Red Grow the Roses. Janine Ashbless

      Prologue

       I’ll sing you Ten-O,

       Green grow the rushes-O!

       What is your Ten-O?

       Ten for the Ten Commandments:

       Nine for the Nine Bright Shiners:

       Eight for the April Rainers:

       Seven for the Seven Stars in the Sky:

       Six for the Six Proud Walkers:

       Five for the Symbols at your Door:

       Four for the Gospel Makers:

       Three, Three the Rivals:

       Two, Two the Lily-White Boys, clothèd all in green-O.

       One is One and all alone

       And ever more shall be so.

      (Folk song)

       There is a City. Maybe you live there: eight million people do. Maybe you’ve visited it. Maybe you’ve only heard of it. It’s an ancient place, founded by the Romans on a marshy floodplain watered by a great tidal river. Its foundations go deep into the sucking mud of history. But these days its population is young, its faces diverse. More than three hundred languages are spoken in its schools and malls and streets. Proud new buildings are hatched among the husks of ancient architecture.

       There is only one person left who still remembers the rushes and the bog myrtle and the wild ducks in what is now the heart of the City. And she is not a living person, not in any real sense.

       Come to the City. Take photos of the famous landmarks on your cell phone. Shop for designer clothes and tourist tat. Walk the frantic streets of the theatre district at night. What will you see, there in the neon dark? Is that shadow behind you someone following? Is that reflection in a plate-glass window horribly distorted, or horribly accurate? Are those eyes that watch from the night even human? They must be, surely. He looks like a man – though his eyes reflect the dimmest of lights in crimson circles.

       Maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe he’s not human. Maybe he’ll take you in his arms and you’ll feel his strength – a strength that makes it impossible to fight him, even if you did want to. But you’ve already lost the will to resist, that moment when he looked into your eyes and showed you all his hunger and his promise. You knew then. You knew, quite suddenly, that this is what you are for – what we are all for – with our warm beating hearts and our aching sexual needs.

       We are for them.

       He’ll hold you like a lover. You’ll feel his breath on your throat and think to yourself: it’s so cold! His fingers will be

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