Lucifer's Crown (26 page)

"Like matter and anti-matter?” Maggie turned to Rose's and Mick's blank faces, “Robin wants to destroy the relics. At the stroke of midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, New Year's Eve. And if he does, we turn into pumpkins."

"Eh?” Mick asked.

"As you saw at Holystone,” said Thomas, “Robin wants us to renounce our shared beliefs, the roots of our faith, thereby leading us to choose evil over good. If his followers destroy all three relics, he would be immeasurably strengthened."

Mick and Rose stared at Thomas.
Two days ago
, he thought,
they would not have believed a word of it
. But what was one more leap of faith when they'd already bridged perceptual crevasses?

In the hall the dog's collar jingled merrily. An infant laughed. The different accents in the dining room made an intricate composition, a canon, perhaps. Mick said, “Just who are you, then, Thomas?"

His gray eyes, Rose's blue eyes, Maggie's brown eyes, each bright and sharp as Excalibur, turned upon him. He faced them squarely. “In my earliest life I was Thomas Becket. I was not killed in 1170. I let someone else take my place, and it was he who died."

Neither Mick nor Rose so much as blinked.

"I am like Robin, in a way. But he exists beyond the veil through which I can only peek. He evokes the powers inherent in the dark places of the world and of the human mind, and uses them to corrupt and control. I have no powers, save those I can invoke through prayer."

"You were called to oppose him?” Rose asked.

"Yes. For my greatest sin, like his, was pride. We first met during the Crusades, a time of pride gone mad."

Maggie looked at Rose. “At Old Sarum Thomas told me—showed me—who he is. It shook me up. I can imagine what Robin said happened there."

"Don't,” Rose told her.

"Supposing,” asked Mick, “Thomas is one of Robin's illusions?"

"Would one of Robin's illusions drive him away with the sign of the Cross?” Rose retorted.

"Well, no.” Shaking his head, Mick started to laugh. A thin, painful laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. “No offense,” he said to Thomas.

"None taken,” Thomas returned with a smile.

Mick slipped the
sgian dubh
into his waistband. “If we're accepting everything else you've told us, why not who you are as well? In for a lamb, in for a sheep, or whatever the saying is."

Maggie waved her hand. “I'm not sure whether you really need to believe him or not, Mick. Just go with the flow. Works for me."

"As for our going...” Thomas glanced at his watch, “I want to ask advice of an old—friend—near Melrose."

Maggie grinned. “You? Ask advice?"

"I have learned a modicum of humility over the years, thank you. Mick, I assume you and your father visited Melrose?"

"When my mum was alive we'd go every year—she loved the Eildon Hills above the town."

"Is that where you heard the music you were playing the night you and Rose left so abruptly?"

"Oh aye, just there. My mum said it was fairy music."

Yes
. “Melrose is like Glastonbury, a place where worlds intersect.” Thomas leaned forward, intent. “Mick, Rose, remember that Robin's favorite tactic is to divide and conquer."

The young people glanced awkwardly at each other.

Maggie added, “'If we don't hang together, we will most assuredly hang separately.’”

"Benjamin Franklin,” Thomas said. And that sentiment made a fine conclusion. Standing up, he stretched, every fiber creaking.

"We get the message,” Rose said, and with a lopsided smile at Mick, “Come on, let's get our stuff. Looks like we ain't seen nothing yet."

"Oh aye,” Mick said, eyes wide. Side by side, if not quite together, they walked out of the room.

They will never again be the children they once were
, Thomas thought, just as tempered steel blades could never again be chunks of iron.

Maggie got to her feet. “Good going. You're up to three allies. Ready to take on the armies of darkness?"

"We have many more allies than that, even if they don't all know it.” Setting his hand on her warm back, Thomas guided her through the doorway.

Mick's Fiesta was still following the mini-van. Although he and Rose weren't sitting close together they weren't on opposite sides of the car, either. But as much as Maggie wanted to put the bloom back in Rose's cheeks, she couldn't. Rose's relationship with Mick was her own.

With a long exhalation, Maggie looked over at Thomas's austere profile. “You pulled your punches a bit with the kids, didn't you?"

"By not naming the Grail? Yes. But only a bit. They will be hearing that word quite soon enough, I think, and feel the weight of it."

Okay
, Maggie thought, but she let that go. Along with the two hundred other issues she was trying to let go.

There were the Eildons, bumps on the Scottish horizon rapidly becoming three high hills. A sign indicated the miles to Earlston, AKA Ercildoune, home of Thomas the Rhymer—who, among other things, had disposed of an evil nobleman named de Soulis.

Thomas London, Thomas Maudit, slowed and turned off the slush-gray A68 onto a smaller road signposted, “Melrose.” The Fiesta followed, and followed again onto a narrow lane, tires crunching through a pristine blanket of snow. When a fence blocked the lane, Thomas stopped the mini-van and Mick pulled in behind.

The slams of four car doors were swallowed by an uncanny silence. Even the wind was still, as though the hills were holding their breath. Beyond a stitchery of fences Maggie could see the rooftops of Melrose smeared by smoke. The elegant limbs of several Scots pines wrote Gaelic haiku on the sky. A bird floated high above.

"Hill North,” Thomas said, his gloved hand gesturing toward the steep hillside above them. “Topped by an Iron Age fort and a Roman signal post. Their camp at Trimontium lay beside Melrose."

"Trimontium,” translated Rose. “Three peaks."

"My dad,” Mick said, “was going on about a mountain with three peaks off the A68."

Thomas knocked the snow from the steps of a stile topping the fence. “I believe in his distress Calum combined two different sites with similar legends—the Eildons and Schiehallion—perhaps because the Sinclairs’ home is at Stow, a few miles beyond Melrose. Our Lady's shrine there once had its own holy stone, but it was broken up to pave a road. Over we go."

Maggie scrambled over the stile after Mick, muttering “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” Louder, she said, “Arthur is buried at Glastonbury, in Avalon. He and his knights are also sleeping here, waiting to called."

"Evidence exists that a historical Arthur lived in southwestern England, in Brittany, in Wales, and here in the Scottish Borders.” Thomas offered Rose his hand. “In his story myth and history intersect."

"Which is why we're here,” concluded Rose, leaping lightly onto the snow.

Maggie squinted up the hillside, a patchwork of white snow, pinkish-gray rock, and brown heather, and saw something move. A white horse. She looked sharply around at Thomas. So did Rose and Mick. He smiled. “Your mother, Mick, was not far wrong when she told you that you heard fairy music here."

"This is where Thomas the Rhymer met the Queen of Elfland,” said Mick, “a lady fair riding a milk-white steed."

Rose said, “You're Thomas the Rhymer? True Thomas? The tongue that cannot lie?"

"Not a bit of it, no,” Thomas said quickly. “Thomas Learmonth lived in the thirteenth century, whilst I was fighting in Palestine and the Pyrenees. But I heard of him and of this place. For many reasons I had grown curious about the Celtic view of creation, nature as evidence of God's grace. Therefore, when I found myself in Scotland in 1314, I came here."

"This isn't the Celtic area of Scotland,” Maggie pointed out.

"And yet I met the Lady here,” he returned, “because it was here that I at last searched for her."

"The Lady?” Rose repeated, just as Maggie asked, “The Faerie Queen?"

"Yes.” Thomas took off along a path that ran up the southern flank of the hill, toward the horse. Sharing a dubious look, Mick and Rose scurried to catch up. Maggie labored behind wearing her own expression, skepticism ebbing into resignation.

A brownish-white rabbit hopped across an open space like a bouncing snowball. Maggie expected it to pull out a pocket watch and mutter about being late ... With a hiss like the fall of a blade, a brown blur shot right past her face. She jerked back and bounced off Thomas's chest.

The bird of prey seized the rabbit and in a mighty beat of wings carried it away, leaving behind only a pitiful squeal and a patch of churned snow sprinkled by blood.

"Whoa,” said Rose, releasing Mick's arm. “What was that? A warning? Big brother is watching?"

"Bugger,” Mick said with a groan. “If you knew Dad was talking about the Eildons, then Robin did do as well. Because I told him."

Thomas laid a soothing hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps it was only a bird securing his lunch. Perhaps it was Robin, intending to intimidate us. But this place is a
geassa
or
locus terribilis
, hallowed by the steps of the Lady, and as long as the relics are safe, evil cannot enter here. Come along."

The horse was waiting in a hollow on the hillside. It gazed at them with dark blue eyes, its mane and tail pennons of silver silk. Thomas let it nuzzle his hand and then stroked its neck.

Chin up, mouth firm, Mick surveyed the land, his land, spread out below the hill. The snowy landscape glistened beneath a blue sky. White and blue. The Scottish flag was a white St. Andrews cross on a blue field. The symbol had appeared to some early king in a vision, Maggie remembered. If Thomas force-marched her up one more hill, she'd start having visions all right. Maybe that's why so many holy places were high places.

Thomas wasn't even breathing hard. Behind his glasses his eyes gleamed. “This world is described by scientists and ensouled by poets and priests, who recognize that in some places it meets the Otherworld—islands, hills, wells.” He pointed toward a hollow in the snow, in the shadow of a thorny bush.

It was the mouth of a well, the snow mounded on its stone rim and clinging to the grillwork blocking its mouth. Maggie was tempted to lean over and yell, “Anybody home?"

She didn't have to. “We come into her presence with a psalm,” Thomas said. Backing away from the horse, he began to chant, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."

The faint tang of peat smoke in the air became the scent of—frankincense and myrrh? The hair rose on the back of Maggie's neck. But the psalms are Hebrew, some part of her mind thought. And another part answered, only one of the Lady's titles is Queen of Faerie.

Thomas's textured voice sent the incantation into a hush so deep surely the people in Melrose must be able to hear. “The Lord shall preserve thee from evil, he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in."

A ripple of harp strings didn't so much break the hush as fill it. Suddenly the horse was draped with dozens of tiny silver bells that sent a trill down the hillside. Rose gasped. Mick swore beneath his breath.

"For the Lord is a great God. In his hands are the deep places of the earth, the strength of the hills is his also."

The sunlight sparked, smeared, and ran. Maggie smelled damp earth, flowers, herbs and spices. Dizzy, she shut her eyes. The ground beneath her feet fell away. A strong hand seized hers and held it. No, she wasn't falling. She was standing on a cool, dry surface.

"The Lord be with you,” Thomas said.

A low, vibrant woman's voice answered, “And also with you."

Maggie peered out through her lashes. The sun shone. Banks of spring, summer, and fall flowers all bloomed at once. Vegetables lay ripe and full among green leaves. Apple and pear trees groaned with both blossoms and fruit. A stream ran between glistening rocks, beneath a rainbow, harp and bells echoing in its voice. Birds sang and insects hummed. This was the melody she'd heard twice before.

She was clutching Thomas's hand. She dropped it. On her other side Mick and Rose stood close together, each face turned up in awe and bewilderment.

The horse still stood before them. On its back sat a woman. Her form was soft-edged, made of light rather than illuminated by it. Red hair spilled down her back and across a green cloak embroidered with gold Celtic interlace. Hair and cloak alike lifted and fell gently in the scented air.

"
Salve Regina
,” Thomas, his voice trembling. “
Gloria in excelsis Dea.
"

Regina. Dea.
. Latin for Queen and for goddess. Maggie glanced at him.

His face was that of a youth, taut and untried—no, it was his usual face, world-worn and world-weary. But his eyes shone. “Diana, Venus, Minerva. Artemis, Aphrodite, Athena. Hecate, Leto, Kybele. Gaia, Demeter, Hera."

The Lady's face, as much as Maggie could see of her face, changed and changed again, from young girl to mature woman to ancient crone. Her hair faded to white, darkened to black, brightened to flaxen yellow.

"Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah. Tiamat, Inanna. Hathor, Maat, Isis. Lakshmi, Kali, Parvati. Shakti. Shekhinah. Sophia."

She was thin, she was buxom. She was tall and then small. Her features coarsened and refined in turn. Through it all she smiled, serenely, knowingly, sternly.

"Freya, Iduna. Macha, Epona, Danu. Cerridwen, Rhiannon, Maeve. Morrigan. Brighid."

Her pale skin became olive, then a rich mahogany brown. Her eyes went from green to blue to brown to bottomless black. Then she was white again, red-haired and green-eyed, in what Maggie assumed was her Celtic avatar.

"Lilith."

Much-maligned Lilith, the first woman, whose sin was in refusing to bow down to Adam, in choosing instead to be his equal.

Thomas's voice faded and died. The Lady gestured, her hands spreading stardust. Maggie wanted, insanely, to add, “Tinkerbelle.” But Barrie's sprite was no doubt yet another version of the Lady, if degenerated from her true beauty and majesty ... Insanity and mysticism had a lot in common.

The Lady spoke, and the music was in her voice. “You are presumptuous, Thomas, not only to bring these mortals, your friends, into my presence, but to include them in your task."