The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi (44 page)

An hour later, they moved to the smoking room where they were joined by Quilty, Jolly, and Uncle Renfric. The coroner reported that Isabel had died of heart failure. “The undertaker will visit later this morning to make arrangements,” he said. “He's a good man. Miss Arundell will receive a first-class interment.”

Renfric added, “Until then, she'll lie in our chapel. Henry, my boy, send those mechanical footmen of yours to my study. I'll have them compose the cancellation letters.”

“Cancellation?” Arundell muttered. “Why, yes, of course. The party.”

“What of John Steinhaueser?” Burton asked.

Jolly answered, “As you said, Sir Richard, he was murdered, his neck broken. Should I arrange for him to be reunited with his family?”

“He has none.”

“Where, then, should he be laid to rest?”

“I don't think he had a preference, sir.”

Quilty said, “May I suggest a small ceremony and burial at Saint John's in Tisbury? Perhaps—late on Sunday afternoon?”

Burial. Styggins, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

“Very well. Thank you. Can I rely on you to organise it?”

“Of course.”

Uncle Renfric gave a grunt of satisfaction and ushered the priest and coroner away.

Henry Arundell said, “It's a quarter-past ten.”

Eliphas Levi interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “
Oui
, we must begin. First, we visit your groundsman.”

“Tom Honesty? Why so?”

“
Pour faire des préparations,
monsieur
.
To make the preparations.”

Forty minutes later, outside the groundsman's lodge, the five men stepped down from the Arundell's steam landau, each dressed in heavy boots and overcoats, each with an umbrella in hand. The rain was falling with violence. It needled against them, battering their brollies, hissing on the ground with such intensity they had to raise their voices to be heard.

Before they could knock on the lodge's door, a slim and pretty woman opened it.

“Mr. Arundell?” she said. “This is a surprise! Do you want to see Tom? Please, come in out of the rain. What dreadful weather!”

“Hello, Mrs. Honesty,” Henry Arundell said. “I apologise that we've descended upon you in such numbers.”

“Not at all, sir. Come in, all of you, come in.”

The men closed their umbrellas, left them leaning against the door-jamb, and squeezed into the lodge's narrow, tastefully decorated entrance hall. As they did so, Tom Honesty emerged from a room at the far end, his shirtsleeves rolled impeccably up to his elbows.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Not really,” Swinburne muttered.

“Wet. Nasty day. Something the matter?”

“We require your assistance, Tom,” Arundell said.

“Certainly. In what respect?”

Arundell looked at Eliphas Levi, who said, “You have dry logs, Monsieur Honesty? For the fire?”

“Yes, but I delivered a barrow-load to the house yesterday. You've not run out already?”

“
Non, non.
It is not for firewood. We need you to cut two stakes for us.”

“Stakes?”

“
Oui.
About two feet long and three inches thick with one end pointed and sharp.”

“May I ask—?”

“It is better if you do not. Also, we require—how are the words?—
un maillet lourd.
”

“A heavy mallet,” Burton said.

“
Oui.
And an axe.”

A puzzled expression crossed the groundsman's face. “Very well. Parlour. Fire. Dry yourselves. I shan't be long.”

Honesty worked quickly and efficiently, completing his task in less than ten minutes. He rejoined them and handed the stakes and mallet to Levi, and the axe to Monckton Milnes.

“Tom,” Arundell said, “have you been to the old castle recently?”

“Checked it after last week's storm. Not since.”

“We suspect a dangerous fugitive is hiding out in it. Might he be in the priest hole? Is it still accessible?”

“Priest hole!” Swinburne exclaimed. “My hat! We saw no such thing when we searched the place.”

“Many of the old Catholic homes and castles have a hidden priest hole, Mr. Swinburne,” Arundell said. “It would defeat the point of them if they were easily detected.”

“Where is it?” Burton asked.

“Beneath one of the vaults. There are two removable stone steps concealing the entrance, though for the life of me I can never remember which they are.”

“I'll come with you. Show you,” Honesty said.

Burton opened his mouth to say no but suddenly felt an unaccountable trust in the groundsman, and before he even realised it, nodded his agreement.

“To the castle, then,” Arundell said.

They waited for Honesty to change into waterproofs then ventured back out into the downpour and into the landau. The groundsman climbed up to the driver's box and sat next to Burton.

The rain made conversation impossible, crashing down like an Indian monsoon, obscuring the path ahead and causing the vehicle to skid across the waterlogged gravel. Burton grappled with the tiller, which shuddered and jerked in his hands, and was thankful when Honesty reached across and took a hold of it, too, adding his own strength to the explorer's. Between them, they managed to navigate along the same path that Burton and Swinburne had twice traversed, passing over the bridge, alongside the woods, through Ark Farm, and up the mound to the ruins.

The men disembarked—each carrying a clockwork lantern—and squinted through the torrent at the grey, jagged walls, the tops of which were still black with ravens, all hunched together and motionless. Henry Arundell led them into the short entrance passage, where they stopped to shelter for a few minutes.

“Oof!” Levi exclaimed. “The reputation of your English weather is most deserve, I think!”

As if to underline his assertion, there came a sudden flash and a deafening detonation. The thunderclap echoed through the atmosphere and was immediately followed by another, sounding as if the air itself was being torn apart.

“
Le Diable
, he know what we intend,” Levi muttered. “But we must do what we must do. Monsieur Honesty, you will lead us to the priest hole?”

“Yes, sir. This way.”

He led them out into the hexagonal courtyard. They splashed across to an arched doorway and into the room beyond, a large square chamber with two small windows at its far end. A dark opening—a door made irregular by the collapse of its lintel—gave access to downward-leading steps. Swinburne wound his lantern and handed it to Honesty, who, holding it before him, descended.

Burton knew the castle's beetle-infested wine vaults lay below, and even though he'd already visited them, his horror of darkness and enclosed spaces caused him to hesitate at the top of the steps.

Lightning flickered and thunder shook the castle to its foundations.

“All right, old thing?” Monckton Milnes asked quietly.

The explorer gave a brusque nod. He moved forward, brushing spiderwebs out of the way.

At the bottom of the stairs, Levi said to the others, “Perdurabo, he feel our presence but he have no power over the body of John Judge in daytime. To us, the man will appear to be in deep sleep, but inside him, it is all strain and fighting. If we kill Perdurabo but not John Judge, Monsieur Judge will become
nosferatu
. If we kill Judge but not Perdurabo, our enemy will flee into another. So we must kill both at once. My directions, you must follow them exactly, or all is lost.” The occultist turned to Henry Arundell. “It is best that you remain here. This thing we do, it offend the Catholic faith.”

“But are you not yourself a Catholic, Mr. Levi?” Arundell objected.

“It is so, but this, it is like the exorcism. Rome is aware of the procedure, but it not like to acknowledge that it exist and sometime is necessary.”

“The man killed my daughter, sir. I'll not be excluded.”

“
Bien.
And you, Mr. Honesty—show us the steps,
s'il vous plait
, then return to the carriage and wait for us.”

Honesty turned back the way they'd come and started up the stone stairs. After he'd climbed seven of them, he faced the group, squatted, and pointed at the last two steps he'd passed. “These. I'll need help to lift them.”

Burton moved to assist. A gutter, about two inches wide and six deep, ran to either side of the stairs. Honesty slid his fingers into it and jerked his chin toward the opposite side. “If you feel, sir. Concealed handhold.” Burton did as directed, curling his digits into a cavity he detected in the stone. The groundsman said, “One, two, three, lift.” They pulled, Burton's arm gave a stab of pain, and the two steps came free. Thunder boomed outside.

The two men placed the heavy stone trapdoor on the lower steps and looked into the dark and narrow tunnel they'd exposed. Four feet wide and four high, it sloped downward into blackness. Burton felt himself trembling.

“Thank you, Mr. Honesty,” he said huskily. “Leave us, please.”

Honesty looked from one man to the other, shifted indecisively, then turned and departed.

Burton gritted his teeth, glanced back at his companions, then dropped to his knees, picked up his lantern, and, holding it out before him, crawled into the tight passageway. He immediately saw that it opened into a larger space about fifteen feet ahead. He shuffled forward, his heart thumping, and the others followed.

When he emerged and stood up, he found himself in a surprisingly large chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Its walls were chalked all over with sigils, their contorted shapes suggestive of forbidden knowledge and banished gods, and in an arched recess in the far wall, a big stone crucifix had been desecrated with an obscene diagram. At the foot of the cross, in the middle of a roughly drawn pentagram, John Judge lay stretched out on an altar. Burton walked over and looked down at the man. Shadows danced and slid across the figure as the others entered the room, their lanterns swinging. The light made the sigils appear to writhe restlessly.

“My hat!” Swinburne whispered.

“Blasphemy!” Arundell gasped.

“Won't our presence here wake him?” Monckton Milnes asked, gesturing at the prone figure.

Levi said, “
Non. Observez!
” And, leaning over Judge, slapped his face. Instinctively, the others took a hurried pace backward, but their caution was unwarranted; the big Irishman didn't respond to the stimulus at all.

“Now we begin,” Levi said. He pulled a garlic bulb from his pocket, put it on the altar, and crushed it with the head of the mallet. Scraping up the juicy, piquant vegetable matter, he smeared it liberally around Judge's nostrils and lips.

“What are you doing?” Henry Arundell asked.

“I make him uncomfortable.”

“Is that wise?”

“
C'est nécessaire.
See!”

Levi swung his lantern over Judge's face. The man's eyes had started to move agitatedly beneath the closed lids. He groaned and his fingers twitched.

“The
volonté
of John Judge is disturbed by the
odeur terrible
, by the bad stink. It struggle, and Perdurabo must battle to stay in control. See! It get very difficult!”

Judge's limbs were now shaking and jerking as if gripped by an epileptic fit.

“The two who inhabit this body,” the Frenchman said, “they are now
entrelacé
—intertwined—and so die both at once when we do what we must do.”

Burton drew a pistol from his waistband and aimed it at Judge's head. Levi reached out and grabbed his wrist. “
Non! Non
, Sir Richard! That is not the way!”

“Why not?” Burton growled. “A bullet in his damned brain will do for him, surely!”

“It is the
volonté
that must be first
immobilisé
and then destroyed. The
volonté
occupy not just the head but the whole body. The
méthode appropriée
, it is
spécifique
. There is much wisdom in tradition, even if we do not fully comprehend.”

Burton slipped his gun into his pocket. “All right. Let's get on with it. Show me what to do.”

“We do it together.”

Levi took hold of John Judge's shirt and ripped it open, exposing the man's chest. He pulled one of the stakes from his jacket and held it with its point touching the sailor's skin, directly over the heart.

“Take the mallet,” he said.

“You can't mean to—?” Henry Arundell blurted.

“Leave!” Levi snapped. “Go! Do not be witness to this!”

Arundell stayed put.

“Monsieur,” Levi said to Burton. “One stroke. Very hard.”

The explorer hefted the mallet. He looked from one man to the other, then swung the tool up and, putting every ounce of his weight behind it, swept it down.

In mid-swing, everything happened at once.

A deafening crash of thunder reverberated through the castle.

John Judge's head rolled sideways.

His eyes opened and flicked from total black to white with a blue iris. They looked past the men to the priest hole's entrance.

The mallet impacted against the stake, driving it straight through Judge's body.

A piercing scream rent the air, merging with the echoing thunderclap.

Judge bucked. He coughed a fountain of blood.

Burton and his companions, momentarily confused, suddenly realised the scream had come not from Judge, but from behind them. They swivelled around and saw Thomas Honesty standing at the mouth of the passage. His eyes were wide, his face filled with horror. He screamed again, turned, and plunged into the tunnel.

“
Imbécile!
” Levi cursed. “He too curious!”

John Judge gave a final twitch and went limp. Blood dribbled down the sides of the altar. Henry Arundell gazed at it, aghast.