Disciples of the Serpent: A Novel of the O.C.L.T.

by Williams, Sidney

  “Can you give us directions or walk us out to have a look?” Freya asked.

  “Could walk ya but it’s not hard to find. Just out the back door and a few hundred meters through the trees. You’ll come to the edge of the lake and you’ll see the ruins, and the tower will be obvious.”

  Freya detected a change in Jaager’s muscles. She could read them almost like his thoughts. She closed her eyes, feeling just a bit of pressure at her throat. He’d made a decision. She put a hand on his forearm, but he gently if not politely slipped it away.

  “’Scuse me a moment.”

  The old man had risen to walk back into his little kitchen. Almost without sound Jaager rose. Freya wanted to call out, to urge him to reconsider, but she knew it was a lost cause. He would not be dissuaded.

  He stepped through the narrow doorway and stood behind the old man, who was humming a soft tune under his breath as he rinsed his cup. As the tap squeaked off and water gurgled down the ancient pipes, Jaager’s long arms folded around the man’s body.

  One black glove rose to pinch his nostrils closed, and another clapped across his mouth, silencing the humming. The sounds from the old man’s throat became low, protesting grunts, components of words he couldn’t form.

  His arms thrashed a bit, and he twisted. He couldn’t escape Jaager’s grasp or do more than wiggle. Freya stepped to the doorway, then put a hand across her mouth and folded herself back against the white stone wall. A few tears formed, but she wiped them away. For the cause, she reminded herself, for the miraculous awe they had planned.

  In the kitchen, the struggle stopped, and Jaager lowered the old man to the floor. No need for the venom here. No need to give those who must be tracking them by now another marker like the tourist.

  The venom had been used as an emergency at the castle. When he was found, more than likely the old man’s demise would be blamed on a stroke or his heart. She drew in a quick breath as she heard him sag and his body slid to the floor, heavy with a thud.

  When Jaager stepped back through the kitchen doorway, she looked up into his stoic features. She didn’t expect him to say anything, and he didn’t surprise her.

  She reached into her purse even though they were alone. Plucking out a compact, she tamped one of his cheeks a couple of times then stepped back to check her work. It looked fine. “Well,” she said, “let’s hope this spot’s as easy to find as he said.”

  Thirteen

  Ethan Bransfield, chair of medieval studies at Trinity, carried himself with an energy and poise that seemed more athletic than academic. He wore a tweed jacket and a charcoal-gray tie with a subdued fishbone pattern, but that all looked like it could be peeled off to reveal running clothes beneath. The disheveled brown hair and a hint of shadow on his squared features added a boyish touch of disregard even though he’d hit his mid-forties.

  After shaking hands, he settled behind a heavy oak desk in front of bookshelves that looked as if they might collapse at any time under the weight of the thick volumes they held.

  Alison Syn, the same young woman who’d met them on their first visit had showed O’Donnell and Bullfinch in. She stood for a moment, looking at them with an almost dramatic hesitancy until O’Donnell’s glare prompted closing the door as she exited.

  “I’ve spoken with the homicide investigators,” Bransfield said. “This has shocked us all, and we’ve been struggling to get our minds wrapped around it. I don’t know if anything new has come to us.”

  “Details matter of course,” O’Donnell said. “We’re interested in your insight into Professor Burke’s work. Areas of focus. Professor Bullfinch has helped me understand the Middle Ages constitute quite an expanse of time.”

  “That would be accurate,” Bransfield said with a smile, suggesting indulgence of a lay person more than condescension. He gave a nod toward Bullfinch. “Professor Burke’s interest lay in the period we call Late Antiquity through the Early Middle Ages, though his focus was really around the fifth and sixth centuries. Interesting times in Ireland, but then all times are.”

  “What was going on then?” O’Donnell asked.

  “It was the time a lot of monasteries were forming all the way from Skellig Michael near Kerry in the South all the way to the North. It’s when St. Patrick and St. Brendan were at work and when Christianity took hold here.”

  “So Professor Burke was interested in religious artifacts?”

  “Often, yes. And the path of belief. He was a student of how belief impacted human development, and how truth became myth. Students have always loved him.”

  “Perhaps. He was fond of stories like Patrick’s Battle with Crom Cruach or the Voyage of St. Brendan. Brendan set sail in search of the Garden of Eden and his adventures became a major Irish maritime epic.” The latter he directed at O’Donnell.

  “All that,” Bransfield agreed.

  She tapped her mobi screen and spun the face of it in Bransfield’s direction. “Does this look like something he’d have been interested in?”

  Bransfield gave the photo of the stone from Castle Cluin a close look.

  “Where did this come from?”

  “We were told it was found in a field near Castle Cluin,” Bullfinch said. “Do the markings mean anything to you?”

  “There’s a resemblance to Ogham of course, but that’s not one of the recognized figures.” He pronounced the word oh-wom or something close to that.

  “We’ve had mentions of the early Irish alphabet? I didn’t think it looked like one of the known characters.”

  “You’re familiar with it?”

  “It’s not a specialty, but I’ve seen and heard of it, of course.”

  “Given the location of the find and the style of the characters, the angled slashes, it would seem to fit the pattern at least.”

  He tapped one complex marking that seemed to include almost a latticework of crossing lines. “That resembles at least one character from the Forfeda.”

  “Now what would that be?” O’Donnell asked.

  “A set of extra letters you might say. Beyond the key twenty characters of Ogham.”

  “Isn’t there one school that holds Ogham is code?” Bullfinch asked.

  Bransfield gave a slight nod. “Secret language of the Druids, a cipher to thwart Romans.”

  “Any idea what this might say?” O’Donnell asked.

  “Not unless it’s about trees.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Another theory of Ogham is that it speaks of trees,” Bullfinch said. “The twenty known symbols are said to each be the first letters of Celtic tree species and each has a calendar significance. Remember Druid means oak and their belief in the spiritual powers of trees is part of their story.”

  “Thought you were having me on for a minute,” O’Donnell said.

  Bransfield smiled and let his gaze linger on her eyes. “I’m an academic, but I’m not that arrogant. On top of the letter name conventions, it’s said the Druids carved different Ogham symbols into wooden staffs for different purposes,” Bransfield said.

  “Magic?”

  “Well, ritual. We don’t know all of the meanings.”

  “And we don’t know all that what’s called magic isn’t tapping into something for which there’s a rational explanation that we just don’t understand yet,” Bullfinch said.

  “I know some of the professor’s files have already been taken, but might we have another look at his office?” O’Donnell asked. “Professor Bullfinch might spot something of interest that others wouldn’t have seen.”

  As crazy as it seemed, that was supposed to be part of Aisteach’s mission, and if a case had ever called for that perspective this was it.

  “Certainly,” Bransfield said. “Alison can help you with that.”

  He touched an intercom on his desk, and a few moments later, Alison opened Burke’s office door for them, admitting them to a room slightly smaller than Bransfield’s. Shelves looked even more in danger of collapsing. Thick volumes
on medieval history shared space with texts including an early edition of The Golden Bough and Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays and other works that seemed to confirm Burke’s interest in the influence of belief.

  O’Donnell fingered a volume with a purple dust jacket, Bullfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable. She cocked an eyebrow.

  “Doubleday edition. Shame to see that gathering dust,” Bullfinch said.

  A small set of shelves beside Burke’s heavy oak desk housed an array of science fiction and fantasy paperbacks. Lovecraft, Howard and lesser-known pulp-era writers such as Seabury Quinn and Rudolph Rottman crowded pristine editions of high fantasy and collectible editions of Stoker, Shelly and others. Bullfinch ran a finger across the spines as he passed the shelf and slid behind the desk.

  Burke’s blotter and note pads had been left behind, though his computer had been plucked away, an absence made obvious by a dust outline and abandoned power cords. O’Donnell pulled the desk chair back and gestured for Bullfinch to have a seat.

  “Maybe you’ll spot something if you look at things from his perspective,” she said.

  Bullfinch obliged, letting his fingers curl around the ends of the armrests and leaning back, taking in a breath as he scanned the real estate before him, doodles on the blotter, a note pad, unmarked, probably left behind as unimportant. An acrylic picture frame faced him. A dark-haired girl smiled, captured in a moment somewhere in a pub or restaurant.

  “Did he have a daughter?”

  Alison stepped to his side and looked at the photograph.

  “Niece,” she said. “Vita Burke. Brother’s child. That had been knocked off. I came in after the police left and found it on the floor under the edge of one of the shelves. Assumed he brushed it off with his coat, so I didn’t think it was anything that would matter to them so I just put it back.”

  “Anything else under there?” O’Donnell asked.

  “I didn’t dive too far.”

  Slipping a pen light from her coat, O’Donnell dropped to the floor on her knees and leaned down to look under the cherrywood unit behind the desk. It stood on short, thick legs that left about two inches of space beneath it. The chair creaked as Bullfinch twisted to look down on her.

  “Anything?”

  She stared into a narrow, shadowy space of dust bunnies and grit missed by the housecleaning department’s vacuums

  “Maybe.”

  She slipped a hand into the space with a little difficulty. Far back near the wall, a tiny black plastic figure lay on its side. Flattening her face on the carpet, she maximized her reach and felt her fingertips just brush it. With a breath, she stretched a little more, feeling tendons strain, but she found purchase and plucked out the little black shape.

  “It’s like the medical symbol,” she said. “Interesting. It’s a snake.”

  The small staff she held was entwined by a single serpent that stretched up its length and curved its head over the top.

  “That’s a Staff of Asclepius,” Bullfinch said. “A little more traditional than the British Medical Association’s that’s gotten a graphic artist’s logo treatment. Hmm, in the U.S. they gravitate more toward the caduceus. Two snakes vs. the one.”

  He took it and turned it over in his fingers. “Looks like the kind of plastic generated by a 3D printer.”

  “Probably given to him by someone over at CRANN,” Alison said, stepping over to look for herself. “It’s a research center. That’s where all the 3D printers are around here, and Professor Burke lectured to them sometimes about the relationship between myth and science.”

  “Perhaps someone picked up on a detail and made it a gift,” Bullfinch said, spinning the chair back toward the desk and passing the trinket over to Alison. “Maybe you should put it with his things. I presume eventually you’ll have to clear his office.”

  “I’m not sure where his things will go,” Alison said. “I don’t know that he had a lot of family.”

  “Any idea what The Circle was?”

  “The Circle?”

  Bullfinch tapped a spot on the blotter. Amid other doodles and minor math calculations, the words “The Circle” were scribbled in ink that had smeared. They were barely legible any longer but they were there. As if to complement the words, Burke had drawn several circles amid other scribbles and doodles. One even looked as if he’d been approximating the familiar image of a snake swallowing its tale.

  “I don’t know that he’s ever spoken of it to me.”

  “I’m not sure if he spoke of it to me either,” Bullfinch said. “Not directly.”

  Fourteen

  Sagging branches shrouded the lower portion of the stone wall at the lake’s edge, and mists from the water swirled in ghostly twists around its base. It looked almost like an enchanted fairytale structure, except for the dead brush and craggy surface. And the fact that a portion of the upper walls had crumbled, leaving gaping openings exposing former rooms. Patches of green vegetation clung at intervals.

  Freya felt her breath catch as she looked up at the edifice. What had it taken to construct it? Ropes and pulleys? And how beautiful had it been in its day?

  Her awe was for more than the architectural feat, however. One of those crumbled walls had revealed the hidden chamber and the markings the old man had spoken of, something forgotten for perhaps a thousand years.

  Jaager displayed less awe and more blind determination, marching past her as they emerged from the wooded area they’d traversed behind the old man’s cottage. He headed in a straight line for a vaulted doorway.

  She followed, tapping her phone’s face to pull up the rough sketches they’d been provided based on the old man’s sources, as well as satellite images. The jagged walls and open roof afforded a sense of what they needed to pass. More pieces had fallen since the photographs.

  Her companion didn’t seem concerned with the possibility that new chunks of stone might be coming down from the ruins. She followed with a little more caution, looking up at the overhanging remnants. It wasn’t clear exactly what held up at least one jutting protrusion.

  Spiral stone stairs began an upward climb just through another arched doorway once they’d stepped through the first. Slivers of light fell on green mossy coatings, but the steps appeared solid.

  Jaager led the way upward, shoes crunching on grit and debris as he disappeared around the first bend. Freya hurried to keep up, feeling her chest tighten. Despite the openings, the air in the contained face seemed a little stale.

  She almost ran into him at the next curve. He’d stopped abruptly as bits of stone dropped from one wall. Nothing too heavy. He gave it a casual glance then moved on.

  She grabbed a breath of damp, outside air as they passed a vaulted window and continued the ascent, scanning the walls for anything about to drop. She’d devoted a good bit of her time to fitness and self-defense after her dismissal. She was in peak physical shape, but her heart banged the insides of her chest as they reached the top of their climb. The steps stopped a few feet below openings in the more complete portion of the structure that appeared to lead into intact chambers. Rock climbing would have to take them the rest of the way. Just a few steps.

  With a ten-meter plunge.

  A little surer of himself, Jaager reached up the wall, found a handhold and steadied himself. Then he slipped a toe into an indentation and pressed himself into the wall and started moving.

  Freya slipped off her overcoat and her scarf. Then she drew in a breath, preparing herself, reminding herself not to look at the drop. The gains exceeded the risk, and she’d been told climbing equipment should be needed.

  This from people who hadn’t actually seen the structure.

  She kept telling herself about the gains as she slipped shoes off as well in spite of the chill and tucked her toes into a deep indentation and went after the tall man.

  Bits of grit and stone sifted off the wall and tumbled downward, and the breeze picked up as she slipped over the stone, working to keep hers
elf steady. Fingernails cracked, and the stone cut into her palms while he rose without apparent effort. Perhaps she should have brought more equipment after all, but the task hadn’t looked as complicated from the photos.

  As punctuation for that thought, she misplaced a toe and felt her sole slip from what she’d thought was a secure placement, and then she dangled. Digging nails into what was at least a substantial outcropping. That almost forced a look down, and her lungs and throat constricted. The ground below looked like a satellite photo, and fallen stone seemed to wait for her to drop down onto jagged edges.

  Jaager leaned out from the chamber he’d climbed into and found a hold on a sleeve, yanking her his way before she could draw another breath. The next time she breathed, it was a sigh of relief.

  The opening could no longer be called a door. Too much wall had crumbled away. It was more like an open maw with jagged teeth all around. Freya followed Jaager into a narrow passage that narrowed again after a few paces, forcing a turn sideways to keep moving.

  Sunlight slashed into the small room they found after the squeeze, allowed in by a pair of openings in the ceiling, possibly from decay or possibly designed as murder holes inside this secret chamber. In spite of the twin rays that pooled on the stone floor, shadows hung in the corners, cloaking the walls with black gloom.

  Freya switched to a light on her phone and lifted it, casting a white glow, illuminating mossy green patches looking almost like splattered paint. She panned over two walls that were pocked but otherwise unmarked.

  Her breath caught as the light hit the third wall, opposite them. Slash-mark characters like they’d seen before spread from floor to ceiling, a blanket of characters etched into the stonework.

  They’d opened a treasure chest, or it felt that way. At a glance she could see markings they hadn’t compiled from other sources, new symbols. She couldn’t be sure if they formed a message or if they’d been stored here, placed somewhere out of sight in the day but preserved in stone. That didn’t matter. Interpretation could come later. For now, they only needed to document them.