Gods and Pawns (45 page)

The procession did not climb the hill, but wound around its base. Presently Lewis was able to drag his attention away from the girl long enough to observe another church that lay straight ahead of them, seemingly dug into the hill. As they drew closer, he saw that it was only a façade of flint, built to conceal the entrance to a tunnel.

The famous Hellfire Caves!
thought Lewis, and his heartbeat quickened.

They entered through gates, to a long tunnel cut through chalk, and here they must go single file. To his amazement, Lewis felt his racing heart speed into a full-blown panic attack; it was all he could do not to break from the line and run. He scanned the strata above his head: wet chalk, fractured and unstable. Plenty of rational reasons to fear this place; no need to summon demons from the unconscious…

The little girl reached forward and gave his hand a squeeze. It made him feel better.

They followed the tunnel gradually downhill, past niches opening off to the left, and then around in a loop that seemed to have taken them in a complete circle. It was black as pitch but for the torch flaring ahead of them, and silent, and damp, and cold as the grave. Another long straight descent; then a tight maze of turns and multiple openings where anyone but a cyborg might have had difficulty keeping a sense of direction. But now light showed ahead, down a straight passage, and Lewis picked up the scent of food.

They emerged into a great open chamber, well lit by flaring torches. Four figures stood perfectly motionless against the far wall. Each was draped in a black veil that dropped from the crown of the head nearly to the floor, in long straight lines. Each wore a mask. Two were black and featureless; two were painted in black and gold, resembling insect faces.

In the center of the room, looking incongruous, was a dining table set for ten.

Sir Francis’s voice boomed into the silence, shattering the tension with echoes: “And now, a pause in our solemnities! Supper in Hell, my friends! Though I promise you, you shall not be long
tantalized.
Tantalus, hey? In Hades? D’y’get the joke?”

“What a witty fellow you are, my lord, to be sure,” said the lady with the torch dryly. She threw back her hood to reveal a svelte woman in early middle age. Her hair was a flaming and unnatural red. Painted, plastered, and upholstered as she was, she had nonetheless maintained a certain charm.

All the party now threw off their cloaks, and Lewis blinked in surprise. The gentlemen, himself excepted, wore white jackets and pantaloons, as well as extraordinary floppy blue and red hats embroidered on the front with the words
Love and Friendship.
The ladies wore white robes, cut in what must have been intended as a Greek fashion; all save the youngest, who, like Lewis, wore ordinary street dress. Her features remained hidden by her veil, however.

“It’s cold in here,” complained a buxom wench somewhat past her prime. “Why couldn’t we done this at the Abbey? It’s ever so nice there. Remember the times we used to have?”

“I know, my dear, a thousand apologies—” said Sir Francis. “But the Abbey’s not so convenient as it was, I fear—”

“And we ain’t a-doing of our sacred rites in no profane place, Sukey Foster, so just you shut your cake’ole,” reproved her mistress. She cast a somewhat anxious eye upon Sir Francis. “All the same, dearie, I ’ope I’ll get a cushion to put under my bum this time? That altar ain’t ’arf cold and ’ard.”

“Everything has been seen to, dear Demeter,” Sir Francis assured her.

“Very kind of you, I’m sure, Lord ’Ermes,” she replied. Gazing around at the assembled party, she spotted Lewis. “‘Ere now! Is ’
e
the…?”

“Yes,” Sir Frances replied.

“Well, ain’t you the pretty fellow!” Demeter pinched Lewis’s cheek.

“Might we perhaps sit?” said the old professor. “My leg is positively throbbing, after that march.”

“Yes, please,” said Whitehead faintly. He looked sweating and sick, a ghastly contrast with his clownish attire. Lewis scanned him, and winced; the mortal was terminally ill.

They shuffled to their places. To his disappointment, Lewis found himself seated far down the table from the little girl in the veil. The masked figures, who had been still as statues until now, came to life and served in eerie silence. A whole roast pig was brought from a side passage, as well as a dish of fruit sauce, loaves of barley bread, and oysters. Chocolate was poured from silver urns. (“No wine?” said the professor in disappointment. Sir Francis and Madam Demeter gave him identical looks of disapproval, and he blushed and muttered “Oh! So sorry—forgot.”)

Lewis, cold, hungry, and depressed, took a reckless gulp of chocolate and at once felt the rush of Theobromine elevating his spirits.

They feasted. Perhaps to make up for the lack of alcoholic cheer, the mortal party became terrifically loud, in riotous laughter and bawdy witticisms that made Lewis blush for the veiled girl. She sat in silence at her end of the table, except for once when she began to lift her veil and: “’Ere! Just you keep your face covered, girl!” said Madam Demeter.

“’Ow the bloody ’ell am I supposed to eat anything?” the girl demanded.

“You pushes the cloth forward, and slips little bites under, like you was a proper lady,” explained Sukey. “That’s how I done it, when it was me.”

The girl said nothing more, but folded her arms in a monumental sulk. Lewis, well into his second cup of chocolate and with his cyborg nervous system now definitely under the influence of Theobromine, regarded her wistfully. He thought she looked enchanting. He wondered if he could rescue her from her degrading life.

How to do it?…Not enough money in the departmental budget. They’d all laugh at me anyway. But what if I went to one of the gambling houses? I could count cards. Prohibited of course but the Facilitator class operatives do it all the time, for extra pocket money. Nennius himself, in fact. Win enough to set her up with, with a shop or something. Poor child…

“Have another slice of this excellent pork, my boy!” roared Sir Frances, reaching across to slap meat on his plate. “And you haven’t tried the fruit sauce! It’s sublime!”

“Thanks,” Lewis shouted back, leaning out of the way as a servant buried the pork in dollops of fruit compote. He leaned back in, took up a spoon, and began shoveling compote into his mouth, aware he needed to take in solid food.

No sooner had he set the spoon down, however, than the red letters began to flash before his eyes with all the vividness of migraine distortion:

TOXIC RESPONSE ALERT
!

“God Apollo,” he groaned. Peering down at his plate, he made out one or two gooseberry seeds in the syrupy mess, when the flashing letters allowed him to see anything. “What have I done to myself?”

He sat very still and waited for the flashing to stop, but it didn’t seem to; too late, he wondered if the Theobromine might have combined badly with whatever it was in the gooseberries to which his organic body objected.

Judge, then, with what sense of dread he heard the
ping-ping-ping
of spoon against water glass, and the creaking chair as Sir Francis rose to his feet to say: “Now, my dears! Now, my esteemed brothers in revelry! Let us put aside our jollity! Our sacred business begins!”

“Huzzay!” shrieked the old professor.

“A little more decorum, sir, if you please,” said Madam Demeter. “This is a solemn h’occasion, ain’t it?”

“I’m sorry, my dear, it’s my sense of enthusiasm—”

“Quite understandable, sir,” said Sir Francis. “But we ought to remember that we have a new celebrant amongst us, who, though but a youth, has shown a true spirit of—er—Mr. Owens, are you quite all right?”

Lewis opened his eyes to behold a revolving wheel of faces staring at him, peeping in and out between the flashing red letters.

“Quite,” he said, and gave what he hoped was a confident smile. The smile went on longer than he had intended it to; he had the distinct impression it was turning into a leer and dripping down one side of his face.

“Ah; very well then; I think we’ll commence. Brothers and sisters! Let us drink together from the cup that will bind us in immortality,” said Sir Francis, and Lewis was aware that a servant was stepping up behind him and leaning down to offer something. Blinking at it, he beheld a figured wine krater, a modern copy, showing Bacchus rescuing Ariadne. He took it and drank.

Water, barley, pennyroyal…a memory buried for fifteen hundred years floated up into his consciousness. Lewis tasted it again.

“The
kykeon!
” he exclaimed, rather more loudly than he had meant to. “And you’ve even got the formula right! Well done!”

In the absolute silence that followed, he became aware that everyone was staring at him.
You idiot, Lewis!
he thought, and meekly passed the krater to Sir Francis. All the others at table drank without speaking. When the empty krater had been placed in the center of the table at last, Sir Francis cleared his throat.

“The time has come. Behold my caduceus.”

This provoked a shrill giggle from the professor, quickly shushed by the ladies on either side of him.

“If you ain’t going to take this seriously, you didn’t ought to be here,” said Bess severely.

Lewis peered and made out that Sir Francis had produced a staff from somewhere and was holding it up. It was in fact a caduceus, very nicely carved, and the twining serpents’ scales had been gilded, and their eyes set with faceted stones that glittered in the torchlight.

“I speak now as Hermes, servant of Jove,” said Sir Francis. “I but do his immortal will.”

“And I am Demeter, goddess of all that grows,” intoned the lady, with a theatrical flourish. “’Ow weary I am, after the bountiful ’arvest! I will sleep. I trust in Jove; no ’arm shall come to my dear daughter Persephone, ’oo wanders on Nysa’s flowery plain.”

Sir Francis indicated to Lewis that he ought to rise. Lewis got up so hastily his chair fell backward with a crash, and he was only prevented from going with it by the masked servant, who steadied him. The veiled girl rose, too, and dragged from beside her chair a basket.

“I am Persephone, goddess of the spring,” she announced. “Blimey, what a lovely great flower do I see! I shall pick it straightaway!”

Sir Francis took Lewis by the arm and led him to the dark mouth of another tunnel, opposite the one by which they had entered. Persephone followed on tiptoe, grabbing a torch from one of the wall sockets as she came. They went down the tunnel a few yards, and stopped. Persephone drew a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs: “Owwwwww! What dark god is this ’oo ravishes me away from the light of the world? Ow, ’elp, ’elp, will nobody ’ear my distress? Father Jove, where art thou?”

“Quickly now,” Sir Francis whispered, and they hurried on through the darkness, around a corner, around another and another, deeper into the labyrinth, and Lewis heard water rushing somewhere ahead. They passed through another, smaller chamber, where there was a low stone altar; Lewis nearly fell over it, but Sir Francis caught him again and the girl took his other arm. Somehow they made it into the next passage and shortly came out into another chamber.

“The river Styx,” announced Sir Francis, with a wave of his caduceus. “Here Hermes of the winged heels can conduct no farther. Away! He flits! He flies, back to lofty Olympus!” Throwing out his arms and springing into air with quite a remarkable balletic grace for a man his age, even crossing his ankles before he came down, and landing so lightly that his wig scarcely moved on his head, he turned and ran back up the passageway.

Lewis stood staring after him. The girl tugged on his sleeve.

“We’re supposed to get in the boat,” she said.

Lewis turned around to look. They stood on the edge of a dark stream that rushed through the cavern. On the farther shore was the entrance to yet another black passage. Before them was moored a quaint little boat, beautifully if morbidly carved with skulls and crossed bones, painted in black and gold.

“Oh,” said Lewis. “Yes, of course! But where’s Charon?”

“’Oo?” said Persephone.

“The ferryman,” said Lewis, making punting motions.

“Oh. Nobody told me nothing about no ferrymen; I reckon you’re supposed to get us across,” said the girl.

“Right! Yes! In we go, then,” said Lewis, who was finding the red flashes subsiding somewhat, but in their place was an increasing urge to giggle. “My hand, madam! Yo-heave-ho and hoist the anchor!”

“’Ere, are you all right?” The girl squinted at him through her veil.

“Never better, fair Persephone!” Lewis cast off and seized up the pole. He propelled them across with such a mighty surge that—

“Bleeding Jesus, mister, look out! You’ll—”

The boat ran aground and Lewis toppled backward, falling with a tremendous splash into the dark water. He came up laughing hysterically as he dogpaddled toward the boat, with his wig bobbing eerily in his wake.

“Oh, God Apollo, I’ve drowned in the river Styx—well, this
is
a first for me—but I wouldn’t be
mister
, you know, the technical term is
mystes
—”

Persephone stuck her torch in a rock crevice, grabbed his collar, and hauled him ashore. “You been drinking, ain’t you?” she said in exasperation.

“No, actually—it’s the drinking chocolate, it has an odd effect on our nervous systems—we cyb—I mean, we…Owenses,” said Lewis through chattering teeth, for the water had been like ice.

“Ow, your shoes’ll be ruined and—give me the bleeding pole, we got to fish your wig out. Damn it, I ain’t wearing this veil another minute,” said Persephone, and tore it off.

Lewis caught his breath.

She was a very young girl, pale by torchlight, but with roses in her cheeks. Her hair was red. Her eyes, rather than the blue or green one might expect, were black as the stream from which she’d pulled him. His heart—not the cyborg mechanism that pumped his blood—contracted painfully.

“Mendoza?”
he whispered.

“’Oo’s that? ’Ere, what’s wrong?” she demanded. “You ain’t going be sick, are you? You look like you seen a ghost.”