Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy (7 page)

He heard a noise, and looked up, immediately readying his sword. Had it been a footstep? He took in the air, picking up nothing, but he had heard a noise and it had come from the one place he had known he would have to face sooner or later, the darkened tunnel.

Will took a step towards it and then stopped again as the lights flickered on along its length and in the chamber that lay maybe twenty paces beyond. It was almost as if he was being invited in. The only thing he didn’t know was the identity of the person or creature issuing the invitation.

He walked on, not hesitating this time, but heading directly into the tunnel. He was halfway along it when the lights flickered, for a second only, a rapid descent into darkness and an equally sudden return to light. And now Will felt the cold in his spine again because in that second a figure had walked past the far entrance.

The chamber ahead appeared empty now, but he had seen a figure cross, he was certain of it. He walked on, cautious, ready to strike first, and was almost at the end of the tunnel when once again the lights blacked out before firing back more brightly than before, or so it seemed.

Will’s eyes smarted against the sudden glare, but he stood his ground, holding his sabre at arm’s length in front of him. He blinked, desperate to get his vision back, because one thing he could see through the light blindness – he was no longer alone.

A figure stood in the middle of the chamber, facing him, fair-haired, wearing a dark suit and a dog collar, looking quite alive – Reverend Fairburn, Wyndham’s spy from the cathedral library. He looked as solid as he had in the moments before falling to his death.

Will stepped into the circular chamber, his sword still at the ready, but Fairburn looked down at it and said, “There’s no need for that, nor would it be of much use – I’m an apparition.”

Will looked around the chamber. He noticed the walls here were decorated, unlike the chamber with the bronze relief, but all he really wanted to see was that they were alone in there. Once satisfied of that, Will slipped the sword back into his belt, but moved away from the tunnel and edged round the chamber until he could see both the spirit and the way out.

He looked at the ghost of Fairburn and said, “Is it not enough that Wyndham made you his servant in life? Now he enslaves you even in death, denying you your peace.”

“Oh, I came gladly for this task. You seek your destiny, isn’t that so?”

“We all seek our destinies in one way or another.”

“True. Well, William of Mercia, prepare yourself because I’m about to show you yours.”

Will laughed and said, “You’re about to show me what Wyndham would have me believe. You may be a spirit, you may have been dragged from the next world just as my brother was, but neither you nor Wyndham know any more about my destiny than I do. Tell me Wyndham’s lies if you wish, but they will be just that, lies.”

Fairburn’s expression didn’t change. He turned and stared directly at Will, the thing he had tried to avoid so much at their last meeting, and said, “You killed me. I
know I jumped, but it was the lesser evil. You killed me, William of Mercia, that is why I am here. I am about to show you the true nature of your destiny, and trust me, you will know it to be the truth and you will despair.”

“D
o your worst,” said Will, sceptical and yet still intrigued. “Whatever my destiny, I know my own heart.”

“Do you?”

Will had stepped back against the wall to prepare for whatever was about to happen, his left hand still poised to reach for his sword if needed. Fairburn remained in the middle of the chamber, but raised his hands now as if invoking a short prayer. When he lowered them again, he smiled and said, “Behold.”

For a moment nothing happened, but then Will noticed the walls had become less solid around them, shimmering in the way he remembered the air on the hottest summer days. Across the room, a figure appeared, at first like a carved stone relief within the wall, then taking more shape, then colour, before emerging solid and real into the chamber.

Another ghost, another he recognised, from the bare feet and grubby blue top, the scraggly beard. The spirit
walked past Fairburn, heading towards a point just to the right of Will where he disappeared into the wall as if made of nothing more substantial than mist. He had looked solid for the time he’d been within the chamber and yet something had been missing. He hadn’t looked at Will as Fairburn had, hadn’t looked at anything, his eyes and expression vacant.

“You recognised him, of course,” said Fairburn once the figure had disappeared. “He called himself Jex. His real name, if it concerns you, was Stephen Leonard. He was a troubled young man, but healthy, a perfect victim … for you.”

Even as Fairburn spoke, another figure was emerging out of the walls, taking on form and colour before breaking free, and Will felt his certainties crumble at the sight of her. He had forgotten the precise likeness of her face, and saw now that despite the short hair, the slightly different clothes, she bore more than a passing resemblance to Eloise and could so easily have been her. With an additional twinge of regret, he remembered how playful her eyes had been, and saw now how dulled and empty they were, how lost her expression.

“Did you even know her name? Helen, and she was just fourteen years old back in 1988. A runaway, naturally, one of the many unlucky vulnerable people to have crossed your path.”

Even as Fairburn spoke, two more figures were emerging from the walls, then a third. And when Will looked, Helen – whose name he hadn’t known, it was true – had disappeared.

Fairburn started to speak, but Will interrupted, saying, “Why do they not see me as you do? These are not spirits, these are mere images, impressions of people who once existed.”

Half a dozen were crossing the chamber in different directions in front of him. Two crossed paths, the apparitions passing through each other and becoming some misty amalgam before reforming again and continuing their journey towards the more total oblivion of the chamber wall.

Fairburn said, “I was your most recent victim, no less than any of these, but I was fortunate indeed to take my own life before you could perform your wickedness upon me. You see, William of Mercia, a spirit and a soul are two different things, and you took their souls when you killed them. This is what you made of them, empty vessels wandering the afterlife with no purpose, no reward. You didn’t just rob them of life, you robbed them of so much more.”

Will shook his head, struggling to accept these words, struggling with the scores of spirits now crisscrossing the room in front of him, some disappearing
into the walls either side of him, so close that he could have reached out and touched them.

The air seemed to be crackling now, charged with all this energy as more and more spirits emerged. And Fairburn was becoming triumphant and manic, calling out comments here and there as each new spirit appeared.

“This woman was with child when you killed her, two deaths, not one. Ah, George Cuthbertson, 1813, but he was merely a stable boy, nothing to a nobleman like you, hardly worthy of consideration. And here we are in 1741, young Tom, fresh to the city – how generous the poor have been to you, William of Mercia.”

One thing Will could not deny was that these were all his victims, and the face of every one of them found a match in his memory, even after all this time. He had often thought of them, cushioned only by the knowledge of the many more deaths he had seen during his long existence.

But if what the spirit of Fairburn said was true, there was no context that would excuse his actions. He had condemned these people not to death but to an eternal limbo, stripped of the very essence of who they had been.

Across the crowded chamber, a young girl emerged from the wall and Will could not stop himself calling out, “Kate!” But she did not hear or see him, and to stare
at her vacant expression was too painful a reminder of how she had once laughed and made him laugh, and how she had so willingly volunteered to be bitten in the hope of becoming his companion.

“Good Kate,” cried Fairburn. “It would have been far, far better for her had the plague taken her, and not your tainted act of friendship.”

“Are their souls gone forever?”

Fairburn ignored him at first, and appeared almost to be carrying out a headcount of the dozens of spirits emerging and disappearing all across the chamber. Finally, it seemed, the numbers were declining again.

“Nothing is forever, even you. Perhaps especially you. When you die, their souls will be released from you and restored to them. I don’t know what will happen to yours, but if there’s any justice, it will be destroyed.”

“I care nothing for what happens to my soul. But nor do I believe you. It is possible, I will allow, that I have reduced them to this, but I would know if I carried all these souls within me.”

Again Fairburn appeared not to be listening. There were only four spirits left in the chamber, and as each disappeared into the walls, he looked more and more puzzled.

Only Will and Fairburn were now left in the room, but Fairburn looked up into the air, lost in calculation
as he said, “Eight hundred and forty-three, I make forty-four, but there should be one more …” With an air of cheap theatricality, he fixed his gaze on Will and said, “How could I have forgotten?”

He waved his hand at the far wall with a flourish and it immediately showed the outline of a human form. It took shape: a woman, wearing a rich blue dress of the kind worn in Will’s childhood, golden hair, pale skin. She stepped out on to the floor of the chamber, a young woman of radiant beauty, at once both familiar and unknown to him.

She wasn’t like the others, and she stared about the chamber as if confused, wondering how she came to be here. These spirits had all been summoned by Wyndham, but this one alone appeared to know that it had not wished to be brought forth.

Coaxing, Fairburn said, “Come, spirit, come into the chamber.” She was walking towards the centre of the room, but not apparently in response to Fairburn’s instructions.

The spirit looked past Fairburn and saw Will for the first time, and now she stopped and stared, and a slight hopeful smile formed on her lips. It faded as she glanced at Fairburn and when she turned her attention back to Will, she seemed eager to impart some message to him.

She did not speak, but reached up and took hold of
a pendant hanging round her neck, brandishing it at Will as she stared at him, smiling again, with something that looked like encouragement. Then she let go and put her finger to her lips. Only as she turned away did the smile fade, a deep and private sadness taking hold of her features.

“Stay a while, spirit,” said Fairburn. But the lady walked a circle round the vicar, and gradually sank into the floor as she did so, as if descending a wide spiral staircase. “Spirit, this distresses you, I know, but you are commanded to stay! See here the evil before us …” But the spirit had gone.

Will didn’t know what to think. Had this been a victim, she would hardly have smiled, or made intimate gestures that had certainly been meant to communicate something, even if the meaning had been lost on him. Besides, he would have remembered a victim so striking from so early on in the course of his sickness.

Fairburn had looked briefly deflated, but he rallied and looked at Will, shaking his head. “It’s hardly a surprise that your first victim should find it so disturbing to see what you’ve become.”

“My first victim? I think not – I have never seen that fair lady before.”

“Your mother, William of Mercia, you have just seen the spirit of your mother.”

Will knew instantly that it was true, though he had never seen her, and he felt as if he’d received a body blow. If he’d had tears, he would have shed them all gladly now for the mother he had never known.

“My mother died in childbirth.”

“Your mother was murdered during childbirth, by those who served you even then, to protect your poisoned legacy.”

“You lie,” said Will, though he was aware of his own voice sounding weak, his thoughts struggling to hold fast against this onslaught.

“Lie? Did I not show you your destiny? Aside from me and the woman whose grave misfortune it was to give birth to you, you can hardly deny the eight hundred and forty-three souls you have taken – that wicked tally is your destiny, and merely the first act of all that is to come.”

Will had been alive long enough to know that there was no lie greater than that which was held up by facts. These were facts, all these many victims, but he still believed, had to believe, that there was a lie at the bottom of all this, a lie created by Wyndham in his battle to destroy him.

“I don’t accept that – it is the sickness I have been cursed with, and it has been a curse, but my destiny is to escape it. As I have said before, I know my own heart.”

Fairburn looked full of hatred as he said, “Your heart, as I believe you know, stopped beating a very long time ago. Accept death, William of Mercia, and release the souls of these good people. That is Mr Wyndham’s offer – accept death willingly, gratefully, or he will destroy you, and the torment he will inflict will be greater than hell itself could offer.”

“If
Mr
Wyndham is so powerful, why does he not tell me these things himself?”

“He will, when the time is right.”

“Of course, when the time is right.” Suddenly Will remembered Asmund’s comment about the many obstacles faced in the life of a great man, then his suggestion that Will had been no random victim, that his sickness had been long planned. “You spoke of my poisoned legacy – what did you mean by it? Or was that just another piece of embroidery to make me believe my mother was murdered on my behalf?”

Fairburn looked uncertain how to respond for a moment, then closed his eyes and whispered, “Do I tell him that much at least?”

So not only had he been summoned by Wyndham, he was in communion with him even now, just as Asmund had been with his master. If Lorcan Labraid had only communicated with Will in much the same way, this entire process would have been a great deal simpler.