The Devil's Piper

by Sarah Rayne

  As she was going outside, Father called to her to be sure to put on her fleecy-lined coat, and Moira clenched her teeth and waited for him to say, ‘the one that makes you look like Daddy’s little teddy bear’. He said it, dead on cue, and Moira clenched her teeth. If Tim Shaughnessey had heard that he would never have got as far as suggesting the cinema and supper at Murphy’s.

  It was cool and quiet in the garden. Moira sent up a prayer that Father would not come out to join her and stand a bit too close so that his thigh was pressing against hers.

  She could see Mallow House from here, a dark crouching outline against the trees. It had been empty for as long as Moira could remember, and everyone at St Asaph’s had giggled about it and vied to tell the scariest stories, because it was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Jude Weissman, who had been executed for treason after the Second World War. One term, several of the girls at St Asaph’s had a dare to go up to Mallow, and came back bragging that they had broken a window and got inside, and danced in Jude’s music room, which everyone said was where the ghost walked, and played ‘Chopsticks’ on his piano.

  ‘But did you see the ghost?’ Moira had asked, round-eyed, and the girls had doubled over with laughter and dug one another in the ribs, and said, Sure hadn’t they seen plenty, and then gone on exaggeratedly lurching walks around the common room, moaning and wringing their hands, helpless with mirth. Bryony O’Rourke, who usually went one better than everyone else, had dragged her school tie to one side and jerked it upwards in her hand, with the idea of portraying a hanged man, but unfortunately Mother Fidelia had come in at that very minute and clapped her hands in horror and said, Did they think the good Lord gave them voices to shriek like banshees while people were trying to study, and if Madame O’Rourke thought her poor father was working his fingers to the bone just to give his daughter school uniforms to make a pig’s breakfast of, her wits had flown straight out of the window! Moira had never really found out if Mallow was haunted by Jude Weissman, and she did not think that Bryony O’Rourke and her crowd had found out either.

  She sighed and turned to go back inside before Father could come hurrying out to ask why she was standing out here in the dark by herself.

  Chapter Four

  Ciaran was late for Vespers and nearly missed it altogether because he was closeted in Father Abbot’s study with a lady.

  He had not been surprised when Father Abbot had asked him to receive the young woman who was apparently seeking permission to camp in the Abbey’s western meadow, because Father Abbot was inclined to be wary of females. ‘Deal with her for me, Ciaran, will you?’ he had said. ‘If she lives in a caravan she might be one of these New Age Travellers which would terrify me so much that I shouldn’t know what to say to her. And you’ve more experience at handling women than I have.’

  The New Age lady was punctual to the minute and she shook hands with Ciaran which was unexpected because most females avoided physical contact with monks.

  ‘Brother Ciaran?’ She pronounced it correctly which pleased him. ‘I’m Kate Kendal. Thank you for agreeing to see me.’

  Her voice was very cool and very English and very well bred. It was a voice that Ciaran associated with Oxford double-firsts and Cheltenham Ladies’ College rather than with someone who lived in a caravan in a field. He motioned to her to sit down in the visitor’s chair, and took the seat behind Father Abbot’s desk, considerably intrigued.

  Kate Kendal was pale and thin with long straight black hair and slanting cheekbones. Her eyes were so wide apart that they were almost grotesque and Ciaran who had been, as Father Abbot had wilily pointed out, very used to women indeed before entering the Order, was unable to decide if she was startlingly beautiful or very nearly ugly. She was wearing tight black trousers and leather boots, with a loose jacket made of squares of different-coloured chenille: maroon and violet and indigo. There was a faint, feminine scent about her: nothing so definite as sprayed-on perfume, but a clean-hair, clean-skin aura.

  Ciaran said, ‘You’re asking permission for temporary occupancy of our meadow, Miss Kendal, is that right? Or should I say Mrs?’ She was not wearing a wedding ring, but that meant nothing at all; Ciaran could list in double figures the women he had known who took wedding rings on and off their fingers with an alacrity that bordered on the promiscuous.

  ‘Kate will do.’ She regarded him thoughtfully and then said, ‘First of all, I’m concerned that I don’t commit any kind of trespass, and I’m hoping you’ll give me permission to camp on your land for two or three weeks. I can pay rent, of course. It can’t be much but I never heard of the Catholic Church turning down any offer of money.’

  ‘Oh, we never refuse a good offer,’ said Ciaran, at once. ‘Father Abbot thought you were a New Age Traveller and it terrified him. But you’re not, are you?’

  She smiled, ‘Nothing so unconventional. I’m on my own here. I’m quite law-abiding, I promise, and there won’t be any loud music or ill-tended cooking fires or drugs.’

  ‘How did you know we owned the land?’ said Ciaran. ‘Most people believe that it’s common land, never parcelled out to tenants under the old manorial laws. In fact it’s still in our tenure.’

  ‘I looked up Titles to the land in Galway,’ said Kate. ‘Part of my research. The monks are still manorial overlords.’

  ‘We are, although not many people know it. And yes, Ms Kendal, it does have a beautifully feudal ring to it.’

  Kate smiled suddenly. ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’

  ‘You have a very expressive face.’ He sat back. ‘Would you mind if I asked your reasons for wanting to be here?’

  ‘Of course not. That’s the second point. I’m researching ancient liturgical music, and your Abbey has an unusual reputation in that area.’

  She stopped and Ciaran said thoughtfully, ‘Has it indeed?’

  ‘According to some of the stuff I’ve found, you’re one of the few religious houses in Ireland still using the Ambrosian plainsong in its original form,’ said Kate. ‘I thought that if I could be given permission to use your library to see what manuscripts you might have referring to the Abbey’s founding, or even its actual founder—?’

  They looked at one another. ‘Early plainsong?’ said Ciaran at last.

  ‘Yes. Dating to around AD 350.’ There was an unmistakable note of defensiveness now.

  Ciaran said softly, ‘I’m prepared to acknowledge you know what you’re talking about, but apart from that I think you’re a terrible liar, Kate. Because whatever else you’re up to you certainly aren’t here to research into early Church music.’

  Kate hesitated and then grinned. ‘Trust a religious to spot a spurious tale,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d done it so well.’

  ‘You had. But I was trained to spot a lie at twenty paces.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘Nothing so respectable. The dusty purlieus of the law.’

  ‘You were a solicitor? – no, that’s wrong – A barrister? Yes, of course you were. I can see you persuading witnesses into being indiscreet,’ said Kate.

  ‘Oh, I’ve brought to light a few indiscretions in my time, Ms Kendal,’ rejoined Ciaran blandly. ‘And I’ve caused one or two as well.’

  ‘That I can believe.’

  Ciaran studied her. ‘You know, I wish you’d tell me what this is really about,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t. It’s a – a private quest. I’m almost certainly chasing a chimera, but I’m vain enough not to want to be proved wrong in public.’ She paused, and then said, ‘I expect you’re used to scholars and historians with obsessions. The geographical location of the Lost Atlantis, or was Christ a space traveller – I probably shouldn’t have said that to a monk.’

  ‘Why not, it’s an intriguing theory,’ said Ciaran at once. ‘But I recognise an attempt to turn the conversation in a different direction.’

  Kate looked at him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said suddenly. ‘I mean, you can trust me. I’m not doing anythi
ng illegal or even immoral.’ The grin showed again. ‘Well, not immoral very often and never publicly. Is that bell summoning you to something?’

  ‘It is.’ It was the first Vespers bell, in fact. Ciaran, who should have been on his way to the chapel and composing his mind for the evening prayers, stayed where he was. After a moment, he said, ‘Listen now, I think there’s a dozen reasons why I shouldn’t give permission for you to use the library, but I can’t bring any one of them to mind. We could let you in for a couple of hours – unfortunately no more, Father Abbot’s a bit strict – but it would be free tomorrow morning. Would that do? There’re a couple of early accounts about the Abbey’s founder, I’ll get the librarian to put them out for you. I can’t think of any reason why you shouldn’t take a few notes,’ he said. ‘And – should we say five punts a week for the field?’

  ‘Very acceptable on both counts,’ said Kate at once. ‘The rent’s a peppercorn, you know.’

  ‘Well, the Church never despises the peppercorns of this world.’

  ‘Thank you very much. Will you take a cheque for two weeks now?’

  ‘I will indeed.’

  She wrote the cheque quickly and her fingers brushed his as she handed it over. Ciaran felt the faintest prickle of electricity across his skin, and in the same moment, Kate’s eyes flew upwards to meet his, and he knew she had felt it as well. For the first time, a trace of colour touched the high cheekbones.

  And then she stood up, and the moment passed, and Ciaran was left with nothing more than the impression of cool deliberate efficiency. Just as well, of course. As he opened the door for her, he said, ‘Will you let me know how your work progresses? We’re interested in everything concerning the Abbey’s history.’

  ‘Of course.’ She met his eyes squarely, and then grinned.

  ‘Of course you won’t,’ said Ciaran.

  ‘No. But thank you for trusting me. Are you going to be late for whatever that bell was for?’

  ‘Vespers. Yes I am, but it won’t be the first time and they’ll start without me. I’ll see you out.’

  Vespers, with its formal evening prayers, was a good meeting time; a gathering together of all the various strands and fragments of the entire Abbey before going in to supper in the long cool refectory. Supper followed immediately afterwards, and since Father Abbot believed it to be the mark of a civilised community to have conversations at meals, there was no Rule of Silence at table. You brought to the table the amusing or interesting or encouraging things you had encountered during your day, and you knew that everyone else would be doing the same. It was an exchanging, said the monks, pleased with the small unconventionality. A stepping outside of the Rule for an hour. Several people said rather caustically that if there was to be any stepping outside the Rule you could usually look to Ciaran to be at the forefront, but others said, No, it was more that Ciaran did not notice the Rule in the first place.

  Ciaran reached his stall only a few minutes late, and heard with pleasure the familiar swell of the monks’ voices and the resonance of the organ. The twilight was already slanting through the south quatrefoil and lying across the chapel’s polished oak floor. His stall faced the window that looked out on the quadrangle and at each of the Offices throughout the day he could see how the shadow of the bell tower lengthened across the old cobbled square. At Vespers during the summer it just touched the ivy-clad library wing, but at this time of year the bell tower was shrouded in darkness.

  It was not shrouded in darkness tonight. The small clerestory window near the top of the tower was open, and light poured outwards from it. Ciaran frowned and then dragged his concentration back to the plainchant. Probably whoever was on bell duty had simply forgotten to switch off the light. This was entirely reasonable until Ciaran remembered that Brother Daniel was bell ringer this week, and Daniel was a very methodical monk indeed. It was just about conceivable that he had missed it when he locked the outside tower door, which was not something any of them ever forgot, on account of stray cats and weasels getting in. On one memorable occasion a tinker had spent the night in the chapel, sleeping in Father Abbot’s own stall and urinating in the font, which had meant that the Bishop had to re-consecrate the whole chapel and everything had to be swabbed down with Jeyes’ fluid.

  Ciaran thought there would be nothing wrong, but it would not hurt to just look across the quadrangle when Vespers was over, to make sure the outside door to the tower was closed. Aside from tinkers and cats, monks were ordinary people and like anybody else they could fall down stairs. Dear old Brother Cuthbert, eighty if he was a day and the Abbey’s Sub-Prior, had some years ago slipped on a too-highly-polished section of floor in the chapel and knocked himself out on the altar rail and it had been an hour and a half before anyone missed him. Ciaran glanced round the chapel, but saw that after all, Daniel was in his stall, his head bowed in prayer, his face in shadow inside the hood of his gown.

  It was unusual for any of them to pull the hood up, but perhaps Daniel had caught a cold in the draughty bell loft.

  Ciaran slipped across the quadrangle after the service, and into the bell tower. The others were already going in to the refectory, but he would not be missed for the few minutes this would take.

  The tower door was ajar which was so unlike Daniel that the prickle of unease increased. Ciaran hesitated, and then pushed the door wide. It was odd how you could hear a thin humming from the bells in here, even from the ground. As if they were singing quietly to themselves up there in the dark.

  He would just look into the bell chamber to make sure there was nothing wrong and then he would come straight back down and switch off the lights. It felt extraordinarily eerie in here, and it was getting eerier by the minute. Supposing a tramp had got in again and was lying up here, out of his mind on meths?

  As he walked across the tiny wooden-floored vestibule towards the stair leading up to the bell loft, he heard a faint moan and spun round at once. Something behind him!

  It was then that he saw that the door leading down to the crypt was open.

  Daniel had managed to crawl to the foot of the stair, but he had not been able to get any farther; Ciaran understood this at once, and horror flooded over him.

  Whoever had attacked Daniel had stripped him of his woollen robe and he was clad only in the cotton undershirt and shorts which most of the monks wore as under-garments. He was huddled over, his hands covering his face, but Ciaran could see that he was breathing, even though it was the struggling shallow breathing of one in extreme pain. He instantly thought: heart attack! because it was easy to visualise an intruder falling on Daniel, stripping him and leaving him for dead. Entirely believable said the upper half, the logical half of his mind.

  But the other half, the half that owed nothing at all to logic, said, insidiously: yes, but he is in the crypt. In the CRYPT . . .

  Ciaran frowned and made an abrupt movement as if to push the silvery voice away. He bent over Daniel’s prone body, trying to take his hands away from his face, trying to speak soothingly. He felt the cold fingers stiffen resistantly, and Daniel groaned again and a shuddering spasm wracked his body.

  ‘Who—’

  ‘It’s Brother Ciaran. You’re all right, Daniel,’ said Ciaran immediately. ‘You’re just inside the bell tower, and you’re quite safe. But I’ll have to fetch help.’

  Daniel said, ‘There was something here—’

  ‘A tramp,’ said Ciaran at once. ‘I think you’ve been attacked. But whoever it was is gone, and we’ll get you to the infirmary—’ He reached for Daniel’s hands again, and as he did so, Daniel gave another of the deep dreadful moans.

  ‘No—You don’t understand what he did—’

  As Ciaran pulled Daniel’s hands away from his face, he felt horror slam into the pit of his stomach.

  Daniel’s face was smeary and crusted with blood, the flesh torn and hanging in bloodied tatters. Whatever had attacked him had gouged deep wounds into his cheeks and neck, the worst still oozing bloo
d, but some beginning to dry and crust over.

  But where his eyes had been were two deep bloody wounds, and as Ciaran stared, his mind spinning with sick horror, blood and thick viscous eye fluid welled up and spilled over Daniel’s mutilated face, running down over his chin.

  Daniel moaned again and turned his face as if trying to see. Ciaran thought: oh dear God, he is trying to see, but his eyes are no longer there to see with. Whatever attacked him, didn’t just claw his face.

  It clawed his eyes. It almost clawed them out. That’s why he wouldn’t take his hands away. He’s been lying down here trying to hold his eyes in place with his hands.

  Ciaran regarded his two superiors in Father Abbot’s small firelit study and said, ‘I don’t believe it and I can’t believe it. It’s centuries since anyone gave any credence to that old legend.’

  ‘Legends are often rooted in fact, Ciaran. And you yourself saw what had been done to Daniel. Clawed and mutilated.’

  Ciaran repressed a shudder and said, ‘How is he?’

  ‘Brother John’s staying with him in the infirmary and he’ll let us know if there’s any change.’ This was Cuthbert. Sub-Prior and the Abbey’s oldest inhabitant. ‘They’re hopeful that he’ll recover, although of course his eyes are gone—’

  ‘Yes.’ Ciaran chewed his lower lip thoughtfully and then said, ‘I suppose we’re thinking it was a tramp who attacked him.’