The ravening, p.26
The Ravening, page 26
The gibber academy: Jenna smiled, then realised that to anyone watching through the camera she’d look as if she were already starting to unravel. Besides, it wasn’t a pleasant thought: her one guarantee of freedom was Whitecliffe’s word.
There was nothing to do but wait, so, hugging her knees, she sat back against the wall and waited.
Someone wants to see you.
The soundproofing in the room – the cell, really; might as well call it what it was – cut off all sound from the corridor outside, so there were no approaching footsteps, just the abrupt clunk of the lock, gunshot-loud. Jenna started, nearly falling off the bed.
Redbeard came in with a chair, smirking at her. Jenna thought of Holly in his and Greasy’s care and clenched her fists, but that only made him grin the wider. She was helpless and he knew it. Let Holly be okay. Let them not have hurt her. She’d not only hurt Redbeard, but humiliated him as well. He’d want revenge.
Redbeard set the chair down a short distance from the bed and went out. Whitecliffe stood in the doorway, beside a squat, broad-shouldered man about a head shorter than her. “Here she is.” She motioned towards Jenna and smiled coldly. “Your visitor, Jenna. Do try to be polite.”
The squat man crossed the threshold, and the door clunked shut behind him. He put his hands in his pockets and smiled, not speaking.
He was almost fascinatingly ugly, heavy-browed and bulbous-nosed with loose thick lips, snaggly yellow teeth and a prognathous jaw. He had tangled, slightly wavy brown hair, complete with sideburns, that framed jowly cheeks, a dewlapped chin and a low, sloping forehead, together with watery brown eyes. But his smile was amiable enough and, when he spoke, his voice was warm and pleasant.
“So,” he said, “you’re Jenna. May I sit?”
Jenna answered with a shrug; the visitor moved towards the chair. His clothes, she saw, were something of a mishmash: brown loafers on sockless feet, grey corduroy trousers and plain white t-shirt, a pinstripe suit jacket thrown over the top. None of them fit particularly well: the trousers and jacket were baggy, the t-shirt too tight. The first impression was of a homeless man wearing charity-shop cast-offs, but the clothes were clean and he seemed self-assured and confident to an almost unsettling degree.
He lowered himself into the chair, resting his hands on its arms with the air of a king assuming his throne, his heavy chin raised as he studied her. The performance grated on Jenna. She unclasped her knees and straightened her legs, trying to assume a more relaxed position.
“Well?” she said, after a few more long, uncomfortable seconds. “Do I pass inspection?”
The visitor laughed. “Oh, I love it,” he said. “They told me you had – what did Dr Whitecliffe call it? – ‘the attitude problem from Hell’. But I like it, I really do. It has a certain charm.”
“I’m so glad,” she said. “I live for the approval of complete strangers.”
“It’s a special kind of attitude, though,” he said. “Not just petulance or ego. That’s cheap. That’s everywhere. Spoilt children, basically. Like James Frobisher. I’m sorry not to have intervened earlier with him; his treatment of you put your life at risk more than once, and all because of his wounded ego.” He sighed. “I ought to have let Dr Whitecliffe take matters in hand from the first. I have had to eat a certain amount of humble pie there. She’d have done what was necessary quickly, efficiently, with a minimum of fuss or drama, and we’d all have what we wanted by now.”
His English was perfect and with no accent she could identify, but here and there was an odd inflection on a vowel, a consonant pronounced a fraction harder or softer than necessary. English might not be his first language, but if so he’d learned it long ago, and spent a great deal of time getting it right. “Would we?” Jenna said.
“You’d have money. That always makes life better. Far too much of my time’s spent in ensuring my financial security for the foreseeable future. Spending one’s immortality in a condition of poverty really isn’t to be countenanced. But of course, you’re different, aren’t you, Jenna McKnight? You have will. Determination. A refusal to be broken. To yield. James Frobisher couldn’t hold you, or the good doctor. You escaped each time.”
“Had a little help the second time around.”
“True. But what kind of person inspires such devotion? I doubt your little lover ever did anything so daring in her life, or would’ve if she hadn’t met you.”
“Wouldn’t bet on it,” Jenna said, feeling a need to leap to Holly’s defence.
The visitor shrugged, dismissing the question. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. Are you saying you wouldn’t have broken out of here if she hadn’t done it for you? No answer? I thought not.”
The visitor gnawed a hangnail, then wiped his hand on the pinstripe jacket. “But what really impressed me was your conduct in the Greylands. That showed real skill. Natural talent. Most people couldn’t have accomplished what you have with years of training…”
He trailed off, and seemed to hesitate. Then he smirked again. “If your ancestry wasn’t already beyond dispute,” he said, “that would’ve told me whose descendant you were.”
“You’re better-looking in person, I’ll say that for you,” Jenna said. “That isn’t saying much, mind, but at least you don’t have the same BO problem.”
He laughed. “You really don’t care, do you? Or pretend not to.” The smile dimmed. “Except about Holly Finn, of course. Makes a nice change. Greed is most people’s Achilles heel. Refreshing to find someone for whom it’s actually love. I imagine that surprised you as much as it did everyone else.”
Jenna didn’t answer; he was uncomfortably close to the truth there, and she didn’t want to concede the point.
Then change the subject, babe.
“So what do I call you?” she said.
The visitor leant back, drumming his fingers lightly on the chair arms. “I have to admit rather liking the name you came up with: the Bonewalker. It does have a certain ring. The real one isn’t quite so evocative. But, for the record, it’s Robert. Robert de Lavoie. Sir Robert, in fact, but I won’t stand on my title. I know you don’t set much store by those.”
When she didn’t speak, he frowned. “No questions?”
“Plenty,” she said. “But I doubt you could answer them.”
“Why not try me?”
“No point.”
De Lavoie pursed his lips. Obviously not the reaction he’d expected. “I thought you’d want to meet me, at least. The real me, not the form I took in the Greylands.”
“Not really,” she said. “You know what really gets me about people like you?”
He looked amused. “There are no people like me, Jenna. Well, maybe one or two, but I doubt you’ve ever met them.”
“I’ve met plenty,” she said. “Seen a lot of you out in the world, or on the news. Even dated a few, worse luck. You think you’re so fascinating and original and important, and you know what, you’re fucking boring. Think every time you fart it’s special.”
“Is that so?” said de Lavoie.
“And you think it’s everyone else who’s boring, don’t you? Only good for what you get out of them. Just take, take, take, then shit it out. And that’s it. All you do. Ever. And then you bang on to anyone who can’t get away from you fast enough about how fucking amazing you and your turds are.”
He wasn’t smiling anymore, and spoke more sharply. “Well, aren’t you knowledgeable, after one-and-a-half score years on this earth?”
“That’s the thing, you see,” Jenna said. “It’s not about how much time you’ve got. And you know what the funniest thing of all is?”
“Please, enlighten me.” De Lavoie’s irritation seemed to have dissipated, and his voice was an easy drawl once more.
“You don’t get that, and you taught it me.”
“Did I?” He was amused again, like an adult listening to a child explaining who’s who at their doll’s tea party.
Jenna leant forward. “I had this safe, comfy little life – private school, nice home, didn’t want for anything. But then you killed Mum, and everything changed, pretty much overnight. Dad fell apart. We lost everything, and then I was all on my own. Had been even before Dad died really, state he was in, but I knew, by then, nothing was guaranteed. No point making plans. What mattered was today. Not wasting the time you’ve got. So yeah, thirty years, but I’ve used them.”
“Really? A few drawings, and an awful lot of fornication? Is that really an achievement?”
Jenna remembered stopping on Dinas Oleu, sitting beside Holly and passing the bottled water back and forth, looking out to sea. “I don’t think that we should have to earn beauty / it’s just that / sweat sweetens it.” The beauty and stillness, the peace of that moment. Feeling close to something essential. Seconds that lasted forever. “Moments,” she said. “Little moments of beauty, connection, love…” She groped for the word. “Grace,” she said at last. “And the sad thing is, you don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
She’d forced herself to maintain eye contact with de Lavoie throughout; a mocking smirk had been on his lips, but when she said “Grace” it fell away and she glimpsed something close to pain, before anger replaced it. Then all emotion vanished from his face, as if he’d wiped a blackboard clean. “You really do presume, Jenna. You’ve had thirty years, and how many of those were wasted as a baby, an infant, a child? How many of them were real? And you think you got more out of those that I have out of over seven hundred?”
“Seven hundred? Really?”
“So you are curious,” said de Lavoie, smirking again. “Well, then, I’ll tell you.”
56.
“Know much about the Knights Templar?” de Lavoie said.
Jenna shrugged.
“All right: a quick history lesson. The Templars were a military Catholic order, founded in the twelfth century to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land and defend the kingdom of Jerusalem. They grew into one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations in medieval Europe, before being accused of heresy, sodomy, devil-worship and any other nonsense the pope and the king of France could concoct between them, then slaughtered and suppressed, enabling their accusers to steal all they had. Oh, books could be written about the Templars, and of course many have been. Sadly, most of them are absolute rubbish. The important thing is that I was one of them, up until the year of Our Lord – well, your Lord, anyway, as I doubt He’d want much to do with me anymore, if He existed, but fortunately he doesn’t.”
“I’m gripped,” said Jenna. “Is there a point to this?”
“Of course there is. The year, as I was saying, was 1302. Jerusalem had long since fallen, and Acre. The Templars had established a stronghold on Cyprus, but they still had one last toehold in the so-called Holy Land, a little rock called Ruad, off the coast of what’s now called Syria. They used it as a staging area to launch raids on the coast – and eventually, they hoped, to invade the Holy Land again.” De Lavoie sighed and shook his head. “Pipe dreams, really. That time was past. In 1302, the Mamluk Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad sent a fleet to take Ruad back, under the command of his viceroy, Sayf al-Din Salar. To cut a long story short, they won. I remember it well, Jenna; I was there.”
He told her of the Beast of Chorazin, whose mummified remains became known as Baphomet, the so-called Idol of the Templars; how the reliquaries had been recaptured from the Mamluks, brought to Ruad and put into the care of Jean de Messins, to be transported to Cyprus. How the Mamluk attack and the siege of the island had prevented this, and how de Messins had died before the siege’s end.
“Marshal de Quincy – our commander – had to appoint another custodian to take de Messins’ place. At which point a young Templar knight called Robert de Lavoie–” he gestured modestly to himself “–enters the story.”
“So this creature was a thing like you?” said Jenna.
“Jenna!” De Lavoie looked piqued; after so many centuries, he was probably used to having things his way. “You’ve spoiled my big reveal. Yes, it was immortal. And it offered me the same gift in exchange for its freedom.”
“I was never great at maths, but the Templars were founded in the twelfth century, right?”
“Glad you’ve been paying attention.”
“But this siege was two hundred years later, right? Don’t you have to eat a descendant every thirteen?”
“The creature had entered a kind of… stasis. Like a coma, or more accurately, hibernation. It would resurface at intervals – usually at any change in circumstances that might give it a chance of escape. If you’ve no further questions, I’ll tell you about that.”
“Naughty me.” Jenna slapped herself on the wrist. “Sorry, mush, on you go.”
De Lavoie scowled; then an amused, reluctant smile briefly touched his lips. “None of the surviving brethren had anything like de Messins’ knowledge of demonology, but that wasn’t what de Quincy required. De Messins had made certain the remains were secure, so what was needed was someone thoroughly trustworthy who wasn’t about to drop dead. I was chosen. I was the youngest sworn brother in the garrison. Despite the siege, I was still strong, fit and in good health, and de Quincy had no reason to doubt my faith.”
“I’m guessing he should’ve.”
De Lavoie sighed theatrically. “I’m afraid so. A Templar Knight’s soul was meant to be as armoured by his unyielding faith as his body was by steel, so neither man nor demon could prevail over him. But my faith hadn’t just weakened during the siege; it had collapsed altogether. I don’t know why. It had seemed perfect before, and other men have come through worse with theirs intact. Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil were all just pretty stories; the reality was blood and meat and guts, and death the end of all. I was honestly terrified, convinced I’d wasted my life on foolishness, that the only life I’d ever know was now about to end. I couldn’t tell my brother knights that, couldn’t even bring myself to confess such appalling treason of the soul to our chaplain. Least of all could I admit it to the marshal. So I lied and told de Quincy my faith remained secure.”
De Lavoie stood and stretched. “Unpleasant place, this. Sets the teeth on edge. Anyway, my duties regarding the remains were simple enough: I just had to pack the reliquaries safely in straw inside locked wooden chests, then ensure they reached Cyprus undamaged. There were seven of them in all; I put off handling the one containing the head till last, as it was a truly unlovely thing to behold. But eventually it had to be done, and so I went to pack it away in its straw. And I would have, without incident, except that was when it spoke to me.”
“It spoke?” Jenna was interested in spite of herself.
“I told you, it was still alive – after a fashion. What was left of its eyes moved in their sockets – they made little noises, I remember, like twigs brushing over dry stone. And the lips moved and it spoke – whispered, really, having no lungs, but I heard it. It said: De Dampierre will kill you all.”
De Lavoie grunted again. “I dropped the case, and the glass shattered. I probably would have whatever it had said – the fact it spoke at all was the horror of it – but as I stood looking down at it, the import of its actual words sank in. Hugh de Dampierre, you see, was the knight negotiating promise of safe conduct with Salar. Like many of my brethren, I’d never had much faith in that to begin with, but we’d all been clinging to the hope it was genuine. And for me, at least, that sentence had dashed it.
“I went to put the head in its wooden chest, but it spoke again. But you do not have to die, it said. Then, last of all: There is a way to live forever.”
Seconds of white silence ticked by.
“The Rite of Cronos,” Jenna said. “Right?”
“Just so. I needed only to uncase the creature’s fragments and place them together to restore it. In exchange, it would help me escape, and teach me its secret.” De Lavoie sighed. “I’d like to tell you I agonised over the decision, but de Quincy had chosen his man badly. And Keret had chosen well.”
“That was its name?”
A curt nod. “It – he, rather – was a man of limited ambition. Just wanted to rule his little hill at Chorazin. His territory, you see. Also, his descendants populated the surrounding area, so he had a vested interest in protecting his food supply.”
“And he really kept his word?”
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I? It was a different world, I suppose. Honour, the given word – they meant something then. To Keret, if not to Sayf al-Din Salar.”
Nor to Robert de Lavoie, Jenna suspected – not anymore, if it ever had done. For all his protestations, she trusted his promises of safety even less than Whitecliffe’s. But she could do nothing about that.
Or perhaps she could.
How do you reckon that?
She ignored the voice, and kept listening.
“Although his body didn’t move,” de Lavoie continued, “Keret had long ago learned to walk between the sacred silence and sleep, as he called it. The realm between dream and death.”
“The Greylands?” said Jenna. “Right?”
“That’s another word for them. Reality there’s very – pliable – as you’ve discovered. With time you can bend it to your will, even make a home there. And from it, project a version of yourself back into the waking world. As I did by the river in Scotland, to save you.”
“And to kill my mother,” Jenna said, remembering Tallstone Hill.
De Lavoie shrugged. “I giveth and I taketh away.”
“So, the Greylands–” Jenna began, but he cut her off.
“I shan’t apologise for what I am, Jenna, or what I’ve done to survive. Why should I? When have you ever done so? We are what we are. We do what we must; we do what we want, and make whatever justifications are necessary after the fact, to others or ourselves. And consider how easily you could have become just another bovine suburban housewife. Instead you stand, independent, yourself alone and no one else. If anything, you should be grateful to me for setting you on that path.”
“Grateful?” Jenna clenched her fists and made to get off the bed. De Lavoie stepped towards her, daring her to attack, all humour wiped from his face, the brown eyes emptied of emotion.
