Lucifer's Crown

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “The ruins,” he replied. “Do you remember the sixteenth-century poem written about the destruction of another great Marian shrine, Walsingham? ‘Bitter, bitter, O, to behold the grass to grow where the walls of Walsingham so stately did show. Walsingham, O, farewell.’”

  The dove took wing again, spiraling above the broken walls. “Walsingham’s been renewed,” said Maggie. “Catholic and Anglican shrines share the site. It’s as big a deal for pilgrims as it was in the Middle Ages.”

  “Time brings renewal and reawakening, doesn’t it? If we can preserve the power of the Grail so that there will be time to forgive and be forgiven…” His voice broke. “Magdalena, I shall miss you dreadfully.”

  She bit her lip, hard, and touched his face, memorizing the high places of his cheekbones, the wells of his eyes, the landscape of his brow and mouth and jaw. His gestures, the timbre of his voice, every word he’d ever uttered to her and every touch he’d ever bestowed on her. His soul, that old soul on whom time had worked its will as it had on the trees and stones of the ancient shrine itself.

  Glastonbury, O farewell.

  Mick wrapped the elastic round his tail of hair and buttoned the top button of his shirt. Ow. Quickly he unbuttoned it. But despite the bruises he felt himself again. The new himself, not the himself he’d been two months ago, not a bit of it.

  Rose sat on the bed holding his chanter to her lips. She blew. It squawked. She looked up with a laugh. Yesterday he’d seen tears in her eyes. Now she was laughing. That was amazing grace, right enough. How sweet both the word and the woman.

  Putting the chanter aside, he scooped her back onto the bed. She wrapped his body with hers and said with a wicked grin, “Open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.”

  He opened her lips. Her mouth tasted of honey. This is now, he thought. Her willowy body flexed to his touch and her scent filled his head, making him giddy. This is now. Her bones were fine and strong beneath her skin, and her skin smooth beneath her jumper, straining toward his hands and mouth—in a moment both their jumpers would be gone and they could lie skin to skin—and their jeans, with their buttons and zips, no trouble at all…

  “Oh, Mick,” she said in his ear, a warm breath trembling with delight. And with caution.

  He blinked into Rose’s bright blue eyes.

  “Mick,” she said again, a wee bit steadier. “Not like this.”

  He wrenched himself away, sat up on the edge of the bed, and reseated his jeans. The wallpaper seemed to pulse in time with his heart. The sgian dubh made a hard exclamation point against his ribs. “I’m thinking we have a choice. We can be getting on with it. Or we can be proper guardians of the Grail and possess ourselves in patience, as my Dad used to say.”

  “I like the idea of possessing myself. You know, honor and all that.” Rose sat up and reseated her bra. “Have you ever gotten on with it?”

  “Oh aye. It didna mean overmuch. I was a gowk to settle for cheap.”

  “Robin said physical virginity was cheap. But I won’t let mine be cheap. I won’t let it be casual. You know, okay, so much for that, what do you want to do now? Watch a video?”

  Had she told him she was a virgin? He wasn’t surprised.

  “I don’t want to fumble around in some corner and then pretend nothing happened. I want to do it with knowledge and intention and consent. With affection aforethought. I want to shout out, ‘I love this man. I worship him with my body because there’s no shame in the flesh.’ Of course,” she added, “I do want to do it with you.”

  He smiled, tentatively. “Is it love, then?”

  “Feels like it from here.”

  “And from here.” Mick raised her hands to his lips. “I dinna suppose we’re gey important with Armageddon and all. But then, if it is Armageddon, would you not hate to miss out worshipping the flesh?”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” she said with a grin. “We’re going to prevent Armageddon, aren’t we? Because we’re just what’s important. And because we possess ourselves like proper guardians of the Grail.”

  Mick grinned back. She was a canny one. She knew no matter how complex the labyrinth he’d been treading, no matter how long and dark its path, he’d come at last to the center. Whatever tasks lay along the path out—the university, the business, a trial—he would have her heart and soul, body and spirit, with him. “Well then, we should be asking Thomas to marry us.”

  Her eyes glowed. “Let’s ask him for a nuptial blessing when we’re at Canterbury. Then in God’s eyes we’ll be engaged, and sex will be okay.”

  “Oh no, lass. It’ll be grand.”

  Footsteps thundered up the stairs and blows hammered on the door. “Hey!” shouted Sean. “Do we have to throw a bucket of water on you two? Rose, you came up here to get Mick to play for us!”

  Rose laughed. “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

  Mick opened the door. Sean looked past him, saw a fully-clothed Rose standing innocently by the basin, and shrugged.

  Mick clapped Sean on the shoulder. “I’ll be down in a tic, Sunshine.” And to Rose, “You go on, lass, blowing in the pipes is no treat for the ear.”

  “We’ll be in the courtyard,” said Sean. “Thomas says there’s a reason they’re called the Great War Pipes.”

  “The yard it is, then.”

  Blowing him a kiss, Rose walked away. Mick set about inflating and tuning, until the bass note of the drones sounded loud and clear and the bag was tight, straining beneath his arm. If fondling the pipes wasn’t as fine as fondling Rose, well, they had their glamour.

  Down the stairs he went, and out into the lamp-lit yard. They were all waiting, Alf, Thomas and Maggie, Sean and Anna, Rose. Even Dunstan, who was sitting inside the lounge window like a deity enthroned.

  Rose smiled and Mick thought, This is forever. He cut loose with “Scotland the Brave.” The skirl of the pipes filled the courtyard with sound and glory. Alf covered his ears. Everyone else cheered.

  So then, the music was enough to wake the dead. Let it. Let Robin Fitzroy know this was the wappenshaw, the muster of the warriors. Let him know they were ready to take him on, and win.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Ellen sat down next to a niche holding a statue of a woman and a baby. Three candles burned in front of it. Superstitious rubbish, those images.

  Mary didn’t die. It was Jesus who died. Maybe he scared his mum as well. I never meant it. I never.

  Ellen didn’t know where in London’s maze of streets she’d found the church that housed this shelter. She’d walked since daybreak, when the cheap hotel turfed her out, Christmas Day or not. The gits driving by in their posh cars didn’t so much as see her, save for the pillock who ran through a puddle, splashed her, and laughed. That’s what Christmas meant, brass for the toffs, and the likes of her left out in the cold and the rain.

  Even if Temple Manor wasn’t half Alf’s rubbish, Christmas went down a treat there, lights shining in the glass, roasted goose, pudding, crackers and funny hats. Mum only ever wanted what was best … Mum was dead. Alf hated her. Anna and the others, they wouldn’t be good to her ever again. And Sean—she missed Sean.

  The good smells that had lured Ellen in from the street now made her feel sick. Even in the warm room she was perishing cold. Cold as bonking Robin. But Wednesday he’d taken no for an answer. Snarling about Canterbury, he’d shoved a few notes at her and left her at St. Pancras station. He never saw her pinch the knife, did he? Now it was a rigid outline in her pocket. Now it was hers.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Shabby folk like her were scoffing down lashings of food. Toffs stood by with cups of tea and cakes—they’re falling about at the sight of us, Ellen thought.

  They weren’t laughing. One tall man was even kneeling in front of a child, slipping new shoes onto her little feet. It was the traitor, burned brown eyes, nose like a bird’s beak.

  Robin said Thomas betrayed God. She didn’t know what he’d done any more than she knew what Calum ha
d done. Robin said he’d tell her everything she needed to know. But he hadn’t done, had he?

  The bloody wound on her hand hurt, the bloody cut on her neck hurt, and something bloody well hurt in her chest, like her heart had been pulled right out. I believe … She didn’t believe in anything, not any more.

  Someone switched on a radio. “First Rites,” again, she’d gone off “First Rites,” the pipes squealing and the drums beating. A man sat down beside her. The traitor, Thomas, holding a first-aid kit. She was too knackered to move away. “I don’t know where it is,” she mumbled.

  “I know,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  That was too complicated a question. “Yeh.”

  “Alf wants you to come back to Temple Manor.”

  “Alf hates me.”

  “He was distressed when Bess died. But he’s always cared for you. Temple Manor is a place for you to go, and work to be going on with.”

  Ellen said, “I have a place to go. Canterbury.”

  “You’ll be going on the thirty-first, I expect.” Opening the kit, Thomas dabbled at her neck with something that burned. Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away.

  Robin told her Thomas was a traitor and a liar. But Thomas had the Book and the Stone off Robin, hadn’t he? What did that make of him? Of Robin?

  “…the light of the world to you, Deep peace of Mary the vessel who bore him to you,” ended the song. Thomas’s hands were as gentle as Mum’s. He bandaged her neck and took her hand. Shaking his head—her hand was a dog’s breakfast, wasn’t it, all puffed and purple—he wiped it off. Again the sting brought tears to her eyes and this time they ran hotly down her cheeks.

  The image of Mary and her baby swam before her. The three candles blurred into one streak of light. A choir on the radio sang, “Silent night, Holy night, son of God, love’s pure light…” The Child looked into that hole which had been Ellen’s heart. She’d seen light filling his Cup, beautiful light. But that was probably a lie, too. The knife wasn’t a lie. It lay cold, hard, and smooth against her ribs.

  Thomas closed the kit. He touched her head, murmuring something in another language, heathen Latin, most like. He was praying over her. She wasn’t strong enough to turn away. “God loves you,” he finished.

  The man was daft. No one loved her.

  “I’ll bring you some food,” he said, and walked away.

  Canterbury, Ellen thought. Robin was after cleaning out the artifacts, wasn’t he, and the traitor was after stopping him, and neither of them would so much as notice if she was there or not. Unless she made them take notice. One more week, and she’d go to Canterbury. And then, if it was blood that mattered—well, the edge of the knife was razor-sharp.

  She no longer gave a toss about the new world coming on. She just wanted the old one to end and be done.

  The towers of Canterbury Cathedral rose above the rooftops. Gray towers against a mottled gray December sky, Thomas thought, remembering other towers and another December sky. But his cathedral was long gone. This new one had been built to the glory of God and His martyr as well.

  In the west hung a quarter moon, like a cryptic smile. He’d seen such a moon the day God’s merciful hand brought Maggie and the students to Temple Manor. He’d seen such a moon the day they found the Stone and were delivered by that same omnipotent hand. He wondered what he would be feeling if he saw next month’s last quarter moon—relief, or disappointment?

  Setting his jaw, he turned toward the group of American students queuing outside the Burger King. “Makes me feel old just to look at them,” said Maggie at his elbow. “I can’t imagine how they make you feel.”

  “Pleased to be alive. And to see you again.” He took her hands and found that he was still capable of a broad smile.

  “I need to thank Canon O’Connell for putting in a good word for me at the hotel. I’ve got the best room in the house, canopy bed, fireplace, and the cathedral right outside the window. You should have seen Rose’s face when she looked in, like Cinderella watching her pumpkin turn into a coach.”

  “Good man, Ivan,” Thomas told her. “Did you enjoy your Christmas?”

  “Yes, thank you. Comparing notes with the other instructors was a heck of a reality check. They were talking about flat tires and sore throats like they were hair-raising adventures.”

  “You and the students downplayed your own adventures, I take it.”

  “We were inadvertently caught up in a murder investigation is all—I passed the treks north off as field trips.” Maggie took his arm and they walked off. “Do you recognize anything?”

  Thomas considered the medieval facades modernized by shop windows and advertising signs, now decorated for the season. “Even the oldest of these buildings is younger than I am.”

  “Especially that brick shopping center over there.”

  “During the last war the Luftwaffe dropped incendiary bombs onto the cathedral, but a wind—the breath of God, I daresay—blew them onto the medieval town. The destruction proved a boon to archaeologists.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Thomas, if you bit into an apple and found half a worm you’d give thanks for the protein.”

  This is the worm that dieth not. “I should hope so.”

  “And your Christmas at the homeless shelter?” she went on.

  “Ellen Sparrow was there.”

  “She was? There’s a—no, it wasn’t a coincidence, was it?”

  “No. She’s fearfully depressed, and, it seemed to me, fey. She intends to be here on the thirty-first … Look!” Above the street rose Christ Church gate, decorated with crenellations, gilded shields, and the benign stone faces of angels. “Built in 1517 under Henry VIII.”

  “And twenty-five years later Henry was looting your—the shrine. A century after that the Puritans were happily breaking and burning. And now…” Maggie was not obliged to finish her sentence.

  Together they walked through the gate and into the spacious grounds of the cathedral. What had been a chill breeze in the streets of the town here became a raw wind scouring Thomas’s face. He had seen drawings and photographs, but the grandeur of the actual building, the towers, buttresses, windows, arches a symphony in stone, took his breath away.

  “Do you want to walk around outside first?” Maggie asked gently.

  “Yes.” Pressing her hand, he let her guide him alongside the south facade. There, the stair tower tucked into the angle of the southeast transept—he remembered Prior Wibert adding its arcades. Biting his lip—lancing a wound always hurts—he walked on.

  A striped cat prowled past the base of the Corona Chapel at the far eastern end of the cathedral, a miniature tiger at its hunt. Thomas and Maggie went round into the network of blank walls, empty windows, and passageways which lay against the northern side of the cathedral. The water tower with the conical roof, that was Wibert’s as well.

  The cloister wasn’t the one he remembered, and yet still it smelled of mold and damp and time. Those uneven stone flags might as well be the ones he’d once walked, and the door into the northwest transept, a wooden slab with an iron latch, the one he had entered that fateful night.

  A burst of sunlight cast the shadows of the pillars black across the walkway, like prison bars. Then the sun went out. He was walking toward the door, the shouts of the knights ringing in his ears, his bowels churning and his heart beating in his throat—his martyrdom was upon him, and yet mixed with his exaltation was a leaden fear that made his feet slow to rise and fall—David, Edward, the others told him it was no time to be standing on his dignity. They pulled at him, urging him to run, to hide, to lock the doors. “No,” he whispered. “It is the hour of vespers.”

  He blinked. It wasn’t night, but a gray noon. The faces round him coalesced to one face, that of a woman, her dark eyes touched with incorruptible gold. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “How can I confront Robin, if I fear to confront myself?” His voice broke and he swallowed fiercely.

&n
bsp; She offered no tawdry affirmations. “Let’s go in the main door, then, not this one.”

  Not this one. Unresisting, he walked beside her round the far end of the building and into the nave. Two rows of tall, graceful columns marched eastward, joined far overhead by interlaced stone branches. Just beyond the base of the main tower and its decorative braces, an arched doorway in the choir screen opened onto a gleam of light.

  The scent of incense hung in the air. That night the scent of incense had mingled with wool and beans. Sweat trickled cold down Thomas’s back, but Maggie’s hand was warm on his arm. She led him not to the north but to the south side of the choir. A second circuit, then, one closer to the center. He tried to breathe deeply, but his chest felt as though it were packed with lint.

  The southwest transept held a souvenir stand and the St. Michael Chapel, hung with regimental flags. Up a flight of steps, and the southeast transept was illuminated by two very recent stained-glass windows. Thomas said, “Many of the original windows were broken out by the Puritans—‘rattling down proud Becket’s glassy bones,’ they said. I was indeed proud, and needed bringing down. But aren’t the reformers and purifiers who resort to destruction and murder guilty of even greater pride?”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” said Maggie.

  Opposite the transept sat the high altar and the austere stone chair of St. Augustine, the archbishop’s seat. Thomas felt the miter on his head, heard the voices singing a Gloria, saw the blaze of candles that sent the shadows fleeing—his heart leapt in the presence of God—he was chosen not by an earthly king but by the King of Kings … Whose teachings he betrayed eight years later. Thomas Maudit.

  Maggie drew him on up another flight of steps, their stone worn into curves. Between the columns circling the Trinity Chapel sat tombs with carved and gilded canopies and effigies, all focused on an eloquent emptiness. There, where the mosaic zodiac gave way to stone flags still hollowed by the knees of pilgrims, there Thomas Becket’s shrine had once stood.