Blood Ritual

by Sarah Rayne

  She moved resolutely along the cold passage, feeling as she went the despair and the bewildered agony of distorted minds.

  Jagged lightning cleaving your mind, showing you the pouring rivers of silken blood. . . Oh yes, I know about that.

  She forced down the clustering images. When you were eight, ten, you believed in monsters and mutants and lurching demons. But when you were grown up, you knew that such things did not exist.

  Yes, but this is CrnPrag, said her mind. This is Stefan Bathory’s nightmare mansion, where he watches human minds disintegrate. I mustn’t think like that. It’s a very admirable thing, the care of the insane. And with the thought, came another: I suppose they are lunatics in those cells, are they? Surely no sane creature would howl and screech like that?

  But supposing you were very sane indeed but you were locked away, put in a tiny, windowless cell for the rest of your life. Wouldn’t you scream until your throat bled, wouldn’t you hammer on the door until your nails were in bloody tatters? Was Pietro behind one of those barred doors, screaming to be let out?

  The great old house was waking in earnest now; doors were opening and closing, there was the chink of crockery somewhere, and the murmur of voices.

  On the left was a small low door that looked as if it might be a housemaid’s cupboard or a broom closet. Was it? Yes. Inside was a tiny slit of a room, barely six feet square, with a small brown earthenware sink and a shelf holding mops and pails and polishing cloths. There was a cupboard with tubs of industrial polish on the floor and tins of scouring powders. Could she hide here until night fell and she could search the mansion with more safety? It would be cold and uncomfortable and quite dreadfully tedious. But she would be able to hear anyone approaching along the stone passage, and she would be able to squeeze into the cupboard easily enough if that happened. She had her wristwatch to count the hours and she was used to long hours of prayer and contemplation now. There would be no food but she was accustomed to fasting as well. And there would be water from the cold tap. She supposed she could even use the sink as a loo if she absolutely had to. It would not be very nice but Catherine was beyond caring about being fastidious.

  She pulled the door shut and settled down to her long vigil in the small bare room that smelt of scouring powders and tins of liquid polish and lye soap.

  The convent in Vienna had smelt of scouring powder and liquid polish and lye soap as well. Buildings, especially old buildings, nearly always had individual scents, of substances that had soaked into their walls and their fabrics over the ages. Individual scents had memories. Drifting lavender and woodsmoke and pot-pourri would always evoke Varanno for Catherine: the good side of Varanno that meant home and security; huge fires and charades in winter; picnics and long walks in summer. Burning cloth and the stench of dried blood meant Varanno’s dark underside: the disused wash-house with the immense rusting boilers in Varanno’s gardens, where she had stolen out in those cold, bleak dawns, sick and shivering with self-disgust. At the beginning, when Catherine was small, when they were both small, Elizabeth had smelt of spring gardens and pine forests. On her wedding night with Ferencz, there had been the drift of lovely old-fashioned perfume – patchouli?

  But Elizabeth’s shade brought with it the reek of fear and pain now. Squelched bones and bloodied rags. Clotted gore beneath your fingernails that you had to scrub for ages to get clean. Had Elizabeth scrubbed her own skin clean after the rituals, or had Dorko and Illona done it for her? Or had she simply lain uncaring, the dried blood caking her skin? Catherine pushed the thought down.

  The scents in Reverend Mother’s study that first day had reminded her of Franz-Josef’s library. Leather and beeswax. Good strong scents that Catherine associated with tranquillity and study. She had felt the leather-scented calm lay a gentle hand over her heart and she had felt a tiny unfurling of hope. I believe that inside this place I could study and pray and forget. I could atone.

  Reverend Mother had regarded her very incisively indeed at that first interview. She was pale in the way that elderly people sometimes become pale, with a thin, polished look to her skin. But her eyes were dark and intelligent and ruthless in the way that the eyes of all true religeuses are ruthless; Catherine felt them searching her mind. Seeing what lay coiled in its dark recesses? Please, no.

  ‘So you wish to give your life to God, do you, my dear?’ They spoke in French, which was Reverend Mother’s native language, and in which Catherine was fairly fluent.

  There had been no irony in the elderly nun’s voice, but Catherine had had to force herself to meet the cool regard. Because the real irony lay in the fact that she did truly wish to give her life to God. She wished to do it in exchange for all those lives she had taken – Elizabeth’s victims, Elizabeth’s rituals, but it was my hand that held the knife – and because it had seemed an honest and practical exchange.

  She was aware that she was bargaining again: let me go unpunished for all those killings, God – eight was it? ten? – let me escape justice now, and I will devote my life to other people. I will renounce the world and spend my life helping the less fortunate. She knew of the work done by the sisters of St Luke’s. How they taught the blind and the deaf; how they helped those paralysed by strokes or mutilated by road accidents to re-enter the world. Down-to-earth, valuable work. Wouldn’t it be a better exchange, wouldn’t it be a more worthwhile exchange than giving herself up to justice, standing trial, almost certainly being shut away in a cell for most of her life? This was very specious arguing, of course; it was probably what had once been called casuistry, but Catherine thought there was a grain of merit in it.

  Let the convent take me, she thought, her eyes fixed on Reverend Mother’s enigmatic features. Let them accept me and I will submit docilely and willingly to the cloisters and the restrictions. I will embrace poverty and obedience unquestioning. And celibacy? Celibacy would be the easiest part. After Pietro there would never be anyone else.

  She answered Reverend Mother’s questions as honestly and as fully as possible. ‘It is not a sudden decision, Reverend Mother,’ she said, her eyes on the pale face with its white coif. ‘And I do not know when it was born.’

  Reverend Mother said, ‘Who knows when any idea, any thought is born? One day one looks into the mind and there it is, neatly arranged.’

  ‘Yes.’ This was exactly how it had been. Without realising it, the notion had been forming, accreting layers, like a speck inside an oyster accretes layers until it becomes a pearl.

  Catherine said, ‘I believe that I have a true vocation.’

  Had it sounded false? But it had not been. Catherine had felt the reaching out of something – something warm and immense and understanding. A huge encompassing love that you could trust for ever more, and that would never betray you. Beneath are the Everlasting Arms. . .

  Let her believe me. She had wanted to fling herself at Reverend Mother’s feet and beg to be taken into this sanctuary. This ancient, quiet House of God where one might work and study and where one might, just a very little, make reparation for the terrible things done on those nights when Elizabeth’s spirit and Elizabeth’s dark and bloody presence had filled up one’s mind.

  It had not been an instant thing, of course. These had been discussions, consultations. A course of rather formal interviews with Reverend Mother and the Bishop and several of St Luke’s senior nuns. Sessions with Sister Marie-Claire who was in charge of the postulants and the novices.

  And there had been the discussions with the Family – yes, those had been the hardest of all, because the Family had not understood. Bianca had stormed at her, angry and hurt. Bianca’s hurt had been the hardest thing to bare. She cares about me after all, Catherine had thought in surprise.

  Stefan and the aunts and uncles had come to Varanno and there had been tempestuous arguments. The cousins had stared at her and whispered to one another. Bianca had railed at Franz-Josef, her eyes glittering slits of colour in her white face.

  ‘You have
lost a son already!’ Bianca had cried. ‘Will you lose a daughter as well! Stop her! Refuse the dowry!’

  ‘They won’t take her without the dowry.’ That had been Ladislas, of course. Ladislas would never understand that there were occasions where money did not matter and there were people in the world to whom it was unimportant. Reverend Mother’s serene pale face swam into her vision briefly. She had a sudden image of Reverend Mother here at Varanno, standing at her side, helping her to fight them. It was unexpectedly strengthening.

  But the real strength had come from a wholly unforeseen quarter.

  Pietro.

  He had come quite quietly and quite unassumingly into the room but every head had instantly turned to him, and Catherine had felt such a stinging of love that for a moment the warm book-lined room tilted and blurred. She fought for calm, because it was unthinkable that any of them should sense her emotions, and she beat down the delight and the singing exhilaration that Pietro had come back. Don’t let the memories surface.

  He stood in the doorway looking at her, and despite her resolve, Catherine felt her body ache with the remembered longing. And he still shines, she thought. Not so brilliantly as I remember – did I do that to him? – but he can still light up the room. He’s incandescent. They’re all looking at him. In a minute I shall have to say something. I shall have to be ordinary and calm. I can’t do it, thought Catherine in sudden panic.

  And then her father dismissed the others with one of his peremptory gestures, and they went from the room at once, obedient to his careless authority, leaving her alone with Pietro. A couple of the aunts embraced her, one of them weeping a little and the uncles and the cousins were bluff and embarrassed. Ladislas was the last to leave; he looked at Pietro for a long moment, his eyes unreadable but his lips thinned into cold dislike. Catherine thought with sudden irrelevance that people often spoke about eyes being the mirrors of the soul, but in fact it was people’s mouths who more often gave them away.

  And now I’m alone with him, and I can’t think what to say, and I don’t know if I can face him . . . Panic started to uncoil again, and then Pietro said, gently. ‘Katerina,’ and held out his arms and Catherine, who had faced the Family stony-faced and dry-eyed, gave a sob and ran straight into them.

  There was still the scent of clean hair and warm masculinity, and there was still the indefinable essence that was Pietro and no one else. Catherine felt his arms tighten and she felt her body’s shameful response and then his response also, and she rejoiced. The months and the years and the hours of struggling to forget might as well not have happened.

  At last he held her away from him, and looked at her very searchingly. For the first time, Catherine saw that he was thinner; there were hollows under his cheekbones that had not been there three years ago, and his eyes had the dark haunted look she had seen that night in Elizabeth’s rose garden. So Elizabeth haunts him as well . . . The thought formed unbidden, and Catherine felt a tug of disquiet.

  Pietro said, very gently, ‘So at last you are going away from Varanno.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ He studied her for a moment, and then said, ‘Do you remember how I said you should?’

  Do you remember . . . Impossible to say: oh yes, my dear lost love. I remember everything, every syllable, every sigh, every heartbeat . . .

  Catherine said, in a determinedly light voice, ‘I daresay this wasn’t quite what you had in mind, however.’

  ‘It seems to me a waste,’ said Pietro, his eyes still on her. ‘But if it is what you want then you should do it. Don’t let them talk you out of it. They will try to, you know.’

  ‘They have tried to.’

  ‘Yes, they hate to let anyone go,’ he said, and although he spoke softly, there was an edge to his voice that made Catherine look up. But he smiled, and although it was not quite the old reckless Pietro, it was close enough.

  She said, ‘My father seemed to understand.’

  ‘He always did,’ said Pietro, half to himself. ‘He’s a wily old fox, but he understands a great many things. Far more than either of us realise.’ And then, as if mentally shaking himself, ‘Has it to be that particular convent, Katerina?’

  ‘I feel comfortable there. And it does good work – very rewarding.’ Catherine drew breath to ask what was remarkable about the Vienna Convent, when a soft voice from the doorway said, ‘Pietro is thinking that that particular House has a link with our family, Cat.’ Catherine jumped, and Franz-Josef came back into the room, and seated himself behind his desk, regarding them both. ‘Well. Pietro? That was what you were about to say, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pietro, after a moment.

  ‘What kind of link?’

  ‘A very tenuous one. I believe that an ancestor stayed there,’ said Franz-Josef, off-handedly. ‘But it was many many years ago, and I don’t know the details.’ He looked at her. ‘You stood up to them well, Cat,’ he said, unexpectedly. ‘And you must do what you must do, my dear.’

  ‘You’re not going to stop me?’

  ‘No. Any more than I tried to stop Pietro when he went to Paris.’ He looked at Pietro. ‘There is no reason why Cat won’t be perfectly safe in the Vienna Convent,’ he said and Catherine had the impression that he was communicating with Pietro on a level that somehow transcended ordinary speech. And then his thin face relaxed into the rare sweet smile. ‘I am glad you came when I asked, Pietro,’ he said.

  Catherine knew that now the decision was made – he’ll let me go! – she should ask about Pietro’s life in Paris and express interest in his work. Was other people’s money still as dull to him? What was his house like and where in Paris was it? The brief conventional letters had said little and told nothing.

  But Catherine could not talk to Pietro – Pietro whose mouth had tasted of moonlight and sinless passion that night – as if they were nothing more than acquaintances.

  But he made it all right. He held out his hands again, and said. ‘Pray for me when you’re in your convent, Katerina?’ The old grin flared, and a painful spasm twisted Catherine’s heart.

  ‘Of course.’

  He had taken her face in his hands then, exactly as he had done on that long-ago night – Elizabeth’s rose-garden, oh God let me stop remembering! – and he had traced her features as if he could absorb her face through his fingertips. ‘Pray for me, Katerina,’ he said again, only now he was completely serious.

  After he had gone, she had faced them all easily and she had been cool and resolute and completely immoveable. It was only later that she had wept for Pietro and for herself and for the burden she was about to shoulder.

  Reparation. Reparation without the luxury of confession. She could never share her terrible secret with another soul, and she could never tell anyone about her dark alter ego who had prowled the night, butchering women for their blood.

  Except for God. She prayed that God would understand.

  And in the beginning it had seemed as if it might work. She had felt the soft folds of the religious life close about her, and for a blessed time she had sunk into the quiet, ordered days. Prayer and contemplation and study. Understanding and taking part in the great religious year which turned like a wheel, and which had the feast days and the festivals dotted along its axis. Advent with its promise and its hope; Passiontide with its sombre message. Epiphany and All Souls. Each with its own special meaning. Each celebrated in its own particular way. Purple vestments for Lent and dazzling white for Easter. The triumphal Ascension Thursday forty days afterwards: the convent had a particularly good reproduction of Corregio’s marvellous inspired painting. And the remarkable ‘Lauda Sion Salvatorem’ and ‘Pange Lingua’ sung at Corpus Christi. Catherine had found a balm and a healing in the choral masses, in the beautiful plainchant that the nuns sometimes sung and in the soaring works of Bach and Handel.

  There had been periods of immensely hard work, struggling to meet the demands of the conventual day: rising at five in winter and four in summ
er; keeping the hours of silence and fasting; learning the work in the infirmary. That had been an atoning if ever anything had. Changing the beds and the clothes of the incontinent. Helping to feed those who could not feed themselves: spooning soup and milk puddings into the dribbling mouths of those distorted by paralysis. Taking her turn in the sculleries and in the laundry.

  ‘We do not send our washing out for others to deal with,’ said Sister Clothilde, who was the convent’s prioress.

  ‘We cannot afford laundry bills,’ said Sister Thérèse, the convent’s treasurer, who was not very much older than Catherine, but who had been in St Luke’s since she was seventeen.

  ‘And it is not beneath any of us to scrub and boil.’

  But there was a purging in working in the wash-room with its stone floor and the huge copper boilers, and there was a hard, strong satisfaction in emptying pans and bottles and in sluicing floors clean of vomit and blood. She had tried to be gentle with the more helpless patients.

  I am atoning. A very little, but I feel it. The scales have tipped just a few degrees back in my favour.

  There had been periods of study; Reverend Mother encouraged the nuns to read the great literature of the world, to discuss Voltaire and Goethe and Dostoevsky, and the long common room where the nuns gathered during recreation hour after supper had shelves containing not only the lives of saints and works of the great religious men and women, but more worldly works as well.

  ‘In so many different languages,’ sighed some of the novices, struggling with unfamiliar English and French.

  But Catherine, brought up in the Family’s scholarly tradition, was fluent not only in French and German, but also in Polish and English. Many of the books had been in Franz-Josef’s study, but others had not. She read voraciously and with delight, barely noticing the change from French to German to English and back to French. With Sister Marie-Claire’s approval, she and Sister Thérèse began to make notes for a belles-lettres about the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, for whom Sister Thérèse was named.