Downs-Lord Day

by John Whitbourn

Genres: Religious & Inspirational; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alternative History sci-fi

Synopsis

Thomas Blades has been released from his time as God-King in the alternative world he fought and ruled over. His descendants rule and fight but he cannot bear to return and meddle in their lives.

Release date: July 31, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 411

Sample

‘Pennies for a poor man, sir?’

‘Get a job, damn y’ eyes!’

And there Captain Theophilus Oglethorpe (jnr.) would have left it, their divergent life-paths intersecting never to cross again. But then he realised the beggar had spoken in English. In Capri, indeed in all eighteenth-century Italy, that was rare enough to command attention. The sparkling blue sea, the crumbling headlong path down to the piazza and dinner still beckoned but they could wait. He backtracked.

‘Say again, sirrah.’

Joanna, his mistress of the moment, frowned unbecomingly. She did not understand her lover’s moderation towards street-scum. A true native of seething Naples, she no longer even saw them.

Conversely, Oglethorpe deplored that lack of charity, waving her on with his swordstick. In his English-naive opinion, seventeen-year-olds should retain some of the innocence of youth. Fine legs and skilful lips wouldn’t save her from displacement if she didn’t sweeten soon. Her sister was poised, waiting in the wings. Her tongue could tie a knot in a cherry stalk: he’d seen her do it.

‘Come, come, my man. I heard you plain. Speak English once more.’

The appalling figure considered the request. He was not as humble as a broken oldster by the wayside ought to be. His grime and rags and wrinkles should have engendered servility. Finally, the toothless mouth cracked.

‘Very well. How do you do, sir? Could you possibly spare a coin or two?’

Theophilus was so amazed that a hand was on its way to his pocketbook before he knew it. Just to hear the exquisite mother tongue spoken so far from home deserved reward alone – but to encounter its cultured version was veritable rain in the desert.

‘Here.’ He showered piastres and pennies mixed, down into the proffered hat. Thanks were nodded but not spoken.

Oglethorpe stirred the dust with his stick. Motes rose briefly, glorified to significance by the Caprisi sun.

‘And so, my man, how came you here – and why?’

It was the least of requests. He was willing to waste a minute or two – and tighten the pout on Joanna’s face. There might be a story therein to sprinkle zest on the waiting flagons of wine. It didn’t arrive.

‘I might ask you the same question,’ came the sole reply.

Back home, the Oglethorpes were renowned for their tempers, for duels and falls from grace. It was through just such, and Jacobite opinions spoken boldly without thought for cost, that Theophilus now trod the path of exile, from Surrey home to France and then China and Sicily – and finally sybarite Capri. The easy south had relaxed him somewhat. He’d acquired a patina of the Mediterranean life-cycle outlook, learnt the easy-going resigned shrug, and draped both over the sharp get-things-done angles of an Anglo-Saxon upbringing. People liked him better, even as they became wary of his new charm. To themselves the locals recalled a medieval proverb: ‘Inglese Italianato è un Diavolo incarnato’ – ‘An Italianised Englishman is a Devil incarnate’.

Now, his native nature reasserted itself, an unsuspected sea-monster rearing from the suave waters. Oglethorpe’s whole universe telescoped down until it was exclusively outrage.

Joanna came hurtling back, a silk centre to a dust storm. She didn’t want to lose this fountain of generosity just yet. Murder was still murder – even on Capri.

Her shapely boot connected with the beggar.

‘Speak, dog. Answer the Inglese Lord!’

That did the trick, proving her tough wisdom nicely. The old man was broken: abject. He’d learnt her language right enough.

He looked up into Oglethorpe’s face, silently surrendering his story. He was read: he was understood. His eyes held all the sadness there ever was.

Theophilus had seen the like before. In Canton he’d observed a forger boiled alive. Before the cauldron even grew tepid the felon had peered out upon the world like that. The Englishman had hoped to reach life’s end without witnessing it again.

‘Actually, I’m not sure I want to h …’ Oglethorpe’s words were involuntary, instinct overridden and foreign to his nature. Accordingly, Joanna didn’t recognise or acknowledge his fear. She booted again – and the deed was done. Speech poured forth: there was no point in protest, no lid to fit the box.

The consoling fragrance of the wayside flowers was lost: overshadowed; the sun shone less bright. Theophilus steeled himself.

‘I have fallen far,’ said the beggar, humbly; fearful of another blow – from any direction. ‘I am the first of a long line of kings …’

Oglethorpe frowned – thinking he might as well get in that mode.

‘The last in the line, surely?’ he corrected.

For an instant there was backbone in the beggar, but it was fleeting, like a stillbirth’s soul. Whilst it still lived he spoke.

‘What I have said, I have said,’ he told them firmly.

Hunter found God in the woods.

God was strolling in the cool of the day – which clinched the matter. Hunter knew the Almighty was partial to that habit – he recalled it from sabbaths in the stockade, when the elders read from the Blades-Bible.

Anything else in the thought line came later. At the time, all Hunter’s powers were devoted to not fainting away. Here was an irony of ironies. He’d abandoned ‘civilisation’ to search for God – and now baulked at being crowned with success. Self-limited and desiccated down to the merely spiritual, his ambitions had never included an encounter face to face!

Afterwards, recalling that first reaction, Hunter would go pale and his weathered brow stud with sweat. He’d judged the chance-found figure just another bit of Wild-life and, of course, drew aim upon it. Afterwards, elders of the tribe assured him that was natural and that pardon was assured. After all, human-shapes met in the Wild were often only seeming-men and actually monsters in disguise – or else Imperials out for some purpose of their own. It was easier to just loose your bow and make identification after. So long as it wasn’t Free-kin that was all right, even for staunch believers and non-harmers; even for Christians. In the Wild there was special dispensation. Turn the other cheek if you must, but first ensure you kept a cheek – and face and guts – to turn with.

In his head Hunter knew they spoke true but his heart walked a rockier way. In nights to come, memory had the power to wake him in the early hours, bolt-upright and silent-screaming.

Hunter had drawn aim with the arrowhead he’d intended for the first deer to cross his path, the great-barb that sundered tough hide and ruined resilient beast muscle. Deployed against human heads it would hit like a rockfall, exploding a skull as though it were a rotten apple. No wounds or cries: a perfect Wild kill.

It was the sheer thought. The possibility. He’d drawn a bead on the carefree stroller, had rested his arm on a bough, lining up a clear path to the unsuspecting victim. Of course, in reality, He must have known full well; He was never in any real danger – but that was poor excuse.

Then, just at the last and right moment (also naturally, because He was God), the visitor turned and looked at Hunter and knew all there was to know about him. That bag of sorrows saddened the divine face but sponsored no other reaction. He understood all – and thus forgave all.

Then the figure turned and walked on, displaying a complete trust that piled burning coals on Hunter’s head. He was shamed into awe. A back was offered to the unmissable shot. From that range Hunter had pinned men deep into trees.

A tear tracked down Hunter’s face, coursing over gullies and dead riverbeds worn by his history. He was riven by his unworthiness for such trust. In truth it wasn’t his faith that had brought him out here beyond everything, but his wives’ creed: that and the stubborn refusal to surrender them to an Imperial cross. He just wasn’t a good enough man to merit any of this.

Hunter had fallen to his knees, without intending, without awareness of it. Only fear of losing God a second time brought him back to reality and his feet. The vision was moving away, unhurried but still fleeting. Suddenly, Hunter was galvanised with energy. By birth he’d partaken in a bitter communion, the unhealing wound that was mankind’s loss of the divine amongst them. That separation had lasted four agonising centuries. Hunter wasn’t going to let any chance of reunion slip away.

So he tracked him, as only he could, without a sound to further trouble that head or cause it to turn. As he went, threading his way over, round and through the twisted trees, he phrased simple but heartfelt thanks that he, he of all men, should be blessed with this window of opportunity.

Then God came to his own window. With one last wistful look back, he entered in and was gone. God-king Blades had left through the shimmering gate back home to Paradise.

Hunter howled at the leaf canopy, for the first time in his life careless of what hungry Wild-life the noise might summon. He would have broken the sacrilegious bow over his knee, were it not defender-feeder of the tribe as well as himself.

He was blessed only to be cursed. Life was cruel and taunting when it imposed not only loss but repeated loss, a wound opened in the same place time and again.

But then he realised they were not left totally forlorn. Unnatural light still shone in the deserted clearing. He raised his eyes to it, half-fearful, half-rejoicing. Experience led him to expect it would burst like the bubble of his hope – but it did not. It remained solid looking, a stable edifice opening into … somewhere else.

Then he realised. As before, as ever, god-king Blades was showing them the way. That ‘window of opportunity’ was left open.

There was general disbelief till others went to the scene. The visitation was repeated for their benefit. Blades once again allowed his visage to shine upon them, before departing a second time. They watched it on their knees, cavern-mouthed, oblivious. A family of red deer ambled by without coming to harm, a feast rendered invisible by even greater joys.

In the stockade the elders listened and learnt and authorised opening of the Book. It was brought forth with ceremony, cradled in the trophy ribcage of a giant Wild monstrosity. Then the headman was doused in pure rainwater and repented his sins in front of the assembled people before he dared so much as to lift the cover. Gauntlets of flayed Null-skin stood between him and contamination of any page; a bone from his worst enemy served as pointer to the words he sought.

The lesser matter first. It was hardly in doubt but worth making the point that all was foretold. A valuable lesson for later.

‘From the book of Genesis,’ he read to them, ‘chapter 3, verse 8: “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day”.’

So there it was. The Deity had done it before. That day he had come to reprove and punish, the day that Adam fell short. Now, just perhaps, He arrived to lift the curse and reopen Eden.

Then the final hurdle. The age they lived in birthed black miracles as well as the more normal sort. There was need for verification.

The headman turned to the frontispiece and the engraved plate facing it. Every Blades-Bible contained the image of its creator.

Hunter stepped up as bidden, his first time upon the dais, and when he looked his face was all the answer any needed. That was as well, for words would not come. Hunter’s throat was choked along with his soul. He’d always believed, after a fashion, when not distracted or embittered by the trouble and misfortunes of this world, but never in his wildest dreams had he thought to encounter fully answered prayers or the promised return. He had to be led away to rest and consider.

Then the others who’d seen came up and one by one confirmed it. What they’d seen was He.

The headman raised skinny arms to the sky and what lay beyond it. As soon as he’d become too old to hunt or fight he’d been inspired to make himself useful by memorising great stretches of the Holy Book. Now he saw why. An appropriate passage hurtled through his mind.

‘“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word;

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation …”’

As chance – or something – would have it, he died the next day, barely troubling himself with further words, slipping into final sleep, happy and easy as a child. Those who remained saw yet another sign.

The one thing he did say before he went was that they should end their long silence, the sullen separation from the rest of man. Babylon must be told, the seed sown – and cast promiscuously. Some pearls might land before swine, true, but surely there was still fertile soil out there. It had to be done. Here was news so good that it needed shouting from the rooftops.

The only difficulty lay in getting on to the relevant roof alive.

They decided to send six delegates (though they could ill-afford to spare them), six separate ways through the Wild. Such generosity ought to ensure at least one would make it.

The stockade looked sparse when they were gone, the loss of so many young warriors a dangerous depletion given the hunger that existed just outside the stockade, ravenous to come in and feed. Yet, in another sense, the tiny human enclave was reinforced, even after the party was gone, slipping over the defences at first light when the worst of the Wild slunk home to sleep it off. Hope now filled out their thinned ranks, making a few seem like many. Good news has that sorcerous power.

Solomon-Weaver and Cromwell-the-Spear were eaten by Null before they went ten miles. Salome-Soldier was sucked to a husk by a spider the size of a sheep, snugly web-wrapped during the leisurely process. Thus ended the first day of journeying.

The survivors lasted a little longer, for a yet further bout of travelling. The Wild had begun – just perceptibly – to thin when Shakespeare-Deflowerer tumbled into a pitfall dug by another tribe of misfits, and died on the cack-smeared spears within – eventually – after calling out for hours for anyone, ‘in the name of a merciful God’, to help him. No one save salivating scavengers heard. That concluded day two.

By dawn of the third, only Grimes-Flintknapper and Hunter were left to win through the Wild. The former could even be said to have made it. He emerged, clad in sweat and rags, by the far bank at New-Kingston-upon-Thames. Falling at the feet of the bridge guards, he babbled out the vital message. However, they’d never known anything good come from the Wild and so shot him without listening.

Only Hunter, seemingly the chosen one, penetrated the green fields and normality of New-Wessex. Whereas Grimes-Flintknapper was Wild-born, Hunter had arrived there fully formed. He’d already suffered at the hands of the orthodox and so trusted less, and this saved his life from intolerant border folk. Patiently waiting for dusk, he slipped by the guardians of Epsom Downs, infiltrating through the fortified yards where horses, more valuable than thousands such as he, lived pampered lives.

Past there he scampered down the green slopes and into the heartlands, sleeping by day in huts and isolated dwellings he found empty. At night, where, in the Wild, wide-eyed vigilance was the bare requirement of survival, he travelled on quite unhindered, stopping to take what he needed. It was not in his nature to filch from working-men’s larders, but he was under a dispensation. The elders had said he was upon a crusade for all and had all but known it they would have freely thrust largesse upon him. It was therefore no sin to harvest a little advance gratitude. Hunter understood the principle and sang it as a lullaby to his conscience. At the same time, he doubted it would be legal tender in New-Wessex just yet and so kept out of sight. A few tethered field-slaves saw him go but they were not likely to report anything to their masters. They watched, dulled eyed and envious, and failed to raise the alarm.

Truly, this was a fat place, Hunter reflected, as he feasted on loving-wife-packed rations liberated from a peddler who’d wake from his nap refreshed but lunchless. Here was ample eating and the chance to do things two-handed, without a weapon perpetually gripped. Here, the Wild only intruded as aberration. With the filter of the Fruntierfolke and rougher sorts at the fringes, Hunter would have bet his bow this deep interior was barely troubled at all. How marvellous, he thought – and yet at the same time sedating – that must be. Hunter didn’t know whether to envy or pity them their poor grasp of reality. What a shame it was that good men could only live outside of here. Now, there was a quandary and choice to leech joy out of everything. Freedom and a short Wild-life, or else plenty in servitude? Why did it always have to be either/or?

Then Hunter remembered the contents of his head and how extra precious it now was for holding the wonderful tidings. When others knew, or others bar a mere select band in the Wild, then just maybe it would change cases. Humanity deserved a new deal – or even the old one, if fairly applied.

God had returned to them, showing He had no favourites after all, and that there was no one He cursed without end. His foot was coming off their necks and mankind would rise again when He did. Just the notion put a spring in Hunter’s steps.

He only broke cover when in plain sight of the Castle. The high walls and red roofs of New-Godalming were vast and lovely in the light of a new day, but rising above them all was his objective – which was a metaphor, when you thought about it, if you chose to see.

Once upon a time everywhere was like this: fair cities surrounded by civilisation. Those of good intent had no need to approach them in fear and trembling, by night and on their bellies. Now, in present decadence, although the bearer of great gifts, Hunter had to sneak in courtesy of an unknowing accomplice. The haywain’s driver interpreted Hunter’s boarding as an encounter with a rut; an all too plausible explanation, saving him the trouble of looking round. Since of late there was less motivation to go round repairing or do anything energetic, the roads of Humandom teemed with pits and sloughs even here, right at the heart of things.

Hunter waited until the ‘third circle’ and the noble abodes to jump ship, ignoring the carter’s surprised cries and the passive gaze of the citizenry. He need not have worried overmuch, even as he hared away like a hound on fire. An age of everyday miracles had made them incurious. It was unlikely anyone would give chase in pursuit of novelty. He wasn’t Null or monstrous and that low minimum now sufficed.

The Castle gate-men had more exacting standards. Hunter was stopped, stunned and bound before more than a few words could pour out of him.

‘“Resurgam!”’ he told them, until a descending mace brought peace. ‘It’s the truth!’

The servants of the god-king had a high regard for truth – more than wages it was the reason they served and believed. They also recognised the promise at the very end of the Blades-Bible. Clearly under divine guidance, Hunter had said just the right words not to earn short shrift and a stiletto to his sleeping form. He’d raised a crop of curiosity.

So, he was taken away for harvesting and questioning – under torture, naturally; just to be sure.

It’s only natural to protest when being eaten. Yet the slave tried to stifle his screams as long as he might. Only silent tears met the first few mouthfuls.

Guy Ambassador itched to intervene.

‘Now, now …’ said the angel.

He, she or it smiled at the Ambassador, warning him. Such sights were something humanity should be used to by now. It was four centuries since success deserted them: four centuries of humiliation offering ample opportunity to adapt. That particular nerve ending ought to have long since gone dead.

Till then the Ambassador thought his had. Or perhaps a protective scab had worked loose because he was leaving. He re-commanded his face to its normal mask.

‘Be friends …’ It was both angelic instruction and warning: a spoilt child imposing peace upon pet cat and dog.

Obedient, the Ambassador drew near the Null-King, feigning sadness at imminent parting. He had to transcend the feast, that obvious show for his benefit. Normally, the Null dined in far more wild style.

His shoes splattered through discarded pieces. He imagined a stick jammed across his mouth to fabricate a smile. He told himself he never, ever, stuttered.

No one was deceived. The monster extended his ham-like arm, languidly pointing one talon in the Ambassador’s direction. What he really wished to do was use it, as the Creator had intended it to be used; to slash human flesh, to strip off succulent slices. His barbed cock rose like a pennon in daydreaming of it. Yet he too was under command. He dared not follow his true nature whilst under angelic supervision.

The Ambassador applied shrinking lips to the claw in homage. It tasted of blood and cloves.

‘I must leave now, exalted one: under p-p-protest, answering only the sternest of homecoming commands. Rest assured, majesty, I shall pine for your presence all the while, and hunger and thirst for the d-day of my return to your delicious Empire of Feeding.’

Null declined to learn man-speech on grounds of dignity and taste. Instead, the words were conveyed into Null by one of the throng of human interpreters: semi-naked wretches shamingly eager for the ear of their master. A babble of silky, chiming tones that mangled a human throat, try as they might. Too octave-ascending, too … ravenous for true rendering.

The Null could not be bothered to conceal their hatred and hunger conjoined, not from lowest Null cub to this King of Mothers himself. His yellow, almond-eyes glowed only the fiercer for the honeyed words, simply nodding a sleek purple head in acknowledgement. Any deeper intercourse with humanity was demeaning.

Yet the angels stipulated courtliness between them, when there was not – staged – war. And what they wanted they got and had done for centuries past.

‘So, sublimity, I must take my leave: until we meet again for the better understanding of our brethren races.’

Unscripted, unlike the last consumption, one of the great, prone, Null mothers on whom the King reposed, began to toy with an interpreter, a spectre of appetite rousing her from customary indolence. Normally they remained secluded, objects of veneration and mystery. Yet today was a special day and a batch litter-borne here in the Ambassador’s honour. He tried – and failed – to bear that in mind.

Her vestigial arms kneaded the interpreter’s legs; she slithered her great bulk forward slightly to apply bulbous lips. He too was Null-bred to unquestioning servility but at this stage nature took over. He wailed his fear and protest against consumption.

The King heard and saw. If there was one thing consistent in their behaviour it was tender solicitude to the mother class. Straightaway, he ordered other Null to assist her inadequate maw.

Guy noted that the man stood to await doom, even as his face dissolved into rebellion. There had to be lessons learnt, advantages to be wrung, even from such excesses, or else it was waste. Guy obliged himself to observe. And besides, the monster King had not dismissed him yet.

Claws arced to die in juddering halt; white teeth joined, heaving resistant sinew away. Here was expert butchery, fruit of practise since dawn-time. The shrieking meal was soon silenced and passed, morsel by morsel, to the blubber mound on the floor. She dined noisily.

The angel’s eyes were wide, her mouth likewise. From far away laughter emerged – perhaps her own, strangely distanced, or maybe from remote viewers of her kind. One was the same as all amongst that breed as far as mankind knew.

A blood spray flew the Ambassador’s way. He dutifully forbore to notice it or any other private Null arrangement. What they did with their slaves-cum-larder was their own business: he told himself that a hundred times a day. If the remaining Null-humans could overlook then so should he, emulating their example in that if nothing else.

The great purple King snapped back to his official visitor in the fluid manner of his race which was so alarming. Everything they did had their entire focus until the next thing – with barely an intervening second.

The royal arm was again flicked in his direction. He was free to go, to cease polluting the throne cavity.

Guy Ambassador bowed low, first to the King, then to each of the mothers whose face was visible amidst the pile. Then he left that den and perpetual abode, walking backwards. A door curtain – quilted human skin – was parted for him. The obliging Null warrior exuded warmth and scorn as he was passed.

Guy’s last view was of the angel in conversation. She slid her perfect feet in human gore whilst whispering in the King’s ear.

Every ramp and passage out to the light was a well-packed womb of Null, sprawled lazily in grooming or half-hearted sodomy. They crowded close as could be to the mothers, just as in the sleep piles of the former days – before the angels put notions in their heads. The old urge still persisted.

Like an intruder into a dry orifice, the passage clear was not made easy. Grudgingly, they made way for the one wild human tolerated in Paris but were free and expressive with their feelings. By the time Guy gained the day and air, he was adorned with drool.

‘We go!’

Bathie clapped her hands and a rare smile applied a flame to beauty that normally slumbered. His wife had been waiting for him, a dark head at one of the apertures in their crazed dwelling; already and easily packed. She’d few enough possessions save her hereditary crimson gowns. Guy Ambassador was likewise built for speed. He’d brought little to Null-France and was departing with less. Shed illusions outweighed gained experience. It was the work of mere moments to throw a few things into a trunk and then be poised, ready to ascend out of nightmare.

Nothing was straight here, no angle true. Every room, walkway and larder in the Null city offended the regularising eye. They built like their thoughts, full of abrupt changes of direction, sharp and cutting as a fang but without guiding reason.

The human dwellings had been tacked onto the main thrust of Null-Paris, another lunatic protrusion high above the ground with no support but hope, a growth upon the body sicked up under protest. They saw fit that its rooms should be wormed into only after a weariness of narrow, knife-edge passages, penetrating a zone of enigmatic spaces, barred ways and dead-ends. There were larders there also, pre-existing or rapidly relocated, and thus screams at unpredictable hours.

Bathie took it better than he, though she spent longer in the fetid burrow. Whilst he was out on his business – wretched though that could be – it was she who was there to hear the scratchings behind the walls, to hear the lightning strikes of agony and despair from just rooms away. Her world was just the twists and turns of that tiny reservation; up to there the Null guard assured immunity – but no further. Guy hardly wondered at the increment in her strangeness when he returned from his days of abasement. Whilst he endlessly shuffled a pack of cards and purged his memories away, she sat and stared at the un-true partitions, as though seeking to pierce them with just a burning gaze. Just beyond there might be serried Null youth, scenting, salivating, at the aroma of meat seeping through, or maybe, meat-to-be, patient, bred to silence, pinned to the wall with Judas-manacles imported from home.

They never discovered. It was never revealed. All she had was the noises and her imaginings. People said the last was worse than reality – but not in Null-land. Mere imagination was unequal to the full horror, was merciful ignorance. There was that small comfort. Left on her own she had nothing to do but picture it: herself the one clean cell set amidst a cancer – long and bad days for a seventeen-year-old girl. Snaky outside darkness entered into Bathie’s thoughts to mate with her own native variant. Guy stamped on the ensuing offspring at birth, successfully so far, but knew it was a matter of time. One day a monster-birth would escape and grow to adulthood and he feared that more than their surroundings.

Null-human servants were provided them, ever changing but all the same. In their averted eyes and nakedness they tended to a muchness. One told them apart by their missing limbs and mutilations – fingers missing here, an eye gone there: either punishments or snacks taken on the hoof. Sight of them sprinkled anti-savour on the food and fresh laundry they carried.

On this final day, the survivor of a scalping had brought a piping hot-pot and proper metal spoons – an unusual, signal honour. The couple were hungry but looked askance at the mystery-meat amidst the bobbing vegetables. It might have been pork; it might not. The Null had a sense of humour and no carnivore meal from them could be trusted. Not for the first time, stomachs had to be deceived with slave-baked bread – and Guy wouldn’t put it past them to grate human even into that.

Belatedly discovering the betrayal, their guts growled discontent all the way to the English Channel.

Under angelic prompting, the Null could be considerate hosts. From somewhere they’d obtained a coach and four, plus a clothed slave-chauffeur to drive. That