Читать книгу The Venemous Serpent - Brian Ball - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

Thin moonlight streaked the high white tower. Then black rain slashed and its massive bulk was hidden. A growl of thunder told the hurrying men that the storm was gathering; though their cloaks were sodden through and through, they did not welcome the thought of the shelter ahead. Tonight the church was no sanctuary.

The priest at the head of the small procession waved his lantern in encouragement, then lost his footing in the mud. A watcher might have thought the sight comical, for he was a tall, thin, ungainly man with the unsteady gait of a heron. He picked himself up from the slimy mud, careful to keep the lantern upright and more careful yet to keep the wafer in his left hand dry. It might have brought a smile to the face of a watcher but for the ghastly white of his face and the strained, haunted look in his eyes.

One look at his countenance would have stilled a ribald comment, dismissed a smile; for, like the men who followed, he was afraid. More, he was in a state of terror. He was engaged in an undertaking that was beyond his understanding. That night, forces that must forever be a mystery to him would assemble. He sweated with terror. In the archaic phrase of his day, he was afraid unto death.

Behind him a man groaned aloud in a torment. The priest turned, his voice a shriek above the wind’s howling:

“No turning back, masters! See, we are in the care of Holy Church! I have the blessed wafer and the water both! No harm can befall us, if we but keep our hearts!”

Nevertheless, one of the men stumbled as the priest had done before. The hurdle swayed, and the shrouded still form might have fallen off the rough platform.

“Have a care!” growled a burly, thickset man. “Our work is yet to be done—if once the moonlight falls on the Beast, the foul thing is loose again!”

He balanced the massive wooden hurdle against his thigh until the bearer was on his feet again. The man sobbed in fright, but he took comfort from the resolution of the thickset man.

The priest raised his lantern,

“All is well, Master Priest!” the thickset man said. “Lead on, and let us be done with this foul thing!”

The men looked at the priest’s face and found no comfort. There was true dedication and real religious fervour in it, but he was terrified, just as they were. They saw his soft hands and remembered his high-pitched voice. The men of the parish had taken matters into their own hands: the priest would officiate, as was his duty, but they would make sure that the brutal and hideous thing that had to be done was carried through by their own hard, powerful hands. Butcher’s work needed their strength.

When they reached the new church porch, they had recovered something of their earlier determination. The hurdle they carried was heavy, but there were enough of them to make the burden light for each man there: what lay on it added little to the beams and wet planks. The wife of the Lord of Stymead had not been a large woman. And this thing she called her lapdog was little larger than the cub of a hound. Both lay wrapped in the grave-windings.

It was the priest who was near the end of his strength. Terror—stark, soul-ripping terror—had drained him. Perhaps because he had more knowledge of the thing they faced, he was enfeebled almost to the point of exhaustion. Yet something sustained him when they reached the porch.

“Put fear aside,” he said, in his natural voice. He swung back the oaken doors and gestured to the men. “All is ready.”

He lit a dozen lamps. The bearers had not put down the hurdle. They stood before the chancel staring down into the gaping pit.

“Mine is the worst part,” said the burly man. “But all must do theirs. So let us be done!”

The priest looked at the men of the Parish as they handled the tools of their various trades. There were masons, a smith, a carpenter, and a butcher. His face showed revulsion as the burly man fingered the edge of a heavy chopping-knife. Now that he was in his own church, the priest felt more assured. He could busy himself in the preparations for the lengthy rituals that were indicated in the sacred books. In his dripping robes, he moved with more confidence now; much of the terror that had been with him since the villagers had taken him to the night-creature and its frightful familiar had been dissipated.

He no longer thought of what lay within the shroud.

“God be with us this night, and all His angels, my masters,” he called when all was ready. “We have need of all His Grace and Powers to preserve us from the Enemy of Mankind.”

H« shuddered as the men knelt before the altar. A memory of their shocked and bewildered faces came back to him. They had found the evil creatures by chance. Too drugged to stir from the spot, the creatures of night had been easily captured and enshrouded. But what when they should wake! He gabbled his words in fresh fear:

“The Almighty has this night delivered unto us the foul pests that have haunted our village for the past year. You have discovered the lair of the venomous serpent, yet it is right that the Lady of Stymead should lie beside her husband, the gallant knight Lord Humphrey de Latours, when the foul spirit that holds her soul in thrall has been duly exorcised!”

He would have said more, had not the burly man interrupted:

“Exorcise away, priest! I would be home before dawn’s light.”

The others murmured in agreement. More than one looked to the dripping hurdle and its still burden.

“So be it,” said the priest. He looked again to the knife in the burly man’s grip. With it, the swine-killer could sever the head of a boar at one stroke. “Strike for the evil heart, then truly cut off her head!”

“I am ready, priest.”

The thunder crashed out at that moment, a heavy and sullen roaring that shook the beams of the high chancel. Crisp, blue-white light flared through the narrow windows as lightning played in a vast sheet across one entire side of the horizon, bathing the church and the village beyond in a ghastly glow. Huge thunder-peals followed, leaving the assembled men stunned and reeling from the effect of the successive shocks. Some called out to God and the saints. Others rushed to the porch, only to run back in helpless terror as more thunder-claps roared over the church. And still the lightning bathed the chancel and the narrow, sinis-ter pit in a wash of corpse-light.

The priest gathered his wits.

“Fear nothing, men of Stymead!” he cried, his voice shaking. “It is a trick of the Adversary. It is a show to seize your hearts and allow the venomous serpent to be free! You are safe in this house—come forward and hear the words of the Holy Book! Listen to the words that will send this evil into the Pit from which it came!”

Several turned and knelt again before the altar. But the swine-killer’s nerve had failed. The heavy knife slipped from his grasp, to fall with a ringing clatter on the flagstones. As it jangled into silence, the priest intoned the prayers that would contain the undead things that had plagued the village so foully.

He broke the wafer and sprinkled holy water. He took the nail that was assuredly from the Cross itself; it would pin the brass plate in place and keep the night-creatures within if all else failed. All was ready.

“Courage!” he called, and he was stronger than at any time that night, for the words of the ritual had comforted him. “Take off the shroud—it is time!”

Not one of the men moved. He tried again, for all was ready. Mortar had been mixed. A coffin lay open. Lead sheeting gleamed in the yellow light. But the thunder had unmanned the parishioners. Its terrible pounding, and the accompanying blue-white lightning, had confirmed their belief that the Devil himself was striding across the night to keep one of his creatures from their vengeance. In vain the priest pleaded. He spoke of the nightly visitations of the things that lay within the grave-windings, of good men lost and children savaged, but it was to no avail. Even as he argued, the priest thought he saw a shadow of movement where one white, icy hand lay hidden.

Lightning bathed the hurdle again, and a pale, watery gleam of sustained light picked out the stones, the alabaster blocks, and the bright engraving.

The priest trembled. “Moonlight!” he groaned. He summoned all his resolution and shrilled to the palsied men: “Since you fear to look on her face, see how a priest of God can do your work for you! Be forever ashamed, men of Stymead!”

Saying this, he picked up the broad-bladed knife and sliced into the sodden linen of the shroud. Too wet to give easily, it resisted his unskilled efforts. But he cut, and cut, and the windings parted. Slight whimpering noises came from the hypnotised men around him.

“Leave be, priest!” implored someone. “Leave be the terrible thing, in God’s Name!”

“In God’s Name I shall destroy the venomous serpent!” he shrilled.

And then the form was revealed.

All had seen it but the priest. He had been summoned on this night when the creature and its frightful familiar had been tracked to its lair; but by the time he arrived, the hurdle was ready and the body enshrouded. Now, he saw the ivory skin, the deep black hair, the vile red lips, the half-smile, the fangs, the taloned fingers, the sensuous, evil curves of the beautifully-formed body all for the first time; and the small, sleeping thing at the feet of what had been the Lady Sybil de Latours. He might have been fascinated, or revolted, or stupefied, for it was also the first time he had seen a beautiful, naked female body.

One white, taloned hand moved.

The priest shrieked high and long, an animal noise like that of a dying night thing. His parishioners echoed the yell. Thunderclaps roared back, and the eyelids of the sleeping, sated woman-thing began to flicker.

The priest let the knife slip, just as had the swine-butcher. It jangled once again. And then the priest fell to the ground.

The sound of metal on stone brought some of the men from their helpless swooning fright. A small man crept forward in spite of the stirrings of the dreadful creature on the hurdle.

Thomas, too, recovered. He growled, anger in his voice:

“How is the priest?”

“Dead—stark dead!”

More men growled fiercely into their heavy beards.

“In God’s own House!”

“A man of little account, but a good priest nevertheless!” Thomas called. “And dead by the touch of the Beast!”

It was so, for a mark glowed on the dead cheek where the icy hand of the night-creature had rested.

“Stay!” roared the swine-butcher as the others began to move. “Stay—we have work to finish!”

Some cowered further away, others waited.

Thomas spoke briefly.

“The priest said it must be done in a certain way, then the thing cannot trouble us again—who will help, who amongst you is man enough to destroy the creature?”

“Will you be butcher?” asked the small man.

Thomas shuddered.

“I cannot do it,” he said simply. “I cannot go near the fangs and the talons.”

Those that had made for the porch turned back. They saw the corpse-like figure of the woman had not moved again; but they saw too that the nostrils distended in time with the slight rise and fall of the exquisite breasts.

“What are we to do, masters?” asked the small man.

“Bury her deep!” Thomas said. “And the small beast with her!”

“And the curse is gone?” asked someone.

“I know not,” Thomas said simply. “But the Holy Wafer blessed by the Bishop is here—let us seal the lead three times and place the Holy Wafer on the seals.”

“And mix the mortar with Holy Water!” called a mason.

“And use the Nail of the True Cross to hold the brass engraving down!”

“And then hide all under the alabaster,” said Thomas. He shook himself. He looked down at the dead priest once more. “That done, we say nothing of tonight. Is it sworn?”

And now a shaft of pale weak moonlight did steal across the altar and towards the ice figure on the hurdle. As if in anticipation, the blue-veined eyelids of the night-woman twitched slightly.

There were men who recognized the danger. A brave man flung the grave-wrappings over the corpse, and this was the signal for a bout of furious activity in the chancel. Thomas himself took a chisel to the bright brass, gouging with all his strength. Within an hour, the only sign of the night’s weird happening was the figure of the dead priest stark across his own altar and the gleaming white alabaster monument that hid the burial-place.