I stopped, stared, leaned out over the railing so far I really risked a fall. Except that my hands had frozen to the railing, and my spine stiffened to the sudden thrill. The gusts riffled my hair, but it didn’t seem cold any more; the chill ran deeper. Across the junction approaches, across an exceptionally scrubby triangle of grass, a finger of reddish sunlight was falling. Two deep furrows suddenly spilled over with scarlet, pointing like an arrow to curving skidmarks on the dusty road, hardly worn at all – broad racing treads, not at all usual. And these in turn pointed to a part of the hedge I’d looked at like the rest; but now the low light highlighted a gap, a notch really, half concealed by the tangled stems. Not the most welcoming effect, that – like a wound, somehow. But it was the first new thing I’d seen for hours; and no ordinary car left those tracks. I leaned back and went padding on down the walkway. After a minute I began to run.
Keeping out from under the cameras wasn’t easy, but on foot you could watch them and time your dashes – especially as they tended to follow the heaviest traffic. I’d had lots of practice, but it was still a bit like 1984. I didn’t know what the country was coming to. Cameras on half the city streets now, infringing everybody’s civil liberties so you had to creep up to cars on your hands and knees, or just work bloody fast. Totalitarian, that’s what I call it.
Maybe that should have made me think, but it was only as I crossed to the island’s outer verge, with the red sunlight ahead of me all the way, that I clued up. I was being led.
Here came the traffic, though, and the camera was swinging this way. No going back – and what the hell to, anyhow? I hopped the kerb, hit the hedge and tried to peer through the gap. A sudden glare of scarlet dazzled me, making me hesitate, almost too long. A dinosaur bellowed in the twilight, and the green bulk of the trailer truck swept around the curve, too close in, far too close. The slipstream would pluck me off the verge like a dry leaf out of the ditch. I didn’t even think of choices. I jumped, and felt the dry stems rattle about me as the thing swept by, that close. And there I was in the field.
Only it wasn’t the one I’d seen from above. And the scarlet gleam was that last spear of sunset striking the detached and unscorched door of the wrecked Ferrari. And there beside it, still leaning on his monstrous scythe, was Willum.
His face hadn’t improved; I’ve seen scarecrows that looked less like turnips, and they were turnips. Even the expression was the same. If I hadn’t seen him move I’d had sworn he couldn’t have. And yet there was a difference in him, somehow. I couldn’t place it, but it made me uneasy.
‘Arr,’ he said.
‘Hi, Willum,’ I said. ‘Look, I’m just going—’
‘You’m back, then?’
‘Yes,’ I said patiently. He wasn’t any bigger than me, but the scythe was. ‘I’m off to the inn to look for—’
‘Could’ve kill y’sel’ in that there,’ he said unexpectedly, and spat.
‘Don’t I know it. Look, I’m just—’
Slowly, very slowly, he shook his head. His unblinking eyes had something of the toad about them, the same awful stillness. ‘Cain’t pass ’ere. Too many of y’.’
‘What?’ I hunched back into myself. ‘Look, wh-what’re you on about? There’s just me!’
Then I saw what was different – about the same as a bull just looking and a bull that’s going to charge. I moved, then. To be precise, I jumped like a rabbit. By the barest split second it was enough. The scythe flashed, no more than that – then glinted right where I’d stood, its tip half buried in the crumpled Ferrari door.
‘Are you crazy?’ I screamed, then dodged again. The scythe would have had me, all the same, if it hadn’t been for the door stuck on the end. The result was a construct the Saatchi Collection would have snapped up – Agro/Aggro, something like that, symbolising the rural rebellion against the consumer society, maybe. The wind resistance must have been incredible, let alone the leverage, but that didn’t seem to worry him one bit. Me it worried, but I was already off and running in this year’s cornfield steeplechase, straight down the middle, trampling the stiff stalks in my path. There’s never an art critic around when you need one.
‘Yew c’m outa there’n!’ screamed Willum in what sounded like genuine outrage, and the sweep of the door-laden scythe ruffled the little hairs on the back of my neck. I didn’t waste words, I just screamed and ran faster, across the field, on to the track and around the trees. Somewhere in that lot I saw the door go sailing across the sky like a Frisbee, and knew the handicap had changed. Stark terror on my side evened it up, though, and slightly longer legs. I rounded the corner, and saw a shape I recognised in the front garden of the inn, apparently snipping away at some of the roses.
‘Popp-yy!’ I shrieked. She turned round, as if in mild surprise, and took in the situation at once. I staggered gasping to the rail, and managed to vault it, just.
Faster over the jumps, that’s the secret.
‘Willum!’ She came storming down the gravel path towards us, flicking her towel as if it was a serious weapon. ‘Willum, you bad, bad boy, you stop that this minute, d’you hear? The very idea – and to this poor gennlemun who’s been in his motor accident, too!’
To my astonishment Willum lowered his scythe and stood there looking about as sheepish as he could, which meant if he bleated they’d have sheared him.
‘Tain’t my fault,’ he muttered rebelliously. ‘You look at ’im, this’n. You see if there ain’t too many round ’im, like. Draws’n, he does. Should’ve snuffed in that there Ferrari crash. Cain’t ave ’im running round—’
‘That don’t mean you’re to go settlin’ any accounts, Willum. Gennlemun’s got trouble enough without your close shaves!’
Willum flicked the scythe absently back and forth between us. ‘Mebbe not, till I’m sikkered,’ he said grudgingly. ‘But ask ’em – go on, ask ’em—’
‘Ask me bloody what?’ I panted, dabbing at my forehead with the first non-paper handkerchief I’d owned in five years. ‘I don’t know anything! That’s why I came here – to ask! A guy called Steve said I could—’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Poppy, in deep satisfaction. ‘Now, you hear that, Willum? Master Stephen said he could come here! Master Stephen himself, mark you! So, now, are you goin’ to gainsay him? Eh?’
The effect on Willum was startling. Something like animation flooded into those little piggy eyes, and the heavy mouth worked. ‘Uhh,’ he mumbled sulkily, and his scythe drooped in disappointment. ‘Should’ve ruddy tole me. Not a flamin’ mind-read’r, am I? Bloody gentry ’n’ their farty Ferraris … Still too many on’n … just doin’ my job—’ He turned and plodded off, trailing his scythe sullenly, like a naughty child, occasionally decapitating innocent weeds out of sheer spite. He barely had to flick his wrist, and the air was full of flying dandelion heads.
I felt my neck gingerly, in case it had got cut already and was just waiting till I nodded.
Poppy shook her head sadly. ‘He don’t get no better, that’un. The very idea! An’ don’t take to heart what he said ’bout that crash. How you got out of it’s none of his business, he’s just annoyed ’cos the car’s still in his field. And what’s all this ’bout too many of you?’
She regarded me quizzically. ‘Only one that oi can see, an’ not too much o’that, neither. Come inside, moi dear, an’ we’ll stick a bit of weight under your ribs. Mind you,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘there’s a lot Willum can see, more’n most of us. It’s gettin’ ’im to make any sense out of it that’s the struggle. Oi ask you, what’s the use of all manner of vision when you can’t string one polite word after another – or won’t, rather, because you’re so cussed? That’s Willum all over. But your Master Stephen now, there’s ever such a nice man, and so polite too – a little cool, o’course, but him with his responsibilities, too. Still, you ask ’im nicely like, an’ he’ll tell you all you want to know—’
All this saw me inside before I could get a word in, and seated at the best t
able under the least smoky lantern with a huge earthenware mug in front of me. There were the usual rustics, apparently nailed in place since I was here last; but nobody else. ‘Well, that’s, er, very encouraging, Poppy – that you think he’ll help me, I mean. D’you expect he’ll be in tonight, then?’
She pursed her long upper lip and made a noise like a very reluctant cork being removed. ‘Ah, now. That oi really could not say. Sometimes we don’t clap eyes on ’im for a year or more – oh, but there’s no call to be takin’ on so, oi was going to say that he’s been in every couple of nights for well nigh a month now. Says he’s got business hereabouts, though what that is it’s not moi place to enquire, moi dear. So you just drink your good ale now, and oi’ll ask in the back, and see if they know, eh?’
It was good, too. So she knew and liked him, then? And trusted him. That was something, definitely. On the other hand, she seemed to like me too, so that was one judgement shot. I wouldn’t have me in a gift.
She reappeared, shaking her head. ‘No, moi dear. Last night ’e was here, so not tonight, most like. They said ’e seemed worried about something, an’ that’s most unlike ’is natural self. But you can leave a message with me, if you like, and oi’ll see it gets to ’im – and before he comes back ’ere, if we’re lucky.’
‘You can do that? Poppy, you’re a marvel. Sure I can’t marry you?’
‘Oi think oi might be a bit of an ’andful for you, moi dear. You don’t look ’alf fit enough, and oi likes to keep a man busy. Drink up, now, an oi’ll get you another. And you’d like some grub, wouldn’t you? It’s sausages tonight.’
Sausages it was, great fat, cheery Falstaff things with obscene splits, sizzling and spitting on the wooden trencher among mounds of mashed potato and glazed carrots, peas, beans and fried bread.
‘You get that down you!’ said Poppy severely. ‘Then may be we’ll be able to see you when you turn sideways, moi dear. Besides that great conk of yours, oi mean.’
‘Gee, thanks!’ I said, nettled. ‘That’s aristocratic, my nose. I wonder if they ever gave the Duke of Wellington this kind of trouble?’
‘Only when ’e put his hand down my placket, moi dear. Oi said you can put your hands where you likes with your French ’ores, oi said, or Bony himself for that matter, but a freeborn English girl don’t appreciate bein’ guddled like a trout. At least not without warmin’ one’s hands, anyhow. Well, don’t let the cat run off with it, moi dear. Sing out when you wants more ale.’
Off she trotted, leaving me blinking. The Duke of Wellington? Well, why not, why not? If I hung around here too long I’d likely be getting my head thatched.
I took her advice and tucked into the sausages. They were coarse-textured but superb, a whole different animal from the soggy greasebags you get these days, like at motorway service stops. Next time anybody palmed those off on me they’d get them right back, Wellington style. And I wouldn’t even warm my hands.
‘A good evening to you, kind sir,’ said a cheerful voice, from behind me. ‘I trust nobody fills this place?’ I was too busy stuffing my face to look up, and just waved. Somebody plonked down quite hard on the bench beside me. Then for a moment I thought the cat really was after my sausages, as something white and furry snaked across the table.
I choked violently, and sprayed the place with sausage. It was a long white beard.
‘Goodness gracious me!’ I exclaimed, or something along those lines. Only the bats would have heard it, anyhow. I swung around to bolt, only to find myself nose to nose with that leering mirror face again. Only this time it wasn’t in the mirror.
‘Ah, be at peace, sir, be!’ the other man exclaimed, in an accent so burry I had trouble making out what he was saying. ‘Not for all the world would we cause you distress. By your leave, good sir, sit and be contented!’
Nose to nose with me is still quite a way off, but I had empirical proof that this was real. Not even an astral projection could have had breath that bad.
All the same, I was about to head for the tall timber on general principles, but a large hand clamped on my arm, almost encircling it with finger and thumb. The casual strength of it was startling. When you saw the leer in the flesh it looked more like a friendly smile.
Gingerly I let him pull me down. Just let him relax, though, and – but the oldster was coming in on my other flank, mopping and mowing with creaky politeness. Him I could make out a little better, but was it worth the trouble?
‘Why, good sir, you do seem in a moved sort. Do compose yourself, I pray you.’ He lowered himself to the bench, leaning on a silver-headed stick, and patted my arm amiably. ‘We mean you naught but benison and well-being! True, we may have discomposed you somewhat by the manifestations of our scrying, true. But naturally we thought that such matters would have become commonplace in your day, as the dawn of centuries saw vulgar suspicions dissolved like ghosts in the sunrise of rational philosophy—’
‘He means we thought you’d be well used to such things,’ laughed the other man. ‘Excuse my learned friend the Doctor, he’ll often speak after the manner of his beard, snowy-pure but long in unrolling. We dared to hope that our discoveries would have taken root in your time, and such ways of communication be commonplace. That’s all. We’d no intent to, ah, discomfort you with apparitions!’
‘Dis-comfort?’ I bubbled with outrage. At least the sausage in my sinuses was keeping the beer in. I was so furious that I inhaled the lot down again. ‘I thought it’d be Care in the Community next! The funny walk and the mumbles! I thought—’
I’d thought they weren’t flesh and blood. But here and now, at least they were. OK, even the old fellow was bigger than me, just, and the other had muscles; but I’d seen them both run like bunnikins, and jumped Santa here. That took the starch out of them. And what I could do once …
My face must have been the giveaway, or just maybe it was the steam shooting out of my ears. The younger type – brother Edward wasn’t it? – hopped hastily back over the bench. The old fellow stayed where he was. That may have been because I was very deliberately winding his beard around my fist.
‘Nay, my good sir! Stay, my good sir!’ he babbled. ‘I beg you, do not allow your just offence to lead you into some rash action—’
‘Nay, sirrah, hold!’ chipped in the other one. ‘Hold your hand!’
‘Just as soon as I’ve stuffed this bogbrush right up—’
‘No!’ His heavy hands landed on my shoulders and pressed me back down. ‘Will you not hear us? Aye, there’s been grievous offence done you, but not all of our making. A man might say some of yours also! So will you not grant us the justice of accounting for it?’
I paused, but I didn’t let go. Neither did the whiskery type. I could have resisted, just; but those arms didn’t seem to be straining too hard. It occurred to me, as it tends to about this point, that I was, after all, not a thug like Ahwaz, and that that was something to be proud of. Besides, I’d just noticed he was wearing a sword.
He cocked his shaggy head on one side, considering, like á speculative thrush eyeing a snail. ‘We could perhaps offer some small emollient?’
I eyed him back. ‘Exactly how small?’
‘Why, the benefit of all mankind—’
I tugged the beard idly.
‘And f-fair and ample compensation!’ chipped in the older man hastily, babbling a bit as I wagged his chin. ‘Sir, we offer you both aid to end your present annoyances, and balm for those you have already suffered. Our honour requires it; and by God’s grace and the favour of great men we are in a position to offer you both. Material balm!’
‘You don’t say?’ I let go the beard and sat back on the bench, absent-mindedly waving away a sudden smokiness in the air. I was cooling down rapidly, but I’d been pretty angry – almost as angry as I’d been with Ahwaz—
No exploding phones or bandits rushing in to chop people up this time, though. A thought struck me, and I looked down suddenly. The table felt hot beneath my fingers. Wher
e I’d been leaning there was a slight scorched outline on the scrubbed oak planking. It fitted my hand.
I blinked. That wasn’t where the smoke had come from, though. The old fellow was making a funny noise. He was frantically trying to straighten out his beard. It had curled up into a tight springy cone, as if somebody had twirled it up in a giant red-hot curling tong.
It smelt like it, too; but that still wasn’t where the smoke had come from. An awful thought struck me. I felt my ears gingerly. They were burning; but I don’t think it was from being talked about.
Warty Whiskers was warily settling himself back at the table. ‘I guess,’ he remarked to the older guy, ‘that our friendship might prosper better if we made ourselves known to Master, ah, Maxie.’
‘Ah, a thought,’ nodded the old man, still tugging at his corkscrewed beard in a sort of absent-minded fluster. ‘Well, my good sir, at your other hand there sits my younger but still most apt and blessed brother in learning, Sir Edward Talbot Kelley, late a scholar of Worcester College, Oxford, lately created knight of the Holy Roman Empire, and in his thirty-fourth year.’ Kelley half rose and bowed. ‘And before you sits all that there is of John Dee, aetatis two and sixty, with the rank of gentleman esquire and the degree of doctor of philosophy in the most venerable university of Cambridge, now Astrologer Royal to her most puissant majesty the Queen Elizabeth.’
My eyes narrowed. ‘The Queen has an astrologer? I know Nancy Reagan did – but the Queen?’
‘And consulted most freely by all at the court, from my lord of Walsingham to the lowest groom.’
‘Walsingham? Wait a moment – which Queen Elizabeth?’
Kelley chortled. ‘Why, of England, man, where else? Is there another I haven’t had word of?’
‘Well,’ I said carefully, ‘yes, funnily enough. I mean, I’m thinking of the right one, am I? You know, Armada, body-of-a-weak-woman-but-heart-of-etcetera, slept here, Progresses? Good Queen Bess?’
Maxie’s Demon Page 10
