Demons of Ghent

by Helen Grant

  The wooden framework of the guillotine was very clean and polished. There was nothing to suggest that it wasn’t in perfect working order, although Veerle assumed that the castle staff must have immobilized it in some way. There were notices warning visitors not to touch the machine, but inevitably there would be a few people who couldn’t resist trying to lie down on it and put their neck through that hole for a photograph. She looked at the blade again and thought, Not me.

  They wandered on into a room full of torture instruments: a wax figure in manacles, a rack with a dummy stretched out on it, a scold’s bridle, a wooden bed. The bed was the worst, Veerle thought, because it looked so innocent. It was obvious what all the other instruments were for: the weights, the screws, the blades. The bed just looked like a bed, and it was impossible to stop your imagination running riot about whatever might be done to someone lying on it.

  Are we going to have to come back through here in the dark? she wondered uneasily. She looked at her watch. It was past five.

  ‘We should get going,’ said Bram quietly.

  As they left the torture exhibition, another of the castle staff came strolling in. Veerle kept her face turned towards Bram, avoiding the man’s eye. No point in giving him a good look at her. Ever since they had entered the castle she had been conscious of a growing feeling of nervous tension; it had begun with little electric prickles in the pit of her stomach, but by now she was so keyed up that she was almost thrumming like a dynamo; she felt as though her eyes must be glowing and every hair on her body standing on end. The man must notice something if he saw her face. She kept her eyes averted, trying not to chew her lip.

  They hurried through the rest of the tour. When they got to the door downstairs, they waited, watching to see whether any of the staff were pacing the grounds. Someone was disappearing round the side of the castle wall, but otherwise there was nobody in sight.

  ‘OK,’ said Bram under his breath. They made for the entrance door again, moving quickly so that the pack on Veerle’s back thumped against her uncomfortably. It was all luck now. If they were seen going in or if the guard was still in the weapons room, there was barely time to complete the tour and enter a third time, not to mention the fact that it would instantly arouse suspicion.

  They met nobody. They entered the keep and climbed the stairs to the spot where Bram had embraced Veerle and whispered the plan into her ear. There they stopped, and listened.

  Silence. They waited for a couple of minutes, and there was still nothing. No footsteps, no clearing of the throat, no creaking of the floorboards. If the guard was in the weapons room he was standing as still and silent as the waxworks in the torture exhibition. At last they risked peeping round the corner. The room was empty.

  Veerle felt an intense rush of nerves, as though she were on the apex of a rollercoaster ride, poised for the downswoop.

  Bram was already starting across the room; he had to tug her arm to get her to move. ‘Come on.’

  She followed him, skirting the glass cases with their sinister cargo of ornate and embossed weaponry, moving inexorably towards the grey bulk of the chimneypiece as though it were some great mouth sucking them in. All the time Veerle was listening for the footsteps on the wooden floor, the sound of a door closing – anything that would tell them that they were not alone. Her hearing was strained to the point of hypersensitivity. Her own and Bram’s footsteps sounded so loud that they must surely be audible to anyone within the keep. Her breathing was the creaking of a titanic bellows.

  They reached the fireplace and Bram took something out of his pocket. A compact head torch, a tiny LED attached to an elasticated headband. The light was small but dazzling, and when they stood on the hearth looking up the chimney Veerle had her first proper glimpse of their hiding place.

  I can climb this, she realized immediately. But it’s going to be hard staying up there.

  The chimney was constructed of grey stones fitted together like bricks. At the bottom it was as wide as the hearth itself, but it very quickly tapered to a much smaller aperture leading upwards into the dark. The stones and the crevices between them would provide plenty of holds, but she and Bram would have to brace themselves against the sides of the chimney to stay up there, and that was going to be a huge strain on arms and legs. The rucksack too was going to be a pain, but she couldn’t see anywhere to stow it. There was no time to think about any of that now.

  ‘You first,’ said Bram under his breath. He stood back to give her room to climb, keeping the light directed onto the stone wall.

  Veerle stepped up to the wall, ran her fingertips over it, searching for holds. The first few moves were going to be the most difficult; the hearth was too wide for her to attempt any bracing move. She found a stone that had a slight lip on the upper surface that she could grasp with her fingers, and tried to step up onto the wall, but as she shifted her weight onto her foot she felt it slipping off.

  Verdomme.

  She stepped down again.

  Don’t panic. Focus.

  That was easier said than done when every nerve and fibre in her body seemed to be straining for the sound of someone approaching.

  You’ve climbed more difficult things than this.

  Veerle stepped onto the wall again, and this time she didn’t slip. She went carefully up the stones until she was right inside the chimney. In the enclosed space she was able to brace herself against the sides but the rucksack was a nuisance; it was impossible to rest her back against the side of the chimney without something digging in.

  Bram was already following her up, and she was on the point of whispering to him that he should wait a few seconds while she wriggled out of the straps and balanced the bag on her lap instead, when he froze.

  They both heard it. Close by, a door had closed.

  Verdomme verdomme verdomme!

  Veerle wasn’t sure whether it was the door round the corner by the other fireplace, or the one that led to the staircase to the roof. In either case they probably only had seconds before whoever had come into the room was within sight of the fireplace. Veerle looked down into Bram’s blue eyes and saw that they were wide with alarm. He glanced downwards and she saw the beam of the LED sweep across the red bricks of the hearth.

  She wanted to say, Don’t do that – whoever it is will see the light, but she didn’t dare speak. Climb, climb, she willed him. She was sick with fear that he would lose his grip and fall back into the fireplace.

  Where is the guard? she thought, and then they both heard him. Firm, decisive footsteps pacing the polished wooden floor. If he were not already close enough to see Bram’s legs in the fireplace, then he must be within the next few seconds.

  Veerle heard Bram draw in a breath, tensing himself for a lunge upwards, and her stomach seemed to roll sickeningly.

  Surely he must hear that?

  Bram moved smoothly upwards without falling, but Veerle heard the fabric of his sleeve whispering against the stones and her whole body seemed to clench with the agonizing certainty that he had been heard.

  There was no time for Bram to make himself comfortable. He wedged himself in the chimney a little below Veerle, with one long leg braced against the opposite wall, a position that must have been excruciating to maintain for more than a few seconds. Both of them held their breath.

  To Veerle’s horror the footsteps were coming closer, resounding crisply on the boards.

  Did he see Bram? she wondered feverishly.

  The unhurried pace suggested he hadn’t, but then, they were trapped in the chimney, weren’t they? He could take all the time he liked; they weren’t going anywhere.

  The effort of remaining motionless inside the chimney, braced against the stones, was so great that she could feel herself trembling, her muscles screaming with the strain.

  The footsteps were so close now that Veerle guessed the man was almost level with the fireplace. She glanced down past Bram, grimacing with the growing pain in her limbs, expecting at any moment
to see a cold angry face appear beneath them, looking up as he spoke urgently into a walkietalkie. She was aware of Bram trembling too as his muscles cramped.

  He’s going to look up the chimney. Any minute he’s going to . . .

  The footsteps passed the fireplace without a pause. Now Veerle could hear them retreating up the room. A pause . . . a change of pace indicated that the man had reached a corner and turned. If he were completing a circuit of the room, he would have to pace down the other side before leaving.

  Please, please don’t let me fall; Veerle offered up a silent prayer. She had the heel of one hand pressed against the stones, the fingertips of the other curled around a tiny hold. Discomfort was rapidly turning to pain, the pressure on each point of contact excruciating, but she dared not try to move.

  Still those footsteps were pacing the room with agonizing languor. Veerle heard a tiny exhalation from Bram, who must have been suffering twice as badly as she was. She shot him a glance, praying that he was not about to lose his grip and fall into the fireplace.

  There was a kind of echoing click, and suddenly it was darker; the lights had gone out in the weapons room. A moment later both of them heard a door close.

  They waited a few seconds more to be sure that the guard had really gone, that he really was on the other side of the door, on his way out. Then Bram dropped from his perch in the chimney, staggering as his feet touched the bricks below and his cramped legs took his weight.

  Veerle climbed down after him, concentrating grimly in the low light. Neither of them fancied striding out into the middle of the room. It felt too exposed, with the guard barely gone. Instead they pulled off their rucksacks, slid into a sitting position side by side with their backs to the wall, and let their cramped limbs relax. They looked at each other, and in spite of the strain and the nerves Veerle found herself grinning at Bram. She felt a sudden surge of warmth towards him, as though a barrier had gone down; force of circumstance had overwhelmed it, like a deluge overtopping flood defences.

  It’s insane to be here, doing this – trying to get the knots out of our muscles after hiding up a chimney together and hoping like hell we don’t get caught and arrested. Veerle looked into those very blue eyes, straight into them, not looking away, and she could see her own exhilaration reflected there. But he really gets it. He really does.

  Something passed unspoken between them, something that neither of them wanted to put into words. When Bram leaned in to kiss her, Veerle didn’t back away. She didn’t give him that look again, the keep off until I’ve made my mind up look. When his lips touched hers she didn’t pull back. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and at that moment there was no doubt in her mind at all. Her heart was racing, she was filled with an eager joy that blotted out everything else. There was nothing else she wanted to think about anyway; no part of the past or the future that wouldn’t spoil the moment, intruding like the tendrils of a weed pushing into the cracks between stones. She and Bram could have been the only two people on the planet; in a way they were because hardly anyone in the world understood her restless need to get away from her life. Bram, she thought. Her head was full of his name.

  The sound of a heavy door closing somewhere nearby recalled her to herself. She stiffened, her head turning, and Bram said, ‘It was the door downstairs. That’s it. They’ve closed up.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He nodded. They scrambled out of the fireplace, taking the rucksacks with them. For perhaps half a minute they stood in silence and listened, but it was clear that the building really was deserted and closed. With the lights out the room was very gloomy; as night began to fall it would be pitch dark, with only Bram’s little LED lamp to carve a tunnel through the blackness. They were really alone.

  ‘We did it,’ said Veerle in wonderment.

  28

  Bram and Veerle waited for nightfall before venturing to the top of the keep. They shared the limited rations they had been able to fit into their rucksacks along with bedding: a bar of Côte d’Or chocolate, a couple of apples, a chunk of Bellie cheese that Veerle had swiped from the fridge.

  ‘You really want to sleep out on the roof?’ she asked.

  Bram shrugged. ‘That was the idea . . . but I had the idea in the summer. I guess we could camp under the walkway, out of the wind.’

  ‘We’ll freeze to death.’

  ‘We can huddle together.’ He raised an eyebrow suggestively.

  ‘We’ll still freeze to death.’

  ‘Let’s sleep inside, then. There’s that bed in the torture exhibition if you want one.’

  Veerle shuddered. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘It’s getting dark.’ Bram nodded towards the window. The panes were small and made of thick, slightly tinted glass, so that whatever light there was entered the room in meagre rations. ‘When it’s too dark for anyone to spot us, we can go up.’

  Veerle put the last piece of chocolate into her mouth. ‘OK.’ When there was no more light seeping feebly through the thick windowpanes they picked up their bags and went upstairs, moving cautiously by the light of Bram’s head torch. Neither of them said much as they ascended the stone steps. The silence within the massive stone walls of the keep had a kind of grim density to it, pressing in on them like fog, and the sound of their feet on the stone rang out eerily, echoing off the rugged walls as though other footsteps were following them up. Bram went first, lighting the way, and as Veerle followed him she cast the occasional glance behind her into the blackness of the stairwell, reassuring herself that they really were alone. As the dim circle of light from the LED moved upwards, the blackness below seemed to seep up after them like a spreading stain. Veerle kept close to Bram. Her heart was thudding and the excitement she felt was not entirely pleasurable.

  The door at the top of the stairs was closed but it was fastened with simple bolts. Even before Bram had opened it, Veerle could tell that the wind had dropped. There was no longer that bitter howling sound from outside, and when the door opened the pair of them stepped out into a cold but clear and still night. Instinctively Veerle looked up for the stars, but there were none to see. The city lights gave the sky a strange opaque tint somewhere between grey and yellow, and the castle itself was lit up from below by powerful spotlights, so that it flamed like a birthday cake in the dark, obliterating the tiny points of light that were the constellations. Even the moon, which was nearly full, was faded and discoloured like a tarnished coin.

  Bram switched off the head torch. They put the bags down by the door and walked along the battlements together, moving slowly as their eyes adjusted to the dark. The illuminations below provided quite a lot of light, but still there were deep inky wells of shadow.

  After a while they stopped walking and stood side by side on one of the corner turrets, gazing out at the lights of Ghent and listening to the faint sounds of city life drifting up from below.

  No one can see us, Veerle thought. She loved the feeling that the upper reaches of the city belonged to her and Bram alone. Nothing about her life down at ground level gave her a sense of belonging at all; school would be out for her for ever next summer, and she knew that Anneke would like to eject Veerle from the flat and her life with Geert as soon as was decently possible. Up here, though, she belonged, and she could imagine herself and Bram exploring the brick ridges and ranges together for as long as there were new places and new routes to discover. She could imagine planning things up here, in a way she never did in her life down there. They could try that other castle, the one that had been built by Geeraard the Devil, if they could only find some way of getting in, or they could try to follow the canal. She wanted to ask Bram a thousand questions, including What was the longest stretch of rooftop you could traverse without coming down to ground level? In her imagination they moved all over Ghent, never descending into the pit of the streets.

  ‘Are you sure nobody down there can see us?’ she asked him. The streets below were well lit and she herself could pic
k out individual people passing to and fro along them.

  ‘Not unless we want them to.’

  ‘No one would believe we were up here.’

  ‘Maybe they will,’ said Bram. ‘I told Marnix what we were planning. He said he’d come later on when things are quiet, and see if we’d done it.’

  ‘He can’t get in, though,’ Veerle pointed out.

  ‘No, he’ll go up onto one of the rooftops over there.’ Bram pointed. ‘I told him to wait until after midnight when there’s nobody around, and I’ll signal him with the torch.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘Then he won’t be able to tell me it’s impossible any more.’

  They looked at each other, laughing.

  ‘He’s not there now, then,’ said Veerle.

  ‘No,’ said Bram. ‘Nobody’s watching us now.’

  He drew her in closer to him and bent his head to kiss her.

  29

  In the end they went inside for a while; it was simply too cold on the roof. They explored the staircases and rooms of the keep, moving cautiously by the light of Bram’s head torch. It was strange to have so much room to move about, so many spaces to explore, and yet to find the outer doors so immovably secured. It made Veerle think of those large and complicated habitats for pet rodents, which gave the creature the impression of space and movement when in actual fact it was fully enclosed with no way out. She and Bram were sealed inside like wasps in a jam jar. She wondered whether it would be possible to get out if they had to, if some emergency overrode the need for secrecy. Whom would she even call?

  As midnight approached they went back up. Veerle was beginning to feel tired. Does Bram really want to sleep out up here? she wondered as they went out of the doorway onto the roof. The night was very clear and dry, but the temperature had dropped even further. She was beginning to think about the morning, about how they were going to manage it. We’ll have to hide in the chimney again. She shivered, rubbing her arms. That’s going to be nasty, if we’re already stiff from sleeping out. It occurred to her too that she was going to have the rest of the day to get through; the Amsterdam trip didn’t end until late the next night. Maybe we can spend it together . . .