The Devil's Piper

by Sarah Rayne

  She had reached this point when there was another sound, and Kate started up, stark terror rushing in. She had thought she had been so cool and dispassionate about all this and so she had.

  But she had not allowed for this one thing.

  Ciaran had locked the door of the tower from outside.

  Kate went down the tower stair as if demons were at her heels.

  Locked. He’s locked the door. She took a deep breath, her eyes fixed on the door. It was important not to give way to panic, because even if the door was locked there would be another way out.

  As she reached for the iron ring handle her hands were shaking. Don’t let it be locked, please God, don’t let it be locked. And if it is – it won’t be – but if it is, let there be another way out.

  She closed both hands about the handle and at once knew it was immovable. Stuck? No, you fool, it’s locked, you knew it was all the time. Try turning the other way. No. Absolutely fast. Ciaran locked it – I heard him do it. Sensible, of course, even at this time of night. Especially at this time of night. The tower stood a little apart from the main Abbey, with its own entrance. Curran Glen was probably more law-abiding than most, but it would have its share of tramps and vagrants and it would not be difficult for someone to creep in for a night’s sleep. The monks probably had a rule that the tower was always kept locked. I’m locked in for the night.

  Kate sank down to the ground, hugging her knees, trying to think. Locked in for the night. Locked in with the great silent iron-tongued bells over her head.

  And the creature of the ancient legends below.

  Ahasuerus had come out on a narrow shelf of rock that looked down on to a dusty road fringed with trees. It was colder than he had expected and there was a fresh moist feeling to the air.

  He curled against the rock wall of the catacombs, absorbing the new clean world, deciding what to do and watching the few travellers going to and fro below him. In the main they were in groups of threes and fours, but occasionally lone men – never women – walked by. So that had not changed since Jerusalem. He began to watch more closely, marking what the travellers wore and how they moved. Can I copy all of that? What language do they speak? The highroad was wider and better marked than any he remembered, and he thought a very great number of years must have passed.

  Night shrouded the landscape, which was unfamiliar but rather interesting. He thought the music was somewhere to his left, and narrowing his eyes he could see the outlines of buildings and houses – not quite like any he had ever encountered, but plainly places for people to live and gather.

  He would have to resist the music for a little longer yet, if he could. He was still clad only in the linen garment they had used to lay him in the coffin and the marks of his execution were visible. He felt again the hatred against the Judges and the sanctimonious monks.

  It was easy enough to wait for the next solitary traveller, and then to stalk him through the night. Ahasuerus leapt on the man as they passed into the cover of some trees, stunning him with a blow to the head, and dragging him to the side of the road. It was astonishingly easy. He stripped the man’s clothes from him, finding amongst them a purse of coins which were unfamiliar but which were clearly tokens that could be exchanged for food and wine. He looked back at his victim. Dead? No, only knocked out of his senses for a few hours. Then I haven’t turned into a murderer yet.

  He straightened up and looked about him. No one to be seen. And the music was tugging at his mind again. Susannah’s music. The smile that had fascinated the females who had come to the Temple; curved his lips. Susannah’s music, calling him back, pulling him into an unknown world. He was conscious of a sudden excitement.

  He donned the unconscious man’s clothes, arranging them as nearly like the other travellers as he could. All right? Yes, he thought he would pass. He had no idea how far he had to travel to reach the music – he thought its pull would guide him – but it could not be so very far. And he had acceptable clothes now and money. If necessary he could purchase food and wine on the road; it would be easy enough to watch how it was done and copy. The thought of an unknown tongue gave him pause, but if he encountered anyone on the road, he could surely present himself as a traveller, a pilgrim from a distant land. He would learn as he went.

  He was aware of the excitement spiralling a little higher. A new world. Unknown people and strange customs.

  But Susannah might be here.

  To begin with, Cosimo thought that nothing was going to happen. The music shivered and spun all about the workroom, and the candles flickered wildly, giving out a sickly sulphurous stench.

  Sulphur . . . When he comes, he’ll come straight from hell, thought Cosimo, torn between a wish that he would succeed and a devout hope that nothing would happen.

  The shadows thickened and all about him Cremona slept. Or did it? Was that a footstep outside? Someone going untimely and stealthily home? Someone creeping back home after a night in a strange bed? Cremona was no worse and no better than anywhere else and you got fornication and adultery in the unlikeliest of places. Cosimo was glad to know that Isabella would never behave so wantonly, despite the looks of the young men who came to be apprenticed to him. He had now and then permitted them to escort her to some place of entertainment on occasions when he could not do so himself. He trusted Isabella completely, of course.

  He thought that several hours had passed since he had played the music for the first time, but he was not sure because he seemed to have entered into a kind of half-world where the only thing that mattered was the steady burning of the six flames, and the inexorable shortening of the candles. He had played the Chant at regular intervals which he had thought would be sufficient.

  He shifted uncomfortably on the velvet cushion, which was beginning to seem very much thinner than when he had first sat on it. Two of the candles were almost guttering now. He leaned over to re-kindle them and as he did so, a dog went sniffing and scrabbling along the street outside. Shortly afterwards a beggar dragged his way along the cobbled pavement, muttering as he went and Cosimo’s heart lurched. But the beggar went on his way, and a little while after that, the faint chiming of the monastery bell from the outskirts of the town broke through his consciousness.

  He had no idea how long it was before the night rustlings and the soft stirrings coalesced into something definite. Something that came slowly along the street, not hesitant, but wary. Cosimo sat very straight and very still, his eyes on the window and, scarcely daring to breathe, plucked out the music’s pattern again.

  A shadow fell across the window as if someone had stopped outside. Cosimo faltered in his playing, not daring to move, his eyes on the door. Was it opening? Was it being pushed slowly to?

  And then without the least warning the door fell back and he was there. Cloaked and robed, his arms crossed on his breast, a pilgrim’s deep hood hiding his face.

  The Nameless One whose body had lain beneath the ancient City of Cremona for nearly a thousand years had risen from the grave and come in answer to the music.

  Exactly as the legend had always foretold.

  Kate crouched in the tiny vestibule at the top of the crypt stairs, the outer door at her back, staring at the stair to the crypt. She had formulated and discarded half a dozen plans for getting out of the bell tower, and several times she had almost given way to panic.

  Because you’d better face it, Kate, at the foot of those dark stairs, inside the Abbey’s crypt, is the Devil’s Piper himself. The creature bound by the music; his name’s Ahasuerus and you might as well admit you know it, you might as well stop pretending. You’ve known his name all along, and you knew what Ciaran and the other man were doing as well. Back into the grave before sunrise. Crucifix and silver bullet and stake-through-the-heart time. Yes, but I didn’t believe it – correction, I didn’t want to believe it. Only it’s time to be honest now. And how the hell am I going to get out of here?

  It was impossible not to give way to the grisliest kin
d of nightmare visions: Ahasuerus shut into the crypt . . . Maybe creeping up the stair toward her . . . No, they’d have shut him away. That was what she had heard, the huge, dull clanging was the sound of the tomb being closed.

  She was becoming cramped and cold, but she was afraid to move from the door. If she went up into the bell tower it would mean she could not keep watch on the crypt. To go down to the crypt itself, with no means of running away, was unthinkable.

  Had that been a sound from below? She scrambled to her feet and pressed back against the locked door, her eyes on the stair. Something scratching at a coffin lid? Something tapping to be let out? She looked at the tower stair again. It was rather horridly reminiscent of every sinister legend ever written or read or imagined. Child Rowland and the dark tower of the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet . . . The Glamis monster prowling its dark fortress and weaving its dark bloody history . . . The ogres of Grimm sniffing out humans . . . Stop it!

  Would the tower provide a means of escape? Maybe she could climb through a window and go down the walls. Or ring the bells to indicate an emergency, like World War Two when the ringing of church bells had been the alarm signal for the German invasion? The bell-ringing would work spectacularly, but the trouble was that Kate was not supposed to be here. The monks would presumably hand her over to the Irish police, because although she had not done anything especially criminal, she had certainly broken into the premises, and the Irish authorities might take a very serious view of somebody breaking into a monastery. They might politely ask her to leave the country. Deport her as an undesirable. And the end of it would be that she would never find out about Ahasuerus and the music.

  She looked back at the tower again. Ringing the bells was out, but what about climbing through a window?

  Going up into the bell tower was a very eerie experience indeed. Kate had brought a small torch with her, but in fact there was more light than she had expected and at each twist in the narrow stair a slit of a window was set into the stone wall. Moonlight trickled in, and Kate, constantly listening for any sound from the crypt, paused at each turn in the stair, looking out. This was not such a very high tower; it was not Salisbury Cathedral or Lichfield, but it was quite high. Could she bring herself to climb out of one of the windows? She thought she could. But how would she get down the outside wall? She would need to lower herself by a rope and—

  A rope.

  She sped up the final stretch of spiral steps and on up the vertical loft ladder into the ringing chamber. Ropes . . . She scrabbled for the torch again. And there in the thin light of the torch, hanging down from the great bells overhead, were four ropes.

  Kate had not brought many implements on the spying expedition but she turned out the pockets of her jacket. A torch and a small knife with the blade protected by a thick leather sheath. It was hardly le Carré or Bond standard issue, but it might serve her purpose. She put the torch back and looked at the dangling ropes. If she was going to cut off one of those, she would have to cut it off as near to the bells as possible. She thought that even the lowest window was twenty-odd feet from the ground and she would need all the length she could get. She took a deep breath and grasped the rungs of the vertical ladder.

  There was only a thin spill of moonlight now, and Kate went up the ladder more by feel than sight. As she neared the belfry a wind stirred, bringing with it a sour ancient odour, as if the bells themselves were breathing their iron breaths down on to her. Child Rowland going into Shakespeare’s dark tower and smelling the blood of an Englishman . . .

  The belfry was smaller than she had expected and the bells were directly over her head now. Kate glanced up and at once wished she had not done so because she was looking straight up into the bells themselves and it was like looking into the yawning maws of huge iron-tongued monsters. All the better to deafen you. All the better to gobble you up, my dear. Don’t look.

  There was no floor up here, only wooden staging, and it was cramped and awkward, and it would be dreadfully easy to miss your footing and tumble between the joists. It was open on all four sides, which she had more or less expected, but the apertures were not as large as she had feared and it would probably be virtually impossible to fall out. But the wind that had soughed in and out of the narrow stair was much stronger and much colder up here; it tore through the tower, whipping Kate’s hair against her face and stinging her eyes. She gasped and crouched on the top of the ladder, holding on to the rungs with one hand for ballast, determinedly not looking upwards, concentrating on the ropes. Each one was pulled taut from under the bell and looped around a system of pulleys bolted to the joists before vanishing down into the ringing chamber below.

  The wind was tapping gently against the bells so that there was a soft low humming, so quiet you were not sure if you were really hearing it. The wind did not quite disturb the bells but you had the feeling that it was very close to doing so. At any minute they might rear up and shriek their brazen call across Curran Glen. The ropes swayed slightly in the wind.

  There was a really blood-chilling story about somebody having offended a bell, and the bell pursuing the miscreant across a bleak snow-covered landscape and killing him. The really spine-tingling part was when the bell was found quietly back in its place next day, apparently a guileless and inanimate lump of metal, but with its mouth dripping blood. Like a cat, innocent-eyed, but licking gore-smeared jowls. Kate wished she had not remembered it.

  She would not think about anything except cutting through one of the ropes and escaping. The nearest rope was slightly thinner than the others and it might be fractionally easier to sever. Probably it was from the smallest bell. As Kate grasped it there was the faintest vibration from above. She felt sweat break out between her shoulder blades.

  It would not be necessary to be particularly technical or practical about this, but it would be necessary to be deft. All she had to do was hack the rope off. Probably all the ropes were attached to the bells by some kind of pulley system, so that if you could climb on to the bells themselves it would be possible to unhook the ropes and let them snake down.

  Kate thought she was as practical as most women today, but she did not think she was sufficiently practical – all right, sufficiently brave! – to climb on to the back of a cluster of centuries-old bells and try to fathom the pulley system in the dark.

  By dint of pulling up some slack with one hand, and holding the fall of the rope firmly between her knees, it was possible to slice through the rope without disturbing the bells. The rope was supple and strong and it ought to hold her weight. She cut doggedly, and felt the strands part and let the rope slither down through the holes in the floor. It fell with a soft thud into the ringing chamber below. So far so good. Now for the descent.

  She chose the lowest window possible. It was probably still dangerously high up in the tower, but she thought she could face climbing through. The frame seemed sound and tough – the monks were apparently as careful of their Abbey as they were of their souls – and after knotting the rope firmly several times around the frame, she flung it out and then swung one leg over the sill.

  It took a shorter time than she had thought and it was much easier than she had feared to lower herself to the ground. As her feet touched the grassy quadrangle, she breathed a huge sigh of relief and stepped back, eyeing the dangling rope. There was nothing she could do about it, the monks would find it at first light, but there was absolutely nothing to connect her with it. And if she could be brazen enough to keep her morning appointment for the library research, and act as if nothing had happened, she would probably get away with the whole thing.

  But somehow she was going to have to get the key to the bell tower and go down into the crypt.

  She was going to have to find out whether Ahasuerus was alive inside the tomb.

  Chapter Eleven

  Moira had hardly slept because she was looking forward so much to her first day at the Abbey’s musical project. It was probably something that would rank as a very
small event in most people’s lives, but Moira thought it was going to be interesting. It would be creative in its own small way and more to the point it would get her away from Father for a few hours.

  She had not wanted Edward to collect her at the end of the afternoon, but there had been no getting out of it. He had wagged his finger over breakfast and given one of his indulgent smiles and said, Nonsense, he would be wanting to hear all about the businesswoman’s day and he would walk up to the Abbey when he himself finished in his office. He would be there to the tick and Moira was not to have turned into a high-flying career lady in a pin-striped suit by that time!

  Mother had looked up from pouring out Father’s coffee to smile and nod, and Moira had smiled dutifully as well, although it was going to be a terrible bore if Father insisted on fetching her home each day. She had been looking forward to walking back from the Abbey on her own: it was dusk by five o’clock and it was the nicest part of the day with everywhere swathed in violet and purple. You could pretend you were in the long-ago Ireland when it had been called by another name, and when half-human creatures prowled the woods and the land was peopled with heroes and giants and warrior queens. You could not do any of that if Father was there because he would be solicitously telling you to look where you stepped, and asking was the walk too much for you and saying he must have a word with the Roads Department about laying a sensible bit of tarmac because the path was in a shocking state. Moira could not dream about Irish legends with Father talking about tarmac and Roads Departments.

  Brother Matthew, who was the librarian, answered the door when she rather timidly pulled the bellrope shortly after lunch, and escorted her to the library.

  ‘And now will you mind being left by yourself?’ he said. ‘Everything’s in its proper place, because we had a young lady in this morning researching early plainsong – rather a coincidence, isn’t it? – and she left everything very tidily indeed, in fact a sight tidier than most of the Brothers, I’m ashamed to say.’