The Dark River

by John Twelve Hawks

  “What’s going on?” Gabriel asked.

  “End of story, boyo. They don’t want you here.”

  Foley removed the knit cap from his bald head as he approached the gate. He bowed slightly to the nun and spoke in a low voice to her, then hurried over to Maya with a surprised look on his face.

  “Excuse me, miss. My apologies for all I said. The abbess requests your presence in the chapel.”

  THE ABBESS HAD disappeared, but each of the three nuns grabbed a sack of peat and started to climb up the staircase. Maya, Gabriel, and the others followed them while Captain Foley remained with his boat.

  In the sixth century, the monks led by Saint Columba had built a staircase that ran from the ocean up to the summit of the island. The gray limestone was veined with white slate and spotted with lichen. As Maya and the others followed the nuns up the slope, the hushing noise of waves disappeared and was replaced by the sound of the wind. Wind blew past conical pieces of stone and rippled through scurry grass, saw thistle, and sorrel. Skellig Columba resembled the ruins of a massive castle with fallen towers and shattered archways. All the seabirds had disappeared and were replaced by ravens, which circled above them, cawing to one another.

  They reached the top of a ridge and descended to the north side of the island. Directly below them were three successive terraces, each about fifty feet wide. The first terrace was occupied by a small garden and two catch basins for the rainwater that flowed down the face of the rock. On the second terrace were four stone buildings built without mortar; they resembled enormous beehives with wooden doors and round windows. A chapel was on the third terrace. It was about sixty feet long and shaped like a boat placed upside down on the beach.

  Alice and Vicki remained with the nuns as Maya and Gabriel climbed down the steps to the chapel and went inside. An oak floor led to an altar at one end: three windows behind a simple gold cross. Still wrapped in her cloak, the abbess stood in front of the altar—her back to the visitors, her hands clasped in prayer. The door squeaked shut and all they could hear was the wind whistling through gaps in the rock walls.

  Gabriel took a few steps forward. “Excuse me, ma’am. We just arrived on the island and we need to talk to you.”

  The abbess unclasped her hands and slowly lowered her arms. There was something about the gesture that was both graceful and dangerous. Maya immediately reached for the knife strapped to her arm. No, she wanted to scream. No.

  The nun turned toward them and flung a black-steel knife through the air, burying it in the wood paneling a foot above Gabriel’s head.

  Maya stepped in front of Gabriel as her own throwing knife appeared in her hand. Holding the blade flat on her palm, she raised her arm quickly, and then recognized the familiar face. An Irish-woman in her fifties. Green eyes that were savage, almost crazy. A wisp of red hair pushing beneath the edge of the starched white wimple. A large mouth sneering at them with complete disdain.

  “It’s clear that you’re not very alert—or prepared,” the woman said to Maya. “A few inches lower and your citizen friend would be dead.”

  “This is Gabriel Corrigan,” Maya said. “He’s a Traveler, like his father. And you almost killed him.”

  “I never kill anyone by accident.”

  Gabriel glanced at the knife. “And who the hell are you?”

  “This is Mother Blessing. One of the last remaining Harlequins.”

  “Of course. Harlequins…” Gabriel said the word with contempt.

  “I’ve known Maya since she was a little girl,” Mother Blessing said. “I was the one who taught her how to break into buildings. She always wanted to be just like me, but apparently she has a lot to learn.”

  “What are you doing here?” Maya asked. “Linden thought you were dead.”

  “That’s what I wanted.” Mother Blessing removed the black shawl and folded it into a little square. “After Thorn was ambushed in Pakistan, I realized that there was a traitor among us. Your father didn’t believe me. Who was it, Maya? Do you know?”

  “It was Shepherd. I killed him.”

  “Good. I hope he suffered a great deal. I came to this island about fourteen months ago. When the abbess died, the nuns made me their temporary leader.” She sneered again. “We Poor Clares live simple but pious lives.”

  “So you were a coward,” Gabriel said. “And you came here to hide.”

  “What a foolish young man. I’m not impressed. Perhaps you need to cross the barriers a few more times.” Mother Blessing walked the length of the chapel, pulled the knife from the wood, and slid it back into the sheath that was concealed beneath her robes. “See the altar near the window? It contains an illuminated manuscript supposedly written by Saint Columba. My Traveler wanted to read this book, so I had to follow him to this cold little chunk of rock.”

  Gabriel nodded eagerly and took a few steps forward. “And the Traveler was…?”

  “Your father, of course. He’s here. I’ve been guarding him.”

  20

  G abriel felt a surge of anticipation as he looked around the chapel. “Where is he?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take you to him.” Mother Blessing removed some bobby pins and pulled off the nun’s veil. She shook her head slightly to release her tangled mane of red hair.

  “Why didn’t you tell Maya that my father was here on the island?”

  “I haven’t been in contact with any Harlequins.”

  “My father should have asked you to find me.”

  “Well, he didn’t.” Mother Blessing placed the veil on a side table. She picked up a sword held in a leather scabbard and slung the strap over her shoulder. “Didn’t Maya explain this to you? Harlequins just protect Travelers. We don’t try to understand them.”

  Without further explanation, she led Gabriel and Maya out of the chapel. One of the four nuns, a very small Irishwoman, was waiting on a stone bench. Clutching some wooden rosary beads, she silently recited her prayers.

  “Is Captain Foley still down at the dock?” Mother Blessing asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tell him that our guests will remain on the island until I contact him. The two women and the girl will sleep in the common room. The young man will sleep in the storage hut. Tell Sister Joan to double the food available for dinner.”

  The small nun nodded and hurried away, still holding the rosary beads. “These women can follow orders,” Mother Blessing said. “But all this praying and singing business does get annoying. For a contemplative order, they talk a great deal.”

  Maya and Gabriel followed Mother Blessing back up a short staircase to the monastery’s middle terrace. It was a long patch of flat ground where the medieval monks had built four beehive huts with blocks of limestone. Because of the constant wind, the huts had heavy oak doors and small round windows. Each was about the size of a double-decker London bus.

  Vicki and Alice had disappeared, but Mother Blessing said they were in the cooking hut. A thin line of smoke came from a stovepipe and was blown south by the wind. Following a dirt path, they walked past the nuns’ dormitory and a building that Mother Blessing called the saint’s cell. The storage hut was the final building at the end of the terrace. The Irish Harlequin stopped and scrutinized Gabriel as if he were an animal at the zoo.

  “He’s inside.”

  “Thank you for guarding my father.”

  Mother Blessing pushed a wisp of hair away from her eyes. “Your gratitude is an unnecessary emotion. I made a choice and accepted this obligation.”

  She opened a heavy door and led them into a storage hut. The building had an oak floor and a narrow staircase that led up to another level. The only light came from three round windows that were placed like irregular portholes in the rock walls. Storage lockers were everywhere, along with cans of food and a portable electric generator. Candles had been left on a red box of first-aid supplies. The Irish Harlequin took out a small box of wooden matches and tossed them to Maya.

  “Light
some candles.”

  Mother Blessing knelt on the floor, the skirts of her nun’s habit spreading around her. She passed her hand across the smooth oak surface and pushed at a discolored wood panel. It popped open, revealing a rope handle.

  “Here we go. Step back.”

  Still on her knees, she pulled on the handle and a trapdoor opened in the floor. Stone steps led downward into darkness.

  “What’s going on?” Gabriel asked. “Is he a prisoner here?”

  “Of course not. Take a candle and see for yourself.”

  Gabriel accepted a candle from Maya. He stepped around Mother Blessing and climbed down a narrow staircase to a brick-lined cellar with a gravel floor. There was nothing in the room except for a stack of large plastic buckets with steel handles. Gabriel wondered if the nuns used these to water their vegetable garden in the summertime.

  “Hello?” he called. But no one answered.

  There was only one way to go—through another oak door. Holding the candle in his left hand, he pushed the door open and entered a much smaller room. Gabriel felt like he had come to a morgue to identify a loved one. A body lay on a stone slab, hidden under a sheet of cotton muslin. He stood beside the body for a few seconds, then reached out and pulled the muslin away. It was his father.

  The door creaked on its hinges as Maya and Mother Blessing entered the room. Both Harlequins carried candles, and their shadows mingled on the walls.

  “What happened?” Gabriel asked. “When did he die?”

  Mother Blessing rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe such ignorance. “He’s not dead. Put your head on his chest. You can hear a heartbeat every ten minutes or so.”

  “Gabriel has never seen another Traveler,” Maya said.

  “Well, now you have. This is the way you look when you cross over to another realm. Your father has been this way for months. Something happened. Either he liked it there and remained, or he’s trapped and can’t get back to our world.”

  “How long can he stay this way?”

  “If he perishes in another realm, his body will decay. If he survives but never returns to this world, his body will die of old age. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if he died in another world.” She paused for a moment. “Then I could leave this nasty little island.”

  Gabriel spun away from his father and took a step toward Mother Blessing. “You can leave the island right now. Get the hell out of here.”

  “I’ve guarded your father, Gabriel. I would have died for him. But don’t expect me to act like his friend. It’s my responsibility to be cold and completely rational.” Mother Blessing glared at Maya and stalked out of the room.

  GABRIEL HAD NO idea how long he remained in the cellar staring at his father. Traveling all this distance to find an empty shell was so disturbing that part of his mind refused to believe it had really happened. He had a childish impulse to do everything over again—entering the hut, pulling up the trapdoor, climbing down the steps to reach a different conclusion.

  After some time had passed, Maya took the end of the muslin sheet and pulled it over Matthew Corrigan’s body. “It’s getting dark outside,” she said gently. “We should probably find the others.”

  Gabriel remained beside his father. “Michael and I were always looking forward to the moment when we would see him again. It was what we talked about before we went to sleep at night.”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll come back.” Maya took Gabriel’s arm and coaxed him out of the room. It was cold outside and the sun was falling toward the horizon. They walked down the path together and entered the cooking hut. It was warm and friendly there—like someone’s home. A plump Irish nun named Joan had just finished baking a dozen scones, and she placed them on a serving tray along with different kinds of homemade jam and marmalade. Sister Ruth, an older woman with thick eyeglasses, bustled around the room putting away the supplies they had just brought up from the dock. She opened the stove and tossed a few chunks of peat into the fire. The compressed vegetation glowed with a dark orange light.

  Vicki hurried down the staircase from the upper floor. “So what happened, Gabriel?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Maya said. “Right now, we’d like some tea.”

  Gabriel unzipped his jacket and sat down on a bench near the wall. The two nuns were staring at him.

  “Matthew Corrigan is your father?” Sister Ruth asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “It was an honor to meet him.”

  “He’s a great man,” Sister Joan said. “A great—”

  “Some tea,” Maya snapped, and everyone stopped talking. A moment later, Gabriel was holding a cup of hot tea in his cold hands. There was a tense silence until the two other nuns entered the hut carrying one of the storage boxes. Sister Maura was the small nun who had been praying outside the chapel; Sister Faustina was from Poland and had a strong accent. As they unpacked the supplies and inspected the mail, the nuns forgot about Gabriel and chatted happily.

  The Poor Clares owned nothing but the crosses dangling from their necks. They lived without modern plumbing, refrigeration, or electricity, but they seemed to find great joy in the small pleasures of life. On the way back from the dock Sister Faustina had gathered some pink heather. She put it on the edge of each blue china plate like a splash of beauty, along with a dollop of Irish butter and a hot scone. Everything looked perfectly arranged—as if in a gourmet restaurant—but there was nothing artificial about this gesture. The world was beautiful to the Poor Clares; to ignore that fact was to deny God.

  Alice Chen came down from the sleeping room and ate three scones with a great deal of strawberry jam. Vicki and Maya sat in a corner, whispering to each other and occasionally glancing in Gabriel’s direction. The nuns drank their tea and discussed the mail that had just arrived with Captain Foley. They were praying for dozens of people all over the world, and they talked about these strangers—the woman with leukemia, the man with the shattered legs—as if they were close friends. Bad news was received solemnly. Good news was cause for laughter and celebration; it felt like it had become someone’s birthday.

  Gabriel kept thinking about his father’s body and the white muslin sheet that reminded him of cobwebs covering an ancient tomb. Why was his father still in another realm? There was no way he could answer this question, but he remembered Mother Blessing telling them why his father had first come to this particular island.

  “Excuse me,” Gabriel said. “I’d like to understand why my father decided to come here. Mother Blessing said something about a manuscript written by Saint Columba.”

  “The manuscript is in the chapel,” Sister Ruth said. “It used to be in Scotland, but it was returned to the island about fifty years ago.”

  “And what did Columba write about?”

  “It’s a narrative of faith—a confession. The saint gave a detailed description of his journey to hell.”

  “The First Realm.”

  “We don’t believe in your particular system, and we certainly don’t believe that Jesus was a Traveler.”

  “He’s the Son of God,” Sister Joan said.

  Sister Ruth nodded. “Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He was crucified, died, and was buried—and then he rose from the dead.” She glanced at the other nuns. “All that is the foundation of our faith as Christians. But we don’t feel that this contradicts the idea that God has allowed some people to become Travelers and that these Travelers can become visionaries or prophets—or saints.”

  “So Columba was a Traveler?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that question. But his spirit went to a place of damnation, and then he came back and wrote about it. Your father spent a great deal of time translating the manuscript. And when he wasn’t in the chapel—”

  “He walked all over the island,” Sister Faustina said with a strong Polish accent. “He climbed up the mountain and looked at the sea.”

  “Can I go to the chapel?” Ga
briel asked. “I’d like to see the manuscript.”

  “There’s no electricity,” Sister Ruth said. “You’d have to use candles.”

  “I just want to see what my father was reading.”

  The four nuns glanced at one another and appeared to make a common decision. Sister Maura stood up and walked over to a chest of drawers. “There are enough candles on the altar, but you’ll need some matches. Keep the door closed or the wind will blow the flames out.”

  Gabriel zipped up his jacket and left the cooking hut. The only light came from the stars and a three-quarter moon. At night, the four beehive huts and the chapel looked like dark mounds of rock and dirt, tombs for Bronze Age kings. Trying not to trip on the uneven pathway, he walked past the nuns’ dormitory and the hut called the saint’s cell where Mother Blessing was living. A faint bluish light glowed from an upstairs window of this building, and Gabriel wondered if the Irish Harlequin had a computer attached to a sat phone.

  He climbed down the steps to the lower terrace and opened the unlocked chapel door. It was hard to see until he lit three large beeswax candles that burned with a dark yellow flame.

  The chapel’s altar was a rectangular box about the size of a small chest of drawers. A large wooden cross was attached to the top, and the rest of the box was decorated with carvings of mermaids, sea monsters, and a man with ivy growing out of his mouth. Kneeling in front of the altar, Gabriel found a crack that outlined a central drawer, but couldn’t find a latch or a handle. He pulled and pushed each carving, but none of these pagan decorations opened the drawer. He was about to give up and return to the cooking hut for instructions when he tugged the wooden cross an inch forward. Instantly, there was a clicking sound and the drawer slid open.

  Inside was a large object wrapped in a black cloth, a small college notebook with a cardboard cover, and two books. Gabriel unwrapped the cloth and found a manuscript with a heavy calfskin cover and vellum pages. The first page had a painted illustration of Saint Columba standing on the bank of a river. Although the book was very old, the colors were still bright. On the page opposite the picture was the beginning of the Irish saint’s confession written in Latin.