Inside the granite eyes there was a flicker of motion towards Fil. ‘His Mother is not as merciful as she might be.’
Beth’s brow furrowed. Her hackles had risen instinctively at the word punishment. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. How can you be punished before you’re born? What could you’ve done by then?’
‘Petty crimes, I dare say, and dreadful ones too. Crimes to give a little girl nightmares,’ Petris said, a mica- like glint in his eye. ‘I didn’t say this was the first time we’d been born, did I? We sinned in lives past, but Mater Viae felt that it would be unsporting to let us snuff it before our debt to her was paid. So she sold our deaths out from under us, right out of our still-warm corpses.’
A grumble of assent went around the circle. Beth stared at them, imagining the pale bodies that had never seen sunlight, born entombed inside these stone figures. She wanted to ask how, but she knew she wouldn’t understand. And, in the end, what did ‘how’ matter anyway? Instead she asked, ‘Who’d buy a death?’
A hush fell on the clearing again, and Petris’ lip curled. ‘In London? Only gentlemen of the most questionable tastes, I assure you. There are… collectors.’
‘Conjurors,’ another voice put in, coming from inside a marble scholar.
‘Conmen’
‘Cun-’ Lady Justice began, but someone shushed her.
‘The Chemical Synod, they call themselves. Our deaths are now ingredients in their stores.’ Petris’ voice was bitter with contempt. ‘They are traders, bargainers, barterers.’
‘Bastards,’ Lady Justice spat, and this time no one stopped her. ‘Complete and utter bastards.’
‘They’ll make anything a commodity,’ Petris growled, ‘height, gravity, heartbreak — but death, oh, death they prize most highly, because with our deaths sitting ready in their larders, they can exchange each for another, and so kill any enemy they choose.’
He sighed. ‘Of course, there is one small matter, a tragedy, if you will, of afterthought. Without our deaths, we can’t die. So we are reborn, into the stone, over and over again.’ Petris spoke with a self-deprecating dryness, but Beth could clearly hear the bitter note.
‘You want to die?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
‘Not that you’d know it from the fact I’m tailing his scrawny highness here around, but not really, no.’
‘I mean eventually,’ Petris said, as though this was obvious. ‘How old are you? Twenty? Thirty?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘ Sixteen? ’ He sounded surprised. ‘Great Thames, now I feel really ancient. Well, believe me when I say that you cannot imagine, with your sixteen birthdays, what it’s like to be me, waking up again and again, morning after morning, when you’ve already done all you ever wanted to do, and seen all you ever wanted to see.
‘My life had a beginning, but it has no end to give it shape. That’s what our Goddess took from us in payment for our sins: the outlines, the boundaries, the very definition of a life.’
He took a deep breath, and then erupted into another coughing fit. ‘So,’ he said when he’d recovered, ‘when Filius here asks us to come and fight for her — and believe me, if there’s anything this old priest does better than drink and fornicate, it’s fight — well, there we have a little bit of a problem: because the infinity she has condemned us to is rather easier to tolerate without her actually around.’
The other statues — no, not statues, Pavement Priests — were moving now. Stone ground against stone as, agonisingly, almost invisibly slowly, they drew closer around her. She felt her bones shiver and her muscles charge with the urge to run, but she held herself firm, even as their shadows crept over the sunlit grass. Wheezing breaths reached her ears over the churning rock. She marvelled at the effort it must take to move that weight.
‘Your scrawny friend here is asking us to be slaves again,’ Petris whispered darkly into her ear. ‘And while I love him, and I do sincerely love him, I don’t love him that much.’
She didn’t know how he’d got so close. She shivered as his musty breath stroked her cheek.
‘You’re already slaves,’ Fil called.
Beth twisted around.
‘You’ve sharp ears boy,’ Petris grunted.
‘Yeah, well, I’m a lot less drunk then I was the last time you saw me.’
‘So am I. Perhaps if you’d got me more so, I’d be more inclined to listen to your drivel. What did you just say?’
‘I said, you’re already slaves.’ He placed his spear-butt on Petris’ chest. ‘’Cause while she’s not here, you can’t pay her back — the only way you’ll get your freedom is in her service, and you know it. So here’s the deal. Fight for me, and she’ll free you when she returns.’
The motion of the statues stopped.
Petris laughed. ‘Out of interest,’ he said, ‘it’s hardly relevant, I know, but indulge an old man’s curiosity, have you ever commanded an army before, Filius?’
‘Nope,’ he admitted cheerfully.
‘Do you have even a basic grasp of strategy, tactics, supply chains, logistics?’
‘Nope.’
‘And have you ever met your Mother, the vengeful and — lest we forget — jealous Goddess, on whose behalf you have elected to start making extravagant promises?’
‘No.’
‘Well then, I can find no fault in your strategy.’ Petris’ voice was as flat as slate. ‘That all sounds marvellous.’
Fil hissed impatiently and rapped his knuckles on Petris’ cowl. ‘Well, how’s your current plan working? Shuffling around your old haunts in your stone pyjamas, hoping she doesn’t come knocking on your mausoleum door? You’re in Limbo, Petris. I’m offering you an out.’
He showed the inside of his wrist to the statue: the crown of tower blocks. He tapped his spear-head against the arm of Petris’ robe and a fine filigree of cracks appeared. The stone flaked away, giving off a smell like damp caverns. A few inches of flesh were exposed, white as paper. A tower block tattoo could be seen there, too.
‘Please, old man,’ Fil said quietly. ‘I need your help.’
A sound interrupted them, a high-pitched wail of distress. Beth wrenched her eyes away from them, looking for the source of the noise. It was the choking, snotty unmistakable squeal of a baby. It was coming from the stone bundle cradled in the Virgin Mary’s arms.
‘Oh!’ the Virgin said, sounding surprised. ‘Oh, hush now, shhhh shhhhh.’ There was a desperate note to her voice, almost as if she had been unaware of the child until it started crying. ‘Hush now, Shhhhsh, shhhhhsh.’
‘A newborn,’ Petris murmured sadly, and his neck grated against his chin as he turned his face away from Fil.
The baby’s crying was joined by the dirge of stone on stone, cracks emerging and as quickly resealing, as the other statues moved planting their heavy feet with care.
Beth noticed that Petris’ wrist had sealed over with fresh granite.
‘There now…’
‘It’s all right, we’ll take care of you.’
‘Are you thirsty?’
The statues clustered around the child, cooing in soothing granite tones. One of the angels crooked its wing, a tiny movement, allowing rainwater that had collected in the grooves of its feathers to trickle into the baby’s mouth.
Beth looked at them. Though the blank stone figures hadn’t turned towards them, she could feel the hostility emanating from them all: hostility to them, to their offer, and to the Goddess they were there representing.
‘Filius.’ Petris didn’t turn away from the baby. ‘I’m sorry. We may have only a few inches of freedom inside the stone, but they’re inches we need to protect. I don’t trust her, and I don’t trust you to speak for her. The answer’s no.’
Fil looked dejected. He turned to go, and as he walked past, he ran his fingertips over the baby’s head. The limestone crumbled away and he bent down and kissed the exposed skin. His lips came up sticky with afterbirth.
The baby didn’t stop crying, and as Beth followed him through the soaking bracken she heard the stone reforming over the child’s head.
