Ring. Sister. Piano (Book 4 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty Three: The Pact

Faustus's journal, the xxii. day of May, in the year of our sovereign lady the twenty-seventh.

She knows it not, but she has lived ere now, and shall live again when my bones are dust.

'Twas in William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regium Anglorum that first I read of the gold-haired witch: a type of demoness, as I thought then, or perchance a favoured shape among the infernal regiment, as demonic familiars are wont to take the form of a black cat or a hare. 

Yet the circumstances suggest she is not a recurrent type, but a recurrent person, ever accompanied by demons of a more, shall we say, demonic appearance? Ever endowed with genius mathematical. Ever stumbling blindly, as I have seen her stumble, wailing to know what she is, what she is, till the weapons of the ignorant stop her voice, oft by severing throat from shoulders.

In like case has she ever appeared to us, attended by wonders and cut down by fear.

So many repetitions seem to me as persistent and failed attempts – yet attempts at what? What does she endeavour, without knowing, to achieve, by waking again and again upon this earth?

She has been abed with a fever these two or three weeks, and Martha tends her most faithfully, though she has filled the creature's head with stories – either the lives of the saints or the lives of the fairies, I know not which would be more censured by the Bishop in this age.

Eve's sister returned last evening, so changed as I should scarce have known her, though I am loath to express in what way she is altered. She was ever, in appearance, more youthful than the Eve-creature, yet now the bloom, while still in her cheeks, is... I know not what. Excessive. Like the painted cheeks of players on a stage.

She informed me that she did not present herself to enquire after the Eve-creature's health (I had not supposed that she did), but rather to speak with me, whom she had seemed ever to abhor. With no small curiosity did I receive her. She walked slightly bent, with a hand cradling her side, as she were wounded.

"Give me leave to know," said she, in manner most cordial, "how she appeared."

"Of whom do you speak?" said I, taking pleasure in prevarication.

There was a strange creaking, as of rotten wood, in the lady's throat. It seemed she could not say the word 'Eve'. "You know very well," said she, at length.

"And you know very well my answer. I conjured her, 'tis common knowledge."

"I must know your workings and your incantations."

"Why must you?"

She measured me in silence a moment, her hand curling and uncurling at her side.

"I propose an exchange," said she. "By this time you know, I think, that I have lived many times ere now. I have seen the great library at Alexandria. I have held discourse with the nine worthies, and supped with Cornelius Agrippa. I have questioned Friar Bacon's brazen head, and may summon forth spirits of the air to resolve me of all ambiguities. I have more learning than you could comprehend, and it galled me to attend your lessons, as it would gall you to have the world explained by a burbling infant. Yet have you stumbled upon something not all my time and diligence could unveil, and in its stead, I will give you everything you seek: the secrets of the universe, which are nothing – mere mechanisms whirring and rattling above our heads. But more than this, I will give you the secrets of magic."

It is fruitless to record what I felt on hearing this offer. Mayhap it is e'en fruitless to record how I acted, for anyone who has read my account (or even heard my name) thus far may guess at how I acted. For the knowledge of the ancients I would sell my soul; 'twas a small matter to sell my journal. Nay, there was no sacrifice entailed, for I had made copies of my journal, and was ashamed of nothing I had set down therein.