The Burning Altar

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘What kind of unexpected?’

  ‘Odd nationalities,’ said Raffael. He paused, wondering if he was deliberately delaying the moment when he must grapple with the appalling task of finding and destroying the Decalogue. Am I simply chasing irrelevancies? No. He looked back at his auditors. ‘People from the East,’ he said. ‘It might be that someone – perhaps several someones – from your League of Tamerlane is already inside Chance House. Are any of them in England?’

  ‘Yes, we believe so.’

  Raffael sat back in his chair and eyed the two churchmen with sudden mischief. Chasing irrelevancies or not, there was a beautiful irony about this situation. He said, ‘You know, there’s a certain wry humour in all this.’

  ‘I don’t see—’

  ‘Oh yes. Think about it, de Migli. After nearly three thousand years of secrecy somebody’s apparently about to blow the whistle on one of the Vatican’s darkest secrets,’ said Raffael. ‘And you’re calling me in to prevent it. You’re asking an ex-priest to help you prevent the Roman Catholic Church from being made to look a fool in the eyes of the whole world.’

  Chapter Five

  Extract from Patrick Chance’s Diary

  Cheyne Walk, January 1888

  Father even crustier than usual this morning due to report in Morning Post that German Emperor’s health failing. Prophesies darkly that the eldest boy, Wilhelm, too keen on German Imperialism for comfort. Mark his words, we’re heading for another war.

  Has invited several people to dinner and bridge, since says, with double chins solemnly tucked into neck, that this is suitably restrained entertainment for Sunday evening. (Truth is that he has his eye on well-endowed – in every sense – widow who has come to live on other side of Park, and can enjoy patting her shoulder while he is dummy.)

  Will have to think of excuse to leave these bacchanalian revels early, since have rendezvous at St S.’s Road with Chloe Cambridge (she of the wolfish appetite at board and bed). Not real name, of course, but probably much more euphonious than baptismal one, so why not?

  Midnight, Arrived at St S.’s – Hall virtually deserted since no performance on Sundays – and entered by stage door as instructed. Chloe or someone had at least left a couple of the gas jets burning so that I could see my way up the iron staircase. Dear God, those iron treads! They echo like the crack of doom when you climb them and the sound reverberates alarmingly around the stairwell. Tried to imagine performers scampering up and down a dozen times a night and failed. No wonder the females have those strong lean thighs . . .

  Every corner of the stair is littered with bits of discarded stage properties and with people’s cast-off wigs and cloaks and mustachios, and this is the other side of the make-believe world in earnest – the place where the baseless fabric melts and the gorgeous palaces and cloud-capp’d towers dissolve. This is where you climb through the tear in the shimmering insubstantial pageantry and see the pinchbeck and paste for what it really is.

  On consideration, would have preferred to preserve the illusion. Few enough illusions left these days.

  The attics stretch the entire length of the building and have intriguingly slanted ceilings. They were probably servants’ dormitories in the bad old days, but old man Barnabas has had them divided to make ‘rest rooms’ for the performers and their friends, nasty old lecher. Would not put it past him to be in cahoots with Whitechapel Jewess who sells unmentionable rubber items down in street.

  ‘Do come straight up, Patrick,’ Chloe had said, in dulcet tones. (A touch refained in her vowels, our Chloe, in fact Cheapside with Pont Street grafted on, but there are worse things than that. And she possesses an hour-glass figure and her bosom is the consistency of cream with honey beaten into it; also those slightly protuberant front teeth that have that astonishing facility to scrape your skin so that you lie shivering, poised on the very cusp between shooting a sky-high ejaculation without warning (v. shaming), and panic that a miscalculation by the exploratory teeth might bring about quite a different conclusion. Circumcision by biting and without an anaesthetic – very nasty.)

  ‘The door will be on the latch,’ the lady had purred. ‘And I shall be waiting for you.’

  The door was on the latch. I tapped, and then receiving no answer went in. It took several confused seconds to assimilate what I was seeing.

  The attic room was lit by more of the gas flares, and the jets flickered in the draught made by the opening of the door. Thin curtains shut out the night, but we were so high up there would probably be a stunning view towards the river by daylight. I took in a jumble of discarded clothes and sprawling satin cushions and stubs of make-up and odds and ends of discarded stage properties. There were some half-unrolled bolts of velvet and thin gauzy cheesecloth, as well as a pile of the lime cones used for stage lighting. More fragments of the splintered make-believe and a lot grubbier than the pieces on the stairs.

  She was not waiting for me, the bitch. She was so far from waiting for me that she was consoling herself with someone who was puffing and pumping and heaving away between her thighs – the two-backed beast’s extraordinarily ugly unless you’re directly involved in making it. They were tangled sweatily on a green satin chaise longue, their heads nearest me, and as I stared, the man lifted his head and looked straight at me.

  The sofa was directly beneath one of the gas jets, and the flickering light fell across his features. Appalled horror slammed into me. Impossible not to recognise the slightly bulging eyes, slumberous-lidded as if with too much sleep, and the heavy Hanoverian chin and jaw inherited from his Guelph ancestors.

  The son going where the father liked to tread. Particularly this son, who was reputed to be so pliable and so easily led that he had more than once been led into male brothels.

  The gentleman lit to such embarrassing clarity, the gentleman who had been disporting himself between Chloe Cambridge’s legs until I gate-crashed the party, was the heir apparent to the Throne of England. Dawdly Eddy. Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence.

  It was one of those situations where almost anything you say is going to be disastrous. I’m frightfully sorry to have interrupted, sir . . . Shall I wait outside until you’ve finished, and if so how long do you think you’ll take . . .? Or maybe you’ve finished already – oh no, I see you haven’t . . .

  By rights he ought to be given his Royal title, of course, but I defy anyone to achieve a court bow and say ‘Your Highness’ under such circumstances.

  The best thing to hope for was that he was drunk enough to be amiable, but that he was not so drunk, poor old easily led Eddy, that it would occur to him as a good idea to invite me to join them. I yield to none in my loyalty to the Crown, but I do draw the line at sodomy with the Duke of Clarence.

  He sprang up at once, fumbling at his gaping trousers, his face suffused with crimson. The situation hovered between melodrama and outright farce and might have tipped over on either side, if Eddy, shoeless and virtually trouserless had not tripped over his feet and gone crashing helplessly backwards into the jumble of cheesecloth and discarded stage properties. He clutched wildly at the air, vainly trying to keep his balance, and as he went down the bales of cheesecloth overturned and went down with him. The thin light stuff billowed upwards like a pale cloud and brushed against the gas jet.

  A sheet of flame blazed up at once: fierce greedy orange and scarlet tongues that gobbled up the flimsy material. Eddy stumbled to his feet, upsetting several more bales and overturning the careful stack of lime cones. They skittered down, cascading about his head, catching the heat shimmer as they came, and Chloe, clutching a handful of anonymous draperies to her bosom, lunged towards Eddy. She reached him seconds before I did, and grabbed at him, pulling him clear. He was gape-mouthed and bulgy-eyed with panic, and although he was gasping and mouthing, since he was clearly unhurt I pushed him out of the way (he would probably consign me to the Tower for it afterwards, but there was no time to worry) and turned back to where Chloe was trying to stamp ou
t the flames.

  The tumbling lime cones were already half melting and incandescent from the sudden fierce heat, and they toppled straight on to her. There was a sickening hiss: like droplets of water being flung into a fire.

  Chloe cried out and fell back, clawing at her face, but it was too late. The side of her face had taken the full brunt and the lime had seared into it. Her left eye and the flesh of her cheek were already a bubbling mass, and as her mouth stretched in agonised screams, the white-hot lime trickled inside.

  It took almost half an hour to get a physician to her. She stopped screaming long before then because her vocal chords had been burned away.

  Elinor loved her attic flat from the start.

  St Stephen’s Wharf was one of the odd little pockets of London’s Docklands that had not been tarted up in the seventies and eighties, and the Chance Centre, which was already being called Chance House, was surrounded by crumbling Victorian mansions, most of which had been sloppily split into bedsits, and with sinister warehouses that probably housed terrorist guns and heroin caches, and seedy smoky pubs and eating houses and pawn shops. It had not previously occurred to Elinor that pawn shops – real pawn shops run by greedy-fingered greasy-haired Whitechapel Jews, and smelling of stale second-hand clothes – still existed in London.

  There were tiny crammed-full general stores as well, catering for every creed and every human need: gefilte fish and curry, hamburgers and pastrami. The food shops were mostly owned by Indians of multifarious religious persuasion but canny business sense. It was interesting to Elinor to think she would probably become familiar with them all.

  Her flat was at the very top of the house and it was considerably larger than she had been expecting – Lewis Chance’s idea of what was ‘not hugely grand’ might have meant anything – and although the ceilings sloped because of being directly under the eaves and the floors were a bit uneven, there was a view of rooftops and chimneys and glimpses of the Thames. Whoever had chosen the fittings had picked out a brown haircord carpet which covered the entire apartment, and whitewashed the old walls the colour of Cornish cream. There were flame-orange curtains at the windows, and deep squashy chairs in mole-coloured velvet with glowing bronze and orange cushions. When the sun was setting over the roofs outside, the long low-ceilinged living room would look as if it were on fire. An oak gate-leg table stood under one window, so that you could sit and eat your evening meal watching the sun sinking into the Thames. The bedroom had splashy yellow sunflowers on the covers and cushions, and a deep wicker basket chair and white-painted shelves for books. Elinor would hang her prints of Georgian London in the sitting room, and the framed Arthur Rackham drawings which her godmother had given her.

  Lewis was committed to attending a Charity Commission dinner on her first night in the centre – ‘Boring but necessary,’ he said.

  ‘Noblesse oblige,’ rejoined Elinor, but with such a complete lack of expression that Lewis glanced sharply at her.

  ‘Well, hardly that. But it does mean you’ll be on your own here until—’

  ‘The small hours?’

  A smile narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s men only,’ said the womaniser unexpectedly.

  ‘I know. Speeches with the brandy, and rude stories while the port goes round,’ said Elinor. ‘But of course I’ll be all right on my own.’ He must not think she was a child who could not be left by herself.

  ‘The house probably won’t often be empty again at night once we’re up and running and properly staffed,’ said Lewis. ‘I’ve taken on a security watchman, but his hours are a bit flexible, and I don’t think he’ll be around tonight. You’ve got keys though, haven’t you? I mean you’ve got a key to the street door as well as the one to your rooms up here?’

  ‘Yes.’ Elinor had been given the key not to the main wide doors that opened directly on to St Stephen’s Road, but to the small side entrance which had been the stage door of the old music hall, and which gave on to a rather narrow dark alley with cobblestones. When the grime had been sand-blasted away, the words ‘Stage Door’ had been still legible. They were trying to decide whether this ought to be preserved or whether it would look a bit twee. You did not want to destroy fragments of London’s history but on the other hand you did not want to appear twee when you were dealing with people who swigged meths each morning.

  ‘Make sure you lock the street door after I’ve gone, won’t you?’ said Lewis.

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll come down with you now and do it.’

  He appeared to hesitate. ‘Come and go in here as you want,’ he said. ‘Of course you must do that. Only—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You hadn’t better go down to the cellars, Elinor. In fact I’d better stress that you never do.’ He looked at her and for a moment the suave smile of the laid-back philanthropist vanished and in its place was a cold hard stare. It was like seeing a blade suddenly unsheathed and the honed edge glinting, and it was unexpectedly unnerving. And then the image disappeared and Lewis said in an ordinary voice, ‘They’re a bit unsafe, those cellars, and I think the river sometimes overflows. At least we’ll say it’s the river, it might as easily be the sewers.’ The smile was the ordinary one. ‘Rather nasty if it is.’

  ‘Oh I see.’

  ‘So if you could make sure to avoid them—’ There it was again, the glimpse of razor-edged steel. And beneath it a trickle of something darker. Like one of the grislier fairy stories, thought Elinor. Go anywhere you like, my dear, only don’t open the door to the seventh chamber. Aloud she said, ‘Of course I’ll keep clear of the cellars. There’s no reason for me to go down there anyway.’

  She stood at the door for a moment watching Lewis walk down St Stephen’s Road. He would probably pick up a taxi from the rank near London Bridge.

  In the damp misty evening he might have been the ghost of one of the elegant gentlemen who would have frequented the old music hall a hundred years earlier. He had shrugged a long dark overcoat negligently over his evening clothes, and the cold vaporous air clung to him as he walked along. One of the carpenters, finishing some cupboards in the centre’s communal kitchen downstairs, had told her the story of the long-ago recluse, and Elinor shivered suddenly. It was a disturbingly evocative tale even while you were discounting most of it as blatant exaggeration. A tall muffled-up man, prowling fog-bound London streets . . .

  Elinor frowned to chase away the images, and locked the stage door, leaving the bolts free so that Sir Lewis could get in later. And now I’m safe, she thought, not pausing to question her use of the word. I’m locked inside and I’m perfectly safe from long-dead reclusive gentlemen who affect ridiculous forms of dress and prowl the streets long after their deaths . . . More to the point, I’m safe from street gangs and tramps looking for somewhere to spend the night. Or from modem-day Jack the Rippers, creeping through the dark streets.

  She went back up to her flat, using the iron spiral stairs which the performers would once have used on their way to the dressing rooms. Her footsteps rang out on the open treads and echoed a bit eerily and she was glad that she had left lights on at the half-landings. The rest of the building was in darkness, but she would leave these on for Lewis’s return. It was probably good security to leave lights burning more or less permanently, in fact. She had better start thinking like a proper householder.

  It took less time than she had expected to unpack her suitcases and arrange the few things she had brought with her. The prints and the Rackham sketches looked very good indeed, and she had brought several bunches of bronze and yellow chrysanthemums from a flower barrow on the way. She arranged them in beaten copper jugs and set them about, and then walked slowly through her small domain with delight – it did not take long but she did it anyway – occasionally touching a wall or a door. Mine. My own place where no one can come in. I can get up to whatever I want in here. Lewis said so. He would probably draw the line at drunken orgies, but he would clearly not question the presence of a lover for the night. If only,
thought Elinor, half bitter, half ironic. Her niece, Ginevra, pursuing what sounded like a pretty riotous career at Durham University, undoubtedly knew more about spending nights with a lover than Elinor did. It was shameful to have reached twenty-eight and never have been to bed with anyone: it would not have been so shameful if anyone had even asked.

  She found a concert of Viennese music more or less by luck on the radio, and listened to it while she scrambled eggs in the minuscule kitchen that opened off the long sitting room. Should she have a bath and curl up in her dressing gown with a book and a mug of coffee? Yes, why not? Sir Lewis would not return for ages, but he would certainly not disturb her when he did return. This was not going to be the classic seduction scene: the brandy-and-cigar-scented roué, dressed in a crimson smoking jacket and making fumblingly lecherous suggestions. Do have some more Madeira, m’dear. And then come into the bedroom to see my very curious etchings . . . Not that Lewis Chance would ever fumble.

  It felt odd to be in a huge old building like this on her own, but she was perfectly safe – that word again. The main doors were bolted and barred, and the old stage door was locked. She had locked it herself. As the evening wore on, she kept reminding herself of this. The Viennese concert finished, and Elinor, half listening to the play that followed, half reading, occasionally paused to lift her head. Old houses had their own sounds at night; anyone knew that. Rafters creaked as timbers cooled and settled. Plumbing made peculiar noises. Stairs creaked loudest of all. If you were unduly fanciful, you might almost imagine that someone was creeping up them now. If Elinor listened, she could hear it quite plainly. Cre-e-ak. And then a pause. And then another creak. Exactly the sound the iron stairway would make if someone were coming up it very slowly, pausing every third or fourth tread. And there was a kind of faint swishing sound. Like skirts brushing against the floor. Or a long dark overcoat . . .