THE GATEKEEPER – by Michael Ireland
PROLOGUE
Lucy and Quella are walking in a poppy field. The sun is low in the sky. Golden light dances across the tiled roof of an ancient abbey in the distance. So vivid—the waving poppies—like an impressionist painting. The sun warms Lucy’s skin. A breeze kisses her face.
A total eclipse banishes the sun. A storm rages in, and the wind, a red tempest, tears the breath out of them, sets poppy petals flying. When the light returns, black clouds pelt down rain. It soaks their clothes. Lightning flashing, thunder booming, Lucy drags Quella behind her. They run hard across the vast field toward an old man at the arched gate of the abbey. His purple robes flap in the breeze. He beckons, his mouth forming words lost beneath the raging winds. She has seen him somewhere. And what’s that deafening sound? Thunder? No. Galloping hooves? Lucy scans the horizon, pulls Quella into a crazy, curving dance around her. Quella falls. “Mommy!” Lucy hauls her up.
Pounding hooves beat out a dreadful rhythm—horses? But where? Wait—the old man. His voice is a whisper beneath the wind. “Don’t go back to sleep,” he says. “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.” He reaches out, urging her forward. “Come and see. People are going back and forth against the doorsill, where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.”
The earth buckles, cracks. Whirlwinds of smoke erupt. The fissures become a chasm. Up out of the widening rupture come four cloaked figures on horseback, horrifying, riding hard toward them, commanding the rain to part. One wears a black cloak, one a yellow cloak, and one wears red. But it is the fourth Rider—the Pale Rider—that Lucy knows she must fear the most. Lucy screams, “Run, Quella! Don’t let go of Mommy’s hand!” Quella falls. Lucy reaches for her. The riders are upon them—and the Pale Rider reaches out a bony hand.
CHAPTER 1 – ROME, ITALY:
Dom Cameron yawned, laid his plump hands across his belly, and waited for Abbott Finian. All this way from the abbey to Rome, and the Right Reverend had left him sitting here in this Vatican hallway. It was exquisite: marble, polished wood, carved stone. One should feel reverent when visiting the greatest monument ever built to the Lord our God. But to come to Vatican City, not see Rome. Why did Abbott Finian, blessed be unto him, even bring me? He needs a lackey to bark orders at, boss around.
Cameron pulled a folding knife hanging from a leather belt around his tunic and, glancing about, he opened it and polished the blade with a fold of his scapular. Cameron felt annoyed. Even if he’d wanted to, which he didn’t—there were crowds in the plaza and he didn’t like the hubbub—he wasn’t permitted to go hear the Holy Father’s morning mass. He always got the short, nasty end of the stick. Back home at the abbey, he’d have finished morning prayers, enjoyed a hush-hush bowl of porridge from Cook’s bubbling pot. He’d have soaked it in goat’s milk, sweetened with honey from the hives. He sighed, felt a rush of anger. It was Finian’s fault! His hatred could consume him—yes, even a man of the cloth.
It started the day Abbott Carlyle died, and he’d let the sun go down on his anger, day after day. Now, it threatened to burst into flame. How could he, the most loyal of brethren, remain silent? Something had to be done—but who would do it? Not him, he’s a minion, the lowest of the low. It’s always been that way, ever since he was a five-year-old kid, plopped into the abbey orphanage with the other sad foundlings. This is my life. I do as I’m told, slopping the pigs, milking the goats, chopping the heads off the chickens on Sundays, bleeding them.
It didn’t bother him, the chicken blood. God hath given the fowl and the beasts of the field unto us, the children of God. It says so in the Bible. Human blood? That bothered him. He’d puked in the bucket when he’d cleaned up after Abbott Carlyle’s suicide. God rest the kind man’s soul. But suicide—a lie! He knew suicide was a mortal sin. What could that American have said to make Abbott Carlyle shoot himself? It made no sense.
Finian was hiding something. His Eminence Cardinal Beauville was, too. It had something to do with that American. When Abbott Carlyle found the Devil’s Doorway, that’s when the trouble started. Surely Finian had made a pact: Keep silent, become the new Abbott. He doesn’t deserve it, Cameron thought. Other brothers have served longer, been obedient in the service of the Holy Father. Why Finian? Cameron smelled a rat: that tub ‘o lard, Abbott Finian.
Cameron clipped his knife back on his belt, rested his head against the marble wall, and closed his eyes. One of Cameron’s eyes was bigger than the other. It was lazy and roamed, so when he met people for the first time, they looked away, not sure which eye was the good one. It didn’t help that he sweated, his teeth were small, his face round, his skin sallow, that he was pear-shaped, or that he stuttered. It made him silent, withdrawn, voiceless in the company of higher-ups. The only place he fit was in the service of God. Living in solitude is God’s vocation.
Cameron felt the cold marble against his shaved head. He could smash his head hard, repeatedly, into this wall. That might make him forget everything. He opened his eyes, stared up at the ceiling fresco, remembering the scene in the scroll room. Surreal. Abbott Carlyle lying there, mouth open, body twisted on the tile floor. If he’d killed himself, where was the gun? As the weeping brothers had loaded Carlyle’s body onto the stretcher, Father Finian snapped orders, pointed his knotty fingers, then left Cameron there. “Clean this up,” he’d commanded. Cameron had dipped the mop in the bucket of water, tried to scrub the corruption away. He’d dropped to his knees, howling at God, at humanity for its sins. Greed, sloth, gluttony. Envy, anger, pride. Lust for gold. It made Cameron’s stomach churn. He’d vomited right into the bucket of crimson water.
On hands and knees in the scroll room, it all seemed clear. The abbey’s monks mixed up in something terrible. But what could he do? He had no power. He was a prisoner, held hostage by others’ greed. To stay is terrifying. Thinking about leaving is terrifying. But rock the boat, he’d be wearing sackcloth, be sent into solitary confinement in the dungeon—again. Whom can I tell? Dom Stuart would believe me, but I can’t take him to the dungeon with me. I’ll tell no one. I’ll sit here. God will show me the way.
Cameron let his head fall onto his chubby chest, prayed for God to renew his faith. Yes, faith would save him.
A shout erupted from the crowd outside in the square. Moments later, sirens. He nearly jumped up to see, but Finian had said, “Sit. Don’t move.” Cameron would pray to Almighty God to be clothed in faith, to be renewed in honor, loyalty, and the spirit of sacrifice. He would be true to his heavenly Father, obedient to his earthly master. God would judge the murderers. Vengeance was the Lord’s. He must calm his anger, lest it grieve him into sin.
CHAPTER 2 – CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS:
“Mariel! Come and see,” Theo commanded into the silent air. But there was no beating of wings at the windowpane, no scratching of talons at the worn frame, no sign she’d visited her perch at the back corner of his work bench. She’d wandered away again, carefree, like the wind. Theo glanced at the clock—4:30 p.m. She should have been back by now.
Theo had found Mariel in a ditch in France in the year 1220, half-dead and starving, a rare albino falcon, pierced by a hunter’s arrow. He’d nursed her to health, trained her. They had been inseparable since. Through wars and drought, famine and plague, through bad times and good, she’d been his touchstone, his devoted companion, his only love. In his youth, in the early days in Egypt, he’d known the love of a woman, but she’d died in his arms, in childbirth. The child died, too. Neferi, his beloved wife, and Theodora, his daughter, one hour old, gone in the blink of an eye. He learned then that love can’t last forever, and he vowed never to love again. And he never did, except for Mariel.
Theo shuffled across the earthen floor of his workshop, past shelves stacked with bottles of all colors, styles, and sizes, all labeled and inscribed with Latin. Some, containing ointments, were small, of opaque brown glass, with stout handles and stopped with corks. Others, globe-shaped, were sealed with wax, holding distillations. Theo inspected these as he passed, popped corks, lifted jars of spicy infusions to his nose. Satisfied, he set them back on the shelves.
Theo walked slowly, feeling his age. He stopped to stoke the fire of the antique furnace. Flames whooshed up, fire devoured the wood. Smoke rushed up the stone chimney, which soared a story past the wooden rafters and out through the cathedral roof. He slammed the grate, made his way across the workshop to his long work stand.
His bench was cluttered with sorcerer’s tools, and in places they had tumbled off and lay, gathering grime, upon the floor. Piled high in the chaos of scattered equipment were all manner of roots, grasses, dried blossoms, and berries. Some were soaking in pungent-smelling brew, others were crushed, dried, and bundled, or tied in skeins of jute or colored string and suspended from the ceiling. Still more hung from wide-headed nails driven into the beams that stood perpendicular to the stone walls of the workshop. Gadgets of all types lay here and there and spaces not occupied by strange contraptions were thick with cobwebs, home to gigantic spiders, and not a small amount of dust.
Theo’s huge white divining bowl sat on the far side of his work stand. He ran his leathery fingers across its moonstone rim, embossed with a design of the Ouroboros. Planting his body in front of his bowl, he lifted his rugged face heavenward and smoothed back his silver hair. He settled into his wizard’s “dragon stance,” legs bent, feet planted. Swaying, he waved his hands clockwise above his bowl. The frayed cuffs of his purple sorcerer’s robe swept up and down: swish, swish, swish. “One is everything. The snake is one. It has two symbols. Good, evil. By the name of power, I banish all shadows from this holy vessel.”
The water in the divining bowl swirled. An image of Claude Monet’s painting, “The Poppy Field Near Argenteuil,” formed in the bowl. Theo chanted in Latin. “Ad astra, et supra,” he sang. “Mariel. Veni. Nunc!” A white falcon flew toward him, first mistily, then clearly, until its face filled the divining bowl—it was as if she’d fly up out of the bowl into the workshop. She screeched, beak opened wide.
“Ah, Mariel. There you are. What’s the matter? Come and see. I need you.”
Mariel blinked her brown eyes, then turned her head to show Theo her surroundings. She looked down from high atop a weeping willow tree, and she kacked a low, melodious trill. She directed her gaze to a street sign: “Welcome to Willow Grove. Go slow. Children at Play.”
Mariel swooped down over a neighborhood of brightly colored houses, over city streets, then flew low over a highway, bumper-to-bumper with rush-hour traffic. She glided above a white sports car. The pretty blonde driver craned her neck to watch the white falcon through her windshield, and the blonde child in the back seat shrieked and pointed as Mariel reeled away into the amaranth sky.
“What mischief are you up to now?” Theo watched Mariel fly above the car for a few blocks, then land on a tree above on a small bungalow in a rain-drenched suburb. Through a gauze of rain, Mariel showed Theo the blond woman and child parking their car and stepping inside the house. The door closed behind them.
Mariel turned her head. In Willow Grove, past the weeping willow trees lining the street, past the stone walls along the lane, parked at the far end of the block, Mariel showed Theo a sleek limousine—the Black Mariah. The driver’s door was open. Its driver, wearing a long, pale cloak, was sleeping against the wheel. Mariel flapped her wings, lifted her white body up and away from her tree top. She stooped down, then swooped over the rainbow-colored houses, over mailboxes and lamp posts, over children’s toys left in yards in the rain. She hovered over the Black Mariah so Theo could see what she could see.
The Black Mariah came into view in Theo’s bowl until it filled its circumference. The image receded, turned, and rested upon one feature of the coach—the red symbol on the license plate—IHShVH. Theo steadied himself against his work bench. “No. This can’t be.” He scrutinized the symbol, poked at the water. The image dispersed, reformed, as it had been. “Alas.” He bowed his head, tapped his hand against his mouth, punctuating each word: “Thorn wood, laurel leaves. Palm, parchment. Sulfur, salt, mercury.” He grasped the rim of the bowl. “Mariel? Show yourself.”
The image of the Black Mariah swirled into blackness, and Mariel’s face appeared in the bowl. She blinked.
“Bird!” Theo commanded. “No time to waste. Come and see.” With a sweep of his robe, he set about putting his workshop in order. He paced through his shop, muttering to the stone walls. “The pale horseman, here at last?” Theo hoped he was wrong. “Has the time come? I’ll need all my powers.”
Theo had prayed for centuries this day would never arrive. It was inevitable. He’d always known. He’d kept Conquest, War, Famine, and Death at bay nigh on two thousand years. Could he keep the Pale Horseman at bay a little longer?
Theo had lived at the beginning of history. A great-grandchild many times over of the epic warrior, Gilgamesh, he was heir to the wisdom, knowledge, and magic of the ages. He’d seen empires rise and fall, and had ensured that through bloodshed and suffering, the gates of the apocalypse remained shut. Sometimes, it seemed hell had been loosed upon the earth. Through his skill and ingenuity, thus far, humanity had been saved. He’d not done it alone. No. He’d shared his wisdom and skill with wise men over the centuries…in fact, he’d embodied many of them. He’d lived as the great mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras. He’d been Plotinus, the greatest of the Neoplatonists. He’d lived lives as a great man, and as a simple man, changing his name and persona as needs dictated. He’d served as librarian at Alexandria before the great fire, again during the second fire, and thereafter he’d lived for a time in that beloved city as the philosopher Iamblichus of Chalcis. In many lifetimes, he’d lived with, worked with, and befriended the greatest philosophers, thinkers, scientists, theologians, mathematicians, and seers of all time—among them, Johannes Trithemius, Nostradamus, Francis Bacon, John Dee, and others. Those had been heady days, heartfelt friendships forged with great men—men who each, in their own way, had changed the world. He missed them all. After these centuries, he longed to return to that world. Men could be trusted then. Things made sense then. Things were simpler. It had been man united with man, against the elements, man against nature, as humankind learned to conquer ignorance and fear of the unknown. Battles were fought and won and lost, but it had always been sword-to-sword, man-to-man, comrade with comrade. This time, things were different. This time, he was on his own, with no one to trust. Now, it was not a war between humankind and the things of the body, heart, mind, and politics. This time, it was a war of good against evil—of humankind against the demons of the netherworld. This is what humankind hath wrought—through greed, gluttony, and pride, humanity itself hath released the demons of hell. It hath drawn misery unto itself. Corruption, hatred, and abuse of power hath brought society to its knees. Now, humanity will pay the price. The next war will be a war to end all wars. Can he save it this time? Alone?
“Yes, I can! I must!” Theo declared. “That dreaded time shall not come, not while I am the Gatekeeper!”
END OF SAMPLE
