Enoch's Device (25 page)

Down the newly formed passageway strode a column of Benedictine monks, their hands steepled in prayer. A miter crowned the head of the monks’ leader, who wore white episcopal vestments trimmed with silver.

From the first row of worshipers, Alais gasped.

The intruder tilted his bearded chin toward the ceiling before leveling a wolflike gaze on the chancel. Ciarán’s blood froze.

For Adémar of Blois had come to Poitiers.

“W
hat is the meaning of
this?” the bishop of Poitiers stammered.

“Heresy, Lord Bishop, is what brings me here.” Adémar let his accusation linger in the air. William’s eyes flew wide, and behind him, Poitiers’ elderly bishop had grown suddenly pale.

“Heresy,” Adémar proclaimed, “which darkens my joy on the day of Christ’s birth. Heresy, which has spread through the Touraine like a disease, from Selles-sur-Cher and across the rivers to threaten all Aquitaine.”

Dónall tugged at Ciarán’s sleeve. “Stay sharp,” he whispered, “Lucien may be among them.” Ciarán nodded subtly, but he could not be any more alert. His muscles tensed as he eyed the monks in the bishop’s entourage, searching for the prior of Saint-Bastian’s.

In the candlelit nave, flustered nobles looked to William, who stood just paces from the bishop, separated by a thin haze of incense smoke. William pursed his lips before speaking. “Bishop Adémar, I beg your pardon. I have heard accounts of the atrocities that Fulk the Black inflicted on Selles-sur-Cher—atrocities which you yourself witnessed and did not abate.”

“Fulk of Anjou is a devil indeed,” Adémar said, “whose passions I could not abate. But know well, Lord Duke, sometimes God uses the devil as his sword. Especially when God has grown angry at how his subjects behave.”

“Explain yourself!” William demanded.

Adémar implored the congregation with outstretched arms. “Is it any wonder why God has not favored your forces in battle? Why the Almighty allows the devil Fulk to build castle upon castle, such that you are becoming a prisoner in your own lands? My dear duke, God favors the victor. So why is Fulk so often the victor?”

William looked stricken, and a palpable tension filled the church as Ciarán saw Dónall’s hand move to the hilt of his hidden blade. Ciarán searched for a way out but found only the vestibule doors, still open to the wind. And the aisle to those doors remained clogged by nuns engrossed in the unfolding drama.

“The answer,” Adémar announced, his eyes burning with passion, “is because God’s wrath burns like fire!”

William moved back a step. Among the nobles gathered beside him, Alais ducked toward the aisle. Just feet from Ciarán, a skeletally frail woman in an abbess’s robes pulled her behind the column of nuns.

“God’s wrath burns,” Adémar continued, “when the king whom you hold so dear has unholy relations with his first cousin, warranting excommunication by Pope Gregory in Rome; when heresy runs rampant in your own lands; when your own cousin adorns her neck with a devil’s sign, practicing witchcraft against the servants of Christ and cavorting with sorcerers from a pagan isle!”

Ciarán’s pulse quickened. He reached for Alais, brushing her arm with his hand. She glanced back, terrified, until her gaze met his. She held his hand tight, and he could feel her body tremble.

Beside Ciarán, Dónall nodded toward the vestibule doors, his expression grave.

“So,” Adémar exclaimed, “should it surprise anyone that as we stand here today, Fulk’s ally, the viscount of Limoges, gathers an army to his new castle at Brosse on the banks of the river Anglin, seizing your eastern flank for his own?”

The color drained from William’s face. “Brosse?”

“Yes,” Adémar replied. “It is time, Duke William, that you lived up to your pious reputation. That you regained God’s favor through courage. As the winter snows thaw, summon your cavalry. Gather your army. Raise the crimson banner of Poitiers and strike against the allies of Fulk the Black. Earn God’s blessing of victory!”

Adémar’s call hung in the air. Behind the curtain of complicit nuns, Ciarán and Alais shuffled along the wall toward the doors, with Dónall hurrying behind them.

“But first,” Adémar said coldly, his finger raised high, “cast away the heretics and let them burn!”

Just paces from the open doors, Alais screamed as a black-robed priest lunged into the aisle, pushing past the startled nuns. With long-fingered hands, he grabbed Alais’ arm. Ciarán’s heart jumped. A wicked smile stretched across Father Gauzlin’s pale, thin face. “Too late,” he sneered.

Ciarán cocked his fist and swung from the hip, smashing into Gauzlin’s jaw and knocking him back into the crowd.

From the transept, a voice bellowed, “Brother Dónall, stop!” Prior Bernard waved a plump finger at Dónall and Alais. “Your Excellency,
he
is your sorcerer, and
she
is your witch!”

Dónall nudged Ciarán. “Go!”

The church erupted in shouts as, hand in hand, Ciarán and Alais rushed through the vestibule doors and down the steps into a snow-dusted square. A flock of startled pigeons burst skyward, while a dozen black-robed monks in the square gazed toward the clamor emanating from the church. They stared in surprise as Alais and the two Irishmen bolted past. “Trust no one in a black robe!” Dónall huffed.

A mob of monks and priests poured out of the vestibule, with cries of “Stop!” and “Heretic!”

“To the Street of the Jews!” Dónall said. “It’s our only chance.”

“Do you know where it is?” Ciarán asked Alais.

She nodded and, gripping his hand, ran toward a narrow alley. Behind them came the mob.

The alley intersected another. At the crossway, Alais and Ciarán glanced back to find Dónall standing defiantly before the oncoming mob. At its head was Father Gauzlin, his face infused with rage. Beside him screamed Prior Bernard and Canon Frézoul, followed by a crowd of priests and monks in black. Dónall raised his right arm. A crystal burned brightly in his hand.

“What is he doing?” Alais gasped.

“Saving our lives,” Ciarán replied. “Come!”

Dónall uttered a verse in the Fae tongue, a melodic sound that filled the alleyway. At once, a beating sound followed, not from Dónall‘s lips but from the rooftops.

The beating of wings.

Like a fierce gray cloud, hundreds of pigeons dived into the space between Dónall and the oncoming mob, heading straight toward the pursuers. Gauzlin gasped, and Prior Bernard blanched as a cry erupted from the startled monks and priests. The flock collided with the men, pecking and clawing and tearing at black robes. Then came a piercing caw as dozens of huge black crows swooped into the alley, followed by yet another horde of pigeons.

Dónall rushed to Ciarán and Alais, who looked awestruck at the swelling, twisting cloud of birds. “Just get us to Jewry,” Ciarán whispered to her, “and I’ll explain.”

As the wingbeats and raucous cawing behind them competed with the screams of men, Alais led them down the alley to the left, only to turn immediately down another in the maze of streets. They ducked under clotheslines with hanging linens and hurried down the narrow stairways that descended the city’s steep hills. The cries of the birds and the mob receded to a dull clamor, and soon Ciarán found himself on a familiar street of simple thatch-roofed homes. Searching for the one with the Star of David carved on its door, he prayed that Isaac was home.

Alais stopped Dónall before they went any farther. “What just happened?” she demanded.

“I asked Mother Nature for a favor,” Dónall said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“You
spoke
to the birds?” she asked, fear tingeing her voice. “And the tempest back in Selles? Are you what the bishop called you?”

“No more than you,” Dónall replied.

She ran her fingers down her face. “Why is this happening?” Her eyes grew moist. “It has to do with the scroll Geoffrey kept, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Dónall said.

Ciarán placed a hand on her back. “The bishop won’t let this go. You can’t stay in Poitiers.”

“I would leave anyway,” she sighed. “William plans to arrange another marriage, and I won’t do that again. But where can I go?”

“Come with us to Spain,” Ciarán said.

Dónall gave Ciarán a look that said he’d gone mad. “Absolutely not!”

“Why not?” Ciarán insisted. “We’re looking for Enoch’s device, and she held a key piece to finding it. What if it’s fate that brought us to her?”

“
Fate?
” Dónall groaned. “You sound like your father again.”

“Has he turned out to be wrong lately?”

“He was wrong about
you,
” Dónall snapped. “You never came from Charlemagne’s line.”

Alais stepped between them. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“The thing we’re searching for,” Ciarán said, “which was mentioned in your husband’s scroll, can be used only by a descendant of Charlemagne’s bloodline.”

For a heartbeat, Alais stared at them, spellbound by what she had just heard. “So . . . you mean someone like
me
?”

Ciarán’s eyes widened. “You . . .”

“I’m from the House of Poitiers. My family is descended from Ranulf of Aquitaine, the great-grandson of Charlemagne.”

Ciarán could scarcely believe his ears. He turned to Dónall. “Now,
that
sounds like fate.”

“Still, we can’t—” Dónall began, but Alais cut him off.

“I’ve already lost Geoffrey’s lands,” she said. “That scroll was his final legacy, and if it meant something, if it’s as important as he claimed, then this is the last thing I can do for him.”

Dónall started to grumble, but Ciarán swelled with hope. “Which means . . . ?” he asked.

She looked determined. “We’re going to Spain.”

P
rior Lucien ushered Father Gauzlin
into the small chapel on the east side of the Church of Saint-Etienne. The priest was shaking. His left eye was swollen shut, and his whole face was crosshatched with bloody scratches. Feathers—and worse—stuck to the bloodstains on his robes.

“What happened to
you
?” Lucien asked in a hushed tone.

“We were attacked by crows. And pigeons, hundreds of them,” Gauzlin replied with a hint of fear lingering in his voice. “Summoned by Dónall mac Taidg.”

Lucien clenched his jaw as they entered the chapel. Dónall was becoming difficult to deal with.

Inside, next to a bishop’s miter, a dozen candles glowed on the altar, while only the faintest hint of daylight seeped through the vellum sheets that covered the window slits. Beside the altar stood Adémar, still clad in his episcopal robes. He studied one of the reliquaries of Saint Etienne, cradling it in his hands. The reliquary was a life-size replica of the saint’s arm, with a forearm shaped like the sleeve of a bishop’s robe, and coin-size stones pressed into the gold encasement, complete with a gleaming silver hand, slightly open at the palm, with two fingers upraised. Adémar did not look up as they entered.

“They say this contains the bones of Saint Etienne’s entire right arm—and his hand, too,” Adémar said, shaking the reliquary so the bones rattled inside. “I find it odd that your people revere these dead clerics like little gods.”

Lucien stepped from the shadows of the tiny nave toward the chancel, and Gauzlin followed nervously behind him. “Every church needs some saint’s bones, my lord,” Lucien replied. “They draw in pilgrims and their donations.”

“But it is more than that,” Adémar said, still examining the golden arm. “So many think these relics carry some form of power. Just a touch of this saint’s silver hand, and one’s pox could be cured. If only I could kiss its golden sleeve, then my gout would be gone. It’s ridiculous.” He stepped closer to them, running his hand across the reliquary’s silver fingertips. “So where are the girl and the Irishmen?”

“They escaped, my lord,” Gauzlin stuttered. “Dónall mac Taidg summoned a storm of pecking, screaming, shitting birds.”

Lucien’s heart drummed in his chest. He fixed his eyes on Adémar, who chuckled and looked wistfully toward the chapel’s ceiling. “They are no threat to our plans,” Adémar said. “And they have no idea how much danger they are in.”

Gauzlin gave a relieved sigh.

“But I cannot abide failure!” Adémar went on, his eyes igniting with feral rage. In a flash, his arm whipped forward, thrusting the reliquary of Saint Etienne like a sword, straight through Gauzlin’s gaping mouth. The priest’s jawbone snapped, and the silver fingers of Saint Etienne protruded through the back of his neck. The golden forearm jutted from the priest’s mouth as if he had tried to swallow the reliquary whole.

Lucien watched in horror as Gauzlin staggered for a moment, scratching at the sliver fingers protruding from his neck, while his face turned a horrid shade of purple. Then he dropped to the stone floor with a loud thud.

Adémar looked up at the ceiling as if Gauzlin’s lifeless body were not even there. “All of our plans are falling into place, Lucien. Duke William will do as I suggested, especially with that hog of a prior whispering my admonitions into his ear day and night. And then we shall have
two
armies—and, best of all, a war. Death and carnage. A legion of souls loosed into the ethers.”

“Yes, my lord,” Lucien replied, trying to calm his jittery nerves.

“And when it’s all done, who knows?” Adémar asked “Maybe these good Christians will even make me their pope. Imagine what I could do in that seat of power!”

“The world would be yours.”

“Indeed,” Adémar said, looking Lucien in the eyes. “But first we must taste victory in this prime conflict.”

“We have read the stars,” Lucien offered. “It shall happen on the fifth of March, when Mars crosses between Scorpio and Sagittarius.”

“And on that day,” Adémar said, “victory will be ours.”

Adémar took his miter from the altar. He looked one last time at Gauzlin’s body, lying on the floor with the reliquary of Saint Etienne protruding from his mouth.

“Failure is an unforgivable sin,” Adémar said coldly. He nodded at Lucien. “You would be wise to remember that, Prior. I leave the priest, and what remains of this pathetic saint, to you.”