The Wayward Godking (29 page)

“Mark, be nice to our guests. You know your brother, Luke, and his wife, Merry,” she scolded him as she picked up the broken dish. She took the dish to the sink, and then screamed before falling back from the cabinet.

All four men were up in an instant. Inside the sink Planxty Grine’s and Stephano Clementi’s heads lay in a splatter of bright red; their lifeless eyes staring up at them briefly before a chorus of male screams filled the kitchen. This led to more screams from the women before they even knew what was wrong.

Lucio stumbled backwards and fell directly into a roaring campfire. He continued to scream and flail about until strong arms yanked him up. Numerous hands beat him mercilessly, putting out the tiny fires in his clothing. He finished up the process by knocking the remnants of the hot coals and ashes from his boots.

“
Santa Maria!
” he shouted, and then realized he was no longer in Mark’s kitchen. He was outside again where a chill wind buffeted his face, blowing the smoke from the campfire in first one direction and then another.

“Lucio!” Mark Andrew had him by the arms. “Where did you come from?”

“I was… I was in your kitchen,” the Italian stammered.

“Ho, Lucius of Venetia,” the Djinni’s familiar voice cut into his confused mind. “Your Highnesses, my royal uncle and aunt. Ho, sons of Adar. Son of the Golden Eagle. Welcome! Welcome! You are looking gracious and lovely, Aunt Merry.”

A number of familiar voices overran the Djinni’s words and joined the noisy greetings.

Lucio turned away from the confusing cacophony and found himself looking out to sea. A fresh, salty breeze struck his face, clearing the nightmarish image of his beloved apprentice’s decapitated head from his mind. He heard Lily already admonishing ‘John’ for having abandoned them in their hour of need. He turned again and his eyes focused on the form of the general sitting alone on a small boulder on the other side of the fire. The flames danced higher, while the excited people moved around, embracing one another, asking a million questions of one another.

Lucio lost all thought and all consideration for his surroundings as he walked slowly toward Ernst Schweikert. The general, surprised by these sudden change in his surroundings, sat watching the melee in confusion. He did not see the Italian draw his sword. Ernst’s head was saved only by Luke Andrew’s intervention, when he literally threw himself on Lucio’s back. Lucio had no thought to his whereabouts when he passed heedless of several shouts of warning on his way to murder the general, who had literally cut out his heart the last time he had seen him.

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

Pope Paul VII slammed the small wooden window shutter forcefully; it rebounding off the frame and almost hit him square in the nose. The pontiff emitted a short shriek and stumbled backwards with very little papal grace. They had been sailing, or rather drifting, for weeks without sight of land.

“How many days, Sergei?” He turned on the Count, who stood staring at him balefully in the light of a flickering oil lamp.

“Thirty-eight,” the Count told him without thinking and then frowned. “No, thirty nine.” He looked at his gold pocket watch and smiled bitterly. “In fifteen minutes we will be equal to Noah. Forty days and forty nights adrift on the depths of the sea.”

“Shut up,” Paolo hissed at him as he swept past him down the rickety wooden catwalk that encircled the upper section of the interior of the ark.

Polunsky followed after him.

“Your Grace,” the Count’s deep voice echoed in the depths of the boxy ship built by desert Bedouins. “The men are growing weary of goat cheese and dried dates.”

“They should have packed more food!” The Pope snapped at him. “Do you think I like eating moldy bread and green cheese?”

“Perhaps you should pray harder,” Sergei said softly and the Pope stopped in his tracks. He turned very slowly and his face turned very dark.

“If
I
did not need you, I would excommunicate you and have you tried for heresy!”

“If I did not need
you
, I would run you through and throw you into the bilge,” Polunsky answered the threat without blinking. “You had best contact your god, Paolo, and ask him for some fresh milk and fruit before the scurvy sets in.”

“Scurvy? What the hell… I mean, what is scurvy, my son?” The Pope’s tone changed remarkably from his former gesturing and posturing.

“A very nasty stomach disorder caused from lack of vitamins. It used to plague the sailors and soldiers of old.” Polunsky pulled his last cigar from his pocket and lit it up. “If we do not sight land tomorrow, I think we might have a problem. Some of the men are talking about mutiny, and I think I shall join them. I’m going to smoke my last cigar today and I expect to have another one tomorrow.”

“Mutiny?! Ha! What would they do? Take over the ship and come up here to look out the window? It’s not as if we have steering or sails or an engine room to take over. That’s ludicrous.”

The Pope started down the stairs leading to the platforms on which the men were ‘camped’.

“I am only telling you what is on the wind.” Polunsky smiled slightly. “Looking out the window might be exactly what they want to do. It’s fairly stifling in here. A little fresh air would do them all a bit of good.”

“The windows are open… I mean, what we can afford,” the Pope looked up at the few rectangles open on the blackness of night. “If we were to be caught in a squall with those ports open, I hate to think what might happen to this creaking crate.”

“All the same.” Polunsky puffed on the cigar and nodded to his commanders on the ‘command deck’. His officers had taken the upper three platforms and the rest of the men were consigned to the lower levels according to rank. The lower the level, the worse the stench. The air was acrid with the smell of urine and animal dung collecting in the bilge. Not a good arrangement. Morale was non-existent. They had absolutely nothing to do except complain and be miserable. “I hope we find land soon.”

The Pope made his way around to the semi-private platform he had taken for himself and his aides. It was really no better than any on the same level, just a bit less crowded. He had a fairly large wooden table nailed to one end of the platform and numerous books, papers and maps strewn about. Everything was anchored to the table or decking to avoid being tossed into the bowels of the ship when the ocean ran high. He had a compass wedged in a crack in the table near his chair. They sat down together and he checked the compass again. It had become a habit.

The needle had finally stopped spinning, but it seemed to be pointing south, if the constellations could still be trusted. Several more compasses in the possession of the travelers confirmed what could not be. The compasses no longer pointed north, but south… sort of… maybe. There were no rocket scientists among the troops and even the top ranking officers were at a loss to explain the behavior of the compasses. Whatever had caused this last great flood had surely devastated the entire earth.

They had seen great plumes of smoke on the horizon during the day and evidence of massive fires at night. The surface of the sea was littered with tons of floating debris of every imaginable type, but most of it was pulverized and destroyed completely, virtually impossible to discern what the pieces might have been originally. They were in deep trouble and only the top officers were informed of what they had seen through the ports. The bulk of the men were barred from traversing the ramps, stairs and catwalks in the upper levels. To make matters worse, they were running dangerously low on fresh water and oil for the lamps left behind by whoever had built the monstrosity that had saved their lives.

Ironically, they had found the remnants of the former inhabitants of the vessel to be most revealing. The lower levels had undoubtedly been strictly used for the transport of livestock. In the upper platforms, they had found evidence of modern weaponry, modern provisions and modern military equipment, such as broken belts, shoelaces, watch bands, discarded razors, broken combs, ragged tee-shirts stuffed in cracks in the walls, and most telling of all, graffiti in several different languages written on the wood with a variety of modern writing utensils. The Pope had even recognized a few of the names carved there. Again, the d’Ornan brothers among others had been within this vessel. The Templars.
Always
the Templars
.

It had taken him almost two weeks to get over the fact that
the ark
, which
had dragged them halfway round the earth, was not the Ark of the Covenant, but a replica, it seemed, of Noah’s ark instead. Not only was it
not
the golden casket containing the Tablets of the Law and Aaron’s staff, the greatest treasures of all time, it was a
used
ark, possibly even a stinking deathtrap for them. First, it had been an enormous disappointment, and then it had seemed a godsend when the flood came and now, it seemed that it might serve as their floating mausoleum if they did not find land soon.

One of his aides brought a ration of his remaining water supply and poured drinks for them in small wooden cups.

The Pope was just about to comment again on the strange behavior of the compass when a shout from above brought them to their feet, heedless of spilling the precious water.

“Land ho!!” One of Polunsky’s captains shouted again. “I see land!! I see lights!!”

An instant uproar erupted in the vast dimness of the ship as everyone came suddenly awake and upright, clamoring for more information and confirmation of the sighting.

Polunsky looked at his golden pocket watch again.

“Zero-zero-zero-two. Right on time. I knew it!” He smiled and clicked the lid shut on the face of his great-grandfather’s prized timepiece.

By the time they made it back up to the portals, a sizable crowd of officers gathered for peeks at the first land anyone had seen in weeks. They stood aside as the Pope made his way through them and shoved his face out the small opening measuring no more than two feet by two feet. Sergei crowded in beside him.

The land was a darker mass against a dark sky full of strange stars. The unmistakable glow of fires littered the beach and the steep landscape behind the light strip of sand and the breakwaters offshore.

“Those are campfires,” Polunsky affirmed his Captain’s assessment.

“What is that noise?” Paolo frowned and turned his head, cupping his hand around his ear. They concentrated their attention on the sounds outside the unwieldy vessel. They could hear the crash of the waves on the shoals and the whistling of the wind, but beyond that, in the very brief moments when the wind and waves were not overwhelming, they heard another distinctively different sound.

“Drums?” Polunsky’s frown deepened.

“Surely not. Music? Not a high priority if you ask me.” Paolo shook his head in disbelief and they listened again.

“Drums. Definitely.” Sergei nodded slowly as the salt spray collected in his eyebrows and beard.

“But…” Paolo drew his head inside, out of the dampness. “But we should be approaching Greece or southern Italy by my calculations.”

Polunsky joined him and the officers huddled about them.

“But how can you tell?” One of the lieutenants asked. “Our compasses don’t work. We have no charts. The stars are not even right.”

“I tell you it is the work of the devil,” another voice spoke in a hoarse whisper. “We are going to die.”

“Enough of that!” Polunsky’s commanding general snapped at his men. “I’ll horse whip the next one I hear moaning about dying! I’m sick of it, gentlemen. It is up to us to keep the men in hand. If they learn we’ve lost hope, what do you think they’ll do other than blame us, and the next thing we’ll see is the inside of the executioner’s hood?”

“I believe the magnetic poles have switched,” the Pope explained to them. “It has happened many times in the past and the Church has studied it for spiritual significance. It seems there is no connection to things of a spiritual nature, but rather a simple fact of geology. If our compasses now point south it is simply a matter of reversing our thinking. The world is still there. It is only our instruments that have changed.”

“Then where the devil is the North Star?” Another voice ventured a question anonymously from the rear ranks.

“We are at the mercy of the sea presently,” Polunsky answered. “We cannot steer this damned box. It is possible our orientation has simply been askew.”

His answer was met with several disbelieving grunts, but nothing more.

“Besides,” the Pope continued. “Our Sovereign Lord has not seen fit to allow us the benefit of a seasoned sailing man amongst us. We really are at the mercy of the sea, as the Count so says, but we are also at the mercy of God and I assure you, He has a hand in this as well. You can rest assured, gentlemen, we are exactly where we are supposed to be.”

“Then God is about to put us ashore!” An excited voice called to them from the window just as a horrendous ripping sound vibrated through the hull. “We’re going aground on the shoals! Hang on to your asses, gentlemen!!”

The lookout’s shouts were immediately followed by tremendous creaking, cracking and snapping noises and spine-jarring jolts. For a few seconds, all was quiet and then, it seemed the entire ark was screeching and bemoaning its immediate demise.