Black Swan Rising (13 page)

“Like a zombie!” the boy declared, shivering with delight and horror. The group laughed and Tolbert dismissed them. I waited until the last one had left before approaching him.

“Margaret James!” he crooned, swooping his arm around my shoulder and drawing me in for a kiss on the cheek. When he held me out at arm’s length to look at me, I saw that his
blue eyes were watery. “Ah, you look more like your mother every day. I was just thinking about her today . . . now what was it that reminded me of her?”

“The article in the
Times
about the gallery being robbed?” I suggested.

His face darkened. “No! The gallery was robbed? I had no idea. I’m terribly sorry. Was anyone hurt?”

“My father was shot, but he’s going to be okay . . .” I couldn’t bear to tell him that Roman was suspected of shooting himself. “But if you didn’t see the article about the robbery, what was it that reminded you of my mother?”

The question distracted him from asking more questions about the robbery. He closed his eyes and tapped two fingers to his forehead in much the same way I tapped my laptop touch pad to wake up the hard drive. “It was an article in a journal,” he said at last, opening his eyes. “It’s in the library upstairs. Do you have time to come up and see it?”

“Yes, of course. Actually . . . I came to see you. I had some questions about my mother and the research she did here.”

“Well, we’re in luck then. The article was on one of her favorite subjects—the watchtower in medieval imagery.”

As Dr. Tolbert escorted me back through the Entrance Hall, I explained that I wanted to see any material concerning medieval watchtowers that my mother had used in her research.

“Yes, I think I have a book she used that mentions a watchtower,” he said while waving good-night to the guard on duty. The guard was ushering the last visitors out; the museum was closing for the night, but I gathered they were used to Dr. Tolbert staying after hours. He unlocked a spiked metal gate and
took me up two flights of stairs. Several of his colleagues passed us on their way down saying their good-nights. He ushered me into a square, barrel-vaulted room lined on four sides with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Long wooden tables filled the room. A round leaded-glass window high up on the arched wall at the end of the room glowed dimly, lit by the last fading light of the day. At its center was a stained-glass roundel containing the figure of a winged angel holding a trumpet—one of the angels of the Apocalypse blowing his horn on Judgment Day.

“Have a seat while I find the article,” Dr. Tolbert said. “I think it was in
Comitatus
. . . or was it
Medieval Studies
. . . hm . . . maybe I left it in my office . . .”

His voice drifted off as he wandered out of the library and down the hall. I sat at the end of one of the long tables and turned on the last of a row of green-shaded lamps. The chairs were the same as I remembered—wide, wooden, U-shaped frames upholstered in faded green velvet, bolted down with decorative brass tacks. They always reminded me of the chair that Laurence Olivier brooded in when he played Hamlet. If it was as uncomfortable as these, I could see why Hamlet was always getting up to stalk around the castle of Elsinore.

Dr. Tolbert came back with the journal and a thick, clothbound book.

“This was one of the books your mother used in her research on watchtower imagery. I’m afraid I can’t let it out of the library, but you’re welcome to browse through it here.”

“I don’t want to keep you, though,” I told him, taking the heavy book from him.

“Oh, you’re not keeping me. I was going to do a little writing down in the Cuxa Cloister.”

“You write in the cloisters?”

“Yes. I find it peaceful after the visitors have gone. The guards are tolerant of my little eccentricities. When you’re done, just leave the books here and come down and find me. If you like, we could go for a drink. There’s a delightful new place in Inwood called the Indian Road Café.

“I’d love to. I’ll be down within the hour.”

“No hurry, no hurry,” he sang as he left the library.

His voice faded as he went down the steps and I turned to the materials he’d brought me. The journal article flagged with a Post-it note was on the role of the watchman in Provençal poetry. It included a twelfth-century alba—a traditional form of troubadour poetry in which a lover expresses regret at the coming of dawn.

While the nightingale sings

I am with my beloved

through the perfumed night,

until our sentry from the tower

cries: “Lovers, get up!

The nightingale sings no more;

it is the lark

greeting the break of day.”

The poem was illustrated by a woodcut of a watchtower under which two lovers clung to one another while a sentry leaned out a window and shouted at them. The article itself was interesting, and I could see why it had reminded Dr. Tolbert of my mother, who had spent her summers in a village in southern France, but it didn’t tell me a thing about ancestral orders of guardians.

I put the journal aside and turned to the book . . . and turned
cold when I read the title:
John Dee and the Four Watchtowers.
I had to remind myself that it only
felt
like a strange coincidence to find that the Elizabethan alchemist was connected to the symbol that Hughes claimed was part of my mother’s history. After all, Hughes was the one who had linked the two together in the first place.

Before turning to the page that Dr. Tolbert had bookmarked, I skimmed through the first few chapters to find out a little more about John Dee. The Wikipedia entry I’d read about him had told me little more than that he had been the official astronomer to Queen Elizabeth I. Now I discovered that he had amassed the largest library in Europe in his age, lectured on algebra at the University of Paris, and coined the term
British Empire.
Late in his life he had turned to the supernatural, attempting to contact angels with the help of a medium named Edward Kelley. Dee later fell out favor under King James I and reputedly died in poverty at his home in Mortlake (although there was no record of his death and no gravestone bearing his name in Mortlake’s cemetery).

I turned to the bookmarked page and found an illustration of the four watchtowers, which Dee had learned about through the teachings of the “angels” contacted by Edward Kelley. Each one corresponded to one of the elements: earth, water, air, and fire. I read through the whole chapter, growing impatient with the flowery language and elaborate constructions invented by Edward Kelley, but could find nothing about a line of woman guardians. I was about to put the book aside when a yellowed index card slipped loose from one of the pages and fluttered to the floor. I leaned down to pick it up . . . and heard a faint sound coming from downstairs. I paused to listen, wondering if it could be Dr. Tolbert calling for me, but it wasn’t a
voice, it was music. A flute playing a haunting melody. Perhaps there was a concert planned for tonight.

I picked up the file card. It contained a drawing of a watchtower surmounted by an eye and, underneath, the words
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Exactly the same image as the one on Will Hughes’s ring—the ring he claimed had once belonged to my ancestor. What startled me even more, though, was the handwriting. It looked like my mother’s.

I turned the card over. In the top right-hand corner was a number, 303, which I guessed corresponded to a page in the book I was holding. I turned to page 303 and saw a ghostly white square on the yellowed page—a square the same size as the card I was holding. Knowing my mother’s research habits, she would have placed the card under the lines she was interested in, so I read the passage directly above the white square.

The watchers watched over humanity from the four watchtowers at the corners of creation, but they were beguiled by the beauty of human women and descended to earth to consort with them. In exchange for their company the watchers taught their consorts enchantments and spells and all manner of esoteric arts.

I looked back at the index card. Under the page number my mother had written,
Despite the erroneous identification as consort, perhaps an echo of our people’s tradition of the watchtower.
The word that stunned me was
our.
My mother
had
been aware of some tradition associated with a watchtower—and not just in a scholarly way (and she would have hated any ancestor of hers being called a consort!). It was part of her family (I assumed that’s what she meant by
our people
) tradition,
but she had never told me about it. I recalled all the nights she had read me bedtime stories—the old classic French fairy tales, like “Beauty and the Beast” and “Cinderella,” but also strange Celtic tales about seals who turned into maidens and maidens who turned into swans who lived in a magical land that she called the Summer Country or the Fair Land, where it was always summer and no one who dwelled there ever aged. Why had she never told me this story? I couldn’t help but feel betrayed by the omission.

I looked through the rest of the book for any other file cards, but found nothing. I took out my notebook and copied the passage on page 303. Then I stuck my mother’s index card in my notebook. I didn’t think Dr. Tolbert would mind me taking it. After all, it had belonged to my mother. I would show it to him and ask if he knew anything else about the watchtower story and if he knew anything else about my mother. Maybe my mother had never told me the story for a reason—some shameful secret about her family that she had felt she had to keep from me.

I shouldn’t keep Dr. Tolbert waiting any longer, though. Even if he had work to do, I didn’t imagine that it was good for a man his age to sit on a cold stone wall in a drafty cloister for too long. And it
was
cold. They must turn off the central heating after the museum closes, I thought, putting on my jacket, slipping the strap of my bag over my head, and adjusting it across my chest. Then I neatly aligned the book and journal with a ray of red light that lay upon the table. I looked up and saw that the light came from the angel’s halo in the stained-glass window . . . but how? I checked my watch. It was five thirty, a good hour after sunset. What light was shining through the window?

It must be an outside security light, I told myself, turning
away from the room. In the hall I looked out a window to see if I could see any outside lights, but I couldn’t see anything at all; the building was surrounded by fog. More freakish weather? I started down the stairs, reminding myself that I wasn’t alone. There were guards and Dr. Tolbert . . . and musicians, I recalled as the flute music resumed. In the Entrance Hall I looked for the guard who’d been there earlier, but the desk was empty. I turned and went toward the Cuxa Cloister, where the music was coming from.

As I stepped under the Narbonne arch, I could see that the walkway around the cloister was dark, but behind the glass—now opaque with condensed moisture—the enclosed garden was lit by a strange yellow glow. Silhouetted against the glass sat Dr. Tolbert. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see that his head was tilted up toward the arch above my head.

“Still studying your mythological beasts, Dr. Tolbert?” I asked, stepping through the arch.

He neither answered nor moved his head in my direction.

I took another step forward and saw the expression of horror frozen on his face.

“Dr. Tolbert!” I cried as I crossed to him quickly and put my hand to his neck. There was no pulse . . . and his skin was already cool. I touched his hand, which still gripped his cane. His fingers were supple yet and loosened their grip at my touch. The cane would have fallen if I hadn’t caught it.

He’s evidently had a heart attack or a stroke, but why? He’d been perfectly fine an hour ago.
He looked as if something had shocked him, but what could have frightened him in this peaceful place? It looked as if he had positioned himself to contemplate his favorite sculptures . . . I turned around and followed his gaze to the Narbonne arch.

On the left side, where the manticore had been, was a blank spot, as if the figure had been chiseled loose or . . .

From behind me I heard the trilling of a flute.

As I turned around, I recalled Dr. Tolbert’s words from his lecture.
And here is a monster out of your worst nightmares!
I must have entered the world of nightmare. A small winged creature—about the size of a well-fed rat—hurtled toward me through the air, three sets of teeth bared. I brought the cane up just in time to strike it. It hit the glass wall so hard that the glass shattered, letting a wave of fog roll in. I heard the creature’s horrible high-pitched squeal as I turned and ran into the Romanesque Hall, through the Entrance Hall, and down the long vaulted passage. Halfway down I tripped over the body of the guard who had let me in earlier. As I landed on my knees, I felt the manticore’s claws graze the top of my head. If I hadn’t fallen, it would have been on me already. It spun around at the bottom of the stairs, hissing and lashing its scorpion-tipped tail like an angry house cat. But this was no house cat. I could see the sinewy muscles of its hind legs preparing to bound. I gripped the cane in both hands and swung when it leapt, catching it in its mouth. Needle-sharp teeth rained into my hair. I took the last stairs in one bound and hit the door at the bottom with my shoulder. I fell out into the fog, stumbled, and scrambled to my feet just as the manticore slammed into my back, tackling me onto the ground. I heard one impossibly sweet note trill in my ear as its teeth sunk into my neck.