A life.
Charles Rayne grabbed another armful of books and papers, carried them to a wheelbarrow by the back door and tossed them onto a similar mound of books and papers. When the wheelbarrow was full to overflowing he trundled it into the garden and tipped it onto a large pile of wood, books, files, sheaves of paper and cardboard storage boxes. He returned again and again, filling the wheelbarrow, tipping it onto the steadily growing pile in the dark garden, his actions lit only by the light of stars.
It felt sacrilegious to burn books, he thought. Some had been companions since his youth, staunch friends when friends were in short supply. But he knew he had to destroy everything that held even the slightest clue. There must be nothing left after he had gone, nothing that could be pieced together as he had laboured for a lifetime to piece things together. Nothing that would lead Doradus to them. He must protect them at all costs. He must continue to watch over them even after he was dead.
He stripped everything out of bedrooms, cellars, lofts, living room, kitchen, and his eyes were hot with tears as he did so. He knew this time would come. It was inevitable. He’d rather expected it sooner rather than later. But even so, it was difficult, in the end, to relinquish a life long-lived.
He paused only once, and this was over his grandfather’s old trunk. The catalyst to his life’s work. He allowed himself the indulgence of poring over the dusty old notebooks and journals one last time, the copious hand-written text and scribbled notes the results of many years of research and speculation. In them he found the connection between the young boy he’d been, disfigured by disease, and the old man he’d become, disfigured by duty.
He scooped out the contents piece by piece, as if scraping out a living thing’s insides, and gradually took it all down to the pyre. He placed the contents of the trunk carefully onto the pile, picked up a container of petrol and doused everything as thoroughly as he could. Pages of books fluttered helplessly in a thin breeze, the mound appearing strangely alive with their movement. He lit a match and flicked it onto the mound, watched the first bloom of blue flame spread across the fuel-sodden paper till the flames roared in triumph and raced across his life’s work.
He waited till he was certain it was being properly consumed, poking it with a long stick and letting air into it, sparks and tiny flares of burning paper spiralling into the night air like unearthly sprites.
He went back to the house and put his toolbox on the now empty table, separating out hammer, chisels and screwdrivers. He set about carefully dismantling his computers, his laptops and notebooks, removing hard-drives where possible. He carried them outside and set them on the stone flags, sending the hefty hammer smashing into them. Sweeping up the mangled remains he threw them into the centre of the raging blaze, the heat causing the skin of his face to prickle, the smoke to sting his eyes.
He stood staring at the white heat of the bonfire, listening to the cracking banners of flame striking the night, feeling that his very soul had been hollowed out; everything he’d ever been eaten away by the crackling, mocking flames.
He went back to the house, now looking curiously empty, almost unrecognisable as his home, and sat in a chair by the coffee table. He contemplated the memory of his Lunar Club colleagues all those years ago. Like yesterday but over thirty years away now. Howard Baxter the excitable archivist; Carl Wood, the thoroughly decent chap that never had a wrong word to say about anyone. He remembered everyone’s excitement when she first came through that very door the next morning. Remembered how she glanced from one to the other of them, her eyes heavy with suspicion. They fixed her something to eat, which she barely ate, answered a number of her questions, how it had started with Evelyn Carter’s strange disappearance and Thomas Rayne the police officer who had used his detective skills to trace her mysterious life history back — further back than he ever thought possible, till he finally had to admit he was dealing with a woman who had possibly lived many, many years. More than that, how he had uncovered the truth about the strange symbol and the Church of Everlasting Bliss; how Evelyn’s kind had been hunted down by them and destroyed, one by one; how his grandson Charles Rayne had taken up the challenge, had taken it upon himself to trace this Evelyn Carter and to help her; and how Charles had persuaded the Lunar Club members to join him in his search. A search that ended with her rescue from Lambert-Chide’s lab. The reason she sat before them now.
A full three hours passed in this way. She appeared disturbed at first that they seemed to know so much about her but she settled down gradually. And he remembered the chill in her voice when, to everyone’s quiet delight, the woman they had known as Evelyn Carter began to relate her life story in her own words.
‘It begins with a young yeoman farmer called Simon freeman,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘He came from the village of Crewkerne in Somerset. He married in the year 1630. But the marriage was not blessed with children, which pained them both. Yet they thought God smiled upon them, for nine years later they took an orphan girl as their own, whom they named Elizabeth. And so this Elizabeth remained their only child. Simon would have preferred a son, because a daughter brought only problems to resolve, not least in eventually marrying her off. But though her dowry was poor, her good looks went some way in making up the difference and Elizabeth was given away in marriage at the age of fifteen to a man of reasonable means, a rope maker called Robert Franklin from the same area. Robert had a son, also called Robert, by his first wife, who had died in childbirth. The marriage was something of a convenience for them both. But even marriages of convenience can be run through with love and in the early years Robert doted on his young wife.
‘Twenty years passed in the blink of an eye and the son grew to manhood. He married, and he brought his new wife into the house to live, as was sometimes the custom. In an age when all were devout, none were more so than the woman her son had chosen to be his bride. She followed her mother’s example of continued fasting to demonstrate her profound godliness; the fiercer the hunger the fiercer God’s divine presence resided within her, and she insisted that the only meat she desired was that of God’s Holy Crown. She would fall into a semi-trance and praise times past when images, statues and the brilliant colours of stained glass windows were shattered, the country purged of its sin just as her body was being purged of sin.
‘It was on one of these occasions, when she had been in the grip of a lengthy fast, that her eyes rolled into her head and her finger pointed out accusingly at Elizabeth…’
‘The Devil walks amongst men!’ the words gurgled in her throat, and her voice deepened so that it no longer sounded like her at all. ‘His unholy familiar rendered in many guises the better to trick men and thus tempt him down the path of evil…’
Both father and son followed the path of the woman’s outstretched arm; the index finger trembled as it hovered six inches or so from Elizabeth’s chest. She backed away and both men watched her closely, their faces deadly serious.
‘What can she mean?’ said Elizabeth.
‘She is God’s holy vessel,’ said the young man reverentially. ‘Why do you back away? There is nothing to fear in God’s pure truth. Unless there is good reason to fear.’ His eyes lingered just a little too long on Elizabeth’s face to prove comfortable.
‘I must leave,’ said Elizabeth.
‘You must stay!’ her husband ordered in a tone of voice she had never heard him use before.
She looked from him to his son; they shared the same grave expression. ‘Art thou afraid, Elizabeth?’ he asked. ‘Pray, why is that?’
‘I am as afraid of God as anyone,’ she admitted.
‘But more fearful today,’ he noticed.