Prospero Regained

by L. Jagi Lamplighter

  We lay upon the hard ground, our mouths dry with dust. Except for Theo, who merely looked tired, and Mephisto, who was asleep, the others were looking gaunt and harried, as if haunted by personal ghosts.

  “So much time lost,” Gregor murmured hoarsely, from where he lay, his head resting on a broken helmet. “Tell me, Brothers, Sister, Spirit with a Soul: what have I missed during my absence?”

  We all spoke at once, eager to dispel the gloom by describing how the world had changed since 1921. There was so much to say. We touched on a few highlights: the First and Second World Wars, the Space Age, Hollywood, the Internet, improvements in technology that had changed the world. Gregor listened to these matters impassively, then turned the discussion to the matter of most interest to him—the Catholic Church and how it had fared during his internment.

  Most of us had little to say about this topic, not having kept track of such things. It was not a subject I had any interest in. Titus went as far as to sneer with distaste, displaying his loyalty to his native Scottish Protestantism. Theo, however, was able to answer many of Gregor’s questions, albeit in layman’s terms and not in the detail Gregor would have liked. Erasmus had not been a religious man in many years, but as a scholar, he kept abreast of the times and could fill in explanations or offer background that Theo did not know. And from time to time, Caliban, who lay on his back with his head resting across his club, spoke up, surprising everyone with the answer to some esoteric question that Theo and Erasmus could not answer.

  Much of what was said distressed Gregor. He was horrified to hear of recent scandals and the loss of faith among the modern public, though he was just as horrified to hear that mass was no longer being said in Latin. He was cautiously hopeful to hear that the church had taken a gentler tone toward heretics, but withheld his final judgment, saying that until he saw how the documents were worded and how their mandates were being carried out, he could not give his approval. Certain niceties of the relationship between the bishops and the pope caused him great distress, until he sighed and shook his head, smiling sadly.

  “It is not meet for me to trouble myself about these things. Especially now, when I have only hearsay to go on. If I should survive to see the light of day again, I will investigate this matter myself. God willing, I will find myself at peace with it. If not, I can always hover nearby waiting for a cardinal to die and, with Logistilla’s help, work my way back up to being pope again.”

  “I don’t suppose it would occur to you to work your way up, like everyone else,” Erasmus asked wryly.

  Gregor eyed him skeptically. “What past would I show them? Do you plan to turn me into a baby and have me grow up again? The life of a pope gets scrutinized. I can hardly come forward and present myself as a member of the heretical and blasphemous witchcraft-practicing Prospero Clan.” He settled back again, his arms crossed behind his head. “Besides, while it is true that I rose to power upon the laurels of a better man the first time, the second time I started as quite a young man and worked my way up to pope on my own merit. But enough of this. Tell me more about this new modern world.”

  We talked some more, describing some of the wonders that mankind had wrought in the last century.

  “Television?” Gregor interrupted after a time. “Is that the same as ‘telly’? Ulysses furnished my prison with a fancy magic lantern containing moving images which he called by that name.”

  “The very same!” Erasmus had taken off his long, green outer justacorps to use as a pillow. He lay on the dust in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat. “So, Ulysses gave you a television, did he? I’m glad to hear it. Maybe you are not as far behind the modern world as I first feared. Did what you see seem shocking?”

  Gregor grimaced as if pained. “The women acted brazenly and dressed outrageously. I prayed constantly that this pageant was worse than the reality it sought to represent.”

  “Might be it was, if it was MTV,” Erasmus allowed. “Though the reality is pretty bad nowadays. Do you remember the name of the program?”

  “Ulysses called it, I Love Lucy.”

  “Dear Jesus!” Erasmus bent over and pressed his hand against his mouth to restrain his mirth. Mab lowered the brim of his fedora until it hid his face in shadow. Theo, Titus, Caliban, and I were not so lucky. We burst into laughter.

  “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain,” Gregor snapped. “Something I said amuse you?”

  “Only that I Love Lucy is tame by modern standards,” I replied, chuckling sadly.

  “Ah, so those prayers went unheeded.” He nodded.

  Erasmus chuckled. “I fear you will have to weather a few shocks when you get home.”

  “You think it a laughing matter, Brother?” Gregor frowned. “I pity those who walk the earth today. So many of them will be led astray by false promises and vice masquerading as virtue. And this”—he gestured out over the dreary battlefield—“will be their reward.”

  Gregor’s words were harsh and chilling. In their wake, I found myself considering the modern world in a new light; many things that had formerly struck me as quaint or eccentric took on menacing overtones.

  “I have missed so much.” Gregor sounded slightly stunned. “The loss of time, of opportunity … the sheer waste! And yet, I am not sure I would alter events, were I able. I would never have come to grips with my hatred had I not been forced to confront my own thoughts for years on end. I would still be as angry and as bitter as I had been before my captivity.”

  “Were you as bad as that?” I asked, very curious about what had caused this amazing change in my brother. I leaned forward, eager to finally learn what had caused his transformation.

  “I was,” Gregor admitted. “The worst of it came after I had been on Mars for about eight years. My confinement had begun to oppress me, and I was seized by hatred, loathing, and wrath such as even I had never suffered before. I hated the Protestants for stealing from us! For robbing so many of eternal life. If it had not been for Luther, Calvin, and others … or perhaps, if it had not been for the Borgias, who gave them the fodder they needed to sway the masses … we, the Church, would have had the Puritans!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Erasmus leaned forward.

  “If the new Puritanical order,” Gregor continued hoarsely, “had been embraced by the Church—as it had other orders had before it: the Benedictines and the Jesuits, the Dominicans and the Franciscans—I could have participated. Instead? What happened? This good human impulse slipped through our fingers, all those virtuous folks who followed it were lost to Hell, and the Council of Trent, which was supposed to conciliate the dissenters, made things more opulent and ceremonial! The purity and simplicity I craved were forever forbidden to me!”

  “This makes sense of many things,” Erasmus murmured.

  I felt the same way. Gregor had always reminded me of the Puritans; I had wondered why he had not joined their movement. Now I saw: he had wanted to be a Puritan … but only so long as the Puritans were under the jurisdiction of his beloved Catholic Church.

  “My hatred and rage grew so great that I became ill,” Gregor continued, sitting up, a black form against the dull gray skies of the plain. “I grew feverish and delirious. Days passed. Ulysses sometimes forgot me for months at a time, so I began to fear that I would die of my illness before he returned to aid me. I lay there, fretting about the Reformation and the sins of Luther and Pope Alexander II. Then, in the midst of my delirium, I beheld a vision.”

  His voice became hushed, awed. “As I lay within my bed, a woman descended from Heaven clothed in a robe woven from the sun. She stood upon a crescent moon, and upon her head was a crown of twelve stars. She revealed to me that she was the embodiment of the Great Church, the Church our Lord the Savior founded upon the rock of Saint Peter.

  “‘Rise up!’ I cried in my rabid state. ‘Seize the malefactors! Rend them! Reveal to them the error of their sinful ways!’

  “Gazing at me with pity, she pointed at her sun-bright robes and asked me s
ternly if I could see any rents in her garments. I acknowledged that there was none. She then announced that she took no cognizance of the split caused by the Reformation.”

  Gregor paused and shook his head, astonishment evident upon his face. “Can you imagine? She thought the differences between the Lutherans and the True Church was no greater than that between … between the Benedictines and the Jesuits! As if our great religious wars were nothing but a squabble among children, in which their mother took no side! It was utterly astonishing!”

  “And you believe this to have been a true vision?” Erasmus asked from where he lay stretched out on the dirt, atop his coat, his arms crossed behind his head.

  “Bah! Of course not.” Gregor waved his hand dismissively and lay down. “It was the delirium of a sick man.” He added, his voice intent, “But it made me think!”

  * * *

  I AWOKE before my brethren and lay for a time staring up at the black billowing smoke shot through with red-orange flames. It was hard to convince my body it was morning—morning being a relative term here—but I eventually rose and, finding my shoulder bag, drew out a brush. Sitting down upon Gregor’s robe, I brushed out my raven-dark hair.

  Behind me, a voice was speaking softly. I turned, stifling a scream when I saw someone standing within our camp. The light was dim, and the figure’s back was to me. I could not make out who it was. He stood, motionless, as if gazing at the battle of the dead raging in the distance. Even before my eyes made out who he was, I had determined his identity; for now I could make out the words:

  Since Death has all my brethren tak’n

  He will not long me leave alone

  On force I must his next prey be;

  Timor Mortis conturbat me.

  Since for the dead remedy is none

  Best is that we for death dispone

  After our death that live may we;

  Timor Mortis conturbat me.

  Erasmus turned, smiling his self-mocking smile through the lank dark hair that fell over his eyes. “Seems appropriate to the place, does it not? Frighteningly appropriate, even.”

  As he walked away and retrieved his long green coat, I had the oddest feeling that he had not actually recognized me. Perhaps, this was true, for he did not pause to say something disagreeable.

  * * *

  MY respite from malice was fleeting.

  “Up early, are you, O Get of Sycorax?” Erasmus asked almost cheerfully.

  I sighed. “Erasmus, now that we know about the dolls and their spell, don’t you think that it would behoove you to make some effort to resist the spell-induced hatred? You are deliberately allowing yourself to be influenced by dark enchantments.”

  A wave of antipathy overwhelmed me, but I dismissed it sternly. It was a magical attack and not my own feelings. I did not need to bow to it. I briefly recalled Theo’s admonition to forgive Erasmus but could not bring myself to go that far.

  “My disdain for you, Sister dear, does not come from any spell. Logistilla, or whomever cast the spell, was merely taking advantage of an enmity that was already present.”

  “Then why do you hate me so?” I repeated the question I had asked him when we were sipping Mango juice back in Boston—what now seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Maria, of course,” he answered.

  I caught myself before I blurted “who”? Clearly, this person was important to my brother and he expected me to remember her. Maria? The name sounded vaguely familiar. Father had had a nurse named Maria during his illness after Gregor’s “death,” but I could not recall that Erasmus had much to do with her.

  I vaguely recalled Erasmus’s first wife, a sweet young woman with a round face, long legs, and a colt’s large brown eyes. Her name had been Maria, I was nearly certain, but I had hardly known her. How could I have offended her?

  I waited, hoping he would say more.

  “Because of Mother and my Maria,” he continued.

  “Your mother?” I asked, astonished. Could this quarrel of his be so old as Isabella Medici? Both Isabella Medici and Erasmus’s first wife had died centuries ago. “What do they have to do with me?”

  “You murdered them,” he replied.

  “I?” I exclaimed. “I was not even present! Your mother choked on a chicken bone at a dinner served by her own great-niece—a party to which I had not even been invited—and your wife, if I recall, died in childbirth.”

  “Exactly,” replied Erasmus. “You weren’t there.”

  I sighed with exasperation. “Don’t tell me this is the old Water of Life argument again! Life with an immortal Isabella Medici would have been intolerable!”

  “She was my mother! What if it had been Lady Portia, whom you apparently continue to insist Father adored. Would you have saved her?”

  “Of course. Father loved her.”

  “Well, I loved Maria.”

  “You would have tired of her eventually,” I repeated by rote what Father had told me.

  Only now, the words sounded flat to my ears. I recalled, for some reason, the old lady I had seen crossing the overpass in Chicago. If matters had been different, and Ferdinand had lived, might it have been me who lay dying upon a birthing bed, as Maria had? I felt strangely disoriented, as if familiar objects had suddenly transformed into an unfamiliar landscape.

  “Is that so?” Erasmus said. “Funny, I never have tired of her memory. In all the years since, I’ve never met a woman who compared with her. No woman since has been as sweet, as gentle, as faithful. No woman, again, has made me feel as complete.”

  When I did not answer, he continued, “She died in my arms, you know, her sweet brown eyes calling out to me to help her, to stop the pain. Her blood ran through my fingers … all my scholarly learning could not help me stanch its flow. And all I could think of, as my love’s life ebbed away, was that a single drop of Water from the lily-white hand of my older sister could save her, could stop the pain … could save the child, the fruit of our love. A single drop. They both died that night, the mother and the child, leaving me to grieve and our four older children motherless.” He paused momentarily unable to go on.

  Eventually, he continued, speaking haltingly. “You’ve tried to take my family from me, but you have failed. Do you know I’ve kept track of them all? Every single offshoot of my and Maria’s love down unto the twenty-third generation? They number in the ten thousands now, yet I know the name and location of every one. That boy you saw guiding Cornelius, is the twenty-third of my line, the twenty-second eldest son in a direct line from my eldest son Sebastian.”

  That was why the young boy who had been guiding my brother Cornelius around back at Erasmus’s house had showed up when Mab and I asked the Santa’s Naughty and Nice pool to show us children who were members of our family. How strange and disconcerting to think that I had thousands of great-great-nephews of whom I knew nothing. Worse, Mr. Mustache had probably been one of these descendants, too. This meant that the man I had led to his death when he had tried to chase my sailboat at night on our way to Logistilla’s had been not only innocent, but also a family member!

  Erasmus was speaking again. “In those wee hours, as my Maria’s life seeped inevitably away, I cursed you in my heart, and I have never forgiven you. You are the murderer of my love as surely as if you had killed her with your own hands.”

  “A ridiculous supposition, Erasmus. Do you also hold me responsible for every other person who had died between then and now? Theoretically, I could have gotten the Water to them as well.”

  “What do I care about them?” he rasped. “You could have saved my Maria and my baby! My wife and my child—I never even discovered whether I lost a boy or a girl. It would have cost you nothing! As Maria lay dying, I left her, even though she called out to me not to leave her alone, and spent some of our precious last minutes together begging Father on my knees to force you to help her. But, he refused. He said the Water was yours, and only you could decide how it would be used.”

  “Fat
her said that?” I whispered, shocked. “How strange…”

  Something in my tone caught my brother’s attention. Erasmus halted his diatribe and peered at me. “How so?”

  “Because Father was the one who told me not to give it to you.”

  “What…?” Erasmus leaned forward, his eyes glittering.

  “Do you think that I, a young woman with no husband, could have known anything of love? How could I have made the judgement that you would tire of Maria? I know nothing of the ways of men and women.”

  “I thought that was precisely why you did it … because you were bitter over Ferdinand and wanted others to suffer,” he said, a touch of uncertainty creeping into his voice.

  “Certainly not!” I objected. “I would not be motivated by such pettiness! I merely did what I always did.… I obeyed Father’s wishes.”

  For a moment, Erasmus looked pained, then he laughed harshly. “Very cunning of you, Sister, to try and frame Father when he is not here to defend himself. I am not fooled. You cannot blame your crimes on him. Nor do I buy Theo’s theory that Father has enchanted you. You are the culprit behind all our family ills, and here, in Hell, the truth shall come out!”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Bite the Angel’s Finger!

  Mephisto awoke and summoned up his friends again. Pegasus proved bright-eyed and whinnying, but the others remained fast asleep.

  “Ma’am, didn’t you once tell me that Pegasus was a magic horse who could carry your whole family?” Mab asked, yawning. He stretched, trying to straighten a crick in his back caused by having slept on a rock.

  “Yes!” I laughed and turned to Mephisto. “Shall we ride?”

  “All aboard!” Mephisto gleefully threw his arms out. “But keep in mind that Peggie gets tired easily when he carries everyone. I don’t know how far he’ll be able to take us.”