‘Now, Master Sherry,’ he called to the silversmith, while the townsfolk watched, stunned into silence by the recent battle of god-like creatures and the crater in their thoroughfare. ‘Ready the brew. Master Cryer, at your post.’
Godfrey Cryer stood at Chevie’s side, his hand poised by the Timekey, its lights blinking agitatedly now, waiting for activation.
‘I am at the ready, master,’ he said with a shake in his voice, which was due not to any anxiety but to zealousness, convinced as he was that the name of Godfrey Cryer was on the verge of immortalization. By this hour on the morrow his name would be on as many lips as Cromwell’s own.
‘Excellent, Constable,’ said Garrick. ‘Apply the tongs.’
Cryer was happy to oblige. The tongs in question were a pair of square-bit tongs, which were usually employed to grip horseshoes while the smith hammered them, but on this occasion they would be used to force apart the witch’s teeth while the silversmith did his pouring. There was a part of Cryer’s being that quailed at performing such a barbaric act on a mere strip of a girl, but this part was small and timid and easily subjugated by his righteousness and vanity.
And so he said, ‘Yes, master. The tongs, at once.’
As he lifted the heavy implement, which would surely crack the witch’s teeth, if not her jaw also, there were cries of shock and horror from the townsfolk who watched from their windows or doors. Even if there had been revolution in the square, the militia was easily a match for anyone who might decide to take issue with the proceedings. Cryer had instructed no fewer than three of the surliest soldiers to keep a direct eye on Jeronimo Woulfe, who had always and ever been the biggest splinter in Cryer’s thumb.
Cryer raised the heavy tongs, testing their action by opening and closing the flat flanges before the witch’s face.
‘Confess,’ he hissed. ‘Confess, witch, and at least heaven will claim you.’
Chevie knew that there was no point in trying to reason with this moron, but try she did.
‘Not heaven, Cryer,’ she said. ‘You are bringing hell down on us all.’
Her words made no impression on the constable, as she had known they would not. ‘A witch to the end,’ he said, pressing the tongs to her lips.
‘Ready the silver, smith,’ he called to Baldwin Sherry.
Sherry peered into the crucible, watching the last lumps of cutlery dissolve and the level of silver rise. As the smith worked, Garrick addressed the crowd, which was not congregated before the stage as was normal but scattered behind walls or piles of goods, as though there was any escaping what was about to happen.
‘Now, good people of Mandrake’s Groan, bear witness to what happens here today. The greatest feat ever performed will take place before your disbelieving eyes. This ain’t no common feat of magic, no trickery, no mere illusion. I, Albert Garrick, will change the world forever, here and now. And the name of this common-as-muck town will be scorched for evermore into the scrolls of history. So bring forth your children and your womenfolk and bear witness to the miracle of Albert Garrick.’
Slowly they came, shuffling out from houses and shops, taverns and even the almshouse. It was obvious that these good people did not wish to witness any miracles today, especially ones that involved giant slashes of fire in the sky and pouring molten silver down the gullets of young women, witches or no.
With them came Fairbrother Isles, stumbling forward as a militiaman prodded him with the barrel of his musket.
‘I have him,’ called the man, voice muffled through the face guard of his Roundhead helmet. ‘I have Isles, but not the familiar.’ They came forward, closer to the dais. ‘In with the pigs he was. Can you believe it, master?’
Garrick squinted at the pair. There was no aura about the FBI agent, as the wormhole had not changed him, but it was Isles right enough, carrying a small chest, his face bloodied and beaten, eyes downcast, and the fellow behind him all swagger and cocksure.
A pity not to have Riley, he thought. But the pot’s half full, as it were.
Still, prudence at all times.
‘Search the African,’ he commanded. ‘And bring that chest to me.’
The helmeted militiaman gave Isles a hefty boot to the rear end, sending him stumbling forward.
Another command from Garrick: ‘Watch the shadows. The familiar will be drawn to his mistress in these final moments. So ready your pikes.’
Four men of the militia pounced on Isles, pinning him firmly to the ground. He was a gent of considerable heft and it took the full weight of the four to hold him down. A further two were needed to tear the chest from his hands.
Isles howled when they took the box. ‘Noooo! No, you fools! That chest is the only chance for any of us. Don’t let him touch it. Don’t touch it, Garrick, you animal.’
The rift pulsed overhead. Ever lower. A sound like the pounding of the surf against a cliff face emanated from its raw scar of a mouth.
Silver, thought Garrick. Rift. Chest. Organize yourself, Alby. Juggle those balls.
‘Bring it here,’ he ordered. ‘Bring the chest.’ Then to Sherry: ‘And, you, be about your business. Pour the brew.’
‘No!’ repeated Isles, dust puffing from the corner of his mouth. ‘No. He will kill us all.’
‘Bring it to me!’ shouted Garrick, and then to Cryer, ‘Prise open the witch’s mouth.’
The militiaman who had captured Isles held back and bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment when all the crises would overlap.
The silversmith then lifted the crucible by its handles and walked slowly towards Chevie, careful not to spill a drop.
‘Good,’ said Garrick. ‘Good.’
That was under way, now for this chest.
The box was deposited at Garrick’s feet and even as he bent towards the simple clasp it occurred to him that there was no reason to open it.
And no reason not to.
But why take the risk when he was so close to banishing forever the hated tunnel?
Why indeed?
So he stayed there in a curious crooked posture, considering, until finally he decided. Destroy the wormhole and then consider the chest.
The Witchfinder was moving his fingers back from the clasp when suddenly he was under attack.
‘You shall not open that box, demon,’ said Riley, for of course it was he behind the Roundhead faceplate and he would have emerged from hiding sooner had not fiddling with his armour taken time. In his hand was a large revolver, not of this age, which commenced spitting bullets at Garrick. Four bullets he fired and each one struck home, catching Garrick in the shoulders, chest and knee.
The pain was excruciating and Garrick howled with rage and annoyance as he sank to the ground, wounded but not mortally so. Barely a trickle of blood issued from each wound and he had grown so powerful now that the pain faded within seconds.
‘Why do you persist in interfering, boy?’ he said, seething with rage. ‘After all I have done. I might have let you live.’
Riley, though, was not looking at Garrick but at Chevie.
‘I am sorry, Chevie,’ he said simply, and pointed the gun at her.
Chevie nodded. He had saved the last bullet for her and she was glad of it. A quick death at least.
But it was not to be, for Riley was felled by a gunshot that knocked him on his side and set his own gun skittering out of reach.
‘I am sorry, Chevie,’ he said, blood leaking from his mouth. ‘Forgive me.’
‘Riley!’ screamed Chevie, vainly struggling against her silver bonds. ‘Riley!’
‘Hah!’ said Cryer, waving the tongs in the air as though they were a trophy. ‘The familiar is vanquished.’
Chevie swung her head towards Cryer, attempting to butt or bite him, but the constable dropped the tongs and moved to help his master.
‘Witchfinder,’ he said, kneeling at Garrick’s side. ‘Praise God, you are alive.’
One of the bullets had worked its way up Garrick’s oesophagus and he
spat it out. ‘I have divine protection,’ he said, grateful for the quantum foam that had already healed his innards. ‘Our mission continues. See to it, Master Constable.’
‘Of course,’ said Cryer. ‘But the chest. Surely we must see what the familiar was attempting to hide.’ And his fingers reached out towards the clasp.
Time froze for Garrick then, and he saw it all. Riley on the ground before him, gaze intense, eyes on the chest. Blood in his mouth, yes, but what better lad to concoct himself a blood pellet? And the shot that felled him? Who had made such a shot? Was not every load spent on the boar creature? Garrick himself had taught Riley to make squibs. A trick, then. But why? So that he might spare his beloved a cruel death? But that could have been done from a distance and with the first shot, rather than waste four precious rounds on Garrick, who could not die. And, if a fellow did not want a chest opened by another fellow, why lay it at the feet of that other fellow?
Unless it be a trap of some sort. A parcel of dodgy goods.
Dodgy goods sold by the death of the pedlar.
Garrick attempted to lunge at Cryer, to kill him if need be in order to stop him from opening the chest, but he was not properly healed and air still whistled through his punctured chest. His breath felt etherized and he could see his hands before him moving as though through molasses.
Cryer, the bone-headed fool, had the clasp flipped in a trice and, says he, all triumphant: ‘Now we shall see what manner of witchcraft –’
Then he stopped, for his face was lit by a golden glow and his expression was all puzzlement. ‘I don’t …’ he said, and then again: ‘I don’t.’
Garrick’s face drew level with the constable’s and every ounce of his good sense could not stop him from peering into the wooden box to see what it was that so perplexed Cryer – though it would not take much to puzzle such a dolt.
Inside the box was something that Garrick could never have imagined.
In the lid was a bisected coil of copper wire and a battery. And in the chest itself the rest of the coil, which had broken its connection as soon as Cryer had flipped the lid.
Also inside the box there was a ghost.
Dark Matter
Squashed and transparent atop the lower copper wires was a ghost, and the ghost spoke to Garrick.
‘Albert Garrick, you killed my son.’
Garrick’s instinct was bemusement, but this faded when the ghost darted from the chest and into Garrick himself. It was inside him, like a butterfly fluttering inside his ribcage.
‘Master?’ he heard Cryer say, as though rousing him from sleep. ‘Master?’
But Garrick was beyond rational response. He rose and backed away, slapping at his chest, then punching his own head as the ghost invaded his brain. He felt as though he were in the tunnel once more, or rather the tunnel were inside him.
Bees, he thought. I am as a swarm of bees.
‘Begone! Begone!’ he cried, which made for perplexing viewing: a man of stature punching his own head and crying Begone. The ghost had moved with such flashing speed that none but Garrick had seen it, and so to others he seemed no more than the common horse-kicked zany.
Inside Garrick’s spasming frame, the spirit of Charles Smart worked quickly. Even though the silver protected Garrick from inter-dimensional traction for the moment, it was possible that he might realize what was happening to him and marshal his quantum antibodies to reject the visitor. Smart expanded until he occupied every atom of Garrick’s being and then he sucked, inhaling and absorbing the quantum foam, which squatted like a parasite on the strands of Garrick’s DNA. To the outside world it seemed as though the Witchfinder were performing some class of demented Irish jig as he skipped and pirouetted around the stake to which Chevie was tethered.
Charles Smart’s labours inside Garrick did not last long; the moment he had absorbed all the Witchfinder’s particles into himself, he surrendered entirely to the inter-dimension’s pull, which was too powerful to be dissipated by mere silver. The spirit of Professor Charles Smart left Garrick’s body and sped upward. And, where Smart had once been orange, now he glowed bright gold. Brighter than the summer sun, as many of Mandrake’s men would swear in the Huntings over the years. Like a golden missile Smart flew, and there was no fear in him, for in his mind he was putting right what he had put wrong in another time and in a different state, when he had been of unsound mind and solid matter.
Now he was pure quantum foam, or dark matter as scientists would eventually come to know it. With Garrick’s quota of this exotic matter inside him, the professor had calculated that he was now composed of just enough energy to seal the rift. Or more accurately to heal it. For was he not the one who had injured the being in the first instance when he had poked holes in it with his accursed portals and emptied out all that incompatible energy?
But now, Charles Smart, you old duffer, you can make things right.
As he whizzed towards the yawning rift, Smart’s final thought before he spread himself nano-wafer thin was that he wished he had been able to punish Albert Garrick more comprehensively for taking the life of his dear son. But he felt certain Riley would take care of that.
From the ground the healing process took the form of a sunburst explosion in the heart of the rift, which spread outward along the rent, sealing the edges with flurries of golden sparks. There was an accompanying sound that was like nothing ever heard on earth and so each person who heard it found it similar to something from their own experience. Some heard the pounding of rain on a canvas sail, while others heard the crackle of an enormous bonfire, and one small child even heard the soothing voice of her departed grandfather saying, ‘There, there, my sweet Sue. There, there.’
Regardless of the differences in what the folk of Mandrake heard, what they saw was totally uniform. The golden shape that had flown into the air was spreading its balm across the gates of hell and wiping them from the night sky. Wherever the golden particles touched the fiery gates, they seemed to cancel each other out, leaving only the true and proper stars in their wake. The process was so wonderful that again people would come to differ in their opinions of how long it actually took.
Nevertheless, it was clear to all that the great rift in the sky had disappeared and the town was safe. Indeed, it could be said that the entire world had been saved. A collective sigh rose from the lips of the good people of Mandrake and any last stragglers left indoors rushed outside to marvel at a night sky that was as it had been for always and ever. The sigh became a cheer, which was strange to hear from the mouths of Puritans, but such was the level of relief and communal elation.
Mandrake was saved.
But who had saved it?
Riley spared barely a glance for the aerial wonders and picked himself up from the ground. He spat the remains of the blood capsule to the dirt, stooped to retrieve his revolver and charged ahead towards the still-bound Chevie, whose eyes darted from earth to sky with bewilderment. Something important had happened, of this much she was certain, but it was not clear whether or not she had been saved. The silversmith still bore his deadly crucible and Albert Garrick still drew breath, and it was a matter of course that if Garrick lived then he was intent on killing someone.
‘Riley!’ she called, straining against her bonds, sawing her shoulders back and forth until her torso gained some play. ‘Riley!’
There was a new tone in her voice that Riley had not heard before; it was obvious to him that she wished him both to save her and to take the utmost care, for she could not bear to lose him.
Chevie feels as I do.
Perhaps he should take to referring to her as Miss Chevron, in the more formal manner of a suitor.
But later for all that. Now for liberating Chevie.
Riley thought as he ran: Garrick was always the most dangerous man in any situation, but at the moment he was on his knees, stricken senseless by Charles Smart’s sacrifice.
Agent Isles had tried to talk the professor out of the idea, which he had
called the dumbest crock of stupid I’ve ever laid ears on.
But the revenant of Charles Smart had not entertained debate: Did you think the box was simply my bed, Fairbrother? I need to get close to Garrick without him seeing my aura. I am completely composed of dark matter and, with Garrick’s to augment my own, it might just be enough to seal the rift.
Isles had been close to tears. ‘But you’ll die, Prof. You will straight up die.’
In response, Smart had winked a sparkling wink. ‘Yes, Fender my boy. But I will live again, and so will my son and so will Agent Pointer. As an upstanding man.’
And that was it.
Slam dunk.
No arguing with that one, and now Riley was dealing with the aftermath of Smart’s ambush. It had been the boy’s dearest wish that the spiritual intrusion would stop Garrick’s heart outright, but apparently there was life in the old dog yet.
There were militiamen too to be dealt with, and watchmen, but Riley’s sense was that these persons were rudderless without Garrick or Cryer to screech at them.
Cryer?
That cur would be at his most dangerous now that his power was slipping through his fingers.
Where was the scoundrel?
Riley saw that the constable had wrestled the crucible from the silversmith, who’d had a change of heart about murdering a girl no matter what the colour of her eyes, what with the gates of hell being clearly shut and all. And now Cryer was lurching towards the pyre, eager to finish his master’s business.
One bullet left in my weapon, thought Riley. And given a choice I’d spend it on Garrick.
But there was no choice. As Garrick himself had often said: Needs must, and life or death are needs indeed. Which Riley had always found a bit of a corkscrew to repeat.
And so Riley, a crack shot since the age of twelve for the old bullet trick, stopped dead in his run and took careful aim. He was certain he could nail the jar at this distance and not make a murderer of himself, especially with such a sweet barker as this FBI pistol. All a chap had to do was aim a tad low and the bullet would fly true as Cupid’s arrow to where it was intended.