‘Do you have any idea what it is, this force? Or where it is?’ asked Vicky. ‘Is it in the walls, or the woodwork, or the foundations? And where did it come from?’
Francis looked serious. ‘I do have some idea, yes. At least, I’m fairly sure that I do. But I’m not going to say out loud what I think it might be. What’s that old slogan they used to use in wartime? “Even walls have ears.”’
‘So how much have you found out?’
‘From the research that we’ve done between us – John Kipling and me – we can say for certain that the Wilmington family arranged for Nicholas Owen to install a priest’s hide here. It was in or around the year 1588. John came across an entry in an old ledger for “repair work” undertaken here by a carpenter called “Little Michael”, which was one of the aliases that Nicholas Owen used to avoid detection by the authorities. “Draper” was another one.
‘The Jesuit priest who was hidden here by the Wilmingtons was called Father Ambrose. He had been sent over from Rome as a missionary, to restore the Catholic faith here in England. Of course, it was treason in those days not to swear the oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth as head of the Church. The Wilmingtons hid him here on and off for nearly six months before he was discovered and taken to London to be tortured and executed.’
‘The Wilmingtons denied that they knew him, though, didn’t they?’ said Grace.
‘Yes, they did, and that saved them from being arrested as traitors, although it’s possible that in the years to come they hid other priests here, too.’
Rob lifted his hand and said, ‘Hold on. Is that somebody out there?’
He was sure he had heard a creaking sound, the sound that they made whenever they started to climb the staircase. He crossed the drawing room and opened the door wider, but when he looked out into the hallway there was nobody there. Nobody that he could see, anyway.
He went to the foot of the staircase and looked up. For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw a curl of smoke or a gauzy fragment of fabric floating across the diamond-patterned window, but then it had vanished. All the same, he stayed there for a few seconds, watching and listening. He had the distinct feeling that somebody had been eavesdropping on them, but had now crept off upstairs.
When he returned to the drawing room, Francis said, ‘Anything?’
‘I don’t know. Something and nothing. Like you said, we mustn’t let this house get to us.’
‘Do you want me to take a look?’
‘No, you’re all right. Like I said, it was something and nothing. Just a squeak.’
‘It was John who found the clincher,’ Francis went on. ‘He has a friend who volunteers at the Tavistock Museum, so they allow him access to some of the archives that the public generally don’t get to see. He found an antique order book that had been kept by a local apothecary back in the late seventeenth century, and it included an entry that refers to Allhallows Hall. Here – he scanned it for me.’
Francis opened the manila folder and took out two sheets of paper. One had the image of an old handwritten page on it. The writing on this page was slanting and crowded, and almost illegible, but John had deciphered it and sent Francis a typewritten version.
‘“June 16th, 1687, To the order of Jeremy Wilmington Esq. at Allhalloes Hall, Sampford Spiney, the following in the quantities of three and one half pounds each: Quicksilver, Salt of Hartshorn, Plumbago, Stibnite, Spiritus Fumans, Philosopher’s Wool and Fulminating Gold.”
‘Those are old names for chemicals like mercury and antimony and zinc oxide. But this list wouldn’t mean much if you didn’t know that they’re the main ingredients for mixing with plaster and creating a witching room.’
‘These chemicals,’ asked Rob. ‘Would they be all that you need?’
‘As far as I can make out, they’re just the basics. I could find hardly any information at all about witching rooms, even on Google, but from the little that I have been able to discover, these chemicals were used to make the room receptive to whatever force you decide to summon up. Once that force has permeated the walls, though, and if it’s triggered with the right incantation, you can hold anybody who enters the witching room in suspended animation. Or “time-durance”, as one of the seventeenth-century wizards calls it.’
‘When you say “force”—’ asked Vicky, ‘what exactly are you talking about?’
‘I can’t be sure yet, not specifically, and like I said, I think it would be safer for all of us if I didn’t say its name just yet. It might not be the right name, but I wouldn’t want to take the risk, especially since it seems to be growing increasingly active – like setting those hounds on you.’
‘I know it sounds loony, but are you talking about a demon of some sort?’
‘You know I don’t believe in Satan and all the traditional demons. But I do believe in invisible forces that can affect our lives – forces that we don’t yet have the science to be able to identify. Think about it – it wasn’t until 1931 that we were able to see viruses for the first time, even though we’d suspected their existence for at least forty years.’
‘So how are we going to get rid of this force?’
‘Well, I was hoping that Father Salter was going to help me by trying to exorcise it. I didn’t think that exorcism would really do the job, but it might have helped us to narrow down exactly what we’re dealing with. If we said its name out loud, for instance, and it lashed out against us, then we’d know that we had struck a nerve, and we’d have a much clearer idea what to do when it came to spiritual decontamination.’
‘But now we don’t have
