***

Yet, when night returned to cover the villa and its gardens, all Marianne's heroic plans melted away before the most primitive of all terrors, the terror of the unknown perils that lurk in darkness. The thought of going back to that ill-omened glade, and looking again on that devilish statue now that she knew the truth, chilled her to the marrow. Never in all her life had she known such fear, not even in that moment after Francis Cranmere's escape when she feared for her own life. Francis was, after all, only a man, whereas Lucinda belonged to the unseen, immeasurable world of the supernatural.

In her fear of being obliged to meet the steward again, she had spent the better part of the day shut up in her own rooms. Not until the afternoon, when she had seen him set off in the direction of the main road, did she venture down to the stables and there she spent a long time meticulously examining Ilderim, as if by some sign the beautiful stallion could give her the key to the mystery of his master. She said nothing to Rinaldo who had watched with some surprise the Princess's long colloquy with the thoroughbred.

Indoors again, she had waited for the night in a state of utter indecision. Curiosity urged her to go back to the ruins of the unholy temple but all that Matteo had told her of Lucinda filled her with an uncontrollable disgust and she feared the sight of that shameless statue almost as much as that of the fanatical servant.

She partook of a light supper, soon over, and then allowed her women to undress her for the night, but she did not go to bed. Her rich bedchamber, her splendid bed, now filled her with horror. She seemed to see the statue still standing there and hardly dared to turn her eyes to the mirrors for fear of seeing the ghost of the evil Venetian woman reflected there. Although it was still very hot, she had had all the windows tightly closed and the curtains drawn, prompted by an impulse of childish terror of which she was secretly ashamed. She had stared for a long time at the moving panel and ended by piling up a table and some chairs in front of it, reinforced by a few heavy metal objects, such as candlesticks, so that it was quite impossible for anyone to open it from the other side without causing a resounding crash.

Before sending Agathe and Dona Lavinia away, she had requested the housekeeper to send Gracchus to her. Her idea had been to make her youthful coachman sleep on a mattress in the short passage connecting her room with Agathe's, but Gracchus, unaware of his mistress's terrors, had gone to spend the evening with Rinaldo, with whom he had struck up a great friendship, at the farm-house where he lived on the far side of the estate. Marianne was obliged to deal with her fears alone, fears which a hundred times that day had sent her hand creeping to the bell to send for her coach. Her will had prevailed but now she was obliged to live through a night which seemed fraught with dangers. The few hours that must pass before the sun rose again seemed an eternity.

The best thing I can do,' she told herself, 'is to go to sleep, fast asleep. Then I shan't be tempted to go back to the glade.'

With this object, she had asked Dona Lavinia to make her some of the tisane which had worked so well the first night, but on the point of drinking it, she had set it back, untouched, on the table by her bed. Suppose she were to sleep too soundly even to hear the collapse of the barrier she had erected in front of the panel?

No, even if the night were to be a hideous nightmare, she must endure it all, with all her wits about her.

With a sigh, she laid both her pistols within reach of her pillow, picked up a book and settled back to try and read. The book was a moving novel by Monsieur de Chateaubriand telling of the love of two young Indians, Chactas and Atala. Marianne had been enjoying it very much but that night her mind was not on it. Her thoughts were wandering far away from the banks of the Meschacebe to the glade where some unspeakable ritual was to take place. Gradually, her old curiosity revived, insidious and tormenting. At last she threw aside her book.

'This is impossible,' she said aloud. 'If this goes on, I shall go mad.'

She reached out and tugged at the bell which rang in Agathe's room, intending to ask the girl to come in and spend the night with her. With someone else there, she would be better able to combat her fears, and Agathe herself, still in a state of nerves, would be delighted to stay with her mistress. But although she rang again and again, no one came.

Thinking that the girl might have taken one of Dona Lavinia's potions, she got up and, slipping on a cotton dressing-gown and pushing her feet into a pair of slippers, she made her way to Agathe's room. Light was showing under the door and Marianne tapped softly, then, getting no answer, she turned the handle and went in. The room was empty.

A lighted candle stood on the bedside table but the bed itself was empty, the sheets lying half on the floor as if they had been dragged there as the maid got out of bed. Worried, Marianne glanced up at the bell communicating with her own room which hung above the bed. An exclamation of surprise and irritation escaped her: the bell had been effectively muffled with a cloth. This was too much. Not content with leaving her room in the middle of the night, Agathe had even had the effrontery to silence the bell. But where had she gone? Whom had she gone to meet? Not Gracchus, he was with Rinaldo, and certainly none of the other servants, for Agathe had little to do with any of them. When she was not with her mistress, she was hardly ever out of sight of Dona Lavinia, the only person in the house she trusted. As for —

On the point of going back to her own room, Marianne paused and, turning back towards the bed, stood thoughtfully regarding the curious condition of the sheets. That was precisely the way they would have fallen had the girl been lifted bodily out of her bed. No one dragged the bedclothes off like that getting out of bed in the ordinary way, but when a body was lifted, asleep or awake… Marianne's heart almost stopped beating as a terrible idea struck her. The muffled bell, the disordered bedclothes, the candle left burning – and there was a cup, too, on the table by the bed, an empty cup that still smelled faintly and unmistakably of the familiar tisane, and with it another, more subtle odour. Agathe had not gone of her own accord. She had been carried off, and Marianne shrank from guessing by whom.

She hesitated no longer. In the same instant, the fear which had been lurking in the pit of her stomach all evening vanished. She sped back to her room and began feverishly dismantling the barrier which stood before the panel. With a scarf tied hastily around her waist to confine her billowing robe, a candle in one hand and a pistol in the other, a second pistol stowed safely in her waistband, she descended the staircase for the second time.

This time, she accomplished the descent swiftly, without hesitation, buoyed up by a rage which banished even the most elementary caution. She had no need to blow out her candle when she reached the entrance: the wind did it for her. It had been rising steadily all evening but behind her curtained windows she had not been aware of it. It was also very much cooler. As she took a deep breath of the night air, she thought that it must have been raining somewhere. The sky was quite light, for the moon was full, but clouds were scudding across it, every now and then hiding the silver disc. The brooding silence had vanished. The park was alive with the rustling of numberless leaves and the creak of swaying branches.

Marianne plunged resolutely into the cave and hurried through it but in the passage underneath the hill she moved more slowly so as to make no sound. A red light showed from the clearing beyond. The draught in the passage chilled the air and Marianne shivered and clutched the thin cotton of her robe closely to her throat. As she approached the end of the tunnel, her heart began to beat faster but she settled the gun more firmly in her hand and, flattening herself against the wall, ventured to put her head outside. Instantly, it seemed to her that she had been transported back in time, out of the noisy, fast-moving era of Napoleon with all its military glories and its busy, bustling life, back into the darkest, medieval night.

The statue stood gleaming in the light of a pair of tall black wax candles. More light, the strange, ruddy glow she had seen from the tunnel, came from a pair of low vases which also gave off a powerful, acrid smoke. Between them, a kind of altar had been set up on the ruins. On it, motionless and apparently unconscious since she remained perfectly still although evidently unbound, lay the figure of a naked woman. A receptacle resembling a chalice stood on a small board laid across her stomach. With mingled horror and amazement, Marianne saw that it was Agathe. Even so, she managed to hold her breath, for the silence was so deep that it seemed as if the smallest sound would precipitate disaster.

Matteo was on his knees beside the motionless girl, but a Matteo whom Marianne hardly recognized. He was wearing a kind of long, black dalmatic decorated with weird signs and unfastened over his chest. There was a gold circlet on his grizzled locks. This was no longer the Prince of Sant'Anna's taciturn steward but a necromancer preparing to celebrate one of the most ancient and unhallowed rites of all time. Suddenly he began reciting Latin prayers at the sound of which Marianne was left in no more doubt as to what he was doing.

'The black mass!' The thought appalled her, and her eyes went from the kneeling man to the statue which, in that sinister light, seemed clothed in blood. Once, long ago, she had unearthed a dusty volume from a long-forgotten shelf in the library at Selton and read, with growing horror, the details of that abominable rite. Soon, when he had reached the end of his sacrilegious orisons, Matteo would offer up his chosen victim to his goddess who, here, stood in place of Satan himself. Having first possessed her, he would then sacrifice her, so much was clear from the long knife which lay, gleaming ominously, at Lucinda's feet.