“My mother. Joyce Summers,” Buffy blurted. “She came into the emergency room.”
“Well, it’s down the hall and to the left,” the woman said.
“Is there any way to check if she’s still there?” Angel cut in. “Her name’s Joyce Summers.”
“Let me see.” The lady picked up a bookmark decorated with cat paws and carefully inserted it into her book. Then she shut the book and placed it flush with the desk blotter upon which many things were scribbled. Very slowly, she placed her hands over a computer keyboard and started typing. “That would be Summers as in the season?” she asked Angel. He nodded. “And the first name was Patrice?”
“Oh, God,” Buffy groaned. Angel touched her arm.
“Joyce,” Angel said.
The elderly lady squinted at the screen. “Oh, my.” She stared at Buffy. Buffy almost fainted. Then the lady blinked and said, “Wrong screen. Which is a good thing, because that other patient, well, let me just see. Yes.” She brightened. “Mrs. Summers was just admitted. She’s in Room 401.”
“Admitted?” Buffy echoed faintly. “What?”
“Yes, let me see.” She started typing again.
Angel steered Buffy toward twin elevators. The receptionist shouted after them that it was past visiting hours, but they didn’t slow for a second. As soon as the elevator doors opened, they were inside and on their way to the fourth floor.
The nurses’ station on the floor was a strange mixture of efficiency and idle chitchat. Some nurses were punching things into computers, while others were discussing their vacation plans. One of them looked up at Buffy, who went through the rigamarole again. Angel stood by her side.
“Room 401,” a nurse named Leyla said, pointing down the hall. “She’s in luck; she’s the only one in there right now. But it’s really past visiting hours, you know.”
Buffy was about to scream, but Angel laid a hand on her arm and looked at the nurse.
“It’s her mother,” he said. “We just found out she was here. Please, just a few minutes.”
The nurse hesitated only a moment before nodding.
Buffy looked at Angel, and together they tiptoed down the hall.
She pushed open the door. Her mother lay in bed in a hospital gown. A trio of lights surrounded the upper part of her head, like some brain surgery contraption in a science-fiction movie. She was asleep.
“Where’s her chart?” Buffy whispered.
Joyce opened her eyes and smiled groggily.
“Buffy.”
“Mom.” Buffy did a half turn. Angel had left the room. She saw his shadow from the overhead lights in the hall. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
“I just felt so sick. Dr. Martinez was . . .” She waved a hand. “There’s a specialist. Dr. Cole . . . Cole . . .” Her eyes fluttered.“I can’t remember.”
“It’s fine, Mom.” Buffy took her hand and leaned over her. She brushed Joyce’s hair from her forehead. “Is there anything you want? Are you in any pain?”
“Not now.”
When were you in pain? Buffy wanted to demand, alarmed, but now was not the time.
“Sleep, Mom. I’ll come see you in the morning.” Buffy smiled at her and kissed her forehead.
“’Kay, sweetie.” She was fading. Her words were slurring together. “Did you get the bad guys?”
“I had a perfectly dull evening,” Buffy assured her.
“Leftover pork chops,” Joyce went on. “New half-gallon of ice —”
“Mom, I’m fine. I’m not hungry.”
“Too thin.” Her mother’s hand flopped toward Buffy’s face. “Love you.”
The hand slowly lowered to the bed. Buffy put her hand over it, then hurried from her bedside into the hall.
“Where’s the doctor?” she demanded in a loud voice. “I want to know why —”
“Buffy,” Angel said, looking a little odd. “This is Dr. Leah Coleman.”
Dr. Leah Coleman was ancient. There was no other word for it. Her face was very pale and extremely wrinkled, and there were dozens of lines bleeding into her lips. Her hair was stark white and cut short, and pierced pearl earrings dangled from withered ear lobes which had obviously been fuller in their day.
“I’m a specialist visiting from New York,” she said by way of greeting. “My colleague, Dr. Martinez, asked me to consult on your mother’s case.”
“Her . . . case? She has a case?” Stricken, Buffy looked to Angel for comfort.
But Angel, though beside her in body, was definitely elsewhere in spirit.
Manhattan, 1944
He sat in an alley that was plastered with posters urging people to buy war bonds and to comply with blackout procedures. Perhaps not realizing the irony, he was crouched beneath a poster that read, “IS THIS TRIP REALLY NECESSARY?”
He was filthy, and he stank, and even though there were far more rats in New York City than there were Huns fighting for Hitler, he was practically starving. He could barely bring himself to drink of them, because he wanted to die.
Angel, once Angelus, the One with the Angelic Face, still grappled with the paralyzing guilt that had overcome him when the vengeful Kalderash Gypsy clan had restored his soul. It was his punishment for killing a young girl of their clan. Now he must live with the guilt from all the evil things he had done while a demon had inhabited his body and his soul had rested in the ether.
He couldn’t live with them. He could not bear another second of agonizing regret. He was more than half crazed with remorse, and he knew of no way to find relief.
A door to the alley opened, and Angel skittered away, like the rats whose lifeblood he disdained. Yet he couldn’t help but turn and look, in case the person who stepped into the alley was the Girl.
And it was. She had lovely dark chestnut hair, usually braided around her head like a coronet, but tonight it was loose and flowed over her shoulders. She wore a starched white apron over a rather severe gray dress, but on her, the costume was feminine and appealing.
Her face was drawn, her features delicate, and her eyes were rimmed with tears.
“Leah?” a voice said behind her.
It was an older woman, who came out into the alley. She lit a cigarette and offered one to the Girl — to Leah, Angel thought, delighted by the knowledge of her name.
“Honey, you need to go home,” the woman said.
Leah shook her head. “There’s too much to do.” She laughed bitterly. “I remember the Depression. I was just a girl, but I worked like a slave in my mother’s soup kitchen. They keep saying the war’s been good for the economy. So why are so many Americans starving?”
The older woman lit a cigarette, inhaled, and blew out the smoke. “There’ll always be the ones who fall through the cracks.”
Leah’s features hardened. “When there are this many, they aren’t falling through cracks. Society is failing them.”
“Oh, Leah. You’re so young.” The woman touched her cheek. “I hope you never lose this . . .” She smiled softly. “What shall I call it? Purity?”
“I’m only doing what everybody should be doing.” She stuffed her hands into her apron pockets. Angel saw her exhaustion in the hunch of her shoulders. She stared at the alley with a dejected frown and said, “I can’t believe I’m supposed to clean this up.”
“Fire hazard.” The other woman shrugged.
“But we didn’t even put this garbage out here.” She surveyed the heaps of trash. “I’ll make a sign-up sheet, ask the men to help us.”
“They’re here for the soup and the beds, Leah. Not to be nice.”
“I can’t believe that, Opal. They’ll help.”
“Miss Coleman?” someone called. “There’s something wrong with the stove.”
Leah Coleman sighed. “I’ll be right there.”
She glanced at the other woman and wordlessly walked back through the doorway. The woman threw down her cigarette, stepped on it, and followed her. She shut the door, casting Angel into darkness once again.
He stared at the smoldering cigarette. At the piles of debris in the alley — empty crates, broken milk bottles, newspapers.
Moving slowly, as if he hadn’t moved any part of his body in more than a century, he bent down and picked up the cigarette. Squeezing it out between his fingers, he rifled through the mess until he located a wooden crate in fairly good condition. He tossed in the cigarette. And a few handfuls of newspapers. He picked the broken glass up carelessly and cut himself more than once. But he didn’t mind the pain. At least it was feeling something.
Angel cleared as much of the garbage as he could. When he got tired, he caught a rat and drained it, so that he could keep going.
Chapter Six
Paris, October 11, 1307
From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a violin, expertly played, sweetly keening. The sound was odd and incongruous, punctuated as it was by the tolling of the bells of Ste. Genevieve. It was just past eleven in the evening, the witching hour near at hand, when a distraught Philip the Fair rode beneath the shadow of that grand church and continued on toward the home of his mistress.
His knights rode beside him, one on either side, the rhythm of their horses’ hooves on the road a brutal counterpoint to the painful beating of his heart. He dared not bring more than these two, trusted men-at-arms, despite the danger should anyone see him for what he truly was.
Philip shivered beneath his cloak and held the reins of his mount all the tighter. It was a chill evening, more so even than might be expected after a gray October day. But he was not a fool. Philip suspected that the cold that seemed to spread throughout his body had little to do with the climate, and far more to do with the dawning horror of what he even now contemplated.
In the past several years, he had done a great many things he would never have imagined. Devious things. Despite the air of propriety that had surrounded them, they had been savage things. But he had a sacred charge as a servant of the Lord, as well as a duty to France itself. And he would do whatever was necessary to fulfill those responsibilities.
No matter the cost.
Or so he had thought. But this . . . this was inconceivable. He’d agreed to it weeks before, but now he could not even close his eyes to sleep for fear of the night terrors that would beset him.
Despite the ghostly violin that played somewhere ahead, there were few people out in the street, save for beggars and other poor, stricken ones who wandered about like soulless things, searching for a safe place to sleep. Philip wondered if they would not be better off in the arms of the Lord than wheedling for alms.
The bells of Ste. Genevieve fell silent as he and his men drew up before the residence of his mistress. They dismounted, his knights looking all about to see that they were not spied upon. Frederick nodded to him, and Philip handed over the reins of his mount and went to knock softly at the door as his knights led the horses into the darkened alley alongside the house.
After a moment, the door opened, and Philip looked in upon the face of his mistress’s manservant.
“Are you going to let me in, Antoine, or just gawk at me?” Philip demanded.
Antoine seemed dumbstruck. He pulled the door wide as quickly as he was able and then fell to his knees in obeisance, eyes downcast.
“Oh, get up, you fool,” Philip snapped. “Tell your employer I am here. I must not be gone very long this evening.”
The pale, silent manservant rose and turned toward the grand staircase that curved upward behind him. But he needn’t have bothered. Philip looked up to see that she was there already, smiling down at him, dressed only in a sinfully ravishing peignoir.
“Indeed,” she said, “it would not do to arouse suspicion.”
Philip could only watch the way her lips moved when she spoke. Then he whispered her name: “Veronique.”
She descended to the bottom of the stairs and dropped her head, bowing deeply. “Your majesty,” she said, a small smile flitting across her face. “Perhaps we may discover what brings you so late and so desperate this evening?”
King Philip shot a suspicious glance at Antoine.
Veronique smiled. “In my chambers,” she said.
Then she turned and led the way back up the stairs. Philip followed, marveling for perhaps the thousandth time at the audacity of this extraordinary woman. He had ordered execution for less offensive behavior. But such a thing would not even occur to him where Veronique was concerned. He loved her. How could he not? She exuded a vibrant sensuality that seemed to overwhelm any effort at rational thought on his part. He was hardly a young man, but her mere presence was enough to rouse within him the most outrageous thoughts.
And she fulfilled each one.
More than that, however, Veronique was a brilliant woman. She understood the mandate that the Lord had set out for Philip and had several times suggested a course of action that aided in its advancement. Veronique understood the matters of state and church which consumed him, and, ridiculous as it would have seemed to him had anyone suggested such an idea years before, she had become not merely his lover and confidante but his most trusted adviser.
Philip followed Veronique into her chambers, watching the way the peignoir slid over her silken flesh. When he entered her bedchamber and almost unconsciously closed the door behind him, it was the first time he had not been completely consumed by his guilt in days.
“Oh, my darling . . .” he whispered as he went to her and buried his face in the honey silk cascade of her hair. Just the aroma of her was enough to transport him to some exotic elsewhere, the barest glimpse of heaven itself.
That was the truth he had come to understand over time. Veronique was a gift to him from God Himself, to aid him and offer succor in these most trying of times.
“Yes, majesty, I am here,” she whispered in return. “But you did not ride out this chill eve merely for the pleasures of my company. Tell me, Philip, what disturbs you so?”
The king released her and turned to face the door, eyes downcast.
“I don’t know if I can do it, my love,” Philip said earnestly. “Jacques de Molay is godfather to my son. Come morning, he will act as pallbearer at the funeral of my sister-in-law. He gave me sanctuary in the Temple last summer when the people of Paris sought my head, understanding, as do you, that what I do I only do for them, and for God.”
Beyond that, Philip could not speak. Veronique knew his heart better than anyone. He merely stood there, watching the flickering shadows thrown onto the wall by the candlelight. Then he felt her gentle touch on his shoulder, and she reached around him and unfastened his cloak. She draped it across her bed covers, then turned Philip to face her.
Veronique looked angry. Philip at first lifted his chin in defiance of that anger, prepared to deride her for her arrogance. But then he blinked and glanced away once more, for he knew it was well deserved.
“You are the king of France,” she reminded him. Once more, he stood tall. “You are the chosen of the Lord. One day, you will be Bellator Rex, you will be nothing less than God’s tool on Earth, emperor of an entire world suffused with the peace of the Lord.”
“Yes,” he replied, nodding. It was his destiny. He had known it since his coronation more than twenty years before.
“But your kingdom is failing. It is poor. The people have perpetuated an economy that cannot hold together,” Veronique reminded him. “Everything you do, you do for them, to heal the wounds that they have made. Perhaps some have suffered —”
“Many have suffered,” the king interrupted.
“And so they deserve to suffer. A less patient, less noble, less faithful king might have put such unfaithful subjects under a much more punitive rule. But you are not such a leader, my love. You are Philip the Fair.”
Nothing that Veronique said came as a surprise to Philip. Yet there was simply something in the way she said it that gave him comfort. There were times — and he had admitted this only to her, not even to his confessor — that he began to lose faith in
his destiny, and in his subjects. Veronique restored that faith, time and again.
The treasury of France was stronger than it had been in many years, but still it suffered. He had begun to rebuild it years earlier, of his own accord. Though it enraged many, Philip had imposed tithes on the church and banned the export of gold from the country. Keeping the gold and silver of France in France, that was a start. Then, from his wealthier subjects, he had appropriated serving plates and vessels made of fine metals, paying a mere fraction of their true value, in order to melt them down and make more coins for the realm. For the coffers.
Time and again, over the years, he had purposely devalued the currency of France. The subjects of his kingdom despised him for it, but France remained a powerful force in Europe, and his dream of Christian empire remained alive. If not for Philip, France might have collapsed into anarchy and ruin long ago.
In July 1306, thanks mainly to Veronique’s wisdom, Philip had executed his greatest plan thus far. He ordered all of the Jews in France arrested and expelled from the kingdom. Their money and holdings were seized by the royal exchequer. It had been a triumph for the church in France, but more so, it had been an enormous boon to the treasury.
And now Veronique had fashioned an even greater and more audacious plan. One that would put a great deal of gold into the hands of the king, far more even than the expulsion of the Jews. Philip and Veronique had conspired to crush the Order of the Knights Templar.
Those warrior monks were extraordinarily powerful. They answered only to the pope himself. But now that the Holy Land had fallen to the Saracens and the Templars had failed, their power was diminished slightly. Their power, yes, but not their wealth and influence. In France, they numbered perhaps two thousand very rich men.
Indeed, they had been Philip’s allies many times in the past. But he had always suspected something was rotten at the core of the order. And Veronique had confirmed it. She had a cousin, she had told him, who had been inducted into the order, only to seek refuge in a Franciscan monastery when he discovered the true nature of the Templars.
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