Paul Lawrence - Hearts of Darkness

I realised I forgot to visit Culpepper. The deadline passed.

A tiny muscle in my neck locked in spasm, shooting stabbed pains down the left side of my head. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the agony. My calf muscles cramped and my toes ached, yet I couldn’t relieve the pressure even a fraction, for every time I relaxed, just an inch, the rope tightened a little more.

‘How are you, Dowling?’ I managed a strangulated whine.

Dowling growled. ‘There came a great wind and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead.’

‘The wind may die down,’ I replied, not sure I understood. ‘It’s been blowing for two days.’

He didn’t answer.

‘What about God?’ I asked. ‘Will He not save us?’

‘Upon your head the name of blasphemy,’ he swallowed.

My eyeballs were popping out of my head. ‘If the fire does arrive, then perhaps it will burn the rope first,’ I suggested.

‘For that we should pray very hard indeed,’ Dowling replied, solemn. ‘Yet I fear you lack the faith.’

‘Well you pray, then,’ I retorted. ‘For you have the faith of a thousand, do you not?’ I felt suddenly hopeless.

‘You are an atheist, then,’ Dowling exclaimed, in shrill triumph.

‘Just because I don’t live my life as if someone were watching from the sky does not make me an atheist.’

Dowling muttered something while I contemplated the silence and tried to quell the panic and fear. I needed to piss.

Thin wisps of smoke slithered under the door, swallowed up before they reached the ceiling, leaving behind only the acrid smell of burning wood. Then the faintest sound of crackling flames, creeping up to the door with despicable malintent. The air grew cloudy, the door blurry and my eyes began to water. I jerked my wrists despite the tightening cord about my neck, fighting the terror that throttled my heart. A wave of black fog billowed into the room, choking and harsh, drifting to the roof and hanging there. I held my breath and tried not to move, my head dizzy. I closed my eyes. Dowling coughed and coughed again, wheezing until he retched.

I tried to shout, but no words came out. My breath rasped at the back of my throat. Tears streamed and the flesh about my eyes burnt. I tried again to hold my breath, but my mouth burnt and filled with phlegm. I was forced to breathe deep, but nothing happened. Then I coughed so hard it felt like my body conspired to turn itself inside out and my lungs threatened to explode. Strange lights danced in front of my eyes.

Shrewsbury’s face floated before my gaze, the bags about his eyes so loose and floppy his eyeballs appeared shrunken. He wore a dark grey cloak about a cadaverous body, thin and bony. The syphilis ate him. He hovered just below the ceiling, forcing his face into mine, grinning like a demon. His face was long like Josselin’s. It had ne’er struck me before how alike they appeared. A heavy thud sounded in my ears, like an axe against a block. Had Shrewsbury chopped off Dowling’s head? I tried to turn and see, but someone grabbed my ankles and lifted them into the air. I glided across the floor towards a fiery glow. Shrewsbury was dragging me to Hell! I tried to jerk my feet loose, kicking out at the bindings that would not be free. I heard my voice rattle as sputum filled my throat. Smoke snaked into my mouth and nose, my head spun. Then something hit me in the face. A strong wind.

‘Stir yourself, Lytle,’ someone shouted into my ear.

I opened my eyes to see Dowling’s red, sweaty face pressed close against mine. I could hardly see, my eyes were so crusted. I tried to bring a hand round to wipe them, but couldn’t move. I turned to see Josselin holding my other arm, the two of them forcing me up the narrow alley. My back burnt so hot I feared my shirt was on fire.

‘I’m glad you came,’ I tried to say, but succeeded only in spraying Josselin’s face with a lungful of green mucus.

He spat on the floor without moving his head, struggling to hold me straight. I stretched my legs and attempted to swing them in rhythm with our slow procession back towards College Hill.

‘I can walk myself,’ I croaked, afore choking again. I dug my heels in the ground and pulled my arms free, falling backward upon the alley floor. Dowling knelt at my side and peered into my eyes.

‘I can walk,’ I said again, tugging on his shirt as I staggered to my feet.

‘Then walk fast,’ Josselin grumbled. ‘The fire is closing in on all sides.’

I turned to see our prison ablaze, flames filling the space within, consuming all with voracious appetite. Then the roof collapsed, sending sparks flying up into the sky, where the wind seized them and carried them west, towards the rest of the City.

‘God’s teeth!’ Josselin exclaimed from behind.

I followed his gaze and saw only fire. College Hill disappeared. Josselin watched frozen, eyes wide.

‘You did this,’ I reminded him, head still giddy. My guts churned and I vomited onto the floor beneath my feet.

‘Into the graveyard,’ Dowling shouted.

He grabbed me by the collar while I still sat crouched, waiting for another spasm. He dragged me towards the middle of the churchyard, away from the worst of the heat and smoke.

I sat on a gravestone watching the flames surge twenty or thirty feet above our heads, roaring with insane ferocity. Though I sat thirty paces away, still the heat engulfed my face, threatening to burn it from my skull. City bells rang loud from all direction, deafening even amidst the blaze of the fire.

Dowling sat close while Josselin strode off in search of something.

I shouted to be heard above the din. ‘Josselin saved us?’

Dowling nodded, twisting the rope about his wrists into giant knots. ‘He chopped the walls with an axe.’

I plunged my head between my legs, fighting the nausea. ‘That was good of him.’

Josselin prowled the inner wall of the churchyard, everything

glowing a fiery orange. The wall encircling us rose eight feet tall, with only one other gate, leading directly inside Thomas Apostle, already lit. The leaves of a large oak tree, stood majestically to our left, flickered and glowed like little candles against the black sky as sparks fell onto its branches and nestled against its dry body.

I struggled to remember. ‘Is it day or night?’

Dowling nodded at the horizon to the west. ‘Night still.’

‘We must climb the wall,’ Josselin called, striding through the grass.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘The fire cannot reach us here, nor can Arlington. The fire will burn itself out by tomorrow.’

Josselin stood with hands on hips, staring at the flames like they were a great inconvenience. ‘I have to get to St Paul’s.’

‘We can go when the fire has diminished,’ I replied.

He looked at me as if I were a great fool and stuck his hand up in the air. ‘Feel the wind, Lytle. How long do you think it will take this wind to carry the fire down Watling Street?’

God save us, he was right. The idea that Paul’s might bow to this fire seemed ludicrous. It had stood for six centuries, had seen off fire, lightning, radical Protestants and Cromwell’s Model Army. That it might now fall to the hands of the man that stood before me seemed unthinkable. Yet the fire was already halfway there, in less than a day. ‘What is at St Paul’s you desire so badly?’

‘No.’ Josselin stabbed his finger at my forehead. ‘Let me ask you a question first. What is your relationship with Arlington? I assumed you played some complex game, that you sought to gain my trust on Arlington’s behalf.’ He looked at my pocket. ‘I have seen you smoke your strange leaves, and watched you emerge from Shyam unscathed. I saw Arlington and Withypoll come out of the house and thought