one of them.
Dashwood nodded. ‘Yes, Trixie, I am a Royalist, I am one of the Silent Opposition. King Henry might have been unbalanced, but he was never as evil as Heydrich. Heydrich can’t be allowed to succeed. I and others like me have been planning…’ He stopped, looked up at Dabrowski and gave him a half-smile. ‘Perhaps it isn’t too late. The opening phase of Operation Barbarossa – the destruction of Warsaw and all the people in the Ghetto – by Clement’s SS-Ordo Templi Aryanis begins in three days. In three days the Party will take its first step towards seizing control of the Demi-Monde and imposing its lunatic ideas regarding racial hygiene on the whole world.’
‘Clement won’t find the Ghetto easy. We Poles will fight…’
‘And you will lose! What will you and your fellow Poles use to oppose the SS-Ordo Templi Aryanis: rocks and coarse language? The SS are the finest shock troops in the ForthRight, they are the mindless bastards selected for their brutality and susceptibility to thought reform. They believe that by killing anyone who isn’t an Anglo-Slav they are doing ABBA’s work.’
‘Get us the guns and we will fight.’
‘Get you the guns…’ repeated her father. ‘Yes, there might be a way.’ He pierced the Captain with a hard stare. ‘Answer me truthfully, Captain: if your Poles have weapons, will they fight?’
‘We will fight, Comrade Commissar, make no mistake of that. We will fight to the last man and to the last breath. We will die with our hands around the throats of those who seek to destroy us.’
‘You are organised?’
‘The Warsaw Free Army is ready. I have the honour of being a major in the WFA.’
‘Then know this, Captain: though I cannot offer you salvation, I can help you and your people die as a proud people.’ Her father turned to Trixie and smiled ruefully. ‘Trixie, you are my greatest love and my greatest treasure. I am proud to be the father of such a strong and independently minded girl, but now I implore you to display all this strength and independence and ignore what your heart might tell you. The Demi-Monde is faced with a great evil and it is the responsibility of everyone to oppose that evil, even at the cost of their life. My life is over…’
Trixie gasped with astonishment. ‘What are you saying, father? We can run, we can hide.’
Dashwood shook his head. ‘No, for me the die is cast. I cannot escape, Trixie. If I were to try I would be caught and then there would be no hope for you. And anyway, I have a higher mission.’ He turned back to Dabrowski. ‘Amongst your detachment here in the Manor, are there men you can trust implicitly, men you would trust with your life?’
The Captain thought. ‘My sergeant and four others.’
‘Not enough.’
‘Enough for what?’
‘There are two barges laden with rifles and ammunition moored just below the Oberbaum Bridge on the Rhine. These are obsolete weapons intended for export to the Quartier but though they are obsolete they are serviceable. A resolute and daring captain, with a company of soldiers equally uncaring as to whether they live or die, could board the barges and, under cover of darkness, sail them upriver to the Ghetto.’
The Captain could barely contain his excitement. ‘Give me an hour in Warsaw and I will have such a company of men. We will take the barges or we will die trying. All that I ask is that you tell me where they are moored.’
‘In a moment. First I need an undertaking from you, Captain. I need to hear you swear an oath as an officer and a gentleman that when you escape from the Manor you will take my daughter with you.’
‘No,’ exclaimed Trixie. ‘I’m not going anywhere without you.’
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The man who had been the rock in her life, the man who had carried her through the loss of her mother, the man who had stood unflinchingly beside her when she had been Censured, the man who had taught her – convinced her – that she was the equal of any man, was talking of leaving her. That was impossible: she would live and, if necessary, die by his side.
But her father was equally determined.
‘You must. It is imperative that I attend the seance this evening. If I were to disappear before then there would be a hue and cry, but your absence, Trixie, can be explained more easily. I can say you’ve been overcome by the excitement of meeting the Leader: you are only a girl after all.’ Dashwood reached across and took Trixie’s hand in his. ‘There is no alternative, Trixie. If you stay we are both lost, but with the Captain’s help, you at least might survive. Do I have your word, Captain, that you will do everything in your power to save and protect my daughter?’
‘You have my word.’
Dashwood opened a drawer, extracted a file and passed it across the desk to the Captain. ‘This contains the details of the mooring location of the barges.’
The Captain took the file and flicked through the pages. ‘Thank you, Sir, thank you on behalf of the Polish people imprisoned in the Ghetto. This will give them hope.’ Dabrowski shut the file and looked sternly at Dashwood. ‘You should be aware, Sir, that it is my intention to try to make my escape during the seance. When Heydrich and his entourage are in the ballroom the garrison will relax and its guard will be lowered. I will try to organise some form of distraction, some sort of ruse to draw all the guards away from their posts.’
‘I think I might be able to help you there, Captain. I had been hoping – planning – to disturb Heydrich’s Operation Barbarossa, but now it seems I must bring these plans forward. I have already sent word to Royalist exiles in the Coven warning them that the ForthRight will attack in early Spring but now it seems I must take more concrete action.’ Dashwood drew a small revolver from the drawer where the file had been lying. ‘Although, like my daughter, I am something of a RaTionalist and take Crowley’s talk of Spirits and Daemons with several grains of salt it is apparent that the Daemon, Norma Williams, is of great importance to the Party. Of course, all this talk of doppelgangers and infiltrating the Real World is moonshine but…’ The Comrade Commissar split open the revolver and checked that it was fully loaded. ‘At Heydrich’s insistence I am to attend the seance this evening in full-dress uniform and that necessitates my wearing a side arm. I will use this to assassinate the Daemon and, if I am able, Heydrich as well. That, I think, Captain, will provide a sufficient disturbance for you to make good your escape.’
‘And what about you, father?’ asked Trixie, a tear gently coursing down her cheek.
‘I, my darling Trixie, am a dead man. It is your responsibility to ensure that I don’t die in vain.’
24
The Demi-Monde: 55th Day of Winter, 1004
The afterglow of Seidr ritual and of Lilithian worship is found in the WhoDoo magic practised by the mambos of NoirVille. Being so heavily suffused by Lilithian folklore, WhoDoo magic is a strongly sexual magic. Mambos (and all of the most powerful practitioners of WhoDoo are female) believe that the interregnum dividing the Spirit World from the Demi-Monde is most readily traversed when the body and the soul conjoin at orgasm. To the WhoDoo mambo at the point of orgasm all things magical are possible because that is the moment when they commune, albeit briefly, with ABBA, or as the WhoDooists know him, the Great Lord Bondye.
– Religions of the Demi-Monde: Otto Weininger, University of Berlin Publications
‘So waddya fink, Wanker? Fucking big, innit?’
For once in his life Burlesque Bandstand was guilty of under-statement. The hounfo wasn’t big, it was huge. When Vanka had designed it never for the life of him had he thought it would turn out to be so monumental. It was one thing, he had discovered, to put measurements down on a piece of paper but it was quite another to see those measurements conjured up in wood and steel. Black and menacing, the hounfo took up over half of Dashwood Manor’s massive ballroom, the floor area of which must have measured a hundred feet by fifty. It was the biggest piece of flim-flam the Demi-Monde had ever seen.
‘Yeah, it’s big all right.’
‘Sumwun wos saying they thought it wos the biggest illusion thingy ever built in the Demi-Monde.’
‘How many times have I got to tell you, Burlesque, not to say it’s an illusion? It’s a hounfo, a temple dedicated to the practising of WhoDoo magic. I don’t want it called an illusion.’
‘Yeah, all right, Wanker. No need to get yer knickers in a twist. Only me an’ yous and, ov course, Miss Ella know it’s an illusion…’ a withering look from Vanka, ‘… a hounfo. The lads who built it didn’t ‘ave a clue wot it is,
