“Of course.”
“God says, where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Which is a weak and ambivalent answer, but I assume what He’s saying is, puny mortal, you can’t begin to understand the mysteries of My providence, so don’t even bother trying. Essentially correct?”
He shrugged. “More or less.”
“Fine. Now try and look at it the way I do, as if it was a play I was thinking about putting on at the theatre. God says all that to Job, yes? But, a few scenes earlier, we saw it all for ourselves. We saw Satan leading God into temptation; bet you your faithful servant will crumple up like a dead leaf, he says, and God falls for it like a ton of bricks. He tortures this good, pious man—kills his sons, brings him out all over in boils, for crying out loud—and why? Because the tempter tempted Him, and the tempter won. And what’s His excuse? Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth? Which,” I added bitterly, “is garbage—“
He was shocked. “Steady on,” he said.
“Yes, but it is. How dare He say His divine plan is ineffable and too sublime for mortal brains, when we’ve just seen it for ourselves? And it’s not even a plan, it’s God being made a monkey of by the Devil.” I shook my head, rather ostentatiously. “Take away the fool, gentlemen. They’d boo it off the stage in Southwark.”
He was looking at me, but I couldn’t help that. “Fine,” he said. “You may just have a point, though I’m not saying you do, I’m just—“
“Saying?”
He nodded. “But I still don’t see the difficulty. You’ve achieved salvation. What more could you possibly want?”
I smiled. “You mean, I should be content. As I was before all this started.”
You know when you’re playing chess, and you think you’re doing rather well, and then your opponent says, Checkmate, and you look, and he’s right. He stared at me. “So?”
“Ask me what I want.”
“All right. What do you—?”
“I want it all back,” I said. “I want my theatre and my ship and my businesses and my farms. And if God isn’t inclined to give them to me, I’m asking you. Your lot.”
He was horrified. “You can’t,” he said.
“Why not?”
“There would have to be a price.”
I laughed out loud. I’d had a hunch for some time, and now was the time to see if I was right. I stuck my hand into the heart of the fire and held it there.
He was gawping at me as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Of course not. I can spot a fake a mile off.”
“But it’s—“
“Just stage fire. Like stage blood, or the fake daggers that retract when you stab someone.” My fingers weren’t even warm. “My stuff,” I said. “Do I get it back, or not?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Yes, please.”
And it was so. Just like that. Magic.
When he vanished into thin air, I fished an ember out of the root of the fire, wrapped it in moss and tucked it into the heel of one of my spare clogs. It was still faintly smouldering when I got back to London. I called to see my lord Devereaux, newly released from the Tower, with a full pardon. In this shoe, I told him, I have an ember of genuine authentic hell-fire. How much do you want for it? he asked.
With the proceeds, I rebuilt my theatre. Master Allardyce’s play—well, you don’t need me to tell you, you’ll have been to see it, six or seven times, like everybody else in London. Within six months, I was better off than I’d ever been. And now? I’m content. I have everything I could possibly want. I mean it.
When I was a boy, I found a message in a bottle. Last week, Mater Cork came to see me. “You’ll like this,” he said.
“Really?” I said. “What is it?”
He showed me a tiny scrap of parchment. “This is Merlin’s handwriting,” he said. “It was found in a bottle by a boy on a beach in Wales, a hundred years ago. Great scholars of the church tried to decipher it, but none of them was wise or good enough, and they failed. In frustration, they threw it away. But only last week, it turned up in a sack of old scraps on its way to the paper-mill, and by some miracle I was there and recognised it for what it was. And now it can be yours,” he added, “for a mere five pounds.”
Sometimes you don’t argue, even when you know you could get it for less. When I’d got rid of him, I spread it out on my desk. It kept trying to curl up at the corners. The writing, as I’d guessed some time ago, was just ordinary Welsh, which none of the learned, high-born Fathers could read. All it said was—
The plague is carried by the fleas that infest rats.
Which is just the sort of thing you’d expect Merlin to know; that wise, humane, practical pagan Welshman. Was it genuine? I think so. My poor old friend the priest died of the plague, remember.
My mother used to preserve things in bottles. Properly sealed, they keep good indefinitely.
I walked down to Westminster and squelched through the sticky black mud until I found what I was looking for. It was there, sure enough; a bottle, its green head sticking up out of the loathsome glop. I knelt down and washed it out, then popped the scrap of parchment into it, shoved in the cork I’d had the forethought to bring with me, and threw the bottle out as far as I could make it go.
© Copyright 2016 K.J. Parker
K J Parker - [BCS192 S01] Page 4
