Deliver us from Evil (58 page)

Lord Rochester was measuring them with each agonised, racking breath long before he could hear them again, soft across the carpets which led to his room. They paused, just outside the door; and at the same moment he breathed in deeply, to see if he would recognise his visitor's blood. Pray God not his son, he thought, pray God not his son. Yet though he breathed in a second time, there seemed nothing at all, and he frowned. Blood without a scent? He struggled to sit up;

and succeeded this time, despite the pain. He cried out to his visitor to show himself.

Slowly, the door swung open. Eyes glittered from the shadows, luminous and cold. A blood-drinker's eyes, Lord Rochester would have said; save that something was lacking; something was strange . . .

He narrowed his eyes, studied the face and then, despite himself, felt a shudder of surprise.

His visitor stepped forward.

Lord Rochester smiled pallidly. 'Lovelace.'

'My Lord.'

I
had been informed you were dead these part fourteen years.'

'And yet here
I
am.' He drew closer. Hair gold and curling. Skin gleaming with a bright ivory paleness. Lips full; smile amused and cruel. And yet not a blood-drinker
...
so, what, then?
What?

Lord Rochester could not veil his gaze of astonishment; and then suddenly he felt angry that he was being mocked by the silence of such a mysterious and unforeseen guest. 'Well, sir,' he exclaimed impatiently. '
I
assume you have not come here - risen, so it seems, from the very grave - merely to stand and grin at me.'

Lovelace's smile only broadened, indeed not, my Lord.'

'Well, then - what is it? - what is your business? For that you bring the news of some great mystery is evident from your appearance.' Lord Rochester gazed at his visitor again; and again, could not conceal a start of surprise. 'Why, Lovelace,' he muttered, 'how dangerous and cruel you seem now. And yet in all other ways, you appear perfectly unchanged - quite as youthful and full of beauty as ever.'

'While you, my Lord, appear strangely loathsome and lined.' Lovelace laughed, and pulled up a chair, to sit by the bed. He had been carrying a bag slung upon his shoulder; he lowered it now and placed it by his feet, very carefully, as though its contents might be fragile. 'Exceeding ugly,' he continued. 'Yet what can be its cause? You have been cruelly cheated, if you sold your soul, and yet still you grow old.'

'There was a surcharge,' Lord Rochester shrugged, 'which
I
have found it difficult to pay.'

'What, my Lord, not a spendthrift like you?'

Lord Rochester shrugged again,
I
have recently, to my discomfort, grown infected by squeamishness.
I
recall, Lovelace, you too once suffered from the complaint.'

‘I
ndeed, my Lord,
I
was a martyr to it.'

'You will remember, perhaps, a journey we once made together on the Thames, when we discussed the peculiar thirsts of my breed?'

'You know full well,
I
shall never forget it.' Lovelace paused, then smiled. 'And how is Miss Malet - Lady Rochester, that is? She has performed her function, and bred for you,
I
trust?'

I
have children, yes.'

Lovelace leaned forward.
'Have
them?', he whispered. 'What, not tasted them yet?'

'You would know, sir, the answer to that question, if you also knew what
I
have recently found out.' indeed?'

'The cause of my lost looks, sir, my lined and sallow skin, my heavy, dissipated stare is no great puzzle, once you only understand a further secret - that our relatives' blood is prized for much more than its taste. For without it, we grow withered long before our time. But drink it once - only once - and we are ever more preserved by that single precious taste.' Lord Rochester paused; he stretched out the claw-like fingers on his hands, in so many ways, then, an indispensable draught.'

Lovelace raised a single mocking eyebrow. 'And yet you have not drunk it.'

Lord Rochester shrugged. 'All men, perhaps, would be cowards if they dared.'

'Where was your cowardice, then, in Amsterdam, when you drained your first victim, and spilled his corpse into the Brouwers Gracht?' 'Submerged beneath the golden floods of my pleasure.' 'And now?'

'The floods are drained away, and there is nothing left to me but a parched dullness, more hatesome than ever for my dread of it is eternal. Within its dust, strange doubts writhe and crawl, like worms of the deep exposed to the light.'

Lovelace smiled faintly. 'Puritan talk, my Lord - most strange and unexpected.' He paused, it is true, then, the rumour
I
heard at Court, that you have lately been closeted with a clergyman?'

Lord Rochester paused,
I
have been speaking with one, yes,' he acknowledged at last.

'And told him .
..
what?'

'Everything, Lovelace - everything.'

'Are you not afraid he might betray your confession?'

'You know he would not dare.'

'And what comfort did he offer you, this clergyman, in your damnation?'

'Nothing, of course.'

'Because, as you once proved to your own satisfaction, when we sailed with Wyndham and Montagu, God Himself is a mere silent Nothing.'

'And yet it is Nothing
I
desire.'

'And the clergyman, you claim, can offer you this?'

Lord Rochester's lips flickered in the faintest of smiles, it may be, not even so much. Certainly, it is by his instruction and recommendation that
I
have forsworn, these past three months, all taste of blood. For he calls me and my kind demons, as contrary to Christian society as wild beasts let loose; and since that much, at least, is irrefutable, his words serve to stiffen my native resolve. And yet
...'
Lord Rochester's voice trailed away as he lifted up his hand once more, its flesh black and dry upon the knobbled bones. 'And yet
...'
he whispered again,
I
do not think my resolve is sufficient. The pain is too great, the goal too uncertain - for
I
fear my damnation is eternal indeed, and that
I
shall never find Nothing - that
I
shall always be myself

Lovelace gazed at him in silence for a moment; then he rose, and crossed to the open windows. The night outside was now a deep, silver blue. 'Tell me,' he murmured at last, 'do you pray?'

Lord Rochester frowned in surprise, then nodded faintly.

'And how does God answer your importunities?'

I
remember, one night, when the clergyman was with me and the pain was at its worst - we prayed for resolve.'

'And?'

'Later that night, despite myself,
I
rose in my dreams.
I
left my body on the breath of the winds. In the fields beyond the Park,
I
found a beggar, curled up asleep beneath a hedge.
I
drank him dry. The next day, when
I
awoke, my health seemed improved. The clergyman proclaimed the miracle of prayer.'

Lovelace smiled, still gazing out at the night. 'And yet what,' he murmured, 'if your prayers could be answered indeed?'

Lord Rochester narrowed his eyes, and for an interval did not reply,
I
would want to know the means,' he whispered at last, 'by which such a thing might be achieved.'

Lovelace laughed coldly. 'Oh, my Lord,' he answered, 'be under no doubt - you will be told the means, and much, much more. For we have all the night ahead of us yet.'

'And
I
would want also to know
..."

'Yes?'

'What the cost might be.'

Lovelace turned from the window. 'Something, my Lord, you might easily afford.' indeed?'

Lovelace smiled, and crossed back from the window. He pulled up the chair again; then leaned forward, and hissed: 'Can you not guess?'

Lord Rochester's face remained perfectly frozen; then he inclined his head, very faintly, just once.

‘
I
am glad, then, that we understand one another.'

Lord Rochester nodded again. 'And yet your folly, sir,' he murmured, 'is wondrous, if you truly wish to grow a thing like me.'

Lovelace smiled contemptuously,
I
thank you, but
I
have conquered my scruples well enough.'

Lord Rochester shrugged. 'You have had time enough,
I
suppose.'

'Fourteen years,' Lovelace nodded, 'which
I
have clearly put to better use, my Lord, than you.'

'How, Lovelace?' Lord Rochester suddenly choked and, racked by his coughs, he struggled to sit up. 'Tell me,' he gasped, 'what has happened to you? Something terrible,
I
dread, to leave your face so unmarked and yet your soul grown so black.'

Lovelace threw back his head with violent laughter,
I
have said, my Lord - you shall hear it all.' He leaned forward suddenly. 'And then - it is agreed - we shall make our exchange?' He waited a moment; then bent, and picked up the bag from his feet. He laid it by Lord Rochester's side; and his grin grew broader still.
'And then we shall make our exchange.'
He did not inquire now, merely stated a fact. He leaned back in his chair; and as his grin grew more distant and then faded from his lips, so his knuckles whitened; and he began to tell his tale.

'The god thou serv'st is thine own appetite,

Wherein is fix'd the love of Belzebub:

To him
I
'll build an altar and a church,

And offer lukewarm blood
...'

Christopher Marlowe,
Doctor Faustus

‘Y
ou have said, my Lord, that
I
seem greatly changed. And yet in truth,
I
was resolved on my present course even fourteen years ago. It is no surprise, however, that
you have no remembrance of that
- for it was a course thrust upon me by your own negligence and lassitude, by my gradual understanding that if ever the Pasha were to have a worthy heir, then it could not be you but would have to be myself. It was for the same reason that
I
had already resolved to leave for Prague without awaiting your return; and why
I
asked Milady, even as we stood on the deck of our ship, watching London burn, to make me a creature like herself.'

'A request she was clearly unwilling to oblige.'

Lovelace shrugged. 'Her refusal did not surprise me.'

indeed?'

Lovelace shrugged again. 'She had already told me, when
I
asked her before, that we had first to solve the riddle of the book. And how, in truth, could
I
blame her for her caution? After all, my Lord - she did not want me to grow like you, distracted from my purpose by a lust for new-found pleasures. Yet watching London burn, watching so mighty a city's agony,
I
had felt a keen sense of what such pleasures might mean - as though my past were a city, like London, to be destroyed. But as the glow of the fire faded from our view, as we joined the cold, black waters of the sea, so
I
felt my sense of urgency fade - and
I
grew content again to wait, as Milady had advised.'

'Even though you could not be certain what the book might show you?'

Lovelace smiled strangely. 'Yet for a few brief moments,' he answered, 'on the night before the fire,
I
had already been shown it.'

Lord Rochester stared at him in surprise. 'And what had it revealed?'

Still Lovelace smiled. 'Sufficient to convince me,' he answered at last, 'that its magic was real.' 'How?'

The smile slowly faded from Lovelace's lips; he seemed not to have heard the question at all. 'How it tortured me,' he murmured, 'that one fleeting glimpse.' He swallowed; then narrowed his eyes, as though gazing at an object very far away,
I
have said that the sea had cooled my impatience, and yet in truth' - he grimaced - 'it still lingered in my guts. For the pain continued there, like a gnawing, hungry thing, and not even the
mummia
could serve to ease it now. The script,
I
thought - surely with the magic of the script it might be healed. Not on the ship, though - for the book's presence in our cabin, unfathomable, unread, seemed only to make my agony worse, so that
I
loathed it and loved it, feared it and desired it, as well one might the cause and cure of one's pain.
I
am sure, my Lord' - he smiled faintly - 'you will have sympathy yourself for such a condition.'