We Will All Go Down Together Read online

  All this I watched from safety, hid between rocks, for my gift had warned me to go up early into the hills and stay away, if I wished to live. But when I perceived the ruin of everything I had known hitherto, I wept and wondered what good that life would do me, a landless girl with no money, who could see as yet no earthly way of getting my vengeance.

  That night I crept out from my hiding-place, and I prayed. Not to God: who was God to me? I remembered some minister the soldiers brang with them, reading over the dead—a verse from his great black book, telling them how what they had done was right and good. For Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms. . . . And the land shall tremble and sorrow: for every purpose of the LORD shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation without an inhabitant.

  These were heretics, the minister said; no, these were outlaws, cried the Captain, in reply. And witches too, likely enough, the soldiers muttered, in their turn. Witches, working Satan’s will against Scotland’s good Christians, fit only to be bled and burnt.

  How little they knew. For in that whole valley, before and after, there was never any witch but me.

  This is my enemy, then, I thought—this rich man’s God. And I think I know where I must turn, to work my will against Him.

  All my life, only one of my family had told me anything of interest, that being my grandam, my mother’s mother. She was coughing blood by then, but I remembered her pulling me close and telling me how I should know where my gift came from—from back long before the Wall fell or men ceased to paint their skins, to just after the Flood, which that good Christian God sent to kill His wayward children’s children, those giants in the earth, with never a thought to who else might perish along with them.

  You have their look, Euwphaim, my grandam said, so they will come when you call. And they will love you, for you have the power to do great mischief in His holdings, before you are taken up from them.

  And so, as I stood there that night in my misery and anger, I opened my mouth and called out for someone, anyone, who would make me strong and poison-full and give me dominion over all those who sought to crush me. I opened my mouth and let the night in, and I closed my eyes, and I let my hate fill me from top to toe. And when I opened them again, he was there: my Black Man, who all my kin do know. My Master.

  The Devil? You are fools, to say it. Anything for you may be called the Devil, if you fear it enough. Yet in truth, he was an angel, as so many of the invisible are: one of Seven who make it their charge to answer us the way God has long since ceased to, if indeed He ever did. . . .

  :Euwphaim Glouwer,: he said. :Will you take my mark and let me wear you awhile, that we may walk inside time’s harness together? Would you see this world altered, and yourself its alterer?:

  I would see this whole world rocked end on end, I told him. I would see it broken and thrown down utterly, without even any other raised in its place.

  I felt him laugh, then. :Well,: he said, :we need not go so far. Yet I may point you in the right direction to achieve your desires, if you will let me.:

  Command me, Master, I told him, then. I fear nothing, who have nothing left to fear for.

  So we joined together, and the sweetness of it pierced me straight through the vitals, hollowing a place for him to live in me forever. He raised his sign up on my palm, by which token I may summon him from any place or time in history, and unlocked to me all the secret powers of which I stand capable. And always ever after have I felt him look through my eyes and heard his voice in my head, counselling me what might be done to make those around me suffer most.

  Dolores cricked her neck, eyes stinging, a niggling disturbance tapping at her mind’s back door. Most witch-confessions followed an extremely well-worn track; the language rarely varied, parroting a rote script with little deviation: Yes, I made a pact; yes, I laid spells; yes, I flew to the Sabbat, ate children, danced backwards, kissed the Devil’s arse. . . .

  Here, however, were beliefs she’d never before seen referenced. My angel is one of Seven—hardly likely that an illiterate Scottish hillwoman would be referencing the Seven Archangels, found only in the Apocrypha of the Geneva Bible. And could that really be a variant on the Nephilim legend roped in with the rest, with Euwphaim’s granny convinced all Glouwers were descended from those “great men and women of renown” sired by the Grigorim, the Watcher angels God had meant to guide humanity through its infancy?

  Jonet Devize thought it was the Devil they were worshipping, though, she recalled, checking her notes. Didn’t she?

  Item: Thatt she admitted giving hersel ouer tae Satan, takynge his mark upon her flesh in her wummen’s partes, the aforementioned found and provd, without doubt. The same observd & sworn uponn inn Questioning of Alizoun Rusk, of similiar contitutyonne & in a lyke place. The same not so observd of Euwphaim Glouwer, who bare her Devil’s mark onn left palm instead, raysed upp lyke unto a brand or scar, & not a meer teat tae suckle imps fromm but lyke unto a lettre in somme Language Unknowen.

  Asked was it not the Devil Lucifer who ye sarved in yuir wyckednesses? Answers: I allways thought itt so. Asked & ye others? Answers: I know anely whatt I know, & Mistress Rusk the self-same. Yet Euwphaim Glouwer was my teacher inn alle thinges, for that her gifte farre outstretchd myne own, giuen whose blode shee had larnt itt from.

  An odd way to put it.

  Dolores shook her head, turned the page, began again.

  In the hills near Neath I found Jonet Devize and knew her for one of mine. She had married a man far elder than herself, and richer, yet once he was dead, his sisters despised her her share, since her husband had given her no childer. Too, she had a bad name thereabouts for speaking to the dead, which none could have known but that she was fool enough to talk on it, after.

  She was a wise girl, Jonet, able to do much that I could not—the making of imps was in her charge, the which she could force to do her will in every thing, much though she feared to send them against those who persecuted her. But I was never taught to be so nice.

  To make Jonet give up her place, those gossips who sought her portion sent their sons and daughters to chide her, casting at her with rocks, so that her skin bled where they bruised her. I came up just as one made to let fly and breathed my will on him, making him known to the elements, so that he was pursued by a wind which kissed him ’til he lost the power to speak. By the next day he had turned black, and on the third he was buried at night, far from home.

  You will have me cast out, Jonet complained. I will be cried for a witch in every parish. But: What matter that? I asked her, in return. They know you a witch already, as you know yourself. Better to seize your inheritance outright, setting your imps abroad and filling them full of sicknesses, that they pull their own houses down in desperation for a cure. And then, best of all, to come with me and seek what my Master promises: the re-making of this world in our own image, that none shall ever suffer as you and I have, or as we can make those who cross us suffer.

  Since the boy I killed was as yet unbaptized, we dug up his body, boiled it for its fat and ate the rest, then flew along the coast seeking a third. Soon enough, we found Alizoun Rusk on the high cliff’s side, scowling prettily, considering whether or no to cast herself down on the rocks below, thus to be rid of the unfashionable marriage into which her kin conspired to force her. For her sea-captain intended had already got her with child, knowing himself secure enough in his suit to force the matter, thus making her either a bride foretold or an unmarried whore—and so she thought it of little moment to let me draw out her child and crush its soft skull in my hand, then watch as I pissed in a sieve and threw it sea-wards, while Jonet piped a wind made from dead men’s screams towards the captain’s sails. In return, she swore herself our sister and was set to the making of poppets, at which skill she proved most expert.

  I stayed ever the brain
to their hands amongst us three, however. And thus ’twas at my Black Man’s whim we made our path, ranging downwards to that slippery place where Scotland slides into England—Dourvale valley, seat to the great family Druir, with Rook’s-home over the very next ridge, where rules the dark and mighty Laird of Roke—to unravel this whole world’s foul knot, if we might.

  . . . unravel this whole world’s foul knot . . .

  Dolores paused, re-reading this last claim and wondering once more at its anarchistic—anachronistic?—arrogance. A weirdly seductive thing, delusion. Jonet and Alizoun must have believed the same, surely—enough so to draw them into Euwphaim’s train, pulling them straight-way from the plain daylight world’s concerns into the Witch-House’s endless, Fire-lit night.

  She sighed, kneading the nape of her neck, as her stomach growled. Best call for Keck and stoke yourself if you mean to go on, she thought, vaguely, until her eyes dropped once more: fixed on Euwphaim’s words and clenched, painful-pleasurable, a fist around a nail. Unable to stop herself from stringing one to the other, or the next, or the next. . . .

  From inside the box came a strange little rattle, pins falling in some phantom lock. But Dolores did not look up again, not even when whatever it was turned slightly, invisibly, poising itself to open.

  You have all heard the rumours, though you pretend disbelief. Glauce Lady Druir came from nowhere, much like myself, although her kin never stepped their feet above-ground unless driven to; in the hollow hills they dwelt, the Faerie brugh, before their High King and Queen at last proclaimed it time to flee this iron-touched world forever. Yet my Lady was left behind, a changeling, to comb her hair and sigh in a cave ’til Enzembler Laird Druir came to court her—which is why all their children carry her odd blood, bearing the mark of her strangeness, inside or out.

  She had more to risk than I, my Black Man said, which is why he sent me to her. That and her dowry, brought up into light from darkness—the Sidhe Stane her gillies take their name from, with which any thing might be accomplished, if there were only enough of similar power to make a circle about it: my coven and her, and Roke’s Laird too, with his book-learning and bad intent.

  To my own mind, Lady Glauce never understood the Stane’s worth fully—’twas a thing she stood guardian to, not master of, for all she might profit from its nearness. Yet since I knew she must be present during the working I had planned for it, I made sure to come to her at a weak moment, after her husband’s head was taken for rising against the old Queen, dead Harry’s daughter. My Lady carried it home to sit with his body in state, her get all ranged about her, unsure on how to proceed—for though she sat in regency for his heir, Minion, ’twas a subtle time, as she well knew. So we helped her from that danger, making it so that Laird Enzembler sat again beside her from thence on, cold and silent except to sometimes nod, and gave her all her will.

  They will never accept you, I told her. Nor your brood neither, once enough time has passed that their fear falls away. Better to alter the balance of things while we still can, then—set fire to the world and watch it burn, to see what else might be grown from its ashes.

  And she agreed, or seemed to. Yet this was a lie, and only we three would pay for it, in the end. For those above are ever at odds with those below, no matter what store of evil angels’ blood they share.

  Sidhe Stane = Sidderstane, Dolores watched her hand scribble, through aching, drowsy eyes. Like the Stane of Scone, Scotland’s destiny—a family totem, the Druir luck. Could be any size, small enough to wear, large enough to lie down on. . . . Now, where had she read that? (Look up reference, cf.) And “gillies” . . . so the Sidderstanes were literal poor relations, former sworn bondsmen of Clan Druir, married into the family proper when Torrance Sidderstane brought his wife, Enzemblance Druir, back from the Auld Sod, an etymological link turned genetic.

  (What an odd name that was too, in context—traditional, one could only think. Hearkening back to old Laird Enzembler and his own daughter, sister to Grisell, who married Callistor Laird Roke. . . .)

  She probably thought that hard, Dolores mused, given she must’ve been the elder. Who marries their younger daughter away first, anyhow? But perhaps she looked a bit too much like her mother for Callistor’s liking.

  So hot in here, increasingly, and oh so dreadfully close; the very air seemed book-dry, desiccated, all moisure sucked away by rotten paper, a quintessence of dust. History’s weight hung pendant, pressing down on her from all corners, thumbing every pore open at once. She yawned, jaw cracking wide, fatigue suddenly a mere stretch away from nausea.

  Was I supposed to just call out for Keck, and hope he hears me? Or . . . wasn’t there a bell he showed me, Mister S—Gaheris? Over there, by where he was sitting—

  Have to get up to find it, though. And how best to do that when her fingers were already scrabbling their way ’cross the page once more, words trailing behind, screwed and slant as blood from some phantom wound? The Roke we tempted to our Cause right easily, him being much a man as any other, craving both his name’s advancement and a warm place for his prick, likewise. . . .

  I told him what I had told my Lady: that my sisters and I knew seven angels’ secret names, who between them could wreck this world and make it over, all anew. And he chose to believe me, for that he had read in his books of those same Seven, my Black Man’s kin, who chose neither Heaven nor Hell, but to circle the globe forever, seeking misery. For the Roke was one of those who thinks magic can be made with silly schoolmasters’ tricks, calling angels down and devils up to do your bidding with equal ease, so that you never have to touch any task with your own hands, if it can at all be helped.

  A marriage was arranged between the Roke and my Lady’s Grisell, to give him cause to journey between their holdings. And once we came all together, she showed us where the Stane was kept, in that same empty brugh she had been cast from. Beneath the Dourvale hill we made our compact, swearing in together, and spilled our blood upon the Stane’s skin, softening it for our purposes—bound ourselves together for all times, with one thing only left wanting.

  There must be a sacrifice, I told them. Nothing for nothing, neither on this globe, nor out of it. We must all give up part of ourselves to see this through, or the working fails.

  What will the world be hereafter, when we are done? Lady Glauce asked me, to which I replied: Better than this or worse, yet in no-wise the same. I fear for my children, she said, who have already lost so much, without ever knowing it. To which I answered: But ’twill be their world, at last, an we say our spells a-rightly—a world fit only for us who are born apart, touched with the invisible. We will no more be hunted, but hunters; no more slaves, but kings. ’Tis worth all things to gain such a prize, is’t not?

  And the fee?

  What you will. An eye, a finger, a cut of flesh . . . that hair of yours, perhaps, which grows so long and greenly.

  I would pay the price, an it bring me what you promise, she told me. Still, I mis-doubt; ’tis a great hazard. And here the Roke laughed, saying: Yet all great Projects be bought by blood, m’Lady Mother, as Hermes Trismegistus does say—and all birth through blood likewise, as every woman knows, of high or low estate.

  Say so again when we see what you give up, she told him. And there it was left for the instant—he and she went one way, to celebrate the wedding feast, while my sisters and I went t’other, to gather ourselves for what was to come.

  We would have remade this world, between the five of us. But in the end, my Lady loved this foul place best just as it is, since it bent to her name and degree. Far better to keep your hand than risk all to gain more—or less—than any of us might know, is what she no doubt thought. So even whilst I and mine laid in our preparations, she planned for our downfall.

  Two nights gone, we returned to the brugh and stood encircled with Lady Glauce and the Roke, casting ourselves together into that place where all paths meet and the Seven may pass by each ot
her without touching, so as not to be put back together as One. Then we began our sacrifices, he first using his sword to clip away a finger-bone, then Jonet the dead eye through which she saw her ghosts. I myself ran a blade under one pap, ready to cut it free like a pitched boil. ’Twas then I felt my Lady in my head, and knew her true intent. All unnoticed, she had let her childer and husband enter through the low road, that they might add their strength to hers—but before I could call on my angel, I saw another of his kin step in behind, laying hands upon these two betrayers’ shoulders. In an instant, the Stane’s power fell from us to them, and every thing was undone.

  Then they were gone away through air and darkness, my Lady’s get and all, I know not where even now, but that it lies so far beyond your grasp that you would never find it did you care to seek for them. And though the Roke and his wife have since returned to his own place, we three awoke on cold grass, in a circle of our enemies.

  They found us uponn the hill-side, Jonet Devize’s dittay had read, Dolores remembered. And set uponn us in our sleep, by Glauce Lady Druir’s connivance, for that shee and the Roke had made theyr ane pact tae scape the Fire togeyther, giving us over in recompense tae yuir guid companye. Which rang far more sensibly than Euwphaim’s version—yet what Dolores found herself watching play out on her mind’s fever-bright screen (popping and hissing like bad Super-8 film, stuttering counterpoint to the words spilled from her pen’s deep-dug nib) fell uncomfortably equidistant between the two: a transcribed vision which outran the text, informing and deforming it. First the word itself, page-plucked, followed gut-kick quick by meaning, image, sound, feeling.