No one returned the greeting, but Father Andreas knew he was not alone. Someone had entered the building. He could feel a presence. It wasn’t due to any special talent or divine intuition. He could now hear the sound of heavy breathing, a scratching on the hard tiled floor, perhaps from hobnailed boots. He wondered, for a moment, if a soldier had entered, looking for respite, maybe injured at the front? After all, the front was only a few miles from here. It might be possible.
“Hello?” he called again, a little stronger this time. “Is any one there?”
He tilted his head to one side and listened intently. The grating of a chair being pushed roughly to one side drew his eyes into the darkness in the middle of the nave. He peered, but all he could see were shadows.
“I know there’s someone there,” he called, trying to sound both assured and welcoming, but aware that his voice wavered with the final words. He could feel his heart beat hard within his chest, a trembling in his hands.
He placed the snuffer on the candle tray and stepped cautiously to the front of the ambulatory, as a servant might do when called before a tyrannical king. He peered out over the Cathedral blackness, his eyes flicking backwards and forwards, urgently trying to see someone, something. He tried to speak again, but the shadows cast from the few remaining candles appeared to rise up amongst the pews and overwhelm him. There was someone who chose not to be seen with him in the Cathedral, of that he had no doubt. He drew back, defeated with fear, his hand to his chest, his eyes wide. He stole past the candles to the antechamber. He was already tugging off his top garments by the time he’d reached it. He heaved the robe over his head and hurried to the cupboard to hang it on the peg.
It was then the shadow came at him.
It was the beast’s eyes which snagged him first, like a hook in a fish’s mouth, the smouldering rage of its glare grasping and holding his gaze. He tried to scream, but his tongue was lame, even after he felt sharp teeth tearing into the soft flesh of his left arm.
There was no pain, no fear, just surprise when he looked to his side and saw the tattered remains of his butchered limb gushing blood onto the crouched feral figure in front of him. Vast and repugnant, its fetid coat knotted, its wicked eyes staring upwards into the Priest’s with hatred and malevolent rage. It readied itself to spring.
Father Andreas fell backwards as the thing leapt, a filthy thick taloned claw catching him hard on the side of the face. It sliced effortlessly through his skull, gashing open the Father’s eye socket, splattering the far wall of the chamber with torn shards of bone and flesh from his face.
He stumbled, trying to raise his one remaining arm in defence or supplication. Blood gushed out of his face, pumping down his cheek and into his mouth. Finally he found his voice, as if the rich liquid had invigorated his tongue. All he could do was scream. He managed to get to his feet and shuffled around in a circle, disorientated, trying to rebalance himself against his missing limb, staggering like a drunkard towards the door.
For a moment, the beast sat back on its haunches and watched, its head turned to one side like a cat teasing a dying mouse. It lingered, almost hidden in the shadow of the antechamber, as if in that moment finding pity in the floundering, weeping figure of the Father. It watched him stagger through the opening and out onto the ambulatory, before rising up and bounding after him with giant, effortless leaps.
There was a swagger to the way the thing moved, a terrible elegance and might, as if every step brought the beast pleasure, a pride in the magnificence of its prowess.
Andreas threw himself down the steps of the apse, tumbling into the pews at the front of the assembly. His head spun. He could feel the life blood pumping out of him, the front of his cassock drenched, his face sticky and tasting of iron. He held up his right hand, slick with gore, and turned it over in attempt to kiss his signet ring.
A dreadful weight thudded into the back of him, his chest thumped hard, as if he had been shot. He felt his legs crumple and he tried to let himself fall, to collapse into the thick embracing darkness of death creeping in from the periphery of his vision. But he found his legs wouldn’t buckle, as if, in his final moments, they had found new vigour, new life. He allowed a last joyous thought to wander through his slowly dying mind, that the Lord had granted him new strength at the end.
He turned his one good eye downwards and despairingly saw how the beast’s taloned claw had punched straight through his body, the wicked thing dripping with his lifeblood from the gaping hole in his ribs.
He realised he was unable to move, unable to breathe. His mind faded. He felt his body rise and be thrown backwards as the clawed hand pulled away, thudding him hard into the bottom step of the apse. He slumped over onto his back, staring up at the Cathedral’s ceiling. How he loved that ceiling, he thought, as death swept in and his vision faded to blackness.
SIX
1889. THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
“We all have to face our own demons,” Father Adansoni insisted, before the prying eyes and questions of the Holy See. “This boy here is no different,” he said, indicating the cowed figure of Tacit next to him.
It was the first time Adansoni had been called to the Inquisitional Chamber. It was the first time he’d brought a child, found during one of his missions, with him back to the Vatican. He felt dwarfed by the size of the chamber and the council that circled before him. But he also found that the command in his voice had not failed him. “Demons he may have,” he called, “but he has taken such giant steps since I found him. His progress has been remarkable!”
He took a step forward and thrust his hands before him, clenched, as if in chains. “When I found him he was malnourished. He could not speak. Now, he is stronger and has refound his tongue. He speaks Polish, his native tongue, but already he has a grasp of many languages. Italian. French. German. This he does but a month since I began to work with him. His capacity for learning is incredible. Physically he is like no twelve-year-old I have known. He is strong, like an ox.”
Adansoni let his hands drop to his side. “I feel he is also my responsibility,” he continued, his voice now plaintive, “and I must do the best for him. I found him. I rescued him from that place. I have brought him into the Church.”
“No, you have not brought him into the Church,” croaked an ancient white-haired Cardinal from beneath a skull cap of scarlet, seemingly too big for his shrunken head. “You have brought him into the Vatican. You had no right to do so.”
“But there is something about the boy,” Adansoni replied firmly, “something I cannot define.”
“If you expect him to stay, Father Adansoni,” spat another from the council gathering, “which undoubtedly you do, for why else would you have brought him here, you must explain your actions to us.”
“We do not take in waifs and strays on the whim of travelling missionaries,” the decrepit white-haired Cardinal continued, only his mouth moving so the rest of him appeared to be made of stone.
“There is a strength within him, a strength about him, an almost tangible feeling of power. I have never felt anything like it before from anyone I have met. One can almost feel it emanate from within him.”
“You use bold words,” a voice from the right of the watching council called. “What exactly are you trying to suggest?”
Adansoni paused and gathered his breath. His heart beat hard in his chest. He steeled his resolve and turned to face the Cardinal. “I’m not trying to suggest anything,” he lied. “I merely feel he would be an excellent addition to the ranks of young acolytes in the Catholic Church, here, in the Vatican.”
“If you bring young ones to the Vatican, it is usually a sign that you think them of the calibre to join the Inquisition. Is that what you are suggesting?”
“No!” answered the Father firmly, feeling a heat rise within him. “Absolutely not. Not all who come before the Holy See are bound to that path. I see this boy achieving much within the office of the Vatican. I do not see him joining the ranks
of Inquisitors.”
“It is most unusual,” a voice to the left of the white-haired Cardinal called, “to take in acolytes from unrecognised sources. We have standards. We only pick from the very finest families and recognised seeds.”
“Then perhaps we should change?” Adansoni retorted, to which there was a sharp intake of breath from the congregation. The Father felt foolish at his hot-headedness and quickly moved to soothe the pricked emotions. “Forgive me, Cardinals. I say only that I feel … no, I know he will be a good addition to our Catholic family and faith. Do not ask me how I know, but I do.”
“And what do you say, boy?” the white-haired Cardinal asked, putting his eyes onto Tacit. “What have you got to say for yourself?”
Tacit raised his head and stared vacantly around the room. His impression was that the place smelled wrong. There was no warm odour or earthy richness in the bewildering dark of the chamber, no comforting fragrance of the mountainsides that he knew so well, no stench of freshly cut goat leathers hardening in the autumn sun, no heady nourishing bouquet of succulent soups and freshly baked bread. Cold stone and metal, along with the hint of wood smoke and pork flesh now long gone, were all Tacit could detect, as he stood bowed in fear close to Father Adansoni in the centre of the room.
And then in a voice and a language Tacit never realised he possessed, words formed on his tongue. “In Deo speramus,” he spoke, lifting his head to face his questioners – “In God we trust.”
SEVEN
23:40. MONDAY, 12 OCTOBER 1914.
THE FRONT LINE. ARRAS. FRANCE.
“It’s like staring into fucking hell’s abyss,” Henry heard one of his soldiers mutter darkly, between puffs on his cigarette.
Henry looked across at Sergeant Holmes. “We need to go into the trench, Sergeant,” he said resolutely, recovering enough of his wits to consider their predicament. They couldn’t stay where they were any longer, exposed on the parapet of the German trench. He looked back to the ditch full of of slaughter. “We need to search it.”
He’d never gone over the top before, never raided an enemy’s trench. For the last month Henry’s unit had been told to dig in and hold their position. All he knew was defence. The responsibility of taking the offensive to the enemy terrified him. He swallowed at his dry throat and thought of his schoolmasters, what they would say if they could see him now. “Round up a few groups of men, Sergeant, those willing to go forward. I don’t expect them all to go.”
“Will do, sir” Sergeant Holmes replied, storming along the trench lip and barking orders to the waiting soldiers.
Henry looked about the blackened, broken landscape and wished to God for a little more humanity to be found somewhere in the world to put an end to this dreadful conflict. Further up the line, heavy guns pounded and the horizon burned yellow. He looked down at the earth and noticed his right boot stood on a piece of paper. It was a picture of a family drawn by a child, a drawing of a father, mother and two children alongside a dog and a cat, disfigured and partially erased by mud, blood and water. But underneath were written the words, clearly visible in careful and precise German writing, ‘Möge Gott Sie sicher zu halten’ – May God keep you safe.
Those unfortunate men selected to go beyond the German front line found only decimation in the support trenches. Most had refused to climb into the infernal squalor, sitting firmly within no man’s land, unwilling to go back, unable to go on, even under the caustic bark of their Sergeant’s threats. Those who had the courage to enter quickly paled and scampered back before they had ventured too far into the complex of twisting high-sided trenches. There was a wickedness which had befallen this place, far greater and more inexplicable than the usual horrors of the war, that even the most sanguine of men felt. Their fear was made all the more terrible by the need to shuffle forward by touch, moon and torchlight alone. A pall hung over the place, blacker than anything created by man’s own invention.
The patrols came back not long after they had headed out, their hands and uniforms crimson from the blood sodden earth, their senses shaken from the scenes within, and no signs of life to report.
“The thing that is puzzling me, sir,” confessed Sergeant Holmes, stepping forward to light Lieutenant Frost’s cigarette, “the thing I cannot understand is, well, where are all the bloody bodies?”
“Good question,” Henry replied, drawing deep on his cigarette. He noticed blood on its paper and quickly withdrew it from his mouth. “I was thinking exactly the same thing.” He corrected the cap on his head, pulling it tight with its peak. “And if our lads did this to Fritz, where the hell have they gone to?”
Standing in the German front trench, they could feel the moisture of freshly spilt blood seep through the leather of their boots. Henry moved his weight uneasily from foot to foot in a vain attempt to stop the oozing into his socks.
The plod of heavy feet in the sodden mud drew the Lieutenant and Sergeant’s attention away down the trench. Henry used the interruption to discard his bloodied cigarette. A squad of Tommies were driving a dishevelled group of German soldiers like cattle ahead of them. The prisoners looked half insane, moaning and crying, clawing at their faces, tearing at their uniforms. They yelped and yelled unfathomable words, as if their minds had been broken, their tongues somehow too fat for their mouths.
“We found these poor buggers,” said a British soldier, peering at them pitifully, “just down the way, in a dugout. They’d blocked up the entrance with stones and mud, sir.”
Another soldier from the squad squeezed himself forward in the narrow trench, eager to be heard, to have his role in their discovery recognised. “There was bits of uniform and all sorts over the opening. I had to put my foot right through it. To make a hole. To peer through. Took some doing. The buggers didn’t want to be found.”
“We found ’em though,” the first Tommy continued, “but they’re all we found of old Fritz,” he added, swallowing and curling the edges of his mouth up disdainfully. “Looks like the rest of them they’ve scarpered, sir, good and proper. That’s if they even got away. We’ve been quite a way in, sir, and there’s nothing but, well, blood and bits all the way.” He went to wipe his eye, but caught sight of his bloodied hand in the flicker of torch light and decided against it.
Henry turned to the muttering, jabbering group of six prisoners, behaving as if maddened by a cruel sickness. He called out to them in German, but they continued their inane babble, seemingly oblivious to anything except their own private torment. Henry spoke again, more strongly this time, commanding one of them, a Corporal, to speak. He took hold of him by the shoulders, turning him sharply.
“Soldier!” he said, trying to shake him into some semblance of consciousness. “Tell me, what has taken place here?”
The soldier waggled his head, his face scrunching up with pain and bitterness. He began to weep, falling forward into Henry’s body and clutching hold of him in a deep embrace.
“Wölfe,” he wept bitterly into Henry’s shoulder. “Wölfe!”
Henry held the soldier to him, the Corporal shuddering and weeping like a wounded child. He could feel the shape of his uniform against his, the weight of his body pressed into him, the smell of earth and blood in his hair. The enemy held on, tightly buried into Henry’s chest. Henry drew his hand to the back of the soldier’s head and pulled him tight to him.
For several moments they stood like that, enemies embraced, until, finally, Henry turned his eyes to Holmes. The Sergeant gave a knowing nod and turned to address the British patrol.
He cleared his throat, almost apologetically at first. “Right then, let’s get these poor buggers out of here.” He stepped forward to usher them along the trench.
“Take them back behind our forward line, Bill,” said Henry, extracting himself from the Corporal to watch the shambling mob stumble past. “I doubt any of our men would fancy bunking down in this trench for the night, do you?”
“Not bloody likely, Lieutenant,” muttered the Sergean
t, finding a pathway out of the bloodied killing ditch into no man’s land. “Mind you, sir, they is all soft. They could all do with a bit of hardening up, if you ask me.”
“How about you, chaps?” asked Henry to the three nearby soldiers. “Fancy a night in this trench?”
“With all due respect sir,” the nearest soldier replied, “not on your bleedin’ Nelly!”
Henry chuckled grimly. “Go on then, get back to our hole.”
Eagerly they bolted for the lip of the trench.
“Want us to send the word, sir, up the line?” asked one of them, peering back into the trench and the popular officer, “to pull back I mean, sir?”
“Pass it on to any you see, Dawson. I’ll walk along now and order any I find back. I think the Hun has buggered off. There doesn’t seem to be anyone about. Oh, and Dawson,” Henry called, “well done with those prisoners.”
“Not a problem, sir,” replied the young soldier, standing to awkward attention, his chest puffed with pride. He made as if to leave but something held him at the lip of the trench. “Sir, excuse me, sir, for asking but what do you think he meant when he said ‘Wolf’?”
“Dawson, I have no idea,” Henry muttered, looking up into the dirty pitch of the sky. “Seems to me are many strange and terrible things in this war. Whatever demons those poor bastards witnessed, I sincerely hope we never have to face them ourselves.”
EIGHT
19:43. MONDAY,12 OCTOBER 1914. PARIS. FRANCE.
Cardinal Bishop Monteria stood silently in the gloom of Notre Dame’s central aisle, bowed by the weight of his advanced years and the month’s labours. A darkness was falling across Paris and the Cardinal’s mind.
Resting heavily on a cane long carried for ailments in his hips, he watched with eyes possessing an eagerness and anticipation at odds with his elderly frame. From every corner of the far nave, the church’s army of Priests, pastors and church hands scurried about their duties, ordering, erecting and arranging the pulpit and transepts for a large forthcoming congregation, as if their very lives depended on it. On Saturday, 17 October, within just five days, many of the world’s leaders, dignitaries, aristocracies and religious officials would descend upon the Cathedral for an unparalleled and combined prayer for peace. A single act to stop the war, an attempt to bring the carnage to an end before the slaughter grew even worse.
The Darkest Hand Trilogy Box Set Page 3