The Devil's Bible

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  Father Lucas had shown Mouse some of the most rare books in the world, and Ottakar’s library at the castle in Prague had been priceless, but she wanted this book, her book, to be different from all the others. The bishop had already insisted on it being big, and truly as she looked down at the sheets of parchment, Mouse was in awe of its size. It was the largest book she had ever seen. It took up half the cell, and when she lay beside it with her feet lined up against its bottom edge, the top of the book came nearly to her breast.

  But Mouse wanted it to be more than just large or full of knowledge. She wanted to pour herself into it. She would cover the gold leaf initials in colored pagan swirls as a reminder of the baby cemetery where the hollow-eyed children had found her; it would be her monument for them, who had no other. And she would entwine the swirls with ivy and animals—a wolf for Bohdan, doves for Father Lucas, and three lone bitterns in the whole of the manuscript, shrouded in shade. One for Luka, the man she had accidentally blinded in a moment of panic, and one each for Ottakar and Nicholas, whom she had killed.

  As Mouse planned her scripted memorial to the people she’d loved, her loss was tempered with light as her art empowered her to create something new out of the ashes of her life.

  “If you keep bringing me things, there will be no room for me to work or to sleep,” she said as she finally turned to her father.

  He spent most of his days with her now. He brought food that was much better than the rank stew the bishop shoved through the slot and which Mouse now fed to the rats. He brought wine; they ate together like a family and talked of history or politics or literature, but nothing about their lives, nothing intimate. They did not trust each other, and even now as Mouse held her hand out to receive his latest gift, her wariness would not let her smile at him.

  “It is not a thing I bring this time, but something far more precious to you, I think.” His voice was heavy with something, but Mouse hadn’t learned how to read him as she did most people.

  “What is it?” she asked cautiously.

  “Will you answer a question first?”

  Mouse tensed. So far, he had asked for nothing in return for his gifts.

  “It depends on the question.” She felt like she was back at Prague playing the deadly game of court politics.

  “Who was Ottakar to you?”

  Her mind raced with the potential dangers of answering his question and with his reasons for asking it.

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “I don’t. I am simply curious.” He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “It is clear that he meant a great deal to you, like Bohdan did. As your father, I want to know who he was.” He waited just a moment more. “What harm could come of talking about a dead man?”

  Mouse took a breath, thinking about her own questions she wanted to ask, mostly about her mother, and she made a calculated decision to give him an answer with the intent to get one from him in return. “He was the man I loved.”

  “This was Ottakar, the king?”

  “Yes.”

  “His son was Nicholas?”

  Mouse’s mouth went dry as she nodded.

  “This Nicholas was your son, too.”

  He wasn’t asking.

  “The one you think you killed at Marchfeld with all the others.”

  Very slowly Mouse felt the reality of her cell drift away. It was as if she and her father stood in the midst of nothing, and all she could hear were his words: “The one you think you killed.”

  He caught her as she sagged under the weight of an impossible hope.

  “He is alive.”

  Her father held her as she wept.

  He was fascinated with the depth of her emotion. It plucked at memories of his own, grown dusty and stagnant from disuse; he had once felt sympathy for the people he hurt and rage at being sent as God’s emissary to test and torture the faithful. He had wept with bitterness and loss. He understood tears of sorrow and anger, but he had never cried from joy.

  Neither had Mouse—until now. But knowing that she had not killed her son released her from a terrible burden of guilt. She felt vulnerable—a lamb lulled by the lion—and she was sure that had been her father’s intent. As her tears finally dried, wariness settled in Mouse again.

  “You have seen him?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She sat up and slowly eased away from him. “Did you . . . speak with him?”

  Her father cocked his head, a deceptively human trait he had adopted. “Ah, I see. You’re suspicious of me.”

  Mouse hated that he could read her so easily while she continued to misjudge him. She had thought he might be angry at her suspicion, but he smiled instead, like a proud parent. “I confess I did search him for any hidden . . . talents. But he must take after his father. Predictably normal.” He didn’t bother to mask his disappointment.

  “Did you hurt him?”

  Cloaked under the guise of nightmares, he had gone to Nicholas to see if the son was as special as his mother. He had not meant to hurt him, but he needed his answers quickly. And Nicholas had not suffered—much. He knew he needed to craft a calculated response because, unlike her son, Mouse was anything but predictable.

  “Why would I hurt him? He is of no interest to me—beyond his interest to you, of course.” He picked at a thread on the sleeve of his habit.

  His response did little to ease Mouse’s worries—he had not really answered her question. Her heart jumping in her throat, she tried a different line of inquiry. “Where is he?”

  “The Hungarians have him.”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  “They are treating him well, it seems. I understand he is working out some agreement with the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf to reclaim his dukedom in Opava.” He waited a moment and then carefully added, “But I am also told that Ottakar’s widow is working against Nicholas’s interests.”

  “What do you mean?” Mouse asked sharply.

  In the months after she left Sumava and went looking for Ottakar, she learned that he had remarried and had other children during the twenty years Mouse had been wandering in the wilderness. But she had never been interested in knowing any details about Ottakar’s new family. Mouse had only gone looking for him because she thought he might need her. Ottakar had been shunned by the Church, was under attack by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf, and had been abandoned by most of his nobles while he marched to protect Bohemia. Mouse had been shocked to find Nicholas by his father’s side, and, driven by a mother’s love, she had followed them both to war. That war had ended at Marchfeld.

  Her father shrugged at Mouse’s growing fear. “Ottakar’s widow wants Nicholas declared illegitimate. I don’t think she likes her dead husband’s bastard—or you very much either.” Mouse winced as he chuckled. “She wants the Duchy of Troppau for her own son now that Ottakar is no longer here to protect yours.”

  Mouse considered her options. She could go to Nicholas, but to what end? He did not know her, and she held no sway over the Church or the politics of men. There was nothing she could do to help her son—but her father might. She did not like the idea of indebting herself to him, even though all his gifts so far had come untethered and seemingly without an expected return.

  “But Rudolf means to reinstate Nicholas as the Duke of Troppau?” Mouse asked, trying to find another way to be sure of Nicholas’s safety.

  “I believe so. But I also think that Ottakar’s widow will stop at nothing to get what she wants for her son. A mother’s love seems to have no limits. Yes?” He watched her as he passed his hand back and forth through the candle flame, making it dance and cast oscillating shadows across her face—first dark, then light. Dark, then light.

  “You mean she will kill him if she has to.”

  “She is already entrenched with her lover, Lord Zavis, who is vying to be named regent of Bohemia and means to rule until Ottakar’s legitimate heir is old enough to claim the throne.”

  “But if Rudolf has Nicholas—”r />
  “Which he does. They are in Opava.”

  “And Ottakar’s widow and this Lord Zavis would be in Prague, yes? They are too far away to be a threat to Nicholas.” Hopefulness brightened her tone.

  Light, he thought as he pulled his hand away from the candle again and let it gleam in Mouse’s eyes. “Ah, but they are not at Prague. Ottakar’s widow and Lord Zavis are at his castle in Hradec.”

  Mouse wrapped her arms tightly around her chest. “Hradec is only a few hours’ ride from Opava.”

  And now dark, he thought as he cupped the flame and threw her face back into shadow.

  “If she hurts him . . .” Her words cut the air as Mouse imagined the things she would do to Ottakar’s widow.

  They sat in silence. Despite the human face he wore and his pleasant demeanor, Mouse had not forgotten who her father was. Her abbey upbringing filled her with a dread understanding of his nature, and though she had seen nothing of evil in him yet, she also knew she was only seeing what he wanted her to see. She knew the dangers in making a request, but surely she had to make it anyway. For Nicholas.

  “I would be most happy to intercede on his behalf—have a word with this Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf. Or with Ottakar’s widow,” her father said lightly.

  Mouse snapped her head toward him though she could read nothing but a casual interest and kindness in his face. If this was a power play on his part, why not make her ask? By volunteering, he gave her what she wanted without any leverage to demand something in return.

  She was left with nothing to say except: “Thank you. Rudolf seems the quickest route to obtaining Nicholas’s safety.”

  “Quickest, maybe, though a slit throat accomplishes the deed rather swiftly and more permanently than politics.” He snapped the loose thread on his sleeve. “And a little vengeance might satisfy your hunger for justice against Ottakar’s opportunistic widow.”

  The candlelight danced as Mouse considered his offer before finally shaking her head.

  Her father sighed. “If you prefer diplomacy to murder, so be it.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mouse asked for a lawyer. Detective Spencer’s questions were irrelevant now. There would be no justice for those dead women—not from the police anyway.

  By the time she was released, Jack Gray was already gone. Apparently, he’d also lawyered up. But Mouse had more to worry about than the tales he might tell. Obviously her slip of power, that flicker of light in the night, had been seen. It meant her father was still hunting her. She didn’t know why, but that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that her father’s nasty pilot fish was still out trolling the streets of Nashville hunting for her, and he was sure to snare more innocent victims if she didn’t act fast. Mouse needed to draw him away from Nashville, and the only way to do that was to make herself the bait.

  The cicadas were oddly silent as she walked up to her porch after the taxi pulled away. Bodie met her at the door, complaining about having missed both last night’s supper and his breakfast that morning. Mouse poured half the bag in his bowl and then sank onto the couch, her head in her hands.

  She knew she didn’t have much time, and she needed to think out the steps of her plan carefully, but she felt paralyzed with guilt. Those dead women and all the lives their loss would touch. The difficulties she’d added to Solomon’s already difficult life. Mouse had not been allowed to see her when she left the police station. She paid the lawyer who’d gotten her out to do the same for Solomon, but Mouse knew the police would hound her friend as they continued to hunt for a suspect, and the longer they went without one, the more suspicious they’d be about Solomon. Mouse wouldn’t be there to help. Jack, who knew things he shouldn’t, would be gone, too—no doubt to report back to his benefactor.

  Mouse hadn’t screwed up this badly in a long, long time. She threw her head back against the couch. Bodie joined her, purring and dipping his head under her hand, wanting love now that his belly was full. She rubbed him for a moment, distractedly, but then her eyes came to rest on a small statue on the mantel.

  It was the only decoration in the whole house. She pushed herself up from the couch and walked to the fireplace, resting her head against the brick as she toyed with the little angel figurine—its wings spread and not a chip in the stone despite its age and the millions of miles it had travelled. Father Lucas had given it to her when she was a little girl, a christening gift after she’d stolen a baptism from the Church that kept its doors closed to her. As a child growing up in the abbey, she’d never understood why she wasn’t allowed to be part of the religious life. But after Father Lucas’s letter telling her who her father was, it all made sense. She was too tainted for the Church. Too tainted to attend Mass or to take vows. Too tainted even for baptism.

  But long before she knew what she was, little Mouse had snuck away into the woods and baptized herself. She had written to Father Lucas, who was away on one of his trips, and confessed what she’d done because she always told him everything. She thought he’d be angry. Instead, he had brought the christening angel all the way from the Carpathian Mountains, wrapped in wool and strapped to his chest to keep it safe. He anointed her with blessings when he gave it to her. It was her proof that he, at least, had truly believed in her goodness.

  The handful of other trinkets from Mouse’s past had been packed away centuries ago, left where no one would find them at a time when she meant to bury that part of herself. No more thoughts of Ottakar. No Nicholas. No Bohdan or Mother Kazi. The ghosts of the past made living in the present too hard.

  But she had needed Father Lucas to stay with her, to help her keep vigil through the long years as they had once thought to do at Houska when they sealed up the hollow-eyed children in the dark pit that the Church called the Mouth of Hell. Mouse had thought she’d been sealed in, too, before Father Lucas pulled her back into the world of men. She ran her fingers along the angel’s wings. She’d kept it with her as a sign of hope in the darkness as she sealed herself in a wanderer’s life—as dead to the world around her as she had been down in that cold, dark pit. The angel held Mouse’s hope that someday, someone would pull her out again, that someone would have faith in her goodness even if she did not.

  She looked down at Bodie weaving between her legs and breathed out her bitterness. She’d stayed in Nashville out of hope for a normal life. She’d adopted the neighborhood’s stray cat out of hope. She’d made friends with Nate and Solomon out of hope. And now people were dead because of her. Again. People she’d come to care for were suffering and in danger. Again. The anger hiding behind her guilt broke free in a hot gust of temper. Mouse curled her fist around the angel, ready to throw it against the wall, to smash it and be done with it. Done with light. Done with hope.

  And then the doorbell rang.

  Mouse flinched, and the stone angel fell to the side and chipped the end of its wing.

  The doorknob started to turn. She’d forgotten to lock it.

  She stood, tensed and waiting as the door inched open. She expected Jack Gray or the police or Solomon’s Death to come sliding in—she was ready for them.

  But it was a little hand with little fingers that wrapped around the threshold and a little face that peered into the dim house.

  “Wind at your back, Em?” Nate asked.

  Mouse fought the tears, but she couldn’t manage a lie. “Not today.” She swallowed hard before adding, “Does your mom know you’re here?”

  Nate had come in and closed the door behind him. He knelt to pet Bodie. “No, but I don’t care.”

  “I do. She . . . she loves you.” Mouse struggled with the words. “She’ll worry if she can’t find you.”

  “She’s busy with the baby. She loves the baby.”

  “Yes. But she loves you, too.” Mouse hadn’t moved from the fireplace; she didn’t think she could.

  “I’m mad at her.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She doesn’t want me to hang out with you anymore. She doesn
’t like you.” Nate looked over at Mouse, who nodded.

  She kept nodding. The tears were running down her face now.

  “Don’t cry, Em.” Nate ran to her, hugging her around the waist. “I love you.”

  Mouse flinched, her body rigid in the unfamiliar embrace. For centuries she had heard husbands whisper those words to wives and mothers coo them to newborns or weep as those words spilled out over lost children. She’d heard them tens of thousands of times in joy and sorrow, seductions and promises. But she’d never heard them spoken for her. Just as no one had said her real name in seven hundred years, no one had told Mouse that she was loved.

  She looked over at the fallen angel as she wrapped her arms around Nate, her body softening as she bent to kiss the top of his head. Fear choked the words she wanted to say as they moved up her throat. The last time she’d said them had been on the battlefield with Ottakar—just before her power ripped from her and sucked the life out of everything it touched. But she wanted to give Nate something back for the powerful gift he’d just given her, so she fought against her fear. She lifted her face to gather more breath. “I—”

  “Well now, that’s sweet, ain’t it?” A man stood beside the kitchen counter.

  He looked like everybody and nobody—plain brown eyes, brown hair. Solomon’s figure of Death. She looked down to his hands. His fingers stretched out thin and then twisted into long, yellowed nails. They were framed in blood, the cuticles too stained for cleaning.

  Mouse pulled Nate behind her. She could sense her father’s mark on the man—a heaviness he wore like a shroud and what Solomon had called an empty look. It was just like the blank look in Jack’s eyes when Mouse compelled him in the bar. Her father turned people easily, preyed on their weaknesses, and tempted them with their wants. They became puppets and he their master.

  He had tried to do the same to Mouse at Podlažice; he would probably try again if he caught her.