Song of the Damned

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘It’s such a confusion of styles, it’s difficult to know what it is,’ said Miss Davy, and rather unexpectedly produced a bottle of port and another of brandy which she set down on the table, together with four balloon glasses.

  ‘Good for the digestion,’ she said. ‘My grandmother used to say that cheese digests a meal, but what, then, digests the cheese? So port and brandy is the answer.’

  ‘In the same glass?’ said Phin, slightly startled.

  ‘Purely medicinal, of course,’ said Miss Davy, pouring a hefty measure for Phin, and then, having appeared to consider the matter, a somewhat smaller one for Arabella.

  Harriet said, ‘I daresay you never expected to be glugging down port and brandy on these premises, did you, Arabella? We won’t mention the time when a dozen bottles of Pinot Grigio were smuggled in for somebody’s birthday.’

  ‘You didn’t miss much, did you?’ said Arabella with a rueful grin.

  ‘I didn’t miss anything. I still don’t.’

  ‘Imagine Hats knowing about the Pinot Grigio that time,’ said Arabella, as she and Phin walked across the main hall. ‘Sorry about tonight. The meal wasn’t exactly haute cuisine, was it?’

  ‘It was perfectly acceptable, though,’ said Phin, as they went up the wide staircase. ‘Pity about the moussaka, of course.’

  ‘Yes, it was. But I think everything will be dried out at the pub by tomorrow,’ said Arabella. ‘Hats has put me in my old room tonight,’ she said, as they reached the top landing.

  Phin said, ‘I think I’m along the corridor.’ He paused, then said, ‘I’d like to suggest I tiptoe along the corridor to your room—’

  ‘Like a character from a French farce.’

  ‘Only to have a goodnight drink, you understand,’ said Phin, gravely.

  ‘Which would be perfectly innocent,’ agreed Arabella.

  ‘But,’ said Phin, ‘with your former headteacher sleeping just one floor up from us—’

  ‘It might kill the romance?’

  ‘Exactly. So I think I’ll go to bed with The Martyrs.’

  ‘You do realize how peculiar that sounds?’

  ‘This is a peculiar situation,’ said Phin. He looked up and then down the corridor, and being sure that no eagle-eyed teachers were lurking, pulled Arabella to him and kissed her.

  When they parted, Arabella, looking up at him, said, a bit breathlessly, ‘It really is a pity about that moussaka, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ll work up an appetite for it again.’

  ‘Good. And – not Schubert, you said?’

  ‘Not Schubert.’

  ‘Who then? Because I expect you’d quite like a music background for – um – atmosphere.’

  ‘Providing it was the right background,’ said Phin, with a sudden disconcerting memory of the red-haired Canadian editor who had flitted briefly through his life just before he met Arabella, and who had been a jazz enthusiast.

  With one of her flashes of unnerving percipience, Arabella said, thoughtfully, ‘You wouldn’t want jazz, of course, would you? All that bounce and energy in the wrong place.’

  The Canadian editor had been a devotee of blues jazz, and had once insisted on playing several tracks of what Phin had thought inappropriate music at an even more inappropriate time.

  He smiled at Arabella, and said, ‘I’ll look out some well-paced Bach.’

  After Phineas Fox left, Olivia had some supper then went round the cottage closing curtains, and making sure doors and windows were all securely locked. She did this every night, of course, because you could not be too careful. She still sometimes had dreams about the night Imogen had died. Sometimes, in the dreams, she thought she could hear Imogen tapping on the wall, or calling to be let out, and on those nights she had to force herself to get out of bed and go down the stone steps to listen. There was never anything, of course. The sounds were in her nightmares and in her memory.

  The meeting with Phineas Fox had gone well. He had been very interested in everything Olivia had told him about The Martyrs, and he had been keen to take a copy of it to read; it was a good thing there had been a copy ready to hand.

  It was a pleasant feeling to fall asleep knowing that he would be in his bedroom at the Black Boar, reading the opera. Or would he? Mightn’t he be spending the night with Arabella Tallis? Arabella had always been able to collect all kinds of men, of course, although Olivia had never understood how, because Arabella was nothing special to look at. She would not have thought Phineas Fox would have been Arabella’s type, but you could never tell, and probably they would be in bed together tonight. But Olivia would not think about that, because it would remind her of her own attempts at relationships, which had been disastrous.

  Arabella would not have disastrous relationships; she was a person for whom sex would be successful, and it would never be complicated by things like the other person being too drunk to be effective or turning out to be married, or being sick in a taxi. Or, indeed, by someone slyly dazzling you with his legal qualifications within weeks of your uncle’s death – making respectful love to you after two dinner dates, and promising that he could invest your inheritance to bring massive returns. That man had decamped a week later to some unpronounceable country, and it had emerged that not only had he deposited Olivia’s money in an inaccessible account, but the money of a number of other gullible ladies as well.

  It was impossible to think of Phineas Fox behaving so appallingly; in fact, Olivia realized she was wondering what it might be like to be in bed with him. He might be quite gentle at first – he was what used to be called a gentleman, although it was not a term that you heard very much nowadays, but it could be used for Phineas – and then later he might be excitingly assertive and masculine.

  Olivia went to bed feeling optimistic about the future. She managed not to think very much about Phineas and Arabella together in a deep, soft double bed at the Black Boar.

  FOURTEEN

  Even with the generous measure of Dilys Davy’s port and brandy to mellow his outlook, Phin found that The Martyrs palled after the first few pages. There were several scenes in an area called Cresacre Woodland, which Tulliver, with unexpected whimsy, described as a ‘sylvan setting’, but which Phin suspected did not actually exist. There was much focus on the inhabitants of the convent, many of whose lines Phin thought were lifted from Puccini’s convent-set Suor Angelica of circa 1918.

  But something that did stand out was that one of Tulliver’s characters was called Ginevra. Was that simply a nod to the local legend, or was Tulliver going to unfold some curious theory about Ginevra? Had he even found something out about her and woven it into the plot? So far, though, ‘Ginevra’ did not seem to play a particularly significant role in the story. Tulliver had, however, allotted her a solo, which attracted Phin’s attention.

  ‘Step by measured step the murderers came to me …

  Inch by measured inch, the light is being shut out from me …

  Breath by measured breath, my life is being cut off from me …

  Heartbeat by measured and precious heartbeat, my life is ending …’

  Phin read this several times, partly because the line about the light being shut off ‘inch by measured inch’ was eerily evocative, but also because he could not help wondering if it came from the Lemurrer. Could Gustav have known about it? It was unlikely, but it was not impossible – Phin thought it could be argued either way. But he would certainly try playing it tomorrow from the score to see what kind of harmony Tulliver had created for such lyrics.

  A few stage directions were peppered through the scenes, one of which called for ‘upwards of fifty men and women, in the garb of the sans-culottes’ to march on the Bastille and storm its walls, while singing rousing rebel choruses. Grappling hooks were an integral part of this scene, which also involved the tipping of vats of boiling oil onto the marauders from the Bastille’s battlements. Phin wondered how Gustav had thought the pouring of boiling oil could be stage-managed, and wh
ether he had appreciated how much space fifty singers would take up. The Royal Opera House or the Met might manage it, but the majority of stages would struggle. He also wondered if Tulliver had checked his dates, because as far as he could recall from general history, not only was the use of boiling oil a medieval ploy, the real storming of the Bastille had taken place five years before this opera seemed to be set. Then he wondered whether Olivia Tulliver had considered how those scenes could be performed on the modest sweep of lawns outside the school.

  There was, however, a touch of light relief in the form of a duet between two of the Bastille gaolers or turnkeys, during which they drunkenly divided up the clothes of recently executed prisoners, and capered around the stage wearing some of them. This was so lively and so enjoyably comedic that Phin wondered, for a startled moment, whether someone other than Gustav Tulliver had written it.

  But, so far, The Martyrs seemed to him to be a pallid and clunkily written copy of Dialogues des Carmélites. He thought Harriet Madeley’s concerns about infringement of copyright were fairly valid, and he also thought the boiling-oil scenes could be pointed out as being entirely impractical for the surroundings. Still, he would reserve judgement until he had read the whole thing and tried some of the music on the school piano.

  It was approaching midnight, and the school was wrapped in silence. Harriet Madeley and Miss Davy would be sleeping blamelessly in their beds, and Arabella – Phin smiled thinking of Arabella – curled up in bed, her hair tumbled over the pillow.

  He put the manuscript on the bedside table, switched off the light, and lay back on the pillows, staring up at the ceiling, his mind still filled with The Martyrs and whether there really was a tenuous link in it to the Lemurrer.

  ‘Inch by measured inch, the light is being shut out from me …’

  The words went back and forth across his mind, and sleep had never seemed so impossible. Phin sighed, rearranged his pillows, wondered if port and brandy were ever responsible for insomnia, and finally sat up and switched on the light. Normally if he could not sleep he reached for a book – something light and undemanding – but he had not packed any books and he had not brought his Kindle, either. But this was a school, for goodness’ sake, and schools had libraries. Since his dressing gown was temporarily out of action, he pulled a sweater over his pyjamas, slipped his feet into shoes, and went quietly down the stairs.

  The school was not entirely dark. No lights were actually on, but there was a faint overspill from outside – possibly from a security light. Phin reached the foot of the stairs and paused, trying to remember if anyone had actually pointed out a library to him. He had a memory of Arabella indicating a window on the building’s right as they drove up. That was the library, she had said. Vellum and leather, and large tables. In her time they had held debating evenings in it, and there had sometimes been a guest speaker.

  It was a curious experience to walk through this building, knowing that two hundred years ago a community of nuns had lived and worked and prayed here. Including Sister Cecilia who had written that letter to Master Firkin? Yes, she must have been here.

  The library, when he found it, was a rather endearing blend of country house library and modern school equipment. Rows of leather and calf-bound books lined the upper shelves – there was even an old-fashioned library ladder that could be wheeled back and forth to reach them. There was a modicum of order to the arrangement of the books, which seemed to be ordered more or less by date: Charles Dickens rubbed shoulders with Mrs Henry Wood and Elizabeth Gaskell, and Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding shared a shelf with Samuel Richardson.

  But there were also computer terminals, and the lower shelves held set books – school editions of Shakespeare’s plays and nineteenth-century novelists. There were also, Phin was pleased to see, a good many of the acclaimed modern writers.

  He switched on a desk lamp, and wandered along the shelves, taking down a book here and there at random, then climbing cautiously up the wheeled ladder to reach the upper shelves. There were a good many bound sermons by vicars and rectors who had served Cresacre, and who had lived here during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These were not very likely to yield any useful information, though, and Phin was about to abandon the search when his eye was caught by the name of Cresacre Convent on one of the older volumes. This was probably no likelier to contain anything relevant than the books of sermons, but he reached up to take it down anyway, and perched on the bottom rung of the ladder to open it.

  The book’s title page announced it, in an ornate script, as being the reminiscences of an eighteenth-century religious, who had lived and worked within the convent’s community. Lower down the page, in slightly less florid print, the reader was advised that the reminiscences had been privately printed in 1798, and had been edited and annotated before publication. ‘Annotated’ probably meant tedious lists of local references. ‘Edited’ might mean anything from a few corrections to re-sequencing and re-writing entire chunks.

  As Phin turned over the title page, the scent of old paper and the breath of the past brushed against his mind. He smiled. There was no denying that the internet was a marvellous instrument – providing you checked all sources and made sure to discern between genuine facts based on primary sources, and the flights of fantasy or misunderstandings, or even outright fake news. But there was nothing like holding a piece of the past in your hands – of touching the leaves of a book written and printed centuries earlier, of hearing the indisputable voice of someone speaking to you from a vanished century.

  He turned over the preliminary pages, hoping to find some clue to the author’s identity, or even to the fate of the vanished nuns, but prepared for the book to be nothing more than the laborious meanderings of a nun who had lived a cloistered life in these surroundings. Solitude and serenity, thought Phin. Incense and plainchant, and a quiet, ordered life.

  But the foxed pages contained more than religious treatises or tracts, or theological philosophies.

  The first sentence might have been penned by one of the masters or mistresses of literature – the men and women who had known the value of grabbing their readers’ attention in the very first line of their book.

  The book began with this statement:

  ‘I had not expected, when I entered our Order, that I would find myself treading dangerous and tragic paths, or that I and my group of sisters would become helpless strands in such a violent and bloody part of history’s tapestry.’

  Phin climbed down the ladder, switched off the desk lamp, and carried the anonymous nun up to his bedroom.

  Propping up the pillows, he began to read.

  ‘Embarking on the hazardous journey which faces us in three days’ time, I am endeavouring to hold fast to my courage. I am also endeavouring to quench my astonishment at the company in which I find myself. Our Lord frequently dined and supped with all levels of society, and I have whiled away part of the journey by trying to imagine what Jesus would have thought of an Italian opera performer, who hints that he was the toast of most European capitals and the darling of theatre audiences. He also hinted that he is the scion of ancient Italian nobility, although this, I feel, is questionable.

  ‘Chimaera – he assures us that this is his name – was a music tutor to Sir John and Lady Chandos’s young daughter. I believe he was quite efficient and conscientious, and was also required to sing for their guests at evening parties. I have no idea how such a man comes to be in a fairly menial capacity in a quiet backwater like Cresacre, but honesty compels me to admit that – for all his faults – he can be a charming and entertaining companion. I suspect there have been a good many ladies in his life (our young novice, Anne-Marie, stares at him with wide-eyed admiration) but, to his credit, Chimaera keeps any reminiscences of his bedchamber exploits to himself.

  ‘His experience of travelling is proving very useful to us, and his knowledge of languages even more so. I am moderately fluent in French, and most of the nuns have Latin, of course,
but, as Mother Superior confided, it is more of an ecclesiastical Latin, and outside of the confessional box and the Mass, not likely to be of much help in such places as wayside inns or finding our way to our eventual destination.

  ‘We had also considered taking with us the gardener from Chandos House – his ancestry might be anything at all, and he has the prosaic name of Dan. However, it has been decided that this would not be practical for several reasons.

  ‘Tonight, he looked at me very directly – he has the most extraordinary green eyes, flecked with gold – and he said, “The secret will be kept, Sister Cecilia. No matter the cost, it will never be known.”

  ‘And, despite his air of caring for no man, Mother Superior and I are agreed that Dan can unquestionably be trusted.’

  This image of a group of professed nuns preparing to travel to some foreign destination, and of being involved with two such disparate-sounding gentlemen was so astonishing that Phin re-read the whole section in case he had missed some vital fact, or misunderstood. But he had not missed anything, nor did he think he had misunderstood anything. He rather liked the sound of Chimaera, who had apparently charmed the nuns, and clearly Dan was the gardener referred to in the letter found in Infanger Cottage. There had been something about a gardener by the name of Dan being instructed to post ‘No Trespassing’ signs.

  He read on.

  ‘We are all unhappy about leaving the convent buildings empty and untenanted, and there has been some discussion as to whether we should admit Master Firkin, the local builder, into the full truth. It’s doubtful, though, if he could be entirely trusted, for he is very fond of taking a drink in the Black Boar, which could lead to indiscretions.

  ‘Yet, as ill luck would have it, going through my desk to make sure I was leaving no clues behind, I came upon a letter from Master Firkin. It had been sent several days ago, and I had not yet answered it – which was remiss of me. It had to be answered there and then, of course, for Alberic had pointed out some dilapidations at Infanger Cottage, for which he thought we might wish to engage his services. He had ever an eye to the main chance.