A Dusk of Demons

by John Christopher

  “You keep poor company.” The fat woman bowed and gabbled respects. “You should have no truck with such people—as well go vagabonding with gypsies.” The clock struck its third quarter. “And anyway it is time you were back.”

  He accompanied us to the square, lecturing us though not unkindly. While it was the people of the tent who had provoked his disapproval, his condemnations ranged wider. We were from a faraway place, an island—he spoke the word with distaste—and had lacked proper instruction. We must understand there were two sorts of humankind: landsmen and sea people. The former were honest, respectable, worthy; the latter shiftless, dissembling, treacherous. The Madness had begun in them, and likely lingered still. A sensible boy—or girl, nodding at Paddy—kept clear of such.

  Advice, he continued, addressing me, was a coin a wise man expended prudently. It was likely to be wasted on many, but capable of good return among the deserving few. He had studied me and saw me as promising, worthy of the trouble he was taking.

  I was not so much impressed by the advice as by the fact of its bestowal. In my growing up I had been surrounded by feminine company and known little of masculine approval. The Master had ignored me, and Andy only noticed me to mock. Joe had provided more, but made no secret of his greater fondness for Paddy. Now, within a space of minutes, two men had paid me attention, one calling me a likely lad, the other promising. Being accepted as a successor to the Master was heady stuff; this was more down to earth, more believable, and in an odd way more satisfying.

  Back at the villa, Paddy was out of sorts. When I spoke of the creatures in the tent, she snapped that they were a ridiculous cheat—either dead or sick, in any case stinking. The mermaid, she would swear, was monkey sewn onto fish. When, for the sake of peace, I agreed, and mentioned the General’s condemnation of the show people, she was not mollified. He was no better, a narrow-minded old fool, as nasty as the rest of them here.

  At that, I remonstrated. We were being well looked after, better than we had any reason to expect. No one could call Ralph nasty. The Mistress had given us the money to spend in the market, and the General, too, seemed kindly.

  “Because he called you promising!” she said scornfully. “It doesn’t take much to win you. I hate it here.”

  It was not often that I had an opportunity to impress her, and I could not resist seizing it. I said, “I can take you back to Old Isle, if you want—take all of us.”

  Paddy laughed. “You’re mad! Have you forgotten Joe and I had to help you get away?” She stopped, and looked at me suspiciously. “The Sheriff and General Pengelly—just what did happen when they saw you this morning?”

  I told her then, as simply as I could.

  She said, “But why? It makes no sense.”

  I shrugged. “It’s what the Demons say.”

  “Then if you’re not mad, they must be.” We were in the garden, and she saw me glance involuntarily toward the sky, where a pale moon was beginning to turn silver in the dusk. “Oh, don’t be silly. Even if they could, they’re not likely to waste time spying on people like us. What are you going to do?”

  I knew what she meant, but hedged. “About what?”

  “Staying or going back,” she said impatiently.

  “I told them I’d think about it. But if you want to go back . . .”

  “It’s nothing to do with me. You’re the one they’re going to build a house for.”

  “You did say you hated it here.”

  “Doesn’t mean I want to go back there. Not after the way Sheriff Wilson treated us.” There was frost in her voice. “Maybe it’s different for you, being the new Master.”

  I looked at her helplessly. I knew nothing was simple, but I was learning there are always more complications than you imagine. Perhaps Mother Ryan could help me; she always had done so.

  6

  I DID NOT SEE MOTHER Ryan that evening. She and Antonia were at a musical entertainment, presided over by the Mistress, which followed market day and lasted beyond the bedtime imposed for children. In the morning, though, I sought her out in her room.

  She listened while I told her what the Sheriff and General Pengelly had said, and was silent after I had finished. Her silence confirmed the truth of what I still found difficulty in believing. I said, “What do you think we should do, Mother?”

  She said slowly, “I think you should go back, Ben. It’s your inheritance.”

  “And you’ll come too?”

  She paused. “One day, maybe.” She saw my face. “It’s not easy.”

  “But why not? Paddy said she didn’t want to because of what happened—the Sheriff sending you away and shutting me up. But that’s all changed. He has to obey the Demons, and the Demons have said I’m to be Master. We don’t even need to see the Sheriff once we’re back on Old Isle.”

  She was sitting in an armchair, and I had been addressing her from a long-familiar position, curled up against her knee. She put her hand on my head, stroking.

  “If it was just the two of us . . .”

  “Paddy . . .”

  “Ah, don’t mind Paddy. Whatever she says in her moods, she’d follow you anywhere, anytime. But I’ve Antonia to think of.”

  “I’ve said Antonia can come as well. Anyone I say can come.”

  “I’m sure ’tis so. And no more than your due, being son of the Master.” She sighed. “But even such a one cannot tell a young girl what’s right for her.”

  “You mean, because of her and Ralph? But he can visit, and she could visit him.” I thought of the long stretch of heaving waters between the Western Isles and the mainland. “In summer, it’s not too bad a journey.”

  She caught a lock of my hair and tugged it. “When I was your age, my mother used to say, ‘You’ll understand better when you grow up.’ I hated that, but it’s often true. The importance of things changes. The way it is just now I’d never get her away from here even for a week, and if I did there’d be nothing but moping and melancholy.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  Mother Ryan laughed. “Didn’t I say as much!”

  “But if you’re not going back, neither am I. I’ll tell the General so.”

  “I suppose it’s you must decide. And your inheritance won’t be lost for your being awhile on the mainland.” She rose from the chair, and I too got to my feet. “Things may alter. In time, they always do. I don’t think I could go on too long like this, with no occupation and people fetching and carrying for me. I’ve been used to working all my life, but never dreamed how much I’d come to miss it.”

  That at least I understood. Unlimited leisure—no coal to bring in, logs to saw, horses to muck out—had seemed a very fair compensation for having to obey petty rules, but already it had begun to pall. Coming from her room, I saw a lad not much older then myself drawing water from the well at the rear of the villa, and offered him a hand. He shook his head dumbly, looking surprised.

  Antonia found me wandering in the flower gardens.

  “Nothing to do, Ben? Then we’re in the same boat. The Mistress has her dressmaker in this morning, so our company is not required. Paddy in the sulks?”

  I was never sure of Antonia’s own mood. I said warily, “Sort of.”

  “Poor Ben.”

  She was wearing a broad-brimmed hat which hid her face, but I assumed she was being sarcastic, as usual. I moved away, but she followed me.

  “Do you like it here?”

  I didn’t see how I could discuss the latest turn of events with her, after what Mother Ryan had said, though I supposed she might have heard something from Ralph. I said, “It’s all right.”

  “Do you like the General?”

  “I suppose so.” I thought about it. “Yes, I do.”

  “I do too. He has that quiet way of speaking, but he’s strong and protective. Like the Master.”

  I was startled. “The Master? Protective?”

  “The way he used to be, in Ireland. I remember it from when I wa
s little. He used to throw me up in the air, and I loved it, knowing he was there to catch me. He was always laughing in those days.”

  “He changed a lot, then.”

  “People do. Some people, anyway.”

  We had reached an arbor, covered with forsythia in full bloom. She leaned against a wall of bright yellow, tilting her face to the sun. She looked relaxed and happy, and I realized with surprise that in her thin, pale way she was quite pretty.

  “How about Ralph?” she asked abruptly. “Do you like him?”

  I said, “Yes,” immediately, and with conviction.

  After a pause, she said, “It’s good here.” She was smiling, her eyes closed against the sunshine. “I don’t think I’d mind if I never lived anywhere else.”

  So that, I thought, was that. I could not imagine going back to the Isles on my own, Mother Ryan wouldn’t go without Antonia, and Antonia wouldn’t leave Ralph. I was not greatly disappointed. I much preferred General Pengelly to the Sheriff, and having too little to do was a trivial complaint. Ralph would probably help me find something. The inheritance could wait. Without Mother Ryan and Paddy, it meant nothing anyway.

  • • •

  There was a succession of dry gray days, with a chill breeze from the northeast that occasionally strengthened to a wind. Paddy and I made peace, but a coolness lingered. She did not speak again of returning to the Western Isles, and neither did I. I might have been more bothered by her indifference if it had not been that Ralph did indeed help me fill out the idle hours. It was because of Antonia, I realized, that he had given up working in the town and stayed close to the villa, but I was glad of his company.

  I went with him around the home farm, inspecting the latest farrowing of a sow, watching the smith shoe the horses, seeing how the young wheat and barley were progressing. There were also several outlying farms, managed by tenants, and one afternoon (when he knew Antonia was going to be fully occupied in the women’s quarters, which were forbidden to men) we rode out to one of them. He had provided me with a pony called Hussar, an easygoing roan. He was a dull beast, and I thought of Black Prince, but with only a minor pang. Andy would be looking after him; he could be trusted where horses were concerned.

  On the way back Ralph reined in, pointing. We were on a bridle path overlooking a sweep of valley that carried the road. A little procession of closed wagons moved slowly along it. I counted four, together with half a dozen outriders, two having laden donkeys yoked to their mounts. The wagons were painted in a variety of colors and patterns: black and white, red, yellow, green, and blue. It made a pretty sight.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Not so much who as what. They’re didikoy.”

  “Didi . . .?”

  “Gypsies is another name. And they sometimes call themselves travelers. You’ll not have seen them in your islands—nowhere to travel to there. They’re not of our people, nor any other.”

  His tone was disapproving, and I recalled the General’s warning in the market. I said cautiously, “Are they allowed to do that—travel about, and not belong?”

  He shook his head. “We wouldn’t want them settled among us. They’re a dirty lot. Thieves too—they’ll steal livestock, money, anything they can get their hands on. Country folk are afraid of them: They think they have powers to lay spells.”

  “But they don’t, do they?”

  “It’s country talk,” he said dismissively. “They keep their distance from us, and providing they do we let them be. We’d not want any kind of dealings with them. It’s said the Madness runs in them still.”

  From a distance the wagons looked attractive. So did the notion of traveling about the country, not confined to one spot but finding a new scene every day. I reflected that was something I would be able to do as Master, if life on the island palled. But I had come to rely on Ralph’s judgment, and his hostility toward the gypsies was clearly great—and understandable if they were such thieves. And if the strange thing called the Madness lingered among them. This could be an opportunity to find out something about that.

  “What was the Madness, Ralph?” I asked. “People mention it, but no one says what it was.”

  “It came of bad living. There were too many people, to start with, crowded together in towns a thousand times the size of ours. There were buildings in them more than a hundred times the height of a man. Think of it—a hundred families, one atop another, and the same next door, and tens of hundreds like that all around you.”

  I asked, “How did the ones at the top get up there? It must have taken all day, climbing the stairs.”

  “They had machines for taking them up and down. There were machines for everything—for traveling faster than the wind, not only on land but through the air, for seeing and hearing what was happening on the other side of the world.”

  Although the thought of people living on top of one another was unpleasant, my curiosity was sharpened by his reference to machines. Seeing and hearing things on the other side of the world—traveling through the air . . .?

  Ralph said firmly, “It was the machines were the main trouble. They brought idleness, and idleness brought wicked living. There were no proper families or proper rules. And what with being all crowded up, they turned on one another, fighting and killing. You get the same with hens if you pen them too close, or pigs. Children even turned on their elders, killing their grannies for pennies. That was the Madness.”

  Looking over the peaceful valley, empty except for the wagons, it was hard to believe such a story, but Ralph clearly did.

  I asked, “What happened then?”

  “The Dark One set their machines against them. You can kill easier with machines. They died in hundreds of thousands. The ones who survived learned their lesson. They listened to the commandments of the Dark One and went back to a wholesome way of life, with all things orderly and children obeying their parents as they ought. They learned not to go mixing themselves up but stay in their proper places, and not use the machines which had caused the mixing up. And we landsmen banned the sea people from our shores. Sea people are another cause of mixing. The Madness is in them still.”

  “There are ships in the harbor,” I pointed out.

  “From other parts of the mainland and islands close by, like those you come from. Not from the distant islands where the sea people live. We want nothing to do with them.”

  Though I was prepared to take what Ralph said on trust, questions nagged still. I said, “We . . . I found a book once, in some ruins on Sheriff’s. It had a picture of a big machine surrounded by rocks, and the words underneath were ‘The first men on the moon.’ You said people used to travel through the air—as far as the moon, maybe?”

  Ralph shook his head. “Another thing they did in those days was tell lies, making up stories which weren’t true. The moon belongs to the Demons, so how could people go there unless the Demons took them? I’m surprised you could think it even for a moment.”

  His tone was severe. It was only what Paddy had said, back on John’s, but Ralph knew much more. I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “And the old ruins are forbidden places, so what were you up to, prying in them?” I had no answer, and kept silent. “You’re a good lad, Ben, with good prospects, but you’ve lacked a proper rearing. You’ve much to learn.” I nodded submissively. “Where did you get that knife I saw you playing with yesterday?”

  “I bought it in the market.”

  “It comes from the old time. All those gadgets; it’s like a machine, almost. Better get rid of it. D’you have it with you now?”

  “I left it in my room.”

  “Then get shot of it as soon as you get back. Things from the old time are like gypsy goods. They’re tainted. Best have no truck with any of them.”

  He twitched the rein to walk his horse on. As I followed on Hussar, I felt the bulge in my trouser pocket surreptitiously. If I’d admitted having the knife with me he would have made me throw it away there and then.
Liking and respecting Ralph as I did, I didn’t enjoy lying to him, but I wasn’t quite prepared for that.

  • • •

  Coming away from the following week’s Summoning, I found myself staying close to Mother Ryan, and noticed Paddy did as well. I’d thought the Demons might be less terrifying on second viewing, but they weren’t—if anything, more so. The dinner gong would not be sounded for a while yet, and I was glad when she suggested going to her room.

  She shut a window that had been left open and pulled her black shawl around her shoulders. I flopped on her bed.

  “It’s turned cold,” she said, but I knew it wasn’t just the weather.

  I said, “You could ring to have a fire lit.”

  “At this hour?”

  “The maid wouldn’t mind.”

  “But I would. It’s maybe from being a servant myself, but I couldn’t impose that way.”

  Paddy, who had taken the second chair, said, “Antonia had a fire lit in her room last night.”

  “That’s for her to choose.” Mother Ryan shook her head. “It’s a funny life, but I suppose we needs get used to it. It could get stranger still.”

  “You mean, when Antonia and Ralph get married?” Paddy asked.

  “And what would you know of that?” Mother Ryan asked sharply. “What has she said to you?”

  “Nothing. But I’ve got eyes, haven’t I?”

  “Eyes indeed and ears, but you’ve also a tongue you must learn to curb. Nothing’s happened that’s proper occasion for talk. And you’ll keep your mouth shut too, Ben, will ye not? What’s to be will be, but we’ll not look to crossing bridges till we get to them.”

  I couldn’t account for the lack of enthusiasm in her voice. “What’s wrong with Ralph?”

  “Ralph takes Ben out riding,” Paddy said sarcastically. “Ralph is Ben’s best friend.”

  Mother Ryan rubbed her hands. “There’s nought wrong with Ralph that I know of—with any of them. But we’re not their kind, and they’re not ours. All this of Summonings and Demons . . . I had enough of that in the old days in Ireland. God be thanked, there was little of the sort in the Isles.”