“A daring rescue attempt. Failed, I’m afraid, but our latter-day Sherlock Holmes might have his Dr. Watson.”
Marda screamed with the full force of her lungs at the sound of Duval’s cold and controlled voice echoing down the corridor.
“Quite a family reunion, Marda,” he said, slightly out of breath. “I’ve never had two members of the same family as guests in my little establishment. In fact it’s also the first time I’ve had a male guest. How interesting.”
“You’ve killed him, you bloody maniac!” Marda heard herself shouting.
“Language. Language, young lady,” said Duval with deadly calm. “There’s no need to shout. It will be bread and water for you again. Christine will not like this. She hath taken unto…”
“What have you done to him? I heard you drag him into the next cell. Is Mark all right?” Marda lowered her voice a little.
“I think he will wake up with a nasty headache.” Duval displayed the hint of a mad grin as he peered into her cell.
“How could you? He was just trying to help. He was being a good brother…a good Christian, caring for his sister. I don’t think you know what a Christian is, let alone a good one.”
“Of course I do,” the priest intoned sanctimoniously. “It was a Christian act of charity to accommodate your brother next to you, and he has Denise of course for company. I have buried the rest of my guests, as you requested. If your brother hadn’t so rudely interrupted us, I would have interred poor Denise as well. Now she will have to wait.”
Duval, standing almost triumphantly in the corridor, clasped his hands together, then stretched them back, making his joints click. She had never seen him do that before.
“Marda, we’re fast approaching decision time,” he said portentously. “Some of the recent events indicate that I should be away for a while-let things settle down for a year or two. The bishop has urged me to get a move on, and, for once, I might agree with him. A nice long holiday in South America is becoming more and more attractive.”
“Will you let us both out of this place?” Marda whispered.
“How can I? I might have trusted you, but your brother would never have understood my vocation. If only he hadn’t been so nosy.”
Marda tried to cover all the angles: “Couldn’t you leave us some food, and then contact someone to let us out when you’re safely in South America?”
He stroked the stubble on his chin, as if he were musing on a major philosophical issue. “Perhaps.”
“Couldn’t you put me in with my brother so that I can see if he’s alive?”
“Ah, three in a cell would be a little uncomfortable, don’t you think?”
“No, no, I don’t mind. I would give anything just to hold him. Would you see if he needs anything? Please, for me?”
“He can stay where he is. I don’t think he wants any help. I shall leave you two to your own devices for a while.”
The grille clicked back into place, plunging Marda back into darkness and utter misery.
Professor Gould had spent the rest of Friday and part of Saturday in the municipal archives. He had unearthed some useful information, but he couldn’t concentrate because he kept thinking of Mark Stewart, his new army friend. He would ring him in Germany on Monday because Mark had said he would be back at the base then. The captain would be interested to hear that Duval was going to South America. The professor also considered visiting the elusive priest again, as he had only a few more weeks left of his sabbatical. He was convinced that his friend Mark had been barking up the wrong tree. Actually he was barking mad, to use another one of his favourite Anglicisms, to think that Duval was some kind of kidnapper. He would tell his friend about South America, but he was also concerned with his own research interests.
The professor desperately wanted Duval to offer an opinion on his paper about Christine Carpenter’s life in France. It was certain that she was the same anchoress, because there was a detailed cross-reference to the papal indulgence granted in Avignon in 1332. The indulgence had been granted, no doubt about that, but Christine had not been re-enclosed. Something had made her change her mind, presumably something very convincing. Perhaps a more earthly love.
The local Inquisition records clearly stated that Christine was interrogated on two occasions in the small French fortress of Saint Sardos, after she had taken refuge in the English territory of Agenais. The English wars over Gascony meant that, in this period, parts of France were sometimes English and at other times controlled by the French king.
The record of Christine’s interrogation detailed, in exquisite Latin, that she was thirty-eight and a widow who had borne two children. There was a reference to her former husband being a seaman from the Cinque ports. He was not named, but the document stated that he was also a former native of Shere. The French Catholic authorities seemed to have been more concerned with the possibility of her being an English spy rather than with her probable status as an ex-communicant. She had been briefly accused by her Inquisitors of being a renegade Cathar, but the heresy line had not been pursued. She had been held, possibly tortured-there was an obscure reference to “pressure”-and finally released after six months. That was it. Probably she had then returned to an English stronghold such as Bordeaux, where she may have rejoined her children.
It was amazing, Gould thought, how details of the fourteenth century could be updated in the twentieth; that was the magic of historical research. He saw himself as an academic detective: provided you had the patience and the languages, medieval records were a goldmine of clues. So many had survived for hundreds of years, but it was tragic that equally as many had been destroyed by the savagery of the Second World War. How could original manuscripts from the Dark Ages be destroyed by the new dark age of Nazism and now, worse, suffer possible total destruction by nuclear warfare?
Professor Gould shook himself out of his intellectual reverie and decided he needed a drink. He walked down from his bedroom to enjoy a real citadel of English culture: the bar of the White Horse.
Marda kept shouting to her brother through the closed grille. She didn’t know if he could hear her, or whether he was alive or dead, but she shouted till she was hoarse. She sat in the dark swathed in her blankets, wondering whether she was better off or not. Her brother had momentarily given her massive hope, but now perhaps he was dead. The madman was probably going to kill them both, but his fear of tactility suggested to her that he would not murder them physically with his own hands. He would wait and let them starve. That was his way of doing things. But it would take time, and he was running out of that. If Mark knew where she was, presumably so did others, and they would come soon. The lunatic would try to escape from Shere. There were so many questions, and only Mark could answer them.
After two or three hours she heard a muffled thump on a door. She rushed to her door and banged hard. Another thump came back. He was alive!
She tried to prise the grille open a little. She had tried before, but now she somehow summoned extra strength. She attempted to force it open using her pen. It moved just a little and she shouted, “Can you hear me, Mark?”
“Just about.” The hoarse shout clearly emanated from a pain-racked body.
“Are you badly hurt?” Marda asked.
“A blinding headache and a bad gash on my head, but I’ll live.”
“I can’t really hear you.”
“I am shouting. I’m OK. I’m sorry I messed up, but I promise I’ll get you out.”
“Does anyone else know you are here?”
“Not exactly, but there’s an American-an a-mer-i-can,” he enunciated each syllable, “called Professor Gould. I’ve told him about my suspicions. He’s staying at the White Horse.”
In her agitated state, Marda threw all caution to the wind. Duval might have been eavesdropping, but she had to find out as much as possible from her brother. “Will the American do anything?”
“I doubt it. I told him I was going back to Germany, but he does know I suspect that maniac. How long have you been here? Since you went missing?”
Marda tried to tell him as much as possible in short shouted sentences. They talked-despite the difficulties-till both their throats were aching with pain. She told him what she knew about the other girls and about the bishop’s pressures on Duval.
“What will we do if he comes back?” she asked.
“I’ll throttle the evil bastard as soon as I get my hands on him,” Mark said, expressing an aggression which belied his predicament.
“That’s why he’ll leave us to rot for a few days. He sulks. And he’s probably afraid of you…like all bullies. I can only pray…”
“Did you say ‘pray’?”
“Yes.”
“Have you gone all religious down here?”
Marda hesitated, not because her tormentor might be listening, but because she was examining her soul. “Maybe… No, I hate religion now. I can only hope that the American tells the police.” She thought of Duval. “Yes, I’m sure the police will be here soon.”
From what he had heard through the open trap door, Duval very much doubted that.
***
Professor Gould did not contact the police. He had no reason to do so, but he did call again at Duval’s house on the Monday following his meeting with the bishop. There was no reply, but he left a note.
Dear Father Duval
I’m sorry I keep missing you. I am returning to the USA in the next week or so and need urgently to speak to you regarding your research on the Anchoress of Shere. I have new information on her life outside Shere. Believe she left her cell a second time or more likely was not re-enclosed, despite the papal indulgence. Died in France. Please contact me at the White Horse (room 3) where I am staying. Look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Irvine M. Gould
Duval heard Gould ring his doorbell, and observed him from behind the curtain in the main bedroom. When he had read the note, angrily he crumpled it up.
He had been prepared to talk to the professor if the note had been civil. But bloody Yanks, know-all bastards who know nothing, another invention to get a free conference trip or promotion. Just like the bishop, more interested in position than in truth. He refused absolutely to believe that Christine had not died in her cell. He was, however, severely discomfited by the note, especially after his recent dramas. His quiet life was becoming too disrupted by outsiders-he would have to get rid of them, clear up all the mess and get out for a while.
He rang the bishop, who was unavailable, and left a message with his secretary to explain that he would follow the bishop’s “advice” as soon as possible. He was now eager to undertake the challenge of a new ministry in South America, he said.
He had to sell his car, perhaps arrange to rent out his house, perhaps not. He didn’t need the money, and tenants might dig around in the garden. Yes, he must finish his bit of landscaping, and he didn’t care that the garden centre thought it was a bad idea to create a rockery and pond in January. It would have to be landscaped before he left, and he would have to do it all himself, just in case. Then there was the dog. He didn’t want to give Bobby away; maybe somebody would offer him a good home, but he would prefer to take the animal with him. He was mentally preparing for his departure; he must make a start on his Spanish. And he had had very little time to do the final edit on his book. On top of all that, Constable McGregor had become more inquisitive than was healthy. The usual innocuous chat, Duval thought, had turned into slightly pointed questions about his garden, and the policeman had asked whether a Captain Stewart had called on him. It was getting too hectic, and pressure made Duval more aggressive.
With all this rush he put his problems in the cellar at the back of his mind. After three days, however, he decided he had better attend to them. It was quiet when he climbed down the stairs with some food and water. He walked past the new inmate and knocked on Marda’s door. He didn’t hear anything as he put on her light and looked through the grille.
She was lying on the bed asleep or dazed. He was wary.
“Christine, wake up. I have some food for you. I’m sorry I haven’t been down for a while, but I’ve been busy.”
She stirred when the light went on.
“Are you sick?”
“Yes. Very. Thanks to you,” she said in a croaking voice.
“Still a little fire left in the belly I see. I shall open the grille fully and pass through the food and water. That should make you feel better.”
She was now more alert. “Thank you. I need food badly. And some heat.”
“We shall see.”
He started to walk away.
“What about my brother?”
“I am sure his fat can sustain him for a while,” Duval said matter-of-factly.
“No, no, please don’t go. He’s suffering badly from concussion and he’s lost quite a bit of blood. Please let him have some-all-of my food. But we both need some water, please.”
Duval carried on walking away.
“No, no, you can’t kill him, not after all he’s gone through. I’ll do anything. Please. I promise I’ll come to South America. Anything, but please let my brother live. Let me join him.”
The lights went off and the cellar door was shut.
Marda agonised over her brother’s condition, but her mind swirled into other nightmares besides Mark’s possible death. In a feverish state, she saw herself married to Duval in the Shere church. Lapsing back into reality, she was violently sick. The image of Denise and Mark lying on top of each other, clutching each other in death, kept impinging on her semi-consciousness. She tried to keep a grip on her sanity. She so wanted to see her brother, but irrationally she was afraid that he would be shocked by the psychological and physical changes in her. Mark had seen her face, but her body had withered. She felt sub-human, worse than an animal, after so many months in the black hole. When she hoped for freedom, when she dreamed that she and her brother could float out into the greenness outside, she shuddered with panic. She was shocked to find that she had developed a fear of leaving the womb, of entering the world outside, which she had almost forgotten. She prayed to God for His help to save Mark and grant them both the sweet mercy of freedom. She remembered that even St. Peter-or was it St. Paul? — had denied Christ three times. Perhaps her memory was fading, along with her strength, or perhaps her religious instruction had been too superficial. Later, in freedom, she might want to learn more. Perhaps.
Sometimes she could not separate dreams from reality. On occasion her nightmares seemed so real that she wondered whether Duval had drugged her again. She recalled the strange, acrid taste in her mouth. She half-remembered the smell of burning flesh, then the pain and the scar of the cross Duval branded on her cheek. Fever took hold, loosening her grip on reality.
At other times she felt entirely lucid. Food and water and heat helped. She was almost herself when Duval came back with a sheaf of papers that he handed through the grille.
“You said you would do anything,” he said in a voice that had altered in some distinct but indefinable way. “I would like you to read the final chapter of my book. Your comments, even now, would be appreciated. The rest is finished, and all collated in a tidy pile on my desk. Your end and Christine’s will run in tandem. As you must realise, it is fitting that thou and the anchoress will be sanctified together in the Holy Spirit. The bishop hath spoken unto me…”
Duval rambled on in a strange monotone, his cold eyes flashing, while Marda tried to understand his disjointed words as he lapsed into medieval English.
Finally, she could take no more: “Would you, please, give my brother something to eat and drink? I beg you.”
“I will ponder upon that when thou hast read my final chapter.”
“OK, I’ll do it, but come back soon,” she said urgently.
She read the final section but couldn’t really take it in, no matter how much she concentrated. She was weak, ill, cold, frightened and desperately concerned about her brother: not the ideal circumstances for literary criticism. She must, however, make some sense of it because he was bound to quiz her.
She was dismayed by the passages on Christine’s sudden switch to extreme self-mortification, which said much about Duval’s increasingly volatile state of mind. The priest’s personality was disintegrating, not Christine’s; Marda had grown to like and empathise with the anchoress of Shere. Duval’s sick fascination with cuts, purges and whips boded ill for Marda unless she and Mark escaped soon. The rest of the writing seemed to be about Christine’s ecstatic last years in her cell, the return of her visions and her final death, still in the wall, at the age of thirty-three, the same age as Christ when He was crucified. Then followed a few final gushing paragraphs about her possible canonisation. Same twisted sort of stuff as before, but she would steel herself to be complimentary. She was the tamest and lamest of critics.
For the next two days Duval brought food and water intermittently for Marda, and once some heating oil and a packet of cigarettes. He didn’t ask about the final chapter, and refused to discuss it even when she raised the subject.
She tried a series of variations on “it’s a masterpiece, but please feed my brother.” Yet no matter what she said, he seemed like stone. Mark occasionally shouted incoherently, but for the most part he was silent.
After hours of stillness and darkness, she heard the adjacent cell door opening and a dragging sound.
“Please open the grille. Let me see my brother,” she begged.
The priest said nothing. For half an hour she heard strange noises, and then screams. He was torturing Mark.
“Stop it, please, I’ll do anything,” she shouted for the hundredth time.
She continued to hear the low moaning which echoed in the corridor. Perhaps it was another victim. Maybe it was the American, Gould, who had also been grabbed by Duval. She shouted to her brother, but he did not-or could not-respond.
A sound of sawing filled the corridor. She tried to shout again, but she had no voice left.
It was one of Duval’s final acts in the cellar. He knew he had but a short time left. No one had come looking for the army officer, so he must have been working alone, but it was time to get out. First, though, he wanted to see if his historical description of Sir Richard’s demise was accurate. How long could a man survive the tearing out of his intestines? Yes, he wanted to know that. For a while a strong man could perhaps hold on, and he wondered how difficult it was to quarter a grown man. Soon he would know that, too. It would be unpleasant but necessary work.
Marda was reaching the outer limits of her endurance, yet she needed to know what dreadful thing was happening. Then, if the monster kept her much longer, she would try somehow to kill herself. She explored the possibilities quickly in her mind, but then dismissed them. “No, no, no, I have come this far, I won’t give up,” she said to herself in a whisper.
Duval suddenly slid open the grille and announced coldly, “I regret to inform you that your brother is about to die.”
Marda launched herself at the door as her tormentor slammed shut the grille. She could not cry any more. She lay on her rough bench, lurching in and out of consciousness, her exhausted nervous system mercifully relieving her tortured mind, but only momentarily.
An hour or so after she had last seen Duval, she heard the cellar door again.
She knew it was her turn to die.
He unlocked her door without knocking.
Wide-eyed and unkempt, Duval said, “Marda, sometimes moving events can create the required state for visionary experiences. You have read all of my book so you should understand what Christine experienced. And how she became what she became.”
The priest wiped his brow, dripping with sweat.
“Christine saw an evil man die, Sir Richard, yet she prayed to see the re-enactment of the death of the very best of men: our Lord Jesus Christ. You tell me Mark has been a good Christian brother. So be it. Mary witnessed the death of her son; you are privileged to see the death of thy goodly brother.”
Marda, barely conscious, tried to concentrate on Duval’s slurred speech.
“This may be your last chance to understand completely what, for so long, I have been attempting to create in this cellar. Please come with me. Let the Lord be praised.”
Marda staggered off her bench, still cloaked in her blankets. She was very weak now, and suffering from hypothermia. Her legs could hardly carry her. Yet, even given her desperate state, he insisted on attaching one of her hands to a handcuff and locking her to a pipe running along the wall. A screen made of old sheets covered the end of the corridor.
“Be prepared,” he warned.
She could never have prepared herself for what she was about to see.