‘She’s delaying her own theft of the cross?’
‘In storms as bad as this, who can prevent that theft?’
‘My father: he will be appalled when he hears what the empress attempts!’
‘Then you would sacrifice your father and his men to no purpose. We’re both aware that the empress wouldn’t refrain from utilising her powers!’
Helen took in the positioning, the elaborate forms, of the game pieces once more, swallowing hard as she contemplated what she must do.
‘I could learn quickly: use my own powers!’
Mary smiled kindly, but shook her head.
‘No: that would be truly foolish. No one can resist the hold it takes on you.’
‘The empress says there is someone far worse than her: I might have to…help the empress defeat her.’
‘Someone worse than her? Someone who also dabbles in this game?’
The insinuation was clear: the more you became involved in the game, the worse you would become.
‘Yet surely with your help, Mary, Mother of God,’ Helen said hopefully, ‘I could be spared its worst effects?’
Mary smiled once more, this time perhaps amused by Helen’s naivety.
‘My child, don’t you realise that everyone who accesses the darkness holds out the hope that they will ultimately be saved if everything slips out of their control?’
‘But surely you can forgive–’
‘Yes, just as I now forgive your own accessing of the dark arts.’
With a fleetingly brief sidelong glance, Mary indicated Helen’s pieces upon the board.
‘You can still be saved, but not if you continue with your foolishness. The darkness will have absorbed so much of your light that there will be nothing left to save: your life and soul wiped out at the stroke of the Devil’s Quill!’
*
Chapter 18
The Devil’s Quill
What does a young man do when the girl of his dreams has her own eyes on someone else?
What chance does a poor, young bookkeeper have in attracting the attention of a young lady who’s used to living a life of wealth?
He meets her regularly, every day.
But only in passing, only as she passes through his room of work, perhaps briefly delighting him by asking if he’s seen her father head this way.
If he has seen her father, he knows for sure that his rich and busy employer hasn’t responded in kind by noticing him. For the young man works virtually ignored by his employer, who regards the bookkeeper as being of little more importance to him than other items of his business; such as the desk required for writing on, the chair for seating, the floor for walking upon.
But there was one advantage, the young man found, of being taken for granted: for he received very little attention, and almost no overseeing of his work. And so, a little by little, with a little something replacing something else, he began to tilt the books he was writing up just a little in his favour.
Of course, he bided his time. The young mistress was hardly one to be impressed by a small windfall.
No, it would have to be evidence of a great inheritance: only something of that magnitude would impress someone like the delightful love of his dreams.
*
Naturally, when you’re replacing something for something, something has to give.
The manipulation of the books caused mayhem within the real world: the world of loan repayments that had to be made, of houses that had to be paid for, of goods that would only be delivered on the regular honouring of bills.
Families were cast out from their homes, thrown off farms, or out of businesses that had been successfully run for generations. Not a few ended up in prison.
But the upside of all this was that the young bookkeeper soon had enough money set aside to at last begin to give the impression that he had received a huge legacy. He dressed elegantly, hired carriages to transport him in comfort about town, rented a fine house, ate well, including at the best restaurants.
He announced his good fortune to his employer, stating that he still wished, of course, to remain as an employee of such a wise, such a talented, such a gracious man: for hadn’t he learned so much about running a successful business while being lucky enough to be in the great man’s employment?
Indeed, he stated highhandedly, he had been so impressed by the success of the business that he wished to invest his own new and not inconsiderable fortune within the company.
Naturally, he expected something for something.
A partnership, perhaps?
Cemented by a betrothal to the great man’s delightful daughter?
*
The contracts were drawn up. For both the partnership and the marriage.
The daughter was not at all amiss to marrying a young man of such surprisingly good fortune. As she told her friends, as she told herself, hadn’t she always secretly admired the handsome young bookkeeper’s quite obvious business acumen, his profound ability with figures? She had always recognised him as a man who would one day go far!
And of course, the young man was ever so briefly ecstatically happy with his new, vastly improved situation.
But the books, the books…it was becoming ever more difficult for him to balance a little something for something else.
He became frustratingly caught up in a complicated web of his own making, having to spend longer and longer tracking down accounts that held real as opposed to imaginary amounts of money. And naturally, the richer he was supposed to be, the more he had to spend, with the grand house, the emblazoned carriages, and the host of servants.
He had become the partner of a great firm that was built only on paper. There was nothing for him to steal from it anymore.
The day of reckoning was drawing closer. His fall seemed inevitable.
Instead, he was offered the opportunity of an entirely new partnership.
*
Now, it was only ‘new’ in the sense that it was ‘new’ to the young man,
In fact, it was one of the most ancient forms of partnership.
‘I see you have a most pressing problem,’ the exotically dressed man said, approaching the young man as he fearfully made his way to his office and his doctored books, ‘but we can rid you of that problem at the stroke of a pen.’
‘How would you know of any problems I might have?’ the young man snorted disrespectfully.
‘I know many things: many things that many men could only wish they knew,’ the apparently eminent man calmly replied. ‘I know, for instance, of your – shall we say predilection? – for switching something else for a little something.’
‘Who are you?’ the young man demand, his brow lowered in suspicion.
Had his father-in-law discovered his skulduggery? he wondered fearfully. Had this man been sent to challenge him, to accuse him and carry him off to court and, eventually, prison?
‘I’m the man who can help you, who can help you in your precarious balancing of what for what within your books. Naturally, it involves a little quid pro quo; or, if you prefer, something for something. But surely no one these days expects something for nothing?’
‘So what is this something that I pay? And what is this something I receive?’ the intrigued young man asked.
‘The something you receive? Why, that’s as much as you want it to be: whatever riches you wish to grant yourself. As for something that must be paid? Well, as you have already witnessed, someone must pay when their money becomes yours; a householder put out on the streets, the children improvised and starving. But of what concern is that to you?’
‘Then…there is no payment regarding souls?’
The young man was not a fool: he had realised who he was dealing with. And, of course, he had heard the stories that warned us to beware making a deal with such an apparently charming man.
The man chuckled warmly; and in the flash of a set of the most perfect teeth, they were suddenly in the young boo
kkeeper’s office.
‘I assure you, these are only silly myths you’ve heard, promulgated by bleeding hearts!’
With a flourish, he produced a contract, handing it to the young man with a slight nod of the head indicating that he was quite welcome to read its details.
‘Oh, yes, yes: to be honest, I should admit that such an important contract naturally requires signing with blood,’ he added, handing the young man a quill with blood rather than ink on its nib. ‘But naturally, if you find the effort too strenuous, then you won’t be signing it, will you? It’s such a small price to pay, after all, in view of the immense wealth you’ll receive!’
The young man began to sign the contract, grimaced a little in pain as the quill drew on his blood for its ink. As the man had promised, however, it wasn’t a pain that made him question the wisdom of signing a contract that, in its details, mentioned nothing of souls.
He grimaced all the more as he signed his own copy of the contract, but reassured himself that the pain would soon be over, whereas a whole lifetime of immense pleasure awaited him.
As the man rolled up his own copy of the contract, the young bookkeeper offered his quill back to him.
‘Oh keep it, keep it,’ the Devil said happily, ‘it’s yours now; the Quid Pro Quo Quill.’
‘That’s it?’ the young man exclaimed, aghast. ‘That’s all I receive?’
‘Try it,’ the Devil replied casually, looking down at the pen still held in the man’s hand. ‘Write any figure you desire in the correct column in your books!’
The young man frowned doubtfully: but did as he was commanded, beginning to write down a substantial amount in the ‘received’ column.
It wasn’t as much as he had hoped to write: the agony of putting down each number was intense, the quill drawing on his blood for its sustenance. The sweat was pouring from him as he finished; but then, it was a great sum indeed that he had awarded himself.
The young man smiled with satisfaction – then scowled in disappointment approaching fury when it dawned on him that there was no proof that the sum actually existed anywhere but within his ledger.
‘How do I know–’
–‘That it really exists?’ The devil grinned. ‘I should be affronted that you would think I would resort to such deceit! I assure you, your coffers are now as full as your column!’
In the flash of his mischievous eyes, they were transported to the well-fortified cellars of the partnership’s offices: and the gold glittered there, as real as the glittering scrawl of blood in the ledger.
*
The Devil vanished, but the young bookkeeper didn’t mind.
He elatedly ran back to his ledgers. Despite the agony of writing out each number, he laughed as he excitedly wrote out another substantial figure in the columns.
The only thing controlling his avarice was the torment of the quill’s thirst for his blood. If he were ever particularly greedy on a particular day – he found he had to begin limiting himself to one sum of money a day – it left him shaking and weak, sometimes even a little gaunt and aged.
Even so, over the next few months the riches he acquired easily made him the wealthiest man for miles around.
As the Devil had promised, with such riches there came misery for others; the business that failed, the farms that had to be sold. But what was this suffering to him, when he lived far away from where he could see its results?
His father-in-law, however, had noticed the connection between his son-in-law’s vast sudden accumulation of wealth and the unexpected impoverishment of people he’d once regarded as friends. For the first time in years, he checked the ledgers for any ‘indiscretions’, as he himself was want to call them: and was truly aghast when he came across figures that appeared to have been conjured up out of nothing more than the wildest imaginings of his partner.
Confronting his son-in-law with the threat of informing the relevant authorities, the man produced their original contract of partnership, insisting that the bookkeeper nullify it by striking his own name out from it. The bookkeeper (perhaps we should no longer call him the young bookkeeper, as he had considerably aged beyond his years) was incensed: and instead of striking out his own name, he viciously scrawled through his father-in-law’s name.
‘I’ve made this company what it is!’ he stormed. ‘You can be the one who–’
He never finished his declaration. For as he finished striking out his father-in-law’s name, using the quill he’d been naturally holding in his hand, the old man dropped down dead in front of him.
*
The bookkeeper consoled his heartbroken wife with the reassurance that her father had had a good and reasonably long life. His later years had been particularly enjoyable, thanks to the extra wealth garnered from the success of their partnership,
He tempered her sorrow with the promise of a funeral the likes of which had never been seen in their land.
It was agreed by everyone that the old man had died of a failing of the heart.
After all, what else could it possibly be?
The aged bookkeeper, of course, knew exactly what it could be.
It had been the quill, and the striking of his father-in-law’s name from the contract.
To check that his assumption was correct, the aged bookkeeper took out another contract, one drawn up long ago between his own company and that of a now worthless man. Taking the quill, gritting his teeth as he tried to ignore the agony of using it, he struck out the worthless man’s name.
The man died, the aged bookkeeper later heard, while happily drinking with friends. His death was naturally put down to his problems with drink.
What else could it be?
The aged bookkeeper was astounded by these new powers he’s discovered lying within his quill.
He could take a life, at the stroke of a pen!
First, he took care of those businessmen who had somehow managed to best him in earlier deals.
Then came those who, over the years, had slighted him.
Next came people he was affronted by during his daily life: the man who wouldn’t give way to him on the street, the woman who resisted his advances, even the child who let a ball fly into and damage his garden.
His wife, too, when she decided to leave him, having become weary of his incessant anger and his increasingly haggard appearance.
He no longer cared for her anyway.
He was richer and more powerful than he could have ever believed possible.
And the quill had another, greater ability beyond even his wildest imaginings.
For the ancient bookkeeper discovered that when he signed his own name to a contract, no matter its supposed insignificance, and despite the incredible agonies it caused him, it helped him live yet another day – to the amazement of those who believed he looked and sounded like he had just stepped from the grave.
Even the Devil, when he reappeared in the offices of the ancient bookkeeper, was disgusted by the deteriorated state of his onetime young protégé.
‘This is not what the quill was granted to you for!’ the Devil complained.
‘Hah, you underestimated my abilities at discovering its true power,’ the ancient bookkeeper proudly sneered. ‘I’ve been relishing the thought of your return!’
He flourished his copy of the contract they had made between them: and using the quill, struck the Devil’s name from its base!
*
The Devil pouted in happy bemusement as he peered down at his scrawled-out name.
‘What have you done?’ he asked, perhaps with a light-heartedness that should have worried the ancient bookkeeper.
The ancient bookkeeper struck out the Devil’s name once again, screaming in a mix of triumph and agony as he did so.
‘Tut-tut,’ the Devil said in amused admonishment, ‘my life stretches far deeper than most!’
With shrieks of self-inflicted torture, the ancient bookkeeper struck out the Devil’s name again and again.
<
br /> The Devil nonchalantly sat on the edge of the ancient bookkeeper’s desk, staring down with counterfeit sadness at the ruined contract
‘Ah, I see what you’re attempting: but I’m afraid that as my name appears in countless places, it’s not an easy one to completely strike out.’
The Devil brought the frenzied scratching of the quill to an end by tenderly placing a frighteningly hot finger on the back of the ancient bookkeeper’s hand.
‘But I tell you what,’ he said with a surprising tone of consideration, ‘I’m a good man at heart, and not at all drawn to vengeance as many people suppose. And so although I should be furious that you’re deleting my name from so many texts, I’ll forgive you as long as you rewrite all those histories for me: maybe, who knows, even giving me a better name? One less feared? One with kinder qualities? A more considerate, more tender man? Yes, yes; the better the qualities you grant me, the more I’ll ensure your suffering is alleviated!’
He smiled kindly as he lifted his burning finger from the back of the petrified bookkeeper’s hand.
The ancient bookkeeper found himself writing with the quill yet again, each letter being agonisingly strained from his blood. And the parchment he was writing upon was endless, for it was being painfully drawn from his own stretched and increasingly shredded skin.
His work was lit by a lantern, one burning the oils from his own body, thereby ensuring it would never dim.
The Devil chuckled graciously as he vanished once more.
‘Oh dear: my history does go back a very long way, doesn’t it?’
*
Chapter 19
The swirling snow was so cold it scratched painfully at the bared flesh of her face, the blood retreating, leaving everything stretched and taut. The surface of her eyes felt glazed, as if like slightly iced-over pools.
Close by her, the darker shapes moving through the thick veils of whirling flakes had changed. They were lower to the ground, their moves stealthier.
Wolves.