by F. G. Cottam
‘So much for the loving husband and devoted father,’ Paul said.
‘I keep telling you, Paul. You can’t judge people from five hundred years ago by the standards of our time. Thomas More wrote Utopia. He was still a zealous advocate of the death penalty.’
‘And he paid the ultimate price.’
‘You know quite a lot of history.’
‘Paul Scofield, A Man for All Seasons. I like movies.’
‘Robert Shaw was Henry in that.’
‘And a very fine job he made of it. Though he was even better as Quint in Jaws.’
There were papers, under the sword. There were title deeds and land registry documents, all handwritten on sheets of parchment, some stamped with official seals. It was the detritus of someone wealthy and important, a man of status and significance, but it was of no relevance to their purpose.
The papers lay at the top and so concealed further artefacts. A steel helmet, such as a knight might have used for protection when jousting. A beret-like hat decorated with an ostrich feather, time-faded but probably once a rich purple colour. A pair of exquisitely stitched leather gauntlets. A locket that when unclasped proved to be a portrait of a blonde female child of about nine or ten. An engraved silver pocket watch. A purse filled with French gold coins.
Paul frowned. ‘Weren’t the English at war with the French during Henry’s reign?’
‘Not at the time when he met King Francis at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Sporadically, after that. Regionally, and always expensively. The campaign of sieges and burning and looting in Picardy almost bankrupted England. That was why Henry eventually confiscated the property of the monasteries. He needed to raise cash.’
‘And Fleury was of Norman extraction,’ Paul said. ‘He might very well have had French cousins.’
‘His wife was French,’ Juliet said.
‘How would that have played with the king?’
‘Anne Boleyn had spent some time at the French royal court as a girl.’
‘And look what happened to her. Geneviève Bujold, Anne of the Thousand Days.’
‘You need to get out more, Paul.’
‘I’ll be OK, now I’ve met you.’
‘Netflix shares will probably never recover.’
‘Ouch.’
There was a book at the very bottom of the chest. It looked like a prayer book, leather-bound, embossed with a design illustrating a Christian cross inside a circle of flame. Its pages were delicate when Paul riffled through them.
‘Do you recognize that motif?’
‘I’ve never seen it before,’ Juliet said. ‘I’d say it’s the Tudor equivalent of a company logo.’
‘Or a secret society,’ Paul said, ‘given that royal seal we broke to open this up.’
He opened the book and turned to the title page. ‘Latin,’ he said. ‘Handwritten. Personal. He wrote this himself, unless he dictated it to a scribe. But I don’t think he did that.’
Juliet took the book from him and looked at the ink on the page, which was black and tightly spaced. ‘No scribe,’ she said. ‘The calligraphy is wrong. I hope I’m right in saying this is what that seal was protecting from prying eyes.’
Paul began to read, not aloud, but to himself. Then he nodded at the contents of the chest, at the helm and sword and ostrich-feathered hat and leather gloves; at the cloth bag of glittering gold coins and the stamped, stiff parchment documents. The Baron Fleury’s wedding ring was there. His Order of the Garter insignia. Some pendant-style symbol of high office set with rubies on a heavy silver chain.
‘These are his stage props,’ Paul said. ‘But this book, Juliet? This book is who he really was.’
December 17, 1527
And so I travelled to see his Royal Majesty the king, not at one of his own palaces, but at Hampton Court, where he resides during Cardinal Wolsey’s absence in Rome. The king schemes at Hampton Court, guest of an absentee host. I believe it is a property he greatly covets. The deer are populous in the region and our monarch much loves the hunt. And there is no swifter or more comfortable mode of transportation than the royal barge gliding serenely along the river on a full tide. A hazardous state of affairs indeed, for the cardinal.
Secrecy being paramount, I was summoned to arrive at midnight, when witnesses are scant in the darkness and the bitter cold. Quartered at my London residence, I came by horse, the night ride not easy over the frost, my mount skittering on puddles turned to ice by the harshness of the season, my body warmed though by the bearskin cloak my beloved wife bought me on my birthday in September as the winter approached.
I discovered the king in ebullient mood. He is a man of mercurial temperament. His humour is not easy to predict, and his summons had given nothing away concerning the mission with which he sought to charge me. Those gimlet eyes of his gave nought further away as he poured brandy with his own hand into generous goblets for us both, to warm me and perhaps to steel him for what it was he had to say.
He has been plotting with the king of France. Henry and Francis are sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, always insistent rivals. Together they have been in correspondence, hatching a scheme. Their motive is the achievement of grace, the currying of favour with our stern and eternally judgemental God. That was my conclusion later, warmly wrapped in a strange bed, my head resting on a bolster. Henry wishes to be rewarded with a healthy and legitimate heir. But I get ahead of my story.
‘What do you know of the practice of magic, Fleury?’ the king asked me.
‘That Mother Church abhors its practice,’ I replied. ‘Is it even a subject fit for upright men to discuss?’
‘Its practice gives power to those with no right to possess it,’ the king replied. ‘They are able to influence events in a manner they should not. Fate can be perverted in their mischievous hands. They are pernicious and greedy, these occult practitioners.’
‘So, you are not a sceptic, sire?’
The king was quiet for a moment. He sipped brandy – a gift, I believe, from the French court. An excellent vintage. Expertly distilled, half a century ago.
‘I have seen a demonstration,’ he said eventually. ‘I have seen the impossible proven from a distance no greater than that between the two of us now. I know what can be accomplished by those in thrall to the Devil. Villages, towns, cities can be undermined. Empires could fall, if these magicians colluded to make that happen.’
‘Do they collude?’
‘Not generally. They work in a necessarily clandestine world. But they communicate, as a cabal would, in code and in secrecy.’
‘And what is this to me, Majesty?’
The king outlined the scheme hatched with his French counterpart in their correspondence.
‘You are rich, Fleury, which makes you plausible. The money to finance this will come from my coffers and those of the French exchequer. But the point is that you could afford to do it, should you ever so wish.
‘You have achievements to your name that single you out as a man of ambition. Again, that makes you plausible, because who is to say where the limits of that ambition lie?
‘You are possessed of courage and nerve, you are resourceful, and you are clever. But none of this would signify without one final, vital fact. Which is that I trust you. You have my faith. Now sleep on it and we’ll talk again in the morning after you have tested me with a blade.’
‘Rapiers, sire?’
‘Broadswords,’ said the king, laughing. ‘A more even contest, Fleury. Sport is only sport when each man has a chance.’
Paul Beck stopped reading. There was a stunned expression on his face. He said, ‘The commissioning of the Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom was nothing other than an elaborate sting operation.’
‘The Almanac was never intended to be used,’ Juliet said. ‘Keller burned. Mary Nye was hanged. I don’t know what happened to Hood or Cortez or van Vaunt, but I’ll bet they didn’t live long lives after their collaboration in England.’
‘Why didn’t Fle
ury destroy the Almanac?’
‘It was designed to protect itself,’ Juliet said. ‘There would have been dire repercussions if he had.’
‘So, he stored it somewhere safe.’
‘Safe, until very recently.’
‘Henry seems to have been a vigorous man, wanting to fence with a broadsword against someone as formidable as Fleury obviously was.’
‘He was vigorous. He was a gifted athlete in his own right, well over six feet tall, slim and extremely physically strong. He led his knights into battle. He was also a talented musician, a thinker who spoke three languages fluently.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘He was knocked unconscious jousting nine years after the meeting described in these pages. That was the start of his physical decline. That was what triggered it.’
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She took it out and saw that the caller had been the persistent priest, Father Thomas Gould. She was relieved the earthquake hadn’t killed him. And she thought she owed him a return call, but the signal wasn’t strong enough in the library basement.
She showed the number on her display to Paul and said, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
TWENTY-NINE
‘I’d still like to speak to you.’
‘I’d have spoken to you last night, but for an act of God.’
‘That wasn’t God,’ Father Gould said. ‘Quite the opposite.’
There’d been no rescue party. The capital had been overwhelmed. He’d performed the last rites three times and done what he could to comfort the dying in the carnage of the rubble-strewn train carriage until they passed, and then he’d crawled back along the track to the station they’d left a minute before the quake struck, led by the feeble glow of emergency lights on the platform.
Though its walls were stained to head height by the recent flood waters, the station itself was relatively undamaged except for the exit, which was partially blocked by fallen masonry. But he was a man of ascetic habits, spry for his age, and clambered over the obstacles, remembering how he’d climbed the cemetery wall a couple of days earlier. That had been prior to reading Professor Harrington’s monograph. He might not have been so keen to do it afterwards.
He walked the five miles back to Crouch End through scenes of utter devastation. He thought that the foundations of many of the buildings now destroyed would have been undermined by the flood waters. But the quake had been powerful in its own right, something emphasized by the aftershocks. The earth would spasm and he’d clutch at any support just to try to stay upright on the route.
The very few people on the streets as dusk came were daubed in plaster dust and sometimes blood and walked with a zombie-like shuffle, uncoordinated, slow, seemingly aimless.
The devastation grew less the closer he got to home. Crouch End had not flooded much either, due to its elevation. It was strange, as though the locality enjoyed some sort of protection. Divine, perhaps? His own church, when he reached it, was missing only a few slates from its steeple. There was a devout roofer in his congregation who would repair that damage cheaply.
His home too was intact. He was exhausted, could not remember having felt in his life such bone-wearying fatigue. But before going to bed, he went into the church to pray for the victims of this most recent catastrophe. He lit a single candle, wondering how many more of these biblical afflictions he could endure before they began to cost him his faith.
Speculating on loss of faith might have been what provoked Father Thomas Gould’s last conscious thoughts on that long night. It suddenly occurred to him that it was a long time since he’d seen one of his most faithful servers on the altar. Peter Jackson had stopped turning up to masses, benedictions and even requiems, which were profitable for the boys.
Peter’s grandfather too had stopped attending mass on a Sunday, which he’d done for as long as Father Gould was able to remember. Perhaps he should pay his parishioners a visit, the old-fashioned way, without prior notice. Putting both on the spot might clarify their attitude. As well as solving a bit of a mystery.
Now, to Juliet Harrington, he said, ‘Where are you today?’
‘I’m in the courtyard outside the Bodleian Library in Oxford.’
‘How on earth did you manage that? Friends in high places?’
‘Not that high. I spent the night sleeping in a very muddy Hyde Park.’
‘Turbulent times,’ he said.
‘Some people are saying the End Times, Father Gould. Do you believe that?’
‘I believe they will come, but they’re not here yet. Crouch End remains relatively unscathed. I slept in my own bed.’
‘There’s an exodus from the capital,’ Juliet said. ‘Fear is contagious. So is despair.’
‘Agreed.’
‘You read my monograph on the Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom. It was commissioned by a Tudor baron named Edmund Fleury. His agenda was to lure its compilers into the open so that they could be dealt with harshly in their homelands by the relevant authorities. It worked. Fleury never intended to use the Almanac personally. He believed magic a crime against both Man and God.’
‘This isn’t information in the public domain, is it?’
‘I’m sure you’re capable of priestly discretion.’
‘I am, professor.’
‘The problem is that the main architect of the Almanac also had an agenda. Gunter Keller wanted to accelerate the End Times. He wanted to see the triumph of Lucifer personally, for himself. Every time a spell from the Almanac is used, a price is exacted.’
‘You believe it’s being used now?’
‘I do.’
‘I still need to see you, to discuss what occurred at a burial service I performed.’
‘I’ll call you later today and arrange a day and time.’
‘Thank you.’
Father Gould ended the call and a flare of brightness caused him to look up out of his sitting room window at the sky, where a double rainbow vaulted across the unsullied blue of the heavens.
‘That’s not possible,’ he said aloud. ‘You require clouds for rainbows. You require showers of rain. It’s the reason they’re called that.’ What had Professor Harrington called this phenomenon in her monograph? The Auguries. The inexplicable events that sometimes signalled catastrophe when the Almanac was being used.
Earlier that morning, he’d reminded himself of old Henry Jackson’s address. Henry had lost a son and daughter-in-law to a fatal motorway crash that had only served to deepen the pensioner’s faith. He’d taken Peter and Peter’s female twin in. Dawn Jackson was apparently extremely bright but not a believer, and Father Gould had never met her. But it was inexplicable that old Henry and his grandson had stopped attending church.
He’d called Professor Harrington just before setting off. As he did so, he was immediately aware that a brisk wind had arisen. It flapped at the jacket he wore and sent his hat careening across his lawn. As he went to retrieve it, the wind strengthened, a sustained blast making the exposed struts groan and whistle where his steeple had lost slates the night before.
A gust blew him backwards at a stagger as he reached the latched gate at the front of the church grounds, one hand holding on to his hat and the other held out for balance at the end of an extended arm.
An empty Sainsbury’s bag, wind-filled, blew across the sky in front of him, a hundred feet in the air and gaining in altitude. He saw a helicopter wobbling above, clattering in the distance uneasily like a child’s shaken toy.
The wind was a sustained roar gaining all the time in volume. Street trees in full leaf bowed in it like billowing sails. He heard a crash behind him and saw that a window in his home had exploded into a mess of blood and feathers caused by some avian creature propelled through the air like a puppet.
Another crash, this time from the street, where a roadside ash tree had snapped at its base and now lay atop two crumpled parked cars, their surviving windows frosted and spidery, an alarm from one adding a chorus to the banshe
e wail of the wind.
Father Gould realized he was going nowhere. He had been looking forward to his first missionary outing in as long as he could remember. But he could also remember the 1987 hurricane, of which this accelerating event was reminding him. The flooding had undermined many London buildings. The earthquake had inflicted structural damage on many more. This windstorm would be the coup de grâce for some of the oldest and most cherished structures in the capital. It didn’t even resemble a capital any longer, except perhaps in a period of catastrophic war. The End Times? He struggled back to the shelter of his home without the will to try to answer his own question.
THIRTY
Dawn had needed to use the displacement spell to put her grandfather down in the cellar with her brother. Bringing him back had been a terrible mistake, something brought home to her forcefully by Handy Andy’s horrified reaction on seeing him. She just had to face the fact that they came back monsters. Maybe it was a process you could refine. Her grandpa had been slightly less of a monster than Pete, but only an incremental improvement on her brother.
Dawn didn’t have the will, the patience or, in truth, the opportunity to polish that particular procedure. Their house was large and sited at the end of a substantial drive and their garden wasn’t overlooked. But they were on a public road in a populous suburb of London and two neighbours had knocked on her door anxious about their missing cats. Cats were no different from kebabs to these versions of her grandpa and brother. People would become suspicious, if they weren’t already.
So she’d taken the book and studied its intricate rite and then summoned the energy and concentration required to perform the displacement spell and now her grandpa was down there with Pete behind the magically secured obstacle of the impregnable cellar door. And she wasn’t missing him a bit.
Dawn had hoped to have a conversation with her grandfather about what, if anything, lay on the other side. But that level of communication had been too sophisticated for the creature he’d returned as. Perhaps there was such a thing as the soul after all and her grandpa had returned without one, just a husk, a kind of human parasite. Maybe that particular spell was simply self-defeating.
