milady stirred at last, and struggled to smile through her shrivelled lips.

'Lovelace.'

He glanced up at the darkness; then laid a finger softly upon her lips. 'Lovelace

'Do not try to speak.'

But she shook her head. 'The power
..."
She started to choke and he tried to quiet her, but there seemed something urgent and desperate in her eyes. She swallowed frothily. 'The power,' she whispered a second time. 'It is born, Lovelace
...
do you not see?
...
the power is born from love.'

'From love?' He stared at her in confusion. She had closed her eyes. 'Please,' he begged her.
I
do not understand.'

Milady opened her eyes dreamily. 'Love,' she murmured again. 'The surprise of it - the shock
...
the truest way to power

She began to choke again, more violently now, then suddenly started to vomit up blood. Lovelace gazed at her helplessly, clutching her in his arms, as she shuddered and seemed to grow more frail beneath his touch. 'The surprise of it?' he whispered. 'Of love?' He frowned, and shook his head. And then all at once he thought of the Pasha's account of Rabbi Loew, brought a flower by his tiny daughter; and of Mr Milton, recognising the long-lost companion of his dangers; and of how both had suddenly made sense of the script, and found in its mysteries the hidden power. And then he thought of Milady; how as she had approached it, the blackness had started to fade from the cellar; and he knew that she too had come armed, not with hatred but with love.

She retched again.

'No,' Lovelace whispered. He rocked her in his arms. 'Milady - no - what must
I
do?'

She smiled at him very faintly, even through her spasms. 'Our child
..."
she whispered. 'Lovelace, please . . . our child . . . no.'

'Never,' Lovelace vowed at once. 'Never,
I
swear it!'

She smiled again, and reached up for his hand.

'But you will live,' he whispered.

'No,' she answered,
I
. . .' She sought to entwine her fingers with his own. 'Peace, Lovelace. Peace
..
.'

He gazed at her in disbelief. 'But you are immortal, Milady. You will never die.'

She was still smiling; but even as he stared at her, he felt the grip of her fingers start to fade.

'You will never die,' whispered Lovelace again. He kissed her. Her shrivelled lips were parted, but he could feel no breath. He kissed her again; then leaned back upon his heels. 'You will never die!' he screamed suddenly. 'You
can
never die!'

Nothing answered him.

He gazed into the black silence of the cellar's depths, then eased Milady's head very gently from his lap. He reached for her dagger; and as he did so, saw how her blood was still slipping across the floor, slipping until it met with another pool of blood, flowing from the shadows, wide and very black. Lovelace gazed into the darkness again, but there was still no sound; and so he placed the dagger beneath his coat, and turned, and hurried at once from the cellar. He picked his way over the corpses littering the passageway, climbed the stairs, emerged into the night, and the charred remains of the Hall. He ran fleet-footed to Woodton. The smell of ashes still lingered above the green, but Lovelace barely paused to glance across it, and at the bodies of drunken villagers slumbering in piles. Instead, he passed into his house, opened his trunk, and drew out a slim - the final - flask of blood. He gazed at it a moment, holding it to the moonlight; then turned and retraced his steps back to the Hall.

By the entrance to the steps, he paused and drew out the knife. Even with his blood-drinker's sight, the darkness seemed thicker than it had been before; but he saw nothing as he descended the stairs, and began to make his way through the corpse-strewn cellars. By the entrance to the final cellar, he paused again. There was nothing ahead of him that he could see, save only darkness and the pale, cold gleam of Milady's naked skin. He glanced down at the blade of her dagger: so slim, so elegant, so lovely. He kissed it very softly; then he drew out the flask and drained its contents in a single gulp.

At once, the darkness seemed to eddy and thicken. Lovelace passed into the cellar. He glanced down at Milady, and felt a sudden lightness burning through his veins. He looked up again, and gazed ahead. The darkness waited, as thick as before. He tensed himself, then walked towards it.

He realised he was treading through the pool of black blood. At once, he froze; for he remembered how its touch had been fatal to Milady - had the power to incinerate even a blood-drinker's immortality. At the same moment, he heard a hissing moan; and then the darkness flickered as it had done before; and he saw the shadow of his enemy, its hands clasped to its wounds. They glistened very brightly; and Lovelace knew for certain that they were cruel and very deep, and that Milady's death had not, perhaps, been wholly in vain. He felt a thrill of pleasure and desperate hope; and, stepping forward, he aimed his dagger at the creature's heart.

At the same moment, with a sudden rush, the creature flickered and grew, as though formed of black flames. Lovelace staggered back, for he could feel himself washed by its touch, so that his blood seemed turned to ice and his limbs to iron. He staggered again, then felt himself stumble. Glancing down, he saw that he had tripped over Milady's corpse. Milady! He sought to empty his mind of all other thoughts. As he did so, he felt the lightness start to grow once more; to ripple and then flood in a blinding stream. At the same moment, he heard the creature shriek and saw, as he had done before within the stones, a sudden glistening across the blackness of its form, and then, in the air, a faint mist of blood. Lovelace felt a second surge of pleasure and hope; and then again, immediately, the creature's touch, as chill as before, and the pressure of something like jaws against his throat.

He screamed, and tried to bend his neck away, but the creature clung like an icy sweat, and even as Lovelace twisted and writhed with all his fading strength, he felt the teeth again - and this time they drew blood. Again Lovelace stumbled back, out through the cellar doorway, so that he fell amongst the corpses of the slaughtered dead; but the creature was still upon him, pressing down and then tearing at his neck, lapping at his wound. Everything was starting to seem distant and faint; and even as Lovelace sought to break free from the weight upon him, so his own limbs too were growing steadily duller, so that at last he could not move them, could only lie still as the weight grew heavier, and the darkness more chill.

From where he lay he could see the cellar walls . . . they were starting to fade. He traced the patterns of the mould upon the brickwork with a strange, distracted concentration, knowing they would doubtless be the last things he would see. He followed with his eyes a long and glistening stain, from the edge of the floor to the side of the doorway; and then suddenly, by the arch, he saw a cross drawn in chalk.

He gazed at it with a rapt and astonished awe.

He could move again now, despite the weight; and he saw as he did so, upon the archway's other side, scrawled likewise in chalk, a second cross.

Where could they have come from, he wondered, such marks? What were they doing in such a hellish place?

The weight was fading on his chest; the light was returning.

Lovelace still gazed in wonder at the two chalk crosses; and then, as he stared at them - suddenly, he knew. There was someone before him: the figure of a man in a militia uniform, the sash of a captain tied about his waist. The figure was bent by the archway, drawing with a piece of chalk the outline of a cross.

'Father,' Lovelace whispered. 'Father.'

The image of Captain Foxe rose, and slowly turned round. He was smiling, even as he began to melt away. Lovelace closed his eyes. The flood of light was blinding him. He could only feel, not see, how he drove the dagger home. But then he opened his eyes again; and as his sight adjusted, so he could make out the cloud of blood in the air. He watched as it fell in a mist-thin rain; fell, and settled, and was swallowed by the soil.

Two days later, upon the Channel, dawn had almost broken. Robert Lovelace gazed across the waters towards the eastern sky. He waited, his hand at the ready. Then it rose, a ray of sunlight; and Lovelace brought his hand down. Two sailors cut the ropes, the coffin fell into the sea; it splashed, and sank, and was lost beneath the waves. Lovelace turned to the captain, and gave the order. Back to Portsmouth. Back at once to land.

As the ship began to veer towards the distant coastline, Lovelace brought out from his coat a tiny casket. He opened the lid and gazed at the soil inside; then touched it very lightly with his fingertip. As he did so, he imagined that he felt it sucking upon him; and instinctively he held it away from himself, as though he were gripping the head of a snake, its fangs damp with poison. And yet in truth, Lovelace thought, no serpent's venom could rival what he held; for it possessed the power, perhaps, to kill even blood-drinkers. All that night, he had been disposing of the soil from the cellars: the soil, and the deathly freight which it bore. Each hour, he had given the order; and a fresh coffin-load had plunged beneath the waves. And now all that was left, he was holding in his hand. All that was left of the blood which might yet kill him.

For it was still within his power, he thought, to be at one with Milady - with Emily - with his parents - in the calm and rest of death. He gazed at the casket a moment more. 'Peace, Lovelace, peace.' He imagined for a second he heard Milady's dying words.

He shook his head. He knew that in truth he had heard nothing but the shrieking of the gulls; and as he gazed at the birds wheeling above the sea, the freshness and joy of things seemed borne upon the winds. Lovelace tightened his grip as he closed his eyes; and then he opened them again and flung back his arm. Forward he hurled the casket; forward and upwards, so that soil was scattered in an arc across the waves, before the casket itself hit the water and was lost. He watched the spot where it had fallen, as the ship was blown onwards, and then began to veer. The place was lost. He breathed in deeply. He began to laugh.

He turned and walked along the ship to the prow. Portsmouth ahead; and the road to London. And in London - his daughter. Lovelace smiled; then he laughed once again.

I
first conceived the idea of writing
Deliver Us From Evil
at a party held in John Aubrey's Broadchalke home; and his twin obsessions with the biographical and the bizarre have been a constant inspiration during the writing of this novel. Numerous people have helped me in my own attempt to fuse the two, above all my brother, Jamie, whose knowledge of the life and works of Lord Rochester has proved invaluable. It was he who pointed me towards some of the more suggestive features of Rochester's career - the abduction of Elizabeth Malet, the bargain with Wyndham before the Battle of Bergen - and
I
would like to apologise to him for having turned his hero into a vampire. To try and make up,
I
have dedicated this book to him.

Keeping things in the family,
I
would also like to thank Sadie, my wife, not only for being wonderful - that goes without saying -but also for the added bonus of her in-depth knowledge of the Voynich Manuscript, which has proved an excellent plus. The Voynich Manuscript, part of which has been reproduced on the endpapers of this book, is one of the most extraordinary and baffling documents in existence. It first appeared in Prague in the reign of Rudolf II; and its mysterious script has never been cracked. It was Sadie who first pointed out to me its supposed connection with John Dee; and thus, however tenuously, with John Aubrey, whose grandfather had indeed been a close associate of Dee's. Such links are always a pleasure to make: they allow one to feel that one is on the right track. Of course, since Sadie does not believe in magic, it goes without saying that the interpretation
I
have put upon the Voynich Manuscript is entirely my own.

For advice with regard to Prague itself,
I
am indebted to Harriet Castor, whose knowledge and love of the city is unfailing. It was she
who helped set me up on my first journey there, so that
I
could see for myself Rabbi Loew's seat in the Old-New Synagogue, and stand by his grave, and that of his son. She also introduced me to Angelo Maria Ripellino's wonderful book,
Magic Prague.
For anyone interested in the legends of Rabbi Loew and the Golem,
I
cannot recommend it highly enough.
I
would also like to thank Mr Meyer Sheinfield, for helping me with details of Jewish history and folklore.