Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [75]
We broke for morning tea, and I broached my idea for recovering Nicholas – assuming that enough of the ghost remained, after ‘something’ had ‘eaten’ him, to be recovered.
‘Polidori refers to a spell that can summon ghosts,’ I said. ‘Does it work?’
‘It’s more of a ritual than a spell,’ said Nightingale. In an attempt to stop Molly from overwhelming us with food we’d taken to having tea in the kitchen, the thinking being that if she didn’t have to lay six tables in the breakfast room we might only get two portions. It worked, but they were big portions.
‘What’s the difference?’
‘You keep asking the kind of questions,’ said Nightingale, ‘that really shouldn’t be coming up for another year or so.’
‘Just the basics – the Jackanory version.’
‘A spell is a series of forma strung together to achieve an effect, while a ritual is what it sounds like: a sequence of forma arranged as a ritual with certain paraphernalia to help move the process along,’ said Nightingale. ‘They tend to be older spells from the early part of the eighteenth century.’
‘Are the ritual bits important?’ I asked.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Nightingale. ‘These spells don’t get used very often, otherwise they’d have been updated in the 1900s.’
‘Can you show me how to do it?’ I asked. Toby spotted me buttering a teacake and sat up attentively. I broke off a bit and fed it to him.
‘There’s another problem,’ said Nightingale. ‘The ritual as it stands requires an animal sacrifice.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Toby’s looking good and fat.’
‘Modern society tends to frown on that sort of behaviour, especially the modern church on whose grounds, incidentally, we’d have to carry it out.’
‘What’s the sacrifice for?’
‘According to Bartholomew, at the point of death the animal’s intrinsic magic becomes available to “feed” the ghost and help bring it into the material plane,’ said Nightingale.
‘So it uses the animal’s life essence as magic fuel?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Can you sacrifice people?’ I asked. ‘Take their magic that way?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But there’s a catch.’
‘What’s the catch?’
‘You get hunted down even unto the ends of the earth and summarily executed,’ said Nightingale.
I didn’t ask who would be called upon to do the hunting and the executing.
Toby barked, demanding sausages.
‘If all we need is a source of magic,’ I said, ‘I think I’ve got an acceptable substitute.
*
According to Bartholomew, the closer to the ghost’s grave site you were the better, so I spent a couple of hours going through the parish records while Nightingale persuaded the Rector that we were interested in catching some church vandals. It’s a very strange church, a great big rectangular stone barn designed by Inigo Jones. The east portico, where I’d first met Nicholas Wallpenny, was fake – the actual entrance being at the western end of the church and giving out onto the churchyard, which had been made over into gardens. Access was via a pair of high wrought-iron gates on Bedford Street. Nightingale managed to talk the rector into lending him the keys.
‘If you’re planning a stake-out,’ said the Rector. ‘Shouldn’t I stay behind, just in case?’
‘We’re worried that they might be following you,’ said Nightingale. ‘We want them to think the coast is clear so we can catch them in the act.’
‘Am I in danger?’ asked the Rector.
Nightingale looked him in the eye. ‘Only if you stay in the church tonight,’ he said.
The gardens were enclosed on three sides by the brick backs and shuttered windows of the terraced houses built at the same time as the rest of the Piazza. Cut off from the traffic noise, they formed a calm green space watched over by the true portico of the church. Cherry trees, pink with flowers in the May sunlight, were planted along the path. It was, as Nightingale said, quite the loveliest spot in London. It was just too bad that I was going to be coming back at midnight to perform a necromantic ritual.
The Parish burial records were sketchy, and the best approximate position I could get for Wallpenny’s grave was over on