The Nostradamus prophecies as-1

by Mario Reading

  ‘Are you going to kill them?’

  Bale glanced up. ‘I’m sorry. What did you say?’

  ‘I said are you going to kill them?’

  Bale smiled. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on how they respond to the picture I have created of you dangling from the end of a rope. You’d better hope they understand exactly what I am trying to communicate to them with my little piece of theatre. That they come in of their own free will. That they don’t force me to shout-out one of those stool legs.’

  ‘Why do you do all this?’

  ‘Do all what?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Torment people. Pursue them. Kill them.’

  Bale let out an amused snort. ‘Because it is my sworn duty to do so. It can be of no possible interest to you – or concern – but back in the thirteenth century, my family and the larger brotherhood to which it belongs, was given a task by King Louis IX of France.’ Bale made a reverse cross, which began at his crotch and ended behind his head. ‘I am talking of Saint Louis, Rex Francorum et Rex Christianissimus, Lieutenant of God on Earth.’ He mirrored the sign of the reverse cross with the sign of the six-sided Pentacle, again going from the bottom to the top of his body. ‘The task he gave us was to be ours in perpetuity and consisted, quite simply, of protecting the French people from the machinations of the Devil – or Satan, Azazel, Typhon, Ahriman, Angra Mainyu, Asmodai, Lucifer, Belail, Beelzebub, Iblis, Shaitan, Alichino, Barbariccia, Calcobrina, Caynazzo, Ciriato Sannuto, Dragnignazzo, Farfarello, Graffi cane, Libicocco, Rubicante, Scarmiglione, or whatever else stupid people choose to call him. We have fulfi lled this bond for over nine centuries – often at the cost of our lives. And we shall fulfil it until Ragnarok – until the End of Days and the coming of Vidar of Vali.’

  ‘Why do we need you to protect us?’

  ‘I refuse to answer that question.’

  ‘Why did you kill my brother, then?’

  ‘Whatever gave you the idea that I killed your brother?’

  ‘They found him hanging from a bed frame. You had stabbed him through the cheek with a knife. You had broken his neck.’

  ‘The bit with the knife. The puncture wound. That was me. I admit it. Samana wouldn’t understand that I meant what I said. I needed to show him that I was serious. But your brother killed himself.’

  ‘How? That is impossible.’

  ‘I thought so too. But I asked him something – something that would have led directly to you. I think he realised, in his heart of hearts, that he would eventually talk. Everybody does. The human mind cannot conceive how much punishment the human body can actually take. The mind intervenes considerably before it needs to – it trawls through what it knows and it jumps to conclusions. It is unaware that – unless a vital organ is damaged – nearly all physical functions may eventually be regained. But the thought of all the damage being inflicted acts as a temporary catalyst. The mind abandons hope – and at that particular point and at that point only, death becomes preferable to life. That is the crucial moment for the tormentor – when the fulcrum point has been reached.’

  Bale hunched forward in his enthusiasm. ‘I have made something of a study of this, you know. The greatest torturers – those from the Inquisition, say, like the Hangman of Dreissigacker, or Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger – even Chinese Masters like Zhou Xing and Suo Yuanli, who transacted their business during the reign of Wu Zetian – brought people back from the brink many times over. Here. I can see by your posture that you don’t believe me. Let me read something to you. To pass the time, as it were – for it must be very uncomfortable for you, balancing on that stool. It’s from a cutting I always carry about my person. I have read it to many of my…’ Bale hesitated, as if he been about to utter some infelicity. ‘Shall we call them my clients? It concerns the first man I mentioned to you in my list of torturers – he was called the Hangman of Dreissigacker. A true adept of the art of pain. You will be impressed, I promise.’

  ‘You make me sick. Sick to my heart. I wish that you would kill me now.’

  ‘No. No. Listen to this. It really is quite extraordinary.’

  There was the sound of a piece of paper being straightened. Yola tried to shut her ears to the sound of the eye-man’s voice, but all that she succeeded in doing was to reinforce the thrumming of blood through her head, so that the eye-man’s voice intensified inside her like the clapping of a thousand hands.

  ‘You must try to imagine your way back to the year 1631. To the time of the Catholic Inquisition. Such a leap of the imagination is probably an easy thing for you to do inside that sack, is it not? A pregnant woman has just been accused of witchcraft by the established Church authorities – a body of men with the weight of both religious and secular law on their side. She is to be questioned – a perfectly reasonable course of action to take in the circumstances, you might agree? It is the very first day of her trial. What I am about to read to you now is how the great humanist, B. Emil Konig, describes the formal investigative processes of the Inquisition in his catchily titled Ausgeburten des Menschenwahns im Spiegel der Hexenprozesse und der Aoto da Fes Historische Handsaulen des Aberglaubens, Eine Geschichte des After-Und Aberglaubens bis auf die Gegenwart:

  ‘In the first place, the Hangman bound the woman, who was pregnant and placed her on the rack. Then he racked her till her heart would fain break, but had no compassion. When she did not confess, the torture was repeated. Then the Hangman tied her hands, cut off her hair, poured brandy over her head and burned it. He also placed sulphur in her armpits and burned it. Then her hands were tied behind her and she was hauled up to the ceiling and suddenly dropped down. This hauling up and dropping down was repeated for some hours, until the Hangman and his helpers went to dinner. When they returned, the Master-Hangman tied her feet and hands upon her back; brandy was poured on her back and burned. Then heavy weights were placed on her back and she was pulled up. After this she was again stretched on the rack. A spiked board is placed on her back and she is again hauled up to the ceiling. The Master again ties her feet and hangs on them a block of fifty pounds, which makes her think that her heart will burst. This proved insufficient; therefore the Master unties her feet and fixes her legs in a vice, tightening the jaws until the blood oozes out at the toes. Nor was this sufficient; therefore she was stretched and pinched again in various ways. Now the Hangman of Dreissigacker began the third grade of torture. When he placed her on the bench and put the I shirt on her, he said: ‘I do not take you for one, two, three, not for eight days, nor for a few weeks, but for half a year or a year, for your whole life, until you confess: and if you will not confess, I shall torture you to death and you shall be burned after all.’ The Hangman’s son-in-law then hauled her up to the ceiling by her hands. The Hangman of Dreissigacker whipped her with a horsewhip. She was placed in a vice where she remained for six hours. After that she was again mercilessly horsewhipped. This was all that was done on the first day.’

  The room was silent. Outside, the wind soughed through the trees. An owl called in the far distance and its call was answered from one of the barns, nearer to the house.

  Bale cleared his throat. There was the sound of paper being put away. ‘I misread your brother. I hadn’t realised how devoted he was to you. How fearful he was of losing face in front of his community. Few people, you see, enjoy the benefits of community any more. They only have themselves to think of – or their immediate family.

  Rationalisations are possible. Shortcuts a temptation. But when wider communion is at stake, other factors become apparent. Martyrdom is one option. People are once more willing to die for an ideal. Your brother, in his way, was such an idealist. He used the position I had tied him in – the downward weight of gravity I had engineered – to break his own neck. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was most impressive. By the end of her first day of questioning, this self-evidently innocent woman whose ordeal I have just been describing to you would no doubt have willingly sold her soul to the Devil
for the simple secret of its consummation.’ Bale glanced across at Yola’s standing figure. ‘One man in a million would have been capable of pulling off such a magnificent physical feat as the giving of death to oneself whilst in suspensory bondage. And your brother was such a man. I shall never forget him. Does that answer your question?’

  Yola stood silently on the stool. The angles of her face were distorted by the sack. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

  52

  ‘I’m not leaving you. If you stand up and lean against me, I will try to shunt you on to the horse. When we get to the Maset you can rest. Yola has made soup.’ ‘Damo. You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘I am listening, Alexi. But I don’t think the eye-man is some sort of super-being. The chances are that Gavril fell off his horse unaided – that he struck his head on the rock by accident.’

  ‘He had ligature marks on his hands and feet.’

  ‘He had what?’

  ‘The eye-man had tied him up before smashing in his head. He had hurt him. At least it seemed that way to me. The police will realise what has happened, even if you don’t.’

  ‘Since when have you become such a fan of the police, Alexi?’

  ‘The police deal in facts. Sometimes facts are good. Even I am not so ignorant that I realise that.’ With Sabir’s help, Alexi pulled himself back across the saddle. He rested wearily forward on the horse’s poll. ‘I don’t know what has come over you recently, Damo. The prophecies seem to have hypnotised you. I wish now that I had not found them. Then you would remember your brother and sister again.’

  Sabir led the gelding in the direction of the house. Its hoof made pelting noises in the dew-sodden sand. Apart from that and the scurr of the mosquitoes, the two men were surrounded, like a cloak, by the silence of the marshes.

  Alexi cursed long-sufferingly. He stretched out a hand and touched Sabir lightly on the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Damo. Sorry for what I just said. I’m tired. And I’m in pain. If anything happens to me, of course I want you to know where the prophecies are buried.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, Alexi. You are safe now. And to Hell with the prophecies.’

  Alexi levered himself upright. ‘No. This is important. I was wrong to say those things to you, Damo. I am frightened for Yola. It makes my tongue misbehave.

  There is a gypsy saying: “Everybody sees only his own dish.’’ ’

  ‘So now you’re viewing Yola as a dish?’ Alexi sighed. ‘You are purposely misunderstanding me, Damo. Maybe this is an easier expression for you to understand: “When you are given, eat. When you are beaten, run away.’’ ’

  ‘I get what you are saying, Alexi. I’m not trying to misunderstand you.’

  ‘The thought of bad things happening to her makes me sick with fear, Damo. I even dream of her – of pulling her from evil places. Or from out of mud-holes and quicksands that try to take her back from me. Dreams are important, Damo. As a community, the Manouche have always believed in the cacipen – in the truth of dreams.’

  ‘Nothing bad is going to happen to her.’ ‘Damo. Listen to me. Listen carefully, or I will shit on your head.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. That’s another of your gypsy sayings.’ Alexi’s eyes were focused on the back of Sabir’s neck. He was willing himself not to pass out. ‘To recover the prophecies, you must go to where I found Gavril. It is twenty minutes ride north of the Bac. Just before you get to the Panperdu. There is a gardien ’s cabane there. It, too, faces north, as protection against the blowing of the Mistral. You can’t miss it. It is thatched with la sagno and has a plastered and tiled roof and a chimney-stack. No windows. Just a door. With a hitching rail in front of it and a viewing pole behind it, where the gardiens can climb up and see far across the marshes.’

  ‘Plus, according to you, it will soon become a crime scene. With police seething around everywhere with their sniffer dogs and their metal detectors and their plastic BVDs.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. You don’t need to be seen when you pick up the prophecies.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Hide yourself. Then pretend as if you are at the cabane and turn to look south. You will see a single cypress tree standing out from the nearby wood. The prophecies are buried directly behind that, about two feet from the trunk. Not deep. I was already too weak for that. But deep enough. You will soon see that the earth has been disturbed.’

  ‘They’ll rot. In the first rain. They’ll become illegible. And all this will have been for nothing.’

  ‘No, Damo. They are contained in a bamboo tube. The tube is sealed in the middle with hard wax. Or tree sap. Something like that. Nothing can get in.’

  An unknown horse suddenly whinnied ahead of them, the noise of its cry echoing through the marshes like a lament for the dead. Their own horse was about to answer, but some belated survival instinct in Sabir caused him to clamp the gelding’s nostrils shut just as the animal was taking a preparatory breath. He stood, the gelding’s nose locked beneath his arm, listening.

  ‘I told you.’ Alexi was whispering. ‘It is the eye-man. I told you he tortured Gavril. Got the location of the Maset off him.’

  ‘I can see lights through the trees. Why would the eye-man switch on a bunch of lights? It doesn’t make sense. It’s more likely that Yola has received a visit from some of her girlfriends from the town. Everybody knows about this place – you told me so yourself.’ Despite his apparent confidence, Sabir stripped his shirt and wrapped it tightly around the gelding’s nose. Then he led him on through the willow copse and down towards the rear of the barn. ‘Look. The doors and windows are wide open. The place is lit up like a cathedral. Has Yola gone mad?

  Perhaps she wanted to guide us in?’

  ‘It’s the eye-man. I tell you, Damo. You must listen to me. Don’t go straight towards the lights. You must check the place out from the outside first. Perhaps Yola had time to run away? Either that, or she’s in there with him.’

  Sabir looked up at him. ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘You heard his horse.’

  ‘It could be any horse.’

  ‘There was only Gavril’s and the eye-man’s left. I have Gavril’s. And the third horse is dead. The horses know each other, Damo. They know the sound of each other’s steps. They recognise each other’s whinny. And there aren’t any other horses within half a kilometre of here.’

  Sabir attached the reins to a bush. ‘You’ve convinced me, Alexi. Now wait here and don’t move. I will go and reconnoitre the house.’

  53

  ‘What are you burning? I can smell burning.’ Yola instinctively turned her face away from the light and towards the darkness behind her.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m not setting fire to the house. Or heating up the pinching tongs like the Hangman of Dreissigacker. I’m merely burning cork. To blacken my face.’

  Yola knew that she was perilously close to exhaustion.

  She didn’t know how much longer she could hold her position. ‘I’m going to fall.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘Please. You have to help me.’

  ‘If you ask me again, I will sharpen a broom handle and shove it up your arse. That’ll keep you upright.’

  Yola hung her head. This man was impossible to touch. All her life she had been able to manipulate and thus to dominate, men. Gypsy men were easy game that way. If you said what you had to say with enough conviction, they would usually give in. Their mothers had trained them well. This man was cold, however. Not amenable to the feminine. Yola decided that there must be a very bad woman in his life to make him this way. ‘Why do you hate women?’

  ‘I don’t hate women. I hate everybody who gets in the way of what I am doing.’

  ‘If you have a mother, she must be ashamed of you.’

  ‘Madame, my mother, is very proud of me. She has told me so.’

  ‘Then she must be evil too.’

  For a moment there was dead silence. Then a mo
vement. Yola wondered whether she had finally gone too far. Whether he was coming across to get her.

  But Bale was only stowing away the remainder of the soup in order to give himself a clearer line of movement. ‘If you say more, I shall whip the back of your legs with my belt.’

  ‘Then Alexi and Damo will see you.’

  ‘What do I care. They don’t have guns.’

  ‘But they have knives. Alexi can throw a knife more accurately than any man I know.’

  In the distance a horse whinnied. Bale hesitated for a moment, listening. Then, satisfied that it had been his own horse and that there had been no answering call, he resumed their conversation. ‘He missed Sabir. That time in the clearing.’

  ‘You saw that?’

  ‘I see everything.’

  Yola wondered whether to tell him that Alexi had missed on purpose. But then she thought that it would be a good idea if he continued to underestimate his opponents. Even the smallest thing might be enough to give Alexi or Damo a crucial edge. ‘Why do you want these writings? These prophecies?’

  Bale paused, considering. At first Yola expected him to ignore her question but he suddenly appeared to make up his mind about something. In doing so, however, his tone changed infinitesimally. Thanks to the claustrophobic intensity inside the bread bag, Yola had become morbidly sensitive to each and every nuance in the eye-man’s voice – it was thus at that exact moment that she understood, with total certainty, that he intended to kill her whichever way the handover went.

  ‘I want the writings because they tell of things that are going to happen. Important things. Things that will change the world. The man who wrote them has been proved right many times over. There are codes and secrets hidden within what he writes. My colleagues and I understand how to break these codes. We have been trying to lay our hands on the missing prophecies for centuries. We have followed countless false trails. Finally, thanks to you and your brother, we have found the true one.’