The Running Grave полностью

Mazu paused, a few steps outside the classroom, and turned to look at Robin, who also halted. This was physically the closest the two women had ever been and Robin now realised that, like Taio, Mazu didn’t seem to care much for washing. She could smell her body odour, which was poorly masked by a heavy incense perfume. Mazu said nothing, but simply looked at Robin with her dark, crookedly set eyes, and the latter felt obliged to break the silence.

‘I – I’m really sorry. I didn’t realise Shawna didn’t have the authority to take me from the stables.’

Mazu continued to stare at her without speaking, and Robin again felt a strange, visceral fear tinged with revulsion that couldn’t be entirely explained away by the power the woman held in the church. Niamh Doherty had described Mazu as a large spider; Robin herself had seen her as some malign, slimy thing lurking in a rockpool; yet neither quite captured her strangeness. Robin felt now as though she was staring into a yawning abyss of which the depths were unseeable.

She assumed Mazu expected something more than an apology, but Robin had no idea what it was. Then she heard a rustle of fabric. Glancing down, she saw that Mazu had raised the hem of her robe a few inches to reveal a dirty, sandalled foot. Robin looked back up into those strange, mismatched eyes. A hysterical impulse to laugh rose in her – Mazu couldn’t, surely, be expecting Robin to kiss her foot, as the girls who’d let the toddler escape from the dormitory had done? – but it died at the look on Mazu’s face.

For perhaps five seconds, Robin and Mazu stared at each, and Robin knew this was a test, and that to ask aloud whether Mazu genuinely wanted this tribute would be as dangerous as revealing her disgust or her incredulity.

Just do it.

Robin knelt, bent quickly over the foot, with its black toenails, grazed it with her lips and then stood up again.

Mazu gave no sign that she’d even noticed the tribute, but dropped her robes and walked on as though nothing had happened.

Robin felt shaken and humiliated. She glanced around to see whether anyone had witnessed what had just happened. She tried to imagine what Strike would say, if he’d seen her, and felt another wave of embarrassment pass over her. How could she ever explain why she’d done it? He’d think she was mad.

At Daiyu’s pool, Robin knelt and mumbled the usual observance. Beside her, Mazu said in a low voice,

‘Bless me, my child, and may your righteous punishment fall upon all who stray from The Way.’

Mazu then got up, still without looking at or speaking to Robin, and headed towards the temple. With an upsurge of panic, Robin followed, with a presentiment of what was about to happen. Sure enough, on entering the temple, Robin saw all her former high-level associates, including Amandeep, Walter, Vivienne and Kyle, sitting in a circle on chairs set upon the shining black pentagon-shaped stage. All looked stern. With an increase of her awful foreboding, Robin saw that Taio Wace was also present.

‘Rowena had taken it upon herself to do a different task to the one she was assigned, which is why you couldn’t find her, Vivienne,’ said Mazu, climbing the stairs to the stage and sitting down in a free seat, spreading out her glittering blood red robes as she did so. ‘She has paid the tribute of humility, but we will now find out whether that was an empty gesture. Move your chair into the centre of the circle, please, Rowena. Welcome to Revelation.’

Robin picked up an empty chair and moved it to the centre of the black stage, beneath which lay the deep, dark baptismal pool. She sat down and tried to still her legs, which were shaking, by pressing down on them with palms that had become damp.

The temple lights began to dim, leaving only a spotlight on the stage. Robin couldn’t remember the lights being lowered for any of the other Revelation sessions.

Get a grip, she told herself. She tried to picture Strike grinning at her, but it didn’t work: the present was too real, closing in upon her, even as the faces and figures of those surrounding her grew indistinct in the dark, and her lips were tingling strangely, as though contact with Mazu’s foot had left some acidic residue.

Mazu pointed a long, pale finger and the temple doors banged closed behind Robin, making her jump.

‘A reminder,’ said Mazu calmly, addressing those in the circle, ‘Primal Response Therapy is a form of spiritual cleansing. In this safe, holy space, we use words from the materialist world to counter materialist ideas and behaviours. There will be a purging, not only of Rowena, but of ourselves, as we unearth and dispatch terms we no longer use, but which still linger in our subconsciousness.’

Robin saw the dark figures around her nodding. Her mouth was completely dry.