Communion...
Chapter 4
After, Helen tried to apologize. I let her, against my better judgment. I needed to get along with these people to do my job. Finally, after handshakes and congratulations from most of the committee, all but my hostess and Father Dorcas left.
“You’ll want to get settled,” Lady Phelps—Leslie—said when it was all over. “We’ve found a couple of flats that you might use. Father Tom will show you the abbey and introduce you to everyone you’ll need to know. The photographer from the newspaper will be around, too, and I know you’ll want to see your office, and—”
I held up a hand. “I have a room that, for now anyway, is just right. It’s a B-and-B just across from the abbey. The photographer—is that really necessary? Already, there must be a dozen people in town who know who I am, and I’d really rather meet people one on one.”
“Oh, you’re not going to be difficult about publicity, are you?” Leslie’s accent slid down-class a little with the complaint. She’d been unable to keep them all in line; the stress showed. “I was so hoping that you wouldn’t turn out to be temperamental.”
Father Tom came to my rescue.
“Let’s give Doctor Griffin a break, Leslie. She’s been here less than a day.”
I flashed him a grateful smile; he deserved it.
Leslie was doubtful. “Well—”
“I really would appreciate a little time to get settled, Leslie.”
“Very well.” She was stiff, yielding only for the sake of appearance.
“And I’ll try not to be ‘difficult.’ I promise.” That earned a thin smile from her.
Father Tom ushered me to his car. I appreciated the ride, but at the same time, I was feeling entirely too ushered. Everyone I met had plans for me, and I still didn’t understand the agenda of the Communion. As we drove, I asked the priest what he thought about it.
“Part of my job is to keep track of them for the bishop of Saint Albans. My title, for what it’s worth, is canon to the ordinary.” My blank stare urged him on. “A canon is a sort of an administrative assistant to the bishop, who’s also called the ordinary. I’m a sort of ecclesiastical troubleshooter.”
The Morris Minor chugged asthmatically up a steep hill. Father Tom’s ruddy hands hauled the wheel around a corner before he spoke again.
“You’re not quite what they expected.”
“I never have been,” I answered, and realized that it was true, even if off the cuff. “Tell me about the Communion.”
“First, you have to understand that, if it weren’t for the old story about Alban, none of this would be here.” He waved his hand in a circle. “No cathedral, no town, no hotels, no tourists. Even the ruins would be nothing more than an old curiosity. The Saxons pretty well burned everything out fifteen hundred years ago.”
I couldn’t find anything to disagree with.
“But the town is here, and it’s still Alban’s town.”
“I’ve heard stories about a ghost?” I asked.
Tom gave me a long look.
“The road, please,” I warned. We had drifted across the center line. He wrenched the wheel and we were back in safe territory again.
“I thought we’d put that to rest.”
“Not among the locals. My landlady—Mrs. Fern—told me about him.”
“You’re staying with her?”
“‘Fraid I am.” I explained about my run-in with the hotel where I’d been booked, leaving out the part about my voice.
“You’re her first, you know.”
“I know. She told me.” His knuckles had whitened on the steering wheel. “What’s the matter?”
Through clenched teeth he muttered, “She’s a foolish old woman—the bane of my existence as canon. One of her hobbies is to lead the Ghostly Walks.”
He checked to see how I took his statement. My face must have shown the confusion I was feeling.
“The tourist board does them. They’re little walking tours of supposedly haunted sites. Rank superstition, if you ask me.”
Every time I talked to someone in this town, things got more complicated. Father Dorcas obviously disapproved, and would say nothing more on the subject.
The trip across the city turned into sightseeing. Father Tom pointed out the sites of the two battles of Saint Albans during the Wars of the Roses. When we drove past the clock tower, he mentioned it marked the place where the local rebels had been hanged during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. He took me into the old town, where I had been in the morning, and pointed out the ancient Roman theatre and some of the other ruins. It was surface politeness, but quite sweet nonetheless—a kind of ghostly drive, I thought.
When the Minor gasped to a halt in front of Mrs. Fern’s home, I started to get out, but he touched my shoulder. For the instant his hand held the contact, a shiver ran through me.
“You might want to think about getting more permanent digs. You’ll be here for a while.”
“I’ve already paid for a week’s lodging,” I countered. I liked Mrs. Fern. She was the kindest person I’d run into so far. I’m stubborn. Tell me not to do something, and I will, just to see what happens. But I didn’t want to be rude; Father Tom had been kind, too, if a more than a little elliptical. Besides, I liked the shiver. He was worth getting to know better. Anglican priests, like Episcopalians in the United States, are not celibate.
I slipped out of the car, waved good-bye, and watched him drive away. While I stood at the curb, I slid my hand into my skirt pocket and touched the brooch.
Too many events had been crammed into too little time. I glanced up at the window—no telltale twitch marked Mrs. Fern’s presence. How could my landlady be such a terror to a canon?
I let myself in. “Mrs. Fern?”
The house was empty. I went upstairs to my room. Everything was just as I left it. My first task was to get out of my skirt and blouse and into my more usual jeans. I was up on one foot, putting on socks, when the vision came.
Schizophrenics have visions and hear voices.
Even though I was in my room and knew it, I saw her appear just outside the abbey’s western door. She walked, slowly, across the tended lawn. She reached a spot and cocked her head for a moment, as if listening.
Whoever she was, she dressed like a Roman woman, not richly but with a nod to propriety. She wore sandals. A palla of indigo wrapped around her, covering a dress of white Egyptian cotton. I’m not sure how I knew about the cotton, but I did. She fumbled at her left shoulder. One end of the mantle dropped almost to the ground. She gathered it in one hand before kneeling.
While she was doing these things, the rest of my world was still visible, but cloudy, out of focus. With one sock off and one sock on, I had scooted to the window without realizing it. One foot sensed the bare wooden floor, a spattering of dust, while the other was still wrapped in heavy white cotton. I felt doubled.
Worse, I knew who she was. Her name was Sheila—Sheilagh, in her language.
She was acting under a compulsion. Sheila had no notion of why she was burying her brooch. I knew, of course, with the hindsight that seventeen centuries can give you.
Something happened. She looked up. Her gaze met mine.
There could be nothing in her world at my height, except perhaps a tree. Sheila would be frightened, I thought; I certainly was. But it was she who calmed me, with the hint of a smile on her lips. She covered the brooch with a careful mound of soil, to wait for my visit this morning, and she knew something better than I.
She knew patience.
Once the brooch was covered, she gave me another look. Then the doubleness faded, along with Sheila. All I saw was what was there now.
It always fails to amaze me how stubborn I can be, how dim-witted and foolish, how lacking in insight into my own behavior, at least while it’s happening.
*
“Father Dorcas,” he answered, all self-contained, professional, politely expectant.
“I need to see someone,” I said. I was in the hallway of Mrs. Fern’s house, using the telephone. My knees kept shaking, until I thought they would bump into each other. It wasn’t that Sheila was scary in and of herself. I wasn’t afraid of her. It was me.
“Help me,” I said.
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