by Manda Scott
Nostradamus made a steeple of his fingers and viewed him over the top of it. He blinked, owlishly. With the same soft care, he said, ‘Even so, you care for your stone, do you not?’
Owen had not expected the question, and so had not prepared an answer. His heart spoke for him, without censure.
Rawly, he said, ‘It is the core and light of my life, my greatest love.’
Even to himself, he had never made it so plain. Laid open as if naked, he wrapped his own hands on either side of this stone that he loved.
It was the size and exact shape of the human skulls he had handled so often during his training, with high, broad cheekbones and deep eye sockets that seemed to follow him as he moved around it. The lower jaw moved freely but was hinged somehow in place so that it could not be disarticulated and removed as could a true human relic – in this respect alone it was unlike that on which it was modelled.
The surface was polished to smooth perfection and seemed impervious to dust or dirt or finger marks. Today, in the upstairs room of the Maison d’Anjou, the crystal from which it was made was warm to his touch, as it had been once or twice in the years since it had become his. It vibrated under his fingers as its song rang through his ears.
The blue that suffused it was breathtaking; the pale, sharp, cool clarity of a sky seen at noon over an open sea. Looking into it was to gaze into infinity, a place with no walls or ceiling, but only an ever-stretching peace.
With only a little effort, Owen opened his mind fully to its presence. It was like entering a great hall, or the reading room of a library, in which an old friend waited for him. Always, it had been his private preserve. This time, he walked in cautiously, afraid that he might find Nostradamus ahead of him. The relief when he did not left him unmanned and wet-eyed. He reached for the wine beaker and found it pushed into his hand.
Michel de Nostradame said, ‘It is no shame to love this thing; it is at least as marvellous as the pyramids of Egypt, as old and as wise. And yet it is more vulnerable than any of these; for there exist in our world those who would destroy it, to rid the earth of the promise it carries. You have done well to have come this far unscathed.’
Never before had the stone been so clearly seen. Even John Dee, for all his perspicacity, had not asked his questions with such tact, nor so readily understood all that could not be spoken.
Feeling a freedom he had not known in Cambridge, Owen said, ‘Dr Dee was of the belief that this stone is not alone, that there are others, and they will be called together at some time long hence, to keep man’s greatest evil from afflicting the world. Would you concur?’
Unconsciously the two men had migrated to classical Greek, the language of physicians, which few others understood. It added an extra dimension to their conversation and their appraisal of each other.
In that language, thoughtfully, with his gaze resting somewhere in the infinite blue of the heart-stone, Nostradamus said, ‘I have here another bottle of wine, bought from the inestimable Mme de Rouen. If you were to pour for us both, we might perhaps begin to speak the unspeakable.’
They rinsed the old wine into the hearth and poured new, of a better vintage than before. Its fruited scent filled the air, catching the blue shine of the stone.
Inhaling his appreciation, Nostradamus said, ‘I concur with all that Dr Dee has told you and can add to it what I have learned from the teachings of Egypt. Your stone is one of thirteen that were created together after the flood that drowned the great cities of Atlantis. Those who survived wished to preserve their wisdom against the tide of ignorance sweeping the earth. To this end, they brought together stones of different hues from the different lands that circle the earth, and carved them with the skill and beauty you see here. Nine are coloured and are shaped for the races of men. Four are clear as glass and are made for the beasts that walk, crawl, slide and fly. Remember this. You will need knowledge of it later.’
He spoke the truth. The very stillness of the stone told Owen so. He listened with his whole body, so that his skin became an ear, and his heart, and his innards, all reverberating to this Frenchman, speaking verities softly in Greek.
‘The magic by which the stones were carved, and the knowledge instilled, is beyond us, but it was done. After many generations, when the task was complete, the skull-stones were separated, as beads from a thread, and each returned to the place of its birth to be held in trust until such time as all are needed to avert the catastrophe that man will wreak on God’s earth. In each land was set a lineage of keepers who guard the knowledge of what must be done with the stones in that end time.’
In the cool of the evening, Owen broke into a sweat. ‘Then I have failed at the start,’ he said. ‘My grandmother died before she could pass to me all that she knew, and that was little enough. Too many of our family have died in the stone’s name. If that knowledge was ever ours, it has not reached me, and thus I cannot pass it on.’
‘Not true!’ Nostradamus’ hand slammed flat on the table. ‘What has been lost can be found again! This is your life’s work. Three tasks have been set you, Cedric Owen: to find the wisdom of the heart-stone, to record it in such a way that it can never be lost again – nor found by those who would misuse it – and last, to hide the stone so that none might come across it by chance or ill design until the end times are near.’
Cedric Owen had thought Michel de Nostradame strange, and light-voiced. He was not so now. Leaning forward in the dying light, his face was a feral mask of lines and shadows, his voice hoarse. He reached his two hot hands across the table, grasping Owen’s chilled ones. ‘You must do this. If any one of the thirteen skull-stones is lost before the end times, then the whole cannot be made from the sum of its parts and the world will descend into such darkness and infamy as to make our current sorry state seem like heaven by comparison.’
Letting go of Owen’s hands, Nostradamus spread his palms around the stone, not touching it, but close, as if he could send his words into it, or receive them from it by some alchemy Owen could not feel. There was a long moment’s waiting before he spoke again.
‘Make no mistake,’ he said. ‘The attacks on your family were not accidental. There is a force at work that does not wish our world made better; it feeds on death and destruction, fear and pain, and wishes these things to continue into the nadir of Armageddon. It bends men to its will; intelligent, thoughtful men who believe that they can take the power they are offered and wield it only for good. But the nature of power is otherwise; it breaks them, always, and its greatest desire is that the thirteen stones might never again conjoin to deliver our world from misery.’
‘You speak of the Church?’ Owen asked, whispering.
‘Ha!’ The Queen’s prophet spat a flurry of wine into the hearth. ‘The Church is ruled by infants, with the mean minds of harlot women and the jealousies of a cuckolded queen. They know that there are places they cannot – or dare not – travel and they would see us die at the stake rather than admit their incapacity, or permit those of us who walk between the worlds to tell others of what we find that does not accord with their infantile view of the universe.’
As if moved by the power of his blasphemy, his hair flew out around his head. He turned a wild and savage gaze on Owen. ‘Yes, I speak of the Church, but it has not always been so in the past, and will not always be so in the future. The Church is but a vehicle for those who crave power. In centuries to come, the state will become as powerful, eclipsing the mewling priests. Men will arise then with power we can only dream of and your stone will be in even greater danger than it is now. This is why the lineage of skull-keepers must be broken and your heart-stone hidden from the avarice of such men.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Wait.’ The prophet held up his hand. ‘We must draw the blinds before we speak of such matters, but first there is a thing you must see while we yet have the benefit of the sun. You must understand what it is that you hold. Dr Dee will have shown you how the light of the sun m
ight be split by a crystal?’
‘He did indeed.’ It was the last of Dee’s teachings, a gift to stretch intellect and spirit together. Owen was still bright with the understanding of it.
‘Excellent. Then we shall perform that feat now.’
Nostradamus was a conjuror at heart. He pulled from his inner pockets a small shard of clearest crystal, and, with a flourish, set it on the table at a place where the sun sent its last rays. He tutted a moment, and moved it, and shifted the white napkin that the light spilling out of his fragment might fall on to brightness, not on to the undistinguished oak of the table.
He paused a moment, then moved his hand away. There across the table was shed a bright, brilliant rainbow, no wider than the palm of his hand.
Owen gave a soft exclamation; he had seen it once before, but it was not a thing of which a man might tire.
Gratified, Nostradamus said, ‘Thus is the sun’s light revealed to be made of seven colours. By this means also is a rainbow fashioned when light meets falling rain and is cast in an arc upon the ground.’
Owen said, ‘And the fifth colour is the blue of the noonday sky which is also the blue of the heart-stone. In my earliest childhood, my grandmother showed me this; my family carries a part of a rainbow.’
The evidence was there again in front of him. The fifth colour in the array, wedged between grass green and midnight blue, was precisely the noon-sky blue of the skull.
‘And did your grandmother tell you, then, why your stone is named for the heart of the world?’
Owen shook his head. Nostradamus smiled, pleased to be privy to more knowledge than a white-haired old woman. ‘Then I shall show you.’
Quick-fingered, he brought a piece of jet and a white pebble from his pocket, and set them at the end of the rainbow strip, black before white.
‘The colours of the world are nine in total; the seven of the rainbow, plus the black of no-light and the white of all-light. Blue is fifth of the nine, the central colour, the fulcrum about which all turns, the keystone of the world’s arc. The ancients knew this, which we have forgotten. To the blue was given the heart of the beast, and the power to call together the remaining twelve parts of its spirit and flesh so that the whole may be joined again.’
Owen frowned. ‘What beast?’
‘The Ouroboros, spoken of by Plato, the ultimate beast of all power, that embodies the spirit of the earth and will arise at her time of greatest need. What else could free the world from the wrath of Armageddon?’
Seeing the incomprehension on Owen’s face, the little man stood, his added height giving weight to his words.
‘The flesh of the great serpent is made from the four beast-stones. I know not the nature of the beasts, nor how they may be brought together – you must find this. What I can tell you is that the life-spirit of the beast comes from the nine rainbow stones that encircled the earth.
‘The ancients knew of the lines of force that flow around us, unseen and unfelt. They mapped them and built on them great artefacts: pyramids and stone circles; tombs where the dead guard the points of deepest power. At nine of these points, they fashioned sockets to receive the stones and hold them on the earth. At the appointed time, when the stars are in propitious alignment, if all nine are set in place, then can the coloured stones of the rainbow arc join with the four beast-stones to become the Ouroboros.’
Owen stared at him, trying to imagine such a thing. The prophet leaned forward, his hands flat on the table, his eyes narrowed. ‘The thirteen stones make the beast. Do you understand?’
‘But why?’ Owen asked. ‘To what end? What can such a beast do?’
Deflated, Nostradamus sat. ‘That we do not and cannot know, for the circumstances are not yet upon us that would require it. If man is, indeed, the instigator of all evil, then it may be that the only answer is to cleanse the earth of our sorry presence. I would hope that this is not so, that it is possible for so great a thing as the earth-serpent to find hope in the race of men and thereby turn the tide of devastation, but we cannot say for certain.’
The sun was all but gone. The rainbow faded to nothing. The heart-stone drew in the light of the fire and shed it softly blue across the table. Heartsick, Owen said, ‘Then it may be that I hold the end of mankind in my hands. I would not wish to harbour such a thing.’
‘But you may hold its saving. Do not deign to judge, for that is not your place.’
The Queen’s physician swept his hand across the table, gathering his stones, then turned to close over the shutters and used his flint and tinder with some élan to light the two tallow stubs left on the table. New light and new shadows furled about the skull-stone, dancing with the fire at its heart.
In the changed atmosphere, Nostradamus poured more wine. ‘Let us review your tasks in reverse,’ he said. ‘When the time comes, you must hide the stone so that it cannot be found by any until the end times. Before then, your task is to recover the wisdom that your ancestors knew, and to preserve it for those who come after.’
Frustrated, Owen threw himself back in his chair. ‘How? Who is left who will teach me this when all of Europe is under the thrall of the Inquisition?’
‘You will not remain in Europe.’
Nostradamus pulled his seat round to sit with his shoulder pressing Owen’s. He moved the candles so that the two flames shone through the unblemished blue of the skull, alight in the places eyes would have been.
Heavily, he said, ‘Now is the time of revealing, limited though it is. You, Cedric Owen, ninth of that name, are the one chosen to make the bridge between past, present and future. You have no choice in this, as I have no choice but to tell you. This stone does require your death, but it offers, as you know, a life lived full and long, with great joy to balance the pain of loss that must come at its end.’
The prophet’s eyes were quite black. His hands were still as death and whiter than bone. His voice came from somewhere else in the room and was entirely powerful, while yet no louder than a whisper. Afterwards, Owen was not even sure what language had been spoken. He thought it might have been Latin.
‘You will go to the place south of here where the Mussulman once ruled, where the river runs into the ocean. From there, you can take ship to the New World, therein to find the oldest part of the Old World and there to meet those who understand the nature of the battle that will be fought at the end of time, and the ways in which we might survive it. It is they who know the heart and soul of your blue stone. They will tell you how best you may unlock its secrets and preserve them for all eternity. I who am an amateur in these things, and serve merely to purvey the prophecies of others, can tell you only that you must return at last to England, and find the place of white water and stone. Hide your secret there and afterwards ensure that those who follow may understand what they have and what they must do.’
Owen waited a long time for the life to return to the other man’s eyes. Long enough to think how he might go south to the place where the river ran into the ocean. He heard the noises of gulls and of fisherfolk and did not question the truth of his ears. He felt the floor move beneath him as a deck and smelled the bitter, brackish sea.
As from an equal distance, he saw Michel de Nostradame come back into himself and pause and view him and nod and smile his small, succinct smile.
‘Good. It is done. I have fulfilled my part of our bargain. Now, I have a question which will seem to you strange. Are you a physician or a surgeon?’
‘A physician, always. I have no common cause with the barbers and wielders of knives.’
‘Nevertheless, you will need to gain some knowledge. I have in my lodgings a monograph by Dr Giovanni da Vigo, who was surgeon to the Pope himself, and several from the Moor, El Zahrawi, whom you may better know as Albucasis, who is in my belief the best man to bring the sciences of medicine, surgery and astronomy together. Do you speak Spanish?’
‘Yes. As part of my studies, I spent half a year in Cadiz, learning the ways of the Mooris
h physicians there.’
‘Then you will already have a foundation for what I shall teach you. Excellent.’ Nostradamus gave his bow again, that showed the crown of his skull-cap.
‘It is too hot for you to travel and all Paris must enter mourning for the young princess. You will be unable to leave for at least a ten-day. If you will come to my lodgings at six of the clock tomorrow morning, I will give you these two books and you may read them in my company. You may ask of me what you will, and at the end you will know enough to perform such surgery as might be needed. Amputations, particularly, should be your field of study.’
At the door, he turned, his gaze still black. ‘Until tomorrow, I will leave you with your heart-stone. You have my best wishes for the success of your venture. On you rests the fate of worlds and of men.’
4
Ingleborough Hill, Yorkshire Dales, May 2007
STELLA WANTED TO go into the cave again, and the rescue would not let her.
She had reached the car at eighteen minutes after three. By half past, when she had stripped out of her dry-suit and changed into shorts and a clean T-shirt, wet-wiped her hands and face, drunk half a bottle of water and tipped the rest over her head, found somewhere to pee that was hidden from the road and eaten the cheese and tomato sandwiches, gone limply acid after a day in the sun, and there was still no sign, she had called Kit’s mobile.
By quarter to four, when there was no answer, she had called the hotel, and Bede’s College in Cambridge and the two friends of his she knew in North Yorkshire who could be relied upon not to panic. She had told all of them she could not find Kit. She had not told any about the skull, or the pearl-hunter.
At four thirty, with the summer sun still warm on her back and her hands so cold she could barely hold the phone, she had called the police, who had called Cave Rescue who had come out in force; a dozen men and women who lived for the chance to go underground.