The Unhappy Medium 3: Wretched Things: A Supernatural Comedy, page 4
Andronicus was back.
From in his hideout, Andronicus 2.0 formed a gang and began a series of raids into his Byzantine homeland. Selling captives into slavery, stealing anything not nailed down, Andronicus’ coffers swelled, and his power grew.
Tales of the resurgent Andronicus quickly reached court, humiliating the ineffectual Emperor and compelling him to act. Snatch teams rode south from the capital.
As usual, Andronicus escaped, so Manuel’s frustrated agents took Theodora instead, forcing him into the open.
Knowing the game was up, Andronicus submitted, albeit in a typically Andronicus fashion, in an orgy of victimhood begging for forgiveness, a wretched display that was just too much for the fantastically gullible Manuel. Forgetting everything that had led to this lamentable moment, he granted Andronicus yet another pardon.
One can only imagine how the Emperor’s advisors felt at this point.
But Andronicus was no longer to be trusted at court; Manuel had learnt that lesson at least. Instead, he was sent to Oenaeum, given a governorship, and made to swear to almighty God that he would finally mend his wicked ways.
And, for a while at least, Andronicus did mend his ways. He did as he was told. He avoided scandal. Andronicus vanished meekly into Byzantine’s inky shadows
.
Chapter 4
Ruins
The sun appeared belatedly above Offa’s Dyke with just thirty minutes of daylight remaining. Struggling free of the omnipresent overcast, it shed its weak light on the historic ridgeline, the ancient earthwork that had divided Dark Age England from an even Darker Dark Age Wales.
None of this meagre light reached the valley floor where Newton and Bennet were waiting in the vicar’s citrus-hued hatchback. Glumly, the pair of them peered out through the windscreen at the car park beside the abbey ruins, waiting.
Llanthony Abbey hangs somewhere between bombsite and Arcadian perfection, its ragged remains impossibly picturesque despite being the architectural equivalent of a car crash. Once grand arches stood torn in half, stained glass windows long gone, columns toppled. Left to rot by the ever-womanising Henry VIII, the abbey had collapsed in on itself, its masonry stolen by the locals or torn asunder by the rampaging ivy. In the failing light, Llanthony’s headbutted grandeur stood silhouetted against the sunlight as it climbed duskward, sliding up the hillside opposite. It was either melancholy … or glorious, depending on your personal perspective. For the over-logical Dr Newton Barlow, for instance, it was not a romantic scene at all; it was just a wet evening beside a broken building, built for a God that still made him feel superior not to believe in. For the Reverend Bennett, however, it was very different. Llanthony Abbey was a psalm in stone that made him feel cosy, spiritually above his cynical companion in every dimension.
‘So very impressive, isn’t it?’ declared Bennet, not expecting confirmation.
‘Is it?’ sighed Newton, ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Of course, it is!’ replied Bennett. ‘Have you no soul?’
‘Yes, I have a soul,’ replied Newton. ‘We’ve all got one. We’ve established that, haven’t we?’
‘We have,’ said Bennett. ‘But I really wonder about yours. I wonder about yours a lot. How can you not be impressed by this view? Newton! I mean, look at it! The light through the majestic, ruined arches, the scudding sky above, the russet of the bracken through the empty windows. Just magnificent!’
‘Hmmph,’ snorted his sleep-deprived companion. ‘Want me to explain the physics of how that light of yours actually works?’
‘No,’ said Bennet preemptively.
‘Yeah. Well, it’s simply a matter of refraction and the spectrum,’ said Newton, yawning provocatively. ‘Mathematics. Things are a lot less romantic when you cut through the fog of dreamy subjectivity.’
‘I don’t see why you have to deconstruct everything glorious or mysterious,’ countered Bennett. ‘Isn’t beauty enough?’
‘Has its uses, s’pose.’
‘Well, you are all the poorer for your attitude,’ said Bennet. ‘Why should knowing the science have to turn one into an absolute bloody misery? Eh? Answer me that.’
‘I’m a misery, am I?’ huffed Newton, curling his lip.
‘Yes, you jolly well are!’ exclaimed the vicar, loudly slapping the wheel for emphasis. ‘And it’s not just me who says so.’
‘Like who?’ said Newton, slipping onto the defensive.
‘Viv and your daughter, for starters,’ answered Bennet.
‘Yeah, well, it’s alright for them, isn’t it?’ huffed Newton.
‘Oh, is it?’
‘Yes,’ insisted Newton, tapping himself on his chest. ‘I’m the one who had to perform a 180-degree turn, both philosophically and emotionally. All they’ve had to do is tag along and enjoy the ride, while muggins here carries all the big questions.’
‘Who’s asking you to carry our doubts and insecurities?’ countered Bennet. ‘Not I. Not them. You should look within yourself, Newton Barlow, and see things as they are; not everyone thinks this matters as much as you do.’
‘Is this a confession or something?’ said Newton, slipping back into a familiar sarcasm. ‘Am I supposed to ask you for spiritual guidance or something? How about a few Hail Marys?’
‘Frankly,’ replied Bennet, folding his arms reproachfully, ‘I can’t imagine you asking for guidance from anyone … or anything.’
‘An accurate assessment,’ agreed Newton. ‘Well done you.’
‘In my opinion,’ said Bennett, ‘I think you are wasting … all … this.’ He gestured in the vague direction of everything with his thin fingers.
‘All what?’
‘The adventures. The mysteries. The action!’ exclaimed Bennet. ‘Being a Purgatorian. Why, it’s enormous fun. Why not embrace it and live in the moment?’
‘Oh, Bennett. You sweet, innocent fool,’ replied Newton, facetiously. ‘Let’s turn that around, shall we? Imagine if I told you that your precious God was about as real as an insurance policy? Do you seriously think you’d just switch off all the prayers and religious mumbling? Would you then just live in the moment? I don’t think so. Why, then, does everyone think I should? I’m a scientist. I’m hot-wired to ask questions, dammit! It’s what I do.’
‘Did,’ contradicted Bennet. ‘Because, unless you hadn’t noticed, your Age of Reason has gone rather pear-shaped. Your much-trumpeted scientific reason is now about as solid as strawberry yoghurt.’
‘Don’t think so,’ replied Newton, doing his best to look unruffled. ‘It’s simply … mothballed.’
‘Mothballed?’ snorted the vicar. ‘And what does that mean, for God’s good sake?’
‘Now look,’ said Newton, ‘I don’t care how cotton woolly the facts seem; if I keep picking at this tangle of nonsense and mumbo jumbo, there is gonna be hard science lurking in there. It’s gonna be well hidden, I grant you. But it’s in there. Has to be.’
‘What if there … isn’t?’ asked Bennet.
‘There will be,’ insisted Newton. ‘Trust me.’
‘Oh, faith is it?’ sniggered Bennet, eyes rolling.
‘No, not “faith”,’ replied Newton. ‘Well … ish. But a different kind of faith to yours …. Science faith.’
‘Faith … is faith, my son,’ said Bennet sagely.
‘Don’t you “my son” me!’ snapped Newton, narrowing his eyes. ‘You know how much that annoys me. If you want a “son”, I suggest you get physical with the Women’s Institute. Until then, I am not your son and wouldn’t want to be … DAD.’
‘Mutual.’ replied the chastised Bennet, looking out of the window at the gathering gloom for comfort. ‘Look, it’s not my problem how you choose to think. It’s yours. However, if you don’t do something about your attitude, mark my words, you will ruin your relationship. Viv is a fine woman; I would hate to see you throw away your happiness simply because you can’t adapt to your new life.’
Newton sighed, misting up the passenger window. ‘She’s said something?’
‘Well … yes,’ confirmed Bennet. ‘She has confided in me more than once, but then, so has your daughter, Dr Sixsmith, and just about everyone else who has had to put up with you these last months. If I were in your position, Newton, I’d start listening to the people who care about you. We mere mortals don’t possess the airship-hanger-size brain you have, but we may be a lot cleverer than you at simply … being. You know?’
‘Being?’ snorted Newton. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Accepting life for what it is, that’s all,’ elaborated Bennet. ‘And, I may say, Newton, you are rubbish at that.’
Barlow steamed up the window with his unhappiness, then wrote with his index finger upon the glass.
Balls
‘That’s gonna be there forever now,’ sighed Bennet, despondently. ‘Thanks. This is the car I collect the Bishop in.’
‘Ok, look,’ said Newton after a sullen interval. ‘I know I should be able to switch horses now that I nearly know the truth about life, death and the meaning of everything, or lack thereof … but I can’t. I keep trying to make myself happy with it all, but it’s pointless. I deal in facts, and the Purgatorians, in their infinite wisdom, won’t give me any of those. Fine. But I'm not buying into the absence-of-all-meaning line. I don’t care what you all say. I know there is a science of some kind hidden beneath all this B-movie nonsense. I know that because … well, science is everywhere. Reality is science. Sooner or later, I will find it in this pantomime.’
‘Oh, Newton, how many times are you going to vanish down this rabbit hole?’ sighed Bennet. ‘Yes, I’m a man of faith, so I’m the last one you’ll listen to, but surely Dr Sixsmith is someone you can listen to? He says it’s just not worth all this digging, doesn’t he?’
‘Yeah, well, Alex is a bit of a disappointment,’ huffed Newton.
‘Oh, thanks,’ said a whisp of light in the back seat. It pulsed once or twice upon the cloth seats, then resolved itself into a balding tubby man in glasses, his face a well-defined frown.
‘Whoops,’ sniggered Bennet.
‘Oh dear. How much of that did you hear?’ asked Newton from inside his coat.
‘The disappointing bits,’ said Dr Alex Sixsmith. ‘You know what, Newton, I’m a tad disappointed with you too, as it happens, you miserable little git. Lighten the hell up. I know this is all dreadfully at odds with your worldview, but so what? It’s cracking fun!’
‘I wasn’t looking for fun, dammit,’ snapped Newton. ‘I wanted truth! I wanted reason. I wanted facts. I wanted nice big books with diagrams in them. Instead, I’ve been given this … this … circus.’
‘Oh, it was given to you, specifically, was it?’ snorted Bennett.
‘I didn’t say it was,’ replied Newton.
‘Well, that’s how it comes over,’ suggested Bennet. ‘Dammit, Newton, don’t you think the rest of us have had an existential crisis or two of our own along the way? Look at me … I’ve gone from the cloisters of the Church of England to holy Ninja by way of the Hammer House of Horror. You don’t see me whinging about the old days.’
‘Oh, you love it,’ laughed Newton. ‘All that Chuck Norris posturing, that kung fu stuff. Bloody love it.’
‘Actually, I’ll have you know I was rather perturbed when I found out the truth about Purgatory,’ said Bennet. ‘I’d always wanted to be a part of the battle between good and evil, but the reality was very much at odds with my assumptions. I didn’t, for instance, expect so many guns.’
‘You love guns.’
‘I do now,’ answered Bennet. ‘But back when I was inducted, it felt so … wrong, so … misplaced. It didn’t feel holy at all. It felt so … so … I don’t know … mundane, officious.’
‘Bureaucratic,’ added Dr Sixsmith. ‘It’s not very heavenly at all.’
‘Exactly!’ exclaimed Bennet. ‘That’s precisely it! It’s not “heavenly” in the slightest.’
‘Purgatory isn’t “Heaven” anyway, is it?’ asked Newton, drawing a priest with large ears on the cold glass.
‘Well, no,’ answered Bennet, leaning wearily over to wipe the glass clear, ‘not Heaven itself, but its –’
‘Protocol, Rev,’ interrupted Alex, tapping the vicar on the shoulder. ‘Remember, we don’t discuss these things with the new boys.’
‘But I’m not new!’ protested Newton, ‘I’ve been in this crazed outfit for over six months!’
‘Not long enough, old boy,’ replied Sixsmith. ‘The powers that be still don’t trust you, I’m afraid. You could run away with some titbit, write us all up in some research paper, just to get your credibility back.’
‘Oh right,’ laughed Newton. ‘I can just see myself strolling into Nature magazine and casually telling them I hang out with the dead, know where Purgatory is, and how to get there. They’d have me sectioned,’
‘Good job you don’t then,’ said Sixsmith.
‘Good job I don’t … what?’ asked Newton.
‘Don’t know where Purgatory is,’ replied Sixsmith.
‘Why don’t you tell me then, Alex?’ pushed Newton. ‘Go on, I won’t tell anyone.’
‘I would,’ answered Alex. ‘If it was … somewhere. Somewhere is where somethings are, and Purgatory isn’t a something in the true sense.’
‘You intrigue me strangely,’ said Newton. ‘Care to elaborate?’
‘Nope,’ insisted Sixsmith. ‘Shouldn’t have told you that, really.’
‘Are you saying it’s not a thing of actual substance, then?’ demanded Newton.
‘No more than I am,’ answered Alex, easing his non-physical face through the headrest and poking out his tongue.
‘You exist, though,’ exclaimed Newton. ‘We’ve proven that.’
‘Have you?’ laughed Alex. ‘Have you really?’
‘Yes,’ answered Newton. ‘Several hundred times now. You are Dr Alex Sixsmith in every sense apart from the fact that A: you are known to be dead, and B: you mostly have no physical solidity.’
‘No physical solidity,’ sniggered Alex. ‘Should have put that on my Tinder profile … while I was alive.’
‘You could always date … up there,’ suggested Newton, not altogether joking.
‘Up where?’ asked Alex.
‘The Afterlife.’
‘Goodness,’ replied Alex. ‘No one dates up there.’
‘And why not?’ asked Newton.
‘That’s enough, Dr Sixsmith,’ intervened Bennet. ‘If you keep feeding him stuff, sooner or later, he’ll start digesting it. Then we’ll have no end of trouble shutting him up.’
‘Fair enough,’ agreed Alex, pulling an invisible zip across his lips.
‘Happy to wait,’ said Newton, when clearly he wasn’t. ‘The more I dig, the more I know. Drip, drip, drip. Softly, softly, catchy monkey.’
‘You’ll be long dead by the time you know your arse from your elbow,’ laughed Alex. ‘And even then, don’t expect any revelations. I can tell you straight from the horse’s mouth that there is nothing much worth knowing. The science, Newton, just ain’t there.’
‘Light’s nearly gone,’observed Bennett, desperate to change the subject. ‘Want me to count the money again?’
‘Nah,’ grumped Newton. ‘Jameson never gets the numbers wrong.’
‘Amen,’ said Bennet. ‘So, tell me more about this book chap.’
‘Mr Nicholas Sleep Esq? Oh, he’s your typical book dealer,’ explained Newton. ‘Thinks he’s Lovejoy. Dresses like a gamekeeper, probably lives solely on coarse pâté, and his domestic cleanliness is best described as “archaeological”. I’m guessing fifty percent of his body mass is dust.’
‘Ah …,’ said Alex. ‘One of those.’
‘Aye. Sleep will just want his cash, and then he’ll bugger off. I’m not expecting any drama.’ Newton yawned till his jaw cracked. ‘Then I’m out of here and on my way home.’
Outside the car, the sun had given up, the sky transitioning to a deep Prussian blue against which the black clouds were hard shadows, charging manically east towards the English border. Below old Offa’s Dyke, Llanthony Abbey rapidly sank into the shadows.
‘You can stay here in the summer, you know,’ remarked Bennet, ‘There’s a hotel and bar built into the ruins.’
‘Fun,’ replied Alex. ‘I could murder a pint of Guinness.’
‘Wasted on you, ghost boy,’ said Newton, gleefully reminding his colleague that death and alcohol didn’t mix. As Alex sighed nostalgically behind him, Barlow lifted his binoculars to his eyes. ‘Eh up! Lights on the road.’
Sure enough, headlamps had appeared at the head of the valley, the beams tracing a meandering vehicle as it heaved in and out of the turns.
‘This could be our guy,’ said Newton, doing up his coat. ‘We all set?’
‘You two seem to have everything under control,’ observed Alex. ‘I’m off. Eric has booked me in for some training course about quality management systems or something equally ghastly.’
‘Fair enough,’ Newton put the binoculars away. ‘Come on, Bennet. Let’s go stand inside the Abbey. That’s where this guy said he wanted us.’
Newton and Bennet heaved themselves from the small car, then strolled as nonchalantly as they could manage into the ruins, Bennet keeping the briefcase with the cash locked tight beneath his thin right arm.
The approaching van had now come off the road, headlamps throwing light and shadow across the ragged arches as it nosed into the car park.
After a short pause, the dealer emerged, cradling a holdall.
‘Over here,’ called Newton, his voice echoing around the broken pillars.
Mr Sleep peered into the darkness, then walked towards them. Ten feet short, he stopped. The dealer placed the bag carefully on the ground before him.
‘You have the money?’ he wheezed.
‘Yes,’ replied Newton. ‘£100,000, in twenties.’
‘Who’s that other chap?’ demanded Mr Sleep. ‘I said just you.’
‘Oh, this is just my colleague,’ explained Newton. ‘From the museum,’
