by April White
“Actually, I was wondering if you keep records here of the bishops from the late 1800s. A friend of mine is related to one and I wanted to surprise him with a genealogy.” I felt bad lying to him, but I didn’t think I’d get anywhere with the real story.
Bishop Cleary looked thoughtful. “The relation was a bishop here at Guy’s Chapel then?”
“We think so. His name was Bishop Wilder.”
The sparkly amusement disappeared from Bishop Cleary’s eyes in an instant. It was replaced with wariness and anger. “Young Lady, if your friend was related to Bishop Wilder, I’d advise that you find new friends.”
The coffee soured in my stomach. “Wow. Okay. Let me start over.” The coldness in Bishop Cleary’s eyes remained as he waited to see how I’d come back from that. “I lied. I’m here to investigate Bishop Wilder because he disappeared in 1888 and I want to know why.”
His eyes were still fixed on mine. “You have my attention.”
Something about this jeans-wearing, white-haired bishop made me trust him. “And… I didn’t like him.”
His eyes widened a fraction. “You didn’t…” Finally, he nodded. “Okay.”
“Really?” My surprise at being believed was clearly written on my face, because the bishop cracked a very slight smile.
“I keep the chapel archives in my office if you’ll follow me.” Bishop Cleary headed toward the door in the wall behind the altar. I practically tripped over my feet to catch up with him, so surprised that he wasn’t calling the cops on me.
The bishop’s office was surprisingly casual for being part of such an elaborate church. There were a couple of low-slung chairs from the 1950s in front of a big dining table used as a desk. Besides shelves and shelves of books, the art on the walls were the only fancy things in the room, and that’s just because the paintings looked really old and valuable.
Bishop Cleary sat behind the desk and I sank into a chair. He looked at me across folded hands supporting his chin.
“Saira is your real name?”
I nodded. “Saira Elian.”
An eyebrow arched up. “I’ve read your name in Bishop Wilder’s genealogies.”
“You have? My actual name?” Talk about creepy.
Bishop Cleary’s gaze on me was unwavering. “Written more than a hundred years ago in his own hand.”
Ho boy. This was going to get interesting.
“I trust you have an explanation?”
I nodded and he seemed to accept that I’d tell him the truth. “Unfortunately, the books were stolen last month. After a request very much like your own.”
My heart sank to my stomach and I knew the answer even before I asked the question. “A well-dressed Russian mob-looking guy, slim, blond, in his late thirties with a soft voice?”
Bishop Cleary looked startled. “That’s him.”
I winced. “His name is Seth Walters and he’s been after me for about the last two weeks. I don’t know him; I just know he’s not someone I want to meet in a dark alley… again.”
The bishop’s eyes narrowed. “Have you gone to the police?”
Why hadn’t I gone to the police and sent them after Slick? My experience with the two LAPD Officers in Venice made me feel that I needed to take care of things myself. Allowing people like the twins and Archer to help me was hard enough. Handing the whole mess over to the police was way outside my experience. I shook my head. “I don’t have anything… real to tell them. I have no proof Seth Walters is after me and to be honest, I have no idea why. But that’s part of what I’m trying to find out.”
“And that’s why you want Bishop Wilder’s records?”
“Actually, I didn’t know they had anything to do with each other until just now. I just… heard the bishop had left King’s College in 1888 and I wondered why?”
Bishop Cleary sat silently for a long moment, and then finally nodded. “As I said before, I’d seen your name in Bishop Wilder’s genealogy, which was a book he’d apparently been compiling for much of his time here at King’s College. His research seemed to focus on five families in particular, though ‘Elian’ and ‘Shaw’ were the only two that stand out in my memory.”
Of course Silverback had been tracking the Shaws in 1888, but it still made my spine tingle. He talked about Will Shaw with Archer that day in his office, so Will Shaw was still alive then. I had a sudden impulse to meet this ancestor of my teacher.
“When Mr. Walters liberated the genealogy from my office, I did some searching through the chapel’s library for any other references to Bishop Wilder. Nothing was written of his departure except that Bishop Malcom had arrived on December 14th, 1888 to fill his vacant post.”
“There was nothing about why he left or where he went?” I expected that all churches were like libraries, with every record meticulously kept.
“Not in the chapel books. However, I did find mention of Bishop Wilder in an unexpected place: the psychiatric notes from Bethlem Hospital.”
“Bedlam.”
Bishop Cleary smiled. “I have to admit a morbid fascination for the place myself, which is why I was poking around the special exhibit of Bedlam’s records we had here at the New Hunt’s House Library.”
“Is it still here?”
The bishop shook his head. “It went back to their archives last week. But I do have this.” He pulled out his cell phone, scrolled through the menu and handed it to me. There was a picture of some handwritten text, and I had to zoom in pretty close to read it.
1 November, 1888. Bishop Wilder here to see SHAW. Patient agitated and unresponsive upon bishop’s departure. It was signed in some illegible scrawl that looked distinctly doctorish. I looked up at Bishop Cleary. “He went to see Will Shaw.”
“Is that significant?”
“I don’t know, but I think so.”
Bishop Cleary sat back in his chair and thought for a moment. “Why was your name in Bishop Wilder’s genealogy?”
I’d told Bishop Cleary I didn’t like Silverback, and I said it in present tense. “I honestly don’t know because as of now, I haven’t actually met him.”
Bishop Cleary’s eyes narrowed. “But you could still?” I nodded. “And that could explain your name in his book?” I nodded again. He took a deep breath. Either he knew something about the Families, or he was used to hearing things that defied rational explanation. “Who was Will Shaw?”
Good question. And one that deserved the truth. “Apparently, he was the inspiration behind ‘Jekyll and Hyde.’ He went crazy in 1871 and they put him in Bedlam.”
“I have a feeling that is one small part of a much bigger story.”
“It’s probably in the public record.”
Bishop Cleary had a very disconcerting way of looking into my head. I might have thought he had some Seer in him, except he honestly didn’t seem to know about the Families.
“I don’t know why you’re not telling me the whole truth, but I do believe what I’ve heard is true.”
“Bishop Cleary, I don’t even know what’s real, and I’m way over my head in a game I don’t know the rules to. I’m sorry I’m not telling you everything, but I’m pretty sure knowing more would put you in danger. And you seem really cool, so I don’t want to do that.”
He gave me the ghost of a smile and stood up. “Well, Saira, shall we go to Bedlam then?”
I stared at him. “Really?”
“Well, not the current hospital, that moved outside London in the 1930s. But the Imperial War Museum in St. George’s Fields still maintains a very small collection from the old hospital chapel, and I just happen to know the way into the archives.”
“It wouldn’t happen to involve a secret passageway or anything, would it?”
“How did you guess?”
I laughed. “Because you looked like an excited kid when you said it.”
Bishop Cleary pulled an old set of keys out of his desk and indicated I should lead the way out of his office. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?
”
I pulled the mini Maglite Archer had given me from my back pocket and grinned. “Nope.”
He grabbed a huge Maglite from behind the office door as he shut it behind us. “Me neither.”
Passages
The tunnel entrance was under a spiral stone staircase in the chapel. There were even brackets along the walls to hold torches, which Bishop Cleary pointed out with total relish. I think I’d found my match in secret place exploration, because the bishop had combed every inch of the network of tunnels under King’s College, and delighted in explaining the purpose of each one as we passed it.
“The primary reason for the tunnel between Guy’s Hospital Chapel and the old Bethlem Chapel is so Bethlem didn’t have to keep a chaplain on staff full-time. Sometime in the early 1800s the doctors realized that holding weekly services at Bedlam actually helped them keep the ‘Unfortunates’ peaceful. Before then the Bedlam docs believed the word of God inflamed their patients to violence.”
“Considering some of the vicious things people have done in the name of God, I can see how they might think that.” I was taking a chance on my companion’s open-mindedness, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“I didn’t go to church for a year when I was a kid. We’d studied the Spanish Inquisition and I was horrified by the torture done by the Catholic priests. But as I got older I realized that the horrors are all done by men, twisting the word of God to suit their own desires for power.” Bishop Cleary reminded me a little of Archer, and I thought they might get along if they ever met. Given that Archer was sleeping under the bishop’s altar that was a distinct possibility.
“But what about the people who would argue that if God were real and good, He wouldn’t let so much violence be done in His name?”
Bishop Cleary was leading the way down the dark tunnel as his flashlight was so much bigger than mine. He stopped and faced me with a smile. “Personally, I think the perfection of God can be seen in all of his creations. And even the flaws of humanity, terrible though they sometimes are, are part of His design.”
I could see myself debating with this guy for hours over cups of tea in his cool, mid-century modern chairs. I raised an eyebrow. “So a murderer is all just part of the plan?”
“Not the act of murder itself, but free will which gives the person the choice to do right or wrong, yes.”
“What if it’s not a choice. What if it’s a predator that has to kill to survive?” I wasn’t sure where I was going with the conversation, but I was thinking about Archer, and about Will Shaw.
“There are those who would say true predators are animals that don’t have free-will. I say everything’s a choice. All creatures can choose to live or die, eat or starve, love or hate according to their will.”
“What about the scorpion who stings the frog midstream because it’s his nature?”
Bishop Cleary laughed. “Even Aesop believed in free-will, otherwise the frog wouldn’t have agreed to take the scheming scorpion on his back in the first place.”
The tunnel was fairly long, I guessed it was a couple big city blocks above-ground, and conversation between us went from theology to history to geography. We finally arrived at a heavy wooden door.
“Until Lord Rothermere bought Bedlam in the 1930s, this door was always locked.” I shone my Maglite at the old iron lock. It was the kind that took a big skeleton key and could be locked on both sides. I looked up at the heavy stone lintel above the door.
“Do you have the key now, or is it still kept up there?”
Bishop Cleary looked at me in surprise. “How did you know that’s where it was?” I reached up and felt for the key. It was almost exactly where my hand went. “Because the chaplains on this side were very confident the inmates wouldn’t be trying to get in.”
I stuck the heavy iron key in the lock and turned it. The door opened and I re-shelved the key as the bishop laughed. “Well done young lady, well done.” We entered a stone basement with a high, arched brick ceiling, crisscrossed with big old water pipes.
“I haven’t done a lot of poking around in here because it technically belongs to the War Museum now.” He shined his light around the cavernous room, illuminating smaller offshoots and passageways. “The old Bethlem items have been kept in an antechamber off this passage.” The bishop led the way past a couple of sealed off walls.
“How come those are closed?”
“There was a cave-in under the men’s wing in the late 1800s. They filled the basements and sealed them off after they demolished that wing.”
We reached a small room with dusty metal file cabinets, probably from sometime around the thirties, and Bishop Cleary went in. “I’ve found a couple of logbooks from Bethlem here, as well as the mostly undecipherable doctors’ notes that the modern museum didn’t have use for.”
“I’m looking for anything from 1888 that mentions either Will Shaw or Bishop Wilder.” Bishop Cleary scowled and I read his expression clearly. “Yeah, you wouldn’t have liked him in person much either. I call him ‘Silverback.’”
“Why?”
“Because he carried himself like he was a big silverback gorilla that everyone should be afraid of.”
Bishop Cleary opened one of the file cabinets and started leafing through the folders. “So, tell me Saira. How is it you know how Bishop Wilder carried himself?”
“You’ll think I’m nuts.”
“Maybe. But I won’t think you’re lying.”
“I’m serious about the fact that you could get hurt if anyone thought you knew.”
“Then no one will know. At least not from me.” His voice was calm and matter-of-fact, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a regular human in the know in case things got crazy among the Families.
I opened a filing cabinet to search for files so I didn’t have to look at him, and then started talking. I’m not sure how long I spoke, but between us we managed to search through every cabinet in the room. I had about five files pulled from 1888, and Bishop Cleary’s stack was about 10 files deep, but nothing interrupted my story. I brought him up to the present moment, and then paused to breathe.
There was complete silence in the room for a long moment, and then the bishop finally spoke. “So you’re saying there’s a Vampire asleep in King’s College?” I nodded and winced, expecting shouting or anger or disbelief to come pouring out of him. “Cool.” I stared at Bishop Cleary. “Do you think he knows any forgotten hiding places? I love to explore things people haven’t seen in years.”
“Considering he’s probably the one who made sure the places stayed hidden, I think he might be willing.” What else could I say? The bishop was blowing me away with how calmly he took everything I’d just dumped on him.
“And time travel. Do you think someone like me could travel with you? I mean both Tom and Archer have Family blood in them. Is that required for traveling?”
I rubbed my eyes with the backs of my filthy hands. “Do you realize that right now I think you’re the one that’s nuts? You should be calling the cops on me or something, not asking about Vampires and time travel like it’s normal. It’s not normal!”
Bishop Cleary smiled happily. “But it’s part of the perfection of the plan. Remember, some people would say I come from a school of thought that believes in angels, demons and a zombie Jesus who rose from the dead.”
I grinned at that. The Silver Sneakers lot would be shocked by the bishop’s irreverence. He continued merrily. “And the existence of your Families explains things that were missing from my education about God and the world and human history.”
Something that sounded like a “thunk” of stone and metal came from somewhere overhead and Bishop Cleary suddenly gathered up the files we’d pulled. “I think perhaps we better go.” We hurried to the main room and the bishop locked the heavy tunnel door behind us.
“They don’t know you come here, do they?”
He smiled at me as he replaced the key above the door lintel. “Sometimes I find it’s
easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”
It wasn’t until we were back in Bishop Cleary’s comfortable office that either of us spoke. “Why are you helping me, Bishop Cleary?”
He put the stack of old files in the middle of his desk, between us, then gave one to me and one to himself. “Because I’m fascinated by everything you’ve told me. And the little boy in me wants to go digging for secrets and uncovering mysteries.”
I grinned at him. “It’s too bad you’re not a free-running tagger. You’d be a good wing-man.”
The bishop stared for a second. Then he laughed. “It’s too bad I’m not twenty years younger. You’d be a good teacher.”
We settled into a companionable silence as we each tackled the stack of files between us. Most of the files I opened were handwritten and illegible, so I started skimming for “Wilder” or “Shaw” among the notes.
Doctors must take classes in how to write badly because I’ve never seen worse handwriting. Only when the nurses did the paperwork could I read a word on the page. I was almost to the bottom of my stack when Bishop Cleary suddenly stopped moving. I looked up.
“I think I found something.” He pushed his open file across the desk to me and I looked at a sign-in log. There, the third of five, was Bishop Wilder’s name and signature. I looked at the date: 9 November, 1888, and his name was signed at 05:45.
“Is that five forty-five in the afternoon?”
“I don’t think so. This page here is written in military time, so five forty-five pm would have been written 17:45.”
“What the he..heck was he doing at the hospital at 5:45am?”
The bishop smiled at my midstream shift of language. “A very good question indeed. But here’s an even better one. Why is your name on this page too?”
I stared at the name he was pointing at: ‘S. Elian.’ It was the last name on the sign-in sheet, and it was completely ridiculous that it was there. “Maybe that’s not my name.”
Bishop Cleary shrugged. “Sure, there could be other S. Elians in the world. It’s just interesting that it happens to be the same day Bishop Wilder signed in, don’t you think?”