The Devils of D-Day (14 page)

‘Because of the English priest, father.
The Reverend Taylor, who was here in the war.
He is
the only man who really knows about the tank, and what was inside it.’

I put in: ‘
We
won’t be away long,
Monsieur
Passerelle
.
Maybe a week
at the outside.

Then I promise I’ll bring her straight back.’

Jacques rubbed his shiny shaven chin. ‘I don’t know what to
say. All this tank seems to bring is trouble and more trouble.’

I said, ‘Believe me,
monsieur
,
this is going to be the last of it. Once we’re
back from England, you won’t ever hear about that tank again. Not ever.’

Jacques
Passerelle
sniffed. He
didn’t seem to be particularly impressed by that. He turned to Madeleine and
asked: ‘Why does it have to be you? Can’t
Mr
McCook
go by
himself.
It always seems that you have to do the
work that others should do.
And what about Father Anton?’

Madeleine looked across at me appealingly. I knew she didn’t
want to leave her father to cope by himself in the middle of winter. But I
shook my head. The last thing I was going to do was cross that devil again. My
ring of hair was going to protect me only until the sun set, and then I would
be as vulnerable as Madeleine.

‘Monsieur,’ I told him, ‘we really have to go, both of us.
I’m sorry.’

The farmer sighed.
‘Very well, if that’s
what you have to do.
I will call Gaston
Jumet
and ask him if
Henriette
can come up and help me. You
said a week, no more?’

‘About a week,’ I told
him,
although
I had no idea how long it was going to take us to dig up
Elmek’s
twelve infamous brethren.

‘Very well,’ he said, and kissed his daughter, and shook my
hand.
‘If this is something really important.
Now,
would you like some calvados and coffee?’

While Madeleine packed, I sat at the kitchen table with
Jacques and Eloise. Outside, it began to snow again – thin, wet snow that
dribbled slowly down the window panes.

We talked about farming and cows and what to do when turnips
started to mildew in the ground.

After a while, Jacques
Passerelle
knocked back his calvados, wiped his mouth with his spotted handkerchief, and
said: ‘I must get to work. We have two fields to plough by the end of the week.
I wish you ban voyage.’

We shook hands and then he went off into the hallway to pull
on his Wellingtons and his thick jacket. I stirred my coffee carefully, waiting
until he was out of earshot, and then I said, ‘Eloise?’

The old woman nodded. ‘I know.’

‘You know? How do you know?’

She said nothing, but reached in the pocket of her apron,
and produced a worn sepia photograph of a young cleric. He was holding a boater
in his hands, and squinting into the sun.

I looked at the picture for a long while, and then I said:
‘This is Father Anton.’

‘Yes,
monsieur
.
I have known him for many years. When we were young, we were close friends. We
were so close, in fact, that we hardly had to speak to know what each other was
thinking. Well, Father Anton reached me last night, after a fashion. I woke in
the night and felt that I had lost him; and when I saw you this morning, I knew
that he was dead.’

‘You didn’t tell Jacques?’

‘I told nobody. I wasn’t really sure it was true. I hoped
that it wasn’t. But then I saw you, and I knew.’

I took out the ring of hair which she had given me. ‘Listen,
Eloise,’ I asked her, ‘is this all the hair you have?’

She lifted her grey head and looked at me closely through
her flour-dusted spectacles. ‘You want more?’ Why?’

The devil is loose, Eloise. It was the devil who killed
Father Anton. That’s why we’re going to England. The devil insists.”

‘Insists?’

‘If we don’t do what it says, it’s going to stab us to
death.
Madeleine and me.
Its name is
Elmek
, the devil of knives.’

Eloise took the photograph of Father Anton from me with
shaking hands. She was so agitated that she couldn’t speak at first, and I
poured her a small glass of calvados.

She drank half of it, and coughed, and then looked back at
me with a face so ghastly with strain that I felt frightened myself.

‘Did he suffer?’ she whispered. ‘Did poor Father Anton
suffer?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I saw Antoinette die
too, his housekeeper, and she was in terrible pain.’

‘What’s going to happen? What are we going to do?’

‘There’s not much we can do except what we’re told. The devil
is going to burn the bodies so that nobody knows what happened – and Eloise,
it’s desperately important that you don’t tell them.’

Eloise was weeping. ‘What about Madeleine?’ she said, wiping
her eyes with her apron. ‘It won’t hurt Madeleine, will it?’

I took her hand. ‘It won’t if we do what it tells us to do.
I have to find out how to destroy it first, how to exorcise it. Meanwhile,
we’re going to have to go along with it, and help it find its twelve brethren.’

Eloise said: ‘There is only one thing I can do to help you.
Wait for one moment.’

She rose stiffly from her chair and walked across the tiled
floor to the kitchen dresser. She opened a drawer, fumbled around for a while
with tins and jars and boxes, and eventually took out a small tin with the name
of a popular brand of French throat pastilles printed on it. She brought it
over to the table and carefully lifted the lid.

I peered inside. There was nothing there but a small heap of
what looked like grey powder.

‘What’s this?’ I asked her.

She closed the lid again, and handed the tin to me. ‘It is
said to be the ashes of the seamless cloak which Christ wore when he was
crucified. It is the most powerful relic I have.’

‘What will it do? Will it protect us?’

‘I don’t know. Some relics have real magical properties and
some are simply frauds.

It is all I can do. It is all I can give you.’

She turned away then, her eyes filled with tears. I didn’t
know what to do to comfort her. I slipped the tin of ashes in my pocket and
finished my coffee. The clock on the kitchen wall struck eight; I knew that if
we were going to make the lunchtime ferry to Newhaven, we were going to have to
hurry.

Madeleine came downstairs with her suitcase. I got up from
the table and took it from her, and gave Eloise a last affectionate pat on the
shoulder.

Madeleine said: ‘What’s the matter? Why is Eloise crying?’

‘She knows about Father Anton. And she’s worried that the
same thing’s going to happen to you.’

Madeleine leaned over the old woman and kissed her. ‘Don’t worry,’
she said. ‘We won’t be gone long.
Mi
McCook will look
after me.’

Eloise nodded miserably.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘we’re going to be late ‘

We went out into the yard, and I stowed Madeleine’s suitcase
in the back of the 2CV.

The thin snow fell on us like a wet veil. We only had one
more piece of luggage to collect – the medieval trunk from the cellar of Father
Anton’s house. We climbed into the car and I started the engine. Then we
bounced off along the narrow, icy roads, the car’s heater blaring, and the
windshield wipers squeaking backwards and forwards.

Although the French rise early, the village was still
deserted by the time we reached Father Anton’s house and pulled up in the front
yard. I got out of the car, walked round, and opened Madeleine’s door for her.

‘What do we need here?’ she asked me, stepping out.

‘The devil,’ I said gravely. ‘We’re taking it with us.’

Taking it with us? I don’t understand.’

‘Just come and help me. I’ll tell you what it’s all about
later.’

Madeleine looked up at the house. She could see the broken
window of Father Anton’s bedroom, with the curtains flapping and twisting in
the cold wind. She said:

‘Is Father Anton up there?
And
Antoinette?’

I nodded. ‘We have to be quick. As soon as we leave, the
devil’s going to set the house alight.’

Madeleine crossed herself. ‘We should call the police, Dan.
We can’t just let this happen.’

I took her wrist, and pulled her towards the house.

‘Dan, we ought to! I can’t bear to leave Father Anton this
way!’

‘Listen,’ I told her bluntly, ‘we don’t have any choice. If
we don’t do what
Elmek
tells us, we’re going to die
like them. Can you understand that? And besides,
it’s
Father Anton’s only chance of survival, too.’

I unlocked the heavy front door and pushed it open.

‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘He’s dead. How can he have a
chance of survival?’

I looked at her straight.
‘Because I made
a bargain.
If we help
Elmek
to find his twelve
brethren, and the thirteen brethren between them raise the demon
Adramelech
, then it will ask
Adramelech
to bring Father Anton and Antoinette back to life.’

Madeleine stared at me. ‘You don’t believe that – surely?’

‘What else can I believe? I saw the devil, Madeleine. I saw
it with my own eyes. I saw Antoinette covered in knives. I saw Father Anton cut
open like a beef carcass.’

‘Oh, God,’ she said, in a low, haunted voice. ‘I can’t go
through with it.’

‘You have to. Now, come on.’

Together, we walked down the echoing length of the polished
hallway. I took the cellar key down from its hook, unlocked the cellar door,
and led Madeleine down into the musty darkness. At the foot of the stairs I
found a
lightswitch
, and turned it on.

The copper-and-lead trunk was waiting for us. It was an
ancient, dull-
coloured
rectangular chest, locked with
three copper hasps. It must have been six or seven hundred years old, and it
was decorated with copper inlays of horses and helmeted riders, and
fleurs
-de-
lys
. Madeleine
whispered: ‘Is that it? Is the devil in there?’ I nodded. ‘You’re going to have
to help me lift it. Do you think you can manage?’

‘I’ve been milking cows and mucking-out stables for weeks. I
think I’m strong enough.’

Full of foreboding, we approached the trunk and stood beside
it. Then we took its curved handles in both hands, and slowly lifted it off the
cellar floor. It was staggeringly heavy. It must have weighed all of two
hundred and twenty pounds, dead weight, and we had to drag it and slide it
across to the stairs. Then we hefted it up, step by step, until we reached the
hallway.

It was a matter of three or four minutes to get the trunk
out of the house and into the yard. I opened up the Citroen’s rear door, ready
to receive it but I was just rearranging my own cases, when Madeleine said:
‘Look! Just look at that!’

Where the trunk rested, the snow was melting. No snow
settled on top of it, either. It was almost as if the snow was shrinking away
from our evil and malevolent burden in fear.

‘One last heave,’ I said dryly, and we lifted the trunk into
the back of the Citroen.

Then I checked my watch. If we took the Route
Nationale
from Caen, we could be in Dieppe in about three
hours. I shut and locked the back of the car, and we climbed in and settled
ourselves down.

I said to Madeleine, softly: ‘You don’t have to go through
with this if you don’t want to.

I mean, if you don’t really believe this devil’s going to
hurt you, you could take a risk and stay at home.’

‘What do you mean?’

I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. But I’ve always felt that any
kind of devil only has as much power as you’re prepared to concede it. If we
weren’t afraid of
Elmek
, then maybe it couldn’t hurt
us.’

Madeleine shook her head. ‘I believe in this devil, Dan.
I’ve believed in it longer than you have. And I started all this terrible
killing, too, so I think I have a duty to see it through.’

‘It’s your choice,’ I told her, and switched on the engine.
Then I pulled out of the snowbound yard, and drove through the cold, empty
streets of Pont
D’Ouilly
. I kept glancing in my
mirror at the dull shape of the medieval trunk – and also to see if any smoke
was rising yet out of Father Anton’s house. But the trunk remained silent and
closed, and it only took a few minutes of driving down those winding roads
before the village disappeared behind the trees and the hills, and I never saw
Elmek’s
strange powers at work.

Madeleine said: ‘I’m sorry, Dan.
If I’d
only known.’

‘We’ll beat them yet,’ I told her.
‘
Elmek
and
Adramelech
and the
whole damned team.’

But when I looked again at the sinister bulk of that ancient
trunk, I felt far from confident; and I couldn’t even guess at what hideous
atrocities its nightmarish inhabitant was already scheming.

A French onion-seller wavered across the road in front of me
on his bicycle, and I blew my horn at him angrily.

‘
Cochon
!’
he shouted, and shook his fist as he dwindled out of sight in the snow.

Dieppe was as grey and tatty as any Channel port, and we
only stopped in the cobbled square in the
centre
of
town for a few minutes, just to change some French francs into British pounds.
It was almost lunchtime, and we were lucky to make the bank before it closed.
In France, they take their lunch seriously. Then we drove out to the SNCF
ferry, past the cluttered little cafes and tourist arcades and bars called ‘Le
Bar
Anglais
’ or ‘Le Bar Churchill’, where
day-tripping British tourists spent their last few francs on very ordinary vin
ordinaire
; past the cranes and the docks and the clutter of
crates and trucks; until we turned the corner and saw the black-and-white ship
with its red-painted funnel, and the English Channel the
colour
of pale green soup.