“Only some of it. Just a few fragments of information we managed to get together in France, and some good guesswork by Father Anton.”
“Father Anton!” said the Reverend Taylor, brightening. “I had no idea that he was still alive! I’m amazed! How is he? He was so kind to me during the war, you know. A real gentleman of the cloth.”
“Father Anton died last night, Mr. Taylor. He was killed when Elmek got loose.”
The Reverend Taylor dropped his gaze. “Oh,” he said quietly. “I’m very sorry.”
I said: “Mr. Taylor, more people are going to get hurt unless you can tell us about these devils. Father Anton said they were probably the thirteen devils that terrorised Rouen in 1045. They were exorcised by Cornelius Prelati, and sewn into sacks, but that was all he could discover.”
The Reverend Taylor sadly blew his nose. “He was a clever man, Father Anton. Yes, he was absolutely right. They were the thirteen devils of Rouen. Les ireizn diables de Rouen.”
“But how did they get into American tanks?” asked Madeleine. “I don’t understand it at all.”
The vicar shrugged. “I understood very little of it myself. It all happened a long time ago, when I was a very enthusiastic young vicar, and I had just been appointed to my first church in Sussex.”
“Can you tell us about it?” I asked. “We’ll keep it to ourselves, you know, if you’re really worried about the Official Secrets Act.”
The Reverend Taylor looked up at me. “Well,” he said, “I suppose there’s no harm, since you already know so much about it. Would you care for some more whisky? No? Well, I’ll have one.”
We waited in silence while the vicar poured himself another drink. Then he came over and sat by the fire, and stared into the red-hot caverns of logs and branches, a man remembering hell.
“What you have to know about this part of Sussex,” he said, “was that it bore the brunt of the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror in 1066. All this valley was occupied, and Lewes became the seat of William de Warrenne, who was one of William the Conqueror’s most trusted officers. The castle at Lewes was built by de Warrenne, and on the southern slopes of the town an immense Priory was constructed, one of the largest ecclesiastical buildings ever erected in England. In its time, it was even greater than Canterbury Cathedral.”
The Reverend Taylor swallowed half a glass of whisky, and patted his lips with the back of his sleeve.
“Of course, when Henry the Eighth broke with Rome, the Priory was dissolved, and most of its stones were pilfered by local people to build houses. But the Priory kept some of its secrets for many centuries afterwards. It was only when Victorian railway engineers came to excavate the site where the Priory had stood, to build a line to Brighton, that they came across several remarkable things.”
I looked up at the clock on the Reverend Taylor’s mantelpiece. Eight o’clock. I wondered how long Elmek would stay patient in his medieval trunk. Madeleine touched my hand, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
The Reverend Taylor said, “First of all, they found the tomb of William de Warrenne’s wife, Gundrada, whose burial place was unknown until then. This discovery was well-publicised. But there was another find, which wasn’t publicised at all. As they dug deeper, they found a sealed vault, chiselled deep into the chalk, and this contained thirteen ancient sacks of bones.”
Madeleine whispered, “The thirteen devils.”
“Precisely,” the vicar nodded. “The thirteen devils, the disciples of Adramelech. And according to words engraved on the lid of the vault, they had been brought across the Channel from Rouen by William de Warrenne as devils of war, concealed in strange suits of armour. He had unleashed them at Senlac, the field on which the Battle of Hastings was fought, and they had flown on Harold and his English soldiers with such ferocity that the battle was won in a matter of hours.”
The Reverend Taylor turned to me, his ruddy face made redder by the heat from the fire.
“I expect you know the story that William’s archers fired their arrows into the air, so that they landed amongst the English. Well, they were not arrows, but devils; and the thing that tore out Harold’s eyes was a beast from hell.”
I took out a cigarette, my first for a whole day, and lit it. I asked the Reverend Taylor: “That was nine hundred years ago, wasn’t it? How did you get involved?”
He looked up. “My oldest church records showed that William de Warrenne had somehow struck a bargain with the devils. If the devils helped the Normans conquer England, he would give them his wife Gundrada as a sacrifice to Adramelech. That’s why the devils came to Lewes, and that’s why Gundrada died when she did. But there were powerful French exorcists at the Priory, and they managed to quell the evil spirits, and sew them up again in sacks. It was only when the railway engineers opened up the vault that they saw the light of day once more.”
“What happened to them then?”
The Reverend Taylor finished his whisky. “They were taken to what are now the vaults of St. Thaddeus, by night, and sealed away by seven Roman Catholic priests. This, apparently, was what it took to keep them from breaking out.”
I whispered, “Father Anton tried to seal the devil away on his own. My God, if only we’d found this out earlier.”
“A single priest would not have sufficient power,” said the Reverend Taylor. “It had to be seven, and they had to invoke seraphim to help them. The thirteen devils of Adramelech were not to be played with.”
“And then what?” asked Madeleine. “How did the Americans find out about them?”
“I was never really sure, my dear,” answered the vicar. “I found out the story myself, and I wrote a short article about it in my parish magazine, in 1938. I can’t imagine that my little publication ever reached as far as Washington, but some very mysterious American gentlemen got in touch with me in 1943, and asked me a great many questions about the devils and the vaults and what could be done to control them.”
“And you told them?” I asked.
“I told them all I knew, which wasn’t very much. I didn’t think about it for a while, but in January, 1944, I received a letter from Bishop Angmering, saying that Allied forces had a patriotic interest in the devils of Rouen, and that I was to give them every co-operation possible.”
The Reverend Taylor was obviously disturbed by his memories. He got up from his chair, and began to walk up and down the worn carpet of his sitting-room, his hands clasped firmly behind his back.
“They came one day with Roman Catholic priests, and they took the thirteen sacks away. I didn’t know where they were taking them, but I begged them to be careful. I said the devils were not to be meddled with, but they said that they were quite aware of that, and that was why they wanted them.”
He sat down again, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
“The next I knew, I was ordered to go to Southampton, and report to an American colonel called Sparks. He was a very brusque man, I remember. Very crisp. He said that my devils were to be used by the American forces for a secret mission. A special division. They had been brought back to life by the conjurations of the Kabbalah, and they had been promised great rewards if they fought on the side of the Allies against the Hun. I never found out what these great rewards were, but I suspect now that they may have involved… well, human sacrifices. I asked one of the American officers, but all he ever did was smile, and tell me that what they were doing was for western liberty and freedom.”
“So you went across to France with this division?” I asked the Reverend Taylor.