The Devil's Piper

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘But all those years—’ Isarel was terribly aware of the minutes running out, and of a thickening staleness already gathering, but he said, ‘All those nights when I was aware of your presence—’

  ‘Yes. I was there. I don’t understand it any more than you do, but it doesn’t matter. We both know and we both understand, and nothing more needs to be said between us.’ He looked at Isarel, and finally and at last, Isarel moved to him. There was the brief feel of Jude’s arms about him, hard, strong, and then Isarel stepped back, and grasping the edges of the terrible oven with both hands, hauled himself inside.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The interior of the oven was an appalling place: dark, meaty-smelling and stifling. The floor was level with the opening, and although this was apparently the largest of the four, it was still barely more than five feet high so that none of them could quite straighten up. As Isarel went deeper in, the rancid blackness closed over him and he was aware, as Kate had been, of the lingering agonies pressing in on all sides.

  The other three had scrambled after him, and their presence was enormously comforting. But Isarel’s mind was still filled with Jude, and he was agonisingly aware that they had left him alone in the brick chamber. I’ve left him alone with the Devil’s Piper and with the ghosts of thousands of butchered men and women, he thought. And with death trickling in and filling up the room . . . Yes, but if we’re quick, we can get to the outer doors and unbolt them. Thirty minutes, he said. It’s probably twenty now.

  From behind him, Ciaran said, ‘Mother of God, it’s as black as the devil’s forehead in here. Isarel, take my torch and switch it on, till we see where we’re going.’ His voice was deliberately down-to-earth, but tiny echoes bounced whisperingly off the sides.

  ‘And,’ said Moira, ‘the better we can see, the quicker we can be.’

  ‘It’s all very well to shout instructions from the back, but it’s damned difficult to do anything in here,’ said Isarel, and was thankful to hear that his voice held the old sarcastic edge. He flicked the torch switch and at once wished he had not done so, because the thin beam of light showed up the black cinders crusting the underside and the scattered piles of charred bones, some still lying in the faint but discernible outlines of human shapes. They disturbed flurries of evil-smelling ash as they went forward and felt it shower into their hair. Kate and Moira flinched and shuddered and once Moira put up her hand to wipe her eyes.

  ‘Keep your heads down,’ said Isarel, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘The roof’s lower than it looked and we can’t cope with anyone getting knocked out. Jesus God – saving your presence, Brother Ciaran – but this is like walking into a tunnel of hell.’

  Moira said, ‘But not everyone who came in here died in here. This is how a lot of them escaped – Jude helped them to do it. Let’s think of it as a way out.’

  ‘A way to freedom,’ said Kate. ‘Some of those poor wretched prisoners got out – maybe quite a lot of them. We’ll get out as well. And then we’ll go back for Jude.’

  ‘I’ll go back on my own,’ said Isarel, at once. ‘There’s no need for anyone else to get into any more danger.’

  ‘Stubborn to the last,’ remarked Ciaran. ‘If we don’t hurry none of us will get anywhere. Is that the hatch over to your left? Down by the floor. Shine the torch till we see.’

  Isarel directed the torch as well as he could in the cramped confines, and there near the floor of the furnace, was a small opening hacked out of the brick, a rough and ready aperture that looked as if it had been made by the roughest tools imaginable. It was no more than three feet wide and at the sight of it Isarel felt his resolve waver. I’ve got to squeeze through there – we’ve all got to squeeze through there – and God alone knows what’s on the other side. Whatever escape route there was might long since have caved in. The torch picked out an oblong sheet of metal lying on its side near to the gaping hole, its surface pitted and scorched.

  ‘They must have used that to cover the hatch in between escapes,’ said Ciaran, scrambling forward. ‘And to insulate the escape route.’

  ‘It looks a bit makeshift.’

  ‘It was probably more effective than it looks. Ready, Isarel? I don’t think there can be much time left.’

  ‘Of course I’m not ready.’ But Isarel was already lying flat on the oven floor, preparatory to squeezing through. ‘But here I go anyway. Moira, can you or Kate take the torch and bend down to shine it through the opening as much as possible—Thanks.’

  He began to inch through the narrow opening, using his hands to pull himself forward. His face was almost flat to the uneven smeary floor and the stench was in his mouth and in his throat, and beneath him was the crunch of macabre piles of ancient brittleness: the cinders of human bones and nails and flesh. His hands closed on the unmistakable outline of a skull, his fingers sliding inside the eye socket before he realised it, and he drew his hand back at once, sickness welling up in his throat. Unbearable. But don’t think about it. He forced his way through the small opening, and felt, as he did so, the ghosts of the long-ago prisoners pressing in on all sides. The urgency and the frenzy that must have driven their own escapes bore him forward, and so vivid was it that for a second he almost felt thin, emaciated hands pulling him through. There was a faint breath of cool, fresh air on the other side, and Isarel stood up cautiously.

  He was in the crematorium shaft. He was standing inside a dark narrow chimney, a nightmare place, echoing with the fear and urgency of the escapees, and blackened and charred with a thousand burnings. Isarel pushed the crowding horrors back, and forced himself to look upwards. A cascade of black cinders gusted into his face, rasping at his throat and half blinding him, and he gasped and choked, rubbing his eyes clear with the backs of his hands. We’re almost there, we’re going to get out, he thought determinedly. But the minutes were slipping away and he was dreadfully aware of how little time there must be left to save Jude, and there was still Ahasuerus. Isarel could not begin to think what they would do about him.

  The shaft was narrower than he had been expecting – no more than four feet across – and the uncertain torchlight showed up the black pitted iron of the walls. A little trickle of cold air was still coming from above.

  He felt warily all around the sides of the shaft for rungs or footholes, and found them quicker than he had hoped, scraping his hand against a jutting iron stave and snatching it back with a curse. He bent down again and called back through the hatch for Kate to tilt the torch upwards, and at once saw the iron staves jutting from the sides of the chimney. A rough and ready ladder driven into the lining of the shaft. But serviceable. Praise God and the Zionist Resistance Movement. How had they managed to drive staves into iron under these conditions? In secrecy and danger and with the constant threat of an appalling death hanging over them? Don’t wonder, just be grateful. He tugged on the lower rungs, dragging down with his entire weight and thought they were safely embedded still. So far so good. Don’t die, Jude. I’m almost there.

  He called through to the others again. ‘I’m in the crematorium chimney, it’s appallingly narrow and it’s pretty nasty, but there’s iron rungs driven into the sides and I think we can climb out. But the shaft is only about four feet wide and we’ll have to go up in single file.’ His voice echoed in the enclosed space, and came back at him hollowly.

  There was a hasty consultation on the other side of the hatch, and then Kate called back, ‘We understand what you mean, and we’ll come through the hatch one at a time. We’ll pass the torch back as we come, so that whoever’s next can direct it up the stack to show the way. All right?’

  ‘Good idea. Try to time it so that there are only two of us in the shaft at a time. The rungs feel firm, but they’re fifty years old. I bet you never thought you’d escape up the flue, did you?’

  ‘That,’ said Kate, ‘sounds like a very suggestive music hall joke.’

  ‘Well, tell Ciaran to send up a prayer that we’ll all get out to laugh at it.
’

  Kate said, ‘Get on with it and don’t waste any time.’

  ‘I am getting on with it,’ said Isarel, who was already starting up the lower rungs.

  The chimney stack was about twenty feet in length, although it was difficult to be precise in the near dark. Whoever had positioned the rungs had not just set them in a straight vertical line, but had splayed them out so that you could hold on to the two above you and work your way up with your feet. The shaft was narrow enough for it to be possible to lean back against the other side as you climbed. But the pull on the muscles of arms and thighs was grindingly hard, and Isarel knew that Jude had been right to say he would never manage it. Had he managed to get out of the gas-filled chamber to near the outer door where the air might be better? We should have helped him into the tunnels, he thought with a sudden pang. But it was so rushed, so frantic. And there was so much I wanted to say. They crushed his feet because he wouldn’t betray his people. They rigged the trial at Nuremberg – how? a dupe? a double in the dock? – and so for half a century, the world thought he was a traitor. I can’t begin to grapple with it. It’s too enormous.

  He stopped again and looked down at Moira, who was beginning the climb. The wavering light of the torch from below picked out her upturned face, and Isarel said with sudden irrelevancy, ‘You look like a chimney sweep’s urchin.’

  ‘I don’t care what I look like at the moment.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Isarel softly, and although the echo missed it, he saw that Moira had heard. Her eyes flew up to meet his, and Isarel at once said in a practical voice, ‘If you keep climbing it’s easier than it looks. But I’ll come back down to help you if—I mean – is it awkward for you?’ He hoped this was sufficiently tactful, but Moira said,

  ‘It’s probably a bit harder for me than it is for the rest of you, but I can do it. Jude would never have managed it, would he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will we reach him?’

  Isarel heard the uncertainty in her voice and the fear behind it. He was angrily conscious of wanting to get her out to safety, and he was very conscious indeed of his earlier thoughts about her. But this is neither the time nor the place, Svengali. Get on with the escape from Colditz, and with rescuing Jude, and finding Ahasuerus, and then have a look at the idea again.

  He said now, ‘We’ll try to reach him, Moira. Onwards and upwards. Upwards in particular.’

  From below, he heard Kate say, ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the name of the poor souls who built this, but whoever they were I hope they all got out and lived in luxury and idleness until they were a hundred and ninety-two,’ and he smiled despite himself.

  His shoulders and wrists were aching abominably, but he thought he would willingly endure the torments of the damned if it meant reaching the top. He could see daylight now; a faint, grey spillage of light, and he thought it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

  And then, marvellously and unbelievably, he was there, he had reached the top, and the grey afternoon was all about him, and there were ordinary things everywhere: trees and birds singing, and the muted sound of the traffic from the highway below the castle.

  He bent to help Moira out, and said breathlessly, ‘All of you stay up here. We’re outside the castle boundary by the look of it – yes, there’s the wall over there.’

  They had come out on the far side of the gentle hill-rise that concealed the grisly underground chambers, and the entrance was on the other side. Behind them was a small copse and in front of them the castle’s bulk reared up grimly. Even from here, Isarel could see the four vehicles – two large vans and two old German Army-type trucks with canvas sheets across the backs and flaking camouflage paint still visible. They were parked near to a steel door opening into the hillside. Isarel eyed it, trying to gauge the distance. It was a much smaller entrance than the double doors he had found in the walled walkway, and it had probably been how the SS officers had come and gone when Eisenach had been a death camp in its own right. Whatever it was, it was much nearer than the concealed entrance in the castle wall. Could he get to it without being seen?

  He looked back at the trucks. They were backed up to where a series of black-mouth spouts protruded from the hill, and long black tubes snaked from the exhaust pipes and clamped around the spouts. Gas vents, thought Isarel, feeling cold horror close about him. And the engines are still running. I think we’re going to be too late.

  He said urgently to Moira, ‘Get into the shelter of the copse, make Kate and Ciaran go with you – Kate anyway – and for the love of God stay there!’ He looked at her, at the smudges of soot and the tumbled, tangled hair, and reached out a finger to rub the smuts from the tip of her nose. The light, half-affectionate, half-teasing gesture which was all he had intended, suddenly turned into something far deeper and far more important, and almost before he realised it, he had pulled her against him and kissed her hard. There was a second or two of surprise and then he felt her response. He held her for another precious second, and then put her from him. ‘That’s in case I don’t get the chance again.’

  ‘Oh, I hope you do—’ said Moira, delighted colour staining her face, and Isarel thought: God, she’ll be an absolute knock-out with the right clothes and hair—No, I’m wrong, she’s a knock-out anyway, even grimy and sooty and dishevelled.

  And then he was running across the hill slope, every muscle feeling as if it had taken a beating, but beyond caring and almost beyond feeling. Only one thing mattered now and that was reaching Jude.

  The first person he saw as he approached the narrow entrance was Vogel. He was climbing out of the nearest truck, a couple of young men wearing the Serse emblem with him, and he seemed to be calling directions as he came. Isarel could see that each of the vehicles had three more Serse followers inside, and although he was frantically aware that the underground rooms must be choked with carbon monoxide by now, he forced himself to halt. If Vogel still had the gun – and of course he has, you fool! – there was no point in going straight up and getting shot. He stayed where he was, crouching low, scanning the grassy hillside.

  Vogel’s people were disconnecting the pipes from the exhausts leaving them coiled like black serpents under each of the spouts, and turning back to the trucks. Isarel risked a glance at his watch. Almost thirty minutes since it had started. Did Vogel think he had pumped in enough fumes to kill them all, then?

  Four of the young men were bringing six or eight objects out of the vehicles, and Isarel, trying to edge nearer, trying to see what they were doing, felt impatience and frenzy beating a frantic pulse in his head. Go away, damn you! Whatever it is you’re doing, stop it and go away! He wanted to go hurling across the stretch of ground and drag open the tantalisingly near doors and reach Jude, but he forced himself to stay where he was.

  And then he saw what had been carried out of the backs of the trucks, and understanding slammed into his mind.

  The objects were five-gallon jerrycans: probably relics of the war, and while two of the young men reached for the disconnected hoses, two more were undoing the caps. A pungent unmistakable smell reached Isarel, and his mind rocked in horror. Petrol. And from the awkward careful way the men were carrying them, each of the cans was brimful. At a rough calculation Vogel and his minions were pouring between thirty and forty gallons of petrol down the vents and straight into the underground rooms.

  It was makeshift and it was a weak echo of what had been done here fifty years ago, but the aim was chillingly obvious. Vogel was resurrecting the crematorium, the Nazi ovens – exactly as a short while earlier he had resurrected the gas chamber. He was going to set fire to the petrol and flames would rage through the underground rooms. If Jude was not gassed by now, he would certainly burn.

  Even as Isarel’s mind struggled to accept the reality and to grope for some kind of plan, Vogel and his people retreated, leaving the youngest of the men behind. Suicide mission, thought Isarel, staring in disbelief as the boy wrapped a rag ar
ound a long stick and bent to soak it in the petrol dregs. God yes, I believe that’s almost precisely what it is! He remembered Kate’s story of the suicides, and of the fanaticism displayed by Serse’s People and also by Vogel himself. Was this boy really going to risk immolation, actually burning alive, purely to further Conrad Vogel’s distorted nightmare vision of a new Golden Race? He might manage to get clear once he had thrown the burning taper in, but it was going to be a very close thing.

  The boy was looking back to where Vogel and the rest had taken cover, and held the stick aloft, plainly indicating: Almost ready! With his free hand, he brought from his jacket pocket a cigarette lighter.

  There was no time to think, no time to consider danger from guns, or from leaking carbon monoxide, or even from petrol explosions. Isarel flung himself forward across the grassy slope, shouting for all he was worth.

  ‘Stop! For Christ’s sake, man, stop! We’ve escaped – we’re all out, and the only thing left down there is your wretched Devil’s Piper! If you light that thing, you’ll blow Ahasuerus to hell!’

  He was halfway across the hill when he saw he was too late. The boy had already flicked the lighter, and the petrol-soaked rag had caught, burning up with raw scarlet and yellow flames in the cold autumn afternoon. The fumes from the vents must already be rising, and at any minute the entire hillside would erupt in flames.

  Vogel had heard him. He turned, and Isarel saw, even at this distance, the cold fury in his face.

  ‘Stop!’ yelled Isarel, again. ‘You crazy, murdering madman, don’t you understand! Ahasuerus is down there – everything you’ve been working for is about to blow up in your face!’ He kept running, but he kept his eyes fixed on Vogel, formless frantic prayers scudding through his mind. Please God, let him believe me – please God, don’t let him shoot me – and above everything, please let me reach the doors and get Jude before the petrol ignites, and let Jude be all right—He was dimly aware of Ciaran running down the slope towards him, and of Moira and Kate watching, their arms about one another.