The Devil's Mask by Christopher Wakling

contrary, my orders are to give you something.’
    â€˜Fine. Give it to me. Then set me down. I’ll breathe no word of this. I swear.’
    This plea was met with more staccato laughter, followed by, ‘Ever the optimist. Just sit pretty. All will be explained.’
    I gripped my elbows and hunched forward on the seat, which attempt to protect myself only increased the horrible sensation of vulnerability. The man still had hold of my arm, the knifepoint was still pressed into my side, though lightly now, perhaps to accommodate the jolting of the carriage as it churned the rutted streets. Uphill. That didn’t narrow things down by much: Bristol is all hills. On we dragged, to the sound of the road-noise and wind. The man did not speak again. In time the raw fear faded. It was replaced by a low panic which still rendered sensible thinking impossible, so that although I tried to imagine how best I might escape unharmed, I could not. Absurdities flitted about me instead. I wouldn’t have time to attend the barber’s today, not now. Why wasn’t I more resolute about improving my drawing?And how could Lilly’s wide-eyed smile be at once adorable and infuriating?
    The coffee smell. I focussed on that. Maybe I imagined it, but there seemed to be something else behind the smell, the sharpness of strong alcohol. Christ! I coughed and shook my head and steeled myself by listening for the sound of the wheels grinding on.

Twenty-one
    Up we went, up. The horse was blowing between the shafts, and the carriage rattled upon its axle, wooden-wheels slipping and biting and clattering over the broken road. Then we were slowing and twisting and heaving over what felt less like a road than earth and rocks. The man had a rough hold of my collar to steady me against the movement, which solicitude I could not help feeling as a kindness, even as I crouched there in the black shadow of the sack. Finally, the seat beneath my thighs bounced to a stop.
    â€˜Down you get.’
    The hand and the knife-tip steered me through the carriage door. I felt gingerly for the step. Beneath it my boot stumped into something wet. I squelched my way forward, the wind tugging at my coat-tails, and then there were planks beneath my feet and my footsteps acquired an echo which, taken together with the yawning stillness above me, told me that I had entered a building. I was manhandled to a staircase and prodded to climb it, feeling for each step. From the curve of the landing, I could tell the stairs belonged somewhere big. Up and up we went. Finally, I was jostled on to floorboards which flexed and clattered as I crossed them. They had not been nailed in place. Fearing a hole in the floor, I baulked, but the knife digging into the small of my back would brookno resistance. Rough wood snagged beneath my leather soles as I scuffed my way forwards.
    â€˜Good man. Steady. There’s the spot.’
    The point of pressure at my back eased and I stopped shuffling. I could still sense the man looming behind me, and a fearful nothingness before me; though I locked my knees they were shaking unreliably, as were my hands. I clasped them together and clamped my teeth shut so hard that my ears rang.
    â€˜Look straight ahead. Don’t turn around.’
    The man attempted to jerk the bag off my head, but his fingers took hold of a chunk of my hair along with the hessian. I winced and swung my head from side to side and the hand pulled and finally, as my eyes pricked full of tears, the bag came off.
    I was standing on the edge of a precipice! I gasped and blinked and reached to steady myself against the stonework. There should have been a door here on to a balcony of some sort, but there was none. Just a ragged opening in the wall of a house perched high above the city, with a sheer drop down the front of the building on to broken stone and earth sixty, no, eighty feet below.
    The voice growled in my ear again. ‘Don’t look around,