Wormwood Read online

  Wormwood

  G. P. Taylor

  To JC & KST you have beaten back the Black Dog and filled my life with your light.

  1: Wormwood

  From the top-floor window of his large four-storey house on Bloomsbury Square Dr Sabian Blake could see the farthest depths of space. He stared out into the night sky through the thick lens of his long brass telescope. He had watched the skies for the past week, and he was waiting – waiting for the sign that he knew would come that night. The strange glow to the north had grown stronger and brighter, causing the stars to fade and never allowing the night to be truly dark. The full moon had burned blood red, lighting the streets with a warm crimson glow as bright as the sun.

  Blake was an astronomer, doctor, scientist and a master of the Cabala. Every hour of every day was spent working out the times of the rising of the sun and the waning of the stars. He measured the phases of the moon as it crossed the sky and when Betelgeuse set beyond the horizon. Blake turned the minute-glass as the sand timer spilled its soft white particles from one orb to the other, and on the fifty-ninth count he took great pride in waiting until the final grains of sand had trickled from the top chamber before carefully turning the large hour-glass. Its dark wood was decorated with serpent columns whose jewel eyes, gold teeth and carved scales shimmered in the moonlight. Blake checked each sand hour against the old brass clock that ticked and tocked laboriously next to the astrolabe on the ornate stone mantel of the empty fireplace.

  Blake did Cabalistic calculations all night, every night, dusk till dawn, from the moon’s rising till setting. From his computations he knew that somewhere in the Twelfth House of the universe a sign would be given. The Nemorensis said so. The Nemorensis never lied; it was the only book to be trusted. To touch the Nemorensis was to hold the secrets of the cosmos in your hands. No one knew where the book had come from, but many had died trying to find its secrets.

  Now the Book of Nemorensis belonged to Blake. It was his by right, divine right as he often thought to himself. As he looked into deep space and nervously bit his lip, he thought of the morning of the Feast of St Quirtle when, shortly after dawn, he had opened the parcel that a coachman had delivered to his door.

  *

  From the outset Blake had been suspicious of the coachman, because he had never seen anyone who claimed such a low estate to be dressed so well. There was no hint of shabbiness. His neat black coat and clean boots spoke of Highgate, not of the Rotherhithe ruffians who usually plied their trade in London town. His pure white skin held no trace of hard labour, no trace of the London grime from horse muck and carriage grease. He had no discernible accent other than the powdered softness of a Lincoln’s Inn dandy. What had intrigued Blake about the man was the gold ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand. It had a large red stone set in a gold mount cut into the shape of the sun. From one side a flaming trail formed the thick gold band that encircled his finger. Messenger the man was, coachman he was not!

  Blake didn’t care. His eyes had immediately been enticed by the shape and contours of the gift he was being offered. This was an epiphany, a gift to a wise man – a wise man lured by a passion that he could feel rising from the soles of his feet and turning his stomach. It was an exquisite feeling, exciting and dangerous. Deep inside, Blake knew that the gift he was about to open would have life-changing possibilities. He almost choked with excitement as he tried to contain the sudden rush that swept over his body like a spring tide. It was as if the book spoke to him soul to soul, churning his heart and fevering his brow.

  The package had been tightly wrapped in a gold silk cloth and tied with red cotton braid, a colour so bright and vivid that it shimmered and looked fluid. There was nothing to say who had sent such a fine gift and the coachman had, when questioned, been vague as to how it had come into his possession and who had told him to deliver it.

  ‘A man just stopped me in the street,’ he had said softly, avoiding contact with Blake’s strong gaze and keeping the brim of his hat low over his eyes. ‘He waved his arms about like a madman, nearly frightened the horses to death. Foreign man, could hardly speak a word of the King’s tongue. French or Spanish. Could even have been from Persia. Never seen one that looked like him before.’ The coachman sniffed and snorted a large dribble of mucus back up his nose. ‘All he kept saying was Number 6, Bloomsbury Square. He gave me the package, Doctor Blake, pressed a guinea coin in my hand, and then turned and ran.’

  Blake questioned him further. ‘You know my name. Did the man tell you?’

  ‘Everyone knows you, Doctor Blake. You are a man of letters,’ the coachman smiled. ‘In fact, I can now say that you are now a man of parcels!’ At that he laughed, handed over the heavy gift, and walked promptly to the carriage. Blake watched as he picked his way through the filth and puddles, jumped on to the driving seat and slowly drove the horse and carriage up the muddy road of Bloomsbury Square.

  Without hesitation, Blake tore at the parcel, unable to wait until he got inside. He sat on the white marble steps and quickly pulled open the silk wrapping. It was then that he first looked upon the Nemorensis: a book so splendid in appearance that it caused his heart to beat faster. The thick leather cover was encrusted in gold leaf; the tatty pages were etched in sharp black that had faded with the years, scratched in small letters. He had never thought he would ever hold the Nemorensis, he had even doubted if it really existed. Now he knew – now it was his!

  *

  Late one night, several weeks afterwards, Blake was leafing through the crusty old book with its thick parchment pages, trying to glean every piece of knowledge; and there in the sixth chapter of the sixth book, on the final page, written by an unknown hand in the margin, he read the words: Wormwood … the bright star shall fall from the sky … and many will die from its bitterness.

  From that day he had searched every corner of the heavens looking for the new star, convinced that this would be the sign that a new age was about to begin, a golden dawn to enlighten small, feeble human minds. The illumination of the world was drawing near and he would be the first to see it, the first to tell the world.

  Blake sipped a cup of hot tea and smiled to himself. He looked again through the lens of the telescope that rested on its fine oak tripod. The stars and planets remained the same, the universe was unaltered, in a few hours the night would be over and nothing would have changed. He stamped angrily on the wooden floorboards. ‘Blast, bother and gibbor. Will it ever come?’ he asked himself impatiently, his words echoing around the empty room. He began to doubt his calculations and wondered whether by some chance he had predicted the wrong day, week, or even year. He looked again and more anxiously into the night, hoping against hope that somewhere in a far-off galaxy a new light had appeared.

  It was midnight; far in the distance he heard the sound of St George’s church clock chiming out the hour. Suddenly the house began to vibrate and shudder. The whole world lurched forwards, then backwards, and then spun even faster. Blake heard a looking-glass drop from the wall of the downstairs room and smash to pieces. Tiles cascaded from the roof to drop the four storeys, smashing like leaves of baked clay in the road below. Plaster fell from the ceiling as the walls shook angrily, cracking the wooden doorframe and firing exploding shards of horsehair and limewash at him from all directions. At any moment he thought the house would fall to the ground.

  In an instant the stars vanished. Without warning the sun rose, then set; night became morning, then night again, time and time again. Eleven suns came, followed by eleven moons, rising and setting from east to west. There was no chance to scream or cry out, no way to understand what was happening. Blake held fast to the telescope and tripod, hoping that each jolt would be the last, hoping that each dawn would not blast into daylight then
into night – hoping that whatever was now striking the world would stop.

  Then there was blackness – a still, sharp blackness surrounded by complete silence. There was no more day and no more night. There was utter emptiness, as if the world was over and the universe had imploded, sucked into some vast dark hole in space. Blake stared through the eyepiece but saw nothing. There was not even the smallest glimmer of light.

  It was then that Blake became aware of the clamour and panic in the street. He could hear the screams from below as men and women grappled in the darkness, hanging on to the iron railings of the newly-built gardens. Blake could not see the window. In the blackness he traced his hand along the metal of the telescope. Now there was nothing. He turned away from the telescope and edged the three feet across the room to where he knew the open window would be. The blackness was so deep, so intense, that it almost smothered and choked him. His feet tangled in the long belt cord of the thick, red dressing gown that he wore over his clothes to keep out the cold. It was cheaper than a fire or a warming pan, but now in the darkness he regretted his meanness and longed for even the faintest glimmer of firelight.

  He fumbled his way to the window and looked to the other side of the square. His eyes were quickly drawn to the only source of light in the street, the soft candlelight from an upper-floor room in a house across the gardens. A solitary figure looked back into the darkness. This was the only light he could see, possibly the only light in the world.

  In the street he could hear the cry of frightened horses stomping in the mud, their hooves nervously cracking against the stones. Far below him there was intense panic, as the inn on the corner spilled out terrified revellers into the night to grovel like so many blind mice squealing and screaming in the unending blackness.

  In the darkness of his room Blake waited, but for what and for how long he didn’t know. He listened to the noise from the street and wondered what to do next. Somewhere across the room was the door to the stair. Outside in the long hallway he knew a candle burnt. He stumbled across the room like a blind beggar. As he fell to the wooden floor, splinters from the newly sawn wood sliced into the palms of his hands. The only way he could know that the street was to his right was the sound of the chaos rising from there. He was a man of science, a seeker of the truth, but now even his immense knowledge failed him. For the first time in his life Blake realised that he was like the rest of the world … helpless.

  From across the city he could hear the screaming growing louder and louder as the blind riot filled the streets. Pistol shots rang out as the militia fired recklessly into the darkness, aiming at the sound of people shouting. The whole world seemed to be on the verge of madness. He could hear people wailing, covered by the black hand of sightlessness.

  Then, without any warning, a blinding flash filled the sky. Far to the east a shaft of pure white light penetrated the atmosphere. No one could escape its brightness as it cut across the heavens like a lightning bolt. London fell silent; the whole town waited. In his room, Blake managed to get to his feet and take hold of the telescope. Finding the eye-piece, he looked to the skies. The shaft of light came again, and again, flashing brighter and brighter, piercing the darkness.

  Blake saw through the telescope what he had been waiting for. High in the northeast at the crown of heaven he could see a star, but this was no ordinary star – it was a sky dragon. A comet of such proportions the world had never seen before. Blake could clearly see a long white tail that streamed far behind the bright luminous head. He knew that it was far away, but something inside made him feel uneasy. Outlined against the deep black of silent space he could see that the horns of the dragon were pointed towards him. He stopped and looked away. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, couldn’t believe what he was thinking.

  ‘If it were true, if it could be believed …’ he wondered aloud as he rubbed his face nervously with his hands. ‘It can’t be, I deceive myself,’ he said in a strong voice, hoping to bolster himself against the rising panic that now gripped his feet and crawled up to his knees. ‘The comet is coming towards the earth,’ he muttered in disbelief. ‘The dragon is coming home!’

  In the east the sun began slowly to rise. It was a quarter past midnight but the dawn had come. Blake chuckled to himself and shook his head. Outside, the madness had ceased; the crowds that had gathered in the street looked to the sky. They ignored the injured and the dying, and the fires that burnt in tucked-away houses. Everyone looked up at the rising sun, which burnt bright against the fading black sky.

  Blake could not contain himself and had the urge to shout the news of his discovery from the window to the gathering below. He danced around the room, banging and clattering on the bare wood floorboards and swirling his thick red dressing gown backwards and forwards like a pantomime dame. He danced and he laughed and he sang out loud: ‘Wormwood! Wormwood! Wormwood!’ As he swirled he tripped and fell to the floor, wrapping himself tighter in his robe and laughing as he rolled around like some peculiar stuffed sausage. In the looking-glassed ceiling of the room he saw himself crisscrossed by shadows from the leaded pane of the window. He wanted to laugh until he was fit to burst – tears rolled down his face as his belly ripped and roared with laughter that echoed against each wall, then faded as it escaped the open window at the front of the house. Only he could see the comet; it was Blake’s Comet, the bringer of his new age.

  From the street below he could hear joyous shouting. People were spilling from their houses, and the stunned revellers from the tavern dragged their muddy forms from the ground where they had clung with fear and wrapped soiled arms around each other in relief that the earthquake and sky-storm were over. Blake got up and rushed to the window, where he joined in with the cheering, stripping off his dressing gown and waving it like the flag of some victorious state. ‘Three cheers for the King, may his madness bring joy to us all!’ he screamed at the top of his voice.

  Then Blake became aware that a sudden and deep silence had descended. The crowd had stopped looking at the sky, people were now staring to the open ground of Holborn and the fields that surrounded Lincoln’s Inn. Far in the distance was the clatter of hooves banging against earth and stone; it was the growing fever of frightened horses. The beasts that had been left in the square quickly joined in, as if summoned by some unspoken call, kicking out at those who stood by, knocking one man from his feet with a blow to his spine that dropped him dead to the ground.

  Echoing from Holborn came the sound of the horses approaching, neighing and snorting as they stampeded through the streets. Some still dragged the tattered and torn remains of the once fine carriages that they had pulled. Others ran free of rein or carriage rod as they kicked and bucked, as if to rid themselves of the unseen force that snapped and bit at their fetlocks. The stampede filled the street and moved through the gathered crowd on Holborn fields like a cavalry charge, cutting down all those that stood in its way, filling the roadway from railings to railings. They scattered into the narrow streets on the edge of Bloomsbury and ran at full speed through the narrow alleyways that cut through the neatly finished houses. Over a hundred horses turned into the square – grey, black and bay, once benign equines now transformed by fear, running for their lives.

  Blake looked down from the window; he could offer no help. He shouted to the crowd but the noise of the horses drowned his words, and he banged his fists in despair against the window ledge. Below him people stood frozen, transfixed by the horses that bore down on them like a tidal wave. Within seconds the stampede engulfed all those who stood in its path. Their victims made very little noise – no shouts of fear, no time to run. All that was left in the wake of the maelstrom was the broken flotsam of human bodies, a jetsam of cadavers washed up by a living tide. The only survivors were those who had clung to the railings, hidden in doorways or jumped into the basements of the tall row of newly built houses that overlooked the square. There they cowered in fear like so many rats packed into a barrel.

  The
reason for the horses’ fear quickly became apparent. Chasing the horses into Bloomsbury Square came a surge of a thousand dogs that appeared to spill from the alleyways, runnels and every corner of London. The air was filled with barking and snarling as they bit and snapped at everything in their path, controlled by a power beyond reason.

  The panic was intense, palpable and beyond imagination. Children who had come into the street to see the spectacular sky now screamed as the pack scented out their victims. Everyone ran, scrambled up trees, jumped over fences or climbed the stonework of houses to get out of the reach of the hounds. Street dogs, fine spaniels of rich men, deck hounds from river barges and preened lap dogs ran together, roused by some atavistic hunger.

  Blake looked on as a young boy scampered the length of Bloomsbury Square. He was no more than twelve years old; his shoeless feet carried him quickly over the mud, chased by several dogs that snapped at his heels and coat tails. He screamed as he ran. To his right and lying helpless on the floor was an old woman. She was surrounded by a pack of dogs that grabbed at her arms and legs and pulled her across the ground like a rag doll. She made no sound, no resistance; the life had ebbed from her body moments before. The boy lunged for the low branch of a tree and, reaching out at full stretch, took hold and swung from the ground just as a large black mongrel jumped forward with bared teeth, trying to sink them into his flesh. Chaos covered the whole square as the dogs split into smaller packs to chase their victims into Gallon Place and Coptic Street. It seemed as if the whole of London was filled with the cries of people being savaged.

  There was a sudden and loud banging on the door of Blake’s house. The large brass tapping-handle was smashed repeatedly against the door plate, echoing through the hallway and up the circular staircase to the observation room. Blake looked out below. There in the street was Isaac Bonham, friend and Fellow of the Royal Society. He shouted loudly as he banged the door and tried to shake off a small brown deck hound that was gripping his leg.