The Scribe (24 page)

He holstered the Bulldog and climbed the steps far enough to reach the light switch and flicked it on. He took another look around the basement in the white light and saw the edge of something metal protruding from the grain. He crossed to the hogshead and took hold of it, found that he had to wrench it free from the gap in the barrel, while more of the grain sifted like sand down to the floor.

Canby held it in his hand and looked at it, thinking that the design of its function was as clearly evident as was the malevolence of its purpose. It was an iron band, three inches wide, hinged at one point of its circumference and with a hasp at the opposite point of the circle, through which a small padlock could be fitted. Its diameter, he noted as he turned it in his hands, crafted to fit a human neck. And stretching out from the band, as if the cardinal points of its compass, were four thin iron rods that tapered at their ends like grotesque parodies of a flower's stalk. Or rather three of them, for where the fourth would have attached to the collar was left only the bright spot of unrusted metal where that prong had broken cleanly away.

He studied it, the sinister curvature of the prongs. The weight of it. Thought of how it would feel when locked into place on the neck of the recovered runaway or the malingering slave. How the prongs would have made sleep a torture, the simple act of laying one's head down for rest a physical impossibility. Its design as purposeful as a horseshoe. The nadir of the blacksmith's art.

He set it down on top of the burst hogshead, glad to be rid of contact with it. Billingsley certainly was insane enough to keep it as a memento, but why such a strange site for storing it? Or the need to hide it? On his stockinged feet he made his way back to the stairs, eager to be gone from this house and outside in whatever daylight remained.

T
HEY KNELT
in the falling light of the quickening dusk, waiting. The only sound above the flickering of the candles was the periodic scraping of the crepe myrtle limbs against the stained glass, the occasional clatter of dried leaves scuttling across brick pavers as the wind pushed them from one corner of the courtyard to the other. Then, the creaking of wood as, one by one, the older ones among the parishioners pushed up from their positions on the kneelers and settled themselves back into the pews, piety yielding to the exigencies of age.

One of them, the youngest of the ladies' guild, rose from her place near the back as quietly as she could and slipped out of the nave. The others sat or knelt as she had left them, listening to her footfalls fading as she went down the length of the vestibule, then coming louder as she ascended the stone steps. Faintly they heard her soft knock on the rectory door.

So they waited, ears cocked for some word on the postponement, of when this day's vespers would eventually begin.

They did not wait long. Though none of them heard the heavy door swing open on its oiled hinges, all of them heard the scream that came just afterward. And the screams that followed the first, one after another ringing off the granite, through the courtyard, and out into the gathering night.

T
HE LITTLE WOMAN
in the vestibule was crouched down on herself, up against the wall like a frightened child or an animal gone to ground, shivering. She raised a bony finger and Canby and Underwood took the steps up to the rectory two at a time and threw open the timbered door.

The bishop was sprawled back in the chair behind his desk. A bloody
U
had been carved into his forehead but he was, so far as Canby could tell, otherwise unharmed. He and Underwood paused in their forward momentum, looking, watching the blood seep from the wan brow. Canby moved around the desk and put a hand on the man's neck.

The bishop groaned and slowly opened his pale eyes.

“I knew you'd come,” he said.

“Shit,” Canby said.

“He's alive?” Underwood said.

“For a while yet,” the bishop said, nodding, the dripping letter made more grotesque by the gesture.

“Look around for the knife, Underwood. A letter opener, maybe, something with an edge or a point to it. He's done it himself. By his own hand.”

“I have, have I?” the bishop said. He struggled to rise, stood, wavered, and tilted toward Canby. Canby put a hand out against his chest to steady him, pressing against the black fabric of the cassock the bishop wore. The man moaned and collapsed back into his chair. Canby heard the sound of something wet striking the floor. He looked at his palm. It was covered in blood.

Underwood made a choking sound and Canby looked down at his feet, at the space between them and the bishop. Gray and ropy coils of entrails lay there on the slate, one length of them trailing back underneath the bishop's robes.

“He wanted me to deliver a message, don't you see,” the bishop said. “Leave him be. Let him finish his work and perhaps he'll have mercy on you.”

“He was here?”

“Bullshit, Underwood. Of course he wasn't.”

“Indeed he was.”

“We saw the coffin go into the ground. We saw him dead on the rope.”

“I saw him rise, Mister Canby.”

“And how did he do that, Bishop? What sort of magic trick would that entail?”

“If you knew what he is, you would get yourself on his side.”

“I'm not here to try God and the devil with you. Where is your son?”

“I do not know. In God's name, I swear it.”

The bishop groaned again and Canby saw a gout of blood begin to spread on the slate floor.

“Good God, Mister Canby,” Underwood said. “What more proof do you need that he ain't of this world?”

“All the proof I see is that madness is catching. See if you can find the blade he did this with.”

“Poor boy,” the bishop said, looking at Underwood with pity in his eyes. “Do you not miss your old station now? So much less was asked of you then. Now you will know true pain. There is no blade, Detective, because Malthus took it with him. The thousand years are over, and he is released from his prison.”

“That's Revelations,” Underwood said.

“It is. Prophecy. Return to your place, boy, and you may find clemency.” The bishop was now straining to talk. “I tell you, Detective, if you knew what he is, you'd get yourself on his side.”

Canby shook his head. “Do you know where your son is?”

“Only that he is safe. Robert has made provision for him.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw him. With Robert. With my own eyes. I doubt no more.”

“You saw him here with Billingsley?”

“That was the arrangement.”

“You
gave
him your son?”

“Yes, I did. As Abraham did Isaac. But he reneged on our agreement. He would not tell me where my Johnny is going.”

Canby looked at Underwood. “At least the boy may still be alive.”

The bishop's eyelids were drooping shut. “He would only tell me that Johnny will be safe,” he said, “from me, from you.”

Canby pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his bloody hand on it. He looked down at the bishop slumped in his chair and slowly ebbing toward the floor, his chest barely rising with breath. He tossed the handkerchief in the clergyman's bloody lap and turned toward the door.

“Underwood, we have another visit to pay this evening,” he said.

Underwood lingered a moment in the room. “What about the bishop?”

“Him?” Canby said, beginning to shake his head. “Let him bleed.”

S
ZABÓ
'
S WHIMPERING
had risen in intensity until now it was nearly a squeal, porcine and desperate as an animal wounded and at bay. Canby stood back and regarded him. His mouth and nose were frothed with blood and mucus, hair matted with sweat. The nose, Canby thought as he rubbed the bleeding knuckles of his right hand, would likely never set right again.

“Take his keys and put him in the cell, Underwood. If he stays out here where I can get my hands on him, I'll surely kill him.”

Underwood half helped, half dragged Szabó into Spot 12. Szabó seemed relieved to have the separation of the bars
between himself and Canby. Underwood slammed the cell door and jangled the ring of keys in his hand. “Now search his living quarters?”

Canby nodded. “Lead the way.”

At the door to Szabó's rooms, Underwood worked through the key ring until the fifth key fit and turned the lock's bolt. He pushed open the door, looked ahead for a moment, then slowly turned his head to Canby. He said, over his shoulder, “Think you're going to be revising that theory on evil here directly.”

Underwood stepped aside so that Canby could see into the room. On its far side, over the head of Szabó's cot, the wall was covered with dark crosses. Crucifixes, all of them, some as simple as two crossed pieces of wood and others ornate, brought, Canby imagined, from Szabó's native land, crosses on which Christs in agony suffered in degrees depicted in a range from beatific to ghastly. Some shedding carved tears and others stoic, some with the build of athletes and others thin, tortured wraiths. But each and all of them arrayed on the wall above Szabó's bed had been hung, meticulously, upside down.

Underwood was moving back up the hallway, his footsteps gaining momentum. Canby listened to him go as he took in the rest of the room: the domestic items—a washbasin, a shirt and a pair of pants draped over a ladder-back chair—mixed in with the tools of the jailer's trade: manacles, leg irons. Atop a bureau he saw a half dozen of the foppish collars Billingsley had taken to wearing, resting there, perfect crescents of white. His eyes drifted back to the manacles. He thought how they covered such a broad swath of a man's wrists, how the leg irons could reach so far up from a man's ankles. An
impenetrable band of iron. As he heard Underwood unlocking the cell door he picked up one of the manacles and set it inside one of the collars on the chipped and scarred top of the bureau. Studied the perfect circle of iron inside the broader circle of starched cotton.

Up the hallway Szabó's cries resumed, then ebbed into a series of low grunts, coming regularly. When Canby got back to the cell he saw that Underwood was working over Szabó's midsection methodically, like a seasoned cop would—like Canby should have—dealing out damage where it could not be seen in a courtroom by judge or jury. Underwood was acting more the professional than he had.

“Underwood,” Canby said after a minute, “I think that's enough. Leave a little starch in him yet. He has some digging to do tonight.”

T
HE
B
ILLINGSLEY
family plots in Oakland Cemetery were on a slight rise above the Confederate Section of the vast graveyard, so that as Canby and Underwood stood over the grave and watched Szabó dig his way down into it, they could look across Oakland to Atlanta. To the west, the International Cotton Exposition glowed with cheerful light at Oglethorpe Park, the fair's operating hours now extended late into the nights. Nearer were the lights of Atlanta, the beacon of Kimball House, and the smoldering glow of the railroad roundhouse, where the smiths and mechanics worked on the cars and engines through the night. The closest landmark otherwise was the Confederate Monument, which raised its stark
marble obelisk above the tombs and mausoleums like a finger of bone. Surrounding it were row upon row of white-tablet markers, plain save for name and rank, of Georgia's Confederate dead. Their number, last Canby had heard, was nearly seven thousand—among them some three thousand unknowns who had fallen with their comrades, the lot of them, in Canby's estimation, dying in the stead of men like Robert Billingsley.

Szabó had dug himself down into the grave neck-deep, with Canby and Underwood standing above, when they heard the cock of a pistol's hammer behind them.

“Not a motion, you goddamn ghouls.”

Canby spoke without turning. “Is that you, Mister Connelly?”

“Yep. Got the drop on you sonsabitches, didn't I? Which college you headed to with that dead man?”

“Imagine our lantern helped you spot us, sir,” Underwood said.

“You getting smart with me, boy? You'd not be the first sack-'em-up man I've dropped in a hole of his own digging.”

“He didn't mean any harm, Mister Connelly,” Canby said. “We knocked at the gatehouse but didn't get an answer.”

Connelly stepped up close, put a hand on Canby's shoulder, and turned him around. Canby could smell the sweet stink of bourbon on his breath. “I stepped out for a minute. But I stepped back in. Where's that leave you?” He gestured with the pistol, its enormous barrel pointing at Canby and Underwood in turn. Canby imagined the sidearm might have been standard issue for the Mexican War, if not earlier.

“I'm Thomas Canby, Mister Connelly.”

“Angus's boy?”

“Yessir.”

“Angus was a good man.”

“Yessir.”

“Well, it's a shitload of trouble you've got yourself into again, isn't it?”

“It is. Trying to get out of a bit of it here. Would you mind lowering that pistol?”

Connolly did not answer, only stepped around Canby to get a better look at Szabó in the grave. His eyes roved over Szabó's broken face and the blood- and clay-stained cotton of the blouse-like shirt he wore. He glowered at him until Szabó, doggedly, began to dig again. Connelly studied the ragged hole in the ground and the earth slung up to the side of the grave.

“Shoddy work, even the second time around,” Connelly said. “Where the hell is he from, that he don't even know how to dig a square hole?” He nodded, as though to himself. “Trying to go shallow, he was. Had to ride his ass to get it six feet deep. But would he let me dig it? No. Just a bunch of that gobbledygook he talks.”

“Was he alone?” Canby asked.

“He brought that bishop with him. They were friends, you know, him and the colonel. It was as small as a pauper's funeral, which I guess is fitting, knowing all the bad he done.”