Shadow of the Serpent (24 page)

The castellated turrets of Fasque House had withstood stronger blasts than this April wind. Indeed it was a mere snipe of a breeze which made no impression on the golden stones. The lights were blazing, and there was a sound of merriment and music from within which would not quite carry to Balmoral Castle fifteen miles away.

Even if the noise had and were the Queen in residence, which she was not, being tucked away safely in Baden-Baden, it is doubtful that she would have joined in the joyful celebrations, her worst fears realised, her champion unhorsed.

McLevy wasn’t celebrating either as he hunched his way up the long drive towards the stately mansion. The coach journey to nearby Laurencekirk had taken an eternity and then he’d had to scrounge a lift to the outskirts of Fettercairn and follow by tramping the rest of the way in this nagging wife of a wind.

The import of Roach’s words kept circling in his mind.

If the inspector approached Gladstone, he would be
dismissed
from the force. Not an idle threat.

But he wasn’t going to meet William head on, more … discover his way around. A glancing encounter.

Thus, falsely reassuring himself but feeling doom in the pit of his stomach nevertheless, he pressed onwards.

Luckily the main gates had been wide open and he’d already watched pass by two carriages of cheery gentlefolk who no doubt by this time were well inside, warm as toast, drinking a health to the Great Man and then each other. They had paid no heed to the dark figure skulking along the verge like a plague carrier to the feast.

An exposed huge swathe of grassland lay in front of the large doors of Fasque House, which opened and shut like a hungry mouth to gobble up the jovial visitors.

The houselights spilled on to this lawn with fine abandon and, in the darkness out of the circle of this artificial radiance, the eyes of nature glittered in the night as some curious deer gathered to witness the spectacle. But not too close lest they be seen and some celebrant lean out of the window to let loose a shot.

For that same reason, McLevy also skirted the edges of the light. He was searching for a building suited to darker purposes.

And there it was. Not far from the house but far enough that the music would not waken the dead and the dead not disenchant the living. The Gladstone family vault.

The stone glowed faintly in the surrounding gloom: four pillars with a flat slab of a roof and an iron railing placed around, of which the gate had been thoughtfully left, as he found when he tried it, unlocked and open to the touch.

Before he descended the worn stone stairs to the opening of the crypt, McLevy felt in his pocket for the comforting weight of an old black revolver. His lifesaver.

He cleaned it every month before replacing the weapon in its oilskin pocket. Aunt Jean had given it him on his twenty-first birthday, to protect him when she was gone.

She claimed her husband Hughie had gained it in a card game with some excise men who had confiscated it off a rum smuggler from Jamaica, but McLevy doubted that.

He had fired the gun twice in the line of duty. Once he’d missed, once he’d hit. But since it was at the same man, a
blackmailing
bastard who was shooting back at him, one cancelled out the other.

The wind whistled round his ears and McLevy realised he’d taken refuge in the past to avoid the present.

No more of that. This uneasy breeding of hesitation must be rectified. He took the revolver from his pocket and grasped it firmly in his hand as he walked down the slippery
mosscoated
steps. The entrance to the crypt was black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat. He poked his head inside.

‘I am James McLevy, inspector of police,’ he called softly. ‘Whoever is there, make yourself known and let us parlay.’

Silence. The wind swithered above. He took a deep breath to calm himself and walked into the darkness of the tomb.

The air was cold and clammy but what else was to be expected from a congregation of long-dead bodies?

The inspector shuffled forward in the dark, all senses alert for danger. He might strike a lucifer but that would make a target of him and he felt his big backside was already sticking out quite far enough.

Then he saw a glimmer of light. It appeared to be coming from behind the defining edge of the sepulchre. He moved softly and, bending down so as not to be visible above the flat surface of the stone, sneaked a look around the corner.

A small candle flickered on the stone ledge of a bricked-up window.

It illuminated the shape of a book that lay beside, uneven pages protruding from the leather binding. On top of the book was a small bell.

Bell, book and candle. Were they not the auguries of excommunication?

‘The dramatic in me,’ said a voice behind him.

The man who had been lying perfectly still, arms crossed, on the top of the sepulchre, had swung silently off the stone surface hindward of the inspector. He reached forward, one hand to pull back the head, the other thumb and first finger to press hard just below the lobes of the ears before McLevy could swing round with the revolver.

Unconsciousness followed, like a lamb the shepherd.

The chapel of Maris Stella was empty, the pungent odour of incense still hanging in the air after the last service had been intoned and the faithful departed.

The altar boys had taken off their gowns and left, no doubt after trying the lock of the cupboard where the holy wine was kept and finding it, as usual, made fast.

Father Callan did not begrudge them the exploration. Boys will be boys, and when holy robes are removed, animal nature often reasserts itself.

The young are entitled to their wild ways, the heavy duties of adulthood come soon enough.

The bishop, of course, might have quite another view. He clove to a most severe authority, but then it was rumoured he had once whispered in Pope Pius’s ear not long before His Holiness departed this mortal coil.

Or was it that Pope Pius had whispered in the bishop’s ear?

Whatever. They were in whispering distance and the little priest had never got closer to the Universal Father than a large portrait of Pius on the wall in the bishop’s study, when he delivered to his superior a monthly report on the comings and goings of the Leith congregation.

It was said the recently ascended pontiff, Leo XIII, was a forward thinker. Hard to tell from his portrait which had been stuck up opposite Pius, but Father Callan hoped so. God knows the Church needed such.

There were many of the cloth who would not agree, but then he had always regarded himself as a secret radical.

He had arrived a young man from Ulster at the height of the Great Famine to find the congregation, a large part composed of recently emigrated Irish Catholics, driven hard in on
themselves
by a hostile society and clinging to the skirts of Mother Mary for spiritual consolation.

Callan was supposed to be a small cog in the holy machine of this fine new building who would make way for bigger wheels, but somehow he had got stuck in the works and now, thirty years later, he was still on hand.

He lived amongst the poor. He blessed them, visited the sick, comforted and buried them. As best he could.

His superiors wafted past, rings glittering in the candlelight, and looked down from a great distance at this worker ant who, when he gave service, wore his robes like a blacksmith wears his apron.

He was regarded with benign condescension, but they left him alone and that was all he asked.

To be left alone. To labour. To do God’s will.

That was not always an easy task.

His eye fell upon the Stations of the Cross, which ranged around the inside of the chapel, high on the walls. He knew their particular depiction now as well as he knew his congregation and indeed, at times, intrigued himself by superimposing the faces of the poor on the actors in the drama. Not upon Jesus Christ of course. That would have been blasphemous; but Saint Veronica for instance.

Many women who knelt before him to worship could have wiped the sweat of death from the Saviour’s countenance.

‘Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi.

‘Quia per sanctum Crucem tuam redemisti mundum.’

He murmured his own priestly words and their response as he walked slowly down the side of the church.

He had worked hard to build some bridges between the
Protestant
and Catholic poor of his parish, with some success, but now the Home Rule movement had reawakened tensions between them.

Many of the Catholic clergy were in favour and spoke accordingly at meetings for the repeal of the Act of Union and a parliament in Dublin, but Callan steered a middle course. Church and the State. A bad mix. He was no great prophet but he could sense the most hellish upheaval.

The Liberal party was apparently sympathetic, but so was the serpent when it offered Eve the apple.

Ireland would be a battleground. Lives would be lost. The Irish were good at killing each other. Like dogs in a pit they’d been set so many times past, face against face, to snarl and draw blood. They had a taste for it now.

His footsteps echoed in the silent chapel and then stopped. His mind shifted.

He had gone to that meeting in West Calder out of a mild curiosity. But when he heard Gladstone speak on the platform it sent a shiver down his spine.

Something in the voice, the harsh, sonorous tone, awakened memories, drifting memories that were brought back into focus. But it was all so long ago, and who was to say that his mind wasn’t playing tricks?

Then amongst all the faces of the crowd, he saw the one staring back. His gaze had met McLevy’s and he had left abruptly, much disquieted at the coincidence of these events being drawn back together.

Thirty years ago. The same implacable gaze. A young
constable
, asking questions that Callan would not, could not answer. The constable must have sensed something because he kept pressing hard and it had taken all of Callan’s training in the art of priestly blankness to keep him from betraying what he had witnessed.

During his years at the chapel of Maris Stella, he had heard many confessions, many souls had poured out their pain, some small and even tawdry, some fierce in agony.

But, the one. That night. It had never left him. He looked back towards the confession box and it was as if a floodgate suddenly opened and the images seared through his mind.

He had been sitting alone and enclosed, the hour late, to commune with his Maker, but heard footsteps echo in the empty chapel and then a thud shook the other part of the box as if a wild animal had blundered inside.

He tried to invoke the formal beginnings of the confessional exchange but the man had paid no heed. Either he did not know the responses or did not care.

The voice was low and rumbling as if being wrenched out of the man’s very soul; the words ugly, disjointed.

From where Callan looked down through the grille, all he could see was the top of the head, the hair thick, a few stray shafts of light running across like spiders.

‘Blood. Blood is the cure. Stinking wombs, they chain my soul. To Satan.’

The priest took a deep breath.

‘You must calm yourself, the way to forgiveness is not to be found in violence of word or action. The humble penitent is beloved of our Lord Jesus.’

A harsh cough of laughter was the response as if the very devil himself was squatting on the bench.

‘I will cut them down. Out of their body I will cut my salvation. Out of their stinking wombs!’

Then, astonishingly, the voice changed to that of an educated tone, as if the mind was split. The tone was deep and powerful.

‘For what says Proverbs?’ asked the man. ‘Do not hearken to a wicked woman; for though the lips of a harlot are like drops from a honeycomb which for a while are smooth in thy throat, yet afterwards you will find them more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword!’

Then the man scrabbled up the side of the partition and put his mouth against the small opening of the grille.

All that the horrified priest could see was the orifice, mouth opening and closing, the red tongue flickering, teeth bared like a beast and flecks of spittle covering the metal grille and dripping down slowly like some sort of obscene Satanic fluid.