It had been going on for a week now. Little things, mainly, beginning with the knife seeming to twist in her hand. A pan moving by itself in the kitchen, ever so slightly, but enough to make her whirl and spill scalding soup. Waking in the night to the sound of a baby’s soft weeping. Worst, the increasing sense of presence, sometimes pleading and cajoling, sometimes threatening, always unpleasant. Now this dream—except a dream it had not been.
All the air is full of good and evil spirits. They surround us endlessly. The weak ones run in terror from the others. If a man died in Paris, and it was raining, his spirit could run to Ploiesti and not three drops of rain would fall on him—that is how fast they run. The evil ones burn as punishment for the bad works they have done in life, and they crave to enter a human body, to stop the burning. Sometimes if a spirit is very, very strong, it can make the soul of a living person leave its body, and go into that body and own it. Sometimes this happens for a short time, sometimes for good. Sometimes that is what happens when people who are not bad, but weak, commit crimes. Because of your gift, spirits will be attracted to you. If you ever feel one threaten you, you must be very strong and keep it away.
How will I know if that happens, Tante Mathilde?
You will know, bunny. Believe me, you will know.
If only the old lady were alive now, Melusine thought; if only there were someone to bolster her. Her husband was the kindest man on earth, intelligent and wise, but steeped in the automatic skepticism of the scientist. If she told him he would sympathize, do his best to believe her, but then deal with the situation in the only way he knew: watch her, surreptitiously and clinically and with agonizing concern, for signs of mental instability.
And Monsieur Boudrie? She hardly knew him—certainly not well enough to dream about, she thought, and almost smiled. She had not been a practicing Catholic since childhood, and never in her heart; she had learned a very different view of the world from the cradle.
The religion I believe, little bunny, goes back much further than the birth of Jesus Christ. It is the ancient and true faith, before men dressed up their different gods and used them to cause so much trouble. There are two gods, a good one and an evil one, who are equally powerful. They battle unendingly for our souls. Our lives are like the board of a game, and we move with each act we make: a step toward the good, a step toward the bad. Each step toward the good makes us stronger. Each step toward the bad puts us more in the power of the evil god and the spirits who are his soldiers. Fools spend their lives trying to gain money, or power, or luxury. They have no sense of what life is truly about. Our earthly time is only a tiny step in the journey of our spirits. The years that sometimes seem so long to us are only an eyeblink in eternity.
The old lady had died when Melusine was six, just beginning to get a grasp of what lay within her. If Tante Mathilde had lived another ten years, Melusine thought, even five, the education might have gone far enough for her to complete on her own. As it was, she had foreseen things: had known the moment of her great-aunt’s death, even though she had been in another city at the time; had known that she would marry Devarre when she first glimpsed him; had known that she would bear a child, and of which sex, the moment each was conceived. But she had never learned to control events in the way her aunt had hinted was possible.
When I was a child traveling with my mother and father in the caravan, many of the old people had power. The village girls would sneak to the camp at night for a spell to attract a lover, or to make a rival look ugly in his eyes. One night I saw a rich lady pay gold to be wrapped in the skin of a wolf and become the loup-garou. I watched her sleep, yelping, her hands and feet twitching; and when she awoke in the dawn, her hair was snarled, her skin scratched and bleeding, her eyes wild. The old people could bring a dead husband back to comfort his widow in her bed, as if he had never gone. I do not lie, bunny. You have this power too, and you must learn to use it, or it can be turned against you. But these are sad times, there is no one left to teach.
The truly disturbing thing about this vision tonight was that it had none of the irrational leaps and bizarre connections of dreams. It had been a straightforward, cohesive drama, with the overwhelming sense of having actually happened, and she almost felt that she had been intended to see it. To what end? By what? What could the priest have to do with it?
The priest. Would there be any profit in talking to him? Clearly, he was a man of intelligence and ability. Rumor had it that he had been a hero in the war. And if it was common knowledge that he often smelled of brandy, there was no doubt of his humility and kindness. Thank God for that weakness, she thought. She had no use for a pious, dried-up ascetic.
She sipped the coffee and sharp Armagnac. The piano music was soothing. But suppose, she found herself thinking, it hid the shuffling approach of footsteps? Suppose a touch came at her shoulder, with a low laugh sounding in her ear? Or the door began to silently close itself, and as she whirled, an unseen hand switched off the light?
She shook her head and quickly stood, refusing the creeping, insinuating darkness that begged for her attention. Perhaps Roger would not be so far wrong: Perhaps she was on the edge of some sort of breakdown.
Well, she would wait a few more days, and if her unrest continued, she would think about a visit to the cure—a cautious call, perhaps in the confessional, to sound out his sympathies. After all, it seemed they were somehow in this together—whatever it was. Although she did not think she would tell him of his role in her dream.
Meantime, there was nothing to do but wait, and hope that when she heard steps on the walk outside, they were those of her husband.
** ** **
Her name had been Celeste Giroudoux. Widowed by the war at the age of twenty-three, she was lovely and delicate, but never free of a darkness far back in her eyes. That darkness Boudrie had seen, and done his best as a priest to lighten; but he had sternly kept himself from seeing her as a woman.
And then one dusky afternoon in the confessional, when his heart was full and weary with the weight of the village’s petty sins, the sudden, passionate declaration from the other side of the screen: “I think of nothing but taking my own life.” There could be no absolution without contrition, but her murmured apology lacked conviction. Still, Boudrie had pronounced the words Christ had used to the harlot He had saved from stoning.
From there had evolved the gradual awareness, the almost unnoticeable transition from a purely spiritual relationship to something more: the overpowering need to satisfy the hunger of two young, strong, lonely people—the hunger of one for what she had lost, of the other for what he had vowed never to know.
When had he first realized it would happen? It was impossible to say. Such an awareness was a fragile, delicate thing, seeking to bloom like a tiny flower under a vast blanket of thou-shalt-nots. He must have known, somewhere in his depths, long before the moment they first touched. Christ, the sweetness! Though he had rushed home and thrown himself into agonized penance, had himself shriven, sworn never to be alone with her again, some part of him knew all along that he would not give up what he had found.
Perhaps if he had moved to leave the priesthood at that very moment, Boudrie thought, instead of enduring three years of deceit and nearly two decades of despair, many lives would have been changed for the better—and one, at least, saved. But that he could not bring himself to do. His need to seek salvation, to atone, was too strong.
And so he hedged, unfaithful to both his lover and his God, and they went on, miraculously maintaining secrecy, caught in an unbearable position. At last he realized that even to pretend to stop seeing her was only piling sin upon sin; that the true basis of human life was not isolation in a musty church with the relics of an incomprehensible deity, but the mystery he shared with her.
Until the day she was gone.
Even after these nearly twenty years, his jaw still clenched at the memory of walking slowly, uncomprehendingly through the night, careless of who might see him,
reading the letter again and again. It gave no indication of her whereabouts and few of her reasons. In time he learned she had gone to stay with relatives in Normandy, and he warred with himself to keep from abandoning everything and following. It was not fear of what he would lose that finally held him back, but the determination to obey her wishes, whatever the cost to himself.
Five years passed before the real reason for her disappearance arrived in Saint-Bertrand: a bewildered, frightened little girl named Alysse; and with her, the news that her mother had drowned in the swift high tide at Saint-Malo. It could have been an accident, but Boudrie knew the truth. The child was said to be the offspring of a hasty marriage, but in his heart he knew the truth of that too. The question was only whether there had been another man—hard though the possibility was for him to accept, it existed; she was, after all, a beauty—and the need to be sure nearly drove him mad. But the only person who could have told him was dead.
And while, at first, not even the fear that he would burn in hell forever was enough to keep him from joining her in death, something else was: his responsibility as a man, as a priest—and perhaps as a father. That was when he began to replace Celeste with another woman, who lived in a keg or bottle, whom even Mother Church winked at, who was always there when he needed her.
From then on, added to the agony of his guilt was the sweet torment of the child, the loveliest creature he had ever seen. He himself had been an orphan; there were few things worse. And though he was helpless to claim her as his own, he had done everything in his power to see to her upbringing. It was impossible, he told himself often—she was far too exquisite to have sprang from his rough loins. But every time he saw her, fierce hope and pride flared in his heart, along with the dread that she might be the living proof of his sin.
He sat heavily in his chair and drank off the brandy in his glass. The hands of the clock said ten-forty. Long hours yet remained before dawn. His conscience tossed and heaved like the clouds around the moon. Was it not yet another great sin to remain in the priesthood with one’s vocation so tarnished?
Yet his weakness in love, like his drinking and occasional rages, he could almost forgive himself. He knew, as he knew few other truths, that her passion had been as great as his. And even if the child were the incarnation of his transgression, how could he feel remorse for taking part in the creation of such loveliness?
But there were sins and sins, and with a groan he at last gave in to the memory of the night that had finished him as a soldier and begun him as a priest: when, at a village named Vezey-le-Croux, he had cut the throat of a sentry, barred the door of a wooden horse-barn, splashed gasoline on the walls, and set it afire—along with the nineteen German soldiers billeted inside. The maquisards had been only four, and poorly armed; they could not possibly have otherwise taken the Nazi post, would almost certainly have been captured next day and tortured into betraying other comrades.
But never would he lose the stench of burning flesh in his nostrils, the shrieks of flaming bodies bursting through the collapsing walls. Nor would he forget the thirty-eight citizens of Vezey-le-Croux, two for one, shot the following week in reprisal.
Lives lost in the course of war were one thing, but fifty-seven souls were waiting for him as a direct result of the work of his hands, and whether it was heaven, hell, or something he had never imagined that lay on the other side of death, Etien Boudrie was certain of one thing: that he would be called upon to render an accounting. Sweating, he filled his glass.
And then slowly, reluctantly, he emptied it back into the decanter. There were times when drinking would not suffice.
He stepped coatless from the house into the windy night. Heavily, numb with anticipation of the remaining hours of darkness, he walked to the church. He entered through the apse, lit a candle, passed through the sacristy to the nave. There he stopped, gazing with an awe that had never left him at the soaring vault above, the slender fluted columns, the precisely arched windows aglow with the faint moonlight—the physical evidence of man’s struggle since the beginning of time to come to terms with his God.
“Introibo ad altare Dei," he murmured, and felt peace coming into his heart. Through thirty years of days heavy with the weight of human folly, of nights too endless and black to support, he had come at last to understand that there was a single immense compensation: the terrific power, the wild, exultant freedom, of absolute loneliness.
It was the heart of the Passion of Christ.
He knelt, the rustling of his cassock echoing through the empty vault as if others, unseen and intangible, knelt with him. Hands clasped, he leaned his elbows on the communion rail and bowed his head.
“Forgive me,” he whispered into the darkness. “I have been a man. I have loved a woman, and I have murdered my enemies.”
** ** **
The glow of the television screen flickered in the living room as McTell climbed the patio steps. Night had long since fallen. Through the glass he could see Linden, curled on the couch, dividing her attention between the TV and a book. He unslung the rucksack and held it carelessly against the bulky lump inside his shirt.
She looked up at the sound of the door. “Forty minutes, huh?”
“Christ,” he said disgustedly. “It started to get dark and I decided to try a shortcut. Needless to say, I ended up lost as a lamb.”
“Far be it from me to say I told you so.” She seemed amused rather than annoyed.
“Next time I’ll bow to your judgment. Let me grab a quick shower, then let’s have a nightcap. I need one.”
Upstairs, he closed the study door silently and hurried to his desk. Carefully, he placed the copper cask upon it. The crumbling cloth wrapping had disintegrated further during the hike; he could feel the spot where it had rubbed off against his sweating skin. With unsteady hands, he stripped away what was left. The clasp was oxidized nearly to dust, and suddenly his scholar’s instincts warned him to stop, to take it to the proper authorities before he risked destroying something priceless. His hands hovered, his mind raced, tom with indecision.
But he gripped it angrily. The hell with authorities—it was he who had found the cask, who had risked and triumphed. If nothing else, that entitled him to the first look at whatever was inside. His penknife easily broke the thread-thin metal.
The object inside was wrapped in a sort of waxy parchment, bound with a black cord that might have been silk. Like the other fabric, it was too badly decayed for him to be sure. It came apart, almost dissolving in his hands.
Inside, as he had suspected, was a book.
It was about the size of a standard Bible, and bound in dark fine-grained leather that had a slick, greasy feel. The symbol on the cover, unlike any design he had ever seen, was barely visible, with the rust-colored ink—if ink it was—faded almost to match the leather. He could only make out that it looked something like a ship, with loops like antennae around it.
Slowly, cautious of the brittle parchment, he opened the book.
The leaves were of vellum, yellowed with antiquity but in good condition, no doubt from lying dry and undisturbed for who knew how many years. At the top of the first page was a pentacle enclosed in a circle. Inside each of the design’s compartments was a symbol or words. He turned the page and, with his heartbeat steady in his ears, leaned close to the several lines of print. The words were in Latin, the characters clearly rendered in a strong, firm hand; and though most of the ink was a faded black, at the bottom on a separate line were several words scrawled in a rusty color similar to that on the cover.
It did not take him long to make them out as Guilhemus Cordevalis, Magister Templi.
McTell walked straight to the Scotch decanter, poured a stiff shot, and downed it. Then he went back and, with his hands braced wide on the desk, leaned forward once again.
Qui servum sibi fidelem velit, qui velit inimicorum sangui-nem haurire, quique manum velit evitare mortis, adeat urbem oportet_______, quo Belial Dominem salutet.
&nbs
p; The missing word had been painstakingly blotted out, and he could not recall the meaning of haurire. But in three or four minutes he closed his dictionary and stared down at the translation he had scratched on a pad:
If a man wishes a faithful servant, if he wishes to drink the blood of his enemies, if he would cheat the hand of death, it is necessary that he go to the city of _____, that he may there salute Lord Belial.
The line above the signature read: Factum ut faciendum. Guilhemus Cordevalis, Magister Templi ann. mcclxxxix.
Done as was to be done. Guilhem de Courdeval, Master of the Temple.
The year was 1289.
Though his longing to continue was almost unbearable, he forced himself to close the book. Linden was waiting. In any case, it was his now, to examine at his leisure.
As he stood before it, marveling at the impossible series of events that had led him to this impossible find, the images that rose and fell in his mind gave way to a single one: the face of the girl stepping out of the bath, at the instant their eyes had met. Again he experienced the overwhelming sweet shock of that moment. Almost in a trance, following some instinct he could not name, he let his left hand move forward, his palm coming to rest on the book and covering the strange looping symbol.
But he quickly pulled it back, swallowing, remembering the priest’s words: Bound in the skin of a heretic flayed alive.
He wrapped the book again in its parchment, hid it in the bottom drawer behind a clutch of papers, then took a two-minute shower and changed into fresh slacks and shirt. As he passed the hall mirror, he paused. His face seemed firmer, somehow, the look in his eyes calmer, more resolved. There was a strength in the set of his mouth he had never before noticed.
Whistling quietly, he walked on downstairs to spend a little time with his wife.
CHAPTER 7
Next, After Lucifer Page 10
