The Printer's Devil (13 page)

‘Well... yes.’

‘Jeez, this is like extracting teeth. What happened? Did you find anything?’

‘No,’ said Alan.

‘No?’

‘The tomb had been cracked open by lightning. There was nothing inside but rubble.’

‘After all that!’ exclaimed Kim. ‘I don’t believe it! All that haring round the countryside, and sod-all to show for it?’

Alan nodded. ‘’Fraid so.’

‘Are you going to leave it at that?’

‘What?’

‘So long, Roger Southwell, and thanks for the wonderful wild-goose chase?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alan. ‘I did think of researching the man a bit. You know, with all the interest there is in the occult, I could probably sell his story somewhere.’

‘And his “Dark Lady”.’

‘Who?’

‘You know - the portrait at James Rendall’s. Another Roger Southwell mystery. Alan, you can’t just leave it like that.’

By this time they had reached Kim’s Audi, which Alan had left in the car park. He held out the keys to her. ‘Do you want—’

‘No, I’m knackered. You drive.’

Alan stowed Kim’s gear in the boot and got into the driver’s seat. Kim slid in beside him, cursing as the seat-beat locked when she tried to fasten it.

‘Well, I’ve picked up another Prize Draw from Suttons,’ Alan related, once they were on the road, ‘and Alec Griffiths rang me about doing his firm’s Annual Report. Oh - and I’ve promised to teach Debbie Griffiths Italian.’

‘You’ve what? Why?’

‘I don’t quite know, really,’ said Alan. ‘Except that she seems to want to be an opera singer.’

‘Debbie?’

‘Surprised me too, but she seems really keen. On Puccini, at any rate.’

Kim opened the Evening Standard, which Alan had bought in the airport shop, and turned first to the cartoons. Five minutes later she was leafing idly through the news pages.

‘Alan.’

‘Mm?’

‘Did you see this about Robert Simpson?’

Alan’s heart lurched. ‘What about him?’

‘He’s in intensive care following a car crash. They reckon there’s permanent brain damage. Apparently he drove his Merc into a bridge on the M4.’

‘Serves the bastard right,’ said Alan savagely. Inside him a melange of emotions and sensations - exultation, fear, hope, dread, desire - thrashed and coiled like snakes in a pit. ‘Well, come on, Kim, he wasn’t much better than a vegetable when he
had
all his faculties.’

As he had expected, Kim found this unanswerable: she couldn’t pretend to have liked Simpson. The kindest words she’d ever applied to him were ‘that fat shit’. She turned on the tape player, having forgotten what was inside; it was
Lucia:

‘Ilfantasmo... ilfantasmo
...’sang Dame Joan Sutherland. Kim shivered, inexplicably.
‘Thephantom...’

Later that afternoon, when Kim had gone to sleep on the sofa, Alan returned to his office and furtively reread that spell.

A Receipt to make a Maiden Enamour’d of a Man.

Almost without thinking, he picked up the scrying-glass and caressed its smoothness. Slowly a strange smile spread over his face, an expression which Kim would never have recognised as Alan’s.

The Journal of Fabian Stedman
III: The Murders

This day I received a letter from that Richard Duckworth the friend of my brother Francis, most elegantly written and in a most fair hand; I had forgotten I had written to Francis concerning this Master Duckworth:
Absens haeres non erit,
¹
in truth. He soundeth a man much as Francis, which is to say, a clergyman, paying at the least lip-service to these knaves of Puritans; an a man do subscribe to their beliefs, so is he saved; an he do not (and I do not), why he will be damned.

And how must I then respond to a man of the cloth? ’Tis not my custom to dissemble, nonetheless I must needs do so, for what I have to say to this Reverend. is of more import than mine own self-esteem. It is that now there are books in this land dealing with all manner of things, mean and ill-printed though many be (and few indeed though printers are permitted to be, is there not space and to spare for a book on the
Campanalogia,
the art of
Change-ringing,
or
Tintinnalogia
as we might term it, being concerned with the
Tintinnabulation
which is most pleasant to the ear when that it is struck well and is also a most admirable exercise for the mind.

To this effect can I write to the man and not enter into matters controversial. An I avoid entirely matters religious shall I find no trouble. ’Tis not an obligation to sign oneself, as he doth,
Your Brother in Christ
(even if the Faithful-brethren would have it so, making folk eat, as they do, religion with our bread). For I have no brothers save mine earthly one and he be a man just as this one and no God or spirit.

Nor do I hold against them their beliefs, for I am sure they are most honestly felt, ’Tis merely that I have no desire to have them fed to me, being unable to believe them myself; and having had more than a sufficiency of my father thundering from the pulpit in my youth, nor did he spare us his sermons at home. I’ll say one thing in favour of this Duckworth and that is he writeth not like a clergyman composing sermons but with grace and an easy flowing style clear to read, the which will be an advantage should we work together on a book.

Today in Fleet-street was a man murdered most horribly, his body seeming drained of substance but not of blood, which latter would be more easy to comprehend for ’tis said that there be spirits which drink men’s blood for nourishment; I have spoken to a man that lifted the cadaver and he said that it was scarce the heaviness of a child, but it was a man grown and tall as I. ’Tis true that men be slain every day, but in ways common and commonplace: in brawls; by robbers; for revenge; by sword-thrust and dagger, club and drowning. This man said that the corpse had no mark of any weapon on’t, only a bitten lip, and the hue of it was blue like unto a bruise and the body dry like unto an husk. And this was a most strange thing.

I have to confess that I bethought me of Roger Southwell and his uses of bodily fluids, though in truth he used very little of them for any purpose I knew; but perchance a witch would use very great quantities for his black arts; they do tell us that there be indeed witches, and indeed from time to time a beldam is seized and hanged, though none I have seen ever did look to be any thing more than an aged crone pissing in her skirts with fear. Though an they possess such power why then do they not save them selves from the noose?

¹
i.e. out of sight, out of mind

This fervour of the church is a wicked thing, to dangle witches and heretics and stretch their necks (in truth they say they do not murder heretics any more, although I hear ’tis but a generation since that they were making pyrotechnics with
Unitarians
so-called) and adulterers too, and I daresay they would burn fornicators an they could catch them (an ’twould not make London-town an empty place); indeed it may be that they do simply murder anyone who doth not meekly comply with their own beliefs. Oft I say to myself,
Cave quid dicis, quando, et
cui,
²
lest they come for thee.

I have not seen Roger since that day when he appraised me of the departure of the creature that he called Lilu, nor in truth do I wish to see him, for he is become not at all a comfortable companion. Yet so much doth remain with me of friendship, that I do think of him with concern lest the canting church lay murderous hands upon him.

There was much talk at ringing-time about a new drab that hath come to dwell in Clerken-well and ply her trade. Bet Paget was the name she called herself, and many were the tales they told of her great beauty and skill in the art of Venus (as they do call it), the which I may say seemeth very strange to me for when I have passed the time with such an one it has been no more than skirts raised in an alley or a back room and all done in two minutes of the clock; although it is true that I never had the coin to pay a whore for a longer time nor had the inclination to do so neither. This being the case it is also a mystery to me how the likes of Nate Mundy find coin for occupation with this Queen of the Queans. And in spite of my great love for Catherine I could not be wholly indifferent to the tales-of this Bet and the divers ways in which she doth pleasure a man. I shall not write down what Nate and the others did say for the mere thought of it is causing my yard to stir and this is an unprofitable activity at this time. Nonetheless, an had we all coin we should all be rich, and most like dead of the pox as well, men being what they are.

I fell to thinking then that those desires of nature which our canting
Sir-Johns
term the
Seven Deadly Sins
are in truth quite the contrary, for lacking them we should not strive for anything. An a man have not lust he will not strive to please his doxy; an he lacks avarice he will learn no trade nor wish for coin to live; without gluttony he would eat nothing but porridge;
et cetera.

These holy Faithful-brothers would have us live within a gray world where there is no black nor white, no passion, no anger nor joy; no heights nor depths neither: a place wherein folk move calm and slow from place to place, blessing God at every turn, asking his permission for all things they do; for all that those who would ordain such a place see it as the purest ideal it is nothing of the kind. An there be a God in whose eyes such behaviour is pleasing, in them all right minded men should spit.

I would have us enjoy our lives to the fullest measure, for whatever else is uncertain, there is one great truth: And that is that
OldBone-Face,
the Reaper, awaiteth every man that ever lived. An there be any sequel, why that is a question for the metaphysicists, for I have never seen a revenant nor heard a message from the further side of the grave. As far as I know, when that we die, then we are dead, and there’s an end on’t. Therefore it doth behove us to make of this life whatsoever we are able, and hence the reason for my book: One small thing perchance, but ’tis the only way to life after death.

Well and good, there’s no profit in these speculations, the which I but write to pass the time when I am kept apart from Catherine. For her father doth make his own demands on her time for to write in his account-books (he being also a printer though having but a small shop); his goodwife did die at the birthing of Catherine and he never took another nor fathered another child.

²
Beware what you say, when, and to whom

It is an uncommon thing in a woman to read and write, at least not so well as Catherine does, and to do figure-work and all in a fair hand withal. I do wonder if a woman may have the temperament to ring bells, for did any one ’twould be Catherine. She could ring the Treble and the lighter bells, as do youths ere they come into their strength. By youths I do not mean those ringers that do call themselves
College-youths,
but boys whose stones have not yet fallen. Or mayhap that description doth apply to some who style themselves College-youths, now I come to think on’t.

Now ’tis true that when first I beheld Catherine all that I desired was to lie with her, but now I do see that she is of uncommon sort. It may be that I am too fond and foolish now that lust is transformed into something more, to see clear but I do think that Catherine is a woman of that same mettle of our late queen Elizabeth whom some called
Gloriana,
who hath said that within the body of a weak and feeble woman she did have the heart and stomach of a man.

I must speak to Catherine; for tho even now I do not like to think on the horrid death of Ann Pakeman, but she did look comely in man’s dress and I had not have known her for a woman. Put my Catherine in such attire and no man but would take her for a pretty boy, in which case all we need to fear are men of th’other persuasion. ’Twould then be I that had the pleasure of disrobing her. For when all’s said and done, if boys played women in the play-houses, why should the reverse not be possible?

-Indeed, said Catherine herself when I did speak to her of these fancies, didst thou never hear tell of Hannah Taylor who was a soldier for the Royalists and a swordsman of note, nor did they discover that she was a woman until she died? Or the one that they called Marius Jordanus, who was a follower of Galileo and truly a woman, nor did she recant his teachings even when that her master himself did?

-Eppur si muove,
said I, which were the words that Galileo spoke after he was forced to recant of his discovery that the earth doth move around the sun: Indeed it doth move (but I was not speaking of the earth). I would fain see thee in breeches though.

-That is not for any other cause but lust, quoth she, the which I was unable to deny. But, Fabian, she said, her eyes bright, Let us but do this thing, let me be a boy, let me see your world, the world in which you men move. I can think of nothing more exciting.

-What of thy father? I asked.

-O use your magic potion once more, quoth she impatiently; At which I felt all the blood drain out of my face. Fabian, didst thou imagine I was unaware? she asked; I could but shrug my shoulders.

And on a sudden most grave, she said, -I did love thee from the first moment I saw thee. And when that I perceived the bright music of your enchantment, why then I knew that a man who would adventure so much was not to be disdained, prentice though he be.

And this arrested me; -Thou dost feel it, when the art of magic is in use, I asked.

-Ay, dost thou not? she responded.

-That I do, I told her, but not all do; Indeed I believe that most folk do not.

-Indeed that must be so, she said with a mischievous smile, for then my father wold have found us out.

And I did embrace her then, for ’twas more than I had wished for.

I think on Catherine now, I cannot hold her countenance in my mind; ’tis like unto trying to hold a hand-full of water. I can see with ease the faces of many folk I know, but Catherine’s I cannot; perchance this is always so when that we love. There are gestures she makes and words she favours; she dwells within me like an house-hold spirit; she is too shining and diverse to see clearly. In her person she is as tall as I, her hair is the colour of an horse-chestnut and her eyes are gray, O but she is comely.
Habeo et teneo
,
³
and that is a great joy and delight, and piss on them that say other-wise.