The Black Angel

by John Connolly

  He feared the Hussites, but he knew too that there were others who threatened the survival of the monastery, and it was simply a matter of which enemy breached its gates first. Rumors had reached the abbot’s ears, stories meant for him, and him alone: tales of mercenaries marked with a twin-pronged brand, their number led by a Captain with a blemished eye, his footsteps forever shadowed by a fat imp of a man, ugly and tumerous. It was unclear to which side the Captain’s soldiers offered their allegiance, according to his sources, but the abbot supposed that it did not matter. Such men assumed flags of convenience to hide their true aims, and their loyalty was a fire that burned cold and fast, leaving only ash in its wake. He knew what they were seeking. Despite the beliefs of ignorant men, there was little true wealth left at Sedlec. The monastery’s most famed treasure, a monstrance made from gold-plated silver, had been entrusted to the Augustinians at Klosterneuburg six years earlier. Those who sacked this place would find little in the way of ecclesiastical riches to divide among themselves.

  But the Captain was not interested in such trifles.

  And so the abbot had set about preparing for what was to come, even as the threat of destruction drew closer. Sometimes the monks heard distant orders shouted; at other times they listened to the screaming of the injured and the dying at the gates. Still, they did not pause in their work. Horses were saddled, and a huge covered cart, one of two specially constructed for the abbot’s purposes, lay waiting by the hidden entrance to the monastery garden. Its wheels were sunk deep into the mud, driven down by the weight of the cargo that it carried. The horses were wide-eyed and foam-flecked, as though aware of the nature of the burden that was being placed upon them. It was almost time.

  “A great sentence is gone forth against thee. He shall bind thee…”

  Heresy, thought the abbot, as the words came unbidden to him. Even possession of the Book of Enoch, condemned as false scripture, would be enough to draw the charge down upon his head, and thus he had taken great pains to ensure that the work remained hidden. Nevertheless, in its contents he had found answers to many of the questions that had troubled him, among them the nature of the terrible, beautiful creation entrusted to his care, and the duty of concealment that now lay upon him.

  “Cast him into darkness…. Throw upon him hurled and pointed stones, covering him with darkness; there shall he remain for ever; cover his face, that he may not see the light. And in the great day of judgment let him be cast into the fire.”

  The abbot’s lodge lay at the heart of the monastery’s concentric fortifications. The first circle, in which he now stood, housed the conventual church, reserved for the use of the order’s initiated members, the convent building, and the cloister gallery. On the side of the church’s transept opposite the river lay the gate of the deceased, which led into the churchyard. It was the most important portal in the monastery, its intricate sculpture standing in sharp contrast to the starkness of the architecture surrounding it. This was the gateway between earthly life and the eternal, between this world and the next. The abbot had hoped to be carried through it one day and buried alongside his brothers. Those who had already fled upon his instructions had been requested to return when it was safe and to seek out his remains. If the gate still stood, he was to be brought through it. If it did not, a place was still to be found for him, so that he might rest beside the ruins of the chapel that he so loved.

  The second circle belonged to the initiated members, and also contained the granary and a sacred plot of land at the entrance portal to the church, used to grow grain for the baking of the host. Within the third circle was the monastery gate; a church for lay members of the order, outside worshippers, and pilgrims; living quarters and gardens; and the main cemetery. The abbot stared out upon these walls that protected the monastery, their lines clear even in the darkness, thanks to the false dawn of the fires on the hillsides. It looked like a vision of hell, he thought. The abbot did not believe that Christian men should fight over God, but more than those who killed in the name of a forgiving God he hated those who used the name of God as an excuse to extend their own power. He sometimes thought that he could almost understand the anger of the Hussites, although he kept such opinions to himself. Those who did not might quickly find themselves broken upon a wheel, or burning on a pyre for their temerity.

  He heard footsteps approach, and a young novice appeared by his side. He wore a sword, and his robes were filthy from his exertions.

  “All is ready,” said the novice. “The servants ask if they may muffle the horses’ hooves and wrap cloth around the bridles. They are concerned that the noise will bring the soldiers down upon them.”

  The abbot did not answer immediately. To the younger man, it seemed that the abbot had just been offered a final possibility of escape and was tempted to accept it. At last he sighed and, like the beasts bound to the cart, accepted his inevitable burden.

  “No,” he said. “Let there be no silencing of hooves, no wrapping of bridles. They must make haste, and they must create noise as they do so.”

  “But then they will be found, and they will be killed.”

  The abbot turned to his novice and laid his hand gently upon the boy’s cheek.

  “As God wills it, so it shall be done,” he said. “Now you must go, and take as many with you as it is safe to allow.”

  “What about you?”

  “I—”

  But the abbot’s words were cut off by the barking of dogs in the outer circles. The monastery had been abandoned by many of those who might otherwise have come to its defense, and now only animals roamed behind the second and third walls. The sound the dogs made was panicked, almost hysterical. Their fear was palpable, as though a wolf were about to enter into their presence, and they knew that they would die fighting it. The young novice drew his sword.

  “Come,” he urged. “There are soldiers approaching.”

  The abbot found that he was unable to move. His feet would not respond to the urgings of his brain, and his hands were trembling. No soldiers could make the dogs respond in such a way. That was why he had ordered their release: the dogs would smell them and alert the monks to their approach.

  Then the twin gates of the inner wall were blown apart, one flying free of its hinges and landing amid a copse of trees, the other left hanging like a sot at night’s end. The fleeing dogs leaped through the gap, those that were too slow killed by arrows that shot from the shadows beyond the gate.

  “Go,” said the abbot. “Make sure the cart reaches the road.”

  With one last frightened glance at the gates, and with sorrow in his eyes, the novice fled. In his place, a pair of servants joined the abbot. They bore halberds and were very old. They had remained at the monastery as much out of their inability to flee far as out of any loyalty to the abbot.

  Slowly, a group of horsemen emerged from beyond the wall and entered the inner circle. Most wore plain, formfitting breastplates, with mail at the groin, armpits, and elbows. Three had cylindrical Italian sallet helmets on their heads, their features barely distinguishable through the T-shaped frontal gap. The rest had long hair that hung about their faces, concealing them almost as well as the helmets of their fellows. From their saddles dangled human remains: scalps and hands and garlands of ears. The flanks of their horses were white with spit and foam, and the animals looked close to madness. Only one man was on foot. He was huge and fat, and his neck was swollen with some dreadful purple goiter. On his upper body he wore a long brigandine for armor, constructed from small metal plates riveted to a textile covering, for his build was too deformed for the fitted protection worn by his allies. There were plates made in a similar manner on his thighs and shins, but his head was bare. He was very pale, with almost feminine features and large green eyes. In his hand he grasped a woman’s head, his long fingers entwined in her hair. The abbot recognized her face, even twisted in the torments of death: an idiot who sat outside the monastery gates, begging for alms, too foolish to fle
e her post even in wartime. As he and his fellows drew closer, the abbot could see a crudely drawn symbol upon their saddles: a red grapnel, newly created with the blood of their victims.

  And then their leader emerged from the heart of his men. He rode a black horse, a spiked half shaffron protecting its head, and a peytral guarding its chest, all intricately carved in black and silver. He was clad almost entirely in black armor, apart from the hood upon his head: pauldrons extending over his chest and shoulder blades; gauntlets with long protective cuffs; and tassets to cover the vulnerable spot at the top of his cuisses, where his breastplate ended and his thigh armor began. His only weapon was a long sword, which remained in its scabbard.

  The abbot began to pray silently.

  “Who are they?” whispered one of the servants. “Jan’s men?”

  The abbot found enough spittle to moisten his mouth and to free his tongue to speak.

  “No,” he said. “Not Jan’s, and not men.”

  From the rear of the monastery he thought he discerned the sound of the cart moving forward, urged on by its driver. Hooves beat a slow cadence upon grass, then upon earth as they moved onto the road. The speed of their timpani slowly increased as they tried to put some distance between themselves and the monastery.

  The leader of the horsemen raised his hand, and six men split from the main party and galloped around the chapel to cut off those who were fleeing. Six more dismounted but remained with their leader, slowly moving in on the abbot and his men. All bore crossbows, already spanned with the bolt ready to be fired. They were smaller and lighter than any the abbot had seen before, with a crannequin for pulling back the bow steel that was portable enough to be worn on their belts. They fired the bolts, and the abbot’s servants fell.

  The Captain dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks. The animal advanced, and the Captain’s shadow fell across the old monk. The horse stopped so close to the abbot that moisture from its nose sprayed his face. The Captain kept his head low and slightly turned away from the monk, so that his face could not be seen.

  “Where is it?” he said.

  His voice was cracked and hoarse from the screams of battle.

  “We have nothing of value here,” said the abbot.

  A sound came from beneath the folds of the Captain’s hood. It might almost have been a laugh, had a snake found a way to convey humor in its hiss. He commenced freeing his hands from the gauntlets.

  “Your mines made you wealthy,” he said. “You could not have spent it all on trinkets. It may be that you yet have much of value to some, but not to me. I seek one thing only, and you know what it is.”

  The abbot stepped forward. With his right hand, he gripped the cross around his neck.

  “It is gone,” he said.

  In the distance, he heard horses neighing wildly, and the impact of metal upon metal as his men fought to protect the cart and its cargo. They should have left sooner, he realized. His act of concealment might not have been revealed so quickly had they done so.

  The Captain leaned over his horse’s neck. The gauntlets were now gone. His fingers, revealed to the moonlight, were scored by white scars. He raised his head and listened to the cries of the monks as they were slaughtered by his men.

  “They died for nothing,” he said. “Their blood is on your hands.”

  The abbot grasped his cross more tightly. Its edges tore his skin, and blood leaked through his fingers, as though giving substance to the Captain’s words.

  “Go back to hell,” said the abbot.

  The Captain lifted his hands to his hood and threw back the rough material from around his face. Dark hair surrounded his beautiful features, and his skin seemed almost to glow in the cool night air. He extended his right hand, and a crossbow was placed in his grasp by the grinning imp at his side. The abbot saw a white mote flicker in the blackness of the Captain’s right eye, and in his final moments it was given unto him to see the face of God.

  “Never,” said the Captain, and the abbot heard the dull report of the crossbow at the instant the bolt penetrated his chest. He stumbled back against the doorway and slid slowly down the wall. At a signal from the Captain, his men began entering the buildings of the inner circle, their footsteps echoing on the slabs as they ran. A small group of armed servants emerged from behind the conventual church, rushing forward to engage the intruders in the confined space.

  More time, the abbot thought. We need more time.

  His monks and servants, what few remained, were putting up fierce resistance, preventing the Captain’s soldiers from entering the church and the inner buildings.

  “Just a little longer, my Lord,” he prayed. “Just a little.”

  The Captain looked down upon the abbot, listening to his words. The abbot felt his heart slow just as the Captain’s men flanked the monks on the steps and entered the chapel, ascending the walls and crawling like lizards across the stones. One moved upside down across the ceiling, then dropped behind the defenders and impaled the rearmost man upon the end of a sword.

  The abbot wept for them, even as the cool tip of a bolt touched his forehead. The Captain’s lieutenant, bloated and poisonous, was now kneeling by his side, his mouth open and his head tilted, as though preparing to deliver a last kiss to a lover.

  “I know what you are,” the abbot whispered. “And you will never find the one that you seek.”

  A pale finger tightened on the trigger.

  This time, the abbot did not hear the shot.

  It was not until the eighteenth century that the Cistercians of Sedlec were able to commence their reconstruction in earnest, including the restoration of the Church of the Assumption, left roofless and vaultless after the Hussite wars. Seven chapels now form a ring around its presbytery, and its Baroque interiors are decorated with art, although these interiors are hidden from the sight of the public as its restoration continues.

  And yet this stunning structure, perhaps the most impressive of its type in the Czech Republic, is not the most interesting aspect of Sedlec. A rotary stands near the church, and at this rotary there is a sign that reads KOSNICE, pointing to the right. Those who follow it will come to a small, relatively modest house of worship seated at the center of a muddy graveyard. This is All Saints Church, built in 1400, revaulted in the seventeenth century, and reconstructed in the eighteenth century by the architect Santini-Aichel, who was also responsible for much of the restoration work on the Chapel of the Assumption. It can be entered through an extension added by Santini-Aichel, after it was discovered that the front of the church had begun to tilt. A staircase to the right leads up to All Saints Chapel, where once candles were lit for the dead in the two towerlets behind the chapel itself. Even in the spring sunlight, there is little about All Saints that might attract more than a casual second glance from the windows of an air-conditioned bus. After all, there are the wonders of Kutná Hora to be seen, with its narrow little streets, its perfectly preserved buildings, and the great mass of Saint Barbara’s dominating all.

  But All Saints is not as it might seem from the outside, for it is in fact two structures. The first, the chapel, is aboveground; the second, known as Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives, lies below. While what is above is a monument to the prospect of a better life beyond this one, what lies beneath is a testament to the transience of all things mortal. It is a strange place, a buried place, and none who spend time among its wonders can ever forget it.

  Legend tells that Jindrich, an abbot of Sedlec, brought back with him from the Holy Land a sack of soil that he scattered over the cemetery. It came to be regarded as an outpost of the Holy Land itself, and people from all across Europe were buried there, alongside plague victims and those who had fallen in the many conflicts waged in its surrounding fields. These bones at last became so plenteous that something had to be done with them, and in 1511 the task of disposing of them was reputedly entrusted to a half-blind monk. He arranged an accumulation of skulls into pyramids, and so began the great wo
rk that would become the ossuary at Sedlec. In the aftermath of Emperor Joseph II’s reforms, the monastery was purchased by the Orlik line of the Schwarzenberg family, but development of the ossuary continued. A woodcarver named František Rint was brought in, and his imagination was allowed free rein. From the remains of forty thousand people, Rint created a monument to death.

  A great chandelier of skulls hangs from the ossuary ceiling. Skulls form the base for its candleholders, each resting on pelvic arches, with a humerus clasped beneath its upper jaw. Where delicate crystals should hang, bones dangle vertically, connecting the skulls to the central support via a system of vertebrae. There are more bones here, small and large, forming the support itself and adorning the chains that anchor the skulls to the ceiling. Great lines of skulls, each clasping a bone beneath its jaw, line the arches of the ossuary at each side of the chandelier. They hang in loops, and form four narrow pyramids in the center of the floor, creating a square beneath the chandelier, each skull capable of holding a single candle in the center of the cranium.

  There are other wonders too: a monstrance made of bone, with a skull at its center where the host should be, six femurs radiating from behind, smaller bones and vertebrae interwoven with them. Bones mask the wooden support around which the monstrance has been constructed and its base is a U ending at either side in another skull. Even the Schwarzenberg family coat of arms is formed of bone, with a crown of skulls and pelvises at its peak. Those bones that have not found a practical use are stored in great piles beneath stone arches.