“Mr. Arundell?” she said. “This is a surprise! Do you want to see Tom? Please, come in out of the rain. What dreadful weather!”

“Hello, Mrs. Honesty,” Henry Arundell said. “I apologise that we’ve descended upon you in such numbers.”

“Not at all, sir. Come in, all of you, come in.”

The men closed their umbrellas, left them leaning against the door-jamb, and squeezed into the lodge’s narrow, tastefully decorated entrance hall. As they did so, Tom Honesty emerged from a room at the far end, his shirtsleeves rolled impeccably up to his elbows.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Not really,” Swinburne muttered.

“Wet. Nasty day. Something the matter?”

“We require your assistance, Tom,” Arundell said.

“Certainly. In what respect?”

Arundell looked at Eliphas Levi, who said, “You have dry logs, Monsieur Honesty? For the fire?”

“Yes, but I delivered a barrow-load to the house yesterday. You’ve not run out already?”

“Non, non. It is not for firewood. We need you to cut two stakes for us.”

“Stakes?”

“Oui. About two feet long and three inches thick with one end pointed and sharp.”

“May I ask—?”

“It is better if you do not. Also, we require—how are the words?—un maillet lourd.”

“A heavy mallet,” Burton said.

“Oui. And an axe.”

A puzzled expression crossed the groundsman’s face. “Very well. Parlour. Fire. Dry yourselves. I shan’t be long.”

Honesty worked quickly and efficiently, completing his task in less than ten minutes. He rejoined them and handed the stakes and mallet to Levi, and the axe to Monckton Milnes.

“Tom,” Arundell said, “have you been to the old castle recently?”

“Checked it after last week’s storm. Not since.”

“We suspect a dangerous fugitive is hiding out in it. Might he be in the priest hole? Is it still accessible?”

“Priest hole!” Swinburne exclaimed. “My hat! We saw no such thing when we searched the place.”

“Many of the old Catholic homes and castles have a hidden priest hole, Mr. Swinburne,” Arundell said. “It would defeat the point of them if they were easily detected.”

“Where is it?” Burton asked.

“Beneath one of the vaults. There are two removable stone steps concealing the entrance, though for the life of me I can never remember which they are.”

“I’ll come with you. Show you,” Honesty said.

Burton opened his mouth to say no but suddenly felt an unaccountable trust in the groundsman, and before he even realised it, nodded his agreement.

“To the castle, then,” Arundell said.

They waited for Honesty to change into waterproofs then ventured back out into the downpour and into the landau. The groundsman climbed up to the driver’s box and sat next to Burton.

The rain made conversation impossible, crashing down like an Indian monsoon, obscuring the path ahead and causing the vehicle to skid across the waterlogged gravel. Burton grappled with the tiller, which shuddered and jerked in his hands, and was thankful when Honesty reached across and took a hold of it, too, adding his own strength to the explorer’s. Between them, they managed to navigate along the same path that Burton and Swinburne had twice traversed, passing over the bridge, alongside the woods, through Ark Farm, and up the mound to the ruins.

The men disembarked—each carrying a clockwork lantern—and squinted through the torrent at the grey, jagged walls, the tops of which were still black with ravens, all hunched together and motionless. Henry Arundell led them into the short entrance passage, where they stopped to shelter for a few minutes.

“Oof!” Levi exclaimed. “The reputation of your English weather is most deserve, I think!”

As if to underline his assertion, there came a sudden flash and a deafening detonation. The thunderclap echoed through the atmosphere and was immediately followed by another, sounding as if the air itself was being torn apart.

“Le Diable, he know what we intend,” Levi muttered. “But we must do what we must do. Monsieur Honesty, you will lead us to the priest hole?”

“Yes, sir. This way.”

He led them out into the hexagonal courtyard. They splashed across to an arched doorway and into the room beyond, a large square chamber with two small windows at its far end. A dark opening—a door made irregular by the collapse of its lintel—gave access to downward-leading steps. Swinburne wound his lantern and handed it to Honesty, who, holding it before him, descended.

Burton knew the castle’s beetle-infested wine vaults lay below, and even though he’d already visited them, his horror of darkness and enclosed spaces caused him to hesitate at the top of the steps.

Lightning flickered and thunder shook the castle to its foundations.

“All right, old thing?” Monckton Milnes asked quietly.

The explorer gave a brusque nod. He moved forward, brushing spiderwebs out of the way.

At the bottom of the stairs, Levi said to the others, “Perdurabo, he feel our presence but he have no power over the body of John Judge in daytime. To us, the man will appear to be in deep sleep, but inside him, it is all strain and fighting. If we kill Perdurabo but not John Judge, Monsieur Judge will become nosferatu. If we kill Judge but not Perdurabo, our enemy will flee into another. So we must kill both at once. My directions, you must follow them exactly, or all is lost.” The occultist turned to Henry Arundell. “It is best that you remain here. This thing we do, it offend the Catholic faith.”

“But are you not yourself a Catholic, Mr. Levi?” Arundell objected.

“It is so, but this, it is like the exorcism. Rome is aware of the procedure, but it not like to acknowledge that it exist and sometime is necessary.”

“The man killed my daughter, sir. I’ll not be excluded.”

“Bien. And you, Mr. Honesty—show us the steps, s’il vous plait, then return to the carriage and wait for us.”

Honesty turned back the way they’d come and started up the stone stairs. After he’d climbed seven of them, he faced the group, squatted, and pointed at the last two steps he’d passed. “These. I’ll need help to lift them.”

Burton moved to assist. A gutter, about two inches wide and six deep, ran to either side of the stairs. Honesty slid his fingers into it and jerked his chin toward the opposite side. “If you feel, sir. Concealed handhold.” Burton did as directed, curling his digits into a cavity he detected in the stone. The groundsman said, “One, two, three, lift.” They pulled, Burton’s arm gave a stab of pain, and the two steps came free. Thunder boomed outside.

The two men placed the heavy stone trapdoor on the lower steps and looked into the dark and narrow tunnel they’d exposed. Four feet wide and four high, it sloped downward into blackness. Burton felt himself trembling.

“Thank you, Mr. Honesty,” he said huskily. “Leave us, please.”

Honesty looked from one man to the other, shifted indecisively, then turned and departed.

Burton gritted his teeth, glanced back at his companions, then dropped to his knees, picked up his lantern, and, holding it out before him, crawled into the tight passageway. He immediately saw that it opened into a larger space about fifteen feet ahead. He shuffled forward, his heart thumping, and the others followed.

When he emerged and stood up, he found himself in a surprisingly large chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Its walls were chalked all over with sigils, their contorted shapes suggestive of forbidden knowledge and banished gods, and in an arched recess in the far wall, a big stone crucifix had been desecrated with an obscene diagram. At the foot of the cross, in the middle of a roughly drawn pentagram, John Judge lay stretched out on an altar. Burton walked over and looked down at the man. Shadows danced and slid across the figure as the others entered the room, their lanterns swinging. The light made the sigils appear to writhe restlessly.