Sarah Rayne - What Lies Beneath

‘It doesn’t look like it. We’re on our own, Crispian.’

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Crispian, suddenly.

‘Believe me, I’d rather be a thousand miles away.’

The men tilted the wooden rectangle and, as they did so, a single plangent note from somewhere inside one of the buildings rang out. Crispian’s skin crawled with fear and repulsion.

‘Jesus Christ, that’s the grisliest thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Gil.

‘What is it?’

‘It sounds like the Last Trump. In fact—’ He turned sharply as there was a flurry of movement from beyond the main entrance. Raif, accompanied by a young man, came in, half-running.

‘He hasn’t done it,’ said Crispian, sick with disappointment. ‘No soldiers, nothing.’

Raif ran across to where they were sitting. ‘I couldn’t get anyone to help,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not that no one cares, but a spy in wartime…’ He gestured, indicating the indifference of the Pasha’s men.

‘Yes, I see,’ said Crispian. ‘He’s going to have to endure it, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will it kill him?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not a… an injury I’ve ever encountered. There’ll be considerable blood loss, and the shock to his entire system will be immense. There’re quite a lot of nerve fibres in the tongue, and also muscle.’

‘It’ll be very painful,’ said Crispian, conscious of the lameness of this remark.

‘Yes. But I’ve brought what I could to help him afterwards.’ He indicated the small bag he had with him, then said, ‘Mr Cadence, I had a moment to look at your father. He still lives, but the coma is deepening.’

Crispian tried to focus his mind on his father, lying in his dark silent world, but his whole awareness was for Jamie. They were bringing him out at last, and a drumbeat had started up from somewhere – a dreadful hollow rhythmic tapping that made the hairs lift on the back of Crispian’s neck. He thought he had never heard anything filled with such menace. The torchflames burned up, throwing huge elongated shadows across the courtyard, so that for a moment it seemed full of monstrous prowling creatures.

Jamie was not manacled this time and he was struggling fiercely, but Crispian could see the men were holding him tightly. The drumbeat increased and a thrumming tension built up in the square. Crispian was aware of sweat prickling his scalp and sliding down between his shoulder blades.

The guards snaked the chains round Jamie’s wrists and ankles, pinning him to the wooden board. Then they fastened an iron brace round the upper part of his head, like a travesty of a coronet, then a second, smaller one, round his neck. The ends were driven into the board, holding his head absolutely immobile. The neck circle seemed almost to be choking him and Crispian found himself swallowing convulsively.

One of the men moved to stand behind the board, reaching around it and thrusting his fingers knuckle-deep into Jamie’s mouth, dragging it wide open. Jamie jerked and let out a cry of mingled surprise and pain, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. The other man stood in front of him, and Crispian saw for the first time that he was holding a jagged-edged clamp with serrated edges.

‘They could have spared him the sight of that,’ murmured Gil. ‘My God, I’d like to tear their own tongues from their mouths.’

They were inserting a wedge into Jamie’s mouth, forcing it impossibly wide. His eyes were straining from his head and sweat was running down his face, gluing his hair to his forehead. Even in the crimson light his skin had taken on a grey pallor.

The single trumpet note rang out again and, as if a signal had been given, the man with the clamp stepped forward and thrust it down into Jamie’s mouth. Crispian could no longer see what they were doing because they were bending low over their prisoner, but he could see Jamie struggling against the manacles and he could hear him choking and gagging and trying to cry out for help. He flung himself against the restraints, but they held firm.

And then there was a cold snapping sound and Jamie screamed with dreadful high-pitched screams. Like an animal, thought Crispian with sick horror.

‘They’ve done it,’ said Gil softly. ‘Oh God, they’ve really done it.’

The men stepped back but Crispian could not see them properly because his eyes were streaming with helpless tears and sweat was pouring down his face, half-blinding him. When his vision cleared he saw that Raif and Gil had both crossed the square and were kneeling at Jamie’s side. The chains that had held him in place seemed to have been removed, but he was slumped against the wooden board. Crispian was not sure if he was conscious. The lower part of Jamie’s face was covered with blood, but it was possible to see that his mouth was bruised and dreadfully swollen, distorting his face.

Crispian was horrified to feel his mind swing between pity and shameful repulsion, because in those moments he had the eerie feeling that it was no longer Jamie who lay there, no longer the cousin he had known since they were both small, but someone quite different. He shook his head to dislodge this feeling but an image stayed with him: an image of Jamie shying away from the world and living the rest of his life in some dark, dreadful half-existence.

After Raif and Gil had applied the remedies Raif had brought, the Pasha’s men found a cart, onto which they lifted the barely conscious Jamie.

Crispian had expected resistance to this, but Jamie’s captors simply turned their backs and they were left to wheel the cart away.

‘They have inflicted the punishment,’ said Raif, as Crispian glanced back at the little knots of watchers. ‘They have no further interest in him, and they will return to fighting the war now.’

When they reached the fortress infirmary, Jamie was taken to a narrow room near the main ward.

‘There’s not a great deal we can do except try to ease the pain,’ said Raif.

Crispian, staring down at his cousin, forcing himself not to flinch from the swollen distorted face, said, ‘I should go to see my father, shouldn’t I?’

‘Yes.’ Raif glanced at Crispian. ‘Sir Julius may rouse a little near the end. Don’t let that upset you. And on some level he might understand you’re there. If so, that would be a great comfort to him.’

Entering his father’s room was, Crispian thought, like going from one nightmare into another. Both Jamie’s room and this one were dimly lit, but where Jamie had been moaning with the same dreadful formless sounds he had made in the square, Julius lay still and silent. A nurse was with him. She smiled at Crispian and indicated to him to sit near the bed, then went out. A low lamp was burning in the corner, shutting Crispian and his father into a dark intimacy in which he could hear his father’s light, regular breathing. After a moment he took Julius’s hand. It lay cool and unresisting against his palm.

The night dragged on. Several times a nurse looked in, and Gil and Raif both came in as well. Occasionally soft footsteps went past the door and Crispian’s mind strayed from his father to Jamie, lying at the far end of the corridor. Jamie, mutilated and damaged for ever, because the Turkish extremists believed he had spied on them and sold information to the Bulgarian army waiting outside the city. Do I believe he did that? thought Crispian, and still did not know.

Shortly after 2 a.m. he became aware of a change in his father’s breathing. It was slowing, becoming laboured. Did that mean he was dying? Crispian went to the door and managed to signal to a nurse, who appeared to understand what he was trying to tell her because several minutes later a doctor Crispian half recognized came into the room. He examined Julius briefly, then shook his head and patted Crispian’s shoulder comfortingly. Crispian took this to mean his father was sinking into death and the doctor was sorry but there was nothing that could be done.