Dark Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  I therefore left Agnes alone until the next night when she cheerfully swallowed a mug of ale spiced with sedative. I hoped Vespasian would hear my call, and could come to kill off our last demon. He had already told me what had happened to the others. Once this was achieved, we could go home. I very much wanted to go and see Randle again and relax in my own house. I dreamed of cuddling Randle, and of Vespasian cuddling me.

  He came. From our tiny attic dormitory, I saw my beautiful husband from the window. he stood in the grounds, gazing out at the night sky, his back to me. In the next narrow bed beside mine, Agnes was deeply asleep. The remaining maid, since others had quickly left, had gone home to Mamma for Sunday and would not return until Monday morning. Agnes snoring was the only sound, so I opened the bedroom window and whistled. Vespasian turned. He was grinning, nodded, and slipped through the door into the kitchens, quickly finding his way up the stairs to the loft.

  I heard an owl call as I closed the window, then saw the silent stretch of its mottled wings. I sighed, turned to look at Agnes, and waited for Vespasian to climb the three sets of narrow stairs.

  When he came into the room, I whispered the latest news and the confession that Agnes had related, and told him I had drugged her with Vespasian’s own special recipe. He sat on the edge of the mattress beside her, and instantly began the same procedure which he had explained to me before.

  “There are always differences,” he said as he wrapped his hands around her brow. “Each creature is an individual, and those amongst us who have been impregnated are vastly varying characters. But let us see what this woman houses.”

  Agnes wore a petticoat-shift in bed, and her grey hair was loose, tangled across the pillow. The blanket was tucked up beneath her arms, and as she snored, mouth open, a tiny shred of pink caressed her rotting teeth and trickled onto her tongue.

  Squeezing the palms of his hands tighter, Vespasian spoke softly as always, calling, “I should like to meet you. Will you come out?”

  The shreds of wafting pink gossamer rushed tightly together as if forming a barrier. Then a soft voice, pretty and even alluring, crooned. “Oh, my lord, I am flattered. But I dare not leave my mother.”

  I smiled. I hadn’t really expected a female, still a monster as it was, and a flirtatious demon seemed ludicrous. Vespasian seemed less surprised, but I doubt if he’d really expected this reply either.

  His thumbs inched towards the temples, and Agnes snored louder. “I offer no choices,” Vespasian said. “I come here only to speak with you, and not for the woman you inhabit. Come out and talk with me.”

  “I can see you,” said the childish voice. “I can speak with you and hear you very well indeed. There is absolutely no gain in my making some unnecessary appearance. So, delightful as I find you, my lord, I do not wish to leave my mother.”

  “Do you speak with your mother?” I couldn’t help asking, even though I was probably interrupting Vespasian.

  The squeaky answer sounded less attractive. “No. Of course not. How ignorant.”

  So I kept my mouth shut.

  Vespasian was patient. Although he tensed his fingers and kept his hands firm around the head, thumbs pressing on the temples, he spoke as though there was all the time without the slightest need to hurry. He said, “So you do not wish to explore the world, nor the welcoming souls of the other humans around. Some would no doubt be better suited to you.” He shrugged. “The choice is yours, although I could force you if I wished.”

  After a slight pause, the thing said, “Why do you want me out? What good would it do either of us?” The thing seemed to titter, high pitched. “Oh my, my, handsome man, do you wish to kiss me? I am attractive, I know, but I do not kiss strangers. Only my mother.”

  “I am a teacher of spirit,” Vespasian said, which was true enough in one way. “There are many opportunities which you are missing. But I may move on to another more accessible than yourself.”

  Another short silence, and then the creature answered in a voice less puerile and more masculine than before. “Perhaps I understand your predicament. But you are a human and cannot therefore understand mine. I prefer females to infiltrate. They are more delightful to influence in unique ways. I eat their dreams of romance, and change them into the details of sexual depravity. So much more enjoyable, as I presume you must know. Debauch, deprave, experiment first, then plunge into your grave. Already since I was set free from Lilith’s symbolic prison, I have devoured five humans and six weaker demons. But floating entirely free simply to speak regarding alternatives, when I am so utterly content with what I already have, seems somewhat pointless. I sit snug here, and the cradle fits me so neatly, I hear my mother’s heartbeat, and that is like the music of Hell’s pathways. She tries to kiss me within when I tickle her crotch. I want no other opportunities and will not leave this new mother of mine until she dies.”

  “Perhaps I should not disclose the world’s secrets,” Vespasian replied with calm persistence. “But this female will be dying very soon. I am giving you the chance to leave before she leaves this world.”

  With considerable hesitation, the thing said, “You offer me a kind choice? I am unaccustomed to kindness from humans. I am doubtful. Are you sincere? Are you to be trusted?”

  “Ask her,” Vespasian indicated me as I stood there beside him. “She trusts me.”

  “Does she want me?” it asked. “Is this one of your alternatives?”

  I quickly backed away.

  “I have other adventures in mind,” Vespasian said. “This woman is meek and kind-hearted. She would give you no pleasure.”

  “But I prefer females,” it said again. “They are imaginative, and so many seem meek until you enter, and find that within they yearn to shout and scream, to hurt and enslave, and most of all to kill. So many wish to kill their husband or their master, their lord of the manor, or their father. Sometimes even the son. I find great enjoyment in helping with such wishes. If not this female, then find me another.”

  “I know many female humans suitable,” Vespasian said, with a quick grin at me. “But whether your intense colouration would suit them, I cannot tell.”

  “I adore being pink,” it complained. “I’m not changing. Go stuff yourself with some other silly idea.”

  “However,” Vespasian sighed, “if you came out, instead of hiding like some cowardly symbol, I might help you dye your tones either deeper, for a stronger appeal, or fainter for a more feminine beauty.”

  After some thought, the voice again became masculine. “Bugger off,” it said suddenly. “I can stay whatever colour I like. Pink ain’t seen much in this age. It attracts the females. Did I tell you I like females best? Yes, reckon I did. So piss off, slime-arse and go nibble your own shit.”

  Abruptly and without warning, Vespasian bent, snapped the ugly mouth further open and ignoring the nasal snores and the guttural echoes, he placed his lips inside Agnes’s and blew so furiously that I had to shut my own mouth hard to stifle the gasp.

  He continued to blow. The demon said nothing, and appeared to be hanging on with difficulty, for faint pink wisps rose from the throat, wafting around Vespasian’s teeth.

  Then the sounds from within the sleeping woman began to whine and then cry. A faint voice murmured, “I thought you kind. But you are cruel.”

  “Are you kind?” Vespasian asked. “Or are you cruel?” And he blew again, even harder. The shivering threads untangled and curled alone, dithering, attempting to cling, before being swept from the open mouth and flying up into the air high above the beds. And as Vespasian blew without rest, so the pink mist oozed from Agnes like some surrendering dream.

  Now Vespasian’s breath was shaded pink, mixing with the cloud blossoming outwards, and the air about us was as pink as rosebuds. I shut my mouth and clasped both hands over it. I didn’t want to breathe demon into my lungs. And one blink after I had swallowed that thought, the gritty cloud burst outwards and surged towards me. My hands already covered my face except fo
r my eyes, and now all I could see was the froth of the unbodied demon, which closely entwined around me, which looked and smelled like vomit.

  Now Vespasian was blowing around my face, and under his breath he was speaking words I decided must be Latin, but could not understand them. I buried my face in my lap, leaning over in desperation, my hands covering what I could, and then the material of my skirts. I could still smell the filth and slime and I could still hear Vespasian’s voice and the passionate exhalation of his breath.

  I think he said, “Et abiit iam et desitis exprobramini”

  It was probably Latin, but I had no idea what it meant. I was too busy cringing and wanting to be sick again. But Vespasian was never prepared to fail. With an echoing explosion, he clapped his hands, and as the pink mist dispersed into threads once more, he blew ever more fiercely.

  Another switch – and the cloud was grit and the grit muffled my nose and breathing since my mouth was already covered tight shut, and I knew I had demon grit finding its way into my head. Vespasian grabbed me. Now he was blowing into my mouth, and it suddenly felt as sweet as a kiss. The grit tumbled from my face and scattered across the floor. Vespasian dropped me, which was strangely uncomfortable, as he stamped hard across the floor. Pink wisps rose, then disintegrated once more, and the stench of death and decay was as strong and as vile as that from the corpse in the well.

  Now finally a heaped pile of the grit scattered. Then it lost colour and shrank into no more than dust. Piece by tiny piece, it popped with little smelly sparks that left only a very few minute grains behind. But evidently even the dust had to be removed or it could regenerate. I sat very still, holding my breath, and not daring to move.

  There was no sound at all except the crunching of my husband’s feet on the floor boards. It seemed a long time, and I was worried that the thumping would disturb whoever slept below the attic room, but no one interrupted us. And eventually after the stench had blown away, the air smelled fresh and no cloud, mist or flecks of any kind remained, Vespasian bent and retrieved one tiny bead of red from the floor, so small I was surprised he could see it. He rubbed this between his forefinger and thumb, and spoke two more words beneath his breath.

  So now even the intangible memory of the demon had gone.

  “Now she is free of the thing,” Vespasian said. “She will wake in an hour or two, but the demon is dead and cannot re-create. And so there are no longer twelve creatures outside our home. There are nine. Which is too many. But my strength is the greater, and I can eliminate nine whereas conquering all fourteen together may have been too much of a challenge. I am, after all, short on practise.”

  I gazed at him with absolute admiration. “You are – magic,” I whispered. “And I adore you so very, very much. Can we go home now to Randle?”

  “We can,” Vespasian said softly. “But there are three things we should do first.”

  I couldn’t think of three. “Rest?” I suggested. “Make love?”

  He smiled. “Firstly, arrange a future for the boy Thomas that will not involve any demon within. A certain level of security and care should be given, if we can find such a thing.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Henry Bloom, perhaps. And secondly?”

  “Secondly, I must ensure the comfortable future of your previous incarnation, my love. Sarah also needs some immediate protection.”

  “And thirdly?” I was still hoping he’d say make love.

  Instead he said, “Thirdly will come a little later. But in the meantime, my beloved, perhaps we should kill Agnes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I slept in Jasper’s arms in the wallow of my own bed, and my own dreams. I knew I was alone, and I knew that Jasper had left me even before I slept, but I imagined him there. And that vision of twining together beneath the eiderdown and velvet coverlet seemed almost as warmly enchanting as the real thing might have been. Arthur was still drugged and unconscious. I imagined what would happen in the morning. Arthur would storm into my bedchamber, accusing me of anything he could think of. Or without the demon within, would he become kind and tolerant? Would he love me in the traditional manner, and could I ever learn to love him? I slept with the thoughts twisting, racing and shouting in my dreams.

  I woke with the patter of rain against my window.

  It was Jasper’s final words to me before he left the previous night, which now echoed in my head. “What I want cannot always be achieved. I can no longer live in your world,” Jasper had told me. And I understood completely. He was no normal man. He was a magical being, perhaps a magician or a sorcerer, even a warlock. The church, I knew, would want him dead on the gallows and yet he had helped me so much, and I am sure he helped others.

  Then there had been the other voice, the woman’s words, which I knew to be true even though I couldn’t be sure who she was. Jasper’s wife? Or some mystical spirit? Perhaps that might be the same being.

  “As absolute leader of church and country,” he had murmured softly, “Cromwell will continue only for five years. Less now, since his unpleasant reign of suspicion and hatred is already begun. A new regime will bring new freedoms for those who wish them, and the king’s son will return. He does not forgive England for murdering his father, but he becomes a placid king. You will face a new life.”

  “And Arthur?” I had asked, shivering as if the ice had sneaked in beneath the door. He had stared down at me, his face was coldly expressionless, and yet I knew exactly what he was saying into my head.

  “Arthur’s future depends on you, my dear.”

  “That would be a sin indeed,” I muttered.

  “Self-defence,” he told me, his expression unchanging, “is no sin unless you defend yourself against a body weaker than your own.”

  “Have you ever – killed anyone?” I asked him in a whisper.

  He regarded me unblinking. “Many times.” Cold-eyed. “I have killed in self-defence and I have killed in battle. But I have also killed in sin. I am no faultless hero, and I have sometimes known sin to be a blessing.”

  Lowering my eyes, I nodded although I wasn’t sure how that would work. Perhaps, even without immediate risk, to kill a man whom you fear and who has abused you for years, would be self-defence in a way.

  Jasper had kissed my cheek before he left. When the door shut behind him it felt as though the daylight had gone too, and my room was once again made of ice. Then I had embraced his memory and even though his arms had gone, they kept me warm and content throughout the night.

  It was the woman’s voice inside my head which calmed me more than even Jasper himself.

  Walking with the pitter-patter of the light rain against my mullions, I began desperately discussing with myself the one thing I wanted to do but felt I should not. Eventually I stood and pulled on the warmth of my bed robe, then slowly walked up the corridor to my husband’s bedchamber.

  I sat watching Agnes, wondering what she might feel – or do – when she woke. I wished she might not wake at all, but since she was still snoring loudly, she was bound to wake at some time in the morning.

  But I had seen the essence of cruelty pulled from within her and destroyed utterly. What I did not know, is what difference that would make to her character. I had an idea that it would make little difference, perhaps some, but after ingesting such growing wickedness for so long, and cheerfully becoming what it was itself, I could not believe that the woman herself could change now.

  Yet we came to destroy the demons at a stage earlier in their progression, and have done exactly that,” Vespasian reminded me. “We did not come to kill those humans left after the demons have gone, even though any world would gain from their disappearance.”

  I turned to Vespasian. He sat beside me, his arm around my shoulders, his hand in my hair as I rested my head against him.

  “I’ve never killed anyone as myself,” I said. “Except when I – became - another sort of demon. I don’t pretend to understand that part of the past. But killing Agnes is a temptati
on.”

  “As always, you are free,” he said. It was a somewhat casual statement considering I was talking about blatant murder.

  “Well, I won’t do anything so horrible,” I said. “It seems different here. I’ve seen so much death going back in history. But I’m the modern me, even if I’m living in the 17th century. So I won’t become less of myself.”

  The tip of his tongue, hot and gentle, slid over my eyelids, both eyes and lashes. He said, “You, my precious one, are so much yourself that I cannot resist you and do not wish to. Sarah Harrington is also considering the rights and wrongs of killing her husband. Remember, she is also you. No one else inhabits you but yourself throughout the incarnations we suffer.”

  “So you kissed her – being me?”

  “I wed Tilda, then found that what I loved in her had grown in you. You are more Tilda than she was and Sarah Harrington is a part of you, as Tilda was. But not all of you. So in only a few more essential moments I shall take you home to where we are simply ourselves, and where our son will soon be waking. Our grounds are cleansed, and what remains can be eliminated. Will you give me time, my beloved, for just those few brief tasks? And perhaps – just perhaps – one more?”

  “You always know what has to be done.” I couldn’t judge anything my Vespasian told me, nor wanted to. All I wanted was my own home, my own beloved son, and to curl in my husband’s arms. And also – of course – to wander my garden when the spring came, without treading on demonic toes.

  “I shall instantly go to Cromwell and back here then, my love, to fly home faster than any plane.” Vespasian pressed me back against the attic wall with the irregular daub behind my shoulders, and kissed me before leaving. I felt his breath like wine in my throat, but hot as if mulled and spiced. I almost swallowed his breath like a medicine, and then felt the even greater heat of his tongue as it tasted mine. When he released me, his arms remained around me as he gently kissed across my eyelids and then my forehead. When he released me fully, I wanted to grab hold of him, but didn’t. I wasn’t quite so silly, especially after four years of marriage. But here in the ugly days of the reformation, I had seen far too little of him.