Paul Moorcraft - The Anchoress of Shere

An hour or so after she had last seen Duval, she heard the cellar door again.

She knew it was her turn to die.

He unlocked her door without knocking.

Wide-eyed and unkempt, Duval said, “Marda, sometimes moving events can create the required state for visionary experiences. You have read all of my book so you should understand what Christine experienced. And how she became what she became.”

The priest wiped his brow, dripping with sweat.

“Christine saw an evil man die, Sir Richard, yet she prayed to see the re-enactment of the death of the very best of men: our Lord Jesus Christ. You tell me Mark has been a good Christian brother. So be it. Mary witnessed the death of her son; you are privileged to see the death of thy goodly brother.”

Marda, barely conscious, tried to concentrate on Duval’s slurred speech.

“This may be your last chance to understand completely what, for so long, I have been attempting to create in this cellar. Please come with me. Let the Lord be praised.”

Marda staggered off her bench, still cloaked in her blankets. She was very weak now, and suffering from hypothermia. Her legs could hardly carry her. Yet, even given her desperate state, he insisted on attaching one of her hands to a handcuff and locking her to a pipe running along the wall. A screen made of old sheets covered the end of the corridor.

“Be prepared,” he warned.

She could never have prepared herself for what she was about to see.

Duval tore down the screen to reveal the young man’s arms tied to the spars of the great wooden crucifix, his legs supported by a short plank. The officer’s anguished, tear-stained face was slumped on his chest, while the blood on the wounded forehead had congealed into an ugly brown lump. His chest displayed a series of small injuries as though bits of flesh had been scooped out with a razor-sharp spoon. Blood oozed from the wounds on to his shirt, which had been wrapped around his waist like a loin-cloth.

Marda did not faint. To the contrary, steel entered her soul. Adrenaline surged through her body and the exhaustion and pain vanished. She could see by the heaving of her brother’s chest that he was still alive.

Marda screamed at Duval, “Let him down! Let him down, you fucking bastard.”

“No, I cannot do that. You must see him die, Christine.” In his frenzy Duval’s voice had moved up an octave.

“First I must hammer in the nails, but it will be swift. Not like the crucifixion of our Lord. I shall break his legs and then it will be over quickly.”

Marda, screaming at him to stop, tried to wrench herself out of her handcuffs. She had lost much weight, but she could not slide her wrist out of the restraints. Her eyes bulged as the priest produced a claw hammer and long nails from a Gladstone bag.

Her eyes fell upon a large white candle, one of the three arrayed like an altar decoration near the base of the cross. She could just reach the nearest one, while Duval was busying himself standing on a stool to reach up and force the nails into her brother’s outstretched palms. Mark pulled up his head from his chest and stared in abject horror at Duval for a brief second before lapsing back into a stupor.

Marda had reached out to the candle with her free hand, and pulled it upright towards her. Without hesitation she poured the hot wax on to her manacled wrist. With massive control, she suppressed the scream of pain that rose within her. She tugged hard and the lubricated wrist slipped out of the metal restraint.

A primeval imperative took command of her as she leapt, like a crazed she-wolf, at the surprised priest, knocking him off the stool with the force of her attack. She tore at his eyes and his hair as he attempted to back off, utterly confused. Then she kneed him very forcefully in the groin, and he went down groaning. With her fists she lashed out again at the big man, and then, with her bare heel, gave him a stupendous kick in the crotch for good measure. She heard the wrenching of tissue.

The priest cried for her mercy, but she could not see anything but fire nor hear anything but a loud drumming. Again and again she pummelled him while he curled into a ball and cried in pain. She stepped over him, grabbed the hammer and rained his body with blows; from her unknown reserve of hate and anger, she found the strength to beat him almost senseless.

She turned quickly to her brother and, standing on the stool, used the V-shaped claw at the other end of the hammer head to lever the ropes off his wrists and over his hands. Taking his weight on herself, she half-fell and half-staggered to the floor. She hugged him for a few seconds before dragging him into her cell and manoeuvring his groaning body on to the bench. She poured water into his mouth, slowly at first, then more to help rehydrate him. That done, she rushed into the corridor to check on Duval.

He was gone. The cellar door, she knew, would be locked. Much stronger than she realised, he must have crawled up the stairs. Perhaps she should have ignored her instincts and gone for help, but she could not leave Mark hanging on the cross. She had no time now to consider her future; all that mattered was the immediate safety of her brother. After washing his wounds, she did her best to bandage them with strips of her bedding.

“Oh God, let him live,” she shouted.

Duval had crawled into his bathroom and run a deep, steaming bath to help ease the pain in his limbs and the searing agony in his groin. Then he staggered into the kitchen and poured himself some brandy. Taking a generous slug, he limped slowly into the hall, where he noticed a large brown envelope protruding through the letterbox. He tugged it out and glanced at the cover. It said, “By hand from Irvine M. Gould.” He moved painfully back to the bathroom to turn off the taps.

He eased his aching body into the bath and began to compose himself, to think himself out of his conundrum: I’ll leave that pair down there for a while. Let them starve. He’ll be dead soon and she’ll be too shocked to resist. I’ll have to kill her; she deserves it for betraying me. How could I have ever thought that she was sincere? The ungrateful bitch. How could she have turned on me, after all that I’ve done for her? I’ll bury them both and get away from this place. Nobody knows they are here. Nobody’s come looking for the brother.

The brandy and hot water relaxed him a little, and the pain began to subside. He was sore, especially around the groin; the bruising would be bad, but there were no broken bones. He was taken aback by her hidden strength; obviously he had fed her too well.

He soaked himself and pondered on his future away from Shere. Wallowing in the comfort of the bath for a long time, he felt the water grow cold and let some of it out, then re-ran water from the hot tap. As he waited for the half-empty bath to refill he leaned out to reach the envelope on the chair beside the bath.

Curious, he opened it. It contained about thirty sheets of paper. The first page was entitled “The French Adventures of the Anchoress of Shere: Research Findings of the Saint Sardos Archives by Professor Irvine M. Gould.”

The water was getting a little too hot. Putting Gould’s essay back on the chair, Duval bent forward and turned on the cold tap, balancing the force of the two jets to give himself a pleasant temperature.

With wet hands, he picked up the papers again. His first reaction was that the essay was typical American fantasy. “France?” he said venomously under his breath. “It’s not possible.”

He started to read very quickly, sickened and enthralled at the same time. After perusing a few more pages, his throat became constricted and dry. He grabbed a towel and stepped dripping out of the bath. Clutching the offending document, now damp in his hands, he closed the bathroom door and limped back to the kitchen. In his state of double shock, from the beating and Gould’s literary stab in his back, he did not notice that he had left the taps running.