Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

I thanked her, and took her hand in mine and told her she was kind. She smiled and nodded and she went on with her party of tourists. They disappeared down the steps of the rotunda.

I checked my pocket, found a valet ticket for my car, and I went downstairs, out through the lobby, and under the campanario, and gave the ticket to the valet along with a twenty-dollar bill and stood there, dazed, looking at everything as if I'd never seen it before--the campanario with its many bells, the zinnias blooming along the garden path, and those great slender palms rising upwards as though to point to the flawless blue sky.

The valet came up to me.

"You okay, sir?" he asked.

I wiped at my nose. I realized I was still crying. I pulled a linen handkerchief out of my pocket and blew my nose.

"Yeah, I'm okay," I said. "I just lost a whole bunch of close friends," I said. "But I didn't deserve to have them."

He didn't know what to say, and I didn't blame him.

I climbed behind the wheel of the car and drove as fast as it was safe to drive to San Juan Capistrano.

All that had happened was passing through my mind like a great ribbon, and I noticed nothing of the hills or the highway, or the signs. I was in the past in my heart, while I guided the car by instinct in the present.

When I entered the Mission grounds, I looked around hopelessly, and once again, I whispered, "Malchiah." There was no answer, and no one who even faintly resembled him. Just the usual families making their way among the beds of flowers.

I went straight to the Serra Chapel.

Thankfully, there weren't very many people in it, and the few that were there were praying.

I walked up the aisle, staring at the tabernacle with the sanctuary light on the left, and I wanted with all my heart to lie down on the floor of the chapel with my arms out and pray, but I knew that others would come up to me if I did that.

It was all I could do to kneel in the first pew, and say again the prayer I'd said when the mob attacked me.

"Lord God," I prayed. "I don't know whether it was a dream or it was real. I only know I'm Yours now. I never want to be anything else but Yours."

I sat back in the pew finally and cried quietly for what must have been an hour. I didn't make enough noise to disturb people. And when anyone did come close, I looked down and closed my eyes, and they just moved on past to do their praying or light their candles.

I looked at the tabernacle and I emptied my mind, and many thoughts came to me. The most crushing thought was that I was alone. All those I'd known and loved with all my heart were utterly removed from me.

I would never see Godwin and Rosa again. I would never see Fluria or Meir again. I knew this.

And I knew that never, never in my life would I ever see the only people I'd ever really known and loved. They were gone from me; we were separated by centuries, and there was nothing I could do about it, and the more I thought of it all the more I wondered if I'd ever see Malchiah again.

I don't know how long I stayed there.

At one point, I knew it was getting near evening.

I had told the Lord over and over how sorry I was for every evil thing I'd ever done, and whether the angels had done this thing with illusions, to show me the error of my ways, or whether I had really been in Norwich and Paris, whether I had really been there or not, I didn't deserve the mercy that had been shown me.

Finally, I went out, and drove back to the Mission Inn.

It was dark by that time, as it was springtime, and the darkness came early. I let myself into the Amistad Suite and I went to work on the computer. It wasn't difficult at all to find pictures of Norwich, pictures of the castle and the cathedral, but pictures of the castle were radically different from the old Norman place that I had seen. As for the cathedral, it had been greatly expanded since my visit.

I keyed in "Jews of Norwich," and read with a vague sense of dread the whole horrible story of the martyrdom of Little St. William.

Suddenly, with my hands trembling, I keyed in Meir of Norwich. To my utter amazement there popped up more than one article on him. Meir, the poet of Norwich, was a real person.

I sat back, simply overcome. And for a long time I couldn't do anything. Then I read the brief articles to the effect that this man was known only by a manuscript of poems in Hebrew in which he had identified himself, a manuscript that was in the Vatican Museum.

After that I keyed in many different names, but came up essentially with nothing I could relate to what had happened. No story of any massacre over another child.

But the sad history of the Jews in England in the Middle Ages soon came to an abrupt finish in1290 when all Jews were expelled from the island.

I sat back.

I had done enough research, and what I had come to know was that Little St. William had the distinction of being the first case of a ritual murder attributed to Jews, a charge that would reoccur over and over again throughout the Middle Ages and after. And England was the first country to expel the Jews entirely. There had been expulsions from cities and territories before, but England was the first country.

I knew the rest. The Jews had been welcomed back centuries later by Oliver Cromwell because Oliver Cromwell thought the world was about to end and the conversion of the Jews had to play a role in it.

I got up from the computer with my eyes hurting and I fell on the bed and slept for hours.

Sometime early in the morning, I woke up. It was three a.m. by the bedside clock. That meant it was six a.m. in New York, and The Right Man would be at his desk.

I opened my cell phone, observed it was a prepaid phone, such as I always used, and punched in his number.

As soon as I heard his voice, I said, "Look, I'm never going to kill again. I'm never going to harm anyone if I can possibly help it. I'm not your needle sniper now. It's finished."

"I want you to come here, Son," he said.

"Why, so you can kill me?" "Lucky, how could you think something like that?" he said. He sounded perfectly sincere and a little hurt. "Son, I'm worried about what you might do to yourself. I've always been worried about that."

"Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore," I said. "I have something to do now."

"What's that?"

"Write a book about something that happened to me. Oh, don't worry, it has nothing to do with you or anything you've ever asked me to do. All that will remain secret as it always has. You might say I'm taking the advice of Hamlet's father. I'm leaving you to Heaven."

"Lucky, you're not right in your head."

"Yes, I am," I said.

"Son, how many times have I tried to tell you that you were working for The Good Guys all along? Do I have to spell it out? You've been working for your country."