Othman snatched his arm away. It burned horribly, the burn of intense cold. He could hear Emilia gagging and gasping behind him. ‘That’s enough,’ he said. He drew the life force back inside himself, sent it crashing like a waning tide back through the centuries. Othman shook his head to clear his sight. Already, he felt drained, and his arm had begun to throb. It made him feel sick to think of the old woman gobbling away at him. He had never been that keen on providing sustenance, only taking it.
He turned and saw her wiping her mouth. There was little immediate outward change, although her mouth glowed slightly at the corners from the ether which had passed through her lips. Her replenishment would take time, but already she seemed to stand straighter, hold herself with more confidence. ‘Take me for a drink,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll talk.’
Othman had no desire to take Emilia to The White House, and besides, his visit to the Winters’ was overdue. ‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘I have a prior arrangement.’
‘Tonight,’ Emilia insisted. ‘We’ll go to The Black Dog. Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you with your lady friend at the new place.’
He presumed she meant Barbara. Othman made a show of looking at his watch, which he wore only for effect. He knew exactly what time it was. ‘Well, just for a short time,’ he said.
Where The White House was light and airy, The Black Dog was dark and suffocating. The entrance was low and ancient; the plaque above the door said, ‘Burchard Leonard’ — no indication of his wife. Othman followed Emilia into the smoky, beery atmosphere of the bar. It was packed with locals: farm people, oldsters. The clientele consisted mainly of men, but for one or two women sitting on rickety stools against the bar. In time-honoured fashion, all went quiet when Othman and Emilia entered the room. Othman experienced the typical feeling of having entered someone’s front room. It was madness to have agreed to accompany the old woman here.
Someone said, ‘Evenin’ Milia.’
Emilia acknowledged the greeting with a grunt, and shuffled up to the bar. Behind it, the tyrant of The Black Dog held sway, a fat man in a tatty looking shirt. One eyelid drooped over his missing eye. The other resembled the eye of a bird, direct, penetrating and soulless.
‘What’ll it be missus?’ he said.
‘A bottle of stout,’ Emilia answered, and jerked her head at Othman. ‘He’s buying.’
Othman ordered himself a Scotch and soda. He could not imagine how Emilia could talk to him in this place without everyone listening in, but then that might have been her intention.
‘I’ll be using the Snug,’ Emilia announced.
‘Then you’ll be needing the light,’ said the landlord.
Emilia, carrying her bottle of stout with a glass over it, led the way to a glass-paned door at the back of the room. Here, she and Othman descended into a musty dimness. Leonard had put the lights on, but they did little to affect the overall dismal gloom of the room. Three steps led down to a small area where three battered tables stood. Leatherette benches lined two of the walls, and a few stools were tucked beneath the tables. It was very cold.
‘We can talk in here,’ Emilia said, sitting down on one of the benches.
Othman opted for a stool. He felt ridiculous. Whatever the old woman could tell him couldn’t possibly be worth this abysmal experience. ‘So talk to me,’ he said. ‘I can’t say I’m enjoying the surroundings and, in fact, must confess I’m eager to escape them.’
‘Burch isn’t one for fancy trimmings,’ Emilia said conversationally, sipping her stout with puckered lips.
‘Tell me about the Murkasters,’ Othman said. He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. The smoke smelled pure and clean in the overall mousiness of the subterranean Snug.
‘Well, they left,’ Emilia answered.
‘That much is obvious. Why?’
‘You think they told us much? No. I’ll tell you about me, about the past.’
Othman wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know of this, or whether it would be of any use to him. Still, he could shut the old biddy up if he got bored. She could have ten minutes of his time before he walked out on her.
It seemed the Murkasters had lived in Little Moor for as long as Emilia could remember. As Othman suspected, she was older than she appeared — one hundred and fifty three years old. When she was seventeen, she’d been taken into ‘service’ at Long Eden, as all young people in the village were required to do for a time. Those whom the Murkasters favoured were granted privileges — longevity being one of them. Emilia described the Murkasters as the serpent people, because of their height, their slimness, and their snaky eyes. She didn’t know how many individuals the family comprised, but had met about twenty of them herself. On her second visit to Long Eden, a Murkaster male had taken her virginity: droit de seigneur had apparently been one of the Murkasters’ demands upon the villagers. No Grigori virgin girl would have lowered herself to being deflowered by a human, yet every young human in Little Moor, male or female, was taken by the Grigori males.
‘Their women were sacrosanct, shrouded,’ Emilia told Othman. ‘They were ruled by the Lady Lilieth, and she was a stern body.’ Emilia sighed. ‘We knew our place, but times were good then. Strangers were kept out of Little Moor in those days, but there were none of those walking-about holidays then, bringing strangers in.’
The Murkasters had brought wealth to the village, a golden age. They appeared to have been benevolent, although Emilia spoke vaguely of ‘tithes’ and ‘taxes’, which Othman interpreted as involving the commerce of flesh and life. Their behaviour seemed typical of a loner throng, shut away in the wilderness, using the local population for their entertainment, labour and for certain experiments, which had been conducted beneath the house. Othman did not think the Murkasters had hungered for power particularly; they seemed to have been stagnant, lazy. Emilia had little of interest to tell. She had not personally witnessed any of the Murkasters’ scientific or alchemical work, which she called ‘secret’. Youths and girls occasionally disappeared into the private areas of Long Eden, never to emerge again, but not on a regular basis. ‘We knew how different they were from us — always had,’ Emilia said. ‘Knew they weren’t quite human, I suppose. They looked like us well enough, but they were very tall. Like you.’ She drank noisily from her glass. Othman was silent, drawing on his cigarette, swilling his whisky round his glass. He did not prompt her. ‘Still, they kept us fat. Know what I mean? The village was fat, the fields were lush. They did things to the land for us. They built the church, and in there, they showed us the mysteries.’
Othman’s ears pricked up. ‘The church? Is that the one some way out of the village?’
Emilia nodded. ‘Still there, though hardly used. They had their own people in there years back. Some say they had the Bishop on their payroll. It is called the church of St Shem.’
‘Shemyaza,’ said Othman. The name seemed to grip his spine like a claw. To the Grigori he was both a god and a devil, their creator and destroyer, the leader of the rebel Anannage.
Emilia nodded again. ‘That’s him. We had him hung over the altar, but they took that with them when they went. Left only a space behind, but there’s Christ hanging there now. Those that came after put that there.’
Othman decided he’d have to try and look round the church. Normally, Shemyaza’s essence was invoked only in the most secret rites of the Grigori, when his dark influence was needed to produce a specific result, but such rituals were, to his knowledge, never performed in a place frequented by human dependants. The Murkasters, then, had been slightly more daring than Othman thought. ‘What mysteries did they teach you?’
‘The Ways,’ Emilia said. ‘How to bend all things, how to hide in the world. They taught the language of fire, and we could speak it. On the altar burned a perpetual flame. They called it the Tree.’ She sighed deeply. ‘The flame died in there when they left. They killed it, because they didn’t want anyone else to know about it. With the flame gone, we were lost.’
She indicated her own shrunken body. ‘This is what happened. Without the flame, the Ways would not work for us. We could only remember them.’
‘So why did the Murkasters leave?’ It seemed difficult to prise this information from the woman, but perhaps she didn’t know the answer.
‘They made trouble for themselves.’ Emilia put down her glass. ‘I’m still thirsty. Talking makes my throat dry. It’s not what it was, my throat.’
‘Then we’d better leave,’ Othman said. He drained the remains of his Scotch, stubbed out his cigarette.
‘Oh, you’ve not heard it all yet,’ Emilia said. ‘Why d’you want to go when the story’s not finished.’
Othman sighed. ‘Just what can you tell me? It seems to me you know very little.’
‘I know that a woman caused their troubles, the one Lord Kashday got with child.’
‘Same again?’ said Othman, standing up.
Emilia Manden grinned at him, held out her glass.
When he went back into the bar, everyone watched him in silence. Burchard Leonard glared at him through the single, disturbing eye. How many of these people were like Emilia? Othman wondered. He did not want to inspect them too closely, afraid of inviting the hunger he’d awoken in Emilia. If they wanted to, they could probably tear him limb from limb, devour him whole. Greed for lost youth could make them do that, he knew. He knew only too well.
His flesh shrank against his spine as he hurried back into the Snug. Putting down Emilia’s bottle of stout, he said, ‘Well, tell me the rest. I shall be late for my appointment if I don’t get out of here soon.’
‘Where you going?’ Emilia’s eyes were narrowed.
‘None of your business.’
‘The Winter cottage?’
Othman wondered whether Emilia had been watching his movements. ‘Now why should I be going there?’ He grinned over his glass at her.
‘Because you must know about them. You must be able to smell it on them.’
‘Perhaps I can. Perhaps not.’
‘We all took the vow for her before she died, you know. Promised to keep the silence. They know nothing, those children. They are innocent. But we knew they’d draw you people back eventually. They are our insurance. The Lord made us promise to take care of Helen, if she returned, and we did. But she was sickening even before she came back. The only reason she returned was because she knew what was happening to her, and she feared for the kiddies. She knew they’d be safe here.’
‘Their mother? Owen and Lily’s mother?’
Emilia nodded. ‘Course. The Murkasters tried often, you know, to take wives from our people. Little Moor would have become something great if it had worked, but it hardly ever did. The children always died, and the seed of our men never took in their women. Then Helen Winter carried twins to term...’
Othman was stunned. Owen and Lily were kin to him, however distant. No wonder he’d been attracted to them. And they didn’t even know. He smiled to himself. What intriguing possibilities this information presented. They were Grigori half-breeds.
‘Helen had a bad time of it, of course. There was always a strange thing going on between her and the Lord. She hated him and loved him; true passion, I suppose. But what exactly happened that night, I don’t know.’ She shook her head.
‘What night?’ Othman wished she was capable of telling a story without rambling, and without missing out important details.
‘The night they had to go.’ Emilia sounded annoyed he hadn’t worked this out for himself. ‘All we saw was the light in the sky, and the sounds — sounds like big wheels turning under the earth. Then, something came out of the sky, creatures. They were just glowing outlines, but so huge! And ghastly!’ Emilia grimaced and smacked her lips. ‘We could see them above the trees. Monsters! Lions with wings and beaks and eagle’s claws! It was like a war in the sky when they came! Such lights! And they fell down upon the house.’ Her eyes glowed at the memory, then her face fell. ‘The next day, the Murkasters had gone. Only some of Kashday’s menials were left to clear up, and the name of the solicitor’s firm in Patterham who would be handling their finances from then on. The hall was built for us. They knew what would happen, of course they did, and wanted to ease their consciences a little.’ She looked directly at Othman. ‘Have they sent you? Or have you come to us by other means?’
Othman saw no reason to lie. ‘By other means,’ he said. ‘The Murkasters are unknown to me.’
‘But you are like them, aren’t you.’
‘In some ways. You know that.’ He rubbed the livid bruise on his wrist in a pointed manner. ‘So Lily and Owen Winter are half-breed Grigori, and they are unaware of this?’
Emilia nodded. ‘That’s the truth of it. It’s safer that they don’t know. At least, that’s what Helen thought.’
‘What happened to her after that night?’
Emilia shrugged. ‘Gone. Disappeared like the others. But the solicitors gave me a letter from Kashday, asking that she be looked after, so I guessed she’d turn up again one day. And she did. Didn’t tell us anything though. I let her keep her secrets. Mind you, I think whatever happened that night when the monsters came did something bad to her. She was on her way to death by the time she came back here.’
‘Kashday Murkaster left her well provided for, then?’
‘Very much so, I would think. I know she didn’t intend to come back here originally, but she was afraid for the twins when she got sick. Wanted to keep them away from the world, so that no-one would guess they were anything other than normal kids. Kashday gave her her freedom and the money to enjoy it, I suppose. No-one knows what happened to him, or where he went. It must have hurt Helen to come back here, to remember. But the children were a blessing for her.’
‘They have no other relatives in Little Moor?’
‘No. Helen was a strange one. She was an outsider, came here originally to work as housekeeper for Farmer Lennocks. He never had a woman, see. She was a young thing, very pretty. Lennocks was scared of her and in love with her both. Why she ran from the world and hid away here in Little Moor, she never confessed, but she was fond of sashaying round the place. Caught the eye of the Murkasters, of course. They wanted her in service, but she wouldn’t have it. Wasn’t local, you see, didn’t understand the system. Kashday would ride over to Lennocks on his big bay and talk to her as she hung out the washing or fed the chickens. You could hear her laughter if you walked the path through the spinney nearby. She loved him coming to talk to her. She played with him, without realising what it was she played with. The Lord would send me over with presents for her: a jewelled pin, a bowl of roses, a phial of cedar oil. Lady Lilieth would invite her to tea at Long Eden for the Lord’s sake, and she had the nerve to go, by Shem she did! I remember her walking across the fields in summer, barefoot, with her hair all tangled and wild, her dress loose around her legs, singing as she went. “Hello Emilia Manden!” she would shout to me, and wave. She irked me, her behaviour and everything. No respect, no understanding. But we had to play along. What the Lord wanted, we had to want as well.’
Othman’s mind was filled with the picture Emilia was conjuring. Helen Winter lived more vividly than anything else she had spoken of. ‘Helen,’ he said.
Emilia glanced at him sharply. ‘She was a sorceress of her own kind, true enough. But he had her in the end. Maybe he told her too much, I don’t know. All I do know is that when Helen Winter lost her head to anger, and came storming back across the fields to Lennocks, and shut herself away in the farm house, and no-one, but no-one could get her out again, soon the trouble came. She caused it, we all think that, but still, we had to protect her because it was what he would have wanted.’
‘Strange you should remain loyal to a man who abandoned you,’ Othman said.
‘If we went back on our loyalty, he would never come back,’ Emilia said.
Othman put his elbows on the table, cupped his chin in his hands. ‘So, how do I get into the house?’
�
��There’re more than bolts and boards shutting the place up, that’s for sure. You’ll have to convince the place to let you in.’
Othman sighed. ‘Have you ever been inside it since it was closed up?’
Emilia shook her head. ‘No. It wouldn’t let me in, but you, you’re one of them, aren’t you? It might listen to you.’
Othman remembered his experience outside the house when he’d visited it with Barbara. It had not felt completely hostile, but very wary. He wondered what had become of the Murkasters. Emilia’s talk of monstrous, spectral beasts suggested Kerubim to him, which reeked of intervention from the Parzupheim. The Kerubim were the Grigori’s angelic army, and, true to the cliché, they were creatures that took no prisoners. It seemed unlikely that many of Kashday’s people would have survived such an attack, and even if they had, the survivors would not have escaped the subsequent round-up by the Parzupheim. If they still lived, they’d be under Parzupheim control now. The Murkasters must have seriously transgressed in some way, but clearly Emilia had no knowledge of that. The truth might just reside in the hidden memories of the Winters, though. Helen still lived in them.
He stood up. ‘Finish your drink, Emilia. I’ll walk you home.’
‘No need,’ said the old woman. ‘I’m quite safe to find my own way back. You get to the cottage. I’m thinking you’ll be more eager to get there now.’
Othman paused. ‘Thank you for what you’ve told me, Emilia. You’ve been most helpful.’
She shrugged. ‘There’s a cost, Peverel Othman. You know that. A debt to be paid.’
Stalking Tender Prey Page 20
