The Sinner's Bible: A Novella (The Natalie Brandon Thrillers) Page 3

  “You and what army?” Beth glanced at the message slip. “Looks like the book is already on campus. Avi has it in the rare book room.”

  It’s cursed, you know, the angel said.

  “So am I.”

  That whole family is cursed.

  “What’s he saying?” Beth asked.

  “The Kennedys are cursed.”

  That’s not the family I meant, little one.

  “Honest mistake.”

  “What do the Kennedys have to do with this?” Beth asked.

  “Nothing, apparently.” A flicker of interest roused her attention. If not the Kennedys, who was Belial talking about? “Beth, when was the Sinners’ Bible printed?”

  Her sister glanced at the message slip. “1631.”

  Now do you know which family I mean?

  She visualized the chronology of English kings, a series of portraits from a book she’d read in her father’s library. The chronology stopped when she reached a man with long, dark hair and a melancholy face. “You’re not serious.”

  Look what happened to him. To all of them. Are you saying you don’t believe me?

  “Not serious?” Beth asked. “Who’s not serious?”

  “The Joker.”

  “I thought Anne Baxter’s episodes were with the Penguin.”

  “Egghead,” she said absent-mindedly. Her heart beat faster as she ran through the chronology of rulers again, moving a few slots back and a few slots forward from the sad, long-haired man. “Beth, Belial’s not talking about the Kennedys.”

  “Oh, good. Because looks, money, power, charisma, why should they have everything? Leave some curses for the rest of us, right?”

  “If the Sinners’ Bible was printed in 1631, it’s the King James version. As in James Stuart, son of Mary Stuart and father of Charles Stuart.”

  Beth blinked. “No. Absolutely not.”

  “There’s a Stuart curse,” she breathed. “An honest-to-God curse.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Belial was right about the Romanov letters. Why couldn’t he be right about this?”

  “Those were letters. Actual physical things that could be found.”

  “So is this book. What if it has something to do with the Stuart curse?”

  “The Stuart curse was venereal disease. Besides, Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded in 1587, way before the Sinners’ Bible was printed. The timeline is off.”

  Belial shuffled his wings, careful to keep the edges from touching her skull. Did the Bible curse the family? Or did the family curse the Bible? Do you even know how a curse is cast?

  “He says it’s real,” she said. “And he’s going to teach us how to curse people.”

  That is not what I said.

  “I can’t deal with this right now.” Beth sank into her desk chair and massaged both temples with her index fingers. Her teeth scraped a piece of dry skin on her lip. “I have an op-ed on the new Russian imperialism due at the New York Times in a week, a book proposal due in four, and I’m still trying to wrangle that RFP from the National Endowment for the Arts. Then, last night, Seth asked me for help with advanced algebra.” Her sister looked up, tears gleaming in her eyes. “I’m a bad mother, Nat.”

  “I’ve never seen a better mother,” she said softly. “Not in the whole world.”

  “What the hell is a polynomial?” Beth wailed. “I can’t help my own kid because I don’t have time to re-learn math and I feel like shit about it.”

  “Let me help.”

  “You know I hate asking you for things.”

  “You can ask, Beth.” Her scars started to tingle and she scratched the right one with a jagged fingernail. “You’re the only one who can.”

  “That’s not the impression I got in London.”

  She closed her eyes. Constantine. He believed in her, she knew that much. But he had his own problems, and they were occupying most of his time. “He’s not here. You are.”

  “And I always will be. I love you, sis.”

  “Then bring Seth over and we’ll kick the shit out of some polynomials.” This time, she scratched the scar on her left arm.

  I can feel it when you do that, Belial said. I don’t like it.

  Beth sighed. “So I’m really doing this, then…a talk on the Sinners’ Bible.”

  “Let me help with that, too. What kind of background info do you need me to dig up?”

  “It’s been so long since I studied pre-industrial England.” Beth shrugged out of her black blazer and hung it on the coat rack next to her desk. “Charles Stuart was the only English king to be condemned to death in a court of law by his own people. What are the odds?”

  “One point six percent. If you start with the House of Wessex, and count William and Mary as one.”

  “Poor Charles.”

  “Beth, what if there really is a Stuart curse?”

  I told you, Belial said.

  “Belial says—”

  “I know what bastard says.” Beth picked up the crumpled pink message slip and aimed a jump shot, bouncing it off the rim of the trash can.

  Natalie smiled. She couldn’t help it. Her perfect sister, the one with the perfect job and the perfect house and the perfect wardrobe, couldn’t shoot a basket to save her life. “The Warriors called. The Heisman’s yours.”

  Beth grinned. “I always wanted to play in the World Series.”

  “You could bring Crawford one of those big foam fingers.”

  “He’d just use it to point at me during staff meetings.” Beth sighed. “Seriously, Nat, whatever you do, don’t mention a curse in front of Crawford. I don’t think he has a sense of humor about these things.”

  He’ll need one, Belial said.

  She shivered and dug her nails into her scar. “No curse,” she said. “I promise.”

  Chapter Six

  August 1661

  Fontainebleau, France

  The Bible lay in a trunk under her cerulean gown, where she’d packed it for the journey from the Palais Royal. She didn’t dare leave it behind. That book was a reminder of all the ways she’d failed Charles, her children, the Holy Father, and the True Faith. Were there Stuart blood spattered upon its pages, it could not torment her more.

  Henrietta Maria clutched at her stomach.

  Twelve years, six months, and fourteen days later, she still dreamed of Charles’s death. But her dream had been wrong, as it turned out. The angel of death had come wielding an axe, not a sword.

  And she was the reason that axe had fallen.

  That was what they said, anyway, in England and here in France.

  The English civil war? All the fault of that Papist queen, who kept Charles from supporting the Calvinists on the Continent. That Papist queen, who urged him to dissolve Parliament and rule with nothing but the Divine Right bestowed on him by God. That Papist queen, who told him to arrest the only men in Parliament trying to save the country. In the end, the Parliamentarians had won. Her Charles had gone to his death wearing two shirts to keep from shivering in the January cold. He hadn’t wanted the people to think he was afraid to die.

  Did I really do all those things? she wondered. Or did I simply believe in him and urge him to do what he felt was right?

  She felt sick every time she thought it was the former.

  Why would God have marked her out for such misery? Were her father’s sins so great that they must be visited upon her and her children, as she had believed when she was younger? Henri IV was still the most beloved king in French history. How could someone so loved be so far from God’s favor? Did that mean her beloved Charles, who had been most unloved, was in God’s favor?

  “I don’t understand what You want from me,” she whispered, turning toward the window.

  Her room overlooked the gardens. A shaft of s
unlight streamed through the glass, illuminated the battered corners of her trunk at the foot of the bed.

  God had warned her twice—once with the misprinted Bible, and again with her nightmare. Still she had failed. Charles was dead, England remained Anglican, and she was a pauper, living entirely on the charity of her sister-in-law, Anne of Austria, mother of the French king Louis XIV. Through the loss of her home, her crown, her husband, and six of her children, that book had remained, a witness and a companion to her grief. So here it was, tormenting her still as she accompanied her daughter, Henriette, on this parody of a honeymoon.

  The wedding had been uneventful, save for Henriette’s tear-stained cheeks and the smile on Anne of Austria’s lips. That smile would fade when Anne learned the truth. She had deemed Henriette too poor a prospect for her beloved son. As if a granddaughter of Henri IV were not fit to become Queen of France! Anne had ushered her boy king into the arms of a cold Spanish princess instead. But Anne would learn that both of her precious sons had broken God’s vows.

  Oh yes, she thought, looking down into the gardens. Even her precious Louis.

  She leaned forward and pressed her hands to the glass. The gardens were lined with hedgerows as tall as a man—purposefully so, arranged in a maze. Henriette stood at the entrance in a gown of pale yellow, her shoulders bare to the summer sun.

  “Cover up, child,” she muttered.

  But in her heart, that wasn’t what she wanted her daughter to do.

  Because her married daughter was reaching for the hand of a man who was not her husband. That husband was in the stables with the Chevalier de Lorraine, occupied with acts and thoughts that the tribes of Israel had forbidden in Leviticus. Instead, Henriette’s tiny hand slid into the grasp of her husband’s brother, Louis, the fourteenth king of that name.

  The man she loved.

  The man she should have married, were it not for Anne of Austria’s meddling.

  I am the wickedest mother ever, she thought. But I want her to have him. Henriette deserved some little happiness, and Anne of Austria deserved to reap what she had sown and watch her son covet his brother’s wife in full view of his court.

  Louis brought Henriette’s hand to his lips. She dropped in a curtsy, her quick breath pushing her breasts above her tightly corseted bodice.

  Henrietta Maria watched his dark eyes devour her daughter. He slid one hand up her arm, twining his fingers in her black hair, pulling her lips to his for a kiss. When their lips touched, he clasped her to him.

  She recognized the look.

  He was a king in love.

  She sighed and leaned her head against the window frame. Another French king was straying from the marriage bed. Did that mean Louis, too, would be assassinated? Or would God’s vengeance strike the object of the king’s desire instead?

  “No,” she pleaded. “If You must take one of us, take me in her place.”

  Louis pulled Henriette around the corner of a hedgerow, into the maze. One hand was already beneath her skirt. Henrietta Maria wiped a tear from her cheek. What sort of mother cried tears of happiness to see her daughter dishonored?

  “I am cursed,” she said. “And so are you, my love.”

  She turned to her trunk and dug the Bible out from under her folded gown. Let it be a record of my failure, she thought, since it must have been I who brought this curse upon our family. She carried it to the bureau, where a quill and ink pot sat ready for her. Most families recorded their births and deaths in the front of their Bibles, a proud history of ownership and achievement.

  “Let our backward history be written here,” she said, turning to the inside back cover.

  She picked up the quill, dipped it in the ink, and said a prayer for those consumed by the strange curse that ran in her family’s blood. It brought adultery and dethronement and execution, each repudiating a holy sacrament—marriage, anointing, and baptism.

  She sobbed as she wrote.

  “My father.”

  Henri.

  “My husband.”

  Charles.

  Her hand hesitated beneath her husband’s name. Would her daughter’s be written there in time?

  “Please,” she prayed. “Let me write no more names.”

  Chapter Seven

  February 2014

  San Francisco, California

  Ezra pulled the Chevy into the university’s faculty parking lot and looked at the dozen streetlights surrounding it. Every other post had a callbox with a flashing blue light.

  Jacob pointed. “What are those things?”

  Ezra slapped his hand. “Don’t point. Don’t talk. Don’t do anything to make them look.”

  “I want to know what they are.”

  “They’re for girls.”

  “But they’re blue.”

  “They’re so girls can call the police if someone attacks them.”

  “Is that what they do here?” Jacob asked, craning his neck to look at the library, a six-floor structure in ugly gray cement.

  “That and give parking tickets.” He glanced at his watch. It had taken twenty-two minutes to get here from the freeway. Next time, they wouldn’t have twenty-two minutes. On the night of the robbery, the truck would have to be left behind. Maybe he could steal a Mustang and leave it in this lot beforehand.

  Jacob liked Mustangs.

  He turned to look at his brother.

  Black grease rimmed Jacob’s fingernails. His blue flannel looked like a map of Micronesia, dotted with burn holes from welding spatter. For this to work, at least one of them had to pass for a student. Would anyone believe Jacob was a football player?

  “Hey,” he said. “Who’s better at the long pass, Stabler or Plunkett?”

  Jacob drummed his fingers against his leg. “Pulled the blower motor earlier today. Everything looked fine. Maybe it’s one of the blend door actuators.”

  “And there’s my answer.”

  He rolled down his window and glanced in the rearview mirror. It was a long shot, but he might be able to pass for a student if he’d changed his major a few times and been held back because he couldn’t get the classes he needed. A group of girls walked by, all wearing sweatshirts with the blue and white Rosemont crest. He couldn’t afford to buy one, and he couldn’t risk stealing one—the student store was probably full of cameras, just waiting to pick off shoplifters. He’d have to improvise.

  “They have police here?” Jacob asked.

  “A campus cop shop.”

  “They carry guns?”

  “That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Jacob picked up a switchblade from the truck’s door pocket.

  “Put that down,” he said.

  Jacob flicked it open, but kept it in his lap. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you to.”

  “You don’t know what you want.”

  “Ezra.”

  “What?”

  “Look at me.”

  He turned his head and saw the tip of the knife sunk a quarter-inch into Jacob’s index finger. “I can’t feel it,” his brother said.

  “Goddamn it, Jacob.” His eyes flew from mirror to mirror, hoping no one was watching.

  “Fell while I was putting my boots on this morning, too. Isn’t that how the doc said it would happen?”

  “You’ll get your balance back once they cut out the tumor.”

  “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Put that away before you get us in trouble. Where’d you even get that thing?”

  “Texarkana.” His brother pulled the tip of the knife out of his finger. “It’s not like I haven’t seen anything, Ezra. I’ve been places.”

  “Not enough.”

  “I don’t want to do this.”

 
“We still need to eat, don’t we?”

  “Who’s going to buy a book?”

  “I’ll find someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Not your problem.”

  “Who?” Jacob said, leaning toward him.

  “Excuse me,” said a high-pitched voice. “Do we have a problem here?” A gray-haired man in a security uniform walked up to his window and put his hands on his hips, craning his neck to see inside the truck.

  “No, sir,” he said. In his peripheral vision, he saw Jacob drop the switchblade back into the door’s side pocket.

  “You can’t park here,” the old man said. “You’re blocking the exit.”

  Ezra glanced at the man’s utility belt. He had a walkie-talkie and a flashlight, no gun. He flashed the guy a friendly smile. “I’m picking up a friend at the library. This is the library, isn’t it?”

  The old man nodded. “Student parking is on the other side of the quad.”

  “Could have sworn the map said it was right here. I’ll show you.” He fumbled with the pile of napkins on the bench seat.

  “You don’t need a map to read the signs.” The old guy pointed at the row of signs, one posted in front of each parking space: FACULTY ONLY. “Move along now,” he said, circling his arm like a traffic cop.

  “What time does the library close tonight? Maybe I got the time wrong.”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  Wrong, he thought. According to their website, the library closed at 11 p.m., and the 24-hour reading room never closed. So much for an organized and efficient first responder. “You’ve been a big help,” he said, nodding at the man. “Have a nice day.”

  The old man nodded back and adjusted his blue cap.

  He put the truck in gear and pulled out of the lot. “It’s a good day, brother. What did that magic 8-ball used to say when we were kids?”

  “Concentrate and ask again.”

  “Outlook good,” he said. “That’s the one I remember.”

  The truck slowed to a crawl as he waited for a pair of students on bikes to make a turn. Jacob reached for the climate control and turned the dial all the way to the right. “It’s cold.”