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  The Glory

  Berkeley Blackfriars • Book 3

  J.R. Mabry

  Apocryphile Press

  1700 Shattuck Ave #81, Berkeley, CA 94709

  www.apocryphilepress.com

  Copyright © 2018 by J.R. Mabry

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-947826-60-1

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without written permission of the author and publisher, except for brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Lyrics from “In the Falling Dark” written by Bruce Cockburn. Used by permission of Rotten Kiddies Music, LLC

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  To find out more about the Berkeley Blackfriar’s universe, download your free copy of The Berkeley Blackfriar’s Companion. Includes short stories set in the Blackfriars’ universe, photos of main characters, a complete glossary, a walking tour of the Blackfriars’ Berkeley, recipes from Brian’s kitchen, a short history of Old Catholicism, a Q & A session with author J.R. Mabry, links to music and videos associated with the books and more!

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  OTHER BOOKS BY J.R. MABRY

  The Berkeley Blackfriars Series:

  The Kingdom

  The Power

  The Glory

  The Christmas at Bremmer’s Series:

  What Child is This?

  The Temple of All Worlds Series:

  The Worship of Mystery

  The glory of God is only conveyed

  by the chariot of truth.

  —Rabbi Isaac Bar Baalam of Damascus

  The sun will no longer be your light by day,

  nor will the moon shine for illumination by night.

  The Lord will be your everlasting light;

  your God will be your glory.

  —Isaiah 60:19 CEB

  Wail, for the day of the Lord is near.

  Like destruction from the Almighty it will come.

  Then all hands will fall limp;

  every human heart will melt,

  and they will be terrified.

  Like a woman writhing in labor,

  they will be seized by spasms and agony.

  They will look at each other aghast,

  their faces blazing.

  —Isaiah 13:6-8 NRSV

  Some [apocalypses], such as Daniel, contain an elaborate review of history, presented in the form of a prophesy and culminating in a time of crisis and eschatological upheaval. Others, such as 2 Enoch, devote most of their text to accounts of the regions traversed in the otherworldly journey. The revelation of a supernatural world and the activity of supernatural beings are essential to all the apocalypses.

  John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  A Quartet of Preludes

  Prelude 1

  Prelude 2

  Prelude 3

  Prelude 4

  Friday

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Saturday

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Sunday

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Monday

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Tuesday

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Wednesday

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Thursday

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Friday

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  A Quartet of Epilogues

  Epilogue 1

  Epilogue 2

  Epilogue 3

  Epilogue 4

  Also by J.R. Mabry

  Acknowledgments

  The Blackfriars books have always owed much to books that have gone before, and The Glory is no different. Larch probably discovered his ascension oil from reading Charles Williams’ War in Heaven, just as I did.

  I want to thank http://www.wiccanway.com/ for guidance on conducting a proper Mabon ritual. I give continued thanks to Josephine McCarthy’s The Exorcist’s Handbook for more creative ideas than I can possibly use. More thanks to my editor, Amanda Noonan, for her encouragement and keen eye.

  Grateful thanks to my wife Lisa Fullam, who heard each scene hot off the printer, and who was constantly freaked out by the fact that she was often eager and ready to hear the next scene and it did not yet exist. There’s a deep philosophical meditation in there somewhere.

  Thanks to my old friend Tony Davis, who said, “I enjoy the novels, but can’t we see some magickians who aren’t assholes? I mean, I want to see someone who looks like me.” Tony is a magickian, and definitely has his heart in the right place. I promised him that the third book would contain just such a magickian. Tony, Marco is for you.

  About 1/3 of the way through writing this, Marillion’s 17th album, FEAR (F*ck Everyone And
Run) dropped into my lap, and it became the soundtrack for writing the balance of the book, much as their previous CDs have provided the soundtrack to most of my adult life. Thank you, boys—my life would be far less rich without you.

  And I know this will be strange, but I want to thank my characters: Richard, Dylan, Susan, Mikael, Kat, Terry and Brian—and hell, even you, Larch—I really love you guys. I have had so much fun hanging out at your house, struggling alongside you, and laughing with you. I never knew what any of you would say until you said it and you constantly surprised and delighted me. This is intended to be the final Blackfriars novel, but you never know. I might just miss you too damn much and will need to come back for a visit, you know?

  A Quartet of Preludes

  For not from the east or from the west

  and not from the wilderness comes lifting up;

  but it is God who executes judgment,

  putting down one and lifting up another.

  —Psalm 76:6-7

  Prelude 1

  Palestine, 1878 BCE

  “If we tell him Joseph is alive, it will kill him.” Rueben sighed.

  It was after breakfast, and Serah the daughter of Asher was cleaning up after her uncles. They barely noticed her as she gathered their plates and carried them to the kitchen, but she took notice of them. Not a word escaped her.

  “I agree. He won’t survive it. The strain on his heart will be too great,” Dan added.

  “Then we will have the death of both our brother and our father on our souls,” Naphtali said, flicking a walnut shell across the room.

  Serah dropped the plate she had just picked up. Her uncles looked up at her, their knotty eyebrows raised at her error.

  “My Uncle Joseph is…alive?” Her eyes were wide.

  The brothers glanced at each other, then looked down. None of them were giving her reproachful looks now.

  “How could you have kept this from us? How could you have kept this from grandfather?”

  “You don’t understand,” her father said, with more edge in his voice than usual. She understood his meaning. That edge in his voice meant, It is not for you to know, and it is not for you to question us.

  “Then perhaps you should explain it,” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips. Cool evening air wafted in from the windows, stirring a hanging cluster of bells.

  “Asher, control your daughter,” Reuben commanded.

  Serah ignored him.

  “Serah,” her father’s tone softened. “I will explain it to you…later.”

  “You will explain it to me now.”

  Her uncles gasped at her impertinence. Wives spoke to their husbands like this in private, but never in public. A daughter never spoke in such a way—not ever. The brothers looked at Asher, expecting him to discipline her. He looked at the rug below his chair. “Serah, I must speak to your uncles in private. Then I shall come and speak to you. Do not shame me in front of my brothers.”

  Serah looked at her father, then at her ten uncles. Without a word she snatched up the last of the plates and turned, slamming the door to the kitchen behind her with her heel. She handed the plates gently to her mother and put her forefinger to her lips. “Shhhhh.” She leaned her head against the kitchen door and listened.

  “—is shameful.” She couldn’t tell who the speaker was.

  “Maybe,” her father said. “But no daughter could be more precious to me than her. She always tells the truth.”

  “That is not always a good thing,” her Uncle Levi noted.

  “It is when she does it.”

  This made some of them laugh.

  “No, I am serious. She’s normally a quiet girl, so you may not have noticed. But when she does speak, she says what is true—and when she tells the truth, it somehow…makes things better.”

  “Is she touched by God, then?” Uncle Simeon asked.

  “I believe she is,” her father affirmed.

  Serah felt her chest swell. Her father had never complimented her that way before, certainly not in front of her. He’s not doing it in front of me now, she reminded herself. Serah watched her mother tiptoe to the basin, trying to carry on her work without making any noise.

  “Asher, are you saying that whenever your daughter speaks what is true, good comes of it rather than evil?”

  “That is exactly what I am saying.” There was a long silence.

  Serah held her breath. She backed off the door a bit, worried that one of her uncles might burst through it and find her eavesdropping. She glanced at her mother and she smiled, unconcerned. It didn’t bother her mother one bit that Serah was listening—her mother did it all the time.

  When no one opened the door, she leaned closer to it. Is what father said true? she wondered. She had always considered telling the truth to simply be a good idea. And in her experience, good always resulted when she did. But is that not true for everyone? She had never thought of herself as special in any way.

  “This is news indeed,” Uncle Reuben finally spoke.

  “Asher, your daughter might just prove to be our salvation,” her Uncle Zebulun said. He rarely spoke, but when he did, people tended to listen.

  “What do you mean?” Uncle Reuben asked.

  “When we threw Joseph into that well and left him for dead, we created a deep pool of evil that each one of us drinks from every day. And it is poisonous to us. I fear it will be poisonous to Jacob our father as well.”

  Sarah’s breath caught in her throat. Her uncles had always told her that their brother Joseph had been killed by lions. Is even my father guilty of this? It seemed he was. Her mother continued to smile. She was oblivious. Serah longed to tell her mother this awful truth. But…later—she didn’t want to miss anything. She kept her ear pressed to the door.

  Uncle Zebulun continued: “Every day you send Serah to the well to draw water. This day let her draw healing forth from our poisoned well. Let her tell our father Jacob the truth about his son. Let her tell him, so that good and not evil will come of it.”

  The sun was setting when she slipped into her grandfather’s bedchamber. He was standing at prayer, bobbing toward the window, his hands palms up before him, as if to catch the last rays of the sun. It was not unusual for one of his daughters or granddaughters to enter, tidy his room, or remove his soiled clothes from the pile in the corner. Serah gathered up his laundry and set it by the door. She hummed as she worked, as she often did. Her grandfather continued his bobbing, not disturbed by her presence or her song. When she finished humming a verse, she added lyrics.

  “Joseph is in Egypt

  And dangling on his knees

  are two of Jacob’s grandsons

  whom he has never seen.

  Joseph is in Egypt,

  living like a king.

  His heart breaks for his father,

  whom he would like to bring

  to Egypt,

  to Egypt land,

  to Egypt,

  to Egypt land.”

  When she finished singing, she leaned against the wall and looked at her grandfather. He had stopped bobbing, his eyes were open, and tears streamed down his cheeks. “I cannot tell,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the darkening sky, “if you are the messenger of God or if you are simply a cruel, cruel child.”

  “Grandfather, you know that I love you. Have you ever known me to be cruel?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever known me to lie to you?”

  “Not once.”

  “Then believe me now, and be glad. Your son, my Uncle Joseph, is alive in Egypt. My father and his brothers met him when they went there for food last month. They were afraid to tell you.”

  “But he is dead.”

  She shook her head. “No. They lied to you.”

  “Wicked children.” He turned his face away so she could not see it.

  “Yes. They were wicked children. But as men they are contrite.”

  His face was still turned away, but his fingers reached
for her, trembling. “My son, the son of my heart, he is…alive?”