The Curse of Salamander Street

To Hannah, Abigail, Lydia – the source of my inspiration

I
T had been three days since the ball of fire had crashed into the earth, somewhere far to the south. The sky had burnt blood red and turned the sea to a boiling cauldron. Beadle stumbled, half-mad with rage, as he cupped his bleeding cheek in his torn hands and licked the blood from his fingers. The dark of the wood clung like a blanket to the ground, and a fine white mist hovered above the stinking earth. From every tree and every branch came the screeching of small birds as they coughed and chattered mournfully in the cold evening air.

Beadle looked up and saw the light of day fading through the thick fingers of the growing eaves that locked together like the struts of a vast cathedral. The drip, drip, drip of the last of the storm fell to the forest floor from the twisted wooden spindles that beat against each other in the wind. Beadle held out a bloodstained hand to catch the drops that spat coldly against his skin.

‘Never mind, Beadle,’ he said softly to himself as he splashed the chilled water against his bloodied face. ‘On yer own now … Yer own man, and not a minute too soon.’ He spoke as if to calm his anger. The sound of his voice danced from tree to tree
like the whisperings of a wood elf. Beadle laughed. With one hand he pulled the woven scarf up around his face to dampen the wound that throbbed and chided his skin. He wiped the back of his sleeve across his brow and commingled blood and sweat with evening dew. ‘Soon be at the sea and then on to the path – never look at Demurral’s face again, never hear another lie from his lips.’ Beadle said the words in a voice just above a mutter, fearful that the trees could hear his proclamations and the reeds would whisper and a spell be made.

He had trudged wearily for many hours along the twisting path that snaked across the heath and into the forest. To the west, the sky had wept bitterly, washing the moor until the track had run like a small river and babbled over the cliff edge and into the sea. Now, as he strode quickly on, Beadle could smell the ocean. It came to him in the fragrance of seaweed and dead fish. He stopped for a moment and looked about him. To one side the path fell away into a warren of dark gorse and bramble. Above him, cut into the shale crag was a stack of narrow treads that went this way and that amongst the trees that had grown from the cliff. Where the paths crossed the steps spiralled like a stone staircase of a vast cathedral. He stopped and looked to the sea below. Then he looked up to the high cliff that seemed to grow above him as if the earth moved upwards minute by minute with his every breath.

Beadle rubbed his chin and panted hard. The thought of climbing the steps onto the high peak daunted him. If he took that way, he knew he could be seen from the tower of the Vicarage. In his heart Beadle knew that Demurral wouldn’t let him go that easily. It had been too simple: Beadle had just walked away from his old life. Here in the wood that clung to the shale cliff, he thought he was safe. The trees and fallen winter leaves made reassuring sounds that reminded him of brighter days. Again he looked up and then down. Beadle stood in the middle
of the crossed paths unable to make up his mind and wondering if Demurral had invoked an invisible creature to follow his every move.

‘Wouldn’t let me go that quick,’ he said to himself in a croaked voice as if he was unsure of his own words. ‘Can’t be just running off – don’t know which way …’ He looked to the path that swept into the arch of gorse and shook his head.

‘Never simple, never simple … Chin up, chest out, heart full of pride …’ he said as he looked back and forth, unsure as to which way he should go. ‘Down? Dark and easy – but up?’ He paused, scratched his bloodied nose and sighed as he thought.

Beadle took two paces up the flight of steps that led through the trees to the light above. He stopped again and looked up, listening to the sounds of the forest that rose up before him. From far off came the splintering of wood as if someone or something had taken hold of a small tree and split it in two.

‘Down,’ he commanded himself quickly. The call of his tired bones had won the battle of his will. ‘And down it will be.’ Beadle shuddered uneasily and looked about the dark wood, his eyes searching out the blackness.

Step by step he walked on into the gorse tunnel that formed a canopy above his head. Beneath his feet the mud squelched and moaned with every fall of his foot as it clasped to his worn boots like sticky fingers. In ten paces he was back to night. The gorse tunnel rustled and shivered with every breath of the wind. Spines of bramble sliced to his left and right like sharpened swords, as the shrill whisper of the dying gale leapt from the sea and through the forest.

He wrapped his bitter hands in the soft dampness of the tails of the neck scarf, muffling them against his worn-out jacket. Beadle smiled to himself as he saw the cut from the dagger that had slivered through the cotton warp of his frock coat, just missing his skin. It had burst open just above his heart, but the
knife had glanced against the unread prayer book that he had carried for years like a talisman.

‘He’ll never do that again, not to Beadle,’ he grunted as he walked, wiping a tear from his eye as he thought of a time before.

Beadle had stood in the remnants of the Vicarage high above Baytown. The cannon of the
Magenta
had torn down every ceiling and mantel. When the world began to spin and the sky explode, Beadle had hidden in the cellar and listened as the stones crashed to the ground and what was once such a proud place was shaken to rubble. When he had emerged later that morning, all was in ruins. It was then that he knew his life had gone. What had been a reluctant home was now no more. With the falling of each stone, so had his life crumbled. He had no desire to serve his earthly master. All he knew was that his heart commanded him to take the road to London.

Beadle knew that Demurral would come for him. Demurral had once vowed that it would be futile for Beadle to think of leaving and that no matter where his footsteps led him, he would be there. It was a thought that had plagued Beadle all that night. He had hidden from his master and had taken a small knapsack and packed what meagre items he owned and fastened the brass catch. He had then slung it over his shoulder as he slammed the large wooden door to the empty house. In twenty paces he was in the stable. The night sky had quaked and the world shook. Beadle buried himself in the thick straw and, unable to fight off the hands of sleep, he quickly slumbered.

‘BEADLE! BEADLE, COME OUT!’ Obadiah Demurral shouted three hours later, the sharp words stabbing Beadle from his sleep. ‘NOW!’

Beadle had dug deeper into the straw, hoping not to be found as Demurral had trudged the stone courtyard searching
for his servant. He had listened as Parson Demurral had smashed his walking cane against the stones and demanded his presence like an angry child.

Demurral had then slumped to the ground and sobbed. ‘Humiliated me, Beadle, humiliated,’ he squawked, weeping between each word and beating the ground. ‘They tricked us … A trap … Power beyond belief. Imagine, Beadle. They had an angel – and not even Pyratheon could withstand his wonders. It brought the Ethio back from the dead and took death from him in an instant. I fear he will come for me. I am as good as dead and for me there will be no everlasting life. This is my curse, my future. I have taken on the powers of Heaven and I have been crushed beneath their feet. HE CHEATED – BROKE THE COMMANDMENTS AND TWISTED HIS OWN MAGIC! I must leave this place.’

Demurral panted pathetically as he sobbed and as he spoke it was as if another spoke through him. ‘My only consolation is that the Ethio boy was snatched from the ship by Seloth and dragged to the depths. Saw it with my own eyes as the ship. They came from the sea like a ghostly choir of dead souls and snatched him from the ship. They moaned and cried until it deafened the world to their lament … Beadle, come to me. Beadle …’ Demurral had then wailed even louder, moaning into the palms of his hands and sighing like a dying dog.

Hiding his knapsack, Beadle crawled from the straw, crossed the yard and warily approached his master.

‘Beadle?’ Demurral whimpered, looking at him through tear-stained eyes. ‘Is it really you? I thought you were gone, abandoned me like the rest, never to be seen again.’

‘Still here.’ Beadle whispered his reply as he held out a hand to Demurral. ‘Just waiting for you to come back. I hid from the sky-quake and fell asleep.’

‘SLEEP?’ Demurral raged suddenly as he grabbed Beadle by
the arm and pulled him towards him. ‘You slept and I died, that’s what you did. Stole from me while I lay in the grave and made your escape. I can see it in your eyes. Shoes for the road and two coats for the night. You weren’t waiting, you were going. Weren’t you, Beadle?’

Beadle nodded, his arm gripped by fingers that burnt his skin. He pulled to run away as Demurral twisted his cane with one hand and slipped the sheath from a long blade hidden within.

‘No, Mister Demurral. I would have waited, I promise,’ he wheezed fearfully as Demurral held the blade above his head ready to strike.

‘Why should I believe that? I took you in when no one wanted you. Nursed you, fed you, and this is what you do to me? Was I not kind?’ Demurral asked.

‘Very kind, sir. Too kind for my own good. Beadle was so ungrateful for your kindness,’ he replied as he cowered from the blade.

‘Then let this be a sign of my kindness, a cut for the cutting of my heartstrings.’ Demurral took the sword and slowly pulled it across Beadle’s face. ‘There,’ he said calmly, stepping back from his servant. ‘A slice of my benevolence and one you’ll never forget.’

‘Forget?’ Beadle screamed as he lashed out in pain, knocking the sword cane from Demurral’s hand. ‘Forget?’ he screamed, kicking Demurral in the leg. ‘No more, Mister Demurral, no more. This is the last you’ll see of me.’ Beadle kicked his master again and again as the priest scrabbled to be away from him, the dark shadows pressing in around them as if to hide what would come to pass. As Beadle scurried from the courtyard, all he could hear were Demurral’s curses.

‘I will find you, Beadle. I know where you will go to hide. My heart is your heart, my thoughts will be your thoughts, you will
never be free of me. Remember the blood and the hound of love that pursues you …’

In the gorse and bramble, Beadle shook the dream from his head as he listened to the grunting and whining of a distant beast. The words of Demurral echoed relentlessly in his mind as if they were spoken time and again. ‘Never did like this place,’ he said as he hobbled even faster. In the remnants of the storm, the dribbles of rain pierced the thick shelter of the gorse. ‘Blast, bother and boiling blood,’ he chuntered, cursing the mud and squelching onward as the mire was transformed to a soft brown soup that covered his feet. ‘Not staying … He’ll never see me again. All them years wasted looking after a monster. Sold his soul so many times he’s forgotten who owns it.’ Beadle rubbed the rain from his brow. ‘He’ll never find me in London. Crane will help me. Three days and I’ll be there – no matter what will befall me …’ He spoke the words as if they were a prayer, knowing that the
Magenta
would sail to the south.

In the distance, Beadle could hear the gentle rolling of the waves upon the shingle beach. The sound dawdled in his mind like a dose of melancholy, stealing his wits from thoughts of Demurral. As the last drops of rain slithered through the branches of the gorse he wiped the blood again from his face with the scarf. He blundered deeper into the darkening tunnel until he walked in a muddy night, far away from the evening brightness. In the distance, at the bottom of the slope he could see a faint patchwork of light as the gorse and brambles thinned and the path ended.

Beadle allowed himself a single chuckle, which soon exploded into a beaming smile. His mind raced faster than his feelings. Thoughts of freedom were tinged with sadness and foreboding. What had been his world had crumbled with the
meeting of a boy and the melting of a heart. Now, fear and exhilaration twisted together and spurged his guts like the salt washing of a frothed beer barrel.

As Beadle walked the last few yards through the tunnel of gorse and bramble, a faint scent of rotting flesh began to seep in from all around him. He shuddered and shook, then looked this way and that, his eyes trying to catch as much as they could from the half-darkness. It was as if someone was near – he could hear the wispy breath and the faint sighs and, more than that, the slathering, chomping and gnawing of bone. A yard ahead, just as the gorse tunnel dipped to the beach, was a hole in the tunnel roof. It was as if the gorse had been parted, and when Beadle looked more closely he could see that each thong of growth had died back and rotted. There at his feet was a pile of meatlets, small fragments of bone and strips of skin. Beadle nervously jigged two steps and, looking upwards from the shadows, saw the feet of a hanging man.

‘Blast, bother, boiling blood,’ he said in a whisper as he drew his breath sharply. In the wood, by the side of the path, was what was left of a man. The body hung from the long branch of an oak tree, the rope so stretched by the dead weight that he trailed upon the ground. Clinging to him like a heavy knapsack was a gruesome black creature that bit into his shoulder and chewed the flesh. The beast was the size of a large dog and covered in thick black hair that appeared to be stretched from bone to bone. Upon its back were two thick blades of shoulder bone like gargoyle wings that pulsed with every heartbeat. As Beadle watched, the creature stopped gnawing the bone and stealthily picked a piece of flesh between its lips, pulling a strip from the meat and then spitting it from its mouth. This was the beast that he had often spoken of but never dreamt he would meet. It was a nightmare of children, brought to life, a dark and distant memory or wicked thought made flesh. It was a creation of evil
that had been conjured long ago when Demurral had first taken to his alchemy. It was said he had taken a child and merged its flesh with a dying wolf.