by Sarah Rayne
‘No, we are on the side of the angels, but we are not permitted to say any more,’ said Raffael, to which the man shrugged, pocketed the notes, and said equably that what the eye never saw the heart never grieved after.
‘Secret Service,’ said Georgie approvingly, as they stood on the steps of the house and rang the bell. ‘Or a hint of Government Intelligence, always supposing the Government ever has any – intelligence, I mean. Very classy, as well. I said you were a class act, Raffael, didn’t I say that, Baz?’
‘Several times.’
‘I don’t expect,’ said Ginevra, eyeing the shuttered windows and drawn curtains doubtfully, ‘that there’ll be anyone up, will there? It’s after midnight.’
Raffael said, deadpan, ‘For those who wish to enter, the door is always open,’ and from the bottom step Georgie was heard to observe that if this was a church it was a very stylish one.
It was at that moment that the door swung open to let them in.
Fires burned in the quiet comfortable first-floor room, and lights were lit and the curtains were closed against the night.
Elinor had stopped shivering and she had stopped feeling light-headed at last. She thought it would be several hours, or even several years, before she would be able to blot out the memory of the gaslit warehouse or the Burning Altar, but she was managing to keep a kind of ballast by concentrating on the immediate present and shutting everything else out.
She and Ginevra had been shown to a large bedroom on the top floor. It had the air of a guest room kept in permanent readiness: it was comfortable but rather anonymous, and there were brushes and combs on a dressing table and a small bathroom adjoining.
‘You’ll find the water hot and fresh towels laid out,’ explained the young man who had let them in and who seemed to recognise Raffael and to see nothing in the least improbable about their midnight arrival. ‘His Eminence will expect you in his book room in – shall we say an hour? Coffee and sandwiches are being prepared for you.’
Elinor said, ‘Thank you very much. Forgive me, you are?’
‘Brother Robert,’ said the young man. ‘I’m attached to His Eminence’s staff while he is in England.’ He glanced round the room again. ‘If there’s anything you want I’m just down the stairs. Give me a call.’ He smiled at them both with incurious acceptance and went quietly out.
The hot water gushing into the deep-sided bath and the thick thirsty towels were the most marvellous thing Elinor had ever experienced. It would have been even better if she had been able to put on fresh clothes, but at least Ginevra had had a shoulder bag which had not been lost when she was knocked out, and Elinor borrowed a dab of make-up.
‘I’ve never met an Eminence,’ said Ginevra, seated before the dressing-table mirror, brushing her hair free of smog and cobwebs. ‘I hope he doesn’t think I’m a hooker.’
‘I should think he might. What on earth are you doing dressed like that?’
‘It was part of the plan.’
‘Well, don’t make any bad jokes about bishops and actresses.’
Ginevra looked at her in the mirror. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘I don’t think I do, not yet,’ said Elinor carefully. ‘What about you?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it either. I might later. But for the moment I think I’d like to have just ordinary things.’ Ginevra thought she should have known that Elinor would understand without needing to be told. After a moment she said, ‘I expect we’d better go down now, had we? This is a very lush place for a cardinal. What do I call him by the way?’
‘“Your Eminence” I think. If in doubt, say “sir”.’
‘I’ve never called anyone sir,’ objected Ginevra, the socialist.
‘Then start now.’
In the event, it was extremely easy and not in the least formal. Raffael was already in the book room, and as they entered he drew them forward and simply said, ‘Eminence, this is Miss Craven – Elinor – and this is her niece, Ginevra.’ And to the two girls, ‘This is Cardinal Fleury.’
‘Ladies.’ There was a gentle handshake and a very ungentle scrutiny from cool intelligent eyes. As George and Baz came in, Georgie bright-eyed and curious, Baz wary, Raffael turned to them.
‘And these, Eminence, are the two young men who so bravely helped us. Georgie and Baz.’
‘We are extremely grateful to you both,’ said Cardinal Fleury, and Georgie was so entranced at being presented with such style and ceremony to a prince of the Church that he forgot about being vaguely atheistic, and returned the handshake warmly, saying it was an honour to be here and they’d been happy to help out. Baz shook hands and said how do you do.
To Elinor the warm room and the fire burning up in the hearth and the leather spines of the books strengthened the feeling of safety. Now I’m really all right. Now those people really can’t reach me. It was inconceivable that violence and terror and ancient blood rituals could find their way in here. This was a place where everything was orderly and civilised; where people studied and held quiet, scholarly discussions, and contemplated theological mysteries: the meaning of the Gospels, and how many angels can sit on a pinhead. It’s a place where very good people live, thought Elinor. I wonder if I’m feeling the goodness because I’ve just come from a place reeking of such extreme evil?
The hot strong coffee and the chicken and ham sandwiches set out on large platters tasted better than the finest haute cuisine banquet. Elinor drank two large cups of coffee and ate some sandwiches and began to feel better. She tried to remember how long she had been in the warehouse and when she had last eaten, and failed. Cardinal Fleury brought a square-necked decanter and poured generous measures of brandy into heavy, cut-glass goblets which he handed round.
‘You will find it warming, Miss Craven. And if you should require medical attention after your ordeal—’
‘No, truly not,’ said Elinor, rather alarmedly visualising the efficient papal machinery summoning a battery of doctors there and then. ‘I wasn’t attacked in any way, you understand. I just need to – get back inside my skin.’
‘Ah. And – Ginevra?’
‘The same,’ said Ginevra. ‘Thank you, though.’
‘There will certainly be a degree of reaction for you both,’ said Fleury. ‘We will give you whatever help you need. The modern custom is to analyse unpleasant events and ordeals for several weeks with trained counsellors, of course.’ He paused, and Elinor waited. ‘But,’ said the cardinal, ‘it is my belief that such a course can sometimes simply serve to prolong distress.’
From his own chair, Raffael said, ‘Tragedies and pain can sometimes be better coped with by overlaying them with small, quite ordinary things. Have some more small and ordinary food and with it a large and extraordinary brandy.’
Fleury, who had finished dispensing coffee and brandy had by now seated himself in a deep armchair, and was tranquilly sipping his own coffee which he took black and unsugared. Ascetic, thought Elinor, and then saw the brandy standing at His Eminence’s hand.
It was a little like a semi-formal meeting of some committee or work group, and when Raffael said, ‘And now we should decide what to do next,’ this feeling increased. They had all been rather silent, letting the terror and the horror of the last few hours slough away. Ginevra was hunched over her coffee cup, her hands curling around it as if to draw warmth from it, and the two boys were silent and tired-looking. Georgie had slid down in his armchair until his head was nearly level with the arms. It was to be hoped he would not so far forget himself as to put his feet up on the inlaid walnut table which held the sandwiches and the coffee pot.
But at Raffael’s words they all seemed to sit up and to look more alert. Elinor, who still felt raw and vulnerable so that every nerve ending was ultra-sensitive, thought a sense of gratitude went through them. Someone’s going to tell us what happens next, they were thinking. She glanced at Ginevra. Ginevra was leaning forward, her hair tumbling about her face. Her eyes were fixed o
n Raffael and her cheeks were faintly flushed. Oh dear, thought Elinor. That’s a complication I didn’t bargain for. But perhaps I’m wrong; perhaps it’s only nervous reaction or something – hers or mine. I wouldn’t know the difference at the moment. She tried to concentrate on what Raffael was saying. His voice was rather attractive. He was not English, of course; she could hear it plainly. Had she known he was not English?
She sat up a bit straighter, fighting off the warm drowsiness, turning over and over the knowledge that she was safe and that the cat-headed creatures could not get to her here, and trying not to think about what might have happened to Grendel. The thought: I wish Lewis were here, formed without warning and so strongly that for a moment it drove out everything else. It suddenly seemed unbearably wrong and fiercely disloyal to be here with this extraordinary assortment of people, forging the bonds that did form between people sharing danger, and not to have Lewis there.
It was of Lewis that Raffael was speaking. Something about the Tashkarans having taken him: something about rival groups and uprisings deep inside the remote part of Tibet. Elinor, by now struggling against the overwhelming need simply to curl up in a dark warm place and let sleep close down, heard something about stone tablets of incalculable age.
The last thing she heard before she gave way to the beckoning folds of sleep, was Raffael saying, ‘And therefore the only thing we can do is go to Tashkara and find Lewis Chance.’
‘If he is there.’
‘Yes.’
‘And,’ said Fleury, ‘destroy the Tashkara Decalogue.’
‘The original mission,’ said Raffael, and Elinor was jerked out of the smothering tiredness for a moment. She looked up to see him regarding the Cardinal very levelly.
After a moment Fleury said, ‘I am glad you have not forgotten it, Raffael.’
‘Oh no,’ said Raffael softly. ‘I have not forgotten.’
Chapter Thirty-one
Lewis came up out of a leaden sleep and for a moment could not think where he was.
And then memory flooded back and despair clawed upwards into his mind.
I’m inside the forbidden city. I’m in the hands of Kaspar and his people, and quite soon I shall be facing a trial for murdering a religion, exactly as I faced a trial for defiling a goddess all those years ago. Only that time I escaped, and this time I think they’ll make very sure I don’t escape.
He raised himself cautiously on one elbow and looked around. They had brought him to a small but not unduly bleak room with stone walls and a timber floor laid with a square of pale woven matting. Brass oil burners stood in niches in the wall. In one corner was a chair and table, and in the other was a washstand with bowl and ewer, and bucket beneath. The door would be locked, of course, but he tried it anyway. Not only locked, but from the feel of it, bolted as well. He stood very still and felt time slither and blur, so that he might have been back in that other captivity, waiting for the pronouncement of the elders, waiting for the judgement of the Stone Tablets. Only that time Touaris was with me . . .
He crossed to the slit-like window. There was still a feeling of mental dislocation and a lingering weakness, but he had no idea if this was due to the injected drug, or to the altitude, or if it was because he was feeling the past stream forward to engulf him.
The room was high up, and Lewis could look across the strange secret valley and see the thin dawn trickling out of the skies. Clear unearthly light spangled the ground with glistening cobweb strands and touched the ancient palace with rose and gold. He stayed where he was for a long time, watching the dawn light, and the feeling of having fallen through a tear in time into a lost world stole over him, exactly as it had done twenty-five years earlier. But the twenty-five years had touched the palace in a way that the thirty preceding centuries had not. Twenty-five years ago this vast timeless citadel had been alive and alight with life and people, and humming with ordinary day-to-day living; now it was silent and brooding, and there was a forlorn air of neglect. Lewis, leaning out as far as he dared, had the impression of gardens untended and cobwebs left to thicken into shrouds, and of crumbling stonework and decaying timbers. The dust on antique time unswept . . . That was a chilling and desolate image, however you looked at it.
He leaned his chin on his hands, staring out. Did I do this? Were the seeds of this decay present in that past I travelled through, and was I the catalyst? Oh Lord, now I really am hallucinating! It’s as well I don’t know anything about Einstein’s theory of relativity or I’d probably start quoting that as well!
But the sense of the past reaching out to fasten soft blighting hands about the present persisted. The brightness faded from the air . . . yes, that described it exactly. How did the rest of the line go? Something about queens dying young and fair, and dust hath closed Helen’s eye. That describes it as well, thought Lewis wryly. Because Touaris is long since dead. She died under the most appalling torture, and I was powerless to save her.
And now it looks as if I’m going to die as well.
After a while he had lost track of time in the underground rooms where Kaspar’s guards put him after they had caught him in the Decalogue Chamber with Touaris.
They had not treated him especially harshly; there had been food and water – even books and writing materials. He had tried to keep a kind of diary-cum-calendar, although the entering of the diary had been grimly reminiscent of Patrick. Had Patrick been here in this shadowy subterranean prison, facing God alone knew what horrors, somehow clinging to sanity? If Patrick could survive then so could Patrick’s descendant.
The underground prison was deep beneath the Death Temple, close to the Decalogue Chamber itself, and as the weeks went by, Lewis became more and more strongly aware of the malevolence emanating from the Stones. He lay awake, hearing rustlings and stirrings; several times he thought he heard strange dragging footsteps going past his door and on down into the ancient bowels of the palace. Once there was something that sounded like huge leathery wings beating on the air, and on another occasion he woke to hear what he thought were faint whisperings as if several people were speaking very quietly in an unknown tongue. Satan’s dark bequest, the pharaohs’ Stones of Vengeance waking, taking on substance in the dark? Rubbing their invisible hands at the thought of another victim?
He had no idea where they had put Touaris, but he knew, with helpless fatalism, that there would be a child. That shared moment of surprised delight; that sudden soaring explosion when the sombre surroundings had receded and something incandescent and luminous had enveloped them both, could not have had any other culmination. It was a moment and a memory to hold on to, and to store away in a safe secret corner of his mind. A touchstone from which to draw strength throughout whatever was ahead.
When Kaspar’s guards finally came to take him out, he was angry to find himself weak and dazed by the burning torches that lit the passages and confused by the noise of the guards. For the first time he understood that his sight and his hearing had become dimmed from living for so long in the shadowy underground apartments and bitter impotent fury blazed up in him. He supposed his senses would adjust once he was in the ordinary world again, and then he remembered it was unlikely that he would ever see the ordinary world again, and panic and despair rushed in. I’m going to die, and I’m going to die at the hands of these murderous cannibals. And so is she.
The guards took him not up into the Death Temple as he had been expecting, but down through the flame-lit stone passages, and Lewis realised for the first time that his trial and sentence – yes, and probably the execution – would be inside the Decalogue Chamber itself. Horror lashed against his mind. It’s to be there! There, before those evil pieces of rock. A tiny part of his mind that was still retaining a tenuous hold on logic argued that it did not matter – a man could suffer screaming torture anywhere – but Lewis was nearly beyond logic by this time.
This was the death walk, this was the last journey of the condemned man. But I haven’t been condemned yet. I w
onder which of the devil’s commandments they’ll invoke? Patrick, did you take this walk and if you did, how did you come out of it with a whole mind?
Entering the huge cavernous crypt was like entering one of the hells of Dante or one of Brueghel’s painted devil-ridden scenes. I’m walking into hell. The deepest most fire-drenched cavern of all – where demons prance and goblins dance: where torment rules and agony holds exultant crimson court.
Shallow bronze dishes set on stone plinths held twisting spirals of flame, and the chamber was filled with people. As Lewis was pushed forward, every eye turned to him, and hostility and anger reared up like a solid wall.
But inevitably he looked first towards the Decalogue itself. The huge stones were as silent and as inanimate as when he had first seen them, but they were implacable and terrible. Lidless, sightless ogre eyes, watching from the shadows. Lewis stared at them in helpless fascination before turning to take stock of his surroundings.
Kaspar and some dozen or so men were grouped at the centre of the chamber – Lewis supposed the other men were the elders – and Kaspar’s dark eyes were filled with what Lewis could have sworn was amusement. He’s enjoying this, the bastard!
He looked about him for Touaris, and when Kaspar said, ‘Touaris has given birth to a boy. That is why we are assembled,’ Lewis made a gesture of acceptance and said, ‘Of course.’ His voice was cracked and husky from having spoken so little for so many months, but he managed to return stare for stare, and to look about him with disdain. This gave him a tiny spurt of courage. I’m acquitting myself reasonably well so far.
But when they brought Touaris and the child in, Lewis’s thin shell of resolve broke.
Touaris had not enjoyed the wearisome months of captivity, and she had certainly not enjoyed being violently sick every morning and suffering leg cramps and backache and a hundred and one other ailments.
What she had enjoyed was thinking up ways of scoring over Kaspar and the boring old farts of elders. After she had got over her indignation at being locked in her rooms – guarded as well, for heaven’s sake! – she began to cast about for means of alleviating the boredom. Seducing the guards was the first and most obvious thing – there were never less than two outside the door, and if you counted the duty changes there were actually eight in total, which was not a problem, of course – but on closer inspection it was not such a good idea on account of not being sure of their loyalties. Also Touaris had no idea if you were supposed to seduce people when you were pregnant. It might turn out to be dangerous or harmful. When she considered the idea further she found that it was unexpectedly distasteful to think of seducing anyone other than Lewis. This was a feeling that might change, of course, although Touaris was not sure whether she wanted it to change.