Serpent Garden

One In the hour past midnight three bobbing lanterns could be seen making slow progress through a dug-up area where a new building was rising in the ruins of the Outer Temple. Two of the men with lanterns were carrying shovels. The third, tall and richly dressed, was guiding an old blind man holding a long, forked dowsing rod. They paused at a pit that revealed a section of the octagonal foundation wall of the ancient tower once called Le Bastelle. "My lords, I feel the rod dip. There is precious metal there, beneath the earth." Blind Barnabas, the dowser, hesitated. "It must be down there, Sir Septimus," said the swarthy young man in the leather doublet and muddy boots, "where they're putting in the foundations for the new hall." He held his lantern high to inspect the newly dug pit. "Well, what are you waiting for, old man?" Ludlow the lawyer, heavily cloaked against the cold, peered over the edge. "My lords, my payment," the old man quavered. "You promised to take me home once I had found it." "As indeed we will, once it is dug up." The voice of the blind man's guide was suave. It was no ordinary treasure that could bring Sir Septimus Crouch, magistrate, antiquarian, and master of the conjuration of demons by the method of Honorius out beyond the safety of the City wall after dark. Here, beneath the ruins, lay one of the infernal's most powerful demons of destruction, chained as guardian to a treasure chest by an ancient spell. And both of them soon to be mine, gloated Sir Septimus. "It's too cold for my old bones. The wind bites through me, standing here. Poor Barnabas has no hood." "You shall have a hat of rabbit fur after this night's work, that I promise," said Crouch. "Oh, my lord, a thousand blessings on you. In truth, you are the greatest gentleman that ever lived . . ." "Enough. Master Dallet, you and Master Ludlow descend and dig there, where the rod points. I'll keep watch up here." Ludlow, the lawyer, cast a bitter look at his patron's face. Ruined and bought, he thought. I have sold my soul. And now I must labor beside this pretty tradesman. Look at him there, that painter, how he sweats, his eyes, how he hates Crouch. What brought him into the diabolist's power? Pallid and triumphant, seamed with the lines of old vice, Crouch's face loomed above them. Cold green eyes were surmounted by eyebrows overgrown like twin thickets of poisonous weeds. His hair, dark mingled with silver, rose from his head in a smoky mockery of a halo. At the corners of his forehead, two broad, curling white streaks mingled with the dark, shining in the lantern light very like the curling horns of a ram, or perhaps a devil. "Speed you, Master Dallet, and cease to regret your white hands there. What is beneath will repay your cares a thousandfold. Mistress, wife, tailor, and jeweler satisfied all at a blow. Whatever other venture could extend such promise?" "Equal shares of everything, remember," said Ludlow, finishing his descent into the pit to join the master painter. "Three ways, I said, and so it shall be," said Crouch, his voice smooth and reassuring. At the bottom of the pit, he could see only the feeble glimmer of two lanterns, and hear the crunch and clatter of metal digging dirt and stone. You, he thought down into the pit. Awake. A trickle of life began to flow into the desiccated, captive thing below, and it drank greedily at the thin essence of avarice and hate seeping through the earth. Crouch could sense something dank and feel the presence of an alien mind, tentative and wispy, like the first stirrings of an evil thought. The hair rose on the back of his neck, and his spirit exulted. "It's solid here," came Ludlow's voice. "It's a pavement." There is a ring beneath the black stone. The thought came from theRiley, Judith Merkle is the author of 'Serpent Garden', published 2008 under ISBN 9780307395368 and ISBN 0307395367.