Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(59)

‘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 the north side of the gardens, somewhere near the middle. Since Nicholas had been loath to show himself with Nightingale around, he was going to be stationed by the gate on Bedford Street, safely within screaming-for-help range. There was still the occasional trill of birdsong as I entered just after midnight. The night was clear, but you couldn’t see any stars through the haze. The iron of the gate was cold under my hand as I swung it closed and headed for the grave. I had a Canadian survival torch which came with a headband; I used it to read the crib notes in my standard-issue police notebook.

You cannot scratch a pentagram into soft, springy turf with anything less than a back hoe, and in any case I wasn’t about to vandalise such a lovely lawn. Instead I drew the star and circle with charcoal dust using a burlap sack with a hole cut in one corner like an icing bag. I laid it on nice and thick. Polidori had quite a lot to say about the dangers of breaking the pentagram when summoning a spirit. Having your soul dragged out and sent screaming down to hell was only the start of it.

At each cardinal point of the pentagram I put one of my calculators. I’d suggested that I bring Toby along just in case the substitution didn’t work, but when it was time to leave the Folly the dog was nowhere to be found. I’d picked up a packet of chemical glow sticks from a local camping shop, and these I cracked and placed where the crib sheet called for candles. The conjurer – in this case, me – was supposed to impart some of his essence, which was late eighteenth-century magic speak for ‘put some magic into’ the circle around the pentagram. There’s a particular forma created for just that purpose but I hadn’t had time to learn it – instead, Nightingale suggested that I just create a werelight in the centre.