by Sarah Rayne
Ciaran had raised his head and he was staring towards the doors into the outer chamber.
‘What—?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He got up and went lightly across the floor, and stood listening. After a moment, he put a finger to his lips, indicating, ‘Be quiet.’ Kate waited, and presently, Ciaran came back.
‘I think something’s happening,’ he said. ‘I think Vogel, may he rot in hell for eternity, is calling Ahasuerus out.’
‘Well, can’t we—’ Kate stopped and shivered. ‘Vogel has a gun,’ she said.
‘I know it,’ said Ciaran worriedly. ‘Do you think I wouldn’t have jumped him if he hadn’t?’
Kate said. ‘He’s come to get Ahasuerus because he needs him for his wretched concert.’
‘No,’ said Ciaran, rather grimly. ‘Not yet. Vogel knows exactly what we’ve been doing – he’s probably followed us and he’s probably had his wretched Serse children spying on us. I think he’s going to use Ahasuerus as bait for Isarel and Moira.’
He stopped and they stared at one another. Then Kate said in a whisper, ‘The music—Ciaran, it’s starting.’
From over their heads, they heard, quite unmistakably, the first faint notes of the shofar.
Chapter Forty-Three
Once through Eisenach’s iron gates, Moira and Isarel felt unexpectedly better.
‘Almost normal,’ said Moira determinedly.
There were a number of Serse’s People in the castle grounds, all of them engaged in various tasks which were plainly for the forthcoming concert. V-shaped display boards were being placed in the courtyard at the front of the castle’s central portion, and two girls were fixing up small printed cards with arrows directing people to the different parts of the castle: the old stable block where drinks and food could be bought; the central hall where the actual concert would take place; the washrooms. The Serse ikon was everywhere.
No one took any notice of Isarel and Moira as they approached the castle’s main entrance, but they were both uneasily aware of the towering walls and of the rows of windows. Any one of the rooms behind those windows might contain a watcher. At any moment, they could be challenged.
In front of them was a huge, oaken door with an iron ring handle, and Isarel eyed it and then looked down at Moira.
‘This is it, isn’t it?’ said Moira, her eyes huge.
‘This is it,’ said Isarel. ‘All right?’
‘No,’ said Moira. ‘I’m not in the least all right. I’m terrified to death. But whatever we have to do, I’ll do it.’
‘Good enough,’ said Isarel, and reached down to the immense ring handle.
Entering the castle was like stepping fathoms deep into the past. The door opened straight on to an immense, galleried hall with a hammer-beamed ceiling and quatrefoil windows set high up. At the far end was a wide, curving stairway of marble and gilt.
Isarel stopped dead just inside the door. Mellow afternoon sunlight filtered in through the narrow windows and lay in soft, blurred pools everywhere, and there was a moment when he saw it as it would have looked to Jude: not dusty and untidy as it was now, but brilliant and shining; coruscating with the radiance of the women’s jewels and the spun-sugar filaments of the crystal chandeliers, heady with anticipation and thrumming with excitement. And at the zenith of it all – insolently timing his entrance with exquisite precision so that every head would be turned to look at him – Jude.
Moira was right, thought Isarel; we really are going back. And Jude’s very close. If I knew the right word of command or if I could somehow open an invisible door, he would be here. I’d see him exactly as he would have been that night, coming slowly down the marble stairway, amused and faintly arrogant, dazzling in black and white evening dress, as self-assured as a cat. Calling his orchestra to attention, affecting to hardly notice the audience, lifting the baton . . . And then the music, the huge, soul-scalding music swelling out and filling up the hall . . .
He blinked and looked about him. The chandeliers were still here, dulled by time and neglect, but suspended from the moulded ceilings beneath the galleries. And although the seething excitement of Jude’s day had long since gone, the hall was filled with bustle and life. A dozen or so young men and girls, all wearing black T-shirts with the Serse ikon, were arranging rostra for the orchestra’s platform at one end of the hall and there was a hum of workman-like sounds: hammering and the chink of tools; little bursts of conversation and shouted instructions; chairs being dragged across the floor; occasional spurts of laughter. Ladders stood at the opposite end to the platform, and several of the men were wiring up some kind of spotlighting. Lengths of green baize carpeting were being unrolled, and potted plants – ferns and palms – stood waiting to be banked against the front of the platform. Four or five more Serse followers were setting plastic-backed chairs into rows facing the platform.
Jude would have expected and got crystal chandeliers and hothouse flowers and an audience largely drawn from the aristocracy of the day. He would have played his disturbing, mesmeric music amidst a cascade of Worth and Dior gowns, and a flurry of expensive perfume: the Bright Young Things of la belle epoque had vanished by then, of course, but the Thirties had had their own svelte elegance. There would have been the creamy, expensive, froth of champagne at the interval, and later, at supper, the tables would have been set with the glistening shapes of whole salmon on beds of crushed ice, alongside silver dishes of Beluga caviare and Perigord truffles, with lobster and quail in aspic, and foie gras and out-of-season fraises des bois.
Moira said softly, ‘Who will the musicians be? Would Vogel use different ones for each concert?’
‘I think they’ll all be Serse’s People,’ said Isarel, keeping his voice low. ‘It would be the only way Vogel could trust them. Can you see Vogel anywhere, by the way? You’d better warn me if you do, because it’s as well to know where the enemy’s stationed, and I shouldn’t know him from Lucifer. In fact of the two, I’d probably recognise Lucifer better.’
‘I can’t see either of them,’ said Moira, deadpan, and Isarel smiled at her.
‘I believe you’re beginning to answer me back, my child,’ he said.
‘I believe I am,’ Moira glanced about her. ‘Where—’
‘The stair,’ said Isarel, without hesitation. ‘Let’s get it over with before anyone spots we’re not of the faithful. And we’re simply rehearsing for tomorrow, remember. With any luck, there’re probably little groups all over the place doing the same thing.’ He nodded coolly at the band of workers and walked confidently across the hall.
The stair was beyond the orchestra’s platform, a little to its right, and it was a huge, wide sweep of marble and gilt with ornate balustrades and carved stone bas-relief and a high, soaring ceiling reaching up to the domed roof. I’ll bet Jude came down that, thought Moira. I’ll bet that fifty years ago he walked down those steps into an anticipation so strong you could slice through it. She was conscious of a sudden painful twist of longing: I wish I could have seen him! and then she remembered Isarel at her side, and for a moment past and present merged.
Isarel slid one hand casually into an inner pocket and Moira’s heart lurched. The shofar! He’s going to play the music! She glanced warily to the half-built stage, but no one was looking at them, and no one appeared to have seen anything to question in their presence. But Moira was strongly conscious of her heart beating fast, and with every minute she expected someone to come up and demand to know what they were doing.
Isarel had approached the stair almost without conscious thought and as he began to ascend the gilt and marble curve, Jude was with him again, walking at his side . . . Haunting me as he did all those years ago . . . As he has never stopped doing. And fifty years ago Jude played his marvellous eerie music in this hall and now I’m about to do the same. Here I go.
He lifted the shofar to his lips and into the great echoing hall of Eisenach Castle floated the sweet, cool notes of the ancient music. Isarel’s whole bei
ng was concentrating so absolutely on what he was doing, that he was scarcely aware of the half-turned heads below, and of Serse’s People putting down hammers and straightening up from unrolling carpets or arranging plants. This is it, he thought. This is the ancient lure: the legendary Black Chant that stretches back and back over the centuries, linking Tartini and Berlioz and Paganini. Mozart and Handel and Liszt.
And Jude. Jude Weissman, writing his marvellous, compelling Devil’s Piper, taking his orchestra into the Nazi death camps. Subduing the wretched, doomed Jews so that they would go unresisting to their deaths . . .
This is Ahasuerus’s music, thought Isarel in awe, but in the same instant, doubt brushed his mind. It’s not going to work. Nothing’s going to happen. Panic swept in, and for the first time he became aware of the listeners in the hall.
The shofar’s sound was light and thin in this vast place, but the music’s beckoning and the sinister romance and the spider-web bewitchments were all there. Subtle. Soft. Wrapped inside the music, creeping into your mind, but doing it so gently and so insidiously that it fastened its claws into your brain before you realised it. The notes spun and shivered about the hall, and within them was a swirling expectancy, an immense anticipation that thickened the golden sunshine into the shapes of beckoning hands and crooking fingers.
He’s approaching, thought Isarel, his mind swinging between panic and sheer blazing excitement. I was wrong – it’s working! The tension mounted up and up; painful, unbearable, stretching out and out until it was so thin and so taut that at any minute it would snap . . .
And then it did snap: with a single plangent note it snapped and something that had been shadow and blurred came sharply into focus at the head of the stair.
He was there. Ahasuerus, the renegade High Priest from two thousand years ago. He was coming across the galleried landing, but he was coming slowly and unwillingly, the hood that Isarel remembered pulled forward to hide his face. This is the legend, thought Isarel, the sheer awe of it gripping his mind. This is the rebel and the lover and the scholar who was cast out by the jealous Elders of the Temple, who was disgraced and exiled, and finally cursed with immortality by his own hand.
He quickened the music almost imperceptibly, and Ahasuerus lifted his head and saw Moira.
Moira was still frightened, but when Ahasuerus appeared she felt a bolt of exhilaration almost instantly followed by a rush of pity so overwhelming and so dizzying that she had to put out a hand to the smooth balustrade to stop herself from falling.
Ahasuerus was not tall and forbidding which was how Moira had been thinking of him; he was bent and hunched over, and most piteous of all, he was cowering. Isarel was nearly level with him now, and the music was going on and on – beautiful, heart-breaking music that you would follow into hell if only it would never stop – and Ahasuerus was cringing, flinging up his hands in the gesture that Moira remembered from the crypt. The immense compassion began to dissolve and flood her whole being, and she thought: whatever he is, whatever he’s been, he’s tormented and wracked with desolation . . .
Forced to walk the world to the music’s command.
It was then that he saw her, and a stillness came over him. Moira saw the glint of his eyes within the hood and froze in panic.
She was dimly aware of shouts down in the hall and of doors banging and people running – Serse’s People giving the alarm! – but she had eyes and mind for nothing but Ahasuerus. He was coming towards her, the dark cloak billowing. She thought Isarel was still playing, but she was no longer sure.
Ahasuerus reached out to her and there was such entreaty in the gesture that Moira felt as if she had been struck. Without having the least notion she was going to do it, she went forward into his arms and felt them fold about her.
He held her to him at once, bending his head, and there was the feeling of warm, strong masculinity and of gentle strength. Moira gasped and heard him speak in a struggling, blurred whisper:
‘Susannah . . .’
Limpid eyes – cool grey, intelligent eyes – were looking at her through the eye-slits of the mask and for a moment, nothing existed in the world save the steady regard of those beautiful clear eyes.
Ahasuerus’s arms tightened and he lifted her bodily, and then went with his terrible lurching gait back down the narrow, shadowy corridor.
The minute Ahasuerus scooped up Moira, Isarel had stopped playing, even though his mind had reared up angrily. You fool! This is precisely what you wanted! Ahasuerus lured by red hair once more! Get after him and get Moira before you’re caught!
The people in the hall were already starting towards them – too late, we’re discovered, thought Isarel angrily. He looked down at them, and as he did so, the immense oak doors they had entered by were flung open and a thin-faced, cold-eyed man stood framed there.
Vogel! thought Isarel, and even at such a minute, even with frantic danger closing in, he was aware of black bitter fury against the descendant of the man who brought Jude to that sordid shameful death.
Vogel did not hesitate. He ran across the hall, ignoring the clustering Serse People, and started to mount the stair.
In his right hand he held a gun, and as Isarel turned to go deeper into the castle after Ahasuerus and Moira, he fired.
In the shadow-wreathed mind of the creature who had once arrogantly faced the Temple Elders in first century Jerusalem; who had bargained with Cosimo Amati for a night with his lady, and who had contemptuously dragged a Tudor King from Catherine Howard’s bed, comprehension burned as strongly as ever it had done.
He had no idea of where or when this cold harsh age was, but among all the selfish-eyed, greedy-handed people, only one thing mattered.
Susannah.
Susannah, her red hair streaming, her eyes tilted at the outer corners, her clothes as strange as everything else here, but unmistakably and blessedly Susannah. Ahasuerus forgot the huge ugly castle, he forgot the shouting people, and stared at the slight figure in front of him, his heart and his mind splintering with pain and joy and sheer awe. Walking towards him, exactly as she had done all those weary centuries ago. In his arms again, as she had always promised him she would be.
The coldest of all the cold ones, the man who was called Vogel – the one who had a warped, blurred vision of Susannah’s music – was coming towards them, and in his hand was the thick, squat instrument that Ahasuerus recognised as being a weapon. He did not stop to think: he pulled Susannah against him and so achingly sweet was it to hold her again, that for a few moments the harsh unknown world grew dim and he was once again in the Temple with Susannah coming through the little secret door.
He turned away from the shouting people and the cold evil-eyed Vogel, and went through the old castle, pausing at the far end of the corridor. Where to hide? Where to take Susannah to be safe?
And then he remembered the dark underground place where Vogel had locked him with the other prisoner, and he remembered that the heavy doors could be opened from without.
The instant that Moira had heard Ahasuerus say ‘Susannah!’ she stopped being frightened, and the minute she looked into the clear grey eyes, a jolt of violent emotion shook her, and kaleidoscopic images tumbled across her inner vision, so brief that she could not be sure she had really seen them, but so vivid that they seared into her mind, like the blinding dazzle of the sun.
A tormented figure nailed to the cross, engulfed in flames and bleeding into the jagged red skies above, the pale smooth skin lacerated and torn to bloodied tatters . . . An agony so great it splintered your mind, and then the dreadful desolation of an underground cavern, lit to macabre life by dozens of flaring torches, peopled with black-clad monks, bending over a stone tomb, their faces avid and gloating in the flickering torchlight . . .
Because the walls of Time are as thin as paper, and if you can control the music you can control Time . . .
Control Time. Because Time’s walls are as thin as paper . . . She had never heard the words before, and n
o one had spoken them aloud. But if they’re right, thought Moira, have I stepped through Time to him, or has he stepped through to me?
They were crossing the castle quadrangle; Ahasuerus was heading for an old, ivy-covered wall, and there was a minute when Moira thought he was about to walk into it. And then she saw that the thick mats of ivy concealed a low arch with an iron gate, and that the gate was open and beyond it was a narrow passage, like a covered walkway. Ahasuerus pulled the ivy aside impatiently and went unhesitatingly through the iron gate.
It was like plunging into a dim underground world. It was not absolutely black in here but it was dark and narrow and rather unpleasant, and there was a dank smell of wet earth and moss. But Moira, recovering her senses a bit by this time, thought they must be in-between an ancient inner defence wall and the new bastion she and Isarel had seen from outside. Whoever lived here wanted to keep Eisenach very safe indeed from the prying world, and whoever that someone was had constructed a second, parallel rampart to encircle the original one. Even in here, it was possible to tell that the new wall was very thick, very dense stone.
Whoever had built the second wall and created this half-secret passageway, had not joined the two walls at the top; Moira glanced up and felt a chill. Far above, meshing forbiddingly against the sky, were thick close coils of black spiked wire. If you were trapped in here, you might just about manage to climb up, making use of the crumbling patches of brick for footholes. It would take a very long time because both walls must be twenty feet high, but if you were agile and if you were driven by fear, you could do it. Yet it would avail you nothing, because you would be torn to bloody tatters trying to get through the barbed wire. And I’m trapped in here with the Devil’s Piper . . .
And then there was a stronger ingress of light, and the passage widened. On the right-hand side – the outer wall side? – Yes! – was another of the thick iron-sheeted gates. Beyond the gate was merely another of the walled tunnels, at right-angles to the one they had just come through. But at the far end were huge double doors, fitted with immense steel bolts. And the doors were open. Ahasuerus sent a quick look behind him, and then went through.
