Enoch's Device

by Joseph Finley

  The first angel blew his trumpet, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were hurled to the earth.

  Niall stared at the image. “I should say so.”

  Another page depicted three trumpet-blaring angels, and a flaming star falling from the sky toward a walled town. A page later, another verse preceded another illumination:

  And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.

  Beneath those words, the illumination portrayed a horde of winged demons erupting from a smoking pit whose fumes blotted the sky. The demonic horde assailed a host of monks who prayed and wept atop a turf of flamelike grass, where another word was painted: “Abaddon.” Two pages later, a cavalry of armored men charged across the land on fire-breathing lions with tails that were writhing snakes, and on the next page, a great city’s majestic columns and domes collapsed to dust.

  Ciarán flipped through two more pages, skimming the text, then turned another page, which was tagged with a bookmark of burgundy ribbon attached to the binding. “Someone marked this page,” he said.

  “This Brother Remi is not the cheeriest sort,” Niall quipped, looking down to a verse that preceded a stunning illumination:

  And war broke out in Heaven. Michael and his archangels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in Heaven.

  The painting that followed, consuming nearly two full pages, portrayed a serpentine dragon in the sky, twisted in battle against the hosts of heaven. Angels thrust spears into the beast, except for Saint Michael, who held a blazing sword. Teardrop flames spilled from the dragon’s mouth onto the earth below. In the bottom left corner, a great white horse with a flowing mane stood rampant, kicking out with its forelegs. And at the bottom of the second page, more angels threw cadaverous-looking demons into a fiery pit. From the pit, smoke rose, gathering near the dragon’s tail, which swept stars from the heavens to the earth.

  “Is this supposed to mean something to Brother Dónall?” Niall asked.

  Ciarán shook his head, “I have no idea.” He felt drawn to the painting’s elaborate detail. Each of the stars had six white points outlined in black. The demons each bore red marks—the wounds wrought by the angels’ spears—and each angel wore elaborate robes embroidered with lines of gold and blue, in between which the artist had painted small dots of color representing jewels. But none of these details could match the dragon’s. Its white eye had a glaring red pupil within a jet black iris. And there was something about the scales. Each was painted in a distinctive pattern, alternating between red and gold over a black surface. Close up, the pattern appeared random, but from even a slight distance, the scales rippled over the dragon’s snaking torso like tendrils of red smoke rising from a burning candle. At points, the pattern inexplicably shifted direction. Lost in this detail, Ciarán traced the patterns with his finger.

  “What?” Niall asked.

  Ciarán ignored him. In the middle of the torso, the scales devolved to an even stranger pattern. “My God,” Ciarán said, “I think there’s a letter concealed here.” He pointed to the image. Against the black background, the scales formed a “D.” “There’s more, too.” Amid an array of red and gold scales, an “Ó” emerged, followed by “N” and three other characters. The letters made a word, and down the dragon’s tail, more hidden letters formed a second word.

  Ciarán’s blood ran cold. For together, the words made a phrase: DÓNALL BEWARE!

  Niall stared wide-eyed at the page. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “You were right.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE PALE HORSE

  Niall looked to Ciarán for an answer. “Do you think this Brother Remi knew the bishop was coming?”

  Ciarán glanced around the scriptorium to confirm that they were still alone. “Why else would someone go to such lengths to hide a warning?” He pondered his own question. “But this can’t be all there is to it.” He searched for more hidden words in the illumination’s every tiny detail—the feathers of the angels’ wings, the patterns in their garments, the flames surrounding Saint Michael’s sword, the stars the dragon swept from the sky—but found nothing.

  “There are a lot of pictures left in this book,” Niall pointed out.

  “True . . .” Ciarán leafed through the pages until he found the illumination of the demons crawling out from the pit. The ghastly creatures, the billowing smoke, and the terrified monks were every bit as intricately wrought as the war in heaven, but he saw only the strokes of the artist’s brush. “There’s nothing in this one.”

  “Go forward a bit,” Niall said.

  Ciarán turned the pages. In one illumination, a seven-headed beast emerged from a boiling sea. Each of the beast’s heads resembled the dragon’s, and its body was like a leopard’s, yellow with clumped black spots. On the adjacent page, another illumination portrayed a horned priest with black venom dripping from his mouth. Still Ciarán found nothing hidden in the pictures. He thumbed through more pages. Even those without pictures had illuminated margins positively acrawl with vines or ribbons, tiny cherubs, animals of all kinds, and beasts from myth and legend: a unicorn, a cockatrice, and every manner of imp and devil. Ciarán sighed. “Whoever wrote the warning couldn’t have expected Dónall to pore over the entire book.”

  “Do you have another solution?”

  “The bookmark was a clue to the first words. What about the rest?” Quickly he paged back to the war in heaven, this time focusing on the verse that accompanied the painting: Michael and the angels fought against the dragon . . .

  The illumination depicted it aptly: Saint Michael defying the dragon, the angels stabbing it with spears.

  The great dragon was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

  “All the images fit the verse,” Ciarán said. Except for one, in the bottom right corner: the white horse with the flowing mane. “Everything but this horse.”

  Niall cocked his head. “What has a horse to do with the apocalypse?”

  “Of course!” Ciarán said. He flipped toward the front of the book, searching through lines of Carolingian script for the verse. He found it in the chapter on the seven seals and read it aloud:

  Then I saw the Lamb open one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures call out, as with a voice of thunder, ‘Come!’ I looked, and there was a white horse! Its rider had a bow; a crown given to him, and he came to conquer.

  “One of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse,” Ciarán said. Unlike so many others, this page did not bear the image of horses or riders—only a thorny vine that snaked across the margins. “The Four Horsemen are one of the most notorious images of the end times, yet the artist omitted it here, instead putting it out of place in the illumination of the war in heaven.” Anticipation mounted as Ciarán read the next verse.

  When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature call out, “Come!” And out came another horse, bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another, and he was given a great sword.

  “We have to find the red horse!” Hurriedly Ciarán skimmed through the pages.

  “Stop,” Niall said. “Look.” A charging red stallion decorated the left-hand corner of a page otherwise covered with script. The adjacent page, however, displayed another illumination of the dragon. Thick chains were coiled about the dragon’s red-scaled torso, and angels tugged at the chains, pulling it toward a bronze tower with a massive door, which one of the angels unlocked with a golden key. Intricate details filled the rest of the painting: a curtain of stars above a hill blanketed with green grass and violet flowers, all of which swirled into flowing patterns that washed against the landscape like a tumbling sea. And that was where Ciarán looked.

  “More letters,” he said, pointing to a “P” hidden within the color-flecked gras
s, followed by seven more letters, then two more hidden words. Together they completed another phrase: PROPHECY HAS BEGUN.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Niall asked.

  “Who knows. We have to find the next horse.” Ciarán returned to the passage on the Four Horsemen and read the remaining verses. They spoke of two more broken seals and two more horses, one black and one pale green. They needed a black horse.

  Ciarán found it near the back of the book, as part of another sprawling illumination. Like the painting of the war in heaven, this one consumed two entire pages and depicted the seven bowls of wrath, poured by seven winged angels. From the first bowl flowed a black liquid, which fell onto a small island with two penitent monks whose faces were disfigured by pox. The next two angels poured blood into a churning sea around the island, where the lines of the waves cascaded into chaotic designs. From the fourth bowl rained fire, from the fifth billowing smoke, and from the sixth spilled a swarm of green frogs. From the last angel’s bowl, lightning arced into the blood sea. And there in the bottom right corner, a black horse galloped down the margin of the page.

  Ciarán started with the blood sea, whose lines of churning waves reminded him of the grass on the meadowed hillside. Sure enough, he found seven hidden letters forming the first word. He spelled it aloud: “N-I-C-O-L-A-S.”

  “Who’s Nicolas?” Niall wondered.

  Ciarán shook his head. There was no Nicolas at Derry. As he let his eyes drift out of focus, more letters, and then a question mark, stood out from their camouflage of billowing smoke swirls. Added to the first word, it formed a troubling question. He detected the third word in the chaotic sea, right where the lightning struck from the seventh bowl. The word made the phrase more ominous yet: NICOLAS CAPTURED? KILLED?

  Niall scratched the stubble of his chin. “Do you think the author believes this will happen to Dónall?”

  “I don’t know,” Ciarán said. He ran his fingers through the hair that ringed his tonsured pate. “Let’s find that green horse.”

  A few pages past the bowls of wrath, there it was: a gaunt horse painted in pale green, bucking in the margin of a frightening illumination that covered half a page. The scene depicted a monstrous beast covered in olive and brown scales, its mouth agape. The beast bore a single gigantic eye, its iris wreathed in flame. Yellowed fangs jutted from the beast’s maw, into which a mass of humanity spilled from the wreckage of a burning city. And yet, as terrifying as the image was, the details were exquisite. Among the victims were kings and bishops and women, some clothed in rich robes, others naked and screaming. Scattered among them were red-hued devils and bestial horned and furred men wielding whips. A beard of flowing hair adorned the chin of the gigantic beast, each hair a serpent with its own terrible eye and fearsome fangs.

  Ciarán combed through the painting. “There’s a word hidden in the beast’s mane. F-E-A-R.” The furry hide of one of the beast-men concealed a second word. “F . . . O . . . R,” Ciarán breathed. He searched for more letters, first in the red and yellow flames that engulfed the city, then in the shapes that decorated the robes of the beast’s wellborn victims, and finally in the scales of the beast. He found nothing more. He ran his fingers over his face. “Fear for what?” he muttered aloud. He scoured the image again, and then looked up at Niall. “What’s left?”

  Niall’s face had gone pale. “You missed it.” He pointed to the first letter, formed by the dark spaces between the victims falling into the beast’s mouth. The gaps between the dying people shaped each succeeding letter. Ciarán stared in disbelief at the completed phrase:

  FEAR FOR CIARÁN

  “How is this possible?” Niall asked. But Ciarán barely heard him. For next to the warning, the image of the pale horse stood like an exclamation mark. A shiver crawled over his skin as he remembered the Horsemen’s final verse:

  When he opened the fourth seal, I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KEPT SECRETS

  Ciarán left the scriptorium in a daze. “What has any of this to do with me?”

  Niall shook his head. “I don’t get it. A prophecy? Someone named Nicolas? Did Dónall ever mention a Nicolas or a Nick?”

  “No,” Ciarán said. “But the warning suggests I’m in danger. And now here is this bishop, who somehow knows who I am.”

  At the sound of honking, Niall glanced up as a chevron of geese glided above them. “You know, there were always those old rumors that Dónall was your father. Maybe they figure they can get to him by threatening his son.”

  “But Dónall’s not my father,” Ciarán insisted.

  “They don’t know that,” Niall said. “But I’ll tell you what: if we chase these bastards from our shore, then no one’s gonna be in any danger.”

  As they walked up the green hillside, past the cluster of cells belonging to the senior monks, Ciarán began to wonder if his friend might be right. All the cells were round, hive-shaped huts of corbelled stone flecked with moss and lichens, and many had been patched with so much peat and mud, they looked like little hillocks.

  “Aw, hell,” Niall said when the door to one particularly moss-laden cell flung open and Father Gauzlin emerged, yelling at a Frank who followed him.

  “Have you looked everywhere?” the priest snapped in Latin.

  “Yes,” the Frank insisted. “And we’ve searched this one twice now. It’s not here.”

  “It must be! The Irishman couldn’t have had it when he fled.” The priest gritted his teeth. “Shall you be the one to tell the bishop it’s gone?”

  The Frank didn’t respond but nodded in the direction of Niall and Ciarán, standing some twenty paces away. Father Gauzlin glared at them. “Move on, you!” he cried.

  Niall balled his fist. “How I’d love to beat the sneer off that sneaking stoat’s face!”

  Ciarán grabbed Niall’s arm and nodded toward the mailed Frank with the broadsword hanging at his side. “Not now,” he said, nudging him toward their own cell across the monastery. When they were out of earshot, Ciarán turned to Niall. “That was Dónall’s cell.”

  Niall glanced back to make sure they weren’t being followed. “What do you think they were looking for?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Ciarán replied. “But I think tonight we should try to find out.”

  *

  Ciarán and Niall waited a full hour after Vespers, certain that all would be quiet in Derry until the midnight bell signaled the holy office of Nocturn. The monks prayed at these offices seven times each day—four times before dusk and three times before dawn—which made for a fairly regimented life. And a predictable one, too, for now everyone in the monastery should be asleep.

  Ciarán lit one of the tallow candles that the monks used upon waking each night to go to the oratory for Nocturns and Matins. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Niall asked, drawing his cowl over his head. “You could see that candlelight from the riverbank.”

  Ciarán pulled on his own cowl. “How else are we supposed to see what’s inside Dónall’s cell?”

  “You’re the one always wanting to be so cautious,” Niall said with a shrug, and stepped outside. Ciarán followed him into the night air, where a half-moon pierced the haze of fading clouds. A biting wind soughed through Derry, so that Ciarán had to cup a hand to windward of the candle’s flame to keep it lit. Around them, the monks’ cells stood quiet.

  They padded across the dew-damp grass toward the senior monks’ cells, until Niall stopped abruptly at the first one. “Look,” he whispered.

  Outside Dónall’s cell sat an armored Frank, half-asleep, slouched against the cell’s stone wall, while near the door stood another, arms crossed, watching alertly.

  “They’re afraid Dónall might come back for whatever they’re searching for,” Ciarán said. “So what do we do now?”

  A familiar look of mischief sparkled in Niall’s eyes, and a devilish grin spread acr
oss his face. He reached down for some palm-size stones. “You’ll hide for a moment, and then you’ll find out what’s inside that cell.”

  Ciarán stared wide-eyed at the stones in Niall’s hand. “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Niall said with a wink. “I’ll meet you back home.”

  Stepping out from behind the cell, Niall hurled the first stone. It struck the standing Frank’s helmet with an audible clang. The Frank jumped, fumbling for his blade, as a second stone pegged the half-asleep Frank in the cheek. With a yowl of pain and outrage, the second Frank put his hand to his face and scrambled to his feet.

  “Columcille!” Niall yelled defiantly, darting from behind the cell and sprinting toward the oratory. The enraged Franks lumbered after him as fast as they could in their heavy mail.

  The beauty of the diversion was not lost on Ciarán. Niall could run like a hare, and he knew every stone and footpath of the monastery by heart. To these Franks, though, it must seem a maddening maze of hovels and sheds, thrown together without any semblance of a plan.

  Ciarán waited until the clanking and muttered oaths of Niall’s pursuers grew faint, and then scurried to Dónall’s cell and ducked inside, where the pungent bouquet of dried herbs filled his nostrils. Dónall’s wooden cupboard, which held his collection of medicines, had been torn from the wall and smashed. Ciarán closed the door. His heart sank at the sight of the devastation. The shards of earthenware flasks and mortars were strewn across the floor, amid the bundles of dried laurel, mint, mugwort, juniper berries, hops, and chamomile, all crushed to useless debris under the searchers’ boots. A leather book satchel, ripped open at the seams, sat crumpled against a wall, and the two books Dónall kept in his cell—Pliny’s Natural History and a tome on Arabic medicine—had been flung to the floor. Even Dónall’s straw pallet had been torn apart, its remnants scattered across the room. Amid the tatters, a goose quill pen lay crumpled on the hand-spun wool rug, now ruined by a smashed pot of ink and ground-in herbs.