Page 40 of The Book of Lost Stories

No More Music

Drusilla woke to find herself lying on the cold stone floor of the chapel, with no idea of how she had got there. It was illuminated only by the weak light of the moon that shone through the narrow windows, lending a ghastly air to the ancient effigies of her husband’s illustrious forebears.

Sitting up, her head spinning, she thought that one of them moved.

Death or Dishonour by ORLANDO brOWNE

The door slammed and the key was turned in the lock. Alys waited only until the sound of voices and footsteps had receded down the passageway before throwing off her loosened cords and running across to the prone figure, face down on the stone floor.

She did not need to see his face to know who he was, even in the half-dark. ‘Lord Rayven,’ she whispered incredulously, shaking him. ‘Lord Rayven!’

He did not stir, although he seemed to be breathing well enough.

When she felt the back of his head, she found a large lump there, one that betokened a much severer blow than that which had knocked her out.

She undid his bonds and managed to turn him partly on his side, discovering as she did so that he had not been searched, for he carried a duelling pistol in either coat pocket.

He seemed to have been in a mill, for his familiar aquiline face was now rather battered, but she thought she could guess who had finished it by creeping up behind and knocking him senseless.

Ripping off the frilled edging of her petticoat, she dabbled it in the remains of the beaker of water and gingerly dabbed at the bruise on Rayven’s head, then chafed his hands, but still he did not stir.

‘Heroic idiot!’ she muttered, brushing away the black curls from his forehead. ‘How did you know I was here – and did you think to tell anyone else, before you rode to the rescue?’

Then a sound behind her made her start guiltily. The child! How could she forget that there was another sufferer who also needed her assistance?

Sarah lay in the deep sarcophagus on a bed of dirty straw. Her blue eyes were wild and unfocused and she did not respond to her name other than to whimper and moan.

Alys hitched up her gown and climbed in beside her. ‘Sarah.’

‘No, no!’ whimpered the girl, trying to draw herself back against the wall.

‘Sarah, it is me – Miss Weston. Remember, you were to come and be my maid? Sarah?’

There was no response. Muttering, Alys set about untying the girl and chafing her hands, then briskly slapped her face.

With a gasp, some intelligence came back into the blue eyes, along with terror. ‘Do not have hysterics, Sarah,’ Alys said quickly. ‘It is Miss Weston, come to get you out of this foul place.’

‘Miss Weston? Oh, Miss Weston, I must be dreaming you are here … I—’

‘Do not waste your energy on crying, but let me help you out into the grotto, where you will find Lord Rayven.’

‘L-Lord Rayven?’

‘He is a friend, although at this moment somewhat incapacitated,’ Alys confessed. ‘Come along.’

She pushed the girl out and climbed after her, then gave her the very last dregs of the mug of water. Sarah cast fearful looks at the dark form, prone on the floor.

‘Miss Weston, we must leave here at once, for they mean to do dreadful things to me! Lord Chase … he came and gloated over what he would do to me tonight, how I would be – be the virgin sacrifice and I—’

‘Not you, me ,’ Alys said. ‘There has been a slight change of plan. You are merely to be shipped off abroad while I am to take your place in this unholy rite, when all except the inner circle of the Brethren are gone.’

‘But what are we to do?’ the girl said piteously, shaking with terror. Alys thought that as an accomplice she left a lot to be desired.

‘Escape, of course. Now, if anyone should come in before we do so – although I do not expect it until later – they will barely be able to make out Rayven in that dark corner, and you may get behind the door. I will slump against the wall, so that they do not see I am untied.

‘But how then shall we escape?’

Alys went over to the barred window in the door.

‘I heard them lock it each time they shut the door, but not the rattle of the key being inserted or removed and …’ she inserted an arm through the bars and strained to reach down ‘… I have very slender hands and wrists – unusually so – and I believe I can just reach …’

Her expression concentrated, she strained on tiptoe, then there was a rattle and she withdrew her arm slowly, clutching a large key. ‘There!’

‘Oh, Miss Weston!’ Sarah said. ‘But still we have to get out, and Lord Rayven is near death.’

‘No he is not,’ Alys said sharply, ‘merely unconscious from a blow on the head. I cannot leave him, but you can escape and get help for us, if you will. We cannot be more than a mile from the Red House.’

‘Alone, and in the dark, miss?’

‘The dark can have no terrors comparable to all you have gone through,’ pointed out Alys practically.

‘Rabbits and foxes are as nothing to the creatures that inhabit this den. But you must leave at just the right moment, for I heard my cousin say that the two men who brought Lord Rayven here were to go back and guard the river entrance until everyone had arrived. So we must wait until the Brethren and the … er … entertainers, have passed in.’

‘But what if the two men are still there?’

‘If they are, I am sure I will think of something, for I will come with you thus far. In fact, we will all escape, should I manage to bring Lord Rayven to consciousness by then, but otherwise, I will come back.’

‘What if they capture me?’

‘Then you will be little worse off than you are now.’

She had another look at Rayven. ‘If only I had more cold water to bathe his head. And he is so cold. Listen, what is that?’

The sound of feminine voices carried up the passageway. ‘I believe the women who entertain the Brethren are arriving, so perhaps you had better conceal yourself, and I will sit against the wall.’

The footsteps hurried past without a pause, and once all was quiet again she attempted once more to wake Rayven.

This time he opened his eyes, scowled at her and closed them again, which she took as a hopeful sign.

‘I think perhaps he will soon wake, but we cannot afford to wait. Come, I will see to your escape, for then I must have an hour or so’s grace before they come for me, and the hope of the help you will bring if we cannot get out in time. ’

She took the horn beaker in case she found the source of the trickling water she could hear, and after a second’s thought removed one of the pistols from Lord Rayven’s coat.

Opening the door cautiously, she peered out.

Braziers lit the passage, which curved away in both directions.

To their right came the faint lilt of music and raucous clamour of voices, and strange heavy scents hung in the air.

‘This way!’ She pulled Sarah in the opposite direction. Cautiously they stole along the passage, and down worn steps.

‘Oh, this is hideous!’ Sarah said. ‘What a dank, awful place.’

‘It is not! Look, the brickwork in parts is quite beautiful, perhaps Roman, although it has been patched and mended roughly over the centuries. See how they have diverted this trickle of water into a basin shaped like a shell … so pretty, if a trifle slimy. But hush, I believe we are near the entrance.’

Three steps led up to a door that was ajar, and Alys tiptoed to it and found she was looking out of a little temple down to the river.

To her right, two sturdy manservants lolled against a wall, laughing at some joke; to her left, a pathway led away in the direction of the wall to where the road must lie and, hopefully, escape.

She gave Sarah a shake, pointed at the path, and patted her briskly. ‘Be quiet until you are well out of earshot, but do not fear that they will see you, for they will be looking the other way.’

Sarah looked at her mutely, eyes enormous, as Alys weighed a small and ancient piece of brick in her hand, then lobbed it as far as she could into the bushes to their right.

‘Go!’ she said urgently, impelling the girl out into the open as soon as the two men had leaped up and rushed off in the other direction.

‘Be quick, be careful!’ she hissed, and Sarah fled like a startled hare into the thicket and was gone. Fear, Alys hoped, would not only get her over the wall should the gate be locked, but give wings to her feet.

How easy it would be to follow suit, she thought longingly, before turning back resolutely and retracing her steps to the grotto, pausing as she did so to fill the horn beaker with water from the little stone basin.

Going by the noises of revelry, she still had some time to spare. Lord Rayven lay as she had left him and she moistened his lips with the water, then applied a cold compress to his head, cradling it on her lap.

She had just pressed a kiss on his brow – and, if truth be told, dampened his face with a few salty tears – when he began to stir and mutter at last, his dark eyes opened and he stared up at her in bewilderment. ‘What … where …?’

‘Hush, Lord Rayven, it is Miss Weston. Do not try to speak until your senses return to you.’

He stared up at her speechlessly for a moment, then with surprising strength pulled her to him and kissed her long and hard before thrusting her away and attempting to sit up. He subsided again with a groan. ‘Oh, my head!’

‘I am afraid you have taken a heavy blow,’ she said, a trifle breathlessly. ‘Were you searching for me?’

‘Yes, I – Jarvis – Jarvis told me …’ He sat up, this time successfully. ‘I set off alone like a fool. There were two men guarding the entrance. I had the best of the fight, but then—’

‘Someone struck you on the back of the head. I expect it was my cousin. He seems to make a habit of it.’

‘He struck you?’ He examined her bruised face in the flickering candlelight. ‘He will regret that!’ he said grimly.

‘Possibly, but not unless we can make our escape from this place. Hush!’

The sounds of revelry grew suddenly louder as though a door had opened, and then feminine giggles heralded the return of the girls past the door.

‘The meeting is breaking up. There is no time to spare,’ she said urgently.

‘If you are recovered enough, we must be gone, for they mean me to take part in some heathenish ceremony shortly. I assisted Sarah to get away to fetch help, but that was so long ago that I fear something has happened to prevent her.’

‘Sarah?’

‘The girl who was missing from the Red House … but of course, why should you know about that? Chase kidnapped her, but now they mean me to take her place.’

Some intelligence began to return to his eyes. ‘You helped this Sarah to escape yet did not go with her?’

‘I would have been very happy to go, but, of course, I could not leave you here like this.’

‘I am not the hero of this piece, it seems,’ he groaned ruefully, ‘merely a hindrance. But you were a fool not to make good your escape when you had the chance.’

‘I know it,’ she said. ‘However, they were too stupid to search you, so you still had your pistols in your pocket. I have one of them here.’

‘Then you had best give it back, for I dare say you have no idea how to use it,’ he said, trying to rise to his feet.

‘Yes, I do. I have two just like it in my luggage.’

‘You never cease to amaze me, Miss Weston.’

‘They were Papa’s.’

There was the sound of loud voices approaching and Alys looked up, paling. ‘We are too late, I think! Lie down again quickly. I will go with them and cause a diversion while you escape, for you are in no fit state to fight them.’

He protested, trying to struggle up, but perhaps her hands pushing him down were a little more forceful than she meant, for his head came in contact with the stone floor and he passed out.

She hoped he would come round again too late for any pointless heroics, but in time to get some assistance before anything of an unfortunate nature happened to her.

Snatching up the pistol and holding it behind her back, she slumped dejectedly against the wall just as Lady Crayling swung open the door.

‘I will fetch her out,’ she slurred, her footing unsteady and her eyes glittering in her white face. She did not seem to notice the absence of the key in the door. Alys thought she was beyond noticing much, although she did cast a glance at the prone shape of Rayven.

‘Your lover is still asleep – how boring for you! Not, of course, that you could do much with your hands tied, which is just as well, for it would have spoiled Chase’s little ceremony. Stand up!’

Alys did so and Lady Crayling draped a white velvet mantle over her shoulders and fixed a vizard-mask over her face. ‘Come along.’

She went with them, finding some comfort in the feel of the pistol she held behind her back when she met the gloating eyes of two masked Brethren outside. That was the one moment when, had it not been for Lord Rayven, she might have pushed past Lady Crayling and run for it.

But as she looked longingly over her shoulder a head poked around the corner and the familiar, homely, one-eyed visage of Jarvis winked at her. She blinked, uncertain if she had really seen him, then the two laughing men took her elbows and roughly propelled her along the passageway.

They could have had no idea who she was and even less idea that her hands were not bound, but clutched a deadly pistol.

Lady Crayling held aside a tapestry curtain and they thrust her forward through an open door into a scene that might have come straight from a stained-glass depiction of Hell.

The music suddenly stopped.