transmigration of their souls might link with that of Jesus Christ. All this bloodshed in order to bring Him back as promised in their Bibles and their addled, world-weary brains.
“Cuff them!” commanded Copperwaite. “One and all, and take them out of here.”
Sharpe, his forehead and the left side of his face covered in crimson blood, stumbled to his feet, trying to get to Jessica. “Get her down at once! At once, do you hear? Take all due care with her!”
The men of the Yard did as Sharpe ordered, easing Jessica's weight immediately. Her stakes and leather bonds were next pulled from her, making her gulp with a last dose of pain. Richard tore off his coat and covered Jessica with it the moment she left the towering, intimidating old cross.
“Need to staunch the blood flow,” Copperwaite shouted.
Sharpe took her in his arms, stroking her auburn hair, reassuring her as he wrapped each hand in handkerchiefs offered up by his men, while Copperwaite did the same for her feet. Sharpe imagined the scene as it must look to the others, as if it were a painting of the resurrection. Sharpe spoke reassuringly into Jessica's ear. “I've got you now, Jessica. No one can hurt you now. You're all right now, we've found you.”
She cringed and cowered like a child in his arms, giving into her fear and loathing altogether now, sobbing uncontrollably. Out of the comer of her eye, she saw Luc Sante's lifeless body, and in the flickering light she thought he winked, and for the first time she fully appreciated her hatred for the old minister of twisted faith.
“Is he… Is he dead, truly?” she asked Sharpe.
“Utterly gone.”
“We'll soon have these others talking,” Copperwaite interjected. “Imagine it. Schuller among this collection of lost wretches.”
Sharpe added, nodding, “I'm sure he's just like all the others. Did it all in the name of their Lord and Master and no more, so they hear no brunt of responsibility in the deaths of their kith and kin.”
One of the uniformed policemen who'd entered behind Copperwaite shouted, “Over here! This one's alive!” He pointed to Father Martin Strand whose form stirred and partially rose, Copperwaite throwing his coat over the naked man's form, saying, “Hold on, man! Medics! Get medics down here!”
Luc Sante's followers, Schuller and Tatham the loudest, went into a paroxysm of religious frenzy on seeing the resurrected Martin Strand, calling out his name now as Christ! Chanting “Strand is Lord, Strand is Christ, Strand is the Holy One!”
Strand smiled a weak, broken, curled smile in response, but he could hardly move otherwise, his entire body going rigid as he went into cardiac arrest.
“He needs medics!” shouted Copperwaite. “Get some medics in here.”
“Radios won't work down here, this far in!” came the response. Strand died a second time, this time in an uncontrollable seizure as Schuller and the others crowded Copperwaite out, ignoring the orders and guns trained on them. Strand died in Karl Schuller's arms.
“Under and behind the cross,” muttered Jessica to Richard. “A set of steps, goes out of here, to street level.”
Sharpe ordered another investigator to have a look, and with the exit located, Luc Sante's motley crew of followers were marched up and out to street level, there met by police cars. They were ignominiously hauled off as coconspirators in the Crucifixion deaths in London. Strand and Luc Sante's bodies followed.
“Why didn't they just hide away the bodies down here?” Copperwaite wondered aloud.
Sharpe replied, “It was in keeping with the ritual, like the tongue branding, the blood and the oil-to bathe the dead in a clean body of water, water representing God's tears. The water in this place would hardly do. Besides, a part of Luc Sante wanted the world to know.” Copperwaite gritted his teeth, nodding his understanding. “You're probably quite right, Sharpie.”
“Now help me get Jessica out of here.”
“Thank you for coming for me, Richard,” she said through the dull haze of the Brevital.
“Rest. Rest now,” he said, his voice soothing her. “You knew I would find you.”
“Yes, but I didn't know if you'd find me alive or dead facedown in a body of water. I'm still not sure you're real.”
“Rest, dear Jessica… rest,” he soothed.
Through the drug haze that hung about her brain now like gauze and film, she caught a flashback of Donald Wentworth Tatham's voice, saying coldly, “Mihi beata mater! In Mother Church and her Child lies salvation for us all.” She saw Tatham as if from a great distance, and his eyes grew gargantuan where they remained glued on Luc Sante at the pulpit.
The religious frenzy among Luc Sante's followers had obviously taken on a life of its own, carrying Tatham, Schuller, the Gloucester twins, Miss Eeadna, Strand, and others along, propelling them to follow any order.
Again, she watched as two men with the huge iron hammers and stakes approached: faceless men at first, each encouraging the other with toothy grins, each exciting the mob to do as they chanted, “Brand her, brand her, brand her. Mihi beata mater. Mihi beata mater. Mihi beata mater. Hold her wrists! Hold her tight! Control her!”
“Hold her hand still, so that I can stake it!” shouted another frustrated voice. The stake looked and felt hefty, larger than before. Somehow she felt it in her hand. One of them, teasing her, wanted her to know its weight. The voices of those around her, driving the stakes home now, through flesh and rending bone, suddenly had familiar and then absolutely recognizable voices which brought their features into clear focus. One was Copperwaite, the other Richard Sharpe.
She woke up screaming in the London Memorial Hospital to where she had been moved since the cave with the cross that rose so high there seemed no top to it. Her screams woke Richard who had been sitting the all-night vigil with her. Her hands were those of a mummy, both bandaged and wrapped. She felt no pain. She wiggled her toes, all to the good. She felt no blisters below her tongue. And she realized for the first time that not all her nightmares had come true.
“Jess, Jess, it's me, Richard. You've had a bad scare, I'm afraid, and God knows why. You're in hospital. They say you can walk out of here tomorrow.”
“Oh, Richard, it was… It was horrible.”He grabbed her up in his arms. “I well know. I was there.”She saw that his shoulder was in a sling and his forehead bandaged from his own wounds. “Cut my shoulder badly going through that grate and-”
“Dear God!”
“-and Luc Sante nearly took out my eye with a bullet, but I'm doing splendidly now, seeing and hearing from you. You were in shock when they brought you in, and I was a close second.”
“I walked blindly into his trap.”
“Never you mind that.”
“Never mind? I was so… He so charmed me!”
“Luc Sante charmed everyone. He could charm a snake.”
“Thanks, I think…”
“What you did, Jessica Coran, was to singlehandedly put an end to the Crucifier club. Well done, so says the papers and Boulte and the Queen.” He pointed to cards, letters, flowers filling the room.
“Well done? What well done? I acted foolishly and nearly got us both killed.”
“Survival, that's what. You survived. Strand and five others did not, six if you add the copycat killing.”
“That would have made me Luc Sante's seventh vicdm.”
He nodded. “I truly believe the old man thought you the prize ring, Jessica. You must have touched something in him as well. You can be fairly charming yourself, you know.”
“Shut up and kiss me, you Briton.”
He smiled, bent over, and passionately embraced and then kissed her. “God bless you, Jess.”
“And you, too, Richard, and you, too.”
EPILOGUE
Perhaps our failure to scientifically examine the phenomena of evil in all its myriad forms is our fear of the
