Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The so-called black coven Colin was after was composed of Satanists, not.witches. He could only hope these Satanists were highly traditional in their practices—if they were, they had very particular requirements for the practice of their Black Art, including that their conventicle be led by a Catholic priest. And Cannon had mentioned a Father Mansell.

  A quick call to the diocesan offices netted him the information that there was a Father Walter Mansell, but that he had been laicized—defrocked, in the old terminology—over ten years before, and thus the diocese no longer kept track of him.

  Colin hesitated for a long moment, then dialed a second number.

  “Can I help you?” The familiar voice was efficient, neutral, and crisp.

  “I’d like to speak to Father Godwin, please,” Colin told the housekeeper.

  “Who is calling, please?” Now the voice was decidedly cooler, betraying an undertone of an accent. English was not Frau Keppler’s first language, and her devotion to Godwin was intense. Few callers got past her dedicated protection of his privacy.

  “his is Colin MacLaren,” Colin said. He switched to an accentless German. “How are you, Inge?”

  “Very well, thank you, Herr Doktor.” Her voice warmed slightly, taking on a note half prim, half playful. “You are playing a very dangerous game these days, nicht wahr?”

  Colin did not waste time wondering how she knew what he’d been up to. Frau Keppler’s intelligence-gathering service was still one of the best he’d ever seen.

  ‘I’m afraid so. Will it be possible to speak to the good father?”

  “He has not been well, lately. But if you must see him, be so good as to come around four. I believe he can give you a few minutes then.”

  TWELVE

  NEW YORK, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1972

  As an unperfect actor on the stage,

  Who with his fear is put beside his part,

  Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

  Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  FATHER ADALHARD GODWIN LIVED IN AN IMPOSING BROWNSTONE in the East Fifties. The building had been the gift of a grateful client, and Father Godwin, who took his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience with absolute seriousness, had donated the property to the Church. In turn he had been granted a lifetime tenancy. Since his retirement fifteen years ago at the age of eighty, he’d lived here, compiling the notes for a book he would never write.

  Colin presented himself on the steps of the brownstone at precisely four o’clock. Frau Keppler inspected him through the peephole for almost a minute before she relented enough to open the door and let him in. She guarded her charge with the maternal ferocity of a lioness, and did not feel that Colin was a good influence on Father Godwin.

  Colin stepped into the hallway and waited as Frau Keppler bolted the door behind him. It slid back into place with the sound of a bank vault closing—the door was sheathed on both sides with thick steel plates against the enemies Godwin had made in the course of a long and turbulent life.

  The young man in the dark suit and clerical collar—as much a fixture of the house in the east fifties as Frau Keppler herself—watched Colin with a fixed, pale-eyed stare until he had satisfied himself, then withdrew through the doorway and closed the door behind him. Colin had made many visits to this house in his life. The identity of the young man in the foyer changed frequently, but Colin had never exchanged a word with any of them. He’d never even heard any of them speak.

  Frau Keppler conducted Colin to the ornate elevator at the far end of the hall and slid its telescoping bronze gates closed. The small cage made its slow progress four floors closer to the angels, stopping at the top floor. Frau Keppler slid the doors open and stepped out.

  “You will not tire him?”

  “I would not have come at all, Inge, if the matter weren’t urgent. You know that.”

  She sighed, giving up. “He is in the solarium,” she said.

  What had once been an open patio on the top floor of the building had since been glassed in with thick, triple-paned windows. Even on this bitter December day, the room was tropically hot, and the pale winter light turned golden as it shone through the shelves and tables covered with plants. Colin could almost feel the pulse of vegetable life here in this place.

  “I take such pleasure in watching the plants grow. There’s such reassurance to be found in nursing them from cutting to bloom, each always the same, according to its nature; each blossom producing more of its own kind …”

  “Hello, Adalhard,” Colin said.

  The old man got slowly to his feet—Colin knew better than to help him—and turned around, wiping his earth-stained hands on his apron. His skin had the porcelain translucency of age, and his thick white hair was still cut in a military brush.

  “Ah. It is bad tidings when you come to see me, my stormcrow. Which of my fallen angels concerns you?”

  “I’m not even sure—” Colin began.

  “Tut.” Father Godwin held up a minatory finger. “Let us not fence, you and I. We both know what you have come for. But I will give you a few moments to gather your resources. Youngsters your age have no stamina,” he added with a twinkle in his eye.

  Father Godwin crossed to the intercom and pressed a button. “Sherry and biscuits in the solarium, if you would, Mrs. Keppler,” he said, and turned back to his guest.

  “It becomes awkward. I hardly know how to address my dear housekeeper these days. Is she a ‘Mrs.’? Or must I stoop to calling her ‘Miz’ as the liberationists would have us do? It is a larger problem than mine, of course, and will not be solved in my lifetime, but once more Holy Mother Church is being asked why it is that women cannot administer the sacraments.” He lowered himself into a chair with a sigh. “And of course we have no good answer for them, since we must all restrict ourselves to the domain of the strictly rational.” Father Godwin snorted derisively. “If we were all rational beings in a materialistic world, what need would men have for the Church, or She for them?” he asked. “Or the Good Lord for any of us?”

  For eighteen years Father Godwin had been an exorcist, one of less than two dozen men worldwide empowered by the pope to perform the Ritual of Exorcism for the Catholic Church. Calls for his services had come from all over the world. If the case satisfied the Vatican’s strict requirements for intervention, Father Godwin had interposed himself between an embattled soul and the blackest forces of Hell itself.

  An exorcism could take months—even years—to complete, and the work destroyed its instruments quickly, taking their health, their strength, and their sanity. At last Father Godwin’s superiors had forbidden him the work, but in his retirement he had found another way to continue the fight.

  “Men always have need of the Light,” Colin said.

  Father Godwin nodded. “Most of all when they least think so. Ah, Mrs. Keppler. Here you are with something to tempt our palates.”

  “The doctor says you should not drink,” Frau Keppler said, whisking a white linen cloth over a table with one hand and then setting the tray carefully upon it. Working methodically, she emptied the tray of a decanter half-filled with ruby liquid, glasses, and a plate of cookies that smelled as if they were still warm from the oven.

  “When the doctor has reached my advanced age,” Father Godwin said with some spirit, “I shall be delighted to entertain his suggestions. Until then, we must presume that what I have eaten for the past ninety-five years will not kill me in the ninety-sixth.”

  Frau Keppler sniffed audibly.

  “Go on, go on,” Father Godwin said, taking a linen napkin from the table and waving it at his housekeeper as if she were a wayward crow. “And tell Donald that he might smile more if he took a glass of wine occasionally.”

  Frau Keppler left.

  “I ought not to tease her—or that terribly serious young man who has come to learn all that I can teach him before he must walk these dark roads alone. I sh
all have to apologize to the Lord when I speak with Him this evening.”

  “I’m sure it’s good for them,” Colin said mildly, pouring two glasses of sherry and handing one to Father Godwin.

  “Ah, yes … certainty. One of the cleverest pathways to damnation,” Godwin said softly. “No man can know with certainty what is best for another, yet God has called us to be the shepherds of His people and to choose their path … .”

  His voice subsided, and he sat silently for some minutes, his sherry untasted. Colin was about to attempt to attract his attention when Father Godwin roused and lifted his glass.

  “One of the penalties of a long life, Colin. So many memories—and so much experience that each choice becomes a dilemma. But you did not come today to hear a lecture upon the horrors of age. You’ve come about a spoiled priest, have you not?”

  Father Godwin still used the older term for a laicized member of the Roman Catholic clergy. Many who left the priesthood left the Church as well, but Father Godwin never gave up hope of returning them to the fold. He had made these men his special vocation in his retirement, watching over them as tenderly as a mother hen over her chicks—though some of those he watched over would have cursed his name had they known of his concern.

  “Yes. A Father Walter Mansell,” Colin said. “I was hoping you could give me some information about him. His name came up in rather … odd circumstances.”

  Father Godwin chuckled dryly. “You should give up trying to spare my feelings, Colin. Walter is a Satan-worshiper. He was excommunicated for it, as well as laicized. Even after Vatican II, the Church retains some standards, though She makes many foolish compromises. I pray for him every night, that poor dear tormented soul.” There was no irony at all in Father Godwin’s words.

  “May he find the Light,” Colin agreed quietly.

  Father Godwin gathered himself together with a sigh. “But you won’t have come to tax me with my failures. I was his counselor before he left the priesthood, did you know? This was some few years after my retirement, but the bishop kindly allows me to keep my hand in. I think His Grace and I both suspected the direction that Walter’s curiosity would take. And so it became necessary to … do what was done.”

  “The Church excommunicated Walter Mansell for heresy?”

  “The Cathar heresy, to be precise; an old and pernicious one, but there’s a dance in the old girl yet, as the actress said to the bishop. You’ll be familiar with it, of course. It holds that Satan is coequal with God, and is the supreme ruler of the Material Realm.” Godwin sighed, as if suddenly weary. “Now, tell me what your interest is in him.”

  “A friend of mine has died,” Colin said. “He mentioned Mansell’s name as if he might be involved with the Black Order my friend was investigating. I don’t know if he is—or even if it’s the same group that I have reason to believe has ended the lives of three people in the last year—but I do know that I want to talk to him.”

  Father Godwin shook his head sadly. “Oh, Walter, I warned you. And instead I seem to have flung you directly into their embrace.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Colin said. Father Godwin glared at him, his normally mild brown eyes suddenly blazing.

  “Indeed I can, young man! It were better that Walter had died than that he should become such a tool of the Enemy. Nights when I cannot sleep, I wonder if I take too much refuge in the law. Knowing what he would become once he’d left us, it might have been better if I had killed him myself.”

  Colin was no Catholic, but in many ways the Light that he served and the Roman Church held similar views. “He can still repent,” Colin argued reflexively. “So long as he lives, there is hope.”

  “Ah, yes. An excellent rebuke, Teacher. Pride and despair together in one beguiling spiritual fault. But there are times when it is so hard to stand by and let Evil be done. It is a cold consolation to know that one is preventing a greater Evil by one’s own inaction.”

  “It is the hardest lesson,” Colin agreed. The two men sat together for a moment in silence.

  “But you will be wanting to talk to Walter,” Father Godwin said staunchly. “He is living in Brooklyn now, I believe. Would you ring for Mrs. Keppler? She will know which of my Liber Negri I need.”

  Mrs. Keppler brought the ledger quickly—and fixed Colin with a meaningful glare. Colin raised a hand in token that he would cut the visit as short as he could. Father Godwin might have the vitality of a man twenty years his junior, but he was still a very old man.

  The Liber Negri were the records Father Godwin kept of his fallen angels, as he called them. The pages were inscribed in an exquisite copperplate Latin, the color of the ink showing that the entries had been made over the course of many years. He turned the pages quickly, obviously certain of what he was looking for.

  “Here we are. Walter Mansell. He lives in Flatbush. If you have a pencil, Colin, I will give you the address.”

  Colin returned home, where half an hour spent with his atlases enabled Colin to pinpoint Mansell’s precise location and give himself some idea of the layout of the streets surrounding the building. He was planning to tweak the tiger’s tail, and there was no room in such a plan for surprises. When he was certain of where he was going, he went around to Cornby’s Garage to pick up his transportation.

  The Black Beast had died two years before, at the end of a long life of faithful service. Colin had hesitated over a new car, but all the new models had looked too low-slung and gleaming for his tastes, and he couldn’t imagine fitting his lanky frame into the front seat of one of those tiny imports.

  He’d compromised—far too close to the side of self-restraint, according to Claire—on an anonymous Ford van, bought secondhand. It was painted gas-chamber green and came pre-dented, but there was enough room in the driver’s seat for Colin’s long legs. A van had a number of other advantages as well, not the least of which was its cargo capacity.

  By six o’clock he was on the FDR Drive, heading south toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Ocean Parkway cut straight through Brooklyn on its flight toward Coney Island. Along both sides of the parkway stood brownstones and the classic C-shaped redbrick Brooklyn apartment houses. Generations of immigrants from every part of Europe had come to Brooklyn, leaving their legacy in nicknames that ranged from Little Sicily to Little Odessa. Once Brooklyn had been a thousand segregated neighborhoods, from Park Slope to Borough Park and beyond.

  Flatbush was an area of comfortable middle-class homes and apartments. Though once entirely Jewish, its population was changing as the old neighborhoods evolved with the influx of new tenants. Today it was no longer so easy to make an assumption about a person’s religion by knowing their address.

  Case in point.

  Colin parked at the end of Mansell’s street. There was a synagogue at one end and a yeshiva at the other, but they were both dark at this time of night, and on a Wednesday evening traffic was not particularly heavy. Colin eased the green van into the last available space on the street—someone must have just pulled out, because he could see the dark bulk of a double-parked car halfway up the street: a big black sedan.

  Colin did not think he would have to lie to Mansell—the unvarnished truth should be a shocking enough impact to gain him the man’s cooperation, or at least the information he sought.

  He climbed out of the van and locked the door, handling the key carefully with his gloved hands. It was a brilliantly clear night, and the air was already startlingly cold; his breath made dense clouds on the evening air. Colin glanced around warily, but the street was empty, and he walked up the sidewalk toward Mansell’s apartment, going over in his mind what he would say to the man.

  If Mansell was indeed a member of the same black coven that had murdered Sandra Jacquet, the lead detective on the case would be able to call him in for questioning. And if Colin’s past experience was any judge, this would draw the whole coven out into the open, allowing Colin to neutralize them before they could do any further harm.<
br />
  It would still, however, leave the problem of Toller Hasloch … .

  Colin stopped as the door to the apartment building opened. The double-parked sedan—a Mercedes—stood at the curb. It made Colin automatically think of a doctor seeing a patient, although most doctors had stopped making house calls years before.

  Most New York apartments were constructed with an “airlock” as part of the lobby: two doors, an inner and an outer, that provided both security and insulation. The space considerations that controlled every facet of city life frequently reduced the space between those doors to awkward dimensions, necessitating callers’ backing out through the outer door.

  The man on the steps faced precisely this problem. At first all Colin could see was the light of the streetlamp falling on his black cashmere topcoat and a sleek helmet of flaxen-fair hair. Then he turned, starting down the three steps to the double-parked Mercedes.

  The shock of recognition was like a shout in a silent world. But—somehow—it was not as startling as it should have been. It was as if Colin were an actor following a script he had read long ago, and on some level he already knew what was to come and who he was to meet here.

  Indeed, in some sense he had been born, he had come here, only to meet this man.

  The fair man stopped in the act of crossing the sidewalk to his waiting vehicle, and turned back toward Colin. Colin could not see his eyes, but he knew what color they would be: a grey so pale it was almost colorless, as cold and hungry as the winter sea.