31.8

 

“If only.” Astaroth shook his head and, somehow, his face was a Greek tragedy mask. “If only someone could go back in time and copyright the works of the Stratford Bard.”

“Stratford was a muddy, rat-infested hamlet. I spent as much time as I could away from there. Besides, it wasn’t my birthplace at all. They only claimed it later when the association with me proved to be lucrative. Or not to be, of course. There is the question.”

“And a sleepy little hamlet it was.” The angel, or demon, Roisin supposed, dropped his hand and put his index finger to his chin. “How much time did you actually spend there?”

“Before I took his name? Almost none. After my parents arranged the marriage between me and that Hathaway woman? About two years before she drove me away with her constant nagging. ‘Hamnet needs more shitrags. The Forsters have just got a proper wooden floor put in over the dirt in their house. Why don’t you get a job at the printers instead of scribbling away all hours? It costs me a day’s laundry earnings just to cover the cost of candles for the week and it’s only you what uses them.’”

“I thought she was supposed to be lovely?” Paul frowns. “All the films show her as beautiful. Gwyneth Paltrow, Jesse Buckley.”

“That’s what we call ‘poetic licence,’ Paul. If I’d written either of those, she’d have been played by that woman with the big head who terrorises Sigourney Weaver.”

Paul shakes his head. “Not sure I know that one.” His face wrinkles as he thinks, then he grabs his phone and taps out a query. He looks at the screen for a moment, then looks up. “You mean Avatar?”

“No. The Mashmallow man from ‘Ghostbusters.’ She was about that size. Gods, she could put away a turnip in two bites, stem and all.”

Roisin laughs in spite of herself, then catches Steve’s expression. “You should do stand-up. Do a whole schtick of Shakespeare in the modern world, trying to make a living writing TV scripts and competing with directors employing sentient robots instead because they’re cheaper.”

“Did you ever watch a series called ‘Shelley?’ I wrote that under an assumed name using pretty much that very idea.”

“When’s it on?”

“It isn’t any more. It ran for four years from 1979.”

Roisin shakes her head. “That was before I was born. Sorry. I’ve never even heard of it.”

“I’m not surprised. It was pretty much biographical. Except for the ex-wife. They insisted I make her a sympathetic character and cast her as a looker, too. Not at all what I’d put in the script notes.” He shakes his head. “How about ‘Fawlty Towers?’”

“Yes.” Roisin lights up. “They still show that from time to time.”

“I didn’t write that, but at least they based the wife on Hathor.”

“Hathor?”

“Ann. That’s what I called her, after the Egyptian Goddess who used to wear a dead vulture as a hat. She thought it was a compliment, but it was the dead bird I saw whenever she lifted up her beaky face.”

“Can we get back on the subject?” It was Astaroth’s turn to look peeved. It was a look Roisin hadn’t really associated with demons before. But it was reminiscent of Lotto’s ‘Portrait of Andrea Odoni,’ and she had to struggle to look serious.

“Yes.” She looked sternly at the boys. “Enough larking about, now. What are we going to do about Hasmed?”

“I thought you said he was out of commission?” Paul looks for confirmation from the assistant, who nods. “That was the whole reason for all the angels shuffling upwards in the hierarchy.”

“He’s got the mantle of knowledge. He’s not going to stay out of commission for long. He’s got all the powers I had before I defeated him.”

“Haven’t you got any power left?” Steve tilted his head to one side. “You’ve still got a lot of soul energy popping out of you.”

“I no longer have the mantle. I don’t even think I even tell him to take a long walk off a short pier now.”

“Everything is in flux right now.” Astaroth sat once again in his invisible chair. “With Gabriel taking over from God, all the rules of the architecture are shifting. Only something as powerful as Justice can dare to take him on.”

“Why did you kill God?”

Astaroth looks at her with something like tenderness. “I told you, because I had the opportunity.”

“But what made you even go to Him? Why would you even try to get close?”

“I was close once, before the Fall. I went to try to reason with him, to save you from being erased from the architecture.”

Roisin freezes.

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