Chapter 7 - Amen Court
Another alleyway in south London. Closed doors, and shadows cast up against the walls, and toppled waste-bins, and pictures of models with grand breasts and spread thighs. As anonymous and as pointless as a thousand others, if not for the stench, which is particularly sour, and for the atmosphere, which is particularly wretched.
The crude iron sliding-door slams back on its rockers.
“Bless my sweet fucking mother, Gamley – but this is why you’ll never find me fucking politicking. Daniel Palmer, they pronounce, you have served us well, with cunning and with strength, in protecting the line down in the East while Angelos was getting his fucking head blown off in the fucking West, and therefore you shall be given the bishopric of Shoreditch and Hoxton, in order to better advise our new Archbishop on his duties. Cuntfuck!”
The Brujah is tall, and muscular, squeezed into an old-fashioned morning suit. His heavily-lined, bearded face is set in irritation.
The little Nosferatu, scuttling along beside him, says, uncertainly,
“It was a promotion you thoroughly deserved, Dan.”
Palmer turns, sharply.
“Shoreditch and Hoxton,” he snarls. “We don’t even fucking own, Gamley, the bishopric of Shoreditch and Hoxton. It’s in Camarilla fucking hands just like every other bit of this shitstain city worth laying a finger on. This isn’t a fucking promotion, you little prick, it’s a stake placed tenderly up my arse, ready for hammering. They want me spying on Connaught, so Connaught’s going to hate my fucking guts once he realises that’s what I’m there for, and if Connaught fucks this up, I’m going to be held responsible for not telling them fucking sooner. Caught up with my train of fucking thought, have you?”
He casually swings his arm towards Gamley’s head, as if intending to strike him, and then begins to stalk away down the long, tatty corridor.
Gamley hesitates, makes a grotesque, mocking face at the Brujah’s back, and then scuttles after him.
At the end of the corridor stands a curious-looking door; ebony, and ancient, it appears to be made out of a multitude of polished, interlocking pieces. Twisting and misshapen, it has been intricately carven to resemble faces.
As the two visitors approach it, a figure steps out of the darkness to greet them. A gaunt, elderly-looking man, dressed all in black. At his side hangs a long-bladed axe.
Palmer grins at him.
“Jack!” he says. “Just the fucking person we were looking for. I was just telling my associate, Mr Gamley, that if our night was not enlivened by the appearance of a fucking mute glorified fucking woodcutter, we might just have to jump in the river, in protest in the lack of Jonathan fucking Ketch in our existence. I’m sure you’ve got a strain in your hand, what with letting in all of these cunts from Birmingham and Manchester and Cardiff and every other inferior fucking termite’s fucking nest eke out their lives, but could you please open the fucking door?”
Jonathan Ketch gazes back, coldly.
Then his sickly hand strokes at the weird door, making complicated movements across the twisted surface. A curious clicking sound emanates from somewhere beyond.
And the door swings open.
Ketch continues to stand there, unmoving, until Palmer snaps,
“Don’t you have a whetstone to be getting back to, Jack? I swear to Caine, sooner or later you’re going to get that fucking axe sharp.”
The gatekeeper gives him a withering stare, then turns and hobbles back into the shadows.
“Now,” Palmer says, out of the corner of his mouth, stepping across the threshold, “I want you to keep an eye on him during our talk. Give me the gist of how you think he reacts to the Ritz business. And don’t, obviously, say a fucking word.”
“I’ll be silent, Dan,” Gamley mumbles, hurrying after him.
The stench inside the enormous chamber is virulent; strands of yellow Tyburn bone, joined by muscle tissue, creep up the dull brick walls, making exquisite patterns where they join, and meet, and move. The floor depicts, across its length, partly re-constructed, an fabulous mosaic; scarlet-eyed, crudely- creatures standing in glory through various points in the history of the city.
Palmer, superstitiously, does not step on any of the legendary Cainites. Gamley, unthinking, scampers across them all.
As they approach the dais and the throne at the far end of the hall, Palmer turns, and whispers,
“What was the name of that fucking moron punk in your pack again? The one with the stupid haircut and the look of an imbecile in his fucking eyes? Oh, and remember not to stare.”
“Brekken,” Gamley hisses back. “But Dan-”
Palmer is already striding forward towards the dais.
“Archbishop,” he says, and makes a low, stately bow. “Night’s been kind to you, I hope.”
From the throne, something shifts, slumped across the fleshy material.
Archbishop Connaught, bony shoulders twisting beneath the cloth of his immaculate suit, sits upright.
His face is a cacophony; a long snout of marrow, pulled and turned outwards, almost resembling a beak. A grinning mouth, yanked upwards on one side and downwards on the other. And, almost concealed beneath mounds of contorted flesh and bone, two cold and weary eyes.
“Bishop Palmer,” he murmurs. “My Templars will be arriving from Birmingham tonight. I expect them to be given shelter, welcome, and vitae.”
Palmer affects, rather successfully, to look pleased.
“A pleasure and an honour, Archbishop,” he says. “I’ll send some of the boys out to catch a brace of kine to add to the meat-lockers. Was there anything else?”
“Yes,” Connaught answers. “There was. Have you discovered, Palmer, who was behind the debacle at the Ritz?”
“Well,” says Palmer, “there wasn’t anyone ‘behind it’, Archbishop, nothing like that. From the sounds of things, one of the lads – chap called Brekken – got the Hackney pack a bit riled up and they decided to make a move on the Kine, cause a bit of mischief. They’ve been ordered to sit on their hands for the past few weeks, you see, and they get agitated. They don’t plan ahead, Archbishop. I mean, I’m only a Brujah, but I’ve at least got the good sense at least to think things through. These motherfuckers are just stupid.”
Connaught says, anger rising in his voice,
“It was foolish, Palmer, and short-sighted. The Camarilla could have retaliated before we were ready to deal with them.”
“Nah, Archbishop,” Palmer says, “nah, they’d never have. See, in London, everyone holds off on the major attacks during the summer. That’s just the way it is.”
Connaught shrieks. His taloned fingers clench.
“Don’t you dare tell me the way it is, Palmer! Not in my fucking city!”
The echoes reverbrate through the hall.
The Tzimisce takes a breath.
“Now,” he says, more calmly, “it’s the exactly this sort of thing, Palmer, that worries me. Unofficial rules. Periods of respite. We are at war with an implacable foe – and Gehenna, the signs have told me, will be upon us very soon indeed. I fear that Angelos, accustomed to the deadlock between us and the Camarilla in this city, his wits dulled, perhaps, by the comforts of stability, failed to take note of this.”
He sighs.
“Tell me,” he says, “where is the original Amen Court?”
“In Newgate, Archbishop,” Palmer responds promptly.
“And yet,” Connaught says, “we are not there. Our palaces lie abandoned, our monuments wrecked, our victories forgotten. We waste our strength on…fools’ moves and pointless gambits and mob attacks that earn us nothing of worth, while north of the river the Camarilla consolidates its power and shores up its defences against us. This must be remedied.”
Palmer asks, slipping his hands into his pockets,
“Would you like Brekken killed, Archbishop?”
“Someone from the Tooting pack, too,” says Connaught. “Chosen at random. A few more recruits should be coming from Exeter over the next few nights to bulk out their numbers.”
“More newcomers,” Palmer replies. “Fantastic. If I may take my leave, Archbishop, to see to your instructions…”
Connaught waves a weary hand, and watches the tall Brujah stalk back away through the darkened court, the hunched Nosferatu scuttling behind him.
This city is already beginning to irk him. The Cardinal has made his expectations quite clear – a significant advance across to the north of the river before the end of the year – but what does he have to work with? Mindless, thick-headed packs, and bishops giving him dark stares and plotting against him.
I will see to all of this, he vows, silently. If it kills me, I’ll bring us back to greatness. Before Gehenna comes, there’ll be flames across St. Paul’s. The Prince’s palace destroyed, Nelson’s Column shattered in the river, and new bodies hanging at Tyburn before Amen Court.
*
You’re ready for this. You’ve always been ready for this. The pistol is clutched, tightly in your hand by your side, the safety pressed inwards.
Nervously, you tug your hood a little forwards, keeping your back turned to the security camera embedded into the ceiling of the foul-smelling corridor.
It’s just a matter of steps. Strike the door inward. Step inside. Find her as she rushes out. Two shots to the head. And run.
Move. You have to move. It’s time.
What are you fucking waiting for?
Your foot launches outwards into the door. It buckles forward, slamming against the wall, but you’re already striding forward into the apartment-
She’s sitting at the kitchen table, a newspaper unfurled in front of her. Her eyes rise to meet yours, but she doesn’t move.
“Wai-” she says.
You squeeze at the trigger. A crack so loud it fills the world. She jerks back; your shot’s gone wide. You fire again, and a jet of blood sprays outwards, almost smoke-like, from the back of her head.
She teeters back on her chair, once, twice, then falls back.
Children are wailing, somewhere nearby.
You approach, slowly, curiously. She’s lying back against the black-and-white tiled floor. A strangely symmetrical, crimson blot stains the left side of her forehead.
Lowering the muzzle of the pistol close to her face, you fire once again, turn and dash back across the floor and through the apartment threshold. Someone is fumbling at the handle of the door across the corridor.
“Stay the fuck in there!” you shout, and run.
As you clatter down the stairway, from behind you, someone begins to yell.
“Oi! Oi! Someone call the fucking police! Oi!”
*
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*
You’re back in your room, inside the Vessel. Caine knows how you even got there. You walked home in a fucking daze, light-headed. Even the splash as you tossed the pistol into the Thames barely seemed real at all.
But there’s something else. You feel exhilarated.
You did it. You took a life. And it was so fucking easy.
You didn’t need to ask an elder’s permission, or fake a gas leak, or skulk in the darkness. You just walked in – and there was power at your fingertips.
Slowly, reliving the crack of the gun – the gorgeous plume of misty blood – you slump forward onto the bed. Your fingers begin to work their way around to the loose brick in the wall behind your bedpost. It shifts, and then comes loose.
But there’s nothing behind it.
You stop, and start. Scrabbling into the shadows, you work your hands through the nook, hoping, desperately hoping, that the papers have slipped into a gap or pressed themselves up against the brick.
There’s nothing fucking behind it.
Someone has taken your treatise.
What do you want to do?
A) Argyll must have found it. He’s been spying on me, after all. I should search his room.
B) It can’t have been someone loyal to the Regentia, otherwise I’d already be dead. Maybe I should check out Fowlesworth…
C) Father Nicholas. He’d have known I was heading out – he’s the only one without duties other than guarding the door. He’d have had the best opportunity to search my room.
D) I mustn’t betray my lack of calm. Whoever’s taken it will be watching to see how I’ll react to the treatise going missing. I won’t try and find out where it’s gone.
E) The chances are that whoever’s found that paper will take it to Eames. I need to get out of the Vessel, tonight – I can make for the Sabbat, south of the river.
