alcove within which all the candles burned. The alcove, its rear wall mirrored, ran like a recessed shelf clear round the base of the dome.
The whispers seemed to sigh about the circular room. Then one voice rose above the others. ‘What is evil?’
‘Weakness.’ The naked man had not been rehearsed in his answers, but his sponsor, one of the three men who questioned him, had talked of what he might expect. He might expect death.
‘What is the punishment for weakness?’
‘Death.’
‘What is your name?’
He told them. There was silence.
He felt the shiver of fear again, but he kept his head high and he stared at the veined sheen of the curved marble walls and tried to see from where the voices came.
The sigh came again, like a wind half heard far away. It died into silence.
The floor on which he stood was of green and blue marble. It was some forty feet in diameter and surrounded by white marble steps, four in all, that climbed to a mosaic pavement. The walls were decorated with columns, sculpted wreaths, and intricate bas-reliefs, any of which could hide the openings from which the voices must come. The chamber, though lavish and bright, seemed to be missing something, as though a throne or a great catafalque should stand within its barren splendour.
‘What is your name?’
He told them.
‘Kill him.’
‘Kill him.’
The third voice, instead of confirming his doom, whispered that he should close his eyes.
The naked man obeyed. He could hear nothing, but there was a sudden shivering of colder air on his body as though a tomb had been opened.
Then he heard footsteps.
He heard naked feet on the marble floor. The feet approached him, walking slowly, and he had to fight the desire to open his eyes. He was shivering. He wanted to break away from the centre of the floor and run from the slow, soft feet that came closer and closer to him. He imagined a blade reaching for him and he had to steel himself to stand still and keep his eyes closed.
Something touched his shrinking, crawling flesh and he almost jumped and shouted in alarm.
Fingers stroked his chest. Fingers that were soft and warm and gentle. The fingers traced down his ribs, over his belly, down to his loins. The relief was coursing through him. He had expected death.
‘Open your eyes.’ The whisper echoed about the high chamber.
The naked man obeyed and, in front of him, smiling up at him, was a girl. She was pretty. She had a round, freckled face with red hair that had been tied back with a red ribbon. Her hair was full and springy because it had been washed. She smelt of soap because she had bathed before this ceremony. Like him she was naked. Her skin was pink, freckled, young and clean.
She smiled at him and her hands stroked him.
‘Do you like her?’ one of the whisperers asked.
‘Yes.’ He felt embarrassed. Her hands were soft and shameless. They flickered and stroked, touched and kneaded his flesh.
The naked man guessed the girl was nineteen or twenty. She had big, firm breasts and the wide hips of a girl who would be strong in childbirth. She leaned forward and licked the sweat on his chest, then reached up to pull his head down to hers.
He kissed her. Her salty tongue was quick between his lips. She hooked a leg behind his legs and her strong thigh was warm on his skin.
‘Take her,’ the whisper commanded.
She was pulling him down to the cold marble and he knelt, laid her down, and ran his right hand down her body.
The girl closed her eyes. The gentlemen who had hired her from the Dijon brothel had promised her a huge sum for this night’s work. Half of it was already in her purse downstairs, the other half would be given to her after she had made this man happy. It was silly, of course, but what girl could refuse such a sum for such a small task?
She opened her legs, thinking what an uncomfortable bed cold marble made, and opened her eyes and smiled into the man’s face. ‘Come, come.’
The naked man ran his hands from her thighs to her breasts and she arched her back, moaned, and closed her eyes again. ‘You’re so good! Come to me.’
‘Take her,’ the whisperer ordered.
He took her, and with a whore’s skill she made him feel that he was a lover greater than any in history. Her head turned from side to side in false pleasure, she moaned softly, she reached for him to pull him down, she pushed up with her hips, and the man, propped on his hands that were either side of her shoulders, smiled down on her as she locked her ankles behind his thighs.
Each whisper so far had been in French. Now, suddenly, one of the hidden men spoke in English. ‘Kill her.’
He froze, then knew that this was the test, that hesitation was failure and failure was death and he fell on her, his hands moving from the floor to her neck and he gripped her throat with his big hands, squeezed, and her eyes opened in terror as she still thrust at him, and then she twisted beneath him, tried to wrench her body free and she rolled on top of him, thrashing, kicking, clawing at him and he shook her head with his hands and forced her back to the floor again.
Her fingers pulled at his wrists, but her strength was nothing like his and he had her beneath him and he beat her head on the floor.
Still he squeezed. He could feel her pulse beneath his thumbs. Her legs beat on the floor. He knelt up, his knee slipping in liquid, and beat her head again. His teeth were gritted.
She took a long time to die. When he took his fingers from her throat, he thought they would never straighten again. He was panting.
Slowly he stood up. He stepped away from the body.
As he stood one part of the marble wall of the circular chamber suddenly moved. Two wooden doors, cunningly painted in the manner of poor church interiors to look like marble, opened before his astonished eyes to reveal a hidden room. There was a table of black stone within the room. Candles stood on the table about which three figures sat. On either side of the table sat men in robes of black and gold, with great stiff cowls like monks’ hoods over their heads. At the table’s head, facing the naked man, sat a figure robed and hooded in silver. He was Lucifer, the day star, the prince of darkness, the leader of the Fallen Angels and, with due ceremony and courtesy, he welcomed the new member who henceforth, he said, could wear the black and gold habit of a Fallen Angel. The robe waited for him on a vacant chair. Then Lucifer gave the newcomer his name. From henceforth, he said, he would be known as Chemosh.
The Fallen Ones met in the shrine built by the Mad Duke who had thought he was God. The shrine was behind the splendid Chateau of Auxigny. The Mad Duke was long dead, gone to meet the God he had failed to be, and his eldest son, the present Duke, was imprisoned with his King in Paris.
One of the Fallen Angels did not sit at the black table, for he was a deaf mute. Lucifer had given him the name Dagon.
