by Clive Barker
But it was the death of Roxborough's sister that Gentle remembered with profoundest horror, hot least because the man had been at such pains to keep her from coming and had even abased himself to the Maestro, begging him to talk to the woman and persuade her to stay away. He'd had the talk, but he'd knowingly made his caution a seduction—almost literally, in fact—and she'd come to see the Reconciliation as much to meet the eyes of the man who'd wooed her with his warnings as for the ceremony itself. She'd paid the most terrible price. She'd been fought over like a bone among hungry wolves, shrieking a prayer for deliverance as a trio of Oviates drew out her entrails and dabbled in her open skull. By the time the Maestro, with Pie 'oh' pah's help, had raised sufficient feits to drive the entities back into the circle, she was dying in her own coils, thrashing like a fish half filleted by a hook.
Only later did the Maestro hear of the atrocities visited on the other circles. It was the same story there as in the Fifth: the Oviates appearing in the midst of innocents; carnage ensuing, which was only brought to a halt when one of the Maestro's assistants drove them back. With the exception of Sartori, the Maestros themselves had all perished.
“It would be better if I'd died like the others,” he said to Lucius.
The boy tried to persuade him otherwise, but tears overwhelmed him. There was another voice, however, rising from the bottom of the stairs, raw with grief but strong.
“Sartori! Sartori!”
He turned. Joshua was there in the hallway, his fine powder—blue coat covered with blood. As were his hands. As was his face.
“What's going to happen?” he yelled, “This storm! It's going to tear the world apart!”
“No, Joshua.”
“Don't lie to me! There's never been a storm like this! Ever!”
“Control yourself—”
“Jesus Christ our Lord, forgive us our trespasses.”
“That's not going to help, Joshua.”
Godolphin had a crucifix in his hand and put it to his lips.
“You Godless trash! Are you a demon? Is that it? Were you sent to have our souls?” Tears were pouring down his crazed face. “What Hell did you come out of?”
“The same as you. The human hell.”
“I should have listened to Roxborough. He knew! He said over and over you had some plan, and I didn't believe him, wouldn't believe him, because Judith loved you, and how could anything so pure love anything unholy? But you hid yourself from her too, didn't you? Poor, sweet Judith! How did you make her love you? How did you do it?”
“Is that all you can think of?”
“Tell me! How?”
Barely coherent in his fury, Godolphin started up the stairs towards the seducer.
Gentle felt his hand go to his mouth. Godolphin halted. He knew this power.
“Haven't we shed enough blood tonight?” the Maestro said.
“You, not me,” Godolphin replied. He jabbed a finger in Gentle's direction, the crucifix hanging from his fist. “You'll have no peace after this,” he said. “Roxborough's already talking about a purge, and I'm going to give him every guinea he needs to break your back. You and all your works are damned!”
“Even Judith?”
“I never want to see that creature again.”
“But she's yours, Joshua,” the Maestro said flatly, descending the stairs as he spoke. “She's yours forever and ever. She won't age. She won't die. She belongs to the family Godolphin until the sun goes out.”
“Then I'll kill her.”
“And have her innocent soul on your blotted conscience?”
“She's got no soul!”
“I promised you Judith to the lash, and that's what she is. A religion. A discipline. A sacred mystery. Remember?”
Godolphin buried his face in his hands.
“She's the one truly innocent soul left among us, Joshua. Preserve her. Love her as you've never loved any living thing, because she's our only victory.” He took hold of Godolphin's hands and unmasked him. “Don't be ashamed of our ambition,” he said. “And don't believe anyone who tells you it was the Devil's doing. We did what we did out of love.”
“Which?” Godolphin said. “Making her, or the Reconciliation?”
“It's all One,” he replied. “Believe that, at least.”
Godolphin claimed his hands from the Maestro's grip. “I'll never believe anything again" he said and, turning his back, began his weary descent.
Standing on the stairs, watching the memory disappear, Gentle said a second farewell. He had never seen Godolphin again after that night. A few weeks later the man had retreated to his estate and sealed himself up there, living in silent self-mortification until despair had burst his tender heart.
“It was my fault,” said the boy on the stairs behind him.
Gentle had forgotten Lucius was still there, watching and listening. He turned back to the child.
“No,” he said, “You're not to blame.”
Lucius had wiped the blood from his chin, but he couldn't control his trembling. His teeth chattered between his stumbling words. “I did everything you told me to do,” he said. “I swear. I swear. But I must have missed some words from the rites or... I don't know... maybe mixed up the stones.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The stones you gave me, to replace the flawed ones.”
“I gave you no stones, Lucius.”
“But Maestro, you did. Two stones, to go in the circle. You told me to bury the ones I took, at the step. Don't you remember?”
Listening to the boy, Gentle finally understood how the Reconciliation had come to grief. His other—born in the upper room of this very house—had used Lucius as his agent, sending him to replace a part of the circle with stones that resembled the originals (forging ran in the blood), knowing they would not preserve the circle's integrity when the ceremony reached its height.
But while the man who was remembering these scenes understood how all this had come about, to Maestro Sartori, still ignorant of the other self he'd created in the womb of the doubling circle, this remained an unfathomable mystery.
“I gave you no such instruction,” he said to Lucius.
“I understand,” the youth replied. “You have to lay the blame at my feet. That's why Maestros need adepts. I begged you for the responsibility, arid I'm glad to have had it even if I failed.” He reached into his pocket as he spoke. “Forgive me, Maestro,” he said and, drawing out a knife, had it at his heart in the space of a thunderclap. As the tip drew blood the Maestro caught hold of the youth's hand and, wrenching the blade from his fingers, threw it down the stairs.
“Who gave you permission to do that?” he said to Lucius. “I thought you wanted to be an adept?”
“I did,” the boy said.
“And now you're out of love with it. You see humiliation and you want no more of the business.”
“No!” Lucius protested. “I still want wisdom. But I failed tonight.”
“We all failed tonight!” the Maestro said. He took hold of the trembling boy and spoke to him softly. “I don't know how this tragedy came about,” he said. “But I sniff more than your shite in the air. Some plot was here, laid against our high ambition, and perhaps if I hadn't been blinded by my own glory I'd have seen it. The fault isn't yours, Lucius. And stopping your own life won't bring Abelove, or Esther, or any of the others back. Listen to me.”
“I'm listening.”
“Do you still want to be my adept?”
“Of course.”
“Will you obey my instructions now, to the letter?”
“Anything. Just tell me what you need from me.”
“Take my books, all that you can carry, and go as far from here as you're able to go. To the other end of the Imajica, if you can learn the trick of it. Somewhere Roxborough and his hounds won't ever find you. There's a hard winter coming for men like us. It'll kill all but the cleverest. But you can be clever, can't you?”
“Yes.”
/>
“I knew it.” The Maestro smiled. “You must teach yourself in secret, Lucius, and you must learn to live outside time. That way, the years won't wither you, and when Roxborough's dead you'll be able to try again.”
“Where will you be, Maestro?”
“Forgotten, if I'm lucky. But never forgiven, I think. That would be too much to hope for. Don't look so dejected, Lucius. I have to know there's some hope, and I'm charging you to carry it for me.”
“It's my honor, Maestro.”
As he replied, Gentle was once again grazed by the deja vu he'd first felt when he'd encountered Lucius outside the dining room door. But the touch was light, and passed before he could make sense of it.
“Remember, Lucius, that everything you learn is already part of you, even to the Godhead Itself. Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing”—there the Maestro stopped and shuddered, as though he had a presentiment—“fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain. Will you remember those things?”
The boy looked uncertain. “As best I can,” he said.
“That will have to suffice,” the Maestro said. “Now ... get out of here before the purgers come.”
He let go of the boy's shoulders, and Cobbitt retreated down the stairs, backwards, like a commoner from the king, only turning and heading away when he was at the bottom.
The storm was overhead now, and with the boy gone, taking his sewer stench with him, the smell of electricity was strong. The candle Gentle held flickered, and for an instant he thought it was going to be extinguished, signaling the end of these recollections, at least for tonight. But there was more to come.
“That was kind,” he heard Pie 'oh' pah say, and turned to see the mystif standing at the top of the stairs. It had discarded its soiled clothes with its customary fastidiousness, but the plain shirt and trousers it wore were all the finery it needed to appear in perfection. There was no face in the Imajica more beautiful than this, Gentle thought, nor form more graceful, and the scenes of terror and recrimination the storm had brought were of little consequence while he bathed in the sight of it. But the Maestro he had been had not yet made the error of losing this—miracle and, seeing the mystif, was more concerned that his deceits had been discovered.
“Were you here when Godolphin came?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you know about Judith?”
“I can guess.”
“I kept it from you because I knew you wouldn't approve.”
“It's not my place to approve or otherwise. I'm not your wife, that you should fear my censure.”
“Still, I do. And I thought, well, when the Reconciliation was done this would seem like a little indulgence, and you'd say I deserved it because of what I'd achieved. Now it seems like a crime, and I wish it could be undone.”
“Do you? Truly?” the mystif said.
The Maestro looked up. “No, I don't,” he said, his tone that of a man surprised by a revelation. He started to climb the stairs. “I suppose I must believe what I told Godolphin, about her being our...”
“Victory,” Pie prompted, stepping aside to let the summoner step into the Meditation Room. It was, as ever, bare. “Shall I leave you alone?” Pie asked.
“No,” the Maestro said hurriedly. Then, more quietly: “Please. No.”
He went to the window from which .he had stood those many evenings watching the nymph Allegra at her toilet. The branches of the tree he'd spied her through thrashed themselves to splinter and pulp against the panes.
“Can you make me forget, Pie 'oh' pah? There are such feits, aren't there?”
“Of course. But is that what you want?”
“No, what I really want is death, but I'm too afraid of that at the moment. So ... it will have to be forgetfulness.”
“The true Maestro folds pain into his experience.”
“Then I'm not a true Maestro,” he returned. “I don't have the courage for that. Make me forget, mystif. Divide me from what I've done and what I am forever. Make a feit that'll be a river between me and this moment, so that I'm never tempted to cross it.”
“How will you live?”
The Maestro puzzled over this for a few moments. “In increments,” he finally replied. “Each part ignorant of the part before. Well. You can do this for me?”
“Certainly.”
“It's what 1 did for the woman I made for Godolphin. Every ten years she'll start to undo her life and disappear. Then she'll invent another one and live it, never knowing what she left behind.”
Listening to himself plot the life he'd lived, Gentle heard a perverse satisfaction in his voice. He had condemned himself to two hundred years of waste, but he'd known what he was doing. He'd made the same arrangements precisely for the second Judith and had contemplated every consequence on her behalf. It wasn't just cowardice that made him shun these memories. It was a kind of revenge upon himself for failing, to banish his future to the same limbo he'd made for his creature.
“I'll have pleasure, Pie,” he said. “I'll wander the world and enjoy the moments. I just won't have the sum of them.”
“And what about me?”
“After this, you're free to go,” he said.
“And do what? Be what?”
“Whore or assassin, I don't care,” the Maestro said.
The remark had been thrown off casually—surely not intended as an order to the mystif. But was it a slave's duty to distinguish between a command made for the humor of it and one to be followed absolutely? No, it was a slave's duty to obey, especially if the dictate came, as did this, from a beloved mouth. Here, with a throwaway remark, the master had circumscribed his servant's life for two centuries, driving it to deeds it had doubtless abhorred.
Gentle saw the tears shining in the mystif's eyes and felt its suffering like a hammer pounding at his heart. He hated himself then, for his arrogance and his carelessness, for not seeing the harm he was doing a creature that only wanted to love him and be near him. And he longed more than ever to be reunited with Pie, so that he could beg forgiveness for this cruelty.
“Make me forget,” he said again. “I want an end to this.”
The mystif was speaking, Gentle saw, though whatever incantations its lips shaped were spoken in a voice he couldn't hear. The breath that bore them made the flame he'd set on the floor flicker, however, and as the mystif instructed its master in forgetfulness the memories went out with the flame.
Gentle rummaged for the box of matches and struck one, using its light to find the smoking wick, then reigniting it. But the night of storm had passed back into history, and Pie 'oh' pah, beautiful, obedient, loving Pie 'oh' pah, had gone with it. He sat down in front of the candle and waited, wondering if there was some coda to come. But the house was dead from cellar to eaves.
“So,” he said to himself. “What now, Maestro?”
He had his answer from his stomach, which made a little thunder of its own.
“You want food?” he asked it, and it gurgled its reply. “Me too,” he said.
He got up and started down the stairs, preparing himself for a return to modernity. As he reached the bottom, however, he heard something scraping across the bare boards. He raised the candle, and his voice.
“Who's there?”
Neither the light nor his demand brought an answer. But the sound went on, and others joined it, none of them pleasant: a low, agonized moan; a wet, dragging sound; a whistling inhalation. What melodrama was his memory preparing to stage for him, he wondered, that had need of these hoary devices? They might have inspired fear in him once upon a time, but not now. He'd seen too many horrors face to face to be chilled by imitations.
“What's this about?” he asked the shadows, and was somewhat surprised to have his question answered.
“We've waited for you a long
time,” a wheezing voice told him.
“Sometimes we thought you'd never come home,” another said. There was a fluting femininity in its tone.
Gentle took a step in the direction of the woman, and the rim of the candle's reach touched what looked to be the hem of a scarlet skirt, which was hastily twitched out of sight. Where it had lain, the bare boards shone with fresh blood. He didn't advance any further, but listened for another pronouncement from the shadows. It came soon enough. Not the woman this time, but the wheezer.
“The fault was yours,” he said. “But the pain's been ours. All these years, waiting for you.”
Though corrupted by anguish, the voice was familiar. He'd heard its lilt in this very house.
“Is that Abelove?” he said.
“Do you remember the maggot-pie?” the man said, confirming his identity. “The number of times I've thought: That was my error, bringing the bird into the house. Tyrwhitt would have no part of it, and he survived, didn't he? He died in his dotage. And Roxborough, and Godolphin, and you. All of you lived and died intact. But me, I just suffered here, flying against the glass but never hard enough to cease.” He moaned, and though his rebuke was as absurd as it had been when first uttered, this time Gentle shuddered. “I'm not alone, of course,” Abelove said. “Esther's here. And Flores. And Byam-Shaw. And Bloxham's brother-in-law; do you remember him? So there'll be plenty of company for you.”
