Deliver us from Evil (56 page)

At once, the circle of his friends were gathering about him; but Robert brushed them aside and knelt by the blind man, supporting him in his arms as Mr Milton, head rolling wildly from side to side, rubbed at his eyes as though to cleanse them of some horror. 'Oh, beware,' he muttered, 'beware!' He twisted violently, and felt with his fingers for Robert's face again. 'For always ancient darkness waits, hungry to regain her old possession, and extinguish life in nature, and all things.'

'Here, sir,' whispered Mr Aubrey into Robert's ear. it may be, this will comfort him.' He handed Robert a glass of wine and Robert, turning back, lowered it to Mr Milton's lips. The old man sipped at it unsteadily; then shuddered; and allowed himself to be helped back into the house. Once seated in his chair, he ordered his other guests away; but Robert waited, then knelt again by the poet's side.

'What did you see, sir?' he whispered. 'For
I
know what happened -you read the secret script.'

Mr Milton did not bother to deny it, and his expression seemed as chill as marble,
I
saw,' he answered slowly, 'a boy in a small room. The boy was you - the room was my own. You were approaching a desk. On it were gathered the sheets of my poem, my
Paradise Lost.
You lifted the top page, you read from it. You spoke the lines of Satan - the very same lines which startled you tonight.'

'And then, sir? - for there must have been more to have made you cry out'

indeed,' nodded Mr Milton; and his smile now was as mirthless as it had ever been. 'For when you had finished reading, the vision began to change.'

'And what did you see?' Robert hissed urgently. 'What did it show you?'

'Still you. But altered - oh, how altered.' 'How?'

Mr Milton shook his head. 'You were
..
. still lovely
...
for you had been lovely before, like an angel touched with the beauty of God, bright-faced, golden-haired. But your costume now was a Cavalier's, and your looks marred by deadly passions, anger and hatred, envy and despair, so that if you still seemed an angel then it was a fallen one, toppled forever from the joys of paradise - as Satan himself, the Prince of rebels, might have seemed. And even as
I
thought this,
I
saw how your lips were bright with blood, and how you licked at them, and
I
grew certain now that you were a fiend, who had once been so good. And
I
was overcome with dread - and so
I
dropped the book, which had shown me such things - for
I
could not endure to see any more.'

Robert bowed his head; then slowly he rose up to his feet. 'The book,' he whispered, 'try it again.'

Mr Milton shuddered; but Robert gripped his arm tightly and thrust the book into his hands. 'Try it!' he screamed suddenly. 'Try it!' He tightened his grip; then whispered, 'Do it, sir - for there are things
I
must know.'

Mr Milton bit on his lower lip; but otherwise his expression seemed now perfectly composed once again. With great deliberateness, he smoothed open the book; he brushed his fingers across the page, but still not a flicker of emotion crossed his face. He shut the book again, he closed his eyes,
I
see nothing,' he whispered. 'Nothing but the dark.'

Robert stood in silence for a moment; then prised the book from Mr Milton's fingers. 'So farewell hope,' he nodded to himself.

'Farewell hope?' The blind man frowned uncertainly, it is done, then? You are fallen already, and become the thing
I
saw?'

Robert laughed bitterly. 'What does it matter,' he answered, 'what
I
am now? For the book does not lie. It represented the past to you faithfully; why should the glimpse of the future not be true?'

Mr Milton did not reply for a long while. 'Virtue may be assailed,' he said at length, 'but never lost. Surprised by unjust force - but never enthralled.'

Robert laughed again, his bitterness now suffused with contempt. 'You fool,' he spat suddenly, 'you old, blind fool! Do you not see, your Satan was right, and wiser than you, though you gave him his speech? All
is
not lost - there
is
still revenge, and courage, and hate.
I
thank you, sir - for again, in despite of yourself, you have shown me the path of action
I
must take.' He stood for a moment more, surveying the blind man; then he turned and left, to cross the room. As he reached the doorway, Mr Milton called after him; but Robert was resolved now on what he had to do. Just for a second he paused; and then he continued on his way. He slammed the door behind him, and Mr Milton's cries were blotted out.

'Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today, Jane called us up, about
3
in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City
...
it began this morning in the King's bakers house in Pudding Lane
...'

Samuel Pepys,
Diaries

R
obert hurried on foot across Lon
don to the Tower. It was dark
now; but some mark of deadliness must have gleamed in his eyes, for although he was richly dressed and alone, no one approached him, not even in the meanest, poorest streets; and instead people shrank when they gazed upon his face. He made good time and, once arrived beneath the shadow of the Tower, he was soon able to discover the Dolphin, where he ran up the steps to the room which Milady had rented. He flung the door open and she rose to greet him. Her golden eyes seemed impossibly wide, and there was a strangeness in her expression - a wild, haunted look which might normally have served to freeze him cold. But now he ignored it; and instead he crossed to Milady, and pressed her two cheeks. He kissed her lingeringly, then smoothed back her curls to whisper in her ear. 'There is a matter of great moment we have to discuss.'

‘I
ndeed,' Milady nodded. She reached for the book from his hands, then laid it carefully beneath her mattress. 'A matter of terrible moment'

Robert gazed at her in sudden puzzlement. 'How could you have been so certain what the fruit of my expedition would be?'

Milady smiled back faintly, then shook her head, it is not your expedition which concerns us now, but a far deadlier matter.' She fastened her cloak and, as Robert opened his mouth to demand from her what she meant, she reached up with her finger to still his lips. 'Your business must wait'

He brushed her finger aside. 'Why,' he whispered, 'what have you discovered?'

'A great horror,' Milady answered. Then without a further word, she picked up a lantern and, with her other hand, led him from the room and out into the street. She summoned a hackney. 'All the speed you have,' she ordered the driver. 'We go to Pudding Lane.'

Something in her voice froze Robert's questionings dead; and he sat in silence as Milady did, staring out ahead, until the carriage arrived outside the house where Emily had died. Robert had not been back there since and, as he stood in the darkness of its shadow, he felt as though his soul were being breathed on by an icy wind. Milady squeezed his hand.
'
I
have discovered,
I
think,' she whispered, 'what it was that Lightborn was searching for here.'

Still Robert did not press her, but met her eye fleetingly, and then followed her into the house. The lock on the door had been smashed; and beyond it, the darkness seemed moist and unpleasantly sweet. Robert had not smelt such a darkness, he thought, since standing in the cellars of Wolverton Hall; and as he breathed it in deeply, despite himself, so he imagined that he caught the scent of stale blood. At the same moment, the stabbing in his stomach confirmed his impression; and he doubled up, and staggered, and fell to the floor. Milady reached for him and took him by the arm; and continued to lead him onwards through the house.

'We are going,' Robert whispered suddenly, 'to that room where Emily died.'

Milady glanced round at him, something like pity glinting in her stare. 'So we are,' she answered, 'poor Lovelace - so we are.' She paused by the door which led into the room. It stood ajar, and she pushed it open. At the same moment, Robert felt his pain redouble, but he struggled to ignore it. He leant even harder on Milady's arm, and followed her forward into the room. She raised the lantern; Robert strained with his eyes.

There came a violent, pain-racked hissing from the shadows.

Milady drew out her dagger. 'Be careful,' she murmured. 'For you have seen how they are dangerous - to my kind as well as yours.'

'What .
..'
Robert whispered; but then his question died, aborted by what he saw in the lantern's flickering wash. For a creature was hunched in the corner of the room, cowering before the light, and yet tensed as well as though ready to leap; and Robert saw how its eyes were burning with thirst, and how its rotted lips were moist with a sticky, thick saliva. There were worms still writhing in its flesh, and mud, intermingled with an oozing, yellowy discharge, smeared all across its body; yet even so, Robert could glimpse on what remained of the creature's skin the unmistakable marks and buboes of the plague. He looked up again into the creature's face; he stared into its eyes. As he did so, he saw the gleam of its hunger start to fade; and he recognised, in the shell of its face, just the meagrest shred still of Emily.

Milady had been studying the creature's reaction intently. 'And so it was in the village,' she murmured. 'For you remember? - you had the power to still the creatures there as well.'

Robert continued to stare into Emily's eyes. By now they seemed utterly frozen and dead. He reached for Milady's hand, squeezed it tightly. 'Where did you discover her?' he whispered at last.

'As
I
walked from London Bridge,' Milady answered, 'after leaving you.
I
saw her, a filthy, rotted thing, seeking to break down the door of this house.'

Robert frowned faintly. 'Why should she have wished to return here?'

'It seems in the nature of these dead creatures. For you remember, Lovelace, in the village inn, how the servant girl's father likewise sought her out?'

Robert nodded slowly; then stared back at the thing which had once been Emily. 'You believe, then,' he whispered, 'that all the other victims of the plague will similarly emerge as she has done?'

Milady shook her head. 'Not of their own accord. For it was Emily who brought the plague here - and doubtless, as well, it is she alone who bears the venom which will wake the other corpses from their graves.'

Robert frowned at her suspiciously. 'How can you be so certain?'

'Because
I
spoke of this matter in the village with the Marquise.
I
had been interested, since
I
had never seen such a breed of thing before, to know how the creatures had been roused from the dead. The Marquise answered me that it had needed the first victim to infect the rest; and that then the venom would have infallibly spread.'

Robert stared at her in disbelief. 'And yet the Marquise never thought to tell you - to tell us - that the poison of the undead was the same as that of the plague? That those who bore the one infection bore the other one as well? She must have known - must have done -and so she must have known also what it was that Emily was bound to become.'

'Doubtless,' Milady nodded. 'For you will remember, Lovelace - the last time we visited her - she told us of a secret written in Tadeus' book?' She paused, then gestured to Emily. 'There it is, before us - the Marquise's deadly secret.'

Robert breathed in deeply; brought himself to stare at the creature again. Then, without looking round, he reached for Milady's dagger and took it from her hand. His limbs felt deadened; yet so too, he realised to his surprise, did his grief. It was not Emily, after all, this rotted, dead-eyed thing; Emily was long gone, long sent to her rest.

As he continued to stare at the creature, it began to whimper, as though sensing in him some terrible power. Robert paused fleetingly, to wonder whether she had recognised him; then he stifled all such thoughts to kneel by her side. She was scrabbling fearfully now at the corner's two walls, but still she seemed unable to tear her gaze from Robert's eyes. Suddenly, she froze again. Robert bent down closer. He swallowed his repugnance; he kissed the creature on its oozing gums. At the same moment, he stabbed with his knife.

He felt the blade puncture something soft. He knelt back, and stared down at the creature's chest. A spume of inky blood was bubbling up from the wound. Robert stabbed at it again. The creature was already lying motionless, and seemed nothing more than a shrivelled sack of bones, but still he stabbed up and down, up and down, until at last his arm grew weary, and he slumped forward to rest his head against the dagger's hilt. He closed his eyes. They felt aching and dry. He rubbed them, and blinked; then slowly rose to his feet.