Lucifer's Crown

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Please ring me if Robert Prince contacts you again,” Thomas went on. “He’ll have some explanation for what happened here today, never fear.”

  “If I acted as though I believed him, then I might could find the book. I need to be making up for backing the wrong horse, don’t I?” He looked down at the Stone. “And what’s this then?”

  “It’s an ancient Celtic inauguration stone,” Thomas explained.

  “Like the Stone of Scone,” Willie said, and added confidingly, “My mates take the mickey out of me for reading history, but I reckon you need to know where you came from, eh?”

  Thomas positively beamed on the young man. “You’re welcome to join us in Fortingall tonight. I can promise you a feast in honor of St. Andrew.”

  “Thank you kindly, but I’d better be getting myself back to Hexham. I gave up my day off for that prat Prince.”

  “One more question,” Mick said. “In the warehouse, did you fall over that step ladder of a purpose?”

  “Well, now, I’ll not be giving away police secrets.” Willie grinned, a broad open grin that drew smiles from the others. “Would you like a hand shifting that stone? It looked right heavy.”

  “No thank you,” said Thomas. “We can manage.”

  “Cheers, then.” Willie shook hands all around, his grasp steady, and bounded up the hill toward the Nissan.

  Maggie smiled. “Nothing like casting your bread upon P. C. Armstrong and having it returned a hundred-fold.”

  “Indeed.” Making the sign of the cross, Thomas murmured a blessing toward the departing car and its occupant, then added to Maggie’s quirked brow, “A blessing will not hurt him, will it? Mick, let us shift the Stone. Rose, if you’d be kind enough to open the boot of car.”

  Rose, Mick, and Thomas stowed the Stone in the back of the Rover while Maggie wearily gathered up the tools. She felt like she’d been riding a roller coaster all day. So did the kids, judging by Mick’s drawn features and Rose’s slightly bulging eyes, as though she was holding in a scream.

  And Thomas? If the day’s events had been a roller coaster ride for them, what had it felt like to him? He had to be profoundly moved. But he’d spent too many years constructing a rood screen before the altar of his soul to reveal himself even now, even to her … Maggie saw him lying on the floor of his chapel. The shadow of death.

  A snowflake brushed her face and she looked up. A few fluffy pink clouds hung in the deep blue sky, their edges gilded by the sinking sun like the letters in an illuminated manuscript. They weren’t snow clouds, and none of them were directly overhead, but the one snowflake turned into two, and twenty, and two thousand. Abandoning rationality, Maggie climbed into the car with the others.

  In a few moments the lawn, the floor of the oratory, the scars left by sheep and heavy vehicles had disappeared beneath a cloak of snow tinted blue by the fleeting winter dusk. The snow fell behind the Range Rover as Thomas guided it over the hill, until its tracks, too, had been erased.

  Maggie watched the stars appear in a sky as darkly polished as the Stone. Tomorrow was the first of December. She whispered into the darkness, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Thomas stood on the hollowed—and now hallowed—stone doorstep of his chapel, watching his friends walk across the lawn to the manor house. His hand still tingled from the touch of so many others.

  The cold, fresh wind lifted the fabric of the chasuble like wings from his shoulders. It was the sort of day that lifted the heart itself, evidence of God’s grace in bleak midwinter. A bright sun glinted off the windows of the house.

  This day made a beginning. The beginning of the end. Of a good end. His chapel had been made whole again. He’d shown forth his faith. How sweet are thy words upon my lips, O Lord … He was as giddy as though he’d already drunk the champagne Alf had laid on. Although it was Bess who had begun organizing the festive buffet, last summer when Thomas first announced he planned to re-consecrate his chapel. Bess was here in spirit today, he was sure. Not the ghost at the feast, like Ellen, but a benign presence.

  There was Ellen herself, looking out of an upper window, by her own choice left out. Even Sean had come to the consecration, his face, like Alf’s, puzzled but polite. And Anna had reminded Thomas that today was the last day of Hanukkah, the story of the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem.

  Thomas wondered how so many people had managed to pack themselves into the tiny chapel. Father Brian from St. Mary’s, who lent the vestments and ritual vessels. George Shaw from Otterburn, Manuel and Cecily Llewellyn from Durham, Edith Howard from Salisbury, Ivan O’Connell from Canterbury, Genevieve de Bouillon from Chartres, Andrea Pellegrino from Turin. Teresa Gaunt from York, who assured Thomas that the Stone was safe in York Minster’s treasury, close by the pavement of the Roman headquarters deep beneath the cathedral. Pavement trod by Constantine himself, who by tolerating and including the troublesome little sect of Christianity had assured its vitality.

  Now Jivan, Maggie, and Rose emerged from the chapel. Jivan was saying, “…after your confrontation with Stan Felton in Scotland, the police had him in again. He confessed to stealing the Book from the removal van, and shopped Reginald Soulis very nicely indeed, saying he handed the Book off to him.”

  “So have you arrested Soulis?” Maggie asked.

  “We can’t find him. D. C. I. Swenholt, Mountjoy’s replacement, swore out a warrant to search his offices and Holystone as well, but no joy.”

  Thomas forced himself to focus on the ongoing task. “And what of Mountjoy himself?”

  “He’s done a bunk. Even his family doesn’t know where he is. P. C. Armstrong, now, says that he’s heard from Fitzroy, and has told him he’d like to join up. He thinks he can trace the Book. That’s a dangerous game…”

  “…but one he has chosen to play.” Once again Thomas was grateful for Willie Armstrong.

  Jivan held out his hand. “Sorry I can’t stop. Thank you for having me in for the service. The old Latin mass is very impressive.”

  Thomas clasped Jivan’s hand with both his own. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Cheers,” Jivan said to the women, and strolled toward the car park.

  “It was an awesome mass, Thomas. Thank you.” Rose stood up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, leaving a whiff of fresh flowers in his nostrils. “I’ll go play sacristan and get Father Brian’s things washed and packed,” she concluded, and ducked back inside.

  It was almost startling to see the young woman wearing a dress and nylon tights. And Maggie as well—she had, he noted, exquisite ankles … He might be elated to the point of drunkenness, but she stood looking out into the winter’s day, her arms crossed, her shoulders bowed, as though she were despondent. That was puzzling—surely she shared his pleasure.

  They’d had many fine moments together, not least the two trips to Scotland and the weekly trips to Salisbury. And they’d taken the students to Wells, to Exeter, to Portsmouth. To Caerleon and Winchester and Cadbury Castle, all identified as Camelot. To Tintagel in Cornwall, Arthur’s birthplace. “You could have taken communion,” he told her. “I should not have turned you away.”

  “I’m not Catholic,” she said.

  Nor confessed. Suddenly he saw who it was she was seeing—not the eccentric pedant in his blue jeans, her friend and companion, but the priest in the penitential violet chasuble and stole of Advent. Who knew better than he what it meant to be swollen with truth but too proud to speak it?

  “Come inside.” He led her back up the nave, their steps echoing. The faces in the rood screen seemed to turn toward them. The odor of hot wax mingled with that of incense, potent as perfume. From the door into the cottage came the splash of water and Rose’s beautiful voice. She’d performed the Te Deum brilliantly for the congregation, but now she was singing Christmas carols.

  Thomas removed the chasuble and set it aside. He replaced St. Bridget’s bell in the cabinet. “Look here,” he said, an
d Maggie stepped up beside him, her arms still crossed.

  The reliquaries of Celtic and English saints—Bridget, Aidan, Ninian, Alban, Edmund, Dunstan—breathed blessedness into the room. Amongst them rested a box with enameled sides. “A reliquary of St. Thomas Becket.”

  “One of David’s bones?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes. This is truly a souvenir of death. Of sin and the search for redemption.” He closed the cabinet and turned to face her.

  Now she looked at him, perhaps finding the simplicity of the long white alb he wore beneath the chasuble less intimidating. “So now your chapel’s ready for the big event on New Year’s Eve. Rose and Mick and I ought to be here, but we’re signed up for the concert at Canterbury that night—and it seems only right we should be in Canterbury the twenty-ninth…”

  Something cold and hard as a steel blade punctured Thomas’s heart, so that his elation gushed away like blood from an artery. Redemption. How could he have overlooked such an obvious point?

  “What did I say?” Maggie asked. “Oh no, I reminded you that December twenty-ninth is your saint’s day. The day David was murdered. And so close to the New Year, too.”

  Envisioning his own face, blasted blank and bare, he steadied himself. “Indeed, December twenty-ninth is approaching, but that isn’t what gave me such a turn. I suddenly saw what an unwarranted assumption I’ve been making. Is this the place where I am to reveal the relics? It may not be, Maggie. It may not be at all.”

  She looked round, at the rood and the screen and the cabinet. At the sunlight spilling through the southern windows, promising spring to come. “Why not? This is your place.”

  “Yes, it is. I meant this chapel as evidence of my devotion. What if it is evidence of my pride? How can I speak of redemption when I have not yet…” His ear caught the sound of a man’s voice. “Who is Rose speaking with?”

  Maggie frowned. “Let’s go see.”

  Rose ran water into the kettle and set it on the electric ring. She lined the sacred vessels up on the cabinet. Gold didn’t tarnish. That’s why reliquaries were made of it, incorruptible gold for the incorruptible saints. “Lo how a rose e’er blooming…”

  Dunstan had sat in the doorway during the service. She was sure he had genuflected along with the congregation. Now, though, he was curled on the seat of the large chair, picking his teeth with a claw. Well, she’d read that incense was a mind-altering drug.

  Some water was left in one of the cruets. Rose poured it into the bowl holding the wine, the salt, and the ashes for the actual consecration. Thomas had looked like he stepped out of the rood screen, his pale skin radiant. That was what a saint did, after all—bring light into darkness. “Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria virgine, gaudete.”

  Pouring the hot water in a second bowl, she added a squirt of detergent. The heavy gold vessels, the paten, the ciborium, the chalice, went into the suds and then onto a clean dishtowel.

  Maggie had watched Thomas celebrate the mass with, for once, every emotion written clear as the sound of St. Bridget’s bell across her face. She wanted him, and she wanted the healing he stood for, and she knew she couldn’t have both. She’d been twenty, too, once, as eager for experience as Rose was, and yet something had gone terribly wrong.

  Intellectually Rose understood that happy endings weren’t guaranteed, but emotionally, darn it, she was rooting for one. For all of them. “O come O come Emmanuel, to ransom captive Israel.”

  She took both bowls outside and emptied them onto the grass. Was that someone standing in the garden gate? No, no one was there. She was jumpy. Big surprise.

  Back inside, she dried the vessels and remembered the two nights in Fortingall, the supple curve of Mick’s mouth, his musician’s hands, his heart beating against her breast and the fire burning down to embers like a prologue to her fantasy. They’d chosen a relationship. If they worked at it nothing would go wrong. He’d be here in just a few more days … “God rest ye merry gentlemen let nothing you dismay…”

  “Rose.” She spun around.

  Mick was standing behind her. She could see every seam in his jeans, every stitch in his sweater, every wave of his hair. No, thinking of Mick wouldn’t make him appear. And this Mick, this image of Mick, wasn’t wearing his mother’s blue cross from Iona. His gray eyes were cold as iron. “You!” she exclaimed, and groped for words—“go to hell” wasn’t going to cut it—“Mary, blessed among women, open my eyes.”

  Mick’s face and body wavered sickeningly into Robin’s. He was dressed in a classy suit and silk tie, like he’d dropped in on his way to an executive meeting. “How dare you,” he said, “sing and smile whilst cleaning those dishes? The dishes that commemorate a vile blood sacrifice?”

  No way she was going to argue theology with him. “I’m making a joyful noise unto the Lord.”

  “And all around you people are suffering.” He clucked his tongue.

  “Yeah right. Like you don’t have anything to do with people suffering.”

  “I don’t set impossible standards for my congregations, I make them happy by telling them what they want to hear.”

  “Just because you want to hear it doesn’t mean it’s right.”

  “Haven’t you tired yet of your self-righteousness, Rose?”

  “Me? Self-righteous?”

  “Your all-too-conspicuous virtue is growing tiresome.” Robin stepped closer, backing her against the cabinet. His voice dropped into a malicious purr. “I can have your body any time I wish, you know that. But why bother? Physical virginity is cheap. What I shall have off you is your faith.”

  Rose shivered. “No. I choose my faith, freely.”

  Dunstan’s face peeked over the arm of the chair, ears back. The outside door opened. “Oh,” said Ellen, like she’d just been punched in the stomach.

  Robin’s head snapped toward her.

  “You told me to watch them and I’m watching, aren’t I?” Ellen gabbled. “You don’t need her!”

  “Like I need him?” Rose demanded. “No, by St. Mary and St. Bridget and every holy relic, no, I reject him and everything he stands for. If that’s self-righteousness then I’ll do my penance for it.”

  Robin looked back at Rose. “Yes, you will,” he said quietly. Brushing Ellen aside, he went out the door and slammed it behind him.

  Whoa, Rose thought. A normal exit. But he wanted to keep Ellen ignorant, didn’t he? She looked like death on toast. Worse. Death on a Belgian waffle. “No, you can’t have him. He’s mine. I’m his.”

  Among anger, revulsion, and pity, Rose chose pity. “He’s just using you.”

  “I believe in Robin, the redeemer come in the last days.”

  “Sure,” Rose said, “but does he believe in you?”

  Ellen stared for a long count of five, then blundered from the cottage into the light of day.

  There was Thomas, standing inside the inner door, in his alb looking like a tall white candle. Beside him Maggie glared. “Beautifully done,” he said, and Maggie added, “Class act, Rose.”

  “Thanks.” But, she told herself, something can always go wrong.

  Ellen had waited in the lobby of Safeway’s for an hour now. Outside dark day was going on for darker night, the sky thick with clouds that were too tired to rain but simply pressed down, heavier and heavier. She remembered the candles in Anna’s candlestick, the menorah, she called it, throwing a soft light against the dining room paneling. Right pretty, even if it was heathen rubbish. She remembered Rose singing three days ago, singing like it was possible to be happy, now, at the end of the world.

  There! Shoving a woman aside, Ellen raced out the door and leaped into the green Jaguar. Save for that dreadful moment in Thomas’s cottage, she hadn’t seen Robin since the day of the tornado, over a month ago. She reached toward him.

  He looked her up and down, his mouth a thin line, like the slit beneath a locked door. She dropped her arms, ashamed of acting needy.

  He drove the car to a far corner of
the car park, beside the dust bins, and stopped. There wasn’t going to be any sex, then. They didn’t do it in the car any more, not after she’d been so clumsy in that layby … If he didn’t want sex from her, maybe he was getting it from someone else.

  Robin’s fingertips drummed the steering wheel. His eyes flashed through lowered lashes and his scowl was brutal. He wasn’t half narked, was he? But she’d caught him out with Rose, not the other way round. He hadn’t called in since Mum died.

  “What’s on at Temple Manor?” he asked.

  “The traitor and the Americans came in from the north on the second.”

  “Did Thomas have the artifact with him?”

  “The artifact?”

  “A big black stone.”

  “The Stone? I thought we had that one, alongside the Book. Two for us, and one to go.”

  “Why trouble ourselves shifting it, when they can do the shifting for us? It’s part of my plan to bring all three artifacts together. Do you know where he’s put it?”

  Ellen shrank away. Was it something she’d said? If everything was going along according to plan then it must’ve been something she said. “I’ll look it out for you.” she said quickly.

  He nodded, and his scowl eased a bit.

  Encouraged, she said, “My mum died. Took too much medicine, she did. ‘Twas an accident. Mum took care of me. She brought me salves and such for my hand. It’s healing up proper now.” She raised her hand. The bandage was stained with blood. “She went to heaven, didn’t she, Robin?”

  “Haven’t you learned by now that only members of the Foundation will enter heaven?”

  “Yes, Robin.” And viciously she squashed that echo of her mother’s voice, I only ever wanted what was best for you. “You were talking to Rose in the traitor’s cottage. She told Anna you’d been at her before, but…”

  “If you believe anything that little bint says, then I feel sorry for you.” His hand snaked out and grasped her arm, tight. But his look of utter contempt hurt worse. “All I’m hearing from you is questions and doubt. Do you deny my Word? Are you some sort of nutter like Vivian? Something’s gone wrong with you, is that it?”