by Sarah Rayne
Before the music began, people had been starting to think about their evening meal, as Kate had. They had been setting out primus stoves or unpacking sandwiches and the hamburger stands were doing a roaring trade. The scent of fried onions and hot chips drifted across the Heath.
But within minutes of the music beginning, the food was forgotten. People turned to the stage, transfixed and Kate thought: what on earth is happening? Why is the music affecting them so strongly? And then without warning, a cold hand gripped her stomach, and she thought: this is Richard’s Beckoning. God yes, it really is. Despite the warmth of the early evening she began to feel cold and rather frightened. The music was like a summoning, it was like a command . . . Follow me and obey me . . . Do what I tell you . . . A Beckoning. Yes, Richard had been absolutely right.
By now everyone was staring at the very ordinary group playing the very extraordinary music, and Kate forced her mind to analyse it. She thought it was a tritone, repeated several times with a slightly different variation each time but although she had a reasonable working knowledge of music, the finer points of much of the theory were a closed book. And most modern music followed its own path without regard to the traditional constructions anyway. This appeared to follow the conventional patterns of loud insistent beat, but beyond that was the writhing coiling melody. A beckoning, thought Kate, feeling the fear increase. She looked round for Richard but he was nowhere to be seen, and she looked back at the group by the stage. And there, in their midst, silhouetted against the blazing radiance of the setting sun, was a thin-faced man with close-cropped hair and the coldest eyes Kate had ever seen. He was dressed in cords with a shirt like a lot of the men, and he wore the silver medallion of the watching group. But there was a look of such triumph on his face that Kate felt as if someone had driven a clenched fist into her ribs. She moved nearer, trying to see more.
To begin with she thought he had the look of someone who has unexpectedly discovered something tremendous, and then she thought that this was not quite right: it was much greedier, far more lusting than that. Someone getting a kick out of power – maybe even a sexual kick. Someone presenting a smooth polished façade but with evil beneath. I can feel that he’s evil, thought Kate, torn between horrified disbelief and a spiralling fear. Cold-eyed and merciless. But urbane. Socially adept. The smiler with the knife under his cloak . . . Chaucer again. The Knight’s Tale, isn’t it? I wish I could see Richard.
The music was rising and falling all about them, and the silver medallion people were chanting in exact time to it. Kate thought they were not chanting any words: it was more like the Eastern mantras where you hummed a sequence of notes over and over until the humming reverberated all around you and enfolded you. A mantra – a real mantra – was soothing and filled with strength and goodness and light, but there was nothing in the least soothing about this sound. It was hypnotic, but it was hypnotic in the wrong way. It was frightening and strongly sensual and very powerful indeed. Kate remembered the drug dealers again. Could they have been spiking people’s drinks without anyone noticing?
Behind her, on the Heath, people were beginning to join in the chanting, and to link hands and sway to and fro. Several couples were reaching for their partners, groping beneath clothing with avid, hot eyes, sinking to the ground and writhing against one another. Kate glanced back at the man, and saw his eyes flicker over the squirming couples, and a smile lift the corners of his lips.
The chanting was increasing, it was spreading to all parts of the audience, and those who were not openly copulating on the ground were pressing closer to the stage, holding up their hands. The silver ikon group were facing them, holding their hands out as if to receive benisons, their eyes shining, their lips slightly parted. The thick sexual groanings blended with the rhythmic chanting.
Kate’s head began to spin and she was feeling sick, as if her mind was dislocating. There was anticipation in the music now: a huge tense apprehension that churned up your stomach so that you began to feel the kind of lurching fearfulness you felt when something nasty was getting close. Something’s happening, thought Kate, looking about her. Something’s approaching . . . The tension’s winding tighter and tighter . . . Like an abscess about to burst. Like a thunderstorm piling up. Her head throbbed.
And then without the least warning, there was the violent report of a shotgun from somewhere behind the crowd: a shocking splintering sound that tore across the music and the chanting. The music shut off abruptly and the climbing tension ebbed instantly. There was a nerve-scraping whine of sound from one of the speakers and the audience turned to look confusedly at one another, spreading their hands in bewilderment. People who had been writhing on the ground sat up and fumbled embarrassedly with zips and buttons, and the group by the stage looked suddenly bewildered. They huddled close to the stage and Kate could see the cold-eyed man talking to them, and then indicating that they should leave.
Everywhere else people were screaming and some were crying. Panic and confusion replaced the slow mesmerised languor and people were crying. Like at a disaster, thought Kate, staring about here. Like when a bomb goes off or a fire breaks out in an enclosed space. But what on earth’s happened to break the spell?
And then from the other side of the Heath came the blare of an ambulance siren.
Kate lifted her head and looked at Moira. ‘The ambulance was for Richard,’ she said. ‘He’d been talking with some people near to the stage when the music started. They said afterwards that he seemed to respond to it like a puppet being jerked.’
Again the pause and after a moment, Moira said, ‘What happened?’
‘I never found out the exact details,’ said Kate. ‘Apparently he had been quite normal until then. Enjoying the Sixties music, recording interviews. He’d managed to talk to two of the Serse People – the group with the silver ikons. And then –’ She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘They said afterwards – the people nearest – that it was as if he’d suddenly been given a command. An order.’
She stopped again, and Moira waited. ‘He took a gun out of the back of a parked jeep,’ said Kate. ‘God knows why anyone would bring a shotgun to a pop concert, but it was licensed and the owner turned out to be the son of someone who had a shoot in Kent. The jeep wasn’t locked and the gun was under some sacking. A bit irresponsible, but not illegal.
‘Richard put the shotgun under his jaw,’ said Kate, her voice devoid of all expression. ‘He pulled the trigger and blew away his face.’
Chapter Fifteen
There was such a complete silence in the caravan, that for a moment Moira could not think how to break it. At last, she said, ‘The shooting was caused by the music.’
‘Yes.’ Kate looked at her defensively, and then said, ‘At the beginning it seemed like the maddest kind of fantasy to think it, of course; I had only Richard’s notes and his hunch, and my own vague suspicions to go on, and for ages I didn’t believe it. I thought: I’m bitter and angry, and I’m looking for something to blame and I’m fastening on to Richard’s weird premise. But when I thought properly, I couldn’t remember Richard ever having been wrong when his own subject was involved. Academics do fall in love with their own theories but he was very level-headed, and he had too much of a sense of humour to let a theory get out of proportion. So then I thought: if he was right, there might have been other tragedies. I’ll just dig a bit.’
‘How?’
Moira could not imagine where you would start, but Kate said, ‘I employed a press agency to send me all the reports of suicides and attempted suicides connected with musical events during that year. That was where I got the first shock, because there were far more than I’d expected. The second shock was when I found that almost every time the music I heard at Hampstead had been played, at least one person in the audience had committed suicide, or tried to, either during the actual concert, or more usually just afterwards. The music went under various names, but I was sure it was the same.’
‘The Blac
k Chant. The Beckoning.’
‘Yes. So then,’ said Kate, ‘I began to look at it the other way up – on the premise that Richard might have been right. That there really was an ancient piece of music that could influence people’s minds. And that opened up a whole range of terrifying possibilities, of course.’
‘Serse’s People,’ said Moira.
‘Yes. I was already beginning to see them as acolytes of the music, and that wasn’t so bizarre a view either; young people do follow trends in music to astonishing degrees, and odd religions and cults have flourished since the world started. There’ve been the Moonies and the Flower Children, and the Hare Krishna Movement in the Sixties. But there’ve also been the Hitler Youth and that group of fanatics a few years back in Texas, where some of the followers burned to death. I began to suspect there could be something very sinister about Serse’s People, and after I’d talked to the families of some of the suicides, I was convinced of it.’ She leaned forward, her eyes eager. ‘All of the people who committed suicide were young, and most of them had been clever or creative. That’s not so surprising, because it’s mostly young people who go to those concerts and there’s often a large proportion of students. But the really odd thing was that every suicide seemed to be balanced by a disappearance. Clever, bright young people simply dropping out and vanishing without trace. All doing so within days – sometimes hours – of one of the concerts.’ She got up to pour fresh tea, and Moira thought about this.
‘It sounds,’ Moira said, after a moment, ‘almost as if there was some kind of test. If they accepted the music they were admitted to the fold. Made part of the—the chosen ones. But those that resisted, cracked mentally, or maybe were made to crack . . . I’m sorry – your husband – I didn’t mean that to sound hurtful.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Kate, shrugging it aside. ‘It’s actually quite refreshing to talk to someone who sees it the same way and doesn’t make stupid scoffing comments.’ She frowned, and said, ‘D’you know, I haven’t talked like this to anyone for ages. I can’t imagine why I’m unloading it all on to you.’
‘It’s something to do with it being the middle of the night,’ said Moira, blushing at the unexpected compliment. ‘And because I’m running away, maybe.’
‘Maybe it is. Of course, for all I know I might be simply turning into a crank.’
‘Please tell me what happened next.’
‘What happened next,’ said Kate, ‘was that I came to a full stop. I hadn’t a clue where to go from there, although by then I’d tracked down the man I’d seen at Hampstead. His name’s Conrad Vogel and he operates from one of the warehouses at St Katharine’s Dock in London. Music publishing, music promotions – not unlike my own set-up. But he appeared to operate quite legitimately and there’s nothing to prevent people from starting up their own churches and religions. I had nothing you could call solid evidence against him. So for a time I was stuck.’
‘Didn’t the police—’ began Moira tentatively, but Kate shook her head.
‘The police were one of the crowd who thought I was a crank. They were very polite but they were dismissive. Very sad, madam, but of course, there’s a high rate of suicides among students. Which,’ said Kate, ‘there is. So I was still on my own.
‘Until a couple of months ago when I heard a piece of music called the Devil’s Piper on Radio Three.’ She stopped and Moira stared at her.
‘Jude Weissman. Judas.’
‘Yes, Judas. He wrote the music in the early Nineteen Thirties and although I’d heard of him in a general way, I’d never heard the music in my life. But I recognised it at once.’
‘The Hampstead music,’ said Moira. ‘The Chant.’
‘Yes. It was superficially different and unless you were looking for it, you mightn’t have known. But I was looking and I did know,’ said Kate. ‘I was in the car at the time, but I had to stop and pull in. I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t do anything. I sat in a lay-by, staring at the radio, feeling sick and dizzy.’
‘I’ve heard of the Devil’s Piper,’ said Moira. ‘But I’ve never actually heard it played.’
‘I’ve got a recording,’ said Kate. ‘You can hear it sometime. It took ages to find, because it’s deleted now – that’s the same as a book being out of print – but in the end I got one. It’s the most extraordinary music I’ve ever heard.’ She paused again and then said in a hard voice, ‘Jude knew about the music all right, the Black Chant. He got his Piper from it and I believe Vogel got the Hampstead music from it as well. I could have concentrated on Vogel but I decided to work backwards. That’s why I came here. To the place where Jude wrote the Devil’s Piper.’
‘Mallow House,’ said Moira.
‘Mallow was my original idea,’ said Kate, ‘but then I read up Curran Glen’s history in Galway, and I found that its main claim to fame was a very old Abbey with a rather unusual tradition for early liturgical music. It set a few signals ringing. It’s unusual to find such very old plainsong these days – most churches use the Gregorian chant which came later. It was a very long shot indeed, but it was just possible that the three things tied up: Jude Weissman, the Black Chant and the Abbey.’
She paused and then said, ‘And so I came to Curran Glen, and that was when I discovered that deep in the Abbey’s foundations is an ancient tomb, and that inside that tomb is something the monks have guarded for almost a thousand years since their founder brought it from North Italy.’
She stopped and Moira, her mind whirling, said, ‘Simon of Cremona’s devil. The Nameless One that Cosimo Amati called up from beyond the grave. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
‘Yes it is. How on earth did you know?’
‘We’ve both read the same transcript, I think,’ said Moira. ‘Simon’s journal. But I didn’t get to the end.’
‘I did,’ said Kate. ‘And at the end, the thing that Cosimo summoned isn’t nameless at all. Simon refers to him as the Devil’s Music Maker once or twice, but his name was Ahasuerus.’
Ahasuerus . . . There was absolutely no reason why the name should strike against Moira’s consciousness with eerie familiarity, but it did.
‘Ahasuerus is at the heart of the entire thing, Moira,’ said Kate softly. ‘He’s the core and the matrix. Amati believed the music had power over Ahasuerus, and that Ahasuerus himself could somehow control the music. At the end, Simon believed it as well. That’s why he created an order of monks that would guard the tomb for as long as they endured.’
Moira felt the fear prickling the nape of her neck again, but she asked, ‘Do the monks know about all this – I mean the present ones? Do they really know and do they really do it, or do they just pay some kind of lip-service to an old tradition?’
‘That’s quite a shrewd thing to ask,’ said Kate. ‘But yes, they do know.’ She saw again the lurching faceless thing that had been drawn inexorably across the dark countryside, and driven down into the crypt, and pushed the grisly image away because there was no point in frightening this nice child more than absolutely necessary. She said, ‘The monks do know. That silver-voiced creature who has no business being inside a monastery at all certainly knows.’
‘Brother Ciaran?’ said Moira tentatively.
‘Brother Ciaran,’ affirmed Kate. ‘I suspect he could tell me a whole lot more about this than he’s so far chosen to do. It’s a pity Catholic monks aren’t open to seduction,’ she said, without thinking, and Moira looked up, startled.
‘It’s all right,’ said Kate, grinning, ‘I do know that an Irish monastery isn’t the place for disreputable adventures.’
‘Wouldn’t you consider talking to him? He’d be completely trustworthy—’
‘I’m sure he would. But it isn’t that,’ Kate replied. ‘I don’t dare talk to him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m going to steal the coffin.’ She grinned, and said, ‘I’m going to bring the Devil’s Piper out into the world, Moira, and I’m going to confront Conrad Vog
el with it – publicly and resoundingly – and then I’m going to destroy them both once and for all.’
‘How?’
‘If I can once get the thing out of the crypt, I’m going to do what Vogel did at Hampstead,’ said Kate. ‘I’m going to set up a concert – very public, very hyped. It’s what I do for a living, after all, and I’m quite good at it. I’ll have TV coverage, radio, video, press—Everything and everyone. And then we’ll play the Devil’s Piper and see what happens.’ She set down her empty tea-mug. ‘When you ran into me, I was trying to break into the Abbey crypt only there isn’t a way to do it. And so tomorrow I’m going to find a way of stealing the tower key and break in after dark.’
At last Moira said, ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.’
‘It’s a very good idea indeed,’ said Moira. ‘For one thing you’ll never lift the coffin on your own. And for another—’ For the first time for what felt like several hours, she smiled. ‘For another,’ said Moira, ‘you don’t have to wait until tomorrow night. We can do it now. I’ve got the library key.’
She had almost forgotten being given it and she had almost forgotten thrusting it absently into the side pocket of her satchel when she left.
Kate said, ‘But if it only fits the library—’
‘There’s a door from the library that leads to the turn,’ said Moira. ‘That’s the porter’s room just behind the main front door,’ she added, realising that Irish and English could sometimes be two different languages. ‘And in the porter’s room—’
‘—are the keys to the rest of the Abbey!’ finished Kate. She stood up and the excitement was back in her eyes. ‘What time is it? Three o’clock. The monks should all be devoutly asleep and if any of them are about at this hour, then they’re up to no good and we’ll blackmail them into silence.’ She paused and Moira started to say something and then stopped, because she was by no means sure how serious Kate had been. ‘I’m perfectly serious,’ said Kate at once. ‘I’ll get into Brother Ciaran’s bed if necessary and swear on the Bible that he raped me.’ A reckless glint showed in her eyes. ‘And once in his bed I don’t think I’d be too quick to call for rescue, either,’ she said. ‘Ready? Come on then. We can be out of the tower and out of the Abbey and halfway across Ireland before they go up to ring for Lauds!’
