The Sin Eater(29)
‘Won’t I, though? I’ll have your devil’s chess set one way or another, Kilderry.’ He had a nice voice, like silk or a cat’s fur.
The Master laughed. He said, ‘D’you know, it would please me to think of a priest possessing Lucifer’s chess set. Or would they excommunicate you?’ He studied the priest for a moment. ‘You know that the devil’s power’s said to come with those pieces?’
‘Didn’t I grow up knowing the legend?’ said the priest.
‘I dare say you did,’ said the Master. ‘But if you do ever get them, you should remember that the devil’s luck comes with them. That’s what I’ve had all these years,’ he said, bitterly.
‘I see that,’ said the priest, looking round the tattered library. ‘But the devil’s bargains were always hollow ones. Will we play on?’
‘We will,’ said the Master, and so they did, all through that day.
The servants sat in the scullery, not knowing whether the guest should be offered food. The Master often went without food during the day, but hospitality for visitors was a strict rule. But just after midday he rang for more brandy and, as an afterthought, said they’d have some food as well, so, along with the brandy, the butler took one of cook’s game pies, together with bread and cold chicken.
‘Are they still playing chess?’ asked the cook when he returned.
‘They are. It’s my opinion that the priest is determined to get that chess set by fair means or foul.’
‘The Master won’t let him have it,’ said the cook. ‘He sets powerful store by that set.’
‘The Master,’ said the butler acidly, ‘likes people to think he was once in company with the devil, and that he won the devil’s own chessmen from him. But at the moment he wouldn’t notice if the entire contents of the castle were to be stolen under his very nose, for he’s as drunk as I ever remember him being.’
‘Is the priest drunk as well?’ I asked, a bit timidly, for although you hear of priests taking too much drink, it’s not something you talk about.
‘Alert as a cat at a mouse hole,’ said the butler sourly. ‘You’d swear he hadn’t touched a drop.’
Just after three o’clock, with the wind shrieking down the chimneys and sending smoke into all the rooms, the library bell rang. When I went along to answer it, the Master was slumped back in his chair, and you’d be hard put to tell if he was drunk, dead, or merely asleep.
The priest looked white and tired, but he smiled at me, although it was a smile he had to force from the dregs of his strength.
‘My guest is leaving, Eithne,’ said the Master, his eyes still closed, his speech slurred. ‘Get out of here,’ he said, not unkindly, but waving a hand in dismissal.
The priest’s black cape was in the window alcove, so I went to fetch it. It was as I crossed the room that I saw something which has stayed with me ever since.
On the chimney breast hung a large oval mirror in a gold frame. It reflected almost the whole of the room and I knew it well for it was one of my tasks to polish it, although it was so smoke-smeared from the years of wood fires that if you spent seven years cleaning it with seven mops it would still never come clean.
The mirror reflected almost the whole room and it reflected the table with the chess set. I always tried not to look at those chess figures in the mirror, for somehow they were even more fearsome the wrong way round. But on this day I’m speaking of, I did look. And here’s the nightmare. The chessmen looked back at me with living faces and eyes that could see.
I know it sounds as if I’d been at the Master’s brandy myself, but as God’s my witness it’s the truth. Those figures in the mirror had living breathing faces and glinting crimson eyes, and if ever I looked at the faces of demons from hell’s darkest cavern, I did so on that afternoon. When I turned back into the room, they were ordinary wooden figures once again.
I don’t know if the Master or the priest saw those reflections. The priest said, ‘Thank you, Eithne,’ as I handed him his cape, and the Master, his eyes still closed, said, ‘I dare say I shan’t see you again.’
The priest looked at him for a moment. Then he said, ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Kilderry.’ Then he gave me his smile again and went out.
Eithne, thought Michael, coming up out of the atmosphere of the ramshackle old Irish castle for a moment. Knowing the girl’s name made her suddenly vivid and real. Eithne, who as a young girl had gone fearfully to the tanglewood, Sleeping-Beauty castle and been so afraid of the chess figures she had run from the room.
He read on.
I always believed that time when the priest was at the castle woke something in the carved figures. For that same night, as I was going up to my bed, I thought I heard something creeping up after me. My room was at the very top of the castle so the stairs were narrow and steep and twisty. I had a candle to see my way, and I whipped round at once, holding up the candle to see down the stairwell. The shadows moved slightly, and although I couldn’t see anything, I could hear something breathing – a creaking, dry breathing it was, the sound you’d get if you had a lump of old yellow leather instead of lungs.
I ran the rest of the way up the stairs and how I didn’t drop the candle and burn the whole of Kilderry Castle to the ground I’ll never know. But I got into my room and slammed the door shut – although when did a slammed door ever keep out the devil if he had a mind to enter? Still, I pulled the latch into place and dragged a chest across as barricade, and wound my rosary around the latch. Then I sat on my bed with my crucifix in my hands, my eyes on the door.