Deliver us from Evil (49 page)

Landed at Botolph's Wharf, Robert found the air loathsome with a sweet, rotten stench which grew ever heavier as he left the Thames behind. Knowing that to search for a hackney would be useless, he began to hurry through the deserted streets, handkerchief tightly pressed to his nose. The scenes of desolation which he remembered from St Giles were now to be found spread all across the city, for like some noxious red weed, crosses marked almost every door, and coffins and bodies lay piled amidst the rubbish. Of those still living, there was barely any sign; and grass was peering through the cobblestones. All of London seemed abandoned to death - and if London now, Robert thought, then perhaps soon all the world.

He continued as far as Hyde Park; and was not greatly surprised to discover a makeshift military camp barring the road which led to the west. He approached the barriers, nevertheless; but when the soldiers learned of his intended journey, they shook their heads and laughed in his face. For the King, they told him, was now in residence in Salisbury; and refugees from London were not greatly welcome. Robert damned Lord Rochester under his breath. If only he had been in London, there would have been no problem, for he would surely then have had access to a pass. But Lord Rochester, having had no wish to lose his place at the Court, was still with the navy; although he had sworn, when they parted in Amsterdam, that he would return to dry land as soon as he could. Robert gazed in frustration at the barricades. Not soon enough, he thought. He gazed back at London, as still and deathly as a corpse laid in its tomb. Not nearly soon enough.

Yet even as he cursed himself for having ever returned to the city, he was reminded of the reason he had chosen to come back. He turned again and left the barricades, heading towards the silence and rotten stench of the city. St James's Park, lately the haunt of fine ladies and wits, now lay abandoned to weeds; and not a single horseman was abroad upon the Mall. Even Godolphin's house, although there was no red cross daubed upon its side, seemed infected by the air of desolation; and as Robert passed inside, he grew suddenly afraid that Milady too had fled. Yet he could not believe it; for what business was it of a blood-drinker to escape a place of death? He called out her name. Nothing answered him, save a prickling silence, and the dance of dust motes caught in the light. Robert called out again. Still silence. He began to run down the corridors, crying out Milady's name all the time and recognising, in his own voice, the tightening accent of desperation.

'She is sick.'

Robert paused on the stairs. Lightborn was standing at their top. 'Sick?' Robert stared up at him in horror. 'How do you mean, sick?' 'She has been a foolish girl, and drunk infected blood. For the plague in these mortals is like poison to us.' 'When did she drink it?'

'Weeks ago. Indeed, Lovelace - it was when you went away, for she was then much distracted.' He smiled faintly, but his stare seemed to harden and grow as distant and cruel as it had ever been. 'You should hurry to her. It may be you will serve to lighten her spirits.' His smile began to fade. 'For she has spoken of you much, in her delirium.'

Robert hurried at once to her room: Milady lay curled up like a kitten in the darkness of a far corner; and the gleam of her skin was a deathly white. As he knelt down beside her, she struggled to rise up, whispering something very fast. She swallowed, and gripped his hands; then suddenly seemed to recognise his face. 'Lovelace!' She kissed him, and the touch of her lips was scorchingly hot. Then she slumped back and lay as she had done before, in a soft, shuddering ball. Her shift clung fast to the sweat on her skin, and Robert realised with a shock how slight she had grown.

She moaned suddenly, and parted her lips like a baby eager for milk. Robert glanced round to see Lightborn now standing just behind him. 'See', he whispered, 'how she licks her lips - and yet it serves her nothing, for her tongue is withered and as dry as sand.'

Robert gazed at Milady in despair and remembered, just a few months before, how he had gazed down at Emily in the same way.

'She is not
...
not in danger?' he asked.

'Who is to say?' Lightborn shrugged, it is certain that
I
have never heard of such a thing before, that blood be made dangerous to our taste by disease.'

'What then must be done?'

Lightborn grinned. 'What do you think? She must be given fresh sustenance. And so it is that all this time, while you have been away upon your travels,
I
have been feeding her.' He seized Robert's arm suddenly, and his voice became a hiss. 'What do you say, Lovelace? Do you dare to serve her as
I
have done?'

Robert did not answer, but stared at Milady and closed his eyes.

'Do not tell me, Lovelace, you are still the thing of your mewling conscience?' Lightborn laughed derisively. 'Why, man, it is no worse than feeding rats to a serpent.'

I
was not in the habit,' Robert answered, 'of keeping serpents as pets.'

'A pity.' Lightborn gazed down again at Milady. 'For it might then have taught you that even the deadliest of creatures deserve sometimes to be loved.'

Robert stared round at him with sudden fury. 'Do not mock me, Lightborn, for you know that
I
love her - that
I
love her full well.'

'Then prove it,' Lightborn whispered. He tightened his grip on Robert's arm. 'Prove it to me now.'

They went out that same night. Lightborn led the way through the darkening streets, towards the distant flickering of mighty fires. As they drew nearer to the source of the flames, so the sweetness in the air grew ever thicker and the sound of shrieks and sobs more widespread. 'London's flesh is rotting upon its bones,' Lightborn whispered, if it were not for the danger of infection from the blood,
I
could truly love this time. For see, how Death with its greedy talons tears out the city's heart.' He rounded a corner, and gestured with his arm; and Robert saw, stretching before him, a pit of the kind he had seen in St Giles - but ten times as vast, so that gazing at the multitude of corpses it contained, their rottenness lit by a circle of great fires, he could well believe that the time of the Apocalypse was near. He remembered what the Pasha had told him, of how the plague in Bohemia had been halted by stripping off flesh from the bones. No such solution would be possible now, he thought, as he stared about; for he seemed to be witnessing the common grave of man.

Lightborn, however, appeared perfectly unconcerned; and indeed, as Robert watched him, he jumped into the pit. Robert could see now that there were other people amidst the carcasses, wailing as they clung to the corpses of their loved ones, or searching through the putrid jumble, just as Robert remembered he had once done himself. Lightborn approached these people one by one; he would whisper to them, then nick them very gently and taste their blood upon his fingertip. At length, he scrambled out from the pit once again, and hurried back to Robert. '
I
have convinced these fools
I
am a physician,' he whispered, 'with an infallible medicine for preventing the plague. Play your part well, Lovelace. Tell them it is true.'

He nodded and turned. A woman and a couple of men had now gathered behind him, their eyes red and crazed by grief. 'Your medicine,' the woman cried, 'will it serve to cure my child?'

'Without doubt,' Lightborn answered. He gestured to Robert. 'For you see how healthy it has kept my good friend. Tell them, Lovelace. Tell them it is so.'

Robert paused. He stared at the wretched woman, her face contorted with mingled misery and hope. 'Six children
I
had,' she cried, 'and now only one. Tell me, please, sir, tell me you can help!'

Still Robert paused. He closed his eyes and saw at once the image of Milady, curled up on her cushions; then he imagined her disease-rotted, and tossed into the pit. He nodded. 'Yes,' he said slowly, as he met the woman's eyes. 'Yes.
I
swear it, the medicine will surely cure your child.'

Lightborn grinned. 'Very good,' he whispered. 'Done like the most nonchalant of hypocrites.' He then took Robert's arm, and began to lead the way. Returned home, he passed through the house and up the stairs, as far as the doorway to Milady's room, in there,' he whispered, 'you will discover the end to all your miseries.' The woman gazed at him wildly, then ran into the room. The two men followed. Robert heard the faint thumping of their footsteps across the carpets, and then silence. 'Let us go and see,' Lightborn whispered, taking Robert's arm. 'Make certain that Milady is taking her medicine.'

Robert passed inside. The two men were standing frozen, hands clutched to their heads and eyes bulging, as though paralysed by the dread of some nightmare, while the woman was moaning, sunk upon her knees. Milady was gazing at her intently; no longer curled up, she still seemed like a cat but now alert and bright-eyed, observing her prey. She darted suddenly, and Robert saw that she held a dagger in

her hand. The tip of the blade caught the woman's throat, and a shower of rubies arced out from the wound. Milady moaned with pleasure as they fell upon her face: one drop she licked, and tasted with her tongue; the others she rubbed and stroked into her skin. Then she embraced the woman and began to lap, eyes closed, from the wound to her throat. The blood was seeping out now in a slow, heavy stream and, as Milady felt it start to stain her shift, so she gasped with rapture and writhed up and down, until her breasts and stomach were sticky with gore. When she gazed up at last, her eyes seemed drugged with a lazy, clotted pleasure. 'Better now,' she whispered. 'Yes,
I
feel - better.'

She gulped hard, as though struggling to hold back the flood of her ecstasy, then gazed across the room. As she did so, a shadow of horror passed across her face, and she pointed at Robert. 'You promised, Lightborn . . . Not him . . . Not like this ...'

Lightborn smiled mockingly. 'But it was Lovelace, Milady, who helped to bring you this medicine.'

'No . . .' Milady shook her head faintly, then clasped her breasts and rubbed them softly, seeming to lose herself as she stroked her fingers through the blood. Delicately, she dabbed at one of them with her tongue. 'Not like this,' she gasped again; and she tensed her whole body, as though fighting back her pleasure. But her victims were already kneeling down before her: bending back their heads, exposing their throats. 'You promised . . . no.' Then she slashed with her knife. Her eyes seemed an inferno of gold, and her teeth like delicate razors of pearl. She bit, and drank, and gasped in rapture as before. 'No, no,' she still moaned as she started to writhe; but she was lost in her pleasure now, and her faint sobs died away.

Yet in truth, Robert was already as unconscious of Milady as she was of him. For with the onset of her pleasure had begun the rippling of his own, and with the pleasure so also the agony had come. Worse than ever it seemed, rising up from the depths of his stomach as though there were something trying to gnaw its way out; and it was all he could do, before he was lost to the dizzying red swirl of his pain, to scream at Lightborn to search through his coat. Then everything was mist; and not until he felt the bottle being forced between his teeth, and the foul taste of
mummia
burning his throat, did he open his eyes again. Lightborn was staring down at him. 'Lord,' he sighed, 'sickness everywhere. How tedious it grows.'

Weakly, Robert staggered to his feet. He gazed around him. The three corpses were piled in a twisted sprawl, while Milady lay curled asleep amidst her cushions. Robert crossed to her. The sickly gleam had faded from her skin, and both her cheeks and lips seemed rosy once again. A faint smile of satiation curved her mouth, so that her expression, composed as it was in the calm of deep slumber, nevertheless seemed dangerous and cruel. Robert felt dizzied by it -and by the beauty which it somehow served to heighten. He felt a faint rush lightening his veins and, at the same moment, the gnawing in his stomach. Seizing the
mummia
he took a hurried gulp.

Lightborn stared at him intrigued. 'What is that stuff?' he asked.

'The same medicine my Lord Rochester gave to the Marquise.'

'You have more of it?'

'Following me in my trunk. It should be here within the day.'

Lightborn nodded slowly. 'Clearly, then,' he murmured, 'your travels have not passed without success.' He struggled to compose himself, but could not conceal the sudden glint of eagerness in his eyes. 'Tell me, Lovelace. Tell me what you found.'

Robert began his account and found himself wondering, as he did so, what the nature of Lightborn's interest might be. For although he was sitting perfectly still, Lightborn could not disguise his excitement; and as he listened to the story of Rabbi Loew, he gave up even the attempt. 'And the book,' he whispered, at the end of the tale, 'where is the book now?'

'Lost,' Robert answered. 'For when the Pasha woke from his struggles, it was nowhere to be found.'

Lightborn nodded to himself, then slouched back in thought. 'You are aware, of course,' he murmured at length, 'that the Marquise's present home was once Dr Dee's?'

Robert stared at him in astonishment. 'No,' he answered slowly,
I
was not aware of that.' He paused as a host of dark speculations suddenly darkened his mind. 'Did the Marquise - did you - did you know Dr Dee?'