Song of the Damned

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Exactly right,’ said Arabella approvingly, when he rejoined her. ‘Suitably academic but not stuffy. I am pleased about you, you know. Did I ever say that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’ll say it now. Or is that being shockingly forward?’

  ‘You can be as shocking as you want,’ said Phin.

  But, even with Arabella’s light-hearted company, as they drove to Cresacre School, Phin was unable to entirely shake off the impression of that faint beseeching echo that had brushed across his mind inside the church. It was when you saw the carving, said a small voice. That’s when it happened – you know quite well that it was.

  Arabella was enthusiastically explaining to him various landmarks along the way.

  ‘That’s the road that used to go up to an old mansion, only it was abandoned and left to crumble for years, and nobody ever managed to trace the owner. Then it got bombed to smithereens during World War Two, and not even the National Trust could put it together again. We used to be taken on nature rambles out there – it’s rather a sad old place. Overgrown grass and parts of walls where the house used to be. Every few years somebody makes a new effort at tracing the descendants or tries to find deeds or something, because they keep thinking they ought to flatten the ground and build on it. They never do, though.’

  ‘Who did own it?’ Phin thought he was finally managing to push aside the strange emotion he had experienced inside the church. ‘Some local squire, would it have been?’

  ‘Probably. Whoever he was, I don’t think anyone remembers much about him. I expect he was one of those purple-faced eighteenth-century gentlemen who drank too much port and had a habit of smacking village wenches on the rump and making bawdy suggestions to them. I wrote an essay about it once for a local history competition, but they said it was defamatory.’

  ‘Probably the old squire broke his neck while he was out hunting,’ said Phin.

  ‘And left a welter of debts and land muddle and scandalous speculations?’

  ‘Along with a sprinkling of bastards,’ agreed Phin. ‘Might it have been the Chandos family who lived there? The church was peppered with their name on memorial stones and things. Chandos House? Chandos Manor?’

  ‘True, O King. And Chandos House does ring a faint bell, although it sounds somehow respectable and I would have liked a randy old squire rollicking through hayfields, but … Oh, this is the turning to the school.’

  ‘Nice old trees,’ said Phin, turning into the school’s driveway.

  ‘Yes. The stones along the side of the road are from the original monastery. They’ve been there ever since anyone can remember. When I was here I tried to organize a midnight feast round them to see if the ghosts of the monks could be tempted out. But somebody blew the gaff on us and Hats ordered all the good little prefects to patrol the corridors.’

  ‘You weren’t a prefect?’ said Phin, already knowing the answer.

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Arabella, with a giggle. ‘Miss Davy, the deputy head, once said I was the rotten apple in the barrel. That kind of comment could scar a person for life, couldn’t it? Oh, and just down there – d’you see? – that windy little track with all the trees that looks as if it might lead to the witch’s cottage from Hansel and Gretel … That leads to Infanger Cottage. It isn’t a witch’s cottage, of course, and the only witch at Cresacre was Dilys Davy. There’s something about the cottage standing on land that was ruled by one of those really ancient laws. Something that goes back to Magna Carta, I think. That’s where Olivia Tulliver lives. The story is that it was given to old Gustav as a bribe to get him out of the school. And now,’ said Arabella, ‘here’s the school itself.’

  Phin supposed he had expected Cresacre School to be imposing and also slightly awe-inspiring. Imposing it certainly was, but very far from awe-inspiring.

  ‘Not what you were expecting?’ said Arabella.

  ‘No. It’s friendlier. More welcoming than I thought it would be.’

  ‘That’s probably the lingering ghosts. Genevra’s ghost, even.’

  ‘I’m becoming increasingly curious about Genevra.’

  ‘It’s most likely only the ghosts of these nuns or even the monks.’

  There were not, of course, any visible traces of the priory, but it was certainly possible to pick out remnants of the former convent. Within the weathered grey stones of Cresacre School were alcoves and niches, which could once have housed statues. Over the main door, what must be the school crest was carved into the stonework. The windows were tall and wide, so that it was easy to imagine sunlight pouring through, falling across heads diligently, or resignedly, or even rebelliously bent over books. Or to visualize crustings of snow on the glass, but with the warm school scents of radiators and games rooms and energy inside.

  Phin said, ‘Were you happy here?’

  ‘Actually, I was. It’s not the thing to say that, of course.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You? At your school?’

  He hesitated, then said, ‘Eventually I was. I didn’t fit in for a long time.’ He did not say he had escaped from the feeling of isolation into the world of music. ‘I was hopeless at games,’ he said, ‘and I liked English lit and history. You weren’t supposed to like things like that. But then—’

  ‘But then?’

  ‘One rainy afternoon, a football match was cancelled and the whole school was incarcerated in the gym. We were supposed to be writing essays about something boring, but there was a piano in the corner …’ He grinned reminiscently. ‘I was still a novice pianist, really – I’m not actually much more than that now – but on that afternoon I bashed out everything from souped-up Beethoven to jazz and then raunchy rock stuff for them. I played partly from memory and partly by ear, and in the end everyone was shouting the choruses of every song we knew, and I don’t think anyone noticed all the wrong notes.’

  ‘And they loved it,’ said Arabella, delightedly. ‘Of course they did. You’ve never played for me,’ she said, suddenly.

  ‘We’ve never been anywhere where there’s a piano.’

  ‘There’s one in there,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the school. ‘Two, in fact. Assembly hall and a rehearsal room. At least, there used to be. And I shouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t even an organ in a cellar somewhere, with a disfigured hunchback in attendance, bashing out Lloyd Webber chords at midnight. Will you play something for me while we’re here? When no one else is around, I mean.’

  ‘Well, I might.’ Phin found himself smiling as he considered the possibilities of this. Astonishingly, he could see himself playing one of the slushily romantic songs of the 1930s and 1940s to Arabella. Maybe that all-time great love song, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, which Fred Astaire had sung in a film. Astaire had not had the finest voice in the world, but he had sold the song’s sentiments brilliantly.

  He put the car into gear and drove up to the front of Cresacre School.

  More traces of the school’s former incarnation were visible inside, as well. Some of the wood panelling might well date back to the nuns’ time, although now it formed a background for framed lists of the school’s head girls and head boys, and the niches held sports trophies.

  There was the vague impression that the school was uneasy with the students all away for half-term, and that it did not quite know what to do with itself. But someone who seemed to be an admin assistant came out to meet them in the hall, and pointed the way to Harriet Madeley’s private apartment on the top floor.

  ‘I’ve never climbed to these dizzy heights,’ observed Arabella. ‘It’s a bit of a breathless ascent, isn’t it?’

  Miss Madeley’s sitting room had views over fields and the tops of trees, and within the trees Phin glimpsed the roofline of a small building that he thought must be Infanger Cottage.

  ‘We’re very grateful to you for coming all this way to help us,’ said Miss Madeley, shaking hands and studying Phin with interest. Her hair was dark with grey streaks and sh
e had a long upper lip, both of which gave her the appearance of a tabby cat. Phin was not fooled into thinking she had a tabby cat’s personality, however.

  A gruff-voiced, thin-nosed lady was introduced as Dilys Davy, the deputy head. Arabella’s witch, thought Phin. Miss Davy accorded Phin a brisk, dry handshake, but he noticed that the nod she gave Arabella was somewhat perfunctory.

  ‘It’s a delicate situation we have here,’ said Harriet Madeley, seating herself behind a small leather-topped desk and fixing Phin with a very straight look. ‘I gave you a summary of it in my email, didn’t I, Mr Fox? Olivia Tulliver wants the school to stage her uncle’s opera.’

  ‘And if you don’t agree,’ said Phin, ‘she could cut off funds for your scholarship.’ He met the steady regard levelly, and saw a small nod, as if his statement had been accepted. ‘I have to ask this, though – is it out of the question to actually stage the opera? Because as something written by a local man and making use of local history—’

  ‘It seems a logical idea?’

  ‘At first look, yes. And there’d be time for a local company to get it together, presumably?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Have either of you read Tulliver’s opera?’ asked Phin. ‘Sorry, that sounds like a misprint of Gulliver’s Travels.’

  ‘No, we haven’t. But we do know that it’s been turned down by more theatrical agents and music directors than you can imagine,’ said Harriet.

  ‘The word is that the rejections were pretty scathing,’ said Dilys Davy. ‘Even then, we might have considered it more seriously, except—’

  ‘Except that we believe a number of those rejections more or less said it was a straight steal from another opera. Something called Dialogues of the Carmelites by Francis Poulenc. D’you know it?’

  ‘Yes. Not well, but I do know it. It’s the story of a group of Carmelite nuns who were beheaded during the French Revolution. It’s very dark – very moving, though. Has The Martyrs got French Revolution content?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘We think Gustav depicts it as the reason for the Cresacre nuns’ disappearance. The solution to the old mystery. And,’ said Harriet, fairly, ‘it is a reasonable theory.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Are you worried about copyright infringement if you put it on?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Miss Davy. ‘I looked up copyright law, and it lasts for seventy years from the death of the author – that’s correct, isn’t it?’

  ‘In a general way, yes. And Poulenc died in 1963,’ said Phin, thoughtfully. ‘Which means his work would still be within copyright.’ He frowned, then said, ‘But if you did put it on, even if it’s a blatant copy, it would be a small audience – a semi-private event.’ Dilys was handing round cups of tea from a tray on a side table, and as Phin accepted a cup, he said, thoughtfully, ‘On the other hand, it wouldn’t be the first time that Dialogues des Carmélites attracted a copyright squabble. Poulenc wrote it from an unfilmed screenplay, and I think there were some arguments about who owned what. I’d have to look it up, but I think it was all amicably resolved. Poulenc did make a good many acknowledgements to his sources, though.’

  ‘Which means copyright on that particular opera could still be a bit sensitive.’

  ‘It might. What would you like me to do? Read the opera to see if it’s worth staging? Compare it with Poulenc’s work to see if it’s a copy? If it is, you could use the copyright concern for declining it politely.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Harriet. ‘But I’m not going to enter into any arguments about Gustav’s opera without being very sure of my ground.’

  Phin thought it would be a brave person indeed who engaged in battle with Miss Madeley. He reminded himself that he did not need to be in the least bit intimidated by academic tabby cats, and that he was here by her explicit invitation.

  ‘Tell me about Olivia Tulliver,’ he said. ‘Does she have a job of any kind?’

  ‘Not in any conventional sense,’ said Harriet. ‘I believe Gustav left a bit of money.’

  ‘She got tangled up with one or two men who made inroads into it, though,’ put in Dilys.

  ‘I heard that,’ said Arabella. ‘Didn’t she do an Open University course at some stage?’

  ‘Yes, and I think she managed to get on to the panel for marking exam papers for them. I shouldn’t think that would bring much money in, but presumably it’d bring a bit. She’ll get a small fee from the Tulliver Scholarship trust.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Phin, ‘that she’ll let me see her uncle’s opera?’

  ‘Mr Fox, Olivia Tulliver would walk across burning coals barefoot to get someone like you interested in that opera. I’ll give you her phone number – she won’t answer the phone to me.’

  Phin took the number. ‘I’m assuming the opera will be in the form of the book – that’s the actual storyline of the opera,’ he said, in case they were not familiar with the term, ‘and that there’ll be a music score with it.’

  ‘I should think so. Whatever else Gustav Tulliver was or wasn’t, he was a musician, and he actually did quite a lot of good work here on that side of things. He was the one who created the school choir, in fact.’

  ‘Would it be all right if I played some of the music here? I’d only need a piano for an hour or two. To get an idea of the music.’

  ‘Of course you can use the piano,’ said Harriet. ‘There’s one in the assembly hall, and another in the small rehearsal room. Arabella can show you.’

  Phin resolutely quenched images of Fred Astaire and ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, and set down his teacup with determination. What he was about to say next might be greeted with incredulity and even hostility. But he could not quench the memory of that small, disturbing echo he had sensed in the church. So, despite being aware of a jab of apprehension, he said, ‘Miss Madeley – Miss Davy – I don’t know how relevant this is going to be, but I believe there might be a strand to your legend that no one has picked up. I don’t know if it links up to the vanished nuns or Ginevra – Arabella’s told me a bit about Ginevra,’ he said, as the two women looked up sharply. ‘Or if it’s something else altogether, but—’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘This afternoon, on the way here, I found a carving in St Chad’s Church that depicts something very macabre – something that’s also very rarely found in this country,’ said Phin. He was aware of Arabella looking at him quizzically. ‘I’m almost certain that it depicts an extremely old ritual – a musical ritual, in fact, that was banned by the church several hundred years ago.’

  ‘What kind of ritual? I hope,’ said Harriet, rather severely, ‘that you aren’t about to present us with evidence of satanic goings-on at St Chad’s.’

  ‘No, although heaven knows how a carving of it found its way to Cresacre. But possibly the present vicar and his predecessors wouldn’t have recognized it for what it is—’

  ‘What is it?’

  Phin said, ‘It’s a ritual that was followed in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France – occasionally in parts of this country as well. It was known as the Lemurrer – from the French l’emmurer.’

  Harriet Madeley said, ‘L’emmurer? To immure?’

  ‘Yes. Specifically,’ said Phin, ‘to wall up. That’s what the Lemurrer was. The walling up of someone.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Walled up alive?’ said Miss Madeley, at last.

  ‘I’m afraid so. While it was being done, the Lemurrer would be sung – complete with gestures – while the bricks were being laid in place.’

  The three women stared at him in horror. ‘That’s one of the grisliest things I’ve ever heard,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Yes. But,’ said Phin, ‘it looks as if it was done in Cresacre. Has there ever been any suggestion that the nuns from Cresacre Convent – or that anyone local – might have been—’

  ‘Walled up? I’ve never heard of it,’ said Harriet, slowly. ‘And I’ve been here for a fair number of years now, and it’s the kind of p
lace where memories are long, as the novelists like to say. Dilys?’

  ‘I’ve definitely never heard of it,’ said Dilys, managing to convey disapproval.

  Harriet turned back to Phin. ‘I’ll have a look at the carving as soon as I can,’ she said. ‘But it’s in the church. Why are you connecting it to the legend?’

  ‘Because,’ said Phin, ‘this school – these buildings – used to be the convent of those vanished nuns.’ He paused, and then said, slowly, ‘And because you’ve got the same carving here. There’s an image of the Lemurrer in this room. It’s over the fireplace. I’m looking straight at it now.’

  FIVE

  A second round of tea had been organized, and a couple of table lamps had been carried across and tilted, so that their light shone directly onto the fireplace carving.

  ‘It’s smaller than the one in the church, of course,’ said Phin. ‘But it’s perfectly clear.’

  ‘I’ve never paid it much attention,’ said Harriet. ‘Except to occasionally think it collects dust. I thought it was simply a series of figures for decoration.’

  ‘They sort of cavort all the way along the mantelpiece, don’t they?’ said Arabella, kneeling in front of the fire, occasionally putting out the tip of a finger to trace the carved figures.

  ‘I’ve seen illustrations of medieval woodcuts of the Lemurrer,’ said Phin, ‘and the hand gestures are unmistakable – very distinctive. I’ll see if I can find any of them online while I’m here and compare them, but I’m sure these – and the one in St Chad’s – are the same. The liturgy itself is long since lost, of course.’ He knelt down by Arabella. ‘Here and also here,’ he said, ‘you can see that the actions of the figures is almost like modern bricklayers.’

  ‘No hard hats, but I do see it,’ said Arabella.

  ‘The movements progress, don’t they?’ said Harriet. ‘Like the figures in Egyptian tomb carvings. The bricklaying starts here – on the left …’ She indicated.