Enoch's Device

by Joseph Finley

  “But first,” Adémar said coldly, his finger raised high, “cast away the heretics and let them burn!”

  Just paces from the open doors, Alais screamed as a black-robed priest lunged into the aisle, pushing past the startled nuns. With long-fingered hands, he grabbed Alais’ arm. Ciarán’s heart jumped. A wicked smile stretched across Father Gauzlin’s pale, thin face. “Too late,” he sneered.

  Ciarán cocked his fist and swung from the hip, smashing into Gauzlin’s jaw and knocking him back into the crowd.

  From the transept, a voice bellowed, “Brother Dónall, stop!” Prior Bernard waved a plump finger at Dónall and Alais. “Your Excellency, he is your sorcerer, and she is your witch!”

  Dónall nudged Ciarán. “Go!”

  The church erupted in shouts as, hand in hand, Ciarán and Alais rushed through the vestibule doors and down the steps into a snow-dusted square. A flock of startled pigeons burst skyward, while a dozen black-robed monks in the square gazed toward the clamor emanating from the church. They stared in surprise as Alais and the two Irishmen bolted past. “Trust no one in a black robe!” Dónall huffed.

  A mob of monks and priests poured out of the vestibule, with cries of “Stop!” and “Heretic!”

  “To the Street of the Jews!” Dónall said. “It’s our only chance.”

  “Do you know where it is?” Ciarán asked Alais.

  She nodded and, gripping his hand, ran toward a narrow alley. Behind them came the mob.

  The alley intersected another. At the crossway, Alais and Ciarán glanced back to find Dónall standing defiantly before the oncoming mob. At its head was Father Gauzlin, his face infused with rage. Beside him screamed Prior Bernard and Canon Frézoul, followed by a crowd of priests and monks in black. Dónall raised his right arm. A crystal burned brightly in his hand.

  “What is he doing?” Alais gasped.

  “Saving our lives,” Ciarán replied. “Come!”

  Dónall uttered a verse in the Fae tongue, a melodic sound that filled the alleyway. At once, a beating sound followed, not from Dónall‘s lips but from the rooftops.

  The beating of wings.

  Like a fierce gray cloud, hundreds of pigeons dived into the space between Dónall and the oncoming mob, heading straight toward the pursuers. Gauzlin gasped, and Prior Bernard blanched as a cry erupted from the startled monks and priests. The flock collided with the men, pecking and clawing and tearing at black robes. Then came a piercing caw as dozens of huge black crows swooped into the alley, followed by yet another horde of pigeons.

  Dónall rushed to Ciarán and Alais, who looked awestruck at the swelling, twisting cloud of birds. “Just get us to Jewry,” Ciarán whispered to her, “and I’ll explain.”

  As the wingbeats and raucous cawing behind them competed with the screams of men, Alais led them down the alley to the left, only to turn immediately down another in the maze of streets. They ducked under clotheslines with hanging linens and hurried down the narrow stairways that descended the city’s steep hills. The cries of the birds and the mob receded to a dull clamor, and soon Ciarán found himself on a familiar street of simple thatch-roofed homes. Searching for the one with the Star of David carved on its door, he prayed that Isaac was home.

  Alais stopped Dónall before they went any farther. “What just happened?” she demanded.

  “I asked Mother Nature for a favor,” Dónall said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

  “You spoke to the birds?” she asked, fear tingeing her voice. “And the tempest back in Selles? Are you what the bishop called you?”

  “No more than you,” Dónall replied.

  She ran her fingers down her face. “Why is this happening?” Her eyes grew moist. “It has to do with the scroll Geoffrey kept, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Dónall said.

  Ciarán placed a hand on her back. “The bishop won’t let this go. You can’t stay in Poitiers.”

  “I would leave anyway,” she sighed. “William plans to arrange another marriage, and I won’t do that again. But where can I go?”

  “Come with us to Spain,” Ciarán said.

  Dónall gave Ciarán a look that said he’d gone mad. “Absolutely not!”

  “Why not?” Ciarán insisted. “We’re looking for Enoch’s device, and she held a key piece to finding it. What if it’s fate that brought us to her?”

  “Fate?” Dónall groaned. “You sound like your father again.”

  “Has he turned out to be wrong lately?”

  “He was wrong about you,” Dónall snapped. “You never came from Charlemagne’s line.”

  Alais stepped between them. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “The thing we’re searching for,” Ciarán said, “which was mentioned in your husband’s scroll, can be used only by a descendant of Charlemagne’s bloodline.”

  For a heartbeat, Alais stared at them, spellbound by what she had just heard. “So . . . you mean someone like me?”

  Ciarán’s eyes widened. “You . . .”

  “I’m from the House of Poitiers. My family is descended from Ranulf of Aquitaine, the great-grandson of Charlemagne.”

  Ciarán could scarcely believe his ears. He turned to Dónall. “Now, that sounds like fate.”

  “Still, we can’t—” Dónall began, but Alais cut him off.

  “I’ve already lost Geoffrey’s lands,” she said. “That scroll was his final legacy, and if it meant something, if it’s as important as he claimed, then this is the last thing I can do for him.”

  Dónall started to grumble, but Ciarán swelled with hope. “Which means . . . ?” he asked.

  She looked determined. “We’re going to Spain.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  MORTAL SINS

  Prior Lucien ushered Father Gauzlin into the small chapel on the east side of the Church of Saint-Etienne. The priest was shaking. His left eye was swollen shut, and his whole face was crosshatched with bloody scratches. Feathers—and worse—stuck to the bloodstains on his robes.

  “What happened to you?” Lucien asked in a hushed tone.

  “We were attacked by crows. And pigeons, hundreds of them,” Gauzlin replied with a hint of fear lingering in his voice. “Summoned by Dónall mac Taidg.”

  Lucien clenched his jaw as they entered the chapel. Dónall was becoming difficult to deal with.

  Inside, next to a bishop’s miter, a dozen candles glowed on the altar, while only the faintest hint of daylight seeped through the vellum sheets that covered the window slits. Beside the altar stood Adémar, still clad in his episcopal robes. He studied one of the reliquaries of Saint Etienne, cradling it in his hands. The reliquary was a life-size replica of the saint’s arm, with a forearm shaped like the sleeve of a bishop’s robe, and coin-size stones pressed into the gold encasement, complete with a gleaming silver hand, slightly open at the palm, with two fingers upraised. Adémar did not look up as they entered.

  “They say this contains the bones of Saint Etienne’s entire right arm—and his hand, too,” Adémar said, shaking the reliquary so the bones rattled inside. “I find it odd that your people revere these dead clerics like little gods.”

  Lucien stepped from the shadows of the tiny nave toward the chancel, and Gauzlin followed nervously behind him. “Every church needs some saint’s bones, my lord,” Lucien replied. “They draw in pilgrims and their donations.”

  “But it is more than that,” Adémar said, still examining the golden arm. “So many think these relics carry some form of power. Just a touch of this saint’s silver hand, and one’s pox could be cured. If only I could kiss its golden sleeve, then my gout would be gone. It’s ridiculous.” He stepped closer to them, running his hand across the reliquary’s silver fingertips. “So where are the girl and the Irishmen?”

  “They escaped, my lord,” Gauzlin stuttered. “Dónall mac Taidg summoned a storm of pecking, screaming, shitting birds.”

  Lucien’s heart drummed in his chest. He fixed his eye
s on Adémar, who chuckled and looked wistfully toward the chapel’s ceiling. “They are no threat to our plans,” Adémar said. “And they have no idea how much danger they are in.”

  Gauzlin gave a relieved sigh.

  “But I cannot abide failure!” Adémar went on, his eyes igniting with feral rage. In a flash, his arm whipped forward, thrusting the reliquary of Saint Etienne like a sword, straight through Gauzlin’s gaping mouth. The priest’s jawbone snapped, and the silver fingers of Saint Etienne protruded through the back of his neck. The golden forearm jutted from the priest’s mouth as if he had tried to swallow the reliquary whole.

  Lucien watched in horror as Gauzlin staggered for a moment, scratching at the sliver fingers protruding from his neck, while his face turned a horrid shade of purple. Then he dropped to the stone floor with a loud thud.

  Adémar looked up at the ceiling as if Gauzlin’s lifeless body were not even there. “All of our plans are falling into place, Lucien. Duke William will do as I suggested, especially with that hog of a prior whispering my admonitions into his ear day and night. And then we shall have two armies—and, best of all, a war. Death and carnage. A legion of souls loosed into the ethers.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Lucien replied, trying to calm his jittery nerves.

  “And when it’s all done, who knows?” Adémar asked “Maybe these good Christians will even make me their pope. Imagine what I could do in that seat of power!”

  “The world would be yours.”

  “Indeed,” Adémar said, looking Lucien in the eyes. “But first we must taste victory in this prime conflict.”

  “We have read the stars,” Lucien offered. “It shall happen on the fifth of March, when Mars crosses between Scorpio and Sagittarius.”

  “And on that day,” Adémar said, “victory will be ours.”

  Adémar took his miter from the altar. He looked one last time at Gauzlin’s body, lying on the floor with the reliquary of Saint Etienne protruding from his mouth.

  “Failure is an unforgivable sin,” Adémar said coldly. He nodded at Lucien. “You would be wise to remember that, Prior. I leave the priest, and what remains of this pathetic saint, to you.”

  PART IV

  He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him.

  —Daniel 2:22

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE VOYAGE SOUTH

  The merchant ship’s prow cut through the sea, spraying brine over the hull and up onto the deck. Ciarán leaned against the railing and looked out to the coastline of narrow beaches and rolling hills draped in a collage of dark foliage and wild grass. As they neared the Basque waters north of Spain, he realized this was the last he would see of Aquitaine. But despite the land’s beauty, Ciarán found himself longing for Ireland’s moss-covered cliffs and misty green hills—an emerald land touched by the hand of God.

  Yet Ireland seemed but a dream now. At times since they left Bordeaux, Ciarán had felt like Odysseus, blown farther and farther from home by the whims of the gods. He reminded himself that Odysseus eventually found his way back to Ithaca, but then, Ciarán and Dónall were not even seeking the way home. Their quest had become far more like Jason’s for the Golden Fleece—a mythical treasure guarded by a dragon, no less. Ciarán wondered whether the fleece shared some connection with Enoch’s device, as if Jason and his tale were yet another reflection of the universal myth, stemming from the same Atlantean source.

  Ciarán glanced to the southern horizon, where no ship followed. Ever since Isaac’s family had smuggled Alais and the two Irish monks out of Poitiers in a cart full of merchant’s wares on the morning after Christmas, Ciarán felt certain they had escaped Bishop Adémar and Prior Lucien, but he remained wary of storms. Even the hint of a darkening sky or the distant rumble of thunder caused his nerves to tense, for the demons manifested themselves as storm clouds, and although he had seen no sign of them since the amphitheater in Poitiers, he doubted very much that they had returned to whatever dark hell spawned them.

  Since leaving Poitiers, Ciarán, Dónall, and Alais had traveled under the protection of one of Isaac’s many nephews. Josua was a slender man with a sun-baked complexion and a talent for guile, which had proved useful in evading the guards at the Poitiers gate. Isaac joined them in Bordeaux a week into the New Year—998 by the Christian calendar, although Isaac reminded them it was still the year 4758 by the Jews’ reckoning, and the year 388 to the Moors, to whose lands they were traveling. According to Isaac, Bishop Adémar had left Poitiers, but not before convincing Duke William to ready for war in the spring, against the viscount of Limoges. Why Adémar sought to turn William against the allies of Fulk the Black remained a mystery, but Ciarán felt certain the bishop’s motives were anything but pure.

  In the days that followed, Josua had introduced them to his business partner, Évrard de Barsac, a Christian merchant and captain of the ship that now bore them toward Moorish Spain. Évrard had the round belly of a man who ate well and regularly, and a seafarer’s oily hair, thick with the smell of brine, which hung over his broad forehead above a protuberant nose and jutting jaw. His twelve-man crew seemed wary about Alais, for a woman at sea was held to be bad luck. But Évrard was smitten with the raven-haired noblewoman, and loyal enough to Josua to allow her aboard. While gruff with his crew, Évrard was cheerful toward the Irish monks and eager to hear stories of the Emerald Isle, which to him was little more than a mythical land at the edge of the world.

  At night, the captain revealed his fondness for Spanish wine, and his robust laugh grew heartier with each cup. While Évrard drank his fill, he left the sailing to his curly-haired first mate, Eli, who was Josua’s nineteen-year-old son. Ciarán found Eli to be a studious young man intent on mastering the mariner’s trade, while his father managed the inventory bound for Córdoba and handled the duties of principal negotiator and tradesman. Aboard the ship, Christians and Jews worked in harmony. “One day,” Évrard had said after a mouthful of wine, “the merchants will own Europe. Whether Christian or Jew is the least of it. Money is money, I always say.”

  The merchant ship, which Évrard leased to Josua for a cut of his profits, was a sheer marvel to Ciarán. A potbellied craft built of thick timber, it had a hold for the Jews’ cargo, and a deckhouse protected from the elements. It had a tall mast and broad sail with sturdy rigging, and nary an oar—testament that in other parts of the world there lived shipbuilders with far greater talents than the Irish with their ox-hide curachs.

  At night, the captain offered his deckhouse to Isaac and his new companions. Alais slept beside Ciarán, where he could feel the warmth of her body and breathe in the honey smell of her hair. On their first night at sea, her closeness aroused him, but he calmed the unbidden urges by focusing on the sounds of the sea.

  During the day, Ciarán found reasons to stay near her by having her teach him the Aquitaine tongue, and if Dónall thought they were growing too close, he didn’t say. Instead, he spent much of his time with Isaac, poring over the symbols in Maugis’ book. Isaac firmly believed that the Fae characters contained Hebrew letters as their root, which made Ciarán wonder whether a language as ancient as Hebrew had been derived from a far older tongue, one that dated to the time of creation—or even before, if such a thing were possible.

  At the ship’s rail, Ciarán glanced at Dónall and Isaac, who sat toward the bow with the Book of Maugis open between them. On the open page, Ciarán spied the picture of the wheel cross, with Dónall pointing out the four symbols that reminded Ciarán of the four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann: the sword for air, staff for fire, stone for earth, and cup for water. Beside Dónall, Isaac’s eyes gleamed as if he had discovered a hidden treasure. Dónall gestured passionately, and Ciarán found it remarkable how fondly Dónall had taken to the rabbi. Perhaps it was their common love for knowledge, or maybe their shared proclivity for laughter, for as scholarly as the rabbi could appear at times, he had a ready sense of humor.


  Alais sat aft with Eli, leaning against the deckhouse, where the two had spread out large sheets of parchment. She waved for Ciarán to join them. On the parchment were drawings of lands and seas, similar to the ones Merchant mac Fadden used on their journey to the mainland, but these were far more elaborate in design. “Eli says they show every kingdom in the world,” Alais said, “but I thought you’d like the drawings.” She was right. Illuminations decorated the charts: tentacled sea monsters and serpents with many humps, giant toothy fish and spewing whales, and a compass pointing north, embellished with an elaborately drawn rose. Each sea was marked by a ship with wind-filled sails.

  Ciarán sat down beside them, studying the drawings. “They’re masterful,” he breathed.

  Eli smiled. “We bought them in Córdoba.”

  Alais placed her hand on Ciarán’s arm. “Show me Ireland.”

  He found it for her and then showed her the Isle of Britain, with the Scott lands in the north. Eli pointed out Iceland, near the top of the world, and the lands of the Northmen. The map depicted France across the Celtic Sea, along with Bavaria and Saxony, moving east to the Hungarian lands and the home of the wild Magyar horsemen, and south to the Black Sea and the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. South of Europe was the mysterious African continent, land of the Berbers and Egyptians, and across the narrow strait of the Mediterranean Sea, where stood the Pillars of Hercules, was the Iberian Peninsula, with the city of Córdoba marked by a star in the heart of the Moorish lands.

  Alais traced a slender finger around the outer edge of the ocean. “What’s past here?”

  “The edge of the world,” Eli said. “You’d plunge into the abyss.”

  “Actually,” Ciarán remarked, “Dónall thinks the world is round.”