Maxie’s Demon (24 page)

More likely Edward Kelley than Christopher Lee, though, and bad enough. Coming to settle accounts, no doubt, and clear the way to the power he wanted. Floorboards creaked, and I wished to hell I knew how to call on it right now. Another creak. Swift, heavy breathing. The curtains twitched, I bunched what was
laughingly called my fist and gathered myself to jump for it.

There was a stifled hiccup in the dark.

‘?’ was about all I could manage.

‘Sss
–
hic – ssh!’

A soft finger touched my lips. ‘Hush, hush, good Master Maxie! Wilt betray –
hic!
– me?’

Something like an electrified rodent scuttled up my spine. ‘Mrs Dee? N-never—’

The bed creaked gently beside me. A feather of cool breath touched
my cheek. ‘Say naught, then. You have been my truest friend, and a younger brother to my poor husband, great as he is in spirit and scholarship, and least, dear soul, in worldly wisdom, where you seem greatest. And much as he pleases me in other wise, he waxes old now and is –
hic
! – little enough to my content!’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

She
rounded on me. ‘But do not think, even so, that anything less
than my lord’s command would have had me bed with the man Kelley! Man, fie! He’s a beast –
hic
– a very beastly beast, a filthy-handed ape who’ll not lave himself but by the quarterday and compels … compels all manner of gross practices from me! Fie! Me, who has been lady to Her Majesty! A monster. A satyr. And you are my Saint George that has delivered me from him.’

She hiccupped, and sniffled
a little. I could smell her. She wore a heavy sort of perfume – oil of roses, probably, with maybe a touch of musk – but it didn’t mask her own scent. Definitely she didn’t wash enough by modern standards, but it was a healthy, animalistic smell. Her voice went very little-girly. ‘A true brother … and the angels say there’s no sin in it with a brother—’

Delicate fingers brushed my bare arm, then
seized my hand. ‘Thou’st touched my heart already. So, bring it to the board then, and let it drink!’ She crushed it to her breast, literally. If they’d had mains then, she could just as well have plugged me in.

One layer of linen nightdress stressed in short order what else wasn’t there, and what was. Her breast nuzzled my palm. Shrinking violet I am not, normally; but with her I couldn’t move.
Her other hand stroked my hair back from my brow, slid down my neck and flattened on my chest. She laughed softly. ‘So thin! A true scholar. For sure you’ve no wife to care for you! Poor Maxie!’ Her hand slid downward, closed and rocked. ‘Poor Maxie!’

I leaned
forward, hypnotised. Her hand moved steadily. A soft blend of wine and flowers blew in my face, and her lips were hot, a little dry, very
soft. I couldn’t believe it. I really was in another world now. I prised her lips apart with my tongue and chased hers, until she hiccuped and giggled and laid her burning cheek against my shoulder. ‘A-ha-ha, no virgin thou, for all thy simplicity!’

Half dreaming, I wrapped my arms around her, and ran my hands up and down her spine, mostly down, ruffling around in that damn nightdress. How could
you lose something that important? Then I happened upon it, and she writhed against me, with a soft, exhaling groan.

My oh my, in spades. She had quite a grip, and she wasn’t hanging around. I still couldn’t quite believe this was happening, or why, or who I was exactly, but by then it was a bit late. She had her legs around my waist, ankles locked, and the bed wobbled and sang a creaky little
song as we ground our way down into the feather mattress, grabbing at one another. I did have one moment’s misgivings that somebody would hear, but then we were over the jumps and into the final straight, she was giving slow, tearing whimpers in my ear and who else existed anyhow?

The threshing slowed down gradually. Panting, sweaty, face-down and half suffocating with my mouth full of linen
and feathers, I found myself wondering if I’d rather be bombing down a long, bare stretch of six-lane blacktop in a Porsche Targa belonging to somebody I didn’t like – Ahwaz, say.

Yes, I decided.

But only just.

I rolled aside,
feeling the drying sweat and stickiness contracting on my skin, and drew a deep, happy breath. A hand stroked my cheek. ‘Ah, good Maxie! Thou’rt a nimble knave, and deft
of thy hands.’

‘Mmm. You drive me to it. We rushed at it a bit too much, though.’

‘Wicked Maxie. What more could we have—’

I demonstrated. ‘Oh,’ she said, several times, and one thing led to yet another. When the feathers settled on that she was a warm, agreeable weight on my chest, nibbling my ear and hiccupping. I massaged her behind and wished there was some light in here. I seemed to remember
they had different ideas about the female figure in the past, but from the brief silhouette I’d glimpsed bouncing against the dim window light, Jane was pretty modern. She ran her tongue around the inside of my ear.

‘Maxie, my sweetest dove, my sugar mouse—’

‘First time anybody’s called me that.’

‘Those gross practices—’

‘Well, I was just—’

A little while later the covers were on the floor
and us halfway after them in a tangled heap. I kissed her between the shoulder blades and manoeuvred myself creakily back up. All good things come to an end, and I felt I was in danger of just that.

She remained leaning
on her elbows, and wagged her feet idly in the air. ‘Thou hast the right of it, dearest Maxie. Faith, who’d have thought it so different? ’Tis not the practice, but the person.’
She sighed dreamily. ‘A proper Cleopatra thou’lt make me, riggish without shame—’

I reached out to help her up, but instead she cascaded gently among the tangled covers and swung back up on her knees. ‘And thou? How wilt thou think of me henceforth? A faithless wife, a light woman, a street whore to pleasure and pass by!’

I stroked her hair. ‘I want to go home. To my own place and time. I can’t
stay, you can’t come. But you I could never forget.’

‘You have loved many women, that I know. How should I be different?’

I didn’t miss the sudden shift from
thou
to
you.
‘Loved? You must be joking. Don’t imagine any of them thought me worth loving, either. With you – yeah, it might have been different. But we can’t let it be, can we?’

‘No, indeed!’ She sounded almost relieved. I might have
been insulted, but I understood. ‘Tonight we have, and then – not forgetting.’

‘I won’t forget in a hurry, believe me. I’ve had the time of my life.’

‘I also. But we have hours yet to make more memories.’ Her hair tickled my navel.

‘What? You have got to be—’

She wasn’t.

First light was no greyer than I felt. I am not normally a record-breaker, and I can’t claim credit for that night’s worth.
I looked at Jane, stretched out along the bed humming quietly to herself, with some awe.

Once I’d half-inched
a classic Mini Cooper – a demure little package, but the moment you blipped that throttle, mighty forces were unleashed. It nearly had me up a lamppost; and I wasn’t much better right now.

I hoped she wouldn’t try some of those moves on Dee; at his age he didn’t look as if he could stand
it. On the other hand, maybe she already had. Maybe he was really my age. By now I was just about his.

She sat up, stretched and ran her fingers idly through her hair. ‘’Tis time. He wakes with cockcrow, oft-times enough. And sin or no, I would have this our secret.’

‘Me too. I haven’t got that many secrets I like.’

She leaned down over me. ‘You weigh yourself short, good my lord. There’s more
within you than appears.’

I groaned. ‘You don’t know the half of it. That’s what Kelley and your husband want from me. Some kind of … power they meant for themselves, but gave me by mistake. OK, they can have it, but there’s ways and ways, some dangerous for me. Guess which Brother Edward’s rooting for?’

She placed a delicate hand on my chest. ‘Something precious? Then little enough my lord
will see of it, if Kelley has his way. That is a man of evil, and I have cause to know it. He’ll preserve the forms of decency thus far only, and then let all masks fall and seize what he will for himself.’ She swung herself to her feet, and stooped, with slow grace, to retrieve her nightgown from the feather-strewn floor. She did have beautiful legs. ‘I must begone, my Maxie. Angels attend thee in
truth, and speed thee happily to thy home.’

I watched
her glide out of the door, a momentary silhouette against the thin light, then nothing. Like a vampire, maybe, one of the Ingrid Pitt variety; and leaving me about as thoroughly drained.

The dead hand of exhaustion flattened me back in the bed. Her scent filled the room. So did mattress feathers, and it wasn’t surprising. One more bout and
I’d have been a dead man, through spontaneous combustion, probably, or just blowing a gasket. As it was, bits of me glowed with friction burn. What I really needed now – yet again – was a good, long, restful sleep with no more interruptions. And of course, the moment I closed my eyes, I was in trouble again.

Half past vision time – time to viz again. My past was back, not so much flashing past
my eyes as putting on a leisurely strip-show, with laser effects. The same old run of humiliations, with some new ones I’d actually managed to forget – and then the same icy rewrites, with revenge topping. I curled up in a ball. But I wasn’t as shattered as the first time round. Jane had done me a lot of good; I was emotionally drained now, and a touch uplifted too. I could almost feel a bit proud
of myself. Whoever was doing this could stuff it. Anyhow, they had to run out of material eventually. Some time …

Almost as if somebody heard me, the visions faded. That quickly; and that did unnerve me, because something took their place. Or nothing, rather. Not a sight, not a sound; just a sense of waiting. Like the overlong silence when you pick the phone up, just before the heavy breathing
starts. Something was supposed to happen; and it would.

‘You have not let me speak,’ said a quiet voice in my ear. The room was empty. I twisted feverishly over on my face and wrapped the mangled bolster around my ears. It smelled strongly of Jane. ‘You have not given me a chance. Any more than the others.’

Quite,
matter-of-fact, reasonable. Baritonal, but slightly female; it might have had
a faint accent, like the bandit women, but none of their flamboyance. The pillow didn’t stop it at all. I’d no doubt what it must be, though what the ‘it’ really was I didn’t want to imagine. Why was it speaking to me so directly? Something had changed. Its estimate of my intelligence, maybe; or my character.

‘What of what
I
want? I want a master. As do we all. Without a master we, for all our
power, we have no direction. We have no purpose. We come to you once again. We will be yours, and all the success and power you can command. Do you want to do good with us? You can. Will you leave us in the hands of another who might do worse?’

I relaxed my grip on the pillow. A hell of a promise; a fair point. A pretty clever way of combining seduction and threat. Jane’s name hovered unspoken
in the air. Those characters wouldn’t have to ask Kelley twice; he’d practically take their hands off. Then, with that kind of power, power that burned out of your very hands at the slightest provocation – what would happen to Jane then? And Dee? I caught myself whimpering and plucking at the sheet.

Not pretty clever. Devilishly clever. Demonaic.

‘There will be no bargains, no penalties, no
barriers lowered, nothing. You have but to command, and we will obey. We will find you, and very soon.’

Booming
thunder rolled across the sky. I sat up with a screech, sending the pillow flying, and headed for the underside of the bed again. Avoiding a nasty accident with the pot, used since my last visit, gave me time to realise that I was awake and really hearing the thunder. Also that it wasn’t
thunder.

It was something booming on the outer door – a pike haft, I guessed, as I got to the window and saw the Imperial guardsman clank into the yard. Dee was hurrying across to meet him, tying up his flapping gown. The armoured man touched his helmet with a piece of paper, and handed it to Dee, who broke the seal with a great show of reverence. He blinked along a line or two, then looking
up saw me at the window and waved me down urgently. I arrived still hopping into my shoes.

‘From the Lord Chamberlain to His Imperial Majesty!’ said Dee anxiously. ‘Concerning a submission from the State Police. Their agents report that mysterious foreigners have been espied within the city this past evening. Asking after one of your name and aspect, young sir! Enquiring in all taverns, lodging
houses and, ah, low resorts. A man and a woman, says one; or perchance two women. Of most formidable aspect.’

He raised an eyebrow. I swallowed, and shrugged.

‘If so, it relates, they are creatures most lawless and dangerous. Attempts to apprehend such a pair were met with – bless my soul! – fierce resistance in arms, and, for the nonce, as it says, their escape. His lordship advises you, Master
Maxie, to look well to your own security.’ He paused. ‘And if you have aught of value to tell which may assist the agents of His Imperial Majesty, to render
an account of the same. At once.’

N
OW
THAT
IS
the original rude awakening, calculated to send your laundry bills soaring. Just to add to my joys Kelley had heard it all, too. There he was in his nightshirt between me and the stairs, eyes screwed up, voice triumphant.

‘You see, sirrah? Spoke I not the truth? As soon cling to a dagger by its tip as to this power ne’er meant for you. And that you can
no more hope to wield—’

I brushed past him. He didn’t look as if he’d slept much, either. He caught me by the arm, painfully hard, and pulled me aside. He dropped his voice so that Dee couldn’t hear.

‘Enough of disguise and fooling! You’ve seen fit to thwart my will in every way since your first coming. And spent this last night ploughing the furrow I cleared for myself! D’you think me a slack
fool, to suffer this quietly? D’you dream I’d let you go unchecked, with such a prize in my grasp?’ His ham hand shook me at every spitting word. ‘A shallow, shiftless cozening guttersnipe like you? You’re as far out of your reckoning as your right time!’