The Irresistible Buck Read online

  Again there was that note of mad elation in his voice as he turned and walked from the cave. Sir Gerald lingered a moment to press the black bottle containing the drug into Moll’s hand.

  Then he said in a low voice to her,

  “Don’t use this on the girl if you can help it. I may have need of it later.”

  There was a clink of coins and Clarinda saw him passing several sovereigns into Moll’s eager hand at the same time as she took the bottle.

  “Be a good girl,” he said to Clarinda, “and do what our Abbess tells you. It will be a pity if she is obliged to render you insensible. You will find the ceremony, if nothing else, an enlightening experience.”

  His lips beneath the mask seemed to leer at Clarinda so that instinctively she shrank back from him and found herself touching the black habit which covered the Abbess.

  When Sir Gerald disappeared, Clarinda said in a frightened whisper,

  “Help me – please help me – if you have a shred of kindness anywhere in your heart, have – pity on me, for I have been brought here – against my will. If you will help me to escape, I can give you money – a lot of money. Five hundred pounds – a thousand, it does not signify. When my uncle dies – he is Mr. Vernon’s father – I shall be very wealthy. I shall give you anything you ask if only you will – help me away from here.”

  Moll looked at her and Clarinda felt that there was some kindliness in her painted face. She was a middle-aged woman and the life she led had undoubtedly taken toll of her looks.

  Once she must have been pretty. There was still a pale reflection of it in her appearance although it was almost obscured by her coarse blemished skin, the bags of fat under her eyes and the fallen contour of her chin.

  “I know what you’re feelin’, child,” she said. “I went through this many years ago when I were younger than you, not more than thirteen and pure and decent, although there’d been plenty after me. But they took me to the caves at West Wycombe. I remember goin’ on my knees before Sir Francis Dashwood and pleadin’ with ’im to spare me,”

  “Then you understand,” Clarinda said eagerly. “Please help me – please.”

  The woman called Moll shook her head.

  “There’s not an ’ope, dearie,” she answered. “Even if you were to offer me one million golden guineas I couldn’t get you away from ’ere. It isn’t as though I wouldn’t welcome the money, but no woman can leave the caves unless she be accompanied by a gentleman.”

  “Are you sure – quite sure?” Clarinda asked and her voice seemed choked in her throat.

  “As sure as I be standin’ ’ere,” Moll answered her. “And the gentlemen who comes ’ere come for one thing only and you knows what that is.”

  “But I don’t,” Clarinda answered. “Mr. Vernon said that you were to tell me what – to expect. I would rather – know.”

  “It would be best if you didn’t,” Moll answered. “If you take my advice, you’ll drink what’s in this bottle, whatever that Sir Gerald says to the contrary. I can’t stand that man, that be the truth for all that he’s generous with ’is gold when it pleases him.”

  “I have no wish to be insensible,” Clarinda protested.

  “Then have a drink, dearie. Gin ’elps, I promise you. I’ll get you a glass.”

  “No – no,” Clarinda cried, “I want – nothing! Just tell me what I have to – do.”

  “’Tis the Black Mass, you’ve heard of it, I suppose?” Moll asked.

  Clarinda knew then that at the back of her mind it was what she had always expected and what she had known must happen in the caves. She then remembered reading how Catherine Medici of France, wife of Henry II, had celebrated the Black Mass in her efforts to destroy her husband’s affection for Diane Poitier.

  She had read a description of what took place in French and she thought then that it was more descriptive, more frankly written than would have been allowed if the book had been printed in English.

  “The Black Mass!”

  She knew now without being told what part she was to play.

  Venus was the naked woman who lay on the altar and over whom the Black Mass was blasphemously celebrated.

  The knowledge came to her like a flash of lightning searing into her consciousness, making her feel sick and faint with the full implication of what it entailed. Trembling, she put her hands up to her face as if she would blot out the horror of what in her mind’s eye she saw happening.

  “You had best drink this, dearie,” Moll said, holding out a glass half-full of neat gin as Clarinda stood there trembling. “They take you when the Service is finished, the Master first. But by that time they are drunk or drugged and you’ll need somethin’, you will really.”

  “What I shall need is not a drug,” Clarinda replied in a slow voice.

  She knew in that very moment that, if she was not rescued by the time the Service was finished, then there was only one thing she could do and that was to die.

  There would be knives on the tables, she thought. Somehow she would seize one and kill herself before the final degradation could happen to her.

  Quite clearly she could remember the place in which a knife’s entry in the body could kill the victim almost immediately. She remembered her adopted father telling her about it when he was describing the way a gladiator who had been defeated was despatched by the victor when the Roman Emperor turned his thumb down.

  It was the same place chosen by the Japanese when committing hara-kiri when they fell on their swords. Somehow she would get hold of a knife and somehow she would kill herself before Nicholas or any other man touched her.

  It seemed to Clarinda, having made her decision, that she received a new strength. She took her hands from her face.

  “Tell me,” she said to Moll, “what happens – first?”

  “You take off your clothes, dearie,” Moll answered, “and I dress you in the white robe of Venus. While they dine you sit at the foot of the altar. No man touches you, you’re dedicated to Satan ’imself.”

  Just for a moment Clarinda felt herself tremble.

  “Do – do these ceremonies really evoke the – magic powers of the – underworld?” she asked.

  Moll gave a laugh.

  “If they do, I’ve seen no sight nor sign of ’em!” she replied. “But they that drinks a great deal or takes drugs swear they sees wondrous sights.”

  Clarinda gave a sigh of relief and then she knew that she had been wrong even to think that such a thing was possible. If she was to be saved, only one thing could save her – the power of good. God would not be mocked by perverts like Nicholas conjuring up devils for their own lustful self-satisfaction.

  ‘I must pray,’ she thought, ‘pray as I have never prayed before that God in His mercy will send Lord Melburne to save me.’

  How it was possible, having seen the entrance to the caves, how anyone could come to her rescue, she had no idea, but she only felt that while the terror within her was still there, she was not now on the verge of breaking down as she had been a little earlier.

  Obediently, without protest, she went into the corner of the cave with Moll and started to take off her clothes. While she was doing it a number of other women arrived.

  They wore flashy evening dresses, they were all smelling of cheap scent and chattering together in their coarse common voices. Most of them were young and attractive enough in a vulgar manner, but heavily painted, giggling and laughing at what lay ahead.

  The majority of them donned nuns’ robes and wore little, if anything underneath, their bare legs showing as they moved their brightly coloured slippers oddly at variance with the austerity of their sombre habits, as were their red lips and shrewd greedy eyes.

  While Moll helped Clarinda take off her clothes, the Abbess chattered away.

  “This place isn’t anythin’ like as fine as Sir Francis Dashwood’s Club,” she said. “He had a banquetin’ ’all and an inner Temple in the very deepest part of the ’ill. There was also a strea
m filled with what the Brothers called ‘unholy water’ where the newly initiated members were baptised. It was all on a grand scale, but ’ere we have everythin’ lumped together. Not that they spares any expense when it comes to the food and drink.”

  Clarinda said nothing and Moll continued,

  “All brought down from London, it is, and the servants too. Mr. Vernon says they be blindfolded so they won’t be knowin’ where they’re goin’. But if that be true, I bet they had a peep or two so that the knowledge will come in useful one day or another.”

  “When Clarinda was completely naked, Moll slipped over her head a long white Grecian gown made of thin silk, which Clarinda felt with a sick embarrassment did little to hide her nakedness.

  There was a gold ribbon to tie round her waist and Moll released her hair to fall in a flaming silken cloud over her shoulders and down her back and tied a gold ribbon on top of her head.

  “Lovely hair you has, dearie,” she exclaimed. “I used to be able to sit on mine when I was young, not that it was ever the pretty colour of yours. But that be a long time ago.”

  “Why do – you do – this?” Clarinda asked, conscious of something wistful and almost human in the woman’s voice.

  Moll’s lips twisted in a wry smile.

  “Money! What other reason is there for a woman my age to do such things? The older you get the lower you sink. This is what livin’ too long does for a woman who could once attract the most fashionable gentlemen in St. James’s.”

  She gave a wry laugh and then continued,

  “’Tis no use gettin’ morbid, I’ve got a few years left yet.”

  “Just think of the money I could give you,” Clarinda said, making a last effort to save herself. “You could live in comfort for the rest of your life and never have to come to places like – this. You could have your own house. You could be comfortable, you could grow old gracefully.”

  As Moll seemed to hesitate for a moment, Clarinda whispered insistently,

  “Is there not one gentleman here who would help me? One who needs money?”

  “That’s just what I was thinkin’ myself,” Moll answered. “But you do see, dearie, I don’t know who they be. They wear masks because they don’t wish to be recognised. I knows Mr. Vernon, of course, because ’e engages me. I know Sir Gerald, ’e’s a habitué at the bawdy house where I works. But the others I may have met them, but when they’re in their robes and wearin’ masks they all look so alike. Most of them are too rich to need money, the rest would sooner have the thrill and excitement of bein’ ’ere tonight than anythin’ you could give them in compensation.”

  “I – understand,” Clarinda said and her voice was dead as if she felt her last vestige of hope had been taken from her.

  It seemed to her as if Moll too shrugged away a dream of what might have been.

  “You look real pretty,” she said. “I can say one thing, there’s never been a Venus in the Club who has looked as pretty as you.”

  “What happens to – them – afterwards?” Clarinda stammered.

  “It won’t help you to ask questions,” Moll replied sharply.

  “What questions does she want answering?” a voice enquired from the door and both Moll and Clarinda started as Nicholas came through the curtain.

  He looked almost unbelievably frightening, Clarinda thought, wearing a monk’s habit of blood red, the hood pulled over his head, his eyes glittering evilly through the mask beneath it.

  “Come,” he said, “the room is filling up, the banquet is beginning. The Brothers must have a chance to see the beauty of Venus, through whose purity our Master will come to us tonight.”

  He held out his hand and with an almost superhuman effort Clarinda forced herself to put her cold fingers in his.

  She had the impulse to make one more last appeal to him, but in the light of the candles which illuminated the room, she could see that the pupils of his eyes were dilated. Black and dark as jet they stared at her and she knew without being told that Nicholas had taken some sort of drug.

  There was no hope of an appeal there, she thought, and in her heart she returned to her prayers.

  ‘Help me – God – help me,’ she prayed and knew that it was only her prayers that would strengthen her not to scream and not to run away uselessly.

  ‘I must keep clear-headed and preserve my strength to kill myself,’ she decided.

  Then she was drawn from the robing room into the passage as Nicholas moved forward.

  They descended lower into the bowels of the earth and suddenly the great banqueting cave lay before them. It was very large in circumference and almost circular. The walls, like the passages, were draped in red velvet and iron sconces held thick long candles. There were couches round the walls and in small alcoves veiled with curtains.

  In the centre of the hall there were tables laid with silver crystal glass and lace-edged damask and there were footmen in powdered wigs and gold-braided livery carrying in dishes, pouring out wine and waiting on the guests who sprawled at the tables, each with a woman at his side.

  Already, Clarinda noted, many of the nuns had discarded their habits and thrown away their wimples. Their hair had been freed, which alone, in many cases, was the only cover for their nakedness.

  There was a great chatter of voices and the sound of raucous laughter, but when she and Nicholas appeared there was a sudden silence.

  Then, the company rose somewhat unsteadily as they processed down the centre of the great cave towards the Altar, which Clarinda saw was set under a high arch engraved with magical signs to the right of the descending passageway.

  There was no need for her to see the huge crucifix upside-down, the tall black candles or the white marble slab of the Altar itself, just long and wide enough to hold the naked body of a woman. She had known what to expect!

  Then she saw on the centre of six broad steps leading up to the Altar there was a gold chair, a kind of throne, on which she knew she must sit until the Black Mass took place.

  Slowly and in silence Nicholas led her to her place.

  She tried as she moved not to notice the men’s eyes leering through their masks at her nakedness only partially veiled by her white gown. She tried to pray, tried not to think of the inverted crucifix ahead of her and tried to remember that the evil in this place came not from anything supernatural but only from the hearts and minds of those gathered there.

  When finally she was seated on the chair prepared for her, Nicholas gave her a mocking bow.

  “I congratulate you again, Clarinda, on your self-control,” he declared. “You are indeed worthy of the great honour to be accorded you tonight. I see too I am wise in my intention of marrying you after the Master has visited us.”

  “I have nothing to say to you, Nicholas,” she replied and to her relief her voice sounded steady and unafraid. “You know that what you are doing is evil, wicked and a blasphemous offence against God.”

  She tried to look at him defiantly, but she knew as she heard him laughing that he was unimpressed.

  “You will change your mind later,” he responded, “and be grateful to me.”

  The words were inexpressibly horrible in all that they implied.

  He left her then and she saw him sitting down at a table where the women seemed more abandoned than at any other and where two of the men already were almost incapably drunk.

  Clarinda glanced round the room. She saw there were great braziers on either side of her in which she realised that magical herbs were burning. She could smell them and knew that they were strong narcotics and felt as if already their power was seeping into her senses and making it hard for her to think.

  She was aware that the herbs would include belladonna, hemlock, verbena and mandrake and she told herself that she must not lose the clearness of her mind or have the sharpness of her intentions blunted.

  Almost immediately in front of her was a table where the occupants were being served with exotic dishes. But what interested C
larinda was the glittering silver that they ate their food with.

  She could then see the knives. Sharp, ground to a fine edge and pointed, one would pass straight into her body without any tremendous strength being necessary.

  Somehow she must seize one. But she knew that she must wait until the reactions of the men and women using them had become so dulled with drink and the exotic fragrance from the braziers that her action would be too swift for it to be prevented.

  ‘Help me – please God – help me,’ she prayed yet again.

  As the clamour of drunken voices and feminine shrieks now rose higher and higher, she looked no longer at the debauched company below her, but turned her eyes upwards towards the unadorned chalk ceiling.

  ‘I don’t want to – look, I don’t want to – see,’ she thought. ‘It is too degrading. It is a – horrid spectacle of men and women who have discarded all the refinements of – civilisation to become lower than – animals.’

  She clasped her hands together and said her prayers – prayers she had repeated all her life before she went to bed and prayers she had learnt from her mother when she was only a tiny child. And as the beautiful words of the prayers themselves brought her some solace, she began to pray harder than ever that she would be rescued.

  She knew that only Lord Melburne could save her, for no one else knew where she was and no one else would be capable of formulating any plan of getting her away even if they wished to come to her rescue.

  ‘Send him – oh God – send him in time,’ she prayed, ‘and if not let me die – quickly. Let me die bravely without – screaming and without – crying out with the – pain of it. Help me – please God – help me.’

  It seemed to her as if her prayers carried her away in spirit from the debauchery around her and it must have been a long time later that something attracted her attention.

  She thought for one moment that the Black Mass itself was just about to start. She had already seen the Priest, the man who had taken Dene’s Farm as a tenant, and recognised him as he wore not a monk’s robe but a red cassock. Even with a mask there was no mistaking his bald head and the fat folds of his numerous chins.