Lucifer's Crown

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  They will never again be the children they once were, Thomas thought, just as tempered steel blades could never again be chunks of iron.

  Maggie got to her feet. “Good going. You’re up to three allies. Ready to take on the armies of darkness?”

  “We have many more allies than that, even if they don’t all know it.” Setting his hand on her warm back, Thomas guided her through the doorway.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Mick’s Fiesta was still following the mini-van. Although he and Rose weren’t sitting close together they weren’t on opposite sides of the car, either. But as much as Maggie wanted to put the bloom back in Rose’s cheeks, she couldn’t. Rose’s relationship with Mick was her own.

  With a long exhalation, Maggie looked over at Thomas’s austere profile. “You pulled your punches a bit with the kids, didn’t you?”

  “By not naming the Grail? Yes. But only a bit. They will be hearing that word quite soon enough, I think, and feel the weight of it.”

  Okay, Maggie thought, but she let that go. Along with the two hundred other issues she was trying to let go.

  There were the Eildons, bumps on the Scottish horizon rapidly becoming three high hills. A sign indicated the miles to Earlston, AKA Ercildoune, home of Thomas the Rhymer—who, among other things, had disposed of an evil nobleman named de Soulis.

  Thomas London, Thomas Maudit, slowed and turned off the slush-gray A68 onto a smaller road signposted, “Melrose.” The Fiesta followed, and followed again onto a narrow lane, tires crunching through a pristine blanket of snow. When a fence blocked the lane, Thomas stopped the mini-van and Mick pulled in behind.

  The slams of four car doors were swallowed by an uncanny silence. Even the wind was still, as though the hills were holding their breath. Beyond a stitchery of fences Maggie could see the rooftops of Melrose smeared by smoke. The elegant limbs of several Scots pines wrote Gaelic haiku on the sky. A bird floated high above.

  “Hill North,” Thomas said, his gloved hand gesturing toward the steep hillside above them. “Topped by an Iron Age fort and a Roman signal post. Their camp at Trimontium lay beside Melrose.”

  “Trimontium,” translated Rose. “Three peaks.”

  “My dad,” Mick said, “was going on about a mountain with three peaks off the A68.”

  Thomas knocked the snow from the steps of a stile topping the fence. “I believe in his distress Calum combined two different sites with similar legends—the Eildons and Schiehallion—perhaps because the Sinclairs’ home is at Stow, a few miles beyond Melrose. Our Lady’s shrine there once had its own holy stone, but it was broken up to pave a road. Over we go.”

  Maggie scrambled over the stile after Mick, muttering “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” Louder, she said, “Arthur is buried at Glastonbury, in Avalon. He and his knights are also sleeping here, waiting to called.”

  “Evidence exists that a historical Arthur lived in southwestern England, in Brittany, in Wales, and here in the Scottish Borders.” Thomas offered Rose his hand. “In his story myth and history intersect.”

  “Which is why we’re here,” concluded Rose, leaping lightly onto the snow.

  Maggie squinted up the hillside, a patchwork of white snow, pinkish-gray rock, and brown heather, and saw something move. A white horse. She looked sharply around at Thomas. So did Rose and Mick. He smiled. “Your mother, Mick, was not far wrong when she told you that you heard fairy music here.”

  “This is where Thomas the Rhymer met the Queen of Elfland,” said Mick, “a lady fair riding a milk-white steed.”

  Rose said, “You’re Thomas the Rhymer? True Thomas? The tongue that cannot lie?”

  “Not a bit of it, no,” Thomas said quickly. “Thomas Learmonth lived in the thirteenth century, whilst I was fighting in Palestine and the Pyrenees. But I heard of him and of this place. For many reasons I had grown curious about the Celtic view of creation, nature as evidence of God’s grace. Therefore, when I found myself in Scotland in 1314, I came here.”

  “This isn’t the Celtic area of Scotland,” Maggie pointed out.

  “And yet I met the Lady here,” he returned, “because it was here that I at last searched for her.”

  “The Lady?” Rose repeated, just as Maggie asked, “The Faerie Queen?”

  “Yes.” Thomas took off along a path that ran up the southern flank of the hill, toward the horse. Sharing a dubious look, Mick and Rose scurried to catch up. Maggie labored behind wearing her own expression, skepticism ebbing into resignation.

  A brownish-white rabbit hopped across an open space like a bouncing snowball. Maggie expected it to pull out a pocket watch and mutter about being late … With a hiss like the fall of a blade, a brown blur shot right past her face. She jerked back and bounced off Thomas’s chest.

  The bird of prey seized the rabbit and in a mighty beat of wings carried it away, leaving behind only a pitiful squeal and a patch of churned snow sprinkled by blood.

  “Whoa,” said Rose, releasing Mick’s arm. “What was that? A warning? Big brother is watching?”

  “Bugger,” Mick said with a groan. “If you knew Dad was talking about the Eildons, then Robin did do as well. Because I told him.”

  Thomas laid a soothing hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps it was only a bird securing his lunch. Perhaps it was Robin, intending to intimidate us. But this place is a geassa or locus terribilis, hallowed by the steps of the Lady, and as long as the relics are safe, evil cannot enter here. Come along.”

  The horse was waiting in a hollow on the hillside. It gazed at them with dark blue eyes, its mane and tail pennons of silver silk. Thomas let it nuzzle his hand and then stroked its neck.

  Chin up, mouth firm, Mick surveyed the land, his land, spread out below the hill. The snowy landscape glistened beneath a blue sky. White and blue. The Scottish flag was a white St. Andrews cross on a blue field. The symbol had appeared to some early king in a vision, Maggie remembered. If Thomas force-marched her up one more hill, she’d start having visions all right. Maybe that’s why so many holy places were high places.

  Thomas wasn’t even breathing hard. Behind his glasses his eyes gleamed. “This world is described by scientists and ensouled by poets and priests, who recognize that in some places it meets the Otherworld—islands, hills, wells.” He pointed toward a hollow in the snow, in the shadow of a thorny bush.

  It was the mouth of a well, the snow mounded on its stone rim and clinging to the grillwork blocking its mouth. Maggie was tempted to lean over and yell, “Anybody home?”

  She didn’t have to. “We come into her presence with a psalm,” Thomas said. Backing away from the horse, he began to chant, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”

  The faint tang of peat smoke in the air became the scent of—frankincense and myrrh? The hair rose on the back of Maggie’s neck. But the psalms are Hebrew, some part of her mind thought. And another part answered, only one of the Lady’s titles is Queen of Faerie.

  Thomas’s textured voice sent the incantation into a hush so deep surely the people in Melrose must be able to hear. “The Lord shall preserve thee from evil, he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in.”

  A ripple of harp strings didn’t so much break the hush as fill it. Suddenly the horse was draped with dozens of tiny silver bells that sent a trill down the hillside. Rose gasped. Mick swore beneath his breath.

  “For the Lord is a great God. In his hands are the deep places of the earth, the strength of the hills is his also.”

  The sunlight sparked, smeared, and ran. Maggie smelled damp earth, flowers, herbs and spices. Dizzy, she shut her eyes. The ground beneath her feet fell away. A strong hand seized hers and held it. No, she wasn’t falling. She was standing on a cool, dry surface.

  “The Lord be with you,” Thomas said.

  A low, vibrant woman’s voice answered, “And also with you.”

  Maggie peered out through her lashes. The
sun shone. Banks of spring, summer, and fall flowers all bloomed at once. Vegetables lay ripe and full among green leaves. Apple and pear trees groaned with both blossoms and fruit. A stream ran between glistening rocks, beneath a rainbow, harp and bells echoing in its voice. Birds sang and insects hummed. This was the melody she’d heard twice before.

  She was clutching Thomas’s hand. She dropped it. On her other side Mick and Rose stood close together, each face turned up in awe and bewilderment.

  The horse still stood before them. On its back sat a woman. Her form was soft-edged, made of light rather than illuminated by it. Red hair spilled down her back and across a green cloak embroidered with gold Celtic interlace. Hair and cloak alike lifted and fell gently in the scented air.

  “Salve Regina,” Thomas, his voice trembling. “Gloria in excelsis Dea.”

  Regina. Dea.. Latin for Queen and for goddess. Maggie glanced at him.

  His face was that of a youth, taut and untried—no, it was his usual face, world-worn and world-weary. But his eyes shone. “Diana, Venus, Minerva. Artemis, Aphrodite, Athena. Hecate, Leto, Kybele. Gaia, Demeter, Hera.”

  The Lady’s face, as much as Maggie could see of her face, changed and changed again, from young girl to mature woman to ancient crone. Her hair faded to white, darkened to black, brightened to flaxen yellow.

  “Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah. Tiamat, Inanna. Hathor, Maat, Isis. Lakshmi, Kali, Parvati. Shakti. Shekhinah. Sophia.”

  She was thin, she was buxom. She was tall and then small. Her features coarsened and refined in turn. Through it all she smiled, serenely, knowingly, sternly.

  “Freya, Iduna. Macha, Epona, Danu. Cerridwen, Rhiannon, Maeve. Morrigan. Brighid.”

  Her pale skin became olive, then a rich mahogany brown. Her eyes went from green to blue to brown to bottomless black. Then she was white again, red-haired and green-eyed, in what Maggie assumed was her Celtic avatar.

  “Lilith.”

  Much-maligned Lilith, the first woman, whose sin was in refusing to bow down to Adam, in choosing instead to be his equal.

  Thomas’s voice faded and died. The Lady gestured, her hands spreading stardust. Maggie wanted, insanely, to add, “Tinkerbelle.” But Barrie’s sprite was no doubt yet another version of the Lady, if degenerated from her true beauty and majesty … Insanity and mysticism had a lot in common.

  The Lady spoke, and the music was in her voice. “You are presumptuous, Thomas, not only to bring these mortals, your friends, into my presence, but to include them in your task.”

  “Presumptuous, yes. But when does the humility I seek become the cowardice I once displayed? No man can stand alone, least of all I. I need these friends, as they need to see you now, because I am asking them to do more, to risk more, than other mortals.”

  “And have they chosen freely to come here? Have they chosen freely to commit themselves to your task?”

  Thomas looked at the others. His eyes didn’t plead, they didn’t command, they asked. Have you?

  The Lady turned to Mick. For just a moment her face solidified into features that resembled his—something in the shape of the chin, the angle of the cheekbones, the coloring. Mick’s mouth fell open. His mother, Maggie thought. The Lady had taken the image of his mother.

  “She is with me always, Michael. As is your father, resting in my eternal embrace.”

  Mick’s voice caught and burred. “I dinna suppose you slipped some sort of drug into our coffee, Thomas?”

  “We’re all seeing the same thing,” Rose told him in an urgent whisper.

  “Believe in me as you will,” said the Lady. “I am inside your belief, I am beyond it, I am above it. I am within you and without you, whether you believe in me or not.”

  Mick stared at her, fists clenched at his sides. Then, slowly, his hands opened and raised, so that he offered her his defenseless palms. “Oh aye,” he whispered. “Aye.”

  The Lady’s smile turned to Rose’s thoroughly disconcerted face.

  The Lady’s cloak became a brilliant blue. “I heard you calling me.”

  “As Bridget?” asked Rose. “Because Mary was a human being…”

  “Through Mary I hear your prayers. Through Mary I intercede in the world.” The horse disappeared. The Lady stood before them, her belly swelling beneath the cloak. Then she held an infant in her arms. She lifted him upward and opened her hands, and he vanished into a glory of light. “The Lord is with me. The Lord is in me. The Lord is of me. And of Mary.”

  Rose frowned slightly, then her expression eased. “Yes.”

  It was at Beckery, thought Maggie, that Arthur had a vision of Mary celebrating the Eucharist with the body of her son. And yet Mary was human, the ultimate saint. She shut her eyes, dizzy again. Seeing visions was hard work.

  When Maggie opened them the Lady was looking at her. Her cloak flushed red. “I have worked through Mary of Bethany. Mary of Egypt. Mary Magdalene, the beloved of Christ, the sinner redeemed. For man does not live by bread alone but by the word of God, and by my blood and that of Mary’s son.”

  The words fell past Maggie’s mind into a deeper part of her being. That frantic little pulse that beat in her viscera slowed and evened into the cadence of waves upon a shore: In the name of the Mother, the daughter, and the holy spirit … Beyond the Word, beyond the Blood, lay silence. Be still, went the psalm, and know that I am God. Maggie opened her mouth, but found only one word inside it. “Yes.”

  The clear morning light became the gilded glow of evening. The fruit trees thinned, and beyond them rose the great trees of the wild wood, the eyes of birds and animals peering unblinking from their shadow. The Lady was sitting on a seat of living roots, branches, and tendrils. A crown of roses rested on her head. Her voice was wind and water, leaping like flame and steady as the earth itself. “Thomas.”

  “Many years ago,” he said, “I sat with my head against your knee, and you opened my eyes. You told me that my task is to guard the Cup, and to assist the guarding of the Book and the Stone, and to attend the other relics in my prayers. But Robin has stolen the Book. He threatens the Stone.”

  “Robin profanes my green cloak. He leads my people to deny my presence and that of my saints.” A long green serpent coiled at the Lady’s right hand, head swaying, scales glinting like jewels. It grew clawed feet and wings the colors of a peacock’s tail. As a dragon it flew away into the forest and vanished with a rustle of leaves.

  The leaves became red, orange, yellow in the honeyed light of sunset. Clouds thickened, darkness rolled down the sky, and a flicker of lightning illuminated the Lady’s demanding face. At her feet, the stream turned to blood.

  Snow fell across Maggie’s upturned face, the flakes so cold they burned. Beside her Mick and Rose stood like statues.

  “Lucifer went to mankind after his fall,” said the Lady, “and by mankind was made strong again. You have called Robin from the darkness. Only you can defeat him.” The clouds parted. Stars shone out, jewels spread across the indigo of heaven. “But I shall strengthen you in your battle, as I have done since long before Arthur rode to Mount Badon with Mary’s image upon his shield.”

  “Should I offer battle?” Thomas asked. “How do I know whether I choose Badon or Camlann?”

  “You must offer battle at the cusp of time, not with your sword but with the Grail. For at your Badon, those who believe in peace may choose a peace lasting not for a generation but for a millennium.”

  A radiant full moon rose from behind a distant mountain. In its light Maggie saw Thomas’s face, stark white and stern.

  “Mankind stands now at the Apocalypse, the time of revelation. If you raise the Grail, one in three, three in one, at the beginning of the new millennium, it will draw the veil aside. Only then may I lift my lamp beside your path into the future. Only then can your wounds be healed.”

  Thomas’s eyes filled with radiance and terror both. “I am not worthy to reveal the three relics.”

  “When does your humility become cowardice,
Thomas? When does it reveal your lingering pridefulness? The Grail is a moment of eternity become time. You alone amongst men are a moment of time become eternal. If you don’t reveal the Grail, then who will?”

  “But if I remove the relics from their hiding places,” Thomas protested, “Robin might take them for himself and destroy them. Then your portal will be closed, and men will no longer know that light is theirs to choose.”

  “You will guard the relics, Thomas, you and your friends. Through you the proud will be scattered and the greedy put down from their seat.”

  Thomas blinked. His lips tightened and then parted. And he said, on a long sigh, “Thy will be done.”

  Maggie laid her hand on his arm. His body vibrated like a plucked harp string. But when the night paled and flushed in a delicate pink sunrise, she saw that his face was as tranquil as an effigy on a tomb.

  Thomas went on, his voice steady, “My help cometh from the Lady who made heaven and earth. In her hands are the deep places of the earth, the strength of the hills is hers also.”

  The Lady smiled, slowly and sensuously, as Mary might have smiled to hear the archangel Gabriel’s sweet somethings in her ear. Sunlight washed over the garden and flowers bloomed. She raised her hand. “I bless and keep you. The light of my face shines upon you and brings you peace.”

  Maggie felt her consciousness being pulled out through her toes. She winced. Sunlight streamed from a blue sky. Snowy fields glistened. She was clutching Thomas’s arm in both hands. Mick and Rose looked around, stunned. A cold wind bent the pines into genuflections.

  For a long time no one moved, no one spoke. Beneath Maggie’s hands Thomas’s arm stopped trembling. When she at last let him go and looked at his face, he was either grimacing or grinning. Shaken, probably, and stirred as well, after his little magical mystery tour through time and space.

  “The Grail?” asked Rose in a very small voice.

  “Yes,” Thomas answered.

  “Some saint you are,” said Mick, “worshiping the mother goddess.”