Song of the Damned

by Sarah Rayne

  She seized Olivia’s hand in both her own, and said, ‘Livvy, I’m so pleased you’re in. I hope you don’t mind me turning up unannounced. It’s great to see you – far too long, isn’t it, and people always say they’ll keep in touch after school, and they really do mean it, only somehow things get missed and life crowds in. What a nice cottage this is. I’ve never been here before, and I always wanted to, and the thing is that Phin – you met Phin Fox last night, didn’t you? – told me about this wrangle you’re having with the local authority and their revolting compulsory purchase order plot.’

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ said Olivia, helpless against this cheerful flood of talk.

  ‘I’d love some. I’m supposed to be seeing the printers later – you wouldn’t believe the typos they’ve got in the draft leaflets for the bicentenary; Hats Madeley had fifty fits. I’m borrowing Phin’s car to drive there, but the appointment isn’t until eleven, and everyone at the school was immersed in other things, so I thought it would be nice to walk down here on the off-chance that you might be in.’

  She followed Olivia into the kitchen, and looked through the windows onto the trees. ‘This is a lovely spot, isn’t it? You are lucky to live in a forest. I do like forests – I always think you might stumble into Narnia or something, or find the pathway to the enchanter’s castle or the end of the rainbow with the pot of gold. On the other hand, you might encounter wolves, of course, and let’s face it, Livvy, there are all kinds of wolves in the world, aren’t there, and I’ve met a few in my time – well, I daresay you have as well. I don’t mean Phin, of course; he’s certainly not a wolf. Is that my coffee? Thanks. Anyway, about this CPO and the planners and plotters … Oh, yes, let’s go into the study, I love studies.’

  She sat in Gustav’s old chair – it was annoying to see that she somehow made it look comfortable, which Olivia had never found it to be on account of the seat sagging so badly – and said, ‘Now then, I am horrified and appalled about the plotters, because an Englishman’s home is his castle, isn’t it? – I expect that should be Englishperson. So after Phin shut himself away with his research this morning, I had an idea.’

  It did not sound as if Phineas had told Arabella about his phone call to Olivia. Olivia was aware of a small secret jab of pleasure at this.

  ‘I wondered,’ said Arabella, ‘if this cottage’s past might be used to fend off the plotters. Because isn’t “Infanger” a corruption of “infangentheof”? Wait a bit, I’ve got it all here.’ She burrowed into her handbag, and produced some printed notes, and her glasses. It had always annoyed Olivia how the donning of spectacles altered Arabella’s whole demeanour. She suddenly seemed scholarly and serious.

  ‘I looked it up online early this morning on Phin’s laptop,’ said Arabella. ‘And I found that infangentheof is an ancient law from the Dark Ages. The literal translation is “in-taken-thief”, and it permitted the owners of a piece of land the right to mete out justice to miscreants captured within their estates, regardless of where the poor wretches actually lived.’

  She looked at Olivia hopefully. Olivia said again, ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was an Anglo-Saxon arrangement,’ said Arabella, returning to her notes, ‘supposedly from the time of Edward the Confessor, but when the Normans came barrelling in, they adopted it for their own nefarious use – I suppose it helped them to keep the rebellious Saxons in their place. The law fell more or less into disuse in the fourteenth century.’ She put the notes down, and said, ‘Now then, if the Cresacre monks were given the right of infangentheof all those centuries ago – it’d be well before they were booted out by Henry VIII, wouldn’t it? – and if that right extended over the land where your cottage stands, and if the cottage’s name comes from it, then it might be something you could use against the planners and the plotters.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  Arabella got out of the chair and began to walk round the room, as if she might find fragments of the cottage’s past strewn in corners, or links to its history pushed under a floorboard. ‘How old is the cottage?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. Mid-1700s, I think. No, probably a bit earlier. I don’t think it was very large when it was first built. One or two extra rooms and bits got added over the years.’

  ‘Is it possible it was built on the site of a much older building – maybe the foundations of that old monastery?’

  ‘And named for the ancient law,’ said Olivia, thoughtfully, and with the words came the memory of Gustav saying Infanger’s cellar was part of the original foundations, and probably even part of the old monastery.

  ‘Yes. And if that’s the case,’ said Arabella, ‘I’ll bet that every preservation society within a hundred miles would rear up and object to it being bulldozed for a new road. They’d want to preserve such an old fragment of a lost bit of English law. We could make the whole thing public, start a protest group – local TV and local radio and things. People would chain themselves to railings and take up residence in trees.’

  Olivia had no idea how seriously to take any of this, but she said, ‘I’m not sure if I’d want publicity.’

  ‘You could keep in the background,’ said Arabella, at once. ‘We’d need to be sure of the facts first, of course, but there might be old land deeds that would help. What I thought is that we might get someone to take a look at the cottage. A good builder ought to be able to spot signs of an earlier structure in the foundations. I’ve got a definite memory of you once mentioning a cellar – we all had to write an essay on local houses or Cresacre’s past once, d’you remember? End-of-term project, I think it was, or a local exhibition, or something like that. I wrote about Chandos House, which Hats Madeley said wasn’t eligible because nobody knew anything about it, and Davy said I was venturing into the realms of gothic fiction. But you wrote about Infanger Cottage because you lived in it.’

  ‘That’s years ago,’ said Olivia. ‘I’d only just come to live here then. I’m surprised you remember.’

  ‘I do, though, because I thought it was fascinating. You said there was a cellar and that it was much older than the cottage. You said there were ancient bricks and a stone arch or something.’

  ‘There is a cellar, but I never go down there. I haven’t done for years. There’s never been any reason to. It’s a bit spooky, actually.’ Alarm bells were starting to sound in Olivia’s mind.

  ‘Cellars are always spooky, aren’t they?’ Arabella sat down on the piano stool. ‘But what we could do, we could ask those local builders – Firkin & Co, aren’t they called, and I always think it’s a vaguely saucy name, although beautifully English rural, of course – we could ask them to take a look at it. I expect they’ve done odd bits of work on the cottage over the years anyway, so they’ll most likely know the place.’

  ‘I really don’t think—’

  ‘They wouldn’t charge anything,’ said Arabella, a bit too quickly for Olivia’s liking. ‘Not if they thought they were going to get a good bit of publicity out of it.’

  ‘I’m not sure if the cellar’s even safe,’ began Olivia, then stopped, because Arabella had caught sight of the photograph of Gustav that hung over the piano. ‘Gustav Tulliver,’ she said, softly. ‘I’d forgotten what a striking man he was. It’s in the eyes, isn’t it? Deep-set. You’d even say they were brooding. Like Heathcliff or somebody. He’d retired by the time I came here, and I don’t think I ever even spoke to him, but I used to see him around quite often.’

  Olivia managed to say, ‘He used to potter around the grounds a bit. Miss Madeley didn’t mind, and it did him good. He had heart trouble – angina. It made him look a bit hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked.’

  ‘I bet he was quite a looker in his younger days,’ said Arabella, which Olivia thought was exactly the kind of insincere nonsense she would have expected from Arabella, because Gustav had not been a looker at all, not ever.

  ‘It’s nice that you keep this photo of him over his piano. What’s the silver chain that’s
strung across it?’

  She was staring at the thin silver chain on which Olivia had threaded the ring with the black stone she had found that night in the cellar. She had never shown it to her uncle, but after he died she had thought he would have liked the small link to Ginevra, whom he had written into his opera. She had always thought of it as a memory of Ginevra herself, as well. Ginevra, who had died here, and who was still here.

  Arabella said, in a strange voice, ‘There’s a silver ring threaded on the chain. With a black pearl set in. Olivia, where on earth did this come from?’

  The alarm bells were sounding again, but Olivia said, ‘Oh, it’s a … a family thing. I don’t know the story behind it. Why?’

  Arabella did not answer the question. She said, ‘Can I look at it? I’ll be very careful.’ Before Olivia could think how to refuse this perfectly normal request, Arabella had reached up to the photograph, unhooked the silver chain, and taken the whole thing across to the window to study it more closely.

  Silence closed down, then Arabella turned back into the room. She said, ‘This is really odd – did you say the ring is a family thing? An heirloom or something, d’you mean?’

  ‘I don’t really know. Why?’

  ‘Because,’ said Arabella, slowly, ‘I’d be ready to swear it’s the very ring we gave that girl who vanished from Cresacre. She was in my year – her name was Imogen Amberton.’

  The worn, slightly faded study blurred, and Olivia thought for a moment she might faint. She gripped the arms of her chair so tightly that the wooden edges dug into her palms. The small pain caused the room to steady slightly, and she became aware that Arabella was still speaking.

  ‘D’you remember Imogen, Livvy? I expect you do, because you sang in the choir with her, didn’t you – she had a beautiful voice and she was always talking about going on those TV talent shows. Only then she vanished, and there were police enquiries and things, although I don’t know if they ever really established what had happened to her. But this …’ she was still holding the silver chain with the ring between her fingers, ‘this is what we gave her for her birthday a couple of days before she disappeared. She was heavily into anything goth and she wanted something really unusual and goth-like for a body piercing she was going to have.’

  Olivia managed to say, ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘One of the girls found this in a local antique shop. The man said it had an odd history; something about it having belonged to one of the nuns at the convent – the famous ones who disappeared. We didn’t know whether it was true, but we thought Imogen would like the story, so we passed the hat round and bought it for her birthday – her seventeenth. She loved it, and she was going to take it to the jewellers to get the piercing done. I don’t know where on her body she was going to have the actual piercing, because you could never tell what Imogen might do. Then two or three days later she was gone.’ She looked at the ring closely again. Olivia clenched her fists, praying Arabella would not notice the engraved initial. It was very faint, though – she had only seen it under a direct light.

  ‘You know, I’m sure this is that ring,’ Arabella was saying. ‘It’s so distinctive. And so small – the antique shop said it had probably belonged to a child originally, although how that tied up with the nuns … And I know it’s all years ago, but I remember it clearly because of Imogen disappearing straight afterwards.’ She was still holding the ring, frowning. ‘It can’t be the same one, though. Because if it is, how on earth could it have got here?’

  She looked at Olivia, and there was an expression on her face that Olivia did not like – an expression she did not think she had ever seen on the flighty, frivolous Arabella’s face before.

  She said, firmly, ‘It can’t be the same one, of course. Not the exact same one.’

  ‘No, of course it can’t.’ But the puzzled look was still in Arabella’s eyes as she replaced the photo and the ring on its thin chain.

  Olivia thought: she’s not going to let this go. She’ll go away and tell people. Phineas – Harriet Madeley. They’ll start asking questions. Phin’s already curious about the Lemurrer being linked to Cresacre anyway. Between them, they’ll decide to tell the police, and the police will be interested, because no one ever did know what happened to Imogen – the case might still be open. They might get the antique shop to identify the ring.

  A chilling realization was starting to creep through her. A realization that a way would have to be found to prevent Arabella from talking about this.

  Arabella was saying, ‘So what about this idea of the cottage and the infangentheof law thing? What do you think?’

  From out of the tumbling panic, Olivia heard herself say, ‘I think it’s quite a good idea. It’s worth exploring.’

  ‘Could we take a look in the cellar ourselves? To see if it looks worth asking the Firkins to come out. I don’t want to push in,’ said Arabella, ‘but I’d love to help if I could.’

  Of course you want to push in, thought Olivia, angrily. You always did. And now you suspect something peculiar’s going on, because of finding that ring, so you’ll find all the excuses you can to push in very firmly indeed. That’s why you’ll have to be stopped. Silenced.

  She said, ‘We could look at the cellar later. You said something about going to the printers this morning, but how about after that?’

  ‘That sounds great. I can come straight back here after I’ve seen the printers. I’ll take the car back up to the school to park, then walk back down, so I’d be here around twelve, I should think.’ She reached for her bag, and Olivia saw her glance at the book about guillotine legends lying on the desk.

  She said, ‘Oh, that’s a book I mentioned to Phineas – he’s looking for background, or something, and my uncle used it for his own research, so I said Phin could borrow it.’

  ‘I can take it with me now, if you like.’

  ‘Would you? Thanks.’

  Arabella picked the book up and flipped through a few pages. ‘He’ll love it,’ she said. ‘He delves into the past with such intensity always.’ A small, reminiscent smile curved her mouth as she said this, and Olivia hated her all over again.

  ‘In fact at the moment,’ said Arabella, ‘he might as well have time-travelled back to the French Revolution, or even further back, to when there were all kinds of peculiar medieval practices. He’s reading up on all kinds of peculiar customs.’ She was not looking at Olivia as she said this, for which Olivia was grateful. ‘I’ll see you later, Livvy. Thanks for the coffee.’

  After she had gone, Olivia sat in the study for a long time, replaying parts of the conversation in her mind. How likely was it that Arabella would tell people about finding and recognizing the silver ring? Phineas had not noticed it and, even if he had, it would not have meant anything to him. Olivia would get rid of the ring, of course, but that would not stop Arabella from telling people … She had a sudden terrifying vision of police officers appearing at the cottage. What would they say? ‘Miss Tulliver, we have information that you have in your possession a ring belonging to a missing girl from twelve years ago.’ ‘Miss Tulliver, we want you to come with us to the police station for questioning. And while you’re there, our men will be excavating the cellar.’

  With the thought, memory looped backwards – back to another dark and deeply buried memory that the old cellar held in its shadowy depths.

  TWENTY-ONE

  After Imogen Amberton’s death all those years ago, Gustav had changed.

  He had always been a quiet, reticent man; now he became melancholy. He spent most of his time shut away in his study, but he did not seem to work on his beloved opera. When Olivia asked about it, he said, curtly, that it was finished, and there was nothing more he could do to it. Once or twice he went in quest of a possible staging of it – meeting a small touring opera company or a concert performer who might be interested – but nothing ever came of any of these meetings.

  Olivia got the manuscript and the handwritten music score
photocopied at the local library, and found addresses of music agents in a reference book there. Gustav composed a very careful letter, which took him several days, and eventually allowed the letter and The Martyrs to be sent to several of the agents. There were only rejections, though. ‘Not what opera companies are looking for at present,’ said one, politely enough. ‘Feel we could not justify representing the work,’ said another. A third, with what Olivia felt was unnecessary unkindness, said that the work lacked originality, and a fourth actually asked if Mr Tulliver was familiar with Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, which was generally regarded as the definitive musical work on this fragment of history. Olivia managed to intercept this letter and burn it before Gustav saw it. He saw the others, though, and he shrugged, and said genius was frequently misunderstood. You had only to look at the great writers and painters and composers to know that. The Martyrs would find its place one day, and he, Gustav Tulliver, would find his own place with it.

  After a while he began to complain of chest pains. Quite bad, he said, but they would pass. There was some breathlessness as well, and eventually he was persuaded to consult the GP. Angina was diagnosed, and a regime of gentle exercise and various pills – together with the right kind of food – was prescribed. Gustav refused to follow this regime and he threw the pills away on the grounds that doctors knew nothing about him and he was not being told what to do or what to eat by a parcel of quacks.

  The closeness that had sprung up between himself and Olivia over Imogen’s death vanished. In the months that followed, in a relatively short time, he deteriorated into a querulous, uncooperative middle-aged man, whom life had disappointed, who could not be bothered to find anything of any worth to fill his days, and who would not try to improve his health. At first Olivia thought it was Imogen Amberton’s death that had brought this about, but after a time she began to wonder if it might also be The Martyrs. Now that it was finished, he seemed to have no goal in his life, and little reason for even living.