Resonance

The Fading God

Fargeal Manor, 1890

F
OR A MOMENT
, the Angel looked directly at him, and Cornelius’ heart leapt with joy and dread.

Can you see me?
he thought.
Do you know I am here?

He took two steps downwards, hoping against all reason that the Angel had finally registered his presence, but the creature’s fearsome, glowing face turned away almost immediately. It began to pace once more, its bright hands roaming the walls, those great luminous wings brushing the ceiling and the floor, and Cornelius cursed the surge of ridiculous hope that had flared within him. Of course the Angel had not seen him. The Angel saw nothing, heard nothing, except perhaps its own desolate thoughts.

Cornelius crouched on the damp step and watched the Angel pace.

Vincent’s usual warning came to him, his wry voice clear and rich in Cornelius’ mind:
You spend too much time in the creature’s presence, cully. Come back up to us.

Leave me be
, he replied softly.
I shall only be a moment
.

Do not let it touch you. Don’t forget what befell the crew
.

Cornelius huffed. As if he could forget. Even two centuries later, the ugly torment of the crew’s deaths haunted him: their rapid loss of teeth and hair, the welter of sores blossoming on their skin.

Why must Vincent speak of it?

He closed his eyes, letting the Angel’s presence soothe him.

Once, many decades after they had died, in a moment of melancholy, Cornelius had confided the crew’s fate to Raquel. She had smiled and gently squeezed his hand. ‘Come now,
meu caro
,’ she’d said. ‘You know as well as I that it was their punishment for having laid hands on an instrument of God.’

At the time Cornelius had nodded, but secretly he had not been so sure. After all, the crew had simply been following the orders that he and Vincent had given. If their fate was a punishment, should the Angel not also have tormented those who had paid for the net to be thrown? Those who now kept it prisoner?

Truth be told, Cornelius doubted the Angel ever truly understood what went on around it. Even all that time ago, as the nets had been cast about it, and those brave few had dragged it to the ground – even as it had been hauled, silent and struggling, over the blistering grass and down into the seeping depths of the tunnels – Cornelius suspected the Angel had had but the dimmest understanding of its plight.

Since then, Cornelius had been the only one with courage or curiosity enough to keep coming down here, and over the many decades he had come to suspect that the Angel was no more aware of his presence than he himself was of the air around him. To the Angel, human beings seemed
as invisible and as inconsequential as the multitude of tiny particle-creatures that Vincent insisted lived in the air and water all around mankind.

Cornelius wondered if this was how humanity appeared to the immortal conscience of God. In his youth, his father had told him that God saw everything – that He judged everything. This had struck Cornelius with horror: the thought that God should look inside him and see the terrible weakness within. But now he wondered: Did God see him at all? If an angel, God’s instrument on earth, could not register Cornelius’ presence, then was he commensurately invisible to God himself? Was mankind, perhaps, no more to its divine Creator than a pot of maggots – a striving, squirming, formless mass, living tiny lives and dying insignificant deaths unmarked by that great, impervious mind?

Cornelius felt that would explain much, if it were so. It would
change
much: to be unseen, to be unjudged. Raquel would shake her head at that: she despised God as one would a brutal father whose children could never please him. In her philosophy, mankind existed only to be tested by God, to be punished by Him, and then destroyed.

Cornelius shrugged lower into his jacket. Perhaps she was right.

He watched the Angel move deeper into the humid reaches of the under-tunnels. As ever, its fingers probed the seams of the outer walls, its face held close to the seeping stones, as if the water of the moat beyond were whispering to it. Cornelius waited until it had retreated down the corridor before climbing the steps and gently closing the door to shut it in. Centuries of habit made him draw the bolt, though as far as he knew the Angel had never tried to come forth. He
placed his hand on the thickness of the door and imagined it in there, the warming light of its presence moving through the eternal darkness under the castle.

Its power was weakening. Cornelius had sensed this for a long time; had felt the ache creep up. Vincent, too, had felt it. But the younger ones had not, at least not until very recently – and then they had seemed to feel it all in a rush.

Cornelius sighed. It was time, once more, for festivals and song. But how might one go about such things now? In the old days here, long before Cornelius’ time, things had been simple, apparently: people had given of themselves willingly, and with joy. In Cornelius’ time, they had been easily duped and used up and never missed. Perhaps this new age held no such simplicity? Cornelius did not know. He would need to send out into the world, to find things out.

The world: he grew weary even thinking about it.

The prolonged exposure to the Angel’s radiance had left a drifting after-image on his eyes, and Cornelius loitered by the door waiting for it to clear. Gradually the glowing presence faded from his vision and darkness closed in. Then slowly – much more slowly than usual – his surroundings reappeared; the walls and floor and rough-stoned ceiling redefined themselves in ghost-fire outlines and washes of shimmering green as his night vision restored itself.

Cornelius began the long trudge back. In the rooms above, the children had at last fallen silent. It was a relief. They had been shrieking all day, their rage such that it had wormed its way even down here, to the peace of the
under-tunnels
. They were hungry. All the family were hungry these days, but of course the children – like all young things – found it hardest to bear.

Cornelius reached his mind past their now silent presence to … there: Raquel, pacing, pacing – anxious, but full of faith. So much faith she had in him. He sought past her and found Vincent, a calm stillness in the house, anchoring him.

The others were there, too – Luke and the old ones and all the rest – all frightened, now, and drawn into themselves with uncertainty. Cornelius sensed them all. He loved them all. But it was for Vincent, always for Vincent, and for Raquel, of course – it was for them that he would find a way.

He had reached the stairs at last, and so began the climb, up to wearisome daylight, up to companionship, and to the waiting silence of the house.

V
INCENT WAS STANDING
in a wash of pale light by the arched window on the first-floor landing, gazing out across the estate. He was dressed with his usual careless grace, his loose white shirt untucked, his scarlet waistcoat unbuttoned, his cravat untied. He had a book in his hand, of course. No, not a book: one of his many periodicals.
Scientific America
? Something from the Royal Astronomical Society? Coming up the stairs, Cornelius tried to make it out.

Vincent did not look around; merely tilted his head to acknowledge Cornelius’ presence and continued to gaze out the window. He was growing his hair again. Soon it would stand out from his head in that familiar shock of massy twists, the sight of which had always made Cornelius smile.
Shall you grow your beard again, too, Captain? Thread slow match into your braids like Edward Teach?

Cornelius came to a sudden halt. Surely the last time they had seen each other, Vincent’s hair had been cropped? His amusement fled as he struggled to put time into its proper order. How long had he just spent with the Angel? He stared at Vincent’s dark face. His high cheekbones were like blades. When had he grown thin?

Vincent lifted his chin to indicate the gardens. ‘Look,’ he said.

Cornelius followed his gaze down the broad sweep of daisy-speckled lawns, past the bright green of the fluttering trees and across to the wide expanse of the boating pond.

It took him a moment to understand.

‘It is frozen,’ said Vincent.

He was right. Even at this distance, Cornelius could see it. The lush green of the grass nearest the pond was brittle with frost, the trees there beginning to don the autumn colours they had not worn for decades. How long had this been happening? Cornelius had no way of telling – he so rarely went outside.

Vincent watched him from the corner of his eye. ‘The children have a rabbit,’ he said.

Cornelius’ stomach flipped.

‘Luke gave it to them.’

‘And you
allowed
this? Vincent, how could you? Why did you not take it from them?’

Vincent tutted. ‘I couldn’t stand their screeching any longer. Do not look at me like that, Cornelius. You are the one who brought them here; the least you could do is look after them yourself.’ He glanced sideways again, obviously unhappy. ‘It has been over an hour,’ he said quietly.

With a groan of revulsion, Cornelius spun and dashed upstairs.

I
N THE CHILDREN’S
room, he knelt, took off his cravat and covered the poor animal’s face with it – not wanting to look. The hoarse keening stopped, though the small body still trembled. Pain surged from it in waves, scouring the edges of Cornelius’ consciousness with pity and shame. He lifted the creature in one piece, as best he could, and laid it at the bottom of a hatbox. He wanted to put the lid on but that seemed too cruel, so he simply rearranged the cravat over the twitching mess and carried the box from the room.

Even in their sleep, the children’s faces turned to him as he passed by, drawn to the suffering of the creature within. It was a movement as unconscious as a flower following the sun.

Raquel was standing by the window of the adjoining room, staring fixedly out into the trees. She said nothing. He did not look at her as he carried his burden past.