by RA Williams
‘Balthasar Toule.’
A shiver like lightning rode down her spine. She reached out, her fingers coming to rest on his cheek, the marble cold. She could barely breathe.
‘Here you are,’ she whispered.
‘What’s that you say?’ The vicar’s eyes narrowed, his voice now less welcoming and friendly. Accusatory, almost. ‘Just happened upon our little church, did you?’ he continued.
She pulled her hand back, feeling suddenly distrustful.
‘Comin’ in here asking all sorts of questions. I remember who you is. And I know who you’re after. You ain’t fooling me.’
The vicar was either mad or spot on.
‘Think you had better be leaving.’
‘But—’
‘Now,’ he said, voice thundering through the church.
She nodded, backing quickly away, making for the door.
Lights from Victoria Pier blinked and flickered through the trees below, the merry sound of a ragtime band playing on the pier head ebbing and flowing in the mild night breeze. Silently, she crossed the church graveyard, the headstones trailing long shadows, the once friendly weeping ash now reaching menacingly for her as she ducked under its branches.
Darkness changed everything. It always did. She was spooked. But determined. Confidence was winning the battle over prudence today.
Approaching the church porch as she had a few hours earlier, in daylight, she reached for the door, recalling how it creaked. Inhaling, as if it would somehow deaden the noise, she slowly turned the handle and pushed the door in. Quite as she anticipated, it creaked loudly, echoing within the church. She opened the door enough to squeeze through. It was near pitch-black inside. A stark contrast from the calming atmosphere earlier that day.
At the far end of the church, candles beside the altar flickered in their stands. It was almost too theatrical. Like a Lon Chaney horror film. Distant lights from the pier filtered through stained-glass windows, creating motion in every shadowy nook and cranny. Fishing through the pockets of her dungarees, she retrieved the cigarette lighter she’d not returned to the man on the night ferry, her compass coming along with it. It clattered to the stone floor. Elle quickly scooped it up, holding it tightly in her hand, hushing herself.
Assuring herself she hadn’t attracted attention, she approached the altar cautiously, eyeing a box poking out from under the velvet altar cloth, illuminated by the lighter’s flame. Rummaging through it, she discovered an open box of candles. They were only inches long, but better than bumbling about in the dark beyond the small pool of light cast by the alter candles. Lighting a candle wick cast a sombre pool of light around her. Passing the hatch where the remains of St Emiliana lay, she fumbled with her compass, catching its face in the glow of the candles. Its dial spun wildly.
Just as it had in the passage under the Externsteine.
‘Damn thing,’ she cursed quietly.
The vestry door opened. Hastily snuffing out her candle, she ducked behind the altar, heart hammering. There came a distant moaning. Not wailing, but proper vexing and muttering. The door slammed shut again, the bang echoing all around. Erratic footfalls could be heard across the stone floor.
She peeked out from her concealment. Dressed in a nightshirt, Duigan fumbled across the chancel, carbide lamp in his hand, its waning beam falling upon the effigy of Balthasar.
‘God curse you, Toule.’
An empty bottle clattered to the floor, rolling to within inches of Elle. Redbreast whiskey.
‘Where are you, scoundrel? The Lord don’t want you in His house. I don’t want you in His house, neither.’ He stumbled. ‘Where are you, then?’ He glared at the recumbent noble, sniggering. ‘You ain’t in there, so you’re not. But I knows where you is. Down there, ain’t ya? Ain’t ya?’
Elle watched the inebriated vicar put his weight against the vestry door. Once he was inside, she heard the sound of jingling keys, followed by more effing and blinding. ‘For God’s sakes, which key is ya?’
Crawling forwards, Elle moved as close as she dared. The vicar wobbled at the gate in the corner of the vestry, a large ring cluttered with keys in his hands.
‘Bugger,’ he grumbled, lazily trying one after another in a padlock securing the gate. Eventually, there was a click, and the lock fell to the floor with a loud clang. Elle leaped back as if the sound had given her away. She heard the gate swing open, followed by tottering footsteps. Waiting until they grew distant, she peered into the vestry. Descending footfall echoed through the open gate.
She looked beyond the open gate. Worn steps sank through an arched brick passageway. Relighting her candle, she grasped the opened gate, steadying herself. Somewhere below, Duigan continued his whinging. Quietly, she followed his sounds.
The entrance to the crypt reeked of damp. Following the steps’ course, she paused at a narrow landing from which the stairs led into darkness. Torches sat in sconces, the brick above blackened from centuries of use. Nineteenth-century oil lamps replaced others.
Removing one such lamp from its rusty hook on the wall, she opened the glass pane. The strong smell of oil suggested it was full. She held her candle to its wick and the lamp began to glow. Snuffing out her redundant candle, she dropped it to the ground, adjusting the wick of the lamp. It offered considerably more light. Remembering her compass, she removed it from her pocket, opened its leather case and looked to the dial. It showed magnetic north. It wasn’t broken after all.
Although she could no longer see the light from the vicar’s lamp, she could hear distant muttering. Tucking away her compass, she swallowed dryly. No sense kidding herself, her mind already envisioned Spring-heeled Jack leaping out at her from the darkness. But Duigan had said he knew where Balthasar was.
Courage now.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, a vast vaulted crypt appeared from the dreary shadows cast by her lantern. Within the vaults lay sarcophagi covered in centuries of dust, hardened into a clay-like substance. The vicar was nowhere to be seen. Then, from the far end of the crypt, came a shuffle. Crossing the chamber, her lamp illuminated another stairway leading down, a distant glow indicating where Duigan had gone. The immensity of the crypt, particularly one with multiple levels, was unusual for a small parish church.
From somewhere below came the sound of the vicar grousing over his keys, followed by the now familiar creak of rusty hinges. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Elle dimmed her lantern. They led to another crypt. At the far end, she picked out the glow from the vicar’s lamp once more.
He unlocked a vault, swung back the gate and ventured inside. Hugging the near wall, Elle pressed on, tucking herself behind the pillars of each vault she passed. Nearing now, she heard Duigan messing about with something and, by his cursing, she reckoned he was failing at it. There came a slight click, followed by what sounded to her like gears winding and a distinctive grating sound. Only a single pillar separated her from him now.
‘Ya loathsome urchin,’ cursed Duigan. ‘Are you down there?’
Elle inched closer. Carved into the stone above the vault was the surname Toule. All air left her lungs. Just as she was about to confront the vicar, she heard something shift heavily away, followed by a loud thunk. Taking a shallow breath, she slid around the pillar, peering as far into the vault as her eyes allowed. It was deep, and choked with cobwebs. Its position at the very end of the lowest crypt made it quite possibly the oldest vault in the church. Inside rested six sarcophagi, darkened by age. They were unexceptional. Like many to be found in England. No death symbol. No Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Not the sort of thing she linked to Balthasar Toule.
One, however, stood apart from the rest, and not only for its resemblance to a Roentgen wardrobe with highly polished inlaid wood and ornate brass fittings. It was also open. She raised her lantern to look inside. Within the imposing but otherwise empty sarcophagus lay the vicar, spindly legs flailing about his hiked-up nightshirt.
Apparently, it was the same
for Irish with their nightshirts as it was for Scots and their kilts. Fortunately, his kicking legs righted his nightshirt quickly.
Duigan had tumbled a good five feet to the bottom of the sarcophagus. It was very odd – a sarcophagus partially sunk into the floor. Getting the old drunk out was going to be a challenge. Swinging a leg over the edge of the sarcophagus, she attempted to reach him. He was too far down. Balancing her lantern on the edge of the sarcophagus, she hopped in to join him. The vicar lay prostrate, mumbling something or other about catacombs. Blearily, he glared up at her.
‘I bumped my noggin.’
‘You’ve got yourself into a proper pickle, Vicar,’ she whispered.
‘Is it you, Emiliana?’
‘Yeah, it’s me,’ she replied. ‘Boo!’
‘Give me strength to cast him out. To let you be. To let you rest.’
‘We’ve got to cast you out of here first, Vicar.’
‘God give me a little boot up the behind.’
‘What did you say?’ she replied, her mind running a mile a minute.
‘I don’t remember.’
‘“God give me a little boot up the behind”, you said.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yeah. You did.’ And just like that she remembered. Clerical collar and soaking wet pyjamas. ‘I’ll be damned.’
‘So you shall.’
‘God gave me a boot up the behind,’ she recalled, nodding. ‘You said it when we pulled you soaking wet from the North Atlantic in 1912.’
He squinted at her. ‘Lifeboat 4?’
A moment of clarity?
‘You was in it? You was on Titanic?’
‘I was.’
‘You didn’t just happen upon me little church, did you?’
‘I did not.’
‘No, you did not.’
The vicar’s legs began kicking up a fuss again, and in doing so his heel came down on an inconspicuous iron lever.
‘Be still. I’m trying to help you,’ Elle said.
Mechanics whirred under her. An instant later, the lid above jarred, slowly rotating. ‘What are you doing?’ she shouted, grasping for the lid above. It was too heavy. She couldn’t stop it. In another moment it sealed over them, clicking into place with an ominous thud.
‘Oh Christ,’ she muttered. Righting her lamp, she tried not to panic. All sorts of horrific ends crossed her mind, not least of which was being trapped forever with a drunken vicar.
The sound of mechanics came again. Elle’s fears were immediately forgotten as the floor fell away.
Reaching for her throbbing head, Elle felt the stickiness of fresh blood. Her wound must have reopened in the fall. She rolled to the side and inhaled what turned out to be a mouthful of dirt. Spitting, she fumbled for the upturned oil lantern, its flame still flickering. Sitting up caused her head to spin, and her hands fell to her sides to steady herself. Her right hand landed on a canvas sack, which came apart in her hand. Folding over what remained, she held it to her head. When she pulled it away to inspect it, she saw fresh blood, though not enough to cause real concern. The vicar lay nearby. They had taken a good fall, landing on a pile of earth and loose brick.
Pulling herself to Duigan, she checked his pulse. He wasn’t dead. Just dead drunk. Either the fall or the whiskey had knocked him cold. Adjusting the flame on her lantern, she looked around them. They had fallen some twenty feet into a high-vaulted chamber, tree roots growing through cracks in the arched brick ceiling.
It was too large to be an undercroft. Up the side of a wall ran a treacherously narrow stair, terminating at a sealed rectangular hatch in the ceiling, where the bottom of the sarcophagus opened when the lever within was activated. Enormous rusty hinges and cogs were controlled by a maze of cords and counterweights. Someone had built a highly elaborate mechanism for entering the chamber.
The vicar knew the way in. He must surely know a way out. She gave him a poke, but he was evidently done for the night.
Regaining her wind, she got to her feet. She was sore, but at least she was in. Wherever in was. Climbing down the pile of loose earth and bricks, she shone her lamp ahead. Criss-crossing cobwebs covered all manner of maritime detritus: old ship masts, torn sails, mouldy fishing nets, splintering wooden barrels, piles of oars. There was even an old cannon, its wooden carriage rotted to bits. Nobody had gone that way for ages. Still, none of the old tot had got where it lay through the trapdoor in the sarcophagus. There had to be another way in – and out.
A hollow, distant thumping drew her attention. She followed it towards the opposite end of the chamber. Every passage radiating from the chamber was bricked over, but at its far end she discovered a high-arched corridor continuing into darkness.
She made her way along it as it narrowed, the bricks sweating with damp. Shallow recesses held lanterns covered in cobwebs. Wandering in the darkness, she stumbled past low vaults filled with rotting wooden casks and even a discarded grand piano, its legs long since collapsed.
The distant thumping continued steadily as she found even more gated vaults, these piled high with crates of French champagne and Turkish tobacco. Further along, she saw a gate ajar. Passing through it to enter the vault, she found crates stamped Product of Ireland.
She reached inside a loose lid and took hold of a bottle. Redbreast whiskey. Duigan was raiding the spirits cabinet. Cracking the cap, she took a drink. It was pure liquid courage.
‘Product of Ireland, indeed,’ she said, before another nip.
Then it dawned on her. ‘Smuggler vaults.’
None of the crates were crusted with solidified dust or cobwebs; they must have been in recent use.
Continuing on, her lantern illuminated vault upon vault overflowing with contraband. Crates marked .303 were stacked along a wall of the passage, suggesting they were only recently delivered. She looked closer. Ammunition. Thousands of rounds.
Beyond, long wooden crates were piled shoulder-high, and stamped Lee-Enfield Rifles. 20 Lot. Yet others, marked Mk IV B Type C Mine. Property of HMS British Army.
‘Not just smuggling,’ she said out loud. ‘Someone’s pilfering from the British Army.’
The thumping grew louder still as she came to another intersection. Four low tunnels twisted off in opposing directions, two blocked by cave-ins. She turned to a passage on her right. Masses of cobwebs and teardrop-shaped egg sacs hung from the arched ceiling. She dared not venture that way. She was left with only one way to go.
More vaults followed, but unlike the others, these were secured by solid wooden doors and padlocks. At the end of the passage stood an arched vault, its entrance also barred by a strong door and padlock. At the top of the arch, just visible in the bricks, were runes.
‘Sekr,’ she whispered, heart racing. ‘Gotcha.’
She grasped the lock. It was recently oiled. She gave it a good tug, but its securing was bolted tight.
Before she could mull over what to do next, her lantern began to dim. The oil reservoir empty.
‘Damn,’ she whispered. ‘Shouldn’t have left the candle behind, dingbat.’
She wondered how long the lighter could last. A hefty mariner’s lantern hung in a niche. She lifted it – it was full. She breathed a sigh of relief. She clicked her lighter and the lantern’s wick immediately ignited, just as the other huffed and extinguished itself. Adjusting the flame bathed the passage in undulating light, revealing a hand-hammered key behind the lantern.
‘Can I really be this lucky?’ she asked herself. Slipping the key into the lock, she gave it a turn. It clicked.
‘Yes, I can.’
She dropped the lock to the floor and pushed the door in, its well-oiled hinges making no sound. Bracing for the unknown, she was just about to enter the vault when, somewhere off in the passages, a door with considerably less well-oiled hinges creaked loudly. An unintelligible voice echoed. Then a second joined it.
It was not the vicar. Fear leached into her again, but she refused to cower. Not when she was so close.
Extinguishing her lamp, Elle shuffled into the blackness of the vault, a smell like mouldy cloth heavy in the air. The voices grew closer. A conversation she could not discern ensued. She gritted her teeth, fighting off the memory of being bludgeoned by a pair of SS goons at the Externsteine.
Fortunately, no alarm was raised by her intrusion.
Mustering up her courage, she left the lantern in the vault, stealthily making her way back up the dark passage, retracing the way she had come. Near the end, she saw a flickering light in the darkness. As she sidled up to the intersecting passages blocked by a recent cave-in, the voices became distinctive.
‘Look at this mess.’
British accent.
‘I’ll ’ave that next-to-useless commodore put paid to if he don’t stop that fuckin’ drilling.’ British and foul-mouthed.
‘Second time in as many days, ja?’ The second voice was neither British nor common. And Elle recognised it.
She stole a peek around the corner. Ahead stood two men, silhouetted by the glow of their electric torches. They inspected the cave-in. One was a giant of a man, his bulk practically consuming the entire passage. The other displayed a controlled demeanour. It was the Belgian from the night ferry.
The large man bent over as best he could. ‘Bugger.’
‘What is it?’
‘Nuffin’,’ he replied, his torch scanning the ground of the collapsed passage. ‘I popped a button on me strides. Help me find it.’
‘Wait. Do you hear?’
They listened. Elle listened as well. The thumping sound. It was very close now.
‘It’s them, innit?’ the large Brit said.
‘We must have the Royal Navy reroute their tunnelling again.’
‘I’ll have words with the useless bellend. Costing me a packet every time I gotta pay him to move his digging.’
Without warning, the hotspur began to hoot and jump about like a man gone barmy. ‘Fucking ’ell. Get off. Get it bleedin’ off me!’
The Belgian raised his torch. Hulking hands slapped away at huge gangly spiders. Their long legs broke away from their torsos as the great wall of a man crushed them.