The White Forest (22 page)

“Can you step into the forest?” I asked.

“It’s a painted picture,” she said. “Thank God and Christ it’s only a painted picture.”

I released her, and she nearly fell in her rush to get away from me. “What was it, Jane? Was it Hell that I saw?”

“Most certainly it was Hell, Anne, and it’s waiting for you, gates thrown wide,” I said. “Now get out of my sight.”

Because Miss Anne had treated me like I was a devil throughout my childhood, I felt little remorse for making my experiment with her. The result, at least, was clear. The Empyrean had returned, getting stronger and stronger, and this time, it would not be sent away so easily.

•   •   •

Carefully I unwound Maddy’s handkerchief from Nathan’s journal and used the silk to turn the pages. It pained me to see the low crawl of his script. Things were so conflicted between us near the end. Yet I cared for Nathan Ashe, and he’d helped me learn much about myself. I felt more than a little guilt at the idea I’d led him astray. With my heart pained, I read:

April 19, 18—Arrival at Malta

Closely following the Queen’s Dragoon Guard, we arrived at the island of Malta, 7:00 in the evening. Dark clouds hung above the high white rocks of the barren island. Never have I been so overjoyed to see so dismal a place. It was land, after all—a surface that did not shift and sway at the wind’s every whim. The ship we traveled on was a French steamer, the Golden Fleece, a name which I found increasingly ironic over the course of our travels. Unlike the mythological Jason and the original sailors of the ship which sought that fleece, Lord Wellington’s brigade was decidedly not a band of ready heroes. Rather, we were a frightened bunch of seasick English and Frenchmen who appeared to have no hope of winning any kind of war. As for the singing piece of timber contained in the prow of the mythic ship, we had no such fanciful thing. If only Jane were here to remedy that.

Stepping onto the rocky shore of Malta, my thoughts went to my secret purpose. It’s true that I became a soldier to serve my queen, but I’ve another motive too—something I won’t readily share with my fellows. I joined Lord Wellington’s brigade because I knew it would make camp on this island before moving on to Sevastopol in the Black Sea. My connection to this place is, of course, Theodore de Baras, the monk who wrote so prolifically about notions of the Empyrean. De Baras lived here on the island during the thirteenth century as a member of the Brotherhood of Saint John. He indicates in his writings that he was not the only member of the Brotherhood interested in the highest Heaven. It’s my hope that the monks on this island will retain the knowledge of their forbearers, and that because of my status as a member of the Queen’s Guard, they will help me find the answers I seek.

If I cannot help Jane understand who she is or what she is—I think we’ll all come to ruin soon enough. And so I am here for answers.

I paused in my reading, face burning. Nathan had gone to war to help me, and his experiences had torn him apart. I realized that if it
hadn’t been for me, he might never have gone to war at all. I felt saddened by this. Even after all that had happened, I still cared for my old friend.

Bunking—I don’t have it in me to describe the wretched bunking houses, though suffice it to say that we are thankfully not camping out of doors, as some of the other posts are. We have, instead, a series of small overcrowded rooms complete with braziers that burn black coal and make the atmosphere quite unbreathable. I have taken up pen again to make a note about how it feels to be away from my people. Not my family, per se, for I grew used to being away from them when boarded at school in my early years, but rather being away from Jane and Madeline. When embarking on this journey, I thought the change might do me good, and certainly, the idea of investigating the Brotherhood excited me. But now living with the war so close, it makes one realize how fragile and brief our relationships are—how significant it is to keep hold of them. There is no room for separation when it comes to love. I wonder which of the two I’ll miss more. This is an experiment of the heart. Maddy would lose her scruples if she thought that it was not her, and it could very well be, but still—

Città Vecchia (the Old City) on Malta has a sun-blasted, timeworn look. The dirt and cobble streets seem often to lead nowhere, and icons of the various religious sects that have held sway over the island since the Phoenicians crouch and caper at every turn. I am fascinated by the idea that so many of our ancestors had monsters for gods. Touring the city with a few of the other soldiers, I made note of a statue of particular interest. It was repeated frequently on the island; I counted nearly twenty some statues, effigies of a tall veiled woman holding a stalk of lilies in the crook of her arm. Her face was downcast, and she had such a countenance of melancholy. A local man told me in broken English that she is called the Lady of Flowers. He said she was a mystic who lived on Malta during the time of Christ. Her spirit apparently still watches over the island. I
recognized the name from the writings of Theodore de Baras. Jane had reacted strongly to a drawing of this figure when I showed it to her back home, so I knew she must be significant.

I squinted up at her stone face, washed in sunlight, and tipped the good man. The English money seemed to please him, and I was on my way, catching up with the rest of the boys who were busy attempting to charm a young female fortune-teller.

22nd—We’ve been driven from our bunking houses in the night by vermin. Some of the men awoke, friends of mine whose sanity I can attest to, saying that there were creatures in the room, crawling things. Rats maybe. Enough to make the entire floor a writhing mat of fur.

Because of the infestation, our brigade was split up and moved to new quarters. The captain made the assignments, and as luck would have it, I was to bunk at the ancient auberge on Malta. The auberge is the place where Frankish and Saxon knights once lived together and that currently belongs to the convent of Carmelite friars known as the Brotherhood of Saint John, the very men I’ve come here to meet. I wonder if this is not simple luck. Perhaps the Lady of Flowers is smiling down on me?

23rd—The friars are a good and cheerful lot—not the traditional grim beasts one expects from monks. At dinner last night, they proved to be as hearty as any Englishman. We dined on boar, an animal which apparently roams wild on the island. The brothers make Christian sport of hunting the creature with bows and arrows. These good men offered to take me on a tour of their vaults after dinner, and this tour afforded me the opportunity to confess that I am quite interested in their order. My interest seemed to please them greatly.

I was not prepared for the fantastic sights I would see beneath the auberge. Apparently, the monks bury their dead in the subterranean vaults in a most uncommon way. It appears that they are first dried in great heat. One could even say they are baked. Once dried, the
corpses are put into niches in the walls in a standing position with their arms crossed, and they are left exposed for all to see.

The dried skin of the corpses is reddish brown in color, pulled tightly across the bone of the skull. As the joints have disintegrated, the bodies have dropped into all sorts of positions. Thankfully there’s no smell, aside from a faint sweetness that reminds me absurdly of black licorice. It’s not the sort of grotesque display I want to be living in proximity of. But the gregarious brothers seem to have no trouble with the dead in their basement. Theirs is not a Gothic existence of mystery and horror. They lead simple lives, and I think one day I should like to live like them, alone on a beautiful island with nothing but old myth surrounding and supporting me.

While in the subterranean chamber, I spotted a stone hallway leading to a circular room that contained a Byzantine-looking gold cabinet. “What’s down there?” I asked my guide out of curiosity.

“A reliquary,” he said. “It’s not to be disturbed.”

I made note of the reliquary. Jane says it is my singular goal in life to disturb that which should not be. She might be right about that.

Aside from the crypt, the auberge is a pleasure. Walls covered in arabesque silk in nearly perfect condition showing verdant ferns and exotic animals—a veritable Eden within the old hotel. Carvings have been done on coral. Filigrees of silver line doorways.

We were served pale brandy at night by the laughing friars who want to know of England, as it seems to them another world. They ask us to describe again and again St. Dunstan’s Day, Bartholomew’s Fair, Buckingham and the Tower.

After the evening of storytelling, I took up conversation with one of the friars, a fellow who seems to be in charge, called Romegas. He was a wizened man with a trim white beard and the most astonishingly clear eyes. I asked him about the macabre display in the lower regions of the auberge, and at first he tried to evade my questions with humor, but as I pressed him, he become more circumspect. “Have you an interest in the soul, Signore Ashe?”

I said that I did.

He nodded solemnly. “One day I promise to teach you more about it. The quality of the human soul is a difficult subject, but here on Malta, there are ways of coming to some understanding of it.”

“And what of the reliquary in the catacomb,” I asked. “Do you have a piece of the one true cross or the jawbone of Augustine hidden there?”

Romegas raised his white brow. “Reliquary, Signore Ashe? There is no reliquary in the auberge.”

25th—Storms all day on the Mediterranean. The sky above Malta is black and alive. Rolling swells break upon the rocks. Still, fishermen can be seen perched out there in the hollows. There is no news of Lord Raglan’s vessel, and we cannot move from Malta without his order. So we wait. I am glad for the waiting, as it gives me more time to investigate.

I lit a long taper and took it down into the crypt to examine the so-called reliquary that Romegas denied. At the end of the hall, in the circular room, I found not only the Byzantine cabinet but, astonishingly, another statue of the Lady of Flowers—the very same that I’d seen repeated in the streets of Città Vecchia. This statue was nearly six feet in height, draped in red linens, a stalk of stone flowers held in the crook of her arm. Dead flowers were heaped dramatically around her feet. Certainly she was a pagan idol, and not fit for the Catholic auberge, and yet it was clear she had been decorated and paid alms quite recently.

I was confused as to why a pagan idol would be lauded in the crypt by Catholic monks, and I turned to the golden cabinet, hoping for answers. Like a traditional reliquary, the cabinet had a variety of drawers, many of which I found to be empty. But in one, I made a rather grotesque discovery—the finger of what appeared to be a white ape. I took the finger from the drawer and studied it. I couldn’t imagine anything more heretical than putting an ape’s finger in a reliquary. How was it possible that Romegas and his brothers had done such a thing?

I don’t know what came over me in the next moment, but I
couldn’t stop myself from slipping the severed finger in the pocket of my military jacket. It was wrong of me to take the brothers’ relic, and perhaps later after I’ve studied it a bit more, I shall put it back.

I paused again in my reading. Nathan had not returned the ape’s finger to the reliquary, but had instead found reason to bring it back with him to England. I wondered what the meaning of this might be. And here again was the Lady of Flowers—the figure my mother had invoked as she lay dying in the Clock Parlor. The Lady who came back to me again and again.

Rather than turning to the next page, I closed the book and left it on the desk. Reading Nathan’s words made me feel as though I no longer could bear being alone. I would go to see Maddy, and tell her what I’d learned.

I
decided to walk across the Heath to reach La Dometa, hoping the great expanse would put my mind at ease and allow me to better contemplate Nathan’s journal and the new facts I’d learned. I had a hunch that it wasn’t the war itself that made Nathan seem so ill upon his return; it had something to do with the auberge and those rambling catacombs where the Lady of Flowers was worshipped.

As I pondered Nathan’s experience, breathing great lungfuls of bright air and listening to the rustle of yellow gorse, I caught sight of a figure sitting on a craggy rock near the path. The young man’s dirty red uniform jacket made my heart skip, and I wanted to veer off into the cover of the trees. But he’d already spotted me. There was nowhere to hide from him. He was a broad boy, sandy-haired, with a deep and jagged scar running across his right cheek. He bore an uncanny resemblance to our confidante, Judith Ulster, and I knew that I must be looking at the Fetch, Corydon Ulster, who’d delivered the awful letter to Stoke Morrow. I wasn’t the least bit pleased at the prospect of an encounter with him.