Chapter 30 #2
I stopped behind a handy pleurant, one of the tall weeping memorial figures wrapped in stone draperies.
It concealed me from view, offering me a place to observe without being detected.
As I anticipated, a group had assembled, each of them heavily shrouded in dark woollen cloaks with deep hoods and sleeves that fell well below their hands.
They looked like monks from a mediaeval manuscript, illustrated in shadow-black ink.
They stood in a loose circle, half a dozen of them holding torches which flared up into the night sky.
In the centre stood Asphodel, also garbed in a black hooded robe, but hers had been embellished with a sheen, the neckline cut low enough to show off the pendant she wore—the Mortlake Jewel.
It glowed against her skin, the flames of the torches sparking fire into the heart of the gemstones.
It glittered as she moved, and the shifting light made it seem almost alive, a thing that existed apart from Asphodel, a thing that carried a knowledge of its own.
The makeshift altar was in use again, set with black candles and fresh heaps of ebony salt.
Beside them sat several flacons and bottles, and Asphodel mixed these in a pewter pitcher, murmuring incantations as the others continued to chant.
I looked for Ruthven, but if he was there, he was dressed like the others, his identity concealed by the long hooded robe.
I turned back to Asphodel, watching in interest as she stirred her mixtures together into a potion of sorts, using a long slender bone—the femur of a dog, I suspected.
When she had finished, she raised her arms heavenwards, calling down gods whose names have long been forgot. Then, with a smile, she moved among the gathered crowd, offering them the pitcher. One by one, they took the pitcher beneath their hoods, drinking from its inky depths.
“Drink,” she urged. “For tonight I share with you the sacred potion that enables me to fly. Drink of it and feel yourself liberated, my friends. Fly with me!”
It was the most ludicrous of claims. To begin with, the flying ointment of witches was historically just that—an ointment.
It was applied to the skin and gave the sensation of flight, among other hallucinations.
I racked my brain to recall the exact ingredients.
The trouble was that there were numerous receipts in folklore—including Francis Bacon’s insistence that it contained grease made from boiling up juveniles.
(I highly doubted Asphodel had been popping children into her cookpot.
I had smelt nothing of the sort in their house, and cooking human flesh is notoriously odiferous.) However, the rest of the ingredients were all to be found in her conservatory.
Wolfsbane, belladonna, others of the nightshade family—all with hallucinatory compounds.
But of course, that was her aim, I realised.
To create an atmosphere of unreality, to induce flights of fancy, perhaps to coax her acolytes into misbehaviours they would scarcely recall the next day.
She needn’t administer the traditional embrocation.
Any herbal concoction would do, provided it contained enough of the appropriate substances to persuade the partakers that they had experienced something beyond the explicable.
It would heighten her powers, drawing out their confidence.
But if I was correct, it was also intended to provide her with a magnificent exit.
Asphodel finished her rounds, pouring out the last of the libation onto the altar stone. The chants—some questionable Latin and a very rude phrase or two in ancient Greek, if my interpretive skills were up to the job—had trailed off as the participants began to fall under the sway of the potion.
“Feel yourselves surrender to the call of the night,” she crooned.
“Give way to your impulses.” The group did as they were bade, some breaking off to stretch out on the graves and watch the passage of the stars, others climbing the nearest tree.
One enterprising soul scaled a mausoleum, tipping his head back to bay at the moon in what can only be described as a thoroughly unnecessary fashion.
Several others merely remained by the altar stone, hoods thrown back as they swayed on their feet, staring glassily into the middle distance.
Whatever she had given them, they were well and truly foxed.
After several minutes of such goings-on, Asphodel clapped her hands, drawing their attention back to her.
She raised her arms, her pale flesh glowing in the moonlight, shadows dancing malevolently over her face.
At a gesture from her, two of the hooded figures moved forwards out of a place of concealment, a third held between them.
They all wore gloves, long gauntlets which concealed their flesh, and their hoods were pulled low, obscuring their features.
The flanking pair supported the third fellow until they reached the altar stone, where they laid him out, and when they did, his hood fell back, and my heart seemed no longer to beat.
Stoker. His features were relaxed in an expression of perfect repose, his limbs loose. He was unconscious, and as I watched, they pulled the robe away, baring his throat.
“Tonight we offer up a sacrifice, the great gift of life and blood that will ensure all of you will enjoy eternity. A fortnight ago, we gave the life’s blood of one of our number on the night of the dark of the moon—tonight we seal the pact.
The circle is complete, and you will go forth under the veil of immortality. ”
She raised her hand and I saw a dagger, thin and sharp, glittering in the torchlight. I did not pause to consider my options, for in truth, there was only one: stop Asphodel, whatever the cost.
Stepping onto the nearest gravestone, I launched myself into the air with a banshee wail that would have struck terror into the heart of a sober man—and there were precious few of those in Highgate Cemetery that night.
Several of them began to weep openly, and one clapped his hands to his eyes, screaming, “Demon!” I realised then that my appearance was only stoking the pandemonium.
From my trousered legs to mud-encrusted face, I was a fearsome sight to behold, particularly as I kept my mouth agape, shrieking Irish curses into their faces as I leapt from gravestone to gravestone on my way to Stoker.
But I was a second too late. The blade swung down, driving straight for Stoker’s heart.
I screamed, a great inhuman cry of pain and disbelief and rage, all of the torments of hell rising in my voice as the dagger plunged to do its terrible work.
At the sound of my cry, Asphodel looked up sharply, dagger still gripped in her hand.
But she stared in confusion from the knife to me and back again, for it was lodged in Stoker’s chest, the lethal point of it stuck fast somehow, but it had not penetrated his heart.
The delay borne of her shock afforded me enough time to cross the clearing and make one final jump, hurtling myself over Stoker’s recumbent form and directly into Asphodel’s midsection.
I bowled her over, onto her back, landing much harder than I had upon Mornaday, for all of the wind was knocked from her lungs and she lay, making a terrible, gasping moan as she struggled for breath.
My sudden and shocking appearance might have alarmed the acolytes, but it was the sight of Asphodel, robbed of her power and writhing—whilst gasping out a few coarse imprecations—that seemed to rattle them the most. They scattered then, tripping over their robes as they fled.
Asphodel and Ruthven had apparently schooled them to obey but not to defend, for they could not get away quickly enough, some of them running headlong into statues and monuments as they ran.
I shoved myself off her, careful to plant a foot on her solar plexus as I did so. I meant to rescue Stoker, but I saw to my relief he was already sitting up, locked in some sort of embrace with one of the two hooded figures that had laid him on the gravestone altar.
“You were unconscious, damn you,” huffed the hooded man—or Hegarty, I should say, for as he spoke, his hood fell back and his face was revealed.
He grappled with Stoker for a moment, and I saw that Stoker’s wits were still a little fuddled, for otherwise he would have shaken off Hegarty as easily as a lion will dash a cub from his back.
He swung his head from side to side to clear it, and when he realised Hegarty was attempting to subdue him, he issued a backhanded blow that sent Hegarty reeling, nose pouring blood.
“You’ve broken it!” Hegarty wailed, clapping his hands over his unfortunate nose.
“I’ll do a damned sight more if you don’t move,” Stoker said, rising from the altar stone with his hands curling into fists.
He paused, noticing the dagger still lodged in his chest. “What in the name of seven hells?” He wrenched it free and tossed it aside as Asphodel pushed herself to her knees, one arm surrounding Hegarty.
“Go now—leave us in peace,” she begged.
“Leave you!” I was sorely tempted to jab her with the business end of a minuten for suggesting such a thing. “You will face justice for your murders.”
She emitted a low moan of pain and continued to cling to Hegarty. Stoker climbed to his feet—a trifle unsteadily—and I decided later it was this momentary lapse of strength which emboldened Seward Johnson.
For of course, he was the second hooded man.
He had hung back in the shadows—and all I have related took place over the course of no more than half a minute—but at the sight of Stoker marshalling his strength, Johnson must have realised he had only one chance to seize control of the situation.
He was not meant for brawling, but then a man with a gun does not have to be good in a fight.