The Satanist (34 page)

‘I can’t! I couldn’t!’ Mary cried. ‘There are some repulsive men among them to whom I’d never give myself. Never! Never!’

‘Never is a long time,’ Honorius smiled. ‘After a while you will come to set much more store on the pleasure a man can give you than on his features, the shape of his limbs or the colour of his skin. But if you have a prejudice against the ageing or pot-bellied I will tell Abaddon, and he will arrange matters so that only well-formed men embrace you tonight.’

Quivering with fear and fury, Mary retorted; ‘No one shall embrace me! I’ll not submit to this! Get out of here to hell where you belong! I’m going home!’

With both hands she thrust down the sheets, and drew up a leg to spring out of bed; but Honorius was too quick for her. Ignoring her movement, the Priestess shot out a hand, seized her by the nose and forced her head back. As Mary gasped for breath, Honorius shot the contents of the glass into her open mouth. She choked and swallowed. A little of the liquid ran down her chin, but as her head hit the pillow, nearly all of it went down her throat.

‘That’s better,’ Honorius murmured. ‘And now I’m going to send you to sleep for half an hour. You will feel quite a different girl when you wake up.’

‘Let me go!’ Mary gurgled, endeavouring to spit out the little of the liquid that remained in her mouth, and thrusting her hands up against the Priestess’s shoulders.

Honorius did let go of Mary’s nose, but dropped the glass, seized both her wrists, broke her hold, and forced her hands down on to her chest.

As Mary’s breath returned, she panted, ‘You bitch! Get off me! Let me go or I’ll kill you,’ and she began to struggle violently. But the tall Priestess was a powerful woman and had the advantage that she had thrown the upper part of her body on top of Mary and was pressing her down.

In vain Mary jerked up her knees and strove to free herself. She could not wrench her wrists from the firm hold upon them and the weight of the Priestess crushed her against the well-sprung mattress of the bed. Meanwhile, Honorius’s face was only a few inches above her own and the big grey eyes in it held hers with a steady gaze.

As Mary stared back the eyes seemed to grow even bigger. Then the Priestess said in a soft voice, ‘Sleep. My will is stronger than yours and you must obey me. I order you to sleep.’

Realising that she was being hypnotised, Mary tried to shut her eyes; but it was too late. She found she could not lower her eyelids, or look away from those great grey orbs that bored down into hers. Honorius’s weight was forcing the breath out of her lungs and she knew that her strength was ebbing. The eyes grew larger until the Priestess’s face
became a blur, then disappeared, leaving only the two huge eyes, now seeming the size of saucers, poised above Mary’s face. She could still taste the potion she had been given. It was bitter-sweet, like vermouth, only as strong as a liqueur. Its flavour was the last thing she remembered before she faded into unconsciousness.

When she came to, she was alone. A delightful warmth pervaded her whole body, the feel of the lawn sheets between which she lay seemed like a caress on her bare skin, and she was more conscious than she had been before of the delicious scent that Honorius had put on her in preparation for Mr. X’s visit. The drug had stimulated all her senses, and with the lazy sensuousness of a cat she snuggled down in the big bed to doze again for a few minutes.

Gradually, all that had happened came back to her, but she felt no impulse to jump out of bed, hurry into her clothes and attempt to escape. A comforting fatalism now dominated her mind. She had succeeded, or very nearly succeeded, in the task she had set herself. Provided she could continue to remain unsuspected as a spy, in the long run she would get the best of these people who had trapped her. Teddy’s shoes linked his murder with Ratnadatta and it didn’t much matter that she had failed to bring about his arrest tonight, as she had planned. It would be equally satisfying to witness it tomorrow.

To achieve this she had, after all, to pay the price she had been prepared to pay to start with. In fact, it now transpired to be a much higher price than she had bargained for. But Honorius had been right in contending that it was not beyond her means to pay it. Some of the men she could not have borne, but Honorius had promised to see to it that she was not asked to do so, and the Priestess had been so completely frank about everything that there was no reason to suppose that she had not meant what she said.

And, after all, during a passionate embrace one man was very like another; so would she really mind that, instead of being made love to by one man all through the night, she was to be the partner of several? An episode from her black year
in Dublin came back to her. Some young men had come to the club intent on throwing a wild party. When the club closed, two of them had carried her off to a flat belonging to one of them. There they had played strip-tease poker until all three of them had forfeited most of their clothes. Laughing and fooling, one of them had then carried her into the bedroom and put out the light. A few minutes later the other had joined them, and as she had had a lot to drink she hadn’t really minded.

The two young men had been friends of Barney’s. The thought of him made her wonder what he was doing at that moment. Her immediate guess was that he was at some quiet country hotel in bed with an attractive woman – some easy light-of-love for whom he had so callously let her down. Then she remembered that it was not yet ten o’clock. More probably they were still sitting in the lounge over coffee and liqueurs talking trivialities but mentally savouring in advance the delights of the night to come. He would be smiling into her eyes, entertaining her with some gay nonsense and grinning that devastating grin of his.

What a fool she had been on the point of making herself about him. As though a man with a nature like his could ever really change. Yet he had persuaded her that he had. In her heart she knew that she had forgiven him for the past. If he had asked her to go away with him for the week-end she would have. And she would have told herself that it was to carry out her plan to be avenged on him. Up to the last moment she would have toyed with the idea of telling him the truth about what he had done to her, then leaving him flat. But she wouldn’t have done it. Instead, she would have let him make love to her again. She knew that she wouldn’t have been able to help herself, because she would have wanted him, and wanted him more than any man she had ever known.

But that was not going to happen now. Once again he had unfurled his true colours. That would give her the strength to resist any future temptation to become his plaything. She was not going to let him break her heart. When he turned up
on Monday full of blarney and apparent contrition, she would tell him that she meant to have no more to do with him. He could run his hand through that dark curly hair of his, that looked like a wet poodle’s, until he rubbed it off, for all she cared. She was finished with him, and for good. All the same, it was better to stop thinking of him.

Lazily she stretched herself. She wished that she could lie there in the warm scented bed for ever. But not alone. She wanted someone to share it whom she could laugh with and be cuddled by. If only some dark, handsome stranger would walk into the room now, she knew that she would welcome him. Just a pretence of fright and shyness perhaps. But no more. A little persuading, then strong arms round her that she could almost feel as she thought of them; then long luscious kisses and once again the swoon of pleasure that she had for a long while been denied.

Suddenly she wondered if she was oversexed and promiscuous by nature. If she could so desire a man, any man, providing he was clean and wholesome, surely she must be? Yet, deep down, she knew that she was not. Although, during the greater part of the four years she had been married to Teddy, their relations had been governed by habit rather than passion, and for the last few months of his life he had become almost impotent as far as she was concerned, she had remained faithful to him. Even thoughts of what other men might be like as lovers had entered her mind only occasionally, and she would never have contemplated for a moment allowing one of them to seduce her. Several of his acquaintances had made exploratory overtures, but she had not even let them kiss her. Those memories reassured her that she was now in a highly abnormal state. The craving that had begun to obsess her was a thing not of the mind, but of the body, and could be due only to the strong aphrodisiac that Honorius had forced her to swallow.

Thinking of Teddy brought to her realisation why he had become nearly impotent. To penetrate so far into the secrets of the Brotherhood of the Ram for them to murder him, he must have passed through all the stages that she had and
gone still further. The cause of his loss of virility at home must have been due to his participation in these weekly orgies. Evidently he had realised that in doing so lay his only hope of successfully carrying out his mission.

Swift resentment rose in her against Colonel Verney. She felt that he had no right to demand so much from his young men. Then she recalled that the Colonel had known nothing about the Brotherhood, so he was not to blame. It was Teddy’s own fetish about duty that had carried him so far. He had always maintained that one should stick at nothing to complete a job.

A little cynically she wondered how he would have liked it if the boot had been on the other foot, and he had happened to find out that she was denying herself to him because she was exhausting her sexual powers in secret debauchery. Would the fact that she was doing so in a most worthy cause have made any difference to him? She felt sure that it would not. He would have believed that she had taken the job as an excuse to return to the promiscuity from which he had rescued her, been mad with rage, accused her of being a born Messelina, and divorced her.

But, there it was. Men were like that. Even the best of them seemed to think that women were different from them and should remain chaste whatever their situation. Since they were not, but subject to the same urges, that was damnably unfair, and men were fools to expect faithfulness unless they gave it.

Anyway, poor Teddy was dead, and whatever she did now could not matter to him. The drug had created a ferment in her, and she knew that even if he had still been alive and in their flat at Wimbledon waiting up for her, it would not have made the least difference. She was impatient now for things to begin, and hoped that they would get through the ceremony of initiation quickly. Her mind whirled with images. She knew it was the effect of the aphrodisiac, but what did that matter? She was ready to play the part assigned to her and would revel in it.

A picture entered her mind of the very tall, hair-haired
man who had picked her up off her feet and given her that tremendous kiss when, a fortnight ago, she had been introduced as a neophyte. Would he be there tonight? She hoped he would. If only she could arrange with Abaddon for that fair-haired colossus to be the first in the draw for her. If only he would walk in now. But it need not be him.

At that moment the door opened and Ratnadatta came in.

He was dressed in the garb of the Brotherhood: star spangled mantle, silver sandals and black velvet garter below his left knee, but he had not yet put on his mask. Closing the door behind him, he smiled at her and, raising herself on one elbow, she smiled back.

‘Abaddon has told me that he exempt you from normal waiting before you become initiate. This ees very special favour that he makes. For you I am most happy. It ees great delight for me also that tonight you become my sister in the Brotherhood of the Ram.’

‘Thank you,’ she continued to smile at him. ‘But as it was you who found me at Mrs. Wardeel’s and introduced me here I really owe it to you. I am most grateful for all you have done for me.’

‘It ees pleasure; a great pleasure. And you haf no fears now about the ceremony?’

‘No, none. I am anxious for it to begin.’

‘It will be soon now. Another quarter off an hour and the Brotherhood will haf assembled in the Temple. Presently you tidy hair, put on mantle and mask and I take you down to them. The ceremony begins at ten o’clock.’

‘Will the ceremony be similar to the one you let me see the first time you brought me here?’ she asked.

‘Yes; but more peoples. It ees our great festival tonight. First all Brothers and Sisters make report off their work for Our Lord Satan. That take an hour perhaps. Next the Great Ram will grant desires and make healings. Then the initiates sign pacts in own blood. At midnight comes sacrifice of Ram and baptism of initiates. After that, great feast and, for you, Service to Temple.’

Mary was thinking to herself, ‘So I’ve another two hours
to wait before the really exciting part starts.’

Ratnadatta’s rabbit teeth flashed white between his thick lips in a wide smile, and he said, ‘I read your thought. It ees you wish early part off ceremony could be over quicker.’

‘Well,’ she gave a slight shrug. ‘I shall naturally be glad when I’ve got through the formal procedure of being initiated.’

‘No! No!’ he laughed. ‘It is that you haf now become impatient to take your part in revels weech follow.’

‘All right, then,’ she smiled. ‘Why should I not admit it? I never remember feeling so much like enjoying a big party.’

He moved nearer to her, still smiling. ‘And offering yourself for Service in Temple, eh? You haf wish that next two hours were already gone, so that straight away you reap joy from rite symbolising Creation?’

‘Of course I feel like that,’ she agreed, a shade impatiently. ‘It’s the result of a terribly strong drug that Honorius made me drink.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I know it. The Golden Liquor of Aphrodite it ees called. It never fails to produce effect. Well, that is why I come early. You perform Service to Temple with me now.’

Up to that moment she had had no suspicion of what he was driving at. For the first time she looked at him not as a mine of information on the Satanic cult, but as a man. Only a few minutes ago she had been wanting desperately to be made love to. And now a would-be lover stood before her. He was dumpy and ill-shapen, but now that did not seem to matter so much; or that she had never before given herself to a coloured man. The skin of his body was lighter than that of his face and, in spite of his little paunch, he looked younger and stronger than when he had his clothes on.