‘Okay, so we have motive,’ said Emily. ‘But how did he commit all these murders? He couldn’t have done them on his own.’
‘What we have been suspecting all along. He must have had an accomplice. And I’m thinking–’
‘Linda.’
I shook my head.
‘The concierge!’ said Emily.
I nodded. ‘But we haven’t seen him anywhere.’
‘Or maybe the owner of the castle, the crazy man who is obsessed with all these torture instruments. Maybe he wanted to try his devices out on people. His ultimate fantasy, and Reverend James and he came up with a plan, a medieval plan, to punish the sinners in his flock, the adulterers and apostates and blasphemers.’
Suzanne shuddered. ‘So it isn’t safe, even if we have Reverend James locked up.’
‘I need to speak to him, find out exactly what is going on. Maybe use him as guarantor of our safety, if there are others.’
Suzanne brightened. ‘Like a hostage.’
‘Exactly.’
‘We shouldn’t leave Linda on her own,’ said Emily.
Suzanne stood. ‘I’ll get her.’
Linda and Suzanne sat in the living room opposite Emily and me. I stared at her, still not knowing how implicated she was in her husband’s transgressions. She looked nervous, entwining her fingers together, and kept shooting glances out of the door. ‘I think I should get him some breakfast and coffee,’ she whispered, not to me but to Suzanne.
Suzanne raised her eyebrows to me. ‘Should we?’
I shook my head. ‘Maybe you’re not quite getting it, Linda. Your husband just tried to murder Emily. Has most likely murdered all the others. And you’re concerned that he’s hungry?’
Linda bit her lip. ‘I want to see him. You can’t lock him up.’
I held out the Reverend’s Bible. ‘He wants to kill us.’
‘Give me that.’ She made a lunge for it, but I held it away from her and she stumbled.
‘It’s evidence, sorry, for the police. Criminal material.’
‘You ruined everything. Everything.’
I had never seen Linda like this – red-faced, wild, angry. I liked this woman better than the passive, pale-eyed, submissive woman I had known her as. I deliberated. ‘All right, you can see him, but we’re not letting him out of that room. If you want to be with him, we’ll have to lock you in there too.’
‘Better than being in here with you snakes. Let me take him some food and drink.’
‘Not just yet. I want to talk to him first. All of you stay here.’
I took the dagger in case Reverend James still had tricks up his sleeve, but as I listened at the locked and barricaded door, I heard only silence. No one had disturbed the thread I had placed across the doorway. I moved the dresser away, knocked, and waited. Then I turned the key.
I stepped inside, dagger at the ready.
‘Reverend James?’
I had many questions, but the first was paramount: how to ensure our safety. Where was his accomplice, if indeed he had one? How could we negotiate safe passage out of here? Were we still in any danger? But I was met with silence and cold.
The handcuffs were lying on the bedside table, open, a key in the lock.
Shit!
I looked desperately around the room. I poked under the bed, pulled open the closet, ran to the window and tried the handle. It was tightly closed. I looked at the doorway. He couldn’t have got out that way. My heart pounded. ‘Reverend James!’
I checked my pockets. I still had the key to the cuffs. This must be the duplicate I had foolishly left on the torture museum display cabinet. Maybe Linda had sneaked in and given him the key while we were downstairs. Anger rose in my throat. Rage at this man. And my foolishness to think I had safely locked him away. How stupid of me!
I had to think of the women’s safety first. I ran down the stairs, calling out, ‘Suzanne, Emily, Linda. Are you okay? Stay together.’
Emily and Suzanne stood by the fire, staring at the dagger in my hand. I lowered it. ‘Where’s Linda?’
‘Isn’t she with you?’ said Suzanne. ‘She said she was going to get some food for the Reverend. We told her to wait, but she wouldn’t.’
I jangled the handcuff key in the air. ‘He’s gone.’
‘What?’ said Suzanne and Emily together.
‘How?’ said Emily. ‘You said you had locked him up in your room.’
‘And Linda?’ said Suzanne. ‘She said she–’
I ran into the kitchen. No sign of Linda. ‘Shit.’
‘They could be anywhere,’ said Emily.
Suzanne frowned. ‘She did help him, then.’
Emily nodded. ‘Yes. She was playing with us. It was all an act.’
I sat by the fire, turning the dagger in my hand. All the pieces fell into place. ‘Let’s face it, we’re the only non-believers here. Alive, that is. We were all inside that cult, we all know how it felt, that fanatical view that the world was against us, that we were right and they were all evil followers of Satan. Who knows what madness lives in people? He called us heretics, apostates, enemies of God. She called on God to smite us, prayed for vengeance. She threw some verse at me when I talked to her, about Jesus casting us into hell for our sins.’
Emily nodded. ‘So they planned to eliminate us. He and Linda. I can see it now. Such hatred. And self-righteousness. And delusion.’
‘I can understand Glen’s murder. That was jealousy. A way to purge the Reverend’s pain and his wife’s unfaithfulness. But Stephen, Mike, Danny and Ali were innocents. They were his closest followers.’
‘He tried to kill me too,’ said Emily.
‘You’re an apostate. Me too. You too, Suzanne. It’s obvious why we should be on the hit list.’
Suzanne crinkled her nose. ‘Forgive my ignorance, but what is an apostate?’
‘Someone who renounces their faith,’ said Emily. ‘In some religions, like some extreme forms of Islam, it invites the death penalty. Medieval Christianity tortured people for apostasy.’
‘Hence the torture museum,’ said Emily.
‘It’s a bigger threat than atheism,’ I said. ‘For someone to de-convert, to reject the true teachings of God (whatever they are), threatens the very foundations of that religion. Undermines faith. You have to eliminate apostates or shut them up.’
Emily whistled. ‘And we were conned into coming here. Into this trap. Shit. I should have followed my instincts. I was never going to come. But I wanted to see you guys.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I knew it was a mistake to come, but I felt there was something to resolve.’
‘With Reverend James?’
‘No,’ I said, looking at Suzanne.
‘Shall I leave now?’ said Emily.
Suzanne looked at Emily, almost kindly. ‘No. So, Rafe, have you resolved whatever it was you came to resolve?’
‘I’m not sure yet,’ I said.
Suzanne shook her head. ‘We all had things we needed to resolve. But I felt I was being set up. I feel like Reverend James is trying to pin those murders on me. All those fake notes, using my perfume.’
‘Who knows the mind of a deluded religious fanatic?’ I said. ‘He sees sin everywhere. Sex, lust, adultery, all anathema to him.’ I picked up the Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. ‘Read this book long enough and you’ll start to dream about torture and persecution and that whole medieval worldview. I’m afraid our Reverend is completely stuck in a pattern of righteous retribution. Do you know he kept our secret confessions?’
‘What?’ said Emily.
‘He burnt them,’ said Suzanne, paling. ‘I saw–’
I marched across to the dining table, picked up the Reverend’s Bible and brought it over to the fireside. I pulled out the pile of folded notes from the back pouch. ‘A conjuring trick. He used them to shape our punishments.’
Emily and Suzanne stared at the notes on the table. No one wanted to pick them up. Suzanne looked at me sharply. ‘Have you read t
hem?’
‘No.’ But I hesitated a little too long.
‘You read them!’ said Suzanne. ‘You read mine, didn’t you?’
‘We have to read them,’ said Emily. ‘It’ll give us a clue about his thinking.’
‘I just wrote bullshit,’ said Suzanne. ‘What did he really think? That I’d confess all my sins?’
Emily agreed. ‘I had so many sins, I couldn’t fit them on the piece of paper.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ said Suzanne. ‘Shouldn’t we have something to defend ourselves with if he attacks again?’
I looked at the open doorway. ‘We stick together, and we arm ourselves. We don’t go anywhere alone. And we find where they’re holing up. At least we know who our enemy is now.’
‘What happens if we need to go pee?’ said Emily.
‘Do you?’
‘I’m bursting. All that coffee.’
‘Me too,’ said Suzanne.
I considered. ‘Let’s all go together,’ I said. ‘I’ll stand guard outside the loo, you two go in first, then me.’
‘We need weapons.’ Emily walked over to the dining room cabinet and pulled out a carving knife and fork. ‘Here.’
Suzanne took the fork. Prodded it into the air. ‘Can’t see myself using this on anyone.’
‘You will, if some hand grabs you around the throat like he did me,’ said Emily. ‘I wished for a weapon in my hand.’
‘I have mace in my room,’ said Suzanne.
‘Good. Let’s get it after we go to the loo.’
We stayed close. Instead of a fearful silence, I decided to fill the silence with our presence. We chatted overly loudly, as if to spook any silent attackers in the shadows.
‘Have to look on the bright side,’ said Emily. ‘He bungled my execution.’
‘I’m next, if his sermons are anything to go by. Eight maids a-milking,’ I said.
Suzanne gasped. ‘He gave us our death cards at that first supper. Little did we know.’
‘What card are you, Suzanne?’ said Emily.
‘Eleven pipers piping.’
‘Oh, you’re safe then, for at least a few days.’
Suzanne sighed. ‘You guys are so glib, so facetious.’
‘Only way to deal with it,’ said Emily.
I interrupted their chatter. ‘Wait, shh. What was that noise?’
We froze.
A creak on the floorboards, a slamming window. ‘The wind?’
‘After you go to the loo, I think we’d better secure all the windows. Lock the doors to each room.’
At the women’s toilet, we stopped and listened. The door was closed, but the wind blew under the gap underneath it. ‘I’ll check for lurkers before you go in.’
‘We all check for lurkers.’
I pushed open the door, peered in every corner, every cupboard. A window banged open and shut. I closed it, secured it with its latch. Suzanne and Emily checked the stalls.
‘All clear.’
They closed the door and left me outside. ‘Lock it,’ I ordered.
I stood outside and waited. I listened carefully for creaking footsteps, wind. I could hear both women peeing, it was so quiet.
The next moment I felt a bee sting in my neck, a stinky cloth clamped onto my mouth. I dropped to the floor, feeling myself go soft, as if I had no muscle strength. In my falling into unconsciousness, I thought I heard screams – far away – and pummelling on the door behind me, but they faded into blackness. My limbs felt heavy, my body like jelly, and a bright light receded at speed in my brain, a blackness like squid’s ink enveloping me.
A throbbing head, my body clammy and hot. Claustrophobic. Pressure on my face, and my nose burning. Rose and musk perfume itched my eyes, seared my nostrils, as if someone had wiped it on my face. ‘Suzanne,’ I muttered, as I opened my eyes, ‘is that you?’
The sting on my neck burned. But that was the least of my worries. I smelt burning cotton. A metallic flavour in my mouth. I reached up and sensed I was in an enclosed space that radiated heat. I touched a scalding hot metal roof and quickly pulled my hand away. My eyes were burning now too. I looked up and saw two glowing diffuse lights. As I grew used to the darkness, I worked out the shape and texture of my prison.
Suddenly, I knew where I was: encased in the brazen bull. Above my head was the hollowed out inside of the mouth and head and the two lights were its nostrils. I had been placed on top of the inside of the udders with its four teats, lying face up.
And worse, whoever had captured me had lit the fire underneath. The brazen bull was heating up, cracking and expanding.
Death by milkmaidens. Not the iron maiden, but the cow that produced human fluids through its udders. I was going to be roasted alive.
You’re going to be the milk, Rafe, I thought. I felt for the trapdoor hatch that I remembered seeing on the first day here. That’s how I had been placed inside. I could make out with my fingers a rectangular section, but it was getting too hot to touch and there was no way to open it from the inside. The torturers who built it had thought of that. Thank God I was wearing heavy clothes. But I could smell that they were beginning to singe. And the oxygen was fast disappearing. It was already hotter than I could stand. Soon I would be bellowing in pain, out of the bull’s nostrils, amplified by the hollow interior.
I was going to die.
9
Nine ladies dancing
I couldn’t breathe. My skin blistered. And the pain throbbed in my left thigh. I wriggled around and felt a hard object in my pocket. Of course, the dagger I had taken from the torture museum as a weapon. It was so hot it was burning my leg. I wrapped my hand in my sleeve and pulled it out.
I groped around me, but wherever I touched was burning hot. The bull had been moulded as one continuous piece of bronze, smoothed and shaped so that the victim would have nothing to grip on to.
Except for the udders – these were a later addition to the bull, and I could feel the uneven plate where the bowl had been grafted on to the underbelly. I felt for screws or bolts but found none. Maybe I could pry the two searing sheets of metal apart. But the heat was strongest at this very point.
Think, Rafe, don’t panic. Try to be logical about this.
But I could not think. My brain sizzled. I knew there was a critical temperature at which the human body could no longer function and after that point I would deteriorate rapidly. The brain would be the first to go. I had to focus my energy in spite of the throbbing pain.
I clanged the side of the bull with the dagger. ‘Help! I’m in here! Get me out!’
The echo of my voice mocked me. No one could hear, I was sure. And who would be listening but the murderer himself? ‘Reverend James!’ I called. I banged again on the side with the dagger.
Calm yourself. Think rationally. Pain, I knew (along with other similar bodily sensations), was a response of the brain to nerve endings. If you could detach yourself from the circuit and understand it, you could stop feeling it. The sensation of pain is separate from pain itself. Pain is subjective. Experiences are in the head, if they are anywhere.
Detach yourself, Rafe, from the pain. Detach. Push down that rising scream in your throat.
I fought back claustrophobia. I hated confined spaces, metaphorical or physical. Trapped in a metal container that was heating up, with no air, was my worst nightmare. But I had to conserve both air and energy. I wriggled to escape the heat on my legs, moved my weight across, and the bull shuddered a little. This gave me the idea. I hurled myself with full force against the side, felt the bull lift into the air, hover for a second on two feet, then fall back on all four. Four legs good, two legs better. I shoved myself again at the concave inner stomach of the bull, and it lurched again, hanging in the air, and as I pushed all my weight against it, felt, yes, that it had reached tipping point, and was falling. It crashed and my body was jarred onto the side of the bull, which was now I imagined – I hoped – sideways on the cold floor of the torture museum. I ar
ched my body away from the red-hot underbelly and inside of the udders but there was nowhere that did not scald me.
Was it just my wish for it to be so, or was the bronze slowly cooling? Yes. I had moved it far enough away from the fire to have an effect. After a few minutes, I could sit more comfortably and my brain began to clear. I took breaths of air inside the skull where the two nostrils had been fashioned so the cruel torturers could hear the bellowing of the dying victim. The metal cracked and ticked as it cooled, and I began working on the plate with my dagger. I steadied my hand, wrapped my fingers in my sleeve as I found purchase and tried to prise open the metal plate. But it would not move.
I cranked it on all sides, banged it with my fist, and finally I felt a slight give. Encouraged, I worked around and around the plate until at last the casing separated and I could lever the metal away from the shell. It pulled away reluctantly, and in a matter of minutes, I had removed the metal plate and the whole udder came with it, inside the bull. I shoved it towards the tail end and breathed the cool air sweeping into the gaping hole it left.
The euphoria was short-lived. The square hole I had created was large enough for a fist, maybe even my head, but never my whole body.
Now claustrophobia kicked in again. There was no way I could escape this way. Above me, the door, bolted, was the only way out.
Unless…
I reached my arm out of the udder hole as far as I could stretch it and felt for the bolt that held the door shut. I could not quite reach, but if I strained and caused a tearing pain, I could touch the bolt. I needed to move this bolt and wiggle it out of the slot. I couldn’t. I needed an extra few inches. I held the dagger out through the opening, stretched and tapped, just touching the bolt. I could lift it up but not push it across to open it.
I rested my cramping arm. My skin scorched on the still-burning hot metal, and I felt short of breath. But I had to do it or die. The body and mind can perform miracles when needed. I had to believe it. Summoning all my mental and physical reserves for the final move, I pushed the dagger and felt the bolt move in its groove. One more push and it was open all the way.
Twelve Days Page 19