‘Oh really? That they were kidnapped and forced to drive three hundred kilometres by two guys the inspector talked rough to on the train? That they were then calmly handed back the stolen car keys, and, to celebrate, they began to download a child porn movie? When the flics get through with them – if they ever get through with them – Monsieur et Madame L’Inspecteur will still have the pimp to reckon with. And his dear old mother lives just down the road from them, remember? And they’ve just run up an uninsured bill of three thousand Euros on the pimp’s cell phone, and got him branded a paedophile to boot.’
‘Christ, Abi. That’s genius.’
Abi used his own cell phone to call up a local taxi. ‘You’re right. It is. Why bother to kill people when you can simply ruin their lives with a little creative imagination?’
7
Genevieve de Bale, dowager Countess of Hyeres, stood on the steps of the Chateau de Seyeme and watched as her adopted twin sons descended from their taxi. They were the last of her children to arrive, and she was marginally displeased.
‘You were due in at 8.10.’
She leaned towards her personal assistant, Madame Mastigou, who consulted her brooch watch and mouthed the correct time to her.
‘Abiger, you are twenty-five minutes late. I had expected you to join me on the steps to greet your brothers and sisters. You are the new Count now. As I am a widow and you are still unmarried, it would have been proper for you to have welcomed the family at my side. Instead, I have had to stand here alone.’
Abi kissed Madame, his mother’s, hand, and touched it to his forehead. Then he took up position a step or so below her on the stairs. ‘Vaulderie and I had a little business to attend to. You would have approved, I promise. Please forgive me.’
On the opposite hillside, Joris Calque fiddled with his night glasses, cursing the gibbous moon and the clouds that were obscuring it.
The Countess bent over and kissed her eldest son on the crown of his head. Vau hurried expectantly towards her, but was rewarded by a simple one-handed cupping of the face. He gave his brother a ‘nothing ever changes’ look, and hurried inside.
‘Of course I forgive you, my darling.’
The two of them – mother and adopted son – stood staring out into the surrounding gloom for a few moments, as though an invisible cine camera were recording them for posterity.
Then Abi took his mother’s arm and they followed Madame Mastigou back inside the house.
8
Calque threw himself back on his inflatable armchair and felt around for his cigarettes. Normally, at this time of the evening, he would never have dreamt of lighting up for fear of giving away his position – but today’s events were just cause for celebration. He was in with a fighting chance again.
The butler, Milouins, had been the first to emerge from the house at around four o’clock that afternoon. After a short pause to sniff the air, he had begun to rake the courtyard into something approximating Zen spirals. Then one of the footmen had appeared with a bucket and a squeegee mop to wash down the stone steps. Finally the gardener had entered unexpectedly from stage right and had attempted to snatch the rake back from Milouins – an altercation ensued, which the gardener lost.
The gardener had then retreated without his rake, scuffing the once immaculate gravel behind him as he went. The footman, plainly recognizing on which side his bread was buttered, had jettisoned whatever remained in his water bucket in the direction of the gardener’s retreating back.
Calque made a swift mental note to ascertain the gardener’s identity as a prelude to approaching him for indiscreet information about the household setup – disenchanted domestic servants, embittered spouses, and disinherited relatives had always formed a major part of his stock-in-trade.
After the initial flurry of preparatory activity there had been a pause of three hours, during which Calque had dozed off on six separate occasions – he had been on the job since early that morning, and was not in the first flush of youth. At about eight o’clock, during a gap between dozes, the Countess had appeared on the steps with her assistant, the ever-elegant Madame Mastigou, at her side. A certain amount of clock consulting had then gone on. At 8.15 the first of a total of five separate cars had drawn up in the driveway.
Each car had then disgorged its occupants, each of whom had gone up to the apparently immovable Countess to kiss her hand and to receive a series of four kisses – two on each cheek – in return.
Then the cars had retreated, leaving the Countess and Madame Mastigou to contemplate the abandoned courtyard like the final guests at a Wagner evening.
Not long afterwards a local taxi had lurched into view, and two men had emerged from its maw. The deteriorating quality of the light had made it impossible for Calque to make out the men’s faces – either one or both of them appeared to be the exception to the Countess’s rule on stasis, however, for she actually moved a step or two towards them in welcome, implying that they were marginally higher in the pecking order than the other arrivals.
One of the men had then disappeared inside the house, leaving the Countess and the other man standing in a pool of light halfway down the entrance steps.
By the time Calque had succeeded in refocusing his night glasses, the pair had turned around and gone inside.
9
Madame Mastigou sat with her pen poised over a sheet of finely milled Florentine writing paper and waited for the Countess to break her silence.
There was a palpable sense of expectation in the hermetically sealed assembly room. This was the first time in five years that all the Countess’s adopted children had been brought together in one place, and Madame Mastigou could sense the tension behind her employer’s otherwise frozen countenance.
The butler, Milouins, had been delegated for guard duty outside the hidden door in the library, and one of the footmen was acting as outrider in the salon, ensuring that no one could make their way through the household’s cordon sanitaire unannounced. Inside the secret chamber the Countess stood at the head of the table, with her children, in strictly descending order of seniority, taking up the remaining seats to her right and left.
They ranged in age from a mature twenty-seven, in the case of Lamia de Bale, the oldest girl, to around eighteen, In the case of Oni de Bale, the youngest male – a virtual giant, nearly seven feet tall, with the trademark red eyes and unpigmented skin of the true albino.
Abiger and Vaulderie, being the oldest males present, and therefore in legal receipt of the countcy and viscountcy through agnatic primogeniture, had been allocated the two senior seats, despite being two years their sister’s junior. At the very end of the table, a chair had been left empty. In front of it lay a sword, a signet ring, and a velvet brocade sash in memory of their brother, Rocha.
To the clinically detached eye it would soon have become apparent that each of the Countess’s adopted children was graced with some defining mark or characteristic that separated them from the herd.
The oldest girl, Lamia, had a prominent strawberry birthmark that spread across half of her face – seen from one side, she was beautiful, whilst from the other side her beauty was disguised by what, at first glance, appeared to be a piece of blood-soaked surgical gauze. Her younger sister, Athame, was dwarfish in stature, with tiny hands and feet. Berith, the young man sitting below her, had a harelip. Rudra de Bale limped as the result of an untreated club foot, and Aldinach de Bale was a natural hermaphrodite, something which only manifested itself in the marked delicacy of some of his movements – in reality there were times when it suited him to dress as a woman, and other times as a man.
Further down the line came Alastor de Bale, who suffered from cachexia, a wasting disease that made his near neighbour, Asson de Bale, appear even larger than his 22-stone frame would normally warrant. The 21-year-old Dakini de Bale had preternaturally long hair, which framed a face that seemed frozen in a sort of malevolent rictus, and her twenty-year-old sister, Nawal de Bale, suffered from hi
rsutism, which gave her the visage of an animal.
Each of the thirteen children had been told, since earliest childhood, that they had been marked out in this way by God as a sign of His especial grace. As a result they each bore their affliction not as an affliction, but more as a mark of special selection. The Countess had also explained to them that, thanks to the prevalence of a certain sort of guilty sentimentality in much of the twenty-first century’s increasingly decadent populace, they might even be able to use their afflictions to divert suspicion from themselves – and out towards innocent parties – in the event of a crisis.
Glancing about the room, the Countess could barely disguise her satisfaction. It was at her direct instigation that her husband had resuscitated the almost moribund Corpus Maleficus. The first time he had described the cabal to her – and his family’s inextricable link to its aims over a history spanning nearly eight hundred years – had been just a few days before their marriage. The Count had sounded almost apologetic, as if he had been forced to summon up a hoary old skeleton from the family vaults in order to forestall his future wife learning about it from other, less well-intentioned, sources.
The Countess – the accustomed recipient, since early childhood, of the complete attention of her extended family thanks to her position as sole inheritrix of both her father’s and his distaff relatives’ extensive fortunes – had realized its glorious potential at once. She could feel herself moving, inchmeal, from one non-carnal embrace to another, infinitely more preferable one. Before this moment she had merely sensed, thanks to her father’s subtle hints, that she would be investing in something more than simply a name with her fortune, but she hadn’t realized exactly what she was buying into. Now she knew for certain. ‘You can’t let something like this just die.’
Her elderly fiance had smiled. ‘How can one resuscitate a skeleton? The outer body and epidermis began to expire alongside the final vestiges of the age-old aristocratic order after the disasters of the Great War. The inner body, along with its vital organs, finally perished alongside my manhood, on Monday the third of June 1940, during the German bombardment of Paris. Do you remember Jean Renoir’s film, La Grande Illusion? The characters played by Pierre Fresnay and Erich von Stroheim? The Old Guard aristocrats recognizing each other, and realizing that they had both reached the end of their usefulness? Well Renoir was right. We are tired and irrelevant.’
The Countess had turned on him, revealing for the very first time the inner fire that drove her. ‘Von Stroheim was not an aristocrat, but the son of a Jewish hat-maker. Fresnay’s father was a Huguenot, and therefore a hater of Catholics. And Renoir’s father was a hack painter who depicted his women as if they were made out of marzipan. Who are such people to tell you that your class is doomed?’ She turned on him. ‘I won’t have it. A man doesn’t need a functioning member to be a man. An institution doesn’t need the sanction of the State to give it weight. The flower of France’s chivalric tradition should not need the permission of its inferiors to celebrate its past achievements and prepare its future triumphs.’
The Count had continued smiling. ‘Future triumphs? For reasons that are entirely beyond my control, it seems that I am to be the last in my line. More than a thousand years of history will die with me, my dear. Where are these future triumphs you speak of going to come from?’
And so she had told him – told him of her plans to adopt a new generation of soldiers for the de Bale cause. Told him of the true extent of her fortune, and what they could both achieve with it. And gradually his face had started to light up. His expression to change. ‘You really think this is possible? I am an old man.’
‘But I am not. I shall represent you. Represent our family. Fight for our status as hereditary peers of France.’
‘Why? Why should you do this?’
She had hesitated for some little time, almost as if she had no answer to his question. Then she had turned to him, taken his hand, and placed it above her heart. ‘Because it is my destiny.’
It was only later, and well into their marriage, that the Countess had realized just how elegantly the Count had steered her towards exactly the conclusion he himself had so fervently desired.
10
So. It was time. The Countess laid aside the document whose ancient codification had caused so much trouble to the inquisitive police Captain – what had been his name? Clique? Claque? – the one who had so dogged her footsteps in the run-up to the death of her eldest son earlier that summer. She knew its entire contents by heart.
‘Who are we?’
‘We are the Corpus.’ Her children responded as one.
‘Which Corpus?’
‘The Corpus Maleficus.’
‘And what do we do?’
‘We protect the realm.’
‘And who is our enemy?’
‘The Devil.’
‘And how shall we defeat him?’
‘We shall never defeat him.’
‘And how shall we unseat him?’
‘We shall never unseat him.’
‘So what is our purpose?’
‘Delay.’
‘And how do we procure it?’
‘By serving Christ’s dark shadow.’
‘And who is that?’
‘The antimimon pneuma. The counterfeit spirit.’
‘And what is his name?’
‘The Antichrist.’
‘And how do we serve him?’
‘By destroying the Parousia.’
‘And what is the Parousia?’
‘He is the Second Coming of Christ. He is the brother of Satan.’
‘And how shall we know Him?’
‘A sign will be given.’
‘And how shall we kill Him?’
‘He will be sacrificed.’
‘And what shall be our reward?’
‘Death.’
‘And what is our law?’
‘Death.’
‘And how shall we achieve it?’
‘Anarchy.’
‘And who are our brothers and sisters?’
‘We shall know them.’
‘And who are our enemies?’
‘We shall know them.’
‘And who is the Third Antichrist?’
‘We shall know him and guard him.’
‘And who is the Second Coming?’
‘We shall know Him and kill Him.’
The Countess made the reverse sign of the cross, followed by the reverse sign of the pentacle, just as her son, Achor Bale, had done just a few short hours before his death.
‘And Holy is the Number of the Beast.’
The children intoned the answers to the Countess’s questions with their eyes turned up into their eyelids – as they spoke, their hands also made reverse crosses, reaching from their crotch back over to the nape of their necks. This was followed by the sign of the six-sided pentacle, also from the direction of the lower to the upper body.
When the invocations were over, the Countess walked the length of the room to stand behind Achor Bale’s empty chair. She kissed her fingers and laid them tenderly on the hilt of his sword. ‘You all realize, of course, that Rocha’s death occurred as a direct result of investigations he was undertaking on behalf of the Society?’
There was a generalized intake of breath.
‘It was at my instigation that he followed the man Sabir. It was at my instigation that he intervened following Sabir’s discovery of the lost verses of Nostradamus. He died fulfilling his duties to the Corpus.’
Abiger glanced across at his brother. He was scarcely able to keep the grin off his face. He knew what was coming.
‘A spy in the apostate Nostradamus’s household – a spy in the pay of one of the noblest of your ancestors, Forcas de Bale – alerted his master to the verses’ potential contents. The Count was already on his way down to Agen when news reached him of Michel de Nostredame’s death. When he arrived, the verses had already been dispersed and the seer buried. It took ne
arly 450 years for the verses to reappear. We in the Corpus have long memories. An oath is an oath for us. Once bound, always bound.’
‘Once bound, always bound.’ The children whispered in echo of her words.
‘Abiger…’ The Countess turned towards her eldest son. ‘The time has come for you and your brother to travel to America. You will identify the man Sabir. First, you will extract the secrets of the prophecies from him in whatever manner you may deem appropriate. Then you will take revenge for the murder of your brother. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly, Madame.’
The Countess turned towards her eldest daughter. ‘Lamia, you did not make the reverse cross. Kindly make it now.’
Lamia’s hand crept towards her throat. The rufous complexion marring one side of her face turned, if anything, a deeper red.
‘I am waiting.’
‘I cannot do it, Madame.’ Lamia shook her head.
Her brothers and sisters stared at her like dingoes alerted to a kill.
‘Abiger. Escort your elder sister to her room. She will remain there until she is able to offer a suitable explanation for her behaviour. Apprise Milouins of the situation. The rest of you may take the blood oath. You will be told when you are needed.’
Oni de Bale glanced down at his mother from his great height. ‘Do we others continue with our work, Madame?’
The Countess turned away, motioning to Madame Mastigou, who was cleaning a small ivory receptacle. Then she turned towards her dwarfish daughter, Athame, a sufferer from Ellis-van Creveld Syndrome. A polydactyl, Athame was unconscionably dexterous with all of her twelve fingers. ‘Athame. Live up to your name. You may do the necessary cuts for the blood oath.’
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘Mother?’
‘I heard you, Oni.’ The Countess turned and laid a light hand on her youngest son’s forearm. She glanced up into his eyes, her neck forced back against the collar of her elegantly tailored 1950s Dior suit the better to take in his span. ‘Always continue with your work. That is the way to please me. Stir, stir, stir. Keep the broth moving. Never let the commoners rest at ease. The Devil is a hungry angel – he will come calling if we don’t forestall him. That is your primary job.’
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