Just for sport, the Dybbuk yawned monstrously and turned its head inside out. The Admiral couldn’t help but gag.
‘Yes, there is,’ it said when normality was resumed and its mouth pointed outward again. ‘I want you to visit old friends, that’s all.’
‘Given my history and temperament, my friends are few in number,’ countered Slovo. ‘There’s Rabbi Megillah, I suppose.’
‘No,’ said the Dybbuk, briskly, ‘not the foreskin-less one: not him.’
‘Well, there isn’t anyone else really,’ protested Admiral Slovo.
‘Think on, Admiral,’ grinned the Dybbuk. ‘I know the hearts of men better than anyone and there are still a few who think warmly of you.’
‘This is all to do with the Menorah business, isn’t it?’ said Slovo, resignedly. ‘Not only have I got to find it but you want me to exhume my best-forgotten past, searching amongst the debris for … friends.’
‘That’s about the shape of it, old boy,’ laughed the Dybbuk. ‘You don’t think I’d be wasting time talking to such a limited life-form as you if there wasn’t some bigger issue at stake? I can’t explain too much, of course; one has to stick to the script and human free-will is required – you being the selected representative. All I can do is direct you on your way and speed things up. Visit your old friends, Slovo!’
‘Script?’ asked the Admiral, slapping off the attentions of a hermaphrodite incubus (or succubus?). ‘What script?’
‘Oh, you know all the old Doomsday stories, Slovo,’ said the Dybbuk. ‘Don’t you ever read your Bible?’
‘Frequently,’ said Slovo truthfully.
‘Well then, you should be intimately familiar with all the end-of-Time scenarios. Most of them involve the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple, and for that you require the Menorah.’
‘Hence Pope Leo’s torments and the pleas of the Emperors …’
‘… and your presence here, yes, yes,’ interrupted the Dybbuk impatiently. ‘All my own work. As I’ve said, I want to get the ball rolling early and catch the enemy unawares. The old boss wouldn’t have that so he had to go. Now I’m in charge and I’m going to help you to help things along. Go and see your old friends, Slovo!’
‘So you keep saying,’ pointed out the Admiral reasonably, ‘but if you are the new Prince of Darkness, why all this worry about scripts and rules? Surely it would be more in keeping for you to play the game entirely as you wish, regardless of any regulations.’
‘I don’t know why I’m bothering to bandy words with you,’ said the Dybbuk slowly, opening and closing all his eyes in a formation dance. ‘The rules just are; they predate the whole struggle and can’t be overturned. I mean, just look what merely trying to subvert them does to me!’
Admiral Slovo looked carefully as he had been bidden, and had he not been born too early to know of the phenomenon, he would have recognized the play of enormous G-force on the Dybbuk’s pulpy skin.
‘That is the price of resisting the regulations in the slightest respect,’ it said. ‘My flesh ripples and my eyes strain as though in the path of a monstrous wind. I suffer every bit as much as your precious Pope and Emperors, I’ll have you know. Why, even ageing you three years was a major drain on my energies.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ enquired Slovo evenly.
‘I told you before,’ said the Dybbuk in terse tones, ‘I can’t direct your feet, only speed them along. We can’t be bothered to wait three whole years whilst you gallivant round the Orient, fruitlessly questioning the natives and digging holes. No, I’ve fast-forwarded those years so as to cut out your useless search and get you to go and see your friends!’
Slovo now recalled the added burden of age he had felt on first entering the room. Three years nearer the cold and peace of the grave, but not a memory to show for it. He didn’t know whether to feel pleased or outraged. Either way, there was no point protesting; what was gone was gone. But he did ask to be updated.
‘Pope Leo only gave me a year, and promised dire consequences should I fail. Since you appear to be the sole source for this section of my biography, perhaps you’d be good enough to explain what happened?’
‘He died,’ replied the Dybbuk bluntly. ‘In hideous agony, poor chap. The surgeons found that his brain was all dried up like an old prune. It was likewise with his successor, Adrian VI; he only lasted two years under my relentless pressure. Right now I’m giving … what’s his name?’
An ethereal, translucent creature, half dragonfly, half fair maiden, flew up to the Dybbuk’s ear. ‘Clement VII!’ it sang sweetly. ‘Clement VII!’
‘That’s right, thank you,’ agreed the Dybbuk, reaching out and juicily crunching the creature in one huge hand. Red-green blood and ichor spilled over his fingers. ‘Clement VII, that’s the one I’m giving a torrid time of it right now. So I tell you, you needn’t worry about your welcome back in Rome; you’re needed as much as ever!’
‘Well, thank you for that at least,’ said Slovo dryly.
‘Don’t mention it,’ replied the Dybbuk affably. ‘You’ve provided me with a degree of amusement these last few years and of course, I have high hopes for you in the future. You really are a nasty piece of work on the quiet, aren’t you?’
Admiral Slovo answered with one of his ‘I do what I have to’ gestures. ‘I am a victim of my times,’ he said in his own defence.
‘Hmmm,’ said the Dybbuk dubiously. Well, you’re wasting your time with all this “natural virtue” business, you know, all you Stoic chaps end up down here with me in the end.’
Slovo smiled. ‘But there again,’ he said, ‘you are the Prince of Lies, are you not?’
The Dybbuk decently conceded the point with a shrug. ‘There’s no pleasing you, is there!’ He huffily flicked one enormous finger at Slovo, causing the throne room to spit him out.
As he was ejected, Slovo caught the Dybbuk’s final words, ‘GO AND SEE YOUR FRIENDS!’
There were some advantages to a proxy tour of the dangerous sixteenth-century world: awaking in his lodgings, Admiral Slovo found himself lighter, healthily tanned and adorned with several new scars he was glad not to recall receiving.
In his sea-chest there was a framed pair of golden, winged socks, labelled as the former possession of the last Roman Emperor, Constantine XI Pakiologos;[19] an indecent statuette of a pathic from Baalbek; gold coin in plenty (Slovo’s piratic impulses had never really been purged); and a stone from the Wailing Wall for Megillah. It looked in fact as if it had been a fun trip – aside from the glaring lack of menorahs.
Like the good and frightened Caprisi woman she was, the Admiral’s housekeeper had kept the place well stocked in his absence, anticipating a sudden return as per the wise bridesmaids of Christ’s parable. To be flung home by the gesture of a demon was about as sudden a return as could be imagined, but Slovo still found the makings of a passable pre-dawn breakfast awaiting him.
Seated with a flask of sack, some bread and onions, he watched the faithful sun rise over the dome of Santa Croce and thought about times past. Later, in his library, he browsed through the great bound volume of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations upon its brass eagle lectern, until he could postpone decision no more.
There was nothing else that could be done, he concluded. Since the Menorah continued to be lost he would have to visit his friends. Fetching his favourite whetstone, he began to ply his best stiletto upon it.
‘I’m very sorry to intrude, Harold,’ said Admiral Slovo, ‘but tell me, would you consider me a friend?’
19
Constantine XI was last seen alive on 29/5/1453, advancing alone and sword in hand, towards the Turkish army storming into his City after an eight-week siege. Allegedly, his socks were the sole means by which his body was eventually recognized and recovered.