Clovenhoof 04 Hellzapoppin' Read online

  “Doubtful.”

  “Have faith, brother,” said Manfred, sweeping the paper balls off the table. “I’ve been collecting the brothers’ pee for more than a week in preparation.”

  “Those barrels in the cellar leak, you know.”

  “Cheer up. We shall have one last fine meal tonight. Marsh rabbit a le pâturage.”

  “Rabbit with grass?”

  Manfred coughed.

  “Marsh rabbit with grass.”

  “Marsh rabbit.” Bastian thought and then put his ‘How Not To Die’ board down unhappily.

  Manfred shrugged genially.

  “Best not to think about it, brother.”

  In the library, Stephen looked up from his copy of Gaudio Ex Coquere. There was that sound again, a lugubrious rumbling sound accompanied by tiny popping sounds. He stepped out into the corridor. Three barrels of monk piss stood beneath the explosive bird mural created by Brother Huey and the late Brother Bernard. One of the stinking barrels frothed and sloshed as though it was reaching some urinary critical mass and was about to explode.

  Stephen held his nose and peered down into the golden murk.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked.

  The reply sounded something like, “Blub Ub.”

  “Sorry,” said Stephen. “I was only asking.”

  Rutspud emerged slowly, a morose look in his over-sized eyes.

  “You could drown in there,” said Stephen. “Couldn’t you?”

  “If only,” said the demon, licking his lips slowly. “What a way to go. Monk’s piss. Delicious.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. I can bottle some for you to take home if you like.”

  Rutspud froze for a second and then burst into a frenzied bout of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Stephen had never actually seen a person gnash their teeth before. It was a common enough phrase but quite bizarre to see in practice. It took Stephen several seconds to realise that Rutspud was crying.

  “There, there, buddy,” said Stephen, tentatively patting the demon’s wet shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s terrible!” he howled. “I’m done for! Scabass has always had it in for me and now …”

  Rutspud sank back into the barrel and gargled in anguish.

  “What?” said Stephen. “Is someone going to kill you?”

  Rutspud’s bubbly reply indicated that demons couldn’t die and that Stephen was an idiot to think they could.

  “Whip you then?” said Stephen. “Spit roast you? Poke you with those three-pronged pointy things?” He thought quickly. Demons were creatures of the perverse. Perhaps they found pleasure in pain and vice versa. “Give you a pay rise? Invite you round for a cup of tea? Give you their blessing?”

  Rutspud stood up, spitting out a stream of piss.

  “He does that.”

  “Who? Does what?”

  “Lord Peter. He offers benedictions to those he hates. And if you’ve really annoyed him, he makes you say Hail Marys.”

  Rutspud had mentioned this Lord Peter before, but the politics and situation in Hell made no sense to Stephen. He chose to ignore it; it took his entire grip on sanity to accept that this creature before him was one of the denizens of Hell. His mind didn’t dare consider much more.

  “What happens when demons say Hail Mary?” Stephen asked.

  “I don’t know but I don’t think it’s a pretty sight.”

  “And that’s what’s going to happen to you?”

  Rutspud shook his head in self-pity.

  “Worse. They’re sending me to the kitten room.”

  Stephen looked at him.

  “Does kitten mean something different in Hell to what it does here?”

  Rutspud shook his head.

  “Are these giant three-headed man-eating kittens?” said Stephen. “A sort of cat Cerberus?”

  Rutspud shook his head. Stephen chewed his lip.

  “I think you’d better hop out of there, dry off, and tell me all about it.”

  Nero ushered Rutspud into the office.

  “Your six o’clock appointment is here, my lord.”

  Lord Peter swivelled in his office chair.

  “Six o’clock?”

  “Yes, sir. Oh.” Nero scampered across to a large mechanism of cogs, levers and numbers on the wall, added since Rutspud’s last visit, and hoisted one of the arms round. “BONG!” he declared. “Six o’clock.”

  Rutspud frowned.

  Lord Peter smiled at him.

  “Efficiency is a calculable measure. A matter of achievement divided by effort multiplied by time. A over E times T. One can’t measure efficiency without actual time.”

  Rutspud shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. The touch of shag-pile carpet on his feet was nauseatingly sensuous.

  “And so, I have invented it. Is it time for another ‘bong’ yet, Nero?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “Well, dash it all. How about some ticks and tocks?”

  “Very good, sir,” said Nero and, adjusting the laurel wreath of razor-blades on his bloody scalp, stood in the corner and began to quietly recite, “tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock …”

  “Now, Rutspud,” said Lord Peter, “I hear nothing but good things about you. Belphegor constantly sings your praises.”

  “Thank you, lord.”

  “And you’ve also maintained responsibility for your cave of tortures in the sixth circle.”

  “I do my best.”

  “All is as it should be and yet …”

  Those last two words were like a blade slicing down into Rutspud’s gut.

  “And yet?” he asked, a quaver in his voice.

  “Something disquieting has come to my attention. Enter!”

  The door opened and Scabass strode in, an object clutched in his hands, almost skewered by his ice-pick fingers. Rutspud recognised the object at once, and Scabass grinned at him with a mouth full of metal spikes.

  “I’m sure you can clear this up in no time,” said Lord Peter. “Could you tell me what this thing is?”

  Rutspud could not deny the truth in face of the material evidence.

  “It’s a cushion, my lord.”

  Lord Peter held out his hand and Scabass passed it to him.

  “Very soft,” he commented.

  “Woven from the shorn hair of vain women and stuffed with the dried guts of dieticians,” said Rutspud. It was a lie. It was made, inside and out, from the cut-offs of old monk habits from St Cadfan’s.

  “And do you know where Scabass found this?”

  Rutspud nodded nervously. Lord Peter leaned forward over his desk.

  “Care to explain?”

  “Shipton – that’s one of the damned in my cave – has piles.”

  “Piles?”

  “Haemorrhoids, sir. She complains about them a lot, between making predictions of woe and gloom.”

  “And so you made this to …?”

  “Actually, I had Cartland and Nightingale make it,” said Rutspud. “I did whip them while they sewed and stuffed it,” he added quickly.

  Lord Peter’s expression had taken a turn for the perplexed, going from a mask of feigned managerial concern to genuine bewilderment.

  “You had this made – specifically made – to ease the pains of one of the damned?”

  Rutspud took a deep breath. Right, he told himself, time to play the trump card, his only card.

  “Hell’s role is to provide high quality torture provision within the framework of a theologically didactic universe,” he said. “The damned must be punished, be seen to be punished, and that punishment must serve Hell’s overall strategic pathway. We do not torture all the damned in the same way. That’s why we have Individual Torture Plans. In fact, one should go so far as to say no two damned are tortured in exactly the same way.”

  “Ye—ees?” said Lord Peter in the tones of one who was willing to humour Rutspud a little longer but only a little longer.

  “Shipt
on’s ITP indicates a course of hangings, gouging and general abuse. Her piles are not a factor in our plans for her.”

  “But her piles hurt,” said Scabass. “We are meant to hurt them.”

  “Of course, sir,” said Rutspud without taking his eyes off Lord Peter. “But it is my professional opinion that the piles are noise, interfering with the signal message we are trying to communicate to this individual.”

  “You are proposing that the painful piles are distracting her from her true torture?” asked Lord Peter.

  “But torture is torture!” Scabass snarled.

  Rutspud shook his head at such naivety whilst sharing a knowing look with Lord Peter.

  “And let’s not forget Pirithous,” he said.

  The looks of confusion on Scabass’s and Lord Peter’s faces were wonderful.

  “King of the Lapiths,” said Rutspud. “Friend of Theseus. We have him in the fourth circle, condemned to sit on a giant stone for all eternity for his hubris.”

  “Oh, him,” said Lord Peter.

  “He’s our piles guy,” said Rutspud. “He’s Hell’s Mr Haemorrhoid. Hell only has one Sisyphus, one Tantalus, one Pirithous. To allow Shipton to revel in her piles is to damage part of our important brand.”

  Lord Peter was nodding. He was actually nodding.

  “That is truly commendable, Rutspud,” he said.

  “Thank you, lord,” said Rutspud, fighting to keep a grin from his face, particularly while Scabass was standing there, stunned, mouth agape.

  “To put such thought and effort into your torture plans …”

  “I only exist to serve,” said Rutspud.

  “Of course, you’re over-thinking it,” said Lord Peter.

  “What, my lord?”

  “It’s de trop. It’s perfectionism taken to excess.”

  Rutspud’s mind stumbled.

  “I’m … I’m trying too hard?”

  “One is flattered, of course,” said Lord Peter. “But I don’t want one of our very best burning out in his prime. You need to take things down a notch or two. Uncoil those springs.”

  “Sir?”

  “You need to relax.”

  Rutspud reeled as though punched. He turned on the spot and found himself facing the poster next to Lord Peter’s inverted crucifix. The kitten dangling from the branch, looked back at him.

  “Hang in there,” said Scabass with a dark chuckle. “Shall I escort him to the Relaxation Centre now, sir?”

  “I think it’s in use at the moment,” said Lord Peter. “What’s the time, Nero?”

  Nero swung the arm of the clock.

  “BONG! It’s seven o’clock.”

  “Already?”

  “Er, time flies like an arrow, sir,” he said.

  Lord Peter stood.

  “Very well, Rutspud. You are to report here at, um, twelve o’clock for some intense relaxation.”

  “And that’s it,” said Rutspud to Stephen. “I’ve got until the twelve bongs and then I’m going to be stuffed into a room full of kittens until I am ‘better’.”

  “And these kittens, they’ll … what?”

  “Sit there and look cute.” Rutspud shuddered within the folds of the habit that Stephen had loaned him. “Or rub themselves up against me. I might even be required to stroke them.”

  Stephen suppressed the urge to laugh. The demon was clearly distressed. Stephen didn’t regard Rutspud as anything like a friend. He looked upon the demon as something partway between a personal outreach project and a schizophrenic delusion. Whatever the case, it seemed both impolite and unwise to laugh at one of Hell’s minions.

  He found the entry in the Librum Magnum Daemonum he had been looking for.

  “Here,” he said. “This is the entry for Scabass. Let's see what it says. Shredder – is that shredder? Yes, shredder of souls. He is a merciless ...”

  “Your Latin's rubbish,” said Rutspud, turning the book towards him. “He is a tyrant with no mercy, who can identify and exploit the most subtle of faults to condemn those who oppose him.”

  “He sounds quite horrible.”

  “You really don’t know the half of it,” said Rutspud.

  Stephen closed the book with a fat, papery slam and shrugged.

  “So, don’t go back,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Stay on Earth. Run free in the Welsh countryside. I mean, I suppose you could even stay here. We could try to pass you off as a new monk. A short, very ugly monk. In fact, we’ve already got a few of those so …”

  “No,” Rutspud whined. “I can’t. They’d find me. They’d send someone. And then they’d drag me to Hell, my own private Hell. I’m sure Escher’s cooked up some weird recursive fractal Hell. You’ve heard the phrase, ‘the devil’s in the details’. Well, that’ll be me. In a Hell within a Hell within a Hell.” He rolled his eyes at the futility of it all and looked around him. “Maybe that’s all this place is: another level of Hell.”

  “Ah, you’ve been to Wales before, then,” said Stephen. “Come on, we’ll sort something out.”

  “Why?” said Rutspud.

  “Why?”

  “Yes, why would you want to help me?”

  “Just being friendly and charitable,” said Stephen. “Goodness is its own reward.”

  “Are you trying to make me puke?”

  “Hey, if you don’t like me being nice to you, you don’t have to come here.”

  Rutspud shook his head firmly.

  “This” – and he gyrated his hands to figuratively cover the situation – “this is a … a trade mission. Give and take. Tit for tat. You’ve given me the books – Wilde says thanks, by the way – and the material for the cushions and what have you.”

  “By the way,” said Stephen, “that business of hangings and gougings for Old Mother Shipton you mentioned. You don’t actually …?”

  “No. No need,” said Rutspud. “That woman wails on cue when the inspectors come round. It actually makes a break from her awful predictions.”

  “So, if this is purely a business relationship, what have you given me in return?”

  Rutspud clicked his tongue in thought.

  “I could bring you and your boys some food from the banqueting hall of surprisingly large cutlery.”

  “Food from Hell?” said Stephen and tried to imagine what effects, physiological and spiritual, such sustenance would have on the brothers. “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe I could bring you back a couple of kittens?”

  “I don’t think we’re in much of position to keep pets,” said Stephen as he crossed to the bank of cabinets beneath the largest library shelves.

  “I wasn’t thinking about pets,” said Rutspud. “I was thinking roasted, broiled, barbecued.”

  “Thanks but no thanks,” said Stephen.

  He pulled out two empty stoppered bottles from a cupboard.

  “Now, let’s bottle up some of that monk piddle for you for later and see if we can’t come up with a solution to your little problem.”

  Bastian clutched the side of the rowboat as it rolled in the tide. The idea of taking to the water to catch some food had seemed a good one, but the boat that Father Eustace had brought to the island from the mainland was cramped, with four monks aboard and, between them, Brothers Bastian, Clement, Lionel and Henry had about as much sea-sense as a drunken Cockney on a lilo.

  They were carrying out a plan that, at the moment of its conception, when they were huddled round the warming room fire with very little in their bellies except quantities of Brother Manfred’s inexhaustible camomile tea, had seemed quite ingenious. They had several lengths of fishing line strung with hooks and pieces of silver from the church altar. According to the one fishing text in the library, mackerel were drawn to shiny objects, mistaking them for tasty sandeel.

  In their fireside planning, they had pictured mackerel positively sacrificing themselves on the hooks for the monks’ continued survival. However, after an hour at sea, albeit no mo
re than twenty yards from shore, there had not been so much as a nibble, and the waves and the constant fidgeting of the brothers continually threatened to capsize them.

  Brother Clement, as sacristan, had insisted on coming along to guard the church silver. However, he was using the outing as a method of delivering a discursive sermon on all things spiritual to his trapped audience.

  “Our usage of the communion chalice and paten in this vulgar enterprise is a rich analogy for man’s materialism and short-sightedness,” he said.

  “Really?” said Brother Henry, hunkering down in the well of the boat in his dressing-gown and trying to concentrate on his Sudoku book.

  “Like the man who throws away the apple seeds because he cannot eat them, we are ignoring the rewards of eternity in search of short-term gain. We should turn to the Lord for our sustenance.”

  “Oh, God,” said Brother Lionel, thrusting his arthritic fingers together and bowing his head. “Please send us two dozen juicy steaks. Oh, and a new set of teeth for me to eat them with,” he added, whistling through his gums as he spoke.

  Brother Lionel opened one eye to stare at the sky.

  “No steak!” he declared crustily.

  “God’s sustenance is spiritual, not merely physical,” said Brother Clement. “We should be in the church, not here.”

  “You’re right,” said Bastian abruptly. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  “See?” said Brother Clement, gesturing at Bastian’s sudden piety.

  “There’s six months’ supply of communion wafers in the sacristy,” said Bastian. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”

  Brother Clement frowned.

  “I must object. Communion wafers are not to be devoured like some midnight feast.”

  “Best bit is, they’re not really communion wafers,” said Bastian.

  “What?”

  Bastian coughed.

  “I know this man in Caernarvon. He did me a deal on ten thousand ice-cream wafers. And you know the price of those communion wafers. It’s extortionate.”

  “We’ve being using ice-cream wafers!” sputtered Brother Clement.

  “Since the Christmas before last, actually,” said Bastian. “I’m surprised no one noticed.”