In the hall Ratnadatta was waiting for them. He, too, had changed into mantle and sandals, so that now his pot-belly stood out undisguised. He led the way round and under the broad staircase. Below it was a pair of big arched doors. Taking a short knob-kerrie from a hook on the wall, he banged with it loudly upon them. From the far side there came a muffled challenge.
'Who seeks entry here?'
'One who repents her past heresies and craves to be accepted into the grace off our Master, Satan; designated by the Creator Lord off this World from its beginning to its end,' cried Ratnadatta in a loud voice.
'Enter penitent, that you may abase yourself before the only true God,' replied the voice, and the doors swung silently open.
Ratnadatta stood aside and motioned to Mary to go forward. The two women let go her arms and Tung-fang Shuo said in a quick whisper, 'Slide your feet. You'll find that easier. It will not take long.'
Mustering her courage, Mary crossed the threshold into the Temple. It was arranged as she had first seen it, with the divans forming short rows on either side of the aisle. The congregation was sitting or lounging upon them but now, instead of their masked faces being turned towards the altar, the twenty-odd pairs of eyes behind the masks were rivetted upon herself.
Through the grille up in the balcony her field of vision had been limited, but she saw now that the sides of the temple were supported by rows of pillars from which rose gothic arches, giving it much more the appearance of a small church than, as she had thought it, a banqueting hall. Then recalling that the Countess had told her that it had once been a convent, she concluded that from a banqueting hall the nuns must have converted it into their chapel. If so, the altar she was approaching must have once been consecrated. The thought that in a few more minutes she would be called on to approve its desecration added to her terror.
The awful effort of moving her lead-weighted feet made her pant for breath and break out in perspiration. But slowly she shuffled forward while, but for the slithering of the shoe soles on the polished floorboards, an utter silence reigned and the many eyes continued to stare at her.
At last she reached the steps in front of the altar. Abaddon was standing behind it, robed as before in heavy black satin. He beckoned her up the steps, then signed to her to kneel down on the top one. When she did so her head came just above the level of the altar top, and as she looked up at him he said in his melodious voice:
'Penitent, the opportunity is offered you to redeem your past. Do you desire to take it?'
'Yes,' she murmured.
'Are you prepared to serve Our Lord Satan with your whole mind, body and soul, permitting nothing to deter you from the furtherance of his work??
'Yes,' she repeated.
'Do you freely undertake to accept without question all orders that may be given to you by those He has placed, or may place, in authority over you?'
'Yes,' she murmured again.
From somewhere behind him he produced a cross about eighteen inches long and made from two thin strips of black wood held together by a single nail. Leaning forward he put it into her hands, and said:
'As proof that you have purged your mind of all false teaching you will now break this and throw the pieces from you, while declaring, 'I deny Jesus Christ, the deceiver; and abjure the Christian Faith, holding in contempt all its works.'
A lump formed in Mary's throat. The thought of performing the awful act required of her filled her with terror. If she uttered such an appalling blasphemy surely the wrath of Heaven would fall upon her? All the beliefs she had held when younger surged up into her mind. She had accepted without a shadow of doubt the accounts given her by the nuns at her convent of people who mocked God having been struck dead on the spot. Even if such things did not happen, there could be no escaping the Day of Judgment. The faithful and the backsliders alike would then have to account for their every act. Although she no longer practised her religion she had never ceased to believe that. How could she possibly make herself answerable for having committed such a terrible sin? The thought of it, and the price she must some day pay, would haunt her night and day for the rest of her life.
Yet, what if she refused? She had wantonly placed herself in the hands of these evil people. She was completely at their mercy. They would regard her standing firm in her true beliefs as a defiance of the dark power that they worshipped. To them, it would be like someone in a Christian church standing before the altar and proclaiming his allegiance to the Devil. Their rage at such an insult might cause them to rise up and fall upon her in a frenzy. They might even murder her.
They would, from fear that, having refused to serve Satan, if they let her go she would betray their vile secrets. Only by killing her could they be certain of saving themselves, or at least having to abandon this well-concealed meeting-place with all its costly furnishings. They would have nothing to fear from her disappearance; for she was living alone under an assumed name. Her landlady would report in a few days' time to the police that she had gone off leaving her things behind, but that would lead only to her being listed with hundreds of other missing persons. She had cut herself off even from Barney, the one and only person who might have tried to trace her.
Short of a miracle, escape was impossible and, having so long since fallen from a state of grace, how could she hope for one? Either she must pronounce the ultimate blasphemy or die there.
Desperately she sought for some middle course: some plea or trick by which she might postpone the issue. Her mind whirled with visions: of the Saviour, whom she was ordered to deny, upon the Cross; of a picture of Hell she had been shown as a child, in which naked men and women were being thrust by demons with pitchforks into the roaring flames; of a little coloured plaster statue of the Virgin before which she ha d knelt for many hundred nights when saying her prayers; of the insolently splendid figure of the Great Ram, and his terrifying black imp, as they had stood only a few feet from the spot where she was crouching, no more than a week ago.
These swiftly changing images robbed her of all coherent thought. From the moment Abaddon had spoken the abjuration her mind had been racing with such speed that each fearful idea chased out its predecessor in a flash; but even so the seconds had been ticking by, and she heard the High Priest say in a low voice:
'Come; do as I have directed. Otherwise the Brotherhood will become impatient.'
At that instant yet another mental picture flashed into Mary's brain. It was the pale serene face of the Mother Superior at the Convent she had attended. The old lady's lips and her gentle tones sounded again in Mary's ears, 'Remember, child, the understanding and the mercy of our Lord Jesus is infinite.'
