The choir fell silent. Thomas raised his hand with its red fingertips. Making the sign of the Cross over Ellen’s head he said, “May the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, descend upon you and bring you peace.”
Sniffing hideously, Ellen looked up. Something flickered in her eyes, some reflection of the light in Thomas’s face, of the light winking and glimmering in the chapel. Far, far above, one ancient bell began to toll the passing of the old millennium and the beginning of the new. With a baleful backwards glare, Sean dragged Ellen several paces away.
Thomas tucked his handkerchief into his sweater as a makeshift bandage. He squeezed Maggie’s hand and removed it from his arm. He nodded reassuringly at Mick and Rose and their taut faces eased. He turned toward Lydia. “It’s gone midnight. I’ll have the Cup now, Mrs. Soulis.”
She clutched the box to her chest. The bell tolled. Each note trembled in the air, in the stone vaults, in the earth beneath.
“You, Mountjoy,” said Robin, his voice dripping contempt. “Reg, Lydia, stop your gawping, get a move on.”
Rose and Mick started forward. Mountjoy leaped up to face them. His foot crushed the cat’s tail. Yowling, she catapulted from beneath the chair, made a warp-speed figure eight between Lydia’s pumps and her son’s wingtips and disappeared into the depths of the crypt.
Lydia lost her balance and fell. Reg dropped the sledgehammer, which rang against the stone floor in leaden echo of the tolling bell, and grabbed for the box. So did Rose. The lid clattered to the floor.
Rose had it! Mountjoy jumped toward her and stopped, staring cross-eyed at Mick’s sgian dubh a foot from his face.
Each stroke of the great bell drove the old millennium deeper into the past. Maggie felt each note in her skull, in her spine, in Thomas’s body beside her. He was praying, his hands raised, his lips moving, Latin cadences and Gaelic measures repeating the rhythm of the bell.
If Robin had shouted, “Why am I surrounded by incompetent fools?” Maggie would have answered. But he saved his breath. His lips cramping into a scowl, he started forward, Reg at his heels. Lydia struggled to her feet.
Maggie looked from the self-righteous frowns closing in on them to the knife in her hand, sticky with Thomas’s blood. Mick swung toward Robin, his knife raised. Robin raised his arm, shielding himself from the relic that had burned him at Holystone.
Mountjoy dived to the side, trying to outflank Mick. Reg moved at the same instant, around the other way. Maggie jumped forward—too late, they’d knocked the box from Rose’s hands—Mountjoy and Reg, Maggie and Rose juggled the box until it clattered to the floor and Rose was left holding the reliquary, a dazzling glow shining through her slender fingers.
Vicious, obscene words spewing from his lips, Robin struck. The crack of his open hand against Rose’s face was shockingly loud. She stumbled sideways. The reliquary opened and the Cup flew from her hands.
“Amen,” Thomas said.
No one moved as the Cup flew into the air, weightlessly, a feather on the breath of God. It hung, trembling to the repeated notes of the bell, and began to fall. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning star … No, the Cup was the brightest star of all time, the star of Bethlehem, shedding a glorious radiance across every upturned face, just and unjust alike.
The lid of the reliquary descended one way, and the base another, each lighting against an opposite horn of the Stone. And the Cup itself, a shallow clear glass vessel, landed gently as a dove in Thomas’s outstretched, bloodstained hand.
Gracefully he went to his knees and placed the Cup on the Book. Its light penetrated vellum and stone both. The glimmer in the air coalesced around the three relics, so that they began to glow in colors that made the rainbow look drab.
Robin was shaking his hand—his palm was a nasty red. “Damn you all! Are there none amongst you who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”
No takers. If anything, Mountjoy and the Soulises were shrinking back. Oh you of little faith, Maggie thought. But then, fanaticism wasn’t faith.
The bell stopped tolling and the last note hung shivering in mid air, sending waves of sound forward into the future. Maggie wasn’t breathing. No one was breathing. They were caught between one breath and the next, between one second and the next, between one millennium and the next. The millennium, which meant everything because they chose it to mean everything. She knelt beside Thomas, beside the Holy Grail and its supernal glow. Mick and Rose, too, went to their knees.
Robin shuddered in paroxysms of fury, cursing Thomas, cursing Mary, cursing Christ, cursing God himself, his voice harsh and ugly. Suddenly he was wearing a Norman tunic and his master’s crown. It was too big for him, tilting lopsidedly across his forehead. Tiny flames licked along its rim, illuminating the empty setting.
Mountjoy’s face registered nothing. Reg’s eyes bulged. Lydia slumped down on chair and hid her face with her hands. Thomas reached out. “Kneel beside me, Robin. Kneel before your Creator, and together we’ll confess our faults. Accept the infinite variety of his creation, and be healed.”
“No!” Robin snarled. “Never!”
“Then, by your own words, you choose oblivion.”
“No!” But Robin’s cry unraveled, thinner and thinner, and broke on a growl of unrepentant rage. He fell. Crouching on all fours, his body was engulfed by the folds of the tunic, which flickered green and gold and then faded to gray.
All three relics were one. They glowed from within, brighter and brighter, so that Thomas’s shadow, and Rose’s and Mick’s and her own, Maggie supposed, stretched across the floor.
Sean and Ellen were watching, their eyes shining in the multi-colored glow flowing out from the Grail and along the floor, so that each flagstone was outlined in light. It flowed up the pillars like the warmth of spring rising up the veins and leaves of trees.
The great bells of Canterbury began to peal, cascades of notes pouring down like spring rain. The voices of the choir were lifted in joy. “Magnificat anima mea Dominum, et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo … ” Maggie heard the words, the music, with her heart rather than her ears. “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior.”
Beside her Thomas murmured, “He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he hath put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.”
The floor, the columns, the arches of the ceiling were made of light, bright transparent gauze, not stone. All shadows were gone. All light and dark were as one. For all Maggie knew the brilliance was shooting out of the tops of the three towers like Roman candles, and yet the choir kept singing and the organ kept playing. But the victory didn’t have to be proclaimed from the rooftops.
Robin’s crouching shape bulged and twisted and was suddenly swept into the air, caught up by another shape formed of nothing but light. Maggie gasped—an archangel, ancient of days, so bright and beautiful she shaded her eyes with her hand. Michael? Gabriel? Or Lucifer, in the image of what he lost when he refused the grace of God?
The shape that was Robin shrank, twisted, and darkened. Above him the great wings shriveled and the hands withered away. He fell from the heights of heaven. When his body hit the glowing stones of the floor it shattered into bits of ash and charcoal, emitting a sulfurous stink.
Each burned bit winked out with a tiny snap and a curl of smoke. Only the crown remained, rolling across the floor until it clanged against the base of Our Lady’s altar. Maggie’s eyes were watering—from the brilliance, the emotion, both—but she swore Mary and child moved, looking down sorrowfully at the loss beyond redemption of a human soul.
“Did you see that?” whispered Rose.
“Oh aye,” Mick returned. “That I did.”
Mountjoy sank down onto his haunches. Reg collapsed at his mother’s feet, his stunned face sagging to his chest. Still Lydia refused
to look.
Thomas knelt quietly, one tear, a drop of light, hanging on his cheek. The crown spun on the floor before him, its empty setting upward. Maggie stared as it, too, glowed white-hot. It sagged out of shape, melted, and as liquid light flowed in between the stones of the floor and disappeared.
She blinked. The light was gone. The floor and the pillars and the vaulted ceiling were returned to—well, no, not ordinary stone. The Stone and the Cup, too, had disappeared. Back to Tobar nan Bride, probably, and Glastonbury Tor. Or perhaps they’d been drawn back into the Dreamtime, there to be made new for a new age, so that the Story could go on.
Maggie looked around. She and Thomas, Mick and Rose knelt in front of Our Lady’s altar, the Lindisfarne Gospels sitting on the floor before them. A quick breeze turned its heavy pages and then stilled. The future was still before them, as it had been since the depths of time.
Maggie was holding Ellen’s—Calum’s—little knife. Mick was tucking his, the original, into its sheath. The olive wood box lay crushed beside the empty crates. Reg Soulis was a pile of misery on the floor. Mountjoy moaned softly. Lydia Soulis rocked slowly back and forth, her hands fists against her face. “It was all a trick. It didn’t happen. Robin said it, I believe it, and that’s that.” Ellen clutched Sean. He looked like he’d been hit by a truck, but he held onto her.
The choir ended the hymn but the organ kept on playing and the bells kept on pealing. How many more of Robin’s followers had seen the light and rejected it? Maggie wondered. How many would go on gnawing the dry bones of their prejudices, afraid to look beyond their own egos?
Mick and Rose levered each other up. With a wary glance at Ellen he returned his sgian dubh to his waistband.
Maggie, too, stood up. But Thomas stayed on his knees, his eyes fixed on the altar and the statue above it. He’d survived. He needed to work through that. The best thing she could do was leave him alone—maybe, just maybe, she’d done the right thing and was going to be rewarded for it.
Chapter Forty-four
Ivan O’Connell walked down the stairs from the nave, followed by Anna Stern and Inspector Gupta. All three shared the same expression, curiosity edging into caution and then, seeing Thomas on his knees, alarm.
Maggie looked down at the top of his head. He still hadn’t moved. She touched his shoulder. “Thomas?”
He whispered, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,” and slumped forward onto the floor.
He lay in the same pose, face down, arms outspread, as he’d lain the night Maggie had peeped into his chapel. The day she’d discovered who he was. The day she’d begun loving him. Oh God! She dropped the knife. With the help of the others she turned him over and lifted his head into her lap. Oh God!
His sweater was soaked in blood. His glasses were bent, one lens scratched. Gently Maggie pulled them from his face. Barely two weeks ago they’d been smudged by her own warm skin. And she’d stood here flattering herself she’d done the right thing while he bled to death at her feet.
Each inhalation was long and rasping, drawn from far beyond his mortal body. His burned-over eyes were a dark amber-gold, rich and rare. Maggie bent over him, trying to dive into his gaze, but its depths eluded her.
She’d dreaded this moment, she’d had nightmares about it, she’d thought it wasn’t going to happen after all and yet here it was. Her heart melted like the brass crown and trickled hotly through her body. “Thomas, no.”
He smiled. His right hand twitched, as though in his own extremity he blessed her again, and fell heavily so that his fingertips just touched the Book. “Yes,” he said. A shudder ran through his body and his eyes dulled, emptied of his spirit, of his soul, of his long mortal life.
Tears spilled down Maggie’s face. Thomas’s head was heavy in her lap, a dead weight. She set her trembling fingertips on his eyes and closed their lids so he could rest at last. A sob burst from her chest. She was going crazy. She couldn’t handle this.
She thought, “‘Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place.’” But Thomas wasn’t going to come back with, “Thomas Malory.”
Someone was holding her—oh, it was Mick on one side and Anna on the other. Gupta was crouching beside her, his black eyes brimming. Beyond him Rose was crying, too. Mick reached out with his other hand and took hers. O’Connell picked up the Book and held it against his chest like a shield.
Maggie’s hands were covered in blood. His precious blood, the blood of the martyr. Of St. Thomas Becket, not England’s but Britain’s greatest saint. Although she couldn’t see the crown of gold shining on his brow, she knew it was there. It wasn’t her reward that mattered, but his.
His face was as serene as the face of the Lady, who had been queen of heaven for millennia before Arthur rode to battle with Our Lady’s image on his shield. Beyond the Word, She had said, beyond the Blood, lay silence.
The music of the organ stopped. The bells stopped pealing. In the hollow hush one soprano voice sang, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you, the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
“Amen,” said many voices. The vaults echoed with the whispered word.
“What happened?” O’Connell asked shakily.
“Robin Fitzroy was trying to stab Ellen and Thomas intervened.” Maggie didn’t have to add that by corrupting Ellen, Robin had defeated himself. Thomas was no doubt fully appreciative of the irony.
“Fitzroy’s legged it, has he?” asked Gupta.
“We won’t be seeing him around any more, no,” Maggie answered.
Mick said, “But his power’s been broken.”
“Robin’s power has been broken. I have the awful feeling, though, that what we’ve won tonight is the chance to keep on struggling against his relatives. To choose to set a good example…” Maggie’s voice broke.
Anna’s intelligent eyes met hers. “It isn’t incumbent on you to finish the task, but you are not free from beginning it.”
“Oh yes,” she agreed in a whisper. “Yes.”
Ellen crept up, leaning heavily on Sean. Her face looked like a nuclear wasteland. And yet the light of the relics lingered, a furtive reflection in her eyes. “I never meant it.”
“Yes you did,” Maggie told her. “When you gave yourself to Robin you chose to mean it.”
“I don’t mean it any more, do I?”
Maggie pulled Thomas’s blood-soaked handkerchief from inside his sweater. She looked from it to the bloody wound on Ellen’s neck, and the one on her hand that lay open and helpless in Sean’s, and could only say, “Get help, Ellen.”
“Counselors,” said Sean. “Prozac.”
Gulping down something between a scream and a hysterical laugh, Maggie laid Thomas’s head upon the stone floor and folded his hands on his chest. Between them she placed the tiny knife—now it was a relic too. Beside it she left the bundled handkerchief, looking like a full-blown red rose.
She wondered whether his body would disintegrate into dust or be assumed into heaven or glow with light as the relics had glowed … No, he’d remain as modest in death as he was in life, and return quietly to the earth whence he came so many years ago. Her nostrils filled with a fresh, clean scent. Frankincense, myrrh, spring flowers and the earth after a rain. The odor of sanctity. She breathed in deeply, and the pain began to ebb from her limbs. Set me as a seal upon thy heart, for love is as strong as death.
O’Connell inhaled. His already shocked eyes widened even further. “Who was he? What was he?”
“A saint,” Maggie said, “leading us by example. A light so powerful it lifted all our souls.”
Anna pressed her shoulder. “You go on, I’ll take care of Ellen and Sean.”
Mick helped Maggie to stand up. Rose got her coat and held it for her. She slipped her rustred hands through the sleeves.
Clearing his throat, Gupta
turned to the deflated balloon that was Reg. “Reginald Soulis, I charge you with the murder of Calum Dewar.”
“Eh?” asked Mick.
“Amongst the crime scene evidence Mountjoy here collected was a bit of polished stone with your father’s blood on one end and Reg’s fingerprints on the other. Taken with Felton’s testimony…”
Dully Reg looked up at Gupta’s mahogany complexion, which made his own doughy pallor look defective. “I was just standing up for my beliefs.”
Mick leaned his face against Rose’s hair. Gupta began to caution Reg. Lydia stared blankly while Mountjoy sank his face into his hands. O’Connell considered Thomas’s body, abandoned like the chrysalis of a butterfly, and shook his head. “There’ll be an inquiry, I expect.”
Let the police investigate, Maggie thought. Let the church come to whatever conclusion it wished. Faith had nothing to fear from rational thought.
The bells began to peal again, joyful and triumphant, notes cascading from heaven to earth while the angels sang—no, it was the choir, their voices flourished in the Te Deum. The cat sat before Mary Magdalene’s altar, paws primly together, head cocked to the side, eyes glowing green. Maggie nodded her thanks and, by placing one foot before the other, walked away.
With Mick and Rose on either side, she went up the stairs into the northwest transept, past the Altar of the Sword’s Point, out the heavy wooden door, and into the cloister. Here the peal of the bells was louder, each rich, full note falling into the night and spreading outward like ripples in a pool.
They went on around to the lawn, where the air was crystal cold and clean. People stood in knots, upturned eyes shining … Oh!
The sky was no longer black. It shimmered with light, rays, screens, crowns, the colors flowing with the pealing of the bells. The light of the relics really had shot up into the sky, Maggie thought. The Aurora Borealis was pouring its luminescence down the northern skies just as it had in December of 1170, when the body of another saint lay before the altar of Canterbury.
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