Lucifer's Crown

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  He sat down, bit into the sandwich, and chewed. His jaw felt heavy.

  London pushed a steaming cup toward him. “Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all,” Mick returned thickly.

  “I believe I’m a friend of your family. That is, I am if the most recent Malise Dewar of Glendochart was your—great-grandfather, I suppose?”

  “That was my great-grandad’s name right enough. And his grandad’s. But my dad’s the family genealogist.”

  “There’s no news of him, I take it?”

  “No.” Mick forced the wad of beef, bread, and mustard down his throat and gulped tea, burning his tongue.

  A woman stepped through the doorway. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt depicting a cartoon armadillo, tire tracks a grid across its body. Her auburn hair swept back from a high, clear forehead. She frowned at London, not in anger, Mick thought, but in puzzlement. Her dark eyes suggested that she was frequently puzzled, and the tilt of her chin that she made a habit of asking questions.

  “Maggie,” London said, “this is Mick Dewar, Calum’s son. Mick, Maggie Sinclair. She’s here with a group of students.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said, and for a moment Mick thought she was apologizing for being there. “I saw your father and Vivian Morgan Sunday afternoon. My student, Rose, found Vivian’s body Monday morning.”

  “Rose? I met her on the staircase. Thought I was hallucinating.”

  With a short laugh, Maggie pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Gupta asked me if I knew Vivian Morgan, But I dinna ken her from Adam. From Eve.” Mick forced down another bite of sandwich.

  “Your father’s an amateur historian?” London prodded.

  “Aye, like old Malise, right keen on history and tradition.”

  “Could you tell me what he said when he rang you?”

  Mick had repeated the words so many times they played counterpoint to “First Rites” in his gut: From the world, the flesh, and the hounds of hell … “He was havering about not believing something and then finding it was true. He said the hounds of hell were after him, and they’d be after me if he told me. Then he was going on about a relic.”

  “A relic?” Distant lightning flickered in London’s eyes.

  “He didna give it a name. It was the Bruce’s, he said, at Arbroath Abbey. His friend Sinclair’s father came to his—dad’s—father and they shifted it.”

  “Sinclair,” repeated Maggie, with another pucker at London.

  He said, “King Robert the Bruce. And Alexander Sinclair of Stow, near Melrose, am I right?”

  “Oh aye, same name for father and son both.”

  “Was the son killed in an automobile accident fifteen years ago?”

  “Aye. He’s gone, and his dad, and my grandad and his dad—they’re all gone.” Mick’s breath caught in his throat. He washed it down with tea. “Dad said that it’s our duty to protect it—the relic, I reckon. From, he said—if I understood the Gaelic—Am Fear Dubh. ‘Dubh’ is ‘black,’ but—ah, he was off his head, going on about time coming to an end.”

  “Not a bit of it.” London’s eyes were growing brighter, shot with light. “Calum was, to use the old Scots word, fey. Facing his doom or his destiny. He’d just seen the old family stories in a new light. As for Am Fear Dubh, it means ‘the Black Man.’ The Devil.”

  That’s daft, Mick thought But still a chill oozed down his back.

  “Did your father tell you where they hid this relic?”

  “Not so’s you’d understand. Take the A68 and the A7, he said, to Fairtichill and Schiehallion, the fairy mountain—‘sidhe’ means ‘fairy’ in the Gaelic, so that’s sensible, at least. But he said ‘the mountain with the triple peak,’ which is dead wrong. And both the A7 and the A68 run south from Edinburgh, not northwest. There’s no Fairtichill at all. He started singing, ‘you take the high road and I’ll take the low road, past Ercildoune and into the gates of hell.’ Then the line went dead.”

  “The A7 and the A68,” repeated London. “Ercildoune.”

  “He was confusing some of old Malise’s tales, I’m thinking.” Light footsteps came down the staircase. Rose, a vision in denim, walked past the doorway. She sent Mick another smile. His rigid lips softened in a reply. Then she was gone, her steps absorbed by the distant beat of the music. Or else by the beat of his own heart … Now wasn’t the time to be eyeing the lasses. “My dad’s in trouble.”

  “I’m afraid he is,” said London. “And so are you.”

  “Why? He didna tell me anything.” Mick shoved his empty plate away.

  “Oh yes he did. Several things, amongst them that your grandfather and Alex’s father relocated a relic that was associated with Arbroath Abbey. He also mentioned ‘Fairtichill,’ the old Gaelic name of the village of Fortingall, which lies at the mouth of Glenlyon as Schiehallion lies along its course.”

  “Fortingall, is it? Dad and I always stopped there on our way to see his folk in Killin. We’d view the old yew tree in the churchyard and have a piece at the hotel.”

  “That’s supposed to be the birthplace of Pontius Pilate,” said Maggie. “Wrong time period, but a good story.”

  London nodded. “Robert Campbell, who directed the massacre at Glencoe, was indubitably born in the area. The story is a morality play, I should think, of the hazards of simply following orders.”

  “From fairies to Pilate,” Mick said, “there’s a leap for you.”

  “It’s not so vast a leap as all that. A little alchemy at work, you might say.” London’s smile almost reached his ash-brown eyes. “Do you know the etymology of your own name?”

  “A Gaelic word meaning ‘guardian’ or ‘keeper,’ my dad says.”

  “Yes. Like ‘Baker’ or ‘Fisher,’ deoradh is an occupation used as a surname. You may have heard of the relics of St. Fillan of Glendochart. The caretakers were named Dewar.”

  “And Killin’s at the head of Glendochart, aye, but how, but why…” Mick’s brain ached. London’s words ebbed and flowed like the tide. “My dad and I’ve been on our own for three years now, since my mum died, you’d think I could help him when he was wanting help.”

  “You may yet be able to help him, Mick. So might we all.”

  “We?” asked Maggie.

  “Sinclair,” said London. “The etymology is French, ‘Saint Clair,’ holy light. The St. Clairs have long been knights in service of holy relics in France and in Scotland both. There’s no such thing as coincidence, Maggie.”

  Her brows arched. So did Mick’s. “My dad said that.”

  “Did he now? He’d realized, I expect, that he—and you—are chapters in a long and very old story. Just yesterday my friend Ivan O’Connell told me that the relic he’s been guarding has gone missing. I should think that relic you guard is threatened as well.”

  “We’re no guardians of anything.”

  “Your family has reduced your knowledge to rumor and quaint custom is all. And your alliance with the Sinclairs has confused the issue. Do you by any chance have a sgian dubh? One with a black stone chipping in the hilt?”

  “Oh aye, that I do. It’s upstairs.”

  “Yes!” London smiled again, this time a fierce, bright smile that swept from his mouth to his eyes and flashed like a brandished blade.

  Mick stared. “The knife’s the relic, is it?”

  “It’s a memento of the relic. I should keep a keen eye on it, Mick. Keep it with you.”

  “Let me guess,” said Maggie. “This has something to do with the sheath for a little knife that Gupta found in Vivian Morgan’s things.”

  “He showed it me. It might could be one of the souvenirs we sell in the mill slop. Shop.” He burped mustard. “I’ve never heard tell of this Morgan woman. And there’s another one—Dad’s been making checks over to an Ellen Sparrow.”

  “Has he now?” London laid his hands on the table, as though contemplating a chess game. He had the long fingers of an artist on the strong hands of a wa
rrior. “I feel certain your relic has something to do with Vivian’s death, which in turn is part of a larger pattern.”

  “How?” Maggie persisted. “I know people all over the world worship relics…”

  “We Catholics do not worship relics. We revere the saint they represent. A relic is a bridge between the seen and the unseen, between the flesh and the spirit. A metaphor made tangible.”

  “Eh?” said Mick.

  “Our reverence for relics connects our faith to the much older beliefs from which it sprang, beliefs that revered the natural world.”

  “Eh?” Mick said again.

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” said Maggie.

  “Suffice it to say that relics—and three relics in particular—give us the chance, allow us to choose, to bring good into this world. But there are those who prefer to bring evil.” London set his hand on Mick’s forearm. “Lift up your heart, Mick. You were brought here for a purpose. We were all brought here for a purpose. We’re off to Salisbury tomorrow, and you’re booked to ride along. I suggest you have a rest.”

  “Oh aye, Dad was on a tour from Salisbury, but…” At his feet sat the cat, his paws tucked beneath his breast, his golden eyes half closed, radiating sleep. Mick’s eyelids felt like sandbags. He was tempted to ask London, who are you, but he suspected he’d get no better answer. Yawning, he pulled himself to his feet and turned toward the door. “Good night, Mr. London. Ms. Sinclair.”

  “Peace be with you,” London said quietly.

  The stairs seemed the height of Ben Nevis. Mick stopped halfway to catch his breath. From down the corridor soared a glorious soprano voice, “…the word made flesh, in the world made true…” Rose. If he and his mates had a singer like her their band would be as brilliant as Nevermas … The band didn’t matter now.

  Maggie’s voice said, “What’s that supposed to mean? We were brought here for a purpose?”

  “You want answers, do you?”

  Yes, I do, thought Mick.

  “Yes, I do,” Maggie replied. “You got any?”

  “A few. And it’s time I acted upon them. Come with me tomorrow to Old Sarum, a place of many meetings and many partings, and I’ll share my answers with you.”

  The house creaked. Maggie said, “Yeah. Sure. Why not? Which is one question I’ll answer myself, thank you.” A chair scraped. Footsteps paced toward the back of the house.

  Mick had no answers at all. He stumbled into his room, collapsed onto the bed, and landed hard in a pool of nightmare.

  Chapter Ten

  Maggie stood in the garden, trying to corral her wits. The morning sky shone a flawless blue, washed clean. Sunlight played across the gallery windows with their tiny panes of glass like fingers playing across a harp.

  The gentle flute and harp music she’d heard after the All Souls’ bell was echoed, oddly enough, by the lilt of “First Rites,” the song the kids played over and over again last night. The insistent beat of electric guitars, drums, and bagpipes was not soothing, though, but energizing, throbbing in her gut like a second heart. No wonder the Scots marched into battle behind a piper, Maggie thought.

  The eyes of the statue of Mary Magdalene, the penitent, were filled with both regret and hope. One hand rejected the past, the other reached toward the future. Was the work sensitive or manipulative? Which was Thomas? What did he want from her? We were brought here for a purpose, he’d said, which meant his motive was between pretentious and profound. Something Miltonian, along the lines of justifying God to man? As much as Maggie wanted to respond, yeah, right, that old pebble in her mind and that new pulse in her gut whispered, if only.

  Outside the garden gate, she found Mick just closing his cell phone. He was clean-shaven and neatly ponytailed, but his eyes were haunted and hunted both. “Still no news?” she asked.

  “Not one bloody word.” Mick tucked his phone into his jacket. “London’s a wee bit daft, is he?”

  “He’s either crazy or he’s saner than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Oh aye, Inspector Gupta said something like that.”

  Maggie wondered about Gupta, too, but held her tongue. Together she and Mick walked to the car park, where Rose and Sean waited beside the mini-van. Anna had already claimed a middle seat. Thomas stood with his hands in the pockets of a heavy tweed coat, exuding a warm scent of wool and soap.

  His smile was affable, even though something in his eyes reminded Maggie of dark clouds massed on the horizon. “Good morning. I’ll sit beside you, shall I, so I can offer the appropriate remark every so often?”

  “Please,” Maggie said with a wave of her hand. In some people Thomas’s old-fashioned speech would be ludicrous, but it fit him, every inch—and he had a good many inches—the scholar.

  “Did you sleep well?” Thomas asked Mick.

  “I kept dreaming my dad was standing over me, all pale and woeful.”

  Maybe he was, Maggie thought with a shudder.

  Rose touched Mick’s sleeve. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and ten years slipped off his face.

  Disgruntled, Sean clambered into the back seat. Maggie rolled her eyes. With his sense of entitlement and his truculent need to prove something—anything—Sean reminded her of her former husband, Danny. Whatever Thomas needed to prove was nothing so straightforward as his manhood.

  Rose settled on the far side of the same seat, leaving the center vacant. Mick sat down next to Anna. Maggie settled herself behind the wheel. “Seat belts on? Good. Off we go.”

  By the time they reached the main road she was ordering herself to relax. She’d driven on the left before, and chauffeured people talking about less interesting topics than Alfred the Great and Arthur—who, Thomas said, fought against the Angles but became the hero of English—the red dragon of Wales, the cross of Christ, the cauldron of the Great Goddess—the earth principle, said Thomas, and the male and the female. Not only his patrician accent but Mick’s Scottish lilt made the American voices sound flat as the whine of a power saw.

  The names on the road signs—“Charlton Mackrell,” “Compton Pauncefoot”—elicited outrageous puns even from Anna. The world, the flesh, and the Devil swelled inside Maggie’s stomach until she felt ready to explode. The original prayer, she thought, went, “From the deceits of the world…” That was the issue, wasn’t it? Deceit and trust. And yet the world was not deceitful. People were.

  Soon they were driving through the narrow streets of Salisbury, making circles around the silvery spire of the cathedral. At last Maggie found a car park and turned everyone loose. Rose, Sean, and Mick moved off in a clump. “Maybe Sean’s accepted him,” said Anna. “Nothing like comparing stories of pub-crawling and bar-hopping to forge a brotherhood.”

  Thomas ushered the group through an ancient archway and into the vast enclosure of the Cathedral Close. Sean aimed his camcorder toward the spire. “Church towers and spires are today’s standing stones,” Maggie lectured. “Both cosmic pillars and phallic symbols.”

  “Raised not only to the greater glory of God but to the arrogance of man,” murmured Thomas.

  “You know you’ve created God in your own image, when you think your enemies are His enemies,” Maggie returned.

  “Quite.” Thomas’s eyes glinted with something more than sunlight.

  Fey, she thought. Maybe that described her mood, too, goaded by fate into—into what? Demanding answers?

  They entered the cathedral through the north porch, passing a bulletin board lined with notices. Inside, ash-gray Gothic arches sprang one upon the other higher and higher, until the vault of the nave ceiling was the vault of heaven itself. Shape and shadow met in an austere harmony, plainchant in stone. The air was cool and damp, scented with mildew, flowers, and candle wax. The throb in Maggie’s stomach beat like a drum, dust in your hands, wet by blood, knotwork in flesh willing when the spirit is weak…

  Delivering commentary, Thomas led them past another chapel of St. Thomas Becket to the fa
r end of the building. “Here we have the Prisoners of Conscience window, created only twenty years ago.”

  Beyond a grove of slender marble pillars glowed a stained glass window, multiple faces and forms on a blue background. The Virgin’s tranquil blue, Maggie noted, not Mary Magdalene’s red, despite—or because of—the blood shed by centuries of martyrs. “Martyr” meant “witness,” after all—a conscious witness, not an innocent bystander. Wet with blood, feet of clay…

  Mick, Rose, and Sean threaded the blue-gray pillars to the far side of the chapel. Behind her, Maggie heard Anna’s hushed voice, each word carefully measured. “The faces in the window look like the faces on the train platform as the soldiers loaded the boxcars going to Auschwitz. Most of my family died at Auschwitz.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that.” Thomas said.

  “The one redeeming feature of the Holocaust was that so many people risked their lives to save others. You remind me of one of them, a Catholic priest who carried many Jewish children to safety. I was one of those children. I’ve often wondered what happened to that man, whether he paid for his faith with his life.”

  “I should imagine,” Thomas said, his quiet voice resonating among the pillars, “he lived on to continue his search for redemption.”

  Maggie glanced around to see Anna cast one last look at Thomas, part baffled, part calculating, and then walk quickly after the others. What was that all about? Redemption? Was that something you found, like buried treasure? Was it something you earned by building a cathedral? By risking your life for another? Simply by believing? You didn’t find it by persecuting other people, Maggie knew that much.

  The students, Mick, and Thomas were moving down the far aisle. She hurried after them. At the crossing of the nave and the transepts Thomas told them to sight upward along a column. It was perceptibly bent, the stone sagging beneath the weight of the great spire. In the south transept he announced, “The chapels of St. Margaret of Scotland, who reconciled the Celtic and Roman churches. St. Lawrence, a Grail-saint. St. Michael, dragon-slayer and weigher of souls, who was an angel long before the life of Our Lord. And,” Thomas added, “here’s Mrs. Howard, the librarian. Edith!”