Maxie’s Demon (15 page)

‘You’re telling me … he really talks to
angels?
’

‘Indeed!’ The old boy genuinely was sincere, his corkscrew beard wagging up and down with the force of his words.

I blinked. ‘Wow. What’d you talk about? The weather? Harp lessons?’

He
frowned. ‘Best you take such matters less lightly, young sir. You’ll needs learn
more of them ere we’re done. We have had some success. Messages have been received, and guidance. We have been told how to better our lives, that we may deserve such a privilege.’ He wagged his head. ‘Often in most unexpected ways. Why, would you credit—’

Kelley raised a mildly protesting hand. ‘Leave all these deep matters for later. Let it suffice that we undertook a project of awesome moment!’

‘’Tis so!’ said Dee eagerly, tugging at his beard again. ‘To summon, by means of a difficult rite, a great angel into our presence! And to establish what might be termed an especial link or sympathy, by which we might call upon some fragment of his awesome powers.’

My hair began to crawl. ‘Wait a minute … I get it. So you were trying to buy into a franchise? With one of you as local agent or
whatever?’

He nodded amiably. ‘I had dared to dream that I might have that honour. To wield so amazing a force for good, a wondrous fount of healing for the world!’ His eyes brimmed with austere joy. ‘But evidently the angels willed that it should fall to another …’

Kelley’s smile was firmer. ‘Should
first
fall to another,’ he remarked.

‘Oh. So you were holding one of your … rituals or whatever
it was when I, well, dropped in?’

‘Not just one ritual,’ said Kelley quietly. ‘
The
ritual. Dangerous as blackest night, and as impenetrable. It demands the effort of Sisyphus, rolling a boulder up a steep mountain. It may bend minds until their cracking point, like willow twigs. It was progressing as never before. And into the midst of it – you fell.’

‘I
was scared, that was all! I was looking
for somewhere to hide! There was something loose in the fields around there, something that scared the—’

‘God willed it,’ said Dee, not that humbly. He looked as if he’d picked up the news at some heavenly cocktail hour. Tor his great purposes, no doubt. So by your unlooked-for incursion, the vessel and source for the overflowing might of the angels—’ He sighed. ‘Is your doubtless worthy but
wholly unprepared self.’

He said
unprepar-ed,
Biblical fashion. Somehow that brought it all home.

I wanted to run around the room and gibber. Angels? Believing in things has never been exactly my strong point. Let’s face it, even in my short life I’ve sold too many lines to too many citizens. The magistrate who believed I was caught headfirst through a car window because I wanted to see the
time on the clock. The passers-by I pulled in on behalf of a cult to have their subconscious tweaked, at so much per superego. The stripshow punters I promised the ultimate erotic experience. The believers I helped to hoodwink for my spoon-bending psychic. The more they believed, the less I did. And angels – well, you could say they were fairly high up my list.

Devils, now, they were another
matter; I mean, you only had to look at the regular crowd down at the Port Mahon any evening. They made anything up to and including the First Circle seem inevitable. But angels never came in. Not even to the saloon bar.

Yet the man
Steve had said all things were possible out here. Now I was beginning to get just how much he might have meant. ‘What I’ve seen didn’t look that angelic,’ I said
slowly.

‘Aye,’ muttered Dee, disturbed again, ‘and I confess that I do not wholly comprehend that. The character of these … brigands, these visitants …’

‘Ah now, and is not that clear as daylight and champagne?’ demanded Kelley. ‘Should not the human agent focus the angelic light, as ’twere a burning glass? And lend it his own colour, like a window of stained leads? Is that not his purpose,
to determine what form it shall take?’

‘Ah!’ cried Dee, and stamped his cane on the floor again. ‘Well reasoned, brother! That must be it indeed!
Primo,
the angelic aid appeared in somewhat irregular form, young sir, because it was not
ab initio
intended for you.
Secundo,
because you were neither expecting it, nor apt to control it. A horse is a gallant aid and grace, but not if you lack bridle
and rein, or indeed the very art of riding.
Tertio
, because you were, let it be said …’

‘Buggering about on dirty business!’ grinned Kelley, in a way I somehow minded a lot less than Dee’s embarrassed squirming.

‘Ah’m, let us be charitable and say … somewhat far removed from a state of grace.’ Anything rather than admit you were chatting with a self-confessed felon, let alone sitting at the
same table.

I thumped a fist on the table. ‘Now wait just a bloody moment here,’ I spat, feeling the whole rigmarole of reasoning leaping about in my aching head like a rat in a coffee can. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that I got all these nightmare goons instead of the robe-and-halo brigade because I wasn’t thinking beautiful thoughts?’

‘Because
you were not about beautiful
deeds!’ exclaimed Dee. ‘Can you not comprehend that? May not angels seem like devils if seen with distorted sight? A spirited horse may seem fair to one who can command it, frightening to another who cannot.’

‘Well, maybe,’ I protested. ‘But you two were ready enough to go for it, weren’t you?’

‘Ready, aye – but with fear and trembling. To be the rightful vessel of such awesome power requires
long discipline and self-purification, such as the art of
magia
already requires. Anyone not so equipped would surely find it a terror indeed – still more, it seems, one who cannot control his evil thoughts. I say not that you are so great a sinner,’ he added hastily, tugging at his corkscrewed beard. ‘A youth wild and untutored, no doubt. But nevertheless—’

‘The power comes to you, lad, as you
require it,’ said Kelley, more kindly. ‘But you’re the wrong fellow, with the wrong purposes, and so it comes in wrong forms. It does you good, but by the most frightening means! And as long as you go on like this, you’ll be but a blind beggar upon a runaway horse!’

I wondered. It made a nasty kind of sense. There was the pure light or whatever blazing out, and me in the way, as a sort of crap-coloured
filter. That was Maxie all over.

And yet I’d never seen myself as the type to blow up phones and chop citizens into chutney, even types like Fallon. Steal his motor, yes, any day; but the Conan routine wasn’t in my line. At least, not consciously. Could I have all that kind of rough stuff racing around in my subconscious? Were all those thugs a reflection of the inner me? Was I a sort of closet
Ahwaz? It was an obscurely depressing thought.

The old fellow
patted my shoulder in a fatherly sort of way – a bloody patronising father. ‘Small wonder it should have filled you with such terror, my poor young fellow. And yet, do you know, I could even envy you it, even that briefest glimpse of power.’

‘It may be, too, that the colouring is not all his,’ added Kelley. ‘We know of our own experience
that dangers may hang about any such exploration. It attracts – well, shall we say, opposing forces? It may be that in the unhallowed state of the experiment they gained some entry thereby. It might not be denied them.’

‘In which case,’ said Dee severely, ‘the removal of this power from you becomes a matter of greatest urgency. Else you may risk becoming as Dr Johannes of Wittemburg, who took
a demon as his servant and so, although meaning well, did ever ill. Surnamed Faust, I remember.’

‘Now him I seem to have heard of,’ I said.

‘A very sad case,’ agreed Dee. ‘I met him myself briefly, in Cologne, not long before—Very sad. And hideous.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Then you’ll come?’ demanded Kelley.

I made a helpless gesture. He thumped the table.

‘Look, man!
Look upon the world, in your
day or ours! Does it delight your eye? You are a man of education, of talent, fallen because fortune turned against you. Would you win back your rightful place? We can alter that, man, and more!’

Then he sat back, and shrugged as well.

‘But that you need not credit, if you’ve no wish to. Suffice it that you can be free of all frights. And you can return to your own time no whit the worse, save
for the weight of a rich reward. You need lack nothing the coffers of the Empire of the Romans can provide, and its great lord Rudolph of Habsburg. For it is he who is our patron, he the Holy Emperor of the Romans himself. He commands your presence! We—we do but request. Yet, unless you trust these others, these brigands or whatever, in your shoes I would brook no delay!’

I sat back, staring.
I’d desperately wanted the whole thing to make sense, and now it did, after a fashion. OK, it was a hair-raising sort of sense that ditched every standard of rationality and reason I ever had. But what with bandits busting out of the woodwork and Elizabethan sages strolling in for a quick one, they were hanging a bit loose anyhow.

I was getting dizzy. I didn’t know what to do, where to go. I
wished that man Fisher was here; but then why should I trust him more than these two? After all, he’d steered me right into this in the first place.

And in a way, too, I trusted Dee. A bit pompous, a bit self-important maybe. OK, he really did want to benefit mankind, that I was sure of; but those who care loudest about man in the mass often sell man next door a touch short. They have trouble
narrowing the focus.

Still,
I couldn’t see a likelier solution. I didn’t much fancy being a kind of loose connection in the angelic circuit any longer.

‘So how long’d all this take, then?’ I demanded.

‘A day of your life,’ shrugged Kelley. ‘No more. One simple rite—’

‘Say, rather a day or two, brother Edward!’ said Dee reprovingly. ‘Be not in unseemly haste! We must first cast the nativities,
seek out the auguries and make all other preparations, so the rite will be safe this time.’

‘Oh, of course, of course,’ said Kelley grudgingly. ‘Though it will be safe enough in any event. And once done, by the same, ah, mystical pathways we may restore you to this very moment. Come, sirrah, our horses are printing the gravel without. Will you not come, for the good of all? Or risk some visitation
more terrible yet? Perhaps here, where the powers you face must surely be stronger?’

I swallowed, suddenly dry, and gulped down the rest of my beer. That decided me. I stood, and shouted for Poppy.

‘A moment, moi dear!’ came her voice from the kitchen.

‘I’ve got to go, love!’ I called. ‘But remember that message, won’t you?’

‘Oi may not be an oliphaunt, moi dear,’ she said, waving me goodbye
from the kitchen door. ‘But ’ave no fear regardless!’

I waved
back. Dee and Kelley were already outside, and I heard the soft whinny of horses. Mystic pathways? Well, I was halfway up the mystic garden path anyway, it seemed.

I turned, and plunged out into the dark.

I
T
WAS INKY
black now, beyond the yellow shimmer of the porch lantern. Moths danced fantastic shadow dances over the gravel. Three horses stood there, nodding impatiently and nuzzling at us as we came out. Nothing mystical about these beasts, anyhow – smaller and shaggier than some, I suppose. I couldn’t help noticing they smelled a bit stronger, too. ‘Will you mount,
sir?’ enquired Kelley cheerfully, cupping his hands to my stirrup like a groom. I was already checking the girth and leathers, though, and swinging myself into the saddle.

‘Ah,’ Kelley
grinned. ‘And there I thought every man of your time would’ve lost the art equestrian to those fiendish fire-carriages. Yourself most of all!’

I grinned back, finding my seat in the rather lumpy saddle. One thing
I’d done a bit of in my teens was riding to hounds, because everyone did – well, everyone in our family. It had never stuck; too exhausting and too cruel. Besides, if you had to kill foxes, I’d sooner shoot them, like pheasants or grouse. Preferably sitting, from behind. In standing corn and out of season, come to that. But I hadn’t lost the knack with horses. Mind you, I did keep wanting to shift
the gears.

The
old fellow laboriously kilted up his gown, revealing leather leggings, and hopped surprisingly nimbly up on to the leading horse. It was Kelley, with his stubbier legs, who heaved and puffed himself up, his rapier clanking against his boots. He buttoned up his soft leather jacket, its fancy tooling shining in even the faint light, and jammed a round embroidered cap down on his
unruly hair. He twitched its feather upright, winked at me and jerked a thumb at the doctor. ‘Waall, illuztrious measter? Art assur-red? Wilt set uz on ower weay?’

For a moment he sounded like a cartoon hayseed. Had they been doing their best to talk something like modern English? To reassure me, probably. Fat chance. But it felt more as if something else had slipped, momentarily.

Dee nodded,
and cast about him like a dog sniffing the night air. Then he clicked his tongue and urged his horse out into the blackness. He didn’t hesitate; I did, but Kelley flicked my mount gently forward and fell in behind. Just where I didn’t want him, even if he would have needed a really long cheesewire.

The darkness closed around us, without even a star, and though the air was cool I felt as if I
was suffocating. As far as I could make out we were turning away from the field, anticlockwise around the pub and along behind the stand of poplars. It was pretty unnerving. For one thing, somewhere out there was Willum.

As my
eyes adjusted to the dark I could just about make out cottages along this street. They seemed narrower and more cramped, their listing walls overhanging the path and their
unkempt thatch bristling against the faint skyglow. There were no lights in their windows; nothing so much as stirred. We seemed to turn off the main street and along a narrow path which wound among their outbuildings, ramshackle barns and sheds ripe with the musty smell of hay and chickens, the odd whiff of drying apples and an occasional eyewatering presence of pig. Somewhere in the distance
I could hear the faint rumble of the junction, and now and again a ramp or flyover would glimmer out of the darkness, veiled in its own hazy yellow glow of lights. They looked unbearably homelike and comforting. And if that doesn’t tell you how desperate I was, nothing will.