Tonight was a night like any other. Rounds at midnight, done, more rounds at 2:00, yet to do. Final rounds would be four and then home at six when the relief came in. The hours in-between were populated, for the most part, by complete, utter, mind-melting boredom. Few people, if any, came in or out and there was just a rack of static screens to watch, one of which was currently showing the most god-awful cable channel ever to reach the mediawaves. He was only watching it at all because it was so bad it was funny.
Boredom was a bitch on heat and tonight she was giving him the finger.
With that in mind, he was actually quite relieved when he saw a familiar figure place his retina toward the door, slide his pass and let himself in. It might only be a few moments of chat, but even that was a few moments more than he had been looking forward to just a short time ago.
Milton Grady looked tired as he clicked his pace across the large, glass roofed atrium normally drowning in California sunlight. Very tired and stressed. But then he should, mused Mike. Milton had already done a full day, the logs showed as much as his eye was being scanned and yet here he was again in the early hours.
He came straight over to the desk to sign in yet again with another print and retina scan.
“Morning, Michael,” he said, deliberately calling him Michael and matching the overly-polite tone he had used the very first time he had ever said hello to the man. It had become a thing. Same greeting, same name, same tone ever since.
Mike also matched the overtly polite tone, as best he could. It fought a good fight against his inherent southern drawl. “I would say it’s still night, Mr. Grady, but I shall bid you good morning if it suits.”
Milton smiled and reverted back to his normal voice. He looked up and raised an eyebrow as he placed his finger on the scanner. “Dinah still missing you?”
“More than she’ll ever admit,” Mike replied, his smile warm. “So, you busy…?” Polite conversation, Mike thought, and never the most astounding opener but it was conversation. For now, that would do just fine.
Milton sighed. “No. Yes. Kind of,” he said wearily. “Almighty fuck up. New light stream modulator was supposed to be here from Austin today. Seems the driver got lost or broke down or broke a nail or something. Hard to get an answer. Anyway, they’re back up and running and they say they have to deliver it before she heads out of town again or it’ll go back to the depot and then we’ll need to reschedule. So I need to drag my backside here at this unearthly hour to sign the darned thing in and run some tests. Because if, like the last one, it doesn’t work properly…” he flicked his eyes, “…then it’s going back to the depot anyway. Apparently, she’s on her way here now but truthfully I’ll believe it when I see it,”
“Women, eh?” Mike joked. He wasn’t being serious, it just seemed like something to say.
Milton smiled wryly and flicked his eyes. His tone lifted to become deliberately well-to-do again. “Truthfully, Michael, I wouldn’t know.”
Mike smiled back. Everyone who knew Milton knew why.
“So, if you could you buzz me on 355 when she arrives, I’ll pop down?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Grady. Anything to break up the night.” He sighed. “It feels like a long one tonight.”
“You really must start calling me Milton,” Milton said. He had told him this many times, but Mike always seemed to forget. “Especially at this time of night. Hell, this could be the closest we ever get to dating.”
Mike laughed loudly. “Yes sir, Mr. Gra… Milton, sir.”
Milton winked. “Just Milton.”
He turned to walk away, his fine leather shoes making slight clicking noises on the tiled atrium. After just a few steps, however, something seemed to enter his head and he stopped and turned back. He creased his eyes.
“What time are you working until, Mike?” he asked.
“On ’til six, Mr. Gra… Milton.”
“Anyone else in?”
Mike pressed a couple of buttons and checked the on-screen logs. He knew that no-one had come in on his watch but whether or not there were people left over from before was another matter. It would appear not. He shook his head. “Not tonight, just you and me.”
Milton thought for a moment, his hands placed together against the tip of his nose. “Then, could I ask a really big favour of you..?”
Mike shrugged. “Sure thing, if I can.”
Milton looked a little worried, Mike thought. “My car is metered in the lot next to Bernie’s on 7th,” he said. “It expires at 3:00am on the nose. If I’m not out, it means I’m midway through something I can’t get away from. Could you pop down there and feed the meter for me?” He placed two red chips bearing CitiPark logos onto the counter.
Now it was Mike who looked worried. He hated nights, that was a given, but what he did like, sort of, was his job. Well, more specifically, having a job at all. “Oh, I don’t know Mr. Gr…” Milton stopped him with a look, “Milton, sir. It would be more than my job’s worth to actually leave the building. And it doesn’t matter how much Dinah claims to want me at home, if I lost this she’d kill me. In the most unpleasant way she could dream up.”
“Yes, Yes, I understand,” Milton said, thinking. “And she does have quite the imagination.” He took a deep breath, bordering on a sigh and thought some more. “It’s just that they fined me three hundred last time, robbing sods.” He curled his face, as though an idea had come. “Tell you what,” he continued. He pulled out his phone and started clicking and swiping. “If I’m out, then I’m out, that’s problem solved. If not, here’s one fifty…” he pulled a thin piece of cardboard with a ‘PPP’ logo on the face from his pocket and swiped it against his phone, his thumb pressed against the fingerprint scanner. He then placed the ‘Payper/Purse’ on the desk in front of Mike. “That saves me half the fine and I’ll be happy to cover for you should it ever get mentioned. Does that help?”
Mike thought for a moment. Hell, he figured, he stepped out for an electric nicorene three or four times a night anyway, so it wasn’t unusual for him to be ‘outside’ for a few minutes. Every single one of his in/out logs would show that. He could simply enjoy his intake on the way to 7th and back and, as far as the logs were concerned, it was just a standard ‘step outside the door’ nicotine break. Perhaps a slightly longer one, but who the hell would be looking?
Reluctantly, though hoping inside that Milton did end up being too busy to make it out to feed the vultures, he took the card. “Why not,” he said with a slight laugh. He held it upright between two thick fingers. “If you do get finished in time, though, it’ll be waiting for you on your way out.”
“Good man, Mike. It’s a blue Chevique, white hood.” He slapped his hand on the desk in firm admiration. “You, old chap, have saved a life tonight!”
FORTY-ONE
Wednesday, July 19, 1645.
Colchester, Essex, England.
Eli was gone. A memory. He was a means to an end and his end had come. Of course, he wasn’t dead. Not yet. He would need to make the odd reappearance as and when necessary but, for now, Rachael was here.
And so was I.
The lower cells at Colchester, the ones into which those suspected of devilry were always thrown, looked just the same as when Prudence had visited. Marginally cleaner, perhaps, as someone had clearly seized the opportunity of them being empty and had come in with a shovel and some fresh straw for the floor, but apart from that... The moss-laden blackened stone walls were still damp and glossy with smears of only God knew what, the barrels and coal sacks still seemingly forgotten, the drip was still adding its beat to the background and the most vile and burning stench was still filling the air in between. Everything was... just the same.
Rachael was sitting in exactly the same place as she had been before, huddled and mumbling into her beads. Helen Clarke had again decided that the opposing corner was definitively the best place from which to stare into nothingness and Anne Leech was fast asleep once more, perilously close to the dunn
y bucket. The only other real changes were that the grub-eating Margaret Fletcher was now absent, having been stretched at Chelmsford, and Anne West had taken the place of Flora Myles. Unlike Flora, however, Anne wasn’t laying dead on the floor. At least, not yet. With two full days to go until the hanging, however, it was still up in the thick, putrid air as to whether or not old age might nip in some time after nightfall and steal her away first.
Clothed in the grubby russet uniform I had secured the previous day in the secluded alleyway at Chelmsford, I knew nothing of this, of course. After all, I had never once set foot into Colchester, let alone into the dark confines of its Castle or its vile cellars. I had wanted to, of course, probably more so than Prudence, but had so far managed to force myself to play the game the way the game just had to be played. That way, my plan might just work.
It was no coincidence, Victoria and I had decided, that Rachael’s demise had been sourced to the year 1645. Or rather, that Victoria had decided and I, after a fashion, had reluctantly agreed. It was no coincidence either that the Teniers painting which had led Alison to Serres had also been painted circa 1645, and no coincidence that the temporary displacement of the Tables from their safe haven within the altar at Serres had also occurred - again - at some point in or around 1645. Like she said, few people believed in coincidences and the Sequence was certainly no fan of them. No, she informed me (at great length), the Sequence followed a clear pattern. A plan. To quote her directly: "That was probably why it had been called ‘The fucking Sequence’ in the first place.
So... I had needed to ensure that a few things stayed firmly on track before I could complete my journey to England; to accept reluctantly that I had a bigger part to play in all this than merely trying as hard as I could to save Rachael. If there was no clear indication of how these things had happened, but happen they must, then I had to become the reason. I had to secure some things in order to secure the thing I wanted for myself. That was my payment. Coming back earlier also gave me the time I needed to familiarise myself with the customs and practices of the period. The obstacles, if you will.
But what had burned at me throughout... what had been tearing at my very soul since my arrival... was the one thing I had known all right from the start. That, according to Article 625 on Page 227 of “Witch Hunting and Witch Trials”, the book Arthur had shown us in The Trials Museum, ’Rachael Garland’ had been tried and convicted as a witch.
Of that there was little doubt.
This fact had been printed in heart-wrenching black and white in a collection printed almost three hundred years after the event and more than one hundred years before I had even chosen to come back. And not a single detail of it could be changed. Not now, not ever, and certainly not by me. Records would show that Rachael Garlens (Garland), the only woman I had ever really loved and the woman who had died once already (though I tried not to think too hard about just how odd that sounded) was going to die again. The difference was that this time the only slender chance I might actually have of saving her life would be to actually make it all happen. I had to let Rachael suffer.
In other words, every second I had been in this horrid and filthy age, and through every sleepless night I had been forced to endure, I had been completely unable to rescue her from what she herself had been enduring; no matter how much I might have wanted. It was for this reason alone that I had forced myself, like some shivering self-weaning addict seated in a remote corner, to delay my arrival on English soil until the very last minute. Simply, I did not trust myself not to try and save her, to pull her away from Manningtree before her real torment even began.
To royally fuck things up.
What that might do to the course of history from that point on was unknown. As a scientist, however, I just got the feeling deep down that it would have been bad. Really, really, really bad. Epically bad. Everything that must happen must happen. That was the rule of return. It was the only reason why I had ever succumbed to Victoria’s idea of being the one to return the Tables to their rightful place and to commission Teniers to do his work in the first place. Detailed comprehension of exactly what was happening around me was still an elusive ideal, but what I did know was that this whole scenario was already too fucked up for words even without my clumsy intervention. With it, the consequences would probably beggar belief. If I fucked up then the future, the one to be lived by others after I had come here, would probably become a dark and shadowy place in which those left to rebuild society would beg each other to do the best job they could possibly do and try really, really hard not to ‘Strauss things up’.
Though I wouldn’t be there to see it, I didn’t like the idea of that one little bit.
Which only left one thing. The main thing. The only thing. Rachael herself; ragged, lost, scared out of her wits and dying even without the noose; her mind and lungs being eaten away by the most silent of killers.
“Beautiful, darling Rachael.”
I had thought it might be a little more difficult to gain access to the lower echelons of the castle, even with the uniform, and had conjured up and committed to memory an impressively detailed script: a check on the four soon-to-be transferred prisoners at the bequest of the elders of Manningtree. A sizing for the length of rope required. An estimate of their weight. It was to be a local hanging of local people and it should not be turned into some farcical nightmarish spectacle of writhing and choking miscalculations. It was to be swift and decisive, short and sharp.
That was why I was here today. I was just a part of making sure that everything went to plan. That everything happened as it should. Hell, when I put it like that, there was even a ring of truth about it.
In the end, it was all a waste of time. I had walked past the outer guards without issue, as any uniformed castle visitor might, only to find that Hoy - the one man who should have formed a wall between me and my goal - was fast asleep at his post, a half-eaten bread-cake-past-its-best rising up and down on his sweaty belly as he snored. Had I thought for one second that I could pass the outer guards again with Rachael by my side, I would simply have taken Hoy's keys from the table and released her here and now. But that was never going to happen. Besides, that would have left me, Rachael and the perceived course of history running in circles for an eternity and there was a much better plan to be had than that. So I had offered Hoy no more than a fleeting and disparaging glance before heading straight past and swiftly descending the stone steps into the many levels of darkness which lay beyond...
Now, crouching low, my face against the filth-ridden bars, I said it again. Out loud this time, my hand reaching through the ironwork as though I was actually the one inside, reaching out and begging for food.
“Darling Rachael.”
Nothing.
There was not a flicker of recognition on her face nor within her eyes, and neither the mumbling nor the rocking took a break for air: ‘I shall not want. I shall not want.’ Over and over and over again. I called her name once more, soft but firm. Still... nothing. I clicked my fingers and tapped against the bars. I even tried shaking them.
Still. Nothing.
For the next five minutes nothing was the only reward I received.
Her hair was far longer than I had known it, the jet black Amelie bob now replaced with lank shoulder-length waves. I had known her true colour was red from the roots I had caught sight of in the past, but I had never thought that it might be quite so red. So... orange. At least, it looked orange from the odd strand that was now fighting hard against the dirt and grime. She still looked gothic, but it was now for all the wrong reasons. Beneath the thin, sweaty layer of grime, her face was no longer pale nor her eyes dark from carefully applied make-up but from painful hunger, lack of sleep and debilitating disease. This was not a death mask she had painted on because she thought it looked ‘cool’; this was a death mask Death was painting on because He was slowly but decisively killing her. And I needed to stop it happening. I needed to remind Rachael Garlens who she r
eally was.
With that thought came another; something odd, but intriguing. Something to do with patients locked in the dark sleep of coma. And music. Music, and comfort and... recognition. Everything else I had tried was failing miserably so I reasoned that such a thing, daft as it may sound, might - just - be worth a shot.
Softly, and to a gentle tune, I began to sing: “Deep in the heart of a seething beast...”
Still nothing, of course, though this time I was not entirely convinced that I hadn’t seem some small glint of recognition behind her eyes. A deathly silence fell, punctuated only by the repetitive soliloquy which had now slipped way under her breath, coupled with Anne Leech’s sleeping breaths adding all the sense of seething required. It lasted way too long for me to feel comfortable.
Again: “Think of bright lights... a splendid feast...”
And again: nothing. Whatever I felt I had seen in her eyes I was now feeling had been imagined.
Even so, I tried one more time: “Where you arrive... can be home...”
And silence again, though not for quite as long this time. Without turning her head, and barely even opening her slender mouth, Rachael continued the verse. Her voice was croaky and harsh, her sense of tune only slightly better than mine. “Where you come from... isn’t always home.”
For a brief moment I couldn’t breathe. I was stunned. Then the hammer hit. I gasped, laughed to myself, almost spoke, then almost cried with happiness. I raised my hands to my mouth and felt tears welling behind my eyes. She was here. Shit, shit, god-dammit and shit, Rachael was here. She might not be back home but at least, wherever she was, I had actually managed to find her again.
In our previous lives, easily the happier of the two thus far, she had only ever played me one collection of songs all the way through, though she had done it four full times in rotation. It had been on a warm summer’s day as we drove to and from Big Red in the Oldmobile. Unlike the car, the album was a proper oldie, she had said. Hyæna. And each time the song ‘Take me back’ had come on, Rachael had thrown her head back, let the wind smother her face and sung the every last word at the top of her lungs. Lungs which were healthy enough to sing loud back then. Until this very moment, I’d had no idea that every single word, in her voice, had stayed within me as clear as the memory of her bright eyes and her unrestrained smile. A smile that had lasted the whole day and deep into the night.
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