Mistress of the Art of Death

Is that what all the depressions on the hill were? The filled-in entrances to mines? But who had needed chalk on such a scale?

It doesn’t matter; their purpose doesn’t matter now. Ulf is down there.

So is the killer. He’s lit the place-those are flambeaux down there; this is the light the shepherd saw. Dear Lord, we should have found it; we walked this stinking hill, skirting every depression to look into it; how did we miss this open invitation to the underworld?

Because it wasn’t open, she thought. The turfed wheel she’d crawled across wasn’t a wheel at all, it was a cover, a lid, a wellhead. When it was in place, it made this dip in the ground look like any other.

Such a clever fellow, Rakshasa.

But some of Adelia’s skin-crawling horror of the killer left her because she knew that when Simon’s cart had carried Prior Geoffrey up the track to Wandlebury Hill, Rakshasa had panicked. Like the guilty thing he was, he had taken the bodies from the shaft by night and carried them down the hill, so that his lair would be kept secret.

This shaft is your place, she thought, so precious it makes you vulnerable. It glares for you as it does for me now, even when the lid is on; it is the tunnel into your body, the entrance to your rotting soul, your doom to be discovered. For you, its existence cries to God, whom it outrages.

And I’ve found it.

She listened. The hill around her rustled with life, but the shaft delivered no sound. She should not have come alone, oh, mercy, she should not. What service was she providing that little boy by bringing no reinforcement and in telling nobody where she had gone?

Yet the moment had demanded it; she could not think of what else she might have done. Anyway, it was done, the milk was spilt and, somehow, she had to mop it up.

If Ulf were dead, she could pull out the ladder and push the wheel into place, entombing the living killer, and walk away while Rakshasa thrashed around in his own sepulchre.

But she had followed the belief that Ulf wasn’t dead, that the other children had been kept alive in Rakshasa’s larder until he was ready for them-a hypothesis based on what the body of a dead boy had once told her. Such frail evidence, such a gossamer of belief, yet it had pulled her into the nuns’ punt and marched her across country to this hellhole so that…

So that what?

Lying prone, with her head over the pit, Adelia considered her choices with the chill logic of despair. She could run for help, which, considering how long it would take, was no option at all-the last habitation she’d seen had been Sister Walburga’s auntie’s farm-and now that she was close to Ulf, she could not leave him. She could descend the shaft and be killed, which in the end she must be prepared to do if, thereby, Ulf could escape.

Or, and this had considerably more merit, she thought, she could descend and kill the killer. Which entailed finding a weapon. Yes, she must look for a stick, or a stone, anything sharp…

Beside her, the Safeguard shifted suddenly. A pair of hands seized Adelia’s ankles and raised them so that she slid forward. Then, with a grunt of effort, somebody threw her down the pit.

What saved her was the ladder. It met her fall halfway down, breaking some of her ribs on impact but allowing her body to slither the rest of the way on its lower rungs. She had time-it seemed quite a long time-to think I must stay conscious before her head struck the ground and she wasn’t.

AWARENESS WAS A LONG TIME coming to her, traveling slowly through a misty crowd of people who insisted on moving about and shifting her and talking, which irritated her to the point where, if she hadn’t been in such pain, she’d have told them to stop. Gradually, they went away and the sound of voices dwindled down to one that persisted in being just as irritating.

“Do be quiet,” she said and opened her eyes, but the effort hurt so much that she decided to stay unconscious for a while, which was just as impossible because there was horror waiting for her and someone else, so that her mind, determined on her own and the someone else’s survival, insisted on working.

Stay still and think. God, the pain; her head was being trepanned. That would be concussion-how severe it was impossible to estimate without knowing for how long she’d been unconscious; the length of time would indicate the severity. Damnation, it hurt. And so did her ribs, possibly two fractures there but-she experimented with a deep breath, wincing-probably no puncture of the lung. It wasn’t helped by the fact that she seemed to be standing with her arms over her head, causing compression on her chest.

It doesn’t matter. You’re in such danger, your medical condition doesn’t matter. Think and survive.

So. She was in the shaft. She remembered being at its top; now she was at its bottom; her brief glimpse had shown enclosing whiteness all around. What she couldn’t remember was getting from one to the other-the natural result of concussion. Pushed or fallen, obviously.

And somebody else had fallen, or had been brought down before or after Adelia herself, because the attempt at opening her eyes had shown a figure against the opposite wall. It was this someone who was ceaselessly and so irritatingly making a noise.

“Save-and-preserve-me, dear-Lord-and-Master-and-I-shall-follow-Thee-all-my-days-I-will-abase-myself-unto-Thee. Punish-me-with-Thy-whips-and-scorpions-yet-keep-me-safe…”

The babbling was Sister Veronica’s. The nun stood ten or so feet away on the other side of the ceilingless chamber that was the pit of the shaft. Her wimple and coif had been torn down to her neck and her hair hung over her face like wisps of dark mist. Her hands were stretched above her head where, like those of Adelia, they were manacled to a bolt.

She was out of control with terror, spittle running down her chin, her body shaking so that the iron manacles about her wrists rattled an accompaniment to the prayer for release issuing from her mouth.

“I wish you’d be quiet,” Adelia said petulantly.

Veronica’s eyes widened with shock and, a little, with justified accusation. “I followed you,” she said. “You’d gone, and I followed you.”

“Unwise,” Adelia told her.

“The Beast is here, Mary, Mother of God, protect us, he took me, he’s down here, he’ll eat us, oh, Jesus, Mary, save us both, he’s horned.”

“I dare say he is, just stop shouting.”

Enduring the pain, Adelia turned her head to look around. Her dog lay sprawled at the bottom of the ladder, his neck broken.

A sob forced itself out of her throat. Not now, not now, she told herself; there’s no room for it; you can’t grieve now. To survive you must think. But oh, Safeguard…

Flames from two torches stuck into holders at head height on either side of the chamber illuminated rough, round walls of whiteness marred here and there by a green algae so that she and Veronica stood as if at the bottom of a massive tube of thick, dirty, crumpled paper.

They stood alone; there was no sign of the nun’s Beast, though leading off from either side were two tunnels. The opening to the one on Adelia’s left was small, a crawling space barred by an iron grating. The one to the right was lit by unseen torches and had been enlarged to admit a man without bending. A curve in it blocked her view of its length, but just inside the entrance, propped against the wall and reflecting the chalk opposite, stood a battered, polished shield engraved with the cross of crusade.

And in the place of honor, in the center of this torture chamber, midway between her and Veronica and the dead dog, stood the Beast’s altar.

It was an anvil. So ordinary in its rightful place, so awful here; an anvil heaved from the thatched warmth of a smithy so that children might be penetrated on it. The weapon lay on its top, shiny among the stains, a spearhead. It was faceted-as were the wounds it had inflicted.

Flint, dear God, flint. Flint that occurred in chalk, seams of it. Ancient devils had labored to dig this mine in order to reach flint that they might shape it and kill with it. As primitive as they, Rakshasa used an implement made by a dark people in a dark time.

She shut her eyes.

But the bloodstains were dull; nobody had died on that anvil recently.

“Ulf,” she shrieked, opening her eyes. “Ulf.”

To her left, from far up the darkness of the left-hand tunnel, deadened by the porous chalk yet audible, came a mumbling groan.

Adelia turned her face up to the circle of sky above her head and gave thanks. The sickness of concussion, nausea from the smell of obliterating chalk, from the stink of whatever resin it was the torches were burning, gave way to a waft of fresh, May air. The boy lived.

Well now. There, on the anvil, just a couple of yards away, lay a weapon all ready for her hand.

Though her hands were tethered, from what she could see of Sister Veronica’s situation and if it resembled her own, the manacles holding their upstretched arms were attached to a bolt that went into the bare chalk. And chalk was chalk; it crumbled-as much use for retaining a fixture as sand.

Adelia flexed her elbows and pulled at the bolt above her head. Oh, God, oh, hell. Pain like hot wire through the chest. This time, she’d surely, surely punctured a lung. She hung, puffing, waiting for blood to come into her mouth. After a while, she realized it wasn’t going to, but if that blasted nun didn’t cease moaning…

“Stop gibbering,” she yelled at the girl. “Look, pull. Pull, damn you. The bolt. In the wall. It’ll come out if you tug it.” Even in pain, she’d felt a tiny give in the chalk above.

But Veronica couldn’t, wouldn’t, comprehend; her eyes were wide and wild like a deer facing the hounds; she was gibbering.

It is up to me.

Another full tug was to be avoided, but wiggling the manacles might shift the bolt sufficiently to create a cavity around it and enable it to be eased out.

Frantically, she began jiggling her hands up and down, oblivious now to everything except a piece of iron, as if she were enclosed in chalk with it, moving it grain by grain, hurting, hurting, but seeing the near end of the protesting bolt separating from…

The nun screamed.

“Quiet,” Adelia screamed back. “I’m concentrating.”

The nun went on screaming. “He’s coming.”

There had been a flicker of movement to the right. Reluctantly, Adelia turned her head. The tunnel’s bend, which was in Veronica’s view, prevented Adelia, opposite her, from seeing the thing itself, but she saw it mirrored in the shield. The uneven, convex surface threw back a reflection of dark flesh, at once diminished and monstrous. The thing was naked and looking at itself. Preening, it touched its genitals and then the apparatus on its head.

Death was preparing for his entrance.

In that extremity of terror, everything abandoned Adelia. If she could have sunk to her knees, then she’d have crawled to the creature’s feet: Take the nun, take the boy, leave me. If her hands were free, she’d have bolted for the ladder, leaving Ulf behind. She lost courage, rationality, everything except self-preservation.

And regret. Regret pierced the panic with a vision, not of her Maker but of Rowley Picot. She was going to die, and disgustingly, without having loved a man in the only health there was.

The thing came out of the tunnel; it was tall, made taller by the antlers on its head. Part of a skinned stag’s mask covered the upper face and nose, but the body was human, with dark hair on chest and pubis. Its penis was erect. It pranced up to Adelia, pushing itself against her. Where deer eyes should have been, there were holes from which blue, human eyes blinked at her. The mouth grinned. She could smell animal.

She vomited.

As it sheered back to avoid her spew, the antlers rocked and she saw that bits of string tied the antlered contraption to Rakshasa’s head, though not tightly enough to prevent them from wobbling when he made a sudden movement.