Tristan has opened the hidden door. The Constable has lost no time in scurrying through it; I can hear him rattling down the narrow case of wooden stairs beyond it. That’ll take him down a short tunnel—an expanded kitchen-sewer, to call it by its proper name—to a ditch that runs along the side of the brewery. ’Tis what remains of a creek that, I fancy, used to wind through a field to the Thames; now it is imprisoned between narrow vertical banks that have been built to either side as the city has grown up round it, and it’s been half covered over with platforms and bridges. It matters not whether the Constable turns left or right along that ditch; either way he can slosh for some little distance through the nameless collection of fluids that oozes through it, and choose his moment to clamber back up to the level of the street. So he’s sorted.
Having seen to that, Tristan is turning back around into the room. He sees how it is with Pym and Kit. And he sees, as I do, that there is no earthly way he can reach them before Pym drags Kit outside.
“Pym. Yer mad,” I say, “don’t make me use this.” And I let him see the dagger as I draw it out from beneath my skirt.
That stops him, for a moment.
“No,” Kit says, “don’t go to the gallows on my account, Gracie.” A pleasant thing to say, but it has the unfortunate effect of bolstering Pym’s confidence a bit. Pym gives me a sneer as if to say “you wouldn’t dare,” and drags Kit one step closer to the sunlight. I follow, closing the distance—just in time to be slammed to the floor by one who’s just come flying down the stairs. Before I know it I’m face down on the boards with a knee in the small of my back and my arm’s being twisted the wrong way.
“Got it!” announces Les Holgate as he pries the dagger out of my fingers.
And that’s all he has time to say before he’s cut down by a meaty punch from Tristan. Les Holgate has awakened from the “vee choke” only to be rendered unconscious again by a more kinetic approach. Feeling his knee come off my back, I spring up onto hands and knees and turn to look at the exit, just in time to see Kit, still firmly in Pym’s grip, silhouetted in the bright light of the sun.
It is now impossible to keep Kit secret. Christopher Marlowe is about to be exposed to the world, and it’s as a direct result of magic being used to Send someone. If there be a hundred men standing outside the tavern, I warrant at least three score will know his face. And I know what that means, with a profundity Tristan surely lacks. Voices outside the tavern begin to cry out in amazement, “Christopher Marlowe! ’Tis Christopher Marlowe!”
As Tristan steps toward them, in a bootless attempt to avoid calamity, I reach out and catch his hand to pivot him around, even as I’m making for the secret exit. He understands, and follows. As we stumble down the stairs, we can hear voices in the crowd calling Kit’s name.
A wee, dank tunnel conducts us to the edge of the sewer-ditch-creek. Tristan’s doubled over from the stench, which is a good thing since there’s not enough headroom for him anyway. I lead him toward the Thames. As we scurry along, I note we are being accompanied by an impressive number of rats who seem to have the same idea. Their squeaking is drowned out by the rumble and clamour of the coming lomadh. I knew it was coming the same way you know when lightning’s in the air.
I knew that this could happen, Your Grace, have always known it, in my bones; sure every witch knows it as well as fish know swimming. We see traces of it in the everyday glamour that accompanies our spells. But isn’t lomadh compared to glamour what the firing of a cannon is compared to a wee candle flame?
There are certain changes that must not be made through magic, and while this is true—has always been true—with even the most benign of entertainments, it is far more true and far more dire with Sending, for then you’ve put one person in a place where they don’t know the way of things, and are like to make some dreadful change, and it takes an áireamhán plus common sense to guard against. When the worlds cannot bear the weight of one Strand suddenly altering that abruptly from the others, it is lomadh, as if you’ve snapped off a twig upon a hearth broom: it is broken, gone, and cannot be redeemed. So it was that moment.
As soon as the public saw Christopher Marlowe alive, this broke the twig. But that image is too soft. For it wasn’t a snap, rather the very world seemed to erupt.
It’s news you’ll hear soon that there was a fire at the Tearsheet, leading to the collapse of it and the neighboring buildings too, with many lives lost. ’Tisn’t wrong, that. But ’tisn’t complete either; ’tis but a story they are telling to be making sense of what they cannot understand. Fire there was, or something akin to fire. But cold there was too, bitter cold, and bursts of wind that struck like fists, and inhalations that made stout buildings shrink into themselves like a dried leaf crumpled in the hand. But this was more than a mere trick of the air. The very fabric of the world was misbehaving. Think of how ’tis when vomiting, in the moment just before the muck in your stomach rushes up your gorge, when ’tis as though your entire body is clenching itself, trying to turn itself inside out like a stocking. Now in your mind’s eye see the Tearsheet and the neighboring buildings—the entire neighborhood—the ground itself and the air above it, the very ether, all doing likewise. Tristan and I were thrown down so hard that we skidded, and drew ourselves up to our feet only when the river came after us as if ’twere alive.
Those fortunate enough to be outside the lomadh could save themselves by running fast enough, and never looking back. Nearly knocked down we were, by several who’d tried to get clear by leaping off the embankment and into the ditch. Those on the inside, such as my poor Kit, and Pym, and Les Holgate, were quickly snuffed out with barely time to scream—or so I tell myself, as I don’t like to imagine what worse fates might have befallen them. But didn’t those in between—neither to one side nor the other of the lomadh, but caught in the fringes of it—suffer in the most dreadful ways. Impossible monstrosities their bodies became, like two-headed calves you sometimes see stillborn at home (not among Your Grace’s cattle but often enough around Lough Swilly or Killybegs), and then out of that impossibility, decaying like rotten fish in sunlight, flesh coming off so quickly it fizzed and sprayed, and those it sprayed on caught it like leprosy and went down to fates of the same nature. A mercy it was that flames consumed what remained.