She must run, she must go away.
She could no longer eavesdrop on what was happening because she knew it to be wrong and wicked. She tried to move and realised in sudden terror such as she had never felt before in the whole of her life, that she was paralysed.
Her limbs were like lead weighing her down, utterly divorced from her mind and yet she was conscious of them. Her feet, her legs, her arms, her body and her breasts – she knew that they were there but they were no longer under her control.
She struggled and yet she did not move. She fought against the paralysis that was all the more terrifying because she could only fight it mentally. She thought that she must open her lips and cry out in her terror, but her lips were motionless and her voice silent in her throat.
It was then that she thought that she must be dead and yet if this was death what sort of place had she been carried to?
The intonations grew louder,
“Malo nos libera sed – ”
She knew now that the voices were all around her. They came from the front, the back and the sides, a circle and she was in the middle of it.
Sheena struggled again and knew the utter helplessness of being a prisoner, although no bonds or chains were required, but only the refusal of her own body to obey the commands she gave it.
“I must go! I must!”
She recognised that she could not.
Still the voices went on. She tried to open her eyes, but the lids would not raise and she felt them heavy over her pupils, so very heavy that they seemed to weigh her down so that she must sink away into the darkness that she had just emerged from.
She fought against the complete blackness that was threatening to overcome her again.
She felt choked and nauseated by the continuing incense and there was something else too, something cruel and evil hovering just outside her consciousness, something that seemed to her as if it was waiting to capture her.
“Lord Satan, hear us!” a man’s voice chanted in French.
“Master of Darkness, come to us,” came the response.
The voices rose in shrill crescendo and now Sheen’s brain cleared a little and she could hear more distinctly the deep and resonant voice of a man who seemed to be standing directly above her while the responses came from those on either side.
She knew now that she was lying flat on her back, her face turned upwards.
There was evil, evil and danger all around her and she could sense it as an animal senses danger.
It seemed to her that beyond the intonation and the responses there was the flutter as of great wings, perhaps dark and hooked ones like those of a bat. She tried to scream again and the very effort brought her nearer to the darkness which seemed to be pulling at her with crooked claws.
She began to pray.
‘God save me. Save me from this whatever it may be. Keep the evil from me. Save me! Oh, save me, God!’
Blindly, like a child reaching out for its mother, her frightened mind sought for a symbol and found it in the thought of the cross. She could see it quite clearly behind her closed eyes, a cross of light, golden and shining, that seemed from the moment it appeared to drive away some of the darkness and to draw her from the hands that would have held her back.
‘Our Father which art in Heaven‒ ’
It was the prayer she had learnt as a child, the prayer she had said all her life when she went to bed and in the morning. Her lips did not move, but she said it fervently in her heart.
‘ – and deliver us from evil – ’
It seemed to her that she was crying the words aloud and now, almost as if her prayer was answered, she felt a faint lightening of her heavy eyelids.
‘ – Amen. Amen.’
Slowly, for one flickering moment, her eyes opened and then closed. There was only a fraction of a second when she could see before the heaviness descended once more and she felt it would be a superhuman task to raise her lids again and she was not capable of it.
In that moment she had seen enough to make her lie faint and terrified in a panic that was beyond expression.
She felt that she must doubt what she had seen and that it could be nothing but a dream, then, as the cross still remained before her closed eyelids, she knew it was the truth.
She was lying naked, her body white as alabaster, upon a black velvet Altar. There were seven great lit black candles beyond her feet and she knew, although she could not see them, that there must be six behind her head.
Above her was the crucifix, but it was upside down.
The Black Mass! The intonations in Latin, now she understood. The prayers were being said backwards.
Kneeling, staring at her as they responded to the exaltations of the Priest or sorcerer who stood beside her, were the Queen and her friends.
Sheena could recognise the Queen’s voice now and hear her strong Italian accent in the pronunciation of her words and hear too the sensuous excitement in her tones.
Suddenly with a sick horror Sheena knew what was happening. They were in the Tower, the Tower the Queen had built for her sorcerers and necromancers and the Tower of which many strange things were reported.
Black Magic! They were words to make the strongest man tremble, words from which decent women shuddered and turned away.
Sheena remembered that Maggie had hinted at the many odd rites and Ceremonies that were reported to have taken place in the Tower. No one was allowed there save the Queen’s most intimate cronies, but servants talked and they told of broken pieces of wax images in which were stuck hundreds of pins, of frogs and bats and newts, which had been asked for by the sorcerers and of snakes that required strange food to keep them alive and sacrifices –
Sheena stopped thinking and felt as if a ghostly hand clutched at her throat. Sacrifices! Was that what she was to be? A sacrifice. Killed so that the blood of the victim could bring satanic power to those who drank it.
Again she tried to scream and knew that no sound came from her lips. A sacrifice for what? All The Palace knew why the Queen paid her sorcerers and why she sent far and wide for cleverer ones. There was only one thing she desired, to destroy the Duchesse and her spell over the King.
“If anything would ever convince me that the Devil does not exist,” Sheena had heard one Courtier say sneeringly, “it would be the Queen’s inability to make any impact on the Duchesse’s youth and beauty despite her continual prayers to Satan himself.”
She had thought it just a figure of speech at the time, but now she knew it was the truth.
The Queen was in league with Satan. She was evoking his aid, calling on him to destroy her great enemy, promising him her heart and her soul if only she could harness the forces of darkness and destroy the Duchesse’s power over the King.
Sheena remembered how the Queen had sent for her and commanded her to appear in a gown of virginal whiteness.
How easy to understand now her plan and how cleverly it had been executed. No wonder the Comtesse had swept aside her efforts to refuse the Queen’s invitation.
With an effort that felt as if she was raising great tons of steel, Sheena raised her eyelids a fraction. Through her eyelashes she could see a cloud of incense and the Comtesse’s face emerging, as it were, through a purple and green fog.
She was staring upwards with a look of intense concentration and her mouth was closed in a narrow evil line.
“It just cannot be so important for her to destroy the Duchesse as for the Queen,” Sheena thought and saw the Queen’s face, her eyes protruding with a rapture that was unmistakable, her mouth wet and half-open, her hands clenched beneath her chin, as if in prayer, until the knuckles showed white.
‘The sleeping panther wakes,’ Sheena almost felt as if she heard the words said in her ear and then just before her eyelids closed from the strain and exhaustion of trying to prop them open, she glanced again at the Comtesse and wondered on what object her whole being was concentrated.
Almost like a clap of thunder sh
e knew the answer.
The Comtesse was praying that she might possess the Duc even as the Queen prayed to possess the King.
As if someone screamed the words aloud, Sheena felt her whole being yearning for the one man who could save her, the one man who had come to her rescue before and who she knew must be her saviour now.
‘Come to me! Save me! Help me! Hear me!’
She felt her cry winging its way through the darkness towards him.
‘Oh, God, make him hear me! Oh, God, let him think of me and know that I am in such danger!’
She was praying to the cross, which once more she could see against her closed eyelids. She was praying with an intensity that somehow she knew was the only thing that would keep her from slipping back into the darkness which still advanced and receded over her tortured mind.
‘I am paralysed. Will I ever move again? Even if I cannot, save what is left of me. Come to me.’
She felt that the Duc must hear her and must know that she was in need of him simply because her need was so great.
And now the chanting and the voices around her were rising, shriller and shriller, deeper and more intense and she then heard the movements of the sorcerer, a sudden scraping of something that creaked a little as if it was a basket and the rustle of wings, which tried to fly and were prevented, and the frightened cry of a cock.
She knew then that she was not to be the sacrifice. Instead the cock was to be sacrificed over her bared body and in her mind she twisted and turned, struggled and fought against the bestiality of it.
But she realised that in reality not one muscle of her drugged body moved and she could only lie there, humiliated by her nakedness, and hear the shriek of the voices as the thrill and excitement of the service reached its climax.
Just for one moment she strove to open her eyes and saw the black cock flapping and fluttering above her, caught a glimpse of the light shining on the sharpness of the knife as it severed the bird’s head from its body and the red blood as it came pouring down over her breasts and stomach.
It was then that she must have fainted or have let the darkness that was hovering so near to her mind encompass it for she knew no more. She only knew that the evil that was being invoked was close to her, a very real, a very threatening thing, something cruel and horrible with great wings shaped like a bat’s.
It was coming nearer, nearer and nearer, to accept the sacrifice and to take it from those who offered it.
And then, as Sheena was lost in the darkness, she knew that her cross was still there and was protecting and holding her –
*
It must have been a long time later that her tired mind struggled back into consciousness. Now the chanting and exaltation had finished and the incense had died down to remain only a fragrance on the air.
Someone was sponging her body clean of the blood and drying her with a soft towel.
She tried to move and found that her body was still paralysed and yet there was feeling in it. She could feel the black velvet beneath her, she could feel that the unseen hands which had sponged her were covering her nakedness with something silken and she could hear voices talking in low but normal tones.
“Will you carry her?” she heard the Queen ask and heard the Marquis reply,
“Of course, madame. She is no weight and anyway it is not far.”
“We must be careful,” the Queen advised in a low voice.
“I will go and find out what is happening,” the Comtesse volunteered.
It was not hard to recognise her voice.
There was something insidious and snakelike about it, something, Sheena thought, that should have warned her from the very first moment they met that the Comtesse was not to be trusted.
“Your Majesty is satisfied?”
It was the voice of the sorcerer, the man who stood beside her and who Sheena knew had killed the cock.
“You were really magnificent, Ruggieri,” the Queen replied. “Tonight I felt our Lord and Master nearer than I have ever known him before.”
“I too was conscious of his presence,” the sorcerer said, “so I cannot but be certain that your Majesty’s aspirations will be realised.”
“I am sure of it. Take this ring. It is a paltry award for your services, but you understand that the thankfulness it is given with comes from the depths of my heart.”
“I am deeply honoured, your Majesty.”
He moved away. Sheena could hear him go and now the Queen said in a low voice to the Marquis,
“You are sure that the King is attracted by her?”
“Most certainly, madame. How could he fail to be? Is she not fair-skinned with the same red hair that has bewitched him for so many years?”
“Yes, they are not unlike,” the Queen commented.
“What is more, Lady Fleming was of the same colour.”
“That is true, that is true,” the Queen muttered. “We have been over all this so often, my Lord Marquis, and yet I need to be reassured.”
“How could you question anything after what you have just experienced?” the Marquis asked softly.
His words sounded sincere and yet listening to them with closed eyes Sheena could hear the cynicism and hypocrisy behind them even while the Queen seemed satisfied.
“You are so kind,” she murmured, “and you shall not go unrewarded. I shall never forget all that you have done for me.”
“All I ask, madame, is to be your most obedient servant,” the Marquis said and Sheena felt that the Queen must be deaf not to hear the sneer in his words.
“I am so grateful to you all,” the Queen said. “So very very grateful for your loyalty and the comfort you have given me. One day the King will return to me, but only if that woman is dead.”
“Or if His Majesty’s affections are engaged elsewhere,” the Marquis suggested silkily.
“Yes, that is my hope. Who knows that tonight may not be the turning point, the moment when the Duchesse’s power ebbs away because another holds the King’s fancy.”
Sheena listened in bewilderment.
What was expected of this orgy of evil? For what particular reason had they evoked the powers of Satan?
The drug was still threatening to paralyse her brain as it paralysed her body. She lost the thread of the conversation between the Queen and the Marquis and heard only the voice of the Comtesse as she came gliding over the room to say in excited tones,
“His Majesty has gone to the Duchesse’s apartments. He has not been there more than ten minutes.”
“We must move quickly,” the Queen proposed.
Sheena heard the Marquis taking a step forward, she felt his hands pass underneath her inert body and lift her into his arms. She would have cried out then at the indignity of it and in knowing that he had touched her nakedness, but she was as helpless as a piece of driftwood battered in the waves of a stormy sea.
He lifted her and someone, she thought that it was the Comtesse, threw part of the silken shroud that covered her over her face. Then a heavier cloth was added and she was covered completely as she heard the Marquis say,
“If I meet anyone in the corridor it will be hard to see what I am carrying.”
‘Where are they taking me?’ Sheena wondered in a sudden anguish. ‘Where can they be taking me?’
She thought fearfully that they might be going to destroy her. Were they about to bury her alive or cast her into some deep lake from which her body could never be recovered? Was the sacrifice, once it had been made, of little use thereafter?
She struggled to remember, but her mind felt as if it would no longer function and she could only be half-suffocated by the clothes that covered her face and by the terror within her heart.
“Go, and the Prince of Darkness go with you” she heard the Queen say and instinctively groped within herself for the cross that had kept her safe so far.
Now the Marquis was carrying her down the passage. She could feel him moving slowly, burdened by her weight and she knew
that the Comtesse walked beside him as she could hear the rustle of her gown and the quickness of her breathing as if she was afraid.
They had not gone very far when Sheena heard the Comtesse give an almost inarticulate cry and sensed that her hand went out to clutch the Marquis’s arm.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“’Tis the Duc de Salvoire,” came the whispered reply.
She was saved!
Sheena felt her whole being cry out in thankfulness and in utter relief of knowing that he had come. He must have heard her prayers and her cry for help and now he was here.
“Good evening, Jarnac.”
The Comtesse’s voice was light and Sheena realised that they must be face to face with the Duc.
She fancied that she could hear his footsteps on the thick carpet.
“Your servant, René!’
He must be bowing to her and Sheena could hear the rustle of the Comtesse’s gown as she curtseyed.
“Shall we see you later at the gaming table?”
The Comtesse’s voice was gay and enticing.
“Perhaps.”
The Duc was being noncommittal and Sheena fancied that he was looking at the Marquis and staring perhaps at her. She tried to move and struggled to raise her hand so that she could pull the silk coverings from her face.
“Where are you going?” the Duc asked with a touch of suspicion in his voice. “And why has our noble Marquis been turned suddenly into a beast of burden? Surely there are servants in The Palace?”
The Duc was being deliberately provocative.
Sheena could hear it in his voice. Did he suspect that she was there, she wondered. With a sudden feeling of horror she felt that perhaps he did not suspect that the Duc was merely being unpleasant because he disliked the Marquis.
“You are not to ask questions,” the Comtesse replied quickly before the Marquis could answer. “We are on the Queen’s business. This is a very special present that she has for the King and she would entrust it to no one save the Marquis himself.”
“How perceptive of Her Majesty!”
There was no disguising the contempt in the Duc’s voice. For a moment or two no one answered and he continued,
The Hidden Evil Page 17
