Hugo stared horrified at the empty chair till recently occupied by his lover. ‘What have you done with Lucacz?’ he shouted.
His sister turned her calm gaze on him, as she recovered the skull brooch and reattached it to her habit. ‘Calm yourself Hugo. We’ve done nothing to him, other than put him in a place where he can do no harm to us.’
The abbess added. ‘You have no idea how dangerous is the spirit you’ve been consorting with, young man.’
Hugo swore to himself. His funny, sexy and occasionally infuriating boyfriend, dangerous? ‘Where is he? You don’t think you can get away with imprisoning Lucacz? The World Beyond won’t let you get away with this.’
The abbess shrugged. ‘You need to be aware that in this place the World Beyond has no power to do anything. My predecessors could even forbid these precincts to the troublesome spirit called Jonas Niemand. However, in common politeness, your sister will take you to where the ghost boy is confined and you may assure yourself that the shade of Lucacz Marcovic is otherwise unharmed and fine, for now.’
It perhaps had been better that the abbess had not added ‘for now’, as that phrase kindled the sort of Tarlenheim pride and defiance that Hugo fully shared with his warrior predecessors. However for now he meekly followed Euphemia. She led him out through the Great Cloister, and then through an arch adjacent to the Chapter House he had previously not noticed. It led through an alley and another arch to a second, smaller cloister, a quiet place enclosing a garden in the centre of which was a tall medieval effigy of the Virgin Mary. The west end of a large Romanesque building faced them across the garden.
‘That’s the old infirmary,’ Euphemia said. ‘It’s used these days as cells for the aged and disabled members of our community, not as a lazarette.’
‘It looks really old,’ Hugo commented.
‘It’s the first abbey church of Medeln, most of it belongs to the eleventh century. Before it housed nuns Medeln was founded as a Benedictine abbey for men in 1044. But it fell into decline and it was refounded in grander style by Duke Waclaw the Pious for nuns of the then fashionable Cistercian order in 1136. The nuns built a larger but plainer church for the new community to the west, and converted the smaller old church to be its infirmary.’
‘Why have you put Lucacz here?’
‘There are cells in its crypt which are wrapped around by powerful spells, which have been used in the past to safely confine unsafe persons who possess a troublesome amount of magic. We think that it will contain a powerful spirit like Lucacz, and thwart any other spirit who tries to rescue him.’
‘Why? What’s he done wrong?’
‘Revenants are very powerful beings, Hugo. And they should not return across the barriers between our world and the World Beyond that they have once passed.’
‘But they have to,’ Hugo declared. ‘How else can the freshly dead spirits be helped to find their way to Eden?’
Euphemia whirled on her brother. ‘What! How do you know about that place?’
‘I was a witness when the dead of Brentheim passed, and Lucacz and Karl Wollherz have since taken me to Eden.’
His sister stared, at first astonished and then her face clouded with anxiety. ‘I worry,’ she declared. ‘You seem now to me to belong to the borderlands, Hugo. You’re no longer wholly of this world. That place you’ve been to makes you its own, as we have seen often in the past. And you’re sure you’ve not yet encountered Jonas Niemand? Karl Wollherz was his great friend amongst mortals. He looks like a ten-year-old boy, darkly beautiful and usually unclothed. He can manifest with small horns and sometimes with wings.’
Hugo smiled. ‘I think I’d have noticed, Euphemia. Say, are you thinking that he might set Lucacz free?’
‘From what we know of Jonas Niemand, if anyone might attempt it, it would be him.’
***
‘Stern sort of babe, your sister,’ Lucacz commented when Hugo entered his cell under the infirmary.
‘The door’s not locked, dead boy. Tell me why you can’t leave?’
‘Ah … that would be because of the Icon.’
‘What’s the Icon?’
‘It’s difficult to describe. But in one way it is a sort of window, and it opens directly from the presence of the Creator into His creation. Even for a mortal it would be dangerous to approach it. For us it ennervates and suppresses our powers if we encounter it uninvited. How can I put it so you’d understand?’ Lucacz gave a tired sort of grin. ‘It’s like you’d feel if I asked you for a fuck after you’d been wanking four times consecutively. Not good for much.’
‘I knew I should have never done it that time.’
‘You are a show off, Hugo, and so easy to lead astray.’ Lucacz chuckled and kissed Hugo on the cheek.
‘So you can’t leave.’
‘If I tried it I’d just sort of dissolve. Fatal. Though of course I’m dead anyway.’
‘Not to me you aren’t, lover. What are the chances of someone supernatural coming to help you?’
Lucacz shrugged. ‘I’m not a person of great consequence in the World Beyond. Karl Wollherz is my patron, I suppose, but it’s members of the angelic or seraphic orders who can deal with this shit, and that lot don’t like entering the mortal world, apart from the great Jonas Niemand of course. But he doesn’t know anything about me.’
The revenant boy pondered for a while. ‘Here’s an idea, and probably not a good one. The barriers are thinnest at the east end of Medeln Abbey. You might go there and open your mind, it’ll be a sort of call to anyone who’s listening in the World Beyond. You’re attuned to Eden, so there’s a chance.’
‘I’ll do it, Lucacz!’ Hugo declared.
‘That’s my posh boy,’ Lucacz chuckled. ‘You really don’t like being treated like those nuns have treated you, do you?’
‘You’re under my protection, Dead Boy. To treat you like this is not to my honour.’
‘My, my! You can do “nobleman” after all. You sound just like the old counts did when one of us common folk pissed them off.’
***
Hugo took a seat at the east end of the great abbey church, on a cold stone ledge around the apse which contained the chapel of All Angels. The fine glass in its four round-headed windows featured what he took to be archangels. The fourth of the winged figures was unfamiliar to him. It was an unidentified youthful angel armed with a spear of flame.
He found its pose an odd mixture of insouciance and threat.
He opened his mind, an odd phrase to describe simply closing his eyes and trying to think of nothing. Hugo was a Catholic boy so his mind naturally settled into the repetitive rhythm of the rosary as a way of seeking meditative space. With the versicles ‘Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death’ he became aware that he was no longer alone in the eastern chevet of the abbey. He opened his eyes and saw a rather plump old nun, trying to pass the praying boy quietly but unavoidably tap- tap- tapping with her cane.
She smiled nicely. ‘Sorry young man, I didn’t mean to interrupt your devotions.’
Hugo murmured reassurances but as he did, he caught something in the lady’s eyes that he recognised, the same light he sometimes glimpsed in those of Lucacz. She too was a revenant.
‘My lady,’ he said. ‘Excuse me for mentioning it, but I rather think you do not need any walking stick to get around.’
The nun leaned on her unnecessary walking stick and submitted Hugo to a very keen examination. ‘My boy, your association with that incorrigible and randy young ostler has had its effect on you. You have the clear sight.’
‘Are you the answer to my prayers?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Fortunately for you, I tend to like cheeky lads like you, young Count Hugo. So in a way I am. Do you know who I am?’
Hugo looked to his left where a great shrine reared up behind the high altar. ‘You’re my ancestor, St Fenice of Tarlenheim,’ he stated.
She laughed softly. ‘Yes I am. You asked about my walking stick, which I very much needed in life. Obviously, as your experience has taught you, I don’t need it now to ease my physical infirmity. But I do need it to retain something of my humanity.’
Hugo smiled. For the first time he was not on the back foot with one of his visitants. He went straight to his main concern. ‘I want to free my Lucacz from his imprisonment. Can you help?’
‘Yes I can,’ she replied, so swiftly that it occurred to Hugo that she had come to him with her mind firmly made up to do just that. Now why should that be? he wondered. There was a bigger game going on here and it occurred to Hugo that he might well be a catalyst in this affair rather than a player. ‘Er … how will you do it?’ he had to ask.
‘Well my dear, it will need the help of an old friend of mine. This is Jonas Niemand.’
Hugo looked to his side and found a naked boy perched there on the ledge. He was tanned and dark of hair, a perfect, graceful and beautiful boy in every way, apart from the small blue horns jutting from his forehead.
***
An hour later the great organ situated in the south choir aisle of the abbey whined into life as its new electrical systems powered up for the office of Sext. The young novice who was acting as duty organist checked the range of musical scores and texts in front of her, which she needed to fulfil her complicated duty.
The organist looked around the choir behind her. The stalls were not entirely empty, an elderly nun she did not recognise had taken the canopied stall at the west end north side. It was the stall reserved for the abbess, and she had no right to sit there. For a moment the novice thought she ought to go and move the woman, but the distant singing of the processional hymn by the community, moving from the Chapter House into the south transept, warned her that the office was about to begin.
The novice watched the developing theatre of embarrassment in her keyboard mirror as the community filed though the choir entrance and each nun climbed up to her accustomed place in the facing stalls. The abbess and prioress entered at the rear of the procession. Abbess Katherine stood disconcerted holding her pastoral staff as she found her stall already occupied. Prioress Euphemia, carrying her own stave of office, climbed up the steps and seemed to be remonstrating with the intruding nun. But a few words from the intruder seemed to send her reeling back to the choir.
The singing of the community’s processional anthem faltered as the strange scene played itself out. The abbess and prioress exchanged a few hasty words but could do no more than stare up at the strange nun. After a minute of confusion, the intruder stood. Despite her age and evident infirmity she spoke in a voice that carried effortlessly through the great church, from the west door to the easternmost apse.
‘Sisters! You are familiar with the idea of visitation. Every year this community receives a delegation of abbesses from the Chapter General of our order, and has done since long before I was a nun in this place. The visitation inspects the life of the community and its conduct, as well as the material state of the convent. If necessary, it offers censure and imposes sanctions.
‘Even in my day, which is now over 500 years in the past, it struck me that the process had its faults. The ancient privileges of this house, by grant of Pope Eugenius III, himself a Cistercian, free it from the oversight of any bishop or metropolitan. Yet it transpires that this place should not be so exempt, for it can go astray. But only the Holy See or its legate can enter this precinct. It has only done so once, on the day in fact when it raised me, your sister, to be a saint of Holy Church.’ She paused for effect. ‘For I am Fenice of Tarlenheim, come to conduct a long-overdue visitation of this house of Medeln on the authority of no pope but at the behest of the powers of the World Beyond.’
***
Up in the dusty tribune above the choir, Hugo was having a fascinating time with Jonas Niemand as they listened to the catalogue of abuses being alleged down below against the abbesses of Medeln over two centuries and more. The angelic boy happily sat on his lap so they could both peer down into the choir. Jonas had the same scent about him as Lucacz, the scent of the World Beyond, though with Jonas it was more intense and exhilarating.
‘Abbess Maria!’ Jonas commented. ‘She was awful. She was a sorceress, and was all set to break into Eden and complete the work of her father, your ancestor, Count Oskar the so-called Great.’
‘Really? What was that?’
The boy gave him a sidelong glance. ‘Very well Hugo. I wouldn’t normally hand over that sort of information, but you’re no ordinary mortal, and your boyfriend’s a good mate of Karl’s. So it’s like this. There’s a place in Eden, high up in the mountains, where the springs of the River of Life rise. And if you drink from it in that spot, you never age and can never die. Wicked Count Oskar managed to get as far as the springs but a Guardian Spirit caught him and … did something horrible to him. Maria thought she could go one better, but Karl Wollherz and the Conduit Boys (my gang, you know) took her down and liberated the Princess Sophia, who should have been abbess. It’s a great story. Ask Lucacz to tell you, he had it from Karl.’
‘So what did you do to her?’
‘Me? Oh, nothing dramatic. Abbess Sophia used the power of the Icon to imprison her and make her harmless. Eventually she was allowed to enter the hermit cells down there, and she ended her life as quite a holy woman.’ The boy shook his head. ‘Who’da thought it? People. They always surprise.’
They listened to the proceedings below some more. At the mention of Princess Osra, Jonas perked up. ‘I had a lot to do with her,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t a proper abbess of course, though she had the title and the revenues. She lived here like a princess when she wasn’t doing political stuff, like ruling Glottenberh for her grandson, my good mate, Staszek; my best mate since the Conduit Boys.’
‘So what went wrong with her?’ Hugo asked.
‘She wasn’t a bad person like Maria, though she was an even more powerful sorceress. Her problem was that she was one of those royal people. They do what they like and they are so full of themselves they always think they’re right and know best.’
‘So how did she go wrong, Jonas?’
The boy grinned. ‘You know about the Dead and their Seers. The Lady Fenice is the greatest among them, she’s so powerful that she even made prophecies about me! But I won’t talk about that. But she and her Council determined that one day Rothenia would be a single great nation in the heart of Europe. And in due course, when the prophecies of Revelation unroll, it will be in Rothenia that humanity is redeemed and it will be the core of the Kingdom that is to Come.’
Hugo was astonished. ‘Should you be telling me this?’
‘Why not?’ said the boy. ‘You belong to the World Beyond now. Lucacz knows this, and you’re his boyfriend. You have a lot to do to help him, and you can do it best if you know about the big game we’re all playing.’
‘So how did Princess Osra go to the bad?’
‘Just like royal people do, she tried to take control and direct events to the benefit of herself and her family. Her plan was that it would be her grandson, Willem Stanislas, who would unite the Rothenian people and be their king. But that was not the way the Dead saw it happening. They prophesied that it would be Elphberg Ruritania that united Rothenia, and it would be a golden-haired Elphberg who would redeem humanity. Had Osra got her way humanity would have been lost.’
‘Willem Stanislas VI? The last duke of Glottenberh? The great Rothenian poet? They made me learn his creepy poems at school’
‘Watch what you say. He is a friend of mine, and himself a wizard of great power. He realised how dangerous his grandma’s game was, and so he helped me and the Dead to thwart her.’
‘He died when he was 18. So did he have to commit suicide to thwart her? That wasn’t very fair.’
‘No. We made a great spell. The fact is that he didn’t die and even now 150 years later he lives on … sort of. I even get to see him from time to time. Another prophecy has been made. One day he will rise from his grave and lead his people in a great battle for Rothenia in its darkest hour.’
Hugo frowned. ‘A lot of people think that’s now!’
‘There are worse things lurking in history, I’m afraid. Another prophecy says that he will rise to be King of All Rothenia.’
‘Bad news for the Elphbergs, then.’ Hugo commented.
‘Prophecies are never simple things, human boy,’ laughed Jonas. ‘You might think on that when you worry about the prophecy the Dead have made about you.’
The pair concentrated on the scene below, where St Fenice was bringing her charge list to a close.
‘In short, the authorities of this house were given extraordinary powers which they were not ever to use except in extraordinary circumstances, such as when the Abbess Hyacinth thwarted a Hussite attack on the lands of the abbey’s liberty just after my own day. But in the end the possibilities of that power were too much for weaker minds, and since the time of Princess Osra arrogant Levites have presumed to use it to meddle in matters that were not theirs to dictate. Even now they have imprisoned here an innocent servant of mine, whom they should have received with respect and assisted. So the determination of the World Beyond is that you should receive the sentence of the Accuser, the Spear of God himself. Lord Jonas Niemand appear!’
‘Show time!’ breathed Jonas in Hugo’s ear, and then was gone. A collective gasp from the community gathered in the choir below drew Hugo’s attention. He craned over the tribune’s ledge to see what was happening.
The abbey’s chevet seemed to have faded out of reality and instead of its east end an unnatural window of light had appeared there, a light whose source Hugo recognised as that of the World Beyond. And there in that light could be glimpsed enthroned a huge being, a great flaming spear in his right hand, and horns rearing from his head. This was no merry boy spirit, but a dark angel of judgement come to deliver sentence.
‘Women of Medeln. You have been found guilty of the abuse of powers you were given for the protection of the Icon of God which is housed here. The sentence of the Court of Heaven is that the Icon be removed from such unworthy Guardians to a place that I shall determine. This community is to be dispersed. Those who wish to continue in regular life may continue in the subordinate priories of Medeln in Rothenia and Bohemia. Others may be released from their vows and enter a lay life. As for the Levites, their office will continue but be confided only to a single person. The Levite will be deprived of the seat of power that is this abbey, which has been so abused by them. Sic factum erit.’
The angelic manifestation faded but Jonas did not return to Hugo, which was a disappointment. He got up and found his way down the stairs to the choir which was filled with a subdued tumult, mingled with weeping. Hugo ignored it and hastened to the old infirmary. And he found his Lucacz just leaving it, hand in hand with Jonas Niemand, blinking rather theatrically in the daylight, and otherwise grinning all over his face.
***
‘This is gonna be super fun!’ chortled Jonas. ‘We’re gonna play building!’ he announced, delight plastered all over his handsome face. ‘Never done this before. So. You ready, gang?’
‘What?’ Hugo responded, unintelligently.
Lucacz laughed and linked his arm with Hugo. ‘Jonas has decided that he and us are going to construct a suitable new home for the Icon. Somewhere to keep it concealed for the rest of its time on Earth, now that the abbey is shutting down.’
Hugo frowned as he concentrated on the problem. ‘The first question is where to put it,’ he said.
‘Right!’ Jonas agreed. ‘Somewhere underground might be best.’
‘I know one place with tunnels not that far away,’ Hugo said, recalling somewhere associated with his family that he had recently had to give some thought to. ‘The Tarlenheim mausoleum in Terlenehem churchyard.’
‘Yes!’ declared Jonas. ‘It’s holy ground too! Couldn’t be better. Hold my hands, boys. Let’s go!’
All three were instantly in the churchyard, not far from where Lucacz had declared his grave to be. Jonas scampered over to the locked iron gate of the mausoleum, and stared into the blackness beyond. ‘Hmph!’ he pondered. ‘It’s promising. The entry tunnel goes straight into the hill and meets a cross tunnel. Turn right and you get to a big room with some very expensive Tarlenheim tombs. Turn left and there’s another big room full of really ancient tombs which used to be in the Grüft below the church.’
‘I know the right hand room. Papa took us boys in some years ago, so we could see the tomb of Franz Friedrich, the Marshal Prince of Tarlenheim, the great soldier. It was creepy but impressive.’
‘I never met him,’ Jonas said, ‘but he was a friend of the Osra lady I had so much trouble with. Now I think of it, I did know a few Tarlenheims in the old days, and they’re buried here. Better wake ‘em up and ask if it’s all right to use their home.’
By unknown but probably magical means, Jonas opened the locked gate and beckoned the other two to follow him into the dark.
Posted 1 January 2025