Without a word their captors marched them through the cobweb-hung passages to the great hall. It was now lit by a number of candles, and the witch was there with Father Damien. She was clad in a mauve robe on which the signs of the Zodiac were embroidered in gold thread. It was the first time Roger had seen her face to face, and he conceded that the account of her beauty, given him by Charles, had not been exaggerated. The priest was wearing his mitre and a gorgeously-coloured cope, which swung open as he moved, revealing his genitals.
Charles’s hands were untied, and he was told to sit at a table upon which lay a parchment. As he took up the document and read it through, Aboe stood over him with a long, sharp knife.
The document declared his intention to receive instruction with a view to becoming a Roman Catholic, that he was about to be married to Miss Jemima Luggala by the ritual of that Church and that any children of the marriage should be brought up in the Roman faith. It continued to state that in no circumstances would he take any steps in an attempt to invalidate the marriage or live apart from his wife, unless it was her wish that he should do so. In a final clause, he made over to her his estate, White Knights Park, unreservedly, with the right to sell the whole or any part of it for her sole benefit.
It was a formidable commitment, but Charles knew that receiving instruction in the Roman faith did not commit him to changing his religion, and that if he chose he could make life so unpleasant for Jemima that she would be glad to leave him; so, without argument, he signed the undertaking.
The witch looked at Roger and said, ‘Mr. Brook, it was as an uninvited guest that you came here but since you are with us I feel sure you would not object to witnessing Lord St. Ermins’ signature; and, later, now that we are all friends, if you agreed to give the bride away a pleasant gesture it would be.’
Roger had read the document over Charles’s shoulder and realised that, apart from marrying Jemima and making over White Knights Park to her, nothing in it could compel Charles to act towards her as an agreeable husband. He said therefore that he would both sign as a witness and give away the bride. His hands were untied, and he signed with a smile, as he had been quick to realise that the more complaisant he appeared to be towards these people, the better chance he would have of turning the tables on them should the opportunity arise.
The whole party then proceeded along further passages and down a flight of stone steps to a large and lofty chamber, the floor of which was only a few feet above the surface of the lake. The outer wall of the room had collapsed, and Roger realised that it must be the big room he had seen from the end of the drive when making his first reconnaissance of the castle. He now saw by the moonlight that it was a chapel, at one end of which, raised on two steps, there was an altar consisting of a low, rough-hewn, smooth-topped slab of stone.
Jemima was standing near it. She was wearing a dress reminiscent of those worn in ancient Egypt. Her skirt was of white lawn, only knee length and heavily pleated. Her legs were bare, and she had golden sandals on her feet. Fichus of lawn fell gracefully from her shoulders to her waist, but only partially covered her breasts; between them, on a necklace of turquoises set in gold, hung a cruxansata. Framing her pale face her dark hair fell in ringlets to her shoulders; it was crowned by a circlet of gold, from the front of which rose a cat’s head.
On seeing the diadem Charles recalled that Katie O’Brien was a priestess of the Egyptian cat-god Bast. Roger, more cynically, thought how convenient the short skirt would be for the final act of the ceremony.
On the altar stood a blood-red, crooked cross. Father Damien genuflected before it, then turned round to face the others who had lined up in front of him. The hands of Charles and Roger were now free, but their ankles were still joined by cords that prevented them from moving swiftly. They also still had cords round their necks. Gog stood behind Charles and Magog behind Roger, ready to seize the ends of the cords at the first sign that the prisoners meant to make trouble.
Father Damien proceeded to intone the marriage service according to the Roman Church. Roger knew enough Latin to realise that, despite the bizarre surroundings, there was no deviation from it which could later enable Charles or himself to state on oath that the couple had not been properly married. At the right moment the witch, who was standing beside Jemima, reached behind the girl’s back, touched Charles on the elbow and pressed a wedding ring into his hand. He put it on Jemima’s finger and they both made the proper responses. Father Damien then gave them the orthodox blessing.
Even now Roger was still contemplating making a desperate effort to break up the ceremony, but the moment he took one short step sideways, Magog grabbed the cord round his neck and pulled it taut. He resigned himself then to witnessing the consummation of the marriage, which was to take place before them on the altar slab.
But that was not yet to be. The witch kissed Jemima, then drew her aside and said to the others, ‘We have yet to celebrate a second Mass to propitiate the great Bast and the master of us all, Prince Lucifer, Son of the Morning.’
At a sign from her, Gog and Magog jerked down the cords about Charles’s and Roger’s necks. As they put up their hands to prevent themselves from being throttled, the two peasants tied the ends of the cords to those attached to their captives’ ankles. Both struggled wildly for a moment, but with their heads strained back, effective resistance was impossible. Their arms were seized and their hands once more bound behind them. They were then dragged a few feet from the altar and forced down on their knees. In that position the slackening of the cords down their backs enabled them to breathe freely again, but they could not come to their feet without choking themselves.
Footsteps at the far end of the chapel caught their attention and caused them to look in that direction. Three figures had emerged from a doorway down there, and could be clearly seen in the bright moonlight: a man, a girl and a lamb. The man was Aboe. With his right hand he held the girl by the elbow, in his left hand he held a lead attached to a collar round the neck of the lamb. The girl was sheathed in the long, white robe of a conventional bride and had a wreath of orange blossom on her head. Since she was veiled Roger and Charles could not see her features distinctly at that distance, but they knew she must be Susan.
As she approached she could not have helped seeing them, but she showed no sign of having done so. Her steps were even and her head held high. Roger concluded that she had been either drugged or mesmerised. Charles’s face expressed shocked horror when he realised what was about to happen. Susan was about to be laid on the altar so that a Black Mass could be held upon her body. The priest would rape her. The lamb was to be sacrificed and, when it had been slaughtered, they would all be made to drink its blood. In agonised fury he shouted at the witch:
‘You can’t do this! You promised that no harm should be done to her! You swore it!’
Katie O’Brien’s scarlet lips opened wide in an amused laugh, then she replied, ‘You poor fool, you made me swear to God. I do not recognise your God. You should have made me swear to him you call Satan.’
‘May you rot in hell!’ Charles cried, and tried to get to his feet, but fell back again, choked by the rope around his neck.
Susan had not taken the least notice of the altercation. In front of the altar she halted. Aboe let go her arm and stepped back several paces from her. Father Damien began to recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards in Latin. Roger’s face was wet with sweat. Charles continued to hurl curses at the witch.
Suddenly Susan erupted from her trance-like stillness. Whipping a dagger from under her full robe, she turned and sprang with lightning swiftness at Jemima. Raising the dagger high, she screamed:
‘False friend! Liar! Judas! Betrayer of trust! You’ve brought your death upon yourself.’
Jemima, her dark eyes starting from her head in sudden terror, was just in time to throw up her hand and grasp Susan’s wrist. For a moment they struggled violently. The priest abruptly ceased his blasphemous prayer. Aboe leapt forward, but he ha
d been standing a dozen paces away on the left side of the altar. Katie, to the right of it, was much closer. Springing toward Susan, she made a grab at the hair at the back of the girl’s head, but her fingers closed only over the veil. The jerk upon it threw Susan off balance. The two girls fell in a writhing heap on the stone floor.
Aboe threw himself on Susan and dragged her off Jemima, who remained groaning where she lay, the hilt of the dagger protruding from her right breast.
The witch fell to her knees, threw her arms round her daughter, raised her head to her own lap and moaned, ‘My darling! How could this have happened? The drug could not have taken effect. How did she get possession of that dagger?’
In a hoarse voice Jemima panted, ‘I gave … gave it to her. And … and I didn’t give her the drug.’
‘But why, child? Why?’ the witch asked in an agonised voice.
‘Because … because …’ came the gasping reply. ‘That stinking beast, Father Damien. He … he has been pestering me for weeks. He came to my room … my room three nights ago. I … I was sound asleep. He ripped the bedclothes off and … and was on me … on me before I realised what … what was happening. To … to be avenged on him I … I gave Susan the knife. Told her what to do. Pretend … pretend to be drugged then … then kill him with it.’
Jemima’s eyes closed, her head sagged and those about her realised that she was dead.
Sobbing, the witch came to her feet. For a moment she looked slowly round as though half dazed. Then her glance fell on Susan. Her beautiful face became distorted with rage, and she screamed:
‘It is you that killed her! You’ve killed my beautiful daughter. After you’d been raped during the ceremony, I’d meant to let you go. To throw you out. But not now! Not now. Prince Lucifer would prefer human blood to that of a lamb representing Jesus. After we have offered up your virginity, your throat I’ll cut myself.’
Turning her flashing eyes on Aboe, she yelled, ‘Throw the bitch on the altar. We’ve said prayers enough. Hold her down for Father Damien.’
Aboe towered above Susan, holding her arms behind her back. Shifting his grip, he picked her up and threw her face upward on the altar. Father Damien grinned down at her. His mouth was working, and saliva ran from the corners. Screaming, Susan fought with tooth and nail. Her veil and the wreath of orange blossom had fallen off. Her auburn hair was in wild disorder as she jerked up her head and bit Aboe savagely in the arm. He let out a yelp of pain, then called Gog and Magog to his assistance. Gog grabbed her hands and pulled them up above her head. Aboe seized the hem of her skirt and wrenched it back, revealing her body naked up to the navel. Then he and the negro each seized an ankle and pulled her legs apart. Father Damien had moved round to the end of the altar, facing her. Opening wide his cope, he gave a gloating chuckle as he exposed himself to her. Held down though she was her eyes stared up at him, fixed in fear on his enormous genitals.
Charles had shut his eyes and was sobbing. Roger stared aghast at this bestial spectacle, overwhelmed with dismay that he was powerless to prevent its consummation.
Suddenly he became conscious of an unseen presence beside him. Silently, in his mind, the presence spoke and he knew it to be the voice of the Sagamore, Morning Star.
‘It was because I foresaw this that I made you my brother.’
Instantly, with all the power of his lungs, Roger yelled, ‘The Frog! The Frog! He who is of Water, Earth and Air. The Creator, the beginning of all things! To defeat this Evil I call upon the Power of the Frog.’
Susan ceased screaming. Everyone present became deadly still. They remained rigid, as though a tableau in a waxworks show. For a moment there was utter stillness, and it seemed as though the dust of ages was falling silently upon them. Then there came the sound of lapping water.
The cords that bound Roger and Charles had fallen from them. Roger came to his feet and saw in the moonlight that the waters of the lake were sweeping away from the castle. Gog and Magog saw that, too. Impelled by a primitive, animal instinct to save themselves, they bounded from the altar, leapt down the tumbled stones into the mud and, frantic with terror, raced neck to neck to the shore.
The witch, Father Damien and Aboe remained rooted where they stood. Susan rolled off the altar and, as Charles ran toward her, picked herself up. A moment later they were clasped in each other’s arms.
Roger turned and stared out across the lake. A mist, partly obscuring the moonlit vista, had risen upon it. Out of the mist there loomed a gigantic figure. It was a huge frog, at least twenty feet in height, squatting in the water. The great eyes of this monstrous spirit of the frogs were focused on the castle. Its throat pulsated as though blown rhythmically by internal bellows. Its mouth opened wide once, then closed again.
Impelled by a silent signal, the witch and her two companions turned towards it. As though attracted by a magnet they could not resist, they walked with halting footsteps to the open side of the chapel, then staggered down the stones into the mud. Flailing their arms and dragging their legs, the three of them seemed to be fighting desperately against an invisible suction. They began to scream in terror and yell for mercy. But their appeals were of no avail. The last that Roger saw of them through the mist they were being drawn inexorably through knee-high water toward the again open mouth of the giant frog.
Afterwards Roger, Charles and Susan could never clearly remember what had happened to them. The floor of the chapel had begun to sink beneath their feet. Somehow they had got ashore. The crashing of falling stones made them look back, and they saw that the evil ruin was disintegrating. The waters of the lake were seeping back and, after a time they had no means of judging, the last remnants of the castle were submerged beneath them.
So weary that they could no longer think, they trudged for miles until they came upon a roadside bivouac, where a troop of soldiers sent out to search for them had made camp for the night.
Next day they were back in Dublin, and united with Georgina. A week earlier she had come over to find them. The Viceroy had given her all the help he could, but Maureen Luggala had proved useless. On enquiring at her house, it was learned that she had been taken away as a lunatic. Georgina had gone to Dublin’s Bedlam, to find her, cursed by the witch, an old and crippled woman, white-haired, her cheeks sagging, and raving mad.
Epilogue
It was again high summer in Britain, the first for many years in which the people had known peace. During the past months soldiers and sailors, many of whom had not seen their families for a decade, had been coming back to homes rich and humble all over England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
In every city, town and village there had been rejoicing, and feasts in honour of the returned heroes. The victorious commanders had been handsomely rewarded. Wellington had received a dozen Grand Crosses in Orders of Chivalry, numerous bejewelled Field Marshals’ batons, giving him that rank in the armies of the Allies, and had been dowered with many thousands of pounds-worth of presents from the allied sovereigns. Generals and Admirals were made Lords, Knights and Commanders of the Bath, in addition to receiving large sums of money voted them by Parliament.
Roger had received nothing, neither had he expected to; it was reward enough for him that the war was over and no-one would again appeal to him to risk his life on patriotic grounds.
Napoleon had attempted, but failed, to commit suicide; then on April 20th, in the horse-shoe court at Fontainebleau, he had kissed the tricolour and bidden farewell to the weeping veterans of the Old Guard before setting out on his journey south. There had been no shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur’ and, as he approached the Mediterranean, the people openly displayed the hatred they bore him for having robbed them of husbands, fathers, sons. At Orange they stoned his coach while he cowered behind Bertrand. Once out of the city, he changed into an Austrian coat, a Russian cloak and a round hat with a White Cockade on it. Learning that a mob at Avignon was thirsting for his blood, he made a detour to bypass that city. Thus, disguised, humiliated and
in fear of his life, the once-mighty Emperor at last reached the coast and was taken on board a British frigate to his minute kingdom of Elba.
The Marshals, on the other hand, continued to be popular heroes. Fat, gouty old Louis XVIII was no fool. Once safely on the throne of France, he decorated them—with a few exceptions including the brave Davout, who had held out in Hamburg to the bitter end—with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Louis, confirmed them in their titles and allowed them to retain their great estates.
On Roger’s return from Ireland, Droopy Ned had persuaded him to go out to Richmond and seek a reconciliation with his wife. He found Mary both sober and contrite. She confessed that she was still drinking, but had cut it down and would give it up altogether if only he would live permanently at home with her. Recognising that she would never have given way to this weakness had it not been for his long absence abroad, he said he would not dream of depriving her of the joy of wine, but asked that in future, even when he was away for a few days, as he meant to be now and then, she should drink only in moderation.
He had made his proviso about being free to come and go as he wished, because nothing would have induced him to give up an occasional night or two of paradise with Georgina at her studio. Nevertheless he was still very fond of Mary and determined to make her as happy as he could. So, after a few days they settled down to resume the tranquil life they had led for a short while after their return from America.
It was on a morning early in June that Roger mounted his horse to ride to London. He did so with a far from easy mind, as he had been summoned to wait upon the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, whom he had met on a number of occasions but did not know well. His disquiet was caused by the belief that the only reason His Lordship could have for sending for him was to ask him to undertake some mission. What it could be now that Europe was at peace he had no idea but, whatever it might be, he was determined to refuse.
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