The Devil Rides Out (48 page)

He, too, could only remember episodes from that wild journey; an unendurable weariness had pressed upon him once they had boarded the plane and left Paris. Even
his
powers of endurance had failed at last and he had slept during the greater part of their fourteen hundred mile flight. He was still sleepy now and only half awake as that unknown demon driver, who had hurried them with few words into the rickety Ford, crouched over his wheel and pressed the car rocketing from hairpin bend to hairpin bend, onwards and upwards.

The last light had been shut out by the lower ranges of mountains behind them as they wound their way through the valleys to the greater peaks which, unseen in the mist and darkness, they knew lay towering to the skies towards the east. Deep ruts in the track, where mountain torrents cut it in the winter cascading downwards to the lower levels, made the way hideously uneven. The car jolted and bounded, skidding violently from time to time, loose shale and pebbles rocketing from its back tyres as it took the dangerous bends.

In the back Richard, Marie Lou and Simon lurched, swayed, and bumped each other as they crouched in silent misery, their teeth chattering with the cold of the chill night that was now about them in those lofty regions….

They were in a room, a strange, low-ceilinged, eastern room, with a great, heavy, wooden door, under which they could see the fog wreathing upwards in the light of a solitary oil lamp set upon a rough-hewn table. Bunches of onions and strips of dried meat hung from the low rafters. The earthen floor of the place was cold underfoot. On a deep window recess in a thick wall stood a crude earthenware jug, and a platter with a loaf of coarse bread upon it, which was covered by a bead-edged piece of muslin.

Marie Lou roused to find herself drinking coarse, red wine out of a thick, glass tumbler. She saw Rex sitting on a wooden bench against the wall, staring before him with unseeing eyes at the grimy window. The others stood talking round the lop-sided table. A peasant woman, with a scarf about her head, whose face she could not see, appeared to be arguing with them. Marie Lou had an idea that it was about money, since De Richleau held a small pile of notes in his hand. Then the peasant woman was gone and the others were talking together again. She caught a few words here and there.

‘I thought it was a ruin … inhabited still … they beg us not to go there … not of an official order or anything to do with the Greek Church. They look on them as heathens here … associates of Mocata's?–No, more like a community of outlaws who have taken refuge there under the disguise of a religious brotherhood … Talisman has affected them, perhaps. Forty or fifty of them. The people here shun the place even in the daytime, and at night none of them would venture near it at any price.… You managed to get a driver?–Yes, of a kind–What's wrong with him?–I don't know. The woman didn't seem to trust him, but I had great difficulty in understanding
her at all–Sort of bad man of the village, eh? … Have to trust him if no one else will take us.'

De Richleau passed his hand across his eyes. What was it that they had been talking about? He was so tired, so terribly tired. There had been a peasant woman, with whom he had talked of the ruined monastery up in the mountains. She seemed to be filled with horror of the place and had implored him again and again not to go. He began to wonder how they had conversed. He could make himself understood in most European languages, but he had very little knowledge of modern Greek; but that did not matter, they must get on–get on….

The others were standing round him like a lot of ghosts in the narrow, fog-filled village street. A little hunchback with bright, sharp eyes was peering at him. The fellow wore a dark sombrero, and a black cloak, covering his malformed body, dangled to his feet; the light from the semi-circular window of the inn was just sufficient to illuminate his face. A great, old-fashioned carriage, with two lean, ill-matched horses harnessed to it, stood waiting.

They piled into it. The musty smell of the straw-filled cushions came strongly to their nostrils. The hunchback gave them one curious, cunning look from his bright eyes, and climbed upon the box. The lumbering vehicle began to rock from side to side. The one-storeyed, flat-topped houses in the village disappeared behind them and were swallowed up in the mist.

They forded a swift but shallow river outside the village, then the roadway gave place to a stony track. Ghostlike and silent, walls of rock loomed up on either side. The horses ceased trotting and fell into a steady, laboured walk, hauling the great, unwieldy barouche from bend to bend up the rock-strewn way into the fastness of the mountains.

Simon's teeth were chattering. That damp, clinging greyness seemed to enter into his very bones. He tried to remember what day it was and at what hour they had left Paris. Was it last night or the night before or the night before that? He could not remember and gave it up.

The way seemed interminable. No one spoke. The carriage jolted on, the hunchback crouched upon his seat, the lean horses pulling gallantly. The curve of the road ahead was always hidden from them and no sooner had they passed it than they lost sight of the curve behind.

At last the carriage halted. The driver climbed down off his box and pointed upwards, as they stumbled out on the track. De Richleau was thrusting money into his hand. He and his aged vehicle disappeared in the shadows. Richard looked back to catch a last glimpse of it and it suddenly struck him then how strange it was that the carriage had no lamps.

The rest were pressing on, stumbling and slithering as they followed the way which had now become no more than a footpath leading upwards between the huge rocks.

After a little, the gloom seemed to lighten and they perceived stars above their heads. Then, rounding a rugged promontory, they saw the age-old monastery standing out against the night sky upon the mountain slope above.

It was huge and dark and silent, with steep walls rising on two sides from a precipice. A great dome, like an inverted bowl, rose in its centre, but a portion of it had fallen in and the jagged edges showed plainly against the deep blue of the starlit night beyond.

With renewed courage they staggered on up the steep rise towards the great semi-circular arch of the entrance. The gates stood open wide, rotted and fallen from their hinges. No sign of life greeted their appearance as they passed through the spacious courtyard.

Instinctively, they made for the main building, above which curved the broken arc of the ruined Byzantine dome. That must be the Church, and the crypt would lie below it.

They crossed the broken pavements of the forecourt, the Duke leaning heavily on Rex's arm. He nodded towards a few faint lights which came from a row of outbuildings. Rex followed his glance in silence and they hurried on. That was evidently the best-preserved portion of the ruin, in which these so-called monks resided. A gross laugh, followed by the sound of smashing glass and then a hoarse voice cursing, came from that direction, confirming their thought.

All the way up from the inn half-formed fears had been troubling De Richleau that they might fall foul of this ill-omened brotherhood. He assumed them to be little less than robbers under a thin disguise, who probably eked out a miserable existence by levying toll in corn and oil and goat's milk upon the neighbouring peasantry, but this great pile upon the slopes of Mount Peristeri was so much more vast than anything that he had imagined. A matter of fifty men might easily be lost among its rambling courts and buildings.

They advanced through another great courtyard, surrounded by ruined colonnades which were visible only by the faint starlight from above. In wonder and awe they passed up the broad flight of steps, through the vast portico on which the elaborate carvings, worn and disfigured by time, were just discernible, into the body of the Church.

Marie Lou, stumbling along half-bemused between Simon and Richard, found herself wondering what they could be doing in this ancient ruin, then memory flooded back. It was here, below them, that the Talisman of Set was buried. There had been no fog in the courtyard outside so they must have got there before Mocata after all–but where was Fleur?

The others had halted and Richard noticed then that De Richleau was carrying an old-fashioned lantern, which he supposed he had borrowed at the inn. The Duke lit the stump of candle that was inside it and led the way down those time-worn stairs. The others, treading instinctively on tiptoe, now followed him into the stale, musty darkness.

At the bottom of the steps they came out into a low, vaulted crypt which,
by the faint light of the lantern, seemed to spread interminably under the flagstones of the Church.

De Richleau turned to the east, judging the altar of the crypt to be situated below the one in the Church above, but when he had traversed twenty yards he halted suddenly. A black, solid mass blocked their path in the centre of the vault.

‘Of course,' Marie Lou heard him murmur. ‘I forgot that this place was built such centuries ago. Altars were placed in the centre of churches then. This must be it.'

‘We've beaten him to it, then,' Rex's voice came with a little note of triumph.

‘Perhaps he couldn't get anyone to drive him up from Metsovo at this hour of night,' Richard suggested. ‘Our man was supposed to be mad, or something, and they said that no one else would go.'

‘Those stones are going to take some shifting.' Rex took the lantern and bent to examine the black slabs of the solid, oblong altar.

‘Are you certain that this is the right one?' Richard asked. ‘My brain seems to be going. I can't remember things properly any more but I thought when we got the information from Simon in his trance he said something about a side-chapel in the crypt.'

No one answered. While his words were still ringing in their ears each one of them suddenly felt that he was being overlooked from behind.

Rex dropped the lantern, De Richleau swung round, Marie Lou gave a faint cry. A dull light had appeared only ten paces in their rear. Leading to it they saw a short flight of steps. Beyond, a chapel with a smaller altar, from which the right-hand stone had been wrenched. And there, standing before it, was Mocata.

With a bellow of fury, Rex started forward, but the Satanist suddenly raised his left hand. In it he held a small black cigar-shaped thing, which was slightly curved. About it there was a phosphorescent glow, so that, despite the semi-darkness, the very blackness of the thing itself stood out clear and sharp against its surrounding aura of misty light. The rays from it seemed to impinge upon their bodies, instantly checking their advance. They found themselves transfixed–brought to a standstill in a running group–half-way between the central altar and the chapel steps.

Without uttering a word, Mocata came down the steps and slowly walked round them, carrying the thing which they now guessed to be the Talisman aloft in his left hand. A glowing phosphorescent circle appeared on the damp stone flags in his tracks and, as he completed the circuit, they felt their limbs relax.

Again they rushed at him, but were brought up with a jerk. It was impossible to break out of that magic circle in which he had confined them.

With slow steps, the Satanist returned to the chapel and proceeded to light a row of black candles upon the broken altar there. Then with a little gasp of unutterable fear, Marie Lou saw that Fleur was crouching in a dark corner near the upturned earth from which the Talisman had been recovered.

‘Fleur–darling!' she cried imploringly, stretching out her arms, but the child did not seem to hear. With round eves she knelt there near the altar, staring out towards the crypt, but apparently seeing nothing.

Mocata lit some incense in a censer and swung it rhythmically before the broken altar, murmuring strange invocations.

He moved so smoothly and silently that he might have been a phantom but for the lisping intonation of his low musical voice. Then Fleur began to cry, and the sobbing of the child had an unmistakable reality which tore at the very fibre of their hearts.

Again and again they tried to break out of the circle, but at last, forced to give up their frantic attempts, they crouched together straining against the invisible barrier, watching with fear-distended eyes as a gradual materialisation began to form in the clouds of incense above the altar stone.

At first it seemed to be the face of Mocata's black familiar that Rex had seen in Simon's house, but it changed and lengthened. A pointed beard appeared on the chin and four great curved horns sprouted from the head. Soon it became definite, clear and solid. That monstrous, shaggy beast that had held court on Salisbury Plain, the veritable Goat of Mendes, glared at them with its red, baleful, slanting eyes, and belched foetid, deathly breaths from its cavernous nostrils.

Mocata raised the Talisman and set it upon the forehead of the Beast, laying it lengthwise upon the flat, bald, bony skull, where it blazed like some magnificent jewel. Then he stooped, seized the child and, tearing off her clothes, flung her naked body full length upon the altar beneath the raised fore-hooves of the Goat.

Sick with apprehension and frantic with distress, the prisoners in the circle heard the sorcerer begin to intone the terrible lines of the Black Mass.

Horrified but powerless, they watched the swinging of the censer, the chanting of the blasphemous prayers, and the blessing of the dagger by the Goat, knowing that at the conclusion of the awful ceremony, the perverted maniac playing the part of the devil's priest would rip the child open from throat to groin while offering her soul to Hell.

Half crazy with fear, they saw Mocata pick up the knife and raise his arm above the little body, about to strike.

Rex stood with the sweat pouring down his face. The muscles of his arms jerked convulsively. His whole will was concentrated in an effort to fling himself forward, up the steps; yet, except for the tremors which ran through his body, the invisible power held him motionless in its grip.