by G. P. Taylor
Jonah pulled her closer, trying to warm the death from her, hoping against hope that she would look up and speak to him. It was a moment that he hoped would last forever, never wanting to let her go, not knowing to what place she had gone.
Soon anger as well as grief welled up within him as thoughts of Solomon filled his mind. He looked to Malachi, tight-lipped to hold back the sobs. “He flees the murder as if it were nothing . . . ,” Jonah said coldly as he gently laid Tara against the side of the throne and wrapped her blood-soaked body in the blanket that she had worn. “I cannot let him go, I have to get due payment for this—”
“Leave it,” Danton said as he cradled Tersias in a sleep from which nothing would wake him. “Revenge is not for you, it belongs to another.”
“Then I will go about his business and do what he should have done so long ago. I let her down so often in life that in death I will be the man.” Jonah gripped the dagger as he strode across the room, his mind burning red, eyes blurred with tears. “Quickly, quickly!” he called to the remnant of the militia who had hidden from the spectacle. “They have killed Skullet and they make their escape.”
From the darkness of the stairway, the captain of the guard ran into the room and saw Skullet dead by the door, the bullet wound to his chest like the mouth of a charred volcano that had burnt a neat hole in his waistcoat.
Jonah faced him, man to man, anger filling his every inch and shaking him as he stood. “Solomon shot Skullet—and now I go after him, he cannot escape,” he said as he stepped by the guard and ran to the door. The captain hesitated, not knowing what to do. Malachi turned to follow his young friend, only to be grabbed by Danton.
“What he does, he must do alone,” Danton said as the large wooden doors to Vamana House crashed open.
In the distance Jonah could hear the scrambling of feet scraping against the stones that stuck from the rough mud. Far to his left, he glimpsed the purple swirl of a long frock coat as it turned into the alleyway that led from Thieving Lane into St. James’s Field.
He ran as he had never run before, dagger in hand, breath choking, heart pounding. A vision of Tara plagued his wits. Two steps behind, the captain kept pace, sword drawn and ready to avenge his master. They spoke not, their minds fixed on the chase, pounding through the mist-filled dark streets, chasing the shadows of the disciples that wove in and out of the darkened footways.
As Jonah ran into the opening of St. James’s Field, quickly followed by the captain of the guard, he glimpsed the giant frame of Campion far in the distance, lit by torchlight from the encampment. Ahead of the giant he could see the carriage by the elm tree, the horses loosely tied. The elephant lay in a ruffled hump of sagging skin, basking in the glow of the moon, snuggled in the thick straw.
“Ozymandius, Ozymandius!” Jonah cried loudly as he ran, coughing out the words through his tears. He saw Solomon turn as Campion mounted the carriage. A disciple threw back the reins from the tether; another opened the carriage door for Solomon to sneak inside, out of the night. The elephant heard Jonah’s calling and hungrily pulled itself to its feet, turning towards him. “Stop them, stop them!” Jonah called as he ran.
The carriage set forth slowly, its wheels sticking in the rutted mud of the field as the horses dug their hooves deep into the ground, frightened by Campion’s screaming. Ozymandius stirred, swinging his long trunk back and forth as the growling of caged tigers and the howl of mad monkeys filled the air.
Campion screamed loudly as Solomon banged on the windows of the carriage for him to drive on. Slowly, as if pressed by an unseen hand, the coach sank deeper into the soft earth, the weight of the giant tilting it to one side as he jumped up and down on the driving plate. “Come on, you beasts!” he screamed, lashing at the air with the whip he had picked from its stand.
Jonah heard his screaming and ran like the wind, chased by the captain.
Solomon saw the boy as he bobbed in and out of the myriad of tents, with every second getting nearer to the bogged carriage. “Quickly, Campion, the boy comes with the guard,” he shouted loudly, banging frantically on the window frame as the carriage rocked back and forth and the horses pulled against the leads, trying to drag it free.
It was then that Solomon looked to his feet. There by the soft purple leather of his finest boots was the black sack taken from his chamber with the locusts inside. A horrible thought flashed through his mind. That somehow a locust could have been taken from the Citadel and set free was surely, he thought, impossible. He slumped onto the leather bench and looked up. There, hanging like bats from the roof of the carriage, were seven black locusts. They dangled by their hind legs, their eyes shining in the blackness. One by one they bristled their long scaly legs, rubbing them excitedly and filling the carriage with their baroque song.
Solomon reached for the handle to the door so he could slip from the carriage and make for freedom. His hand slithered over the lacquered wood as he attempted to find the missing latch. The dark realisation of imprisonment came to him quickly. Solomon had no lavender to scent himself, and in the darkness his robe could not be seen for its fine purple that would, in daylight, ward off the creatures. He was trapped, and the locusts were awake in their roost.
From every corner of the circus gathered the strangest people Jonah had ever seen—a man so tall that his neck stretched a yard from his shoulders, a girl with two heads and three arms who talked to herself. As they watched Campion struggle to free the carriage from the mud, the screaming from inside grew louder and louder. Ozymandius prowled around the carriage, standing on his hind legs and bellowing at Campion.
Hearing the screams from inside the carriage, Campion jumped from the driving seat. The captain of the guard broke through the encircling crowd of circus monstrosities with Jonah close behind. There was a sudden crack as Campion flicked out an arm that pierced the air like an arrow, and the captain fell to the floor before he could raise his sword an inch.
Jonah stood before the giant, who looked down at him and glared. He felt the elephant close by him. “Do it for me!” shouted Jonah as he held out the knife. “Ozymandius, the carriage . . .”
The elephant raised itself again on its back legs and stepped towards the carriage, crashing down upon the drawing pole and cracking it in two. The horses bolted to freedom through the crowd and across the field.
Campion looked back and forth, unsure of what to do.
“He’s going nowhere and neither are you,” Jonah shouted. “Come on, fat boy. Do me like you did the captain, one punch on the chin and I’ll be yours . . .” He danced back and forth on his tippy-toes, glinting the knife in the moonlight. “Solomon doesn’t need you and you’ll never get the chance to have me again. Come on, you lily-liver—hit me like I know you can . . .”
Close behind, Ozymandius pushed against the carriage, lifting it from the mud and spinning it to its roof. The screaming stopped as Solomon was rattled like a broken eggshell in the tumbling coach. The elephant lifted it again, rolling it to its wheels and then back to its roof as if it were but a blown feather on a summer’s day.
Campion lashed out at the boy, his fist snapping the air just short of Jonah’s face as he leapt backwards, somersaulting to his feet to the applause of the crowd.
“Make a fool of me, boy? With one hand I could pull your head off, and with two your ears as well,” Campion snarled.
“Then I would be as ugly as you,” Jonah taunted as he danced back and forth.
A hand flashed from the darkness, hitting Jonah in the arm and sending the knife spinning from his grip. Then another and another as three blows beat home double quick, taking the breath from his body and the life from his legs.
Campion stepped closer, towering over the boy who lay beaten on the damp ground. “Now I have you and you will not jest with me,” he said, raising his hand above his head to rain down one last fatal blow on the boy’s chest.
Time stood still for Jonah. The noise of the circus, the cry of Ozymandius and the cac
kling of the crowd faded into the expanse of night sky. He looked up at the giant and saw his hammer-like fist high above him, about to fall. All he could feel was the cold damp earth and the smell of winter grass mixed with the sobering fragrance of London dirt.
Soon, he thought, he would be with Tara.
With a snap, a loud crack and a sudden flash the elephant’s trunk wrapped itself around Campion’s neck and jolted him from the ground as the beast choked his throat. Ozymandius dangled the giant above the ground. Campion grappled with his large, weakening hands, struggling to breathe as he hung like a puppet.
No one dared move. The crowd was silenced. The elephant turned. Campion was carried like a limp doll as the beast strode from the encampment and into the dark night, screaming and bellowing as it disappeared into the blackness.
Jonah got to his feet, gasping in the cold night air that burnt his lungs and chilled his spine. The carriage lay broken and trampled, its door hanging loose. He walked slowly forward in the flickering torchlight and moon shadows. A wall of faces surrounded him, whispering to each other, one calling his name.
He stepped closer and lifted the handle, pulling the wood from the frame. Then Jonah leapt back, stumbling, falling to his knees as he scrabbled madly to free himself from the horror his eyes had witnessed. Solomon’s bones fell from the carriage, picked clean by the locusts that now gorged themselves on each other as their greed brought their own demise.
As the boy grabbed the dagger that lay beside him, the prophet’s bald and gnawed head rolled across the grass towards him, its one remaining eye staring wildly from the mantle of its socket, its mouth half smiling.
A hand reached down and took Jonah by the scruff of his neck, pulling him to his feet and tugging him close in a warm embrace. “Come, my friend,” said Malachi. “We have nothing here. The morning comes and we have a woe-day to endure . . .”
The procession snaked through the long dead grass of Conduit Fields, leaving the dank smoke-filled smog of London far behind as the tall houses of Queen Square faded into the distance. Far to the front, Jonah pulled the horse that in turn dragged the flat cart. Rocking gently on the stark wooden boards of the wagon, the lifeless forms of Tersias and Tara lay together.
Malachi walked with the cart and Danton stepped slowly behind, head to the ground, counting the paces as he walked. “Two dead, Mister Danton,” Malachi called behind him as he pressed on towards Black Mary’s Well. “Was stopping Malpas and Solomon worth a young life?”
“That we will never know,” Danton said heavily as he stumbled along the cart track. “Sometimes in life we will never understand until we, too, have gone the way of our friends.”
“Once I thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel—now all I see is a boy in despair,” Malachi replied as he looked at Jonah. “I thought Tersias would live, but then he slipped from us in his sleep. Gone with Tara, that is my hope. He’ll no more be troubled with his second sight. No more prophecies, no more Wretchkin and begging for him.” Malachi wallowed in melancholy. “I would have taken him for my own. The change in me would have been a change for him, but he was stolen from me,” he sighed as he walked, looking at the bright blue winter sky. “If only he could have seen this place—to be buried by the well and the King’s Cross, such a fine sepulchre, away from the dirt and grime of London.”
“And the dagger and the Alabaster—what will you do with them, Magnus?” Danton asked.
“They will rest with Tara. She will keep them guarded. They are not for this world, and we shall be sure that Malpas does not return. Do you not think?”
“Do you mark the grave, Magnus?”
“Only with the pain of my heart,” Malachi replied, quickening his pace to catch Jonah as the outline of three shapes broke the horizon by the well stones. “Someone is already there before us. . . . The gravedigger should be long gone. Who can it be?” Malachi anxiously bobbed back and forth, shielding the sun from his eyes as he looked towards the dark figures. He watched as Jonah raised his hand and waved, and the smallest visitor broke free from its companions and came running along the track towards him.
Maggot ran to his friend and flung himself into his embrace as he wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand. “Dead?” he asked Jonah, disbelieving the shrouded bodies that lay before him.
“Sleeping to wake again,” Jonah replied as he pushed back a shudder from his lips, not wanting Maggot to see him cry.
“There’s a grave made ready, lined with lavender and sea grass,” Maggot said as he gripped his hand.
“A resting bed until they wake. Warm and cradled in soft earth to face the rising sun and wait for that splendid day.” Jonah coughed as he cleared his throat and put his hand to his lips to silence the boy. “Words have no more place here, for words started this death upon the heath and I have nothing left to say, my young friend.”
They travelled on, hand in hand, only the cold breeze breaking the silence as it whirled through the branches of the hedges. The last rays of sunlight slowly faded.
Waiting by the well, Griselda held on to Old Bunce, who trembled in his thick coat, shivering more through anticipation than biting cold. He bit his fingers as the procession drew closer, wanting to see the face of his little girl. The horse stopped by the deep pit that had been carved from cold earth.
Jonah stood, gripping the horse, burying his face into its neck, feeling its sharp coat against his skin. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see Danton and Malachi lift the bodies of Tara and Tersias from the cart and place them in the earth.
“They should not be dead.” Jonah sobbed. “If I had been the man I should be, I would have saved them both. It is I who should lay there and they should mourn me.”
“Not meant to be,” Griselda chided him gently. “Your death waits in another place, far in the future, hiding behind a doorway or sleeping away, old and well fed.”
“You . . . you could do something . . . some magic, a charm, what you did to me . . . ,” Jonah said as he scraped the ground with his feet.
“Do you want to do this?” Malachi asked as he held out the Alabaster and dagger to Jonah. “The deeper it is buried, the more we will know that it will never be seen again.”
Jonah threw the Alabaster into the depths of the grave.
Then he rummaged in his pocket. “I still have the finger I stole from you, Malachi. We could make a charm of life and cast off death,” Jonah said. He brought out the withered ring finger with its dark gnarled nail.
“Give it to the grave, Jonah. It is of no use to me now. I walk a different road.”
“So you won’t even try?” Jonah cried.
“Say good-bye to them, Jonah, give her one last kiss and let us lay them down to sleep,” Malachi said.
Jonah turned and saw Griselda kneeling by the cold bodies of Tara and Tersias. “Come, Jonah. Sit with us,” she said softly, beckoning him with her thin white hands. “For friendship if not for love.”
In the grief and sadness of the moment, Jonah looked towards the sky and saw the dark clouds brighten before him as a jolt of lightning cracked from east to west. He wiped a finger across his face, pressing the tear from his cheek and smearing it upon Tara’s lips. He did the same to Tersias. Griselda smiled, knowing what stirred in his heart.
He looked up at Malachi, Maggot and Old Bunce. They all stood silent as if frozen in time, the clouds hanging above them, motionless and still. Jonah took Danton’s whistle from his pocket and put it to his lips. He blew once, then again and again, louder and louder. It called like the sound of a summer bird flying higher than the clouds. A creature you hear but never see, as if it was never really there. He remembered Danton’s words, that if he was in trouble, then he could use the whistle to call a companion, a comforter, and he would come.
Jonah waited in the silence, hoping for the promised miracle. At the top of the lane he saw a dark figure standing by the hedge, cowering like a golem in the long grass. In his heart he knew it to be Malpas,
back for one last look and gloat in his contentment. He looked again and the shadow had gone. All around him, ice gripped the ground and enfolded each crease of Tara’s grave clothes in crisp white seams—and then, like the sudden changing of the season and passing of winter, it was gone.
By Tara’s head a sprig of snowdrops burst through the dry, barren earth, shooting forth their buds and bursting white. The sky burnt bright as another shard of light cracked the heavens, then again and again like canes of blue light beating against the sky.
Jonah’s heart raced. This will not end in death, he thought to himself, not daring to believe, as the thought came again, spoken on his lips.
Tersias stirred from his sleep, his eyes opened and stared at Jonah. “It is you . . . ,” he said, smiling at him. “And Magnus Malachi . . .” The boy laughed as he struggled to be free from his bindings.
Choking back his fear, Jonah tore at the cloth that held the boy fast. There was a sudden crack of thunder, and Malachi was jolted from his dreaming.
“Tersias!” he cried as he saw the boy twisting to be free.
A frenzy broke out in the gathering as Danton and Malachi pulled the boy to his feet and pulled open the bindings.
“Tara . . . it is time,” Jonah said, knowing that she could hear his every word. “Wake up—the winter is over, the spring has come . . .”
Tara opened her tired eyes as the blood flooded her soft cheeks and Jonah ripped the purple bandages from her head.
