Maxie’s Demon (36 page)

‘You’ve despoiled it, you little whoreson, you son of a punk—’

I grabbed one of the water buckets and dashed it over that part of the machine. ‘You bet I have, sunshine! You see it, sun – er, Highness?’ I panted, as the steam cleared and the tubes contracted with sudden violent poppings. ‘Where it’s steaming, there, nowhere near
the brazier? That’s where he’s just diverted the molten lead, with this sliding bit here! It’s a tap, a spigot! Like a beer keg!’

It was carefully concealed among the twists of the other piping. I’d never have spotted it if he hadn’t led me to it, but once you knew you could see it stuck out, like an appendix in a digestive system, a dead end to drain something off the main system. A carefully
measured something.

‘But it steams here also!’ muttered Rudolph dubiously, dabbing nervously at another branch of the piping, also away from the fire. It didn’t occur to me then it was the first time he had actually spoken.

‘That’s where he brings the gold in!’ I traced the short iron pipe back, burning my finger in the process. ‘Ow! To this brazier here – there must be a crucible inside, and
the gold just flows down once the pipe gets hot enough. If it isn’t, nothing comes through, so you’d never spot it otherwise. And with that shout he expects everyone to be looking at the trough!’

‘Where
nothing should appear,’ said Dee quietly. ‘Yet something – there!’

Molten metal hissed down into the water, and I nearly had heart failure. But as the distorted nodules sank hissing to the floor
of the trough, there was no mistaking that dull sheen. Rudolph plunged his hand in, and caught up the still steaming metal. I held out my hand, and he tipped it into my palm. It was heavy.

‘Lead!’ said Dee, bitterly, leaning over. ‘But a mere tenth part of what was put in. I recall there was always some lead still among the gold that emerged. You remember, do you not, Edward? I thought that so
convincing, that the transformation should not yet be entire …’

With a sudden, savage gesture Rudolph drew his dagger and smashed at the iron pipe with the hilt. The abrupt cooling had probably cracked it anyway. Glinting gold rolled in lacy fragments across the floor.

I smashed the bucket down on the appendix pipe, which sagged and broke off. I stooped after it.

‘Well?’ demanded Rudolph.

I fumbled it up, and showed him the open end. The tube was clogged with the same dull leaden gleam.

The Holy Roman Emperor spat out something so unholy it even amazed me. Then he waved a hand to the captain, who dropped Kelley and saluted. Rudolph turned on his heel and stalked out, the alarmed pikemen fluttering out of his path like electroplated pigeons.

The captain made
a noise like a bomb
in a bucket of phlegm.

‘
A-hem
! The aforesaid demonstration has not been carried out to the satisfaction of His Imperial Majesty’s inspecting officer, namely myself. The practice is therefore deemed to be illegal, corrupt and unholy. I am therefore commanded to escort any persons suspected of such illegal activities to the palace, at once. Of course this could not possibly involve His Excellency
the Doctor Dee, who is above suspicion and has in any case never made any material claims. Your Excellency Master Maxie—’

He fixed me with the beady eye all cops everywhere seem to develop just for me. But then he bowed.

‘—is but newly arrived, and has given meritorious service. Therefore, the Emperor bids me present his compliments to you, and will you please to inform His Excellency Sir Edward
Kelley that he is to accompany us without delay?’

Kelley did the classic pale-to-purple bit.

‘Me?’
he screamed. ‘Have you lost your iron-skulled wits? I’ve never—’

He looked about frantically for a way out, as the pikemen closed in. ‘I’m innocent! It would have worked—’

The captain’s eye turned even beadier.
‘Du ist mich instantlich mit comingk! Oder ist your arsch oot o’the windae! Zu Befehl!’

Clearly a bright lad, this, though no grammarian. And maybe overinfluenced by those Scots mercenaries.

Would have worked?

Shaky
with released tension, I leaned on the table. The broken pipe, heavy with the weight of metal inside, was still burning my palm, and maybe I deserved it, just a little. I was still dizzy with the speed I’d had to react, not once but twice, and with the thought of what
might have happened. It brought me out in the mother of all cold sweats.

If Rudolph had thought to look closer … But he was already humiliated enough.

If Kelley had thought to look closer …

But then he’d never really believed his machine worked, or ever could. I contemplated the stringy gobbets of lead the Emperor had spilled from the trough. The Romans had used those to tell fortunes, once;
and they’d certainly told mine. It was lucky I’d been able to palm enough of them to press into the open end of the appendix pipe.

Enough to cover up what it was really full of.

Not that Kelley knew. He hadn’t even bothered to look, or demand a closer examination. Lead was what he’d expected me to find. But this once, just this once, his little gadget had only served to divert the evidence that
would have vindicated him, and left us well and truly screwed. Royally, you might say.

This once the transformation had come through. He really had made gold.

There he was, shouting about his innocence. He’d conned everyone, but he’d ended up conning himself. And then I’d had to con him, too.

The quickness
of the hand deceives the eye. Well, OK.

Why had it worked? It never had before, that
was obvious. It couldn’t have, or Kelley would have found out when he melted the metal back out of the appendix. Maybe he’d managed to tap the power of the Spiral at long last – through the extra excitement and intensity of working under pressure, perhaps. But there was a nastier possibility. Could somebody else have started to feed him power, as they had me with the phone? Maybe that aborted ritual
had left him some kind of link, after all. One that could liberate him, just as it had me. If this went any further the dung could really hit the windmill …

The captain bowed again. ‘Please to inform His Excellency that he will be still given every opportunity to prove the worth of his process. An apartment is to be provided in the quietest tower of a remote castle, well furnished with all his
apparatus, where nothing else at all may distract His Excellency’s labours. Until, of course, in the fullness of time His Excellency is crowned with success. Please to inform him of that.’

A remote castle. Far away from Prague, far away from the margins of the Spiral, no doubt. Where nothing really could reach him.

Nothing at all.

‘Captain,’ I said, and bent a bit myself, ‘it’s going to be
a positive pleasure.’

T
HE
THUDDING SOUND
grew louder as the ponies splashed on.

‘In
truth,’ apologised Dee for about the thousandth time, ‘I am sorry to convey you home with such scanty honour. No carriage, no escort even.’

I laughed. ‘I’ve told you. I don’t need those!’ The last time I had an escort, I’d been handcuffed to him.

Dee’s beard wagged. ‘You are kind, sir! And certainly it
befits a scholar to make no undue display on his travels. I had thought, perhaps, if our endeavours had been successful, to travel homeward in great style, but I am chastened for that. Now I shall have only what is necessary for my poor Lady Jane and me. No more than a few carriages – four, perhaps, even three. A train of wagons for our modest baggage, a dozen or so outriders, a few men at arms that
we shall hire by stages. The world will scarcely see us pass. Poor Edward! Poor Edward!’

‘Well,’ I said, trying to derail that particular train of thought, ‘a carriage and cavalry escort wouldn’t fit in very well, down here. Might cause a nasty blockage, in fact.’

‘Aye, that is so,’ he answered, quite seriously. Almost without thinking he turned his mount’s head under a low mould-grown arch
I would probably have missed. The note of the splashing changed, and the throbbing grew louder still. ‘Know you, I mean to petition Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth that she shall recover poor Edward from Rudolph’s grasp.’

‘You know,’ I said very carefully, ‘he did play you a couple of nasty turns. And he could have gotten you in shit a lot deeper than this with old Rudolph.’

‘Oh aye, I
know it well. You have been a true friend to me in uncovering it, though a painful one. But I cannot abandon him thus, poor, misguided fellow, not after so many years of labouring in my vineyard. Much of what he did was in frustration at our failures, I am sure, and in expectation of pleasing me. Her Majesty will surely not refuse to ransom a man of such qualities. I shall write him so, often, that
he lose not hope.’

I
gave up. Kelley was part of Dee’s world, the world where angels talked to him and he passed on their messages to respectful kings and statesmen. The fact that Kelley had mostly been planting vines of his own, and nasty ones too, seemed to have passed him by. Endlessly forgiving people is the easy way out, so much easier than facing the facts about them; and about yourself.
The Kelleys of this world know that. So do the Maxies, come to that, but we’re not so good at milking it.

Still, by all accounts old Bessie was an even tougher nut than Rudolph, a real brick-in-the-handbag artist. She might like Dee, but she wouldn’t lift more than the odd finger for Kelley. As Kelley was probably well aware; and banged up in the middle of nowhere, with no hope but screeds of
encouraging bleatings from Dee, might just be a heavier punishment than the bastard deserved.

That
made it about right, by me.

The metallic clunking of the engines shook the foul air now. Dee held his staff up, and I saw the sloping ramp, its concrete cracked and weed-grown; but it could have been the stairway to Heaven. ‘There lies your way,’ he said. ‘But I would not take my leave of you in
these noisome depths. I shall join you for a moment upon the marches of your strange future.’

When we emerged into the air it was still crisp night, and the stars were glittering cheerfully, considering what was rising up to them. I noticed the noise at once, even over the chug of the pumping gear. The hum and buzz struck deep in the ears, the beehive drone of modern life. Especially the bits
of it I kept nicking.

‘I regret I shall never see this world of yours, with all its wonders,’ said Dee wistfully. ‘But still more so that I shall never again enjoy your company. Fare you well, my boy, and fall not back into your old ill ways. There is more of good in you than many I have heard called honest and esteemed. I cannot now give you the rewards you were promised, for all your toil,
but here is a trifle in token.’ He passed me a pouch, which clinked interestingly. ‘Ah, and this is a letter also, from my lady Jane, and from – ahem! – Mistress Joan. Would you credit it, they made me swear it should not be opened in my presence. Ah, womanish as ever!’ He chuckled fondly.

So did I,
for different reasons. Not that different, come to think of it. ‘You look after yourself, too.
I mean, I’m not saying give up on the angels, OK? Just the mediums. If someone says they’ve picked up a message for you, well, you could ask why the angels don’t deliver it directly. Look at it this way – the medium
is
the message!’

Dee thought a moment, then nodded. ‘Most profound, my boy; most profound. Well, this is our parting, I fear. Come clip me now!’

Being embraced by a man is not exactly
my idea of fun; I had some close shaves in the nick, being small, blond and young. Still, it was the way in Dee’s time. Old Loew had done it too, and at least Dee didn’t have oil and garlic in his beard. Loew’s was like a salad.

Apart from all that, as I watched Dee lead the patient ponies plodding away back down that nasty slope, I realised I was going to miss them both. They hadn’t approved
of what I was, but nor had they screamed, or preached, or patronised – much. There was something to be said for the religious approach. Maybe I ought to try it one day, if I could find something I believed in – First Reformed Seventh-Day Ferrari Fetishists?

More likely Hell on Wheels, Maxie.

I stood there a moment, feeling very lonely. Then I opened the envelope, and read it in the dim glare
of the sewage farm’s lights. There was a letter, and if you want to know what it said, you mind your own business. Besides, I’ve no idea what her standard of comparison was, anyhow; though something suggested it was more than just the other two. Or maybe that was Joan’s expert opinion. But there was also a ring, and a very nice one too, gold with a blue stone. At least this wasn’t going in the hockshop,
no matter what.

Mind
you, I’d said that about my watch, and the old man’s too. Even true champions and flame-bodied lovers have to eat.

The purse had gold in it, nice bright, new Austrian thalers that any expert would recognise on sight – as a forgery, because they were that new. I knew a bloke who could take care of that, though it’d be a fresh experience for him ageing something genuine. All
told, I probably had at least a grand’s worth here, at collector’s prices. And sitting waiting in my little roof-nook hideout, if the rozzers hadn’t happened upon it – and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts they hadn’t – was another sweet, sexy fifty times that.

My ears practically rang at the thought of it. I needed a drink to celebrate this. And where better than the Wheel? Lots of places, since
you ask; but at least it was nearby, and that’s always a good point in a bar. I could have another go at getting around Poppy – or rather, over. Or under. Or wrapped around, or all of the above, choose one from each column. Maybe I could show her Jane’s letter as a reference.

The thought buoyed me up so much I practically floated along the path back, even without external power. It took longer
on foot, and seemed to have developed a few extra turnings since I’d last passed that way, but I kept the Wheel firmly in mind. It didn’t seem to be so very long before I came in sight of the village outskirts, and saw over the thatches, against the greying sky, the pointy poplar stand which marked the pub.