THE PRIORY OF SAINT-BASTIAN
Part of Alais wished she had died, so that she might join her beloved Geoffrey in heaven or wherever one went upon leaving this world. That she was still alive seemed unreal, as if she were still in that dreamlike world where the black tempest had arisen out of nowhere and routed the men who sought to kill her. The older Irish monk had called it a miracle. Could it be? Might Saint Radegonde finally have come to answer her prayers? If only she were in Poitiers, she could ask the abbess of Sainte-Croix. She would have an explanation. Alais vowed silently to see the abbess when they made it to Poitiers . . . if they made it there.
She tried to focus on the hope of returning home, but her mind kept drifting back to the tempest and the fire and poor Thadeus and, worst of all, what the bishop had done. She prayed that she could banish that memory to the darkest recesses of her mind. But where those memories had been, hate would linger—that much she knew. Many times since they left Selles, she had wished that the tempest had claimed one more life, obliterating the rapist who hid behind a priest’s mantle, instead of the Franks who merely did his bidding. As she rode alongside the three strange monks, the hatred coursed through her veins like venom, and she knew she would never purge it from her heart.
Geoffrey’s horses were all she had taken from Selles other than a few dresses, including the simple gray shift she now wore, and the pendant. Despite its peculiar shape, it had been her last gift from Geoffrey, and she had sworn that she would wear it close to her heart. She sat in the saddle of a dappled mare, riding as a man rode and as no lady ever did. It was the way she preferred, ever since she and Adeline had learned to run their ponies along the banks of the Clain. It also allowed her to ride faster, for they needed haste more than decorum. The older Irish monk had warned that Fulk the Black and the bishop would return sooner or later, and Alais could not bear the thought of that horror. She was relieved to be gone from Selles, though she felt a pang of regret at abandoning Geoffrey’s lands. They had meant so much to him. But King Robert had never come, nor had her cousin. So what could she have done to protect the land and its people from the likes of the count of Anjou? Someday, perhaps, the king would finally arrive and restore her lands. Maybe then she would return. But that seemed so remote now. Too much had happened. For now the only hope she would allow herself was that they reach Saint-Bastian’s safely tonight.
The road from Selles wound through a thick and tangled wood, filled with enough shadows and whispery noises to make even a seasoned traveler uneasy. Alais had heard more than a few stories of hapless wayfarers killed by wolves or wild boars, and even tales of aurochs still running wild, goring or trampling riders in their path. And three monks with wooden staffs were hardly the protection she was accustomed to after traveling with Geoffrey and his men-at-arms. The young Irish monk looked fit enough to put up a struggle, but he rode completely unarmed. The other two were probably too old to do much of anything, although the Irish one named Dónall was tall and imposing—the type of man who might hide a fierce temper. The Benedictine, shifty-eyed and thin as a distaff, just made her uncomfortable, as if something were not quite right about him. That these three men had become her saviors simply added to the strangeness and unreality of it all. The forest, though, with all its shadows and gnarled trees with their clawing branches, seemed all too real. Between the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves, she listened for movement in the woods, any grunt or rustle that might represent a wolf or boar. But after hours of travel, even after sunset, when a big gibbous moon provided the only light on the shadowy road, they had encountered no sign of trouble.
After some time, they spotted lights flickering through a thick stand of trees just past a bend in the road. Soon enough, the moonlight revealed the faint outlines of a cluster of buildings. The road emerged from the woods. Ahead, one of the lights was moving, raised high by the hand of a black-robed monk.
“Who goes there!” a husky voice cried out in the langue d’oil.
The Irish monk named Dónall reigned in his chestnut stallion and answered in Latin, “Peace, brother. We seek warmth in your cloister, and refuge in the name of our holy Savior.”
“From whence do you hail?” barked the thickset Benedictine holding the lantern. He stood before an earthen wall with a half-open wooden gate.
“From Paris,” the wiry Benedictine named Remi replied. “Has Brother Lucien of Saint-Denis taken vows here?”
“In truth?” the husky-voiced gatekeeper said. “Brother Lucien is the prior.”
“Then Providence has found us twice today,” Dónall said. “For we are old friends of his, from Reims.”
The gatekeeper eyed them warily as the four riders came into the glow of his lantern light.
“So be it,” he said. “Welcome to the priory of Saint-Bastian.”
*
Of all the abbeys and priories Ciarán had seen since arriving in France, the priory of Saint-Bastian was by far the coziest—or most cramped, depending on one’s perspective. The buildings, all built of brown sandstone, were small and closely spaced, and the cloister’s covered passageways were scarcely wide enough for two men to walk side by side. Rushlights lit the meager walkways, which were framed by humble arches with narrow pillars. The scents of rosemary and mint drifted through the cloister from a well-tended garden, and a splashing fountain provided the only sound besides the crickets’ chirring.
They waited in the cloister while the gatekeeper went to fetch the prior. Before he left, the gatekeeper had been visibly discomfited upon realizing that a woman had entered the priory. Despite Dónall’s assurances that all would be fine, the monk had looked at her as if the devil himself had set foot in Saint-Bastian’s. Ciarán could sense Alais’ discomfort. He would feel better once she was safely in a guesthouse—assuming that this humble priory even possessed one.
After some minutes, the gatekeeper returned, accompanied by a squat, graying Benedictine. From the way his eyes sparkled when he saw Dónall and Remi, he must surely be the man they sought.
“I can hardly believe my eyes,” the prior said, and a warm smile spread to his ruddy cheeks.
“Lucien.” Dónall wrapped the prior in a brotherly embrace, and Remi clapped him on the shoulder. The gatekeeper, apparently satisfied that the prior was not in imminent danger of perdition, returned to his post, casting a fearful glance at Alais as he departed.
“How many years has it been?” Lucien asked.
“A lifetime too long,” Dónall replied.
“What brings you back to the Continent? I heard you had returned to that rainy gray island of yours.”
“A great discovery brings us here,” Remi said, cradling the gold-inlaid book shrine that contained the scroll from Selles-sur-Cher. “After so many years of searching, we have found the Book of Enoch.”
The color drained from Lucien’s face. “I have long since put that part of my life behind me,” he said.
“I know,” Remi replied, “but have you considered its significance? It is a lost book of scripture, a chronicle of the darkest secrets of mankind’s past.”
“Is this why you’ve come—to show me this?” Lucien asked.
“No,” Dónall assured him. “We found it at Selles-sur-Cher. But we happened upon some trouble there with one of the local magnates. We come here seeking sanctuary.”
Concern furrowed Lucien’s brow. “My priory is yours, of course. But this trouble—it is related to Enoch’s book?”
“I can’t tell,” Dónall said.
“We need a place to study it,” Remi added.
“Tonight?” Lucien said.
“I’ve waited a lifetime to read these words,” said Remi.
“We do have a library, which also serves as our scriptorium. It’s not much . . .” Lucien pointed to a nondescript door off the adjacent walkway. “I could get some candles.”
“Would you?” Remi’s eyes grew wide. “And you’ll join us, right? After all, it was you who first saw a connection between the verse in Genesis and
the existence of the Fae. This discovery could affirm that link. After all these years, all the speculating and conjecture, surely you are still curious.”
Lucien wrung his hands. “What about her?” he asked, nodding toward Alais.
“She is the lady of Selles-sur-Cher,” Dónall said, “and in need of sanctuary, too, I’m afraid. Have you a guesthouse?”
“Certainly,” Lucien replied, though still seeming a little mystified by her presence. “It’s out back—and vacant, fortunately. Consider it yours for as long as you need it.”
“Our debt to you is great, old friend,” Dónall said, taking Lucien’s hand. “Ciarán, can you escort Alais to the guesthouse and then meet us in the library?”
“Of course,” Ciarán said with a nod. He was relieved to learn that the priory had such accommodations. Alais looked relieved, too.
Prior Lucien showed them the pathway from the cloister to the guesthouse, and as they left, Ciarán glanced over his shoulder. Down the narrow walkway, the three old brethren from Reims headed for the library, carrying a book shrine between them—and within it the scroll whose contents might change all their lives forever.
A gravel pathway led to the guesthouse, which proved to be nothing more than a square stone building with a thatch roof. A cold breeze had blown up, and Alais shivered as they walked down the path. There was something delicate about her, something fragile, and Ciarán found himself wanting to put an arm around her and keep her warm, to protect her. Or just to touch her again? He tried to suppress these disturbing thoughts as he opened the unlocked door to the guesthouse.
It appeared to be a single room, barely lit by the moonlight that spilled in through the open door. Six straw pallets, three on each side, were the only accommodations except for a wooden bench with a washbasin, and a candle in a wrought-iron holder. A flint and steel and a ball of tinder, to light the candle, lay beside it on the bench.
“This won’t be what you’re accustomed to, I’m afraid,” Ciarán said.
“It will be fine,” she replied.
Ciarán lit the candle. “It’s not much light.”
“I’ll not need it. I’ve never felt so tired.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“No, I’ll be well.”
He turned to leave.
“There is one question,” she said. “It’s silly, I know.” She lay down on the pallet nearest the candle. “Why do you and Dónall leave your robes the color of fleece?”
“We Irish are not so vain as to need to dye our clothes.”
“So the Benedictines are vain?”
“Those I’ve seen, yes. But we are the foreigners here, and it is not ours to judge.” He smiled. “And anyway, not everyone can be so blessed as to be born Irish.”
“Are all Irishmen so proud?”
Ciarán flashed her a smile. “God could make only one place so beautiful on all the earth, so at least we come by it honestly.”
She looked at him skeptically, and then a hint of a smile bent her lips. “You Irish are a curious lot.”
Ciarán merely shrugged. He waited there until Alais closed her eyes and he was sure she was asleep. Then he set off for the library.
*
Dónall found the library no less cramped than the rest of the priory. The place was rich with the smells of parchment and dust. The far wall had three good-size windows, through which streamed enough moonlight to illuminate the desks of the scribes. A small reading table with four chairs occupied the center of the room, and a modest hearth took up much of one wall, the rest of which held narrow shelves sparsely populated with books. Four more shelves, mostly empty, occupied the library’s two remaining walls.
“We don’t have many books, I’m afraid,” Lucien explained. “This is but a poor priory.”
“It is no matter,” Remi said, setting the book shrine on the reading table and pulling up a chair. Dónall laid his book satchel and blackened staff down beside Remi’s staff.
“You still carry those?” Lucien said, taking three candles from one of the lower shelves.
“One never knows when a stout knot of alder might come in handy,” Dónall replied.
As Lucien lit the candles one by one, the flames glinted off the gold of the book shrine. “It’s just like the one that held the Book of Maugis,” he said. “My God, but that seems so long ago!”
Remi was practically shaking with anticipation, and for good reason. For Dónall knew, in the pit of his stomach, that what they might find could shatter the walls of skepticism that his scholarly mind had erected around Thomas’s and Remi’s theories.
Remi opened the book shrine and reached inside, when Lucien suddenly grabbed his hands.
“Do you realize what we’re about to do?” Lucien asked. “Do we really want to know what truth lies behind Arcanus’s prophecy? Have you thought about what that could mean? Understanding that could change everything.”
“Yes, brother,” Remi said. “It is all I have ever searched for. I would give up everything for this knowledge.”
“And you, Dónall?” Lucien asked.
Dónall thought for a moment. Since first learning of the book’s discovery, he had wrestled long and hard with the question. “The truth is all I have ever longed for.”
“Then our fate, whatever it may be, is sealed,” Lucien said. Again Dónall caught the boyish sparkle in the man’s eyes. “I’ll admit I was hoping you’d say that. I’d forgotten how it feels to stand at the precipice of discovery with one’s toes dangling off the edge.”
“Then we begin,” said Remi. Lifting the centuries-old scroll from its box, he carefully unrolled the left spindle on the tabletop. As he read the lines of Greek, Dónall listened with a growing sense of awe.
For word by word, that cryptic verse from the book of Genesis was coming to life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE SONS OF GOD
‘And it came to pass that the sons of men had multiplied, and fair and beautiful daughters were born to them. And the Watchers, the Sons of God, saw them and lusted after them, and said to one another, let us choose wives from the daughters of men.’
Ciarán entered the library as Remi read the verse aloud.
“Can there be any question now?” Remi asked. “The sons of God are the watchers, the angels who looked down from the heavens with lust in their hearts. This is the truth the church fathers tried to bury.”
Dónall and Lucien barely looked up as Ciarán took the empty chair at the table. Remi continued reading: “‘Under their leader, Semyaza, they bound themselves by mutual curses to do this deed. In all, they were two hundred who descended to earth in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Armon. They took wives of the daughters of men and defiled them. And the women conceived and gave birth to the Nephilim.’”
“My God,” Lucien whispered, “it’s all here.”
Dónall rose from his chair. “Angels on the earth, defying the will of God.”
“It speaks of sorcery, too,” Remi said. “‘The Watchers taught men the casting of spells, and divinations, and the eternal secrets that were made to be kept in heaven. And men drifted away from God, and they were led astray and corrupted.’”
“What of the offspring?” Lucien asked. “The Nephilim?”
“Here,” Remi said. “The children of the Watchers, the Nephilim, consumed all the labor of men, and when mankind could no longer sustain them, they turned on men and devoured them. And as men perished, they cried out and their voices reached to the heavens.”
“It all goes back to Genesis,” Dónall said in amazement. “The wickedness on earth became so great that God regrets the very act of his own creation.”
“It is even more than that,” Remi insisted. “It confirms the truth of other myths. Did not the Egyptians speak of a time when the neteru—literally translated as ‘watchers’—lived on earth and guided men? This reign of the gods was followed by another era, the reign of the demigods—the offspring of men and divine beings.
The Nephilim, without a doubt. They, not mortal men, were the ones who built the great pyramids. And what of the Greeks? Their mythology is rife with stories of gods procreating with mortal women, many of whom bore children described as giants. Tityos and Hercules, and the Babylonian Gilgamesh.”
“The heroes of old,” said Dónall. “The warriors of renown.”
“Precisely,” Remi said. “And look at the Greek Titans and giants, creatures born literally of Uranus—of the heavens—and of Gaia, the earth. The offspring of heaven and earth, of angels and their mortal concubines! The stories of the Gigantomachy and Titanomachy, the wars of the giants and the Titans—does this not describe a time when the Nephilim wreaked havoc on earth?”
“The common origin of all those myths,” Lucien remarked. “Thomas was right.”
As Ciarán listened, he found himself, curiously, accepting all of it. With his own eyes he had seen the tremendous standing stones such as the Giant’s Ring near Béal Feirste—creations that could not have been built by human hands. And the Giant’s Causeway in Antrim—thousands of basalt pillars that traversed the sea from Ireland toward Scotland, supposedly laid by the mythical Finn mac Cumhail, a giant hero born of a mortal woman and a Celtic god. Legend held that the same was true of the great Cú Chulainn. And then there were the many tales of the Formorians, the giants who fought the Tuatha Dé Danann. “But then, what became of all those giants?” Ciarán asked. “The Great Flood?”
Remi wore a wicked smile. “No, not yet. War broke out in Heaven. The archangels—Michael and Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel—heard the cries of men and saw the evil being done on earth, and made accusations against the rebellious angels before God Himself. That is when God decided to destroy the earth by water and told Noah to build his ark. But first, he ordered the archangels to round up the fallen: ‘Go, bind Semyaza and his followers and split open the desert and cast them into the darkness of Dudael, and seal them in the hills of the earth until the Day of Judgment, when they shall be hurled into the Fire.’ So,” Remi continued, “the archangels waged war on the watchers and imprisoned them within the earth.”
Enoch's Device Page 16