by Sarah Rayne
She had been right about the things looking terrific. Moira regarded her reflection in the changing cubicle and remembered how last autumn Father had picked out for her a tweed coat with a self-belt and velvet collar, and a navy linen two-piece with a pleated skirt. And even though it really wasn’t that kind of a journey, and even though Moira was frantic every time she thought about Kate in Vogel’s hands, she thought you would have to be very nearly inhuman not to feel pleasure at being given such marvellous things.
She sat by Isarel on the plane, and with the idea of finding out a bit more about what they were going into, asked him about Jude.
‘That’s if you don’t mind talking about him?’
‘God, no,’ said Isarel, at once. ‘Jude’s haunted me all my life, Moira. When I was very small, I dreamed about him – night after night. I used to wake up terrified, expecting to see him standing in a corner of the bedroom watching me. I dreamed about this place we’re going to as well—’
‘Eisenach Castle?’ It increased the feeling of unreality to be seated here with someone who looked like the photograph of Jude come to life. Lauren had said these were two of the sexiest men she had met for ages, and Lauren probably thought most men under the age of ninety were sexy, but even so—‘Tell me about Eisenach,’ said Moira.
‘I don’t know where to begin. But it’s grim and stark,’ said Isarel. ‘A mountain fortress. There’s a central hall where Jude’s last concert was held: a huge, glittering place with chandeliers and stone pillars and a marble and gilt stairway—He came down that to confront his audience that night.’
‘When he played the Devil’s Piper?’
‘Yes. And there’s a dining room with faded tapestries lining the walls, and sombre bedchambers above, and a turret on the eastern side—’
He broke off abruptly, and Moira said thoughtfully, ‘Did you ever read any of those stories about a traveller who dreams of a place night after night, and then comes upon it unexpectedly years later, and is told that it’s haunted?’
‘And is recognised as actually being the ghost who haunts it,’ said Isarel. He smiled suddenly, ‘I did indeed.’
Moira said, ‘I wonder if you’re going to be recognised when we get to Eisenach?’
‘So do I.’
Lauren had been efficient about the arrangements, which Moira thought she should have expected. The rental car was reserved for them at Frankfurt, and Isarel, after consultation with Ciaran, took the wheel.
‘I’m out of practice at driving on the right,’ said Ciaran.
‘And if you’re not driving, you can go to sleep in the back,’ rejoined Isarel.
‘Certainly not, I’ll point out the sights to Moira as we go.’
‘You don’t know any of the sights.’
‘That won’t stop me,’ said Ciaran.
As they neared Eisenach, they began to get tantalising glimpses of the old romantic Germany: the Germany that had once been sprinkled with names like Bohemia and Bavaria and Saxony and Mecklenburg, and that had been a patchwork of petty dukedoms, ruled by palatines and margraves.
I’m going into a fairytale, thought Moira, entranced. I’m going into the Black Forest – I mean the place not the pudding – the ancient Forest of the Kingdom of Thuringia. This is the land where wood-cutters change into prowling wolves when there’s a full moon, and princesses get shut away in doorless towers and have to make a rope from their hair and climb down it through a window. It’s a pity about the motorways and fly-overs and whatnot, but I suppose the journey would have been a lot more difficult without them.
We’re going to Eisenach Castle, she thought; we’re going to the place where Isarel dreamed he walked as a child, and where Jude Weissman performed the Devil’s Piper. And now it’s going to be performed again, only Conrad Vogel’s calling it by another name. Satan’s Lute-Player, that poster said. I suppose it is the music. Yes, of course it is. Vogel’s simply re-hashing it, and giving it another name, the rat. There’s a word for that – I don’t mean plagiarism, or do I? Palimpsest? Yes, that’s what I mean. New writing on an old manuscript. How remarkable. I wish we knew if Kate was all right.
Ciaran had taken over the wheel for the last stretch, and they were driving down a long winding road with scented pine forests on both sides. Directly ahead, the sun was sinking behind the trees, setting the skies ablaze with great swathes of scarlet and crimson and lilac. Oriflammes streaming across the sky, thought Moira, entranced.
Isarel said suddenly, ‘We’re nearly there. In a minute there’ll be a break in the trees on the left, and you’ll see it.’
‘Are you sure? According to the map—’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
And then it was there, exactly as Isarel had said, suddenly in their view between the trees.
A stark mountain fortress, set amidst the sprawling pine forests of ancient Bavaria and Bohemia, at the heart of the dark fairytale Forest of Thuringia, the lost kingdom of the Franks and the Saxons. Turrets rose on all sides, and even from this distance, Moira could see the jagged castellations, and the slit-windows of the Middle Ages and earlier, and the dark band of shadow circling it that indicated a moat.
Eisenach Castle.
Kate opened her eyes and winced as light sliced into her brain.
She was lying on something hard and uncomfortable – wood? – and she was stiff and bruised and cold. She moved cautiously, and banged her arms against the wooden sides. A box? Panic nudged at her mind, and then memory began to return in painful strings: herself seated in Conrad Vogel’s office and Vogel himself smiling the smile of the knight with the knife under his cloak . . .
Drugged coffee, thought Kate, struggling to force back the thick folds of unconsciousness. How long ago was it? It felt as if it could have been several hours. Another strand unravelled and she thought: he was going to bring me to Eisenach Castle with Ahasuerus! Is that where I am now?
She moved her hands and feet again, and met rough wood on all sides. No ropes. Is this the packing case? I think it must be. At least the lid’s not on and I can see out.
The absolute nightmare would be if Ahasuerus was still here with her. But even as the thought formed, Kate knew he was not. There was no longer the indefinable sense of another presence. She had shared this wooden case with the Devil’s Piper, but he was no longer here. This discovery was such a relief that she thought she might be equal to climbing out and exploring. In any case, to lie here wondering where she was and what might be waiting for her, was unthinkable. She pushed herself up on one elbow, flinching from the pain in her head again.
The light was not so very bright after all, in fact what light there was was extremely dim. It was just that after the drugged unconsciousness her eyes were sensitive. Where the devil am I? thought Kate. Somewhere cold and dank and cavernous. Could it really be Eisenach Castle? A cellar? A dungeon? Don’t be ridiculous.
It was important not to give way to panic. It was even more important not to listen to the insidious little voice whispering that she was shut away in a dark underground place and that Conrad Vogel might be waiting for her and – what was far worse – that Ahasuerus might be waiting for her as well.
She clambered out, wincing afresh as her cramped arms and legs protested, but finally standing upright. She was numb and stiff and she spent a few minutes massaging her calves and arms. Agonising cramp-pains clutched her muscles as the blood began to flow again, but her sight was adjusting to the dimness and she was feeling better. She was crumpled, she felt vaguely stale, and the green surcoat she had donned in London about a hundred years ago was badly creased. None of this could be helped and none of it mattered.
She thought her first impression of being underground had been accurate. The packing case was lying in what appeared to be some kind of earth tunnel, about fifteen feet wide, with a low ceiling. There was a vaguely claustrophobic feel, and Kate thought the tunnel walls and ceiling were hard-packed soil or rock. There was a dank earthy smell as well, which she ass
ociated with subterranean mounds and ancient excavations. Or even cemeteries with freshly dug graves – no, not that.
The idea of being in an underground tunnel was rather nasty. You could not help thinking about all the things that lived underground. Blind wriggling worms and slugs and the horrid scuttling things you sometimes saw when you turned up a clod of earth in your garden. Kate shivered, half with repulsion, half with cold.
The first thing to do was find out how far the tunnel stretched and how to get out. The entrance would probably be locked or barred, but this was something else not to think about yet. And I’ve done this before, thought Kate. I was locked into the Abbey bell tower at Curran Glen, and I got out all right. I’ll get out of this, as well. I’m an old hand at escapes and I’ll insist that I’ll get out.
There was sufficient light to see a few yards in each direction and she inspected the walls cautiously. Yes, hard-packed earth, veined here and there with pale gristly jointed tree roots. So I was right about being under the ground. At some time someone dug down – or maybe dug into a hill or an escarpment – to make this. Is it some kind of Roman hill fort or a pre-Christian barrow? No, it’s more modern. I wish there was more light. If I smoked I’d have matches or a lighter. I never thought I’d regret not smoking. Her partner smoked constantly and they had had a few battles about it before agreeing on demarcation lines and smoke-free hours in the office. Kate would have given a very large sum of money for one of Lauren’s boxes of matches just now.
The earth tunnel curved slightly to the right, and Kate went forward warily. It was important to remember about not being frightened and although it was rather horrid down here, so far nothing had actually happened to her. She was certainly wrought up and angry, which was probably a good way to feel, because of the adrenalin, but nothing had happened.
Ahead was a faint ingress of light, and the faint cold gleam of steel. Doors? She stopped, listening intently, but if anything prowled behind her in the dark, it prowled soundlessly. I think I’m alone, thought Kate, torn between thankfulness and terror.
She looked back at the doors. Were they some kind of trap? Was Vogel – or whoever might be working with him or for him? – expecting her to walk through those doors? What was on the other side?
The doors were huge double oblongs, each one ten feet high, with massive iron bolts across them, rusting and pitted with age. The doors might lead anywhere or they might lead nowhere. Vogel or Ahasuerus himself might be standing on the other side, waiting for her. But she was damned if she would go back into the tunnel.
The doors yielded to her touch, but the hinges shrieked with a high-pitched squeal that set her already taut nerves jangling. But beyond them it was perceptibly lighter, and Kate could see into a large, brick-lined room. It was huge and echoing, but as she entered the breath caught in her throat and for several minutes she had to fight against a feeling of physical suffocation. And there was pain lingering here, and the most appalling terror.
She advanced cautiously to the centre of the chamber, which was immense, at least eighty feet long and probably twenty feet wide. It was no gouged-out affair of earth and rock: this was a proper room, the walls lined with dark red brick, crumbling in places with the dryness of age but mostly sound. The floor was cold, hard concrete and her footsteps echoed hollowly. The ceiling was lower than the tunnel, but near the top where wall and ceiling met, were steel vents of some kind, each one about a foot in diameter, placed at regular intervals. Kate stared at them, trying to understand their purpose. They were like yawning mouths. Black and cavernous and rather sinister. There was absolutely nothing else in the room, but it was so full of agony and panic that it was nearly choking her.
At the far end was a small, low door, half sunk into the wall, surrounded by more of the dark, old brick. Might it be a way out? As she walked across the concrete, the thick terror surged up again. Dear God, what is this place?
But comprehension was already flooding her mind, and fragments of memory – things heard, things read – were forming a grim pattern. This dark underground cavern, this brick-lined room with steel doors and steel vents . . .
She had been brought to Eisenach Castle – Conrad Vogel had said it was where he was taking her – and until very recently indeed, Eisenach had been in Soviet-ruled territory, in the Eastern Bloc. Behind the Iron Curtain, in fact. Remote and impenetrable. Anything might have gone on there. Anything might still go on. Serse’s People. Conrad Vogel presenting his travesty of a Messianic creature to the gullible youngsters who followed the music’s lure.
Eisenach, of course, had been the glittering background for Jude Weissman’s famous concert, but it had also been rumoured that it was one of Hitler’s most secret bastions. One or two of the history books had suggested that it was there that Jude had entered into that terrible pact.
None of the books had ever suggested that the castle had been more than a meeting place for high-ranking Gestapo and SS officers, however, and there had never been so much as a hint that it could have been a death camp. But Kate, looking around her, understood with blinding clarity the purpose of the underground room and she knew at last where she was.
Conrad Vogel had carried her into one of the Nazis’ disused gas chambers and sealed all the exits.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kate knew that if she was to escape, she must try to think clearly again, and she must force back the horror and the agony and the clustering ghosts.
She moved swiftly across the hard concrete floor, resolutely not looking up at the gaping vents, concentrating on reaching the small sunken door at the far end. Shut out everything except the thought of survival, Kate. She pushed open the low brick door on the room’s far side and went in.
To begin with, she thought this was better and then she thought it was a hundred times worse. The light was better here and she could see that there was the same concrete floor and the same red brick walls.
But set into the wall facing the door, about halfway up, were six or eight immense holes, each one three or four feet across, and roughly semi-circular. They looked like the mouths of tunnels and each one was surrounded by thick steel plating and framed by a jutting parapet. Circular steel doors were still attached to two of the openings, huge bolts holding them in place, but their hinges rusting and their edges pitted and blackened. They were exactly like rather old-fashioned bakers’ ovens. They would be fired and there would be long-handled implements to thrust deep inside to test the heat and to test the baking bread.
For a minute, Kate stared at the openings, grappling with the bizarre notion of finding bakers’ ovens down here, and then the juxtaposition of the room with the grisly outer chamber struck her with dreadful clarity.
The outer chamber had been the gas chamber, and it was fearsome and pitiful and soaked in the long-ago agonies of the poor doomed creatures forced into the underground chambers and murdered. But after the gas had dispersed the bodies were dragged through into this room. Because the yawning tunnels were exactly what she had seen them to be: ovens.
They were human ovens.
This was the crematorium.
As Kate’s senses reeled, footsteps crossed the floor of the outer room, and she spun round.
Conrad Vogel was standing in the doorway, his thin lips smiling, a small black revolver levelled at her.
‘So you have recovered from the chlorpromazine, have you, Kate?’ he said, and walked forward until he was standing in front of her. ‘You are a trifle dishevelled and pale,’ he said, ‘but on the whole it is not unattractive.’
He put out a hand to touch her face and Kate said very clearly, ‘If you lay a hand – or anything else – on me, I shall gouge out your eyes.’ She glared at him. ‘And then I shall twist your balls off – very slowly and using my fingernails.’ God, I’m descending into profanity with a vengeance, she thought. But if that’s the only weapon I’ve got at the moment I might as well use it. And I’m damned if I’ll let him see how frightened I am!
> But Vogel said, ‘Physical violence can be very arousing. Don’t under-estimate my tastes, Kate. You might find that I like it.’ He leaned against the wall, the gun still levelled, his eyes never leaving her. ‘And I can think of worse fates than taking you to bed,’ he said.
Kate replied in a strong, clear voice, ‘I would rather be fucked by Ahasuerus.’ And thought: well, you’ve hit gutter-level now, Kate. I don’t care. I would rather be fucked by Ahasuerus.
Vogel studied her for a moment. ‘Your husband did not follow you,’ he said. ‘He is still in London,’ and Kate felt such a rush of relief that for a moment she forgot about her own danger and Vogel’s sly insinuations. Richard had not taken the bait! He was still safe! Then I’ve only got to worry about myself!
‘Which means,’ said Vogel, ‘that we shall have to lure him a little.’
‘How?’
‘I’m going to make a phone call to him,’ he said, regarding her thoughtfully. ‘Suggesting that he comes out here for you. And so that we can be sure of it, you are going to add your persuasions to mine.’
‘Am I indeed?’
‘You are. You’re going to make a tape recording, begging him to come for you. A brief message that I can relay over the phone.’
Kate managed a scornful laugh. ‘Losing Richard’s really upset you, hasn’t it?’ she said. ‘You’ll go to any lengths to get him. Well, you can screw your tape recording, Conrad, because I won’t do it. Did you honestly think I would help you to drag Richard into your nasty little cult? If you really thought it, you’re either very naive or merely mad.’
‘Oh, I’m not mad, Kate. Simply I intend to do what my grandfather’s master failed to do more than half a century ago. But where he failed, I will succeed.’