by F. G. Cottam
The man who opened the door was very elderly. He blinked at the light and vastness against which Cantrell knew he must be framed in the doorway. He was tall and thin and stooped from what looked like the affliction of arthritis. It had bent his back and deformed his hands, twisting the fingers of both in on his palms in a mannerism that made him seem obsequious or afraid. He wore a coarse brown woolen habit and a silver crucifix that looked antique hung from a frayed leather cord around his scrawny neck.
‘I am Brother Dominic,’ he said. ‘You will be Father James, sent by the Cardinal. Come in, Father. I will not pretend that you are welcome.’ The words were delivered with a blast of the halitosis common to serial fasters. The chemicals of the stomach, deprived of food, revolted.
Cantrell felt relieved at the rudeness he’d just encountered. He despised cant and hypocrisy. His presence here was a threat not just to the way that the residents of this place lived and worshipped but to their very existence. It would be perverse for them to pretend to be pleased by his arrival. He’d deliver the news they needed to hear and his departure afterwards would not be delayed by unnecessary courtesies.
There was no brightness within, because there was no power. There were candles on high stands, he saw as his eyes adjusted to the absence of illumination, but they were not lit. Gloom pervaded. What scant light there was entered through glassless windows in the stone fabric of the building as deep and narrow as archery slits. The flagged floor of the large chamber he was in was strewn with a thin carpeting of straw. There was no furniture and no decoration other than a heavy wooden cross hanging unadorned on the wall opposite the wall in which the door was hung.
To his left, he saw there was an archway. It was to this that Brother Dominic gestured as he said, ‘Come.’
The archway shaped the entrance to a corridor. It was long and lit along its length by tapers set in sconces on its walls. Cantrell had become aware of how cold it was in the building. He couldn’t see his breath, but it felt chilly enough in there to do so. It was silent apart from the sound of their footsteps echoing slightly as they progressed. He looked down and saw that Brother Dominic wore leather sandals over bare feet.
The corridor opened onto a large and largely featureless room. Two men stood in it. They were elderly like Brother Dominic and, like him, they were gaunt looking and grim of expression, attired in the same coarse habit he wore. Their expressions turned hostile when they saw their visitor. One was almost entirely bald. The other had a head of white hair shorn close to the scalp. He was introduced as Brother Stephen. The bald monk was Brother Philip.
They invited him to sit at a table equipped with a long bench to either side of it. He sat on one side and they sat on the other. There was no point, he thought, in observing non-confrontational niceties when it came to the seating arrangements. He was there only to confront them.
There was a pewter jug on the table on a beaten pewter tray with four beakers. Cantrell was thirsty after the climb to get there. He poured from the jug into one of the beakers and raised it to his lips. It was well-water, cold enough when he swallowed the first sip to possess a skein of ice.
‘Is this all that remains of you, just the three?’
They looked at one another. It was Brother Stephen who spoke. ‘We were seven,’ he said. ‘We were never to be fewer than seven.’
‘Is seven the magic number, gentlemen?’
‘There is no magic,’ Brother Philip said. ‘There are rituals and observations. There is prayer. At times in the history of our order it has been necessary to deploy some of our brethren. Seven was the number dictated by the Holy Father when we were charged with our mission.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Mother Church was in her infancy,’ Brother Stephen said.
‘A lot has changed since then,’ Cantrell said, thinking the words redundant before they left his mouth. Or were they? This was an audience who needed the obvious spelling out.
‘The certainties don’t change,’ Brother Philip said, ‘the judgment of the Almighty, the miracle of the risen Christ.’
Cantrell took another sip of water. He said, ‘the Lazarus Prophecy?’
They just stared at him. The three wise monkeys, he thought to himself. He said, ‘What happened to the other four of your brethren? How is it you find yourselves under-strength?’
‘We are not physically strong,’ Brother Dominic said. ‘The regime here is arduous. The fasting is necessary but it takes its toll on the body and we are beyond the reach of medical attention. There was an infection in the winter, a sort of influenza perhaps carried by the village boy who brings our provisions each month.
‘It took two in December and another in January. We thought Brother Simon had beaten it, was rallying, but he relapsed and surrendered his life at the beginning of February.’
Surrendered, Cantrell thought. These elderly fools thought they were soldiers of God, manning the frontline, carrying the fight through millennia to the great corporeal adversary of the Christian faith. It was pathetic, the degree of self-delusion they nourished. He might commit the sin of pride in his contempt for them. They committed it in the portentous self-importance of the role they deluded themselves into believing they fulfilled. They were further past their sell-by date than priests who performed exorcisms. Their only saving grace was that they existed in secrecy. They were not, at least, a public liability to the Church they thought they served. He’d been told to be gentle with them. He still intended to try.
‘Modern thinking on Lazarus is that he never died,’ he said.
‘That’s heresy,’ Brother Philip said.
‘Mistakes are still made concerning the vital signs. Even in hospitals, mistakes are made. We’ve all read stories about people waking up on mortuary slabs. Sometimes a pulse is difficult to detect. Did you not find that with Brother Simon, before he perished?’
‘We did,’ Brother Dominic said. ‘We thought twice that he had been taken from us. We knew for certain he was dead only when the cold rigor of his corpse proved itself to us.’
‘Lazarus was probably afflicted by a condition that rendered him comatose. He was wrongly believed to have died. Early mortality was much more common then and most illness went completely undiagnosed. I’m talking about a time when a tooth abscess was a death sentence. He was declared dead and regained consciousness four days later.’
The three men before him stared at him silently. Finally, it was Brother Philip who spoke. He said, ‘Lazarus was a sinner, judged before God and found wanting.’
‘Yes, the Cardinal told me,’ Cantrell said. ‘And the real miracle was not that Christ returned him from death, but that he delivered him from hell.’
‘From which region he delivered a warning for mankind,’ Brother Philip said.
‘Commonly known as the Lazarus Prophecy,’ Cantrell said. He chuckled, ‘or uncommonly known, since it’s been kept such a secret for so long.’
Brother Stephen tilted his head to one side. He raised a hand and stroked his chin between forefinger and thumb. ‘What would it take,’ he said, ‘to convince a sceptic?’
‘Something you cannot provide,’ Cantrell said. ‘I’d require tangible proof.’
Brother Stephen stood. He walked over to a narrow door Cantrell had not really noticed until that moment. It was positioned in a part of the room in shadow. The monk opened the door and stood back from it. It gave on to a narrow set of ascending steps that spiraled steeply to the right and disappeared in darkness. He produced a large key and held it out.
‘Your proof resides in a locked room at the top of the stairs,’ he said. ‘The steps are steep and there are eighty of them but you are unencumbered by priestly vestments, Father Cantrell. You are attired for exercise and you look formidably fit.’
Cantrell rose and walked across to the open door. He looked at the steps. He plucked the key from the monk’s fingers and examined it. It was brass and tarnished and looked as though the mechanism for which
it was made would be old and crude and sturdy. He said, ‘Riddles are inappropriate to the gravity of the moment. I have neither the time nor the inclination for games.’
‘It’s no game,’ Brother Philip said from behind him. ‘We could not be more serious in what we strive to accomplish.’
‘Very well,’ Cantrell said. He strode towards the open door. Then he hesitated.
‘There is but the one route and the one destination,’ Brother Philip said. ‘The way is dark but you cannot get lost.’
His two brethren laughed at Brother Philip’s levity. Cantrell thought it probably uncharacteristic. He didn’t think the remark remotely funny. He turned and crossed the room and reached into the arch shaped corridor for a lit taper from one of the wall sconces. Then with that between the fingers of his right hand and with the key held in his left, he walked back and went through the door and began to ascend the stone spiral of the steps.
Brother Stephen closed the door behind him. They waited for him to ascend out of earshot and then Brother Philip said, ‘You should not have lied to him about our numerical strength.’
‘If he’s not our friend, he’s our enemy,’ Brother Stephen said. ‘And I told him the truth about how many we are here. What resources we possess beyond these walls is none of his concern.’
‘He’s here because we’re obsolete,’ Brother Dominic said. ‘We’re an embarrassment to this modern Church with its refusal to believe in miracles.’
‘Miracles are not the only thing they’re agnostic about,’ Brother Philip said, ‘or the most important.’
‘That might change for Father Cantrell when he uses the garret key,’ Brother Stephen said. ‘His perspective might alter entirely.’
Cantrell climbed. The stone cylinder up which he ascended seemed very smooth in the waxy glimmer of his candle flame. He had two thin inches of tallow before his fingers began to burn and darkness engulfed him. He found himself hoping that there was a bright and spacious window with a panoramic mountain view through its storm-proof glass on the other side of the door to which he held the key. Somehow he doubted it.
He was climbing again. He had done a lot of that already for one day and thought that the ascent to their grim priory should have given him an appetite. He should by rights feel famished, he thought, even ravenous by now.
But he didn’t. What he actually felt was hollow with a sense of trepidation so strong he thought it qualified as dread. Sweat oozed out of his facial pores with every labored step and he could smell its sourness on skin that felt tender and raw under his clothing with gooseflesh. His scalp itched under his hair. His heart skittered in his chest.
He had reached the door. It was iron, like the entrance to an ancient prison cell, rust streaked and immensely solid, an enduring and implacable obstacle to anything getting in or getting out. With an unsteady exhalation of breath, he fumbled the key into its lock.
Chapter Two
‘He’s identified with the Beast out of the Earth from the Book of Revelation,’ Jacob Prior said. ‘Some of the alternative names he was given derive from 666. They’re numerologically decoded. But it’s the same character. Most of the early references to the Antichrist consider him to be a real individual rather than a metaphor for anarchy and destruction.’
‘How early is early?’
‘We’re talking the first and second centuries A.D. The Hebrew text Dom Carter translated this morning uses names familiar from that far back. He refers to the Son of Perdition and The Wicked One and The Son of the Wicked Demon. They’re all early Christian synonyms for the Antichrist.’
‘This Wicked Demon …’
‘Satan.’
‘So the Antichrist is the Devil’s son?’
‘That’s one interpretation.’
Jane sat back in her chair. They were in her office and the door was firmly closed. There was coffee in two mugs on the desk between them, but neither of them had touched their drink. Jacob Prior was as young as he’d sounded, surely only in his late 20s. He was darkly good looking with a slightly melancholy demeanor. She thought that might just be because they were discussing a detail from a recent and horrific murder. Or it might actually be piety, a condition with which she was unfamiliar.
He’d arrived holding a cycle helmet. He was much more mountain bike padlocked to street railings than he was sports saloon on a parking meter. He was rangy and athletic looking and casually attired in jeans and a black sweatshirt with no discernible logo. The four faxed translations were facing him on the desk. They’d requested Professor Carter use a fax machine because it was so much more secure than email was.
‘He’s saying that the Antichrist is coming?’
‘No. He isn’t. That would only be repeating what various sects and prophets and preachers have been threatening for the last two thousand years. He’s saying that the Antichrist is here. He’s saying that what was done to Julie Longmuir is his achievement. He’s saying that the next one will be a cause of great grief and torment.’
‘And he’s saying all this in language someone from Nazareth at the time of Jesus would have used.’
Prior gestured at the fourth translation. He said, ‘According to Dom Carter, yes he is.’
She’d briefed him on the specifics of the Longmuir murder before showing him the translated texts. She’d spared him crime scene pictures, because she needed his clarity of thought rather than his shocked revulsion. He seemed eager enough to help. He also seemed to have time on his hands. He’d come straight from his Lambeth flat to Victoria. If he worked, he worked from home. She remembered that he’d seen her at that morning’s press conference on the midday news. It was now just after 2.30 in the afternoon.
‘How is it you’re on first name terms with Professor Carter?’
‘I’ve helped with some of his research. Religious belief and its spread through the written word was a significant influence on the development of ancient languages.’
‘I’m sure it was. That’s what you do, research?’
‘It’s how I earn a living.’
‘Is it much of a living?’
‘Not really.’
‘I’m guessing a failed vocation,’ she said. ‘You were training to be a priest. You had a crisis of faith. But faith still fascinates you, thus theology.’
‘If you’re in possession of a telepathic gift, why don’t you use it to catch your killer?’
‘All I’m in possession of is intuition,’ she said. ‘With the Scholar, it’s not helping.’
He obviously found her questions and assumptions intrusive. They hadn’t vetted him yet. They would, but she thought it a formality. She wanted information and she wanted it faster than the bureaucratic protocols generally allowed.
‘Would you describe his knowledge of early Christianity as comprehensive?’
‘The most recent message is different from the others. In the others he quotes from Revelations and some of the Gospels and he hints darkly about the End of Days. In the Longmuir message he’s very specific about the Antichrist. And he quotes his sources as though they were people known personally to him. He’s not so much expert on the subject as intimate with it.’
Jane shivered. The notion of the Scholar being intimate with anything was a repulsive one. She said, ‘What do you think it signifies, this change in tone from the messages left at the earlier crime scenes?’
‘I’m sure you have psychological profilers to tell you that sort of thing.’
‘We have an abundance of profilers Mr. Prior. But I’m asking you.’
Prior didn’t say anything. He finally picked up his coffee, which had by now to be cold, and sipped at it tentatively. Traffic buzzed below on the busy street outside. There was the fading persistence of a siren a couple of blocks away. Sunlight leaked dustily into the room through the chinks of her window blind.
‘Do you think he’s gaining in confidence?’
‘I’d put it stronger than that,’ Prior said. ‘It’s almost as though he’s remember
ed who he is.’
‘So you think he’s delusional?’
‘If he is, that will make him easier to catch, won’t it? Delusional people are quite conspicuous, aren’t they?’
‘You’d think so,’ she said. But she didn’t really buy the argument. Lots of people in her own chain of command struck her as quite seriously delusional but their jobs and credibility weren’t threatened by it so far as she could see. Delusional men from Hitler to Gadhafi had risen to lead entire nations in relatively recent times. Ordinary people fell for all sorts of lunatic theories about everything from illness to aliens without their beliefs impinging very much on their professional or their personal lives.
She thought about the Whitechapel killer, the subject of her own very hasty recent research. Had he gone around like Mr. Hyde, they’d have very likely apprehended him. She was sure he had managed to act most of the time much more like Dr. Jekyll.
She said, ‘Was there a single thing that cost you your vocation?’
He smiled. ‘There was a single moment,’ he said, ‘quite a small event really, in the scheme of things. It was the South-East Asian Tsunami of a decade ago.’
‘That was hardly a small thing, Mr. Prior.’
‘It was hearing about the details of the death of a single victim, a five-year old British girl on holiday with her grandparents. They were spared to endure the living death of guilt and regret for the miserable length of the lives left to them.’
‘You stopped believing in God?’
‘I still believe in God. But I couldn’t serve a capricious God. Not in the way the Church demands, I couldn’t.’
