And something that was not yet love but might be one day.
The promise of love.
The good folk of Mandrake’s Groan kept their eyes peeled, motivated by a fear of witches and witch-born abominations, but also by terror of the Witchfinder, who strode along the rough battlements, shaking any shoulders that drooped, and issuing dire warnings to anyone who might be considering resting their eyes for even the briefest moment. It was uncanny how he seemed to be everywhere at once, propping up the weary and the distracted with a prod of his icy fingers.
In fairness to the townsfolk, though, they were amateurs in the surveillance game and, what’s more, amateurs from the past, relatively speaking. Even with Albert Garrick encouraging their vigilance, they were no match for an ex-army sniper from the twentieth century who was extremely determined to gain entry. When it was taken into account that the others in the sniper’s party were a hunting hound and a young magician whose business it was to make himself invisible, it seemed as though the advantage was with the interlopers. Although it was the sort of advantage a troop of mice might enjoy when creeping into a bear’s den.
There was abundant cover to be had in the scrubland and Isles made full use of it, inching forward with mind-numbing slowness that tore Riley’s nerves to shreds and had him on the verge of rising to his feet and running full tilt for the town wall, but he did not: to doom himself would be to doom Chevie and, if Smart was correct in his calculations, the entire world of man along with them. So they crept forward, concealed by camouflage sheets, the underside of which Isles had coated with lead-based paint. Smart assured them that this would flummox Garrick’s second sight and also somewhat lessen the draw of the rift on the quantum foam in their systems, as would the silver plates in their modified Kevlar vests. Pointer had no sheet or vest, but he was glad of the silver torque concealed beneath the shabby-looking leather collar round his neck.
The topography was on their side, and of course the lack of natural light. And so Isles led the way in, following a path that he had, like many TV chefs, prepared earlier, in case exactly such an incursion proved necessary. In all honesty, he had only made preparations like this out of sheer boredom, but he was ex-special forces and a federal agent and had, once upon a time, been a Boy Scout, so being prepared was in his DNA.
This particular route, one of three that he could have chosen, followed a hidden gully that snaked towards the town walls from the woods. Pointer jokingly referred to this route as the beer path, as its meanderings were a little like Isles’s own when he had tied a load on. The gully was invisible from the wall, hidden by low ridges and scrub, and once the gully ran out there was a hotchpotch of thickets that Isles had surreptitiously planted over the years to provide cover should he need it. From the watch’s vantage point, there was nothing noteworthy about the bushes’ placement, nothing too regular or symmetrical, but for a camouflaged soldier who specialized in special reconnaissance missions these thickets were his own personal lines of cover, measured exactly to his stride and reach so that Isles could find concealment blindfolded. He was, in effect, invisible, and if Isles was worried about the boy behind him showing up in anyone’s vision he needn’t have been. Riley had spent years in enforced training, learning the secrets of concealment in even the tightest spaces.
But he’d had one suggestion to add. Garrick knows all the secrets we know, and he will expect a distraction. That’s the cornerstone of stage magic. Make the audience look the other way.
So they had decided to give Albert Garrick the distraction he expected.
Garrick was overseeing the Devil’s Brew preparations when he heard the voice. Actually the entire town heard the voice.
‘Hey, Garrick. Albert Garrick, you phony! Come on out here and face me. Mano a mano.’
Garrick half turned from the sweating silversmith, who was at that moment pouring a bucket of appropriated silver coins into a hissing smelter. The entire wealth of Mandrake was being melted down for cannon-shot and the molten execution. Garrick was loath to leave the silversmith because this work was important. It was vital to the success of his fledgling plan.
To change the world. To truly be a magician. A warlock.
‘Who calls my name?’ he snarled over his shoulder, knowing that Cryer would be there or thereabouts.
Cryer’s response was not immediate, for a boy had jumped from the wall’s ladder and was now whispering in the constable’s ear.
‘Constable, I would have you answer promptly.’
‘Y-yes, Master Witchfinder. The boy says … Well, he says it is a hound, sir. A dog, he says. Perhaps the child is bewitched.’
Garrick’s mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. ‘A dog, eh? A hound, says the lad.’
‘Yes,’ said Cryer, wincing, his shoulders hunched as if expecting harsh words or possibly a contemptuous blow.
But Garrick only rubbed his sharp chin.
There was a hound with the squid, he thought. An FBI dog. So – as Riley’s hero detective might have said – the game is afoot.
Garrick treated the silversmith to a lingering and serious gaze, which impressed upon him the importance of this work, and then strode to the ladder.
‘Well, then, Master Constable. Let us see what this dog has to say for himself.’
The walls of Mandrake’s Groan were carefully engineered to withstand raids from casual bandits but not serious incursions from army regiments or the like. This would only mark Mandrake as worth taking, of strategic value, as it were, and the council was eager for the town to be overlooked and bypassed, especially by generals seeking warehouses stuffed with grain to feed their armies and stables packed flank to flank with fine mounts to bear their cavalry. So the council had hired an engineer from a fine firm in London and after a week of pacing and sketching Master Quill had declared that the walls should be of plain unlimed stone hewn from the local quarry, unlike the houses, which were of the famous Anglian brick. These walls should be precisely twelve feet high, which was too high for a man on horseback to clamber over but not high enough to offer any serious resistance to cannon, and there should be gates at the four points of a cross, which should satisfy the Church but not anger the Parliament.
However, Mandrake’s council had never bargained on witchfinders or abominations. Though judging by the terrifying aspect of the fiery rift now yawning above them, the height of the walls would make no difference whatsoever. Walls would be little hindrance to flying witches and their demons.
A final further reminder, as if one were needed, that all was utterly changed in the humdrum world of East Anglia was now a hunting dog, possibly a pointer, though larger than the usual variety, gambolling a distance from the wall and calling for the Witchfinder, and none too respectfully either.
Pointer threw back his head and howled. He was planning to show these old-timey, superstitious, sack-wearing jug-heads how trash-talking should be done. After all, if a guy had to blow his cover, he might as well blow it big.
Which was how Donnie Pointer dealt with his dog-shaped predicament. He thought of himself as being in deep cover.
Not any more, he thought. Not after tonight.
In the red spectral light from the rift, Pointer saw Garrick’s tall figure appear on the battlements and he felt his hackles rise.
This guy is bad news. The worst. And it will be my pleasure to toy with him a little.
‘Hey, Garrick,’ he called. ‘Hey, Master Witchfinder. How’s the big plan going? You all up to schedule on destroying the world?’
Garrick’s fingers gripped the stone crenellations and he scowled into the red-tinged moonlight. This talking dog was an unexpected complication. Riley he had expected, even the bludger Isles, but a prancing pointer was a distraction for everyone. And should he, Albert Garrick, lower himself to converse with a mere hound?
Garrick looked up and down the wall at the rows of torchlit faces looking to him for a response of some kind.
For leadership, he realized. Thou
gh these expectations could be at times tiresome, on this occasion he felt that these people’s almost tangible terror of him was augmented by – what could it be now? – reverence.
Yes, Alby, old fellow, he thought smugly. These idiots do indeed revere you. You have become holy to them.
He laughed. And they ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait till I split the rift.
The townsfolk were surprised now, for Garrick had laughed aloud and this did not seem appropriate with such a threat looming large above them.
‘See what the devil is reduced to!’ he cried, which explained his mirth to the bystanders. ‘A hound from hell.’
His voice carried across the scrub to the giddy animal.
‘Hey, I ain’t no hound. You’re the mutt around here,’ said Pointer, following this declaration with two barks, which undermined his argument somewhat, before adding, ‘But you’re right about me being from hell.’
‘Aha!’ said Garrick, triumphant. ‘He admits it. A confession.’
‘Yeah, I’m from hell all right. Hell’s Kitchen, New York, New York. So good they named it twice. Where are you from, Witchfinder? Stupidsville?’
To the watchers on the wall these words were little more than gibberish, except for the word ‘hell’, which they understood only too well.
Garrick’s nostrils flared as they detected the smoke from the silversmith’s smelter and he grew bored with this game. ‘Pah!’ he said. ‘Again the creature confesses. It is an abomination. Shoot it.’
This was the command the men of the watch had been awaiting, and a dozen long-barrel muskets were set in their notches on the wall and cocked. To pierce the hide of a witch’s familiar would guarantee a man’s immortality as regards his very soul and indeed his reputation in the taverns hereabouts.
‘Fire!’ ordered Garrick, and the muskets roared, spitting flames, lead and long unfurling plumes of grey smoke.