(1992) Prophecy

by Peter James

  ‘This book?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? What is it?’ There was a typed card in a mounting on the outside of the cabinet. It said: Maleficarium. c.1650 AD.

  ‘An instruction manual of satanic rituals. It’s supposed to be written on human skin.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘That’s what the family has always believed. I’ve no idea whether it’s true.’

  She leaned forward with morbid interest. It was as beautifully crafted as it was hideous. She stared at the grain of the pages, tiny criss-cross lines; the colour was a repugnant dark brown. She peered closer, revulsion spreading through her. Frannie had seen preserved human skin on mummies and on tribal artefacts. It always looked leathery, like this. ‘Have you ever had anyone test it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could get it done for you.’

  There was an expression of wariness on his face. ‘I’m not sure I really want to know. It’s a bloody evil thing whatever it is. I’ve never even touched it and I don’t think I want to.’

  ‘What’s the history behind it?’

  ‘It was written by one of my ancestors – the second Marquess.’ He nodded at the portrait.

  ‘That’s him?’

  ‘Yes. Lord Francis Halkin.’

  ‘Is he the only Marquess who’s not buried in your family chapel?’

  He frowned. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Edward told me when he was showing me the chapel.’

  His expression darkened. ‘He was a fairly evil man by all accounts.’ He eyed the book uncomfortably. ‘He was into witchcraft. Black magic. A whole raft of things. He was a sort of follower of Gilles de Rais.’

  ‘I know the name. Who was he?’

  ‘A rather unsavoury Frenchman who liked to have sex with small boys and cut their throats during the act.’

  Oliver moved and as his shadow slipped away from the book, the effect made it appear for a moment as if the skin were breathing, and Frannie turned away also, unsettled, not wanting to stand near the cabinet any more. A floorboard creaked as her weight shifted.

  He dug his hands in his pockets. The sunlight in the room seemed to be incongruous. She followed him as he walked slowly on. ‘Gilles de Rais is reputed to have killed over nine hundred boys – the world’s worst ever serial killer. I don’t know how many the second Marquess killed. Nor where he got his writing-paper from.’ He stopped and turned towards her. ‘I can never take the notion of aristocracy too seriously. None of us are descended from terribly nice people.’

  ‘There are plenty of ordinary people who are not very nice either,’ Frannie said. ‘Plenty of ordinary people commit evil acts and atrocities. You should see some of the weapons I’ve been sorting through at the Museum. Things like beautifully jewelled Indian knuckledusters with attachments for tearing ears off. Does tearing people’s ears off advance mankind?’

  ‘If it stops them being able to wear Walkmans it does.’

  She chuckled, then looked back at the display case. ‘Why do you keep the book? Why don’t you sell it to a museum?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s part of the house’s heritage, whether I like it or not. There are a lot of other things here that I’m not wild about. I’d love to flog some of the dreary old portraits and buy some modern pieces, help encourage our young artists. But people want to see the family’s history hanging on these walls.’ He walked on again. ‘The book pulls a few visitors – we get some of these odd occult characters travelling hundreds of miles to have a gawp – it’s mentioned in quite a lot of reference works. I get two or three letters a year from the born-again brigade telling me to burn it.’

  Leaving the gallery, they walked through a doorway at the end and into a dining-room. Places were laid for an elaborate dinner on the round mahogany table.

  ‘This is where my ancestors would have intimate dinners.’

  ‘Intimate dinners for sixteen?’ She’d counted the places around the table.

  ‘The table can be extended or contracted.’

  A single picture hung on each of the four walls. The one that drew Frannie was a portrait of a man with a strong family likeness to the second Marquess. His face was slightly plumper, but there was the same hard arrogance and a look of fox-like cunning.

  ‘That’s the third Marquess,’ Oliver said. ‘Lord Thomas. He shopped his older brother, the second Marquess, to Cromwell, so he could inherit the title.’

  Frannie could see the smugness in the man’s face, and could well believe what Oliver had just said.

  ‘It was during the Civil War. The family used to have a house in London – later destroyed in the Great Fire. There was a secret passage beneath it down to the Thames and the second Marquess allowed the Royalists to use it as a safe house in exchange for a supply of boys, the story goes.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Oliver’s eyes roved around the room. ‘He was hot-collared.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The same thing that happened to Edward the Second. A red-hot poker pushed up his backside. It used to be a good way to murder someone – didn’t leave any visible marks.’

  Frannie squirmed. She was glad she could see no family resemblance to the portrait in Oliver’s face. She looked at the round table again, cordoned by crimson rope to prevent visitors from helping themselves to the silverware or the cutlery. ‘Do you ever use this room?’

  ‘Very occasionally. There was a time when we did period banquets for American tourists.’

  ‘Could we eat here tonight?’ she said mischievously.

  He looked surprised. ‘You’d like to?’

  ‘I think it would be amazing!’

  He caught her mood. ‘We could, I suppose!’

  ‘Don’t you think the house would like it – for it to be used again.’

  He knelt down and crawled under the table. ‘I’m not sure I can remember how to make it smaller.’

  Frannie could see the family crest was embossed on the silver cruets, and on the handles of the cutlery. Much larger, in the centre of each plate, the Halkin motto was clearly legible in gold lettering inside the scroll. Non omnis moriar.

  The words gave her the same feeling of apprehension she had felt earlier when she had read them above the front door. I shall not altogether die. From Horace. She had come across the quotation originally when she had studied Horace at school. But there was somewhere since. She read them again. It was there, on the edge of her mind, like a child taunting her then dodging behind a tree.

  Like Edward. She shuddered as she suddenly thought of his strange question when he had been holding the fossil. Do you think the dead always stay dead, Frannie?

  Non omnis moriar. She repeated the Latin silently to herself, then the translation, staring into the steely eyes of the third Marquess, as if he might help jog her memory. As if he might explain why the words made her feel so deeply and unaccountably afraid.

  Spoons of flame hovered unsteadily above the twin silver candelabra; they fluttered in a draught and a hundred reflections shimmied in unison on the polished facets of the crystal goblets.

  Frannie had her pullover on over her shirt, but still felt the dewy chill of the night air. Oliver sat opposite her across the mahogany table, which he had reduced right down in size. He was looking relaxed, wearing a denim shirt with the cuffs rolled back, and cradling his glass in his hands. His hair had slid forwards either side of his parting and rested across both temples, but he made no attempt to push it back. There was a mottling around the neck of the bottle on the table and the red of the wine in the glasses was dulled with a faint tinge of brown. The label said: Gevrey-Chambertin, 1971. Steam curled from the thick fillet steaks on their plates.

  Frannie helped herself to mushrooms, a large tomato and tiny new potatoes from the foil pack in which they had brought the food. ‘Are there any ghosts here?’

  His mouth broadened into a warm grin and the blue of his eyes deepened in the candlelight. ‘I don’t
think so.’

  ‘I thought all old houses had ghosts.’

  ‘All old families have skeletons in their closets, but they don’t all rattle and wail in the middle of the night.’ He cut a piece of his steak. It was beautifully cooked, well done outside, pink inside, the way she liked them.

  Frannie cut into hers, watching the band of juice trickle out in the wake of her knife. The sight made her feel queasy, reminding her of the blood from the boy’s fingers. Her eyes went warily up to the third Marquess. She heard the sigh of a gust of wind outside, and the hiss of leaves. The window behind the drawn curtain was open slightly, and rattled in the draught.

  She looked up at the unlit chandelier for the first time. The candlelight was reflected in its tear-drop crystals. The flames were burning upright again now; tiny ripples of heat warming the air above them. ‘How did your wife die?’ At last, she’d said it.

  Oliver was silent for some moments before replying, then leaned forward as a sudden weariness seemed to sap him, and rested his elbows on the table. He interlinked his fingers beneath his chin. ‘I – it was about three and a half years ago.’ He gently tapped the base of his throat with his thumbs. ‘I was taking Edward to meet Sarah for lunch – it was her birthday and we were having a day in London. She’d gone to have her hair done. We saw her on the other side of the road, and she started to cross towards us. A van being chased by the police jumped the lights and hit her.’

  ‘God!’

  ‘It carried her across the road and pushed her through the plate-glass window of a shop.’

  Frannie looked at him in horror. ‘You saw it happen? Both of you?’

  He grimaced.

  ‘Three and a half years ago?’ she said, her voice trembling.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whereabouts did it happen?’ she felt her whole body clenching.

  ‘In the City. I had to go to a meeting and took Edward with me into the office. We had a bit of time after it finished, before Sarah arrived, so I thought I’d show Edward the Guildhall. He was in a bit of a grumpy mood because I’d promised to take him to Hamleys and hadn’t managed it. We had a drink in a café, then, as we came out into Poultry, we saw Sarah on the other side of the road. I remember not recognizing her at first because she’d had her hair cut short. She started to cross the road and a van being chased by the police jumped the lights and pushed her through a shop window. She was decapitated.’

  ‘God, I’m sorry.’

  He studied his wine and said nothing.

  Frannie felt a strange and disorienting mixture of shock and surprise. ‘Was it a bookshop?’ she asked, quietly.

  He looked at her oddly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Edward had a chocolate milkshake and you had an espresso?’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly –’ his face darkened into a deep frown. ‘Yes, actually, I think –’ He leaned back. ‘How on earth do you know that?’

  ‘I was the girl who served you. It was my parents’ café.’

  There was a long silence. Oliver shook his head in disbelief.

  Then a sudden cold draught of air struck Frannie in the face. The flames on the candle heeled over sharply, almost tugging free of the wicks. A shadow moved behind Oliver. It was the door opening. Frannie pressed her nails into the palms of her hands. Oliver turned his head, following her stare.

  Edward stood in the doorway in a woollen dressing-gown and corduroy slippers. ‘Daddy, I heard a noise in the attic.’

  Warm blood spread like central heating through her veins as her fear subsided. She slackened her clenched fingers, breathing out, almost exhilarated in her release, smiling at Edward as he came closer across the room. Oliver stood and put his arm protectively around the boy. ‘Did you? Probably squirrels. I’ll get someone to set some traps and put down some poison.’

  Frannie continued to smile at Edward but there was barely any hint of recognition in his expression. He eyed their plates. ‘Can I have some pudding?’

  Oliver tousled his son’s hair. ‘You can have some tomorrow. Come on, I’ll take you back to bed. Say goodnight to Frannie.’

  The boy mumbled, ‘Gnightfrannie,’ then turned.

  Oliver winked at her. ‘Couple of minutes,’ he said.

  As they walked off, Edward grunted something she did not catch; their voices faded and their silhouettes became part of the darkness that stretched out into the corridor beyond the door. She looked back down at her steak which she had hardly touched and cut another piece, the silence amplifying the sound of her knife on the china. She was thinking back three and a half years, surprised she could remember so clearly what the man had ordered for the boy and himself. Thinking about the coincidence; or coincidences.

  She drank some more wine and caught the arrogant gaze of the third Marquess on the wall. She became self-conscious, unable to dismiss the sensation she was being watched by the face in the portrait.

  The horror of the death of Oliver’s wife played on her mind. She could remember that scene clearly, also. And the stories that came back to her afterwards from other shopkeepers, from her parents. How the woman’s head had been severed cleanly by the plate-glass and had rolled to the other end of the shop. How every single book in the shop had had to be thrown away because they had all been sprayed with blood.

  She felt a strange mixture of elation and fear. As if there was some curious force of destiny at work and she was part of its master plan. But there was something that Oliver knew and was holding back. Had he known that they had met before? Did he have some reason for contacting her? For bringing her here?

  The flames of the candles heeled again as another gust blew outside. There was a sharp crack behind her like a foot on a floorboard but she did not want the Marquess on the wall to see that she was nervous. Houses creaked and cracked all the time. The change of temperature from day to night. Contraction and expansion. The British Museum made the same sounds. She had been on her own many times down in its vaults, surrounded by mummies and unopened coffins; alone in crypts. It wasn’t the dead who frightened her, it was the living. She was not afraid of ghosts.

  She knew there was no one in the room; the door behind her was closed and she could see through into the darkness beyond the one in front. But when something touched the back of her head, she jumped, her larynx throttling the scream before it escaped. The same something flicked her cheek. Then her ear. A shadow flitted in front of her eyes. A moth, swooping in an uneven parabola in front of her. Its shadow strobed across the table.

  Just as her breathing had calmed, the bang right behind her almost shook Frannie off her chair and on to the floor.

  She turned in terror. The wall was blank; where there’d been a likeness of a white-faced girl from the past, there was now just a large dark rectangle and a crude hook in its midst. The picture of the girl lay face down on the floor, its frame split by the impact, like broken bones. She heard a deep hiss and the curtains were sucked into the window. Then both candles blew out, and the door slammed shut.

  ‘Frannie?’ Oliver’s voice.

  She opened her mouth and nothing came out. She heard a sharp click. Light filled the room and she blinked. Oliver looked anxiously at her, then beyond at the fallen picture. ‘What’s happened? You OK?’ He walked over to the picture, knelt down and held up two strands of wire. ‘Snapped,’ he said. ‘Bloody flimsy bit of wire whoever did this. Could have injured someone.’

  ‘It nearly gave me a heart attack!’

  His eyes moved to each of the remaining pictures in turn, giving each a stern appraisal. ‘I apologize for Edward – he normally sleeps OK.’

  ‘Probably still shaken by the accident on the speedboat – or Dominic’s fingers – I should think it would give any child nightmares.’

  His face relaxed a little. ‘You look as white as a sheet.’

  ‘The painting gave me a fright!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ His eyes focused intently on hers and he smiled. ‘So. Not such strangers after all!’

&nbs
p; Frannie shrugged. ‘I had the feeling at King’s Cross that I’d seen you before. It’s been niggling me.’

  ‘Do you often work in the café?’

  ‘All the time when I was a kid, in the holidays, and when I was at university. My dad used to pay me, which was useful. But I haven’t in the new café. The lease ran out and they were forced to move by developers a couple of years ago.’ She looked at him quizzically.

  He took a step towards her. ‘I – I’m really happy that you’re here.’

  ‘In spite of our – coincidence?’

  He slipped his hands around her waist and she felt the gentle grip of his strong fingers. He tilted his head back a few inches. His hair had slid further down over his temples and the crystals of light from the chandelier danced in his eyes. ‘Maybe you’re going to change my luck.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  They held each other’s gaze and slowly their faces moved closer. Their lips dusted each other’s lightly, tentatively, then parted. They stared, searchingly, into each other’s eyes, then kissed again. She was surprised how soft and tender his lips were, how gently his mouth moved. His fingers pressed harder, held her more firmly, tracing the contours of her back, and she felt safe now, her fears melting, replaced by an intense yearning. She kissed him ferociously, pushing her fingers through his soft hair, breathing in the light fragrance of his skin, feeling the strength of his body.

  Their mouths separated again and they eyed each other once more. Oliver cupped her face in his hands and kissed each of her eyelids lightly, then looked into her eyes, with hope and with fondness. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A sharp click woke Frannie with a start from a confusing dream. It sounded like a machine being switched off, or a drawer being shut. She sat up, confused, taking a moment to remember where she was. Then she breathed out and sank back against the pillow, held herself still, trying not to wake Oliver, who was sleeping deeply beside her. The stump of a candle burned unsteadily beyond him. Outside, the hoot of an owl probed the darkness.