by Kim Wilkins
I didn’t reply. I didn’t really have the energy. I was half-drunk, exhausted, strung out, hadn’t washed my hair in four days, hadn’t changed my clothes in two, and was completely out of control of my emotions. Iwas weeping, and didn’t even realise it until Chloe handed me a tissue. Chloe sat me down and went to the counter to order for both of us. I put my head in my hands, leaning on the table as though it were the only thing holding me up.
“Sophie? Sophie Cabrel?”
I looked up. A well-dressed man in his mid-thirties stood in front of me, and it took me a moment to recognise him. Terry Butler, a friend of Martin’s.
“Oh, hello,” I said, straightening up, self-consciously pushing my hair out of my eyes. “Terry, isn’t it?”
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You look unwell.”
“I am … I haven’t been …” I began to weep again, and I knew somewhere in some other consciousness that this was bad, very bad, because Martin was supposed to believe that I was happy, healthy, hearty and doing just fine without him.
“Can I buy you a coffee?” he asked. “Perhaps you can tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m with a friend,” I managed, pointing at Chloe, who was returning. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“Hello,” Chloe said, looking curiously at Terry.
I introduced them and they exchanged greetings.
“I’ll be on my way then,” said Terry, holding up a paper takeaway bag as evidence. “Sophie, I’ll say hello to Martin for you.”
I tried to smile but couldn’t, so I grimaced at him as he left, then slumped onto the table.
“It will be all right,” Chloe said, patting my hand. “Don’t worry.”
I knew that. I knew it would be all right. Because tomorrow I would be with the old woman again.
I didn’t realise how foolish I had been until the following day, the glorious promising day of my remedy. My adventure with Chloe, leading her all over town, bragging about how easily I could lose her had, of course, made them twice as vigilant. Exactly twice. When I peeked out the window in the morning, there were Marcus and Mandy. Waiting, chatting to each other, no doubt ready to grab me if I went out the front door.
“Damn,” I said. “Damn, damn.” I paced the room. I had planned to leave mid-morning, lose my guardian on the underground, and come up at the Barbican because they would be expecting me to go through Old Street. I knew that by the time I was in the old woman’s building, they wouldn’t come near me. They were too afraid. Deirdre had wanted me thrown out of the dinner party on Sunday because she feared contamination. There was no way they’d break in and grab me once I was there.
Still, I’d rather they didn’t even know.
I dressed and made a tentative trip to the bakery for breakfast donuts. Marcus and Mandy flanked me as soon as I left the building.
“How are you feeling?” Mandy asked, her anorexic chin trembling in fear as she assessed how much weight I’d managed to put on in just a week.
“Terrible,” I said. “Just awful.”
“But you did it,” Marcus said encouragingly. “You refused to go back yesterday, and that must mean you’re feeling more able to keep refusing.”
“It does, it does,” I said. “I’m just getting some food, and then I’m going back upstairs to work all day. Take my mind off it.”
They seemed to accept this. I suppose it was easier for them to accept it than to continue worrying about when I’d make my break for it.
I took refuge once again in my room, the curtains drawn tightly. At mid-morning I peered out and saw Neal and Art had relieved Marcus and Mandy. My palms were wringing wet, and I trembled all over. I should go soon, I should be on my way soon. She was expecting me. If they stopped me, would she refuse to see me another day? I gasped at the thought, suspected I might die if that were the case. I had to get out of the building some other way.
I went to the bathroom and pushed open the window to assess it as an escape route. It would be a tight squeeze, but I could fit. The drop was fairly steep, but there were two drainpipes running side by side; their curves would make good footholds. From there, I could disappear up the alley, come out near Euston Road, and walk down to Great Portland Street for a train.
Shaking with fear and anticipation, I returned to my room to gather my things. Tape recorder, fresh tapes and batteries, notebook. I caught sight of myself in the mirror over my wash basin and barely recognised myself. None of this mattered. Nothing mattered but the knowledge that I would soon be in her company. I took one last glance out the front window — Neal and Art were sitting on a fence talking — and went to the bathroom.
I limped all the way from the Barbican to the old woman’s house, on account of a four feet fall from a slippery drainpipe. I barely felt the pain, but knew by tomorrow my ankle would swell and I would be in tremendous pain walking on it. The thought of tomorrow, though, was an alien one to me, like the thought of one’s own mortality. Yes, it would happen eventually, but for the present it hardly seemed possible.
She was waiting for me, eyes fixed on the doorway. “Sophie, you’ve come back.”
“It’s been agony,” I moaned, closing the door behind me. “Friends have been watching me. I hope they don’t come up here.”
“They won’t. Not once I start talking. It will keep them away.”
“What’s happening to me?” I asked as I set up my tape recorder. “Why do I feel so terrible?”
“I warned you when you first came.”
“You didn’t tell me it would hurt so much.”
She shrugged. “I warned you. That was the extent of my obligation.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, sitting on the floor, then giving up on any pretence of propriety and stretching out full-length on the bare boards, on my back, waiting for her voice as an exhausted woman waits for sleep. It’s coming. Sweet, sublime relief.
“Where was I?” she said.
“The plague.”
“Oh, yes. They left London. And they were away for many months. Around a quarter of London residents were afflicted and died. It was the worst plague in living memory.”
And so — thank the Lord — at last she spoke.
10
Who Could Seduce Angels?
Mary raced into the kitchen, Max running at her heels, and stopped short. “Death! It smells terrible in here!”
“What did you expect?” Deborah said, stacking coal into the fire. “It has been locked up for nearly a year.”
“Locked up with a dead rat in the chimney,” Mary muttered, scooping Max into her arms and pressing him against her face. Six months without a bath and he smelled better than their kitchen.
After a long bumpy journey, the family had finally arrived home to the house on Artillery Walk. While her sisters, Father and Betty had brought in the trunks and opened the windows, Mary had spent ten minutes running up and down the street seeing which of their neighbours were still alive. And checking, of course, if anyone had moved into the house with her secret room. Luck was still on her side.
“Well, Mary?” Father said, leaning on the table. “Who is alive and who is dead?”
“The two old people on the corner are dead, the Whitlocks lost four of their children, everyone from the house adjacent to Greene Lane died, and the three houses directly across are still vacant — I suppose they haven’t returned from the country yet.”
“I hope we haven’t returned too soon,” Father muttered.
“But we’ve been away so long, Father,” Anne said. “We had to come back or we would have forgotten what London looked like.”
“Are the Baileys still there?” Betty asked Mary.
“Who are the Baileys?”
“The Catholics on Leake Street.”
“I didn’t walk that far.”
“Go back and check. I’d like to know if they’re still alive.”
“Do it yourself,” Mary said. “I’ve better things to do.” Mary had long since dropp
ed any pretence of being polite to Betty, and Father had long since given up admonishing either of them for their bickering. “I’m going up to check our room,” Mary said.
“Wait for me,” Deborah said.
“I’ll race you to the top of the stairs.”
They both ran off, and Mary felt a twinge of guilt that Anne had to limp so slowly behind them. But excitement at being home was too much for her; Max yapping merrily around their feet, she and Deborah chased each other up the stairs.
Their room was exactly as they had left it, though dustier.
“We shall have to give all the rugs a good beating, and turn all the beds,” Deborah said, inspecting her closet.
“I’m going to the secret room,” Mary said.
“Good luck,” Deborah said. She was on her hands and knees, feeling under her bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Just checking if something’s still there.”
“Watch Max for me?”
“Of course. But don’t be too long. Betty will get suspicious.”
Mary threw open the window and hoisted herself out onto the ledge. She could see clearly down into the Walk: the boarded-up houses, the fading plague crosses on doors. An air of emptiness still clung to the street. They had heard reports of the enormous numbers of people who had died, but the illness had run its course, and slowly the refugees were starting to return. By midsummer, she expected, all would be as normal.
And Lazodeus, hopefully, would be back.
Her first shock was that the window of her secret room was open. Had it stayed open all this time? Obviously it had, for the rugs and cushions near it were mouldy with rain damage. She kicked them aside and moved further into the room. Dust took the edge of brightness from her cushions and hangings. She shook a red curtain half-heartedly, sneezed from the dust which emerged. Her eyes itched and she rubbed them vigorously. Lying down among the cushions, she closed her eyes and did what she had known all along she would do the instant she was back.
“Lazodeus? Can you hear me?”
She hadn’t really expected him to arrive, but she was disappointed when he didn’t. Not a day had passed in the country cottage when she did not long for him. Rather than waning, her yearning had grown stronger every day. She squirmed in her bed at night, next to her sisters, longing for the intense pleasures he had taught her. On many occasions she had walked out into a secluded field, lay among the long grass and given those pleasures to herself. One particularly fortunate week, she had found a local boy willing to attempt learning the methods. But neither solution was really satisfactory. It was the angel she longed for, his divine face, his thrilling presence. What could she do to make him come?
She sighed, flipped over on her stomach and sneezed again for the dust. It was bliss to have some space to herself. The house at Chalfont was small and there had been little chance of avoiding her family. In summer and spring it was fine enough to go out of doors; all three of them had often left the cottage in the morning, went their separate ways and did not return until supper. Whenever they were inside, Betty seemed determined to harass them, especially Mary whom she particularly despised. Mary found, though, that she almost relished being Betty’s enemy. She bathed in Betty’s loathing almost as indulgently as Deborah bathed in Father’s approval.
No, that wasn’t right, for Deborah no longer seemed so eager to please her father. She had changed in those months away. Physically, she had grown to full maturity, and — damn her eyes — she was the most beautiful of them by a large margin; a young woman for whom heads turned as she walked by, but with absolutely no interest in men and their attention. But it was in matters of the heart that Deborah had changed the most. She no longer toadied around Father hoping to impress him. She would go out in the morning with two enormous books under her arm, find a tree to sit beneath and read all day. Mary had looked into the books once, when Deborah was sick in bed, and found that they were books of magic and astrology. It was all too much like mathematics for Mary’s liking, and just so typical of Deborah to reject Lazodeus and then go looking for magic in a book.
The worst part of Deborah’s growing indifference to their father was Father’s growing irritation with all three of them. Without Deborah to displace his paternal affection onto, he had begun to accuse all of them of being ungrateful, disloyal, cold-hearted and disobedient (much to Betty’s joy). If Betty could read and write well, he would most certainly have sent them away by now. But his great epic — that interminable trial of patience he called Paradise Lost — needed scribes, and Father, not clever with money at the best of times, had to rely on his daughters for his dictation.
Boring, old, blind, waspish Father. Healthy as a horse, though. Wouldn’t die any time soon.
Mary picked herself up and headed for the window. She should rejoin her family, help to set the house up again. There was nothing much for her in the secret room anyway. She wondered how long she would have to wait for Lazodeus’s return. A brief moment of cold fear swept over her when she allowed herself to imagine that he may never return. But no, she couldn’t believe that. To believe that was to lose all hope. For without him, she knew, she would surely die.
Deborah knocked vainly on Amelia’s door for five minutes, then had to admit that the older woman wasn’t home. She turned and scanned her surroundings. The two slender, bent trees were heavy with leaves and a blackbird hopped among them, watching her warily.
So Amelia had not yet returned to London, and Deborah could not gauge her own disappointment. She had spent all the time away at Chalfont poring over the books, learning the endless lists of correspondences and mathematical formulae as keenly as she had once learned every remedy in the Pharmacopoeia. Now she wanted to put her new knowledge into use. Now she was ready to be Amelia’s apprentice.
She felt overwhelmed, unsure what to do, so she sat on Amelia’s doorstep and put her head in her hands. The long months of their refuge from London had changed her in many ways, but she was still at her core the same person. She would weigh the situation up carefully, and decide what her next course of action would be. Perhaps she should spend the time until Amelia’s arrival revising what she had learned. She could leave a note, asking Amelia to send word when she had returned to London. And she would not experiment with anything magical — the scrying mirror, for example — until she was safely under Amelia’s tutelage.
The blackbird took to flight as she stood and walked past it, back onto the street. But as she began to walk away, she saw two figures approaching in the distance. One tall, elegant lady and a hunched hag. Amelia and Gisela.
Despite herself, Deborah began to wave madly.
“Amelia!” she called. “You’re home!”
Amelia waited until she was closer to respond. “I’ve only been out at the markets.”
“I thought you weren’t yet returned to London.”
“I’ve been back since Christmas. And you?”
“Father was over-cautious. So many died.” She remembered her manners and nodded her head at Gisela, who was carrying a sack. Gisela smiled a crooked smile and walked on ahead of them.
“I’ve learned everything I can from your books,” Deborah said. “I know you will be pleased with me.”
“Come inside, then. The cats will be happy for a fresh lap to sit on.”
The walls inside had been newly whitewashed, the candlesticks had been polished to a fine gleam, and all the rugs and cushions had been beaten back to their former glory. The cats lazed in soft places. Richly coloured curtains were drawn against the daylight, and candles glowed in the dark.
“Where have you been?” Amelia asked, clearing a space to sit.
“Out in the country. All living on top of each other. Betty nearly drove us mad.” Deborah picked up a cat and sat down.
“And your Father?” Amelia said, eyes gleaming. “Has your relationship with him improved?”
“My relationship with my father is not what it was,” Deborah replied, and she
still felt the tingle of cool regret. “He is not what I thought he was.”
“Most of our idols have clay feet. You’d do well to remember that,” Amelia said. “So, you believe you are ready for an apprenticeship with me?”
“Yes, haply.”
“I will have to test you.”
“I anticipated you would.”
She leaned forward, and Deborah got the distinct impression that Amelia expected her to fail.
“What is the highest emanation on the Tree of Life?”
“Kether,” she said. The question was too easy; a trick question to mislead someone feigning knowledge. She may as well have asked the first letter of the alphabet.
“The twenty-fourth angel of the Decanates?”
This was more the question she expected. “Uthrodiel,” she answered without hesitation.
Amelia suppressed a smile. She was surprised, impressed. Deborah felt pride swelling inside her, for she knew she could impress her new teacher even more. Every day for months she had gone out to the forest and studied the books assiduously.
“And his sign?”
“The scorpion.”
“Hmm,” Amelia said. “Very good. So far …”
“I’m ready for more.”
“Who is the ruler of the ninth hour of the day?”
“Vadriel.”
“His numeric value?”
“Two hundred and fifty-two.”
“Which demon is represented by a lion with a donkey’s head?”
“Valefor,” she said, and to obviate further questions: “He is ruled by Venus, cadent by day.”
“And would you call on Valefor if you wished to find something stolen?”
“No, for Valefor teaches thieves. I would call upon Andromalius.”
Amelia leaned back and clapped once. “Ha!”
“Are you pleased with me?”
“You have an exceptional memory.”
“I studied very closely.”
“But does the whole system make sense to you? Or are they all simply unrelated facts?”
Deborah paused over this question. “I understand the system, the chain of correspondences, but I do not believe that all the knowledge of the universe is answerable to the system.”
