Rats and Gargoyles

by Mary Gentle

  Rats and Gargoyles

  Rat Lords Series, Book 01

  by Mary Gentle

  With Rats and Gargoyles, Mary Gentle turns her amazing abilities to a mythic realm at "the heart of the world." It is a time and a land ruled by the Hermetic magia of the Renaissance, by secret, almost forgotten Masonic rites, and by the all-encompassing presence of the thirty-six Decans, the god-daemons incarnate in living stone.

  "IF YOU PLAN TO READ THIS ONE, BE PREPARED TO ENJOY!"

  –New York Daily News

  "SPLENDID, ELABORATE! Soldiers and scholars, card-sharps, secret sects, Dickensian grotesques . . . and post-natural, post-literate, post-everything creations."

  –Washington Post

  "DARK, VIVID, AND COMPLEX."

  –Hackensack Sunday Record

  COPYRIGHT

  MARY GENTLE

  RATS AND GARGOYLES

  ROC

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

  London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,

  Victoria. Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto. Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

  Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd. Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. Previously published in America in a Viking/Roc hardcover edition. Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press.

  First Mass Market Printing, October, 1992

  10 987654321

  Copyright © Mary Gentle, 1990

  All rights reserved. For information address New American Library.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK–MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book".

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to

  G. K. CHESTERTON

  and

  JAMES BRANCH CABELL

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe a debt those investigators who have treated Renaissance Hermetic magia as a field for serious scholarly research. The fact that I have treated it as one vast adventure-playground is not intended to detract from this.

  Those who helped include Goldsmiths’ College, University of London; the albums I’m Your Man by Leonard Cohen and Famous Blue Raincoat by Jennifer Warnes; Watkins Books in Cecil Court; Rouen; and Alexandre Dumas. I also owe a debt to Sarah Watson for reading the manuscript, and for letting me read her (unpublished) "The Jaguar King."

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Chapter One

  In the raucous cathedral square the crowd prepared to hang a pig.

  A young man slowed his pace, staring.

  The yellow wood of the gallows wept sap; hastily nailed together; the scent of pine reached him. Stronger: the stench of animal dung. Lucas reached for a kerchief to wipe his sweating face. Finding none, he distastefully used a corner of his sleeve. He thrust a way between the spectators, head ringing with their noise.

  A man and a woman stood up on the platform. Between them, a great white sow snuffled, wrapped in a scarlet robe that her split feet fouled, jaws frothing. She shook her snout and head, troubled by the loose hemp rope around her neck. It went up white against the sky, to the knot on the gallows-tree.

  Sun burned the moisture from the flagstones, leaving dust that took the imprint of the young man’s booted feet. The steps and entrances and columns of the cathedral towered over the square: a filigree of brown granite against a blazing early sky; carved leaves and round towers still wet with the night’s dew.

  "This beast has been duly tried in a court of law." The priest’s voice carried from the platform to the small crowd. "This she-pig belongs to Messire de Castries of Banning Lane, and has been found guilty of infanticide, most filthily and bestially consuming the child of the said Messire de Castries’ daughter. Sentence is passed. The animal must be hanged, according to the law and justice. Do your duty!"

  The priest lumbered down the rickety steps from the gallows-platform, her leaf-embroidered robe tangling at her ankles. She elbowed Lucas aside just as he realized he should move, and he bristled despite himself.

  The man remaining on the platform knelt down beside the sow. Lucas heard him say: "Forgive me that I am your executioner."

  "Hang the monster!" one fat woman in a velvet dress screeched beside his ear, and Lucas winced; a tall weatherbeaten man cupped his hands and shouted through them: "Child-killer!"

  The executioner stood up and kicked back the bolt holding up the trap.

  The trapdoor banged down, gunshot-loud. The sow plunged, a crack! cut off the squealing, screeching–the groan of stretched rope sang in the air. In the silence, Lucas heard bone splintering. The sow’s legs kicked once, all four feet splayed. The scarlet robe ("I" for infanticide stitched roughly into the back) rode up as she struggled, baring rows of flopping dugs.

  "Baby-killer!"

  "May your soul rot!"

  Lucas wrenched his way free of their rejoicing. He strode across the square, dizzy, sweating. The ammoniac stink of pig dung followed him. He stopped where a public fountain and basin stood against the cathedral wall, tugging at the buttons of his high collar, pulling his jacket open at the neck. Sweat slicked his skin. He bent and scooped a double handful of water to splash his face, uncertain at the novelty of it. Burning cold water soaked his hair, his neck; he shook it away.

  Then he leaned both hands on the brown granite, head down. Sun burned the back of his neck. The water, feather-stirred by the fountain’s trickle, mirrored a face up at him: half-man and half-boy, against a blue sky. Springy black hair, expensively cropped; eyes deep-set under meeting brows. For all that his skin was tanned, it was not the chapped skin of an apprentice.

  He shifted his padded black jacket that strained across his muscled shoulders; moved to go–and stopped.

  The moon gleamed in the early morning sky. He saw it clearly reflected beside his face, bone-white; seas the same pale blue as the sky.

  Across the moon’s reflected face, a line of blood appeared, thin as a cat’s' scratch. Another scraped across it, curved; dotted and scored a third bloody weal across the almost-globe. A symbol, glistening red.

  He spun round and jerked his head up to look at the western sky. The moon hung there, sinking over the city’s roofs. Pale as powder, flour-dust white. No unknown symbols . . .

  A pink flush suffused the gibbous moon, now almost at its full; and the seas flooded a rich crimson.

  He turned, grabbed the edges of the basin, sta
ring at the clear water. The reflected moon bore a different symbol now. As he watched, that faded, and a third set of blood-lines curved across that pitted surface.

  Men and women passed him, dispersing now that the pig’s execution was done. He searched their faces frantically for some sign they saw his bloody moon; they–in spruce city livery, open to the heat–talked one with another and didn’t glance above the rooftops.

  When he looked back, and again to the sky, the moon was clean.

  " ’Prentice, where’s your workshop?"

  The man had obviously asked twice. Lucas came to himself and, seeing the man wearing the silk overalls of a carpenter, assumed the extreme politeness of one unfamiliar with such people.

  "I have no workshop, messire," he said. "I’m a student, and new to your city. Can you tell me, please, where I might find the University of Crime?"

  Not far away, a gashed palm bleeds. The hand is cupped. Blood collects, trickles away into life-line and heart-line and between fingers, but enough pools to be used.

  The moon’s face is reflected into a circular mirror, twelve hand-spans in width. This mirror, set on a spindle and in a half-hoop wooden frame, can be turned to face the room’s ceiling, or its east, or (as now) its west window.

  Through the open window comes the scent of dust, heat, fur, and boiled cabbage. Through the open window comes in the last fading image of the morning moon.

  With the tip of a white bird’s feather, dipped into the blood, she draws with rapid calligraphic strokes. She draws on the mirror glass: on the reflected image of the moon’s sea-spotted face.

  She draws, urgently, a message that will be understood by those others who watch the moon with knowledge.

  White sun fell into the great court, on to sandstone walls as brown as old wax. Sweeping staircases went up at cater-corners of the yard to the university’s interior, and Lucas thought of eyes behind the glazed, sharply pointed windows, and straightened. He stood with two dozen other cadets under the sun that would, by noon, be killing, and now was a test of endurance.

  "My name," said the bearded man pacing slowly along the lines of young men and women, "is Candia."

  He spoke normally, but his voice carried to bounce off the sandstone masonry walls. His hair was ragged blond, tied back with a strip of scarlet cloth; he wore boots and loose buff-colored breeches, and a jerkin slashed with scarlet. Lucas put him at thirty; upped the estimate when the man passed him.

  "Candia," the man repeated. Under the lank hair, his face was pale and his eyes dark; he had an air of permanent injured surprise. "I’m one of your tutors. You’ve each been invited to attend the University of Crime; I don’t expect you to be stupid. Since you’ve been in the university buildings for an hour, I don’t expect any one of you to have purses left."

  Candia paused, then pointed at three cadets in rapid succession. "You, you and you–fall out. You’ve just told a pickpocket where you keep your purse."

  Lucas blinked.

  "Right." The man put his fists on his hips. "How many of you now don’t know whether you have your purses or not? Tell the truth . . . Right. You four go and stand with them. You—"

  He pointed back without looking; Lucas found himself targeted.

  "–Lucas." Candia turned. "You’ve got your purse? And you know that without feeling for it, and giving it away, like these sad cases? Tell me how."

  Surprised at how naturally he could answer the impertinent question, Lucas said: "Muscle-tension. It’s on a calf-strap."

  "Good. Good." The blond man paused a calculated moment, and added: "As long as, now, you change it." He barely waited for the ripple of laughter; flicked his head so that hair and rag-band flopped back, and spoke to them all.

  "You’ll learn how to take a purse from a calf-strap so that the owner doesn’t know it’s gone missing. You’ll learn about marked cards, barred cater-trey dice, the mirror-trick, and the several ways of stopping someone without quite killing them."

  Candia’s gaze traveled along the rows of faces. "You’ll learn to conjure with coins–get them, breed them, lend them out and steal them back. There are no rules in the university. If you have anything still your own at the end of the first term, then well done. I didn’t."

  He allowed himself a brief, tailored grin; most of the cadets grinned back.

  "You’ll learn about scaling walls and breaking windows, about tunnels and fire-powder, and when to bribe a magistrate and when to stage a last-minute gallows-step confession. If you live to learn, you’ll learn it. Now . . ."

  Heat shimmered the air over the flagstones. Lucas felt it beat up on his cheeks, dazzle his water-rimmed eyes. His new cotton shirt was rubbing his neck raw, and when the shadow crossed him he was conscious only of relief. He glanced up casually.

  The blond man raised his head. Then he took his hands from his hips, and went down on one knee on the hot stone, his head still raised.

  Lucas gazed upwards into the dazzling sky.

  He glimpsed the lichen-covered brick chimneys, wondered why a bole of black ivy was allowed to twine around one stack, followed it up as it thickened–no, it should grow thicker downwards, towards the root–and then saw the clawed feet gripping the chimney’s cope, where that tail joined a body.

  The sky ran like water, curdling a yellowish brown. Lucas felt flagstones crack against his knees as he fell forward, and a coldness that was somehow thick began to force its way down his throat. He gagged. The air rustled with dryness, potent and electric as the swarming of locusts.

  Wings cracked like ship’s sails, leathery brown against the shadowed noon.

  It clung to the brickwork, bristle-tail wrapped firmly round the chimney-stack, wings half-unfolded and flicked out for balance. The great haunches rose up to its shoulders as it crouched, and it brought the peaks of great ribbed wings together at its flaking breast, and Lucas saw that the bat-wings had fingers and thumb at their central joint.

  All this was in a split second, reconstructed in later memory. Lucas clung to the other cadets, they to him, no shame amongst them: each of them having looked up once into the great scaled and toothed face of the daemon poised above them.

  A fair-haired girl of no more than fifteen stood up from the group. She began to walk towards the iron gates. Candia’s gaze flicked from her to the roof-tops; when he saw no movement there, he relaxed. The girl paused, turned her thin face up to the sky and, as if she saw something in the gargoyle-face, slipped out of the side-gate and ran off into the city streets. Her footsteps echoed in the quiet.

  The sky curdled.

  That same gagging chill silenced Lucas’s voice. He coughed, spat; and then the heat of the sun took him like a slap. He winced with the feeling that something too vast had just passed above him.

  The blond man rose to his feet, dusting the knees of his buff breeches.

  "Why did you let her go?" Lucas demanded.

  Candia’s chin went up. He looked down his nose at Lucas. "She was commanded. The city proverb is: We have strange masters."

  His gaze lingered on the gate. Then, with a final flick at buff-colored cloth, Candia said: "You’ll all attend lectures, you’ll attend seminars; most of all you’ll attend the practical classes. Punishments for absence vary from stocks to whipping. We’re not here to waste your time. Don’t waste mine."

  Lucas rubbed his bare arms, shuddering despite the morning heat.

  "First class is at matins. That’s now, so move . . . You four," the blond man said, as an afterthought. "Garin, Sophonisba, Rafi and Lucas. Accommodation can’t fit you in. Here’s addresses for lodgings."

  Lucas paused over his slip of paper. The other three cadets wandered away slowly, comparing notes.

  As Candia was about to go, Lucas said amiably: "I don’t care to live out of the university. Fetch the Proctor."

  Candia shot a glance over Lucas’s shoulder, Lucas turned his head, and the man cuffed him hard enough across the face to send him cannoning into the sandstone wall.


  "You address tutors as ‘Reverend Master,’ " the man said loudly, bent to grab his arm and pull him up; winked at Lucas, and added: "Do you want everyone to know who you are?"

  Lucas watched him walk away, the cat-spring step of the man; opened his mouth to call–and thought better of it. He read the printed slip of paper:

  Mstrss. Evelian by the signe of the Clock upon Carver streete neare Clocke-mill. Students warned, never to leave the Nineteenth District between the University and the Cathedral. And then, after the print, in a scrawling hand: Unless commanded by those greater than they.

  Candia pushed the cathedral door open and moved rapidly inside, shutting the heavy wood smoothly behind him. He stopped to quieten his breathing, and to adjust to the dimness. Light the color of honey and new leaves fell on to the smooth flagstones, from the green-and-gold stained-glass windows.

  The blond man’s nostrils flared at the incense-smell: musky as leaf-mold and fungus. He padded slowly down between the pillars towards the altar, and his boots, practiced, made no sound. He saw no one in all that towering interior space. The pillars that were carved of a silver- gray stone to resemble tall beeches concealed no novices.

  Once he froze, reached out to a pillar to catch his balance and remained utterly still. The stone was carved into a semblance of roots, with here and there a carved beetle or caterpillar, as above where the carved branches met together there were stone birds. The sound (if there had been a sound) was not repeated.

  Coming to the altar, Candia settled one hip up on it, resting against the great polished and swirl-veined block of oak. He listened. Then he drew out his dagger, and began to clean casually and delicately under his fingernails.

  He swore; stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked it.