The World Above the Sky (28 page)

The lovers held their final pulse at bay, trembling, alive, suspended. Deep down the well, inside the brazen Head of Baphomet, the Stone Grail pulsed once, then rested.

The spreading branches and budding twigs of the oak above formed a lattice work of light and shadow. To distract his body Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk filled his mind with the scent of the crushed hay, the weave of the branches, the patches of blue, the glint of the sun, the face of Eugainia, her nipples light beneath his thumbs, her eyes closed, her head thrown back, turned to the left. Eugainia cast her memory to Lord Ard's fetid bed. The image repelled her. She raised her hips. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk followed, pressing higher than she expected. She righted herself, let her weight fall. He lifted her again. She opened her eyes, knowing his were also wide with surprise. Fire danced between them. She imagined their child riding waves of their passion in the warm salt sea of her belly.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's gaze shifted, his face a sudden mask of outraged disbelief.

Henry seized Eugainia by her shoulders, jerked her up and away.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk covered himself, rolled to his side. His seed spilled to wither on dry and sterile ground. He grunted, bewildered and ashamed. The force of Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's humiliation, and the outrage pulsing deep in Eugainia's belly, herself appalled by the profanity visited upon them, merged in fractured anguish. Their shame burned with a terrible heat. Inexpressible, their fury took the form of a white-hot bolt of light and shot down the well. Inside the hollow brazen head of Baphomet, the Holy Grail was shattered by the fire of Henry's great betrayal and the aggrieved lover's shame.

In the silence that followed, the thoughts of each drove inward. None imagined the magnitude of the destruction below. Inside the Head of Baphomet, wrapped in coarse linen where all God's grace and beauty waited unmolested for one hundred years, nothing remained but tattered cloth, and the rubble and dust of the Christ's most precious relic.

In a moment of anger predicted by Keswalqw, Henry had breached his sacred trust. His behaviour sickened him. He had disgraced the past. He knew the damage was irreparable. Henry Sinclair had found his Lady. His victory was hollow. His misguided passion had once and for all hanged, gutted and quartered his hopes for a New Arcadia.

Still in Henry's frozen grip, Eugainia folded her hands on her belly. Yes. Life. Still there. Drowning in a sea of shame.

How Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk rose from his belly to standing, Tooth of Wolverine light in his hands, he could not tell. What he knew was this: he would give his life for those of his wife and child. If further provoked, he would take the life that had shamed and dishonoured them both.

“Your hands, 'Enry Orkney. Remove them from my wife.”

Henry drew his broadsword.

“This woman belongs to another, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk.”

“I belong to no one but myself.” Eugainia struggled to free herself. “Take your hands from my body.”

“No, madam. I will not.”

“Madam?” Eugainia rounded on Henry. She spit in his face. He wiped His Lady's spittle from his cheek and the bridge of his nose. He dropped the visor of his helmet.

Eugainia moved to Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's side.

“Step aside, Eugainia. God wills it.”

“God wills no such thing.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk advanced, spear held low, his two-handed grip readying him to thrust, not throw.

“The Ghost World calls to you, Henry Orkney.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk circled, his jabs deflected by Henry's sword. Neither man could find advantage. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk stepped back, spun to the right. He forced every ounce of strength into his upper arms and shoulders. He aimed the flat of the spear head at Henry's right temple. Tooth of Wolverine connected with all the force Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's eighteen years could muster.

Henry felt he'd been struck by lightning. Thunder shook the steel helmet, then rumbled down his spine to the pit of his stomach. He suppressed the urge to vomit. He lashed out. He swung his broadsword blindly, caught the shaft of Wolverine within a hair's breadth of Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's leading hand. The Spear of Destiny was halved with a splintering crack.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk stood easy, his arms outstretched, a section of the halved spear in either hand, his naked chest vulnerable. Inviting. Henry raised his weapon two-handed above his head, his intention to bring it down with full force and split Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's skull.

Henry stepped forward.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk stood his ground.

Henry lunged, brought his sword down with all his might.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk fell like a stone and rolled out of range.

Henry regained his balance. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk crouched. Henry levelled his sword, spun to the left, a roar emerging as he gained momentum, powering the horizontal blow he hoped would strike the young warrior's head from his body.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk dove. He planted the Spear of Destiny in Henry's side.

Henry stood stupefied. He shifted his sword to his left hand. With his right, he grasped the shaft of the spear and pulled it free. A gush of blood. He threw the sectioned spear to the ground, covered the wound with his hand, staunching the flow. He advanced on Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk slipped his flensing knife at his calf from its sheath. He crouched low, ready to spring. Unseen by either, Eugainia retrieved what remained of the spear. In a tight, two-fisted grip she pressed the bloodied tip of the halved spear to her belly.

“Stop it! Now! Stop it or God and Goddess help you both, I will bury this stone blade in the Holy Child.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk sheathed his knife. The broadsword fell from Henry's hand. He collapsed into darkness.

Prince Henry Sinclair found himself back in the jaws of Jipijka'maq, Horned Serpent Person, thundering hell-bound through earth and solid rock.

THE WORLD ABOVE THE SKY

Summer, 1399

• • •

The Singing Stone of The People jutted from the centre of the green, circular meadow. The black obelisk appeared to pierce the surface of the earth at an angle, suggesting an arrow shot from the sky or, according to The People, a spear hurled from the Sky World by the Creator Himself, a sign of His dominion. Its height exceeded that of a tall man. At its widest, near the base, its girth doubled. More flat than round, the stone tapered to shoulder width near the apex, where it curved in on itself from two sides, not unlike a tongue. Its lingual shape supported both its name and prophetic capability.

The meadow lay subdued beneath a low, grey sky. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk stood alone, his back to the great stone. Both rock and man glistened, wet with moisture condensed from the sodden air. Tooth of Wolverine, its handle restored with a stout shaft of ash, stood inverted against the rock, its head indistinguishable from the star-stone, and the sister stone in Scotland from which the spearhead had been cut two thousand years ago.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk cut and removed four small rectangles from each of the corners of a square of birchbark. Spruce-root filaments, stripped and oiled, lay in a tight coil beside him. He scored and folded the bark into a box large enough to contain a clenched fist or, he thought, an enemy's beating heart. He regretted injuring Henry. He had no choice. Henry had shamed him and humiliated him. He had assaulted his wife. He had betrayed them both and would happily have murdered Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. “Then he would steal Moon Woman and my child. I did what any man must do when those he loves are threatened,” he said aloud to the stone, his only witness, his voice muffled by the thick air.

He pierced adjacent edges of the box's four corners with a thin bone awl, and threaded the spruce roots. He examined the box from every angle and found it pleased him. He set the box aside, near a small white-onyx bowl, traded for sturgeon roe far to the south some seasons past. Still warm from the fire, the bowl contained tar, tar from the pool at the base of the Smoking Mountain. Tar, he recalled, from the same pool that covered Moon Woman the day she shape-shifted, struggling to free her heart of its double grief, the loss of Morgase and her ill-made child.

He retrieved and examined the box more closely. Whatever could have prompted him to make such a thing as this, he wondered. Not since boyhood had such a childish notion overtaken him. He cut a length of willow, feathered one end with his knife, dipped the brush into tar. He dabbed the box seams inside and out, then set the finished box aside to dry.

Across Claw of Spirit Bird Bay, the Smoking Mountain belched a sulphurous cloud of vapour and black smoke. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk watched the cloud rise. It dispersed quickly, absorbed by the dense overcast. He offered his dilemma up to the Creator, hoping the smoke would carry his question swiftly to the Power he trusted would bring comfort and guidance.

“Great Spirit, why did you make me? All my life Keswalqw says it is I the tribe awaited, since the days of the Great River wars. ‘The People awaited you, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk,' she said, ‘the shaman/warrior/chief who will lead and heal The People.' Then the white-as-a-ghost-persons came. I see Eugainia and I know...she is for me. She says I was sent down to the earth, one of their three Gods made flesh, to walk beside her. How can this be? I'm a man like any other. I walk by myself. Did You, Great Spirit, in Your wisdom direct Kluscap to fill those sails, cause Henry's wind-catching blankets to puff out, to push his great canoes across the ocean sea? Did Kluscap bring me She Who Is My Love and Sorrow for a reason? I wish to be a simple man again. A man of The People who loves an ordinary woman. I know this can't be. When we join, Great Power fires our coupling. I feel that we are great and pure and good alone. Not ordinary, either of us. But together? We are eternal. How can I be of The People and not of The People at the same time? Mysterious are Your ways, Great Spirit. Your heart and my heart, are they not one and the same? Why is your purpose kept from us? Must I subdue my own sorrow to know the greater sorrow of the whole world? Can he who knows no illness, only vigour, hope to heal? Can he who walks alone give comfort only to the lonely? You direct us to tell a new story, the story of all women and all men, a tale beyond telling or remembering, to tell the old stories in a new way, in a white-as-a-ghost-person way and, at the same time, in the way of The People, so that all the people may understand, may find harmony in Your words, in the hearts and minds of the animals, in the voice of winds and mountains, in the minds of the earth and the sea, in the words and deeds of each other, so all may find new ways to love the Earth World and all who tread upon it. It is said at every turn of the great sky wheel a new voice sings the story-songs of the God. Were we—was I—sent by You to reveal a new world? To tell this new tale? This old tale in a new way? Almighty Voice...is it time for Two to sing the song together? Not his song. Not her song. The human song, the earth and sea and sky song; the song of perfect kindness in the time of the Two Made One?”

The ground below Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's feet trembled. He placed his hand on the obelisk. A slight vibration then a gentle tone, ineffable, sweet, stirred the hair on his arm. He lifted his hand from the surface. The vibration ceased. The tone faded. He lay his hand on the stone again. The vibration resumed, increased in volume, holding precise pitch. Tooth of Wolverine rattled against the stone, its movement slight, too gentle to account for the sparks that flashed from rock to the spearhead and back. The tooth of ravenous Wolverine, the point of the Spear of Destiny, began to glow. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk took the spear in both hands. He touched the spearhead to the obelisk. A fissure opened in the rock. He set Wolverine aside. The black-as-night Singing Stone of The People bled bright red blood. He held the birchbark box to the flow.

So this is why this childish box compelled me to make it, thought Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. “Enough,” he said when the box filled to overflowing. The bleeding stopped. The fissure healed. The star-stone stood unmarked and silent.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk held the box of blood above his head. The blood dissolved, ascended as vapour, indistinguishable from the grey, distillate air.

“Great Spirit, I asked a question. You answered. With Your blood, from the bones of the earth You answered.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk lowered the box, examined the interior. All that remained was a faint rose glow. He sat cross-legged at the base of the stone. He took up the last square of birchbark. He began to fashion a lid.

A day's journey distant, on the ocean side of the peninsula, Athol Gunn dismissed the slight tremor below his feet, confident the fruit of this fortnight's labours stood unthreatened; the recent Grail Chapel repairs would, he was certain, hold. Under direct orders from Eugainia, Sir Athol had halted reparations to the Grail Castle and relocated the expedition's artisans from the castle and the shipyard in Spirit Bird Bay to the Well of Baphomet, their task the immediate penetration of the well and retrieval of the Holy Grail. The timing of her orders, he reflected as he walked, seemed divinely ordained; the construction of the two longboats was all but complete. Both lay at anchor in a tidal estuary of Spirit Bay where the ship's timbers—seams and joints caulked—had swollen tight in the tidal estuary. Cured masts, ready to be footed and raised, lay on rafts alongside. All had been on schedule for a late-June, early-July departure. Sooner would have been better: the summer seas of the North Atlantic, though less prone to violent outbursts than those of a fall or winter crossing were known to be capricious. A small matter, Sir Athol believed, considering the opening of the well and retrieval of its treasure would save three lives; those of Eugainia St. Clair Delacroix, her unborn child, and his cousin, Prince Henry Sinclair.

The moccasined feet of generations of The People had moulded the path along The Gold River as it became known to the visitors, so named by Antonio who, before his banishment, scoured its bed clean of even the most minute nugget and flake. Athol walked at a brisk pace beside the pillaged river of the yellow stones. A clear purpose always put a spring in the sturdy man's step. He glanced back at the castle, its outline softened by the green tracery of unfolding leaves. All things considered, Athol was relieved the Chapel and Lady's quarters were finally inhabited. Eugainia had installed herself voluntarily in the unfinished castle fortress, the better to tend Prince Henry's wound. Still, there was much to do. The main concern throughout—the repaired chapel and bedchambers aside—were roofs and windows. Though the Great Hall's stone and rubble walls suffered least in its hundred years of neglect, its slate roof had collapsed as rafters decayed. Door and window casements had deteriorated. Leaded glass windows sagged over time and slumped to the ground. The kitchens—the two great hearths at least—were still viable. For this Sir Athol offered up a second prayer of thanks.

Eugainia remained convinced the healing power of the Grail was the only source of hope. It became clear in the minds of The People—less than a week since his side was pierced—that Henry's life depended on Keswalqw's ministrations. Eugainia felt the truth of this but still could not untangle her drive for survival and that of the child from the recovery of the sacred relic. She had no inkling that Henry's imprudence and her fury at the Well of Baphomet had reduced the Stone Grail to unholy rubble.

Nor had Athol Gunn. She's right, of course, he thought, the smell of the ocean sharp in his nostrils. As always. First, the Holy Grail.

The Grail's remains lay wrapped in cloth inside Baphomet some seventy metres and three treacherous floodtraps below the rock-hard surface, at the centre of the grove of oaks outlining the Templar cross pattée. An elaborate system of tunnels and traps had long ago been engineered to flood the well with tonnes of sea water if safeguards were rashly breached. None but Templars, or those privy to their singular skills as engineers, could hope to open the Well of Baphomet and survive. Templars had dug the Oak Island well a hundred years ago, and were in possession of the same techniques employed by the Crusaders who penetrated the stone walls of Jerusalem. Under the noses of the Saracens, Henry and Athol's forbears, the proto-Templars of the first crusade, breached the foundations of the Second Temple and, below it, constructed the tunnels that gave access to the great hall of the First Temple built by King Solomon himself.

Sir Athol roused himself from these reflections, crossed the wooden bridge to the island where, finally, good news awaited him; his men were in reach of the sacred prize.

The cold stone walls of Eugainia's bedchamber were smothered in tapestries, their bright threads worked to illuminate the grim miseries of big-eyed, flat-faced saints. If poor Henry woke to these dismal visions, Eugainia feared he'd wish he himself had drowned with the poor souls who'd met their fates in the Great Gulf, since named for the too lightly grilled St. Lawrence. Eugainia directed Henry be moved from her heavily draped bedchamber to the soft rose light and open air of the graceful chapel.

The chapel's vaulted ceilings commanded the eye to rise. The high, rounded rose window above the alter invited souls to soar, not shrink in despair. In the apse, Henry lay white and silent upon a bier before the alter, draped in quilted linen, his breathing light and irregular. The flag of the Knights Templar stood furled upon a standard at his head. At Henry's feet, a sweetgrass smudge pot issued fragrant smoke.

Keswalqw folded back the linen coverlet. Eugainia rolled up Henry's shirt, exposing the broad swath of cloth that circled his waist. The bandage, folded back, revealed a second linen pad. Beneath it, Keswalqw's spent poultice of moss infused with shaved willow bark and tar from the Smoking Mountain, packed with tidal mud from Turned Up Whale Belly Bay, lay in direct contact with the wound.

Eugainia cupped a fresh poultice, warmed by her hands. “I know the healing powers of tar. And the power of moss to dry and absorb. But mud on an open wound?”

“For every Earth World sickness, the Great Spirit provides a remedy—in the trees, the plants, the earth under your feet. From the World Above the Sky, Grandfather Sun sends great healing power to the weak in spirit. Grandmother Moon with her sky children, the stars, send strong medicine from the Sky World to her earth children who feel they've lost their way, who live fearful and alone. Earth medicine has the greatest healing power of all,” Keswalqw said as she moulded the poultice, its final shape that of a thick ash leaf. “The Power that causes a seed to sprout is heightened by the ocean's salt. Nothing has more Power than a sea-mud pack of willow and moss when wounded flesh turns putrid. Earth, sea and sky medicine. Together. Very strong.”

“And the tar?”

“Healing power from the World Below the Earth. Something in it helps bind the wound and keep it sweet. ”

“Tar is a great balm for the stomach.”

“Yes. And most diseases of the skin. Henry's flesh, once healed, won't decay again.”

“Still something taints his blood.”

“Only Henry himself, with the help of the sun and moon can find and kill that poison. All we can do is treat the wound and keep it clean.”