by Sarah Rayne
Ahasuerus said coldly, ‘I am aware of the custom, fool. It is barbaric and brutal and it is the last resort of the weak.’ His eyes raked Amati. ‘Or even,’ he said, deliberately, ‘of the impotent,’ and a murmur of delighted horror went through the watchers. Cosimo’s face darkened to angry crimson and he clenched his fists. ‘But,’ said Ahasuerus coolly, ‘if this is your wish—’ He shook off the two men holding him and walking to the centre of the square, stood for a moment, apparently studying the brazier and the fiercely hot iron tongs. Then he turned away, and to Isabella, it was as if his eyes were looking at some unseen landscape: as if he knew he could not escape the torment devised, and as if he was simply concentrating his vision inwards, on to some marvellous dawn-drenched, music-filled horizon that no one else could see and no one else could hear.
As he did the last time . . .
When he turned back to the brazier, a tiny wind was ruffling the quiet square and the scent of hot iron and burning charcoal and wood was borne to where Isabella huddled, helpless and anguished. The shimmer of heat-haze rose strongly up again and people backed away once more. Ahasuerus glanced at them and his lips curved upwards in amusement.
And then he reached down and grasped the tongs.
The worst part was the stench of burning flesh. Like roasting meat, thought Isabella, shuddering and nauseated. She wrapped her arms about her body as if for warmth, rocking to and fro, her entire mind thrown forward into the square, trying to share his agony.
As his fingers closed over the glowing irons, Ahasuerus’s face drained of all colour and sweat sprang out on his brow, soaking into his black hair. He staggered back, half falling, but then somehow righting himself. He had dropped the burning tongs almost as soon as he had grasped them, but Isabella could see that they had done their work. Ahasuerus’s clear eyes were blurred with agony, and he was moving as if he was in a trance.
He held out his hands and a gasp went through the watchers and Isabella felt an icy hand clutch at her stomach, because his hands, his hands . . .
The skin and the flesh had melted and bubbled with the heat so that fat was running down and dripping on to the ground – greasy, colourless, exactly like fat runs out of cooking pork! – oh God, no! Sickness rose up in Isabella’s throat and she swallowed convulsively and dug her nails into the palms of her hands. Mustn’t be sick. Mustn’t give way. Control it.
The four fingers of each of Ahasuerus’s hands were fusing in the furious heat, the nails shrivelling and cracking. The tongs had fallen from his grasp and they lay at his feet, shreds of shrivelled skin adhering to them.
Let him not break, prayed Isabella in silent agony: let him hold on to whatever inner vision he has, let him continue to look beyond the agony to his far-flung horizon . . .
For a moment she thought consciousness was sliding from him, and he half fell again, sinking to his knees in the hot, dusty square. But then he raised his head and directed a look of such arrogance and such exultant triumph at Cosimo that something that was very nearly delight surged up in Isabella’s mind.
Ahasuerus said, ‘Well? Is this what you wished to see?’ His voice was splintered with pain, but the pride was unmistakable. Isabella thought if she had not loved him before she would have done so then. But his hands, oh dear God, his hands.
It was as if half-charred lumps of meat, bleeding scarlet claws protruded from the sleeves of his robe. Raw bleeding flesh . . . Blackened finger-ends . . . Ahasuerus turned slowly, holding them out, palms uppermost, and as he faced the shaded side street, Isabella saw the agony of it, and the sickness lurched in her stomach again, so violently that this time she could not hold it back. She doubled over, retching and gasping, vomiting the sparse breakfast she had eaten on to the ground, her insides scoured, her eyes streaming.
When she finally straightened up, shuddering and wiping her mouth, it was to hear her husband saying, ‘Maimed and wounded. Sufficient proof of guilt.’ And then, looking round at the silent crowd, ‘God did not protect him,’ he said sententiously. ‘And so we must count him guilty.’
It was then that Ahasuerus staggered and fell to the ground, and it was then that Simon and the monks moved.
Simon had never wholly believed in the legend of the immortal High Priest: the Scribe and the Scholar who had defiled the ancient Temple of Jerusalem with his harlot and whose name the Sanhedrin had tried to strike from history. But he had taken the vow and he had meant the words he had said, even while he was making private reservations. Now, staring at the helpless mutilated creature with the astonishing beauty and the remarkable, luminous eyes, the reservations melted and knew it had all been true. This is the creature my Order vanquished in first century Jerusalem, and this is the being I swore before God to shut away from the world for ever.
They had brought the stone sarcophagus out of the catacombs early that morning. It had taken eight of them to carry it up, and although it had been heavy it had not been as difficult as they had feared. But Simon, standing in the dim catacombs and looking down at the ancient elaborate tomb, had felt icy fingers brush the nape of his neck. So that is where they interred him. That is where they sealed his body after the sentence of the Triple Death and that is where he lay for ten centuries.
The Sanhedrin’s sentence had been a travesty of Christ’s own torments of course, intended to mock the heretic Priest. Simon touched the litany of Christ’s sufferings in his mind, familiar from a dozen Easter vigils: the agony in the Garden . . . the Scourging at the Pillar . . . the Crowning with Thorns . . . the Carrying of the Cross . . . the Crucifixion . . . Had Ahasuerus suffered his own agonies in the same way? What about the final part of his sentence – the burning alive? How was he unmarked from that?
He looked back at the sarcophagus and thought: he didn’t die then and he hasn’t died now. But what happened all those centuries ago to ensure that sleep that was neither quite death nor quite life? Did the music create it? Or the grisly death sentence? And what do I do to ensure it now? Shut him into the tomb, alive and aware and slam down the lid? It was a harrowing thought.
They had brought the sarcophagus back to their own house in the Campo Santo and three of the monks had worked through the night in the carpenters’ shop, fashioning a wooden inner coffin. It was plain by most standards and almost wholly unadorned, but Simon thought it would serve its purpose. The stone tomb was cumbersome and awkward, but a wooden coffin could be placed unobtrusively in the shadows of the Campo Santo. Waiting for the re-interment.
Simon had been genuinely appalled at the burning of Ahasuerus’s hands. He had seen the exultation in Cosimo Amati’s face; he had felt the ugly sexual jealousy within the man and he had seen for the first time that this whole thing was little more than the revenge of a cuckolded husband. He has manipulated us all! thought Simon, staring across the square with its pall of grisly smoke and the stench of charred flesh in his nostrils.
The realisation was unpleasant and unwelcome, but for all that, the punishment would further Simon’s own task. This was Ahasuerus, the rebel High Priest, the renegade who had threatened to return; this was the one whose Simon’s Order had been formed to guard. No matter that after so long a time the vow had become perfunctory, and no matter that most of the monks in the Order had forgotten how and where Ahasuerus’s body lay. Simon had taken the vow, and the vow had been to God and to his own Father Abbot, and you did not qualify a vow.
As Ahasuerus turned, Simon leapt on to him, forcing him backwards, aware that behind him the other monks were closing in. There was a moment when Ahasuerus resisted with all his strength, and when he fought back at Simon like a wild beast. Simon was unexpectedly aware of pity and admiration, because even like this, even mutilated and in screaming agony, Ahasuerus could fight.
As Ahasuerus fell back into the waiting coffin, Simon felt a tremendous surge of exultation that was so violent it was nearly sexual. He moved forward, his muscles tense, ready to meet Ahasuerus a second time, certainly expecting him to resist again.
But Ahasuerus did not resist. He lay where he had fallen, the long silky lashes fanning his cheeks, and Simon stood looking down, his thoughts chaotic, torn between triumph at having succeeded and pity and a half-fearful curiosity.
He’s gone back, he thought. I don’t understand how or why, but he’s somehow slipped beyond us. The essence, the living, breathing thing that was the High Priest has eluded us. He glanced around the square. Something to do with the travesty of a trial that had mirrored the trial in first century Jerusalem? Something to do with the fire, even?
I don’t know. I can’t begin to understand. I can only thank God that it has happened. He bent to help the other monks wedge the coffin lid into place.
Isabella had crouched shivering and wretched in the little side street off the Campo Santo, rocking to and fro with agony and despair, still trembling from the violent nausea. After a time she wrapped the cloak about her, turning up the hood to hide her face, and went out into the streets again. No one gave her a second glance and for the first time ever she was glad of anonymity.
She was still reeling from what had happened: deaf and sightless and uncaring of where she went or what she did. But people were flocking into the streets to discuss what had happened, and little by little, the excited curiosity and conjecture began to pierce the shell of misery.
No one was entirely sure what had happened, save that the strange enigmatic being had been sent back into the eerie half-world he had come from, and that he had been re-interred in the stone sepulchre and the sepulchre sealed.
And now a little band of monks, led by the English Brother Simon himself, would travel out of Cremona and out of Italy, bearing the tomb with them. A better resting place, Brother Simon had said, sombrely. A safer resting place. The people of Cremona, going in rather cursory fashion about their work, told one another that while it was certainly true that the stranger had rid the city of rats, it was also being whispered that Amati had called him out of some dim and distant past and if that was so, he was better away from Cremona altogether.
Isabella, trying to listen without being recognised, managed to be drawn into one of these discussions inside the wine-shop, and interspersed a question about the monks’ destination.
Well now, that was the oddest thing of all, said the wine-shop keeper, whose trade had been brisk on account of the excitement but who was not so busy that he could not pause for a word or two with a lady who looked as if she might be very comely beneath her enveloping cloak. That was the surprising part of it all.
It appeared that Brother Simon, along with eleven other monks, was returning to his homeland; the wine-shop keeper could even give a touch of verisimilitude to this snippet by adding that Father Abbot had ordered a cask of best mead for the monks to take with them on their journey.
And they were going not to England as most people seemed to think, said the wine-shop owner, but to some outlandish-named place on England’s western side – an island or some such. It was nowhere the wine-shop keeper had ever heard of and nowhere he particularly wanted to hear of again, always assuming that he ever received payment for the mead, because a religious way of life did not necessarily guarantee payment of bills.
Dawn was again breaking over the little town as Isabella made her way towards the monastery.
She wondered how the strange episode would be woven into the fabric of Cremona’s history and into the history of the Amati family. Would Ahasuerus be a martyr or a sinner or even a devil?
But it no longer mattered, because Isabella would no longer be here. With the knowledge that Ahasuerus was being taken to Simon’s homeland – an island on the west side of England, the wine-shop keeper had said – she had known that she must follow him, even though leaving Cremona would be the hardest thing she had ever done. But she could not stay. She could not bear to remain here to witness Cosimo’s exultation. He would recount the story half a dozen times a day and he would gloat more and more about the part he had played, until in the end it would sound as if Cosimo had fought Ahasuerus single-handed and triumphed. The worse part would be that Cosimo would end in believing it himself.
It would be necessary to travel alone but that did not trouble her. The cat-like smile curved her lips suddenly, because there were any number of adventures that could befall you if you were travelling alone. And she would not really be alone, because she would be in the monks’ shadow all the time. They would not know she was there because she would have to keep a few hours – even a few days – behind them, but if there should be a real danger, Isabella thought she could probably call on their help.
She was taking only the barest necessities. Some changes of linen; food until she should be clear of Cremona and able to buy provisions without being recognised. She had rifled Cosimo’s private cupboard for money, uncaring of whether she would be branded a thief after she had gone, and she had packed all of her jewellery which she thought she could sell on the way and which should provide for her for quite a long time.
She paused as she slipped through the silent house, looking down the stair to the workroom, and something stirred in her mind. The lyre. The old bone-lyre Cosimo had used to summon Ahasuerus from the catacombs. There was no reason to take it, and there was certainly no reason to imbue it with any magical qualities of its own. It was nothing more than wood and bone and catgut; the force was inside the music. But it was a link.
As she stood waiting in the shadow of the monastery tower, with the daybreak Office of Lauds chiming within, her mind went back to the remarkable night in the catacombs and this time the smile was no longer the cat-smile, but a real smile; the smile of the Isabella that Cosimo had never suspected existed, and that hardly anyone had suspected existed. The Isabella who had loved Ahasuerus, and who had experienced that eerie recognition, and who would one day love him again.
But she must follow him. They had shut him into the tomb, and they thought that had ended the matter. But supposing it had not? Supposing that he only slept, and that within the sarcophagus he was still alive and still aware? Sealed into the grave until the music should call him again? Like Simon, Isabella had no idea of what had sent Ahasuerus back into the death-sleep, but the thought of Ahasuerus alive and aware in the grim tomb fashioned a thousand years earlier, was unbearable.
There was only one thing to do and that was to stay close to him. To go wherever he was taken and to remain within sight and within hearing of the tomb.
And to hand down the knowledge and the music, as it had been handed down to Isabella herself, so that in some distant future, a future she could not imagine, Ahasuerus would walk in the world once more.
The secret smile curved her lips again and she slid one hand beneath the cloak and placed it on her still-flat stomach. Hand down the knowledge . . .
It might be that the bone-lyre would not be the only link she would have with her High Priest.
Chapter Twenty
Moira thought she was acquitting herself fairly well so far.
The ferry crossing to Holyhead with the caravan had been uneventful and in fact a bit tedious, and Moira, who had been keyed up to expect questions or suspicious looks or even a search of their belongings, had almost felt cheated. There was no point in adventures if you could not experience a few threads of melodrama on the way. And then she remembered the dreadful thing that had happened to Kate’s husband, and she remembered the coffin with its eerie occupant, and reality asserted itself. There was melodrama to spare in all this, and there was torment and danger as well.
The ferry had docked at what had seemed an unearthly hour of the morning – Moira had lost count of the days – and they had driven across Wales and down to London.
‘Do you drive, Moira?’ Kate had said as they were leaving Curran Glen behind.
‘Well, no—’
‘Oh, you mean your foot. But that wouldn’t stop you driving an automatic, would it? This one’s automatic – they’re the easiest cars in the world to drive. We could get you a provisional
licence and you could have a go sometime.’
Moira stared at Kate, caught between delight and astonishment. Another gap in that thickthorn hedge. She managed to say thank you.
They stopped at a couple of motorway restaurants on the way which were not like anything Moira had ever encountered. It appeared that you could get petrol for your car and a bed for the night for yourself at some places, and you could order any kind of meal at any hour of the day or night. Father would have said that the motorway restaurants were filled with common loud people, and would have driven off the motorway into a town to find a nice old-fashioned dining room that could provide a cut off the joint and two veg, but Moira was fascinated by the classless service stations and the hybrid food. She liked looking at the other travellers and wondering what their journeys were about. There were families with children, mostly wearing jeans or tracksuits, talking excitedly about seeing Grandma or Auntie or friends, and there were businessmen in sharp, dark suits who discussed next month’s board meeting or the extrapolated figures for the finance review and the new trade order from Japan. Sometimes there were women with them, dressed just as formally, with glossy, well-cut hair and briefcases of their own, drinking austere cups of black coffee. At adjoining tables lorry drivers ate huge platefuls of sausages and baked beans and chips at three o’clock in the afternoon, and smothered their food in tomato ketchup and sucked their teeth with automatic lasciviousness at every female under forty.
They made a detour off the motorway shortly before they got into London – it was a place called High Wycombe – to buy provisions because Kate said it would be easier to park here than in London which was always a nightmare. There was a General Post Office and a National Westminster Bank, and Moira took out some of her hoarded money. The man at the desk asked for identification, and she produced her passport and there was absolutely no problem at all. A hundred and fifty English pounds there and then, and another fifty-five to be added to the total.