‘That’s all very well. But if they won’t be set free, there’s no point in my setting you free, is there?’
‘Ah, but if thou decideth narrrt to release me, I’ll juggle the bones right out of thee as soon as blink. Thy leg would make for a gurt fine flute.’
Esus raised his head from the trestle and grinned at him, and Rob thought, I can’t believe this. I must be going out of my mind. I’m down in the cellar of Allhallows Hall trying to bargain with a demon.
With horns and a tail and a forked tongue like Satan, Esus would have been scary enough, but it was his down-to-earth rustic clothes and his slurry Devon accent and his creepy insinuating threats that Rob found so terrifying. Even locked up here he had the power to drag the skeletons out of living people, and pull them through walls, so who could guess what he might do if Rob were to set him free. He might simply disappear and cause no more trouble, but even if he did, Rob had no way of knowing for certain that they would ever get Timmy or Martin or Ada back.
‘Well?’ Esus croaked, and his throat cackled with phlegm. ‘What’s it to be? Wilt thou release me, kiffy man, or watch thy raymes jump out of thy skin for a dance on its own? I’d play it a right merry jig if my hands was free.’
‘You’re so powerful, I’m surprised you couldn’t pull off those shackles yourself.’
‘Oh, zurrprized, art thou? That tells me thou knowest naught about magic and spells. These irons, they was forged with a curse that not even God Himself could unweave.’
Rob said nothing, but lifted up the pickaxe, turned it upside down, and forced one pointed end into the space between Esus’s left wrist and the iron hoop that was holding it there. He pushed the handle sideways, leaning against it with his whole weight, and gradually the bolts that were holding the hoop came squeaking out of the trestle. The hoop dropped to the floor with a clank and Esus lifted his arm and flapped it three times to shake off his gauntlet. His bare hand was white and finely wrinkled and claw-like, with liver spots and long curved nails.
‘Arrh,’ he said, and reached up to claw at his withered neck. ‘To scratch again, what a boon that is, and when I’m free I’ll scratch every crevice of me, between my toes, and my ballsack too.’
Rob pushed his way under the tarpaulin to the other side of the trestle, and started to prise off the iron hoop from Esus’s right wrist. This one was fixed more firmly, and he had to pump down on the pickaxe handle again and again before the hoop finally dropped off and clanged onto the floor. Esus shook the gauntlet off this hand, too, and then lifted himself up into a sitting position. His stench was so strong and his jerkin was so rough and greasy when it rubbed against Rob’s hand that Rob retched again, and his mouth filled with bile, which he was forced to swallow.
‘Come on, now, kiffy man, let’s be having my feet free! If I’m not walking the moors again before ten minutes is up, I’ll be carving a curvy whistle out of thy rib, I promise thee that. The Kiffy Man’s Lament, that’s what I’ll be after playing thee, except that thou’ll be naught but bones and natlins by then, and deaf to even the prettiest tune.’
Rob wrenched the iron hoops from around Esus’s bucket boots. Then, half-stifled, he pushed the heavy tarpaulin aside and struggled his way out of the tent. He realised then that the vibration that had been shaking the house had abruptly stopped.
‘There,’ he told Esus. ‘You can go now. You can leave this house and never come back.’
Esus slowly eased his legs off the trestle. He sat there for a while, tugging on his gauntlets again and staring at Rob with his silvery eyes.
‘Tell me, kiffy man, what is the world like now?’
‘I don’t think you’ll recognise it, although the moors haven’t changed that much. Not nearly so many trees.’
‘One hundred and twenty thousand and sixteen days have passed, and I have aged not. I’ll need thee to stay with me, to be my servant and my guide.’
‘I’ve set you free. I’m not doing any more.’
‘Thou believest that thou hast a choice, thou bag of whistles?’
‘The moors are out there. There’s plenty of places where you can hide yourself.’
‘I will need hounds! Thou willst have to acquire hounds for me.’
‘Esus, those days are gone – long gone. You can’t go hunting for babies any more.’
‘There must still be chrisemores. Don’t tell me that the world has become more devotional to that skyfool.’
Rob held up the pickaxe in his left hand, and shook it, to show that he meant business. His chest was heaving and his throat was so constricted with stress that he could barely speak. ‘Listen – I’ve released you so that my son and all the other people trapped in this house can go free. But that’s all I’m doing for you. I’m going now, and you can get yourself out of here as soon as you like.’
He backed away from the tent, still holding up the pickaxe, and kicking aside some of the bones on the floor with his heels. Esus stood up, and he was so tall that his fraying white hair touched the joist above his head. He took one unsteady step towards Rob, and then another, but it was obvious that centuries of being shackled to that trestle had atrophied his muscles and tightened his tendons. He was a supernatural creature, but he still needed a physical presence so that he could walk the earth. As Rob’s divinity teacher had once told him, ‘Even Satan has to have a heart.’
Rob reached the cellar steps. Esus was still coming towards him, but very slowly, his bucket
