The Lazarus Prophecy (20 page)

She limped along Lambeth High Street and went inside the pub and ordered a Diet Pepsi. Assuming she survived this experience, her mother was scheduled to bring the kids back bathed and fed at around 8pm. In early Saturday evening traffic in a flagged-down cab she was maybe 20 minutes from home.

She was the only customer. The man she assumed to be the landlord was middle-aged and paunchy and didn't look like he got much sunlight. He had pale skin and wore glasses with oversized frames. Their lenses magnified his eyes but he averted his gaze in a manner suggesting casual conversation wasn't his thing. That was fine. On this occasion, it wasn't hers either.

The fittings were not original. Original would have been velveteen plush with rows of brass studs tarnished by time and nicotine. There would have been spittoons and the dead odour of cheap cigars and mirrors carrying adverts on their glass. And the pub would have been full, because the water wasn't fit to drink and drink delivered the desperate the oblivion they sought and there was nothing else in those days for people to do.

There was music in the pub. It played from bookshelf speakers wired to an old cassette machine behind the bar. The landlord seemed to be a soul fan. As she stood and sipped her drink, Summer Breeze segued mournfully into Me and Mrs. Jones. The landlord busied himself with the pretense of polishing a glass and Charlotte closed her eyes and ran her palm lightly along the wood of the bar.

Nothing.

She was confident that the bar itself was original. It had been rubbed-down and re-varnished any number of times, but its weight and solidity did not suggest refurbishment to her. It had been scarred and scored and cigarette burned at its edge through decades. Edmund Caul might have rested his elbow in its surface, idly contemplating involvement in a game of dice underway at a table in the saloon. If he had, there was nothing left of him there.

‘You alright for a minute, Miss? I need to nip upstairs.'

Charlotte jumped. She had been lost momentarily to her reverie. It was just the landlord, telling her in code that he was off to sit by an open upstairs window and steal a crafty smoke. She smiled and nodded. He shuffled off. She'd drain her drink and go. Pain and limping made her thirsty but she didn't want another and had come here on a fool's errand.

Ice clicked against her teeth as she raised and emptied her glass and then on no more than a whim, she put it down on the bar and walked to the far corner and the gents' lavatory. She looked around. She was still the only customer.

She pushed open the door and walked in on the stench of strong disinfectant masking ancient piss in four giant Victorian urinals. There was the rhythmic plop from a cistern of water in one of the two adjacent stalls. The urinals were glazed and white with countless tiny fissures under the glaze, giving them a grey aspect until studied close up. They reached from a gutter on the floor to chest height and Charlotte ran a palm along the rim of one of them. Nothing happened.

What happened next, she could never have explained. It occurred out of some curious compulsion far beyond her control. She did it dictated to by an instinct too strong to question or deny. She did not know she was going to do it until the act was done.

Each of the urinals had a copper knob placed high at its centre. They were stained a sludgy green where water ran out of them to sluice the piss away. They dribbled fitfully. Charlotte stepped across to the third of the four urinals and she leant forward. The reek of disinfectant made her nostrils prick. She put a steadying hand to either side of the porcelain. It felt smooth and cold under her fingertips. She arranged her lips around its copper nob as someone would in an open kiss and she licked the metal, tasting its cold, tart harshness.

She groped and fumbled her way back through the pub. It was ill-lit and sawdust trailed her dragging foot on its floorboards. She could hear laughter and shouts and the tinkling of a pianola and the gloomy air was pungent with tobacco and stout. Oil lamps painted the corners in florid yellow orbs which had no reach.

Smog slicked the cobbles outside. The world had shrunk to what feeble pinpricks of gaslight allowed, strung out along Lambeth High Street. Somewhere a baby cried and the cry
was hunger induced and wretched. People passed, all ragged, a dim procession of shadows. The slums sagged in a forlorn row across the street from her, their windowpanes blackly naked and their interiors unlit. Unseen, a horse clopped, the iron shod hooves striking stone louder as the beast approached.

She saw the black bulk of something defining itself in the sooty air and recognized a hansom cab and saw the horse pulling it wore its mane in a black plume. Leather and metal detail glimmered dully and the animal snorted, reined to a halt. A figure slipped lithely from the cab's interior and tossed a coin at the driver who caught it, smartly.

‘Obliged, Mr. Caul,' he said.

Edmund Caul was pale and tall in an ulster and bowler hat tilted rakishly in the brief monochrome glimpse she caught of him through the smog before he slipped inside the pub's door. He wore a trimmed moustache. He was sinewy inside his clothes and moved like liquid. He winked at her before he disappeared. He flashed Charlotte a grin.

‘He carries a cane, like me,' she said aloud, smiling through her own surprised tears as the hansom creaked away and she limped, weeping, each step weighted by terror and foreboding until she reached the end of the street and the air cleared and the buildings around clarified into shapes and structures she recognized. She saw cars swish by on their way to the junction on the south side of Lambeth Bridge. She could have sunk to the pavement and hugged the stones, so ecstatic was she with relief.

There was a bronze relief at the centre of the door. The stubs of seven candles in various states of cold expiry stood in seven holders there. Above them was a tabernacle. Above that had been molded an image of the crucified Christ.

‘God forgive me,' the cardinal said.

‘Seven for the seven signs of His divinity,' Brother Philip said. ‘Mass was said here seven times a day. Even after the influenza epidemic of the winter, when we were but three as we remain today, the rituals were enacted. They stopped only eight weeks ago, when we received your edict.'

‘How did he endure your ministrations?'

‘He was voluble. The Devil is the Lord of Misrule, the Prince of Mischief and sometimes he is the Crimson King. He is never quiet.'

‘This wasn't Satan himself you housed.'

Brother Philip raised an eyebrow. ‘We didn't house him. We imprisoned him. Sometimes he laughed. Sometimes he blasphemed in dead languages. He would parody the liturgy in voices mimicking our own. The similarity was uncanny, like listening to a demonic echo. Sometimes he would merely sing. That was the worst. He would croon ditties from the English music hall. He sounded almost nostalgic, doing that.'

‘You imply a nature, a personality?'

Brother Philip shook his head. ‘No. Physically he resembles a man in every aspect. But there are differences. He absorbs rather than reflects light, so he cannot be photographed. He was confined by our rituals, but locks cannot hold him.'

‘Some trick of telekinesis?'

‘A trick should you wish to describe it as such, your eminence.'

‘I'm sorry, this is difficult for me.'

Brother Philip produced a key. He unlocked the cell door. He said, ‘Go and examine the relics he left behind. Nothing reinforces faith in the skeptic so much as physical evidence.'

‘A lesson taught in the gospels by Thomas, who doubted.'

‘He was entitled to his doubt. The Redeemer taught us that belief is all the stronger for overcoming it.'

‘Indeed.' The cardinal took a step forward and then paused, almost faltering. ‘Will you not accompany me?'

Brother Philip said, ‘Forgive me, no. His presence was corrupt and loathsome. I need no reminding.'

The cardinal endured the cell for at least five minutes before re-emerging. Brother Philip thought he had done extremely well to last so long.

‘You have a man in London?'

‘We do. It was he who told us that our prisoner had returned there.'

‘Why do you think he went back?'

Brother Philip didn't reply immediately. He relocked the cell door. He gestured for the two of them to take the stairs. They had ascended through three high floors of the priory, all the way to the library, before he did so. It was night time and dark and he lit tapers on the walls before saying anything at all. Their light was feeble. It made the cardinal, who considered the gloom oppressive, yearn for the bright vibrancy of electric bulbs.

‘It's my belief he came into the world young and immature. I think his appetite for destruction was strong and gleeful. But I believe that then, he lacked a sense of purpose.'

‘Confinement by your brotherhood gave him time to reflect.'

‘That's true, your eminence, but it was not our intention to allow him to escape us.'

‘We can indulge the back and forth of mutual rebuke. Or we can communicate as men with something urgent to accomplish. Please continue.'

‘He knows now what his purpose is. More significantly, I think he has realized who and what he is. He knows his stature. He possesses Satan's pride.'

‘He isn't the devil himself,' the cardinal said, repeated.

Brother Philip did not reply.

‘Can your man not go after him?'

‘Peter Chadwick is strong and brave and resourceful. But we know from our own history that they cannot be tricked, or curtailed, or confined by a man who has killed. Men who have taken life have compromised their souls. They have not the necessary purity. They are spiritually contaminated. Chadwick was a soldier who distinguished himself in the field.'

‘Where he took lives?'

‘More than a few, I fear, yes.'

‘We need a champion.'

The plural was not lost on Brother Philip, who smiled to himself.

‘And we must recruit. Your brotherhood must be put at full strength again.'

‘We need four to restore the seven.'

‘If you can find willing souls I would suggest an eventual strength of 49,' the cardinal said.

‘That is seven times seven.'

‘Congratulations, Brother Philip. You remember your times-table. I find myself becoming an enthusiast for numerology, confounding the saying about old dogs and new tricks.'

‘You have a fondness for English sayings. You share that with him.'

‘I will read the prophecy now.'

‘First I will pour you the large glass of wine its contents will determine you require,' Brother Philip said.

‘How many have there been?' The cardinal had finished reading.

‘He is the ninth,' Brother Philip said.

‘I was afraid you might tell me that.'

‘He is different from the others,' Philip said. ‘That's if the chroniclers of our order are to be believed. They do not die, according to our predecessors in the brotherhood. Imprisoned by the rituals, they fade and disappear eventually when they lose hope and purpose. They leave behind nothing but their spoor. This happened in the past after a span not dissimilar in years to a mortal life.'