The Golden Portifor - 37. Chapter 37

As the four youths emerged into the nuns’ cemetery of the abbey of Medeln, Willi stared curiously around him.

‘Have you any idea what we’ll do if I succeed in getting to see my mother?’ he asked Karl.

The boy frowned. ‘Well ... not exactly, no. But I’m hoping your lady mother may have some ideas.’

‘She’s been stuck in there for years,’ observed Wilchin. ‘Chances are she’s done a lot of thinking about how to get out of the cell they put her in, and what to do once she was free of it.’

‘You’ll be on yer own, Willi,’ Andreas said. ‘I don’t think the rest of us’ll be able to get anywhere near the place. So yer’ll have to play it by ear.’

As they were passing the anchorite’s cells, nothing could prevent Wilchin peering into the one where Karl had seen ‘his old mate’, as he called Lady Fenice. He came back shaking his head, disappointed. ‘Just some nun reading her book.’

Wilchin’s special talents came into play when they reached the infirmary cloister. A small procession of nuns walked past them without apparently noticing them at all. He grinned as he swept a bow to the passing ladies. ‘Here’s where we stop,’ he announced as they entered the garden. ‘If I goes any closer to that door none of me spells will work, I can feel it.’

‘I can’t get past the statue,’ Karl added, ‘but you can my lord Willi. So time for you to do yer stuff. Good luck!’

The others murmured their encouragement as an uncharacteristically subdued and nervous Willi squared himself to the task. ‘What does one say to a mother you’ve not met since you came into the world?’

‘Er ... hello?’ Karl unhelpfully suggested.

‘I’d have a few words to say to my mum, whoever she was,’ growled Wilchin. ‘Ran off wiv a tinker when I was not much more than a baby, and left me wiv someone who called herself me aunt who chucked me out on the streets to beg. Me only family since has been the Conduit.’

Without another word Willi von Strelsau edged cautiously across the cloister garden, but experiencing no barrier to his progress strode to the infirmary door and laid hand on the bronze ring of one of the valves. There were no sparks or alarms, and the metal was cool under his hand. He pushed it open without so much as a creak.

***

Boromeo von Tarlenheim began ticking off his options as he and Colonel Barkozy rode through Tarlenheim and took the river road to Medelnbrücke. He could go along with the charade, he supposed, and play the unsuspecting victim till he was within the abbey walls, the problem being that without any help available he might then become the sacrificial victim his enemies intended him to be. Would the Conduit boys be there before him? Something inside him believed they would be, but he could not be sure. The alternative was to act before he reached the abbey gate, subdue Barkozy and end the charade. And that was what he decided on.

Coming to the end of their ride, Barkozy began to urge on his mount. Perhaps he wants to get the dirty deed done, Boromeo thought to himself, an indication of conscience perhaps? The problem was that he had no way of knowing, and certainly there was no time to work on Barkozy’s doubts, even had Boromeo known what to say. Words were not his gift. So he spurred on Onyx and came level with the colonel’s mount. They were on a straight stretch of road less than a mile from the abbey. Without warning he reached over and pulled the reins abruptly from Barkozy’s hand, leaving him without the means to guide or halt his mount. Then Boromeo skilfully used Onyx’s weight and power to pull the other horse up hard, causing the colonel to reel forward and sprawl over his horse’s neck. When he pulled himself up it was to find himself face to face with one of Boromeo’s pistols.

‘What the damnation ...?’ he sputtered.

‘Now, colonel. I think it’s time we had a heart-to-heart about why we’re really here in Ober Husbrau.’

‘I told you, it’s a vital mission to ...’

‘Oh shut up, colonel. Keep your pack of lies to yourself. There was no defeat at Mittenheim, and I’m willing to believe His Royal Highness is as well today as I am and certainly not dead on a battlefield. You’re a damned traitor and a Bavarian spy. The box you have at your saddle holds no Crown of Tassilo either, I’ll bet. More likely it has in it all you’ve been able to salvage from your career in Ruritanian arms, which is now over, I would imagine. So why are we here?’

‘If you knew all this, why did you accompany me?’

‘To find out your game, Lorenz, and why it is you have such an interest in me. Because so far as I can see, this is all about getting me to Medeln Abbey. And why should that be? I don’t believe it’s a concern for my immortal soul.’

Barkozy was momentarily startled at that last remark. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Boromeo replied, doing his best to give a knowing look.

Now the man looked fearful. ‘So you know about ...’

‘The boy with the horns?’

‘God save me!’ Barkozy now was plainly terrified, his eyes wide. Boromeo had hit the target; he smiled broadly and blessed Jonas Niemand.

‘I don’t think the Almighty has much to do with all this, has he?’

‘How ...?’

‘You and Dudley should have left well alone. And if you think I’m going to follow you into that abbey like a bull into a slaughterhouse, you can think again. Maybe it’s time you should reconsider your allegiance. You’ve attracted the attention of those in the World Beyond whose attention is deadly. Seems to me that Dudley can’t help you now, nor my aunt for that matter. They’re dragging you down with them, Lorenz.’

The man slumped. ‘I didn’t want any of this,’ he said. ‘Dudley promised me as much money as I could imagine. Now it’s all about his revenge on his enemies. He’s got a lot of them and he can’t let it go. He’s mad with it all. But what’s in it for me? You can protect me, you say?’

‘We’ll see, won’t we.’ Boromeo holstered his pistol. ‘I at least know what’s on the other side of that door Dudley wants to open. You see, I’ve been there and come back without losing a drop of blood.’

***

Willi von Strelsau walked in through the portal of the infirmary. Within was what must be one of the older parts of the abbey, he observed. The arches of the aisles to either side of him were heavy and round-headed, with zig-zag carving. A crucifix on a screen closed off the east end of the building. Beyond it must have been a chapel and altar. On this side however was an open space, with curtains partitioning off the bays of the aisles into wards for the sick nuns, and whatever other patients were admitted. But where was his mother imprisoned?

He quickly paced across the flags towards the screen, passing as he went some tables and shelves in the centre of the nave, which he assumed was a dispensary. Prison this place may have been, but it was also a working infirmary. His mother would obviously not be confined to a bed in a curtained alcove, but in a place rather more secure, he concluded. He paused at the heavy brocade curtain that closed the door through the screen.

Willi’s close association with his beloved Phoebus had had its effect. He had tagged along with Serge often enough to pick up his love of old buildings and a better than average knowledge of their architecture. Looking back along the infirmary it occurred to Willi that what looked like a church might actually have once been one. Surely this infirmary was exactly that, an ecclesiastical building rather older than the present abbey church but enclosed within the monastery’s expanding circuit and converted to other purposes. And that meant that it might well still have features that a church would ... such as a crypt below its sanctuary.

On the other side of the screen was indeed a grand apsidal sanctuary, with a carved and painted reredos climbing up behind the altar to the vault. It vividly depicted the episodes of the Passion of Christ in the style of a century before, with a scene of the Resurrection at the apex. It occurred to Willi that here was where the dying sisters would be laid on ashes for their final moments, their heads propped up so their failing sight would see that Christ also had shared their sufferings, and the promise they might yet share his life.

To his right was a door which Willi quickly passed though. Under the arch were stairs descending to the left but a large and striking image of a decapitated girl saint was in an alcove at the stair head, holding in her hands her crowned and haloed head, which was smiling sweetly down at him. Willi knew the subject: St Dymphna, patron saint of the insane, the wrongfully imprisoned and the sexually victimised. He somehow did not think the placing of the statue was accidental. This uncanny place was getting to him.

As Willi began the descent of the steps he encountered a nun coming up from below. She stared, startled, and dropped with a crash the tray she was carrying.

‘Good morning, reverend lady,’ Willi observed respectfully, as he passed the dumbstruck woman. Apparently she was too stunned even to question why this male was where he had no business being. He heard her feet clattering up the stairs at a run behind him. He hoped the boys lurking outside might be able to stop her raising the alarm.

The door below was closed by a bolt, which Willi pulled back. He pushed open the door and walked through to find himself in a low vaulted space, a crypt raised on many thick round pillars, lit by lamps and small cell windows penetrating to the outside. An altar was up against its east end, before which was a curtained alcove with a bed, a desk and a prie-dieu. Kneeling at it was a white-robed nun who looked up, showing remarkably little surprise at the intrusion. She got to her feet as Willi fell to his knees before her, mute.

She reached out and removed his wig, then smiled. ‘Wilhelm, my dearest child, that bag really does you no favours.’

Willi took his mother’s hand and kissed it. He then pressed into it the ring his nurse had given him nearly a decade before. She looked down at it.

‘My dear, that was so thoughtful of you. So that good lady did what I asked of her. Now do stand up. There. What a tall and elegant young man you are. Now let me think. Since you are here you must know how I came to be imprisoned.’

Willi cleared his throat. ‘Yes mother. The Gräfin Maria von Tarlenheim stole the abbey away from you after the death of the Abbess Clothilde. Then she kept you imprisoned by her magic and lies.’

‘Not just her magic, my dear. She has some, but most of what power she has was stolen from me.’ She looked around. ‘I rather fear that though you have penetrated my prison, you have no means to liberate me from it. Is that so?’

‘I’m afraid so mother. But I have help.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Briefly, as I understand it from my ... er ... companions, when the old Graf Oskar succeeded in breaching the barriers in this church and found a way into the World Beyond he woke forces he could not control. Not least he brought the attention on this abbey of the long-deceased Lady Fenice of Tarlenheim and also of a curious magical elfin child who went by the name of Jonas Niemand.’

‘The Lady Fenice? Not surprising to me, as her bones lie in the abbey church. But she has appeared to mortals?’

‘Indeed, and made friends with a talented servant boy by the name of Karl Wollherz, who is in the service of my good friend, Sergius von Tarlenheim, a nephew of Abbess Maria.’

‘And this elfin child? I know nothing of him.’

‘Really? I had hoped you’d know all these supernatural characters. I met him as he was masquerading as another servant in Serge’s household. The boys tell me that he occasionally appears with horns.’

‘Horns you say!’ His mother’s eyes had widened. ‘Ah! Then perhaps I may have some idea of what he may be. That he is in the world at all is most alarming, for he is the most powerful spirit from the Beyond that may enter it. But what’s more his task when he comes is to correct and punish with a power that may not be gainsaid, for it comes directly from the All Highest.’

‘Then he is an angel! I never believed that he’s an elf, though the boys call him that.’

‘He is more. He is the highest of all angels, their great prince and sovereign, though his name is not one I dare speak. And who are these “boys” you speak of?’

Willi smiled a little sheepishly. ‘Young Karl is their chief, he’s been gifted with quite extraordinary powers by both Fenice and Jonas. Then there’s his best friend, Andreas, who has been granted a sword the like of the Excalibur wielded long ago by Arthur of the Britons, and also there’s a more debatable urchin by the name of Wilchin, to whom the horned boy gave the power to deceive and mask himself. God save me, I took him into my service, a decision I may live to regret. His abilities are those possessed by the most villainous of servants.’

His mother smiled. ‘But you like these youths.’

‘I have to say, they may not excel in conversation, but they do liven things up.’

‘And where are they?’

‘That’s the point, mother. I could approach you, but there is some spell that keeps them out of the infirmary as well as keeping you in this crypt. Have you an answer to how it may be dispelled. Karl says it’s beyond him.’

‘Does he know its source?’

‘I assume it’s the Abbess Maria.’

‘No. As I said, most of the magic she has is stolen. For there is lodged in this abbey a greater power than any else in this world, placed here in arcane ways and for arcane purposes centuries ago, and served always by two lady guardians since the days when the Lady Fenice was alive. One of them is usually the abbess of this house. One of the pair is drawn from the Tarlenheim family and the other is always a member of the ruling house of the Rothenians.’

Willi nodded. ‘You were to be the abbess after Clothilde, but the Gräfin Maria pre-empted your election, is that so?’

‘She was never intended even to be a nun, but she tricked her way into the cloister and for years charmed and flattered the late abbess Clothilde into revealing far more of the abbey’s secrets than she should have. After her father’s scandalous end she was professed here and she found herself well situated on that foolish lady’s death to usurp full power.’

‘And how did she do that, ma’am?’

‘Why, my son, by taking from me a small token of my office. But small though it may be, it is also very great, because it is a conduit of the greater power that lies beneath this abbey. So to free me, you must take it back.’

***

The boys nodded wisely when Willi finished his story. ‘She sounds really nice, your mum,’ commented Karl.

‘Y’know, I think she is,’ Willi agreed. ‘Shorter than I expected, but I can see where I got my brains from now. By the way, what did you do with the nun I ran into on the stairs?’

The others looked at Wilchin, who shrugged. ‘Once she came running out into the cloister calling for help I could do me stuff. She’s got no memory of the shock you gave her. Hopefully she’s making herself useful to them sick nuns inside. Probably she’ll be a bit vacant for a bit. I has that effect on people. Hope she don’t give ‘em the wrong medicines like.’

‘So this token ...?’ asked Andreas.

‘Ah! My mother explained. You boys remember the stained glass in the big window above the door of the Veronkenkirche? The one with the portrait of the Lady Fenice. Tell me, what was she wearing?’

Karl frowned in concentration. ‘She had on a white nun’s robe and a tight headdress in white and black.’

‘So far so good, but you’re forgetting something.’ Willi said.

‘You’re right, Willi,’ Andreas agreed. ‘She had a brooch pinned to her robe, a weird silver death’s head.’

‘Weirder than you might think,’ Willi continued. ‘Apparently the brooch is the source and channel of magic for these guardian nuns. There are two brooches. Abbess Maria inherited the old abbess’s one, but then stole my mother’s, which she had from a Tarlenheim lady who previously held it and had also been prioress of the abbey. Once Abbess Maria had both in her hands and my mother was powerless she banished her to the infirmary crypt, where they place nuns who’ve lost their wits and have gone demented, giving out that my mother had fallen into madness, and using the combined power of both these talismans to convince the convent of the lie. For good measure the abbess then devised the barrier to confine my mother within the infirmary walls, as she feared that my mother had a store of her own native magic.’

‘I’ll bet she does too,’ Karl observed. ‘The Dead would be interested in her, and just like they gave me some powers, they’ll have done the same to her ‘cos of what she’d had to live through. Your mum’s a bit like me, Willi. I can sense it.’

‘Hmm. We’ll see. As for the recovery of that brooch, it’s over to you three. Standing up to a sorceress in her own lair is far beyond my skills, I think.’

The younger boys exchanged glances. It was Andreas who was their acknowledged leader, so they awaited his cue. ‘The way I see it is we’re all three going to have to gang up on ‘em. The abbess and Dudley may have some nasty tricks between ‘em. First question is where are they? You bin here before Karlo, d’you know where she has her ... what did Willi call it, her lair?’

Karl frowned in concentration before replying. ‘She’s in her quarters where she dined my lord Serge and Father Heer, the other side of the big cloister. And ... yes ... I think Dudley’s with her.’

‘Can you sense Boro?’

‘Nah, our Boro’s got no aura worth mentioning, other than that smell when he don’t change his underdrawers.’

‘Can’t forget it,’ Andreas observed.

‘I really did not need to know that, child,’ Willi protested.

‘It’s all part of the delights of being a servant to the nobility, my lord,’ Karl chuckled. ‘So what do we do, Ando?’

The young soldier grinned. ‘Ambush,’ he pronounced.

***

‘So you propose to enter the abbey?’ Barkozy was surprised. ‘I thought we’d established that it’s in the hands of people who very much want to slit your throat?’

‘How’s that different from going into battle against any other enemy, Lorenz? I have a duty to my friends and family to bring the career of that mad dog Dudley to an end.’ He consulted his watch. ‘Time for you to go, I think. Get out of here, colonel. In your way you were a friend to me, so I’ll not prevent you fleeing the country even though you’re an enemy of my king. Continuing along this road will bring you to the Saxon frontier. I suggest you do just that.’

Barkozy sat his horse a moment. He shrugged, touched his hat in a brief salute and rode on up the Taveln valley without a backward glance. Freed from the distraction posed by the colonel, Boromeo was now able to concentrate on the problem at hand. He kicked Onyx into a canter in the direction of the abbey gate.

Hammering at the doors brought a lay sister who looked startled at the uniform of a guard captain and announcement that he carried the king’s letters to the lady abbess. He was admitted into the outer court but refused to hand over the alleged missives except to the lady in question. He was told apologetically that the abbess was currently engaged.

‘What, my lady? Is this how you treat the king’s seal? His Majesty’s written word is to be treated as if the king himself were present. Would you tell His Majesty – the abbey’s patron – to cool his heels and wait for the lady abbess to finish totalling her accounts? Word of this will return to the Hofburg you may be sure.’

The sister stared, and ran off without a word, leaving Boromeo thinking he had perhaps overdone the pomposity. He led Onyx across the court to the stables. But before he reached them, Onyx reared his head and swung it back in a way Boromeo recognised. Onyx had sensed a familiar presence. He turned. Another guard captain was in the yard.

‘Ando?’

‘Boro! What the fuck!’

‘Where are the others?’ Boromeo asked with a certain amount of relief. ‘I’d hoped you were all here.’

‘No offence, Boro, but I’d hoped you were a long way away. We got yer letter, and Karlo brought us here a lot quicker than nature allows. What did yer do with Barkozy?’

‘Oh ... I confronted him, talked some sense into him, and sent him on his way.’

Andreas shook his head. ‘What the fuck were yer planning on doing here?’

‘The abbess. She needs sorting. The woman’s an embarrassment to the family, as if my wizard of a grandfather wasn’t bad enough.’

‘So yer was going to march in on her and offer her all the Tarlenheim blood she needed? Where’s the sense in that!’

‘I don’t think Aunt Maria would have found me a pushover, Ando. I’ve been in Fäerie, don’t forget. Not for long maybe, but Karlo took me there and I’ve drunk of the river of life. It changes you in all sorts of ways, and not just physically. Enough maybe to match a sorceress who’s never breathed its air.’

Andreas took the other boy’s shoulder. ‘Yer a brave one, Boro. But nuts, like most of you Tarlenheims. Anyways, all four of us is here now, well five, if yer counts Lord Willi, but I doubt he’s up for the fight. And it’ll be a fight too. But we got the measure of her powers, and I don’t think she’s a match for Karlo and Wilchin, even wiv Dudley at her side. But since yer are here, I’m thinking you’ll do as the way I need to distract her. So listen, this is what I has in mind ...’.

***

Boromeo followed the white figure of the choir nun who had been despatched by Abbess Maria to mollify the king’s messenger. He had been assured by Andreas that his aunt would not be fooled by his stratagem. ‘She’ll know you’re no king’s messenger. She’ll recognise the scent of yer blood, Boro, long before yer arrives in her ... er ... lair.’

‘So won’t she know you’re out here too?’ Boromeo had objected.

‘Not wiv Wilchin and Karl making sure she won’t, no. So just keep her talking as long as yer can, and don’t get near any knives.’

So Boromeo strode along the alleys of the great cloister and was ushered by his guide with demure bows through the heavily sculpted doorway that opened on to the broad stair to the abbess’s lodging. The lodging had been rebuilt with a certain grandeur by the late Abbess Clothilde. She had left it a two-storey baroque mansion built on to the west side of the cloister in the French style of the early part of the century, with its own kitchens and service rooms independent of those of the nuns. The abbess’s domestic quarters were on the upper floor.

Boromeo found his aunt awaiting him on the landing, one hand on the balustrade of the stairs. She seemed faintly amused about something.

‘Well, nephew. I didn’t expect His Majesty to send you on his errand, though I do appreciate his tact in the matter.’

Boromeo was not much like his father, but he did share the man’s impatient dislike for verbal fencing. ‘Let’s not talk rubbish, aunt. I’m here to arrest the traitor Dudley who’s taken refuge in this abbey. I know he’s here. His creature Barkozy told me all I need to know.’

‘Did he indeed?’ she replied. ‘I very much doubt it. But if the man Dudley is within the walls of this abbey then he has the right to claim sanctuary. So I cannot in good conscience surrender him, out of respect to this abbey’s ancient privileges.’

‘I would guess, aunt, that the nature of Dudley’s treason doesn’t deserve that sort of consideration. You need to call up your people and confine him. Then maybe the bishop of Modenheim can decide whether sanctuary applies in this case. The king will expect no less than full cooperation. The man Dudley all but handed the duchy of Mittenheim over to the Bavarians, or would have done had not Prince Henry broken the elector’s army.’

The abbess pursed her lips. ‘So you know about that? How did Barkozy persuade you to ride here with him?’

‘Some deceit about escorting the Crown of Tassilo to refuge here before the Bavarians could snatch it. The man’s not as good a liar as he believes, and I didn’t fall for a word of it. I knew he was Dudley’s confederate. I assume he wanted me as his hostage and passport to the frontier.’

‘Most interesting,’ Abbess Maria said. ‘We’ll need to talk more of this. But come this way.’

She motioned Boromeo through a tall door which opened into the hall of her lodging, where he found General Dudley standing at the dining table, inspecting a book open before him. He looked up.

Boromeo promptly declared, ‘Robert Dudley Bard, I arrest you in the name of King Rudolf for the crime of high treason. Surrender your sword.’

Dudley waved a hand dismissively. ‘I’ve no time for this. My lady, please to bind this boy.’

The confidence he had expressed to Andreas evidently misplaced, Boromeo was immediately struck as rigid as if he had shared his grandfather’s fate. Speech and movement were impossible other than a constrained breathing.

Ignoring him, Dudley continued. ‘It doesn’t seem to me as if the boy’s blood needs to be spilled in the sanctuary. I can slit his throat here and collect it in a basin, if you’ll be so good as to provide.’

The abbess was frowning. ‘Something’s wrong, Dudley. This is just too neat. The boy’s all but offered himself up to your knife. He knew your man Barkozy wished him no good, yet still went along with him. How could he be sure that Barkozy was taking him to you? Only if he knew you were here, but how could he possibly know that?’

Dudley gave an impatient shrug. ‘The boy’s the family idiot, a lucky idiot it’s true, but still an idiot. Don’t expect rationality. He’s not his tedious and self-righteous pedant of a brother. Time is pressing. You’ve agreed that now’s the time to complete your father’s work. We have the spell and all the necessary items. Pursuit will eventually find me here. So let’s go where nobody can follow and seize the prize Count Oskar failed to bring back.

‘The spirit Mammon revealed that he held your father prisoner, as I told you before. This boy’s blood may buy Oskar’s freedom if we use our combined power and the conjurations he devised with the Partsufim.’

The abbess’s frown deepened. ‘You underestimate the dangers, Dudley, and overestimate our strength. You cannot chain the likes of Mammon the Insatiable with clauses and sentences. The only reason he answered your summons was his curiosity and greed, not least his desire to savour the sort of human blood he took from my father, irradiated in the ancient magic that our family has long had in keeping. Mammon may keep his bargain, or he may not. I can tame him in this world, where he is weaker, but I’m not so sure that will apply once we pass the portal.

‘And then there is the troubling feeling that my father did more than open a door for himself to the World Beyond. I’ve felt a presence in this place since he passed, and it’s no spirit or demon. I fear to put a name to it.’

‘The Horned Boy?’

‘No, not Him. It’s a very different power. Though we now know that He is at large in this world, and seems to know you for what you are, He hasn’t been here so far as I can tell. I doubt He’d take kindly to our experiment, but His power is such that He could turn us and all this abbey to dust in an instant and there’s nothing I or you could do to stop him. He is the Destroyer. So why has He not appeared? Strangely, it almost feels to me as though He wants there to be passage between the worlds. And why should that be? These are very deep matters, Dudley.’

‘Then we throw and let the dice fall as they will, my lady. Now, the basin?’

‘You’re very like my father, Dudley. Let’s hope you have better luck. Give me a moment.’

It was as the abbess returned to Dudley’s side with the basin that she became aware that a small figure was casually ascending the stairs in perfect confidence and complete nudity, a beautiful dark boy seemingly of about eleven years of age, his forehead adorned with sharp, blue horns.

***

‘And keep that mouth of yours shut,’ Karl urged Wilchin. ‘Yer can hide a lot of things, but yer don’t talk like a lord, and Jonas talks posh like Lord Serge. The game’s up as soon as yer says anything.’

‘It’s weird standing in an abbey full of nuns wivout a stitch on,’ Wilchin complained.

Willi gave a little laugh. ‘Some friends of mine would really love what you’re doing, urchin.’

‘Why does I have to take me cloves off anyway?’

Andreas rolled his eyes. ‘Cos if yer’s barefoot and naked yer walks different than when yer has cloves on. So if yer wants to do a convincing impersonation of a bare-arsed Jonas you got ter be bare-arsed too.’

‘You has to look all confidence, Willchin,’ Karl cautioned. ‘He’s a prince of his people and nuffin can touch him. Put yerself in his shoes ... well, apart from the fact yer has none on I mean.’

‘I’m ready. Fine. Stop botherin’ me. Think Jonas. Got it.’

Wilchin fought the feeling of dangerous exposure as he cloaked his body with the image of Jonas it was within his power to summon up. He could see his own bare feet on the steps as he climbed them, but anyone else would see those of a smaller and far prettier boy. His head reached the level of the landing and through the open door into the abbess’s dining hall he could see a strangely rigid Boromeo and the startled faces of Dudley and the Abbess Maria as they observed his approach. Very swiftly that surprise turned to shock and then utter fear. Dudley dropped the basin he was holding with a loud clatter and fell to his knees. Their reaction did his own confidence no end of good. Down below, he knew Karl was observing the scene through senses other than visual.

Wilchin paused at the threshold of the hall and made a long performance of sweeping the room with his gaze. He turned a baleful regard on Dudley and advanced silently upon him. ‘Spare me, Great One!’ the terrified man shrieked, grovelling. The abbess in the meantime had recoiled, clutching the brooch on her breast, as she backed away towards the chimney piece. Wilchin switched his gaze to her, since Dudley was clearly out of it. Struck by an idea he held her eyes and put out his hand. Slowly, she detached the brooch and put it in his outstretched palm, hoping perhaps in this way to buy mercy.

Wilchin took the death’s head and was momentarily overwhelmed by the feeling of power that surged up his arm. Two things happened. One was that his concentration wavered under the assault on his senses and the image of Jonas he projected was dispersed like mist on a hot day. But the other was that Boromeo was freed from the spell.

‘Take it and run!’ Wilchin yelled, as he threw the brooch at his friend. Thinking quickly, an unfettered Boromeo caught the object, took to his heels and clattered down the stairs, brooch in hand.

Registering the deceit, Dudley also thought quickly. He jumped up and seized Wilchin’s ear. ‘Geroff!’ the boy squealed.

‘What in hell’s name are you?’ he shouted.

‘Dudley, there’re other powers here,’ the abbess shouted. ‘Hold that boy hard. He may be able to deceive, but that’s the limit of his abilities. The Horned One is nowhere near, but there’s something new here, and it approaches.’ She gestured to the door, where another boy could be seen ascending the stairs.