The Devils of D-Day (16 page)

The devil laughed with a soft, creaking noise that made me
shudder. I said: ‘Come on, Madeleine. Let’s go and find the Reverend Taylor,’
and I opened the door of the car.

As I stepped out,
Elmek
whispered
from out of its locked trunk: ‘Remember – the sun has set. Your ring of hair no
longer protects you. So tread wisely!’

I climbed out of the car into the cold night air. There was
a single street lamp by the corner of an old weatherboard house, shining dimly
through a halo of fog. You could tell we were close to a river by the
bone-chilling cold, and an almost imperceptible movement in the air, as if
ghosts were brushing past us, unseen and unheeded. I coughed.

Together, we walked up the sloping street. We looked right
and left, but the village was deserted. Far away, across the other side of the
river, we heard a train clattering towards Newhaven, and for a moment we saw
the lights of its windows through the trees. Madeleine said, ‘Dan – there’s a
sign here.’ I peered through the fog. On one of the old flint walls, there was
a white-painted notice reading: ‘St Katherine’s Church & Vicarage’. It
pointed uphill into the gloom. I turned back for a moment and looked at our
Citroen, parked at an angle beside a low hedge, and then I said: ‘All right,
then.

We’d better see if the Reverend Taylor’s at home.’

My mouth felt as if I was chewing furry caterpillars. I
reached out for Madeleine’s hand, and we walked as slowly as we could, but it
only took a few steps before St Katherine’s came into view around the houses –
an ancient
steepled
church with a moss-covered
lych-gate and a graveyard of leaning headstones. Close beside it, its windows
warmly lit, was a Queen Anne vicarage, fronted with shiny blue-black bricks.
There was a white porch trailed with leafless creeper, and an imposing black
front door, as glossy as a coffin.

We walked across the street and approached the porch as
quietly as we could. It somehow seemed sacrilegious to march around this silent
fog-bound English village talking in strident voices. Madeleine leaned forward
to read the engraved brass plaque on the door, and whispered: ‘There it is,
Dan.
The Reverend P.
Woodfall
Taylor.’

I pulled her closer, and kissed her cheek. She smelled of
French perfume and soap.

She said ‘Your nose is cold.’ Then I lifted the weighty
brass knocker and struck it twice. Across the road, someone switched on a
bedroom light.

Inside the vicarage, I heard doors opening and closing.
Then the sound of someone walking towards the door.
A key
was turned in the lock, and then a slice of light fell across the path, and an
elderly face appeared at the crack in the doorway.

‘Yes?’

I said, uncertainly: ‘Are you the Reverend Taylor, sir?’

‘That’s correct. Did you want to see me?’

I coughed. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. But there’s
something I have to discuss.’

The old man looked at me suspiciously. He had a crest of
wiry white hair, and that ruddy, well-polished face that always makes me think
of English clergy as a boxful of Carolina apples. He was wearing a clerical
collar and carpet slippers, and a pair of shiny grey pants that looked as if
he’d pressed them under the mattress. There were deep indentations at the side
of his nose where he usually wore spectacles, and that was probably why his
pale, bulging eyes were regarding me so fixedly.

‘You’re American, aren’t you?’ the vicar asked, in precise
tones. He even pronounced ‘aren’t’ as ‘ah-runt’. He said: ‘You’re not from the
Mormons? Because I’m afraid I have nothing to say to the Mormons.’

‘I’m not a Mormon, sir.’

‘They’re a terrible pest, you know.
And
all this ridiculous nonsense about
Moroni
and
Boroni
.’

Madeleine said, ‘We’ve come about the tank.’

The vicar
swivelled
his jowly head
in his stiff clerical collar and blinked at her.
‘The tank?
How very odd.’

‘Why is it odd?’ I asked him. I wondered if he, like Eloise,
had felt some kind of premonition or psychic wave.

‘Well,’ said the Reverend
Woodfall
Taylor, ‘they only came around to empty it on Tuesday.’

I stared at him uncomprehendingly and he stared back at me.

‘The septic tank,” he explained. ‘Isn’t that what you
meant?’

If I hadn’t felt so sick and serious about
Elmek
, I think I could have laughed. But all I could say
was: ‘Not that tank, sir. The tank you once said prayers over in Normandy,
during the war.’

His mouth slowly opened, as if some strong invisible hand
was pulling his jaw down.

He
said,
perplexed: ‘Normandy?
The tank in Normandy?’

I nodded. ‘It’s been opened,
Mr
Taylor. The devil’s got out.’

He stared at me in absolute slow-motion horror. Then he
opened the door wide, and almost dragged us both into his cluttered little
hall, among the crowded umbrella-stand and grandfather clock and coat-rack hung
with ecclesiastical raincoats and hats. He slammed the door behind us, and
locked it.

‘You’d better come through,’ he said worriedly, and ushered
us into his sitting-room.

‘My wife is out tonight,
organising
a beetle-drive for the women’s institute, and that’s probably just as well.’

The sitting-room smelled of pipe-smoke and logs. There was a
wide open hearth, in front of which toasted a marmalade cat and three shabby
armchairs. One wall of the room was lined with books like With Net
And Specimen Jar In
Lahore and The Way Of Christ Vol. IX,
and on the chimney-breast was a muddy oil painting of the Sussex Downs at
Fulking
. The Reverend Taylor said: ‘Sit down, please,
sit
down. Perhaps I can get my woman to make you a cup of
coffee. Or there’s whisky, if you prefer.’

‘A whisky would be wonderful,’ I told him. ‘We came all the
way over from France this morning.’

The vicar went to an antique sideboard and took out three
ill-matched glasses. He filled each with neat Vat 69, and brought them over to
the fireside with trembling hands. He swallowed his where he stood, wiped his
mouth with a crumpled handkerchief, and said: ‘Cheers.’

Madeleine said: ‘We’re looking for your help,
Mr
Taylor. We know something about the devil, but not much.
Ever since the war, it’s had a terrible effect on our village.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said the Reverend Taylor. ‘I told them this
business would come to a bad end. I told them a hundred times. But oh no, they
never listened. You do your part, they said, and we’ll take care of ours.’

‘Who were they?’ I asked him.

The Reverend Taylor looked at me in surprise. ‘My dear
fellow, I couldn’t possibly tell you that.
Quite out of the
question.
I was bound by the Official Secrets Act, and unless I hear to
the contrary, I still am.’

‘
Mr
Taylor,’ I told him, ‘I don’t
like to sound offensive, but this young lady and I are both in serious danger
because of that tank, and I’m afraid the Official Secrets Act is going to have
to go where the monkey put his nuts.’

There was a silence. A log in the crackling fire shifted and
dropped, and a shower of sparks flew up the chimney.

The Reverend Taylor said: ‘I’m afraid I’ve never really
understood that expression.’

Madeleine leaned forward intently. ‘
Mr
Taylor,’ she said, ‘you have to help us. The devil is threatening to kill us
both, unless we help it to find its brethren.’

‘
It’s
name is
Elmek
,’ I said quietly.
‘The
devil of sharp knives and cuts.
If we don’t bring all thirteen devils
together again, it has promised us the worst death that anyone could think of.’

The vicar sat back in his chair. His eyes went from
Madeleine to me and back again.

Then he said: ‘You know about it, don’t you? You know about
it already.’

‘Only some of it.
Just a few
fragments of information we managed to get together in France, and some good
guesswork by Father Anton.’

‘Father Anton!’ said the Reverend Taylor, brightening. ‘I
had no idea that he was still alive! I’m amazed! How is he? He was so kind to
me during the war, you know.
A real gentleman of the cloth.’

‘Father Anton died last night,
Mr
Taylor. He was killed when
Elmek
got loose.’

The Reverend Taylor dropped his gaze. ‘Oh,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m very sorry.’

I said: ‘
Mr
Taylor, more people
are going to get hurt unless you can tell us about these devils. Father Anton
said they were probably the thirteen devils that
terrorised
Rouen in 1045. They were exorcised by Cornelius
Prelati
,
and sewn into sacks, but that was all he could discover.’

The Reverend Taylor sadly blew his nose. ‘He was a clever
man, Father Anton. Yes, he was absolutely right. They were the thirteen devils
of Rouen.
Les
ireizn
diables
de Rouen.’

‘But how did they get into American tanks?’ asked Madeleine.
‘I don’t understand it at all.’

The vicar shrugged. ‘I understood very little of it myself.
It all happened a long time ago, when I was a very enthusiastic young vicar,
and I had just been appointed to my first church in Sussex.’

‘Can you tell us about it?’ I asked. ‘We’ll keep it to
ourselves, you know
,
if you’re really worried about
the Official Secrets Act.’

The Reverend Taylor looked up at me. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I
suppose there’s no harm, since you already know so much about it. Would you
care for some more whisky?

No? Well, I’ll have one.’

We waited in silence while the vicar poured himself another
drink. Then he came over and sat by the fire, and stared into the red-hot
caverns of logs and branches, a man remembering hell.

‘What you have to know about this part of Sussex,’ he said,
‘was that it bore the brunt of the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror in
1066.
All this
valley was occupied, and Lewes became
the seat of William de
Warrenne
, who was one of
William the Conqueror’s most trusted officers. The castle at Lewes was built by
de
Warrenne
, and on the southern slopes of the town
an immense Priory was constructed, one of the largest ecclesiastical buildings
ever erected in England. In its time, it was even greater than Canterbury
Cathedral.’

The Reverend Taylor swallowed half a glass of whisky, and
patted his lips with the back of his sleeve.

‘Of course, when Henry VIII broke with Rome, the Priory was
dissolved, and most of its stones were pilfered by local people to build
houses. But the Priory kept some of its secrets for many centuries afterwards.
It was only when Victorian railway engineers came to excavate the site where
the Priory had stood, to build a line to
Brighton, that
they came across several remarkable things.’

I looked up at the clock on the Reverend Taylor’s
mantelpiece. Eight o’clock. I wondered how long
Elmek
would stay patient in his medieval trunk. Madeleine touched my hand, and I knew
she was thinking the same thing. ••

The Reverend Taylor said: ‘First of all, they found the tomb
of William de
Warrenne’s
wife,
Gundrada
,
whose burial place was unknown until then. This discovery was well-
publicised
. But there was another find, which wasn’t
publicised
at all. As they dug deeper, they found a sealed
vault,
chiselled
deep into the chalk, and this
contained thirteen ancient sacks of bones! Madeleine whispered: ‘The thirteen
devils.’ ‘Precisely,’ the vicar nodded.
The thirteen devils,
the disciples of
Adramelech
.

And according to words engraved on the lid of the vault,
they had been brought across the Channel from Rouen by William de
Warrenne
as devils of war, concealed in strange suits of
armour
. He had unleashed them at Senlac, the field on which
the Battle of Hastings was fought, and they had flown on Harold and his English
soldiers with such ferocity that the battle was won in a matter of hours.’

The Reverend Taylor turned to me, his ruddy face made redder
by the heat from the fire.

‘I expect you know the story that William’s archers fired
their arrows into the air, so that they landed amongst the English. Well, they
were not arrows, but devils; and the thing that tore out Harold’s eyes was a
beast from hell.’

I took out a cigarette, my first for a whole day, and lit
it. I asked the Reverend Taylor:

‘That was nine hundred years ago, wasn’t it? How did you get
involved?’

He looked up. ‘My oldest church records showed that William
de
Warrenne
had somehow struck a bargain with the
devils. If the devils helped the Normans conquer England, he would give them
his wife
Gundrada
as a sacrifice to
Adramelech
. That’s why the devils came to Lewes, and that’s
why
Gundrada
died when she did. But there were
powerful French exorcists at the Priory, and they managed to quell the evil
spirits, and
sew
them up again in sacks. It was only
when the railway engineers opened up the vault that they saw the light of day
once more.’

‘What happened to them then?’ The Reverend Taylor finished
his whisky. ‘They were taken to what are now the vaults of St Thaddeus, by
night, and sealed away by seven Roman Catholic priests.