When she stepped through the gap she found herself in an open area filled with immaculately maintained gardens. On the other side of the garden was a house, or at least what she presumed was a house. It was built right into the jagged rocks at the edge of the cliff.
As she made her way along a neat path through the garden toward what looked like it might be the front door, she noticed the landscaping was mostly edible. It was vegetables mixed with herbs and flowers, but it was so artfully done, it was even more appealing to Phoebe, who’d been raised on a farm, than a purely decorative grouping of non-native flowers planted for curb appeal.
The stacked stone and boulder walls that enclosed the garden were faced with trellises that supported espaliered fruit trees, vines, and various types of running and climbing plants. Near the front door was a large expanse of vertical garden mounted on a metal grid. Phoebe smiled to see several varieties of salad greens sprouting at eye level.
A row of beehives stood along one side of the garden. The stacks of wooden boxes were painted in a charming hodgepodge of pale blues and pinks. Each hive had a name painted in large ornate letters on the topmost box—Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Samael, and Oriphiel.
There was a large ornate metal knocker in the shape of a winged angel mounted on an ancient-looking gothic-shaped wooden door. Phoebe used it to tap twice and then she waited. After a couple of minutes a woman near her own age opened the door and said, “Ms. McFarland, I am Arabella Devlin-Forrest, please forgive me for not meeting you outside and escorting you in, but I was engaged on a telephone call.”
The woman wore an immaculate coatdress that looked like one of designs Catherine Walker made especially for the royal family. And she spoke with the same upper class English accent Phoebe remembered hearing on the phone. “If you will come this way, please. I will take you to your patient.”
Phoebe reminded herself to do her best to speak Standard English to these people. They obviously were not local. She followed Arabella down a short flight of wide shallow stone stairs into the house, expecting to enter a cave-like space, but it was quite the opposite. The far wall of the house was all glass, giving a view across the mountains like something she thought eagles might have. The floor was concrete that had been ground and polished until it shone like a mirror. It was reflecting the light from skylights, creating a mirage so that the large expanse stretching out before them was shimmering like the surface of a lake.
The house was built atop, within, and around boulders—and the natural rock had been left exposed. As they walked, Phoebe saw that the house was lit not only by skylights and a glass wall, but also occasionally from the side by windows with eccentric shapes made to fit the natural crevices.
She stole quick glances into the rooms they passed as Arabella escorted her through the house. A small creek ran through the center of what looked like a living area, and she heard and then saw a natural waterfall at the far end of a hall.
The house was quiet except for the sound of water. It had a soothing effect on her frazzled nerves.
Chapter 18
“I don’t know my patient’s name,” Phoebe said.
Arabella hesitated a moment and then said, “You may address him as Le Seigneur.” She pronounced his title in French to sound like sane-yeur.
“Like senior?” Phoebe asked.
“If you are enquiring about the etymology of the word, yes, the roots are the same. If you are enquiring about the modern meaning, Le Seigneur is a French honorific that means Lord.”
“Lord?” Phoebe repeated, flabbergasted. She couldn’t help herself but her first thought was, Oh Lord, what have I gotten myself into? Fortunately she was able to keep her reflexive outburst to herself.
The people of the Smoky Mountains were possibly the least hierarchical ethnic group on the face of the earth. Respect had to be earned. Their natural hyper-politeness and tendency to be amused would instantly leap to its polar opposite, insolence, when presented with anyone they deemed to be affecting airs.
“I don’t think I can call him that with a straight face,” Phoebe said.
She followed Arabella into the room and saw an elderly man lying in bed. He’d obviously heard their exchange because he gave her a gentle smile and said, “My name is Étienne.”
Phoebe smiled back at him, and tilted her head to try to work out what he’d said. Whatever he’d said, it was pronounced with a honking sound she’d have to work on.
“In English it is rendered as Steve.” He spoke with a strong French accent.
Phoebe looked at the room and at her patient and decided it wouldn’t be right to call him Steve. Her patient’s room was light, and airy, but as stark as a monk’s cell. It contained a bed, a nightstand, and a single chair, all made of scrubbed pine that glowed with the warm golden patina of beeswax polish and age.
She guessed the man was in his seventies. “Please have a seat,” he said. “Thank you so much for coming.”
Books and papers lay all around him atop the covers.
“I’m still adjusting to the new technology,” he said, flourishing a pencil in his right hand. “I am learning to dictate to voice recognition. It works almost perfectly, but I find myself unable to compose text unless I’m holding a pencil.”
They both laughed.
“I hope it wasn’t too difficult finding us.” He had an angelic smile.
Phoebe shook her head, deciding not to make any comment on the extraordinary features of his driveway. She was suddenly too shy to meet his dark-eyed gaze, so she cast her eyes around the room.
The only decoration was an exquisite miniature that sat on a small easel atop his bedside table. It was a painting of a knight in armor facing a dragon. Phoebe guessed it must be either St. George or St. Michael, but she didn’t know how to tell the difference. It depicted a charming scene where the two opposing figures seemed to be having a chat rather than a battle.
“That’s lovely,” Phoebe said. “I’ve never seen one like that. The knight and the dragon seem to be friends.”
“There’s no point at being angry at the Devil,” he said. “The Devil is only doing his job.” He gave her another sweet smile, then added, “But, of course it’s our responsibility to see him for what he is and not join in on the wrong side of things.”
“Is this St. Michael or St. George?”
“It is St. Michael, the archangel. He is the greatest spiritual being of his rank, the chief of the angels and the archangels. I am glad you notice the tone of the image. Only the relatively newer versions depict any aggression between the angel and the dragon. The oldest pictures show Michael not even looking at the dragon. He stands with his face raised to heaven, averting his eyes from the distractions of evil.
“It is like the famous quote that no problem can ever be solved with thinking that occurs on the same level where the problem was created. Problems can only be solved with higher thinking. In the Bible, in Jude, the Archangel Michael speaks to the Devil, but he is careful in how he does it. He says, The Lord rebuke thee. He says this because it is not man’s task to rebuke the devil, but God’s.
“St. George comes on the scene much later. He is the one you almost always see fighting. That’s because he is a man rather than an angel. He is a human trying to overcome evil. This task is more difficult, more confusing, for a human than it is for an angel. Angels don’t have free will.”
Phoebe saw that her patient’s face was creased and lined. Careworn or disease-worn, she didn’t yet know. She might’ve been wrong about her initial guess at his age. Now that she was closer, and as the clouds shifted overhead so the light coming in through the skylight changed and played across his face, something about his face made her think he might just as easily be much older.
Phoebe was going to ask him about his condition and what she could do for him, but before she
could speak, a beautiful young woman appeared in the doorway wearing a white cotton nun’s habit with blue stripes along the border, like the one Mother Teresa had worn. She didn’t say anything but she and Le Seigneur exchanged a look of concern.
He turned to Phoebe and said, “We would like to bring your friend inside, if you do not mind.”
Phoebe was shocked and embarrassed that they’d managed to discover Nick, and so quickly, too. “I’m so sorry,” she said, mortified. “I know this is highly irregular, but it was an emergency. I hope you’ll forgive me for bringing somebody along, especially on my first day, but there was nowhere else for him to go.”
“Please do not worry,” he said. “Tell me about him.”
Phoebe gave her patient a highly sanitized and extremely brief version of Nick’s backstory. She said she’d found him after he’d had a bad fall in the forest and he didn’t have any insurance. Le Seigneur listened attentively, with emotions playing across his expressive face.
When Phoebe finished, he said, “I understand,” and made a quick nod toward the nun. He indicated with a graceful gesture that Phoebe should go with her.
Just before they went out the front door, Phoebe laid a hand on the nun’s arm and said, “You’d better let me go get him by myself. He’s been through a lot recently and he might be frightened by a stranger.”
The nun made a small bow and remained in the foyer while Phoebe went outside. When she cleared the boulders and crunched across the pea gravel toward the truck, she saw that the mummy was getting restless. He was kicking against his shroud.
Phoebe leaned over the bed of the truck and released the tie-downs. Nick was still wrapped in the soft blue hospital blankets that were bungeed around him in three different places. It was a struggle not to laugh at his appearance, but Phoebe was a pro, so she maintained a poker face.
Nick sat up and gave her a dirty look. “Are we there yet?” he asked, sarcastically.
Chapter 19
Phoebe unhooked the bungee cords and unwrapped the blankets. Then she helped Nick climb out of the back of the truck. He was surprisingly bright and alert. She told him that he’d been invited inside. “Be good,” she warned.
Nick kept his mouth shut as he was met by the young nun and escorted through the extraordinary house. She led them to what was obviously a kitchen. It was a marvel of bronze sinks, copper pots, wooden spoons, and exposed pipes in a style that was a collision between the Flintstones and some very rich tree-huggers. “Le Seigneur suggests you refresh yourselves,” she said, gave them a small bow, and left.
A young man stood at a counter across the room with his back to them. He was chopping vegetables on a cutting board made from a slice of a tree that still had bark around the edges. The counter he worked on was an immense slab of honed soapstone.
This was not just rich, thought Phoebe, but a special kind of bottomless pit of wealth. A beautiful house like this, hidden in plain sight, was several levels beyond the best security system money could buy. She could tell Nick was awestruck, too.
The monk-chef was dressed in a perfectly clean, hand-woven brown medieval-style monk’s robe that was belted with a real rope.
“Allow me make you breakfast,” he said, with a thick Scottish accent. “What would you like? We have a full range of seasonal organic produce grown locally. Breads. Free range eggs, goat or cow’s milk. Cheeses.
“What do you recommend?” asked Phoebe, utterly charmed.
“The goat cheese omelet is very popular, but I prefer the slow food version of the Egg McMuffin.”
Phoebe laughed and ordered the healthy McMuffin. Nick went for the goat cheese omelet. The two shell-shocked houseguests sat side-by-side on stools at a vast limestone island wolfing down the delicious meal. Nick was clearly feeling better by the minute.
Phoebe figured now was as good a time as any to try to find out exactly what she’d gotten herself into by befriending him. She didn’t want to take him into the room with her new boss totally unprepared.
“We haven’t had much of an opportunity to get to know each other. But, considering the circumstances, I need to cut right to the chase. Why are people trying to harm you?” she asked, putting it as gently as she could.
Nick shrugged, “The guys weren’t much for conversation, but I gleaned that they’d prefer that I not publish the results of my research.”
“What research would that be?”
“I’m writing a book about the actual cause of the Civil War.”
Phoebe was dumbfounded. Talk about anti-climactic.
“Instead of debating with me about my methodology in obscure economics and history journals,” he said, “they decided it would be more expedient to simply toss me out of a helicopter in a place where no one would ever find my body.”
Wow. That seemed a like an extremely disproportionate reaction to a boring problem. She turned sideways to look at him. He didn’t seem to be kidding. As usual, when confused, Phoebe reverted to dialect. “What’re you sayin? That there’s still people fightin the Civil War? Like those reenactor people?”
Nick shook his head, so Phoebe continued with her list of suspects, “The Daughters of the Confederacy? The Ku Klux Klan?”
“No and no,” Nick said. “My guess is that it’s one or more large corporations.”
Oh my gosh, Phoebe thought, he’s insane.
Nick saw the look on her face. “I know it sounds paranoid, but I’m a mathematician. I’ve done the regression analyses over and over and I’ve run it by the best economists in the country, even Nobel Prize winning economists, and everyone agrees that I’m correct.”
“About what?” Phoebe asked.
“That slavery was not the cause of the American Civil War.”
Uh oh, Phoebe thought, now she had an inkling why people were trying to kill Nick. This kind of talk was certain to send knee-jerk left-wingers and the political correctness police into orbit. Apparently it already had.
The cause of the Civil War was supposed to be black and white, north and south, good and evil, plain and simple. It looked like she’d accidentally gotten hooked up with a Salman Rushdie type. A political correctness fatwa must’ve been put out on him.
“Abolition was a smokescreen concocted by northern industrialists who stood to make fortunes if they could block imports from England that were undercutting their sales. Before the Civil War and during the generations since then, robber barons have spent a lot of money obfuscating the fact that there is a direct correlation between tariffs—taxes on imports—and war.”
Phoebe tried to choose her words carefully. “I know this is somethin that’s real important to you, and I don’t wanna upset you, but what you just said is a totally toxic mixture of extremely boring and yet unbelievably inflammatory stuff.”
“Exactly! If you link a despicable human rights practice to a dull business matter, everyone will tune you out. And yet, imposing certain types of tariffs on particular types of imports is how you start wars all over the world. And I have proof.”
Nick was certainly animated all of a sudden. This was a new side of his character she’d not seen before.
“Many industries in addition to the so-called military-industrial complex, want to prevent this information from getting out. They will gleefully kill me to prevent the public from finding out how they light these fuses around the world and then reap vast profits from behind the screen of their war-mongering.”
Phoebe struggled to follow what he was saying.
“It’s been going on for centuries. One of the lies is that the only companies that profit from wars are the ones that make weapons or military provisions. The truth is that even greater fortunes are being made in ostensibly unrelated industries. It’s these guys who’re the ones actually starting the wars—like the textile trades started the Civil War�
��and the automotive industry, among others, is fomenting conflict in modern times.”
“Why hasn’t anyone noticed this?” Phoebe asked, still not sure he wasn’t nuts.
“The root cause of the conflict is subtle. You can’t explain the concept in a sound bite, and it doesn’t help that winners of wars always rewrite history and cover up the incriminating parts. But also, we’re a nation where voting your pocketbook without the slightest concern for your fellow men or for the future of civilization has become the way things are done.”
Phoebe didn’t say anything. She wanted to care, but she just didn’t. She was a nurse, he was a numbers guy. She was more interested in his black eye than World War III.
“He’s right, of course,” said the monk-chef, from across the room. He was stirring a stockpot of soup with his back to them. “There are various sorts of groups—you can label them interest groups, trade associations, political parties, call them what you like.
“The front men for these cabals are never the real leaders. They’re just puppets who fit a vital demographic. They’re good looking, eloquent. They’re recruited and groomed for their roles.
“The top people are never publicly revealed, and they’re rarely known, even to the most ardent and highly-placed followers. These groups have legions of enforcers. It sounds like you’ve had a run-in with them.”
He put a lid on the pot and turned to collect their plates. “Good people, honest people, can’t afford to be naïve and trusting, or disinterested,” he said, looking pointedly at Phoebe. “That’s how evil wins.”
He removed a tin of glorious smelling apple and cinnamon muffins from the oven and set it down in front of them. He waggled his oven mitts at them and added, “But if you’re going to engage with these rascals, you better have the proper protection.”
Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 02 - The School for Mysteries Page 7