The War in the Dark

by Nick Setchfield

  ‘Look at this,’ said Karina, her voice a whisper for all that they were alone.

  She pointed at the stairwell wall. A finger of light fell onto it from a high window, revealing markings gouged into the stonework. There was a whole series of them. The symbols were etched deep, the stone crumbling in their grooves. Somebody had clearly carved them out of the wall with remarkable persistence.

  Winter recognised the shapes from the parchment the Reliquarists had given Karina. They were the same strange geometric assemblies of lines and numbers.

  ‘These are runic,’ he said, surprising himself with his own certainty.

  ‘My God,’ said Karina. ‘You’ve actually been paying attention.’

  Winter followed her up the stairs. ‘I’m a fast learner. And I know code when I see it.’

  At first the symbols kept a distance from each other. They were regularly spaced, ten or twelve inches apart, twenty at most. But as Winter and Karina climbed the steps the shapes began to multiply and cluster. By the fourth turn of the tower’s stairs they had become more frenzied, etched with less care but greater insistence, scratched rather than chiselled into the stone. It was as if they were breeding, thought Winter.

  There was a room at the top of the staircase. Once it must have been the highest cell in the building, as tall as the tower itself, but its hefty, brass-trimmed wooden door had been left wide open. Now it was just a bare, echoing space, infested with runes. The symbols covered every inch of the room, the walls and the ceiling, salt-white against the dark stone.

  A solitary window allowed a slice of light. The light struck a bundle in the corner of the room. The bundle was the body of a man.

  Winter approached the figure, cautiously. It was wrapped in an odd muddle of clothes. The coat was a filthy velvet, cut in a formal, foppish style that reminded him of powder-faced men in old paintings. The shirt was equally grimy but its loose wing collar and tattered tie seemed closer to this century. The trousers looked like Elizabethan breeches, buckled below the knee and tucked into torn white stockings, while the feet were clad in a sturdy pair of soldier’s trench boots, presumably from the Great War. It was like a jumble sale across the ages.

  The body was that of an old man. A very old man, judging by the way the skin had shrivelled like a dying apple. The parched flesh clung to the contours of the bones, its surface mottled with moles. The hair was ash-coloured and bedraggled, spilling onto the man’s chest until it was indistinguishable from his beard.

  Something else caught Winter’s eye. The body was surrounded by what looked like slivers of wax. The thin, translucent strips lay in little mounds on the floor of the cell. Winter found himself reminded of discarded snakeskin.

  And then he noticed something else. The body was breathing. As Winter watched, the man’s sunken chest rose and fell beneath his shirt, the movement almost imperceptible in the gloom.

  He glanced at Karina. The blade was already in her hand.

  ‘He’s alive,’ said Winter.

  ‘Are you pig-witted, boy?’

  The voice stirred in the man’s throat. It sounded dry and ragged. The vocal cords had clearly been neglected for some time.

  ‘Am I what?’ asked Winter, incredulous that the man had spoken.

  ‘Pig-witted,’ repeated the man, the words rumbling out of him as if he was shaking off sleep. ‘Ignorant as a shit-nut.’

  His eyes snapped open. They were a fierce blue, incongruously bright in the old face. The man fixed his pupils on Winter.

  ‘Observant fellow, aren’t you, boy? Quite the gannet eye. Of course I’m bloody well alive.’

  He switched his attention to Karina, noting the glint of her blade. He smiled, summoning a natural charm for all that he was exposing a mouthful of ruined teeth.

  ‘And you, girl? Do you mean to kill me? I wish you luck with that. I truly do. But I fear it’ll be a waste of your day. Still, I won’t stop you. The attempt may be diverting.’

  He began to sing, softly to himself, his cracked old voice struggling to keep the melody.

  ‘Death is my sweetheart, who never holds me true… My cruel little mistress, my cold wife too…’

  The song ended in a private chuckle. The man fixed his eyes on Winter once again. There was an urgency to his words now.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, sir. Don’t fear your death. Embrace it. We spend our years in dread of it but by Christ we should crave it. A life without an ending is no life for any of God’s works.’

  Karina stepped forward, sheathing her blade.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  24

  The question hung like the dust suspended in the half-light.

  For a moment the man in the cell seemed affronted, as if Karina had insulted him by asking who he was. Something cold and proud flared in his eyes. Then his face puckered into a smile, one that deepened his creases, leaving his skin looking like pale, weather-worn leather.

  ‘It appears my legend has receded. Very well.’

  He began to gather himself, elderly bones shifting beneath his mismatched clothes. He raised his body with a struggle and rested it against the wall, framed by the frenzy of runes. And then he tossed a stray lock of hair from his face and let his jaw jut forward. It was a haughty, almost theatrical gesture. Winter momentarily glimpsed a much younger man, one who seemed utterly certain of himself and his place in the world.

  ‘There is much that I am,’ the man began, his voice now surprisingly resonant. ‘Much that I have been. Thief. Cripple. Occultist. Swindler. A stealer of men’s wives and a forger of coins.’

  He put a hand to the side of his head, sweeping his hair back to expose a malformed ear. It looked like it had been clipped, sliced with a knife. An old wound, clearly, and it had healed badly. The edge of the ear was now a scarred curl of flesh, darker than the skin surrounding it.

  ‘They lopped me in St Albans. A public shaming. The mark of a forger. In years gone by people knew what that mark meant. Now I seem to have outlasted its meaning. A tiny but sweet victory, don’t you think, girl?’

  Again there was a decrepit grin. Karina regarded him coolly.

  ‘I was once made a baron of Bavaria,’ the old man continued, ‘for all that England had branded me a criminal. Some say I was a fallen priest, too, and I may have been but Christ, it’s so long ago, and one forgets. I was considered a warlock but I called myself an alchemist. Some say I trafficked with devils. Others believed I consorted with angels. Sometimes even I didn’t know the difference. Heaven and Hell… they speak the same language, you know.’

  ‘She asked you who you were,’ said Winter, tersely. ‘Straight answer. No more bullshit.’

  The man gave an imperious flash of his eyes. ‘A blunt and tiresome fellow, aren’t you, boy? But then I forget what it’s like to know urgency. So I shall tell you my name – or one name, at least, for I have a choice of many, depending on my mischief. I am Sir Edward Kelly. You may know me as a scryer and a colleague of Dr John Dee. A friend, in fact, for all that I took his wife.’

  Winter saw Karina react, almost imperceptibly, to the sound of the name. He turned back to the old man. He had never heard of an Edward Kelly but he had certainly heard of Dr John Dee. Malcolm had mentioned him that day in Broadway Buildings as they had stood beneath the portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster. Dee had been some kind of court astrologer and a founding figure of Britain’s intelligence network. But that was centuries in the past.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ said Winter. ‘Dee lived four hundred years ago.’

  The man gave a tiny, impatient sigh. ‘Impossible is a word an alchemist quickly unlearns. It’s a manacle. My God. Only four hundred years. I thought it was longer…’

  Winter glanced at Karina. ‘Are you going to tell me you believe him?’

  Karina crouched down, keeping her gaze level with the old man’s eyes. She spoke calmly. ‘What are you doing here, Sir Edward?’

  ‘I knew it,’ said W
inter to himself. ‘Of course you believe this shit.’

  ‘Why am I here?’ the old man echoed, his eyes searching Karina’s. ‘Didn’t you come looking for me, girl?’

  Karina shook her head. ‘I had no idea I’d find you. I only knew the tower was here. They locked you up? In Schattenturm?’

  ‘Schattenturm…’

  Kelly savoured the Germanic syllables as he repeated them. ‘Of course. I’d forgotten its name. Yes, I was imprisoned after my trial in Prague. A rival accused me of poisoning the emperor. As if an alchemist would ever use anything as commonplace as poison.’

  His eyes flickered, as if he was unlocking deep memories, undisturbed for years. ‘Or was it after my arrest in Olomouc? I seem to recall I was once accused of theft from the royal library. A book of scholarly demonology. Now Dee had a magnificent library. Magnificent. The accumulated lore of centuries. Oh, he had such books at Mortlake. Such beautiful books.’

  ‘Why are you still here?’ asked Karina. ‘It’s not a prison anymore. You’re free to leave.’

  ‘I did leave,’ said Kelly, keeping his eyes on her until Winter sensed he was being pointedly ignored. ‘I left years ago. Before the wars, whatever wars they were. But I came back. Because the world eventually grinds you down with its sunrises and its sunsets. After a while you realise there’s so little point to them. Weary, perfunctory things. Sometimes I think they’re just for show.’

  ‘You’re telling us you can’t die?’ said Winter.

  ‘No. If you listen, boy, I’m telling you I cannot live. Not easily.’

  ‘You’re saying you’re immortal?’

  Kelly clapped his hands, slowly and sarcastically. The contemptuous sound filled the bare cell, echoing between the stone walls.

  ‘Every alchemist’s dream. An elixir to outfox the reaper. Not the sweetest dream, I discovered.’

  Winter moved his eyes over the pathetic figure. ‘So I see.’

  ‘You’re an Englishman,’ said Kelly, with a hint of confrontation in his voice. ‘What line of work?’

  ‘I’m British Intelligence.’

  The old man gave a hiss of appreciation through his broken teeth. ‘Oh, are you indeed? Dee was an intelligencer too. One of the first, with Walsingham. You’re one of his children, you know. Still playing in the shadows for the queen. Or is there a king on the throne of England now?’

  ‘It’s a queen,’ said Winter. ‘Queen Elizabeth.’

  Kelly absorbed this latest piece of information. There was a wry glimmer in his eyes. ‘Semper eadem. Ever the same. She had that on her coat of arms. How right the old virgin was.’

  Karina leaned closer. ‘How did you meet John Dee?’

  Kelly stared at her. He seemed transfixed by her fine scar. He reached for it with a bony finger and she allowed him to trace its pale arc. He moved across her skin, slowly, like a fascinated child. And then he put his finger to his cracked lips and kissed it. He began to speak.

  ‘I first came to the great house in Mortlake in March of 1582. Dee told me he had watched the sky that day. He had seen it turn to the colour of blood. No doubt some would account for that with science but science was young and magic was old and we listened to magic. It was an age of signs, after all. There had been talk of a new star in the heavens.’

  Kelly began to absently scratch the back of his hand. As he spoke, the scratching intensified.

  ‘I knew Dee by reputation. The queen’s conjuror, we called him. The finest mind in England. Walsingham made use of him, of course. He outfoxed the Catholics with his clever little codes. Dee could hide words within words, conceal symbols within symbols, meaning within meaning. It was a language of shadows. But he wanted more. He wanted a language of fire.’

  Kelly dug a nail into his skin. There was a weak trickle of blood. He ignored it and continued talking.

  ‘That was Dee’s dream. He imagined he might conjure obedient spirits from the flames. And they would be at his call, these creatures, flying in fire across the world to carry his secret words. Over peaks, over lakes, behind the very backs of the Spanish dogs as they plotted to overthrow our queen and restore the Roman Catholic faith. It was to be a language of fire and sky, in the service of England.’

  Kelly tore away a sliver of skin. Winter stared at the hand. Somehow he imagined that the flesh beneath, newly exposed, would be supple and young, renewed like a snake’s epidermis. But it was every bit as old as the rest of the man. He watched as Kelly tossed the waxy fragment to the floor, adding to the pile of discarded skin. Winter wondered if this was what immortality meant. It wasn’t eternal youth at all. Just endless old age. No wonder the poor bastard craved death.

  ‘But Dee was no scryer,’ Kelly continued, eyes bright and alert in his ancient face. ‘He was blind to the visions in the black glass. That was my gift, you see. He required my talents. And so he took me into his home at Mortlake and we were partners in this great work.’

  ‘The black glass?’ pressed Karina.

  ‘The scrying glass!’ spat Kelly, with sudden impatience. ‘The stone in the frame! The obsidian window, girl!’

  He put his hand to the stone floor and began to grind his palm against it, scouring away the centuries of accumulated dust and grime. He swept his hand in an urgent, circular motion, clearing a plate-shaped space in the dirt. And then he tapped his nails on the dark stone, insistent that they grasped the meaning of his words.

  ‘I looked into Dee’s black glass and I saw angels. They weren’t spirits. They were angels. They came out of the white fire that grew in the glass, out of the flames that gathered like clouds. They came to greet me, girl, and I was frightened at first. They’re terrifyingly beautiful. As beautiful as lightning in summer darkness. You imagine you might lose your eyes just to gaze upon them. And my eyes wept blood.’

  ‘Angels…’ whispered Karina. ‘My God. I always believed.’

  Kelly’s voice grew quieter, more guarded. ‘I saw them,’ he declared. ‘I saw the archangel Uriel, the one who had warned Noah of the flood. There was Michael, of course. And Raphael. And Madimi, the child, with the face of gold and the laughter that sounded like song. She was always my favourite, Madimi. I imagined she was God’s favourite too. I would have killed for her.’

  He fell silent, his eyes lost in memory.

  ‘What did the angels show you?’ asked Karina, softly.

  Kelly’s eyes fluttered, returning to the moment. ‘A new language. The oldest language, as old as Heaven. Never spoken by human tongue, never placed on a page by man’s hand. They taught me it, the angels, and I would speak what I had learned, even as my eyes ran with blood. And Dee would write it down, every detail, every letter, every word. He said it was a celestial alphabet. He called it Enochian. The Claves Angelicae. The angelic keys. He knew that they would unlock the universe for him. For England. We’d show the Spanish brutes. God was on our side.’

  Winter gestured to the symbols carved on the cell walls. ‘These are the same runes, right? The ones they showed you? The same alphabet? This Enochian stuff?’

  Kelly shook his head. There was a crack of despair in his voice. ‘No, boy. Not the same. I cannot remember what they taught me. I try to recall it, and some days I think I’m close, but the more I carve on the walls the more maddened I become. There is an enchantment upon me. An enchantment of silence. It lies upon this land but it’s mine. Even my mind has been silenced.’

  ‘Who did this to you?’ asked Karina.

  ‘Dee,’ replied Kelly, calmly and resentfully. ‘Dee did this to me.’

  Karina nodded. And then she unbuckled her bag. ‘There’s something I need to show you.’

  She delved inside, retrieving a small book. It was as slim as a hymn book but it had the anonymous look of a private journal. There were no words on its bruised leather cover, which folded shut like a wallet, two flaps joined by a pair of scuffed metal studs. The edges of the pages inside were ragged and uneven.

  ‘Give me your lighter,’ she said to Winter.<
br />
  He fished it from his pocket and passed it to her. She struck a pale yellow flame, marginally brightening the gloom.

  Karina handed the book to Kelly. ‘Take a look, Sir Edward.’

  Kelly took it, almost warily. He balanced the book on his palm, let his fingers brush the binding. And then he popped the studs and carefully unfolded the cover flaps.

  Winter watched as the pages turned, lit by the lighter’s flame. They seemed to belong to a dozen different books – some were plain manuscript, yellowed with age, some were smooth slices of vellum, others were brittle pieces of parchment, almost like rice paper. They varied in size and shape, too. Some pages were little more than fragments, clearly orphaned remnants of other journals. Some were charred by fire, others warped by exposure to water. A couple were bandaged with tape. All of them were bound together now. The leaves of this book had clearly been assembled from many places, many sources, over many years.

  A thought struck him. Of course. The order of leaves…

  Each page held a symbol or a series of symbols. They looked like the runes on the walls: lines, letters and numbers, arcane splices of language and mathematics, just like the one Winter had seen on that scrap of paper in the Berlin tunnel. They were drawn in ink, charcoal, pencil. One seemed to have been set down in blood, faded to a dull burgundy stain. Kelly flicked through the mismatched pages at increasing speed, the symbols blurring as he did so.

  Finally he closed the book. He regarded its cover for a moment, as though studying the imperfections in the leather. And then he looked up, a mix of bewilderment and disgust in his eyes.

  ‘Why in Christ’s name have you done this?’

  It clearly wasn’t the reaction Karina was expecting. In fact she seemed taken aback. Her face was usually so cool, so impassive, that the slightest tremor in her composure betrayed her.

  ‘I’ve gathered it all,’ she told him. ‘Every last page.’

  Winter could hear a proud, wounded tone in her voice. It reminded him of a well-intentioned child confronting an inexplicably furious parent.