Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

‘I give you this warning,’ I told him, ‘because I’m sick of making sure your last chance vanishes. Take the witches and wizards, take what stores you can carry, and go. You’re an educated man, you can subtract the longitude where we are now from the longitude of the far coast the Spaniard Vizcaíno mapped for Spain eighteen years ago, and cypher out how big the continent must be! Even if the middle of it is another sea – if you can’t lose yourself from other people’s sight in all those thousands of miles, where can you!’

  Master Fletcher ruminated for what seemed a very long time.

  ‘You’re an agent of the Inquisition,’ he said. ‘Death waits for you too, back there.’

  ‘Doubly so. Why do you think we had such bad storms, getting here?’

  Slowly, his expression cleared. The lines around his eyes relaxed. ‘I’ve wondered . . . but it’s not possible – someone would follow us if we left the settlement. No matter how far we go into the wilderness, Standish and his soldiers would find us. You know,’ he emphasised, giving me a keen look. ‘The Papist church wouldn’t let us go free.’

  I’ve known Moses these two years at Leiden. My instinct about the man was to speak. I don’t think he’ll betray me.

  ‘I’ve wondered about it too,’ I said. ‘What would make the difference is a diversion, that would take every man’s attention away from you. I can provide that. Tell me the day. My Gift is the power of air and water. I’ll call up a storm that will wash half of New Plimouth into the sea. And they won’t search for you. Because I’ll make sure they believe you drowned, and the bodies washed away.’

  Moses frowned. ‘It will be likely some men will die. What of the responsibility if that happens?’

  ‘I have enough blood on my hands; I won’t notice more.’

  Moses Fletcher cast his eye across the shacks, with their pitched roofs and tall brick chimney-stacks – no man wanted to be cold the following winter.

  I could see he thought of the effort put into them.

  ‘Gather stores,’ I urged. ‘Hide them away. Get your people prepared. Make agreements with the local chiefs that they never saw you pass. When you’re ready, tell me. Even if any suspect you’re gone, this land is too big to know which way you went.’

  Moses also watched Master Standish and his militia men, I realised; disembarking from the shallop boat after another exploration, with their matchlock muskets.

  ‘Can you do this?’ Fletcher asked me.

  ‘I believe so. I have one man to fool. I think I can.’

  ‘If all of us are in favour, then yes. It’s desperate, but I can see no other way. The Church will send more after you.’ Moyses Fletcher gripped my arm. ‘I’ll leave word with the men of the Patuxet, only to be told to you. So that you’ll know – where to follow us.’

  He’s an honest man, but there are facts I haven’t told him. Understand this, my Secret. I wouldn’t ever go with them. I can’t take you with me.

  JA

  *

  Diary entry, 20 March, 1620, New Plimouth [1621, new calendar] [Marked private cypher]

  My Secret,

  Moses is forthrightly arguing with his people, under the secrecy a close-knit church can show to outsiders. I took it upon myself to speak to the Strangers and the Mayflower’s crew. Tallying up, all the Gifted are going, near on sixty-and-seven men, women, children.

  This country is beautiful once spring gets here.

  Moses and I have been entertaining ourselves with Greek names for the Gifts: telekinesis, to move things at a distance; transmutation, to change the nature of things (as for example in healing). I’ve since thought of a name for your skill – the ancient Greeks called chronological time chronos (self-evidently we borrowed the name); but they also had the concept of kairos – the supreme moment in which all happens. You master the skill of seeing kairos, past and future.

  We aren’t wise enough to use these powers. In this, the Church is right.

  Not to use. But to have? To be killed for merely existing?

  The ability to command another man’s soul is not the necessity to do it!

  I know Moses hopes others might follow them from Europe, across the seas and into the mountains. Who’s to pass the word back?

  Humble foremast sailors, I think, whom no man of rank ever looks at.

  How will we hide who’s gone? I’ll need to alter the record of deaths in sickness and storm.

  [Editor’s note: Perhaps three centimetres of the page are left blank. As far as can be discovered, there is no hidden writing. It appears to be just that John Allerton began his writing again in a hurry.]

  And all in a moment one’s view of a man is changed!

  I’m just back from the brick-and-beam house used as a church, meeting house and repository of records (afterwards taken and stored on the ship), where I refined my plan.

  I had no sooner trimmed a quill and altered five or six entries when Miles Standish appeared, alone, and with a quick eye to read what I wrote.

  ‘You’re helping us.’ He spoke as if someone had punched him.

  I realised, ‘You’re helping them.’

  And then I asked, ‘“Us”?’

  Miles Standish gave me a sardonic smile, for the first time as if he didn’t want to start a duel. ‘Oh, some of us have lesser talents than calling down tempest and lightning. Much less. I can keep a small amount of water or milk fresh for nine days. I must say, as a Gift, it’s come into its own here.’

  With no tact, I blurted, ‘I had no idea you were a wizard!’

  ‘I had no idea you were so hard to provoke to a fight . . . I thought you a fanatic, too devoted to du Plessis to risk his mission failing.’

  That had me stuttering.

  He folded his broad arms. ‘Young Master Allerton, I thought, clearly had to be got out of the way, but it must be legal, or I couldn’t work here. I’d started to think I should take you into the woods and blame the death on the natives!’

  His belligerence passed, only a ghost remaining. A matter of habit. Although I realised that the undertone in his voice was jealousy.

  ‘Will you travel with Moses?’ Standish asked. ‘I intend to stay here and keep the militia going – keep anyone from asking stupid questions. After that I’ll leave a guide I trust here, for any that follow, and head for the mountains.’

  It was odd to realise I could speak to Standish with as much trust as I could to Moses.

  Because of that jealousy, I didn’t say someone has to call up the storm.

  ‘Someone has to make everything convincing to the Bishop. I’m doing that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘In a word? Relapse.’

  He stood beside me as I forged notes for the deaths of the witches and wizards who’d leave New Plimouth. What had been a desperate fever, but with many recovering, now appeared from December to February as a disease that killed most it seized on. With copies of these records on the ship, only fifty or so colonists would be expected to have survived the winter. Miles Standish made gruff but serviceable suggestions.

  As we left the church, he shook my hand. ‘Shame I spent so much time on trying to kill you! We could have spent our time as friends.’

  Now Moses has sent me word: they can be ready, but need fourteen days.

  I must watch the weather patterns. I’ll need to summon a cyclone.

  JA

  *

  New Plimouth, 2 April 1620 [1621, new calendar], to his Grace the Bishop of Luçon, greetings –

  Sir:

  My apologies for the late report. The fever gave me a relapse, and I was for some weeks between life and death. While the initial disease seemed to run its course quickly, the relapse was often deadly. I must report there are not three score colonists left alive.

  The Mayflower prepares to leave here in a few days. Given there’ll now be a following wind, we might make the voyage to England in as little as a month.

  It looks as though John Carver will be left in charge of the colony. They could do worse.


  Many of those I came with from Leiden are in God’s hands now, and the ones from England were not spared. Without new colonists for support, they’ll have a difficult time assuring New Plimouth’s survival. But it is in God’s hands. When we arrived, we found the bones of those who had made a prior attempt. It is a fierce and unforgiving country.

  My business here being concluded, I will hope to be met with some direction at London as to whether I travel to Avignon or Paris to see your Grace.

  JA

  [Spring cypher]

  *

  Diary entry, 3 April 1620 [1621], New Plimouth

  [ private cypher]

  My dear, sweet Secret,

  I have asked an honest man, Captain Jones of the Mayflower, to send off this parcel to you when he touches land in England. I can trust him, I think. I must raise a wrecking storm at the town, and I can’t ensure all my belongings there will survive.

  If I had another month, with the seas and air then warmer and more motile, it would be easy to call up what I need. I’ll need to put much strength into this – a weaker Gift than mine couldn’t do it.

  There are copies of my reports to his Grace enclosed; you’ll recognise the cypher.

  Should he ask you questions, remember: I have nothing to hide. Answer, if he asks, and he will have no cause to punish you.

  The last courier I had from his Grace, before we left Plymouth in Devon – it seems longer than seven months ago! – he was writing of wars that will encompass the east: Bohemia, all the German principalities and the Holy Roman Empire, and Sweden. I know it must have been something you Fore-saw as a cause of a future.

  If I have a wish, it’s for you to Fore-see happier things.

  I need you to know, should you hear news you didn’t expect, that all is as I planned. I know I swore I wouldn’t leave without you, but I must go.

  I hold Secret and Silence in my heart.

  Your loving cousin,

  JA

  *

  Rotherhithe, London, 13 May 1623; Master Joseph Jones, to the nun known as Sœur Secret, in the Convent of [————] [name neatly cut from paper with a knife or scissors]

  Sœur Secret –

  My apologies for the late delivery of these papers. My father, Christopher Jones, died last year, not a twelvemonth since his return from that vile and godforsaken country over the Atlantic. I’m certain the hardships there brought on his death. The Mayflower herself has been berthed at Rotherhithe while legal complications arose from my father’s will. The journey across the seas battered her so; she will likely have to be broken up. But I wander from the subject.

  It was not until this week that I found your parcel of documents, carefully wrapped, in my father’s second-best sea chest. I have found a vessel going to Marseilles, whose bosun is a trusted friend; I’ve asked him to pay passage for this parcel from there to where your Order has their house.

  I need hardly say, you will find all the seals in order and all the papers unread. The ‘JA’ mentioned in the superscription [paper now lost] clearly intended the package to be private.

  Though this arrives late, I hope that it may give you some comfort.

  J. Jones, Merchant

  *

  Memoir of Christopher Jones, Captain, Master of the Dutch fluyt Mayflower, writ in my great cabin, and afterwards corrected in my house in Rotherhithe this 12th June 1621.

  This was to have been another part of my Memoir for my family, of the New World, but I find this too disquieting. I send it to Master Allerton’s cousin (to the address as superscribed), hoping it will tell his family more than it told me.

  When it came to 5 April of that year we set sail from New Plimouth, in the evening, as a great storm came up from the south. It roared up suddenly from the deeps, with winds that twisted up some of our poor shacks off Cole’s Hill, clear off the earth. The lightning danced down and set much else on fire.

  It is safer to ride such storms out at sea. I took any I might come across aboard the Mayflower, but the storm came up so fast the greatest number were caught ashore.

  Sailing into New Plimouth at dawn, 6 April, we saw the extent of the damage. Fewer buildings were burned than we feared – but all had been scoured open, and washed out, by that great tidal wave.

  A number of poor souls were found drowned on the beach. We cast about to find out where the tides deposited wreckage, and found two more; their names are inscribed on a memorial.

  Captain Standish was aboard with me, and later walked over the wreckage of the town. He remarked that we shall likely not know the total dead, them being sucked back into the depths of the sea, never to be washed ashore – or if they are, somewhere too far for us to know of it.

  New Plimouth colony has suffered. But I am sure it shall be rebuilt, especially with those new colonists that will sail over this summer.

  I mention this particular incident, not only because it’s an example of the mystery of God’s judgement, but because of something I saw, and can’t understand. It irks my mind.

  I watched through my spyglass as we tacked to leave the harbour, coming close to stranding ourselves each minute for reason of the storm. That glass is a vanity to me, specially ground, so that I can see very clearly. For a ship’s master, it is always a necessity.

  At the height of the storm, the surge of the giant wave came up into the harbour – and continued to rise. It lifted us, and smashed through every hut on the foreshore, and raged inland.

  We took advantage of the new depth of water to flee, but from my place on the rear deck, I watched New Plimouth slashed by rain and spray.

  And up on one of the pitched roofs, clinging to the brick chimney stack, I saw a man.

  The rain thrashed across the settlement so hard that it lashed him sideways. I recognised the building on which he took refuge. The Saints often use it for prayer. Lightning stalked across the town in silver spears, bright enough to show me his face. I knew him for John Allerton, an amiable member of the Leiden colonists.

  I saw his face plainly.

  Allerton stood up with the chimney supporting him. Rain streamed from his hair and clothes. His fists were clenched by his sides, not holding fast to the roof. Shockingly, he wore no boots nor hat; I suppose he had shed them to get a more clinging grip, when, as now, he must climb for safety.

  White fire flashed down and seemed to make contact with the crown of his bare head and his bare feet at one and the same time. There was a sound so loud it deafened half the men on the Mayflower. John Allerton was flung back in light, arms thrown wide, as if in his final moment in the lightning it had been given to him to look like our Lord on His cross.

  Curiously enough, it’s because of this sight of him that I was able to give some comfort to humble sailors among the crew who knew him. One man had even heard the rumour that young John Allerton committed self-murder! I was able to reassure him that everything I knew of Allerton’s death made it plain that it was an accident.

  But, as to that final moment:

  Allerton was dead, and I had the ship to tend to.

  But he had been in the centre of my spyglass when the lightning came down as if to his call. Now, bear in mind that I am a master mariner. I am long used to bad weather, and to making out what one man aboard another ship may shout to us, by the movements of their lips.

  John Allerton screamed his last words into the crashing storm:

  ‘Secret – lie for me!’

  Ω

  Little can be added to the astonishing conclusion of this account.

  From established records we know that Miles Standish continued as a good commander of the New Plimouth forces, if a brutal one, until his mid-fifties, when he retired into a more advisory role. He died in Duxbury, Massachusetts, at the good age for the time of seventy-two. He never did join any church.

  The name of Moyses Fletcher, along with many others, appears in the surviving records of those who died in the winter of 1620–21 from the plague. The report of Captain Jones’
s death and the court case about the Mayflower are confirmed in English records of the time.

  Two years after these events, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Bishop of Luçon, became Cardinal Richelieu; two years after that, as chief minister, he became the most powerful man in France, and the most hated for his ruthlessness.

  Of the missing, nothing is known. They may all have perished, or they may have moved inland and settled. If so, their descendants may be the source of reports in deeply rural areas of America even centuries later of people using ‘knacks’, or folk magic.

  c. 1690s

  The seventeenth century was a time of many purported wonders. Most can be dismissed as travellers’ tales, grown more fantastical with each retelling. But some cannot so easily be disregarded.

  Reports of supposed ‘miracles’ have always been taken seriously by the Church, and have been carefully investigated. A few, such as the visions at Lourdes, Fatima and Knock, or healings which contribute towards the cause of beatifications and canonisations, are judged to be true miracles. Most, despite local fervour, are found wanting, and are not granted official recognition.

  But some, it seems from this report, are investigated – and then all evidence of their existence is suppressed.

  The Silver Monkey

  Dave Hutchinson

  If, in the dying days of the seventeenth century, one had been visiting the many small duchies and principalities and margravates which littered central Europe like a perpetually squabbling jigsaw, one might have chosen to visit the town of Altenberg.

  One would, in all honesty, have had to wander some distance off the beaten track to have been aware of the town’s existence at all. Centuries of poor choices by the town’s ruling family had resulted in shifting borders and allegiances and at least one burning, all of which had sapped the town’s resources and, one might conclude, the spirits of its people. It sat in a deeply forested valley through which a river ran from the mountains on its way to more interesting territories, produced nothing of any great note, and seemed, to the outside observer at any rate, to be doing its best to avoid the attentions of History.