The Devil's Apprentice Read online

  ‘But what of God?’ comes the question, a whisper hushed by its own daring. ‘Was there ever such a Being? A Great Designer who made the Great Pattern?’

  ‘You ask that of me?’ Azmordis laughs a laugh like red lightning, and the Dark Tower trembles to its very roots. ‘Many have posed that question, especially in this modern age, but never – no, never – to Me! Ask it of the wind that blows without a mouth – ask it of the smile on the face of the moon – ask it of the child that was born yesterday! All you will get is the wind’s breath and the moon’s kiss and the child’s cry. There are philosophers who will tell you that adds up to God. But I am not a philosopher.’

  He calls himself the Dark Lord, all-powerful and omniscient. He would never admit there might be something he did not know.

  The whisper returns, the voice of a Serafain, an infernal angel with a half-human visage and wings made of dusk and blindness.

  ‘What did the artist give you,’ he asks, ‘for the privilege of painting such a picture, unique among all the pictures in the world?’

  ‘He gave me nothing.’ There may be scorn in his tone, there may be amusement. ‘He had come to me for money... about three hundred and fifty years ago. He was always in debt. He offered me his soul in payment, but I refused. He put a little of his soul into every picture, you see, though he didn’t know it. In the end he had none left. I took the painting instead. It is the one fragment of a human soul that I truly keep. All others wither, or slip away from me, through the Gate of Death into eternity.’ He pauses, gazing at the unseen image. His hidden Self. ‘When I am gone, it will be destroyed. I have commanded it. No likeness must outlast Me.’

  When I am gone...

  He has reigned in the Night so long...

  He is old, older than the imagination of Man, and a time comes when even immortality wears out. The spirit gnaws itself, stifling in its own darkness, power galls, and the countless battles, defeats, victories all become part of a weary routine dragging him into perpetuity. Mogul emperors have been replaced by media moguls, ambitious princes by faceless businessmen, ruthless conquerors by petty politicians, eager peasants by stars of reality TV. He who once said: ‘Evil be thou my Good’ realises at last the endless banality to which he has doomed himself. He who once said: ‘Après moi, le déluge’ vows only that when sleep takes him forever, another will sit in the empty seat, and look out over the numberless city lights, and remake Evil in his own image.

  Or hers.

  But the spirits are gone who might have followed him; the few who remain are weakened and jaded, left behind by the current of Progress, which flows faster than Acheron or Ifing. Lesser spirits are too lightweight and the common werekind too wayward. He must choose from among mortals, from the Gifted few, for they alone have the power and the strength he seeks. A mortal will be raised up to immortality, will wear the Horned Crown and the Cloak of Invisibility, hold the Sceptre of Fire, turn Andvari’s ring. A mortal, with human imagination, human creativity, a human flair for evil, will step into the Devil’s cloven footwear. And the empire of Hell will never be the same again...

  ‘But surely,’ says the Serafain, ‘if humans are to take on your role, isn’t it inevitable they will also take on the role of God, whether or not He exists?’

  The Devil smiles a thin dark smile.

  ‘They did that long ago.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bygone House

  London, twenty-first century

  PEN HAD ARRANGED to see Mr Pyewackett again on the following Wednesday, but on Tuesday she had a call on her mobile from Quorum, asking her to come around immediately. It was after school and already dark, so they were sending a taxi for her.

  ‘I suppose your Mr Pyewackett is dying,’ Mrs Harkness said.

  Pen didn’t answer, because she didn’t want to lie. He was, after all, already dead.

  Her grandmother found herself in a quandary. She had no wish to insulate Pen from reality, but there was something not quite right, in her view, about her granddaughter rushing off to attend the deathbed of a virtual stranger. Death could be peaceful, and it could be painful, and the need to protect her from ugly facts, while at the same time teaching her about them, forced her into a confused emotional dilemma.

  ‘You can go,’ she concluded eventually, ‘but I’m coming with you. It’s too late for you to be running off to deathbeds on your own.’

  ‘All right,’ Pen said. She knew when it was prudent to concede. ‘But you have to wait downstairs.’

  At 7A, Quorum seemed happy to welcome Mrs Harkness. He showed her into the sitting room, brought her tea, and offered her something to eat if she was hungry. She asked gently probing questions, and received answers which, without telling her very much, left her insensibly reassured. Mr Pyewackett was very elderly and very eccentric, his family had a long-standing connection with the Tudors, he had been extremely taken with Pen and her legal aspirations and would like to give her a chance to prove herself. And so on.

  Meanwhile, the bedrooms would be prepared as soon as Mr Pyewackett had gone to his Final Reward and Quorum was looking forward to taking care of her and her granddaughter. Mrs Harkness found herself anticipating the guilty pleasure of someone else doing the housework, the cooking, the washing up...

  Upstairs, the corpse said cheerily: ‘Well, I’m off.’

  ‘I thought you were going to tell me more about... about everything,’ Pen said.

  ‘No time for that. Your bloody firm’s had seven years. Not my fault they’ve been procrastinating.’

  ‘It isn’t my firm,’ Pen pointed out.

  ‘Whitbread Tudor Hayle, ain’t it? You’re a Tudor. Sharp as a–’

  ‘Never mind that. I wanted to ask you all sorts of things – about the house, and this Bartlemy Goodman, and–’

  ‘Too late now. Here are the keys. Hang onto them: they’re the only set. Don’t bother trying to get them copied; there’s no locksmith alive who could do it. Leaving everything in your capable hands.’

  Pen stared down at the bunch of keys he had deposited in her palm. They looked unnervingly ordinary, much like any other keys she had seen. There were three of them on the ring, and only one seemed particularly ancient, a sliver of iron so crudely-shaped she couldn’t imagine it turning a lock any more.

  ‘That’s the front door, that’s the cellar.’ Mr Pyewackett indicated the other two. ‘Not sure about the third. Never found a lock it fitted. Tried a few, when I first had the place – used to go in and wander round, looking at the doors, but I never opened one. Best if you stay here. No point in inviting trouble. When Goodman turns up–’

  ‘Supposing he doesn’t?’

  ‘You’ll sort it out,’ Mr Pyewackett said comfortably. ‘Move in tomorrow. Don’t want to leave the place empty for more than a few hours.’

  ‘But... Quorum’ll be here, won’t he?’

  ‘He’s the butler. He don’t count. You come around after school. He’ll have supper waiting. Enjoy your digestive system while you can.’ He swigged the last of the sherry, patted the cat, and lay back against the pillows.

  Pen wondered if there was going to be a celestial choir, or a beam of white light coming down from the ceiling. She found it difficult to visualise Andrew Pyewackett’s soul ascending to heaven under such conditions – or at all – but she felt there ought to be something.

  The dead man said: ‘Good luck, girl – though you shouldn’t need it. Cheerio.’

  The glow in his eyes went out as suddenly as if it had been switched off. And that was that.

  Since the funeral had already taken place some seven years earlier, Quorum attended a discreet cremation the following day. That same afternoon, Pen and Mrs Harkness moved in.

  THAT NIGHT THEY sat down to a supper of cheese omelette and strawberry tart, waited on by a butler, and Pen, despite the presence of her grandmother, felt a new sense of maturity, mistress of a house which, if not her own, was in her charge. (Two houses, if she was going to be precise.
) She had her first job as a lawyer, if a somewhat unconventional one, and the prospect of adventure to follow – the kind of adventure in which she had never believed, that normally featured in books she never read, which meant she had only a hazy idea of what to expect, and could still hang on to her conviction that the realms of the imagination were not for her. No talking carpets, no flying cats. Time travel, it appeared, was science, and Pen had always been good at science. The elves and monsters could stay in storyland where they belonged.

  Her grandmother, naturally, had been told nothing about Number 7 except that it had stood empty for many years and was ‘unsuitable for occupation’. After all, that was the truth, or a small part of the truth, and Pen and Quorum, without actually discussing the matter, came to a tacit agreement that the whole truth might be rather too much for her to swallow. Although she had noticed that the house had no door at the front she simply assumed it was somewhere round the back and didn’t trouble to look for it.

  She worked for a small art-and-design company and rarely got home until six o’clock or later. Pen was used to having a couple of hours to herself on her return from school, normally spent on the computer with a cup of tea growing cold beside her. Now, she had Quorum to make her tea, supplemented with cake from a Hampstead patisserie, and other prospects than the Internet.

  ‘I want to see the door,’ she told him the following evening. ‘The door to Number 7. Before Grandma comes home.’

  ‘If you wish, Miss Tudor,’ Quorum said, acquiescing without enthusiasm. ‘But I must reiterate Mr Pyewackett’s warning. Naturally, you should see the door – you need to know where it is – but it would be most unwise for you to actually enter Number 7. Also quite unnecessary.’

  ‘Mr Pyewackett told me he went in when he was younger,’ Pen said. ‘He didn’t open any of the doors, of course.’ She carefully avoided any mention of her own intentions in that respect.

  ‘He was the true custodian,’ Quorum responded repressively. ‘And although young at the time, I understand he was considerably older than you.’

  ‘Do you think I’m just a child?’ Pen said, her spine stiffening.

  ‘Not at all, Miss Tudor. You seem, if I may say so, very mature for your age, and not at all prone to juvenile curiosity.’

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ said Pen, deciding privately that scientific curiosity was quite different from the juvenile version, should she be prone to it. ‘And please... you needn’t call me Miss Tudor. My name is Pen.’

  ‘Very well, Miss Pen. If that’s what you would prefer.’

  He led her to the back of the house and into a utility room, with chest-freezer, washing machine, tumble-dryer, and a collection of old coats hanging on a free-standing rail, hiding the wall beyond. Quorum wheeled the rail out of the way and Pen saw the door, like a front door on the outside of a house, with steps up to the threshold, a pillared frame, a fanlight over the top and a seven on it in polished brass. It had a letterbox, though presumably that was never used, a demonic door-knocker with horns and protruding tongue, even a bell. It was painted dark green.

  ‘This wall,’ Pen said, ‘does it touch the other house?’ She was sure the two were completely separate.

  ‘There is a spatial interface,’ Quorum explained, switching from his Jeeves persona to scientific expert. ‘Although in this dimension the house and the door are some way apart, they connect through another dimension, or so I have been given to understand. However, it might just be magic.’

  ‘No magic,’ Pen said positively, though she wasn’t sure about spatial interfaces either. She laid a hand on the door, but it didn’t give her pins-and-needles, or anything sinister; it felt exactly as a door should.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, standing back, letting her hand slide into her pocket to touch the keys.

  Quorum moved the coat-rail back into place and they left the room.

  7A had four bedrooms: Quorum was on the top floor, Pen and Mrs Harkness on the first. Pen was secretly thankful she hadn’t been put in Mr Pyewackett’s room, since for all her pragmatic attitude she wouldn’t have been entirely comfortable in a bed formerly occupied by a living corpse. (That doubtful privilege went to her grandmother.) Later that evening, scrubbing her teeth in her own private bathroom, Pen found herself anticipating the freedom of the weekend. It had been decided Mrs Harkness would go home on Saturday to clean, check the mail, attend her book club, see her friends. Quorum had already imbued her with sufficient confidence for her to consider leaving Pen in his care for the night.

  On Saturday, Pen resolved, she would explore Number 7.

  She lay awake for some time while the imagination she didn’t have opened the dark green door and went roaming through the passageways of the forbidden house.

  Beyond the Doors

  London, seventeenth century

  ONE-EAR CLAIMED to be the oldest of the Lost Boys. He said he was fourteen, on what basis no one knew, since he couldn’t count above ten unless he took his shoes off and, like all of them, he was undernourished and undersized, but he was quick as a fox and smart as a whip, so Ghost allowed it to be true. In fact if not in name, One-Ear was his second-in-command. He had lost his left ear when he was six, or so he said, when a storekeeper set his dog on him, and the brute took it off in a single bite. Sometimes, when he had been at the gin, the storekeeper became a merchant or even a noble, and the dog got bigger, and grew several extra heads, but the gist of the story remained the same, though the scar was so clean Ghost suspected a lesser bite which had become infected, leading to amputation. One-Ear would describe being taken to a blacksmith, who cauterised the wound with a red-hot iron, which probably saved his life. The other boys looked up to him almost as much as Ghost, but he had a vicious tongue and a contemptuous manner, so only Ghost was able to love him.

  Ghost loved them all, though he hid the feeling so deep inside that even he didn’t know it was there.

  It was One-Ear who found Tomkin.

  He’d come from the country with his mother, who was looking for work, and possibly for his father, but she’d died of the flux and the cousin who took them in treated him worse than a slave. He’d run away from a beating when he met One-Ear, who brought him to the back room of the Grim Reaper for approval.

  ‘He don’t know nothing,’ Filcher objected. ‘He can’t earn. Them as can’t earn, can’t eat.’

  ‘We’ll find a use for him,’ One-Ear said. ‘With that face, he’s worth his keep. He looks as innocent as an angel in church.’

  Tomkin had only been three months in the city: he hadn’t yet acquired the haggard features and vagabond cunning that marked the others. Under the dirt-stains and the tear-stains he was clear-skinned and wide-eyed as an infant.

  Cherub studied him appraisingly, the cynicism etched in gin on his plump little face. ‘You thinking o’ Big Bel?’ he said. ‘He looks as tender as a pullet from the king’s own table. I reckon she’d get a guinea for him, easy.’ He didn’t say Ghost won’t like it, but that was what they all thought.

  And Ghost arrived on cue, noiseless as ever, slipping into the room like a shadow among shadows.

  ‘A guinea for who?’ he asked.

  ‘Him,’ chorused Cherub and Filcher, in unison.

  ‘I found ’im,’ said One-Ear, asserting his rights. ‘Half o’ that’s mine. More’n half.’

  ‘You know the rules,’ Ghost said. ‘We share the take. Bonus for whoever comes top in the day’s pickings.’ As he was the only one who could do the arithmetic, he could spread the bonus around without removing the incentive. ‘But I don’t see any guineas. I see a lost boy – like us.’

  ‘Poor little thing,’ said Mags, passing Tomkin a tankard of gin and ale mixed. He took a mouthful, turned scarlet, and choked.

  ‘He ain’t like us,’ One-Ear said amid the laughter. ‘He grew up on a farm drinking milk like a little babby. Look at ’im!’

  But Ghost didn’t laugh. ‘He’s one of us now,’ he said, and his face went hard and still
and scary, so the others shut up quickly, even One-Ear. ‘You brought him back here. That means he’s ours to look after. Big Belinda doesn’t get any of my people.’

  ‘I’ll tell her that, shall I?’ said Mags.

  Ghost looked at her with his agate eyes. ‘You tell her.’

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I’m no tattle-tale. But you watch out for him. If Big Bel sees ’im, she’ll be round here, sure as check. She still thinks you’re like old Sheen.’

  ‘Some day,’ Ghost said, ‘I’ll teach her different.’

  Tomkin proved worth his keep after all. He wasn’t much of a thief but he could warble a few popular melodies, and with his sweet sad face and the trill of his voice passers-by would be distracted from the activities of the rest of the boys. Some would give him a farthing for his pains, especially the ladies, often reaching for their purses at an inopportune moment, which rather spoiled the whole scam, but, as Ghost said, no system is ever completely foolproof. One-Ear became quite proud of his protégé, taking full credit for the new addition to their gang, and reserved the right to torment him, should any tormenting be required, permitting no one else to do so. But Cherub was jealous, seeing in Tomkin, perhaps, his own lost innocence.

  It was Cherub who left him on the street when the Duke’s coach came by, splashing mud over the clothes of meaner folk. That same evening Big Belinda climbed the narrow stair to the loft, squeezing her great bulk through the doorway and pointing at Tomkin with her fat finger.

  ‘I’ll give you fifteen shillings for ’im.’

  ‘He’s not for sale,’ Ghost said.

  ‘Make it twenty.’

  ‘He’s not for sale.’

  ‘Think you’re sharper than Mr Sheen, do you? And he and I doing business ten years together! Still, mebbe you’re right. You’re here, and he ain’t, so let’s us be friendly. Twenty-five, and that’s my best offer.’