Having allowed her congregation to gaze their full, she turned about to face the altar. Raising her arms again, she cried in a loud voice:
'Oh, mighty Bast, sister of Set and daughter of Lucifer, we pray thee intercede with him—the most beautiful and most gifted of all the Archangels: the Sun of the Morning, the Lord of This World, the Giver of all Power, Wealth and Joy here in the Principality bestowed upon him by the Almighty—that he may grant our desires. In devotion to you, dear Bast, and to Him, I will now receive into myself two libations of the essence that creates flesh.'
Turning about, she clapped her hands three times, then threw herself face down on the curiously-shaped padded stool. Her full breasts fitted into the downward curve on the left side and her buttocks were raised up over the hump on the right. In response to her claps, the curtains bearing the Yang and the Yin again parted. From the left the Abbot emerged and from the right the huge, coal-black negro. Both were now stark naked and erect. Stretching out a hand the Abbess grasped the member of the Abbot and drew him toward her. The negro flung himself upon her from behind.
The silence was suddenly broken by a girl's voice gasping, 'Take me away.'
It came from one of the white-clad novices. Charles swivelled round on his cushions to stare at her. The mask and veil entirely hid her face and hair, but he could have sworn that the voice was Susan's.
Her escort whispered angrily, 'Be silent!'
Again the girl's voice came, louder this time. 'Take me away at once! I refuse to witness this disgusting spectacle.'
As she spoke she had turned towards the stairs. The man grasped her arm to pull her back. In a low, harsh voice he said, 'Shut your eyes if you will. But you must remain till the ceremony is completed.'
When the girl had spoken the second time, Charles could no longer doubt that she really was Susan, and now he recognised the man's voice as that of Captain Hawksbury. Jumping to his feet, he covered in a matter of seconds the short distance that separated him from the arguing couple. Addressing Hawksbury, he whispered fiercely:
'Unhand this lady! I intend to take her out.' 'Hell's bells! What has this to do with you?' Hawksbury exclaimed in surprise.
'No matter,' Charles snarled. 'She is coming with me.'
Hawksbury had let go Susan's arm and turned to face him. Cockfighting and contests between pugilists were the favourite sports of the day, and many a young man of gentle birth prided himself on his performance in the ring. When at Eton Charles had learned to box and had proved himself a formidable opponent against others of his weight. Now, with the precision of a professional, he lashed out and landed a terrific punch under the side of Hawksbury's jaw. The Captain went over backwards, landing with a heavy thud at full length on the floor of the aisle.
All this had happened very quickly, but those nearby among the congregation had heard the fierce whispering and several had called, 'Hush! Hush!' or 'Be quiet there!' in low, angry voices.
As Hawksbury was bowled over, Susan let out a scream. Within a minute everyone present sprang to their feet. The nearest men scrambled over the cushions and ran at Charles. He turned to defend himself and knocked down the first to come within striking distance. The next landed a blow on his ear. A third struck him hard in the stomach, momentarily winding him. Others seized his arms and, strive as he did to free himself, he was soon overpowered.
His mind was in a whirl. What they would do to him he had no idea, but he felt certain that they would regard as an appalling sacrilege his violent interruption of their satanic ceremony at its highest point. It was possible that they might content themselves with expelling him from their Order. But, if the Abbess proved vindictive, she might put some terrible curse on him, perhaps even render him impotent. Between the faces staring at him he glimpsed her now. She had risen from the stool and was standing, still in her splendid nakedness, between the Abbot and the negro. Her dark eyebrows, which met over the bridge of her imperious nose, were drawn down in a ferocious frown, and her mouth was set in grim lines that showed her to be in a most evil temper. Scowling, she began to walk forward.
Charles's mind flashed to Susan. It was she who had been the cause of the ugly scene that had ruined the tribute to the dark gods. He was now powerless to get her away from this company of rakes and licentious women into which, all too late, he now realised he had allowed himself to be drawn by fascination with the occult and his urge to satisfy his lust in exciting surroundings.
Had he been brought up to be religious, he would never have done so, but neither his mother nor 'Uncle' Roger, for whom he had an unbounded admiration, ever went to church. Both of them had told him that they believed every person to have many lives, and that the original teaching of Jesus Christ had been perverted almost from the beginning by the fanatical St. Paul, followed in the early centuries by ignorant and often evil priests.
Susan, he knew, had absorbed the same ideas: a belief that no man could absolve another from his sins, and that the only sin one could commit was deliberately to cause others to be unhappy. Such a belief could explain why she had allowed herself to be brought here, but she could have had no idea of the rituals performed at Satanic ceremonies, otherwise she would not have attempted to leave the temple.
Yet the fact remained that it was her attempt to do so which had led to this abrupt disruption of the night's proceedings; so Charles was filled with fear that the Abbess would regard Susan as the principal offender and vent her wrath even more severely on her than on himself.
He was now powerless to protect her, and it was certain that no-one else there would. She was helpless in their hands, and was incapable of resisting anything they decided to do to her. They were gathered there to slake their lusts on one another. The Abbess's ritual was to have been followed by an orgy. They would not be content to go home without it taking place. The Abbess might decree that Susan was to be stripped, and that any number of men who liked should possess her forcibly. At the awful picture this possibility conjured up, sweat broke out on Charles's forehead.
Suddenly a tall man near the altar cried in a loud voice, 'Unhand that young fellow and let him take the novice hence. 'Tis not fitting that anyone should be brought here who is not a willing participant in our revels.'
'Aye, aye!' several other voices supported him, and a woman's treble called out, 'We want no squeamish young prudes in our joyous company.'
But the majority of those present howled down the protestors, and one man shouted above the rest, 'She'd not be out with our Brother who brought her at this hour of night if she were all that innocent. She'll make good sport for us. Strip her and let's see if she is a virgin.'
'Well said,' yelled another. 'And if she is, let Aboe make a woman of her on the altar.'
Charles's heart lurched in horror. Aboe was the giant negro.
During this altercation the two men holding Charles had released their grip on him. With a sudden plunge forward he broke free. For him to reach Susan and get her away was impossible, but he swiftly backed against a pillar, his fists clenched, ready to fight again.
The Abbess had halted, undecided, half-way up the aisle. A lull in the clamour enabled Charles to make his. voice heard, and he appealed to her:
'Reverend Mother, I pray you let me take her away.
On her account as well as my own, I swear that neither of us will say aught to anyone about what takes place here.'
'No! No!' came an angry chorus, and someone called, 'She should pay for having interfered with our lady Abbess's receiving the libation to Lucifer. Give her to the negro.'
The tall man who had first intervened shouted, ‘I’ll not have it! And you know who I am, Katie O'Brien. 'Twill pay you ill to cross me.'
The Abbess did know. He was a Duke and one of the wealthiest men in England. She was greatly averse to offending him, but loath to disappoint the many opposed to him, so she sought refuge in a subterfuge and cried:
'Brothers and Sisters, we are all equal here. We will put i
t to the vote. All those in favour of letting them go, put up their hands.'
A dozen hands were raised. Then she called, 'Now those who would have her pay a forfeit.'
Over twenty hands went up, a clear majority. 'So be it!' she cried, then beckoned to the negro. 'Gome, Aboe, take her.'
Susan was being held, so could not get away. As the negro took a step forward, she screamed. At that moment the masked Duke sprang out of the crowd and dashed at him. To avoid the attack, Aboe stepped back and cannoned into the pedestal just behind him.
It went over with a crash. The oil that fed the flame in the centre of the chafing dish gushed out across the carpet. An instant later the flames caught the curtain with the Yin upon it. As it flared up the nearest cushion caught, then the flames seemed to leap from it to others.
Pandemonium ensued. Everyone was shouting, 'Fire!' and scrambling through billowing smoke toward the entrance to the temple. Charles did not lose a second. No sooner were the curtains ablaze than he swivelled about, sprang towards Susan, grasped her by the arm and ran with her toward the stairs. Rushing up them, they reached the hall breathless. The footman there stared at them in astonishment. Brushing past him, Charles wrenched open the front door. Within two minutes of the fire having started, he and Susan were out in the street.
Side by side they hurried to Charles's coach. He roused the dozing coachman and told him to drive back to Berkeley Square. Susan was weeping and, getting into the coach, huddled back into a dark corner. But Charles was in no mood to be sympathetic, and demanded angrily:
'Since when have you become fascinated by the mysteries of the occult?'
'I am not,' she sobbed, 'and know nothing of them.'
'How then could you be so great a fool as to let Hawksbury take you to the Hell Fire Club ?'
'I ... I had no notion that is what it was. He simply told me that... that he would like to take me to an amusing party for . . . for an hour or two. He said that it was being given by one of his friends and... and that he would bring me home well before the ball was over.'
'He deceived you, then. But that is no excuse for having gone off alone with a man in the middle of the night. He might well have taken you to his own apartment, or some other place, and there seduced you.'
At that she, too, flared into anger. 'You are right! As I found him attractive, he might have. But had he attempted me, the odds are that I should have prevented him by saying that I had my affairs, and consoled him by half-promises about the future.'
'You were then seriously considering taking him as your lover?'
'Yes; and why not? I told you this morning that, while you sowed your wild oats, I should consider myself free to sow mine if I had a mind to it. But when you said that tonight you intended to disport yourself at a club that provided special diversions, I never dreamt that it would be in such company. Oh, Charles! How could you become a Satanist ? The thought appals me.'
'I am not a Satanist, any more than were those distinguished men who belonged to the original Hell Fire Club. The ceremonies are only a means to render amorous encounters more exciting.'
'So you say. But you cannot deny that the occult enters into it, and that evil powers are invoked to better the prospects of those who attend these meetings.'
For a moment Charles was silent, then he replied, 'I believed it to be hocus-pocus. Although most members know only their introducer, the Abbess knows them all, so it would be easy enough for her to find out the state of their affairs through tittle-tattle and shrewd interpretation of their reactions to remarks made by her when conversing with them. I had no means of judging if her predictions are always right, and assumed that, in many cases, they enabled those to whom she made them to avoid threatened calamities or better their prospects by their own efforts. But tonight has proved me wrong. The powers of evil must have been potent in the temple, otherwise the powers of good would not have intervened to save us by causing that fire.'
'Indeed, you are right. The fire could have been no ordinary accident, occurring as it did at the critical moment. And, apart from having saved us, I do thank the good Lord that Captain Hawksbury took me there tonight, for it brought about your having to sever your connection with that abominable woman.'
Charles nodded. 'Yes. It seems that unwittingly you have played the part of my guardian angel.'
After a moment he added, 'It can as yet be barely two o'clock, so when we get home they will still be dancing; but some of the older guests may have started to leave. It would be awkward to encounter any of them, dressed as we are, so we'll go in by the tradesmen's entrance. Fortunately, I have a key to it. With luck we'll get up the back stairs to our rooms without being seen by any of the servants; but we may run into one of them. If so, we'd best start talking of a masque at Covent Garden, implying that we have returned after spending an hour there with friends.'
'I'd as lief no-one saw me dressed as a novice,' Susan replied, pulling off her coif. 'Let down the window so that I can throw this out, and the robe after it. Then, if I'm seen, I'll be ordinarily dressed.'
While Charles did as she asked, he said quickly. 'Of course. What a fool I am to have supposed that Hawksbury would have risked suggesting you should rid yourself of your dress and petticoats in the ladies' room, as did the other women before putting on their nuns' robes. I'll have to keep mine on, though, for I had to leave my coat, waistcoat and breeches with my cloak in the men's closet.'
'So you had made ready for the fray,' Susan remarked acidly. Then she went on, 'If we do meet any of the servants, they'll not think it so strange that you have exchanged your cloak for a friar's robe as they would if they saw me dressed to take vows in a convent.'
As she spoke, she was wriggling out of her white novice's attire, and she shivered from the blast of the chilly air now coming through the open window. Up till that moment her mind had been so agitated that she had not realised that she had left her furlined cloak behind. Now she spoke of her loss with bitter anger, wondering how she could possibly explain its disappearance to Georgina. But when she had thrown her white garments out of the window and Charles had pulled it up again, he promised to go out before midday and buy a similar robe for her.
At that she said in a calmer voice, 'Charles, it would be most generous of you to do so, since 'tis no fault of yours that I had to abandon such an expensive garment. I'll admit now that I was plaguey foolish to let Captain Hawksbury take me off on my own; and, but for your presence in that house, God alone knows what might have befallen me.'
'Then let us have no more recriminations, and say no more about it,' he replied. Putting his arm about her, he kissed her gently and they completed their drive back to Berkeley Square in silence.
On entering the square, Charles told his coachman to drive round the corner into Bruton Street. Before handing Susan out, he took three guineas from his purse, gave them to the man and said:
'Here, Jennings, is money enough to keep your mouth busy for a long time with good ale; so you'll not open it to mention to anyone that Miss Brook and I tonight attended a masquerade. Is that understood ?'
The man gave a broad grin. 'Indeed it is, m' lord, and I thank 'e for this generous present. Hope be I'll drive you and the young mistress to enjoy many a good lark, and never a word will pass me lips 'bout it.'
Confident that the man would not now tell his fellow servants about the night's doings, Charles led Susan through the mews to the entrance at the back of the mansion. Unlocking the door, he opened it cautiously and peered inside. No-one was about, so he whispered to her to follow him in, and together they tiptoed up the back stairs. On the landing that gave on to their bedrooms, he said in a low voice
‘It will take me only a few minutes to put on suitable clothes, but longer for you to redo your hair, so when I'm dressed I'll come for you; then we'll go down together as though we had been sitting out a dance.'
Five minutes later he joined her in her bedroom and sat in a chair until she had fi
nished making herself presentable.
When she had done, she turned to him and said:
'Dearest Charles. On the latter part of our drive home I did some serious thinking. That I should have caused the Hell Fire Club to be barred to you in future I have no regrets. But I realise that, as a man, you must satisfy your passions and, as I told you this morning, I now feel a similar urge. Even if we refrain from telling each other of those with whom we indulge ourselves, neither of us can escape thinking of the other in such situations, and that will cause misery to us both. Rather than we should suffer that, I have changed my mind about insisting that I should enjoy another year of freedom to flirt with whom I will. Instead I have decided to accept your proposal that we should marry in the Spring.'
Sadly Charles shook his head. 'Alas, my love. I would we could, but it is now too late. Come Spring, I shall no longer be in England.'
Her eyes widened. 'Charles, what. . . whatever do you mean?'
His face suddenly became grim. 'You must have heard the taunt that Hawksbury flung at me after he had pushed me over into the gutter. He as good as called me coward, because while claiming to be a man well versed in the use of weapons, I was skulking in England instead of going to the war against our enemies in the Peninsula. The round of easy pleasures here have so filled my mind, that such a thought had never before entered it. But he was right. It is my intention, no later than this coming afternoon, to see my trustees and have them purchase for me a commission in the Guards.'
The Irish Witch rb-11 Page 5
