“You look absolutely ravishing, my dear,” he said.
But when she turned, he understood that there was trouble. Her gaze was cool, moving deliberately over his hiking clothes and rucksack.
“You could at least have told me where you were going,” she said. She turned away again, making needless adjustments to silverware and glasses.
McTell kept his voice carefully light. “I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to punch in and out every time I left the house.”
“I’ve been breaking my back all day trying to get ready for Mona and Skip. If I’d known you were going to be out playing mountain man instead of working, I’d have asked you to help.”
McTell’s own anger flared, but he bit off the words—They’re your goddamned guests—and waited until he had calmed down.
“For heaven’s sake, Lin, I wasn’t gone much over an hour. I was feeling restless and walked up to the ruin. I’d have been happy to help you, but I thought you had everything under control.”
“What is it with this ruin, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “I just don’t understand the attraction. Is there that much to see?”
“There’s a wonderful view,” he said. “It helps me think. That’s what I get paid for, remember?”
“Huh.”
For a moment neither spoke. Then he said, “Well, I’m ready for a drink. Want one?”
“My glass is on the counter.”
As he crossed the room, he unslung his rucksack. He paused, hefting it. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “Don’t tell me—”
“Now what?”
He unzipped the pack and ran his hand around the inside. “I can’t believe it.”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“My camera. I took some shots and laid it on a rock, and then walked away without it. All the way down the mountain without noticing a thing.” He shook his head in exasperation.
“Well, it’ll be all right, won’t it? No one’s likely to go up there tonight.”
He walked to the door and looked outside critically. “I’m a little worried about rain. I left it sitting right in the open.”
“I don’t think it’s going to rain, John.”
“You’re probably right. Still, I may run up there after dinner. Bet I can make it back in forty minutes.”
“In the dark?”
“There’ll be plenty of twilight.”
She glanced at him sidelong, but said nothing more. McTell poured himself a Scotch and freshened her martini. As he handed it to her, their gazes met. Hers was still cool and distant, and he suddenly understood that the real source of her anger had nothing to do with work, either his or hers: It was, simply, hurt at being left alone—jealousy, almost as if she had sensed that in a strange ethereal way, another woman had come into his life.
He set his glass down, circled her waist with his hands, and pulled her, resisting a little, to him. “Sorry,” he said. “You’re absolutely right, that was very inconsiderate of me. Whatever chores are left to do, I’m all yours.”
“It’s all done,” she said, and at last, to his relief, smiled. “But next time, give a yell before you disappear, okay? I looked all over the house for you.”
“Done,” he said. He kissed her and went back to his drink.
“Can I come with you?” she said.
He stopped, the glass halfway to his lips. Excuses flashed through his mind. “I don’t think you’d be able to see enough to make it worthwhile,” he said slowly.
“Oh, I don’t mean tonight. Next week, after Mona and Skip leave.”
He smiled, letting out his breath. “Of course. You can’t say I don’t know how to show a girl a good time.”
“I’ll pack a pique-nique lunch. And on the way up, I’ll tell you about a fantasy I’ve always had. It involves performing oral sex in a scenic setting.”
“Most intriguing,” McTell said. “But I have to warn you, the battlements are in full view of the entire city of Cannes.”
“Hah. As if it would shock them.”
“What about the ghost of old One-eye?” he said lightly. “He hasn’t shown his face in six hundred years.”
“For a scene like that, he might come up.”
“Besides, he liked boys.”
“Precisely my point. Although I’m not exactly a downy-cheeked youth.”
“Closer than me, lover,” she said. Her fingers quickly caressed his groin. “I’d better see how Mademoiselle’s doing.”
McTell carried his drink to the glass doors and leaned against the jamb, gazing out into the deepening evening. For the first time, he had lied to his wife.
** ** **
Perhaps an hour of daylight remained before the quick, almost tropical fade into night. The moon was on the wax, behind the clouds like a streetlamp in fog. McTell strode into the fortress.
He retrieved the camera first thing and stuffed it into the rucksack—it would not do to come home without that—then arranged the tools beside the dungeon’s stone rim. He wrapped a handkerchief over the head of the cold chisel to avoid a clinking sound that might carry. Then he began to work, hammering swiftly, gouging at the mortar that held the crossbars. It was old and crumbled easily. In a few minutes he could shake the grate with his hands. He inserted a pry bar under one end, braced himself, and heaved. With a cracking sound, the edge broke free. Exultant, he dropped the bar and threw the grate clear.
The sky darkened perceptibly as he descended; when he reached the bottom, it seemed almost night above. He crouched, flashlight playing on the step. His breathing was harsh and loud in the tight space. Carefully, he began to scrape, making the same motion as the hand in his dream.
Beneath the soil was solid rock.
He tapped it with the bar, then again harder, and then drove the point against it with all his force. Chips of stone sprayed his hands. He threw down the bar and stood, panting. He was a fool, a child, a madman, allowing himself to manufacture an elaborate fantasy—to believe in it—and finally coming face to face with the inevitable result: dust in his mouth. He raised his eyes. The rectangle of light above had grown so dim he could hardly distinguish it, and his anger was suddenly lost in a surge of claustrophobic panic. What if he saw hands replacing the grate?
He fought the urge to claw his way up the steps, and took several slow breaths, forcing himself back to calm. Then he crouched again and carefully examined the joint of the bottom riser with the tread above. It was packed with dirt. He inserted the cold chisel and gave it a tap.
It went in a quarter of an inch.
He tapped again. Another quarter.
Quickly, he inserted the flat edge of the bar beside the chisel. Wiggling first one and then the other, he worked both in a full inch.
And felt the stone block beneath them move.
With excitement amounting almost to nausea in the pit of his stomach, he levered the block until it fell, with a soft thud, between his knees. Thoughts whirled through his brain: a nest of snakes, even now about to boil out over his hands, or the carcass of some dead animal, writhing with maggots and corruption. He realized he was whispering, “It’s nothing, there’s nothing in there—” With the point of the bar, he probed the small cavity.
It touched something, with a dull metallic clink.
The flashlight beam shook with his hands. The object was flat and square, the size of a cigar box, wrapped in some coarse fabric rotted nearly to dust. Through it he could make out a greenish hue: oxidized copper, he realized—the metal the bar had touched. Gently, he lifted out the object. His fingers told him it was a small cask, with hinges and a clasp.
He fought the urge to tear away the cloth and break it open. Quickly, he swept the flashlight beam through the cavity. There was nothing else. He set down the light and gripped the stone block to push it back into place. For the first time, the beam caught the inner surface.
On it was carved an unmistakable rendering of the c
reature depicted in the church, celui. It was facing out, as if emerging from the stone.
Scalp prickling, McTell glanced hurriedly over his shoulder. The daylight above was gone. He shoved the block back into place and tamped dirt against it, then stood and scraped his feet to obliterate any tracks he might have left. Carefully, he tucked the copper cask inside his shirt. It was heavy, a cold dead weight.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he was panting, and with huge relief, he stepped into the open air. The sky was a little lighter than it had seemed from below. He moved quickly, replacing the grate, smoothing the crumbled mortar, collecting the tools. A final pass with the flashlight assured him that a casual visitor would notice nothing.
He had scooped up the rucksack and tools and was turning to leave when his gaze caught the great stone slab that had puzzled him on his first visit. Abruptly and certainly, its purpose struck him: It was the pediment of an altar. But it was nowhere near any foundation that might have been a chapel. It was facing the dungeon.
McTell moved swiftly through the ravine, the cold solid weight of the package against his chest, his senses electric with the surrounding gloom. It was only the moonlight through the branches, he told himself, casting the shadows that seemed to move of themselves; only the wind making the sound like voices, sighing and whispering in the tree-tops. He burst through the brush at the far edge and stood, slowing his breath.
The great walls loomed like the tombstones of fallen angels. Far below, he sensed the vast black void of the sea. He turned again and hurried on, imagining that he could almost understand the voice of the wind, speaking a language that was ancient when men first walked the earth, yet achingly familiar, whispering to something undiscovered in his depths—wooing, coaxing, promising.
** ** **
Powerless to move, with vague, numb dread rising within, Melusine Devarre watched the silent scene unfold. She could feel rather than hear the booming dirge of the cathedral bell from the village below, the clank of armor, the clopping of hooves. The air was gray and heavy with twilight; the stake driven into the ground before the fortress gates cast no shadow. Half a dozen men mounted on palfreys conferred in a tense cluster, whispering to each other in silent pantomime. Behind them, a crowd of perhaps a hundred, peasants by their dress, waited in an expectancy of anger and fear. Black-robed monks hurried around the stake, arranging bundles of wood like mothers tucking in children.
From the fortress a procession began. Two lines of mounted knights in armor, flanked by foot soldiers in leather hauberks and mail, escorted a single man in their midst. He was a head taller than the others, his shoulders an axe-handle wide; his tunic revealed the massive corded forearms of a swordsman. His wrists were tightly bound. A single eye stared out from a face that was arrogant, grim, above all defiant. It was wide across the cheekbones, seamed and scarred, with the nose thick as a small fist, the mouth a taut line utterly without pity. Where the left eye should have been was an empty socket, uncovered by a patch.
Soldiers chained him quickly to the stake, and a man wearing the dark robe of an inquisitor reined his horse forward. He shook a parchment from his sleeve and made a show of unfurling it. His hood fell back to reveal a white tonsure, a thin ascetic face with eyes the color of fog. With the parchment raised, he began to speak.
But under the bound man’s gaze, the old monk faltered and stopped. It took him a visible effort to keep his attention on the parchment. But again, his eyes rose to meet those of the accused. The answering stare was mute, implacable, cold with contemptuous rage. The monk swallowed, tried to speak, failed; the parchment slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the ground. He sagged, nearly falling from his mount. Other horses began to stamp and rear; the crowd moved in agitation, a single body with a thousand limbs. No one seemed willing to approach the condemned. Confusion reached the edge of panic. The crowd seemed about to stampede.
Then from its depths a thickset monk lunged forward with a blazing torch. Three long strides took him to the stake. With a sweep of his arm, he hurled the torch into the woodpile and leaped back. The branches flared, then burst into a thunderous blaze, blurring the profile of the unmoving victim behind a sheet of wild red flame.
As if a dam had burst, the crowd surged forward, shaking fists and throwing rocks at the burning man. A woman dropped to her knees, face contorted, mouth stretched in a soundless shriek of fury.
The monk who had thrown the torch was still running, but his motion became slower and slower, as if he were fighting a torrent of invisible viscous liquid. As he forced his way through the mob, his cowl fell back, revealing his terrified face.
Recognition snapped Melusine free.
** ** **
Etien Boudrie awoke with a violent start, staring around him. Gradually, he realized he had fallen asleep in his chair. With a groan, he sank back. His head throbbed. Thirst raged in his throat. He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
For the first time in years, a dream of fire.
He struggled to his feet, angry with himself. The cloudy afternoon had made a drink seem fitting, even advisable. With no obligations for the evening, it had been too easy to take a second and third. Now the brandy decanter, full when he had started, was nearly half empty. His stomach burned, his throat demanded water. Thank God, no images remained from the dream—only a bursting, unbearably intense sheet of flame. In the kitchen he rinsed his face and filled a pitcher. When he got back to the study, he felt a little better.
The electric light seemed harsh. He lit candles instead and settled back. When he looked out the window, the restless clouds showed a gibbous moon. The clock said a little after nine. But sleep was hours away now; it made no difference whether he drank coffee or liquor, lay in bed or sat up in a bright room. He would remain wide-eyed and unfocused until just before dawn. Then, when he must begin preparations for Mass, weariness would sweep over him like a wave from the sea.
The sleeplessness had not begun until after he had become cure, as if it were a part of his new burden of responsibility—as if his postwar days in the seminary had been a time of innocence, a gift he had not known enough to appreciate. At first he had prayed that his nights might remain uninterrupted. But finally he admitted that it was not the insomnia itself which was terrible, but the flood of memories it would not let him escape; and from those, he did not dare pray to be delivered.
The maquisards had called him Tien—an orphan boy, fearless, cunning, strong enough to have lifted the front end of a jeep off the ground on a bet, and once, to have carried a badly wounded comrade on his back eleven kilometers, over rough terrain, at night. But his courage had been illusory. He had been too young, too brittle. The day-to-day, night-to-night fear had finally broken him, and it had broken him the wrong way.
Over the protests of his insides, he reached for the decanter. At least, thank God, those dreams of fire had dwindled some years ago, as mysteriously as they had started, as if it had been a matter of processing a concrete amount of guilt. Until tonight.
The night breeze through the open window made the candles flicker. Boudrie stared at the moon. It hung over the earth like the eye of a pagan god, demanding obedience out of darkness. He rose and leaned against the sill, put his cheek against the cool glass. Clouds sailed past, turned the moon to a pale frosted orb, moved on to let it shine again. Diana, mistress of women, he thought.
There remained the other great sin of his life. But dwelling on that was not a way of expiation—it was a guilty, bittersweet pleasure, one he allowed himself only in his hardest hours.
Perhaps, after all, this was such a night.
** ** **
Melusine’s eyes were open, her heart pounding like a fist hammering at a door. Her hands clenched the chair arms.
The book she had been reading lay at her feet. She had pushed back so hard her heels had left marks on the rug. Pulling herself up, she limped quickly to the kitchen, threw on the lights, stood with
her back to the sink, sucking in lungfuls of air. The first dizzy grasp of what had happened was coming to her. She was once again herself, safe in her own home, in the twentieth century. But for a few awful minutes, she had been somewhere else—a very long time ago. It was not as if she had drifted into a doze. One moment she had been reading. The next she had been there.
Not only that, but someone else had been there with her: the priest, Etien Boudrie, whose terrified face had been revealed, when his cowl had fallen back, as that of the monk who had thrown the torch.
“Roger?” she called hoarsely, then remembered that he had gone to his office to get some sort of book. The air around her was still thick, almost vibrant with a sense of menace. Fighting panic, she made herself breathe deeply, then paced, willing the unseen presence to recede.
In a moment she was able to turn on the tap, run water over her wrists, fill a kettle and put it on the stove, more for something to do than because she wanted coffee. What she wanted was brandy, but not badly enough to go back into the parlor. She waited, listening to the comforting sound of the water heating, setting out the coffee things in measured movements, forcing the dark energy to dissipate—remembering the dry soft voice, almost a whisper, of Tante Mathilde.
Do not be deceived, little bunny. The devil never sleeps, but walks the earth in ten thousand guises, searching for souls. The priests will tell you one thing, the professors another; but this has been true since the beginning of time, will be true until the end. I know little of books, or of what people think is important these days. But I know that this battle for our souls goes on at every instant, unseen and unfelt though it may be. No passing of time can ever change it.
When the coffee was made, she poured a cup, steeled herself, and walked quickly back into the parlor. She stopped in the room’s center and stood, testing. It was going to be all right. Her shoulders sagged with relief.
All right, until next time.
It would be nice to have the company of a fire, she thought, but the nights were still too warm. Music, then. She put on a record of Chopin Etudes, bright, sparkling pieces free of the deep bass and minor chords that seemed to summon darkness. She poured a glass of brandy and took that and coffee back to her chair.
Next, After Lucifer Page 9