Diana's Altar Read online

  diana’s altar

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  Copyright © 2016 by Barbara Cleverly

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cleverly, Barbara, author.

  Diana’s altar / Barbara Cleverly.

  ISBN 978-1-61695-664-6

  eISBN 978-1-61695-665-3

  1. Sandilands, Joe (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

  I. Title

  PR6103.L48 D53 2016 823.92—dc23

  2015037547

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the two Juliets, at stroke and bow:

  Juliet Burton, agent

  Juliet Grames, editor

  Ladies, my admiration and gratitude!

  Upon that day either prepare to die

  For disobedience to your father’s will,

  Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would,

  Or on Diana’s altar to protest

  For aye austerity and single life.

  —Shakespeare,

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream,

  Act 1, scene i.

  Chapter 1

  Cambridge: Late October, 1933

  Adelaide Hartest reminded herself sternly that she was

  a doctor. A doctor of medicine. A scientist, she would have claimed—one who believed in evidence gathering and cause and effect. In reason.

  So why was she standing here at dawn, one indecisive hand on the latch of the gate of All Hallows Church, suffering a very particular set of symptoms? Her mouth was dry, her hands were trembling, her teeth were trying, unbidden, to hold their own chattering conversation and, interestingly, the hairs really had risen at the nape of her neck. Briefly she explored the inches of skin between her hat brim and the collar of her cape. Her fingers encountered warm dampness and a palpable, unnatural bristliness there. She pulled up her woolly scarf to fill the gap and looked about, seeking some external reason for the current of cold air that was trickling down her spine. There was no sign of a breeze; the few golden leaves left clinging to a solitary ash tree hung motionless.

  Homeostatic mechanisms, of course! This was merely Nature clicking in faithfully after the brisk cycle ride back from a grim all-night stint. None grimmer. Emotionally disturbed, professionally challenged and physically threatened by her case, young Dr. Hartest had expressed her frustrations by vigorously pedalling over country roads in the dark back to Cambridge. She’d become overheated and her body was responding obligingly by kicking in with its cooling-down devices. Simple. No—that wouldn’t quite do. Adelaide was trained never to accept the immediately obvious without question. Autonomic body temperature adjustments didn’t go halfway to accounting for the mental and physical state she was experiencing.

  She made her diagnosis: good old-fashioned fear. It wasn’t a feeling that had troubled her often in her twenty-seven years. Standing almost six feet tall in her silk stockings with a head of hair that impressed by its auburn luxuriance, Adelaide was blessed with a confidence that rebuffed danger. At the sight of her smile and her long stride, Danger crossed the road and slunk past on the opposite side. Danger with a human face, at any rate. But what natural cause of terror was there—other than human—that might possibly lie in wait to ambush her? Earthquakes, floods and volcanic outpourings were completely unknown in the centre of civilised Cambridge at six o’clock on an autumn morning.

  She was alone here with her turbulent thoughts, come to seek a solace which most probably wasn’t available to her.

  The Market Place, only yards away, was silent. None of the traders had arrived to set up stall yet. No barrows rumbled over the cobbles, no merry banter rang out. She hadn’t even spotted the beat bobby who usually lurked under the gas lamp by King’s College, lighting up a Woodbine and ready to greet her with a cheeky, “Morning, Doc! Give it ten! You’re winning!” when she cycled by.

  The crowding medieval rooftops enclosing the tiny square where she was standing were taking on a sharp silhouette against the brightening sky. The ancient church of All Hallows, squat and square, blotched by damp, bore witness to the passage of every one of its thousand years. It conjured up the image of a discoloured tooth shakily attached to decaying roots, but having nerve connections all too vigorous and snaking down to draw strength from some deep past.

  Adelaide reined in her imagination. Fatigue and anger were weakening her defences against fanciful thoughts. She was in the wrong place at an inconvenient time and ought not to be loitering here. Though she had by now identified the source of her unease. The poisonous miasma floating, undetected by the usual senses, all about her—it was All Hallows. The church building itself. It was resenting and resisting her intrusion.

  If there were few willing to penetrate the first defences of evergreen foliage that encircled the ancient stones, there were fewer yet who would enter the dim interior in spite of the enticements advertised on a billboard at the gateway: the skull of Saint Ethelbert, a page from a prayer book of Queen Isabella and an oak lectern once pounded by the fist of a dissenting preacher.

  Adelaide found their lure perfectly resistible. She had other business at All Hallows.

  She was intent on having a serious word with the Lord. Bearding the Almighty in his den. She reasoned that, just as she listened with care to the patients who made their way into the privacy of her consulting room, confident that they would be telling her nothing less than the truth and expecting nothing less than an honest answer in return, the Lord—if he existed—would show similar good manners. Consultation was a game for two players and imposed its own etiquette. In the stillness of a deserted church in front of his own altar, Adelaide had initiated such conversations many times before. God, in her simple estimation, was a Gentleman. If he wasn’t, she couldn’t be doing with him. She had always left whatever sacrosanct surroundings she had chosen to witness her outpouring of emotion feeling more at peace with herself. Unwelcome truths and difficult decisions were more swiftly dealt with on one’s knees on a lumpy hassock.

  There were two responses to fear: flight or fight. Rush for the cliff’s edge or loosen your sword in your scabbard and take a stand. She had a decision to make, and her self-imposed time limit was almost up. In three hours she would lift the telephone and ask the operator to connect her with a London number. She would wait for the familiar voice, warm and expectant. She would deliver her decision. Her life would change forever.

  Adelaide never made detours and she never ducked out of any situation. She had playground scars to prove it. She swung the gate open and paused for a moment to take a torch from the pocket of her cape. The battery was running low—she’d almost drained it during her nightmare excursion into the Cambridgeshire countryside—but it clicked on valiantly and the narrow beam lit up the paved path beyond.

  It had been swept clean of leaves. Visitors were clearly expected. Adelaide decided to take this as an omen. An invitation. Steadily she moved towards the west door.

&nb
sp; In the English tradition, the House of the Lord was always left unlocked. When she lifted the latch of the heavy oak door and pushed, there were no metallic squeaks to break the silence. It swung open with ease on oiled hinges. Adelaide hesitated, her attention caught by a postcard pinned neatly to the door at eye level. It was handwritten in scholarly calligraphy.

  All Gallows’ Eve

  Tuesday, 31st October

  Vespers

  By invitation only

  Please apply to the Rev. Sweeting for admission.

  The service will be followed by a symposium on the darker issues of modern life:

  * Distrust * Doubt

  * Depression * Death

  “Pompous prats!” was Adelaide’s muttered response to this. A group of self-indulgent soul-searchers egging each other on to plumb the depths of melancholy on Hallowe’en? Well, they were just looking for trouble, and she rather thought she was better qualified to comment on the four Ds than any academic sensation seekers.

  Something about the wording of the announcement struck her as strange. No times were given for the service. Just: Vespers. The evening service. But this was the house of God, open to all at all times, not a private chapel where invitations might be issued to the specially chosen. The Reverend Sweeting seemed to have taken on the role of God’s maître d’hôtel. When she met him, Adelaide would have a question or two to put to the reverend. Crossly, she tugged the card from its moorings and put it in her pocket. Someone should hear about this.

  Just in case “Vespers” had turned into “Vigil” she put her ear to the door and listened. Bursting in on a coterie of depressed souls further debilitated by a night of philosophising in a minor key was not a tempting prospect. All was silence and she risked peering in.

  Signalling to her through the musky darkness, a solitary candle flickered a welcome. Soft as a sigh, a breath of air lightly scented with incense invited her inside.

  Chapter 2

  A six-foot bobby having a quick pee at the end of his

  shift is not easily concealed in the centre of a compact city, but the still-thick canopy of leaves on the chestnut in front of King’s College Chapel was up to the task. Police Constable Risby thoughtfully buttoned up the flies of his uniform trousers and listened to a cracked college bell sounding the hour. He was trying to make sense of what he’d just seen. He’d had the central city beat entirely to himself since three o’clock. A good, quiet spell of duty it had turned out to be. He’d expected worse: “Mischief Night,” they’d always called All Hallows’ Eve when he was a kid before the War. There was a craziness that got into folk these dark evenings after the clocks went back an hour. Even the governor had thought to remind him of the date. “Last day of October, Constable! Witches, ghoulies and long-leggety beasties—you may expect a selection of various frightful apparitions about the town tonight. Put a spare pair of handcuffs on your belt and stand no nonsense. Haul ’em in and leave ’em to sleep it off down in the cooler. I’ll deal with any spirits that have missed the witching hour myself when I get in. I’ve booked the magistrate.”

  He’d thought the students at least would have been up to something, but if they had, he hadn’t spotted it. A few drunken party-goers in masks and costumes had joked with him in an amicable way, and he’d managed to hang on to his helmet and his truncheon—always the targets of trophy hunters. His last contact with student revellers had occurred just before three o’clock when he’d warned a group of young men that a college Bulldog was on the trail and advancing at a brisk pace down the passage. Good-humouredly, he’d given them a leg up over the tall, wrought-iron fence in a secret place where he knew the spikes had been tampered with, and had seen them safely inside the college grounds before the official came puffing along. Risby didn’t care much for students, but he cared far less for self-important college policemen.

  And that was it for excitement until, in the middle of his pee, he’d noticed the cycle light wobbling towards him down Trinity Street. He’d just been able to make out the flying nurse’s cape and woolly hat of that new lady doctor. The big, good-looking redhead who’d joined the medical practice in Trumpington Street only yards from where he was loitering. She was going at quite a lick on her Raleigh tourer, he noticed. Returning to base after working the night shift? Risby wanted to know how anyone could think that was acceptable. It was no duty to give a woman! He had a fellow feeling for anyone grafting through the small hours and watched her as, abruptly, she turned off the main Parade and dived down the snicket into Peas Passage. Now why would she do that, at this time of night—or was it day?

  Risby was uneasy. A rum place, that little square by the church. Bad feeling to it. He always found himself patrolling at a quickened pace through those little alleys surrounding . . . now what was its name? All Hallows! That was it. Making the connection, Risby was suddenly alert. This was All Hallows’ Eve. The constable shuddered, remembering his superintendent’s lip-smacking evocation of the sinister goings-on one might encounter on this night—some rubbish about malicious spirits tearing through the thin veil that separated the living from the dead. Load of superstitious codswallop, but PC Risby reckoned that if—if!—any veil-tearing was to occur in Cambridge, that would be just the spot for it.

  And on this night of all nights, his duty was to check the church surroundings, open the door and take a quick look inside. They still kept valuables in there, trusting to the sanctified aura to protect them. Fools.

  He vaulted over the wall into the Parade, pulled his truncheon from his long pocket and, grasping it firmly in his hand, crossed the road. A single woman could scare herself silly or even come to real harm down there, and it wasn’t going to happen on his watch. Be it Old Nick the Devil or Old Dave the Dosser—anyone he found causing mayhem or offence would feel the weight of twelve inches of English oak across his skull.

  No Reverend Sweeting shimmered forward to check her invitation, but Adelaide stood motionless at the door, giving her eyes time to adjust to a different degree of darkness, and getting her bearings.

  As colours and shapes began to emerge, she stepped over the threshold, sensing a soft carpet under her feet, her focus on the east window ahead of her. The huge space above the altar was filled with stained glass and was beginning to come alive inch by inch with shards of kaleidoscope colour, revealing a seductively beautiful and mysterious scene. The old stones had retained the unseasonal warmth of the day, and the air seemed to be still reverberating with the music, the incense, the devotions and farewell kisses of a just-departed gathering.

  The intimate space was filled by ranks of oak pews in deep shadow. They were divided down the middle by a red runner laid over the stone paving slabs. Her torch swept down this path to the altar, locating the single candle that had survived the night’s ceremony. The flame bobbed again, acknowledging her presence and luring her deeper inside.

  As she stared steadily ahead, her eye was caught by an imbalance. She traced this to a thickening and bulking of the shadows in the pews to the right. And, floating a foot or so above this dark shape, she saw a shimmer of silver-white, highlighted by the candle flame. A bone-white, head-sized pool of light. She blinked and looked again. Was she seeing the full moon through a window she hadn’t suspected was there? No. She reminded herself that she had already seen the full moon set that night in a fiery gold over the sheared wheat fields.

  Adelaide drew in a shuddering breath. With a stab of relief, she remembered that the decapitated head of Saint Ethelbert was reckoned to be about the place on display somewhere. Could someone, in a fit of donnish humour, have positioned it at head level to surprise and entertain the visitor? She had no wish to shine her torch into a pair of empty eye sockets or a mouth sagging open in bony rictus grin.

  Obeying the childhood rule that if you turned to look at the Devil you gave him leave to appear, she kept her gaze focussed on the altar. From the corner of her eye, she saw the
patch of light begin to move. It advanced an inch or two towards her, seemingly of its own accord. It steadied then moved again, making a slight inclination in her direction. A formal bow? A nod? Was some ghastly spirit of this place introducing itself?

  The remaining candle was already guttering with that last treacherous surge of brilliance which defies but inevitably precedes its extinction. A flash of golden warmth that threatened to plunge her into darkness.

  Soft as a sigh, a voice lightly tinged with humour invited her inside.

  Chapter 3

  “Do come in! I say—you’re an early bird! But what bird are you, I’m wondering? Raven or wren? Messenger from Heaven or the Other Place? You’ll find me over here in the first row of the pews, to your right. Do excuse me if I don’t get up. Not feeling too good, I’m afraid.”

  The voice, which had been suave and academic, degenerated into a gurgling cough.

  The surprise of meeting not with the remains of a medieval saint but the flesh and blood presence of a man was swiftly followed by a stab of resentment. Was there no place in this city where you could be truly by yourself with your thoughts? Good manners chased away irritation and she managed to greet the sole occupant of the pews: a slumped, grey-cloaked figure. It would be rude, she thought, to shine torchlight in his eyes, so she kept it tactfully averted.

  “How do you do, sir? And good morning to you!” Her voice had taken on its customary professional briskness. A sick elderly gent was something she knew how to react to. “But—no Raven, Harbinger of Death—that’s just my shiny black cycling cape. Sorry! It must look a bit sinister in this light. I’ll take it off.” She proceeded to do that, revealing the sensible skirt, angora twin set and Hermès scarf of a lady doctor on duty. “Wren, perhaps? Bustling and cheerful? I’ll settle for that! Adelaide Hartest. Doctor Hartest. If you’re not feeling too sharp, perhaps I can help? Let’s have a bit of light on things, shall we? I’m sure it would take me an age to find the electrics in here, they will hide the switches in cupboards, so I’ll do the obvious.”