Gallows at Twilight (27 page)

‘Tell him that it’s vital for our safety that he returns. He cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the Demon Father again. Tell him, now that I know what he is, I may be able to help him.’

‘Is that true?’

Adam hesitated. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘OK,’ Pandora sounded unsure. ‘But I think he’ll only come if you have answers about his mother. Adam, tell me honestly, did you have
any
idea?’

Adam looked at the man sitting on the other side of the desk.

‘None.’

He was about to hang up when Pandora asked her last question:

‘Is there any news? Has the
Codex
started writing again? Is Jake OK?’

Adam ran his hands over the ancient yellow parchment of the
Codex Tempus
. His finger traced the last sentence on the page—
death by hanging
.

‘No, Pandora, there’s no news.’

He replaced the receiver in its cradle.

Dr Holmwood leaned forward in his chair. ‘Tell me.’

Adam repeated Pandora’s report. By the time he had reached the end, Holmwood had sucked two cigarettes down to their stubs.

‘You realize that this changes everything,’ he said, breathing out a lungful of grey-yellow smoke.

‘Of course.’ Adam held his head in his thin hands. ‘I blame myself. I ought to have looked into the boy’s story more closely, not just accepted the dark creature gossip.’

‘It is indeed unfortunate that you were not more thorough,’ Holmwood nodded, ‘and that you concealed his existence from the Institute. Still, no point crying over spilt milk. Saxby has heard reports that the Demon Father and Roland Grype have left Havlock Grange and have been spotted in London. Now we have this new intelligence that makes perfect sense. He has come to see
her
… It is time to act.’

Holmwood heaved himself out of the chair. He shrugged on his overcoat and turned back to Adam.

‘I trust the boy will survive,’ he said. ‘Now, more than ever, we need the power of the witch ball. Without it, this world is lost.’

‘How can he survive?’ Adam jabbed a finger against the
Codex
. ‘The rope’s virtually round his neck. You more or less put it there yourself.’

Holmwood took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, but I still believe that I acted for the best.’ He moved to the door and, with his face turned to the woodwork, said, ‘I do not believe that we will see each other again, Adam. Not in this life, at any rate. I just wanted to say that, although we’ve had our differences, I always thought of you as a son. I may not have been much of a father, but I—’

‘Goodbye, Gordon.’

Holmwood gave a stiff nod and left the room.

Adam remained at the desk while memories raged behind his eyes. He saw himself as a boy, a grimy-faced toddler being dandled on Uncle Gordon’s knee. He remembered his first day at Hobarron’s Hollow school, listening with rapt attention to an assembly conducted by Dr Holmwood. Other memories: his initiation into the Elders; Holmwood revealing to him the reality of witches and demons; going to the Institute leader with his idea to make a clone of the Witchfinder.

Adam gasped at the power of these memories. He realized that, although he had good reason to despise the man, without Holmwood the greatest joy in his life would never have existed. Holmwood had sent Jake to his death, and yet it had been the old doctor’s power, wealth, and influence that had been responsible for giving the boy life. Surely that had deserved a scrap of thanks?

Adam turned his thoughts to the
Codex
. Staring into the grain of the parchment, he pleaded for the phantom quill to begin writing again. Somewhere in the distant past, his son’s life was hanging in the balance.

‘The shadows lengthen,’ said Mr Lanyon. ‘The hour is almost upon us.’

After the trial, Jake had been taken down into the dank cellars beneath the Shire Hall and imprisoned in a little cell filled with empty wine barrels. The thief-proof door was sturdy and the room was windowless. Jake was to be held here until the gallows were ready to receive him. With their construction almost complete, Jake had thought that his appointment with the hangman would come soon, but the afternoon had worn on and no one had come for him.

The delay was explained by Mr Lanyon. It seemed that a committee of local merchants led by the landlord of The Green Man had begged Earl Richard to hold off on the witch’s execution until twilight. England’s Civil War had taken its toll on their trade, and it was in the interests of the town that this unexpected festival should not be wasted. While the crowds waited for the hanging, they would eat and drink and their purses would become ever lighter. Always mindful of his popularity with the powerful merchants, the Earl had proclaimed:

‘
Let the rushes be lit, for there will be gallows at twilight … ’

‘Will you tell me who you really are?’ Leonard Lanyon asked. ‘And why you came to Cravenmouth?’

His hands still manacled, Jake sat on the floor while Lanyon hitched up his buff coat and climbed onto one of the wine barrels.

‘Let’s make a deal,’ Jake said. ‘I’ll tell you who I am if you tell me who
you
are.’

The vicar’s eyes flitted to the cell door.

‘If you’re worried, why don’t you speak with your thoughts?’

The reply flashed into Jake’s mind—
Hush!

How do you do it?

My mother
. Lanyon gave a sickly smile.
When I was small, I’d go out walking with her, into the fields and forest, following the roads and the streams. My father was a preacher: a man who could only find God inside the cold walls of his church. But my mother and I, we saw the goodness of the world manifest in trees and animals, in the water and the air. While we walked we would talk to each other, and yet we never once said a word. She called our talk ‘the Whispers of Oldcraft
’.

Oldcraft
, Jake echoed.

You know the word?

It’s where all magic comes from. The ancient spirit of this world
.

You mean God?
Lanyon asked, and shivered, as if something troubling had touched his heart.

Maybe
, Jake thought,
I don’t know
.

Deep inside, Jake caught a glimpse of a hidden light burning just beyond his reach. A secret he had glimpsed before but which always eluded him. He glanced back at Lanyon.

Sometimes I think I know where it comes from. Oldcraft. Magic. Who created it. Who placed it in the Earth. Who allowed humans to feel its touch
… He shook his head.
So, your mother, she was a witch, then
?

That’s what they called her. In the end
.

They?

The townspeople. The witnesses and the magistrates. Him
.

Who?

My father. It was by his word that she was condemned. They took her out to the gallows and they hanged her high. My father made me stand beneath and watch every kick, every shudder, every spasm. For long years he had used the Bible as a whetstone to sharpen his spirit into a blade of righteousness. He laid that blade at my mother’s throat and thrust it deep into her flesh
.

I’m sorry
.

Do not say that!
Silent tears rolled down Lanyon’s face.
Do not apologize to
me
. I, who through cowardice, have trod my father’s path and have condemned an innocent to the gallows
.

‘You were afraid,’ Jake said aloud, ‘that’s not a crime.’

It is. My mother’s spirit tells me so. And yet even now I cannot bring myself to save you. I remember
how
she died, and my soul quakes at the thought of it
.

Jake levelled his gaze with Lanyon’s.

You wanted to hear my story? Then listen carefully
.

Jake told the tale of how he had come to Cravenmouth:his life in the twenty-first century; his discovery of his true identity; his battle with dark witches and their demons; and finally his journey on the Scarab Path to find Josiah Hobarron’s witch ball. By the time he had finished, Lanyon’s eyes were wide and staring.

‘It’s madness,’ the vicar said. ‘Everyone knows that we are living in the final days of this world, and yet you tell me that life continues four hundred years hence?’

‘Yes,’ Jake said, ‘but maybe not for much longer. That’s why I came back. Without the witch ball, the world will fall to demonkind.’

‘And the beetle that brought you here—that was the creature we saw in the hall? The stone scarab?’

Jake nodded. ‘Dr Holmwood said that the beetle would only leave me if it sensed that my death was near. Mr Lanyon, if I don’t escape from here, if I don’t find the witch ball, then the demons will win.’

‘But haven’t they won already? You lost the scarab—how can you return home now?’

‘I’ll find a way. Maybe the witch ball will have the power to send me back. All I know is, unless you help me, then four hundred years from now the demons will break free from their prison dimension. Billions of people will be slaughtered, the entire world will fall.’

Jake rose to his feet.

‘I know you’re frightened, but the future is in your hands.’

He heard the sound of a bolt being drawn, the rasp of a key in the lock.

Lanyon wrenched his gaze away from Jake.

‘God forgive me, I cannot help you.
I dare not!
’

The cry was taken up by the crowd.

‘Hats off! Hats off !’

At first Jake thought that it was said as a mark of respect; a scrap of dignity to be afforded to the condemned man. As he saw the tall Puritan hats being batted off heads, however, he realized that it was because the people behind simply wanted a better view of the execution. The leering faces, almost inhuman in their hunger for death, made Jake’s heart tremble.

He was led by Monks and Utterson down the steps of the Shire Hall and towards the baying mob. The crowd seemed to have doubled. They packed the windows and rooftops and perched on the groaning boughs of the trees like a gallery of strange birds.

At the foot of the stairs stood the gallows: a spindly man-made tree, leafless and starkly black against the sunset. The scaffold was surrounded by a ring of watchmen armed with pikes and muskets who struggled to keep back the crowd. As Jake was dragged up a rickety ladder to the gallows platform, he felt a hand clutch at his leg.

‘Any last words, sir?’

Jake looked down into a dirty, eager face. The man took a quill from behind his ear and a scrap of parchment from his pocket. He licked the quill tip with an ink-black tongue.

‘Who are you?’ Jake asked.

‘An Ordinary Man. That’s to say, I write little stories for the broadsheets. Always good to get a gallows confession from a witch—helps sales immensely, don’t you know.’ The man winked. ‘So, you gonna spill your guts or have I got to make it up?’

Monks growled like a bulldog and the Ordinary Man shrugged and scuttled away.

‘Shame,’ Jake smiled, ‘I was just about to tell him everything. Make a full confession of my witchery ways.’

‘You were?’ Monks frowned.

‘Wow. You really are thick, aren’t you, Sergeant Monks?’

Jake flashed a grin and was bundled up the ladder. On the platform, three figures waited in the dying light: the Earl, the Witchfinder, and Leonard Lanyon. Earl Richard held a posy of flowers to his nose to ward off the stink of the square. Like a ravenous jackal tasting the kill, Matthew Hopkins’s tongue flickered across his thin lips. Lanyon fixed his eyes on the wooden floor and seemed unable to look at Jake, even as the prisoner was paraded in front of him.

Having only caught a glimpse of the gallows, this was Jake’s first opportunity to see how it had been constructed. The simplicity of the death machine chilled him to the core. The upright post of the inverted L stood at the back of the platform while the shorter horizontal beam jutted forward towards the square. A sturdy rope hung down from the beam to a point just level with Jake’s head. He had thought that there would be a trapdoor below the noose, and that the drop of four metres to the ground would be enough to snap his neck. A clean, quick death. He should have known better. In this barbaric age, death was a hard and brutal thing, even for the innocent. For a witch it must be seen to be a lingering exercise in agony.

Instead of a trapdoor, a large rectangle had been cut out of the platform and the cart that had brought Jake from the keep had been backed into the space. Jake was led onto the back of the cart and forced to stand on the wooden box that would soon be his coffin. The manacles were struck from his wrists and his hands were tied behind his back. Monks took Jake by the scruff of the neck. The sergeant forced his head into the noose and pulled the rope tight behind his right ear.

‘Ready for the drop?’ he whispered.

For the first time, Jake’s voice faltered.

‘H-how long will it take?’

‘Depends on many things,’ Monks shrugged. ‘On a man’s will, on God’s pleasure. I’ve heard tell of men hanged from the Tyburn Tree in London who didn’t die for days. Even when the birds pecked out their eyes, still they gagged and struggled. But a scrawny little thing like you? I’d wager ten minutes, twenty at the outside.’

‘And after?’ Jake said, forcing the words out. ‘What happens then?’

‘We’ll bury you under these gallows and drive an iron stake through your heart,’ Monks sneered. ‘Only sure way to keep your damned ghost from haunting the town.’

Due to hunger, fear, or the effects of his recent torture, Jake suddenly weakened. He stumbled across the box but managed to remain upright.

‘See the tears upon his cheeks!’ a voice called out from the crowd. ‘The witch cries for his miserable life!’

Jake felt the single teardrop slide down his face, but the man was wrong. He did not cry for himself. As he watched the fiery sunset dip behind the black houses, his thoughts turned to the future: to his dying father and his doomed friends; to the victory of the Demon Father and the destruction of the world. Fire, death, unimaginable suffering, and every evil thing made possible by
his
failure.