Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy (9 page)

Eloise nodded as he walked back to her, but then he stopped, spotting a diagram of chalk markings on the wooden floor under the bed. She jumped from the bed and looked at it herself.

“Someone’s been in my room!” It seemed to outrage her more than the recent attempt on her life. She took a tissue and used it to rub away the chalk markings.

Once they’d gone, Will said, “Good, from now on you must check for marks like this, or for anything else in your room that seems out of place. You must consider yourself under attack at all times.”

“But I don’t get it. Why does he think killing me will stop you?”

“It seems Wyndham knows what we’ve only imagined till now, that my destiny can’t be achieved without you. It’s the only explanation.”

Eloise smiled playfully and said, “You’d better keep me alive then.”

She was teasing him, perhaps as a way of countering her own fear, but he said, “I would happily give up my destiny and this poor excuse for a life before I would see any harm come to you.”

“Don’t say that,” she said, touching him lightly on the arm. “I need you as well, remember. That’s what Jex said. So don’t ever say that.” She sat back on the bed and gestured for him to sit too.

As he sat down, he said, “I meant only to say that protecting you means everything to me.”

“I know that.” She smiled a little, but then said, “Isn’t it funny, there I was complaining about a lack of incident, and now I’ve been attacked by crows, nearly thrown out of a window, and you’ve seen the spirits again.”

Eloise seemed upbeat at these developments, but Will felt the need to bring her back down to earth, to make clear that with greater activity came greater danger.

“I saw more spirits last night.”

“What do you mean? Your brother again?”

“No, Edward will trouble me no more. This was the very late Reverend Fairburn, doing Wyndham’s bidding in death as he did in life. And Fairburn in turn introduced me to the ghosts of all my victims, and was even kind enough to count them – eight hundred and forty-three.” Will decided against mentioning their soulless eyes or the explanation he’d been given for it, not least because he still wanted to believe it wasn’t so. “Then there was the ghost of my mother, murdered when I was born, or so Fairburn told me.”

“You saw your mother?” She looked moved by the revelation and Will remembered that Eloise had been orphaned in infancy, that she also carried that longing and curiosity to know the woman who’d given birth to her. He nodded and she said, “But why? I mean, why would they murder her when you were born?”

“To ensure that I alone carry the bloodline of the four vampire kings. It relates to the wording of some ancient prophecy or other.” Again he stopped short of telling her about the painting on the chamber wall. Instead he said, “Of course, this was all related to me by Fairburn, speaking for Wyndham, so we don’t know how true it is.”

“It makes sense though. From four will come one – didn’t it say that in Jex’s notebook?”

“It signifies nothing.”

She shook her head, dismissing his comment. “No, Will, it does, whether we want it to or not.”

He heard a floorboard creak above, just someone shifting about in bed, but that in turn reminded him of the unseen watcher from the window.

“What’s on the top floor of the school?”

“Some of the teachers live up there, a few storerooms, I think. Why?”

He stood up. “I’ll be back shortly. I just want to check something.”

“Maybe I could –” He put his hand up to stop her, but smiled reassurance and she settled back against the pillows.

He moved swiftly, along the corridor, up two flights of stairs, then along a narrower staircase on to the top-floor landing. A couple of the rooms showed lights under the doors, though they hadn’t been visible from outside. He counted along, reaching what he thought was the room in question.

It was a storeroom. Will moved to the window and looked down, confident that this was where his watcher had been. But he had no way of knowing who had been up here, only that it hadn’t been Marcus Jenkins and that Wyndham had more than one spy in the school.

He was about to leave, but spotted a box of chalk, which looked as if it had been placed hurriedly on a
shelf just inside the door. Will supposed a school was full of chalk, but he still wondered if the same person who’d spied from here had also drawn the diagram under Eloise’s bed.

He left, only hesitating near one of the lit rooms where he could hear a subdued conversation. It was two female teachers, one of them the young woman he’d seen talking on the phone earlier, whispering, laughing quietly, talking in gossipy tones about different teachers.

He listened in for a moment, hoping to hear something telling, but he found himself weakening again rapidly, the hunger pulling him into the void. He walked on, eager to get back to Eloise. The rest of the school was full of the swollen silence of sleep, all those young pulses, gently pumping the blood he so desperately needed.

It was a relief to get back into Eloise’s room where he noticed immediately that she was dressed. Before he could say anything though, she jumped from the bed and took hold of him by the arms, obviously worried. “Oh my God, Will, what’s up with you?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.” She pulled him across the room and they sat on the bed together.

“You look … it’s the blood, isn’t it? It’s horrible, I can’t stand seeing you like this.” She stroked his face, his hair, held his hands, as if trying to soothe the life
back into him, tears beginning to form in her eyes. And ironically, her touch, her very presence, while not giving him what he needed, at least made the hunger ebb away again.

He smiled, trying to reassure her. “It looks worse than it feels. Trust me, I’m fine, and always better when I’m with you.”

She fixed her eyes on him, searching for any hint that he was lying, then said, “Can I give you a hug, just for a second? Would that make it worse? Of course it would – what a ridiculous thing to say.”

He shook his head and held her, the warmth of her body almost seeming to pass through him, and she nestled her head into his shoulder, exposing her warm, pale neck. As much as she soothed him normally, it was agonising to be so close to the richness of her blood, knowing how long it would sustain him, but he would not pull away, not until she was ready and comforted and reassured.

Eloise, almost as if she’d heard his thoughts, slowly eased away and sat back against the headboard of the bed. She nodded, looking a little embarrassed, acknowledging that intimacy was a trial for him, not a comfort.

He looked at her. “Why are you dressed?”

She smiled. “When I was cleaning away the chalk
marks, it triggered something and when you went off just now, it came to me. Did you find anything by the way?”

“Nothing important.”

“OK. I remembered where I’d seen that bronze relief we found – the circle with the four swords around it. It might even be a boar’s head, but it’s not really visible any more.” Will gave her a questioning look. “Henry’s Maze. It’s here in Henry’s Maze, in a pentagonal clearing. So, OK, this might be a leap, but don’t you think it’s possible that the maze is a map …”

“Of the labyrinth.” Will laughed a little, remembering his one meeting with old Henry, long ago in the cathedral library, seeing now that he of all people, his brother’s distant descendant, might have been able to tell Will more than he’d ever realised. More than that, he thought back to the way Henry had looked at him, as if at a familiar ghost, and wondered if he’d recognised the likeness from the painting in the circular chamber. “So you want to explore the maze?”

“That’s why I’m dressed,” said Eloise. “Who knows what clues clever old Henry left for us. And if Wyndham’s trying to kill me, all the more reason to get a move on.”

Will nodded and stood. He’d explored the labyrinth and had found nothing new, but perhaps Henry, across his long life,
had
discovered its secrets, and had left
clues to them in the maze as Eloise suggested.

But as they descended through the school in darkness, Will’s mind also raced back up to the top floor, to that storeroom, focusing on the box of chalk. It simply served to remind him that they were struggling to find out, clue by clue, things that Wyndham already knew.

T
o be a young man of means in that period was a wonderful thing. It was the Age of Enlightenment, of scientific and artistic exploration, the era of the Grand Tour. Yes, there were troubling little wars, minor inconveniences, petty crimes and illnesses to endure, but Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century was something to behold
.

I left home with barely a backward glance, so fixed was I on the adventures ahead. I took only a valet, coachmen and a cook. The custom was to take a guide too – a bear-leader – but I took none, for my own knowledge had already surpassed that of anyone who might have accompanied me
.

And in that manner I crossed the Channel and proceeded along the well-worn routes through France and Italy to the wonders of antiquity, meeting the same fellow travellers again and again, in Paris, then in Florence, in Rome
.

My tour differed in some respects, naturally. For
one thing there was no time limit on my travels, no restrictions placed on the locations I might visit. More importantly, I was a young man on a mission and my itinerary took me to places unknown to the average grand tourist of the day. Even when I visited common stopping points – the University of Heidelberg, for example – I was there to study secret texts or to meet with obscure academics
.

Oh, I saw such things on my travels, and have such memories. I’ve lived the better part of three centuries, yet I remember those journeys as if they were yesterday – the royal burial mounds of Gamla Uppsala in the twilight, the Catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples, seeing the lost castle of Graubünden emerging out of the morning mist. The memories are so real, it’s as if I could reach out across the centuries and step back into them
.

For more than a decade I followed this existence, not only as a scholar, but as a young man in love with life and all the pleasures it had to offer. Despite all my preparations for battle, I never encountered a demon, nor even talk of demons that was worth listening to. It was the summer of a mayfly, or so I thought
.

It was in the last gasp of my youth that I briefly tired of Europe and visited the Near East, journeying to the Pyramids at Giza, then on to the site of Memphis. The
location of the ancient capital was known, but today’s history books would have it that it was not excavated until Napoleon’s army arrived some half a century later. In this, at least, the history books are wrong
.

When I arrived, I found there, at what I now know to be the Necropolis, the camp of a most extraordinary man who called himself only Rossinière. Teams of native bearers were working on his behalf, digging among the ruins, yet though they found many artefacts, he showed little interest and was happy for the natives to spirit them away. He was looking for only one artefact in that ancient burial site and he never told me what it was or if he found it
.

I have no complaint – I learned almost all that I know from that man. He was of noble birth, I knew that much, but I knew neither his nationality, nor his real name, for I’m certain it was not Rossinière. All that really matters is that he took me under his wing
.

As we sat by the fire one night, discussing the stars suspended so closely above our heads, he looked lost in meditation briefly and said, “Might I tell you something, Wyndham?” I became uneasy, but I looked at his handsome and youthful face glowing in the light of the flames and relaxed again. As if to put me further at ease, he looked in my direction and smiled as he said, “It’s my birthday today.”

I congratulated him and asked him how old he was. I assumed he was a year or two older than me, but sensed he had learned rather more in his time and weathered a little better
.

Rossinière looked away again, his eyes lost in the dancing flames as he said, “That’s really what I wanted to tell you. I’m one hundred and forty-two years old.” I didn’t respond, but he read my initial thoughts, saying, “Don’t worry, I have not been too long in the sun, I have no fever, and you are quite right not to believe me. I could try to prove it to you in many ways, but I can think of only one that is indisputable.”

Something about the way he spoke assured me that he was telling the truth, that this man who sat before me had been born in 1624. My next thought was for the proximity of my weapons because I wondered if I had at last encountered such a demon as had haunted my mother
.

“What are you?”

He smiled again. “Just a man, Wyndham, just a man like you, curious like you, desirous of more time like you. I am the way I am because of my own efforts, not through witchcraft or devilry.”

Was I to believe him? In the previous ten years or so I had met plenty of fakers and cheats who would have travellers believe any number of tall tales
.

“You said there was one way of proving your age beyond doubt.”

“Not of proving my age, but of proving the possibility of it.” He smiled again, but it was a lost smile, that of someone who might easily have lived for over a century. “I did have a fever, the week before you arrived here, and it might easily have killed me. Only then did I realise that nothing of what I know is written down – there’s too much to write anyway – and that if I were to die, my secrets would die with me. Then you walked into my camp and I knew immediately you were a kindred spirit.” He moved closer, staring into my eyes, and though he was now partly in shadow, his eyes seemed to fix me as if they were illuminated from within. “I’ll teach you my secrets, Wyndham, how to have mastery over this world and the next, how to manipulate time so that you might pass through it without ageing a day. You know so much already, it would not be difficult to teach you the rest, if you want to learn.”