Prospero Regained (71 page)

Since Erasmus was not back from wrestling the book yet, Father moved on to the next eldest. “Cornelius, do you have a question for me?”

Cornelius nodded slowly, his face impassive behind the royal purple swath of cloth that again bound his useless eyes.

I wondered, suddenly, why we had brought a blind man to Hell with us. And yet, Cornelius had managed to hold his own, an astonishing feat. Of all my brothers, he was still the greatest cipher to me, the one with whom I had the least in common.

And, yet, it had been for love of Cornelius that I had broken my staff to save Erasmus. He had more than paid back my sacrifice when he had turned down his chance to enter Heaven, choosing instead to remain on Earth to help the family and serve mankind. I watched him, speaking softly to Ulysses, who was helping him choose dishes he wished to eat, and I felt quite grateful that I had been given the opportunity to save his favorite brother.

I just wished that he would regain his normal composure. He looked so haggard, so listless, like a mere shadow of his former self.

“Father,” Cornelius said softly, his voice strained. “I have a request, rather than a question. My staff needs to be rebound. It has been acting on its own, at the prompting of its masters in Hell.”

“Oh, Please! Let me speak with Paimon!”
the voice from Caliban’s club said.
“I shall set him straight!”

Father replied tersely to the
Staff of Wisdom
. “Vinae, you must stop speaking up without being spoken to! Otherwise, I shall rebind you, too. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“He’s on our side,” Logistilla had finished tending Titus’s wounds and now sat gingerly upon a pillow, wincing slightly as if her rump pained her, sipping soup. “He told Lilith so to her face.”

“Really!” Father’s face lit up. “Good work, Caliban! As for you, Vinae, be silent. We shall discuss your idea of speaking to King Paimon later. Anything else, Cornelius?”

My blind brother shook his head. Father’s brow furrowed. He gazed at him with concern. Reaching forward he lay his hand on Cornelius’s shoulder and squeezed his arm. Cornelius nodded and forced a smile, but his heart was not in it. Father tightened his grip on his shoulder one more time and then turned back to the rest of us.

“Next question, Titus?” Father asked.

Titus had come back when it became clear that three people were too many to carry the groaning tome. Now, he sat again, chewing on his meal. As he looked up, his mouth full of stew and his younger son hanging upon his back, my heart went out to him.

His period as a bear or, perhaps, changing staffs with Gregor, had done him good. He responded much more quickly than he had when last I saw him, a decade ago. Back then, he had seemed to be in a slothlike stupor. He looked so happy now, seated with Logistilla and their younger son—the older one had gone off exploring the library—I prayed he and his family would be granted many happy years together.

Swallowing his stew, Titus said, “I’m still confused about Miranda’s mother. Is she really an angel, and if so, why was it such a secret?”

Father pressed his fingertips together. “Yes, Miranda’s mother is the Virtue Muriel Sophia, the patron angel of the
Orbis Suleimani
—as I believe you all have surmised.”

“But why keep this secret?” Titus repeated.

“This was kept secret for two reasons,” Father replied. “First, because of a prophesy about a nephilim Sibyl freeing the elves from their tithe to Hell. Those who wished to prevent that prophesy from being fulfilled would have come after her, had they known. Second, as I just said to Theo, I feared that if Miranda’s true nature was known, people might try to manipulate her. It would be easy enough to present her with instructions that appeared to have come from me, and to prompt her to do any number of things. I had such bad experiences with her accidental misinterpretation of my commands, I did not wish to have her abused maliciously.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “That I should not obey you?”

Father shook his head. “I could not be the one to tell you, Child. If you heard it from me, your mind would have interpreted it as an order. You might have tried to act as if you were free, but you would have been doing so under orders, not because of free will. Rather like someone who has been told ‘Go have a good time,’ spending the day at an amusement park they don’t particularly enjoy. I discussed this with your mother a great deal over the years. We both concluded that we had to wait for you to discover the truth on your own.”

“But why didn’t you at least tell her that her mother was an angel?” Theo asked.

“Because that was the greatest secret of all … that Miranda was a candidate for the nephilim Sibyl of prophecy. I could not risk that secret to anyone, not with demons such as Baelor of the Baleful Eye wandering the earth.”

I thought of my mother, the angel, and breathed a long-delayed sigh of relief. Finally, I could step off the roller coaster that had swept me along ever since that day, a mere week ago, when Erasmus had informed me that Portia Lucia di Gardello was not my mother. For a time, I had felt rudderless and lost, yet the truth, when it finally came out, had proved more glorious than even my wildest hopes.

Oddly enough, though, discovering my mother was an angel did not seem as significant as it might have in the past. In the space of seven days, I had gone from believing my mother was Lady Portia, to Sycorax, to Lilith, to Muriel Sophia. Yet, in the end, it did not matter whether my mother was a mortal, a half-ogre witch, a demon, or an angel. I was still myself, and my strengths and weaknesses were mine alone.

Still, I was deeply grateful to know that Father had not lied when he spoke of his admiration for my mother, and I felt honored to be the child of such great love.

Mab raised a hand. “Will you allow follow-up questions?”

Father nodded. “Be my guest.”

Mab flipped through his notebook and, finding the place he was looking for, pulled out his space pen. “If it was a secret that Miranda was the one fulfilling the prophecy, why was Lilith so bent on keeping Miranda from becoming a Sibyl?”

“Lilith was not taking any chances,” Father replied. “She created the Unicorn Hunters in an effort to slay all the Sibyls, and she bound up all the nephilim, both the wicked and the harmless ones. I believe you saw some of them in the cages around me.”

“So, Lilith was out to get Miranda on principle?” Mab asked.

“Exactly,” Father replied. “Had she known the truth, she would have bent much more of her twisted will to harming Miranda.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Mab.

“Gregor?” Father asked.

Gregor looked up from where he sat in his ripped scarlet cardinal’s robes, watching the family with an indulgent smile. I had hardly wept during Gregor’s funeral; that would not be true today. His time on Mars had changed him. While he was still a man of principle, he had acquired a kindness that had been lacking in his youthful self. I recalled how impressive he had looked with his robes flying about him as he drove off the demons in Infernal Milan or when he had blessed Malagigi and shriven Uncle Antonio and tried to reconcile this with my old image of Gregor the Brute. I could not.

He was a good man, Brother Gregor.

Gregor chuckled. “Father, I have so many questions, I have missed so much, that I do not feel it is worth my asking any particular question now. Rather, I would like to take this time to say thank you. I am so very happy to be home again!”

“There is much I do not know as well.” Father also chuckled. “I still have only the vaguest idea of where you were or why you are alive. I shall look forward to a long, cozy conversation with you, anon. Next? Logistilla?”

Logistilla looked up from her Vietnamese soup and smiled with mock sweetness. “I don’t have a question for Father,” she purred. “He’s always told me what I want to know. But I do have a question I’d like to ask of somebody: what will happen to all those creatures who escaped in Hell? The ones who the Serpent of the Wind let out of their cages?”

“Oh, oh! Me! Can I answer? Me!” Mephisto bounced up and down on his chair, spilling Theo’s coffee. Theo glared at him and then sighed, resigned.

“Certainly. Answer away.” Father gestured at Mephisto and took advantage of the momentary lull to get in a bite of his beef and broccoli.

Mephisto leapt in cheerfully. “The Hellwinds will catch most of them—those that were evil—and bring them back there, once a new set of cages has been built. Those who were merely prisoners of Lilith’s, and there were a few, might escape, if they’re lucky. Might help if Gregor prays for them.”

“You can pray too, Mephisto.” Gregor glanced sideways from his meal.

Mephisto shrugged. “Maybe, but you’re better at it.”

“Speaking of freedom and prayer, I wonder how Uncle Antonio is faring,” Logistilla opined.

“Let’s look!” Mephisto replied cheerfully. He whipped out the crystal ball and announced, “Show me Uncle Antonio!”

The mist within the crystal cleared to show a large building of dark gray stone, much like a prison. Within, Uncle Antonio knelt in a small cell that contained a bed, a table, and a chair and nothing more. It must not have been a jail, though, for the cell door was open. Uncle Antonio wore the blue robe and yellow belt of the Brotherhood of Hope. Upon his shoulder was the emblem of the anchor and star.

“Let us pray for him,” Gregor intoned. Obediently, we all lowered our heads and prayed.

When we looked up again, Logistilla gasped and pointed at the cell. “Look at that!”

On the table lay three intertwined rings. Unlike the dull gloomy objects in the cell around them, these rings were made of gold so bright that they seemed to shine. I recognized them, of course; they were the Borromean rings, one of the emblems of the House Sforza, of which we and Uncle Antonio were members.

“How did they get there? They weren’t there a moment ago,” Erasmus asked. He had just returned from his mission to move the demonic tome. He leaned over Mephisto’s shoulder, staring into the crystal sphere.

“They are a concrete symbol of our prayer,” Gregor replied. “A sign to remind him not to lose his way. Let us hope that he follows it.”

As Mephisto put the ball away, I caught one last glimpse of Uncle Antonio, rising from where he knelt to gaze in astonishment at the golden rings, their light lending substance and solidity to his features.

“Ulysses, I believe you are next.” Father had also been gazing into the ball. His face was calm, but the barest smile crinkled the corners of his eyes as he watched his brother. He sat back down again and regarded our youngest sibling.

I smiled as I realized that I had even grown fonder of Ulysses in this past month, despite his foibles. His easy airy charm, which I had found annoying in the past, now seemed well-meant and appealing. And, while he had abandoned us in times of trouble again and again, he had screwed up his courage and come back to rescue us.

Ulysses asked, “Why didn’t you tell anyone what I was up to—about my acquiring talismans, I mean?” To the rest of us, he said, “I like to think of myself as in the Indiana Jones line of work.” He patted his pistol. “No, perhaps more the Lara Croft line of work, really, except without huge gazang…” He looked from Logistilla to me and fell quiet, muttering, “Right-o!”

“Who?” Gregor whispered to Theo.

“A female Allan Quartermain,” Theo whispered back.

Gregor frowned. “How quaint.”

I felt a moment of sympathy for Gregor, who had dropped out of sight the year after American women got the vote. Modern life would be quite a surprise.

“Yes, I’m quite curious about this, too.” I turned to Father, eager to hear how he would answer my brother’s question. “When I complained about Ulysses, you did not breathe a word about what he was doing.”

“Ah, that’s the rub, isn’t it?” Father sat quietly for a time, massaging his temples. I suspected I knew what was to come: he was about to tell us that he had kept us apart because he did not want us to spill secrets to each other and thus to the enemy. Still, I would like to hear it from his own mouth.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FOUR

O Brave New World

“Perhaps you all think working for an angel is easy,” Father said, when he finally began to speak. “Well, take it from me: it is not! It takes tremendous faith and courage to follow Divine Will. The angel comes and says, ‘Put Aerie Ones into bodies so they will develop souls.’ And you think: that idea is crazy! We’ll lose control of them. And what kind of souls? Not all souls are good, you know.

“It took great courage upon my part to go forward with the plan to try to give the Aerie Ones souls. It went against many things I believed in, putting spirits into bodies, letting them interact with mankind,” Father continued. I saw Cornelius and Mab both nodding. “However, once I had done it, I could not help thinking … If I was brave enough to give the Aerie Ones freer rein, what about my children?

“Miranda has often berated me for allowing you all to leave Prospero, Inc., but during the period when we ran the company together, I controlled everything. I made the decisions, chose our projects, enforced good behavior, mediated disputes—marshaling you all like a good general with his troops. And you all acted like good soldiers, obedient but with little initiative.

“So, I decided to take a risk. I set each of you about separate tasks and slowly withdrew my oversight. There were some frightening moments there.” Father frowned at Ulysses. “More frightening than I had realized, apparently. But look at the benefits I have reaped. Each of you has flourished and grown. Without my help, you went to Hell, rescued me, rescued your brothers who were in need, and all came back again—only eight have ever made it to Hell and come back alive, before this.” He turned to me, a twinkle in his keen eyes. “Besides, I figured if you were really interested in what your brethren were doing, you might take the trouble to ask them.”

I blinked in astonishment, my head spinning as I tried to absorb all that Father had revealed. I put my hands on my temples, as if that could stop the feeling of vertigo.