The Cornerstone Read online

  Copyright ©2013 by Anne C. Petty

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  ISBN: 978-1-936564-67-5 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-68-2 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012953062

  Printed in the United States of America

  JournalStone rev. date: January 25, 2013

  Cover Design: Denise Daniel

  Cover Art: Vincent Chong

  Edited By: Elizabeth Reuter

  For Bill, Lynn (who will especially appreciate all the

  Marlowe lore), April, and Lissa

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  Acknowledgements

  Several editions of Christopher Marlowe’s play “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus” were consulted for the history, quotations, and paraphrases from the play, including:

  Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays, edited by J. B. Steane, New York: Penguin Books, 1969.

  Doctor Faustus (Norton Critical Editions), edited by David Scott Kastan, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

  Doctor Faustus and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics), edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, Oxford University Press, USA, 2008.

  Thanks to: Lissa Griffin, LMHCA and Sex Therapist, for reviewing all the psychological material in the book.

  Ugly hell, gape not, come not, Lucifer!

  I’ll burn my books. Ah, Mephistopheles!

  —Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

  Inception

  Brú na Bóinne, Ireland 1581

  Doctor John Dee—accomplished mathematician, alchemist, Hermetic magician, herbalist, astrologer, and advisor to Queen Elizabeth herself—pulled his fine wool cloak tightly across his shoulders. The late afternoon sun was disappearing behind a cloudbank massed low over the rolling hills, their deep green shaded to mossy black. A chill wind whipped at his beard and the mane of his mare.

  An adequate horseman, he guided his skittish palfrey over the narrow footpath skirting the riverbank, a firm hand on the reins. He glanced behind him. Dee envied the easy grace with which his hooded companion sat the stallion he'd acquired from the stable back in Dublin. The horse had gone wide-eyed with nostrils flared and shivers rippling over its hide when Monsieur C had put his booted foot in the stirrup, but the moment he was seated it was as if horse and rider had become one.

  On their left, the river meandered between shallow banks thick with fen sedge, marsh-horsetail, and bulrush. To the right, dense woodland. Stands of ash, hazel, alder, and oak, trees Dee knew from Mortlake in Surrey, near his riverside house, occasionally thinned enough to reveal distant hill country dotted by limestone outcroppings and wild, untended grasslands covered in gorse.

  Dee watched the thunderheads piling up over the valley ridge. He supposed it mattered little if the rain caught up with them; the scheme in hand would go forward. He was glad to be in the lead as he searched for the landmark left by the witch, marking the turnoff into the trees. He preferred not to look at the drugged body of the girl draped lengthwise over Monsieur’s lap, her thin arms hanging down and flopping with the horse’s gait. She was a prostitute and cutpurse, which was why he’d taken her. They were likely saving her from a worse fate…imprisonment in Newgate amongst other thieves and worse criminals, and eventual death on the gallows platform. No reason to feel remorse for her soul, as she’d already damned it herself, but he would say a small prayer for her passing.

  The river took a sharp bend where clumpings of silverweed and meadowsweet grew thicker along its bank. It flowed more swiftly over a rill and around low-arching willows trailing their long fingers in its gray waters.

  “Not far now, my lord. The mark should be up ahead.”

  “Nay, my good doctor, as I’ve told you, I am no lord. Merely your devoted friend and mouthpiece for the One who is above us.” The voice radiated intimate good humor, the kind of voice you’d expect from a close friend. Dee relaxed his shoulders.

  He’d met Monsieur C on the continent more than a year ago, during a series of so-called “spiritual conferences” he’d conducted for the edification of kings and courtiers, from the Polish King Stephen and his court to Emperor Rudolf II, who’d not been moved by the notion of summonings and divinations. In Bohemia, however, the angel Uriel had spoken through C’s mouth to an assemblage of nobles and scholars, and had given tangible proof that his presence was not mere imagination. A crippled child had been made whole, his mother collapsing at the sight of him tottering across the chamber toward her. Uriel had given his blessings to all who witnessed the miracle and assured Doctor Dee that he would continue to send guidance through his chosen interpreter.

  They’d traveled far and wide together since then.

  Encouraged by Monsieur C, he’d delved deeply into the angelic languages, convinced the key to creating a unity of all mankind lay in the books he’d laboriously penned through his companion’s willing communion with the higher spheres. He felt no conflict in the crossing over of his mathematical and navigational studies with his magickal and spiritual explorations. In his mind the two were one great bridge to the Eternal, to the revelation of Mysteries beyond man’s waking life. Mysteries that could describe and define the human spiritus. This evening’s mission, while related, was somewhat darker. Dee felt his resolve slipping at the enormity of what they intended.

  Apparently sensing his thoughts, Dee’s companion remarked, “Be of good cheer, my friend. Think how our success in this experiment will affect the community of the learned, those cognoscenti, mages and masters who have failed to acknowledge the brilliance of your hypotheses regarding the nature of death and the human soul.”

  “True enough,” Dee said, sitting straighter in the saddle. “‘Tis not that I question your angelic guidance. But I do wonder…” He bit back what he’d been about to utter. That if the witch proved inadequate to the task or if the exchange went wrong, the consequences were unimaginable.

  “I am here to support you,” the honeyed voice replied. “You will not fail.”

  Dee flexed his fingers, stiff and chilled in his calfskin gloves. The cold was retreating from spring with petulance, keeping buds underground and dusting the higher elevations with lingering snow. His horse stumbled on the path as the ground became stonier, veering away from the river
and curving slightly uphill. Near the treeline he spotted the cairn, an arranged pile of rough-cut limestone cradled among the roots of a mammoth oak.

  “There,” he said, pointing. They turned off the path and into the trees where the lemony scent of forest gum sweetened the air.

  A few minutes into the canopy, Dee pulled up and dismounted. “A moment, if you will.” His companion smiled indulgently in the gloom, or so it seemed to Dee as he removed a glove and rummaged through the leather bag affixed to his saddle. His thin fingers closed on the round brass casing and pulled the contraption out, an amazing invention given to him by Gerardus Mercator, his mentor at the University of Cambridge. The combination sundial and compass rested heavy in his palm. Underneath the arm of the sundial, a glass-covered rose compass with a spindled needle indicated the position for magnetic north at zero degrees. East lay at ninety degrees. The tomb where Radha Ó Braonáin, a sorceress of great depth and cunning, had agreed to meet them was a few degrees away from the eastward mark. Dee’s previous dealings with her had convinced him she was not to be taken lightly or ordered about in this particular endeavor, regardless of his own paranormal prowess or that of his companion. They must tread carefully.

  She likely would not have agreed to be party to this day’s task at all if she did not have a personal interest in it (a fact C had discovered and revealed to Dee as the means for enticement). At his initial description of the plan, she’d laughed aloud and called him mad. It wasn’t every day someone asked her to help catch a banshee.

  Confirming their direction, Dee remounted and guided his horse into the underbrush thick with enchanters—nightshade and urbanum, woodland herbs he knew well. The heavy compass rested in his ungloved hand. His fingers were cold to the bone, but he would not take the risk of handling it clumsily, or Jesu forbid, dropping it. The girl across C’s saddle moaned and Dee looked back. Monsieur rested a hand on her back and she stilled again.

  Dee shivered and wished he’d brought a heavier cloak. Something fur-lined, perhaps. His sense of chill was not entirely due to the weather. He recalled how he’d finally persuaded the widow Ó Braonáin.

  “The banshee is the gateway guardian between life and death, is it not?”

  She’d nodded, her wrinkled mouth drawn into a purse, her eyes hooded under dark brows.

  He’d continued. “Everyone knows that her wail precedes the passage of the departed’s soul into the afterlife. It is she who calls Black Coach.” The manifestation of Death on the physical plane. Dee shivered again. He’d never seen the apparition itself nor heard the blood-freezing cry of its herald, but if things went as planned, he would experience both those things before the night was done.

  “Aye,” the witch had said, frowning.

  “What I propose,” he’d stated with what now seemed arrogant confidence, “is to create a magickal object that can hold death at bay…nay, time itself.” He’d waited for the impact of those words, but the witch held his gaze without a blink.

  “If the gateway guardian could be trapped within an object of power, I have the means to bind it to the will of the object’s owner—literally to stave off dying and age not a year beyond the instant of the talisman’s creation.”

  “And how would ye do that, Master Dee? What spell d’ye have in yer black bag of tricks that could command such a spirit?”

  “I was hoping you yourself might know,” he’d said. He knew she would deny any such ability, but he held his trump hidden, waiting till the right moment.

  She’d emitted a rude noise and made as if to walk away, leaving him standing at the gate of her croft-covered cottage in the foothills of the Boyne Valley. Its crumbling walls and much-patched roof suggested great age, its foundation possibly much older than the present pitiful dwelling. He knew her family line was ancient, leading back to the days of the great Brian Boru or even further. The weight of her family name was not lost on him either. Ó Braonáin—descendant of sorrow.

  “Wait,” he’d called. “Hear me out. You have a son, I think…” After a few heartbeats, she turned.

  “Did have.”

  He knew this full well and carefully played his hand. “The banshee is an elemental, not something that can be controlled by modern alchemy. What’s required is old magick, something that draws from the Earth itself. I know your lineage, Radha Ó Braonáin. Your ancestors helped build the great mound further up the valley.”

  “What would ye know of any such thing?” Her voice was haughty, dismissive, yet she remained where she stood.

  “I have studied the transmogrification of souls enough to believe that if an offering is made when the Black Coach is summoned, the herald may allow an exchange. One soul for another.” He waited for the implication to take hold.

  “Such a thing is not possible.”

  “No? My companion in the paranormal, Monsieur C, is a conduit for the Divine. Through him, I have witnessed loved ones returned from Death’s doorstep to their grieving families, the wandering soul brought back from the land of Shades.”

  “Have a care, Professor Dee, e’er ye blaspheme.” The witch had actually laughed into her threadbare muffler.

  Dee’s cheeks flushed, but he held his anger in check. “‘Tis said, a witch will get her wish though her soul may not get mercy.”

  She cast him a baleful glance and held her silence.

  Dee tried again. “Think on this. A life for a life, with the promise of control over Death itself. That is what I offer you…and your son.”

  He stood quietly as the silence between them stretched out, thinned, threatened to snap. At last she retraced her steps, close enough to look him in the eyes. “Whose life would ye trade, eh?”

  He hesitated not a second. “A lost soul whose place on Earth is already forfeit.”

  The witch considered. “This companion of yours, how d’ye know him?”

  “We have been trusted friends more than a year now. He is touched by the Divine, the voice of Uriel speaks through him.”

  “Does it now?” The witch snuffled again, not exactly a laugh. “Let me think on’t. Away wi’ ye.” She made a shooing gesture with one hand that some might have taken for a warding spell.

  He’d departed as bidden, but it wasn’t a week before she’d sent word to him, with directions for finding a certain small passage tomb on the slopes above the Boyne Valley. She’d chosen Saturn’s Day, a good day for a binding spell. He was warned to bring only his accomplice and the necessary offering and to speak of their plan to no one. The tomb was protected by charms that blinded ordinary eyes to its presence, but she would lift the veil over its entrance for this one night. He suspected what lay within.

  A rook’s caw and the flapping of heavy wings through the trees tugged his attention back to the present. He wet his lips. It seemed the witch had her own herald. Before long, the trees thinned and they emerged onto the verge of low grass-covered hills with steeper inclines beyond, forming the bowl of the great valley. Dee scanned the horizon, searching for the landmark that had been drawn on the back of the broadside scrap he’d received from the widow Ó Braonáin. And there it was, a distant outcropping in the shape of an outstretched wing and directly below it, as the raven flies, a small tumulus on a slope much closer to them.

  “I believe this is the place.” Dee carefully replaced the compass in his saddlebag, then urged his horse forward.

  “A landscape of great beauty and greater desolation,” murmured his companion, as if its rough contours were somehow familiar to him.

  Yellow oat-grass and fairy flax clothed the flanks of the slope as they drew near the barrow, hiding calcareous outcrops and making their way uphill increasingly treacherous. Dee’s horse picked its way hesitantly over the rock-scattered ground until at last they reached a flattened area in front of the barrow. It was typical of the smaller passage tombs built by the ancients who’d left their footprints up and down the land within the river’s great loop. The low stone entrance was of simple post and lintel construction
, framing the black tunnel leading into the mound. Around it in a careless arc were smaller stones marked with symbols potent to the ancient ones. There was no sound save for the gusting wind...no movement of animals, large or small, within their range of vision. The back of Dee’s neck prickled as they sat their horses, watching and waiting.

  He was about to offer his apologies to C for having made a fruitless journey when a draped figure stepped over the crest of the mound just above the tomb. For a moment the widow Ó Braonáin seemed a fair likeness of a banshee herself. Wind snapped at the edges of her voluminous dark shawl as long gray-streaked hair streamed across her face. Dee had been unable to guess at her age in their last encounter and today was no better. She could have been fifty years or fifty more.

  “Have ye brought the exchange?” Her voice stilled the air around them, then tore away on the wind.

  Stiffened from the ride, Dee got off his horse with less agility than he would have liked. “As you can see.” He indicated the limp form in her dirty brown dress.

  The crone pointed to a spot near the tomb entrance. “Lay her down there.”

  Dee watched, his stomach in knots, as his companion dismounted and gathered the young woman into his arms as lightly as if she were a sleeping child. He placed her gently on the bracken, and stood up. Taller and thinner than even Dee himself, in a heavy cloak with an ermine-lined hood, C stood silent and imposing.

  The Irish witch stumbled backward, her breath sucked in with a hiss. The fingers of her left hand flicked a protective spell almost faster than Dee could discern it in the fading light. “Namhaid!”