Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy

A
demon ended my childhood. The year was 1742 and I was just eight years old. I was not bitten, do not think that of me, but in a very real sense I was infected, and the darkness of that creature crept into my heart. It is lodged there still, and the only way I’ll ever be free of it is to rid the world of the demon itself, and of the evil that comes with it
.

I was born, then, in 1734, the youngest son of the fourth Lord Bowcastle. My father was a benign and generous man, inclined to view his two sons and two daughters in a spirit of wonder and benevolence. My mother, for the first eight years of my life, was spirited and beautiful and full of good humour. She kept the beauty thereafter, but the spirit of Lady Bowcastle, formerly Miss Arabella Harriman, only daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Harriman, was broken beyond repair that night in 1742
.

She’d accompanied my eldest sister, who’d just come out into society, to some happening or other in the city.
I remember the beginning of the evening well, not least as my final moment of undiluted happiness. I remember telling my sister how beautiful she looked. And my mother danced with me in the hall as they waited for the carriage to be brought around
.

I was in bed by the time they returned and the next day I knew only that my mother was unwell. But in the days and weeks that followed, young as I was, I became my mother’s confidant. The story within the house was that Lady Bowcastle had seen a spectre as she’d stepped down from her carriage, a wraith or some such thing. Only I was told the truth
.

What my mother had seen that night was a demon, a demon that had haunted her youth. She had perhaps long consigned those youthful encounters to the deepest recesses of her mind, but seeing him again, completely unchanged after almost thirty years, was enough to bring it all to the surface and unsettle her well-being
.

Had the demon not been there that night, or had she looked the other way and failed to see him, everything would have been different. Only he was there, and she did look and did see. It destroyed her health and changed the course of my life even before I knew it
.

From that night forward, she determined that I would become the defender of her soul, that I would learn to understand such demons, this demon in particular, and
that I would destroy them wherever I encountered them. She determined, young as I was, that I would become a champion for the cause of good
.

And that, in short, is how I came to be the man I am: warrior, alchemist, sorcerer. My name is Phillip Wyndham and I have lived through a quarter of a millennium and more because of my mother’s foresight and conviction, and because the demon itself still lives despite my promise that I would destroy it. The demon also has a name of course, and its name is William of Mercia
.

T
he parkland was frozen, a thick hoar frost painting each branch white against the night sky. There had been no snow since the week after Christmas, but now, nearing the end of January, more was forecast to fall in the days ahead.

The weather made little difference to Will, but he was very conscious of how visible he was, a lone, dark figure crossing the frost-lit lawns as he made his way to what was now known as the ‘old’ house, Marland Abbey School. It loomed up in front of him, a jumble of Jacobean towers with cupola roofs and flagpoles, dotted with lit windows which seemed inviting even to him.

For the last few weeks, Will had been living in the cellars of the new house, a Gothic creation meant to recall the abbey, the ruins of which stretched away from the east lawns. Built in the nineteenth century, the new house had marked the beginning of the end for his brother Edward’s descendants, the titles evaporating
with an absence of sons, the estates with a series of foolish schemes and bad investments.

Now it was owned by the National Trust and run as a tourist attraction. It was closed for the winter, which made Will’s residence easier, although he couldn’t help but be filled with sadness that it was no longer home to his family, the Mercian Earls, the Dangraves – the Heston-Dangraves as they’d become after the titles had gone. Had this been the point of it all, to leave two beautiful buildings set in two hundred acres of parkland?

He stopped walking, having come as close to the school as he dared approach so early in the evening. He could see all he needed to anyway. From here he had a clear view through the windows of the Dangrave House common room – Eloise’s house – and watched now as the students strolled in after dinner.

Eloise had told him Marland was a progressive school, offering more freedoms to students than was usual, and this showed itself in an odd way with their uniforms.

From a distance, they all appeared to be dressed alike, pale blue and white striped shirts without ties, all worn with the collars turned up for some reason, green jumpers, the boys in pale grey trousers. Some of the girls wore trousers too, while others, including Eloise, wore tartan skirts over pale grey tights. Will wasn’t entirely sure where the Scottish connection came from.

On closer inspection though, the green jumpers varied in size and shape, all looking home-knitted, some of them cardigans rather than pullovers. It appeared to be the one element of the uniform through which the students were allowed to express their personalities, albeit in green. It added in some way to their relaxed and easy manner as they walked into the common room – there was no question that this was a privileged and comfortable existence. They flopped into armchairs and sofas or stood chatting in small groups full of laughter.

Will envied them, the warmth of their world, the companionship, the sense of belonging. He envied them most, of course, for the fleeting nature of the life they were leading right now. Good or bad, these intense heady schooldays would be over in the blink of an eye and would melt away as quickly as the frost beneath even the weakest winter sun.

These people in front of him, some looking younger, a few even looking older than Will, their lives would all move on. He’d failed to leave his own youth behind, so looked on longingly at that quality in the lives of others, cursing himself, wishing it might have been other than this.

And then his spirits lifted at the sight of the one thing that did give meaning to the last eight centuries of torment. Eloise walked into the room, deep in
conversation with another girl. Eloise. The sight of her contented him and held his soul fast. She’d leave him behind too, but he didn’t want to think of that now, he wanted only to watch and wait for her.

She crossed the room and sat on the arm of a chair, suggesting in her body language that she wouldn’t be staying long. Then someone stood between her and the window, obscuring her from view, and Will spotted another student, Marcus Jenkins, the boy who’d joined the school at the beginning of term. His jumper, Will noted, looked suitably home-made, but fitted a little too well, marking him out as a new boy.

He was listening intently to other boys, but as if sensing Will’s gaze, he turned and looked directly towards him. It unsettled Will, even though he knew the boy could only be staring at his own reflection in the window. There was something strange in the boy’s bearing, stranger even than his sudden appearance here at Marland.

Will remembered him of course. At first he hadn’t been able to place where he’d seen him before, but then he’d spotted the white ghost of a scar on Marcus’s cheek and it had all come back to him – this was one of the boys who’d harassed Eloise that night by the river.

Briefly, Will wondered whether he would have come to know Eloise at all had it not been for rescuing her
from those boys. But his memories fixed on Marcus again, whose name he had not then known, whose appearance was now so very different, and who’d been the only one of Taz’s gang not to run in fear.

They hadn’t encountered each other here at Marland, but Will had the feeling that Marcus Jenkins knew he was here, and that meant other people knew it too. Though Asmund had failed to mention it, though Jex’s notebook hadn’t referred to it, Marland seemed to hold the key to finding Lorcan Labraid and the truth of Will’s destiny.

Marcus turned away and at the same time Will realised Eloise had left the common room. She would change before coming out to him, but he prayed for her to hurry. He could feel a familiar and sickly emptiness taking hold deep inside and he was certain her presence could keep it at bay.

But this wasn’t the pining of a lovesick youth, this was his need for blood resurfacing, too soon after he’d fed from Jex. Of course, Jex had been no ordinary victim so it should hardly have been a surprise that the poor homeless man’s youth and health had sustained Will for so short a time. A life stolen just two months before, and yet here were the first pangs of a spiritual hunger that would build over the days and weeks ahead until he could think of nothing else.

It was as if the changes taking place in his world were using up his energy more greedily. He’d come to know how much life was in a person’s blood and how long it would last, even without understanding the ‘why’ or ‘how’ of it, but as with everything else, the rhythms he’d established over centuries now counted for nothing.

Was it because of the energy expended fighting Asmund – surely a battle to the death with the creature who’d infected him would have taken its toll – or combating the demons conjured up by Wyndham? Or was it something more fundamental – was everything speeding up now as Will gained speed himself, hurtling towards his own destiny?

He heard a door open somewhere nearby and instinctively stepped back, though the whitened lawns offered no immediate hiding place. Some of the teachers would occasionally come outside in the evenings to talk on their phones, and he didn’t want one of them to alert the school to a possible prowler.