Smacked his head on the end of the one hundred and fifty year-old wooden table. Tried to stop himself, right enough, but he had little feeling in his arms either. Forehead to wood, a loud crack, and he collapsed onto the floor, the blood immediately oozing from the small cut.
Somebody said, 'What the...?' and let the question drift off.
'Just like the bloody Catholics to screw up,' muttered Jacobs, who still had the humph.
Ping Phat bent down to shift Luigi's head away from his feet. Felt for a pulse and under his nose for a breath.
'Still alive, but unconscious. We can proceed.'
Ephesian nodded. He and Ping Phat once more joined hands, and again there was nothing to stand in the way of the return of the King. That was that for the Catholic Church. If only they had chosen to deploy a thermo-nuclear device to obliterate the entire island, as some of the cardinals had argued.
'Dear Lord!' proclaimed Ephesian, although he didn't quite have the TV evangelist's voice that Jacobs had down pat, 'we gather here today, not to bring back your son, but to restore the line of Jesus, who was king, and who served you as prophet and teacher. Behold, we stand at the door and knock! With the blood of the sacred feminine, we revive the line that was lost. I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death!'
He looked up the table and, for the second time in two days, magically managed to look Jacobs straight in the eye. There passed a look of knowledge and understanding between them, a bond that would not be shaken by the presence of the usurper.
'The blood,' said Ephesian softly.
Jacobs nodded, then lifted the vial of Garrett Carmichael's blood. He removed the top and slowly poured the contents into the Grail, letting the last few drops drip mesmerically. The audience was spellbound. Only Igor found this a little distasteful. Some of the others assumed that someone must have died for this blood, but thought it a reasonable price to pay in order to give life to the man who lay disjointedly before them.
'Full circle,' said Ephesian. 'We must each drink the blood.'
You're kidding me! thought Barney.
That's part of my bird! thought Igor.
Are you sure? thought Petersen.
Nothing none of us haven't done before, thought Luciens.
Just like the Ardennes in '45, thought Rusty Brown.
Didn't even have to do that in the Ardennes in '45, thought Ginger Rogers.
Three billion dollars by the end of the week, thought Ping Phat.
I'd prefer a nice cup of tea, thought PC Gainsborough.
Knew I should have sent Chardonnay instead, thought McGhee.
Not again! thought the Reverend Dreyfus.
However, they were all silent with their thoughts. Jacobs took the first sip, a tiny amount, his tongue flicking out to remove the excess from his lips and then he passed the cup to his left, to Thomas Petersen. And as the cup was passed around, Ephesian recited slowly from Revelations, pausing only to take a sip of blood when the cup was passed to him by Ping Phat.
'His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.'
Barney Thomson tasted another person's blood for the first time and then laid the cup, still half-full, down on the table. He swallowed quickly, did his best to rinse the taste out of his mouth with saliva. Tried not to think about what he was part of. Suddenly felt a bit nervous about the freakishness of it all, of this absurd chopped up body lying frozen before them.
'Pass the cup to the head of the table,' said Jacobs quietly, and Barney wondered how long he'd been lost in morose contemplation.
He passed the cup onto Igor and then through Romeo McGhee, Ginger Rogers and Luciens, it reached Ephesian.
'By the pouring of the blood onto the lips of our King, and by the laying of our hands upon him, the line of Christ will be reborn!' cried Ephesian, who was just about beginning to get the hang of the Jimmy Swaggert routine. 'We must stand!'
As one the brotherhood rose. Every heart was thumping at the thrill of the moment, even the hearts of the new initiates who had come along curious rather than faithful. Ping Phat saw investment and marketing and money; Romeo McGhee saw newspapers and marketing and money; Barney Thomson saw none of that, but still his heart raced at this bizarre and grotesque ceremonial creation of life.
'And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS!'
And Ephesian lifted the Holy Grail, the ancient wooden cup of Christ, and poured the remainder of the blood slowly into the frozen mouth of Azarael Corinthian. The first small amount entered the mouth and then quickly it filled the frozen space and began to spill over the sides and run down his cheeks and to collect in two pools on either side of the table.
When he was finished pouring, he placed the Grail on the table and laid both his hands on Corinthian's head.
'Join me, Brothers!' he said, his voice breaking with the strain.
They were almost there, their king was about to be reborn. He closed his eyes and allowed himself a sudden image, a dream of the next few minutes and of the next day, when the glory of God's kingdom on earth would once more be reinforced to a needy and desperate world.
Ping Phat also placed his hands on Corinthian's head and then, in turn, down the table the brothers of the Prieure de Millport pressed their hands against the frozen flesh of the naked heir to the throne of Israel and of Europe. Barney Thomson lightly touched the left foot, noticing that no one was bold enough to lay their hands on the royal genitals.
The fire flickered with some draught down the long flue, there was not a man amongst them who was not shivering with nerves, or wracked by anxiety, every sinew strained, every muscle rigid.
'And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb!' declared Ephesian.
'Return to us, oh Lord!' cried Jacobs.
'Return to us!' cried Ephesian.
And then the cry was taken up by six more, 'Return to us!' and then ten of the brothers of the Prieure de Millport began to exalt in unison, 'Return to us! Return to us! Return to us!' Barney raised an eyebrow and wasn't chanting anything.
'Arf!' chanted Igor.
'Be reborn, my King!' ejaculated Ephesian, breaking ranks. 'De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine; Domine, exaudi vocem meam!'
They all felt it; they felt the power and the majesty of the Lord coursing through their veins. They pressed their hands more firmly against the cold body, they each closed their eyes and lifted their heads to heaven, waiting to be touched by God, waiting to feel the warmth return to the frozen body of Azarael Corinthian.
Ephesian felt a shiver pulse down his spine, his fingers itched and twitched, but the spasms in his head were gone forever. His moment had arrived and not just the heir to the king of kings was about to be reborn.
'Arise! Arise!' he called.
'Arise!' cried a few of the others.
'Arf!'
'Drop down dew, heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness; let the earth be opened, and a saviour spring to life!' ejaculated Jacobs, getting in on the act.
And the great love and strength and power of the Lord flowed down from heaven as a raindrop on a tiny leaf, and they all felt bathed in the wondrous glory of God's light. This was the moment of resurrection when their king would be reborn!
Ephesian dared to open an eye and look at what had been the jigsaw of Azarael Corinthian.
Nothing had changed.
A few others dared open an eye as they had imagined the heat
of the Lord's blessing surging through the stricken and chopped up body of their king.
Nothing.
Slowly, around the circle, one by one, they all opened their eyes, the taste of blood still on their lips, and looked at their king. Still frozen, after all these years.
'What's happened?' asked Rusty Brown.
Ephesian said nothing. Suddenly the twisting discomfort which had plagued his stomach for the previous two days returned.
'What's gone wrong?' asked Jacobs, looking at Ephesian.
Ephesian had once again lost the ability to look Jacobs in the eye and was suddenly on the point of returning to the shell he had occupied all his life. It should have happened by now, the resurrection should have come with the pouring of the blood and the laying on of hands. Ephesian felt scared and nervous, wondering if he had done something wrong, wondering if he had not followed the ancient Prieure de Sion parchments correctly. Had he just let down generations of knights and monks and grand masters? Mouth open, breath beginning to come in short stabs, eyes wide and locked on Corinthian's blue and frozen face.
There was a stunned and suddenly melancholic silence around the room. There was not a man there, amongst the permanent members of the society, who had not believed that the Grail would bring their revered leader back to them. Instead, they were standing flat and dejected, confronted by nothing more than twelve individual body parts, assembled in approximately the right order, and still frozen.
'Maybe we could stick him in the microwave,' said Rusty Brown.
Jacobs was the first to move, walking round the table and picking up the Grail. The affront of Ping Phat, the hubris of the man in trying to appropriate the organisation for his own ends, was now forgotten. All that mattered was that the Grail had not done what they had thought it would.
'Dear Lord, how could you let us down? How could you deny us the divine powers of the Grail, the cup of Christ?'
He held the Grail aloft, so that one or two of the others looked up at it, as if raising their eyes up into the face of God. And one or two of them, it must be said, took a look at their watches and thought, I have to be up early in the morning.
'I think I'm seeing a problem here,' said Barney Thomson.
Jacobs stared angrily at him, as if equating the fact that Barney could see a problem, with Barney also causing the problem.
'Problem, yes, there is,' said Phat, who was looking most disconcerted at the disappearance of a host of marketing opportunities. For example his extensive range of Cup of Christ Kitchenware, which was at that very moment being manufactured by six year-old children in Malaysia, would all be for nothing.
Ephesian did not even hear Barney. He was slumped in his chair, eyes locked on the frozen face, yet seeing nothing.
'You're saying that the Grail has divine power,' said Barney.
'Yes,' snapped Jacobs angrily.
'Yet, your whole argument here, all your society is about, the secret it has been keeping all this time, is that Jesus was the descendant of the kings of Israel, a mortal man, that there is a direct lineage from him to this frozen piece of disassembled meat before us. A king perhaps, but not born of God.'
'Yes,' snapped Jacobs again, but he had begun to see where Barney was going.
'So the Society claims that Jesus was mortal and not divine. He was not born of God. Therefore, if he's not divine, why would the cup he had his last drink out of, be divine?'
There were a couple of nods around the table.
'You didn't seriously think that this,' he said, indicating the grotesque array of parts before him, 'was ever going to come back to life? And if it had, that it wasn't going to scare the absolute hell out of you?'
He let the words sink in. There was some low murmuring around the table. Jacobs looked incensed but it was impossible to tell who or what he was incensed at.
'I suppose,' someone muttered.
'I've seen some weird stuff in my time,' said Barney, 'but it's usually being done by weird people. You lot are too normal for this.'
He looked around the table, at all the embarrassed faces.
'Who would've believed you anyway? How can you prove or disprove anything that is born of faith? It comes from the heart and the soul. Two thousand year-old parchments aren't going to tell anyone that what they feel inside isn't true. And this...,' and he waved his hand at the table, letting the words drift off. 'Go home, go to bed,' he added, then he took a last look around the collective and turned to Igor.
'Come on, mate,' he said. 'Let's go.'
'Arf.'
Jacobs looked angrily at them but had no words to stop them. The rest of the collective watched them turn to go, thinking about what Barney had said and wondering just how weird they were being exactly.
Barney took a last look at the absurdity of what had just taken place, and then he and Igor began heading up the stairs.
'You going back to Garrett's?' asked Barney.
'Arf.'
'Cool. Maybe I could sleep at yours, 'cause I've just realised the time.'
They were gone, and then there were ten.
Around the table the low mumblings grew, the shuffling and the rustling and the glances at watches. A few looks were thrown the way of Jacobs and Ephesian, but no longer was anyone concerned with Ping Phat. Ten minutes ago they had accorded the man some respect, the monied businessman from the east. Now he was a fat foreigner who'd been stupid enough to get involved in an extremely bizarre business with a bunch of no-hopers in provincial Scotland.
'I should probably be getting to my bed,' said Ginger Rogers. 'Up to Glasgow in the morning. Getting the 7.50 from Largs.'
'Aye,' said Rusty Brown. 'I'm having a lie in tomorrow, but I'm keen to start it now.'
Chairs were pushed back, tired bodies were raised up onto tired legs, and the last ever meeting of the Prieure de Millport was in the process of being dismantled.
'Someone should probably do something with that,' said Luciens, pointing to the frozen corpse.
'I'll come back up in the morning,' said Gainsborough. 'Need a cup of tea and my bed.'
'It's not like he's going anywhere,' added Luciens, and Gainsborough laughed.
And then, walking around the table, Luciens stumbled across the prone figure of Luigi Linguini and the paramedic in him took over and he bent down to try and revive the man, considering it a better option than trying to haul a dead weight up the stairs.
And so, in a quick succession of ones and twos, the members of the collective were gone, including Ping Phat, already on the make, already running through in his head what merchandise had been manufactured up to this point and how best it could be marketed around the world.
And in the end, after Luciens had raised Luigi groggily to his feet and told him not to keep calling him pontiff, only Simon Jacobs and Bartholomew Ephesian were left.
Jacobs slumped down into the seat next to Ephesian, and he too locked his eyes on the blood covered face of Azarael Corinthian. Years of planning and dreams all for nothing. The lineage of Christ was dead. They still had the documentation, but they knew that Barney had been right. What did any of it matter?
'Dear Christ,' said Jacobs, the words a low and humble mumble.
Bartholomew Ephesian said nothing, but stared morosely at the top of the head of the last king of Israel, as he began the long night's drift into the long early morning of the first day of his descent into insanity.
Epilogue: A New Dawn
It was a fresh day, mostly blue skies peppered by occasional strings of white clouds, the wind which was blowing in off the sea a delicious cool breeze, smelling of salt and adventure and faraway places. A spring day, still demanding a jacket and a robust pair of trousers, but a spring day as it used to be before global warming weirded out the planet's weather systems for the foreseeable future. Middle of April, bit of sun, bit of chill in the air, winter over, hint of summer, the wonderful smell of the grass and the earth from a little rainfall in the middle of the night.
B
arney had left the door of the shop open so that he could fully savour the aroma of morning. He had stopped at the bakers on the way along the road and had bought four fresh rolls, two each for him and Igor. Intended to wait and see if any customers arrived first thing, before establishing exactly when he was going to ask Igor to grill the bacon out back. Cup of tea, beautiful morning, bacon roll.
Today he could let his mid-life crisis pass. It would be back, presumably, on its pale horse, to wreak whatever havoc it chose with his mental well-being, but today the world seemed all right. He could get the paperwork signed, commit himself to this place and to Igor, and maybe he'd take his first look at houses along the front. See if there were any available round the west side of the island. Something near the boatyard.
He was standing in the doorway, resting against the frame. Igor was inside the shop, leaning on the brush, following his gaze across the road and the white promenade wall, out to sea. The waves were low, occasional white horses breaching the swell, a few small boats bobbled around in the bay.
Barney vaguely wondered if the secret society would continue its work, even without a figurehead. Or perhaps they would have decided in the middle of the night to keep the figurehead they had frozen, until such times as science had found a way to successfully resurrect him. After all, hadn't he himself once been reduced to just a brain in a jar?
Barney did not know, never would know, and would not have cared had he known, that Ping Phat and his entourage had departed that morning, having spent the remainder of the night plundering the Prieure de Millport's secret documents and its secret frozen body parts. They had taken it all, while Ephesian and Jacobs had stood by and let them, so lost were they in disappointment. Not that Ping Phat had any grand motives involving lineage and the denunciation of two millennia of Pauline beliefs and dogma. He had no idea what use he would make of all the material, yet he knew that leaving it behind benefited him not. Better to take it with him and establish later how much money he could make from it. Even at a basic level, perhaps the Catholic Church would be willing to pay for it.
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