Lucifer's Crown (6 page)

"No. But it's hardly important with somebody dead."

"We don't always know what's important, do we?” His voice had a rasp beneath it, like velvet lined with sandpaper. He was looking at her, but he was also seeing something a long way beyond her. “An innocent bystander could well find—herself—at risk."

"Maggie, our teacher, told me to watch my back."

"By all means. Choose your friends cautiously. Though I say it as shouldn't, I suppose."

"That's okay, you come with references."

His quick laugh had more irony in it than humor.

"I came here to, well, witness everything I can,” Rose went on, “but I never intended to be a witness."

"One can most unexpectedly find oneself answering a call to witness truth,” said London.

"I'd like to know the truth, and not just about Vivian. About everything. Theological. Intellectual. Romantic, in every possible sense. Beauty and magic and ... But it's like searching for the Holy Grail, you know? You look and you look but you don't know if you're good enough to find it. Not that I'd recognize it if I did.” She laughed, too, at her own pretensions.

"The Holy Grail? Don't be so sure you wouldn't recognize it."

"Yo, Rose!” called Sean's voice. “Food's on the table!” He burst around the corner of the hedge and stopped.

"This is Mr. London,” Rose explained, and gently dumped the cat, who sat down and began washing his face. “You know, Maggie told us about him."

"Oh.” Sean extended his hand. “Sean MacArthur."

Standing up, London returned the handshake. “There's nothing older but the hills, MacArthur, and the Devil."

"Huh?” asked Sean.

"An old Scottish saying. Indicating the antiquity of your family, I daresay."

"Oh. We're from Plano, Texas, actually."

"It was nice meeting you,” Rose told London.

"My pleasure,” he returned gravely.

Rose loped off beside Sean, telling herself that London was a gentleman and a scholar in the truest sense of the expression. She'd heard his words, but she hadn't necessarily heard what he meant by them. He was going to be as demanding a teacher as Maggie. Still, between the purring cat and the cultivated academic, Rose felt a lot better about life going on and everything.

Sean opened the massive wooden door of the house, releasing the scents of baking bread and frying bacon. Food for the body, Rose thought as she stepped inside. One appetite at a time.

Only in the U.K., Maggie reflected, would you
eat
your tea. But here, “tea” was more than beverage and national restorative, it was a meal she and the students badly needed. Fat insulated the body from shocks.

Bess Puckle's soft round face appeared in the dining room door. “More chips? Scones? Freshen the pot?"

"Oh no, thank you,” replied Maggie.

"Righty-ho.” Bess vanished back into the kitchen.

Maggie wiped the clotted cream and jam from her lips. “It's going to go straight to my hips,” she told Anna, “but it sure is satisfying."

Anna had nibbled while the others chowed down. She shook her head apologetically. “I haven't been able to eat rich food since I was a child in Warsaw. With the war, we were on very short rations."

A Jewish child in Warsaw during the war, Maggie repeated silently. Short rations didn't describe it. But Anna's composure rejected sympathy.

This time it was Alf Puckle who appeared in the doorway. “Nothing else? Then let's have us a shufti round the house.” He led his guests into the corridor, saying, “Sorry we couldn't accommodate you last night, but we're always full up October thirty-first, what with the loonies and their fires and their dancing. Some even walk along those farm plots on the Tor, thinking they're a labyrinth."

"There's evidence for that belief,” Maggie told him.

Alf shrugged. “No harm in it, but no purpose in it either. No need for supernatural moonshine, the real world's enough for anyone."

Not necessarily
. But then, “not necessarily” was probably what Vivian, the Lady of Shalott, had felt. Maggie glanced at Rose. The young woman seemed less grim now, thank goodness and Temple Manor.

Rose looked askance at their host. “Do you go to church, Mr. Puckle?"

"Easter and Christmas, when Bess gets stroppy.” Chuckling, Alf raised the latch of a door. It opened with a screech along a rut worn in the stone floor of a medieval hall. The interlaced beams of the high ceiling made patterns of light and shadow above a fireplace large enough to roast SMU's mascot pony.

Sean's head hit the lintel with a thud. “Shi—oot!” he exclaimed, censoring himself in mid-word.

Maggie flinched, but knew better than to try and check him over.

"Some say folk were smaller back then,” Alf said consolingly, and opened his arms to the room. “Bess and me always wanted to own a property with some history. It was a right bit of luck when her vicar recommended us to Thomas. He offered us a hire-purchase plan—we manage the place as a B&B and make repairs and such, and in time we've bought it. Bess's daughter wasn't too keen on living here. But she's an adult now, making her own way.” A shadow touched Alf's face, then passed so quickly Maggie wondered whether she'd noticed it.

"Very generous,” she said. “But he couldn't keep it up by himself, could he?"

"No. Last of his line, he is. Just goes to show you, one man's misfortune is another's good luck. This here's the Great Hall, the oldest part of the house. Fourteenth century. The rest of the place was added on a piece at a time. Windows, chimneys, stonework—it's a right jumble and more than a bit drafty, but personable."

"How much renovation did you have to do?” Anna asked.

"Not so much as you'd expect. The Londons made a good fist of the upkeep over the years—no rising damp, no woodworm. Place just needed some life in it, is all."

Smiling contentedly, Alf guided them through a maze of rooms, staircases, windows, and fireplaces. Timber floors creaked. Doorways sagged. Stone and brick exuded that earthy, musty odor Maggie always found so appealing, the scent of the past. The furnishings of the house ranged from antique to junk, sprinkled with twentieth-century fundamentals such as flush toilets and electric lights. By the time Alf waved them through the front door with its wrought-iron knocker, Sean had forgotten to act blasé, Rose was openly enchanted, and Anna's sharp eyes hadn't missed so much as a nail.

An archway led from the courtyard to a lawn. Beyond the weathered stone wall encircling the grounds, ravens cawed, adding ambience, and a car honked, subtracting it. Still, the car was heading down to the bridge over the River Brue, where Sir Bedivere had returned Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake.

Alf gestured toward the house. “That wing there's the latest, early eighteenth century."

Silvery half-timbering abutted gray stonework which abutted off-white plasterwork laced by flaming Virginia creeper. The red bricks of the Tudor chimneys looked as though they'd been knotted and woven.
Magic
, Maggie thought. Temple Manor was a quilt sewn by the hands of time and man, and like a quilt it was both shelter and allegory. Its gravity made her frame house look like the Little Pig's house of straw.

"This way, Thomas will be in the chapel. That and the cottage is all he kept for himself.” Alf led them around a corner and past a yew hedge. Beyond it lay a formal garden, overlooked by the many-paned windows of the gallery. “He tells some good historical tales, he does, not all dates and acts of Parliament and such."

"I've been reading his books for years,” Maggie said. “I assigned a couple to the group."

"Very well-written,” Anna added.

"I liked the one about monastic life,” said Rose, “how the monotonal notes of the chants reverberated against the stone."

Sean shook his head. “The books are okay. Heavy on people's feelings but light on the battles."

"People in battles have plenty of feelings,” Rose told him.

"Here we are,” announced Alf. “Oldest building on the property. Twelfth century, on seventh-century foundations."

The church stood aloof on an expanse of lawn, its ancient stone blushing in the sunshine. A dove peered down from a corner of the roof. “Supposedly St. Bridget left a bell here,” Maggie lectured. “She began her story as Brighid, a Celtic goddess with similar attributes. Bridget's nuns tended Brighid's sacred fire in Kildare, Ireland, until the Reformation. The newer chapel here at Beckery was dedicated to Mary Magdalene, a saint whose origins are all too human. This is as ancient a site as Glastonbury, and just as much on the pilgrim circuit."

"Like the monks finding Arthur's grave in the Abbey, pilgrims being right good business and all.” Alf winked conspiratorially.

"Arthur saw a vision of the Holy Grail here at Beckery,” Maggie went on with a smile, appreciating his honesty. “Lancelot retired to a hermit's cell by Chalice Well. Guinevere was kidnapped and held on the Tor.” Ravens exploded from the trees beyond the wall and skeined into the distance. “And according to some stories Arthur lived on in the form of a raven, a pagan borrowing if ever there was one."

"The Arthurian legends,” Anna said, “are Western Europe's equivalent to the Dreamtime of the Australian aborigines. Myths of origin and identity."

"Stories,” said Alf dismissively.

But, Maggie thought in silent protest, stories were honest, too. “With the name ‘Temple’ I assume the manor was originally a Templar preceptory."

"The Knights of the Temple of Solomon,” said Sean, pumping his fist in the air. “They were tough."

"This was once a preceptory, right enough,” Alf said. “After the Reformation, the Londons fitted out a chapel in the house, still being Catholic and all, and the chapel here became a barn. But our Thomas's seen to its restoration right and proper. Go on ins..."

A screech tore the sky. A reddish-brown missile shot by the edge of the roof. Everyone jumped. The dove disappeared. “A falcon!” Alf exclaimed.

The bird of prey landed atop the roof tree, its hooked beak turning right and left, its bright eyes scanning its domain. Then it launched itself toward the north and dwindled into the distance. One white feather drifted down to Rose's feet. “No, it didn't get—oh, there she is."

The dove's small white head peeped out of a crevice between two stones, no doubt counting its blessings.

Maggie exhaled. Rose, a dove ... She had to stop looking for signs and portents.

"I'll leave you to it, shall I?” Alf glided away across the lawn.

"Thank you,” Maggie called. “Onwards,” she said to her charges, and stepped over the deeply-furrowed stone threshold.

The tiny chapel was dark and still, redolent of mildew and paint. Dust motes eddied in swords of sunlight that glanced through the narrow western windows. Below the eastern window sat an altar holding a crucifix and a vase of crimson flowers. To one side stood a small wooden cabinet.

The light drew gleams of color from the niches of a rood screen so old the wood looked moth-eaten. Above it loomed the obviously new crucifix. The figure of the man hanging from its crosspiece curved downward, as though his poor, torn palms ached to embrace every soul standing below and turn misery into triumph. Sunlight danced across the thorns in his crown, making it a crown of stars. Such artistry! Maggie thought.

Anna stood a bit apart, respectful but unmoved. Rose looked upward with eyes as bright as votive candles. Sean shuffled his feet, playing the bored sophisticate again.

Maggie did a bit of foot-shuffling herself. It'd been years since she'd attended a church service. Her wedding had been in her mother's Episcopal church. Later, the rite had—no, it was she and Danny who had failed. It was she who had disillusioned herself. The sacraments were valid if you believed in them. What had Gupta implied? That you could choose to believe? But she wasn't sure she believed that, much as she wanted to.

A man ducked through a second doorway. “Ah, here you are."

Norman
, Maggie thought. Except for his arch of a nose, his body was all straight lines. His eyes were the faded brown of the Bayeux tapestry and the angle of his chin implied aristocratic hauteur. Only a sprinkling of gray in his hair and a few lines and sags in his face conceded age. Maggie had expected Thomas London to be old and frail. This man was no older than fifty. He must have been publishing when he was fifteen.

He reached up to a dangling socket and inserted a light bulb. Light flooded the niches in the rood screen. Turning around, London said, “Rose, Sean, it's good to see you again. And you must be Ms. Sin...” He stopped abruptly, clearing his throat. “Your name is Sinclair, isn't it?"

"Maggie Sinclair.” What? Had he seen a wanted poster hanging in the post office? “It's an old Scottish-Norman name."

"So it is.” His handshake was cool and considered. “Have you by any chance relatives in Scotland?"

"Not that I know of."

"But surely the ‘Maggie’ is for Margaret, as in Scotland's St. Margaret."

"No, it's for Magdalena, I'm afraid.” With the light reflecting off his glasses Maggie couldn't see London's eyes. Still, she took a step back from what she sensed was a very intense gaze. So her name wasn't a common one. She didn't owe him a character sketch of her single-before-it-was-cool-to-be-single mother.

Anna stepped forward. “My name is Anna Stern, Mr. London."

"Ah,” he said, and unbent so far as to turn to her and return her handshake. “How do you do, Mrs. Stern. And it's Thomas, please."

"Then I'm Anna,” she told him.

"Where did you find such an awesome rood?” asked Rose.

"I must confess to carving and painting it and the other figures,” Thomas replied.

"Are you restoring the pictures or making new ones?” Anna asked.

"Restoring, as best I can."

Feeling more and more like a one-trick pony, Maggie stepped closer to the screen. A partially completed painting of the Virgin Mary filled the niche beside the doorway. Of the others only three were finished. “The saints associated with Glastonbury, right? Joseph of Arimathea, Bridget, David of Wales, Dunstan, either St. Paulinus of York or St. Neot of Cornwall..."