Gods and Pawns (47 page)

The butler lifted the napkin to disclose a pitcher, a small pot of honey, and a dish of little cakes. Sir Francis twisted his fingers together self-consciously.

“That’s, er, milk and honey and, ah, the closest my cook could approximate to ambrosia. The honey comes from Delos,” he said, with a peculiar tone of entreaty in his voice.

Lewis dragged himself into a sitting position, though his brain quailed against the red-hot lining of his skull. The butler set the tray on his lap; he grabbed up the pitcher, ignoring the crystal tumbler provided with it, and drank two quarts of milk straight down without pausing to breathe. Sir Francis watched with round eyes as he gulped the ambrosia cakes one after another, and, seizing up a spoon, started on the honey.

“Wonderful stuff,” said Lewis, remembering his manners. “Might I have a little more?”

“Anything you like,” said Sir Francis, beckoning distractedly at John. Lewis held the pitcher up.

“Another round of this, please, and three or four loaves of bread?”

“With jam, sir?”

“No! No jam. Thank you.”

John took the pitcher and hurried out of the room.

“I don’t wonder you’ve an appetite,” said Sir Francis. “That was an astonishing evening, my boy. We’re all greatly indebted to you. Never saw anything quite like that in my life.”

“But—I received the impression you’d—er, enacted certain rites before,” said Lewis, scraping the bottom of the honey jar with the spoon.

“Why, so we had. But never with such remarkable results!” said Sir Francis. “What an improvement on your predecessor.
He
was no fit vessel for Divinity at all! Treated the ladies most disrespectfully. I sent him packing; then we discovered he’d helped himself to the spoons. Apprehended him in the very act of boarding the coach with my best silver coffee urn in his trunk too, would you credit it?

“Not at all like you. Such Olympian presence! Such efficacy! Whitehead looked positively well. ‘How d’ye feel now, Paul?’ I said, and bless me if he didn’t reply, ‘Why, sir, I declare I could pile Mount Pelion upon Mount Ossa, and straightwise mount to Heaven!’”

“I’m gratified, my lord,” said Lewis cautiously. “Though I confess the evening is somewhat indistinct in my memory.”

“I expect it would be, sir. I suspect
you
were scarcely there at all! Eh?” Sir Francis winked at him. “But I’ll leave you in peace; John will lay out your clothes. All fresh-laundered; though the wig’s at the barber’s for a fresh setting and powdering. It was in a sad state, I fear. And I’ve taken the liberty of having a new pair of shoes made; one of yours seems to have gone missing in the Styx. You’ll find them in the bottom of your wardrobe.”

“New shoes?” Lewis said. “Made overnight?”

“Overnight? Bless you, no! You’ve slept for three days! A very Endymion,” Sir Francis told him. He lingered shyly by the door a moment, his eyes downcast. “You have rendered me a greater service than I can ever repay. Your servant, sir.”

Lewis enjoyed an unaccustomed luxury of idleness over the next few days; the servants tiptoed in his presence, looked on him with awe, and leaped to bring him anything he requested. He used the time to access and review his memory, and found, to put it mildly, some difference between what his conscious mind had perceived and what his augmented perception had recorded.

He was chagrined by this, but his embarrassment was ameliorated somewhat by the relaxation of pressure as regarded his mission for the Company.

DASHWOOD OBJECTIVE OBTAINED
,
he transmitted on his credenza, long past midnight when he was unlikely to be disturbed by a servant.
ATTENDED “ELEUSINIAN RITE” AND CAN REPORT THAT IT IS NOT, REPEAT NOT AUTHENTIC. DETAILS WELL-KNOWN IN ANTIQUITY WORKED INTO A PLAUSIBLE FAKE. SOURCE SCROLL NOT LOCATED BUT SUSPECT THE EUGENIKOS FORGER. AWAITING FURTHER ORDERS.

He sent the message and relaxed, but almost at once a reply shot out of the ether:

Lewis gnawed his lower lip. He sent:

With a certain sense of moral outrage, Lewis transmitted:

He knew well enough, now, where the object of his quest was.

With a heavy heart, in the small hours following an evening during which Sir Francis had been particularly pleasant company, Lewis packed his valise. He drew on his cloak and slipped down through the dark house, and out a side door into the garden. He switched to night vision; the surrounding countryside leaped into focus, lurid green, unearthly. Pausing only to hide his bag in a clump of rhododendron, he set out.

He went quickly, though it was a long cold walk just the same. Once, a bat shrieked overhead; he looked up in time to see its smear of red light vanishing into the trees. Once a fox crossed his path, and stopped to regard him with eyes like fire. He missed the little girl walking at his side, and wondered whether he’d be too great a fool if he sought her out once he returned to London. He wondered whether he could bear watching her grow old and die.

This question so preoccupied him that he almost failed to notice that he was being followed. After a while, however, the laboring mortal heartbeat and steam-bellows breath distracted him, and he looked back. There, a great way off, a scarlet blur made its way along the track. Its dark lantern pulsed with heat. A poacher? Lewis shrugged and picked up his pace, until he reached the entrance to the Hellfire Caves.

The gates had been locked; a moment’s work with his cloak pin and Lewis had them open. Fighting panic once more, he hurried into true Stygian blackness, rendered more ghostly by his vision. Emerging from the maze into the banqueting chamber, he nearly shouted at what he took at first to be a lurking figure; but it was only a pair of serving tables stacked up on end, draped with oilcloth.

Muttering to himself, Lewis went on. In the chamber with its altar, he was almost surprised to see no spot of residual heat glowing still from Mrs. Digby’s bum. At the River Styx he proceeded soberly, poling himself across in the little boat with all the dignity of Charon, and stepped out dryshod on the other shore. There, trampled and forgotten in the chalk, Lewis spotted Persephone’s veil.

He bent and picked it up. He regarded it a long moment before folding it carefully and tucking it away inside his shirt, next to his heart.

In the Inner Temple, he lifted the lid from the sarcophagus. Within was a box of alabaster, something Egyptian from the look of it. He lifted the lid on that and found a box of cypress wood, a modern piece painted with figures of maenads dancing. Within, he found the scroll.

Lewis unrolled it, examined it briefly, and sighed. Yes: the work of the clever Russian.
Let him not speak, he who has witnessed the rites sacred to holy Demeter and her slender-ankled daughter! But bear witness, oh furies, that this scribe breaks no oath in relating the true nature of what he has seen with his silent pen…
He returned the scroll to its box, tucked it under his arm, and walked back toward the starlight.

He was on his way to the maze when he heard the crunch of footsteps coming. In a panic, he turned back and dodged into one of the alcoves opening off the banqueting chamber. There he stood, absolutely still as the mortal shuffled into the chamber.

It was Sir Francis, peering about by the single ray of light his lamp gave forth.

Lewis held his breath.
Do not see me, mortal man…you will not see me, mortal…

A bat swooped through. Sir Francis gasped and dropped his lantern, which unfortunately did not go out; rather, its shutter was knocked open by the impact. The chamber was flooded with light.

Oh, crumbs.

Sir Francis bent to pick up the lantern, straightened with it, and looked full into Lewis’s face. His gaze fell to the box under Lewis’s arm.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “I was afraid of something like this.”

Lewis, ready to babble out an apology, was quite unprepared for what happened next. Scuffing sharp-edged gravel out of the way, Sir Francis knelt down laboriously.

“Please,” he said. “Which one are you? Apollo? Hermes? I was sure I recognized you, t’other night. Forgive my old eyes, I pray; I might have seen you more clearly, once.”

“I am only a messenger,” said Lewis, praying to both gods for help.

“Just as you wish, my lord,” said Sir Francis, and he nearly winked. He regarded the scroll box sadly. “Must you take it away? We were idle merry boys once, and we did blaspheme; but only as boys do. I had rather hoped you had come to dwell among us at last. We need you, we poor mortals.”

“But you no longer need this.” Lewis held up the scroll box, wondering if he could wink out without dropping it.

“I suppose not,” said Sir Francis, slumping. He clasped his hands. “Please, tell me, Bright One—will my friend die?”

“You know he must,” said Lewis, as gently as he could.

“Oh, Paul,” said Sir Francis. He said nothing more for a moment, as a tear rolled down his cheek. He looked up at Lewis hopefully. “But if
you
are here—why then, it’s a sign! The gods are not unkind. They must care for us. It’s all true, isn’t it? We
will
go to Paradise, and revel in the Elysian Fields, just as She promised us.”

“Believe, it, mortal man,” said Lewis.
For all I know, it may be true.

He reached down his hand as though in blessing, setting it on Sir Francis’s head. Concentrating, he generated a pulse designed to have an effect on the temporal lobe of the mortal brain.

Sir Francis gasped in pleasure. He heard celestial choirs, had visions of glory, and
knew
a sublime truth impossible to put into words. The ecstasy was enough to send him into a dead faint.

Lewis picked him up and staggered out with him, far away through the night fields to the great house, where he laid Sir Francis down before the statue of Bacchus. He paused only a moment, leaning forward with his hand on the wall, gasping for breath; then he knocked, loud enough to rouse the servants.

Long before the fearful mortals had come to the door, he had retrieved his valise from the shrubbery and fled in the direction of London.

No more than a month later, a certain peddler wandered the streets of a certain district of London. The streets were crowded and filthy, even in this somewhat better-class part of the district. The mad king squatted on his throne, the American crisis was going from bad to worse, nay, the whole globe was reeling in chaos that would soon spit forth another age, and the first snow of winter had begun to drift out of a sullen and steely sky.

The peddler’s garments were shabby, not really adequate for the weather, and yet he carried himself with a style making it not outside the powers of imagination that he might in fact be a dashing hero of some kind. One temporarily down on his luck, perhaps. Conceivably the object of romantic affection.

He doffed his hat to all he met, and, when meeting any who looked as though he or she might know, discreetly inquired whether they knew the way to Mrs. Digby’s establishment.

Hoping, even as foolish mortals do, for some sign of a compassionate universe.