Working my way north toward the road that circled around Cashtal yn Ard, the purple molecules seemed to be getting thicker. Thirty minutes until sunrise, I found a rock in the middle this tiny wood, covered in moss at first glance, but with the spellbound sheet of paper filtering the light onto it, it looked like the moss was not moss at all.
This had to be the way into Bereft. The lost village whose very name implied its status as lost.
“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.”
—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
“Ever listen to a song, become completely enraptured in it to the extent you questioned whether the music was reality? And this existence was in the ephemeral? It’s when a song makes you question your own existence that you know it’s great.”
—Shred
Bar Sinister 1562
Hideous. Unholy.
The physician wanted nothing more than to wash his hands; scrub the filth. Burn his clothes.
Accursed.
The queen’s blood was covered his breaches, his overcoat. The birth was difficult by any standard, but he had no right to suspect such anathema would occur within the confines of God’s natural order. Even if half the rumors proved true about Elizabeth’s…proclivities, the child—if he could call it that—was surely a testament of divine judgment.
Once scoured, once he was given the chance to prostrate himself in prayer, maybe he would find peace and forgiveness that only seemed too foreign now. Would God forgive him for being complicit in the Devil’s handiwork?
The image of the beast remained fixed in his memory: a boy, male at least, heaving its chest, whimpering. Both heads whimpering.
The infant shared its organs and its bodily humors. The doctor knew that soon, not only would the Queen’s abomination perish, but her sins be laid bare for the kingdom.
It was for God to judge, he knew, but he knew that if anyone were to learn of his role in even this part of Elizabeth’s transgressions, he would be utterly undone. Would it be worse if he tried to conceal it? Whom would he tell?
Who would believe him?
The doctor followed a guard out through a passageway that he acknowledged in some superstitious way must exist, but would never have actually guessed at its existence. The steps spiraled narrowly around what must have been the castle’s north tower. The doctor followed the guard and only then, at the bottom of the stairs, did he notice the footfalls of another guard behind him. The air in their current chamber was stagnant and only exacerbated his black bile humor, exacerbating his nausea after physicking such a birth. The guard held a torch out in front of him in what must have been a very long, preternaturally dark tunnel.
He shuddered, wondering if he were dead and he was merely being led into the Underworld.
He did not turn to look at the guard behind him, but heard his breaths and the clattering of what was likely a halberd.
Besides the feeling of sickness, the cloying scent of sweat made him gag. No sooner had the doctor felt himself about to retch, the guard ahead of him shouldered the wall in front of his torch and pushed.
They were out of the tunnel. Unfortunately, they remained indoors. The pale light of the moon and the freshness of the wind was the doctor’s most earnest wish.
He stepped into the new chamber. The guard conversed with a cloaked figure, but the doctor could make out no details beneath the hood. As his eyes adjusted to the light cast by the number of torches, the cloaked figure stepped over to the doctor, startling him.
“Y-y—yes?” he gasped.
The hood came down, revealing the face of a man…and not the devil he expected to find. “This, Master Whitney, is to help you recover. Calm the humors. And your nerves.” The man was certainly in his thirties, even though he was graying on the points of his beard and temples. Still he maintained a youthful vigor. He held out a vial. Doctor Whitney’s eyes shifted and focused to make out its substance. A powder from the looks of it? “Hold out your hand, sir.”
The smile was charming, inviting. Before he could stop himself, the doctor held his hand out to receive the contents of the vial. The stranger tapped the powder into the palm of his hand. In an instant, it seeped into his skin in and disappeared.
Doctor Whitney began to wheeze and before he even managed a cough, he was on the floor of the chamber convulsing.
The doctor’s suffering induced one of the guards to retching. The other turned away in disgust. Perhaps they, too, questioned the safety of their immortal souls.
Meanwhile, the alchemist removed his cloak and, finding no hook or even a rusty nail, folded the cloak and laid it neatly on the floor of the chamber. He placed his vial back into his bag, placed the strap over his shoulder, and did not wait for the guards to lead him up the secret staircase and into Elizabeth’s chambers.
* **
1569
The alchemist, John Dee, took the boy to his dear friend, Edward Kelley.
To Master Dee, it was increasingly clear how much Kelley favored the boy. Master Dee also ingratiated himself with the Queen. It was already paying dividends as he was often at her side as her physician, magician, and confidant. Secrets always had a way of driving the keepers asunder or, conversely, forging the deepest of friendships.
Since that day, Dee inquired after the boy; visited him from time to time. Once Elizabeth even asked about him. She was pleased to learn he prospered under Master Kelley, though it had been some years since Her Majesty asked anything more concerning her son, William.
Meanwhile, Kelley wrote to Master Dee of the child’s peculiar demeanor of late. Instead of returning a letter, Dee was now calling upon Master Kelley’s cottage nearly a fortnight later.
By the time Kelley came to the door, he was out of breath. Even so, they greeted each other warmly, Kelley expressing his delight.
Master Dee told Kelley his stories of intrigues in Elizabeth’s court until William was sent to bed.
The boy did not complain, but they knew he was listening from the loft above. So, Dee told Kelley of more affairs, foreign and domestic, until they could hear the heavy breathing of young William’s slumber.
“The child I sent to you those seven years ago,” Dee belched and reached for the carafe of wine. He poured. “You know I performed a kind of magical surgery to save the child. But what I did not tell you was that I also performed a physical surgery.”
“The scar,” Kelley looked up from his own goblet to Master Dee. “There is the scar on his neck. It was grown smaller as he has grown larger, but I had assumed that was the nature of whatever you performed then.”
Dee drank from his own goblet, dribbling wine over his beard. Drunk and finding it that much easier to speak the truth. “In vino veritas,” he raised the goblet toward Master Kelley and down the last of his wine. “Under typical circumstances, I would not have ventured into such territory. But, I was much surer of myself in those days. I had apprenticed to a physician many years ago, before coming to the alchemic arts. It was precisely my interactions with the corpses that instilled me with the knowledge to even try such a thing. The plague in those days made many corpses.”
Master Kelley was not nearly as drunk as his dear friend. His wits were still about him, yet he was perplexed and stroked the length of his mustache turning his thoughts over like bread in an oven. “This is truth indeed, sir. I am intrigued, though I confess that I am also befuddled with where our discourse leads!”
“The child was born dicephalic,” Dee finally divulged. “Yet, one head would need to be removed for the whole child to survive.”
The fingers of Kelley’s hand stopped mid-stroke. Once he realized how foolish he must seem, he folded his hands on his lap. Suddenly, he had new perspective of the preceding seven years. Young William did seem like two children. He had known, and treated adults with the same abnormality. He might have suspected something, yet…
Dee saw the concern flooding Kelley’s visage in
the candlelight. “He’s quite all right now, I assure you. But what I have to tell you is the rub of the matter. You see, the souls of both children were powerful. In a way I cannot begin to describe to you, I knew that to simply snuff out the life of one boy, would be to kill both of them. Therefore, I set about encapsulating the soul of both in the same body. The essence of the two children were already fused. What I did was lead the full essence of one child into the full essence of the other. Fate would have them share a body, but to save them, they would have to share a mind as well.”
“But…” Kelley was aghast. He knew, to an extent, Master Dee’s abilities were greater than even his own. How marvelous they must truly be? And the boy—what kind of child was this? “From what I have experienced with him, I can attest that they do not share a mind simultaneously.”
“I could not be sure that would be the outcome, but it was my hope. It was the best of circumstances that the child not be tormented by a split-mind.”
“Indeed, therein lies only madness,” said Kelley.
“I am here to work on him a little more. To finish what I began those year’s ago in the Queen’s chambers. I have a plan to portion out the time to each, that way they may both prosper, with one not in constant struggle against the darkness of the mind.” Master Dee tipped the last few drops of wine out of the carafe and into his goblet.
Kelley walked to his cabinet and drew out another bottle of wine and decanted it into the carafe. He also refilled his goblet, drank it down, and refilled it once more even before offering Dee any more.
“I have a plan. Once I have performed my work, his—their—minds will align with the lunar phases. It is the best solution, I think. You will take the boy to a family in Stratford-Upon-Avon. There, he will spend part of the cycle with that family, then the other part with you. I have already offered to pay him handsomely and he is obliged to accept. There, one will learn his trade—that of logomancy. Here, he will be schooled in alchemy.
Master Kelley downed another goblet of wine and felt himself giggling, though he knew the timing of it was highly unseemly. “Two separate personas; two separate identities. Who shall the second boy be? He’ll need a name, if we are to keep them distinct.”
Dee smiled at Edward painfully, “My boy, his name was Francis.”
So, is there anybody here who can tell me where I am?
Walking in the afternoon
A captive in a passive tomb
Moments turn to long Decembers
Stoking fires from dying embers
I try to move a limb
But there’s a disconnect within
A devil in the alchemy
A phantom staring back at me,
It’s you
The Dear Hunter, Is there Anybody Here?
Chapter 10
There was enough time to spare, so I called Joy and then Cool Luke. I never saw the red lines they followed, but Cool Luke’s potion worked as they were both next to me within the following ten minutes.
Joy glowed with sweat in the diffuse twilight from having come so swiftly, but was clearly relieved at one of us having found the entrance. “Good. I wasn’t finding anything.”
“And you gave me the easy job. I think those ruins are important, but probably not related to the lost town. If they are, more along the lines of using them to focus magical energies.” Cool Luke stared at the light pouring over the moss-covered rock and how, through the lens of the paper, it did not look green at all. “I think you did find it. Do you think we have to move it? Lift it up? Go down?”
“No telling, but we’ll have about five or ten minutes to figure it out. It all depends on the sunlight, I‘m afraid.” I put the piece of paper carefully into my satchel and tore the light-bearing Post-It so it would shine no further. Joy spit into her palm and wiped it onto her jeans. Cool Luke had replaced his illuminating vial into the breast pocket of his coat and buttoned it so its light would not leak. The coat was also just thick enough that its luminescence did not seep through. Nevertheless, I had visions of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the Phial of Galadriel. The thought brought the swiftest of smiles to my face as I associated Cool Luke with Frodo and likewise associated Joy with Samwise. The smile was wiped away when it struck me that in just such a scenario, I was probably Gollum.
The minutes counted down until the black of the sky gave way to inky grays and indigo-blues. I kept my sunglasses on the bridge of my nose and handed the magical luminescence spell to Joy. “Step back and hold it over the area of the rock, please.”
Something would give. Something would reveal itself. “Cool Luke—move around. Look around. Look for anything that seems out of place. That moves or gives something away.” Cool Luke at first bent down as if to lift the rock from its burial place. It did not budge, seemingly going down deep within the soil. Or just stuck.
“I’m getting the exact same thing we’ve been seeing. Nothing new,” Joy reported before holding the paper 360 degrees in every direction around her.
We were two minutes in and no closer to entering Bereft. And I was already out of ideas. Cool Luke fanned out to walk the perimeter of the rock. Joy followed suit, except with the luminescence spell.
This was not at all like the path into the Shadow Mill. The sun was rising and we should have, within minutes, located the doorway. I put my boot onto the rock in defiance. Time was short and I would not wait until the evening to try again. There was no telling what could happen by then.
I sat on the rock and looked at the ground and shuffled my feet.
Except I slid a little bit as I did so. The moss was loose.
After Cool Luke initially tried to budge the rock, I dismissed anything more could be down to it physically, but the moss moved like a blanket or a tarp. “GUYS! QUICK! OVER HERE!” I exclaimed, peeling back the covering of the rock.
There was an open space that led down a short distance, but then away from where we were. “I’m already in,” Joy audaciously rushed down into the gateway. Cool Luke followed her almost immediately. While there was still a minute or so to spare, I sent the text I had already typed on my phone to both Manannán and Victoria: In.
Hopefully we would not need a cavalry sent in after us.
The way through the tunnel was also lit—though it was not coming from outside as I had replaced the moss covering upon my descent. At first, I thought it was sunlight leeching through and causing a phosphorescent green hue, but as we came to the source of the light it became obvious: the path ahead was alight with what looked to be white-green phosphorescent mushrooms. As I approached, the fungi to grow on the stonework walls of the tunnel itself.
We had already traversed nearly 20 feet of what I could only describe as something out of 1960s-era psychedelic rock album covers, when we came to a set of stone-carved stairs leading up and out. Eager to move beyond the confines of the tunnel, Joy leaped up the stairs in her excitement.
“Joy!” I whispered, though I did not necessarily have any reason to. “We need to be cautious!”
“Grey’s right, Joy. We should stay close together. We don’t know what we are to face here.” Cool Luke took a moment to survey what he saw at the top of the stairs and turned to me, grimacing and looking uptight. At least he was a voice of reason. Joy was my best friend, but her youth was still a liability.
Meanwhile, Joy stopped and tapped her foot in a mock show of impatience. Cool Luke stepped past her, keeping his left hand in the left pocket of his jacket. He was listening intently for any sounds coming from beyond the top of the stairs. As I stepped up, the view became clear and it became obvious why they had not proceeded any further. There was an ornate iron gate that blocked us from going any further.
“What shall we do?” Cool Luke asked, though I did not think he was necessarily asking either of us. I went closer to the gate, reached out to touch it, but then pulled my hand back so as to not endanger myself.
There were no sounds here. The shadows here at the gate of Bereft indicated eve
ry bit of stygian black that I had seen at the Shadow Mill. And given the age of this place and its current state, the shadows, though of the same uncanny darkness as they were in San Francisco, seemed to pervade this space. It was almost asphyxiating.
The design of the gate allowed me to peer through and see if there were, even if unlikely, signs of life.
There were not. There was nothing to indicate life at all. There were various forms of plant life I could see, just like the mill in San Francisco, and I could even make out some shapes that might be buildings, but there did not appear to be any movement or light from what could be buildings. Still more phosphorescent plant life littered the landscape, making me wonder if this was something Aldous Huxley saw under the influence of mescaline, or Timothy Leary under LSD.
But, instead of being fascinated by opening my door to perception like them, the door to Bereft filled me with a quiet kind of dread, but conversely, an inexplicable curiosity.
The air was previously filled with the tunnel’s smell of wet earth, but not much else. Now, standing at the gates of Bereft, there was a strange absence of any aromas whatsoever. For as much flora that it seemed to have, it did not have the same scent as one would encounter in any other town with grass, trees, or flowers. Yet, there was a slight odor of something on the air that definitely did not emanate from the tunnel. Something like mildew…or rot. What I sensed brought to mind childhood memories of jumping into piles of leaves, but wet leaves. Moldy, rotting leaves that may just have something decaying secreted away under them.
I fished the pair of sunglasses out of my bag that I had etched and fashioned into makeshift binoculars and peered through the gate once more in the direction I thought I saw buildings. There were buildings there. They were quite obviously indigenous to the time period that Bereft was said to have been constructed—the early part of the 17th century. From my vantage point, there looked to be some sort of thoroughfare with houses and maybe a tavern to one side of the street. And it wasn’t just distance obscuring my vision as even then, making out any sorts of details was much more difficult than it should have been.
Will of Shadows: Inkwell Trilogy 2 (The Inkwell Trilogy) Page 11
