Son of the Morning (35 page)

‘Get outside and fetch me some more lights,’ said Montagu. The mason left quickly.

He peered closer. Yes, there were indentations of some sort in there, almost melted into the rock of the sarcophagus. It was like a pattern on a rock on a river bed, lots of little ripples. Why had the idea of a river come to him? Were they scales? Too big. He leaned right in to the sarcophagus and almost leapt back out again. On the far long wall of the container was the unmistakable image of a human hand – long and slim, its fingers clearly defined. It was as if it had been put into wet cement but there was unmistakably a blackened area around it – ash, perhaps.

The mason returned, bringing two more horn lanterns. Montagu took them and set them inside the sarcophagus along with the two he had already lain there. He traced the pattern on the stone base. Ripples? Scales? He swallowed. No. Feathers – each as big as a goose quill.

‘Help me set the lid upside down, I want to have a look at it.’

‘It’s a weight, sir.’

‘Lift it.’

The men struggled to get the lid upright but eventually it came to the perpendicular, lying on its long side.

Montagu took a lantern and squatted before it. The mason, out of curiosity, leaned over and, as he did so, the lid slipped. He fought against its weight for a second, Montagu tried to stand to help him but it was no good. The lid crashed to the floor, breaking into five big pieces.

‘Sorry, sir, I’m sorry. I have a wife, a boy. They depend on me, sorry. I …’

Montagu raised his hand for silence. Outside someone shouted to ask if he was all right.

‘Fine, well!’

He kneeled, the lantern beside him, touching the biggest fragment. Burned into the stone was, unmistakably, the face of a man, a face of divine symmetry and perfection. Montagu was convinced he was looking at somewhere that an angel had lain.

Montagu turned to the mason.

‘Get out,’ he said, ‘and if you ever mention what went on here tonight I shall send Hugh Despenser’s son to see you, along with fifty of his men.’

7

Two weeks after Dow obtained the potion mix, Orsino had to travel to Windsor. Bardi wanted to see him for a progress report and had sent a boy to summon him.

Dow knew this was his chance. In his room in the night, he pried up the floorboard and spoke to the thing in the circle below. Dow had given up thinking of him as either a devil or a demon and now just considered him Osbert, as he called himself. The whore had known him so perhaps he was indeed a man.

‘Be ready to distract him when he takes his cup of wine,’ said Dow.

‘I will that,’ said Osbert.

The next day Dow worked in the cellar, helping the priest as he went through his useless rituals, his calling of higher and lesser demons, his invocations of angels. Sometimes it seemed to Dow that the priest was near to achieving some effect. The light swam, he heard whispers. But was that just the long hours, the repetition, the sheer boredom of the magical endeavour? The air was as thick as a broth and nearly as warm. Dow sweated. The priest sweated. Only Osbert seemed unaffected.

At Vespers, when the priest habitually took his wine, Edwin moved towards the door, wiping sweat from his top lip. Then he looked back at Dow and returned to the table. Dow guessed what had happened. Orsino always fetched him his cup and Orsino was not there, so he didn’t trust Dow to either stay with Osbert or to fetch the wine.

‘What is your plan, priest?’

‘You’ll call me master.’

Dow said nothing more but Edwin was in the mood to talk. ‘The same plan I’ve had for the year or more we’ve been here. To force it to speak.’

‘Open Hell again. Give me the key.’

‘Four men lie dead. Bardi was badly mauled. If we cannot compel this spirit, we cannot hope to compel the so much greater fiends that might emerge if we open the gate.’

The priest had a dagger at his belt but Dow knew he could deliver the murder strike to Edwin’s throat before he would have a chance to reach it. This was his time to act, for sure, with Orsino away.

The priest wiped his lip again. ‘I want my wine. You’ll come with me to get it. In front of me – where I can see you.’

Dow walked in front of the priest up the stairs out of the cellar, towards the kitchen.

‘Open my wine.’

Dow went over to where three bottles stood in the corner. He pulled out the wooden bung and its oiled hessian plug. Then he poured the drink into the priest’s rude goblet. For all his evil, Edwin did not share the addiction to gold and jewels of many of his fellow priests.

He passed Edwin the cup. Dow had been a boy when he left the moor and had never killed a man. Even the Devil’s Men tried to avoid death in their robbery. ‘Lucifer is life. Îthekter is death,’ Abbadon had said, and Nan had told him the story of God’s many murders, from the flood of Noah to the burning of loving Sodom to the killing of Lucifer’s earthly form, called Jesus. ‘We don’t kill unless it’s unavoidable,’ said Abbadon, ‘and never one of our own.’

‘What if a man of Lucifer tries to kill us?’

‘That’s how you tell a man of Lucifer,’ said Abbadon.

‘How?’

‘He won’t.’

So killing was wrong, but so were a hundred other things that were necessary for survival. Lucifer said that all such things – theft, murder, deceit – should be avoided and, if done, should be only to prevent suffering to others, never to the self. It seemed Dow had no excuse to kill Edwin, however much he wanted to – the priest seemed hardly to meet anyone else, let alone harm them.

‘What does Lucifer do to someone who breaks that commandment?’ Dow had asked Abbadon.

He had responded, ‘Nothing. He says what is right and asks us to believe it. If we break his commandment then we punish ourselves. The sin is its own punishment to the righteous man.’

Osbert screamed out from the cellar. ‘Do not torment me further, do not press me to yield up the truth. I cannot defy you – your words fall on me like the lions God sent to devour the Samarians!’

Edwin froze for an instant, almost like a rabbit hearing the sound of dogs.

‘I will tell you where the Drago is, I will tell you!’

Edwin slammed down his cup and ran down the stairs. Dow reached inside his tunic and took out the wrap of powder and emptied it into the wine. He stirred it in with his finger and then stuffed the piece of sacking back into his tunic.

He hurried down the stairs himself. Osbert was standing fully upright in the circle, his arms stretched out like Christ’s on the cross.

‘You have named the nine thousand, three hundred and forty-five demons of the lower level of Hell,’ Osbert said. ‘You have abjured me with the names of six hundred holy angels and one thousand, five hundred and eighty-five saints. The requirements are met!’

‘Victory!’ shouted Edwin. ‘Where is the Drago? Where is it?’

‘Where did you last have it?’ said Osbert. ‘Think back. Retrace your steps. I find that useful when I lose anything.’

The priest actually sat down on the floor, his head slumping forward as he let out a heavy sigh. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘why do you torment me?’

‘I’m supposed to be a devil, aren’t I? Torment is rather my raison d’être, according to you,’ said Osbert. ‘Isn’t it a bit like asking why the rain gets you wet?’

‘You deserve all the torments that God can devise,’ said Edwin.

‘I’m undergoing one of the torments that, presumably, God has devised,’ said the Osbert. ‘I’m stuck in this stupid circle, and have only an idiot like you for company.’

‘You test me, as Christ was tested in the desert.’

‘Except I haven’t offered you anything and, in my reading of the Bible, Christ tried to get rid of the devil, not confine him.’

‘Once again, you confirm your nature with your own lips. You admit you are a devil.’ He turned to Dow. ‘There’s progress, boy – we’ll hook this creature yet. Now get to the kitchen. I want my wine.’

Dow went up the stairs. In the kitchen Edwin picked up the goblet and drained it at a go. Then he chewed and spat.

‘By God, boy, don’t you know how to pour wine? You must do it gently so the lees doesn’t enter the pure wine above. This is like drinking grit! Orsino never makes that mistake!’

He banged down the cup on the table and Dow saw that, grit or no grit, he had drained it to the bottom.

‘Pour another cup – and properly this time,’ he said.

Dow picked up the wine bottle and poured. Outside the sun was setting. He looked at the thong around the priest’s neck. He would soon have that key.

The hours crawled until midnight. As the bell tolled nearby a drunken voice called out for God’s mercy. Some rich man relieved of his money, maybe his life.

Dow would not risk a candle. He felt his way across the room to the door. Then he took up his knife and worked it into the lock. Edwin would be dead to the world and he could risk a little noise. He pried the whole mechanism off, the cheap rivets sheering easily. Then he just smashed in the door.

And if the priest were somehow awake? Dow had taken his last beating. He was a warrior now, Orsino said so. No little monkey of a priest would take a stick to him again. What he couldn’t achieve by subtlety, he would gain through force.

He felt his way up the stairs to Edwin’s room on the top floor. The door was locked. Trust the potion to keep Edwin asleep? Yes. The lock was old and gentle pressure revealed a lot of play in the door.

He put his shoulder to it and gently pushed. Pop! It came open. Moonlight lit a small square at the window, giving just enough light to see by. Dow had never seen the priest’s bedroom before. There was the priest in a bed, almost the only furniture in the room. The reeds on the floor were dry, giving off the thick, musty smell of long and slow decay. The old man snored like a pig in a byre.

Dow approached him. The pouch was at Edwin’s neck, his dagger underneath his pillow. Dow slid the dagger out, then reached forward and cut the cord. He opened the pouch and took out the little box, squeezing it in his hand. He felt a charge go through him, nothing magical, just the excitement of being so near to what he wanted. To see the Southampton demon again, to thank him for the gift of his branding and ask him more about his purpose. The priest’s keys were on the chair. Dow took them. Then he went to the washstand where there was a candle and the priest’s flint and tinder pouch. He took them and felt his way back downstairs to the cellar. There he struck the flint, blew on the tinder and lit the candle.

The key slid into the lock and he opened the door. Downstairs he found Osbert hopping from foot to foot.

‘You’re here at last! Set me free.’

‘In good time. You need to do something for me first.’

‘I can’t do anything. You’re as mad as he is. I’ve been telling you the truth since the moment I arrived here. I’m just a pardoner. Did you go to Greatbelly?’

‘Yes.’

‘And didn’t she know me?’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘So do you think she consorts with demons? She only consorts for pay.’

‘If I thought you were a demon, I’d let you go now.’

‘What?’

‘I am a friend of Hell.’

‘All right, I’m a demon. There, I confess, now let me go!’

‘You are a man, I think. Demons and devils both are unlike you.’

‘How unlike?’

‘You are a beggar,’ said Dow. ‘Downtrodden. I think neither a demon nor a devil can remain so pitiable so long.’

‘That’s right. I am a man, and a beggar. So why don’t you let me go?’

‘I will – eventually.’

Dow took a book and the knife he’d got from the devil into the centre of a circle Edwin had drawn on the floor. He made some adjustments to the symbols with his chalk – the sign of Mercury where Edwin had drawn Saturn, and adding Venus – the morning star and the sign of Lucifer, Lord of Light and Love – at the four points of the compass.

‘If you are a devil, this will protect me when I let you go. But if you
are
a devil, then I doubt you will come back.’

‘Come back? From where?’

‘Hell.’

‘Oh, for the love of God. I’ve been confined here for an eternity. I’m already in Hell, aren’t I?’

Dow took out the key. He checked the circle. Hell’s gate would be open for a moment, and he wanted something to fall back on should inimical forces break through. He felt more confident facing a devil because of the mark the demon had given him. But he wasn’t foolish enough to think that it could protect him completely. The demons themselves were afraid of some of the devils. He didn’t know if he could ever call the lady again. And besides, the lady was drawn to light and it was very dark in the cellar. So it was a good idea to be cautious.

Dow began his chant, under his breath. He knew what to do. The priest had burned his notes on the devil summoning, but he must have commanded the devil by the name of one that creature deferred to. If he was a devil, Satan; a demon, Lucifer. What if he was an angel? That hadn’t occurred to Dow. Could you trap angels in circles? He didn’t know.

So Dow took out the key from the pouch. He studied it, marvelling at how fine it was, how thin. Even in the anaemic candlelight of the cellar he could almost see through it.

‘What have you got this time? I’d hurry up if I were you,’ urged Osbert.

‘Don’t worry about the priest – he’s dead to the world.’

‘You should have killed the old madman.’

‘I thought of it.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Lucifer says it’s not right to kill.’ Even as he said the words, they didn’t sound convincing to Dow. He had vowed to kill Orsino and Edwin, felt an almost palpable need to do so. But he hadn’t killed Edwin when he got the chance.

‘Not even in self-defence?’

‘He doesn’t make rules like your God. He says it’s not right to kill but accepts that many necessary things are not right. Yet if we can avoid it, we should. If we can’t, there is no penance and no crying over it.’

‘I know men well enough. I can tell you want to kill both of them, the soldier and the priest. What stopped you?’

‘I have a great mission to complete. I may need them to help me.’

‘What great mission?’

‘To find the Drago.’