Son of the Morning (11 page)

Edwin jumped towards Dowzabel. He dribbled powder from his pouch, recompleting the circle from the inside, grabbing the parchments and putting them at the edge. Bardi leapt over the powder to cling to the boy.

‘You can command him – you send him back,’ said Bardi, pricking his knife into the back of Dow’s neck. All around their feet creatures seemed to pour from the earth, hemmed in by the circle.

The demon turned to face them. ‘I would leave the circle if I were you, my friends, for what comes inside will not look on you kindly.’

The priest made the sign of the cross. Bardi held up a piece of bloodied cloth. Orsino, outside the circle and without its protection from the demon, displayed his piece of sacking.

‘Send them back, boy, send them now or I will kill you!’ said Bardi.

As the knife jabbed at his neck, Dowzabel felt weak, faint. Little demons, things in the form of cockroaches and rats but monstrously deformed, many-legged, many-headed, were crawling all over him. A little girl, her face eaten by leprosy, stroked his hair.

It was unbearable, even for someone who believed in the salvation that Hell had to offer. He had to keep his faith, he had to believe. He remembered Abbadon, next to him on the moor, holding him by the fire, tending Dowzabel in his agony after they’d cut his tongue. ‘Let me tell you about Hell,’ he’d said.

So Dowzabel knew what was coming out of the first gate – demons, lesser angels chained to an earthly form, taking what they could from ashes and coals or the insects that crawled in the earth or the bodies of devils they had killed in war. Coming too were the lost, Dow’s own people, the souls of the poor and downtrodden. Still, he could not bear to look at them, their fly-eaten eyes, their diseased lips. Worms were all around his feet, spiders, crawling things, a baby starved to nothing but pulling at his leg. He thought he would go mad but he had to endure. If Hell’s gate was open then salvation was near; this was the army of liberation, seething from the floor, pushing against the invisible barrier of the holy dust. He had to bear it. The fallen angels would liberate them, fight God, break His curse, throw off their twisted bodies and return to the world of light.

Then there was the sense of something else, something terrible. Smoke was all around him. He had a feeling of a great weight on his chest, his ears were dull as if he had plunged to the bottom of a pool. His nose began to bleed once more, and his mouth was full of the taste of iron.

‘It is here. It is here. The gate has been open long enough. Close the gate now, Dow. Close the gate!’ The fire demon was reaching towards him.

Dow was finding it difficult to think. His thoughts seemed unwieldy things and he had that sensation from a dream where a simple action seems impossible to complete.

‘Close the gate. The worst of Hell is close. Do not risk freeing him!’ The demon spoke again, its voice hissing like a smith’s iron plunging white hot into water.

All the little creatures in the circle chirped and shrieked in agitation.

Dow still had the key in his hand as creatures swarmed all over him, all over Bardi and Edwin. He saw a monstrous cockroach on his arm, a head at either end. He pitied it, the poor soul forced to take its form from the offcuts of creation.

‘Forbid these things from harming us!’ Bardi’s knife was drawing blood. ‘Tell them to go back!’ Dowzabel’s fist was curled tight around the key but Edwin’s fingers prised his hand open and took it.

Orsino stood in front of the demon, waving his sword, screaming that it had killed his friend. The demon ignored him, so Orsino swung a blow at its head. The sword went straight through it and emerged the other side in a burst of ashes, as if the demon’s body had no substance at all.

‘Fight me! Fight me!’ shouted Orsino, ‘you who killed Arigo!’

‘I will not fight you.’

‘Why not?’

‘You are not of God. Lucifer heard your curse echoing across all Hell when your family died and now Free Hell has claimed you. We have uses for you, Condottiere.’

The words seemed to stun the man. He sank to his knees, crossing himself, shouting out that he hadn’t meant what he had said, that his mind had been disordered by grief, that he would do penance and go on crusade.

Dow spoke to the demon with his mind.
What am I to do?
Don’t leave me with these men
.
Stay and talk to me, soft demon
.

‘Do what they say and you will have nothing to fear from them. Find the banner. Free Hell charges you with that.’

Where shall I look
?

‘I cannot tell, but there is a phrase on the wind. Can you not hear it?’

A wind was springing up, stirring the ashes, stirring the parchments.

I hear nothing.

The demon put his hand to his ear. ‘The king in the east.’

Dow sank to his knees. Looming before him through the smoke was a man, richly dressed but his face flayed. His coat was torn away at one arm and Dow saw he had writing of some sort down it. His neck bore an ugly wound all around it and a strange lacing through the wound. It looked as though he had his head tied on by twine. Bardi screamed when he saw the man, his legs doing a little back and forth as he tried to decide whether to leap out of the circle and face the fire demon or remain in the circle and face the bizarre figure that was materialising in front of him. Dow choked and spat. The demons in the circle scrabbled and screamed to be free. ‘A devil! A devil. He comes for us! Let us fly!’ A hand groped from the smoke to grab at Bardi. The rich man let Dow go and frantically stabbed at the creature’s arm with his dagger.

‘You!’ said the devil. ‘You played me most false, banker!’ It grabbed the dagger arm.

‘It’s trying to drag me to Hell! It’s trying to drag me to Hell!’ screamed Bardi.

‘Quickly!’ said the fire demon, ‘He cannot be allowed through! Close the gate!’

Another devil appeared – a monstrous head on a pair of legs, stuffing the tiny demons into its mouth. Dow recognised the face – it was that of the priest who had cut his tongue. Dow was stiff with fear. He remembered that so clearly – the bleak summer, so far from home, the Plymouth sea front, grey on grey, and the shears on his tongue. He’d thought he would die, drown on his own blood. That priest’s face was in front of him now, leering through darkness. ‘You speak like a serpent, so you shall have a serpent’s tongue,’ he’d said.

They’d let him go then and he’d gone – back to the Devil’s Men, back to find Nan’s body on that sparse hill, to call the others to it to make a fire of heather and gorse and return her to the light of which she was made. He’d vowed as he’d watched her burn that the priest would come to regret letting him go. The Devil’s Men had finally got him coming back from Lostwithiel. He’d died too quick for Dow’s liking.

Dow felt faint at the memories. He had a sense of a gate or a door through which the devil who had grabbed Bardi was summoning the courage to pass. He could not let it. Bardi howled and screamed.

‘Release me! Release me! I never played you false!’

I close the gate!
thought Dow.

‘In whose name?’ A voice in his mind.

He could think of no demon’s name, his thoughts drowned by an inner scream.

In mine. In Dowzabel’s. I close the gate to Hell.

The scraping, that terrible noise. The devil released its grip on the rich man. Everyone put their hands to their ears but Dowzabel, hands still tied, was forced to bear it.

Bardi fell to the floor, clutching his arm and howling.

‘When the gate opens again, I will be waiting!’ The voice was tormented, distant.

‘Give me the boy!’ the demon bellowed.

Edwin all but threw Dow over the powder of the circle. Dowzabel could not stand, he was so exhausted, so cold and so frightened and his ankle would not support his weight.

Help me!
Dow screamed with his mind.

The demon stretched forward a burning finger to the wound on Dow’s chest. Dow felt a searing pain and flinched away, howling in agony. Exactly where the priest had branded him, the demon had burned him again.

‘You will help yourself. We who are now free have work to do.’

You have betrayed me! You have burned me. You are the same as the men of Îthekter
!

But the demon didn’t seem to hear him. It folded its arms over its chest. ‘I go to pursue Free Hell’s destiny; I have places to go, bad men to see.’

The wind stirred the ashes of the demon’s body and it began to blow away, stripping him to nothing until he was no more than a trail of sparks flying into the night sky.

Bardi kicked a gap in the circle of powder and the remaining little creatures that surrounded them blew out, flowing up towards the black sky like so much smoke.

Edwin collapsed, sitting back on the rim of the crater.

Bardi stumbled over to the ravaged bodies of Pole and Arigo. His arm was a tattered mess and he held it close against his body, wincing with pain even as he spoke.

‘Well, broadly speaking,’ he said, ‘I’d call that a success.’

Orsino stood up. He had recovered his wits. ‘You’re a bastard, sir, if you call this success. Arigo was my friend.’

‘Watch your tongue, Orsino,’ said Bardi, ‘unless you want to lose it. Though considering the circumstances, I’ll forgive you this once.’

‘I don’t want to work for you any more, sir.’

Bardi sat on the floor, clutching his arm. ‘Then gamble less or sell your family’s home and pay your debts. Remember, your mother and your sisters sit secure for as long as you are useful to me, or for as long as I live. You are mine until you can pay your debts.’

‘What is our debt now? And where is your profit? We open the gates of Hell and allow demons that God locked away to come crawling into the world. A great man dies. My friend too,’ said Orsino.

‘The gate to Hell is closed and will remain so while I have the key,’ said Edwin.

‘Perhaps that’s best in the short term,’ said Bardi. ‘We got what we wanted. Nothing worth having is without cost.’ He turned to the priest. ‘Your spirit was right about the boy, father.’

The priest bowed his head to his knees, hugging himself, sitting on the lip of the pit and staring into space. ‘Who was that devil, Bardi? He knew you.’

‘The fire demon knew Pole. It means nothing. I’ve never seen the other one before.’

Orsino went to Dow. The boy tried to stand but he was too weak. The soldier supported him.

‘We can let the boy free now?’ said Orsino.

‘I need him,’ said the priest. ‘He is going nowhere. He has a rare command of these demons. He will come with me and help me learn about Hell. If he can open the gate to Hell, he can get more from my devil than I have achieved.’

‘Your devil at St Olave’s wants him dead,’ said Bardi.

‘A good enough reason to keep him alive. We can strike bargains with it. We may pull more truths from it yet.’

‘The demon said England’s liberation was in the Drago. Use your art to find it,’ said Bardi. ‘Everything depends on it.’

‘Everything? If a fiend like that commands it of a heretic like this, I say keep away from magic banners,’ said Orsino.

‘England will not succeed against the French without it,’ said Bardi.

‘I am a Londoner, what do I care for England? The king asks permission before he visits my city,’ said Edwin. He sat straight.

‘Think what you have done, Edwin,’ said Bardi. ‘You have walked in the darkness. Now return to the light.’

‘Do you think God would favour whoever found this banner?’ said Orsino. ‘Could so doing wipe away sin?’

‘It’s a powerful relic. It would take great effort to find. Of course God would smile on whoever located it,’ said Bardi.

The priest’s head slumped forward. Then he nodded slowly. ‘I will ask my devil. He led us to the boy. He may lead us to the flag.’

Bardi clutched his wounded arm.

‘If you open the gate to Hell again, make sure I am far away.’

‘Unless our knowledge deepens, that will be impossible,’ said Edwin, ‘many more demons are free in the world tonight. I thought we could force it back. We couldn’t and I will not attempt this again until I am sure I can dispel what I summon. Devils are one thing. These demons another.’

‘You sound like you believe their heresy,’ said Bardi.

‘I do not. I believe what the church believes. Yet it seems true that some creatures of Hell bow to God, while others do not and so the distinction is useful.’

‘You spend too long in the sewer, you’ll eventually get shit on you,’ said Bardi. ‘Make sure you respect the faith of the holy church.’

‘I embody it,’ said Edwin.

‘Then the boy? He is a heretic and should be hanged. Goodwill favour us for that.’ said Bardi.

The priest pursed his lips as if he were a condescending master and Bardi a thick-headed apprentice. ‘No. Hell favours him. That may be to our advantage. We’ll see what use he can be for a while.’

‘If you think that’s best,’ said Bardi. ‘Orsino, you will go with him.’

‘Why?’ said Orsino.

‘I think I should keep an eye on the priest and this boy,’ said Bardi, ‘and a spell in his stinking hovel of a house might teach you to mind your manners in future. Make sure they apply themselves, Orsino, and report to me monthly. I want to see progress in finding this banner.’

Orsino snorted. ‘It will be a rare hovel that’s more unhospitable than the moors.’

‘Now,’ said Bardi, ‘I’m going down into the town to fix my arm and stay with a merchant friend of mine. Accompany me, Orsino. We head for London tomorrow. At first light,’ said Bardi to Orsino.

‘Not first light,’ said Orsino.

‘Why not?’

‘Because before we do anything, me and the father here are going to bury my friend.’

Bardi nodded. ‘Return once you have seen me to my lodgings. Work through the night and say your mass at dawn. Clear the rest of this mess as well – including Pole. We’ll leave his family to wondering what could have happened to him on the road back to London. I will stop at Windsor to report our findings to the king. After that you are at my disposal. Fetch me my horse. And you priest, prepare to work. Your salvation, England’s salvation and indeed mine, depend upon you.’