Empire of Fear

by Brian Stableford

  ‘Who’s aboard?’ cried Master Heilyn, as yet unable to see the men in the boat.

  ‘Brother Quintus from the Abbey,’ replied the monk. ‘And Master Cordery.’

  Heilyn lowered the light, and it illuminated the head and shoulders of the monk. The shipmaster grunted with satisfaction, but his fears were not completely allayed.

  ‘What bells were rung at the abbey this afternoon?’ he asked, anxiously.

  ‘Dominicans came with men-at-arms,’ Quintus told him. ‘They came to root out heresy, and succeeded, for here we are as you can see. Put down your guns, Ralph, and help us aboard.’

  Heilyn seemed half-satisfied with the reply, and threw down a rope ladder, but told his men to be ready. Noell was the first to climb up to the ship, and Quintus followed him. Then came Langoisse, and as he reached the deck the two men who had been with him in the back of the boat brought up their muskets, aimed and primed.

  The Turk had already leapt from the boat, scorning the ladder, and had climbed the side in seconds, pulling a pistol from his belt and a knife from his teeth as soon as his feet were on the deck. Langoisse was brandishing a pistol of his own, pointing it at the head of Ralph Heilyn. The fishermen with muskets hesitated, lost in confusion, and Langoisse told their master to instruct them to drop the guns.

  Heilyn looked at Quintus, bitterly, and called him betrayer.

  ‘Alas, Master Heilyn,’ said Quintus, ”tis better thus. If you carried us to Ireland, and then returned, you’d be in mortal danger. Far better to be rudely dispossessed by the pirate Langoisse than to give him willing succour and carry him safe from his enemies. You must make up a story to explain your loss, and may curse us all as loudly as you like. When all is finished, you may go to the abbot, and remind him what he owes you, if he is still able to pay. I cannot say that you’ll not be a loser, but I know that you will not lose your life.’

  It seemed that Heilyn could hardly wait to practise his cursing, but once Langoisse was identified to him, he and his crewmen knew better than to start a fight. The fishermen were disarmed, then the Turk and another man ferried half the crew to shore, returning with Leilah and her maid, and some more of their own men, before taking away the rest of the fishers. In the end, they took Heilyn back alone, and left him on the beach to count the cost of his ill luck – railing, no doubt, against the ruthlessness of the wicked fate which had caught him in its net.

  When the pirates took up the anchor, and sailed away, Selim took Quintus and Noell down to the mate’s cabin, and watched them until Langoisse had taken proper stock of his new possession.

  Noell sat on the bunk, and Quintus on the floor, in the tiny cabin, which stank no less of fish than any other part of the buss. The Turk remained patiently in the doorway, his hands folded across his chest. The swinging candle-lamp which lit the cabin sent all the shadows a-swaying when the ship bobbed on the waves, tacking half across the wind. The strange contours of the Turk’s scarred face seemed almost alive in the shifting light, as though it was a skull covered in writhing worms, with naught living in it but the gleaming eyes which stared upon them.

  Here’s a demon, though Noell, who might easily tend a cauldron in any Hell. But where’s the pretty one, the devil’s whore? He had seen no sign of the Lady Cristelle, though he could not be entirely sure that she had not come aboard with the last party brought from shore.

  At last, Langoisse came to see them, bearing several packs with him. He pushed the ones which belonged to Noell and Quintus into the cabin, but placed two more outside the door.

  ‘Well, my friends,’ he said. ‘What am I to do with you? I’ve half a mind to feed you to the fish, though my pretty gypsy has pleaded most earnestly that I should let you live. You’re pirates now, of course, for your part in stealing Master Heilyn’s ship, and you will hang at Chatham Dock if ever Richard’s navy gets its hands on you. Then again, Richard might plan a more entertaining fate for you on Tower Hill, or at Tyburn, as he surely does for me.’

  ‘We came in search of a passage to Ireland,’ said Quintus, evenly. ‘Perhaps you might leave us in Baltimore.’

  ‘I’ll not make port anywhere that the Firedrake might catch up with me,’ said Langoisse. ‘Master Heilyn did as he was bid, and provisioned for a journey. Without his crew, we’ve food enough to take us to Tenerife, and I’ll feel safer there than in any land within the Imperium of Gaul, if the ship is hale enough to make the voyage. I think she is.’

  ‘And will you be a pirate in a herring-ship?’ asked Quintus. ‘She’ll not deliver much of a broadside, I fear, and you’d be hard-pressed to chase an argosy.’

  Langoisse grinned, showing his discoloured teeth. ‘I was a pirate in a crippled galley once,’ he said. ‘When I started in this life, I’d naught but my own strong arms and Selim’s friendship. With brave men and muskets there’s much that might be accomplished on the Afric shore, and I think I might even make my peace with the vampires of Malta, if I cared to seek sanctuary with the Hospitallers. I might sell you both for slaves, I suppose, but I’m not such a cruel man, as well you know.’

  ‘It was a cruel and vile man which cut poor Mary’s throat,’ said Noell, coldly, ‘and that was not a sin which I could ever forgive. I’ll call no such man friend.’

  Langoisse laughed drily. ‘It was not I,’ he said, ‘nor did I order it done. And as it happens, the man who did it lies dead outside the gates from which we lately fled. You saw him killed yourself, I think.’

  ‘I do not know that,’ said Noell, though Quintus tried to restrain him, ‘and I do not believe that you did not order it done.’

  A black mood seemed to sweep across the pirate’s face in an instant, and he scowled fiercely. ‘Never call me a liar, Master Cordery,’ he said, ‘for I do not take insult very lightly, as you may yet find. I do not care about your silly serving maid, and it pains me not at all that she is dead, but I did not do it, I would not have done it, and I tell you that the man who did is dead. There is an end on’t – or do you wish that you and I might come to a settlement in another way?’

  Noell felt Quintus’s fingers tightening on his arm, urging him to make no reply, and though he was in a mood to be defiant, he dropped his gaze, and said nothing.

  ‘You could have killed us ashore,’ said the monk, quietly, ‘or left us with Heilyn on the sand. You do not mean to do us harm, I think.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Langoisse, though the scowl was slow to fade from his face. ‘I would not leave you for the inquisitors and the hangman, not even for the thirty guineas which was Master Cordery’s worth before this game began. If he will not clasp my hand, and be my friend, it matters naught to me. But I have dealt fairly with you both, and you have no cause to hate me.’

  ‘I hate no one,’ said the monk. ‘I pray God’s mercy for you as I pray it for all men, and I will thank you with an honest heart if you will take us to a place of safety, in Ireland or elsewhere.’

  With that, apparently, the pirate was satisfied, and he withdrew. Noell wanted to speak to him again before he went, to ask what had happened to the vampire lady, but he could see the wisdom of keeping silent, and knew that he would have his answer, if he would only wait a while.

  The Turk followed his master, leaving them alone. They picked up their packs, and put them both on the bunk, then sat beside them, looking about at the place to which they had been brought.

  ‘Narrow walls of wood,’ said Quintus, ‘and a mere shelf on which to sleep. But we are not used to luxury, you and I. It will suffice.’

  ‘It must suffice to be alive, for now,’ said Noell, grimly.

  ‘The True Church,’ Quintus observed, ‘knows no boundaries. Whatever circumstances a good man is brought to, his soul is on the road to Heaven, and he may follow the path of righteousness if he can.’

  ‘The route,’ answered Noell, ‘seems somewhat round about.’

  They prepared themselves for sleep, being as tired as men could be. Noell took the bunk, which was less comfortable
a bed than he was used to, and Quintus slept on the bare boards of the floor. Noell did not sleep soundly, but his nightmares could not frighten him awake, and the sun was high when he felt sufficiently recovered to rise again.

  When Noell got up, Quintus was not there, and so he found his own way up on to the deck, a little unsteady on his feet. He was hungry, and the stink of fish – which seemed to him far worse than the odour of the fields of which Langoisse had complained – was tormenting him anew.

  Everything in his life would be strange, now, until he could shape himself to this new reality of being a passenger among pirates, but he was not entirely disheartened by his situation. He had not one, but two friends, counting the gypsy girl along with Quintus, and the number of his deadly enemies could not be counted higher than before. Three of the pirate’s men, who were on deck, watched him as he passed by, but did not speak to him.

  The bright light of the warm mid-morning sun felt good when he paused to savour it, and when he went to the bow of the ship to look out at the great unknown, into which they were headed, he felt that he would be able to bear whatever it was that he might see.

  What he saw was the ocean, calm and blue beneath a clear and brilliant sky.

  It was only when he glanced back again, to look at the mast of the little ship, that he suddenly felt sick again, in his stomach and his heart. For there, suspended by knotted black hair from a driven nail, was the severed head of the Lady Cristelle.

  Oddly, the memory that came into his mind was what he had said to the gypsy girl when she told him that Langoisse meant to make a mistress of the lady. I think you misread him, he had said. Clearly, he had been correct in his estimation. The pirate had displayed his intention, so that even those who were not schooled in reading could know his mind, and know his valour in the face of the vile temptation of vampire comeliness.

  In the days that were to come, Noell Cordery – and he by no means the only one – would cast many a sidelong glance at those dark, empty and accusing eyes. Sometimes, he would fancy that it was Medusa’s head which he saw, and he would wonder if its gaze might be slowly turning his soul into adamantine stone.

  And in the fullness of time he would observe that although tenacious life had been conclusively banished from the vampire’s flesh, the head still resisted, for an astonishing lapse of time, the cruel corruptions of decay.

  PART THREE

  The Breath of Life

  ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

  ‘And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

  ‘And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.’

  (Genesis 2:7-9)

  PROLOGUE

  The de-ciphered text of a letter received by Sir Kenelm Digby at Gayhurst in the summer of 1643.

  Burutu, August 1642

  My most loyal friend,

  Your letter telling me of my mother’s death brings the saddest news that a man can hear, and the reading of it left me desolate for some days. Though it is near nineteen years since last I saw her I think of her often, and I have always treasured her words when you have succeeded in sending them half across the world to my places of exile. Your account of her last days, and of her thoughts of me, is precious to me, though it has called to mind all that I have lost in consequence of leaving my homeland.

  It is unfortunate that such news casts a shadow, for in every other respect your letter should have brought me joy. A thousand thanks for the gifts which you have sent to me – all of them invaluable. So much of what we once took for granted in Europe is very difficult of attainment here, and though the trading-post which we have established now plays host to five or six ships a month, there are so many things the captains would never think to include in their cargoes. We thank you for the paper and the inks, and most especially for the books. Among the lenses which you sent, Q has found a pair which correct his ailing sight much better than the old ones, and he is exceeding grateful.

  Nothing has so awakened my enthusiasm since I first left England as the microscope and the instruments for the preparation of slides. You say that you are simply discharging a debt, because it was my father’s designs which first allowed you to begin experimenting with such devices, but you have improved greatly upon the instrument which he made in London so many years ago. Your ingenuity in using combinations of differently-curved lenses in order to reduce aberration is nothing less than genius. There is so much I might do with this instrument that I know not where to begin.

  It is sometimes difficult to remember that our sojourn here has now measured out nine years of our lives. Q seems not a day older than he was when first we quit the Welsh shore, though he is now past sixty. The tropic sun seems to have turned his skin into the bark of some exotic tree – it is golden brown and hard. He invariably wears a white monastic habit and a great white straw hat, and when he strides across the sand by the river’s shore he seems to me like a warrior angel of Michael’s army, ever-ready to take arms against the fallen. He has the same effect on the natives, who readily accept that he is a holy man, and call him ‘the babalawo from the sea’. A babalawo is one of the many kinds of priests which they have here, representing Ifa, the Uruba god of wisdom and divination. Babalawo means ‘the father who has the secret’. All native priests of this order wear white cloth, and Q’s habit allows him to take an appropriate place within the native scheme of things.

  In a curious way, Q seems more at home here than he did in the abbey at Cardigan. He does not always behave in priestly fashion, although he celebrates the sacraments for our tiny Christian community. He does not seek converts among the tribesmen, though he is ever enthusiastic to learn about their beliefs. Nor does he give substantial encouragement to the missionaries who sometimes come here. Sometimes, I wonder whether he is more content to be a babalawo than a servant of the false pope of Rome. He does not consider all of the hundred gods who are worshipped here to be demons, but argues that some of them, like Ifa and Obatala, are aspects of the one true God, called by different names. But he is distressed by the worship commonly offered here to darker gods like Elegba and Olori-merin, whose rituals involve bloody sacrifices.

  I, of course, am much changed from the frightened boy who sheltered in your house after the strange death of my father. I have grown as tall as he once was, and I think that I am somewhat like him in appearance, though I would hardly deserve to be called, as he was, the handsomest man in London. I am fortunate in my strength, because few white men flourish in this land of fevers. I have seen persons of great courage and stout constitution so reduced by dengue, dysentery and malaria that they became no more than wrecks of men. Since last I wrote to you we have lost four men, including the worthy Jespersen, and have gained only two – Dutchmen who came aboard the Hengelo. Our colony, if such it might be called, now numbers only fourteen whites, three of them wives, though we have twenty-four black workers living permanently on the station, within the outer stockade.

  I have heard it said that what does not kill us makes us stronger, but whoever coined that saw was never in Africa. Every bout of sickness suffered here makes a man weaker, until by degrees he has not the strength to bring him through another crisis. I seem better able than most to withstand such things, but one has to be wary. The river seems to attract sickness, and the handjul of white men who have travelled a short distance up-river and returned (many have not returned) say that it is a kind of hell which our race was never intended to endure. The natives put here by God seem hardly designed to endure it themselves. Barely a third of the children born survive the ravages of malaria and smallpox, and those who mature seem always to be suffering from yaws or kra-kra; sleeping sickness and leprosy imperil everyone. We have learned never to go bare-headed or
barefoot, to boil all the water that we drink, and to sleep behind veils of fine netting which help to save our skin from the swarms of biting insects. Our exile sometimes seems a kind of purgatory.

  We are in the worst part of the rainy season now. These last few weeks it has been raining twice daily, after noon and after dusk. Each storm lasts for three hours and more. The river is perpetually in flood, and this is the season when there is most to fear from crocodiles. The compensating benefit is that it does not get so very hot in the daytime, nor so very cold at night. It is a comfort to be able to take my pen in my hand each day, and though I cannot quite imagine myself back in Grand Normandy, I know that I am addressing myself to my only friend in the land of my birth, and that I am in consequence not entirely separated from the realm to which I hope one day to return.

  Trade is slack at this time of year, but ships still come. For the most part they are Gaulish vessels from Britain, Holland and France, but Maroc traders sometimes venture here, despite the fact that the Sultan's soldiers are at war with Songhai in the north. Mohammedan caravanners are attempting to establish a trade-route across the Sahara, but the centuries-old jihad which their masters have waged against the black tribes will probably make it impossible for them to succeed.

  Our trading post makes matters infinitely easier for the captains of all these vessels, not one of whom would gladly go back to the days of the Silent Trade, but many seem jealous of our presence here. The Marocs claim that theirs is the true right to trade here, despite the war which has raged since time immemorial. The Portuguese, too, claim that it was they who ‘discovered’ this entire coast, and that the British have no business here; but the vampire lords of Lisbon and Setubal cut short the naval adventurings of the Portuguese when Henrique fell from favour, and their claims are based entirely in might-have-beens.