“I’m watching Timothy with great care, Beelzebub,” Satan said sternly.
“Good,” Beelzebub said. “Then I look forward to a long and happy life.”
But would he get it? Every urgent step by Timothy was like a death knell. As he watched Beelzebub stalk out of the Hall of Pandemonium, Satan wondered if he was facing his own extinction at last.
Something was amiss among the monks and the hawk was watching them with growing agitation.
The first thing she’d noticed was their great busyness: They seemed to be everywhere on the move, even in the remoter parts of China. What was more unusual, even the acolytes, who never left the monastery during their novitiates, were seen far from Ireland, traveling in pairs. That was something of great significance to the hawk.
Furthermore, when the monks encountered each other, it was never by chance. They met by prearrangement, held very brief conversations, then quickly parted. They moved purposefully at a fast pace, covering great distances on foot. And also, they seemed to center their activities around religious places, Buddhist monasteries, Catholic convents, American Unitarian religious communities. They were searching for something almost urgently. But what was it?
The hawk’s lord, Satan, hated this order in particular. For it was their practice to preach against him all over the world. On every street corner, it seemed, they railed against Satan, accusing him of the most monstrous ways, warning against his seductive corruption, his unslakable thirst for souls, urging all to believe in his existence, to reject his blandishments, to save their souls; and too often the monks were successful, too often snatching souls from Satan’s plucking claws. This order of Irish monks was a bone in his throat.
The biggest bone of all was also the busiest: Brother Zebulon. The hawk watched him closely. He was 6 feet 6 and broad as a bull with heavy muscular limbs and great strength. Satan had tried to seduce him more than once for he had a thundering voice and great Irish eloquence. Out in public places he would orate with wit and vividness, filling his speech with particulars against Satan. He drew crowds. He was spellbinding. The things he said about Satan made the archfiend wince with rage. Then Satan’s bellows would fill the Halls of Pandemonium.
What finally caused the hawk to take action was the rule of silence the monks imposed on themselves one day. Only essential conversation was allowed. And even their prayers were now conducted mutely. It was a difficult rule, for they were naturally a garrulous lot: the rule of silence hadn’t been invoked in generations. So when Brother Zebulon failed to make even one thundering sermon against Satan in a day, indeed when he failed to speak to anyone at all for three days running, it was too much for the hawk. She summoned her lord.
He studied the situation and agreed something dangerous was afoot. Crisscrossing the earth, whispering to each other in doorways, determinedly silent otherwise, praying mutely, busy as ants, nearly running from place to place in and out of religious centers, the monks were up to something. It was all too suspicious.
“Where’s their abbot, Joseph?” he asked. The hawk hadn’t seen him in nearly two months; but then she hadn’t been looking for him.
“How about Timothy? Where is he?” Satan asked. The hawk didn’t know. More than a month had passed since she’d seen him.
Satan pondered the situation, seeking some precedent for the monks’ behavior. But they had never acted this way before. And where was that Timothy? It was time to find out what was going on. He selected two acolytes from the monastery as the easiest targets.
CHAPTER 5
The Hawk on the Hunt
They were both very young, little more than boys. One of them didn’t shave yet. It was October and they were walking through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia under arbored trees like cathedral arches, the yellow and orange autumn leaves in brilliant sunlight like stained glass windows. Their feet crunched through the fallen leaves, and in the exuberance of youth they talked softly to each other as they walked, the rule of silence forgotten. America was a wonder to them.
Satan assumed the shape of Father Aiden, a very old monk who rarely appeared at the monastery.
“Well,” Satan said in his sternest voice to them. “Acolytes. Children. What are you doing out of the monastery?”
“We have been sent to find Father Joseph.”
“What is your name?”
“Michael.” The boy had an unmistakable Cork accent.
“And you?”
“Vincent.”
“Why have you been sent to find Father Joseph? Isn’t he in the monastery? He’s still the abbot, isn’t he?”
“We have a message for him,” Michael said.
“Message?” Satan frowned intimidatingly at the two of them. “What message?”
“It is only for Father Joseph.”
“But suppose I meet him before you do?”
The two youths drew aside and murmured to each other. Then Michael leaned close to Satan’s ear. “Father Joseph is to be told that Brother Zebulon has found a good hiding place for the man with the purple aura.”
In his long life Satan had never been so astonished. He stared at the two of them, looking from one face to the other. They were too innocent; it couldn’t be a hoax.
Satan gazed about him, at the brilliance of the autumn day, at the skimming leaves that fell, at the shafts of sunlight that reached down through the trees; and in the midst of that loveliness, for the first time in his life, he felt the qualm of dread.
A man with a purple aura. Not a days-old infant. A man. If Timothy found him first—this man with the purple aura—then Satan and his throngs would be given their final punishment.
He stared so hard at the boys, his face was so thunderstruck, they lowered their heads and shuffled their feet.
“Where is this man with the purple aura?” Satan demanded.
“Don’t know.”
“Who does?”
The acolyte shrugged. “Brother Zebulon, I suppose.”
Satan gazed on them with fury. Insignificant mortal trash. Daring to conspire against him. And now they had it within their power to destroy him. Him. Satan. His maddened green eyes dance at the two acolytes and they backed away in fright.
Satan felt he was an eyeblink away from extinction. The great alarm bell in the Hall of Pandemonium began to reverbrate through all the chambers of hell.
He had to find Brother Zebulon quickly.
Brother Zebulon definitely needed new shoes. It was a commonplace requirement, for even the stoutest shoes didn’t last long on the feet of a wandering mendicant. And those on Zebulon’s feet were disintegrating. They had been resoled more times than he could remember and now the uppers were going. Soon there would not be enough left to attach a sole to.
He had to interrupt his urgent search for Father Joseph long enough to get a pair of new shoes. And he knew exactly where to find them. On the other side of the Chesapeake from Norfolk, at the lowest end of the Eastern Shore peninsula, was the orphanage. And there lived Brother David, who in Brother Zebulon’s opinion was the finest shoemaker in the world.
Over the years he had worn out many pairs of Brother David’s shoes. And right now on a shelf in the shoemaker’s shop there waited for him a new pair, made of top-grade leather, with a Goodyear welt pulled over a combination last that was made from a mold of Brother Zebulon’s foot. The inner sole contained an arch-supporting steel shank, the upper was lined with calfskin and stitched to a thick flexible sole treated with silicone, and the rear was mounted on a pure rubber heel. The shoe had six eyelets that laced up to the top of Brother Zebulon’s ankle. In David’s shoes, over the years, Brother Zebulon had suffered never a turned ankle nor a pulled calf muscle, never a bunion, a corn or a foot-bone complaint.
Brother Zebulon walked south on Route 13, approaching those shoes the way a gourmet approached a French banquet. He was still a young man, in his midthirties, and the long walks kept his huge body fit and strong. He approached his work with gusto, prayed with great c
onviction and begged for his supper without shame. His sermons against Satan were legendary.
Brother Zebulon estimated he was no more than ten miles from the orphanage. He loved children. And often when he visited the orphanage for new shoes, he would spend a few days watching the children and talking to them. But this time he couldn’t stay. The whole monastery had been sent out to search for a safe haven for the man with the purple aura—which was becoming more visible every day. And Zebulon had found such a place.
Now he had to locate his abbot to tell him.
So he would pause long enough to sleep, then he would put on his new shoes and strike out again in his search for Father Joseph. The last he had heard, the abbot was crossing Asia to the west coast of America. Zebulon would start for California at dawn the next morning.
St. Jude’s Refuge for Children. Saint Jude, the finder of things. The finder of homes for children. The finder of shoes for him. The finder of a refuge for the man with the purple aura.
Dusk was not far. In the long lovely afternoon of autumn, he saw a long sinuous V of Canada geese pumping across the sky toward the glowing sunset beyond the Cedar Island wildlife refuge on the bay.
As he walked Brother Zebulon saw the lights of several homes through the road hedges. It was getting colder.
After a while more and more vehicles put their headlights on, and home lamps began to glow across the land. It was going to be a rich and lurid sunset. Thick gray clouds portended a change in the weather. Brother Zebulon sensed there would be an autumn rainfall within the next twelve hours.
He began to watch impatiently for the landmarks of St. Jude’s. The entryway to the orphanage was through a brick wall, between two brick columns surmounted by two large concrete balls. The two wrought-iron gates had not been shut in years. Soon enough, he told himself, coming around a curve of road he would see the two concrete balls. The orphanage itself was almost a mile off Route 13, up an old dirt path that was usually in need of scraping. The large tractor-trailers generated a bow wave of wind, and when they passed him at high speed the bow wave would strike him from the rear like a good hard push.
At last Route 13 described a long gentle curve, and there in the early dusk were the two cement balls. Soon now, soon. Brother Zebulon picked up his pace. He told his old shoes to hold up just a little longer and he said a small prayer to that effect. He walked with a picture in his mind of his new shoes on one of the wooden shelves behind Brother David’s head; from a lace hung a paper tag with his name on them: Zebulon. Those boots helped make endurable the vow he’d made never to ride on any vehicle on pain of loss of heaven.
Gratefully Zebulon turned away from the roaring truck traffic and stepped through the gates. He walked beside an old stand of scrub pines that effectively dampened the sound from Route 13 and also blocked the worst of the wind. The odor of the pines filled his nostrils. Ahead of him lay the old buildings of the orphanage. Some boys were practicing lacrosse on the far playing field in the last of the twilight. Brother Zebulon now permitted himself to admit he was quite hungry. He had eaten nothing since yesterday. Was it the sin of gluttony that made him yearn for a bowl of steaming vegetable soup with fresh bread?
The sound of children laughing came to him through the pines. A moment later a child, little more than four years old, trotted from the pines, giggling. Brother Zebulon was surprised. It was a girl in a plaid skirt and white sweater. There had been no girls here on his last visit. And why was she dressed in only a thin sweater on such a chilly night?
Even in the twilight he could see that she had large striking blue eyes, a guileless beauty. She ran up to him and put her arms around his right leg. “Brother Zebulon,” she called gaily.
Now more children came from the copse of trees, chortling and calling to each other. They skipped eagerly onto the path and clustered around him. Several boys reached him first. They wore sweatshirts that proclaimed ST. JUDE’S in gold letters on a blue field. They took his hands and began to pull him along the path.
“It’s Brother Zebulon,” they cried. “Everyone has to give Brother Zebulon a hug.” The number of children swelled as more and more came from the dark woods. They all seemed under five—all strikingly beautiful, Oriental boys and girls with love-filled smiles and black children with flawless chocolate skin and glistening dark-brown eyes. Overjoyed giggles filled the air. They reached their arms in the air, wiggling their fingers at him to be picked up and hugged.
“No roughhouse,” Brother Zebulon said with a laugh. “One at a time.”
“Me,” said a lovely Chinese girl. “Me first.”
Brother Zebulon stooped to hug her. Her thin arms clutched his neck. More children seemed to be arriving. The number was astonishing. A boy climbed his back, two more swung from his elbows. More tried to climb his body. They seemed dreadfully heavy, and soon Brother Zebulon was staggering with this great welter of joy and love. The little Chinese girl gave him repeated kisses. Her arms were squeezing his neck cruelly.
Zebulon was awed by the number of children that now poured from the wood. Was it hundreds? He had no chance to estimate for he was now quickly borne to the ground. He felt the first twinges of alarm.
The children quickly closed around him. They sat on his chest. They pulled his arms out flat and sat on them. They made a crushing mass on his legs.
“Enough,” he cried. “Please, children.”
The laughter increased and the swarming bodies mounted. There was a great weight on his chest.
“Please, children,” he called. “You’re too heavy. Please let me up.”
“First you must tell us a secret.”
“What secret?”
“Where is the man?”
Brother Zebulon tried to raise his head. The questions were coming from a young Caucasian boy with a very wise and knowing face. “What man?”
“You know. The man with the purple aura.”
Zebulon studied the child’s face. “How do you know about him?”
“Oh, we just know.”
“Enough,” Zebulon commanded. “Let me up.” He began to rise. And even with the great weight of the children, he managed to get to his knees. But more children came skipping and giggling from the woods and clambering on him. Slowly he lost ground and fell backward. The swarming bodies of the children blocked out the sky.
“Where is he, Brother Zebulon? Tell us.”
Slowly the pressure on his chest built, a great weight, far heavier than ordinary children.
“Tell us, Zebulon dear.”
The pressure on his ribs was forcing the air out of his lungs. “I may not tell you, children,” he cried. His arms were benumbed and felt as though they were going to burst from the terrible pressure. The mound of children on his body grew higher. His legs too now throbbed with agony. It was difficult for the blood to flow through his veins and arteries. “I am forbidden to tell you,” he shouted.
“Tell us, Brother Zebulon. Tell us.”
“Fiends!” Zebulon shouted. “Get thee gone!”
The children set up a new wave of giggles and clambered still higher. “Tell us, Zebulon. Tell us.”
Now the pressure increased; inside his head the pain was terrible. A crown of pain circled his skull from the blood pressure. His hearing became muffled. He heard the giggling children as though underwater. He couldn’t breathe.
“Tell us where he is, Zebulon. Tell us. Tell us.”
Zebulon knew he was going to die. “Get thee gone,” he said with his last breath. As he framed the act of contrition in his mind, he lost consciousness.
The children paused. He could no longer hear them. They scampered down from the pile and en masse hurried into the woods and the waiting darkness without giggling. They left Zebulon dead but they were no wiser.
Satan still didn’t know where the man with the purple aura was. For the first time he knew terrible urgency. Now the hawk had to find Father Joseph the abbot as quickly as possible. And she had no idea where he was.
The hawk rose high in the sky, then higher. Her mission now was frantic. To find the man with the purple aura meant finding Father Joseph. And he was a world wanderer. She hadn’t seen him in months. It could take more months to find him, searching the earth from the sky.
Worst of all, she had no idea how much time she had. For while she was searching for Joseph, Timothy could be finding the man with the purple aura. So at any moment the ultimate punishment could descend on hell.
The hawk soared aimlessly over southern France for a short time, then followed her instinct. She set her course for America.
The autumn had called forth great waves of migrating birds once more, to flee winter and darkness. But this time the hawk barely noticed. She swept over the earth, her eyes searching everywhere, and she missed little. She saw a number of the Irish monks, heads bent, pursuing their snail’s pace far below her. She saw the wild animals preparing themselves for winter or fleeing it. She saw men in their cities and on the roads. She flew above storms and through flawless sparkling autumn days. But she didn’t see Joseph.
She used the winds to carry her rapidly over large areas and she flew with little rest. Up in the sky before dawn and soaring and flying until sunset drove her back down to a roost, she went on day after day. The prevailing winds carried her south from New England to the mid-Atlantic, then to the southern Atlantic states.
Remembering Joseph’s habitual routes, she drifted across Georgia westward. Joseph had traveled this way a number of times. But her searches failed to find him. And she never saw Timothy and his dog.
She became gaunt. Her feathers were worn. But her great wings carried her tirelessly in spite of her short rests. On more than one day she failed to stop soon enough to take a bird for food and had to content herself with a careful preening of her feathers before she slept.
Each day failed to turn up Joseph. It was as though he was hiding from her. Maybe he and the man with the purple aura were both hiding together from her.
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