Deliver us from Evil (23 page)

Night came. Robert lit candles. The news would not arrive today, he thought, not now. He felt disappointed. Tomorrow - he would have to brace himself to die tomorrow; he was almost impatient, he realised, for death to arrive. He sighed; and then suddenly, from the street outside, heard a great din of shouting and cheers. He watched Mr Milton tense, then reach across the table for his manuscript. Robert crossed to where his knife was hidden and stood with arm raised, by the side of the door. There was still silence from the house below; and then, rising faintly, came the clattering of footsteps.

Robert raised his arm higher. He glanced back at Mr Milton who was sitting rigidly in his chair, the motionless image of some ancient senator waiting to be struck down by barbarian hordes. The footsteps rose louder. Robert heard the secret doorway in the hearth being forced. Despite himself, he stepped back. There was a sudden silence as the footsteps paused on the stairway outside; then the handle turned; and the door was opened.

Silence again.

'What news?' cried Mr Milton. 'Robert - tell me - who is it there?'

Robert stared at the group of men in the doorway. One of them handed him a sheet of paper. He scanned it. He breathed in deeply; then turned, and placed it in Mr Milton's hands. 'You are safe,' he whispered. 'You are not amongst the fifteen condemned.' He felt light with relief; yet deep inside him, he realised with a sudden shock, there was disappointment too, that he was not to fight and die after all. For his mother's words had lately been always in his thoughts, her vow that she would meet him with his father after death. Yet now, it was clear, he was still lost amidst the moral world; and the way ahead of him seemed darker and more uncertain than before. Where, he wondered, might it lead him now? And what, when he took it, might he find he had become?

'
o
dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,

Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!'

John Milton,
Samson Agonistes

M

r Milton too over the next weeks seemed similarly afflicted by doubt. He had emerged from his hiding-place, but he appeared increasingly to brood and be conscious of the worthlessness of things - more, certainly, than he had ever been whilst in fear for his life. He was often insulted on the streets, and he suffered these insults with an impatience he would never have allowed an executioner to glimpse. Robert did his best to defend his master, and would often launch himself recklessly against the blind man's tormentors; but they would merely laugh at him in turn, and his attempts to be martyred were met not with blows, but with jeers. Mr Milton, confronted by such a mixture of indifference and contempt, seemed slowly to sink into misery; and Robert, watching him, became aware how even the most implacable of minds might learn to despair. 'Not me, though,' he prayed. 'O Lord, please, not me.' He began to contemplate schemes for his return to Woodton once again; to yearn for some desperate and terrible measure. But what? Always, his dreams returned to such a question; and always, he shrank from the answer that they gave. For he knew of only one path which might offer him success, and the thought of its course still filled him with dread.

Day by day, though, as he wandered the streets - and almost without his realising it - he grew less careful. Whereas before he had kept to the margins of crowds, now he mingled with them freely; whereas before he had avoided the scent of blood, now he passed slaughter-houses with only a hurried glance. Yet he was never surprised by Lightborn or Milady; and he began to think that in such a populous city he might roam the streets freely, and still not be found. He started to accompany Mr Milton on ever longer excursions, and to discover that the city, which before had seemed nothing but a wilderness of streets, was not perhaps such a maze after all. He learned where the road to Salisbury began; and he also learned how Pudding Lane could be reached. But though he brooded more and more on what his course of action should be, he continued undecided; and as he pondered, so his carelessness grew.

One fine autumn day, he was walking with Mr Milton along the Mall. From ahead of them, by Charing Cross, there rose a sudden roar. It froze Robert's blood, for it had sounded joyous and cruel, and he had learned to fear such a noise. He tried to continue along the grass; but there was a second cheer and Mr Milton stood suddenly motionless, his fists clenched. 'What do you see?' he whispered. Robert shook his head. 'Am
I
so weak,' the blind man asked, 'that the workings of evil must be hidden from me?'

'Not hidden,' answered Robert. 'But why stare it in the face?'

'
I
stare at nothing.' Mr Milton smiled coldly. 'That is your function, Robert. Come. Lead me towards the noise.'

Robert did as he was ordered. 'There is a great crowd,' he murmured, 'and in its centre is a scaffold. A man is upon it, just cut down from a rope.'

'A man?' Mr Milton pressed. 'What man?'

Robert shrugged. '
I
do not recognise him.'

'It is Major-General Harrison,' said a jolly-looking bystander. 'One of the fifteen lately condemned to death for treason. Major Harrison is the first to be slain.'

Mr Milton said nothing for some moments. 'Does he go to it bravely?' he whispered at last.

'Oh, yes,' replied the bystander. 'He looks as cheerful as any man could do in his condition.' He was interrupted by a sudden groan, and then loud cries of joy. 'They have cut him open,' continued the bystander helpfully, 'and now his head and his heart are being shown to the people.' He paused, then lowered his voice. 'They say,' he whispered, 'that his wife expects his coming again. They say that he will surely be at the right hand of Christ, so that those who have judged him will be shortly judged themselves.'

Mr Milton's eyes rolled terribly. 'They say that, do they?' He laughed, and not since the night amongst the stones had Robert heard so chilling a sound. 'Then where is Christ now?' the blind man hissed suddenly. 'Where is Christ's judgement here, on earth?' He turned and began to hurry, pushing through the mass of people. Robert had to run after him to take his arm; his master was shaking, he realised. Gradually, as he was led from the crowds, Mr Milton began to compose himself again; but though his calm returned, it seemed as frozen and fierce as his laughter had been. He did not say a word, not as he walked, nor even once he was back in his home. Instead, he went straight to his desk; he unlocked his hidden manuscript. For a long while he sat holding it; then, like the sudden breaking of a tempest, he began to write. Never had Robert seen him compose in such a fury; and when he finally finished, Mr Milton sat as though drained, and almost shocked at himself.

'Tell me,' asked Robert softly, 'what should
I
do?'

Mr Milton did not seem surprised that the silence had been broken at last. He reached for Robert's hands. 'Whatever must be done.'

'How far should
I
go?'

'As far as you must.'

Robert paused a while; then he opened his mouth. But Mr Milton, as though sensing the question that was hanging in the air, lifted up his hand. 'As far as you must,' he repeated with emphasis. His blind eyes stared as though endowed with sudden sight; he laid his hands upon Robert's head. '
I
shall rest now,' he murmured. 'Do not come with me. It is time for both of us,
I
think, to find our own way now.'

Robert watched as the blind man went; then slumped in sudden weariness into the empty chair. He realised, looking at the desk, that the manuscript had not been locked away and he stared at the papers with almost superstitious awe. He felt afraid to touch them. But Mr Milton, he thought suddenly, did nothing by accident. Go your own way, he had said. Still, though, the blind man had been the spokesman for the Foxes' cause; and his guidance had always been most precious and wise. Mr Milton had surely understood this himself; why else then would he not have locked the manuscript away? Robert reached out, and took the top page. As he had guessed, it seemed to be a poem. The writing was almost illegible, covered with scrawled corrections and marks; but at the bottom, in a clearer hand, there were lines which had been circled and underlined. Robert touched them: the ink was still fresh. He smoothed the paper back upon the desk, then began to read.

'What though the field be lost?'
he read.
'All is not lost.'
He paused, to repeat the phrase beneath his breath.
'All is not lost.'
He swallowed, then continued.
'The unconquerable will,'
he murmured,

'And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield:

And what is else not to be overcome?

That glory never shall his wrath or might

Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace

With suppliant knee, and deify his power,

That were an ignominy and shame

Robert stopped reading. He sat back in his chair, and the page fell from his numbed fingers to curl on the floor; but the words he had read from it still seemed to echo in his mind. Like a trumpet blast they sounded, a summons to action; and Robert thought how it was said that the sightless had the powers of prophecy. He remembered now the blind man's first words to him, spoken after he had slain the footpad. 'Do not condemn yourself,' Mr Milton had said. 'It is no sin to be revenged on your attackers.' How much less of a sin, then, Robert thought to himself, to venture whatever had to be ventured, when it was the redemption of Emily which was his ultimate goal. He reached down for the sheet of paper again; he re-read the lines. 'No sin,' he whispered, 'no sin.' Then he closed his eyes. He imagined Lightborn was standing before him, pointing to the wounded man at his feet. He was handing him the knife. Robert imagined he took it
...
he imagined he plunged it into the injured man's face.

He was arrested that same evening. A Sergeant-at-arms came with a troop of armed men; Robert and his master were both dragged away. At the jail they were parted; as Robert was led to his cell, he twisted and called out to Mr Milton not to fear. He knew why they had been seized: not on his master's count, but on his own. For when the troops had arrived, standing by the Sergeant Robert had recognised Godolphin, Lightborn's lover; and outside the jail, he had glimpsed the same man again.

But days passed, then weeks, and a couple of months. Still no one came. Then at last the door was opened, and Robert heard his name called out. He rose and followed the gaoler from the cell. Down a long, fetid passageway he stumbled, then out into the pure air of an open court. A man in a cloak was waiting there, smoking a pipe. He turned slowly round, a thin smile lighting his pale face. 'At last,' said Lightborn, 'we meet again.'

Robert blinked. The sun, and Lightborn's eyes, were too bright for him to bear. 'And my master?' he stammered. 'Mr Milton - where is he?'

'Released already,' answered Lightborn. 'And let us hope he remains that way, for - did
I
not tell you this? -
I
was once accounted a poet myself.'

'But why should he not remain released?'

Lightborn blew a ring of smoke from his lips. 'If you return to him,' he murmured, '
I
would not like to vouch for Mr Milton's fate.' 'What would you have me do, then, sir?' 'Come with me.'

'It needs no threats to persuade me to do that.'

Lightborn narrowed his eyes. 'Indeed?' He rose and crossed to take Robert's hand, then led him from the courtyard. 'So
I
may presume, then, Master Lovelace, that you will not be running away from us again?'

Robert rubbed his eyes. For the first time, he looked Lightborn in the face. 'Never,' he whispered. 'Never again.
I
have a friend
I
must rescue -
I
know what
I
must do.'

'
o
, what a world of profit and delight,

Of power, of honour, of omnipotence,
Is
promis'd . . .'

Christopher Marlowe,
Doctor Faustus

R
obert lay in the perfumed waters of the bath-tub. A circle
of
drugged eyes surrounded him: Lightborn's boys, naked save for the paint that gilded their lips and the pearls about their arms. Their pale hands stroked and flickered across his limbs. With each caress, Robert felt the dirt melt away. He knew that with it went his old self, the old Robert Foxe, lost upon the steam which rose from the bath and misted the gold of the candle-flames. At length, he stretched and felt himself utterly cleansed. He climbed from the bath and the boys began to dry him; one brought him a pile of clothes which Robert recognised immediately. They were the same Milady had offered him before: the clothes he had rejected. The boys began to dress him and this time, Robert did not complain. He had made his decision: he had pawned his soul. He was not Robert Foxe, but Robert Lovelace now.