Book of Shadows (2 page)

Away from their village the Comforts had been forced to call upon those who were living normal lives in the outside world but secretly shared the Druids’ belief. With help from these particular outsiders, the search for the stolen
Book of Shadows
had started in England and then spread to Europe, North Africa, Canada, and finally America. It was an outsider who had learned that the book was in New York and then contacted the Comforts—who had rushed to the city and begun stalking the five who’d taken the book.

In addition to the Druids and their tribe, there were others who wanted its immediate recovery and the destruction of the nonbelievers who had seen it.

East Anglia, England. 1646. The beauty and peace of this rich land was shattered by a reign of terror launched by Matthew Hopkins, a self-appointed “Witchfinder General.” Claiming a commission from Parliament, which later turned out to be false, Hopkins traveled throughout the region witchhunting, and in a two-year period caused the deaths of four hundred people. While some of his victims confessed to being witches, others were innocents who ended up strangled, drowned, burned, or hanged along with them. To escape Hopkins, those who served the craft of the wise—they would always call it that in preference to “witchcraft”—fled East Anglia.

Some found their way to the Druids’ village and were taken in. It was their descendants who wanted the
Book of Shadows
returned at all costs. For it was they who had recorded the spells, rituals, and incantations passed from believer to believer over many years and which now formed a collection of the most powerful knowledge in the occult.

But one reason above all drove the Comforts to exert every effort to get the book back into the hands of Druids: Its possession by unbelievers threatened the very life of the Druids’ village. The
Book of Shadows
revealed in coded detail the plan devised by the tribe to guarantee its continued and secret existence. If this code were ever broken, the outside world would have no choice but to destroy every member of the tribe.

Not only would the villages location be known, but the unique precautions it had taken to protect itself against the outside world would also be exposed. The lives of many depended on getting the book back and eliminating the five Americans who had seen it.

Wyrd, the tribe’s goddess of destiny, had dealt the Druids a bitter blow by bringing the five to the village. The Americans had come to England on holiday, rented a houseboat and sailed north on the canal leading from Oxford to Manchester. An important feast day had found the village deserted for a ceremony taking place in the fields and on that day the Americans had left their houseboat to stroll through the protecting woods in the surrounding and lovely countryside. There they had come upon the old man and the boy guarding him.

And the Americans had accidentally found the
Book of Shadows.
Perhaps it was Wyrd who until now had prevented the Americans from discovering the book’s true value. But how long would the goddess of destiny withhold that knowledge?
How long?

In similar fashion Rupert and Rowena Comfort had accidentally come upon the Puerto Ricans in Central Park and been forced to kill two of them.

Before man had visualized a god in his own likeness, there had been other gods to bow down to. Man had worshiped out of fear and nothing frightened him more than the awesome power of nature. And so he had bowed down to stones, rivers, birds, beasts. He had especially worshiped trees, the oldest living thing in the world.

No tree was more revered than the oak, the tree dedicated to the god of thunder and lightning, for it was this god who sent the rain needed for a successful harvest. And since the oak god fertilized the earth, it was natural to believe that he fertilized women, that it was he who made them able to bear children.

The oak’s long life also proved it was the god of youth; those who wanted to live long not only worshiped the great tree but also carried an acorn in their pocket.

New York. In this crowded, filthy, and ugly city, Rupert and Rowena Comfort had gained strength and soothed their fears by bowing down to the oak god as they had done all of their lives, as their ancestors had done for five thousand years. On the night the two Druids had come to Central Park to worship, they’d seen the three Puerto Ricans brutalizing the tiny oak tree—and stopped it the only way possible. The encounter in the park hadn’t been planned, but it had been necessary. No priest of the Celt tribe could witness the desecration of an oak and let it go unpunished.

After the killings, Rupert and Rowena returned to their hotel with the severed hands, both of which were to play a role in the five killings. In the bathroom Rowena held the hands over the toilet and used her great strength to squeeze all of the blood from each one. Then working in the bathtub she rubbed salt, niter, long peppers, and a special powder into the flesh of the fingers, backs, and palms.

To hasten the drying process, she wound a coat hanger around the wrist and stood patiently holding each hand over a hot plate until the flesh was tanned and stiff. Behind her, Rupert Comfort sat on the bed and carefully cleaned their ritual knives, removing all traces of blood from the blade and polishing the black handles. As they worked they spoke in Shelta Thari, the language of the Celtic Druids, a language thought to have disappeared from Britain.

They talked of the man they would kill tomorrow, the antique dealer who was the first of the five threatening the tribe’s life.

“S
OMEONE BROKE INTO THE
house and took two things,” said Nathan Shields. “They stole my address book and a photograph taken of the five of us in England last year.”

“Doesn’t make sense. You’ve got thousands of dollars worth of antiques lying around. Wasn’t there cash, television sets, clothing, jewelry … ?”

“None of it touched. Not so much as a pair of tweezers. Naturally my first reaction was that I’d misplaced the book and the maid had simply shifted the photograph to suit her taste, whatever that was. Then I remembered: The maid hadn’t been there in over a week. As for the address book, I tore the house apart and couldn’t find it. But I did find something else—several things, actually—which convinced me that someone had searched my house and I do mean searched.”

“Like what?” said Marisa Heggen.

“My shoes.” Nathan Shields sighed, a small hand over his heart.

“Your what?”

“Shoes. I’m particular about them, as you well know. I think the operative word is prissy. No one’s allowed to touch them except me. One hundred and four pairs of shoes, all neatly numbered on racks in two closets. When I found a Pierre Cardin sandal on the floor, I knew someone had been poking around.”

Marisa smiled at him. “Nat, you
are
married. Doesn’t Ellie—”

“In twenty-six years of marriage, Ellie has never touched my shoes. She wouldn’t dare. Besides, Ellie hasn’t been near the house for almost two weeks. She spends most of her time in the apartment here in town, especially when the ballet’s at City Center. The maid’s got her own problems. Immigration wants to deport her back to Santo Domingo, so lately she’s been spending more time with a lawyer than with a vacuum cleaner. When I hired Lupe I had a Spanish-speaking acquaintance of mine lay down the ground rules in her native tongue, the most important of which was stay the hell away from my shoes. In over two years of working for me, Lupe never touched so much as a shoelace or a Gucci buckle.”

Marisa held her cup towards him for more cognac.

“What about the two men who take care of your horses?”

“Gone,” said Nathan Shields as he poured. “Actually they’re coming back tomorrow morning. I’d given them some time off. I sold the last of the palominos ten days ago, remember?”

“I remember.”

“I’m having a pair of brood mares delivered this evening, which is why I’m closing the shop around six and driving over to the house. One man’s reporting in tomorrow morning and he and I’ll check reports on the studs we’d like to use, their bloodlines, fees, and so forth. I’m going to breed again, so to speak. A marvelous thought at my age.”

Marisa watched him bring a three-hundred-year-old pink and gold teacup to his small mouth, inhale the aroma of the cognac before sipping it, and gently place the antique cup back on a matching saucer. The loss of the address book and photograph obviously bothered this man, who insisted that his life be precise and orderly in all things. Nat never suffered the violation of his privacy gladly. Psychic rape, he called it.

She leaned over, took his hand, and watched his lips spread in a tentative smile. Nathan and Ellie Shields, in their mid-fifties and old enough to be Marisa Heggen’s parents, were her best friends. He was a successful antique dealer on Madison Avenue, a balding little man with a long, sad face that reminded Marisa of Stan Laurel. Nathan Shields was the kindest man Marisa knew and too intelligent to allow the loss of an address book and a photograph to upset him. But he’d listened to her problems often enough in the past; now it was her turn to listen to him.

That’s why she was in his shop drinking cognac from antique cups with Japanese “felicitation” markings on the bottom. The marks meant
happiness,
something which had eluded Marisa lately.

“My safe had been opened,” said Nathan Shields.

Marisa looked up from her teacup.

“Both burglar alarms had been bypassed,” he said. “Someone had cut the wires.”

Marisa’s eyes held his for a long time.

In the short silence, Shields placed the antique cup and saucer on his desk and stood up, his back to Marisa.

“After the business with the shoes something told me to go to the safe. I keep a fair amount of cash there. I never know when I’ll need money on weekends or after banks close. Some of the people I buy from prefer cash, to avoid being hit for heavy taxes. I won’t buy stolen goods, but if people insist on cash I go along with them. Anyway, I checked the safe …”

He turned around and looked at Marisa. “Nothing was missing. Cash, bonds, securities, my will, important receipts, none of it was gone. But someone had been in the safe. The money wasn’t stacked just the way I’d left it. My papers had been put back, but again, they weren’t in the order I’d left them in. Then I began to feel more than a little edgy, which is when I checked the alarms. They didn’t work, so I called the police. They came and did some checking of their own; that’s when I learned the wires had been cut.”

He walked from behind his huge desk and sat on the edge in front of Marisa. “The police were there two hours and between us we couldn’t find anything else out of the ordinary. It was only after they left that I made a more detailed search and found out about the address book and the photograph. Whoever broke in also searched the attic, the freezer, the pool house, and the garage. In police terminology, my unknown visitors gave the place one good toss.”

Marisa frowned. “Why, Nat? It’s all so unreal.”

“To say the least. The police aren’t going to get excited about what I’ve lost and if I go to my insurance company with this fanciful tale, I’ll be laughed at. My premiums are high enough as is.”

He pointed to his shop. “They tell me I have to have three different alarms, separate fire and theft policies with the usual exorbitant premiums, and I’ve got to change the combination on any safe I keep here at least three times a year. There are bars and gates on the windows and doors at night, and I get inspected more times than an Arabian virgin. I don’t mind it, being a precise sort of fellow—”

Marisa smiled. “The operative word is ‘prissy.’”

“Prissy. But it’s made me ever vigilant and watchful, which brings me to the next item on the agenda. For about a week I’ve had the feeling I’m being followed.”

“That’s life in Fun City. Everybody in New York gets followed sooner or later.”

Nathan Shields shook his head. “I’m not talking about the louts with wet chins who follow such stunning beauties as yourself. I’m talking about …”

He closed his eyes and hesitated. “It’s … it’s just a weird feeling I’ve had that somebody knows everything there is to know about me.”

Marisa stood up. “Sounds like you’re a victim of that old Chinese curse. Whenever they wanted to wish a person rotten luck, the Chinese would say ‘may you live in interesting times.’ Now didn’t you invite me over here for lunch?”

Nathan Shields smiled and clapped his hands together. “Indeed I did, I most certainly did.”

He looked at his watch. “Ten after two and America’s favorite actress hasn’t eaten and neither have I. My love for you is indicated by my having kept the ‘Closed’ sign dangling on the front door for the past half hour. You go out and bring back the eatables. Cottage cheese, black coffee, and fruit cup for me. Diet time.”

“Tuna salad for me,” said Marisa. “No bread. Skim milk, maybe. The camera adds ten pounds and ten pounds is the last thing I need.”

“How’s the show going?”

“Well. Still number one in our time period. May we never run out of bored housewives, unemployed truck drivers, bored Gypsies, and whoever else watches soap operas.”

“How does it feel to be America’s favorite bitch?”

“Marvy-doo, as our new ingenue is fond of saying. I’d like to wring her neck but the twit doesn’t have one. I’m thinking of bribing one of the script writers to come up with a scene where I run her over or throw acid in her face or something constructive like that. The show’s still a winner. Being a bitch on a soap opera ain’t Broadway but it pays a hell of a lot better than selling Bibles door to door, an occupation I was once forced to fall back on before becoming the star I am today.”

They both laughed.

Marisa took both of his hands in hers. “Don’t worry, it’ll turn out all right. The business at your house is probably one of those off-the-wall things that happens to everybody at least once in their lives. You did say nothing was taken.”

He nodded.

“About being followed,” she said. “I know the feeling.”

“You’re a lot prettier than I’ll ever be. Any man who wouldn’t follow you is myopic. Speaking of men, how’s Robert?”