From one moment to the next, Cibalto changed. No longer the tall, thin man with an expressive face and a twinkle in his eye, he now appeared heavier, his face longer, his chin more pointed. His face was Cibalto’s, yet it wasn’t. His expression was cold, haughty. He sat back in his chair, laced his hands over his belly, stretched his legs out in front of him. Arrogance radiated off him. He remarked in a bored voice that sounded like Cibalto’s, but oddly different. His English was stilted and curiously flat, here yet oddly far away, an echo of a man’s voice, as if he were speaking through a funnel. “You wretched earthbound creature, believing you could go against us. You have no more power than this pissant little shite whose blood I recognized immediately when he arrived in the palace. I smelled him, but alas, I wasn’t strong enough to free myself from the web of my eternal prison, despite the strength of my rage.”
Grayson felt his heartbeat thunder, but he kept his voice calm, tried to match the creature’s arrogance. “Who are you? Who is ‘us’?”
“I am the fourth Earl of Lennox, grandfather to James VI of Scotland and James I of England. I know not why, but after my death, I was tied to this accursed palace. Holyrood—bah, the stupid name, what a farrago of nonsense! I looked down at my own dead body and felt unseen shackles bind me. I couldn’t leave. I have hovered for hundreds of years, unable to free myself. I watched the spirits of that idiot son of mine and Rizzio, a worthless piece of offal withal, and they moved freely through the palace, but not I—I was bound, unable to do anything.
“Oh yes, I knew when Mary visited, but she never stayed long. She preferred the castle. Finally, I felt my savior. I felt hope and I called to her. She came to me. She is Celestine. She removed my shackles. And when I was free, she nurtured me, strengthened me, taught me how to take over this pathetic human being for brief periods, see modern Edinburgh through his eyes—but not for long. This Cibalto Terduck, he was too strong, and his spirit fought me. She knew what I wanted, and it pleased her. I encouraged Celestine to contact you because you would come to help this pathetic human.”
“What is Celestine?”
“Ah, Celestine, she is a demon sprung from a Viking rape in the Orkneys nearly a thousand years ago in your time. She became more powerful than you can imagine. She promised me that, together, none can overcome us, no one can kill me.”
Grayson laughed, pointed a finger at Lennox. “Kill you? You are already dead, nearly three hundred years dead. You should never have hovered here—you should be in hell.”
“Grayson? Wh-what is happening?”
It was Cibalto. Grayson ran to him, shook his arms. “Fight, Cibalto, don’t let Lennox take you over again. Fight!”
Cibalto slowly faded back into the Earl of Lennox, but this time his figure wasn’t solid, his outlines vague, distorted.
Grayson said, “What’s the matter, Lennox? Cibalto’s spirit can still fight through you, make you release him?”
“No!” Lennox closed his eyes, his lips moving. Suddenly, he was once again in control. “I wish I could drink some fine wine from the French court. That bitch Mary brought cases of it when she came to claim her throne.”
“Well, you cannot drink anything. You are a malignant spirit from a nightmare, nothing more. Why do you hate Cibalto Terduck?”
Lennox laughed, a nasty sound filled with venom and malevolence. “He claims to be a scholar, yet he does not know he is a descendant of that vainglorious James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell. There is only a trickle of Bothwell’s blood flowing through his veins, but it is enough for me to smell him, to make my plans, to gain my revenge, to find a way to free myself.
“Like that perfidious bitch Mary, I want you to find the princesses. I know there are living descendants, female twins. I saw them in a vision, and they haunted me year after year, a twin bearing more twins, all the way to the present. Her spirit lived on through them. Celestine told me where they are, but we cannot get them. That is why we need you. You will deliver them to us. Once we have them, we will kill them and banish them and their vile mother into oblivion. Then Celestine will take me from this wretched place. You doubt me? Here are the princesses as they live now.”
Grayson saw two young women, both with glorious red hair, a sprinkling of freckles across their noses, and Mary’s amber eyes. They were laughing and dancing.
“They live in Copenhagen, close to the royal family.” And Lennox seemed to hiss like a viper, a frightening sound that froze Grayson
“Celestine tells me if you do not fetch the princesses to us, we will kill your miserable son and then we will kill you.”
“You can certainly try,” Grayson said and slowly rose.
Lennox stood. He smiled a ghastly smile. He rose tall and taller yet, towering over Grayson until his head reached the top of the bookshelf. He began to whirl around, faster and faster until he was swallowed into a dark funnel. Then the funnel became utterly still, frozen, and a beautiful young woman took form. She wore a blood-red robe fastened at her waist with a golden cord. On her feet were golden sandals. Her hair was long, nearly white it was so blonde, and flowed in soft waves to her hips. She looked like a medieval princess. She said in a haughty voice that reeked of long-lost time, her words ancient, unrecognizable, yet Grayson understood her, “Behold me. Kneel before me. I am all-powerful.”
Grayson laughed. “You pretend you once lived on this earth as a human woman? Why do you present yourself as such an ugly creature, naught but evil spun from a nightmare?”
She hissed at him, just as Lennox had done, and pulled a golden knife from the folds of her gown.
Grayson felt the spit dry in his mouth, but he said, his voice calm, “I doubt you can hold this façade for much longer, Celestine. Already I can see your eyes are no longer blue—they are now black with ancient sin and violence. Show me what you really look like. Or are you afraid to show me?”
The beautiful young woman sank into the black funnel. Then Grayson saw another vague shape of a man, his flesh twisting, heaving, as if searching for form and substance, to leap forward and tear Grayson’s head off. But no man emerged, and the funnel roiled and heaved and twisted back upon itself. Lennox’s vicious voice was deep with ageless hatred. “Listen to me, you worthless piece of spittle. I will kill Mary’s spirit, I will kill those spawn of Bothwell’s, those vile princesses. Then I will kill you and your son.”
The black seemed to thicken, grow even taller, brushing the very ceiling itself. The woman’s voice was harsh, filled with cold rage. “I know all about you, how you killed the Border queen and her daughter, hurled them into oblivion. A human, and yet you are powerful, but not as powerful as I, never as powerful as I. I am so powerful I amused myself by sending Miranda that dream of the man struck by lightning in the face. I knew you would think about it, and it would worry you, and yet it made you only more anxious to come and save Cibalto Terduck. But you will not. Like Lennox’s son, Darnley, he will lie rotting in Kirk o’ Field.”
“Give me Lennox.”
Nothing happened, but Grayson asked, “Did you kill your own son?”
The blackness shimmered and twisted, and the funnel slowly became a richly garbed young man of the sixteenth century, a high white ruff around his neck, his legs covered in pale-blue stockings, so very young he was. Pustules covered his face. He stared at Grayson even as the flesh on his face fell away, leaving white bone. No blood, only white bone. His skeleton’s mouth opened, and a young man’s hollow voice said, “I am Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. You were able to read Mary’s diary. You surprised me, I will admit it. I hate what she wrote about me, the despicable bitch. I knew her for what she was, a stupid, vain woman who knew nothing at all and was too tall, taller than most men. To look up at her, it maddened me. I watched as she made mistake after mistake. I know she killed me since I’d performed my duty and given her a son. She and that accursed Bothwell, arrogant, vainglorious creature, they married after she’d been his whore for months.”
Grayson said, “Mayhap you do not know. Your father knew you were to be killed, yet he didn’t warn you, he did nothing to stop it. He did nothing at all, except he surely celebrated.”
“No!” The young man’s voice seemed to slowly fade, but still Grayson heard rage. “Those cursed princesses could challenge my son for the English throne. I will destroy them.”
