Deliver us from Evil (42 page)

Lord Rochester answered it with his usual lazy smile,
I
only wish that
I
knew my own intentions,' he murmured, 'as well as you appear to do.'

'Come, my Lord,' said Robert impatiently, 'you owe it to me not to make sport of my request.'

'Owe
it
to you?' The smile grew colder. 'But you are bitterly mistaken, Lovelace.
I
owe you nothing at all.'

‘I
ndeed? Yet you know what you did to my hopes, when you stole Miss Malet.'

'You wanted her stolen. Why, you told me the very place and the time.'

Robert did not answer this. Instead, he turned and looked away. 'Yet you would not have taken her,' he said slowly, 'had you not desired her for a reason of your own. We both know, my Lord, what that reason must be.'

There was a lengthly silence,
I
am still not decided,' said Lord Rochester at last.

'Yet you are very nearly.' Robert turned round again to face him. 'And when you are resolved -
I
would like to come with you to meet with your Turk.'

'My Turk, Lovelace?'

'Was that not how you described him to me? The Turk
you met with
upon your grand tour of Europe? The Turk who taught you all the mysteries you know. The Turk who has offered you a strange and deadly gift.
I
must meet with him, my Lord.
I
must find out what he knows.'

'And what makes you think he would know anything at all?'

'From whom else could you have obtained the
mummia?
Why, not even the Marquise had heard of it before. And yet it salved the evil which had struck her in the vaults - the evil which no one else knows how to confront.
I
would learn, my Lord, what that evil truly is. For
I
fear -
I
very much fear -
I
am somehow infected by it; that
I
wear, as the Marquise has put it, the Devil's brand.'

Lord Rochester stared at Robert in silence, his lips half-curved between a frown and a smile.

Robert waited a moment; then brought his fist suddenly crashing down upon the table. 'Tell me!'

'Why should
I
?'

'Because
I
must know what
I
am
...'
- Robert paused, and swallowed - 'and what
I
might become.' He swallowed again, to compose himself. 'Please, my Lord. Please.
I
have no other hope.'

Slowly, Lord Rochester rose and crossed to the window of his room. 'There is a problem,' he murmured at length, gazing out at the sky. 'The Turk - the Pasha - he is in Amsterdam.'

'What is he doing there?'

'We had arranged - a while ago - to meet there, as a place that was of mutual convenience.' Lord Rochester paused, then gestured at the distant masts on the Thames. 'Unfortunately,' he murmured, 'it is rather less so at present - now that His Majesty's Navy has imposed its blockade.'

'Why then do you not arrange to meet in some other town?' 'The Pasha is
...
unwilling
...
to leave Amsterdam.' 'Why?'

'He is . . . unwilling.' Lord Rochester paused, and did not expand. Instead, he leaned out through the window and angled his head, as though listening for something faint on the wind. 'There,' he said suddenly.

'What?'

Lord Rochester smiled. 'A possible solution to our problem.'

Robert joined him at the window; and then he heard it, a muffled, far-away boom. He frowned. 'Cannon-fire?' he asked.

Lord Rochester nodded. 'There is a battle begun against the Dutch on the Channel.
I
have written to the King - and will shortly join the fleet.' He leaned our further and breathed in the air. 'What do you say, Lovelace?' he asked. 'Will you come with me to war?'

Robert stared at him impatiently. 'There must be an easier way 'No,' said Lord Rochester. 'For
I
must, before
I
dive into mysteries which would forever deprive me of mortality, be confident that
I
wish to bid farewell to Death, the certainty of which is all that makes us human.' He turned to Robert. 'Do you still believe,' he asked suddenly, 'that you will meet with your parents in the bosom of Heaven, and that all your mortal suffering will there be washed away?'

‘I
t
surprises me,' replied Robert at length, 'to hear you ask such a question.'

'Does it?' Lord Rochester laughed hollowly. 'And yet all men would have faith, if only they dared. For without faith, what is left us? A world whose belly is a bag of turds, her cunt a common shore, a stinking compound of shit and slime. It must suck us down, Lovelace, it must drown us . . .' He paused, to gaze out again at the burning sky. 'Save that still hope lingers, the hope which lies in Death
...'

Robert did not answer. He was remembering
his
mother's dying cry, her promise that they would meet again beyond the Celestial Gates. He had not heard it so clearly for a very long while.

It would still speak to him, unbidden, in the days and weeks which followed. Lord Rochester, as he had claimed he would be, was soon released from the Tower; he journeyed with Robert to the east coast; and from there they both took ship to join with the fleet. Even upon the waves, though, the cry would still echo in Robert's mind, and he almost wished that it would not surprise him so insistently; for he knew that it affected his will, and clouded his resolve to seek out his revenge.

Lord Rochester, however, was in a death-haunted humour; and he would not leave the topic of the after-life alone. The closer that the English fleet drew to the Dutch, the more urgent grew his meditations, as though he were desperate to believe that doubt might be something like the sea, boundless and ever-flowing, upon which he might be borne forever, away from his meeting with the Turk in Amsterdam. 'And yet in truth', he muttered one night,
I
find it hard to conjure up any doubt at all. For reason and experience both suggest the same truth, that we are bundles of sensations, mere matter, nothing more. There is no life beyond death - but merely annihilation.'

One of his companions in the ca
bin shook his head. 'Do not say
so,' he muttered fearfully. 'For tomorrow it may be we shall fight, and
I
feel it strongly in my soul that
I
am fated to die.'

Lord Rochester stared at him, intrigued. 'Why, Wyndham,' he asked, 'do you truly believe that your soul, if you are killed, will survive your mortal dust?'

'
I
trust so, yes.'

'And yet still you dread to die?'

Wyndham shivered. 'Let us not talk of this matter any further,' he said. He reached for the swaying lantern overhead, and guarded the flame with his hands, as though in doing so he was keeping watch upon his life. Lord Rochester grinned. He turned to Montagu, who had come with him and Robert aboard the same ship. 'What do you say?' Rochester asked his friend. 'Do you agree with Wyndham, that our religion speaks the truth, and that death is but a portal on to a fresh and wondrous state?'

Montagu frowned, and did not answer the question. '
I
feel it too,' he murmured slowly, as though with sudden surprise. '
I
feel that
I
shall die.'

Wyndham gazed at him wide-eyed. 'It cannot be,' he whispered.

'And yet if it should be true?' Lord Rochester pressed. 'If you should both die, what then?'

Montagu frowned at him. '
I
do not understand.'

'
I
must know,' whispered Lord Rochester, leaning forward. 'And so would we all.'

'Know what?' asked Wyndham, licking his lips.

'The truth of what awaits us.'

'What do you propose?'

'That we enter into a solemn vow. All of us, together, now at this moment.'

'What are we to promise?'

'That tomorrow, should any of us die, we shall appear to the others and give notice of the future state
..
.' Rochester paused. 'Or prove, by our non-appearance, that it does not exist at all.'

Montagu glanced at Wyndham, then laughed harshly.
'
I
shall consent to no such thing.'

For a while, Wyndham stayed frozen, gazing at the lantern as it swung back and forth with the rolling of the ship. Then at last he closed his eyes, and nodded slowly.

At once, Lord Rochester reached for their hands. 'Swear it,' he whispered. 'Swear it upon the dearest proofs of our religion. Swear to return if it is true, that there is indeed an after-life, a state beyond death.' When all was finished Lord Rochester lay back, as though after a furious bout of pleasure, and smiled. 'And now,' he murmured, 'we must wait and see. It will prove,
I
think, a most valuable experiment.'

The next day, battle was joined. Robert, standing with his companions on the deck of their ship, followed the progress of the engagement; and he soon realised that he was watching a disastrous defeat. For the English ships were cramped and could barely move, so that they became sitting targets for the Dutch guns; the shrieking of the gale was soon mingled with that of the injured and the dying, and the waves were flecked with bobbing corpses. Yet Robert and his companions, and their entire ship, were barely fired upon; and indeed, when the battle was finished and the English fleet withdrawn, it was discovered that only four men out of the hundreds on board had been killed. Of these four, two had been Montagu and Wyndham. They had been hit by the same cannon ball, so that they had been reduced to a mingled mess of limbs and guts right by the side of Lord Rochester, splashing across his cloak. He had gazed down at their corpses for a moment; and then turned to Robert, a single eyebrow raised. 'Now,' he had murmured, 'let us wait and see.'

They did so for the next two nights. Robert would pace the decks, gazing out at the storm-lashed waves or up at the sky, as though expecting to see the spirit of the dead upon the gale, but there was nothing borne to him on the winds, save only plumes of spray; and he knew that the ghost would not appear. It was true, he wondered what Lord Rochester might have seen; but he could not ask, for his Lordship was away on secret business with the Admiral, and it was not until three days after Montagu's and Wyndham's deaths that he finally reappeared. He stood framed in the cabin doorway for a long while, as he met Robert's stare; then he laughed suddenly and shook his head,
it
has often been said,' he proclaimed, 'that the truth best lies in silence - and now Wyndham has proved that it is so indeed.'

Robert crossed to him. 'You are decided, then?'

Lord Rochester narrowed his eyes, and did not answer at once. 'We have been much exercised the past days,' he murmured at length, 'with how best to deal with these mud-dwelling Dutch. It has been suggested that we do not yet have the ships to whip them as they deserve. It has been suggested that what we need is a little more time - that we should negotiate a holding truce - have talks, perhaps, or talks about talks. All in the utmost secrecy, of course.'

Robert nodded slowly. 'The utmost - of course.'

'
I
have volunteered myself in the service of such a plan, and have taken the liberty, Lovelace, of volunteering your own name as well.
I
trust you are agreeable.'

'What would
I
not do in the service of my King?'

'Your loyalty does you credit.' Lord Rochester nodded curtly. 'Very well. We shall leave tonight on a small, swift vessel, in conditions, as
I
have mentioned, of the utmost secrecy. We shall set sail for Holland, and when we arrive we shall approach the Stadholder of the Dutch Republic'

'And where, my Lord, is the Stadholder to be found?'

'Why, Lovelace, it is hard to be certain. Indeed, it is possible - no, likely - that we shall not be able to discover him at all.'

'That would be a great tragedy.'

'An exceeding one.'

'Yet we should not permit our fear of failure to blunt our resolve.' 'We most certainly should not.'