Authors: Joseph Finley
A
s the ferry neared Selles,
Dónall focused his thoughts on Thomas. He waded through a sea of memories to a hilltop outside Reims. Thomas stood with him. Icarus, in all its autumn glory, soared like a bird above the trees. The wind whistled, and Thomas’s leaf creation pitched and dived. Then, halfway through the dive, the birdlike shape imploded, its wings collapsing into its body, spinning wildly and scattering yellow and red leaves across the hilltop.
“
We’re getting better at this, you know,
” Thomas had said.
By the time Dónall reached the riverbank, the answer seemed clear. “Thanks, old friend,” he said aloud, drawing an odd look from his companions
.
Ciarán poled the flat-bottomed ferry to the dock. Atop the nearest hill, amid the gathered men outside the abbey, a tendril of smoke curled skyward. A line of destriers with mailed and helmed riders obscured any view of what was happening. But Dónall knew what was happening, for he had watched it happen to Martha and Thomas. That day, he had been helpless, with an infant in his arms, surrounded by a mob of townsfolk and soldiers and self-righteous priests. There was nothing he could have done—at any rate, that was what he had told himself whenever doubt crept into his mind and kept him awake on all those sleepless nights. But this time, it would be different. He was wiser now, and stronger
.
Unsheathing the leaf-shaped sword hidden beneath his habit, he said, “Remi, can you handle the fire?”
“Of course.” And the mad look in Remi’s eyes seemed to confirm his words.
Dónall leveled his sword toward the hilltop. “Ciarán, when we get there, you find the lady and take her from the pyre. Remi will control the flames.”
Ciarán answered with a hesitant nod.
“This is not like Derry,” Dónall reminded him. “They don’t have a clue we’re coming. Just follow my lead, but remember to stand back when you hear the noise.”
“Noise . . . ?” Ciarán asked.
Dónall nodded. “You’ll know it when you hear it. Like God’s own wrath, it will be loud.” Then he made the sign of the cross and uttered a verse from the Psalms: “
Let ruin fall upon them unawares,
” he said. “Now, go!”
*
To Ciarán, the charge seemed sheer madness. But he was not about to let Dónall down.
The air stank of ash and smoke, and when once again Niall invaded his thoughts, a cry of “Columcille!” leaped from Ciarán’s lips. “Columcille!” he shouted a second time. With each battle cry, the word emboldened him, and the Irish in his veins seized control.
“Columcille!”
“Eno-o-o-och!” Remi yelled, keeping pace with Ciarán as Dónall started to fall behind, waving his sword in wide arcs.
At the hilltop, several horsemen, alerted by the battle cries, turned toward Ciarán and Remi. To Ciarán, the Franks’ powerfully built destriers appeared gigantic and fierce, to say nothing of the men astride them, decked in mail and bearing swords and lances. Indeed, the Franks were laughing at them. One of the bearded riders gestured with his lance, and several more Franks turned toward them, snickering to one another.
“Columcille!” Ciarán cried defiantly.
Remi shook his staff, shouting “Eno-o-o-och!”
Several of the riders set their lances, preparing to charge.
Dónall,
Ciarán prayed,
do whatever you’re going to do.
An instant later, a pale azure light shimmered over the treetops and the spire of the abbey church, and the gentle breeze whipped up into a howling gale. Bare branches bent. On the hillside, dirt and pebbles, blown up by the wind, began to form a swirling cloud of debris. The horsemen were no longer laughing. They held their ground, but now their mounts began to whinny and stamp their hooves. Ciarán had to shield his eyes from the dust in the rising wind.
Smoke from the burning fires was sucked into the wind, which swirled now in a conical pattern, growing louder and taller with each breath. Ciarán and Remi retreated a few steps down the hill as the cyclone—for this was what it had become—grew in size and force. The horsemen backed away, and a few riderless mounts bolted toward the fields. Ciarán could hardly believe his eyes. The whirling black tempest stood impossibly high, roaring like a thousand lions, devouring every wisp of smoke and debris in its path. And halfway down the hill stood Dónall mac Taidg, waving his sword in the air.
The horsemen closest to the whirlwind broke ranks, but before they could retreat, Dónall whipped his sword arm toward them, and the cyclone followed.
It sucked the three nearest riders and their horses into its churning mass and then barreled into the next group of men, both mounted and on foot. The thunderous din of swirling cloud drowned their screams, and when at last it released its prey, it dashed man and horse to the ground with such force that nothing could have survived. The cyclone chewed into the hillside, feeding earth and rock and fleeing soldiers into its hellish funnel.
“Holy Mother of God!” Ciarán uttered, unable to take his eyes off the carnage.
Remi tugged at his sleeve. “Have you forgotten why we are here?” Remi pointed to where the horsemen had stood just moments ago. A stake surrounded by rising flames jutted from the hilltop. And in the midst of that burning pyre stood a raven-haired girl more beautiful than anyone Ciarán had ever seen.
*
Alais was sure the end of days had arrived. As the flames engulfed the kindling beneath her feet, she knew that the rest of her life would be brief and horrible. No sooner had this thought occurred to her than the air began to sizzle, followed by the ghostly blue light and an impossibly loud and violent wind. And as that wind grew into a swirling, howling black funnel, she realized that it, not the fire, was to be her end. She watched in stark horror as it sucked up horses and men like so much thistledown. In a heartbeat, a half-dozen men-at-arms perished in the cyclone, along with two of the craven monks, while the rest scattered like rats. Even Fulk the Black, who seemed so fearless in his arrogance, bolted when the whirlwind whisked away his men. The bishop, looking equally terrified, fled with him.
Alais could not shield her ears from the deafening sound. The wind emanating from the swirling tempest whipped her hair and burned her face.
It comes now!
her mind screamed.
But it never did. What happened next seemed unreal, as if she were no longer in this terrifying moment but had somehow entered a dream. The cyclone turned, as if it had a will purpose—
as if it could think—
and followed the fleeing horsemen.
A panicked rider and his mount were its next victims, followed by two Franks who had fled on foot. Alais closed her eyes as one of the men was hurled against the abbey’s limestone wall with a sickening crunch.
Hearing voices near at hand, she opened her eyes again. It was two of the suicidal trio who had charged the Franks: a skinny, wild-eyed Benedictine and a young monk in a gray habit unlike any she had ever seen. The Benedictine, who was speaking a language Alais had never heard, thrust his walking staff into the pyre, and to her astonishment, the flames, which were nearly licking her toes but a moment ago, began to diminish, as if the fire had lost its air. Alais no longer knew what world she was in. A dream? The afterlife? None of it seemed real. Beneath her feet, heat still emanated from the blackened kindling, but the flames were gone.
*
“Ciarán—now!” Remi cried. “I cannot hold it at bay forever!”
Ciarán shook off his stunned disbelief at what Remi had done to the fire. The girl looked at him, shaking and sobbing, the tears making pale channels through the soot that caked her face.
He stepped onto the pyre and felt the heat beneath the kindling radiate through his sandals. Ignoring the pain, he tried to untie the ropes that bound the girl’s hands.
“Hurry!” Remi cried.
Ciarán tugged at the ropes, trying not to imagine what would happen if Remi lost his tenuous control over the fire. “Wiggle your hands free,” he told the girl in Latin, praying she understood.
And she must have, for she managed to free one hand. Then the other slipped easily out of the rope. “Can you help with the knots?” he asked. She nodded, though the dazed, disbelieving look remained. Ciarán went first to the rope that bound her ankles. Pulling on it, he found it hot to the touch. The girl screamed. Her feet had been singed, though not terribly, it appeared. Fortunately, the knot gave way.
“
Hurry!”
Remi groaned.
The girl had managed to untie the knot at her neck. All that remained now was the one at her waist. As they both worked feverishly at the knot, Ciarán could not help noticing that her dress had been ripped. Between the entrancing swells of her naked breasts hung a pendant with a strangely familiar shape.
“Ciarán!” Remi gasped.
The rope around the girl’s waist came free, and Ciarán took her in his arms and leaped down from the pyre. Behind him came a loud
whoomp,
and searing heat as a column of flame billowed skyward. An instant later, it settled back to earth, engulfing the stake and what remained of the pitch-smeared kindling in a raging inferno.
A few feet away, Remi lay panting on the ground. Dónall rushed toward him, and he, too, looked pale and drained, like a man who had not slept in days. Only then did Ciarán notice that the thundering noise was gone. He looked to the road. The cyclone had dissipated, leaving an ashy gray haze in the air. Smoke still rose from the cottages, many of which had burned to the ground. Far down the road, a line of horsemen fled at a gallop from Selles-sur-Cher.
Ciarán helped the girl stand. “Are you hurt?” he asked. She nodded at first but then shook her head, and he could only imagine what must be going through her mind.
Dónall said something in the Frankish tongue and pointed at the pendant the girl wore, whereupon she blushed and crossed her arms to cover her breasts.
Carefully Dónall lifted the Book of Maugis d’Aygremont from its satchel and turned the book toward her. On the cover, the golden ankh glinted in the sunlight. The girl’s eyes grew wide. And then she fainted dead away.
“W
hat happened?” the girl asked,
looking up at her three unlikely rescuers. Dónall translated the Frankish words for Ciarán, who wondered how she could be involved in any of this.
Dónall had already removed his cowl and placed it over her bare shoulders and bosom, and for this she seemed grateful. Behind them, the last embers still crackled in the pyre, now reduced to ash and cinder and a few tendrils of smoke that still carried the acrid scent of pitch. As Dónall continued to speak in the girl’s native tongue, she periodically shook her head in disbelief, her lower lip trembling.
“Her name is Alais,” Dónall explained. “She is indeed the lady of Selles-sur-Cher, and her late husband was the lay abbot the prior spoke of. She asked about the cyclone. I told her it must have been a miracle, for what other explanation could there be? And let’s not work too hard at coming up with one, shall we?”
“Tell Ciarán what she said about the pendant,” Remi pressed.
“Her husband gave it to her before he died,” Dónall said. “She claims it’s a key that unlocks a secret, something she was not to reveal unless someone arrived with the same symbol. She never actually expected anyone to show up with an ankh, which is why she was so stunned when she saw it on our book.”
Dónall asked the girl if she could speak Latin, for if so, they could all understand what she had to say. Ciarán had never met a woman who spoke the language of the Church, but as it turned out, this Alais of Selles-sur-Cher was the exception. When the first Latin words left her lips, Ciarán swore to himself that if he had to spend much more time in these lands, he would learn the Frankish tongue, or, as Dónall called it,
le langue d’oil
.
“Has a monk named Nicolas ever come to the village looking for this secret?” Remi asked her after finally picking himself up off the ground.
“No,” she answered.
He shook his head grimly, and Ciarán could see the look of pain in his worn face.
“Can you show us this secret?” Dónall asked her. “It is the reason we came here—and, I fear, the cause of all the trouble you have been through.”
She looked at him, her eyes still fearful. “Yes,” she said softly.
She led them toward the manor, built of gray limestone blocks, down the road from the abbey. At the sight of burned-out cottages and trampled fields, tears spilled from her eyes. Villagers had begun to emerge from their hiding places. Some wept for their own dead and injured: men who had tried to protect their daughters or wives from the horsemen, women who had been raped, and elderly folk who had seen their life’s work destroyed, stolen by the invaders from Anjou. Others were already picking through the charred wreckage of their homes. Mothers huddled with children, while several of the men and boys roamed the fields to herd in the sheep, cows, oxen, and hogs that had scattered during the fires and the cyclone. The crackle and pop of the dying fires punctuated the anguished moans and sobs of the people of Selles.
Ciarán looked away from the devastation. “All this suffering,” he said to Dónall. “All at the hands of this bishop of Blois. He knew about the secret she protected, didn’t he?”
“I see no other explanation,” Dónall replied. “Adémar of Blois must have found Nicolas and wrested from him all the secrets he held, including the one about this place.”
“As well as where to find the Book of Maugis,” Ciarán added. “And where to find us.”
Dónall nodded. “Nothing else makes sense.” He glanced at the broken body of a horseman, its chain mail bloody from wounds wrought by the cyclone’s debris. “Let God judge them now.”
When they reached the pathway to the manor, Alais stopped abruptly, her eyes fixed on the lifeless form of an old Benedictine monk. “I cannot leave him like this,” she sobbed. “You have to help me move him.”
Ciarán nodded, touched by her sorrow. He tried not to look too closely at the man’s injuries. Part of his skull had been mashed in, and the bloodied limbs protruding beneath his black habit were broken and twisted. Ciarán cradled the dead man’s trunk in his arms while Dónall picked him up by the legs.
“Oh, Thadeus,” Alais said, choking back tears. “Why did you just stand there? Why didn’t you run?”
Ciarán searched the girl’s beautiful face for some clue to what had happened. Clearly, this old monk had been dear to her.
As Dónall and Ciarán laid the body in a garden outside the entranceway to the manor, she said, “He defied them. Thadeus warned Fulk the Black that he would burn in hell. And now he’s dead.” She buried her face in Dónall’s habit.
“Then he died a brave man,” Dónall said softly. “We should all be so courageous when our time comes.”
Remi knelt over the body. He closed the monk’s eyes and traced a cross on his forehead. “Deliver him, O Lord, from eternal death, on the day when the heavens and earth shall be shaken and you shall come to judge the world by fire.” Then he looked up at the others. “We bury him before we leave. He was a Benedictine; he deserves no less.”
Dónall nodded his agreement, but he spoke with urgency. “Then we have even less time. At some point, those riders will regroup, and they may even return. If they do, we don’t want to be here.”
Alais grew paler as Dónall spoke.
“Can you show it to us now?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “But I warn you, Brother Thadeus said it speaks of terrible things.”
Dónall glanced at Remi. “History is made of terrible things,” Remi said. “We would expect nothing less.”
*
From the moment they entered the manor’s main hall, Ciarán sensed this was the scene of something terrible. A bloody dagger lay where it had fallen on the stone floor. The trestle table had been upended, its benches kicked aside, and the wooden bar to the door lay across the room from where it belonged.
The bedchamber where Alais took them was even worse. Blood spattered the floor and the blankets of a canopied bed. At the sight of the bed, the color drained from the girl’s cheeks.
“We have to move the bed,” she said, turning her head away.
Ciarán and Dónall did as she said. Beneath a thin layer of rushes, they found a wooden plate fitted between the stones in the floor.
“Underneath that,” she said.
Using his fingertips, Ciarán winkled the plate loose, revealing a cavity below the floor.
“That is surely it!” Remi kneaded his hands in anticipation.
Dónall lifted out a small oak chest whose lid was richly inlaid with gold. The symbol carved into the lid was unmistakable: an interwoven seven-pointed star—the symbol in Maugis’ diagram of the prophecy.
“The Book of Maugis was housed in a similar chest in Reims,” Dónall explained. “But it bore an ankh on the lid.”
“Maugis clearly intended to keep the two together,” Remi said, the familiar manic lilt back in his voice. “Thomas was right. Each is the key to understanding the other—ankh and star. But through some cruel twist, they were separated.” He stared, wide-eyed. “Open it.”
Dónall turned to Alais. “We’ll need the pendant now.”
She nodded, her eyes still pained, and Ciarán realized that she only wanted to be gone from this scene of awful memory. Reaching under the cowl, she lifted the chain from around her neck and handed it to Dónall.
“It
is
a key,” Dónall said, noticing the teeth at the ankh’s base. Carefully, he fitted the pendant in the keyhole and turned it. The lock gave a loud click, and he opened the lid. And there it was.
“God, but it looks old,” Remi breathed.
“It’s not even a book,” Ciarán noticed.
“No,” Remi explained. “Books as you know them did not exist until the late Roman empire. It would have to be a scroll.”
Remi carefully removed a scroll wound around two wooden spindles. It appeared to be papyrus, heavily stained by the ages.
“If it’s what we think it is,” Dónall said eagerly, “it should date from the time before Christ, during the reign of the Romans, or even the Greeks before them.”
“Thadeus said the words were Greek,” Alais said.
Remi nodded in wonder. “Of course,” he said. “Maugis used Greek when he wrote of this document.” Unfurling enough of the scroll to reveal a large block of handwritten text, he read aloud:
The words of the blessing of Enoch, who walked with God and shall witness the time of trouble, when the wicked and ungodly are taken from the world.
“I’ll be damned,” Dónall whispered.
Ciarán felt a chill. He did not want to contemplate the implications this might have for Remi’s theory. Nor could he tell, given the scroll’s thickness, how long it might take them to sort it out. “It’ll take at least a day to read.”
“Then let us start now,” Remi said, plopping himself down on the bed.
“No,” Dónall said. “Not here. We need to find a safe place first.”
“My cousin is the duke of Aquitaine,” Alais said. “You could go to Poitiers.”
Dónall shook his head. “Poitiers lies days from here. I was thinking of somewhere closer, in case that bishop decides to return with more men.” He turned to Remi. “How far from here did Lucien retire?”
“At a priory, south of Saint Aignan,” Remi replied.
“I know of one there,” Alais said. “The priory of Saint-Bastian—only a half day’s ride from here.”
Dónall almost smiled. “Then perhaps we’re in luck. I saw a stable out back. Have you horses?”
Alais nodded. Even in her present state, smudged with soot and racked with grief, Ciarán found her captivatingly beautiful. “What about her?” he asked. “If those men come back . . .”
Dónall looked up from the scroll and said, “You won’t be safe here. Those men will surely return—tomorrow, in a week, in a month. Even if they don’t, you stand accused of being a witch, and if any of those spineless churchmen from the abbey were to cling to that accusation . . .” After pausing a moment to let the implication sink in, he said, “We could take you to Poitiers. If your cousin is duke, then surely you’ll be safe there.”
Alais stared at the floor, her arms crossed over her chest. She wiped a tear from her cheek. “There is nothing left for me here,” she said. “Take me home.”