Читать книгу Brotherhood of Shades - Dawn Finch - Страница 11
ОглавлениеChapter Seven – The Keeper of the Texts
The huge dark room had only a weak square of light at its centre. This trickled down from a glass pyramid that rose from the ceiling, cutting into the churning winter sky. D’Scover looked up to see the bruise-coloured clouds tear across above him, pushed rapidly by a vicious and aggressive wind.
He walked across the dark room with the confidence of someone who knew every square centimetre of this cavernous space. At the circular table in the middle of the large square room, he reached out and waved his hands over it and a green glass lamp standing in its centre gradually illuminated much of the room, forcing the shadows into reluctant retreat. The conjured light trickled slowly like glowing treacle into all four corners of the room and showed the walls to be entirely covered with books. Tall mahogany shelves climbed to the ceiling and towered over D’Scover, groaning under the weight of countless tomes. Volumes of all description were crammed into this library and each looked older than the last with the oldest of all high up on the soaring shelves.
Walking towards one of the bookcases, D’Scover counted his way along, looking for just the right one. Stepping backwards into the thin pall of natural light, he cast his eye to the very top where the cobwebs hung like gossamer bunting in a macabre parody of decoration. Still staring upwards, he gestured towards the remaining shadows in the darkest area furthest from the light and a narrow wooden ladder, supported by a rail on one of the uppermost shelves, rolled towards him, stopping just a few centimetres away. He climbed up and, as he reached the upper level, brushed away the cobwebs to reveal the ancient texts beneath.
As he pulled one from the shelf, it sent a cloud of spiralling dust into the room, which caught the thin light and danced around him. Ignoring the dust, he opened the book and scanned down a few pages quickly before replacing it. The ladder moved steadily along from shelf to shelf and D’Scover continued to pull out book after book, each time searching the pages carefully for the correct content. Occasionally something would catch his attention and he would place a text carefully in the air behind him and gradually it would descend to rest on the table below, drifting slowly like a leaf dropped by the wind.
Time passed and the pile grew; soon nothing could be seen of the table except the brass stem of the lamp and its glowing green shade. D’Scover looked at the table and grudgingly descended from his lofty perch and returned to the desk. Pulling an imposing oak chair towards him, he sat and gave a beckoning gesture to the lamp. The light from it dutifully crawled back towards him and arranged itself in a thick golden puddle, concentrating its greatest strength over the chosen volumes. D’Scover opened the first one and began to read.
The paper was brittle with age and only D’Scover’s carefully diminished substance allowed him to turn the pages without them shattering in his hands. The Texts had been in the possession of the Brotherhood since its founding, but many were much older. Father Dominic had collected manuscripts from all over the world, from the small works of fables by twelfth–century scholars and the human-skin-covered grimoire of the fourteenth century, to the sixteenth-century works in his own hand.
The history of civilisation was laid out between these faded covers on countless elaborately decorated pages. Here fabulous animals and flowers of all description wound their way round the words of teachers from many centuries. Across this parchment landscape marched the armies of Kublai Khan, hunting for now extinct animals, and unicorns pranced among a twisting maze of vines. Armies fought long-forgotten battles on a world that was most assuredly as flat as a plate, and kings brutally seized bloodstained land they believed was by right of God theirs, only to have another god instruct his minions to seize it back a century later. Each manuscript appeared to glitter in the half-light as the heavily applied gold leaf curled up, flaking from flowers and borders.
D’Scover read on, carefully transposing some key phrases into a small brown leather-bound notebook. Once an entry caught his eye, his finger hovered above the section and, as he moved his finger from line to line, the words formed on the open pages of the notebook as though soaking through from inside the paper itself. The pages filled and the weak winter daylight began to fade as the clouds above the Text Chamber split to reveal a sky dotted with sharp white points of starlight. After many hours, and with his substance beginning to weaken, he pushed the books away across the table and laid his hands flat on the patinated surface. Taking a long inbreath, he pursed his lips and blew a sigh across the table, ruffling the pages of the books and making them jitter.
“It must be here,” he said to the empty room.
He cupped his hands together, curving one hand round the other to form a bowl, and breathed into it. A cascade of blue sparks rolled into his hands, whirling and twisting until he could hold no more. Squeezing his hands together, he crushed the blue light, causing sparks to pop out and skitter across the table. When he opened his hands again, a small blue sphere lay in his white bloodless palm. Holding it up, allowing the moonlight to fall through it, he could see the indigo clouds roll around inside. After a few moments the outline of a human head started to form within the clouds. As the image cleared, it triggered a memory within D’Scover and he dropped the ball. It rolled along the table, tumbling from the edge and disappearing in a glittering blue shower before it hit the floor.
D’Scover pulled one of the books out from the bottom of the pile and briskly flicked through the pages until he found the one he was looking for. A treatise on witchcraft from the seventeenth century lay open in front of him with its pages bearing many later additions in an inky scrawl. On one of these pages was a detailed drawing of the trial of a young witch in Hertfordshire. In this drawing the young girl sat, with a defiant expression, tightly tied to a post in the middle of a village green. The crowd around her looked angry and many of them raised farm tools above their heads. The account of the trial listed her supposed crimes, the crimes that damned her to a public burning. The book told how, among other acts of witchcraft, she had cured a child of deafness, pulled back a tree that had been blown over on to a house and diverted a flood that threatened a family’s crop. The picture of the so-called trial was small, but even so D’Scover could see that this witch was the same girl he had seen form in the ball.
“Another piece of the puzzle,” he said to himself.
D’Scover stretched out his arms and looked over the piles of manuscripts on the table. He became aware that his substance was so weak that he was only barely managing to hold his shape. His arms had become a thin grey shadow of his usual form and his hands were almost transparent. One by one he gestured for the books to return to their places on the shelves and they rose slowly and gracefully to slot themselves into their niches once more. When the table was cleared, all that remained upon it was his full notebook and the book containing the witch trial. Standing up, he gestured for the table to move to one side, and this it obediently did.
Once the floor space was clear, D’Scover took his place beneath the glass pyramid and turned his face towards it. He stretched his hands aloft and the great glass sheets of the pyramid opened to expose the cold night sky. D’Scover began to softly chant his Ritual of Dispersal and, after his grey vortex scattered into the darkness, the pyramid silently closed behind him.
“How do you feel?”
“Hard to explain really. I don’t feel dead, I actually feel kind of . . . alive.”
“Adam,” D’Scover turned the boy to face him, “you must let that feeling go. You are dead and nothing will change that. There is nothing in the known universe that can make you alive again. You have had your time.”
“You really do love a good speech, don’t you?” Adam sighed. “You asked, I answered. This is all new to me and I don’t know what answers you want so I just tell you the truth.”
The hospice was in darkness and, as the offices were empty, D’Scover had managed to Hotline into one unseen. Adam had been a little tricky to find as a first Dispersal into a building of that size often caused drift. D’Scover eventually tracked him down to the mortuary and pulled him back into the empty office he had just used. Adam’s old room was now occupied and so restabilising in there was no longer an option.
“What was your Dispersal like?” D’Scover asked.
“D’you actually want to know or is that another question that I should give a dumbed-down answer to?” Adam said.
“Adam, I know that you are angry, but it will pass. It is quite natural at this stage to . . .”
“Look, I’m sorry, I’m not really angry. I don’t mean to seem angry. I’m finding it hard to understand all of this and I think I want it all to end. Please just tell me what you want from me and let me go,” he pleaded. “I’m sure that I’m not cut out for all this. If I’m dead and I’ve dealt with all that memory stuff, then why am I still here?” He waved his hands at the blank walls of the cramped space. “Am I always going to be here, haunting this place?”
D’Scover sighed and walked over to the computer, removing his CC from his pocket and placing it back on the blank screen.
“I think that it is time we had a proper talk,” he said. “We will go to my offices and I will explain as best as I can.”
“At last!” Adam said, walking over to where D’Scover was holding his hand against the screen. “Hey, you have to use the keyboard not the screen, you know – or do you ghosts not have technology yet?”
The screen began to ripple and turn purple and the familiar blue sparks crackled across the matt surface, gathering pace as they started to swirl.
“Oh, we have technology,” D’Scover said to a stunned Adam. “We have plenty of technology.”
The sparks spread out and Adam stumbled backwards in the darkness, trying to move out of their reach, but D’Scover grabbed for his arm and pulled him into the enveloping neon light. Adam twisted around in panic as the sparks grasped at him and began to swarm over his arm. Once the first lick of sparks had touched his arm, he became rapidly absorbed in a swift wave of blue crackling light, and then was gone . . . All that remained was a red spiral that shimmered in the darkness for a second and vanished.
“Whoa, now that was amazing!” Adam gasped. “How did we do that? Where the hell are we?”
He now stood, staring at his arms and legs as though checking they were still all of the required number, in a darkened office high up, looking down on the blinking lights of the city.
“Just a tweak on your friend technology, and we are in my offices,” D’Scover answered. “When we Disperse, we can take advantage of the Internet, telephone lines, wireless connections, all manner of electronic systems; it is just a question of opening the right pathway and sliding in.”
“Can anyone do it? I mean, can anyone dead do it?”
“No,” D’Scover explained, busying himself at his desk. “It is a difficult procedure and one that is exclusively managed by the Brotherhood.”
“The Brotherhood?”
“Take a seat,” D’Scover gestured towards the couch, “I have a lot to explain.”
Adam turned, taking in D’Scover’s private collection. “Is this some kind of art gallery?”
“No, as I said, this is my office.”
“Tasteful,” Adam grinned. “You must earn a mint.”
“I earn no money for what I do,” D’Scover replied.
“Still, looks like you don’t exactly go without though, do you?”
“There is nothing I require, no.”
Adam flopped down on the couch and leaned back into a softly yielding corner of the large piece of furniture.
“Very classy, comfy. None of your superstore rubbish here, eh?”
“Adam,” D’Scover’s voice had taken on an even more sombre tone, “I am prepared to give you the answers that you need.”
“That’s all very well, Mr Mysterious,” replied Adam, “but I don’t know what the questions are, do I? Can I have a clue?”
D’Scover sighed. “Maybe if I explained more about the Brotherhood, you would have a greater understanding.”
“Worth a shot.” Adam swivelled round to put his feet up on the couch and rested his hands behind his head. “Let’s give it a go.”
“I will not be explaining this in the conventional fashion; it is a little more complicated than I have time for. I will use a technique I developed for the Brotherhood.”
“You’re the boss,” Adam quipped. “Bring it on.”
“Adam, please try to take this seriously.”
“I am.” Adam sat up again. “Honest, I’ll be serious.”
D’Scover turned from him and made a gesture in the air with his fingers. The chair from his desk swivelled round and slid across the room towards him and he sat down, facing Adam.
“You have to show me how to do that stuff.” Adam pointed at the chair. “That is too cool.”
“Close your eyes and listen carefully to my voice.” D’Scover ignored Adam’s comment and carried on. “Let the images come into your mind and do not resist anything that happens.”
“Well, that all sounds totally creepy, but if you say so.” Adam half closed his eyes and rested his head on the cushions of the couch.
“In the sixteenth century,” D’Scover began, “Europe was ruled then as now by kings and politics, but disease and poverty were its real masters and had been so for centuries. Plague still marched across the civilised world and poverty was both companion and assistant to this horror.”
D’Scover’s voice had fallen to a soft tone that lulled Adam into listening closely, and as he did so, he realised that the edges of the room had begun to blur. He could no longer make out every word that D’Scover was saying, and felt he must be falling asleep. Shadows walked at the edges of his vision and dark shapes loomed around them. The shadows gradually began to take a stronger shape and he could see that they were people in simple, ragged clothes moving between dirty, rustic buildings. Soon the office had faded completely to be replaced by a perfect tableau that looked as if it had fallen from the pages of a history book.
Adam turned about himself with a start and looked upon a scene that was apparently solid and real; he marvelled at the detail of his dream. He jumped back in fear as a cart rumbled past him along a muddy road, throwing up a shower of earth and water, and realised this was more than just a vision. He looked down at his legs and saw that the filthy water had passed straight through him. The people around him were not the illusion here – he was.
Around him everyone carried on with their daily grind of work, but to Adam it looked as though food was not part of this equation. The people were thinner than anyone he had ever seen. Even in the homeless hostels and crowded doorways of London no one had looked as near to death as the gathering he saw before him. Children carried baskets of wood past him and Adam could see nothing but the spectre of a young death in their grey faces. He walked on, turning away as the pathetic wretches came close to him. He knew how it must have been for those who had once passed him by in the streets towards the end of his own life. It was not that they didn’t care, just that they didn’t know what to do to make it better.
Forcing himself to watch, he continued through the village, stepping over rivers of human waste as he went, despite the fact that he knew it could not touch him. Some of the villagers staggered from house to house with dirty bandages flapping from their diseased limbs. Others recoiled in horror as they passed and clutched their filthy sleeves to their faces in a pathetic attempt to prevent infection. Adam knew from the rough plague crosses daubed on many doors that in these shabby houses lay the sick and dying.
D’Scover’s words hung in the air, a soft rhythm of sound that throbbed and built up this world of pestilence further.
“Villages . . . struggled . . . poverty . . . plague . . . feudal lords . . . controlled . . . population . . . iron grip.” D’Scover continued with his speech and as Adam listened to the soft, intermittent music of his voice around him, there unfolded a world as vivid and real as the one Adam had once lived in.
“Plague . . . stronghold . . . weakened population . . . no resistance. Travelling . . . Europe . . . rats . . . decimated . . . cities . . . too few alive to bury . . . dead . . . superstition . . . ghosts stalked . . . living . . . demons . . . assumed . . . control . . . damned . . . village. Time passed . . . spectre of disease . . . rose from the darkness . . . slaughter more and more people . . . religious houses . . . met . . . discuss . . . solution.”
Adam could see this world unfolding around him as real as if he had been born into it. D’Scover stood – a weak shadow by his side – explaining. The scene changed and began to fade from the foul horror of the villages to the towering mass of a great cathedral that now grew up around him. Its creamy walls climbed high above and brilliant light streamed in through a tall plain-paned glass window. Around him sat a large body of men, all dressed in elaborate, highly coloured robes.
Adam realised that these were the heads of religious houses, monks and priests, cardinals – men from all aspects of the religious world and from all over Europe gathered together. He saw and understood deeply that they could no longer cope with caring for those who were suffering. These realisations came to him in a rush that made his head spin. It was the most intensive history lesson imaginable as D’Scover laid out the monastic world and high-church life in front of Adam’s stunned eyes.
The congregation shuffled uneasily in the dark wood high-backed chairs and a solemn murmur ran around the gathered men. An elderly abbot in a dark purple robe slowly and stiffly rose to his feet and cleared his throat. A hush descended on the gathering and he began to speak.
“Brothers,” he said in a voice heavy with age, “this is the darkest time we have ever known.” A rumble of agreement rippled around him.
“The king moves closer to breaking down our great houses, closer than he has ever done before. If we do not take this threat seriously, then all of our efforts have been for nothing.”
The congregation clearly supported this man. Spurred on, he continued.
“Here we have gathered time after time, talking our throats raw, and still we have come no closer to an accord. All of you have made arrangements for your greatest texts and many have taken to moving silver and monies to places of safety.”
A hearty laugh burst from several of the older men who knew which of the priests the speaker was referring to.
“We have all taken steps to protect that which we hold dear, but it is not enough. We have an obligation to others. Try as we might to ignore the truth of this, we can no longer afford to do so. We must take the warnings of Father Dominic of the Benedictines seriously.”
With this statement, the crowd suddenly split angrily and faces began to grow red with the shouting. Some of the men stood and tried to shout down the abbot.
“HEAR ME!” he bellowed above the mêlée and they listened once more. “Plague has irrevocably damaged the beliefs of our world. As more were taken by the pestilence, belief was diminished and the strength of our world is weakened. With less people to believe, more and more spirits have become trapped in the world of the living instead of passing on. Father Dominic’s theories have been borne out. How many of you can say that you have not had reports from your diocese about spirits walking amongst the living? We must hear what Father Dominic has to say, and this threat must be dealt with. It is our solemn duty. That we can no longer question.”
He raised a fat hand and beckoned to a figure hidden in the shadows at the back of the nave. The sturdy form of Father Dominic walked into the light. Dogging his footsteps was a thin servant boy with an unruly mop of black hair. He stumbled as he attempted to keep up, trying not to drop the large bundle of papers and books in his arms. The congregation growled with dissent, but remained seated as the father walked into their midst and took his place in front of them. He waited a moment for the rumble to die down before he spoke.
“You are aware of my workings and of the Dissolution that comes upon us.” His soft voice made everyone lean forward to listen. “It is my solemn belief that we must take action to prevent the world of the living from becoming overrun.” He looked around, waiting for a response; none came and so he continued. “These papers,” he grabbed a large parchment scroll from his servant and held it aloft, “list hundreds of reports from around the country. Spirits are not resting and the nation is in danger of being overrun with the dead. In the Augustinian priory of Lanercost in the north there is the bare start of a new Brotherhood, a Brotherhood that can cope with the demands laid upon us by the coming Dissolution.”
The abbey filled with sharp intakes of breath and more murmurs.
“This new Brotherhood will, with your agreement, remain a clandestine order. They must never be identified and must never be attached to one of our great houses as they must be able to act independently. This is why we have chosen the small priory at Lanercost to gather the necessary texts; these will be moved to a safe place should the Dissolution reach that far north. If necessary, we will continue to move them to keep them protected.”
“But how can this new order be any different?” a thin man with grey hair and long white robes called out from the midst of the crowd. “What is the purpose of this? This new order will surely be broken apart, just as our orders will.”
“No, that will not happen,” Father Dominic responded. “It will not be broken apart because it will not move within the world that we know. This will be an order of spirits – a Brotherhood of Shades.”
With that, the congregation stood and many shouted and even hurled prayer books across the floor to land inches from where Father Dominic stood. He gave a small bow to the angry crowd and spoke over them. His words were almost lost to the chaos of noise.
“Fools!” a shrill voice came from the back of the congregation.
Everyone turned as a hooded figure stepped out of the shadows and walked on into the aisle. In one swift moment the hood was thrown back to reveal a thin, scruffy-looking girl with long and knotted brown hair. Outrage once more rippled through the gathered men.
“I said you are all fools!” she shouted. “And, as sure as day follows night, you will all perish in your ignorance. This man,” she pointed at Father Dominic, “brings you a way of preventing the inevitable creep of the dead into the world of the living and you shout him down. What vexes you here? Are you too afraid that he is right and that you will all be overcome?”
“Who let this girl child in here?” the white-robed monk bellowed. “Servants, take her from here; this is a closed assembly.”
“I know of her!” another monk shouted. “She is from a village close to my abbey. Seize her quickly; this meeting must not become common knowledge.” He spun on his heels and pointed at her, his face purple with rage.
“Her interest lies in our destruction,” he spat. “She is a witch. She must not be allowed to live and tell of what she has seen.”
Several servants ran up the aisle, armed with swords, and surrounded the girl before one of them grabbed her arms and held her tight; another pointed a sword at her stomach.
“You will see,” the girl cried out. “You fear my kind, but I will last longer than any of you. One day superstition and ignorance will be overcome and on that day you will all need the help of such as I.”
The guards grabbed her hard and bundled her from the nave. Chaos ensued as some of the monks used the interruption to leave while others shouted to Father Dominic to explain. The father thrust the scroll back into his servant’s hands and, ignoring everyone’s pleas, he turned away from the gathering.
“I will take my leave!” Father Dominic shouted. “I will not be party to such murderous deeds.” At the door he turned back and bellowed once more.
“Think on!” he shouted. “You will come to me before the year is out and ask for the help of the Brotherhood – that much I can promise you.”
Turning, he walked back into the shadows and was gone through the transept doors.
Adam looked around at the scarlet and angry faces of the men as, one by one, they began to filter out of the building into the night. He suddenly became aware that D’Scover was standing by his side in the empty abbey.
“What happened next?” Adam asked him.
“Father Dominic was correct. Within one year, the heads of the great houses sent representatives to talk to him and let him explain how his new Brotherhood would function. The good father had discovered a text that could manifest a spirit indefinitely. These spirits could then maintain the Brotherhood and continue to assist those passing ungrieved-for long after the monasteries had been forgotten. The father had also had visions, visions that he described as images of angels, including the Archangel Uriel, who explained the Ritual of Sustainment to him. This he recorded and adapted to suit the needs of his new Brotherhood.
“He believed that if the Brotherhood was formed entirely of spirits – Shades – then King Henry and his Dissolution of the Monasteries could not affect them. The plans were put into motion and five monks were chosen from five different holy orders to assist with the new Brotherhood. Franciscan, Benedictine, Carthusian, Augustinian and Dominican monks all represented the views of their houses and brought ancient texts to form a central library. They arrived with their servants to meet in one of the last abbeys to resist the Dissolution, a Norman-built Benedictine abbey in Hertfordshire.”
The walls around Adam changed again and flaking-plaster pillars painted with vivid depictions of the crucifixion replaced the creamy stone of the previous abbey. He stood in a nave once more, but this one seemed much longer, and the wooden roof rose higher above him. The building was busy with the movement of monks in black habits bustling around, filling crates with everything that was not nailed down. Pews were pushed back and stacked one upon another in a messy heap of wood that cleared the aisle, allowing the men to rush backwards and forwards in their work.
Ahead of Adam, right at the end of the nave, stood four monks, two in robes of brown, one in white and one in black. The man in black was Father Dominic and he clutched a small, cream-coloured book close to his body. The other men stood by a long table draped in burgundy velvet that rested in front of the high altar. They pored over the many books that lay scattered across its surface. Overlooking them, the high altar screen rose almost to the roof. This simple wooden panelling bore no decoration save for a plain shelf carrying a large crystal crucifix that caught occasional beams of light and cast them in prismatic colours on to the illuminated texts.
“We shall never complete this,” one of the men complained. “This is a fool’s errand. We will all die in this task. Even as we speak, the king’s men grow ever closer. They were expected in Wycombe only this morning. It is not a day’s ride from here. It will be our legacy that we threw our final moments away on such a waste of time.”
“No,” Father Dominic insisted in his soft but forceful tone, “it shall be done. We are closer than we have ever been. We just need a little more time, a few hours, and a suitable candidate. I have kept the Sisters of Southwark informed of our progress and all is in readiness for the first full trial of our methods. We must be patient as we do not know how much time . . .”
A deafening pounding interrupted them as the great west door was hammered on. The men all looked to the monk who had rushed to the small spyhole in the door.
He called out to them. “The king’s men!”
“Our time is lost,” the white-robed monk said in an urgent tone, grabbing the books from the table. “We must hasten from this place with these books; they must not fall into the hands of the king’s men else it will give him all the evidence he needs to raze every monastery and convent to the ground.”
“Quickly!” Father Dominic shouted to the other Benedictines who had gathered near the door. “Bar it well; it will give us a little time. The other doors are already sealed as I anticipated this. Where is my servant?”
“Here, father.” A young boy ran to his side.
“Boy, come with me. I have to add a little more to this text and then you must take it and the Master Text to the Sisters, as we have planned. You know what you must do?”
“Yes, father,” the boy replied. “On my life, I shall see it done.”
“Good lad,” the father said and ruffled the boy’s mop of black hair.
The monks rushed to make sure that all was copied into one great volume. The hammering on the door grew greater and the other monks began to drag all that they could move to the door to create a barricade. Pews were piled in front of the door and the stem of the tall brass lectern jammed through the oak handles. Father Dominic hastily filled the final pages, ink spilling over his fingers as he dipped his quill with haste. A few last notes and, with the young servant hot on his heels, he ran into the recesses of the abbey to hide the texts from the king’s men just as they burst into the building.
