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.
XVI. The Flood
Duval tore down the screen to reveal the young man’s arms tied to the spars of the great wooden crucifix, his legs supported by a short plank. The officer’s anguished, tear-stained face was slumped on his chest, while the blood on the wounded forehead had congealed into an ugly brown lump. His chest displayed a series of small injuries as though bits of flesh had been scooped out with a razor-sharp spoon. Blood oozed from the wounds on to his shirt, which had been wrapped around his waist like a loin-cloth.
Marda did not faint. To the contrary, steel entered her soul. Adrenaline surged through her body and the exhaustion and pain vanished. She could see by the heaving of her brother’s chest that he was still alive.
Marda screamed at Duval, “Let him down! Let him down, you fucking bastard.”
“No, I cannot do that. You must see him die, Christine.” In his frenzy Duval’s voice had moved up an octave.
“First I must hammer in the nails, but it will be swift. Not like the crucifixion of our Lord. I shall break his legs and then it will be over quickly.”
Marda, screaming at him to stop, tried to wrench herself out of her handcuffs. She had lost much weight, but she could not slide her wrist out of the restraints. Her eyes bulged as the priest produced a claw hammer and long nails from a Gladstone bag.
Her eyes fell upon a large white candle, one of the three arrayed like an altar decoration near the base of the cross. She could just reach the nearest one, while Duval was busying himself standing on a stool to reach up and force the nails into her brother’s outstretched palms. Mark pulled up his head from his chest and stared in abject horror at Duval for a brief second before lapsing back into a stupor.
Marda had reached out to the candle with her free hand, and pulled it upright towards her. Without hesitation she poured the hot wax on to her manacled wrist. With massive control, she suppressed the scream of pain that rose within her. She tugged hard and the lubricated wrist slipped out of the metal restraint.
A primeval imperative took command of her as she leapt, like a crazed she-wolf, at the surprised priest, knocking him off the stool with the force of her attack. She tore at his eyes and his hair as he attempted to back off, utterly confused. Then she kneed him very forcefully in the groin, and he went down groaning. With her fists she lashed out again at the big man, and then, with her bare heel, gave him a stupendous kick in the crotch for good measure. She heard the wrenching of tissue.
The priest cried for her mercy, but she could not see anything but fire nor hear anything but a loud drumming. Again and again she pummelled him while he curled into a ball and cried in pain. She stepped over him, grabbed the hammer and rained his body with blows; from her unknown reserve of hate and anger, she found the strength to beat him almost senseless.
She turned quickly to her brother and, standing on the stool, used the V-shaped claw at the other end of the hammer head to lever the ropes off his wrists and over his hands. Taking his weight on herself, she half-fell and half-staggered to the floor. She hugged him for a few seconds before dragging him into her cell and manoeuvring his groaning body on to the bench. She poured water into his mouth, slowly at first, then more to help rehydrate him. That done, she rushed into the corridor to check on Duval.
He was gone. The cellar door, she knew, would be locked. Much stronger than she realised, he must have crawled up the stairs. Perhaps she should have ignored her instincts and gone for help, but she could not leave Mark hanging on the cross. She had no time now to consider her future; all that mattered was the immediate safety of her brother. After washing his wounds, she did her best to bandage them with strips of her bedding.
“Oh God, let him live,” she shouted.
Duval had crawled into his bathroom and run a deep, steaming bath to help ease the pain in his limbs and the searing agony in his groin. Then he staggered into the kitchen and poured himself some brandy. Taking a generous slug, he limped slowly into the hall, where he noticed a large brown envelope protruding through the letterbox. He tugged it out and glanced at the cover. It said, “By hand from Irvine M. Gould.” He moved painfully back to the bathroom to turn off the taps.
He eased his aching body into the bath and began to compose himself, to think himself out of his conundrum: I’ll leave that pair down there for a while. Let them starve. He’ll be dead soon and she’ll be too shocked to resist. I’ll have to kill her; she deserves it for betraying me. How could I have ever thought that she was sincere? The ungrateful bitch. How could she have turned on me, after all that I’ve done for her? I’ll bury them both and get away from this place. Nobody knows they are here. Nobody’s come looking for the brother.
The brandy and hot water relaxed him a little, and the pain began to subside. He was sore, especially around the groin; the bruising would be bad, but there were no broken bones. He was taken aback by her hidden strength; obviously he had fed her too well.
He soaked himself and pondered on his future away from Shere. Wallowing in the comfort of the bath for a long time, he felt the water grow cold and let some of it out, then re-ran water from the hot tap. As he waited for the half-empty bath to refill he leaned out to reach the envelope on the chair beside the bath.
Curious, he opened it. It contained about thirty sheets of paper. The first page was entitled “The French Adventures of the Anchoress of Shere: Research Findings of the Saint Sardos Archives by Professor Irvine M. Gould.”
The water was getting a little too hot. Putting Gould’s essay back on the chair, Duval bent forward and turned on the cold tap, balancing the force of the two jets to give himself a pleasant temperature.
With wet hands, he picked up the papers again. His first reaction was that the essay was typical American fantasy. “France?” he said venomously under his breath. “It’s not possible.”
He started to read very quickly, sickened and enthralled at the same time. After perusing a few more pages, his throat became constricted and dry. He grabbed a towel and stepped dripping out of the bath. Clutching the offending document, now damp in his hands, he closed the bathroom door and limped back to the kitchen. In his state of double shock, from the beating and Gould’s literary stab in his back, he did not notice that he had left the taps running.
Naked, except for the towel, he slumped into the rocker near the wood-burning stove. Although he rarely drank spirits, he swallowed his second double brandy in one gulp and turned back to the beginning of Gould’s version of the life of the Anchoress of Shere. He read it carefully through to the end while drinking another brandy. He read it again. Disbelief and scorn turned to enraged despair as Gould piled up the documentary evidence, the irrefutable records. The American’s research had been rigorous, with little conjecture. Gould had apparently proven that the anchoress had not chosen to return to the enclosure. He even suggested, quite convincingly, that the entombment had been forced on her-Christine had witnessed a murder involving a cleric in Vachery Manor, and the Church had connived at her enclosure to shut her up. She was compelled to undertake a vow of silence and enclosure, or her father would be exiled. As an extra inducement, her family was bought off with money and a small parcel of land. Poor Christine was no more than a victim of a conspiracy. She was never a visionary. Such was Gould’s interpretation from the evidence of the French archives. It made a mockery of Duval’s life work, and vindicated Gould’s remark that he would make the priest eat his words. Duval’s whole world collapsed around him.
Bobby came up and licked his hand, but the priest pushed the animal away. He opened the door of the wood stove, ready to project the offending article into the fire, but at the last moment hesitated and instead forced himself to read it again, much more slowly this time, stopping only to throw on a few dirty clothes that were piled on a kitchen chair.
Then he started to read it yet again, as though utter concentration on the text could transform its content. This time, after he had finished the first page, he started to chew at the end of the A4 sheet and then to bite it. “This is C-R-A-P,” he said bitterly, instinctively conforming to his habit of spelling out expletives. Then, with a manic laugh, he said, “And I’ll make it into C-R-A-P, too.”
