Deliver us from Evil (28 page)

'
I
'll plunge into a sea of my desires And quench my fever, though
I
drown my fame, And tear up pleasure by the roots. No matter Though it never grow again.'

The Earl of Rochester,
Valen
tinian

H

is guilt, when he woke to it, made Robert leap at once to his feet. The woman stirred, and reached out sleepily for him. He glanced back down at her. Her scen
t was heavy with honeyed sweat;
her face smeared with paint; her limbs bare of her prostitute's rags. He felt the sudden lightness again, and he had to force himself to brush her fingers from his thighs. Hurriedly, he wrapped a cloak about himself. As he left the room, he did not look round.

He found Milady seated by a fire in her chamber, gazing into the softly-burning flames, a bottle of red wine and a goblet by her feet. She seemed lost in some private ecstasy; and only when his shadow fell across her did she stir and glance up. She smiled with lazy pleasure as she reached for him. 'Was it not magical?' she whispered. 'For Lovelace - Lovelace -
I
felt it all.'

'Felt what?' asked Robert coldly.

Milady smiled again, and hooded her eyes. 'How can you ask?' She pulled him down and, despite himself, Robert laid his head upon her lap. 'Not for a long time,' she murmured, 'not since - oh, many, many years - have
I
known such wanton delights as
I
shared with Lightborn today. For it was you, Lovelace, your sporting, which served - as it were - to whet my own.'

'How is that possible?' Robert asked.

Milady shrugged faintly,
I
have told you - by some strange transfusion,
I
can share in your emotions and all your delights.'

'And
I
, it would seem, can share in some of yours.'

There was a brief silence. Milady bent and reached for the goblet by her feet. She sipped from it; and, very faintly, Robert felt the hollowing in his stomach which the night before had presaged the killing of the butcher.

He stared down at the bottle, it is blood?' he asked.

Milady inclined her head. 'Compounded with claret. The best. Haut Brion.'

Robert gazed from her lap into the pattern of the flames. 'Will
I
,'
he asked softly, 'when
I
become a creature like you, always feel a pleasure like
I
knew last night?'

'Doubtless,' replied Milady, stroking his hair, indeed, it will surely be the greater, for there is nothing to compare with the actual taste of blood.' She paused, then murmured in his ear. 'Did it terrify you?'

'Yes,' said Robert. 'As much as, last night, it ravished me as well.'

'Do you want it again?'

'Yes,' said Robert at last.

'What will you do?'

I
shall wait'

'Until what?'

'Until
I
am ready to return to Woodton, and seek Emily's escape.' He looked up at Milady. 'For
I
do not look to grow a blood-drinker for the pleasures it may bring, but for the powers alone.'

'Of course.'

'It is the truth.'

Milady smiled. 'Yet you did not play the puritan upon the sofa last night.'

Robert shook his head. 'It is no sin to enjoy the pleasures which God has given us - but only to reach after more . . . and to seize from others what is theirs alone to give.'

Milady frowned. 'What do you mean?' she asked him sharply.

'It was wrong, what we did to Lady Godolphin.'

Her golden eyes widened in puzzlement. 'Why?'

'Why, Milady? Why? It was a rape.'

'She went to it willingly enough.'

'You know full well that at first she did not.'

Milady studied him, puzzlement and fascination mingled in her expression. She shrugged at last, and took another sip of wine. 'Then what would you have us do?'

'She must be sent with all honour - yes, and with money too - to a place where she may resume her former life, for we have done her much wrong.'

Milady arched a thin eyebrow, and smiled as she shook her head. 'Lightborn will not like this.'

'No - for he can enjoy no pleasure unless it has some shade of cruelty to it. But you must persuade him, Milady.'

She shrugged faintly. 'You know, sweet Lovelace, that
I
ever do as you request.'

And so she did; and Lady Godolphin was indeed sent away. Naturally, Milady had been correct that Lightborn would not be pleased; and his fury against Robert was contemptuous and cold. But Robert was not afraid: he knew that Milady continued his protectress, who was the only being in creation Lightborn loved, the only being he would not willingly hurt. But for all his mistress's power over him, Lightborn did not surrender easily; and he grew all the more determined to teach Robert the ways of godlessness, so that the canker of religion might not infect his house any more. 'For
I
am a lord of the living and the dead,' he muttered, 'a creature of dreadful powers - and
I
shall not be preached at.' Instead, he began to grow a preacher himself. He would insist, with many fluent a
rguments, that religion
had no purpose but to keep fools in awe, and that all who thought otherwise were hypocritical asses. He would sometimes light his pipe with strips torn from a Bible and, surrounded by his boys, would describe how St John had been the lover of Christ, and used him as the sinners of Sodom might have done. Then Lightborn would gesture towards the Bible and invite Robert to light his own pipe with it, since he had surely proved how it was nothing but a record of bugbears and hobgoblins, and jugglers' tricks. When Robert refused, as he always did, Lightborn would sigh piously, look to Milady and shake his head. 'And yet this is the same godly youth who watched you and
I
tear a fellow Christian to shreds, and then stained this room with the heat of his lusts, which he inflicted upon a woman quite as holy as himself. Lord!' - he would raise his eyes up to the roof - 'what hypocrites these Christians must be!'

Robert would ignore such taunts; but he felt their sting, and the truth of their charge. He remembered what he had sworn to Milady: that he would not witness the drinking of blood until he was ready to drink it himself; and he struggled hard to keep to this vow. He was helped, in the beginning, by his need to master the arts which he would require for his return to Woodton. His lessons in horsemanship were resumed, and soon taken to a level where he had far surpassed his teachers; likewise in the use of weapons, of daggers and pistols, and every kind of sword. It was with the blade that Milady had first given him, however, that Robert grew most brilliant; and he came to love it as though it were almost an extension of himself. Yet sometimes he would find he was afraid to handle the sword; for it was cruel and deadly and, when it flickered through the air, he could imagine what it might mean to be as cruel and deadly himself.

In his blackest and most secret thoughts, however, Robert began to think he might almost welcome such a fate. For the more he practised, and the more dangerous he became, so also, upon the passage of the years, the more did he find himself growing tortured by his vow. He would always know when Lightborn and Milady had fed, for their eyes would spark and their very flesh gleam, and they would brush past him laughing, arm-in-arm, as though drunk. Robert could not then endure to continue in the house, for he knew that if he did he might hear their pleasuring, which would fill him with a strange and tormenting jealousy, and darken his already dark and fierce desires. He would walk instead through the streets, or through the groves of the Park, half-tempted to spill some obscure person's blood in the hope that he too might grow ravished by its scent.

Then one day, in the Park, he surprised a couple of footpads who had seized a lady and were holding her at knifepoint, forcing her to hand them her jewellery and purse. Robert alerted the footpads to his presence with a cough; and then, in the fight which ensued, ran them both through the heart. He sniffed the blade, but he felt nothing at all; and he wished that Milady might have sniffed it in his place. But he did not take it back to her: he wiped the blade clean, and kept true to his vow. Instead, to keep the pangs of desire at bay, he took to having women in their homes or in brothels, in the streets or in the Park -wherever, in short, Fate might give him the chance. Nor was Fate chary; for Robert was young, and handsome, and rich. With the help of such advantages, and his own gnawing appetite, he had soon grown, before he was barely seventeen, a most practised and accomplished libertine.

And with practise, at length, came a refinement of his tastes. He was fortunate in the woman he had rescued in the Park, for she had been an attendant to Lady Castlemaine, most lovely and notorious of all the mistresses of the King. Having gained his reputation for gallantry, Robert was soon an object of considerable interest; and it was not long before he began to grow flattered, during the fashionable hours for a stroll through the Park, by the coy attentions of the very best sort. At first, it was true, his admirers seemed almost reticent; and Robert, who often had Milady on his arm, realised they had mistaken her for a rival for his heart. But such a consideration did not concern his conquests for long; and when they discovered that Milady, far from seeming jealous, appeared almost to draw pleasure from their coquetries, they redoubled their oglings and flutterings. Promises were whispered; assignations made; and Robert soon found that he had an open invitation to the Court.

He had often wondered, in his darker imaginings, what lay within the sprawl of Whitehall Palace. It stood heaped at the southernmost end of the Park, a jumbled mess of buildings and styles which had always seemed to Robert - passing beneath the shadow of its outer walls, and remembering his father's mortal hatred of kings - to possess the outlines of some structure of Hell. Feeling his parents' eyes to be upon him, it took Robert a long while before he could summon the resolve to pass inside it; and he was only persuaded in the end by Milady, who appeared eager to witness its secrets for herself. Lightborn, however, refused to go, muttering that he would not crook the knee to the flummeries of a king, nor to any mortal; and Robert himself, as he passed with Milady through the Palace gates, felt a chill about his heart, as though he might expect to see the Devil at any moment. It was very cold, just a few days after Christmas, and thoughts of the Devil were much on Robert's mind. But then, as they walked along the Privy Gallery, they suddenly passed by the King himself; and Robert - who had witnessed the blank stare of evil before, and understood its look - knew at once that Charles Stuart was no demon, nor risen up from Hell. His Majesty was surrounded by a carpet of small dogs; and yet their yapping was nothing compared with that of two women, both wondrous beauties, who were standing on either side of him screaming abuse. One Robert recognised: she was Lady Castlemaine, the mistress who had first invited him to her apartments in the Court. Her rival was just as lovely, but icy-faced and very young. The King was smiling disengagedly; he began to fiddle with his gloves. The dogs whined and yelped. The ladies screamed on.

it is said that cunts, like oysters upon rocks, fix upon the King, that they may conjure up pearls.'

Robert looked round. Two young men were standing by the Gallery wall, both dressed as he was in the height of fashion: one tubby and jovial-looking, the other tall with refined, handsome looks. It was the second man who had spoken; and Robert was struck by the contrast with the matter of his words - for as his voice had been haunting, so also was his face. His eyes were hooded and his lips soft and sensual; and yet there appeared something almost innocent in his expression, like a rebel angel undefaced by his fall. His beauty, it struck Robert, seemed almost like Milady's; and then he saw how the young man was studying her, as though with the same thought. Milady met his eye, and smiled, and arched her brow. The young man struggled to meet her stare: for a while he succeeded, then at last he looked away.

Milady continued to observe him. Slowly, she lowered the hood back from her hair. 'What is it, then,' she asked softly, 'which those two ladies are seeking to conjure from the King?'

'Why,' the young man replied coldly, 'that quintessence of all earthly ambitions - a place in a carriage.'

Milady narrowed her eyes,
I
do not understand.'

it has been lately delivered,' explained the second young man, 'as a gift to the King. Such is its magnificence that they who ride in it cannot help but be observed. The quarrel, therefore, is who shall ride in it first?'

'A pretty issue,' said the first man, gazing back at the ladies, 'when the two of them are nothing but flesh upon bones.' 'Are not we all?' Milady asked.