Song of the Damned Read online

  ‘I’ll happily drift around churchyards with you – and, actually, churches are good places to disinter legends anyway—’

  ‘Oh, God, you’re such a pragmatist,’ said Arabella, tempering this remark by reaching for Phin’s left hand, turning it over, and tracing a light pattern on his palm with her fingertip.

  Phin resolutely kept his eyes on the road, and managed to continue steering the car reasonably efficiently. After a moment, he said, ‘If you start talking about ghosts, I warn you, I’ll make you get out and walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘In these shoes? Oh, my dear,’ said Arabella, with the grin that made her look like a dishevelled elf. She was wearing a scarlet silk shirt over jeans, which looked very nice indeed, together with a floppy-brimmed hat which looked terrible, and which had turned out to obscure the driving mirror, and had had to be thrown onto the back seat.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘we’ve got a really good choral concert on one of the nights – a guest soloist and that conductor who leads youth orchestras. Hats Madeley is secretly hoping you might get a mention of that onto one of those late-night TV arts programmes. The kind you probably get asked to speak on all the time, I expect.’

  Phin hastily disclaimed ever having been asked to speak on a late-night TV programme of any kind. ‘I’m a lowly researcher. A back-room boy.’

  ‘Even so, it … Oh, we’re coming up to the exit for Cresacre.’

  ‘This one?’

  ‘No, it’s the next one – oh, wait, no, it should have been that one after all. Sorry, Phin. Can you turn round? No, of course you can’t, not on a motorway.’

  As Phin resigned himself to driving on to the next exit, Arabella said, with what sounded like studied casualness, ‘Did you say you booked two rooms at the Black Boar? Not that it matters either way, of course.’

  In an expressionless voice, Phin said, ‘I booked two rooms, as it happens.’

  ‘Ah.’

  She appeared to wait for more, so Phin said, ‘I asked if they could be next door to one another, though.’

  ‘Did you really?’ said Arabella. Phin could not decide if she was relieved or pleased or amused.

  Local people often told Olivia how marvellous it must be to live in a cottage with such ancient associations. Romantic and historic, they said.

  Infanger Cottage might be historic, but it was far from romantic. It was damp and dingy. The roof leaked, the plumbing was erratic, woodworm had chewed up half the timbers, and the window frames were so badly fitting that they rattled when you walked across the rooms. It would cost a king’s ransom to put the cottage to rights and Olivia did not have a king’s ransom. Even if she did, she could never risk anyone coming inside the cottage and uncovering its past.

  What she did have, though, was her uncle’s opera. The Martyrs. The work he had vowed would one day take them out of the narrow confines of Cresacre, and into more exciting worlds. Olivia had believed him. After he died she had vowed that she would do everything to get his opera recognized. And the school bicentenary could have been the very chance she had hoped for. But The Martyrs had been ignored. Instead, there was to be a choral concert by the school choir, a murder-mystery evening in the library, and a gala supper on the last night. There were also what were referred to as fun-type auctions, with local celebrities. The only local celebrities Olivia knew of were the mayor, who was a grasping local businessman with a hard-faced wife, Firkin the builder, the DJ from the local radio station who drank like a fish, and the vicar.

  Had nobody remembered that Gustav, a former headteacher at Cresacre School, no less, had taken the Cresacre legend, spent years researching it, and had created an entire opera around it?

  Olivia was so angry she had violent indigestion for the whole of one night, and, next morning, she had written to Harriet Madeley. She’d spent a long time composing the letter, but in the end she had got it right. She had found a book called A Layman’s Guide to the Law, and it had been very useful.

  ‘Dear Miss Madeley’, she had written, ‘Recently there have been concerns as to whether the present level of funding for the Tulliver Scholarship can continue. This is due largely to the fact that investments no longer yield the profits they once did.’

  Olivia did not really understand the financial side of the scholarship, but everyone talked about low interest rates and investments going down. As well as A Layman’s Guide to the Law she had a book called Everyman’s Accounting, which she had bought when she started attending trust meetings. It had enabled her to occasionally ask a polite question at the meetings. She thought the board members – most of whom were quite elderly – probably told one another that it was very nice to see young Miss Tulliver taking her board duties so seriously.

  But you did not need Everyman’s Accounting to understand that actually the scholarship’s funds were very healthy. Miss Madeley would not know that, though, and the elderly board members would not tell her. Most of them lived quite far away, and the chairman was a solicitor from Worcester. They usually had the meetings at his office; Olivia caught a train there and back, with a taxi to and from the station. She was able to claim travelling expenses. After her first meeting, a man who was the trust’s secretary had taken her for a drink at a nearby hotel so that he could explain a bit more about the trust’s workings to her. He was staying overnight there, and he had suggested they have their drink in his bedroom, which would be more private. It turned out that he did not want to talk about the trust at all, but after a few drinks Olivia had gone to bed with him because he was the secretary and important, and you never knew where a romantic encounter like this might lead. But he had not phoned her afterwards, and at the next meeting he had ignored her and talked loudly about his wife and two children, which was the first time they had been mentioned. Olivia had felt ashamed and embarrassed, but fortunately the man resigned as secretary afterwards, and she never saw him again.

  The real punch of her letter came at the end.

  ‘There is a glimmer of hope for the school, however’, Olivia had written. ‘It has been suggested that if you could demonstrate its loyalty and commitment, and help perpetuate the Tulliver name, that might go a considerable way towards securing and ensuring future scholarship allotment to the school.

  ‘This could probably be done in several ways, but it would certainly strike a very favourable note with the board if the school were to stage the work written by a member of the Tulliver family – in other words, my late uncle, Gustav Tulliver’s, opera, The Martyrs, as part of the bicentenary celebrations. As a descendant of the original Tulliver who created the scholarship, and as an eminent man who made the school his life’s work, this would be seen as a fitting tribute. The work itself contains considerable local content so it would be of immense interest, and, if a professional company cannot be engaged, there are several excellent amateur opera groups that would surely jump at such an opportunity.

  ‘With kind regards to you and to Miss Davy,

  ‘Olivia Tulliver’.

  After she had posted the letter, she sat for a long time in her uncle’s study, his books and research notes all around her. The memories scudded through her mind until she could almost see his gaunt figure at the piano, the dim light falling across his face, highlighting the sunken cheekbones. If she listened intently, she could nearly hear his voice.

  ‘Sing for me … Sing as if the music’s being torn from your throat and your lungs …’ And then, ‘Because this is Ginevra’s song,’ he had said.

  Ginevra. Even now, the name sent a chill through Olivia. Ginevra was at the heart of the Cresacre legend. No one knew for certain what had happened to her – or even if she had ever actually existed. But Olivia knew. She had known for a long time, and she had also known for a long time that she would do anything to keep the truth about Ginevra secret. She would cheat, lie, steal, if necessary. Even commit murder? said a small, sly voice inside her mind.

  Murder. The word lingered, and the memories clawed upwards again. Mu
rder … There was certainly a murder at the heart of all this. A very strange and macabre murder that had its roots in Infanger Cottage.

  Diary entry, 1790s

  Last night I tried to shut out the fear by playing music in my mind. When I was a child at home, the house would be filled with music – I grew up with it.

  I started calmly enough with a Mozart Allegretto, diligently finding every note on an imaginary keyboard, painstakingly trying to get every note right.

  It did not work, of course. Because, by some devil-inspired means, a deeper memory slithered inside Mozart’s beautiful patterns.

  The forbidden music. The ancient plainchant that my grandmother forbade my cousins and I, as children, to play or sing. It was very old, she said, rocking in her chair, looking at us. Really very old indeed. It had been handed down within our family over many generations, and it was believed to have macabre associations. No, she did not know exactly what they were – she did not wish to know – but she had been told by her own grandmother, who had been told by hers, that the music had a very dark root.

  We would never destroy it, though, said my grandmother firmly, for it was a fragment of history – of religious history – and such shreds of the past should be preserved. ‘There may come a time when it can be used for good,’ she had said. ‘But it must not be allowed into the light. It should be kept in the darkness from which it came.’

  To tell a child not to do something is to ignite its curiosity. One afternoon, when I was staying at my grandmother’s house, together with the dearest of all my cousins, we stole quietly into the music room. It was a rain-swept afternoon, dark and dismal, and everyone was somewhere else. And we found the music and we played it on grandmother’s pianoforte. I did not play it very well or very accurately, but my cousin, who was older and had learned music for longer, achieved what she thought was a fair mastery.

  Huddled in this dimness now and writing this, thanking God’s mercy that I am allowed a tallow candle for an hour or so once darkness falls, I am remembering that afternoon, and a tiny part of me is wondering whether on that day my cousin and I disturbed something that would have been better left alone. I cannot dismiss the memory of the music, or the image of my cousin seated at the pianoforte. It’s printed on my mind – a small scene; one of those secret, forbidden times that children sometimes share and that the grown-ups never find out about. That small, elfin-faced girl – who my father once said had music in her bones – is long since dead, may God grant her soul rest. But while I have that image of her, she will never really die for me.

  The memory of that music will never die, either. I have left traces of it behind – deliberately so. My grandmother wanted it to remain undisturbed in its own darkness, but I think she was wrong.

  THREE

  Cresacre, 1794

  Gina Chandos had enjoyed the evening, but now it was over she was starting to feel nervous about what might lie ahead. It was a pleasant, rather excited nervousness, though.

  She had played the pianoforte for her parents’ guests. She had worn her lavender gown, and she had played a Mozart Allegretto. She thought it was not being vain to believe that she had played quite well.

  He had thought so. He had watched her from across the room, with the smile that made his eyes slant under the dark brows, and that gave him the look of a mischievous devil.

  Cesare Chimaera. That was the name by which he had been known to his adoring audiences, to members of the royal houses where he had performed and sung during the glittering years of his fame – to the people who had entertained him in their palazzos and splendid villas. That name had been blazoned across posters outside theatres and opera houses, usually with the words, ‘Famous,’ and, ‘Spectacular,’ and, ‘Supremely gifted’. Gina knew all this, not only because Chimaera had told her, but also because he had shown her some of the posters which he had brought with him to England.

  ‘Where,’ he had said to her, ‘I was forced to flee on account of jealous, small-minded enemies. There were people in Rome and in Milan – underlings, footling persons – who were envious.’ A sigh. ‘And so,’ said Chimaera, sorrowfully, ‘I am reduced to earning a living as a music master. But I do not give him any thought at all, that person. Instead, you and I shall give our thoughts to Mozart.’

  It was clear that neither of Gina’s parents had heard any of the rumours about Chimaera. Gina only knew them herself because people who came to Chandos House murmured to one another that they wondered at John Chandos allowing such a man in the house, they did really. Chandos was a justice of the peace, and normally he had an unerring eye for a rogue.

  Chimaera was not a rogue, of course, and Gina tried not to listen too much to the spiteful talk. Mother always said eavesdropping was unladylike and unmannerly, and Father Joachim had preached about that only two Sundays ago, Mother said. Also take no heed unto all words that are spoken; lest thou hear thy servant curse thee. Ecclesiastes, said Mother, and Gina would do well to take note of it.

  Gina did try to take note of it, and she always tried to follow Father Joachim’s teachings, because he was a man of God, and he had known her since she was born; in fact he had been there at the birth. He sometimes talked about that; about how he had waited just outside what he referred to as the birthing chamber, and how it had been a dark, rainy night, and they had feared for Gina’s life.

  ‘But I fought to keep your soul safe,’ he said, which Gina always found smothering and embarrassing. Still, you had to treat a person who had fought for your soul with respect, so she was always careful to be polite to Father Joachim.

  It was impossible to avoid knowing the effect Chimaera had on the servants. Within two days of his arrival, they were giggling and nudging one another, saying he was a one, that Signor Chimaera, you didn’t know where to look for some of the things he said, not that you could always understand it all, him being foreign. As for making so bold as to tidy his bedroom alone – well, best not risk that, they said, giggling all over again.

  Gina did not understand all the servants’ innuendoes, but she understood that Chimaera, who dressed modestly in black, but whose smile was not modest at all, was considered to be what was called a rake. A seducer.

  Father would know about rakes and seducers, of course, but Mother would not. To Mother, what happened between men and women within marriage was a distasteful necessity. She had not told Gina precisely what it was, except to say that it was something that had to be endured occasionally. This conversation had taken place on Gina’s sixteenth birthday, when various social events were being planned, mostly with the aim of securing a good marriage. Most ladies, Mother said, found it possible to politely discourage that side of marriage, and real ladies avoided it as often as was consistent with a happy union. Gina, not entirely following, had felt, vaguely, that this outlook might be a pity for Father.

  It was shocking that Chimaera might be a seducer, but what was even more shocking was that after the evening at which she had played the Mozart, he walked lightly along the hall outside her bedroom. She sat up in bed, her heart pounding with a mixture of fear and shameful hope. There was a tap on the door, and he was there. He stood for a moment in the doorway, then came across to the bed and sat down, reaching for her hand. He was wearing a brocade robe, and he said she must not be alarmed or call for help; it was simply that she was the most beautiful, most desirable creature he had ever seen, and he was smitten with a deep and helpless love for her. And since he believed his love might be returned, said Chimaera, he was here tonight so they might explore together how that love could be made into reality.

  What was most shocking of all was that Gina had realized she was not going to scream for help, and nor was she going to order him to leave. The fear had completely vanished, and she was tremendously excited and also extremely curious. Ahead of her might be the thing people whispered and giggled and blushed about.

  She listened enrapt as he quoted to her from the world’s great poets – although he told her tha
t all the poetry in the world could not really convey how passionately he wanted to make her his own love in truth. She was so beautiful, so petite and dainty. A little, perfect, porcelain doll. Somehow, between a Shakespearean speech and a quote from Boccaccio’s avowal that an arrow had sped to his heart at first seeing her, he got into bed with her.

  At first she was worried in case anyone came in, but Chimaera said there was no cause for concern, because he had locked the door, having stolen a key from the housemaid’s cupboard downstairs earlier on. If Gina was still anxious, he would wedge a chair under the door handle, and she had his promise that if anyone tried to get in he would climb out through the window.‘I will risk life and limb to preserve your good reputation with your parents, you see,’ he said. Then, his eyes narrowing with amusement, he said, ‘But I do not promise to preserve your innocence tonight. You will not mind that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gina, who had already decided to throw every trace of innocence out of the window.

  ‘Shall we find out?’ he said, and he began to kiss her and to slide his hands under her nightgown. Until now, Gina had only had two very mild flirtations with sons of family friends and had once almost been kissed in the orchard by a good-looking gardener who had stood so close to her that she could smell the fresh clean sweat on his body. Chimaera did not taste of apples or of sweat; he tasted of perfume, as if he might have dabbed some onto his skin. This ought to have been pleasant, but at such close quarters Gina found it a bit sickly. But she was glad that she had not chosen to have her hair wound in soft rags to curl it tonight, and that it could stream unchecked over her bare shoulders for Chimaera to bury his face in.

  Between kissing her, he said he understood for the first time the sentiments of the Renaissance poet, Petrarch, who had talked of being disarmed by emotion. But when he took off his brocade robe, even to Gina who had only the sketchiest knowledge of the details of a gentleman’s body, it was immediately clear that he was far from disarmed. It was not immediately apparent, though, how things would proceed, but Chimaera would know what to do.