Advent Read online

  Advent

  James Treadwell

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2012 James Treadwell

  The right of James Treadwell to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 444 72848 4

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke – Aye! and what then?

  in the notebooks of S.T. Coleridge

  Contents

  One

  Part I

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Part II

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Part III

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Part IV

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Part V

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Part VI

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Part VII

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Author’s Note

  About the author

  One

  A December night 1537

  On a wild night in deep winter in the year 1537, the greatest magus in the world gathered together and dismissed his household servants, wrapped himself in his travelling cloak, took his staff in one hand and in the other a small wooden box sealed with pitch and clasped with silver, and stepped out into the whirling sleet, bound for the harbour and – so he expected – immortality.

  All but the city’s most utterly forlorn inhabitants had been driven from the streets by the bitter weather. The remaining beggars and strays were fully occupied with their struggle to survive until dawn, so the magus walked uninterrupted through alleys of filthy slush. Nobody so much as saw him; any lifted eyes would have been stung by the icy rain, which felt as if it blew from every direction at once. Nobody but one.

  Some thirty paces behind him, a figure followed, bone-thin as the stray dogs and ragged as the beggars. It looked like little more than a jumble of sticks and scraps of cloth that should have been scattered at once by the ferocious wind; but seen more closely (though nobody saw), it was a woman, gaunt, weather-beaten, but steady. Her eyes were fixed on the man’s back and never turned away no matter how the sleet blew.

  Beneath his cloak the magus kept a tight grip on the box. Inside it, padded around with wool, was a calfskin pouch pricked out with marks of warding and asylum. Inside the pouch were two things: a small oval mirror in a velvet sheath, and a ring that appeared to be carved of wood, though it was not.

  Inside the mirror was a share of the magus’s soul. Inside the ring was all the magic in the world.

  He came out of the alleys and hurried as best he could along a broader thoroughfare by a frozen canal, where the wind was at last able to settle on a single direction and roar at full force. He was not afraid, exactly. Since mastering his art, he had seen far more than any other living man, and outgrown faint-heartedness. Still, the things he carried were infinitely precious to him, and he was eager to be away, across the sea in England.

  Even in the foulest weather, a falling tide and a wind blowing seawards kept the wharves from being entirely deserted. He had to break stride to pick his way through the lantern-lit clusters of carters and watermen clumped alongside creaking hulls. That was what made him glance around and so for the first time notice his pursuer.

  His fingers closed tighter on the box.

  ‘Johannes!’

  Her voice made a space for itself in the air, slicing between the weather’s din and the clattering and flapping of the ships. He halted, his back to her.

  The moment she caught up with him, the wind stopped. Instead of sleet, snowflakes fell, gathering on his hood and shoulders. In the abrupt silence he felt in his ears the guilty hammering of his heart. The rest of the world around them had gone still. The two of them stood as if alone in the snow, as they would again, long, long afterwards, in their last winter.

  He sighed and closed his eyes. ‘How do you come to be here?’

  ‘Johannes, turn.’ She spoke in Latin, as he had.

  ‘I know what I will see.’

  ‘Then face me.’

  He neither turned nor answered.

  ‘What you took from me,’ the woman said, ‘you must now return.’

  At this his eyes blinked open. He pressed the box tight to his heart.

  She stretched out an arm towards his back, hand open, and held it still. ‘You cannot bear it,’ she said. ‘Save yourself.’

  Still without facing her, the magus raised his voice. ‘I did not look for you to be here. Let me go.’

  ‘Look for me?’ He had never heard her angry before. He had not thought her capable of common passions. The ice in her voice cut as keen as winter. ‘You never looked for me. No more can you dismiss me. But if you do not turn back, I will go, Johannes, and the end you fear will have arrived.’

  For a few seconds neither spoke. The snowflakes made white shadows on the trimming of his cloak and thawed into cold drops on her upturned face.

  He set his lips tight and took a step forward.

  She gave a despairing cry, instantly drowned out by the return of the wind. In an eye-blink it hurled away the flecks of snow and spun them into the freezing murk. He looked around, but the ragged woman was nowhere to be seen. She at least had kept her word and was gone.

  A voice bellowed, ‘Master John Fiste!’

  It was how he had given the captain his name. The vessel and its crew were English. He shifted round to put the wind at his back and saw a mariner beckoning and, beyond that, the harbour light glowing through a sparkling curtain of sleet.

  Still holding the box tightly concealed under his cloak, he followed the man aboard.

  Some hours later the wet abated, and because he had urged haste and paid them extravagantly, the ship put out to sea. The wind was strong but steady, and the crew made light of it. But as dawn approached it grew into a storm. All that day it swept the carrack unrelentingly westwards, far past the port where Master John Fiste had expected to begin his life again. When at last they were close to being propelled altogether out of sight of land, with no sign of the storm relenting, the captain resolved to risk an approach to the lee of the English coast, hoping to
enter the great harbour at Penryn. As they neared the estuary, the wind squalled capriciously, the ship was blown onto reefs, and captain, crew and passengers were drowned, Master John Fiste and the rest.

  For all anyone knew, the greatest magus in the world had stepped out of his house alone one winter night and vanished. In time, most came to say that he had sold his soul for his art and been called to a reckoning by the devil, snatched off without a trace. It made a good cautionary tale for a more sceptical age. Believing Johannes in hell where he and his practices belonged, even wise men barely troubled themselves with the fact that all the magic in the world had gone with him.

  Part I

  Monday

  Two

  Gavin Stokes fidgeted in his seat and willed the train to move. Outside the window his mother stood on the platform, waving and smiling weakly. He was worried she was about to cry.

  He didn’t mind the actual crying; he was mostly used to it. What he was afraid of was that if she fell apart right at this moment, she might change her mind about letting him go. His father had taken their trolley and was already heading off towards the Heathrow Express platform. Gavin saw him turn his head and say something to her over his shoulder, something that made the corners of her mouth tremble even more, and just at that moment, soundlessly, the world outside the window twitched and began to slide away.

  ‘Take care of yourself, Gav, love,’ he just about heard her shout. She took a few steps along the platform, but she couldn’t catch him now. ‘I love you!’

  ‘Love you, Mum,’ he mouthed back, without saying it. His father was out of sight already. A moment later and she was gone as well. The train was leaving them behind, gathering speed as if it too couldn’t wait to get away from them and all the rest: home, school, London. It was taking him about as far away as you could go without leaving England altogether.

  He pulled his bag down onto the table and dug through it until he found the envelope he’d taken that morning from his mother’s desk. The night before, he’d dreamed that he’d gone into her room, opened a drawer, dug around and pulled it out. That was how he’d known where to find it.

  She had torn it open. He unfolded the two sheets of paper, briefly surprised to see the tiny, thread-like handwriting. But of course Auntie Gwen wouldn’t use a printer; she wouldn’t have one.

  My dear Iz, [there was no date or anything]

  Hope you can still make sense of my writing, I know it’s been a while. I’m truly sorry to hear about your troubles, but so, so glad you wrote to me! I think about you all the time, believe it or not, really I do. Being able to help now is like a gift to me. I’m really sorry I just can’t come to London for a whole week with work and things here but I have another idea, please listen, I really want to do this for you and Nigel and for Gavin too. Why doesn’t he come to stay with me down here while you two are away? Think about it. Please! He’s nearly grown up now, probably more nearly than I am (guessed what you’re thinking didn’t I Iz?) [Here she’d drawn a little smiley face, and drawn it very well: it had Auntie Gwen’s rather long chin and longer hair, and was winking.]

  I’m sure he’ll manage the journey down. You said he seems just the same as always so there can’t be anything to worry about for a few hours on a train. I can meet him at the station in Truro so he won’t even have to tune in enough to do the change.

  I’d be just so delighted to have him stay here and maybe it will do him good to get away for a bit. [He grinned. Neither Mum nor Auntie Gwen could have begun to imagine exactly how good he was feeling.] This is the kind of place that really might be perfect for him. And he and I always got on well. I know it’s been a while since I’ve been up but I still send him those postcards sometimes so he won’t have forgotten all about me. [The grin turned to a frown. He’d never had a postcard from Auntie Gwen, or not for years anyway.] It’s not the ends of the earth here, there are good people around to help if anything happens. I know how much you and Nigel must be looking forward to your trip, really, why not let me do this and you can just not worry for a few days?

  To be honest there may not be anything to worry about anyway, you and I know what Gav is like, it’s probably just something the school people hadn’t seen before but for us it would just be Gav being Gav! Wish they’d told you what it was though, that seems so unfair, it makes it so much harder for you. Iz I really wish I could be there and just give you a big hug. Please try not to get upset, I know, easy for me to say, but I’ve always known there was something special about your boy, in a good way, the best. [Gav paused and for a while thought of nothing at all, while the city’s weed-strewn margins swished by.] Anyway, please think about it, no I mean please do it, give yourself a rest and me the pleasure of seeing my nephew and Gavin a break too. It’s a bit short notice but it’ll work, all you have to do is write back to let me know and just tell Gav I’ll meet him on Monday at 16.48 at Truro station. It really isn’t that easy for me to get to a phone – you and Nigel must find it hard to believe – but anyway, the post does work fine [here the writing reached the end of the second sheet and had to cramp itself even more and turn up the side of the page.] oops no room, I love you Iz, peace to N and G, write back quickly! XO G

  The cross-stroke of the last ‘G’ was lengthened out into something like a tiny dragon’s tail, its arrowheaded tip just squeezed into the top corner of the sheet. He was staring at it but not seeing it.

  It had taken him a lot longer than weird Aunt Gwen to work out that there was ‘something special’ about him. For all but the last few of his fifteen years he’d had no idea. The special thing, it turned out, was that some of the things that happened to him weren’t supposed to happen. Some bits of his life were allowed – nobody minded them. Others weren’t.

  Learning the difference between them had been a miserable experience. He’d had no idea there was anything wrong until everyone started telling him about it, and even then it didn’t really make any sense to him. Distressingly, it was apparently the parts of his life he liked best that shouldn’t actually have been happening. He’d begun finding out about this a few years ago, around the time he’d switched schools. The first symptoms of the change were in the way his parents talked to him. Instead of ‘Oh, really?’ (with a smile), it became ‘Oh, come on, Gav’ (with a frown). Then it was ‘Gavin, I think you’re too old for this now.’ (For what? he’d asked himself. For what?) Then it was ‘Look, Gav, you’ve got to stop all this’, and then ‘I don’t want to hear about this rubbish and frankly neither does anyone else’, and then worse, until the night he’d thought his father was actually going to hurt someone. That night was when he’d finally grasped that the rules of his life had changed for good, without warning, without anyone asking him or telling him why.

  He’d got up that night and gone along to his parents’ room because Miss Grey had told him Mum was dead.

  Miss Grey hardly ever said anything at all. Never, really, unless you counted when he was asleep, and even then the things she said were a bit strange and confusing and hard to get hold of, the way dreams are, though he always felt he understood what she meant. But that night, for once, the words had been quite clear: The sun rises on your mother’s grave. He woke up straight away, worried. He knew his mother couldn’t actually be dead or have a grave because she’d been listening to the radio as he dozed off – he’d heard it downstairs – but he couldn’t help feeling anxious. He sometimes dreamed things before they happened, and those dreams always had Miss Grey in them. So he went along to their bedroom and opened the door.

  ‘Mum?’

  Rustling bedclothes and then Dad’s head popped up abruptly. ‘Gavin? What the bloody hell are you doing?’

  ‘Is Mum OK?’

  ‘What? Christ, what time is it?’

  ‘Mum?’ But his mother hadn’t answered, and he couldn’t hear her breathing. All he could see was a dark lump in the duvet, like a mound of earth. He panicked and switched the light on.

  ‘Ow! What are you . . .
?’ Bleary and blotchy, his father cringed from the light, but for a horrible few moments Mum hadn’t moved at all and Gav had been utterly certain he’d dreamed the truth again. His first thought was that now he’d be living alone in the house with Dad, an idea of such deadly horror it made him screech.

  ‘Mum!’

  And then of course the lump had moved and she had pushed herself up, messy and fogged with the confusion of sudden waking. ‘Gavin? What’s wrong?’

  He started to cry.

  His mother sat up and beckoned him, smoothing her hair. He climbed over the bed to her. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ his father grumbled, and she kept saying, ‘What’s wrong?’ halfway between anxious and exasperated. ‘What’s wrong now?’

  ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ His father fumbled for the bedside clock, pulled it to his eyes, groaned.

  ‘What? Gav, Gav! Silly boy. Whatever gave you such a horrible idea?’

  And because this had all been four or five years back, and he hadn’t yet learned what he wasn’t allowed to say, and also because he’d been scared witless for the awful seconds before she’d woken up, the truth came out.

  ‘Miss Grey said. She said my mother was dead.’

  His father slammed the alarm clock down on his bedside table hard enough to break it and shouted, ‘I’ve fucking had enough!’ which was terrifying because until then Gav had thought swearing was just a naughty joke. Even more terrifying was his mother’s reaction. She’d frozen, gone white like someone caught in a searchlight, and then instead of holding her arms out to Gavin, she sort of shrank in on herself, her eyes inexplicably fearful. His father was bellowing at him to get out, bellowing and swearing and thumping the table, and as Gav scrambled back to his own room he heard the shouting go on behind him beyond the slammed door, until in the end Mum shrieked, ‘I haven’t! I haven’t!’ so loudly that they must have realised the racket they were making because they stopped, leaving Gav sitting bolt upright in his bed, perched stiff as if trying not to fall.