Lucifer's Crown (2 page)

Now the ruined walls were illegible lines half-erased by the mist. Skeletal tree branches hung motionless overhead. Magdalene Street was quiet, but this shrouded expanse was deathly silent. The sun was rising above the fog, but this gloom was neither daylight or dark. By the calendar it was All Saints’ Day, but here it was still Halloween. The cold filtered through Rose's shoes and up her legs, raising goose bumps on her denim-clad thighs. This wasn't the campus, was it, with spotlighted security phones every few steps.

Inhaling the smoke-flavored air, she looked toward the roofless shell of the Lady Chapel, its empty windows opening onto darkness. She imagined light, stained-glass windows, gold reliquaries, candles—and a choir dressed in blue robes, the Blessed Virgin's color, singing the
Stabat Mater
or the
Regina Caeli
. Or the
Magnificat
, her favorite.

She imagined Mary sitting in her bedroom—Rose saw her own room with its posters and books—when suddenly the archangel Gabriel appeared and announced she was going to give birth to the Son of God. Rose would've said, “Wait a minute, how's this going to work?"

But Mary said, “Be it unto me according to thy word.” And, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit doth rejoice in God my savior, for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden; for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."

Not that Rose had any aspirations to sainthood. Or to being anyone's handmaiden, either. It was that her Stories had a soundtrack. She began to sing beneath her breath, “
Magnificat anima mea Dominum
...” Then she stopped. Talk about whistling past a graveyard!

But who's watching, anyway? she asked herself. And with a sudden jerk of her heart answered,
he is
.

A human figure stood between the north transept and the site of Arthur's tomb, veiled by the mist. Except for two glints, eyes catching the light like a cat's, Rose saw only a blur for a face ... It—he—turned toward the darkness, took two strides, and was gone. A cloak or loose coat billowed behind him, radiance shimmering along the floating cloth like the last fiery rim of a bonfire.

She blinked. She really had seen him. And he'd seen her. So she'd been standing there singing, that wasn't any weirder than doing yoga on the altar. Why was he out here so early?

She heard only the slow drip of water in the crypt. The steam of her own breath added to the mist. The back of her neck prickled, but she wasn't going to go back to the hostel and tell everyone she was too scared to get her book.

Up the nave she hurried, glancing warily toward the north transept beneath its broken vault. Of the church proper only St. Thomas's chapel still had its original walls, making an alcove that this morning was deep in shadow. That's where the man had been standing, next to something ... Rose peered into the dark chapel and stopped dead. A long white shape lay on the grass, a shape as still and silent as the stones around it.

Oh God
. The prickle in Rose's neck merged with the goose bumps on her legs. She forced her feet to carry her forward.

The lines of the woman's naked body were as smooth as those of a marble effigy. She lay on her back, one hand at her side, the other on her breast, fingers curled as though holding an invisible object. Her chalky face and the dark hollows of her eyes looked up to where the sky should have been but wasn't.

It was the yoga woman.
I don't believe this. It isn't happening.
“Hello?” Rose croaked. But the woman's marble-like chest didn't move. From her body emanated not the odor of sanctity, the sweet scent of a saint's incorruptible body, but the stench of mortality and death.

Outside the chapel something moved. Rose spun around with a gasp. A shape and a quick flutter—it must be a bird, one of those big crows they'd seen yesterday. If it was the man he'd be trying to help the—the dead woman. Wouldn't he?

This was a nightmare, yes, but it wasn't a dream. Rose felt the blood drain from her face. Her head spun. All Saints’ Day sacrilege pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
go for help
...

She sprinted toward the gate and the lighted windows of the custodian's lodge.

Just as Mick walked into the office the phone went. He dropped his rucksack on the desk chair and lifted the receiver. “Dewar Woolen Mills, Mick Dewar speaking."

His father's voice said, “Thank God. I rang the flat, I didna ken where you'd gone."

Mick frowned. He was away to university in Glasgow, where else would he be going on a Monday morning? And he knew he'd given Calum the number of his mobile. “Where have
you
gone, Dad? You didna ring last night. I stopped in at the office to see if you'd left a message with Amy."

Calum's voice was thin and taut and his words stumbled. “I didna have time to ring—I came away from Glastonbury in the wee hours, used up my petrol and stopped outside Carlisle ... The hounds of hell are after me, Mick."

"Eh? What?"

"There's something you're needing to know. I never told you before, I didna believe it myself, but it's true, it's true ... My telling you will have them after you as well. God, damned if I do, damned if I dinna."

"What?” Mick's heart drummed in his chest like the drops of water drummed onto the asphalt of the car park outside the window.

His father's ragged exhalation sounded like fabric ripping. “Listen to me. The Bruce's relic, it was at Arbroath not so long since. Sinclair came to my father and me and we helped him shift it."

"Alex Sinclair, your chum from university?"

"His father. I met Alex later. I'd say that was a right coincidence, but nothing's a coincidence, is it? Nothing at all."

Alex had died donkey's years ago, hadn't he? Mick remembered his father lifting his glass in a salute to the dead. Was Calum drunk? Whilst his father had a taste for the whiskey, Mick had never known him to take too much. But then, he hadn't seen overmuch of Calum of late. He had the university, the band, and the lasses.

Calum wasn't drunk. He was exhausted. He was ill. He was terrified. “Dad?” said Mick, his own voice shaking. “I—I'll hire a car, I'll..."

"It was our duty then. It's our duty now. Oh God, Mick, I should have told you this long since, but I didna believe it. No time now. Time's run out, it's come to an end. Protect it, Mick keep it from them. From him."

"Protect what? From who?” In the back of his mind Mick heard the voice of his literature lecturer correcting, “from whom."

"From himself.
Am Fear Dubh
. Take the A68 and the A7—the high road, eh?” Calum's voice cracked into a dry giggle. “Take the high rood—road—to Fairtichill, and then the wee road west..."

"Dad, you're not sensible."

"Then up you go, toward Schiehallion, the fairy mountain with its triple peak. My grandfather Malise used to tell about that road, and then he'd say each man has to bide his own weird. Meet his own fate."

Something wasn't right with his father's geography, but then, all of this was dead wrong.

"You'll take the high road,” Calum crooned. “I'll take the low road past Ercildoune and into the gates of hell. They're coming. They're outside the door. Mick, I...” His voice stretched thinner and thinner and then broke.

"Dad? Dad!"

The echoing emptiness of the open line made Mick's head feel hollow. He stared at the receiver. His hand was numb. Pins and needles danced along his arm. Cold sweat ran down his back.
Oh God
.

The office smelled as it had always done, of wool, paper, and old sausage sandwiches. Beyond the window the rain fell. Puddles on the pavement reflected the orange glow of the street lights. Above the sign reading “Dewar's Fine Woolens” rose the distant, gnarled outline of Edinburgh Castle, half-erased by the mist and the gloom.

"I dinna believe this,” Mick said. “It's not happening."

It was happening. And he was sitting there like a gowk. He batted at the phone cradle. When he heard the ordinary electronic pips of British Telecom he punched “999."

"Emergency services."

"Mick Dewar here. My father rang from a petrol station outside Carlisle. He's ill, off his head ... Aye, I'll wait."

He threw his rucksack on the floor. It hit with a solid thunk, spilling books and folders and the long case of his practice chanter. If he didn't get himself to his lecture and hand in his essay he'd be docked points. Right now he didn't give a damn for either the lecture or the essay.

He dropped onto the chair. On the desk stood the snap taken last spring, of him with his father in front of Dunnottar Castle. The stark ruins on their cliff above the sea looked like a studio backdrop behind the two smiling faces. Faces that were strikingly similar: square chins, keen gray eyes accented by supple eyebrows, high foreheads fringed by dark hair, Calum's silver at the temples, Mick's caught in a ponytail.

That day Calum went on about a braw lassie smuggling the crown of Scotland away from besieged Dunnottar. The crown was a relic, right enough, but it was safe in Edinburgh Castle.

That had been their only outing this year. Mick no longer had time for playing tourist. Now his dad was on his own, ill, hurt, far from home ... Mick slammed his fist onto the top of the desk. The picture fell over.

He crammed the books back into his rucksack. On top lay
Idylls of the King and other Poems
by Tennyson. One passage leapt suddenly to his mind: “The curse has come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott."

"Hello?” said the dispatcher in his ear. “Mr. Dewar?"

"He sounded as though his curse had come upon him,” said Mick.

"Sorry?"

"His fate, his doom. His weird.” Mick pulled a face. He was havering, daft as Calum. “My father rang me from a petrol station. He's off his head, he needs help. Carlisle. The car's a Ford Mondeo..."

His hand clenched round the phone. He was going to bloody well find out what had happened to his father. And then he'd sort it out.

Maggie added a spoonful of sugar and a dollop of milk to the mug, and pressed it into Rose's hands. The British regarded tea as a specific against anything from toothache to war. When in Britain do as the Brits do. There wasn't much else she could do.

It had been an hour since Rose ran into the youth hostel as though the hounds of hell were at her heels. Her hands were at last starting to warm up. Her color was better, too, if her features were still pinched. Although even in shock she was beautiful. With her fresh complexion and waves of golden hair Rose fulfilled the promise of her name, all the more lovely because she seemed artlessly unaware of her beauty.

Turning forty
, Maggie informed herself,
isn't so bad you have to envy a twenty-year-old girl who looks her age.

Sean buffed the far end of the dining table, adding the smell of polish to those of disinfectant and bacon, his face carefully neutral. He was a handsome young man, yes. His manner ranged just far enough between cocky and callow to be charming. But Maggie sensed something deliberate in both.

She told herself,
so you're down on men. You don't have to get your back up because a twenty-year-old boy acts his age.

"Sorry I went off by myself. I should've asked Sean to go with me, but I didn't...” Rose glanced at the young man's broad back.

Maggie filled in the rest of the sentence,
want to encourage him
, and said aloud, “...think there would be any danger. Of course not. Small town, a civilized country—uh-oh. Here we go."

A man in a dark suit thrust open the doors of the vestibule and walked into the dining room. “Good morning. I'm Detective Inspector Jivan Gupta, Somerset Constabulary.” Although he wasn't a large man, he carried himself like a king—or a maharajah. His mahogany complexion was cut horizontally by a splendid black moustache. Similarly black hair was trimmed in a military style.

Maggie started to run her fingers through her own short, thoroughly undisciplined auburn hair and caught herself. “Good morning."

Pulling out a chair, Gupta sat down. From his inside pocket he produced pen and notepad. “Miss Kildare? Do you mind answering a few questions?"

"Anything I can do to help.” Rose shoved the mug away, set her chin, and sat up straight.

Maggie extended her hand. “I'm Maggie Sinclair. Instructor in British History, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. I'm leading the seminar group."

"Dr. Sinclair.” Gupta's handshake was brisk and firm.

Maggie's jaw tightened. “No. Just ‘Ms.’”

"How many students do you have, Ms. Sinclair?"

"Three."

Sean left the polishing cloth lumped on the table and leaned against the fireplace. “My name's Sean MacArthur."

"I'm Anna Stern.” Anna stepped into the room, propped her broom against the wall, and sat down.

Anna's contained movements, her whip-thin body, her cap of silver hair made her resemble an ambulatory Ionic column. While Maggie insisted on “Ms.,” Anna was unaffectedly “Mrs.,” a widow pursuing her intellectual interests, not a political agenda.
You don't have to envy a sixty-five-year-old's composure, either,
Maggie instructed herself

Gupta asked, “You're stopping here at the youth hostel, are you?"

"Just for two nights,” Maggie replied. “Today we're moving to the B&B where we'll be staying until the end of the year. Temple Manor on Old Beckery Road, about a mile west of the Abbey."

"Ah, yes. The former owner is a great friend of mine."

"Thomas London, the historian?"

"Yes.” Gupta nodded. “You'll be stopping in Somerset until the end of December?"

"We rejoin the other groups in London at Christmas, attend the New Year's Eve concert at Canterbury, and get home the first week of January."

Gupta wrote that down. “Now then, Miss Kildare. Soon after entering the Abbey this morning you found the body of a woman. You told P. C. Barnes you weren't in the grounds above five minutes. The custodian agrees."

"It seemed longer than five minutes,” Rose said in a steady voice.

"No doubt. Why did you go into the Abbey before it opened?"