26

‘Henry is still in the tower?’

Mary nodded, looking numb. We watched for several minutes. The fire was greedy. Brave raindrops spattered the blaze, and were consumed. The timbers were alight now, and hissed and spat as they burnt. The roof caught, began to bow, and clouds of smoke belched from the windows. Furnace-like, vapours and sparks escaped in a column of orange and black against the overcast sky. The heat roasted our faces and made our eyes stream with tears.

‘Come away,’ I told them. ‘We can’t do anything. And we’ll freeze without shelter.’ We could not douse the flames. We could only watch, half-transfixed, as all I owned was taken, yet I was so exhausted, I could not even rouse myself to anger or pain.

We huddled in the stables. Guppy nosed my hand and the horses stomped and whinnied in fright. Milton was barely able to walk. Mary and I had supported him between us, and now released his weight into the straw. He lay with eyes wide and staring while I took several candles from the store, staggered back towards the house, and lit them from the blaze itself.

When I returned, Mary threw her arms about my neck without warning. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. Her embrace was tight. She, like me, was thickly coated in ash. I accepted her comfort, pulling her close, and allowing my fingers to catch in the loops of her hair, as though I could tie myself to her. For a few moments, we stood stock-still. There was something about her nearness that calmed me, as if she were the peace I had searched for all my life. Slowly, my body realised I was alive – I had survived the fire. Mary and Milton were safe. My limbs stopped urging flight. I began to breathe normally, to relax the knotted muscles of my throat, and to think: what next?

Then, from where he lay in the straw, Milton said, ‘I saw a terrifying horde of martialled spirits filling a great barren space; more than the barbarian, more than the stars of Heaven’s endless plain, so many that of their true number no record could keep account. They were mighty, each more imposing than a man, yet all formless and as yet unbodied. Some I recognised, countless ages from their pagan dominations upon the Earth: Moloch, lover of human sacrifice; Chemos, he that was worshipped by Solomon in his utmost folly; Baal and Astarte, Tammuz and Dagon. Innumerable, illimitable; monstrous in their rebellion. They were the children of chaos, ten thousand banners strong.

‘Then, the Arch-Fiend spoke. I cannot speak his words, not yet. They were heavy with defeat, yet hot with resolve. They evoked the crash of shields and the din of war. His minions resolved upon building a city, atop a great hill of fire and smoke. They rifled for their tools – metal and ore, to build their impious structure. Driven on by this multitude, a work of which men would boast for a thousand years rose up within an hour: a temple, of columns and pillars high, of wrought gold, arched roof, and untold chambers within, dwarfing Babylon itself. A city, just as she told me,’ he concluded. ‘Raised by a demonic army.’

Milton had regained his sight, but blinked repeatedly and rubbed his eyes, as if testing whether he could really see. He spoke with something like awe. His speech seemed different – trapped in some pattern of poetry and pictures, like he had not entirely returned from whichever world in which the creature’s words had ensnared him. I realised it was important: what he had seen during his trance could throw open this mystery.

‘Why?’ I asked, bewildered. ‘Why would it show you that?’

Milton thought. ‘I think it is showing me where it comes from. What it is.’

‘There’s no time for this,’ snapped Mary, just as suddenly as Milton had spoken. ‘Henry is alone, and she is out there.’ She had released me, and stood between us, her eyes wild and conflicted. I realised, of course, that she might not know the way in the dark.

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling inexpressibly weary. But there was truth in her words: with Not-Esther free, Henry was in danger.

I looked at Milton. ‘When I return, we will talk more upon this.’ Then, at Mary, who was gathering up her cloak. ‘But I will go, not you. I know the fields much better.’ She moved to argue, and I held both her hands in mine. ‘I’ll have Guppy. Better to stay here with Mi— Mr Milton. I’ll bring Henry, then in the morning we’ll look for Esther.’

‘All right,’ she said, finally. ‘But I’ll look for him at first light, whether you’re back or not.’

‘I’ll be back,’ I promised, fearing it was an empty promise, for I did not know how I would find my sister, what would happen if I did, anything beyond these few black hours to come.

With the bristle of the hedgerow spiking my bare left hand, the glow of the fire behind, and the lantern’s halo before me, I felt my way along the edge of the field. My lungs still burnt from the smoke, and the numbness after shouldering the door had receded, only to be replaced by brutal aches over my entire body.

It was six fields’ walk to the church. The ground underfoot was slippery with softening snow, undulating with troughs, hillocks and low knolls. Worried about the vicious teeth of poachers’ traps, or the mantraps laid by my father’s men to deter them, I kept Guppy to my rear on my right-hand side; he was unsettled by the fire and my tense, silent presence, and growled often at unseen movements – more than likely just the rustlings of foxes, sheep or weasels, but I leapt each time he snarled, training the light towards the open field and my unprotected side. It was not the dark that affected the mastiff. He and I had been out here often to bring home an injured or sick sheep, or to attend a birthing ewe, and he knew the journey instinctively, padding along the surest ground, but he was uneasy.

He was not alone, there. We both felt there was something here that should not be.

I took each step gingerly, unable to afford a stumble in a chance burrow or molehill that might break an ankle or put out the light. As we came to a boggy patch, I encouraged Guppy up the soil bank, where the hedgerows grew tall and the undergrowth sat heavier. I flinched at a cracking sound, and the knowledge of having broken something. My mind was screaming as I withdrew my boot, suggesting starveling wolves, bugbears, boggarts – everything impossible, or unnatural, that a frightened man might imagine taking shape. Reaching down, my hand shaking, I retrieved something jagged at the edges, smooth and domed about the middle: a skull, picked bare long ago, rinsed by the wind and rain, belonging, once, to some unfortunate mammal. I dropped it. Everything seemed wrong and strange tonight, heightened by the dark, and my trepidation about what was out here, just beyond my reach.

As we crossed into the last field, moving west, I turned to look behind. Morning was creeping up. The sky was still ink-dark and thickly carpeted with cloud, but over the eastern horizon came the first grey hints of dawn. We were on higher ground, now, with a view of the inferno we had escaped: the blaze had reached its zenith, the roof of the house had fallen in, and my home was a fire-bright ruin, charcoal-etched against the sky.

Beside me Guppy snarled again. As I swung the light, I saw his shoulders were hunkered low, his attention on something ahead. I raised the lantern – it was only bright enough to let me see two or three steps in front – and beyond its influence, something flickered across my sight, white and uncertain.

‘Esther!’ My voice rent the darkness. ‘Esther…!’ I took a step forward, too fast, and tripped over a mound, which sent me tumbling down the bank. The candle died as I fell, leaving me blind. Between Guppy’s deep barks, I heard the frantic bleating of the sheep as they ran off.

I lay in the ditch. My breath came in saw-toothed bursts and my heart drubbed in my chest like a forger’s hammer.

It was just the sheep. Just the sheep.

Guppy nosed my hand, whining. I clambered to my feet and patted the stiff hair at the top of his neck. ‘Come on, boy.’

The church loomed a hundred yards ahead, up a winding path. Heavy clouds, blown in from the sea by a wind picking up as the day broke, maundered about the tower. Around the chancel, hogback gravestones and simple crosses ran east to west in a low forest. Guppy and I cut through a breach in the crumbling flint wall that marked the boundaries of the graveyard. With no lantern, now, I relied on the thinning dark to find my way to the south porch. I pictured Henry as I went. Mary had said she’d left him in the priest’s shelter, in the tower, so I would have to enter the vestry, climb the ladder to the first floor, then coax him out, all in the dark.

Had Esther come here? I wondered, as I pushed the door, and heard its grind against the stone flags. Could she even come here? Would the creature inside not prevent her from venturing on to holy ground? And yet, even the reformers admitted, the church itself had no power to keep out the wicked, or those predestined to Hell; it was only faith that could drive out evil, not bricks and mortar.

‘Henry?’ I whispered; then, a little louder, ‘Henry?’ In reply, something gave a feverish squawk – a bird, I thought – and then was silent.

Guppy whimpered behind me, but followed as I edged towards the nave. In days gone by, a candle or lamp would have burnt by night over the altar, symbolising the eternal presence of Christ, but the godly men said candles were to see by, not to shore up popish beliefs about the sacraments. The church was not used by night, and therefore it was not to be lit by night. And now that I wanted to see…

I decided Esther wasn’t here; or was not here now. Guppy wouldn’t have entered if he had sensed the creature, and the frigid air smelt of damp and caustic limewash, not sea-salt and shells. But I hoped… Henry was skilled at concealing himself, as he had shown me, and this crumbling spot was the monarch of hiding places, where a resourceful little boy might find any number of corners in which to lay low. As I felt my way down the aisle, I raised my voice, just slightly. ‘Henry!’ If he was in the tower, he might not hear me. I reached the back, and ran my hands over the wall, hunting the narrow door to the minister’s private chamber. There were three steps up from the floor of the nave, through a poky archway that seemed designed for gnomes, not men, and I thumped my head on the stonework, cursing aloud as I came down into the vestry.

It was surprisingly hazardous. This unfashionable church had no permanent cleric. There was nobody to order the jumble of what, from feeling about me, I judged to be ancient pews, dirty cassocks, bowls and alms plates strewn across the floor. It was a tawdry, neglected place. And it felt empty. No warming spark of life anywhere. ‘Henry?’ No answer arrived but the wind’s fretful moan.

I pulled Guppy back and heard him yelp in frustration. ‘Stay here,’ I said, firmly. He sat. I found the ladder, a rickety thing cobbled together with twine rope, and simple slats for rungs. It hung down from the ceiling and, although I could not see above, it had to go somewhere, probably to the first floor; there, I hoped I would find the old priest’s storm shelter, no more than a hole, where a travelling curate or monk might outlast bad weather. I climbed as quickly as my sore body would allow and, after twenty or so steps, poked my head through a trapdoor into a loft thick with the smell of damp straw. Again, I called Henry’s name. Its anxious echo reverberated around the walls.

I sweated, but not from the effort. From fear. Henry was not my blood, but I found that did not matter, and now, as I went up through the hole and came to my knees in the musty loft, something else surfaced within me, something I had repressed on the ill-omened walk from the house: the terrors of what I might find here, the crawling things I had buried deep as barrow-wights, and not allowed into existence in the presence of Mary’s frightened face. He’ll be fine, I had said. He knows how to hide.

Had he hidden so well I could not find him, or…?

‘Henry?’

The boards creaked under my weight. Rising, I found my balance and turned in a circle, seeking a doorway, an arch, any glint of light. I had no idea of which direction I faced when I saw it: a shadow among shadows. There was a recess in the wall. Half-blind, I groped my way towards the gap. The wind, finding a path through the thin lancet windows, made a doleful whistling sound, almost drowning my voice as I called Henry’s name for the last time.

I crouched, reaching into the space, hardly long enough for a man to lie flat in, or tall enough to stand. My hands met no warm flesh, no shrinking child doing as he was told and hiding, lest the monster should find him again. They touched instead a small pile of coarse wool, cold under my fingers: the blanket I had given him. I swept it up and held it to my face, swallowed rising grief and panic, for the cell was empty, and the little black-haired boy was gone.

I arrived back at the house, alone except for Guppy. I attempted to cover my own fears, and tried, unsuccessfully, to soothe the dread in Mary’s face. No, I did not yet have Henry, but there was no cause to think the worst. Not yet. ‘He’ll be hiding somewhere,’ I reassured her. ‘He hid at the house, so perhaps he would again.’

‘I told him to stay in the church. In the storm shelter. And not to move. He wouldn’t disobey me.’ She was lime-white, uttering the same things over and over, her composure vanished, her teeth chattering with fright. ‘She’s taken him, I know she has. I know it. I know it.’

Abhorrent images circled my mind like buzzards, but I tried to sound hopeful. ‘He might have seen the fire go out and come back to the house. We can ride the perimeter, and I suspect we’ll find him—’

‘No. No, Thomas. He would do as I bid him.’ She was adamant. And her apprehension was spreading to me because, of course, she was right. Henry would have remained where she told him – if not in the church itself, nearby. He would not have run off into the smoky, freezing night.

That could mean only one thing: Not-Esther had him.

What for? What did it want?

Like prattling ghouls, memories pressed in against me, threatening to overwhelm my hope: I saw Rutherford, and the way the rope had stretched his neck, so his head lolled low on my chest as I dragged him from his house; my nostrils heaved with the sweet, deathly reek of the Gedge women’s cell; I felt again the dark despair of my father’s demise.

Would it harm him, or induce him to harm himself? It was true that, of the men and women it had attacked, none had been overpowered physically. The creature’s voice had – I could only assume – arrested them as it had me. But it had not hurt me, or inveigled me, other than to frighten me out of my wits.

The worst possibility – the one that Milton acknowledged with a shake of his head, even as I comforted Mary – was that it was too late.

But what if not? What if it could rein in its impulses, and see that Henry was its best chance of escaping us? With him alive, we would – we would have to – negotiate with it. There was a chance it had taken him but not hurt him, and that, if we found Esther, we would find Henry alive. I veered between optimism and savage fear. And a crushing guilt. I had sent him there, and now I had to find him.

We waited for the daylight. I fed the horses. Mary had wanted to return to the church immediately, but I persuaded her that we would not see what we needed to see – footsteps, signs of a struggle – until the sun came up. Instead, we sheltered in the barn and talked of where Esther might flee and where it made the most sense to look. Whatever we talked of – she had taken the road to Norwich; she had returned to the scene of John Rutherford’s death – nothing seemed more likely than anything else. Mary and Milton argued, with Mary insisting we search the local farms, suggesting they might be hiding in a barn or stable just like this one, and Milton saying, with haughty authority, that we could not predict the actions of such a creature based on our human needs for shelter, light, food and drink. Reluctantly, Mary conceded this.

Finally, doubtfully, I shared what was on my mind. ‘It might seek out people. It might not be satisfied with one death, or five. Perhaps it feeds off these deaths, in some diabolical way. Perhaps it… it might not be content unless it takes hundreds, even thousands. In which case we must look to towns, cities, the more souls the better.’

Milton sat cross-legged in the straw, his hands steepled beneath his beardless chin, his eyes closed. He was deep in thought. I recalled his vision, a vision of Hell, and how I had not comprehended it, but perhaps my old tutor, with his labyrinthian mind, had understood more of it than he had told us. After a long pause, I said, ‘Mr Milton, what is it? The creature.’

He opened his eyes. For a split second, he was far away from us again. Then he shook himself, sat up straighter, and spoke with conviction. ‘A demon, I believe. A fallen spirit of the ancient world.’

‘Like Satan?’

‘Or one of his servants. One of those that, after the Fall, became the gods of the pagan pantheon.’

‘It’s a god?’ I was reeling. How could a god possess my sister? How could we fight one?

‘There is just one God,’ said Milton, sombrely. ‘But there are many idols, and not all of them entirely false.’

‘And this one is…?’

‘It’s impossible to say with certainty,’ said Milton, his cracked voice sounding even more weary than mine. ‘But I believe that when we sat by my fire and read Janssen’s account, what we were reading was a man’s description of the appearance of a slumbering monster, a deity of the ancient world. And somehow, for a reason we might never know – though it is my own suspicion that it was injured, and sought refuge in the only living soul it could find – its consciousness attached itself to your sister’s. And then, for a long time, it slept.’

I remembered from Janssen’s story the hideous scream of the serpent as it fell against the ship. Perhaps Milton was right. Perhaps the creature had always lived inside Esther, lived with us, shared our table and known all that we knew… I felt a warmth against my fingers as Mary wrapped her hand about mine beneath the straw. I returned the squeeze, taking reassurance from her touch.

‘But why has it woken now?’ I asked.

‘I can only speculate,’ continued Milton, ‘but if all you have told me is correct, then I must conclude that Esther, who had been so pure, so incorruptible, never gave the parasite any cause to dominate any part of her, until you arrived, Mary.’

‘I?’ Mary said, shocked. Her hand tensed in mine.

Milton nodded. ‘It’s possible. From what you have said, your arrival, and her father’s fondness for you, particularly, triggered such a deep envy in Esther that it allowed the monster room to surface, where otherwise, perhaps, it would have remained dormant. Maybe forever.’

At this, Mary clasped her hand to her mouth. ‘It’s my fault?’ she cried. ‘For coming here?’

As always, Milton was oblivious of other people’s feelings. I gripped Mary’s forearm and drew closer to her. ‘Of course not. None of this is your fault. You did nothing to bring this about. Do you understand?’ Our faces were just inches apart. Even with everything that had happened, it knotted my stomach to be this close to her. I loved her. I had to tell her. But not now. ‘Do you? This is not your fault.’

Without agreement, she huddled in the crook of my arm.

As soon as there was light enough to drown out the last stars, leaving Guppy to a bowl of water, but taking the horses, we followed the road towards the church. It was a longer route, and cut out the fields I had crossed in the dark, but I thought that gamble was sound. I was certain Not-Esther had not returned in the direction of the house; it might have gone south, towards Norwich, or down the coast, but not back upon itself.

The wind had got up even more in the night. A storm was on its way. We rode beneath bare branches that whipped back and forth across the path, and trunks that swayed precariously on the slope up to the church. There was no rain yet, but the air had that quality of the nascent year that told you, when the rain came, it would lash your face like a forest of frozen needles. The land around us was hard and unyielding, not yet awash with the subtle green that would say spring was around the corner.

A second search by daylight confirmed Henry was not in the church, and the animals were unfussy and obedient, so we were certain Not-Esther had travelled out of the range of their scent. Still, we scoured the immediate fields to the west, north and south, working quickly, avoiding talk of what we might discover. I dismounted and parted the hedgerows with branches, Mary went down into ditches and checked hollow trunks, and Milton waded across muddy quagmires to root through copses and coverts, and peer up into the branches of the trees. Without speaking of it, with our hearts full of boundless fear about the worst thing we might find, we searched for a sign.

By the time, finally, we turned east, and began to follow the coast road, a six-mile track straight to the sea, Mary’s face was ashen. Walking his horse, Milton met my eyes often, and I was not imagining the pessimism I saw there. If the creature had taken Henry, it had done so without snapping so much as a twig or trampling on a wigeon’s nest. In the absence of anything to indicate the direction it had chosen, we would have to turn south, to Norwich, and take our chance that it would seek out others. I looked in front and then behind again, at the ground we had covered. Nothing. There was not a thing to mark the passage of anything but deer and—

I very nearly missed it.

There. On the ground. A dull, metallic glint almost buried by windswept leaves. Dropping Ben’s harness, I ran the ten or so yards back towards my quarry, and kicked aside the debris that had brought us so close to disaster. I picked up the object, then clenched it in my fist. It was Henry’s sundial.