Diary Entry of Nicholas Hawksmoor
15th May 1681
Even to deliver and explain what I bring forward is no easy matter; for things in themselves new can only be apprehended with reference to what is old. But after today, all is forever changed. The old world is no more.
According to the scriptures, man forfeited the happiness of this life by eating of the tree of knowledge. But I say, that knowledge itself, in all its guises, is more powerful than any cage that the church can put on it. Of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are interchangeable. I will not be led away from seeking the true reality of things and I will accept nothing that is but examined and tried.
There is an unseen spiritual world, as real as the equally unseen agencies of the lodestone and electricity in the natural world. I commit to paper not some vain babbling doctrine about the nature of things, I have seen it with my own eyes, and heard with my own ears. Today, I have glimpsed the highest link in nature’s chain, where human knowledge and supernatural power meet in one.
But first, I must turn back to the events that brought me to this revelation. It is extraordinary to think that just yesterday, I first read the pages of the remarkable volume from Mr Cooper’s bookshop. I now wonder whether the rioting in the streets had not been merely the result of chance, but instead guided by some invisible hand.
As I lay awake in my bed, contemplating my dream and listening to the heavy rain outside, I resolved to search out the location of the stone circle described in the book. Whether it was true or fancy, I would find out.
In the first light of dawn, I stole away from my lodgings carrying the book and the sharpest knife I could find, and headed into the thick fog. With sober and grave mind, I walked along the banks of the Thames, turning northwards at the church of St Magnus the Martyr and onto Canning Street. As I moved along the street towards the building site that was once the great cathedral of St Paul’s, I thought of Wren and his grand vision for a new cathedral following the Great Fire. He keeps the details of his plans secret and only shares them with one other, the dour and ill-tempered Isaac Newton, during his visits to the Royal Society.
I reached the newly built church of St Swithin’s and crossed to the south side of the street. On arriving there I examined the spectacle of the London Stone, its whiteness almost glowing in the quickening light of dawn. Hard like flint, it had been excavated as a single block and stood much higher than my shoulder. Its position had been marked on the map and by its location, and from other landmarks described in the book, I could orientate my direction towards the centre of the stone circle long since gone that had once crowned London’s earth.
Guided by the map, I headed east out of the Old City towards the Minories, a place I knew well. Wren had often engaged the work of a fine Jewish instrument maker who had a workshop in the area, and I would frequently run errands between the two gentlemen. The map showed the centre of the sacred stone circle to be in close proximity to an ancient drinking well that I had on previous occasion visited. I knew its position and reached the old well in good time.
Some distance away from the well, I came across a very curious object in a spot covered by thick undergrowth. It was a pyramid forged from a material like Portland stone. I looked down at the book in my hands and I realised that I had found the centre of the circle. The pyramid and inverted cross design stamped into the book’s soft leather cover stared back up at me, confirming my supposition.
Even more curious than the discovery of the pyramid however, was the small outcrop of rocks only feet away from it, surrounded by a dense thicket of brambles and catch weed. Hacking my way through the brier, I could see that the outcrop marked the entrance to some fashion of passageway.
Less than a quarter turn of my pocket watch later, I had collected a torch from the instrument maker’s workshop and was venturing under its flickering light into the bowels of the earth. It was a strange and fearful passageway, the first part dropping away steeply into blackness. Guided by the torch and with head hunched, I crept ever further down through the narrowing tunnel.
Suddenly, the tunnel opened up into a deep pit. I must have been at least twenty yards under the ground, in a hole as deep as the roof of St Swithin’s church. In the centre of the pit stood an amazing sight. A stone mausoleum, impaired with age, but still recognisable as a fine monument, perfectly preserved beneath the busy streets of the Minories.
The structure was of Roman design and topped with an imperial eagle statue. With my torch, I could make out that held within the eagle’s beak was a writhing serpent. Soon I reached the floor of the pit and saw that the mausoleum was square in form, with a pyramidal roof held aloft by choice pillars of black marble. The building was a stately structure, echoing an age of ancient Roman glories.
Under the light afforded by the torch, I edged myself through the arched entranceway to the mausoleum. With my heart pounding in my ears as loud as a church bell, I stepped into the melancholic blackness of its interior. The centre of the space was given up to a black marble altar. Spread out on the top of the altar, like soldiers in a Roman legion, were three lines of coins. Ten in each line, thirty coins in all.
Notwithstanding reading of their existence in the pages of the book the previous evening, I couldn’t believe I was now standing close enough to touch them. How this curiosity had been kept a secret for so long, and its antiquities not ransacked, I shall never know. They had been brought from the Holy Land by the Emperor Constantine to be interred in this mausoleum. The silver coins were objects of dark power, tokens of sacrifice to the God of Sulphur.
All that I had found had been laid out exactly as described in the book. I felt something strange and fearful about me, my senses sharpening in the darkness. Did I have the courage to complete the journey? Wretched feelings held carnival within me. I tried to keep the door carefully shut on them, but I could not. If I made a vow, a vow unto the Dark Lord and swear an oath to bind His soul to mine, I would not be able break that bond. But the book promised great temporal power and knowledge beyond my understanding if I did so.
Why shouldn’t I take all knowledge to be my province? For isn’t knowledge like the branches of a tree, once started, infinitely multiplying outwards at right angles. I was about to awake dark powers in order to attain the mysteries of all things. To have both a longitude and latitude. Wren rebukes me often for being curious of knowing everything to excess. He says I am so frequently diverted, with inclinations towards new trifles. My inquisitive appetite should be tempered with sober devotion to practice, he admonishes.
But my great endeavours with the Professor have given me scanty success. He holds all the knowledge, and only throws me scraps, as if I were some lap dog. Of the plans for the new St Paul’s Cathedral he shares nothing, of the experiments he conducts with Mr Hooke in the great stone column built to commemorate the Great Fire, he tells me less. I have come to realise that Wren gives nothing but a false lecture, that is worth naught. Whereas the book in my hands holds the promise of nothing less than the secrets and mysteries of nature itself. In that moment the plan was thoroughly settled in my mind.
With haste, I stripped myself naked to the waist and then retrieved the knife I had brought with me. As instructed in the book, and with awe and trembling, I cut a shallow line into my flesh an inch above my navel. Taking one of the coins from the black altar, I squeezed it under the flap of skin created by the cut. This hurt me greatly and many times did I cry out in pain and agony into the darkness. Gasping, I leant over the black altar and let my blood fall onto its surface like drops of rain. Then I opened the book and recited the incantation instructed in its pages. Its words held incomprehensible power and as I spoke them out loud into the echoing chamber, I felt a dark presence rise about me.
Then a cloud of glowing sulphurous particles rose up from the floor, like the glowing embers of a fire caught in a putrid wind. By the hand of some unseen agency, the particles began to spin in the air. Faster a
nd faster they went like a twisting vortex, until the very air itself took fire. Before me stood a column of flames suspended in mid-air, like the blazing eye of a snake. My mind was consumed with fear and my body began to convulse violently.
Like a lens that causes all sunlight to meet in a single focus, the power of the flames came together onto the coin deposited under my skin. My flesh swelled, and my veins felt like liquid fire. I shook greatly in pain and agony and strange visions of black churches invaded my mind. Then as quickly as the flames had appeared in front of me, they were gone. I fell to my knees in exhaustion, utterly undone.
I will never forget the panic that followed. A loud rumbling rifled through the bowels of the earth, and then an earthquake jolted me with such violence that it shook the breath out of my body. Struggling to my feet, I was shaken to and fro, as if a ship tossed upon the sea by a tempest. Cracks and pits began to open up in the ground either side of the mausoleum. I had to escape from this place or be likewise entombed. With wildness and terror swirling all around, I grabbed my coat and filled my pockets as well as I could with the strange coins from the altar. Some tumbled to the floor in the confusion of things, as I ran for the passageway. It seemed like the very earth was turning itself inside out in front of my eyes, as I fled for my life.
Gasping for breath, but escaping without much hurt, save the slit around my stomach, I was delivered to daylight with tremendous relief. My body had survived intact, but my soul had been altered forever. I walked home a changed man; a man admitted to the secrets of arcane knowledge. My courage had been sharp enough to pierce the veil, and now with new purpose, I had been reborn. To celebrate, I bought a pleasing silk handkerchief from a hawker plying his trade near the river.
I retired to my lodgings in Middle Temple to rest. When I placed my head on the pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My unbidden imagination was gifted successive images that arose in my mind with an acute clarity. I saw, with my shut eyes, a powerful vision of four black churches, towering over the rebuilt cathedral of St Paul’s. My name was written on each of them in fire. The Dark Lord was returning from the place to which he had been cast down and I had been chosen to prepare the way.
Chapter 52
Blake opened the blinds of his living room window and watched the headlights of one of the two police cars disappear into the cool London night. The other patrol car was stationed outside his front door and would be for the foreseeable future. Blake’s immediate concern was for Sarah, and he insisted on seeing her before making his statement. His arrival at the Desais doorstep, flanked by police, had understandably caused them great concern, but as the police officer explained the extent of the security measures now in place, they agreed that the best place for Sarah was with them, at least in the short term.
The statement he had given at the police station had initiated countrywide manhunts for Angelo Ricard and his security manager. Searches had already been made of both Ricard’s office and his exclusive London residence in Belgravia, but neither had found any trace of him or his henchmen. They had disappeared from the face of the earth. Would the police be able to nail Ricard before tomorrow evening’s blood moon?
Blake had arranged to meet Milton the following day to discuss the planned security arrangements for St Mary Woolnoth. He should sleep, but his brain wouldn’t let him rest. It kept blinking on and off like a neon sign. His body still felt the echo of the adrenaline that had recently sped through his veins. He tried to keep his anger in, but it kept rising to the surface. The shock of the events surrounding Alina had turned his world upside down. Blake guessed that Ricard had sought her out at the shelter and performed some kind of bizarre initiation ritual on her, implanting a Tyrian shekel beneath her skin. Had Alina’s arrival at Sarah’s hospital been part of a plan to keep tabs on him? Had it all been a sham? The fire of rage was burning brightly in Blake’s heart.
In search of a distraction from his dark thoughts, Blake walked over to the television and switched it on. Whilst he poured himself a mug of whisky, he became aware that the programme was all about the mayoral election. According to the well-known political pundit who was presenting the show, voting had ended three hours ago and the counting of the votes was now well underway. The final result would be announced at around six o’clock that evening. Only then did Blake remember that he hadn’t voted, as the events of the day had somewhat spiralled out of control.
He switched off the television and savoured a gulp of the golden spirit. Placing the mug onto the coffee table, he darted out of the room with a determined look in his eyes. Five minutes later he returned, cradling a number of items in his arms. He laid them out one by one onto the coffee table, ticking them off in his mind: a hammer, a pestle and mortar, an empty plastic medicine bottle that had recently contained painkiller tablets for the stitches in his head, and the lump of London Stone salvaged from the Cannon Street bombing.
Before setting to work, he walked over to the window and closed the metal blinds. He could feel the anger swell in him again as he grabbed the blinds and twisted them in his hands. The rules had changed. With his face hardening, a new resolve became forged within him. He just needed one chance. Then he would kill that son of a bitch.
Chapter 53
Blake had introduced DCI Milton to the pub years ago. Hidden off a back alley to Ely Court, and a stone’s throw from London’s famous diamond centre of Hatton Garden, Ye Olde Mitre Tavern had stood on the site since 1546. Although the drinking establishment was tiny compared to its modern counterparts, its out of the way location meant that conversations could be held in relative privacy. Milton had called ahead to reserve the smallest of the alcove drinking rooms. He wanted a quiet place to talk to Blake. He needn’t have worried; the lunchtime rush had ended and the place was nearly empty.
After ending his phone call to Sarah outside the pub, Blake ducked his head and walked into the bar. He immediately made a beeline for Milton in the alcove.
‘You slept any?’ said Milton.
‘I don’t sleep much these days,’ said Blake solemnly.
‘Look man, I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. I don’t know what to say, Vincent,’ he said shaking his head, the tone of his voice turning sober out of respect. ‘If I can help out in any way?’
The two men silently looked at one another.
‘We’ve got to nail this bastard Ricard,’ said Blake.
Milton could read a hardness in his gaze. ‘He’s gone to ground for the moment, but I can’t have you going lone ranger on this one. You’ll end up getting yourself killed. You understand?’
Milton noticed Blake’s hesitation in response.
‘You know that, right? We’ve got to do it the right way.’
Blake said nothing.
‘That lowlife isn’t going to get within twenty feet of St Mary’s church tonight. It’s being secured as we speak. All doors and windows are being padlocked. I’ll have officers stationed outside. No way in or out. If it wasn’t for the mayoral elections, I would have twenty more officers there.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Blake.
‘The official announcement,’ said Milton, raising an eyebrow. ‘For the mayoral elections. The final results will be declared outside the Bank of England. We’ve had to divert some of the team to manage the inevitable crowds.’
Blake nodded, unsure as to where he had heard the information before. But he knew that the Bank of England was just a stone’s throw away from the church of St Mary Woolnoth.
‘The exit polls are all indicating a landslide victory for Lambton. A new mayor usually means a new police commissioner for London. There’s a good chance that our friend Lewis may be up for the top job. If that happens we’ll all be in the shit,’ he grumbled sourly. After shooting a cursory glance around the pub, he carried on. ‘How a snake like Lewis could be put forward for a job like that beats me. He’s just a talking head, not a real policeman. He couldn’t piss into a pot.’ His voice dropped a n
otch. ‘Look, Lewis doesn’t want anything to go off tonight that could jeopardise his chances of making it to the top of the food chain.’
‘You do know Ricard will stop at nothing. This is his final chance to complete the pattern,’ said Blake, staring at the DCI with a hard, unbending look. ‘There won’t be another blood moon tetrad for centuries.’ Blake glanced up at the clock behind the bar. ‘What time do you want me at the church?’ said Blake.
‘Here’s the thing,’ said Milton, rubbing his chin. ‘I don’t want you anywhere near the church tonight. You’ve gone through a hell of a lot over the last couple of days, and to be honest, I’m not sure all your wheels are on the road at the moment. Look, don’t sweat it. If Ricard gets within walking distance of the church we’ll hammer him. Anyway, I want you to focus your attention on Ricard’s house in Belgravia. We need to get some clue as to where he might be hiding out.’
Chapter 54
‘So, this surprise you wanted to show me?’ asked Rosalind, staring into space. ‘When can I see it?’
Ricard returned to the room, carrying a backpack and something that looked like a woman’s purse in his hand.
‘It had better be worth it,’ she teased.
Since the charity event, Ricard had taken quite a shine to her. He had bought her flowers and even invited her to have lunch with him at his luxury home
Now they were together in one of Ricard’s other London properties, this one just off Green Park. He said he wanted to collect a bag before unveiling the ‘big secret’ to her. This apartment wasn’t as impressive as his Belgravia home, but it was perfectly adequate. If the truth were known, she had started to take a shine to Angelo Ricard too. He was a good-looking, confident man. The type of confidence you get from a hefty bank account and being very well connected.
The Devil’s Architect: Book Two of the Dark Horizon Trilogy Page 21
