She gave him the candle and he placed a candle to each wall simultaneously. It was not a pleasant scene. The mass of bodies caught alight creating an arch of fire. Rahn braced himself for the sound.
‘Do they always squeal like that?’ she said, unperturbed.
‘Yes.’
There was a frenzy and those spiders that had not been consumed by the conflagration moved off almost magically, leaving only an acrid smell.
He gave Eva her candle. ‘That was easy,’ he said merrily. ‘Far easier than a nest of snakes, or rats. Why, I remember there was a cave at Ornolac that—’
She was looking at him with a singular expression.
‘What?’
‘You have one on your head,’ she said.
He scrambled to get it off and stomped on it until it was nothing more than a brown stain.
‘Yes, frightening indeed!’ she said, and walked ahead.
Rahn gathered what pride he had to him and followed.
This girl is something else!
As Rahn had foreseen, the tunnel came to an end. It looked like someone had tried to wall up what might have once been an entrance to another chamber. When he inspected it further, he found a short, narrow opening in the wall at head height. He managed to pull down some rocks, and shone his candle into it. He had been right, there was another chamber behind it. He was in his element: his heart pounded with excitement and this made his head throb. He looked around but there was nothing on which he could stand.
‘I’ll give you a hoist,’ the girl said.
‘What? Nonsense!’ he answered. He tried to lift himself up but it was too hard.
‘Like this – just put one foot here and I’ll hoist you up. I said you would need me.’ She was smiling as she held out her laced hands for him. ‘Am I going to wait all day?’
With Eva’s help he was soon scrambling through the aperture. He told her to wait for him and fell into a round chamber for his efforts. He walked about the perimeter, looking to the centre and couldn’t believe his eyes. A circular depression had been cut into the floor of the rock that looked just like the one at Wewelsburg, only half the size. He was filled with a nauseating memory: the man pleading for the life of his children; Himmler grimacing; the sounds of shots.
‘Are you alright?’ Eva said, behind him.
‘I thought I told you . . . wait a minute, how on Earth did you get here?’
‘I’m very athletic. Look,’ she said, pointing to the walls. ‘What are these?’
Still vexed, he took his candle to the symbols drawn on the walls. ‘I’ve seen them before, in grimoires. This is proof that we’re on the right track! This crypt has been used for black magic rituals.’
‘But why here, in the tombs of the dames?’
‘Remember, the Order of penitents that Saunière and Jean-Louis Verger belonged to supposedly had a copy of Le Serpent Rouge, the pope’s grimoire; this same order was involved in saying masses for the dead and the sacrament . . . the sacrament given to the dying. The pagans conducted their funerary rites near tombs or underground and I’ll bet the penitents did too. Black magicians, you see, don’t only use demons, phantoms, ghosts and elemental beings for their infernal ends. I’m beginning to think they also use the dead.’
She was silent, perhaps horror-struck.
He continued, ‘They invoke the spirits of the dead, or those who are in limbo, the living dead.’
‘Like in séances?’
‘I think so. I’m afraid this is not my line of expertise, but I’m learning fast.’ He looked about for another exit. ‘Saunière must have tried to get to this crypt through the graveyard. That would explain all the digging.’
‘But why not just come through the other crypt?’
‘Did you see all the water? That crypt must fill up when it rains. That’s what the young Abbé Lucien told us yesterday. This town is riddled with tunnels and cisterns – a catchment that supplies water to the residents.’
Eve looked into the circular depression. ‘What’s that? Is that stained with what I think it is?’
‘It’s a ceremonial pit and yes, that’s blood.’ But when he shone the candle into it he was taken aback by what he saw.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Look for yourself!’
The stone in the depression had been carved to depict a circular version of the Sator Square:
‘They’ve circled the square,’ Rahn said. ‘But that’s not all. See the floor up here? It’s been marked in the shape of a pentagram and a hexagram inside a square. Outside that a larger circle completes it.’ He showed her. The smaller circle is the soul; the square represents water, fire, earth, air; the pentagram points to the etheric forces, the forces the alchemists say are related to warmth, light, sound and life. These forces run through the hands, feet and head, just like Leonardo da Vinci drew in his Vitruvian Man, but they are also found in the Earth; and the hexagram represents the astral forces, the forces of thinking, feeling, and willing. These signs all form a protection for the one performing the ritual sacrifice.’
‘I just had a thought. That little patch in the cemetery for unbaptised children—’
‘Don’t think about that,’ he said quickly. ‘They use mostly animals: goats or kids, chickens, sheep; that sort of thing.’ But in his heart he felt a tremble. ‘Kids’ in grimoires actually meant children . . .
They both heard something and paused.
‘What’s that?’ she said.
He knew what it was, he’d heard it before and it had nearly cost him his life. He looked at her. ‘When you came to the church was it raining?’
‘Yes, it was falling down like buckets!’
‘In that case we had better go, and now!’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘A flash flood. This chamber is protected by the wall.’
‘You mean we’ll be trapped?’
Finally, the girl sounds ill at ease! ‘Not if we hurry. Come on!’ he said, grabbing her arm.
He led the way out of the crypt and waited for Eva to climb down through the opening first. By the time they were halfway through the first part of the tunnel, the water had reached Rahn’s knees. It was unbearably cold. Rahn could hardly feel his feet and he was trembling. Eva followed, stumbling in the near dark.
‘How does it happen so quickly?’ she said.
‘I was caught in the caves of Ornolac during a rainstorm. I hit my head,’ he said, between breaths, ‘and I only survived because a Senegalese friend, a man who is almost a giant, carried me on his shoulder through the channels swollen with water. He carried me for miles! Hard to believe, but true.’
Eventually, they emerged from the tunnel and found the steps that led to the confessional. The water was waist-high here, too close for comfort, Rahn thought, but when the opening above became visible, he made an awful discovery.
‘Someone has locked the hatch!’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The hatch! The hatch is locked! But I saw two more exits. Wait here. And don’t worry, as I said, I’m used to things like this.’ He left her shivering on the topmost steps, encroached upon by the rising water.
Moving through floating bones and other debris, with the candlestick held high over the water in one hand and his jacket in the other, he took an eternity to make his way to the other steps he had seen earlier. No luck! These only led to a boarded-up sub-floor. Immersing his shivering limbs back into the water he looked for the third set of steps. If he found that boarded-up as well, then things were not going to work out in their favour. To his great relief these steps led upwards in a spiral to a small room full of bric-a-brac.
He descended again quickly. ‘I’ve found it!’ he called out, and made a hasty journey across the flooded crypt holding the candle out before him.
His return with Eva was difficult because the water was now nearly at the level of his chest and he had to help her through the mud and debris, bones and swimming rats and floating spiders. Al
l this while trying not to trip on submerged obstacles, keeping his candle lit and, most importantly, his coat dry. By the time they reached those steps, however, Rahn had dropped his candle into the water, and Eva’s had gone out, leaving them in utter darkness. His legs and hands were numb and he had to find fresh reserves of strength in order to drag Eva, who was now listless, up the steps and into the room.
The room felt narrow and smelt stuffy. He could see almost nothing except that the walls appeared to be whitewashed and the floor underfoot felt like compacted dirt. There was a small window, which was hardly sufficient for ventilation or light. The only way out was what looked like a door or hatch at the top of another set of steps.
‘Where are we?’ Her voice sounded sleepy and drugged, and this alarmed him. He placed his jacket over her shoulders.
‘That way must lead into the sacristy.’ Rahn pointed to a door. ‘This must be a second secret way in and out of the crypt.’
He was mentally prepared for it to be locked and so when he found that it opened easily into a small closet, he was so relieved he nearly fainted. He had to get past a number of musty priest’s robes in order to find a second door, through which he emerged into the sacristy. He returned to help the poor shaking girl.
The door leading to the sacristy from the church opened out into the area between the statue of Saint Anthony of Padua and the altar enclosure. The priest had said that the tomb of Sigisbert lay somewhere beyond it, perhaps because he knew that, behind that false wall in the sacristy closet, there was a way to the crypt.
The church seemed to be bursting with light compared to the darkness of the sacristy. Rahn made certain there was no one in sight. Someone had locked the hatch and they might still be in the church. Luckily for them, whoever it was either didn’t know about the second entrance or didn’t think he and Eva would be able to find it. Peering down the nave, he realised the pulpit had been built over the second entrance. Perhaps by Saunière, wishing to keep it secret? These thoughts ran through his mind in the time it took for him to blink. He felt his old fear rising up. He tried to calm himself. There was sweat forming over his brow. Having survived being trapped and nearly drowned in a crypt hadn’t made him any braver when it came to churches. But he could hear his teeth chattering and he knew he had to get out of his wet clothes, or he would succumb to the cold himself.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Eva shivered next to him.
Rahn took her arm and the two of them made their way out of the church and into the awful night, frozen to the bone, toiling through the wind and rain back to the house. Rahn helped her up the stairs, got the fire going in the little hearth and gently helped her out of her soaking clothes and into the bed. He took off his own wet things and found a spare blanket, which he swung over his shoulders, moving the chair closer to the fire for warmth.
‘Please, get on the bed, won’t you?’ Eva said, surprising him. She held out her hand, long and slender like the rest of her.
He hesitated. She isn’t in her right mind and might regret this in the morning.
‘I’m afraid I—’
‘Please!’ she said. ‘I’m so cold!’
Falteringly, he lay on the bed over the covers. He lay there rather stiffly, not knowing what to do. Arousal was the furthest thing from his mind; after all, she was under a score of blankets and besides, Rahn’s body had taken a battering these last few hours and he doubted that it would obey him, even if he could stop thinking for a moment to sense the stirring of desire. Also, he felt enormously guilty for having dragged her and Deodat into this mess and he was not about to compound it by taking advantage of her when she wasn’t in her right mind.
‘Do you believe in the Devil?’ Eva said to him.
‘The Devil . . . you mean Lucifer, the one that was cast out of Heaven? Well . . . yes, I do believe in him.’
‘Lucifer,’ she said sleepily. ‘Isn’t he the one who absconded with Isis, the keeper of God’s wisdom?’
‘Yes, you see it in fables and fairy tales – the damsel in distress who is eventually rescued from the dragon by a hero; the damsel is a symbol, she represents a man’s soul.’
‘Really? And the dragon?’
‘The Cathars told a story to their children – would you like to hear it?’
‘Mmm.’ She drew near to him, he could feel her warm breath on his cheek.
‘It went like this,’ he said, softly. ‘The good gods of light created human beings and sent them to Earth, where lived the dark dragon of matter. When the dragon swallowed mankind whole, a seed was planted in it for its redemption because inside it now there was not merely darkness, but light as well.’
‘I see, so, to redeem the dragon you have to get inside it, you have to enter into its belly . . . is that what the story means?’ She yawned.
‘Yes, before you can find Heaven you have to go through Hell, because Hell tests the nature of a man.’
Eva said, almost inaudibly, drifting off, ‘And if you were to save me from the dragon, you’d be saving yourself, because I am really your soul . . .’
‘I would be saving all that was holy and beautiful and virginal in me, do you see?’
But no answer came, Eva was asleep.
He waited for her breathing to become regular and more rhythmic before allowing fatigue to overtake him. Soon he was dreaming that Etienne was in his arms, thin and angular and beautiful. It was once more their last night together. She moved away from him and lit a Russian cigarette and looked at him through the velvet darkness and her face melted away a moment, revealing the deformed grimace of a devil whose mouth opened wide in a terrible screech – Viva Angelina!
Rahn woke with a start. Eva was not in the bed but he had no time to think on this particular strangeness because there was a clanging of the church bells that tore through the birthing day like a cataclysm. With his nerves still raw and on alert from his dream, he jumped out of bed and changed into his only dry clothes. Soon he was out in the streets meeting the confused faces of others, who, like him, had come to see what the noise was about. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. Where was Eva? He pushed his way to the church just in time to see the young priest stepping out, looking pale and out of sorts.
The sun was rising now and a faint light came through the windblown trees.
‘What is it?’ Rahn said to the stunned abbé.
‘In the church,’ he managed to say. ‘It is horrible!’
Rahn hurried through the door, past the devil’s stoup and, with the confessional and the grand relief of the Sermon on the Mount behind him, he paused to look down the central nave. Breathless, cold, anxious, exhausted, he tried to see but it took a moment to adjust his eyes. His fear of churches momentarily forgotten, he hurried over the chequered tiles to the enclosure, seeing a little more and then a little more, until he paused.
What he saw made the old woman’s words return to his mind.
Beware of that raven!
33
Blood on the Altar
‘It’s devilish Mr Holmes, devilish!’ cried Mortimer Tregennis. ‘It is not of this world.’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’
A man approached, announcing in a tedious and perfunctory manner that he was the mayor and wanted to know what was going on.
When he saw what Rahn could see he cried, ‘Mon Dieu! Wicked priests! Wicked priests are born again as ravens! Saunière!’ He sank to his knees, crossing himself.
Rahn ignored him and concentrated on the scene before him. A black raven had been sliced open and its carcass was hanging from the crucifix by a cord tied around its neck. Below, on the altar, someone had placed a white cloth on which a symbol, a circle and a cross, had been drawn in blood. In each quadrant letters were drawn that when read clockwise formed the word AGLA.
Beside him, the mayor awoke to his civic duty and sent all the townspeople to their homes, commandeering two men to take down the bird and the white sheet and its contents and
to burn them outside the town gates.
In the meantime Rahn looked for Abbé Lucien and found him at his presbytery, keeping company with the last person Rahn would have expected. It was Eva, looking spritely and, for all intents and purposes, not at all touched by their shared nocturnal ordeal.
‘Hello Otto, I woke earlier and went for a walk. I returned immediately when I heard the bells. What a terrible upset!’ she said, taking the kettle off the hob to make tea.
The abbé looked distraught and gestured for Rahn to sit at the table with him, perhaps the same table at which Saunière had once sat before his fire. Rahn acquiesced and, pushing aside his suspicions, tried to formulate his thoughts into questions.
‘She went too far this time! To desecrate a church on All Saints’ Day! Pure evil,’ the abbé said, shaking his head, his blond eyelashes batting nervously.
‘Who do you mean?’ Rahn said to him.
‘Madame Dénarnaud of course, who else?’ He blushed with anger. ‘I saw her last night. I was coming back from the mayor’s house on my way to the presbytery and I saw her at the church.’
‘What time was that?’ Eva sat down, her good-natured domesticity disappearing in the wake of a cool detached curiosity that made her brown eyes brilliant, like two burning coals.
‘Quite late; you see I ate at the mayor’s house, as I do every week. We usually play cards, a bit of harmless fun. It must have been well past midnight. It was raining and the wind was wild, as you know, and the woman looked wet through and I thought she might be sleepwalking because she is known for it. She told me she had been praying in the church but I doubted it. I offered to help her to the villa but she told me to go to Hell!’ He shrugged. ‘I would have locked the church, as I usually do before going to bed but I realised I didn’t have the keys, so I decided to leave it. The mayor is trying to call the police but the telephone lines came down in the storm.’
Rahn sat forward. ‘I doubt if Madame Dénarnaud could reach as high as the crucifix to hang the raven without help.’ But Rahn remembered the madame’s words: Beware of that raven. And he couldn’t deny that it all sounded suspicious. He rubbed his sore head. ‘Do you know why the mayor’s first impression on seeing the bird was to say that it was Saunière?’
The Sixth Key Page 24