Lucifer's Crown (20 page)

Mick leaped forward, barking his shins on the stone rim. Below him, in the dark, muddy trench, lay Calum, curled on his side, his face turned away. His shirt was mottled with brown and green stains. His tie encircled his throat just beneath his jaw, his clean-shaven jaw, its swollen flesh a pasty purplish white where it hadn't been torn by the beaks of ravens. Beneath his head lay a block of red sandstone, its grainy surface almost camouflaging several smears of brownish red.

The sweetish-sick stench rising from the trench filled Mick's nose and mouth, choking him. He threw himself away, onto the grass, gasping for breath, watching his mind shatter into a thousand bloody fragments.

From a great distance came Rose's voice, leaping upward an octave and then breaking, “Oh no. Oh God, no. Oh Mick!” Her hand grasped his arm. “Mick, I think he's been—been gone—for a couple of days. Who were we talking to? What were we talking to?"

She wasn't screaming. A fine braw lass she was. Sunlight glanced out between the thick gray mounds of cloud, struck him across the face, and swept on.

Calum had said the hounds of hell were after him. They'd caught him. Mick would smell the stench of his father's decaying flesh the rest of his life. It seeped into his own flesh, into the very marrow of his bones. The hot tears slicing his face would never wash it away. “I should have known. My dad would never talk to me like that. Never."

"Of course not,” Rose's heavenly blue eyes overflowed and a tear sparkled on the pink curve of her cheek. “Mick, we need to call for help."

"Oh aye.” Mick let her lever him to his feet. He closed his eyes for a moment, but the sight, too, was burned forever on his brain—the chalky skin, the red stone smeared like an ancient sacrificial altar. A red stone like the one in the case in Edinburgh. A fake? The original? He didn't care, not now.

Cutting through the lament of the wind came the clip clop of a horse's hooves. The gray horse was picking its way down the steps, mane and tail fluttering. On its back sat a shape sketched in light and shadow, a skeletal form that was human and yet wasn't human at all. A gleam of sun struck cold flame from its brow, as though it wore a fiery crown. And yet it had no face, no eyes, no mouth, only a space above the bony shoulders through which the distant hills made blue shadows.

"Blessed St. Bridget,” gasped Rose.

Calum's real voice in Mick's mind said,
Behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him
. “I didna believe it, but it's true."

The figure raised the chill gleam that was its hand. From wall and trench rose shadowy shapes, wavering like reflections in glass. A low cry swelled up from the ground, a wail of agony and anger mingled. Ghosts, Mick realized. He hadn't believed in them, either.

Seizing Rose's hand, he pulled her into a run, away from the pale horse and its pale rider, across the grass toward the west. But from those walls more shapes arose. Eyes flickered, spidery hands grasped, dim shapes flocked forward. Surrounded, Mick and Rose shrank together, trembling body pressed against trembling body. “This isn't happening,” said Rose.

It is.
Mick couldn't breathe. The ground itself was sucking him down ... The
sgian dubh
. He whipped it from his pocket and pulled away the sheath. Despite the shadow of the clouds, the tiny blade flashed.

"Blessed St. Bridget,” Rose panted. “Blessed St. Patrick. Holy Mother of God.” The shapes hesitated.

Once again Mick heard Calum's voice, and behind it Malise's voice, telling the quaint old tales. Well then, if he'd fallen into those tales, best he act accordingly. With the point of the knife he cut a circle in the turf about both him and Rose, and shouted toward horse and rider and shadows, “The Cross of Christ be upon me!"

The shapes quailed, rippling like phosphorescent rags.

Half behind him, still clutching his free hand, Rose dragged the medal from inside her jumper. “Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Mary, blessed among women, help us."

Another sunbeam raked the hilltop, almost extinguishing the threatening shapes. Then the light winked out, shadow fell, and the shapes condensed into twisted bodies, groping hands, leering faces. But they pressed no closer. The horse whinnied. The figure on its back sat deathly still.

Mick grimaced, straining after the words: “I gird myself today with the might of heaven, the rays of the sun, the beams of the moon, the glory of fire, the speed of wind, the depth of sea, the stability of earth, the hardness of rock. I gird myself today with the power of God."

Rose's voice joined in, like the peal of a bell. “God's angels to save me, from the snares of the Devil, from all who wish me ill..."

The low moan increased, so that the hilltop shuddered with grief and pain and jealousy.

Mick's and Rose's voices made one voice, “I arise today through the power of the Trinity, through faith in the threeness, through trust in the oneness, of the Maker of earth, of the Maker of heaven."

The moan rose to a shriek. The shapes threw themselves on the ground like men wrapped in flames, rolling and slapping. Then the sunlight glanced out and they were gone. The figure on horseback bowed, once, its wasted shoulders lowering and raising, and then it too was gone, horse and all.

Rose turned to Mick and threw herself into his arms. He held her as tightly as he could, the
sgian dubh
upright against her back. He didn't know how long they stood exchanging breath for breath. Long enough for his limbs to solidify, his stomach to firm, and his thoughts to spiral down to one bright point and hang there, balanced unsteadily, but still balanced. “Rose,” he sighed against her warm scented flesh. If anything could take away the taste of decay that coated his mouth and nose, her fresh scent could do.

She tilted her head. “What was that with the knife?"

"Something I remembered. Like the prayer, St. Patrick's Breastplate, I dinna ken why that came to me. To us."

"Divine inspiration,” she stated. “Same reason I actually remembered the prayer for the miraculous medal.” Her arms locked around his chest, like a proper breastplate.

Mick looked around the fort, from the heights of the walls to the dark trench where Calum lay. Where his body lay, discarded. The mind, the spirit, the soul who had been his father was gone. With a long, ragged sigh he released Rose. He retrieved the sheath and replaced the knife. Respectfully he tucked it in his pocket. “Well then..."

"Hello there!” A man wearing a dark overcoat and tidy suit was strolling toward them. His red hair shone in the sun. “There you are, Mick. And Rose. Good of you to come as well."

"Oh,” she said. “It's you. Why didn't you tell me you're a policeman?"

"There's more than one way to save souls, isn't there?"

Fat lot of good Prince had done for his dad. Mick shot Rose a quick glance—no need to tell about the ghosts, he'll think we're bonkers. Nodding, she dropped the medal back inside her jumper.

Prince stopped an arm's length away, outside the turf circle. His smile was tight, not reflected in his ice-bright eyes, and his cheeks above his beard were livid. Mick didn't envy whichever poor sod Prince had just been tearing strips off of. He said, “My dad's dead."

"What? Where?"

"In yon cellar pit."

Still scowling, Prince strode across to the pit, looked inside, turned back. “I'll send for a forensics team. You shouldn't stop here. I know a safe house, Holystone, where you can rest until we've time for an interview. That's your Fiesta in the car park, is it? You can follow me."

"What about the policeman from that car?” Rose asked.

"Hm? Oh, the stupid clot was taken ill, they'll send someone after the car. Don't worry about him."

"But my dad, we shouldn't be leaving him here,” Mick protested.

"The team will care for your father. Cut along now.” Prince headed purposefully toward the gate.

"I don't trust him,” Rose whispered.

"I dinna trust anyone save you. But I have to know what he's playing at...” Mick stopped to steady his voice. “Wherever he's taking us, you'd best nip off to the rail station and get yourself back to Glastonbury."

"I'm not leaving you, Mick. Not now."

"Rose...” But he didn't want her to leave him.

"It's getting on for one,” Prince insisted. “The days are short this time of year.” The green gleam beneath his heavy lids seemed miles-deep.

Mick met his stare with one of his own. Taking Rose's hand, he made sure his own body was between her and Prince as they stepped from the circle and walked together through the ancient gate.

Maggie gazed up at the walls of Housesteads. They were Roman rectitude imposed upon the Celtic interlace of the hills—or so Thomas would have said, if he hadn't been inspecting the footprints crossing a muddy patch in the path.

"Mick and Rose have been and gone, it appears,” he said. “So has someone else. Come along."

"Yes, Kemo Sabe,” Maggie muttered, but Thomas's long legs were already carrying him up the slope to the fort. He went through the south gate and headed toward the north, ravens flapping away before him. Reminding herself she was, after all, younger than he was, Maggie panted after him.

Rose and Mick had had more than two hours’ head start. Even so, Maggie had hoped she and Thomas would catch up with them. She'd leaned forward eagerly, fixated on the vapor-lighted roundabouts which marked each passing city, while Thomas's voice spoke of the Romans who were as much before his time as his birth was before hers. They'd been the first but not the last to make a wasteland in Scotland and call it peace. Now Hadrian's Wall was more symbol than structure, like Old Sarum a wasteland.

They had slept a few hours, then stopped to shovel down a breakfast of eggs, beans, and strong tea that now sat like lead in Maggie's gut. She only caught up with Thomas at the peak of the fort.

His hawk-like profile turned west and then east. “There is Heavenfield, where St. Oswald won a battle against two pagan kings who wished to stamp out Christianity in Northumbria. Oswald was a friend of Aidan, who was sent by Columba from Iona to Lindisfarne, as his predecessor Edwin was a friend of Paulinus of Canterbury. The Roman and Celtic myths intersect here, the story of the Stone intersecting the story of the Book.” His eye fixed on the north. His silver-streaked hair blew back from his forehead.

All Maggie saw were the hills receding in ever more tender tints of blue until they faded from sight. Scotland. The wind wailed like bagpipes over the drumbeat of her own blood. The sun cut shafts like searchlights through the massed white and gray clouds. The air held a frosty crackle. Sheep looked like giant caterpillars huddling close to the ground.

Thomas turned back to the fort. “Look."

Muddy semi-circles made a path down a series of broad steps. “Are those hoofprints?” Maggie asked.

"I should think so, yes.” He followed the trail, murmuring, “The horse stopped here at the intersection of the Via Principalis and the Via Praetoria. But no prints lead away."

"An illusion?"

"That evil smell is no illusion."

Maggie sniffed, detecting a pungency that seemed heavier than the air. “Oh no..."

"I am sorry to say I recognize that smell.” Thomas paced across the turf to the ruins of what had once been a substantial building, and leaned over the wall. Every line in his body stiffened. His right hand moved up and down, left and right, making the sign of the Cross. Maggie didn't have to see his face to know what he'd found. The question was, who had he found? Fists clenched, she walked to his side and looked down into a trench.

The body was Calum's. At first she felt a rush of relief, and then shame to feel relief at all. The sweet sickly stench of death filled her nose and throat and she jerked herself away, doubly sorry she'd eaten breakfast. She retreated upwind and let the icy gale scour her lungs. Poor Mick, she wailed silently. Poor Rose. Had they found him? Was Robin here?

Thomas murmured in Latin cadences. Calum had probably been Presbyterian, but surely his soul wouldn't be offended by Thomas's efforts on its behalf. When he at last turned away from the pit his skin was almost gray, the circles below his eyes the deep plum of day-old bruises. “Just as...” he began, and coughed. “Just as I feared. Calum died probably on the Monday, soon after he disappeared. He's lying on a counterfeit stone. Whether he tried to convince Robin it was the real one, or whether he himself thought it was, we may never know. I'll take the east, you take the west. We must learn what happened to Mick and Rose here."

Dumbly, numbly, Maggie moved off. She scouted the other ruins, cringing at every hole, and came at last to a stretch of grass leading to the west wall. “Thomas! Come look!"

He sprinted toward her. The center of the circle gouged in the turf may have been trampled flat, but Maggie could've sworn it was greener and fresher than the dead, dry grass outside.

Thomas said, “They were attacked."

"What?"

"One cuts a protective circle around oneself when attacked by evil beings. And Mick's
sgian dubh
would cut a very strong circle."

Maggie shut her eyes and opened them again. But she'd long since suspended her disbelief. “Beings? Plural? Not just Robin?"

"He could well have raised some very threatening ghosts. I wonder, however...” Thomas glanced back at the horse's hoofprints. “I'd very much like to find the constable who has so carelessly abandoned his car in the car park beside the Information Center."

"Oh, boy.” Again Maggie took the west, poking around the overgrown foundations of the gate and leaning over the Wall proper. To the north the clouds were thickening with snow. To the east the Wall angled past a boggy area and what looked like a small gate. Thomas had dropped into the earth—no, there he was, rising from a crouch. He beckoned. She raced down the slope.

He stood in the foundation of a guard house, a stone rectangle just the size to hold a human body. Maggie skidded to a stop.
Oh no, not another
... This body was alive. The constable's upturned face was chalk-white. Sandy hair fringed his forehead and blood smeared his temple. The yellow windbreaker he wore over his navy blue uniform was almost too bright for Maggie's dark-adapted eyes.