Deliver us from Evil (72 page)

'And the other slaves?'

'They were freed as well. For
I
supposed, from all that
I
had learned, that the Dark Spirit, my enemy, fed on mortal suffering; and that if
I
could only ease that, then
I
might also serve to weaken his power.'

'And that was your only motive?' 'Reason enough, would you not say?'

Milady did not answer for a moment, but stared out through the window at the bone-thin labourers straining with the boxes. 'And your supposition,' she murmured at length, 'do you know if it has proved justified?'

I
am certain
it
has done.'

The note of triumph in his voice made her turn, surprised. 'Why,' she asked him, 'you have evidence?'

Lovelace nodded. His smile seemed very thin,
I
have mentioned,
I
believe, how Sir Henry and his men are my prisoners?'

'They are still alive, then?'

Lovelace's smile broadened. 'Not so many of them as there were. Three only now.'

Milady frowned. 'You have been feeding on the others?'

'Upon the lucky ones, yes. But there were some whom
I
remembered had been seduced very early by Faustus' gold, and must therefore have been the leaders in the plots against my father - and for those
I
found a crueller, far more fitting fate. The first of them
I
killed upon Yuletide, in the heart of an ancient site named Clearbury Ring.'

Milady gazed
at
him, appalled. Lovelace caught her expression; and he snarled with sudden fury and contempt. 'Do not, please, Milady, goggle as though it is somehow a crime to spill blood.'

Milady answered him distantly. 'But to spill it, sir, as your great enemy did?'

'And yet that was how, Milady, he recovered his greatness - and
I
too, by its consequence, have increased my own strength.' 'How can you know?'

'Because after
I
had left the body dumped on Clearbury Ring,
I
drank the abortion's blood, and at once felt a surge of power such as
I
had never previously known.
I
rode directly to Wolverton Hall.
I
entered it for the first time since
I
had been there with you;
I
found the library filled as it had been before. The creatures
I
slew -
I
slew them. Milady - which was more than you or the Marquise had been able to achieve. Their victims
I
freed; and then, not wishing to exhaust my strength,
I
left the Hall and burnt it to the ground. The cellars, though,
I
knew, would still remain; and so on Childermas,
I
slew a second man, and left his body in the Lady Chapel.
I
returned to the cellars. Again,
I
slaughtered as many of the creatures as
I
had the strength and power to kill. A further visit, though,
I
knew would still be required. Candlemas came.
I
left the body this time beneath Old Sarum. And upon my return to the cellars,
I
completed the slaughter -
I
destroyed utterly the creatures which the darkness had been nurturing, so that none of them - none of them at all - still remained.'

'And
...
the Dark Spirit?'

Lovelace shrugged. 'What were those creatures
I
slew, save the emanations of his evil and of his very self?
I
know that to be the case -for after all,
I
bore one of them once within the depths of my own belly. And now they are gone. How much feebler, then, do you think, their author must be now?'

'And yet still he remains.'

'True.' Lovelace paused. 'But do not forget - May Day has come.' He met Milady's stare a moment more; then turned abruptly and left the room.

'What will you do?' she cried after him.

'Come and see,' he answered. 'For it is almost sunset - and everything now is done.'

She followed him outside. Lovelace was walking towards a guard. He had words with him, the guard bowed his head and turned at once; and then, sounding across the green, there rose the remorseless, steady pounding of a drum. Straggles of villagers began to gather on the green - forming, as if by instinct, in a circle round its edge. Their haggard faces seemed twisted by greed, their nostrils twitching as they sniffed at the breeze. Milady walked to join Lovelace. She could see that the boxes from the wagon had been opened, and the meats, and wines, and delicacies laid out. Lovelace smiled at her; then snapped his fingers. Two horses were at once brought forward. 'Please -Milady.' Lovelace gestured with his hand. He watched as she climbed into her saddle; then climbed into his own. Side by side, the two of them rode forward.

As they did so, the drum was silenced, and the villagers sank at once to their knees.

'Have no fear.' Lovelace raised up his hand. 'For you have seen what
I
have brought you.' He gestured with his arms towards the food and, as he did so, the villagers began to mutter amongst themselves. 'Please!' cried out a thin and desperate voice suddenly. 'What would you have us do?' A chorus of other voices echoed the cry. Lovelace smiled, and again he raised his hand.

'You know full well,' he answered,
I
would see the marks, the certain proofs of your regret, for the crime which you or your parents committed, when my mother was burned here more than twenty years before. Well?' He suddenly raised his voice. 'Show them to me! Show me the proofs!'

He was greeted for a moment by a deathly silence. The ring of faces, so desperate, so worn, seemed utterly frozen. Then an old woman stepped forward, pulling
at
something round her neck. There was a glint of gold; and then she tossed the necklace away, so that it was flung into the centre of the green. Lovelace spurred his horse forward; he bent down from his saddle and plucked the necklace up. He was laughing wildly as he wheeled and trotted back to Milady. As he did so, there was a glitter of jewellery and coins from all around him - arcing, then falling in a shower of gold upon the grass. Lovelace halted again by Milady's side; he raised the necklace, and placed it against her naked throat.
‘
I
would give you this,' he said, 'as
I
would give you all the world, my dearest love, but
..."
He raised the necklace again, and held it to the sun. It was caught by the dying rays to become a deep red. 'And so it was caught before,' Lovelace whispered. 'Stained by blood, as though in mourning for the innocent.'

There was another deathly silence; and then Lovelace nodded, and the drum began to sound. It rolled slower now and the crowd, as though sensing what it foretold, half-fell to their knees as they had done before. Several on the edge of the green began to back away; and through the gap they created, a column of guards emerged. Milady pricked her horse gently forward. She could see now that the guards were leading two men weighted with chains. They staggered forward into the centre of the green. Behind them, through the gap which had been made in the crowd, she could glimpse a great pile of wood, and on its summit two stakes.

The guards pushed the prisoners forward, so that they fell by the foremost hooves of Lovelace's horse. They blinked and gazed about them, as though too enfeebled by hunger to know where they were. Lovelace prodded the nearest with the tip of his boot.

‘I
s it true,' he asked in a ringing voice, 'what these others here have told me, that you were the first in all this village to accept Faustus' gold?'

The two men blinked up, as bewildered as before; while from the crowd there rose murmured jeers of condemnation. Lovelace sat motionless all the while in his saddle. Then suddenly he leaned forward, and struck the man nearest him about the face with the necklace. 'Answer me,' he hissed,
I
want to hear the admission of guilt from your own lips. Were you the first to accept Faustus' gold?"

The man nodded hurriedly, and muttered something.

Lovelace struck him again across the cheek. 'Louder!'

'Yes,' he stammered, 'yes, it is true, we were the first.'

His companion writhed and sobbed. 'Yes,' he echoed. 'We both took the gold.'

Lovelace nodded to himself; then sat back in his saddle and gazed round at the crowd. 'Well?' he demanded. 'What punishment, then? What punishment?
Decide!'

There was silence again; then three or four voices, at the same moment, gave the answer: 'Burn them! Burn them!' Lovelace smiled; he gestured
at
once with his hand. Two of the guards stepped forward; they tugged on the chains. The condemned men fell, then staggered to their feet. They were dragged across the green to where the two stakes were waiting. The crowd began to break and re-form around the pyre. Lovelace's grin broadened. 'And in this manner,' he cried suddenly, addressing the villagers again, 'it may be that you will serve to burn your own guilt away. Whoever lights the fire - let him or her have first portions from the feast!' He sat frozen a moment more, watching the sudden surge of excited villagers all clambering forward to snatch the tinder-box; and then he wheeled his horse round again. He glanced at Milady. 'A pretty sight,' he laughed, 'fit subject for the moralising you seem now to enjoy.'

She gazed at him bleakly, then shook her head. 'This is not the way.'

'The way?' Lovelace answered. 'No - for this was the merest excursion. The way, Milady? The way lies ahead!' He laughed again; then spurred his horse forward and began to gallop down the road which led from the village. Milady glanced behind her. She could barely hear the screams of the dying men above the villagers' cheers, but beyond the crowd a pall of black smoke was now starting to blot out the sun. Milady smiled very thinly; then wheeled her own horse round, and followed Lovelace down the road. She watched him ahead of her, disappearing into the wood, and knew, riding side-saddle as she was, that she could not hope to rival such a pace. Nor did she try; for she was certain already of their destination, and of what would be waiting on the far side of the trees.

She cantered briskly through the wood, and past the now abandoned gates; and then, emerging into open land again, saw the silhouette of Stonehenge ahead of her, black against the deepening purple of the sky. It seemed circled by fire and, nearing it, Milady saw a ring of guards, all holding torches, and Lovelace, lit by the glare, dismounting from his horse. He passed between the guards into the ring of stones itself, and was lost amidst the shadows. Milady shook out her horse's reins and rode towards the torches, until she too was lit by their glare. The guards seemed to shrink at the sight of her; but one stepped forward to hold her horse. She slipped down from the saddle; then followed Lovelace into the shadow of the stones.

There was a naked man by his feet, face down upon the grass. The wretch was shrieking uncontrollably; but for all his writhings, he could not escape, for a gleaming metal hook had been driven through his ankles. The hook was attached in turn to a rope; and Milady saw how it passed across a lintel of the stones, and descended again into the hands of a guard. Lovelace made a sign, and the guard began to tug. As the rope tautened, the man was dragged across the grass and then pulled into the air, until he was twisting and bucking like a fish upon a line. Lovelace approached him; seized him by his hair. It was long and matted, and exceedingly white; and as Lovelace jerked the head round, Milady was not surprised to recognise Sir Henry Vaughan. 'He has grown damnably ancient,' said Lovelace, releasing his hold. 'See, Milady, the leathery skin. Any blood he has will be sluggish and cold. Yet still' - he shrugged -
I
am certain it will serve.'

'Lovelace.' Milady approached, and took him by the arm. 'Do not do this.'

'Why not?' The gleam in his eyes was perfectly dry; yet his voice, as he spoke, seemed almost to catch. He met Milady's stare a moment more, then turned to gaze at Sir Henry again. 'You know what he did.'

'What did he do?'

Lovelace breathed in hard; he shuddered violently, then started to laugh.

'What did he do?' As Milady echoed her question, she reached to seize Lovelace by his other arm. He continued to laugh, and she shook him. 'Do you not see,' she cried with mounting fury, 'what is happening to you?'

I
know it full well'