#Vademecum Casus Belli (Chattering Order)

[positivelyominous]

Oxfordshire - 2008 AD (Again)

(Previous) (First) 

Azruba’al stumbled hastily out of the cab and tugged nervously at his bowtie. To remove at least a little complication from the evening, he had assumed the form he’d first met the current generation of Sisters in. Cutting around the back of St. Beryl’s Church, Azruba’al jogged to the rear entrance, clutching the picnic basket tightly in his arms. There was a man sitting on the little terrace there, next to the dustbins, smoking a pipe and looking troubled. He glanced up at Azruba’al as he approached and made to greet him.

“Er, hullo–“

“So sorry, can’t stop to chat, very late.”

The man next to the dustbins watched the other man’s form disappear into the building. He let out a small, helpless puff of smoke. First the unexpected contractions, then the oddly behaving staff, and now some strange fellow in a big coat rushing through the back doors with a picnic basket. Mr. Young had liked the look of the hospital when he’d brought his wife inside; it was clean and modern -but not too modern- and the presence of the nuns gave it a warm, serene feeling. But now he was wondering if everything was all right after all…

⧗

“Blast that stupid machine,” Azruba’al snarled under his breath, striding through the empty hallway, “Half an hour late, I am half an hour late! Please don’t have started without– well, they wouldn’t, would they? I mean they couldn’–“

He was so lost in his own thoughts that he nearly ran right into a black-robed figure coming around the corner.

“Oh! Good grievance, I–“

“Master Azruba’al! You’ve come at last!”

The demon in question straightened up, a look of relief brightening his pudgy features.

“It’s so nice to see you again,” said the nun, who was known amongst her Sisters as Mary Loquacious*, and was preparing to live up to her name, “I was barely out of Sunday school the first time– Hell’s teeth, you haven’t aged a bit! I–“

“Yes, yes, it’s lovely to see you again too, dear girl,” Azruba’al interrupted, quickly. He knew what would happen if he let her pick up steam, “I am rather late, I believe?”

“Oh yes, forty-six minutes and twenty-six seconds exactly,” Mary replied, with a cursory glance at the watch pinned to her breast.

Azruba’al scowled, “Right, you’d best be quick about it, then.”

He pressed the basket into Mary’s arms, “Here he is. Get him to the Cultural Attaché as quick as you can.”

“Oh my star– this– it’s him? The Adversary? Destroyer of Kings? Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is Called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Dark–“

“Hell’s sake, yes! Yes, it’s him, now hop along, there’s a good girl,” cried Azruba’al, nearly pushing the woman back around the corner, “We don’t want him to be forty-seven minutes late, do we?”

“Of course not, Master Azruba’al,” said Mary Loquacious, lifting one of the lids of the basket to peek at the Long String of Epithets That We Shall Hence Refer To As The Adversary, “Ohh, look at him! He’s got his daddy’s complexion!”

“They’re all like that at first,” said Azruba’al absentmindedly.

“No horns, though,” she remarked.

“I’m leaving, now,” said Azruba’al, letting go of the woman’s shoulders.

“Too young for fangs, and– oh! Yes, Satan keep you! Good night!”

Azruba’al was gone before she’d finished speaking. Mary gave a little shiver of excitement and bustled quickly down the hall. She could hardly believe it. Here she was, Sister Mary Loquacious-You’d-Best-Not-Get-It-Wrong-Again, cradling The Adversary. For all her years as a Satanist -which were indeed all of them, having been born into the faith- she’d never imagined that she would be at the thick of their greatest hour. No more tea-and-cookies duty for her. Speaking of, she’d meant to take a tin to the American Cultural Attaché…

“There you are!”

Sister Mary’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a very flustered Sister Grace Voluble.

“They’re getting antsy in there, they think something’s wrong! Have you got the– oh, for Hell’s sake, Mary, just a tin! They don’t need a whole picnic!”

Mary glanced down in confusion before puffing up a little, smugly, “I don’t have cookies. I don’t have a picnic, either. What I’ve got is the One We’ve All Been Waiting For, The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of––“

“Oh, thank the Fallen One,” interrupted Sister Grace, making to snatch the basket out of Mary’s hands.

Mary drew away, indignantly, “Master Azruba’al has entrusted me with the Child.”

Sister Grace looked as if she was about to argue, before thinking better of it.

“Well you had best get him to the nursery and tag him so we can deliver him to his ‘parents’. We can’t pretend to be weighing them forever.”

Mary nodded primly and marched towards the nursery.

There is a game teachers use to explain probability to their pupils. Each child receives a chart and a bag with a variable amount of red and blue tokens inside. They are instructed to remove a single token from the bag without looking, note its colour on the chart, then put it back in and repeat to their hearts content†. The point of the exercise is to show that the probability of drawing a red token or a blue token changes depending on how many of each token there are. For example, if there were two blue tokens, and one red token, it would be less likely to draw out the red token without looking. It would be even less likely, say, if someone painted the red token blue by mistake. Even if you were looking straight at the tokens, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

There were three rosy-pink babies in three blue swaths resting in three hospital bassinets. Sister Mary had just wheeled in the last one, the most important one, and was heading towards the worktable for a pen and a tag. At that moment, another Sister entered.

“Mary! What are you doing in– oh! That’s all three, thank Bowels, we can finally send them off!”

Before Mary could protest that she hadn’t tagged the Adversary yet, and what if he got misplaced, the newly arrived Sister was chivying her out of the room, insisting she get those biscuits.

Mary let out a deep, disappointed sigh as the nursery door slammed behind her. Well. At least she’d get to meet the Cultural Attaché.

⧗

Mr. Young had returned to room three by this time. He found his wife asleep, and no baby to speak of. Luckily, a nearby nun explained that the child had been taken away to be examined, and Mr. Young decided it best to retire to his wife’s side in case she woke up and panicked in the interim. By the time his son was finished being ‘examined’ and was delivered into the grateful arms of a flustered Mrs. Young, Mr. Young felt as if he’d been there for an eternity. And it was about to get longer.

“Hello! Oh, your Lady wife’s awake, then, good!”

Another nun was bustling into the room, bringing with her a tin and the air of someone who was about to sit down for a long, enthusiastic chat.

⧗

Harriet Dowling was laying in a cot in room four, surrounded by a complement of six security men in imposing black uniforms. One of them was carrying the latest and greatest in videotelephone technology, through which Harriet was meant to see her husband, the American Cultural Attaché. Thaddeus Dowling was technically on the line. He just wasn’t there visually. Spiritually, he was sandwiched next to his wife with a cool cloth and a strong hand to squeeze. Physically, he was on a business trip.

It was Sister Faith Prolix who was the first to congratulate Harriet, and, coincidentally, the first to suggest a name for the baby now cradled comfortably in his mothers arms.

Wormwood was a bit unconventional, yes, but the kindly Sister Faith was ever so convincing. Besides, Harriet didn’t much feel like naming the child ‘Thaddeus’ at that point.

⧗

The demon Azruba’al hurried through the night, too distracted to even think of calling another cab. He needed to make an urgent phonecall. A phonecall his people wouldn’t be too pleased about, but hopefully one they’d never discover.

⧗

There was a third baby. It didn’t have a tag, and presumably, didn’t need one.

Sister Constance Pleonastic had it in the backseat of the church’s old station wagon, driving it down the darkened midnight road. There were only two families, after all.

“I really can’t believe it’s finally come,” she prattled on to herself, faithfully upholding her convent’s chiefest tradition, “What a time to be alive. My grandmother would have killed to be in my place… if those Warrens hadn’t got her first.”

There was an orphanage in the nearby town. There was also a lake. The baby in the backseat was growing fussy. It could feel that something was wrong, somehow. This was not the same dark, rumbling thing it had been in before, and the endless, droning voice did not belong to the gentle hands that had wrapped it in soft blue.

It wasn’t quite ready to be the The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is Called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness. It wouldn’t be for another eleven years. It did, however, possess something of a defence mechanism to ensure that it at least had a chance of getting there.

And so it was that at that moment precisely, a large black cat came padding out of the bushes on the side of the road and into Sister Constance’s headlights.

The cat yowled. The station wagon swerved.

GOOD EVENING, SISTER CONSTANCE, said Death, helping a very dazed Sister Constance Pleonastic up from her body, I AM SURE YOU ARE VERY DISAPPOINTED. BUT TAKE HEART THAT YOU WILL STILL HAVE A SEAT TO THE FINAL SPECTACLE, EVEN IF IT IS LOWER THAN THE ONE YOU HAD PREVIOUSLY.

After sending the unfortunate woman on her way, Death was preparing to leave for his next appointment when something else at the scene caught his attention. Not a death; those were a constant everywhere you went. Creatures big and small; something was always dying. No, this thing was quite unorthodox, as it existed in the living world. There was wailing from the backseat of the ruined car. A wailing that Death would have ignored, had it not come from this particular source.

Death knelt in the wreckage, gently pushed aside the cushion of airbags, and lifted a blue bundle into his arms.

I DID NOT EXPECT US TO MEET SO SOON, he said, thoughtfully, as the child immediately quieted in his embrace, BUT I SUPPOSE IT IS NOT AGAINST THE RULES. I HAVE YET TO RIDE. AND YOU HAVE YET TO CALL ME.

Even still, the child needed protection. It needed a home.

Without another word, Death drew a pitch-black wing of oblivion over the infant, and the both of them disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the smouldering wreck.

———————————————————————————————————

*It was called a Chattering Order for a reason. To explain it properly, however, one would have to do the authorial equivalent of joining up. Hopefully, the name says it all.

†Certain hearts grow content faster than others.