by Sarah Rayne
As the candle flames burned up their stench filled the room, driving out the ordinary, safe-feeling workaday scents. This was eerily in accordance with the ancient legend: Isabella, spinning the tale for him one night, singing the cool silvery sequence of notes in her high sweet voice, had said her grandmother always told how, if you ever dared to use the ritual and summon the Creature, its stench would drive out all else. The devil trailed its own aura with it, Isabella’s grandmother had said: at least, that was the belief handed down and down through the women of their family, and you could believe it or not, just as you chose.
Cosimo seated himself on the velvet cushion, the candles burning up strongly and smelling very nasty indeed by this time. He could almost imagine there was a whiff of horse manure about them which was odd, because the two carters would not have dared to cheat a man of Cosimo’s standing, especially not when he had paid them so well.
It was not supposed to matter what instrument was used: Isabella had said that if the music was played in correct sequence, the Servant had to come, that was the legend. Perhaps the candles and the melted corpse-fat did not really matter either. Perhaps they were only trappings, tricks to dazzle the gullible.
Cosimo took a deep breath and lifted the lyre in his hands. It was the oldest one he possessed, and it was made not from polished wood, but from human bone. It felt cool and light to his touch and it was rather a grisly feeling to know that the bones had once belonged to a person who had walked and danced and laughed. For a moment he could almost fancy that he felt a ripple of life from it.
This was going to be it. This was going to be the playing of the devil’s music, the incantation that Isabella’s family called the Black Chant, and that they had guarded over the centuries; the music that her grandmother believed had been forged in the blood of Lucifer and seared in the fire-drenched furnaces of his domain. Cosimo had memorised Isabella’s sweet cool song and had hummed it to himself a number of times to be sure he got it right. He had done this very softly and he had been careful never to hum it after sunset, because it did not do to take chances with these matters.
And now he was going to play the musical sequence that would reach the devil’s Servant slumbering in his deep unknown tomb and that would draw him into the old house in Cremona and force him to obey the bidding of the one who summoned him.
He took a deep breath and plucked out the sequence of notes.
The first thing that Ahasuerus was aware of was the music trickling into his mind like coloured water trickling through cracks in a wall. Marvellous enchanted music: come with me and come to me . . . dance to my piping and follow me into hell and beyond . . .
The second thing was the feeling that he was waking from a long, long sleep. He remained motionless, letting the memories seep into his mind.
The cellar beneath the Temple where he had been chained and manacled and left without food and only a few sips of water. The travesty of a trial, and then the Sanhedrin’s grisly sentence of death and the horrified gasps of the listeners. And above all, the monks: the Fratres Cruciferi, sly-eyed, greedy-fingered, waiting until they could shoulder their burden and receive their blood-tainted payment. Had they done so? Towards the end Ahasuerus had been blind and deaf with agony and so near to death he had been almost beyond thought, but he had known that the monks were on the edges of the crowd, their black robes turning them into the carrion crows they were. Had they carried out their promise to take his unmarked tomb to the depths of a bottomless pit, or the subterrenean hall of some lonely mountain? Was that where he was now? He thought the monks would have kept their word: they had been a little afraid of him – they had certainly flinched when he had flung that last threat at them – ‘I shall return!’ They would have taken the mutilated body of the High Priest and carried it to a dark desolate resting place.
But now the music was calling him back: Susannah’s music that she had coaxed or bullied or seduced out of the old Scribe, and whose history stretched so far back that no one could trace it, and that Susannah said would stretch just as far forward. Time was like a great unrolling carpet and if you possessed the knowledge, you could walk back and forth on its surface. Perhaps the Nazarene had possessed the knowledge? Susannah had said, slyly, and Ahasuerus had stared at her, his mind tumbling, not daring to believe, but caught for a moment by the dazzling allure of such an idea.
Whether Christ had had the knowledge or not, he had never known and he never would know. But lying in the dark silence, the music soaking into his bones and his mind, he knew now that Susannah had not lied and delight poured through his whole being. Her promise was coming true; she had guarded the music, and after his death and hers, she had passed it on and passed it down, so that at some future neither of them could see it would call them both back into the world.
Ahasuerus opened his eyes. The darkness and the silence were absolute and there was the feeling of being in a narrow, enclosed space. Memory unrolled a little more, and he saw again the stone sarcophagus, the waiting sepulchre on the edge of the crowd that had gathered to witness his execution. Its massive lid had been propped against its side and the interior yawned blackly. Even through the choking death agonies he had been aware of black bitter fury, because they might at least have hidden that from him until he was dead.
And now he was inside it. He was entombed in the elaborate stone coffin that the greedy friars had prepared for him. How long had he been here? He had no idea, and it did not matter yet.
He moved for the first time, and cried out with the pain that flooded his body. His cry was harsh and weak, but it was a terrible sound in the dark silent tomb. He moaned in agony as the congealed blood moved in his arms and legs, and his moans echoed eerily in the confined space and came back mockingly at him.
The tomb-stench was stifling and Ahasuerus drew in a breath, and felt the winding-sheet sucked into his mouth, stinking of mildew. Disgusting! He choked, retching, and spat out shreds of the rotting cloth, forcing his mind to concentrate, forcing back the mists that clung to his brain. It was like pushing through a shaled-on crust, like fighting out of a membraneous sac, but he was doing it.
Overcoming death . . . Climbing out of the tomb.
With the thought he reached upwards, and at once his hands met resistance. The stone lid? Yes, of course. They had not nailed it down, because stone could not be nailed, but it was a huge heavy slab and it would be squarely across the tomb and it would take every ounce of his strength to move it. Panic gripped him, and he thought: I can’t do it! I’m trapped! Susannah, you wanton bitch, did you unknowingly sentence me to a far worse death than the Sanhedrin’s? A silent lonely death in the blackness of the tomb. Am I to end as a ravening madman, screaming with hunger and thirst, blind and deaf, my mind splintered into insanity?
He pushed upwards again and this time there was a rasp of sound, stone scraping against stone, the faintest scratch imaginable. But Ahasuerus heard it, and dizzy gratitude flooded his mind, so that for a moment the darkness was shot with light. Moveable. It may take hours or days, but I shall move it. I shall get out.
Slowly, with many pauses to gather his slowly returning strength, he inched the stone lid aside; not trying to overturn it which would surely be beyond him, but sliding it to one side. To begin with the progress was so painful and so slow that he thought after all he would never do it, but to be trapped down here until he went slowly mad was so gruesome a prospect that fierce determination gave him extra strength. Eventually, sweat soaking his hair and his skin, a faint dim line of light appeared. The sweetest thing I ever thought to see. Only a little more and I can grasp the edge and gain more purchase . . . Only a very little more . . .
And then he was pushing the lid across and the light was stronger and there was a dry stale stench gusting into his face. Ahasuerus sat up cautiously. He was light-headed and he was trembling and weak, as if every muscle had been beaten with knotted scourges, but his mind was clearing. He drew in a deep breath and looked about him.
So. So the curs had brought his murdered body down here, together with paupers and plague-corpses and criminals, and all the other poor creatures who could not afford proper burial. He could smell the stench of too-ripe meat, like fruit bursting and leaking its rottenness.
But he could sense, far above him, fresh clean air. He forced himself to climb out of the stone tomb, pushing back the press of bodies as he did so. He had no idea of where he was; he might be just outside Jerusalem, or he might be just outside of anywhere. How far would those greedy monks have taken his sepulchre? He glanced at it. As he had thought, it was lying on a shelf of rock, with more shelves above and below, each one stacked with corpses, some of them incompletely shrouded, the winding sheets loosened and trailing. He turned his back on it and set off through the tunnels.
Ahasuerus had no idea how long it took him to find his way out of the catacombs. His eyes were still only partially adjusted to the light, and he could scarcely see. His whole world and his every sense was focused on the hewn-out rock of the caverns and on the piles of half-rotting corpses. There was nothing by which to measure time and the thick smothering stench of decay was everywhere. As he walked on, his feet making no sound on the hard rock floor, he could hear the dripping of water somewhere over his head and it was a terrible and a desolate sound. I am the only living creature here. Yes, but I am returning to the world.
He padded on, seeing that he was coming to the newer part of the catacombs, seeing that the burials were more recent. The deeper part had been drenched in the stench and the feel of crumbled bones, and there had been a sprinkling of grey bone-dust on the ground. But there was a stench of putrefaction in his nostrils now, and the winding sheets of these later bodies were wet and stained with the leaking body decay within . . .
Ahasuerus stopped abruptly and bent over, retching, his forehead beaded with sweat. But if I am sweating it is a living sweat and if I am sick being sick is a living experience. Susannah, you were right about the music . . . Awe, tinged with fear, brushed his mind.
And then directly ahead of him was a slanting ray of light: sweet dark blue twilight, pouring in from over his head. With it, he smelt the clean pure air of the world again. Almost there!
He broke into a half-run, and then he was standing in the pouring twilight, at the mouth of the caves and the cool clean night air was filling his lungs, and the grave-stench was behind him, but nothing had ever tasted or felt so good: not the best wine in all the world, not the body of a woman you loved.
He was out of the catacomb city of the dead.
Chapter Nine
Isarel’s first notes on the shofar were hesitant, and after a moment he lowered the instrument and half closed his eyes, reaching for the cadences of Jude’s music. I can do it, he thought. I believe I can do it. When he lifted the shofar to his lips for the second time, he did so with authority.
And this time it was there; between one breathspace and the next, it was there. Like hitting a nerve. Dead in the gold.
The Devil’s Piper, the magical beckoning that Jude had discovered, that some long-ago member of the Amati dynasty had used to summon a creature he had believed to be a demon.
The Black Chant.
On the rim of his vision, Isarel saw Ahasuerus’s shadow tense, and he thought: in another minute I shall see him. Panic churned and his heart began to race. In another minute he’ll be before us: the sinister figure of all those stories. The doomed creature chained to the world forever, bound to answer the music . . . I don’t believe any of it, said Isarel’s mind fiercely.
No? Then why are you playing Jude’s music?
Ciaran moved then, flinging the door back against the wall, and standing in the dark hall was the robed, hunched-over figure of a man, his face hidden by the deep hood. Every nightmare, every imagined horror, thought Isarel, struggling for calm. The silent intruder who steals into your house, so stealthy that you never hear him until you round a corner and there he is in front of you.
I don’t believe any of this, said his mind, again. I don’t believe I’m taking part in this charade. This silver-tongued Irish monk is probably a con-man and that’s his accomplice. Once I’m out of the house they’ll ransack it, or they’ll take possession: lock and bar the doors and windows, and claim squatters’ rights. Why would anyone want to squat in Mallow for God’s sake?
Ciaran was pulling open the outer door and the moonlight was sliding bars of cold brilliance on the scarred oak. We’re moon-mad, thought Isarel. Moonstruck lunacy, that’s what this is.
But of their own volition Isarel’s hands were lifting the shofar again, and the music was spinning. Music that walked the thin line between evil and good, and between seduction and allure.
As they went into the night, Isarel looked back and saw the huddled figure come lurching out of the shadows after them. Ahasuerus walked awkwardly, almost cowering inside the enveloping robe as if fearful that it might be snatched from him. He dragged one foot as he came, and Isarel suddenly found this limping gait unbearably painful.
But he walked purposefully on, through the roughish track that wound between the sparse trees and down the narrow path that led towards the Abbey. There was a vague memory of the English solicitors talking about shared boundaries and the resolving of responsibilities for upkeep. Then this must still be Mallow’s land, and the Abbey must be only on the other side of a wall or a fence. Would they go down on to the highroad and in at the gates? For a mad moment, he visualised them all climbing over a wall, amicably helping one another. Mind you don’t trip over your robe, Ahasuerus. Just hold the shofar for a minute, would you, while I vault across. And now down here and let’s put you back in the tomb.
Ciaran was walking ahead of them, and a tiny part of Isarel’s mind was aware of a spurt of too-shrill amusement that he should be entering an Irish Catholic monastery in this way, and that he should be entering such a place at all.
With the playing of the music, memory had yielded other things now, and the haunting words that Jude had put to part of the Piper music were singing through his brain.
‘I know a charm that will call up the spirits of the gloaming . . .
That will soothe pain with sound, and agony with air;
I know a charm that will remove the veils from the communing shades . . .
That will stay the poor unhousell’d souls from roaming . . .
And tempt the wild woodland magic from the glades.
But it will do no good unless you believe it . . .’
It was plagiarism at its most obvious and its most defiant, of course: Jude had unrepentantly plundered Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, and Clemence Dane’s Will Shakespeare and probably Maeterlinck and Spenser as well if you went deeply enough. And then he had rolled the stolen threads up into one brilliant coruscating sphere. The sphere was hollow and the hybrid phrases were counterfeit, but it did not stop any of it from raking at Isarel’s senses half a century after Jude had written it.
The Abbey was ahead now – some kind of gate in the wall was there? – and Isarel quickened his steps. Would the doors be open? Yes, fool, the door is always open for those who ask . . . No, that’s something else. Is this the low door in the wall that the philosophers and the dreamers and the poets wrote about? I believe I’m slightly light-headed. Hallucinating with tiredness. The drive across Ireland. The whiskey and wine. God yes, the wine. Delirium tremen
s at last, that’s what this is. Seeing things that aren’t there, manipulating charms I don’t believe in.
Luring the unhousell’d soul back to the tomb.
It was impossible to forget Jude’s words and it was impossible to avoid the analogies. I’m the Pied Piper, thought Isarel, the Black Man of Saxony . . . The doomed Erik in Phantom, luring his lady – what was her name? – down to the sewers beneath the Paris Opera House. Shall we get the scene where the mask’s ripped aside?
A dim light burned at the Abbey’s heart and Isarel saw it with thankfulness. Almost there. Over the water-jump, down the straight and home. Is he following? Oh God, yes of course he is.
He risked one quick look over his shoulder – and that’ll probably turn me into a pillar of salt! – and saw that Ahasuerus was certainly following. He looked like a creature made up of the twisting shadows: Isarel could almost believe that the shadows had reared up to trail after him, but whatever else was happening, Ahasuerus was following the music. Because even if I don’t believe in the charm, he does, thought Isarel. It’s the belief that counts, remember? and the poor sod believes. Is that what this is about? He hasn’t lain in the Abbey cellars for a thousand years at all, and he hasn’t risen from the grave either.
But he might think he has. And Ciaran might think it as well. What if they’re a couple of escaped psychopaths? What if it isn’t an Abbey but a lunatic asylum? What would happen if I threw down the shofar and ran like hell down to the village? I won’t do it, of course. But I don’t know why I won’t do it. And there’s the music, that’s real enough. Jude, what have you bequeathed to me, you bastard?