A cold dry breath of wind ruffled the papers on Father Abbot’s desk, and Ciaran knelt down to replenish the fire. The ticking of the clock on the mantel suddenly seemed much louder.
At last, Ciaran said, ‘Father Abbot, that – that thing that’s buried in the crypt has been there for hundreds of years. It’ll be a mouldering skeleton. A heap of bones. Nobody believes in the legend any more, and even if we do—’
He stopped and Father Abbot said, ‘Even if we do . . .?’
‘It needs the music to wake it,’ said Ciaran. ‘The – what did they used to call it? – the Black Chant, and—dear God, isn’t this the most ridiculous conversation ever!’ He made an impatient gesture. ‘I hear what I’m saying but I don’t believe I’m saying it,’ said Ciaran.
‘The tomb is there,’ said Father Abbot. ‘The tomb of Ahasuerus.’ With the pronouncing of the name, a sudden silence closed down on the room, and Ciaran had the feeling that something outside had crept up to the uncurtained windows and was standing just out of sight, listening. The feeling was so strong that he crossed the room and looked out. Something moving out there? But there was nothing, and Ciaran drew the curtains and came back into the room.
‘I’ll give you the tomb,’ he said, resuming his seat. ‘I’ll even give you the Black Chant. Too many intelligent people have believed in it.’
‘Mozart believed in it, didn’t he?’ said Cuthbert unexpectedly. ‘The Chant and the legend of the devil’s piper?’
‘So it’s said. Wasn’t he a Freemason?’ said Father Abbot.
‘I’ve no idea. What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Only that they’ve kept some odd secrets over the centuries.’
‘So,’ said Ciaran caustically, ‘has the Roman Catholic Church.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘But the music vanished hundreds of years ago!’ said Ciaran. ‘We all know that. And even if you believe in it – even if you truly believe that a piece of music exists that has power over that thing in the tomb – do you really believe there’s a musician in today’s world with sufficient fire in his belly or passion in his soul to re-create it?’
‘I’ll tell you who could have done it,’ said Cuthbert. ‘He’s dead now. God keep him, but he could have done it. The grandfather of that young man who’s just come to Mallow House. Jude Weissman.’
‘Judas,’ said Ciaran, softly.
‘Well, we didn’t call him that in those days, of course. But he wrote something while he was here that people said had an oddness to it. Father Abbot – your predecessor, that was, Father – always wondered if the tomb influenced him, Mallow being so near and all. I remember him quite well,’ said Cuthbert. ‘He played the Abbey’s organ for us one Easter, which considering he was Jewish was very generous, I thought, because I don’t know that I’d go into a synagogue. He played Bach, I think it was. And some Handel. He was a very brilliant young man, although he was supposed to be a bit erratic. We used to hear him sometimes in the summer when the windows of the house were open. Only very faintly, but it was there. The scent of lilac and Jude Weissman’s music. The two always go together for me,’ said Cuthbert, with unexpected poetry. ‘We all prayed for him later, when they said he was a traitor, and we offered up Masses for the repose of his soul after they executed him. He left a wife and small child. It was all very terrible.’
Father Abbot said thoughtfully, ‘Is it possible that the grandson has inherited his gifts?’
‘And found the Chant by accident and played it tonight? But that would be impossible,’ said Ciaran. ‘Wouldn’t it? If the Chant does exist, no one could find it unless they knew about it? And if they found it, they’d certainly know about it.’
He looked at Cuthbert for confirmation, but Cuthbert said thoughtfully, ‘I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t swear that some of these modern pop music people haven’t occasionally hit a nerve.’
Ciaran smiled for the first time. ‘Cuthbert, you never cease to amaze me. What on earth do you know about pop music?’
‘Only that it occasionally drives young people to drugs or suicide,’ said Cuthbert. ‘And that’s it’s always much too loud.’
Ciaran said slowly, ‘You could be right about pop music and the Black Chant, Cuthbert. There was a case a year or so ago where a young man blasted out his brains with a shotgun and his family tried to prove that there was some kind of subliminal message in the pop group he followed. They even went to Court over it, I think.’
‘People forget that the devil is extremely clever,’ said Cuthbert seriously. ‘They think of him – if they think of him at all – as a persuasive gentleman with horns and a forked tail, but if he went about today’s world looking like that, people would only think it was a gimmick to sell central heating. If he’s in the world today – and of course he is – he’ll be in all the things that lower people’s resistance. Drugs and drink, and excuse me, Father Abbot, but sex.’
Ciaran said suddenly, ‘Daniel wasn’t sexually assaulted, was he?’ and the ugly words jarred on the gentle scholarly ambience of the room. Cuthbert, shocked, drew in his breath and said: bless them and save them all, certainly not. ‘Whatever else has been said about Ahasuerus, it’s never been said he wasn’t a gentleman.’
‘It’s never been said the Prince of Darkness wasn’t a gentleman either,’ said Ciaran caustically. ‘But if Ahasuerus is such a gentleman, would he have injured Daniel so violently?’
‘He might,’ said Father Abbot at last. ‘He might if there was a struggle of some kind. If Ahasuerus had broken out and Daniel tried to stop him. We’ll know more when Daniel regains consciousness. In the meantime—’ He stopped and then said, ‘In the meantime, there’s the tomb.’ He glanced uneasily to the window, and Ciaran thought: so he heard it, as well. ‘We’ll have to open the tomb, I’m afraid,’ said Father Abbot. ‘Or at least, see if it’s been disturbed.’
He stood up, and Ciaran said, ‘Now? You’re going to go down to the crypt now?’
‘Bless me, is that altogether wise, Father? I don’t want to interfere, but it’s very nearly dead of night—’
Father Abbot said very firmly, ‘We can’t delay. We don’t dare delay. If that thing has really woken—’ He broke off, and then said, ‘Ciaran, you’ll come with me?’
‘Into the jaws of—’ Ciaran stopped and spread his hands. ‘It’s the maddest thing I ever heard of, but I’ll come with you.’
‘We needn’t wake the others. I don’t want to worry them until we know if there’s anything to worry about.’
‘I’ll come as well if you want me,’ said Cuthbert.
‘Would you, Cuthbert? Three of us would manage better than two.’
‘Yes, and that vault hasn’t been unsealed since – dear me, Brother John Joseph in seventeen fifty, and that was only to repair a bit of chipped stonework. We’ll need the proper tools,’ said Cuthbert, becoming practical. ‘And candles as well, because there’s no electricity down there, you do know that, do you, Father?’
‘I do know there’s no electricity, Cuthbert.’
‘And,’ said Ciaran in an expressionless voice, ‘precious little sanity either. Very well, en avant, Father.’
It was not quite what the novelists called the witching hour, but it was close enough. Ciaran supposed that if you were going to commit a foolhardy act, you might as well do it with the full complement of midnight chimes – or at least ten o’clock chimes – from the clock tower and with only the flickering light of a candle to see by.
As they crossed the quadrangle he again had the feeling that they were being watched, and he paused, holding his candle aloft, shielding it from the sighing night wind with one hand. I believe there is something out there, he thought. But there was nothing to see except the Abbey’s own black shadows, and there was no sound except the wind stirring the dry leaves on the ground, and he turned back to where Cuthbert was unlocking the outer door of the tower.
The crypt stairs, up which Daniel had managed to drag himself, twisted round and down. They were dark and enclosed and narrow, and the candle flames burned up strongly in the dry air, throwing their three shadows onto the ancient stones, exaggerated and grotesque. The stone steps were worn away at the centre, and Ciaran felt a shiver of awe at this evidence of age. As they went down, he found himself turning round several times to scan the shadowy stairs above. The feeling of being silently followed was very strong indeed.
And then Cuthbert was saying in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘It’s over there, I believe. Directly ahead.’
‘I don’t think we’re going to miss it, Cuthbert.’
Ciaran could feel the centuries of goodness and the decades of prayer and sacred music receding. Like water streaming off the oiled feathers of a seabird. An albatross or a storm petrel . . . Why did I think of storm petrels? A bird of ill-omen on my right hand . . . Yes, but what sits, invisible, on my left? And supposing the tomb is tenantless . . .?
He shivered again and at once Father Abbot said, ‘The atmosphere is not good here.’
‘There’s no air,’ said Ciaran shortly.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I know.’
Cuthbert was setting more candles at intervals on the floor, using the melting wax to stand them upright. ‘Light,’ he said. ‘Very important.’
‘Important for what? Grave-desecration?’
‘For fighting back any kind of darkness,’ said Cuthbert with complete seriousness, and Ciaran at once said, ‘Forgive me, Brother.’
He looked about him at the shadowy crypt, the low archways of stone, the shelves of rock at the sides, and drew breath to frame a prayer. As he did so, Father Abbot’s hand came down on his arm.
There in front of them, shrouded in twisting darkness, was a crouching black bulk: a waist-high rectangle of dark stone, roughly eight feet in length and four or five feet wide.
The tomb of Ahasuerus.
It was more conventional than Ciaran remembered, although he was no longer sure if he had in fact seen it properly until now. There was no reclining figure on the lid, but whoever had constructed the tomb had apparently spent some time in Eastern countries, for there was a strong resemblance to the sarcophagi of the Egyptians. But Ahasuerus wasn’t Egyptian, thought Ciaran, puzzled. I don’t believe the legend, not entirely, but I know what it says, and in every version Ahasuerus was a Jew, he was the rebel High Priest of the Temple . . .
Whatever Ahasuerus had been in life, in death he lay inside a long elaborate stone sepulchre, embellished with ancient symbols of light, including the Aryan swastika – the real thing, not the later distortion of the Nazis, thought Ciaran, with awe – and with Celtic and Pictish crosses as well as the conventional crucifix, the crux commissa representing Christ’s gibbet.
At his side, Father Abbot said softly, ‘They bound him to the grave with every symbol of light they could find and still he escaped. The tomb is the original one, of course, but the inner coffin was made several hundred years later. Or so the legend says,’ he added.
‘Is he – forgive me, Father – but was his body embalmed?’
‘I have no idea.’
As the three men walked slowly forward, their eyes never leaving the crouching outline of the tomb, dense pools of darkness slithered across the floor at its base. And then Father Abbot murmured a prayer and held up the candle and the shadows seemed to dissolve and trickle away.
Even before they reached it, they could see that the stone lid had been dislodged – from beneath? thought Ciaran, atavistic fear prickling his skin – and as they approached, a faint drift of corruption breathed outwards from the yawning blackness of the interior. The breath of the grave, thought Ciaran and felt a knot of sickness form at the pit of his stomach.
He drew in a deep breath, his free hand closing about the crucifix he wore at his waist and he was grateful when Father Abbot said in a perfectly ordinary voice, ‘Do you both see the inscription on the side? In the bas-relief near the top?’
Ciaran held his candle up so that the warm glow fell across the side of the sepulchre. In a soft voice, he read the inscription.
‘“Non omnis moriar multaque pars mei Vitabit Libitinam. I shall not wholly die; large residues shall escape the Queen of Death”.’ He looked at Father Abbott. ‘So he really did claim immortality?’
‘Apparently.’ Father Abbot studied the carved words for a moment, and then said quietly, ‘It’s believed that it was our founders, the ancient Fratres Cruciferi Order, who caused those words to be engraved on the sepulchre.’
Ciaran looked back at the tomb, and felt once more the creeping fear. Non omnis moriar . . . He drew in a deep breath, and held up the candle.
The warm flickering light fell across the stone sepulchre, and the horror reared up and lashed against the minds of the three men.
The immense stone lid had been pushed aside so that it lay at right angles to the elaborate stone sepulchre. Inside was a smaller, more conventional coffin: wooden and unexpectedly flimsy, as if it might have been constructed hurriedly, in immense secrecy.
The inside of the stone tomb reeked of death and despair and agony. The wooden lid of the inner coffin had been flung aside, and a thin layer of discoloured linen lay discarded as if whatever had lain under it had pushed it aside and sat up.
The tomb was empty.
The fire in Father Abbot’s study had hardly burned down at all, but Ciaran stacked more logs of wood on to it before taking a seat.
Cuthbert was glad to see Ciaran replenish the fire because hadn’t the crypt been a nasty draughty place and their experience a very terrible one indeed.
‘And with your permission, Father, we’ll take a little drop of the brandy that the infirmary keeps for medicinal purposes. I’ve fetched it in for us.’
‘I suppose,’ said Ciaran, accepting the brandy gratefully, ‘I suppose that it isn’t all a series of coincidences? Could the lid have been moved by anything ordinary? Settlement in the foundations? Vandals? Have we had workmen in—?’
‘The tomb was empty, Ciaran.’
‘I’m not forgetting that.’ Ciaran frowned, and then said, ‘Listen now, could Ahasuerus – could anyone – have got out of that tomb from the inside? Rolled back the stone? I didn’t mean that to sound quite so Biblical, Father.’
‘The stone wouldn’t be that heavy. And if you were trapped—’
‘Could Daniel have helped him?’ asked Cuthbert hesitantly. ‘Was that why Ahasuerus clawed him?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. If Daniel heard something in the crypt, it’s more likely that he’d go for help,’ said Ciaran. ‘I know I would. I wouldn’t investigate that crypt after darkness unless I’d got at least two other people with me, and certainly not if I thought something was prowling about down there. Isn’t it more likely that Daniel encountered – whatever it was – and was flung aside?’ He made an impatient gesture. ‘I’m beginning to sound as if I believe in all this,’ he said.
Father Abbot said softly, ‘Didn’t you see the marks, Ciaran?’
‘I—yes.’ Ciaran looked at the older man. ‘But I hoped no one else had,’ he said.
‘What—Father Abbot, Brother Ciaran, what marks?’
In a voice scraped raw with pity, Ciaran said, ‘On the underside of the coffin lid were claw marks. Where – whatever was inside – had fought to get out.’
The silence came down again, heavy and stifling, but at length, Father Abbot said, ‘The Fratres Cruciferi believed they had entombed Ahasuerus for ever. They thought Ahasuerus would never walk in the world again.’ He paused, and then said, ‘But as we know, they were wrong. Ahasuerus’s last furious threat came true.’
‘Non omnis moriar . . .’ said Ciaran gently, ‘I shall not wholly die.’