by RA Williams
Gaele walked ahead of her through the open doorway at the end of the passageway and then turned.
‘Follow me.’
The chamber beyond surprised her: the walls were cut from chalk, the bare floor lacking the bright mosaics of the previous chambers. A floral-print armchair sat out of place by the entrance, a half-read novel lying open over an arm. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh. A gramophone spun on an upended champagne crate, needle raised. An empty cup and saucer sat on a record sleeve. She looked at it closely. The Andrews Sisters. ‘Yodelin’ Jive’. Elle liked that song too. Bing Crosby’s velvet voice joined the Sisters.
Oil lanterns sat beside the chair, one lit, flame low. A dartboard hung from a rusty nail pounded into the chalk wall. ‘Necropolis kitted out by grandma?’
Placing the thermos on the record sleeve, Mahmoud tucked his tommy gun under his left arm, unwrapping the waxed paper around the shortbread Gaele had brought him. It didn’t go unnoticed by Elle that neither man relinquished his weapon.
‘Where is Balthasar?’ she asked, her disquiet scarcely more thinly veiled than her impatience.
‘He is there,’ Mahmoud replied, directing her to another strong door at the far end of the humble chamber.
They walked towards it and she followed. Another chamber. Mahmoud turned the flame up on an oil lamp on the wall. A low-ceilinged crypt held four sarcophagi, none of them ornate, their sealed lids displaying Balthasar’s death symbol and crusted over with lime. The fourth was made of limestone and appeared well looked after. She touched it. Only stone now separated her from Balthasar Toule.
‘Why is his not chalk?’
‘Chalk is an excellent desiccation agent. We can’t have our old man drying out,’ said Gaele.
Elle was so close to him now, yet she felt oddly empty, the realisation hitting her that the best part of her life was surrendered to a memory. Now that she had found him, she felt nothing. No electrical charge rising up through the limestone, passing through her. Like the limestone itself, she felt cold.
Without looking up, she asked, ‘In the other sarcophagi, are they Crimen?’
‘Yes,’ replied Mahmoud.
‘Why would you let him be with them?’
‘It’s not a choice.’
She looked up at Mahmoud. ‘Leaving him beside those beasts isn’t a choice?’
‘He did not leave Balthasar here,’ corrected the Belgian. ‘Balthasar left himself.’
‘He is Crimen,’ Mahmoud explained, his words sounding almost like charity.
‘And you? What are you?’ she asked him.
‘His Sentinel.’
‘You are Guilty as well?’
He said nothing in reply. Elle looked to Gaele.
Raising his hands, he said, ‘I am as mortal as you.’
‘Yes, Dr Annenberg, I am,’ Mahmoud said, his stare penetrating. ‘I cannot explain why we hunger for such terrible things. No more than I can tell you why we rest with others like ourselves. I can only tell you—’
‘Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,’ she said, remembering his words from ten years before. It was all true. What she had witnessed. The things she’d kept inside for so many years. Her theories. Turning to the sarcophagus containing Balthasar, she said, ‘I need to see him.’
‘You cannot.’
‘I must.’
‘Mahmoud,’ Gaele pleaded softly.
‘No,’ he bristled, blocking them from the sarcophagus. They had ruffled his feathers all right, but Balthasar’s Sentinel was not yet engaging them with his tommy gun.
Elle watched Gaele tap Henry’s trigger. ‘Whatever are you hoping to do, Mahmoud? Hit us with your shortbread?’
Mahmoud lowered his hand, crushing the biscuit to dust. ‘Don’t make me kill you both.’
If his ruthlessness alarmed Elle, his look of woe betide terrified her.
‘Give your gyppo mafia routine a rest. It neither suits you, nor does it intimidate me,’ snapped back the Belgian, before cursing, ‘J’en ai ras le cul.’
‘Va te faire enculer,’ Mahmoud growled in reply.
Elle sniggered. It wasn’t every day she heard one man tell another he’d bugger his arse.
Her reaction seemed to break the tension. Gaele lowered his Winchester and leaned it against the armchair. Resting a hand on the Persian’s shoulder, he said, ‘You must permit her to see him. And you know perfectly well why.’
Elle looked to him. She didn’t know perfectly well why. Before she could ask, Mahmoud spoke up. ‘Disturbing him could have dire consequences.’
‘Or it could be what he has waited these many centuries for.’
The Persian’s countenance eased. He stared at Gaele for a long time before turning to Elle.
‘A word of warning,’ he said, laying his hands upon the sarcophagus lid. ‘You may find his appearance upsetting.’
She didn’t have time to process what Mahmoud had said before he slid the lid sideways. Crystallised lime flaked to the ground as it grated. Gaele grasped an end. Together, they leaned the lid against the side of the sarcophagus.
Raising her lamp, she hesitantly looked within. Her breath buried itself, as the odour of mouldy cloth rose up to her nose. An atrophied corpse lay before her, brindled skin tightly drawn around its petrified body, head thrust back, dross-encrusted eyes sealed up, mouth wide in despair. This wasn’t her raffish, dark-haired enigma in a duffel coat. This was a sad, frail fiend. She wanted to run from the hollow and curl up with her memories. But her legs were having none of it. ‘It isn’t him.’
‘This must be shocking,’ said Mahmoud, resting a hand on her shoulder. ‘He went too long without dormancy. Over-fatigued himself.’
‘More than a year,’ said Gaele.
‘Nearly two,’ Mahmoud corrected.
‘How long?’ she asked, looking up at Gaele. ‘How long has he been in this state?’
‘He went away the end of July.’
‘Four weeks,’ added the Persian. ‘It’s not long enough. Not nearly.’
She forced her eyes back to the remains and a face so withered and sad, seven centuries of misery in a single, agonising gasp.
She remembered now. The handsome yet gaunt face she had forgotten. Before she could do anything to stop them, tears began to well up in her eyes.
In that moment, she loathed herself. Loathed that she had mistaken those sad remains for anyone but Balthasar Toule. She reached in, her fingertips touching his face. The Persian went to stop her.
Retracting her hand, she turned to him, eyes flushed with tears.
‘I’m sorry.’
Mahmoud nodded solemnly.
‘I’ve spent my life hoping for this moment. Hoping to find him.’
Turning back to Balthasar, she gently stroked his emaciated face, his skin cold like his marble effigy in the Parish Church of St Emiliana.
‘I never once gave a thought to what I would do if I did.’
Her hand lingered on his brittle hair, hoping her touch would resurrect him. In his frozen scream, she searched for even a hint of life. There was none. A full tear left her eye. Running down her cheek, it dripped from her chin onto his mottled forehead. Instinctively, she placed her lips on the spot where it landed.
She stood, wiping her tears away. ‘Rest.’
Eyes cracked open. His voice croaked, ‘You’ve changed your hair.’
❖❖❖
31 AUGUST 1939
FOLKESTONE, KENT
Number 1, The Bayle greyed with the years. Odd-coloured patches filled the crumbling mortar in the stonework, and its roof was a mishmash of slate tiles and shuttered dormers. The six street-facing windows were curtained. Hardy rose bushes grew from planter boxes on the ground floor, bursting with scarlet flowers. It was the only visible life to the house.
Gaele parked the Anglia on Priory Gardens, a narrow side lane just outside the entrance to the house. He got out and quietly mounted the steps, having a cautious look around before opening the front door. It was early. The
Bayle was quiet. He turned to those still waiting in the car and gave a nod.
The Persian bundled Balthasar inside in his arms, a worn patchwork blanket covering him. ‘You didn’t lock the door behind you?’
‘I have temporarily lost the key,’ said the Belgian, closing the door and drawing the blind, blotting out the dawn.
‘Bedroom or vaults?’ Mahmoud asked.
‘Take me upstairs,’ croaked a voice from under the blanket.
‘You’re certain, Buster?’
A head underneath nodded. Mounting a narrow stair at the rear of a tiny lounge, Mahmoud flashed a look of daggers in Elle’s direction. Choosing to remain in the doorway carrying Mahmoud’s Thompson and Henry, she watched as he disappeared from view up the creaky stairs.
Gaele crossed the room. ‘Shall I have them?’
Taking the weapons from her, he propped the Thompson against an armchair before lowering the trigger guard of his repeater, ejecting fifteen .44 rimfire rounds, leaving them loose in a drawer by the door.
‘What now?’ Elle asked, restlessly wringing her hands.
‘It’s not as if he’s going to die,’ replied the Belgian, checking his wristwatch. ‘Half five. I should like a coffee.’
‘Shall I make some?’
He snorted. ‘Good luck. You will find the larder bare. Only tea in this house. The Priory Arms is just a few doors down. Mabel keeps a bag of beans and a press.’
‘The pub? Don’t think I’m welcome there.’
‘Cubby has already forgotten you biting his ear off.’
‘Yeah? How long before he forgets you bludgeoned him?’
Gaele tossed his unloaded rifle onto a worn settee covered with yellowed newspapers, and was about to reply when an upstairs door creaked open. Footsteps crossed the floor above before Mahmoud appeared down the narrow stair.
‘Get to the butcher,’ he told Gaele.
The Belgian nodded.
‘Buster’s in need of victuals,’ the Persian continued. ‘On the high street. Make sure you see old Bill the Butcher about a freshly dressed sow. And buy all the sweetbreads you can.’
‘Planning a meat pie?’
‘Don’t box clever with me, Mssr Gaele. This is on your head.’ He glared at both of them. ‘Do you know what you’ve done? What harm you have caused?’
Elle’s heart squirmed from guilt.
She was just about to apologise when the Persian started up again by holding his index finger and thumb hardly a hair’s width apart. ‘I’m this close to flaying the both of you alive,’ he said.
Heading for the door, Gaele cocked a snook behind the Persian’s back. ‘Someone needs a cuppa char,’ he said, before closing the front door behind him.
Taking a long breath, Mahmoud looked angrily at Elle, before plunking down in the twin of the armchair in the hollow.
‘He’s right, actually. I could do with a cuppa.’
‘I’ll make it,’ she volunteered, unsettled by the Persian’s threat. ‘If you tell me where the kitchen is?’
‘Never mind,’ he replied. He put his tommy gun on his lap and removed the circular ammunition drum.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked, all butterflies, unable to stop herself thinking about what had happened in the last hour and what was going on right now just above her head.
‘I wait,’ he replied coldly, ratcheting back the Thompson’s bolt. A .45-calibre bullet sprang from the receiver and pinged about the floor, before rolling to Elle’s feet. Crouching down to retrieve it, her cracked ribs protested. She winced.
‘Whatever have you done to yourself?’
She pushed the pile of newspapers on the settee aside, gingerly sitting down.
‘My ribs or my head?’
‘Both.’
‘My ribs are courtesy of Cubby Smyth. Discovered me in his smugglers’ passages and gave me a hiding.’
‘And the head?’
She felt the stitches. ‘I was chucked out of Germany a few days back. Couple of Nazi goons clocked me in the head with their Schmeissers.’
‘Then you were lucky.’
‘Why’s that?’ she asked as she tossed him the bullet.
‘Normally, they use the other end of their machine guns.’
Catching the round, he inserted it into the drum magazine. It seated with a satisfying click.
‘Where do you keep your tea things?’ she asked.
He began to stand.
‘Don’t get up,’ she told him. ‘We can trade war wounds over a pot of tea.’
The Persian pointed her towards a narrow hallway beyond the front door. Following it, Elle came to a glass-panelled door leading into the kitchen. Like the rest of the house, it was painted eggshell blue, and was horribly poky. It smelled musty from disuse. Everything about the place suggested nobody special lived there.
She put her hand to an Ascot on the wall beside the stained porcelain sink. ‘Great. No hot water,’ she whispered to herself. A dinged kettle sat on a cast-iron cooker. At least the Aga was hot – they always were. The tap spat at her, releasing a trickle of rusty water. As she waited for it to run clear, she pulled back the curtains above the sink, throwing open the windows to let in some fresh air. Across the narrow lane, the tower of St Emiliana peeked out from behind a high wall.
The water now cleared, she filled the kettle and set it on the cooker. Turning her back on it, she leaned against the counter and noticed two empty whisky bottles on yet more yellowed newspapers. A tin of cigarettes poked out from underneath. Flipping the papers aside, she opened the tin. Only one remained. She didn’t feel at all rotten taking someone’s last gasper. Cracking a match from the box beside it, she lit it and took a deep drag before blowing the smoke out of the window. Still waiting on the kettle, she turned over one of the newspapers.
Le Petit Vingtième. A Belgian gazette.
She looked to the funnies. Adventures of Tintin in the Congo. She paused, looking up from the paper. Congo. Belgian. Was Gaele living here as well?
The front door opened and then closed with a crash, followed closely by a string of thick expletives. Heavy feet thumped into the lounge.
‘Wot the fuck is going on with you lot?’
Cubby was back.
‘Don’t get shirty,’ Mahmoud hushed.
‘Don’t order me about, you pompous Persian poof.’
‘Cease your never-ending whinges and tidings, will you?’ the Persian demanded.
‘Me missus tells me Gaele come in asking for coffee.’
‘There’s tragedy in that?’
‘He tells her that Yank is here.’
Elle went to the kitchen door, gently pushing it open to better hear the conversation.
‘She’s not all that’s here,’ Mahmoud replied.
‘Ah, his lordship up, is he?’ Cubby asked, his voice lower. ‘That was a short nap. I need words with him.’
‘He’s not seeing anyone today.’
‘Wot?’
‘He’s poorly. His dormancy was interrupted.’
‘Were it that Yank?’
‘It was,’ Elle replied, standing in the doorway. She watched the publican’s head go purple.
‘Wot’s she doing here?’
‘She knows.’
‘She knows? Knows what?’
‘What would calm you?’ Mahmoud asked.
‘Her head on a fucking plate.’
‘Didn’t your mum ever teach you it isn’t polite to crack a lady’s ribs?’ Elle asked, sarcasm biting.
‘A lady didn’t bite half me ear off.’
‘Come now,’ Mahmoud interjected. ‘It was all cauliflower. You could hardly hear from it.’
‘It’s my ear, innit?’
‘She left you the good one.’
Putting a hand to his bandaged earlobe, the publican turned to her. He was smiling now.
‘Ah, sod it,’ he said, offering her his stout hand. ‘Enough of all this. Mates call me Cubby.’
The enormity of his hand swallowed
hers.
‘My mates call me Elle.’
‘Now that we’re all mates,’ said Mahmoud, ‘perhaps you’ll tell me what is so urgent you need to speak to Buster.’
‘It’s them engineers burrowing under the church,’ Cubby said.
‘Close to our passages?’
‘Close? If’n they fart I can smell it.’
‘Need I have a word with the officer in charge of the engineers?’
‘It ain’t the barmy army I’s worried over. I toss them a few coppers now and again. It’s that Royal Navy commodore overseeing the lot of them. Won’t take a bribe.’
‘The thumping in the passage,’ said Elle. ‘It’s the bunker being built along the Road of Remembrance, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ Cubby replied. ‘Them vaults been in me family for ages. And while the customs plonks is nosing about in the harbour, we’re boots-up here. Six hundred years and the Bill never once cottoned on to what the Smyth family is up to.’
‘Who’s the officer in charge?’ asked Mahmoud.
‘A useless git he is. Commodore Wimbourne.’
‘Ribs Wimbourne?’ Elle asked, hubris showing in her smile.
‘Yeah.’ The publican turned to her, equally surprised. ‘How you know that?’
‘Let me have words with him.’
‘You? Good luck,’ Cubby scoffed. ‘Bloke’s so tight you could shove a lump o’ coal up his bum, give him a boot up it and out pop a diamond. A crap one an’ all.’
‘The commodore and I have history,’ she said. ‘He was on Titanic. You could say he owes me a favour.’
‘So what? He’s a strong swimmer.’
Elle nodded to Mahmoud. ‘We were on Titanic.’
Cubby scratched his head as the kettle began to whistle. Padding down the hall, Elle opened the swinging door to the kitchen to find steam pouring from its spout. As she pulled it from the cooker, whistling dying away, she heard the sounds of a discussion from the lounge she couldn’t quite make out. By the time she had assembled the tea service and made her way back along the hall, the publican was heading out of the door.
‘Come round the pub after you spoken to that plonk. I’ll pull a pint for you.’