Lucifer's Crown

by Lillian Stewart Carl

He was pouring the water into the teapot when Jivan arrived. The rich mahogany of his cheeks seemed to be dusted with ash and the jet gleam of his eyes was dulled by fatigue. A rich, delectable odor hung over him. The detective smiled at Rose’s furtive sniff. “It’s the first day of Divali. Since I can’t bathe in the Ganges, I purify myself with sesame oil.”

  Thomas steepled his hands in front of his chest and bowed. “‘Wipe away my ignorance, O Lord, and let my soul shine like a lamp.’ Is that correct?”

  “Word perfect, as always.” Jivan returned the bow.

  “Is this the festival with the lamps on the window sills?” asked Maggie.

  “Yes, the lamps welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance.” Jivan sat down in the desk chair.

  Opening the door to Anna’s knock, Thomas offered her the large chair before the hearth. “Are you sure you want Ellen to participate?” she asked.

  “We mustn’t write her off—it would be arrogant to assume we can see all ends. Talking to her about the rally is a good place to start.”

  Rose waved her hand as though asking permission to speak. “Sean’s coming but Ellen flat refused. She says you’re ‘a crashing bore.’ Sorry.”

  “There are none so blind as those who will not see,” Thomas returned, not without a wry smile. He distributed cups of tea and handed round the milk and sugar. “Let us begin. Jivan, Vivian Morgan’s death.”

  “The inquest brought in a verdict of murder.”

  “No one’s going to faint in surprise at that,” said Maggie.

  “We learned very little from Ellen Sparrow,” Jivan continued. “She hinted she was part of an elite within the Foundation, and was right chuffed about helping break up the Willow Band’s ceremony last Sunday. Fitzroy went off with Vivian before the violence began. He was giving her an interview, Ellen said—with a good bit of jealousy.”

  Thomas sat down beside Maggie. “She said that Calum followed Robin and Vivian?”

  “Yes. He probably witnessed the murder. That would put the wind up him good and proper, especially if he knew Fitzroy saw him watching. No wonder he took to his heels.” Jivan tapped his cup on the desk. “Ellen says Calum must have murdered Vivian, upset she was having it off with Fitzroy, and Fitzroy went after him to bring him to justice. We can’t prove her wrong, not yet.”

  “How does Ellen justify Robin’s sexual behavior?” Anna asked.

  “He had to humor Vivian, what with her being a journalist and all, the better to spread the word. Which is true as far as it goes, I’m thinking, moral considerations aside. Still, her flat in London has been turned over and all her files are gone, as though someone doesn’t agree with the word she intended spreading.”

  “Robin may also have thought,” Thomas said, “that Calum gave Vivian his sgian dubh, a Dewar family talisman. Once Robin discovered that her knife was not the family one, he would have a second motive to chase Calum down.”

  “Was that the relic Calum was going on about, then?” asked Jivan.

  “It’s part of it, yes.”

  Rose asked, “What about Calum at Housesteads?”

  “I expect he was murdered as well,” Jivan answered. “By whom is another issue. By the by, Mountjoy in Hexham tells me that P. C. Armstrong is home from hospital.”

  “Thank God,” said Thomas, amid a general sigh of relief.

  “Mountjoy seemed more interested in you, Thomas, than in Fitzroy. Wanted to know the nature of your relationship with Calum and Mick, and wouldn’t have it when I told him there was none at all. He wanted to know why you and Mick—and Maggie and Rose—went to Housesteads.”

  “Because Robin told Mick his father was there,” said Maggie. “Alive.”

  “So I told Mountjoy. But still he asked me to take statements from the Puckles that all of you were here at the time of Calum’s death.”

  Thomas envisioned Mountjoy’s saturnine face. The man was innately suspicious, a useful trait for a policeman, yes, but only when his suspicions were directed the correct way. “Has he interviewed Robin?”

  “He didn’t say. He could be having as much of a problem laying Fitzroy by the heels as we are. Fitzroy didn’t attend the rally last night, although the lecturer he sent was—a fine speaker.” The edge of outrage in Jivan’s eyes restored some of their luster.

  A knock on the door was Sean. Sitting down on the floor beside Rose, he whispered, “I found an old broom. You want to play hockey with the ball?”

  “Sure,” Rose replied. “In a little while.”

  “Okay.” Sean settled back against the brick of the fireplace.

  “Tea?” Thomas asked, and upon Sean’s, “No, thanks,” turned to Anna. “Now, about the Foundation rally last night.”

  From her handbag Anna produced a small tape recorder. “I thought it would be easiest if I simply taped the speech.”

  It wasn’t Robin’s voice that filled the small room, but a woman’s. Thomas allowed himself a moment to consider the dreadful hypocrisy of a woman promoting an organization that wished to limit women’s activities, then turned his attention to the tape.

  He had heard it all before, ad nauseum, with the words altered only slightly to fit each time and each place. Dehumanizing diatribes about those who were different, scapegoating, divisive rhetoric, prejudice—the poisonous sentiments pricked his skin into gooseflesh. “Moderation in defense of the faith is unforgivable … here in Glastonbury New Agers openly practice Satanism—God will punish us with fire and storm, he will give our enemies supremacy, if we allow such indecency … our work here is to save souls…”

  Thomas’s gaze moved from Rose’s tight brows to Sean’s rolled eyes to Maggie’s scowl to Jivan’s and Anna’s grim faces. Even Dunstan’s eyes were hard chips of amber.

  “…purchase copies of our videos, share the spiritual experience with your friends who are not saved … subscribe to our newsletter and we shall provide you with voting guides and news summaries … you need never again say ‘I don’t know.’” A burst of applause sounded like thunder. Anna switched off the recorder.

  Thomas murmured, “‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’”

  In the ensuing hush Sean’s mutter to Rose was perfectly audible. “That woman was two enchiladas shy of a combination platter. I mean, she was making sense there, about criminals and stuff, and then she started talking about how England is the best of the best when it’s the U.S. that’s on top. The Foundation should be glad Europe wants to take the U.K. on instead of bellyaching about the EU being out to get them. The U.K.‘s a nice little country with all the history and everything, but they’re like, podunk. Nothing important happens here any more…”

  He realized every eye in the room was focused on him save for Rose’s—she was hiding her face in her hand. “Oh,” Sean said with a sickly smile. “Sorry, give me a minute to get my toes out of my tonsils.”

  “You’re entitled to your opinion, Sean,” Thomas said, as inwardly he rejoiced that Robin’s tactics had backfired.

  Jivan suppressed his own smile. “The Foundation is addressing legitimate issues. No one wants to tolerate wrongdoers. But their definition of wrongdoing needs re-thinking, and no mistake.”

  Unable to sit still, Thomas leaped up and paced across to the window. Outside the clouds were thickening. “‘If a man say I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar, for he that loveth not his brother how can he love God?’”

  “Which is why the Foundation re-defines ‘brother,’” said Rose.

  “What is the true Word?” Thomas asked. “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hangs all the law.’”

  “To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God,” said Anna, in the words of her own story.

  Jivan added, “‘O children of God, unite and love one another.’”

  “Taking advantage o
f people’s insecurities to make yourself powerful is the oldest ploy in history.” Maggie sat back, arms crossed, lips tight.

  “No surprise our friends and relations accept the modern myth that faith is incompatible with reason, when they believe that their only choice is between it and the religious totalitarianism that blackens human history.” With a meaningful glance at Maggie, Thomas paced back to the fireplace. Beneath Rose’s hand Dunstan was purring, a small but penetrating hum of serenity. Introducing cats to the floor of Parliament, he thought, would greatly increase the civility of debate.

  “Robin has led the Foundation to make a mockery not only of Christianity but of religion itself. For it’s through our shared stories—myths, legends, mythology, theology—that we build the bridge between the Seen and the Unseen that he wants to destroy.”

  Sean said, “Mythology and theology are two different things. Mythology is imaginary. Theology is real.”

  “They are metaphors of the same story,” Thomas told him. “Robin and his ilk wish to corrupt the imagination of the heart, for how else to know God save through the imagination? What is the Golden Rule but imagining oneself in another’s shoes? ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’”

  “‘Forgive us our trespasses,’” added Rose, “‘as we forgive those who trespass against us.’”

  Jivan sighed. “Buddhists teach compassion and reconciliation, but still there are Buddhist terrorists.”

  “Yeah, vindictive religious groups like the Foundation are nothing new. So far their violence is mostly verbal…” Maggie didn’t need to finish her sentence.

  “Robin has a legion of brethren. The Islamic world, for example, kept the light of knowledge burning whilst our ancestors stumbled through the Dark Ages, but is now bedeviled by…” Thomas hadn’t intended to make a pun, but there it was. “…violent self-righteousness. Manipulating religious faith to gain temporal power undermines the integrity of faith itself.”

  Anna seemed small as a child against the high back of the chair. “The people who were applauding on Friday were ordinary people, like the people who watched passively as the boxcars left for Auschwitz.”

  “Not everybody was applauding,” Sean pointed out.

  “Very true,” said Anna, “thank goodness.”

  “Still,” he persisted, “that’s just the way it is, bad things happen.”

  “I’m hopelessly helpless?” asked Maggie. “I’m helplessly hopeless?”

  “Despair is one of evil’s greatest temptations,” said Thomas, “because if we despair then we do not act.”

  “Okay…” Sean’s frown was a reflection, no doubt, of how painful it was to have one’s mind stretched.

  Sending a sympathetic smile in the lad’s direction, Thomas went on, “Perhaps you would be good enough to share our thoughts with Ellen.”

  “Yeah, well…” Sean didn’t seem entirely convinced. Looking at Rose, he jerked his head toward the outer door.

  With a smile for Thomas, Rose stood up and brushed off her jeans. “Sure. Let’s go. Thanks.”

  Sean held the door open for Rose, and shut it behind them, but not before a cold gust of wind swept the room. The fire leapt. Dunstan strolled over to the desk and allowed Jivan to scratch his ears. Anna looked at her clasped hands. Thomas’s tea was lukewarm, but his impassioned—lecture? sermon? manifesto?—had left him dry. He sank into his chair and drank thirstily.

  Maggie asked, “Feel better now?”

  “Yes.” He was quite aware that he’d been preaching to the choir.

  “Moslems say that the Devil has no power over those who believe in God,” said Jivan, “but only over those who befriend him. Now, the Devil may be an entity of Islam and Christianity, but we all understand evil. Robin Fitzroy is befriending evil.”

  Anna leaned forward. “You said he wanted to destroy the bridge between the Seen and the Unseen. How can he destroy a metaphor?”

  “You might say,” Thomas told her, “that manifestation of metaphor is the basis of faith. Christians, for example, believe that Our Lord was metaphor made man. When he died, the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom—that is, the veil separating the Seen from the Unseen was opened, and he passed through. That veil will open again this New Year’s Eve.”

  One of Jivan’s dark brows arched upward. Anna cocked her head to the side. Maggie propped her elbow on the table and her chin on her fist. Her necklace swung forward and chimed against her cup.

  “My task is to bring the three parts of the Holy Grail together at the New Year, to open the veil. Robin’s goal is to destroy it, so that he can lead us into ignorance and darkness.”

  Anna’s keen blue eyes moved from Thomas’s face to Maggie’s and thence to Jivan’s, as though she suspected they were all playing a practical joke on her. “I have a hard time accepting that cult objects might have genuine supernatural powers.”

  “Supplication attracts deities to fill certain objects with holiness,” Jivan told her.

  “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” offered Maggie, “said ‘we are symbols and we inhabit symbols.’ Supposedly he once walked into a tree, saying he saw it but he didn’t believe it. I’ve done that myself.”

  “Miracles don’t happen in spite of natural law,” Thomas concluded, “but in addition to what we know of natural law.”

  “Robin’s a dangerous demagogue,” said Anna, “but are you telling me he has supernatural powers?”

  “Yes, I am,” Thomas told her.

  “Since the intelligence of the universe and the self is the same,” Jivan added philosophically, “reality can be changed at the level of the self.”

  Dunstan directed an interrogative meow to the window. Thomas turned to see the white dove sitting on the wall beside the garden gate. Beyond it Rose and Sean hit the ball to and fro. Ellen stood in the shadow of the archway. When Rose hit the ball in her direction, she hesitated, then kicked it back. Sean laughed, as did Rose, and even Ellen smiled. There was hope yet.

  Anna exhaled through pursed lips. “So it’s no more important that I actually believe in the power of the relics than I believe Jesus Christ is the messiah? Just as long as I don’t walk into Robin Fitzroy’s perceptual tree?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Thomas said, “that you and Jivan are not Christians. In his pride and greed, Robin is no Christian. He squeezes the Unseen through the empty setting in Lucifer’s crown, and the narrow aperture distorts it beyond all recognition.”

  “Ah, the consolation of metaphor,” murmured Maggie.

  “We must recover the Book,” Thomas said, “and find the Stone. The Dewars guarded it for centuries—a chipping from it is in the handle of the sgian dubh—but Calum didn’t know its location. Nor does Mick.”

  “What of the—ah—Grail?” asked Jivan.

  “Until I myself bring the Cup from its hiding place, it is safe.”

  Anna sat back in the chair. “God is involved with the world, just not in the way we expect. And I certainly didn’t expect this.”

  “This is just the sort of thing that would happen in Glastonbury,” moaned Jivan. “Thomas, you’ve mucked up my murder investigation. I can’t tell the chief constable our prime suspect has psychic powers, let alone that his motive is, well, Armageddon.”

  “I’m sorry, Jivan,” Thomas said. “But I doubt you’ll ever bring Robin to justice for Vivian’s murder. Or for Calum’s, although someone else could well have struck the actual blow at Housesteads.”

  “Robin isn’t beyond God’s justice,” Anna said.

  “He will be if I do not reveal the relics at the appointed time—or if he has them destroyed. Robin and his ilk want us to forget that we have a choice between good and evil.”

  “How can I help, then? By working with Ellen? I’d do that anyway.”

  “Everyone who accepts the grace of God rejects Robin and therefore weakens him,” Thomas told her. “So, Jivan, Anna, show forth your own faiths, and the variety of G
od’s creation.”

  “That doesn’t seem like much,” said Maggie.

  Thomas could only say, “The best revenge is not to do as they do.”

  “Marcus Aurelius,” Maggie returned. “Yeah, we’re the good guys. By definition, the good guys don’t shoot first.”

  Glancing at his watch, Jivan stood up and rolled his shoulders wearily. “I’ll see to getting you copies of the police reports on the theft of the Book. But just now I’d better be taking Alf’s and Bess’s statements.”

  Anna, too, got to her feet. Thomas expected her to ask, and just how do you know all of this? But she said, “Thank you for letting us know what’s going on here, Thomas.”

  “Knowledge is strength,” he returned.

  Jivan paused. “Thomas, I … Well, I’ve no time for more metaphor just now. Cheers.”

  Thomas started to stand, but Maggie was ahead of him. She ushered Jivan and Anna out and waited until the cat trotted after them. Then she went round the room collecting the empty cups. Thomas levered himself to his feet by leaning on the table. He was quite fatigued. He must be getting old. “I’ll clear away.”

  “No problem.” Maggie piled the dishes in the sink, ran water into the kettle, and placed it on the electric ring. Her movements were stiff, sinews and nerves wound to their tightest, each plane and angle of her face cut like a facet of a gemstone. When she started washing up, Thomas hobbled to her side and picked up the tea towel.

  She smiled wryly up at him. “Gee, you’re handsome when you’re mad.”

  “Mad angry or mad insane?” he returned with a smile of his own.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy, not any more. You may be a card-carrying heretic, but you’re not crazy. You simply have very broad horizons.”

  “Thank you.” He turned a wet cup thoughtfully in his hand. “The Cathars of southern France were heretics. They believed that Our Lord had no human nature. They had the wrong end of the stick, but their beliefs could not possibly threaten God, only the power of the church.”

  Again memory carried him into reverie…

  He saw not the ceramic cup but a thick glass drinking vessel. For the first time he felt that sound and heard that sensation which plucked every fiber of his being. “Thank you for this gift,” he said.