The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery(23)

As I walked towards the fortress towers of Liège, I could hear the marching feet of the soldiers with more clarity. I tried to convince myself they were growing fainter, but they were not, of course. They were getting louder and closer.

The forest was behind me by this time, and ahead were fields. I went across those fields like a fleeing hare – I swear I had not run so fast since the night when I had to make an unplanned retreat from the Volkov-Yusupov Palace, along with a pair of gold candlesticks, an ormolu mantel clock, and something I believed might be a hitherto-unpublished poem by Alexander Pushkin. (The poem turned out to be a forgery.)

On this particular day, however, I was not burdened with candlesticks or fake Pushkins, and I reached the edges of the German fields safely and thrust my way through a gap in the hedge. I was close to one of the fortresses now – a chimney-like structure, stark and forbidding, rearing up into the afternoon sky like a black jutting tooth. I paused, wondering if I dare try to get into the tower and hide. But wouldn’t they try to take possession of those towers anyway? Then I saw that to the right of the tower – perhaps the length of a small field away – was a low, rambling greystone building, with a small bell tower and, rising above its roofs, the outline of a cross.

A convent. And convents were places of sanctuary; they had the same immunity from violence and invasion as churches.

I went across that short distance at the speed of the Hound of Heaven fleeing down the arches of the years.





Eight


As soon as I neared the convent’s walls, I became aware of music trickling from the windows – thin sweet music, young girls’ voices, blending and weaving together in the most heart-scalding perfection I had ever heard. And I may be a thief and a man of few principles, but I can appreciate beauty as well as anyone else, and I stood there for several moments, listening, feeling a balm lay its hand across my soul.

Then I remembered the soldiers and I glanced over my shoulder. But they did not seem to be very near, so I walked normally and openly to the ancient door at the convent’s centre. If you’re about some nefarious deed, to act furtively will only draw attention to yourself. ‘Walk in as if you own the place,’ my father used to say. ‘And the chances are that most people will think you really do.’


All through what came later, I remembered how the gardens of Sacré-Coeur had looked and felt on that afternoon. During the worst days, I occasionally managed to believe I was still walking through those colours and scents, and that the world around me had remained serene. And although my knowledge of flowers is mostly confined to florists’ establishments, when my mind revisits Sacré-Coeur even now I can see and identify the flowers: the rich purple and deep pink windflowers, and the snapdragons and poppies, and I can smell the foaming lavender.

But even on that afternoon I was aware of a sense of dislocation, because this was a country about to be invaded. War does not belong in serene old gardens, with the warm scents drugging the emotions far more surely than ever the perfumes of Arabia did. War belongs to winter, to grey, angry rainstorms and spiteful blizzards, so that the misery and the pain and the fury blends and blurs with the lashing elements.

I had intended to go up to the door at the centre of the convent and politely request food and rest for a few hours. Once it was a monastic tradition that the weary wayfarer was offered food and a bed for the night, and there was no reason to think that had altered much over the centuries. But the music was still weaving its gossamer strands, and almost without realizing it, I followed it. I have listened on many occasions to beautiful music in spectacular settings, but I had never before listened to the Evening Prayer sung in a convent with the soft light of the dying afternoon bathing everything in rose and gold. I should like to record that I experienced a conversion as I stood there – that the music and the tranquillity of Sacré-Coeur worked a reformation on me and changed my life. They didn’t, of course.

The singing was coming from a chapel at the side of the main convent: a small low building with narrow windows that had heavy strips of lead and beautiful coloured glass inset. By standing on tiptoe I was able to peer through the nearest window. There were perhaps twenty nuns inside, all kneeling in prayer, and the chapel was small, but very lovely. I could see statues and carvings and exquisite Mass vessels on the altar. And icons. Oh my God, those icons. My mind instinctively began to compile a list of people who would pay lavishly and unquestioningly for any one of them.

I raised myself up a little higher to see better. The soft sweet chant was still filling up the chapel, but of the chanters themselves there was no sign. I scanned the aisles and the arches again, but I could only see the soaring arches and columns, a low inner door at the far end, and several high, intricately carved rood screens set across one of the aisles.

Rood screens.

Rood screens are, more or less, panels of open wooden tracery. They’re a kind of leftover from medieval times: a flimsy partition – largely symbolic – dividing nave from sanctuary. In Russia we have a similar structure, called an iconostasis – but instead of being beautifully carved wood an iconostasis is a small wall of religious paintings and icons. (I think I acquired my love of icons from being taken, by devout parents, to church services, and studying the icons while everyone else was murmuring the responses.)

There was no reason why Sacré-Coeur’s chapel should not have rood screens, and there was even less reason for me to find them faintly sinister. But I did, for the simple reason that the singing was coming from behind the screens. The Choir was not merely separated from the small congregation, it was completely hidden. Why would a small remote convent do such a thing for a normal evening service?