Enoch's Device

by Joseph Finley

  “We must go,” Thomas said. “Now.” He ducked back into the crowd, and Dónall trailed him, wending his way through the monks and priests, praying he did not draw attention to himself.

  Free of the crowd, Thomas rushed back into the foyer. He held his head in his hands before drawing them nervously from his face. “Didn’t you see it—the hidden door? Canon Martinus must have found the Secret Collection.”

  “He couldn’t have.”

  “The door was cracked! All they need do is examine that panel, and they’ll find it.” The color drained from Thomas’s face. “What if they know about the book? They’ll have damning evidence against us . . .”

  Dónall could taste bile in his throat. “There’s a rather bigger problem.”

  Thomas gaped at him. “Bigger than this? Bigger than the revelation of our secrets?”

  “Yes,” Dónall said with a sigh. “Because one of us has murdered Canon Martinus.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE SECRET OF SELLES-SUR-CHER

  The sun set behind the low hills backing the tiny village of Selles-sur-Cher, painting the sky with a salmon glow behind the cross-shaped gravestone of the man Alais loved.

  The stone stood in the cemetery south of the abbey, where the lay abbots were buried beside their family members and where the few monks whose prominence warranted burial outside the underground crypts were also laid to rest. Alais knelt beside Geoffrey’s grave on the damp patch of grass where she, too, hoped to lie when the time came to join her husband in the afterlife. Two weeks had passed since his death, and each time she came here she wept—for him and for herself. For not only was Alais burdened with the loss of the man she loved, but she found herself alone—terribly alone.

  The year after she and Geoffrey wedded, her father fell victim to a hunting accident, bleeding to death after being gored in the thigh by a wild boar. Within the year, her mother remarried a wealthy lord in Lombardy. Alais had written her since Geoffrey’s death, but Lombardy was halfway to Rome, and it could be weeks before she received a reply. Still, Alais prayed that her mother would write back or even journey north, for she had never come to visit Alais in Selles. Nor had her sister, Adeline, who had stopped writing years ago.

  Alais held the strangely shaped pendant at her throat, the cross with a handle, and whispered the last words of a prayer. Then she kissed the tips of her fingers and touched Geoffrey’s gravestone. “Good night, my love,” she said. She had risen to return to her manor house when she heard footsteps at the graveyard’s edge. She gave a relieved sigh, realizing that it was Brother Thadeus.

  “Remember, child,” he said, walking toward her, “this was but the first death.”

  “Whatever do you mean, Thadeus?” she replied.

  “The book of Revelation speaks of two deaths. The first is the death of the flesh, which we all suffer. But a second death falls to those souls who, on the day of judgment, are cast into the lake of fire. Yet the Lord spares the souls whose deeds warrant entry of their names in the book of life. They suffer only the first death. Geoffrey was a good man. His only death is behind him, I think. His soul is in heaven now.”

  Alais tried to smile, but she couldn’t manage it. “What about those left behind?”

  “Some say life is a gift, but I think of it more as a test. And tests were never meant to be easy.” Thadeus placed a hand on Alais’ arm. “May I walk you back home?”

  “Certainly.”

  The two of them left the cemetery and started down a path through the fields. Puddles of mud from the morning’s rain dimpled the path. The grass on the hills had begun to yellow as winter neared, and the farmers had retreated to their homes. The smoke wafting from their thatch-roofed cottages tinged the air with a familiar dark sharpness that was indelibly linked in Alais’ mind with winter and cold and gray.

  “Have you received any word from the king?” Thadeus asked when they had gone some distance down the path.

  Alais shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Thadeus’s brow wrinkled in the way it did when something concerned him. “I know that Geoffrey sent him a message. What about your cousin?”

  He referred to William, whom she had known well when she was a child, even though he was eight years her senior. She had not seen him since her wedding, two years before William succeeded his father as count of Poitiers and duke of Aquitaine. After Geoffrey died, she had sent one of his few remaining men-at-arms to Poitiers to tell William. Although Poitiers was only thirty leagues southwest of Selles-sur-Cher, the roads were in such abysmal condition that even on a good horse, the journey would take five days. Yet nearly twelve days had passed since her messenger departed. For a week now, she had hoped to see a unit of horsemen carrying her cousin’s standard emblazoned with its crimson lion, or the king’s blue banner with its golden fleur-de-lis, riding to the aid of Selles. But no one came.

  “The last I heard,” she told Thadeus, “he was on campaign with King Robert in the south.”

  “I heard the campaign did not go well. Your cousin has made a few military mistakes of late. I had hoped his focus might return to things closer to home.”

  Alais just nodded. She feared that William had forgotten her. The king, too.

  “Keep the faith,” Thadeus said. “Help will come.”

  As they climbed the hill to the manor house, Alais realized how lucky she was to have the old infirmarer. Since Geoffrey’s death, Thadeus had always been there. He was not judgmental like Prior Ragno, or frightened of an attractive woman as many of the monks were, or overly deferential like the village women, who were uncomfortable with her noble station. He was simply supportive, one of the few people who did not want something from her. He was perhaps the only person in Selles she could trust completely.

  “Will you be all right?” Thadeus asked when they reached the manor’s door.

  “Yes, thank you,” she replied.

  “Very well, then.” He bowed slightly before turning to walk back to the abbey.

  “Wait.” She found herself fingering the pendant Geoffrey had given her. Something about it had been troubling her since his death. “Have you ever heard of a secret kept by the abbey—a treasure, perhaps?”

  The old monk smiled and shook his head. “We are a poor abbey, child, with only a few relics of Saint Eustace, I’m afraid.”

  “Not a saint’s relic,” she said, “but something that would be locked in a small chest—a secret passed down by the lay abbots.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Would this chest be large enough to hold a book?”

  “I think so.”

  Thadeus chuckled under his breath. “There were rumors of an old tome, a rare book of knowledge, but we have so few books, and it’s been so long, I had stopped even thinking such rumors might be true.”

  “What if I told you I am certain it’s true?”

  “But . . . how so?”

  “Come inside,” Alais said. “I’ll show you.”

  The manor house that she had shared with Geoffrey was a simple structure. At times, Geoffrey insisted on calling it a castle, and he always had grand designs for its expansion, yet to Alais, having grown up in the palace of Poitiers, it seemed rather small. Unlike the villagers’ wattle-and-daub cottages, the house had buttressed limestone walls, which made it the sturdiest structure in Selles, aside from the abbey. The house consisted of three main rooms: the hall, by far the largest room, where Geoffrey had held court and they ate all their meals on the trestle table in its center; a tiny garderobe; and the bedchamber. A kitchen stood adjacent to the house, along with a wooden stable.

  Alais led Thadeus through the hall to the bedchamber. It was a small room with a canopied bed, a clothes chest, and a table with a basin of fresh water under the single window.

  “We need to move the bed,” she told him.

  “Why?”

  “It’s hidden underneath it.”

  Thadeus looked perplexed. “Why isn’t it in the abbey?”

  “I got the se
nse from Geoffrey that the lay abbots had hidden it here forever.”

  Thadeus shrugged but did as she asked, grunting as, together, they pushed the heavy bed aside along with a small pile of rushes that had been laid over the floor. He started at the sight of a long sheathed dagger that had been hidden under the bed.

  “I’ve not felt safe since Geoffrey died,” Alais explained, picking up the dagger and tucking it under a pillow. “It helps me sleep better.” She cleared away some more rushes where the bed had been, to reveal an old wooden plate on the stone-tiled floor. She knocked on the plate.

  “Hollow,” Thadeus remarked.

  She nodded and then knelt, using the tips of her fingers to pry the plate out.

  Beneath was a small, dark cavity. Something glinted inside—the warm glint of gold.

  “Help me lift it,” she said.

  Thadeus knelt before the space and helped her lift out a small oak chest. His eyes grew wide at the chest’s lid, which was inlaid with gold in a pattern of a seven-pointed star, within a circle containing twelve odd-looking symbols.

  “Do you know what it means?” she asked, pointing at the pattern.

  The monk stared in awe—perhaps of the symbols, or of the prodigal amount of gold. “The symbols may be astrological,” he murmured, “but I can’t be sure. Can you open it?”

  “Yes,” she said, taking the pendant-key’s chain from around her neck. The base of the cross fit perfectly inside the keyhole. She turned it until she heard a click, and then carefully opened the lid.

  Inside was not a book, but a scroll wrapped around two carved wooden spindles. Its dark-stained surface looked unbelievably ancient to Alais, as it had the first time she saw it.

  “It is not written in the Roman script,” she told him. “I don’t know it.”

  Thadeus lifted the scroll from the chest as delicately as if he were lifting a baby chick from its nest. He unfurled it slightly. “The words are Greek.”

  “Can you read it?”

  But Thadeus was already tracing a gnarled finger under the text. Within moments, he seemed lost in the old scroll. She brought him a candle and waited at the edge of her bed as he read, slouched over the table. His face was intense, even troubled at times, but she could not tell whether he struggled with the language or with the writing’s content. Afraid to disturb him, she said nothing.

  He read for what seemed like an hour. When he finally looked up, his face was ashen. “This speaks of dire things, my dear. Fascinating things, to be sure, but terrible.”

  His hands trembled as he rolled up the scroll. “I cannot say more.” He gently laid the scroll back in the chest and closed the lid, then hastily lowered it into its hiding place.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “There was a reason this was kept from the monks. I’m certain of it now.” He replaced the wooden plate over the hiding space and began covering it with rushes. When he was done, he sighed with relief.

  “Tell me, please,” she begged.

  “It is heresy,” he said. “Even blasphemy.”

  “Then why is it here?”

  Thadeus looked at her helplessly. “I wish I knew.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS

  Two days after they entered the channel between Britain and France, Ciarán spotted land. Sheer white cliffs stretched for leagues east and west, and the cries of gulls rang from the shore. His spirits soared at the sight, for they had reached the mainland with still no sign of the bishop’s ship.

  While Ciarán stood on the bow gazing at the towering cliffs, the oarsmen unfurled the sail to capture the light breeze hissing off the sea. “What is that land?” he asked.

  “That there’s Normandy, lad,” Merchant Mac Fadden said, standing alongside the young scribe.

  Beside them, Dónall watched a seagull dive for a fish. “Its name means ‘the land of the Northmen.’ The Normans were Vikings who settled these lands long ago.”

  Ciarán glanced warily at his mentor. Vikings were something every monk had been raised to fear, for their brutal raids on Irish monasteries were legendary.

  “Don’t worry lad,” Dónall said, clapping Ciarán’s shoulder. “The Normans are Christian now, and they’ve become more like the Franks than their Northmen kin.”

  Despite Dónall’s assurances, Ciarán couldn’t stop scanning every inlet for the sinister low outline of a Viking longship as they sailed along the Norman coast. To his relief, they had encountered none by the time they reached the mouth of the Seine, the river that would take them to Paris.

  After their first day rowing up the Seine, they docked at a town called Rouen, the seat of the duke of Normandy. The townspeople seemed welcoming of the Irish strangers, which was more than Ciarán could say for the town itself. For Rouen was altogether unlike Derry. There were no oak groves here, no fields of clover, no corbelled huts. A looming wall of stone, not earth, encircled the town, whose buildings were wedged cheek by jowl along narrow, dung-strewn mud streets that emitted a fearsome stench. The monks of Rouen, clad in their black Benedictine habits, seemed perfectly content to walk these cramped, fetid streets and alleyways, and that struck Ciarán as unnatural. For if God was indeed the lord of the elements, as Saint Columcille had written, then how could these Benedictines pay him proper homage in a place made entirely by human hands?

  They left Rouen the next morning beneath fair skies, before a steady westerly breeze that aided their voyage up the Seine, which meandered like a twisting serpent through lush valleys toward the great city of Paris. When they finally arrived just before dusk, Ciarán could hardly believe what he saw, for Paris seemed to float on the river. Fortified walls, glowing with the light from scores of flickering lanterns, surrounded the city like the hull of some gigantic ship. In place of a ship’s masts, steeples and towers topped with slate roofs rose through a haze of smoke from a thousand cooking fires. As they rowed closer to shore, it became apparent that Paris did not float but, rather, was built on a narrow island splitting the Seine. Ferries rowed between the island and the mainland, and where they did not, plank bridges crossed the river. Coracles and other craft jammed the docks, and to Ciarán’s relief, none resembled the bishop’s black-hulled ship.

  Merchant mac Fadden’s oarsmen rowed the curach toward a harbor flanked by stout, square towers flying blue pennons dotted with gold lilies. As they pulled alongside an empty stretch of pier, Ciarán marveled at the city’s size, for more buildings stood along the riverbanks, and more lanterns hung from posts along the road that ran parallel to the city, creating a trail of tiny lights unlike anything he had ever seen. He wondered whether there was a grander city in all the world. Rome, perhaps, but it was hard to imagine such a place.

  At the docks, Ciarán and Dónall bade Merchant mac Fadden and his oarsmen good-bye. “Be good, lad,” mac Fadden said, wrapping Ciarán in a bearlike embrace. “And listen to Dónall. He’s a good man, and I’d trust him with my life.”

  Ciarán was surprised to feel the sting of tears. Whether mac Fadden’s devotion to Dónall had caught him off guard, or he was just suddenly struck by the sadness of their parting, Ciarán felt certain he would miss the stalwart captain and his crew.

  Dónall embraced Merchant mac Fadden before making the sign of the cross and uttering a prayer:

  God be with you on the sea; Christ be with you on the land. Spirit be with you in every breath. May your journey bring you home, and your travels be swift to the fair oaks of Derry.

  Merchant mac Fadden clapped Dónall on the shoulder and then turned away, his rugged seafarer’s eyes gone suddenly misty.

  Dónall led the way from the pier, with his black staff in hand and the book satchel slung over his shoulder. As they departed, he drew Ciarán near. “Stay close,” he said, “though it’s hard to get lost—all roads eventually lead to the river.”

  Beyond the docks, throngs of Parisians filled the streets. Lit by more of the flickering lanterns, the streets were narrow like those of
Rouen, though cleaner. And the churches were certainly grander, but the air still held the acrid smells of unwashed humanity, smoke, and dung. Dónall and Ciarán headed for one of the bridges that would take them to the southern bank of the Seine. They passed churches devoted to saints named Geneviève, Denis, and Christophe, and everywhere, shuffling along amid the throng, were dozens of Benedictine monks and black-robed priests. The priests and monks shot looks at the Irishmen in their gray habits, but it was the worried expressions on these clerics’ faces that caught Ciarán’s attention.

  “What do you think’s bothering them?” he asked.

  “Let’s find out,” Dónall replied. Stopping a priest outside a basilica dedicated to Saint Étienne, he inquired in Latin why the priest and his brethren should look so troubled.

  The priest, a slight man with a puckered mouth, twitched nervously. “Haven’t you heard?” he replied. “Pope Gregory has excommunicated King Robert for his marriage to Bertha of Blois. Soon all France may be under papal interdict, depriving us all of the blessed sacraments! And this when the end times draw near, when our souls are already in grave peril!” The priest made the sign of the cross. “It is why the king fares so poorly in his conflict with Fulk the Black. Because God is angry with the king, and soon he will unleash the devil Fulk to punish us—all because the king married his cousin, his own kin!”

  The priest seemed to grow more agitated the more he spoke, so Dónall quickly bade him farewell. “A papal interdict?” Ciarán remarked as they walked away. “That’s outrageous!”

  Dónall cocked one brow. “Tensions between the Franks and our new German pope seem to be running a tad high—though I suspect this is just a political move.”

  “Who’s this Fulk the Black?” Ciarán asked. “He seems to have everyone on edge.”