The Jealous God

by Brendan Carroll

  “Sir Luke!” the clurichaun said as he replaced his green tam with a bright yellow ball on his head. “It is an honor to see you again!”

  “And you,” Luke nodded to Paddy and shook Seamus’ hand.

  “Ye’re lookin’ well enough, laddie,” Seamus said and smiled at him. “Ye’re brother tells us thot ye’ll be takin’ th’ crown soon.”

  “Aye, so ’e says.”

  Luke walked along behind his brother as they headed for a long table set up in the garden. Several elves and bean tighes were setting out platters of food for them.

  “Twill be glorious!” Seamus summed it up, and tucked his thumbs behind his suspenders, and stuck out his chest. His red jacket and yellow knee-pants were almost as gaudy as Paddy’s green and yellow kilt. “Twill be a great day when clurichauns can travel aboot th’ overwarld in safety again. I was thinkin’ thot me nephew Paddy Stagmaster moight ’ave a place at yur court, King Ramsay, as a sort o’ ambassador, ye see.”

  “Aye, thot wud be noice,” Luke nodded thoughtfully.

  “’e cud act as a liaison betwixt th’ clans, so t’ speak. We’ll be needin’ t’ keep abreast o’ th’ news.”

  “Aye,” Luke agreed.

  “Then tis agreed thot when ye’ve taken yur roightful place and settled in a bit, I’ll be bringin’ me nephew around t’ see ye.”

  “Aye,” Luke nodded again as they sat down at the table.

  Il Dolce Mio climbed onto the end of the table between two platters of fruit and sat cross-legged.

  “I believe, we should also have representatives at your Royal court, Royal Uncle,” the King told him brightly. “Since I will be marrying soon and should have many children, I will most likely send one or two of the Royal Princes and Princesses to live with you, so they can learn how men do it.”

  Luke sighed and looked at his brother in dismay. Mark Andrew shrugged apologetically.

  “Did ye decoide ’ow and when we moight be leavin’, brother? I miss me woife, and Michael, and Galen, and th’ oothers.”

  “The King and Paddy have agreed to help us transport the cargo to St. Patrick’s. From there, we will travel to Germany at first opportunity. Of course, it might be a problem convincing the Grand Master to return to Germany so soon. From what I could see, things were pretty fair there in comparison to elsewhere. We will have to be very careful how we travel. Most likely, we will need de Bleu’s magick to help us. If we travel between worlds, it will help keep us out of Jozsef’s eyesight.”

  “Thot sounds reasonable. Ye ’aven’t ’eard anything o’ th’ others?”

  He was referring to the Lords of the Abyss and their consorts.

  “It seems they have urgent business elsewhere,” Mark told him vaguely, reflecting on what he had seen in the scrying dish.

  He had seen John Paul in America with a host of Templar Knights and soldiers riding down on a line of armored vehicles in the desert. The tanks and guns had been turned on the mounted warriors, but the shells had been ineffectual, blowing up in the air, before they reached the sword and mace-wielding troops led by his ‘son’. If he had not been hallucinating, John Paul had been riding a white horse with wings! He had swooped down along the length of the column when it stalled on the desert highway as the soldiers poured out of the trucks and fired wildly at him, before throwing down their weapons, and running pell-mell across the rugged wasteland on foot. After the vehicles and weapons had been abandoned, another contingent of men, in more vehicles, had descended from the foothills and commandeered the abandoned artillery and tanks, driving them away in complete safety.

  Mark Andrew had been extremely pleased with this development. He had told Luke about it, hoping to cheer him up, but his brother was inconsolable.

  Luke was not listening anymore. He had slipped back into his own thoughts. His mind wandered from the table, as if it had legs of its own, and he had no control over it. He was thinking of Merry. She had only just begun to show signs she was recovering from the news he given her about the baby girl she had lost. That time now seemed like ages ago. The little excursion had been damned from the start. What with Lucio’s ulterior motives, the death of Ruth Kadif, and the awful task of telling Merry about Marduk’s treachery. As much as he had tried to avoid telling her, she had kept hounding him about the secret he was keeping from her. The secret he had promised to tell her when they were lying under the stars on the Isle of Ramsay, but the camping trip had been canceled after the arrival of Omar and the news of Ruth’s death. They had never had the opportunity to lie under the stars, but had, instead, gone back to Lothian and then down to Sicily very briefly for Ruth’s funeral. Merry had refused to let the matter drop and had threatened again to go to Mark Andrew to ask about her missing child, and so, in final defeat, he had told her their little girl was not his child, but the daughter of Marduk, venerable Lord of the Sixth Gate.

  This thought brought home yet again, the strangeness of his existence. There was nothing normal about his life. In fact, he didn’t know what normal might have been. He had even brought Simon to sit in when he had told her about it, but Simon had been unable to soften the blow, and she had reacted just as he had expected, with total denial. She refused to accept it. She blamed Mark Andrew and insisted Mark had lied to him. For what reason he would do this, she could not say or imagine, but she was sure it was some plot her brother-in-law had concocted in order to keep Luke under his thumb. Luke failed to understand her logic in that regard.

  It was obvious she would never believe it, and she would never forgive him for believing it. Luke Matthew and Simon had listened to her in appalled silence until she had finally burst into tears and fled to her bed. Simon had ended up offering his condolences to Luke before leaving them. He sat mulling all of these memories over, one by one, trying to decide if perhaps he should not petition King Il Dolce Mio for permission to remain in the center as a jousting instructor or some such. He could become an elf just like Armand… but it was not to be.

  After dinner, they made ready to leave the underworld the following morning. Tonight, there would be a gathering of the elves and the usual dancing and singing, but Luke did not feel much like dancing or singing.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Merry bent slightly into the wind and ducked her head as she hurried across the open space between the garage apartment where she lived with Michael and Galen and the front of the great keep. The wind was blowing very hard, gale force, as another storm blew in from the west. She clutched a basket to her waist and her waterproof cloak about her neck, as the wind whipped her hair and blew bits of rock and sand into her face. She was on her way to the top of the keep to visit with Catharine de Goth. There were no longer any restrictions placed on the woman who lived in the chapel. She was free to come and go as she pleased, but she didn’t seem pleased to go or come. The woman remained in seclusion, living in the old chapel, spending most of her time alone in meditation and prayer. Merry had taken a great liking to her, and she seemed grateful for the visits and the little things Merry took up to her. She especially liked homemade cookies and welcomed the tattered novels Merry brought to her from the library in the keep. Merry had tried to coax her down to dinner at the apartment many times, but she had refused each invitation with a mixture of sadness and what seemed to be a hint of fear. Joey also visited her regularly, and some of her grandsons would venture up to see their grandmother from time to time, also taking her little gifts.

  As far as Merry was concerned, she had never seen a more wonderful crew than Simon’s sons. In spite of Reuben’s slight problem, none of them had displayed any bad traits as far as she could see. Even Reuben’s indiscretion had seemed minor in Merry’s eyes, and Andrew’s abstract connection with his father did not seem too very bad. Where she came from, a man could have a dozen sons and daughters and have, perhaps, only one good one out of the whole bunch. But, then, she had Galen Zachary who had been raised in much the same way as Simon’s sons, and he was as good as any of them.
If only her daughter could be returned to her, she was sure they could do just as well by her. She could not forgive Mark Andrew for simply abandoning hope for her daughter and Catharine had been very sympathetic to her plight.

  What was good for the goose was good for the gander in her way of thinking. Even if what Mark Andrew said was true, what difference did it make? As she walked across the island, she mulled over a mental checklist of the children in the Order with questionable parentage. If they could accept Queen Ereshkigal’s children, and Omar Kadif’s children, and Lord Adar’s children, as well as, Oshun’s son, then why would they reject Marduk Kurios’ child? It didn’t make sense.

  Merry carried many tales of Catharine’s grandsons to her, and the woman was delighted to hear about them. They were all very much like their father and much friendlier than the other people sharing the island with her. The Healer’s sons often came to dinner with Galen and Michael, and the conversation was always entertaining, in spite of, the conditions under which they all lived. Merry had tons of anecdotes and photographs to share with their grandmother, and she never got tired of hearing them and looking at them. Catherine had amassed her own little collection of photos of the boys and girls, and Merry had provided her with the materials to make her own keepsake album. The grandsons remaining on the island often visited their grandmother, but the visits were brief and awkward. Simon’s sons did not know what to make of Catharine de Goth.

  They were very polite and always brought some small gift, but the conversations were stilted, to say the least, and there was very little exchange of affection. Oriel and Rachel paid joint visits two to three times per week, but Catharine was making no headway with her granddaughters either. Merry attributed it to the well known fact Catharine and Lucio Dambretti were… connected somehow. No one talked about it, but everyone knew and, true to form, Simon’s children blamed her for the situation, not the Italian.

  Even though Catharine appeared to be only twenty-five or twenty-six, they all viewed her as the ‘older woman’ when it came to her relationship with Lucio. Furthermore, they naturally associated their grandmother with their grandfather, Edgard. In this light, she was cast as the adulterous woman, having an unspeakable affair with a younger man. It hardly mattered. Lucio looked at least ten or eleven years her senior, and their relative age difference was hardly worth mentioning. They still saw her as a bit of tramp. Edgard had not helped soften the image before he and the others had gone off to New Babylon. He had tried to forbid them to visit her at all, but could give no reasonable explanation. His many unkind remarks about her had not helped her situation with her grandchildren.

  Simon, on the other hand, had visited her several times, and it was Simon who had instructed his children to pay frequent visits to her so she would not suffer loneliness. No one knew exactly what Simon thought of his long, lost mother. He had not made his feelings about her available for scrutiny. Whatever he thought of Catharine de Goth, he kept to himself, and Merry thought it most admirable of him.

  The threat of war, and invasion, and disaster hung over their heads, as they waited for some word of the missing Knights. The last message they had received from the Grand Master hinted he would be seeing them soon, but so far nothing else had been forthcoming from the European Continent. The reports they received on their radios and televisions were terrible, and garbled, and unreliable. What was worse were the constant reminders issued, almost daily, concerning the search for Luke Matthew and Mark Andrew Ramsay and their possible co-conspirators in the botched assassination attempt against the King of England. The only consolation was as long as the reports of the search continued to be aired, they knew Mark and Luke were evading capture wherever they were. Unlike their last exile, they had none of the contacts with smugglers to keep them supplied with the finer things in life and no reliable source of news. Simon had told her that there were no reliable sources of news, nor were there anymore ‘finer things’ to be had.

  But now, Merry was very excited. She had learned Catharine kept many secrets, and one of them was her ability to use the scrying dish to see things. Catharine had slipped up one day, during one of her more depressed bouts and told Merry something she should have had no knowledge of whatsoever. Merry had pressed her on the issue until she had admitted, she could ‘see’ things. Her power, she had said, was not very great, but she sometimes had success when the conditions were right. Merry was taking her a woolen cloak, a small bag of coffee, and some of Luke’s personal belongings, in hopes, she might be able to find him in her dish.

  Catharine met her at the doors to the chapel and accepted the cloak gratefully. The early spring storms were growing more frequent and stronger with each passing day, and Catharine had very little in the way of personal belongings. Merry had seen her wearing a number of thin shawls and sweaters Joey must have provided for her from their own dwindling stores. She liked to walk on the roof of the keep, but the wind was unmerciful there. The long cloak would be useful for this purpose. It was the last of the new ones. The coffee was a very precious commodity and was certainly very close to a bribe, moreso, than a gift. Catharine’s face lit up when she saw it. She had only recently admitted coffee was one lingering vice she had picked up while living in Verona, complaining how much she missed it. It was the only complaint she had made, since coming to the island.

  They walked quickly through the chilly sanctuary to the apse. There was no heat here. Little Barry, Zebulon, Benji and Matthew had run electrical power to the roof and partitioned off her small area with sheets of plastic and old tarps in the process of trying to make the space, in which she lived, more tolerable. So far their efforts were mostly in vain because the huge expanse of the chapel suppressed what little good they could do to almost nothing. Merry could not imagine how she had gotten through the long winter nights here without freezing. Even the cozy little garage apartment had been quite chilly at times as they had tried to conserve their power.

  Catharine bustled about the space, making coffee for them on her little hot plate. Soon the rich smell permeated the sanctuary giving the illusion of a cozy atmosphere if one closed one’s eyes.

  Merry sat impatiently waiting for an opportunity to broach the subject of scrying on Luke Matthew, while Catharine talked about her grandsons’ visits and the mundane news about the island residents. She seemed to know everything about everyone, even the people with whom she had no contact. She ended by asking about Bari ‘Joel Isaac’ Kadif.

  “I haven’t seen him lately,” Merry told her. “He keeps to himself. All I know is he looks a great deal like his mother in the face, but at a distance, he looks like Luke Matthew and that always gives me a start. I saw him out with the horses the other day, and I nearly killed myself getting down the stairs. I thought it was Luke...” her voice trailed off. “I miss him so much.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Catharine handed her a cup of coffee and sat down on her mattress, pulling her long gown about her bare feet. “I would love to see my brother or at least hear from him. I am worried about the conditions in Germany. There must be no food there at all by now. The winter was very hard. It will be difficult for him to find food from what I understand. Of course, he doesn’t need much, and he has plenty of money, but money cannot buy what is not on the shelf. I have heard there have been terrible shortages all over the continent because of the war and the efforts to feed the refugees along the coast.”

  “It just keeps getting worse,” Merry sighed and reached into her basket. She pulled out Luke Matthew’s hairbrush and fiddled with the bristles.

  Catharine eyed the brush expectantly.

  “You have brought something else?” she asked after a moment’s silence.

  “Yes. I hate to bother you.” Merry handed the brush over to the woman.

  “Luke’s hair?” Catharine looked up at her.

  “Yes. I was hoping that you might feel like doing something with it. I mean, I don’t want to impose. I know you have enough troubles…” Merry stumbled to a
halt.

  “I wish I had some of Eduord’s hair.” Catharine smiled ruefully. “I can’t see him because of the thing he keeps in his presence. It is very powerful.”

  “What thing?” Merry’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Never mind.” Catharine pulled some of the long strands of black hair from the brush. “I believe this might help a great deal. Do you have anything else? Something with his blood on it?”

  “Blood?” Merry frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t have a dagger or knife, that he might have used. Something that he might have cut himself on… accidentally. A razor, perhaps.”

  “I have his razor and several knives he used to carry from time to time,” Merry nodded. “I don’t know if he ever cut himself… Yes. I do. In fact, I have his dagger. I cut him with it once.”

  One of Catharine’s eyebrows raised slightly.

  “Unless he cleaned it very well, there should be some blood traces on the metal. You would be surprised,” Catharine said and frowned at her slightly. “Forensic science is remarkable. All it takes is a few molecules, it seems. Blood is a very tenacious substance. It almost seems to have a life of its own.”

  “Luke told me blood is what makes kings,” Merry commented offhandedly. “He says blood and family is everything.”

  “And so he is right,” Catharine told her. “Some blood seems to be more tenacious than others, but all blood is precious. Contrary to popular belief, the soul lives in the blood and all blood is royal.”

  It was Merry’s turn to frown. She remembered vaguely the stories about Catharine when she had first appeared in Scotland. Rumors about her and her brother being vampires or some such.

  “You know… it’s funny.” Merry smiled. “When you first showed up and all this… everything happened with Lucio and the attack and all… old Gil Pairaud, the cook? He was talking with Planxty Grine, and they were discussing vampires. Planxty asked him if he thought vampires existed, and Gil was telling him there really are vampires, but not like people thought. He didn’t know I was there in the laundry room, and I heard the whole story. It was quite fascinating. I asked Luke Matthew about it, and he refused to discuss it with me. And, then there was an incident with Vallen Martin and Christopher Stewart… well, Planxty has such a big mouth. He was always hearing and seeing things, and he could never keep secrets. Anyway, there was a rumor Christopher Stewart and Vallen Martin were members of vampire cults or some such, and Gil was very interested in the story Planxty told.”