The Black Angel

by John Connolly

“There is that.”

  He set about tearing apart his lobster. I tried not to watch.

  “So, do you want to tell me why Claudia Stern should have come to your attention?” he asked. “Strictly between ourselves, I should add.”

  “There’s a sale taking place there tomorrow.”

  “The Sedlec trove,” said Phil. “I’ve heard rumors.”

  One of Phil’s areas of interest was the aesthetics of cemeteries, so it wasn’t surprising that he was aware of Sedlec. Sometimes, the breadth of his knowledge was almost worrying.

  “You know anything about it?”

  “I hear that the fragment of vellum at the center of the auction contains drawings of some kind, and that in itself it’s worth relatively little, apart from a certain curiosity value. I know that Claudia Stern has presented only a tiny portion of the vellum for authentication, with the remainder supposedly being kept under lock and key until a buyer is found. I also know that there has been a lot of secrecy maintained, and care taken, for such a minor item.”

  “I can tell you a little more,” I said.

  And I did. By the time I was done, Phil’s lobster lay half-consumed on his plate. I had barely touched my beef. The waitress looked quite pained when she came to check up on us.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  Phil’s face lit up with a smile so perfect only an expert could have spotted that it was false, although his regret was genuine.

  “Everything was divine, but I don’t have the appetite I once had,” he explained.

  I let her take my plate as well, and the smile faded slowly from Phil’s face.

  “Do you really believe that this statue is real?” he said.

  “I think that something was hidden, a long time ago,” I replied. “Too many individuals are concerned about it for it to be a complete myth. As for its exact nature, I can’t say, but it’s safe to assume that it’s valuable enough to kill for. How much do you know about collectors of this type of material?”

  “I know some of them by name, others by reputation. Those in the business occasionally share gossip with me.”

  “Could you get a pair of invitations to the auction?”

  “I think I could. It would mean calling in some favors, but you just told me that you believe Claudia Stern would probably prefer if you didn’t attend.”

  “I’m hoping that she’ll be sufficiently distracted by all that’s happening to allow me to get a foot in the door with you by my side. If we arrive close to the auction, I’m banking on the hope that it will be easier to let us stay than to throw us out and risk disrupting the affair. Anyway, I do lots of things that people would prefer I didn’t do. I’d be out of a job if I didn’t.”

  Phil finished his wine.

  “I knew this free meal would end up costing me dearly,” he said.

  “Come on,” I said. “I know you’re fascinated. And if anyone kills you, just think of the obituary you’ll get in the Press Herald. You’ll be immortalized.”

  “That is not reassuring,” said Phil. “I was hoping that immortality would come to me through not dying.”

  “You may yet be the first,” I told him.

  “And what are your chances?”

  “Slim,” I said. “And declining.”

  Brightwell was hungry. He had fought the urges for so long, but lately they had become too strong for him. He recalled the death of the woman, Alice Temple, in the old warehouse, and the sound of his bare feet slapping on the tiles as he approached her. Temple: her name was somehow appropriate in light of the desecration that had been visited on her body. It was strange to Brightwell, the way in which he was able to stand outside himself and watch what occurred, as though his mortal form were engaged in certain pursuits while its guiding consciousness was otherwise occupied.

  Brightwell opened his mouth and sucked in a deep breath of oily air. His fists clenched and unclenched, whitening his knuckles beneath his skin. He shuddered, recalling the fury with which he had torn the woman apart. That was where the separation occurred, the division of Self and Notself, one part seeking only to rend and tear while the other stood aside, calm yet watchful, waiting for the moment, the final moment. This was Brightwell’s gift, the reason for his being: even with his eyes closed, or locked in complete darkness, he could sense the coming of the last breath….

  The spasming was increasing in frequency now. His mouth was very dry. Temple, Alice Temple. He loved that name, loved the taste of her as his mouth found hers, blood and spit and sweat intermingled upon her lips, her consciousness seeping away, her strength failing. Now Brightwell was with her once again, his ensanguined fingers clutching at her head, his lips locked against her lips, the redness of her: red within, red without. She was dying, and to anyone else, from a doctor to a layman, there would be only the sight of a body deflating, the life leaving it at last as it slumped, naked, in the battered chair.

  But life was not the only element departing at that moment, and Brightwell was waiting for it as it left her. He felt it as a rushing sensation in his mouth, like a sweet breeze ascending through a scarlet tunnel, like a gentle fall making way for harsh winter, like sunset and night, presence and absence, light and not-light. And then it was within him, locked inside, trapped between worlds in the ancient, dark prison that was Brightwell.

  Brightwell, the guiding angel, the guardian of memories. Brightwell, the searcher, the identifier.

  Brightwell’s breathing grew faster. He could feel them within him, tormented and questing.

  Brightwell, capable of bending the will of others to his own, of convincing the lost and forgotten that the truth of their natures lay in his words.

  He needed another. The taste was on him. Deep inside him, a crescendo grew, a great chorus of voices crying out for release.

  He did not regret all that had followed from her death. True, it had brought them unwanted attention. She was not alone in the world after all. There were those who cared about her, and who would not let her passing go unexamined, but the intersection of her life’s path with that of Brightwell was no coincidence. Brightwell was very old, and with great age came great patience. He had always retained his faith, his certainty that each life taken would bring him closer and closer to the one who had betrayed him, who had betrayed them all for the possibility of a redemption always destined to be denied him. He had kept himself well hidden, submerging the truth of his being, burying it beneath a pretence of normality even as the three worlds—this world, the world above, and the great honeycomb world below—did all in their power to demonstrate to him that normality had no place in his existence.

  Brightwell had plans for him, oh yes. Brightwell would find a cold, dark place, with chains upon the walls, and there he would bind him, and watch him through a hole in the brickwork as he wasted away, hour upon hour, day upon day, year upon year, century after century, teetering on the brink of death yet never falling finally into the abyss.

  And if Brightwell were wrong about his nature—and Brightwell was rarely wrong, even in the smallest of things—then it would still be a long, agonizing death for the man who had threatened to stand in the way of the revelation that they had long sought, and the recovery of the one that had been lost to them for so long.

  The preparations were all in place. Tomorrow they would find out what they needed to know. There was nothing more that could be done, so Brightwell allowed himself a small indulgence. Later that night, he came across a young man in the shadow of the park, and he drew him to himself with promises of money and food and strange, carnal delights. And in time, Brightwell was upon him, his hands buried deep within the boy’s body, his long nails slicing organs and gently crushing veins, controling the intricate piece of machinery that was the human form, slowly bringing the boy to the climax that Brightwell sought, until at last they were locked together, lip to lip, and the surging sweetness filled Brightwell as another voice was added to the great choir of souls within.

  CHAPTER T
WENTY

  Martin Reid called me first thing the next morning, leading Angel to question if he was actually in league with the very people he was supposed to be working against, since only someone involved with the devil would call at 6:30 A.M.

  “Will you be attending today’s event?” he asked.

  “I hope so. What about you?”

  He grunted.

  “I’m a little too well known to mingle unnoticed in such company. Anyway, I had a fraught telephone conversation with our Miss Stern yesterday, during which I stressed once again my unhappiness with her determination to continue with the sale, despite doubts about the provenance and ownership of the box. We’ll have somebody there to keep an eye on what transpires, but it won’t be me.”

  Not for the first time, it struck me that there was something wrong with the way in which Reid was dealing with the sale of the Sedlec fragment. The Catholic Church was not short of lawyers, especially in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as anyone who had dealt with the archdiocese in the course of the recent abuse scandals could attest. If it were determined to stop the auction from going ahead, Claudia Stern’s business would have been crawling with oleaginous men and women in expensive suits and polished shoes.

  “By the way,” he said. “I hear you were asking questions about us.”

  I had checked up on both Reid and Bartek after my meeting with them. It took me a while to find anyone who was prepared to admit that they had ever set foot in a church, let alone taken holy orders, but eventually their identities were confirmed to me through Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, where both men were staying. Reid was officially based at San Bernardo alle Terme in Rome and was apparently responsible for instructing visiting clerics and nuns about the way of life of Saint Benedict, the saint most closely associated with the rules governing the order, through contemplation of places in which he spent crucial parts of his life: Norica, Subiaco, and Monte Cassino. Bartek worked out of the new monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur in the Czech Republic, the first monastery to be built in the Czech Republic since the fall of Communism, and it was still under construction. He had previously lived in the community at Sept-Fons Abbey in France, to which he and a number of other young Czech men had fled in the early 1990s to escape religious persecution in their own country, but had also worked extensively in the United States, mainly at the Abbey of the Genesee in upstate New York. Sept-Fons, I remembered, was the monastery that Bosworth, the elusive FBI agent, had desecrated.

  Still, Bartek’s story sounded plausible enough, but Reid didn’t strike me as the type who was content to sit at the front of a tour bus muttering platitudes through a microphone. Interestingly, the monk who explained all this to me—having first cleared it with the head of the order in the United States and, presumably, with Reid and Bartek themselves—told me that the two monks actually represented two distinct orders: Bartek was a Trappist, a group deriving its name from the Abbey of Our Lady of La Trappe in France and formed after a split in the order between those who subscribed to strict observance of silence, austerity, and simple vestments, and those like Reid who preferred a little more laxity in their duties and lifestyles. This latter group was known as the Sacred Order of Citeaux, or the Cistercians of the Common Observance. I also couldn’t help but feel that there was a certain amount of respect, bordering on awe, in the way the monk spoke about the two men.

  “I was curious,” I told Reid. “And I also had only your word that you were actually a monk.”

  “So what did you learn?” He sounded amused.

  “Nothing that you didn’t give them permission to tell me,” I said. “Apparently, you’re a tour guide.”

  “Is that what they said?” said Reid. “Well, well. They also serve who only stand and wait at the bus door for latecomers. It’s important that history is not forgotten. That’s why I gave you the cross. I hope you’re wearing it. It’s very old.”

  As it happened, I had attached the cross to my key ring. I already wore a cross: a simple Byzantine pilgrim’s cross, over one thousand years old, that my grandfather had given to me as a gift when I graduated high school. I didn’t think that I needed to wear another.

  “I keep it close,” I assured him.

  “Good. If anything ever happens to me, you can give that a rub and I’ll be in touch from the next world.”

  “I’m not sure I find that reassuring,” I said. “Like a great many things about you.”

  “Such as?”

  “I think you want this auction to go ahead. I don’t think you and your order made more than cosmetic efforts to stop it. For some reason, it’s in your interests that whatever is contained in that last fragment is revealed.”

  There was only silence from the other end of the line. Reid might almost have abandoned the phone, were it not for the soft susurration of his breathing.

  “And what reason would that be?” he asked, and there was no longer any trace of amusement. Instead, he sounded wary. No, not wary, exactly: he wanted me to figure out the answer, but he wasn’t about to give it to me. Despite all my threats of the combined wrath of Louis and the Fulcis being unleashed upon him, Reid was going to play the game his way, right until the end.

  “Maybe you’d like to see the Black Angel too,” I said. “Your order lost it, and now it wants it back.”

  Reid tut-tutted, and the mask was restored.

  “Close,” said Reid, “but no cigar for you, Mr. Parker. Look after that cross, now, and give my love to Claudia Stern.”

  He hung up, and I never spoke to him again.

  I met Phil Isaacson at Fanueil Hall, and from there we walked to the auction house. It was clear that Claudia Stern had taken certain precautions for the sale of the map fragment. A sign announced that the house was closed for a private sale and that all inquiries would be dealt with by phone. I rang the bell, and the door was opened by a big man in a dark suit who looked like the only thing he had ever bid on was the option of striking the first blow.

  “This is a private event, gentlemen. Invitation only.”

  Phil removed the invitations from his pocket. I didn’t know how he had acquired them. They were printed on stiff cards and embossed in gold with the word STERN and the date and time of the auction. The doorman examined them, then looked at both of us closely to make sure that we weren’t about to produce crosses and holy water and start sprinkling the place. Once he was satisfied, he stepped aside to let us through.

  “Not quite Fort Knox,” I said.

  “Still, more than one would usually encounter. I have to confess, I am rather looking forward to this.”

  Phil registered at the desk and was handed a bidding paddle. A young woman in black offered us refreshments from a tray. In fact, there were a lot of people in black present. It looked like the launch of a new Cure album, or the reception after a Goth wedding. We both opted for orange juice, then took the stairs up to the auction room. As I had hoped, there were still people milling about, and we were lost in the throng. I was surprised at the size of the crowd, but even more surprised at the fact that most of them seemed relatively normal, apart from their monochromatic dress sense, although there were a few who looked like they might spend a little too much time alone in the dark pursuing unpleasant activities, including one particularly nasty specimen with pointed nails and a black ponytail who was only one step away from wearing a T-shirt announcing that he suckled at Satan’s nipple.

  “Maybe Jimmy Page will be here,” I said. “I should have brought along my copy of Led Zep IV.”

  “Jimmy who?” said Phil. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.

  “Led Zeppelin. A popular beat combo, Your Honor.”

  We took a seat at the back. I kept my head down and looked through Phil’s copy of the catalog. Most of the lots were books, some of them very old. There was a facsimile of the Ars Moriendi, a kind of how-to guide for those hoping to avoid damnation after death, first published in translation by the Englishman Caxton in 1491, consisti
ng of eleven block-book woodcuts depicting the deathbed temptation of a dying man. Claudia Stern clearly knew how to put together an impressive and enlightening sales package: from the couple of paragraphs describing the lot, I learned that the term “shriven” meant to be absolved of one’s sins; that therefore to be given “short shrift” meant being allowed little time to confess before death; and that a “good death” did not necessarily preclude a violent end. I also learned from a book of saints that Saint Denis, the apostle of Gaul and patron of France, was decapitated by his tormentors, but subsequently picked up his head and went for a walk with it, which said a lot for Saint Denis’s willingness to be a good sport and put on a show for the crowd.

  Some of the lots appeared to be linked to one another. Lot 12 was a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches, that dated from the early sixteenth century and was said to have belonged to one Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg, a fire-and-brimstone cathedral preacher in Strasbourg, while a copy of his sermons from 1516 was Lot 13. Geiler’s sermons were illustrated by a witch engraving by Hans Baldung, who studied under Dürer, and Lot 14 consisted of a series of erotic prints by Baldung, featuring an old man—representing Death—fondling a young woman, apparently a theme to which Baldung returned repeatedly in his career.

  There were also statues, icons, paintings—including the piece that I had witnessed being restored in the workshop, now listed only as “Kutna Hora, 15th century, artist unknown”—and a number of bone sculptures. Most of them were on display, but they bore no resemblance to those that I had seen in Stuckler’s book or in Garcia’s apartment. They were cruder, and less finely crafted. I was becoming quite the connoisseur of bone work.

  People began to take their seats as one o’clock approached. I saw no sign of Stuckler or Murnos, but eight women were seated at a table by the auctioneer’s podium, each with a telephone now pressed to her ear.

  “It’s unlikely that any serious bids will come from the floor for the more esoteric items,” said Phil. “The buyers won’t want their identities to become known, partly because of the value of some, but mostly because such interests still remain open to misinterpretation.”