Communion, Chapter 13

We alleluia-ed, and it was true.

Chapter 13

     

      It took weeks to write it down, to make the words come out right, especially within the length limit that Simon Bluetooth had set for me. I didn’t want to give away the farm, to tell too much of the truth—that my informant, my source on the past, was a long-dead girl-soldier-nun. I’d started calling the pieces “imaginative reconstructions” to avoid awkwardness.

      While I was still working on it, I went into my office to find Leslie Phelps seated at the Ergonodesque, scrolling through screen after screen of what I had written.

      “Oh, there you are.” She looked up from the computer.

      I was speechless with anger. Just what was it she had been reading? I reached around her and hit the computer’s switch on the power strip. The screen snapped to black.

      “That can’t be good for the equipment,” she complained.

      My capacity for speech returned, but I was afraid of what I might say. I managed a tight “Please, Lady Phel—“

      “Leslie,” she interrupted.

      “Please respect my privacy.”

      “Privacy?” She had not the least idea of why I might be offended. “This computer is not your property, Clio. Nor is your work product. I was merely looking to see what progress you’ve made. It’s been some time since you wrote anything new for the Advertiser. You weren’t here. Rather than wait, I investigated.”

      This is my boss, I reminded myself. Don’t piss her off so badly that I have to leave town.

      “Leslie, some of what I write I don’t want to share with people until I’ve finished with it.” I didn’t have anything embarrassing on the Communion’s machine (I saved that stuff for my laptop), but there was a lot of first draft stuff and raw notes that I didn’t want anyone snooping through. “It’s unfinished.”

      She’d just gone down about twenty notches in my estimation. I was one of the servants, sure enough, just like William or Ted.

      “I don’t plan to justify myself to you, Clio. I thought we trusted each other.”

      Fat chance.

      “I don’t mistrust you, Leslie.” Liar liar pants on fire. I felt exposed. I decided to say so.

      “I don’t mean to be rude,” I said. And truth to tell, I didn’t. But I wanted to set sure and certain boundaries between us. “And if I was, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention.”

      “Very well.” The words just barely escaped her thin-lipped face. She wasn’t used to backtalk, as Mama would have called it.

      “Maybe,” I went on, “I’m just being temperamental, but what you want from me is the finished product, right?”

      She managed a stiff nod.

      “First drafts are often rough. Like a painter’s first sketches. I need to feel safe enough to take risks that may not work out.”

      “I’m not ignorant, Clio. I take your point.” Leslie stood. “If you’re quite through, I have business to attend to.”

      She walked out as if she owned the place, which she did. I stayed, feeling resentful and definitely outdone. Of course, I didn’t have generations of experience at lording it over people.

      We Americans call something an antique if it’s a hundred years old. Europeans live in a past more than twenty times as deep. It takes some getting used to. If my eyes were not bound by time, I could see.

      I took my hard-wrought pages to Simon. He’d been after me for more output, too.

      “It sells papers, my dear one, which sells advertising, which puts gold in the pockets of my publishers. They have an affection for profit. So, they have an affection for you.”

      He was at his huge partners’ desk again.

      “I don’t suppose you can arrange to write these little stories any more rapidly,” he asked, after plying me with tea. This time, I had provided him with disk and hardcopy—unstapled. Again, though, he put me through the torture of reading it while I waited.

      “It would help if you spelled things properly.” He marked a spot on the manuscript. “I know how you Americans are, but you’re in Britain.”

      “Sorry.”

      “No you’re not—not a bit.” His looked up from the papers, his eyes twinkling. “But it’s good of you to pretend. How are you getting on with her ladyship?”

      I told him about my run-in with her.

      “It’s a hazard of working for the aristocracy. Or the rich, though they haven’t been the same for some time now.” He made another mark on my story, and I strained to see what it was, but he kept it from me. “Leslie Phelps has money and a title. It can be a savage combination. I always thought she managed rather well.”

      “Snooping through my things is doing well?” I asked.

      “You’re not one of us, Clio. Or as a Texan once said to me while I was visiting Dallas, ‘You’re not from around here, are yew?’”

      “OK, I’m not. So?”

      “So our ways are not your ways. You are an American, and not only that, a black American. You’re an independent woman. You have no living family. You’re very new here and don’t know our ways. And yet you can tell us things about ourselves that we can not see.”

      I was nearly flattered, and said so. I was blushing, too. “I can?”

      “You have no idea how relieved I was when you showed up, instead of some down-on-his-luck Cambridge don. You actually care, and you have no reputation to protect, so you have the ability to be completely honest. All you want is the freedom to work. I’ll talk to Leslie and remind her of just what she’s got as opposed to what she might have had to settle for.”

      I was beyond flattered now. For the second time in the day, I was speechless. I don’t think I’d ever known what Mama meant by the word flabbergasted until this instant, but I sure knew now. I could only look down at my shoes. No one had ever said such things to me, and I could only blush some more. “Thank you.”

      “If you want to thank me, go home and write some more.”

      I stumbled out of his office and took his advice.

     

* * *

     

      There came a tapping at my door. I opened it to find Mrs. Fern, bearing the manuscript of my last vision—or next installment in the ongoing newspaper saga of Saint Alban. She’d asked to see what I was working on, and I couldn’t think of a reason to refuse. It would be in the paper within the week.

      “I’m going up to Dunstable to see my cousin,” she said, “since it’s so fine today. I wondered if you’d care to come along.”

      Go, said my voice, before I could think of a polite excuse. It was really quite a sweet offer.

      Mrs. Fern’s cousin turned out unexpectedly. She was Joan Elspeth, one of the members of my board of directors. I worried that I might be the only person in town who wasn’t directly related to everyone else.

      Joan Elspeth presided over an estate outside Dunstable, on the northern edge of the Chiltern hills.

      “Most of it is no good for farming,” she explained. “Much too much up-and-down for the plough. I keep some of it in woodlot, some of it in sheep, and some I just let run wild. As far as I know, parts of this land have never been cultivated.”

      Mrs. Elspeth dressed in worn tweeds. She’d “kept up” with me through Lady Phelps (Leslie) and her cousin, Mrs. Fern.

      “You might enjoy—we’re quite off the beaten track, you know—you might enjoy the little valley where I go walking some of the time. It’s quite peaceful, actually.”

      I thanked her and wondered what she needed to get away from. Leslie, for one, I guessed. The Elspeth estate, like its owner, was far from that beaten track she had spoken of. I did not know that such wildness could exist on this heavily and long-populated island.

      “You must call me ‘El,’ my dear. We’ll all go tramping through the wood together. It leaves precious little time for honorifics.”

      It was a splendid day. The sun shone down on a landscape ruffled by October winds. The autumn rains were suspended, for the time being, having left behind them a last haze of dark green before winter’s browns and grays.

      El and Mrs. Fern—Jane, now—changed into clothing suited for hiking through the woods. Since I seldom wear anything else, except when forced by circumstance, we were all three soon ready. El had packed a hamper with food. Off we went.

      El was right about her land; there was far too much up-and-down. After an hour’s trek, we topped a hill and looked back across the valley toward our starting point. My panting must have signaled my dismay, for El said, “You ought to get out of the library and see the real world more. It’s worth the effort.”

      El had an authority about her that Jane lacked, as did Lady Phelps. Maybe it came from her apparent wealth. Or perhaps the huge Dane who must have figured in her bloodline, but not in Jane’s, contributed something, a thousand years after the fact. El was easily fifty, easily six feet tall, and easily could have turned out shy, horsey, and ungainly. Instead, she manifested as sure and stately.

      Sweating heartily in spite of the autumn breeze, we moved down the hill, along a narrow path, El in the lead, me in the middle, and Jane bringing up the rear.

      El held up a hand. “Wait here.” She took the basket from Jane and disappeared ahead.

      “What’s going on?”

      “El’s a bit of a show-woman,” Jane said, smiling. “I told her what part of the legend you were working on, and she’s cooked up a treat. So many people ask me about you and what you’re doing. They don’t mean to pry—and I don’t say anything; I’m not a gossip—but El is special, and, after all, a member of your committee. I hope you won’t be angry with me.”

      It all poured out in a rush. Jane was actually blushing. I was flattered, in an odd sort of way. Back in Philly, I would have been offended at the breach of privacy. Here, in this wood or back in Saint Albans, it felt natural. How could people not be curious, maybe even fearful, of what I might say about their patron?

      El reappeared. Her face was flushed with excitement; all her authority was gone. She smiled and shifted from foot to foot as I walked past her and followed the path around a couple of turnings.

      When I made the third turn, there it was. El came up behind me.

      “The locals say—”

      “I know.” The brush and trees could not be the same. The whole place could not be—but there, in front of me, backed by a stand of oaks bright with a red and orange fringe of leaves, was the flat rock I had seen Germanus using as his altar. Across it, like an altar cloth, lay a white linen, its edge ruffling in the breeze. Atop it were bread, wine, fruit, and cheese from the hamper El had packed.

      We ate and drank. What else was there to do?

      One more thing: we alleluia-ed, and it was true.

     

* * *

     

      Joan Elspeth, while Jane was off to the loo, put it this way. “You’ve had quite a time of it.”

      I nodded, wary of giving away too much even to the woman who had shown me the extraordinary glade. There were layers upon layers of ancient loyalties, ancient competitions, among the people among whom I was working. The ties that bound them together were like the strata in an archeological dig. On the surface, there might be an overlay of grass and trees, hiding the old stone, metal, wood and bone that made up their history, but the old bones were still there, their presence felt like a badly healed fracture.

      “Jane and I go back a long way,” El said. “I could say the same about Leslie.”

      We sat in El’s Victorian solarium, in one wing of her country home. Unlike the great hall, just beyond the carved oaken door, her sun room enfolded us in a cozy, sunlit warmth.

      The hall was spectacular, full of ancestral portraits and even a suit of fifteenth-century armor that still bore the dents earned during one of the battles in the War of the Roses. The ancestor who owned it had survived just long enough to get home from the second battle of Saint Albans. He had been too young to participate in the first.

      The solarium looked out over the back lawn. The grass sloped down to where the woods began. We sipped reconstitutive brandy after our trek in the forest. The wind had grown blustery as we returned; the spirits’ heat drove the chill from my skin, working from the inside out.

      “It hasn’t been dull, I assure you,” I answered. “A friend who had been here told me that Saint Albans would bore me to tears, but he was wrong. I haven’t had the chance.”

      It was El’s turn to nod. I decided I had to chance her refusal while Jane was out of the room.

      “Tell me, if you don’t mind—”

      “Which means you think I will.”

      “Maybe.” I tried to think of an easy way to say it, and failed. “What’s between Jane and Lady Phelps?”

      El slumped in her wing back chair. The afternoon sun fell on her short blond hair and lighted her face. Her smile turned to a frown of puzzlement.

      “I’m part of it, too, you know, so I can’t say that my opinion will do much good.”

      “Part of what?”

      “The intrigue.”

      I waited.

      “It’s silly, really. Tragic, in its outcome. Jane and Leslie are cousins, somewhat removed, but cousins still.”

      I put things together mentally. “You’re a cousin, too.”

      “Too right,” El sighed. “I’m the middle one, who still can talk to each of the others. When Jane married Henry, Leslie, whose purpose in life is to judge everything she encounters, found him wanting in social standing. Jane didn’t care. In 1960, she was twenty-four, and a rebel. She smoked pot and fell in love with the drummer of a rock and roll band. The story is simply pitiful. He threw her over and she met Henry on the rebound. He was her age and cared for her through the whole time—got her off the drugs she’d gotten involved with, gave her a sense of self-worth. Leslie couldn’t stand him. He had no education to speak of; he was just a good soul who rescued Jane when she’d needed it. I think she married him out of gratitude, but, as time went on, a real love grew between them. Of course, when Leslie opposed the marriage, Jane grew only more stubborn. You’ve seen how she can be.”

      “How who can be?” Jane spoke from the door. It had opened without El’s noticing.

      “You, dear,” El said, not missing a beat. “I was giving Clio your history. She’s rather caught in the middle of the muddle between you and the unspeakable one.”

      Jane laughed and picked up the thread of the story herself. “She offered me money, you know, after Henry died. I couldn’t take it, of course, because paying me would have released her from responsibility. She pretended she was only trying to help, but it was wergild, as sure as could be.”

      The sky dropped toward the roof of the solarium. The undersides of the clouds hung down like teats on a nursing bitch. Under glass, we watched the sky darken from pale gray to near black. Wind swirled around the glass room and whistled at the joints.

      “I guess we ought to get back, before it breaks on us.” I started to gather up my empty snifter.

      “Too late,” El answered, gauging the sky. “Besides, this is much the best place to watch a storm.”

      Jane waved the decanter of brandy in the general direction of my glass. “I rather feel like letting my hair down, Clio. Do let’s stay the night.”

      A gust rattled the panes. The first spatters of rain, large, heavy and cold gobbets of water, fell on the glass. Swirls of dust, invisible until now, appeared, floating in the rain drops over our heads.

      “This will be a good one!” Jane’s face was turned upward to the storm, her eyes wide with excitement, her lips parted. El still sat in her chair, but her eyes, too, were wide, her face open to the sky. She glanced at me.

      “It’s quite safe. We’ve never lost a pane to a storm in over a hundred years.”

      The warmth of the sun had long since deserted us. I shivered in the chill coming through the glass and around the joints of the old solarium. Maybe it had stood the test of time, but time would win eventually. The fact that it had endured so far didn’t reassure me in the least; it just brought the inevitable closer. Time always won. It was the single lesson of history I was sure I had learned.

      Lightning exploded. The thunderclap went straight through me. Surely the lightning must have struck the house, but the two cousins only grinned fiercely at each other, while I struggled not to cower like a frightened dog.

      The rain fell in earnest now, beating against the glass while the heavens roiled with lightning flashes and bursts of thunder rattled the panes.

      “There’s a new one!” Jane cried, pointing to a spot in the glass ceiling where drops of water pushed through a joint to fall on the flagstones below.

      “No, you missed the last storm,” El shouted back. “It started then.”

      “You knew this was coming?” I asked Jane.

      “I always come out for storms,” she shouted against the roar of the rain, face still turned to the sky. “I thought you’d like it. We hardly ever get one like this.”

      Truth to tell, it excited me, in a way I didn’t recognize, maybe because the two cousins took such open pleasure in the violence of the elements, their faces unguarded. For the first time I saw someone here without the mask of that British combination of reserve and politeness—what Chaucer called politesse—completely absorbed in something, aware of my presence, but not careful of my reaction.

      I moved toward the storm and pressed my face against the glass. Its texture came as a surprise, smooth but rippled from the furnace of a hundred years before, and cold against my skin with the chill of the heavens. Through it came the pounding of the rain, the pressure of the wind, the spasms of thunder. Jane and El couldn’t see my own fierce grin, but it was there. Right on my face.

      My hand slipped into my pocket to grip the ancient brooch. It glowed hot in its secret darkness, smooth and new once again, and I caressed it, longing for the vision this time, for the instant when everything changed.

Communion, Chapter 12

Here's the next installment of The Communion of the Saint. Back to the 5th century.

An audio version of the book is at podiobooks.com. Also free.

Chapter 12

     

      Despite the treacly decor and uncomfortable furniture, I hadn’t slept so well in weeks. Even the velvet portrait of Jesus seemed benign when I entered the living room to find Amphibalus contorted on the window sill, washing.

      “I dreamed about you,” she said in the morning over tea. A wheeze grated in her voice, the result, she said, of asthma. “I never had a best friend when I was a child. I dreamed that you were she.” She shuffled over to the sink with both our cups. “We’d best get ready; Thomas will be coming for you.”

      Christina was in the bath when the knocking started. We had ended the night chattering like school girls. When Christina had knelt at her prie-dieu, I hadn’t, for once, felt awkward. It seemed natural for that huge woman to pray, as natural as breathing.

      I had to laugh when I looked out the cottage door. The three of them stood as far apart as they could. The stone stoop was only a few feet wide, but the gulf that opened among Father Tom, Leslie Phelps, and Mrs. Fern was huge. Each mirrored the expression of the other—a stern determination mixed with distaste at the presence of the other two. I opened the door.

      “Good morning.” I stood aside. “Won’t you all come in. I’m afraid we’ve just put up the breakfast things, or else I’d offer you tea.”

      They sorted themselves out with difficulty. Leslie sniffed at the room, wrinkling her nose at Amphibalus, but keeping her silence. The cat stared back, clearly unimpressed. Mrs. Fern wore her sense of betrayal like a raincoat. Father Tom mainly looked uncomfortable, a pained expression on his face, as if the awkwardness among the three of them were his fault. Still, he managed to be the first to speak.

      “Where’s Christina?”

      “In the bath.” I could think of nothing to do to ease their embarrassment, which was just as well. Each of them deserved it. Saint Albans, I was reminded, was a small town. I hadn’t run into this kind of nosiness growing up in Philly, but I’d seen it in the college where I’d taught. It was delicious. I felt rejuvenated. “I’ll just let her know you’re here.”

      The bath was off the small cell where Christina normally slept. She’d insisted that I use her bed. She’d put fresh linens on it for me. I tapped at the door to the bathroom. She peeked out, steaming and fresh in her voluminous bathrobe.

      “They’re here—three of them.” I filled her in on the flood of shame filling her tiny living room. “I wouldn’t leave them alone too long together.”

      “Quite right. There’s no telling what could happen.” She ducked back into the bathroom.

      Her breath still whistled in her chest. I was beginning to worry about her. I stripped the covers, found fresh sheets in the bottom of the armoire, and remade the narrow bed. With my arrival Christina had had more trouble in her cottage overnight than she might normally see in a year; I wanted to ease the burden. My hospital corners weren’t perfect, but they were the best I could do. Besides, I couldn’t wait to hear what might happen in the front room.

      “She’ll be out in a moment.” I would have said “minute,” a few weeks before. The environment was beginning to work on me. I had done some acting in college—nothing serious, just extracurricular stuff. It had left me with the distressing tendency to mimic the accent of anyone I spent time with.

      “Are you packed?” Mrs. Fern clutched her keys, as if afraid they might be stolen.

      “I’m afraid I didn’t have anything to pack,” I said. “It all happened so quickly.”

      “You might have called.” Lady Phelps.

      “I—

      “She’d had a head injury, for the love of Christ!” Tom’s irritation broke through. “We did what we thought best. She has no one here.”

      “Hmph,” Mrs. Fern’s face soured.

      “I should think that I would be the first notified.” Leslie wrapped herself in the full haughtiness of her class. “I am her employer.”

      “More’s the pity.” Christina, wrapped in a purple and orange caftan, appeared at the bedroom door.

      Amphibalus jumped from the sill and rubbed against Leslie’s ankles. Leslie shuddered, but stood her ground.

      “Clio would be better off if you weren’t,” Christina continued.

      “It’s because of my work that she is here in the first place.”

      “It’s because of your work that my Henry dropped over and died,” Mrs. Fern said. All eyes turned to her.

      “I beg your pardon?” Leslie’s tone was mild, but her eyes shone hard as the flint of the cathedral. “Henry Fern, as I recall, was under treatment for the abuse of alcohol. It can hardly be—”

      “All the more reason you and your foreman should have taken him off the job.”

      Embarrassment draped us in awkward silence. None of us three onlookers wanted to be in the middle of this ancient fight.

      Father Tom cut in. “This is neither the time nor the place to rake up the past.” I was glad for his intercession, but I also wanted to know the story. Raking up the past was my business—though usually not the recent past.

      “Now, how are you feeling?” Tom turned his attention to me, a bit flushed from his intercession, but triumphant with the small victory he had won. I rather enjoyed his success; it gave him a look of strength.

      “Quite well, thank you.”

      “I checked on her several times during the night,” Christina said. “Never a problem. I think we can rule out a concussion.”

      I hadn’t noticed—sleeping the sleep of the ignorant, I suppose. Still, it was kind of her.

      “The doctor asked me to come back today for a quick check,” I said to Tom. “Could I prevail on you for one more performance as my chauffeur?”

      The protests of the two women died under Tom’s withering protectiveness. I promised Mrs. Fern that I would be back in her home for lunch and spend the afternoon resting, and Leslie Phelps that I would be on the job tomorrow. They left, after making me cross my heart and hope to die that I wasn’t still suffering from a concussion. I let Tom go out to the Morris Minor before turning back to Christina.

      “Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been more than kind. I was a stranger and you took me in, and you nursed me through the night. That’s two cardinal acts of mercy.”

      “Go ahead now.” She smiled, then began to laugh, her huge frame jiggling under the bright caftan. “This scene we just played paid me back many times over. And I’m late for my morning prayers.”

      “Pray for me,” I asked, before I could stop to think about it. “This whole business confuses me.”

      We embraced. I could feel her breath rumble deep in her chest. “You should get that taken care of.”

      “That wheeze? I’ve had it for years. It comes and goes, but I’m still here. Go on with you, now.” Christina bent; Amphibalus leapt to her arms.

      Then I was out the door and into Tom’s Minor, chugging along the narrow road.

     

* * *

     

      I made Tom take me back to the cathedral, if only for a moment, to look again into the chapter house where I’d had my “fall.” He stayed at my side while we were there, refusing to leave me alone.

      I found that I didn’t mind his protectiveness, that part of me welcomed it.

      “Are you still jealous?”

      “The edge has worn off,” he answered. We stood at the prie-dieu, where my vision had started the day before.

      “I’m glad you took care of me. If I had to go through all that”—I touched the kneeler—“it’s good that you were with me.”

      He nodded, preoccupied with his own problems, of which I knew little.

      Tom knelt at the prie-dieu and let his forehead touch his folded hands. His absolute lack of self-consciousness released a stream of tenderness in me. He looked vulnerable, as if by choice, while in his silent prayer; it made him stronger. Tom Dorcas found his God differently, without the awful struggles I insisted on.

      There was room at his side. I knelt, too, and pushed my fear to arm’s length.

      I closed my eyes, folded my hands, and prayed into the silence of the ancient stone, into the quiet of Tom’s soft breathing. At first, only words came, and I felt embarrassed, hypocritical. Nothing happened, and I was disappointed.

      I ran out of words. The quiet grew, but instead of being frightened, I felt something—maybe Tom’s calm presence, maybe something else: a shield, a shelter grew around me.

      Then I knew. Tom’s prayers were for me.

      He touched my hand. We stood, I a little unwilling.

      “Time for the world, again,” he said. “Are you ready?”

      The doctor was, blessedly, the same woman who had seen me the day before. She amputated Tom from my side with practiced ease and led me into the examination room. There, she went over me top to bottom.

      “One of the benefits of private care is that, if things aren’t too busy, we can spend the time we ought with our patients. How do you feel?”

      I took a moment to think about it. “Not bad at all. Private care?”

      “The abbey’s paying for your treatment, not National Health. It does make a difference. How is your headache?”

      “Gone.”

      She wielded her ophthalmoscope like a laser dagger and peered into my eyes. The bright light reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

      “Does that hurt?”

      “No. It reminded me—”

      “Of what?”

      But whatever the trace was, it vanished. I shook my head. “It’s gone, now.”

      With a clean bill of health and orders to spend the rest of the day doing nothing of importance, I reappeared in the waiting room. Tom was at the payment desk.

      “—to me at the abbey.” He brightened when he saw me. “All done?”

      “Quite.”

      “Ready for a rest, I imagine.”

      It didn’t figure to be restful back at Mrs. Fern’s house, at least not right away. There would be the initial scene to be got through.

      Mrs. Fern, though, surprised me. She put water on as I came through the door, shooed me upstairs to get into my warm, white bathrobe, and had the tea ready when I came back down. It was disarming to be met with a P. D. James mystery, a cuppa, and told that she had to be out for several hours and I wouldn’t be disturbed. She even unplugged the telephone before departing on whatever errand drew her out of the house.

      I sat for a while at the kitchen table, sipping tea and feeling comforted. Mrs. Fern had a disarming talent for nurture. I watched the sunlight, through the kitchen window, play on the spire of the abbey.

      Rested now?

      The voice was back. I almost didn’t mind.

      I forget the limitations of the flesh.

      I reached for my brooch. Reflexively, I carried it with me wherever I went, slipping it from purse to pocket without the necessity for thought. The rough, pitted surface reassured me. At least I wasn’t catapulted into some spectral version of past events. The kitchen stayed in place. The walls stood as solid as wood and plaster could make them.

      “What is it?” I asked.

      I felt that I should check on you.

      “Good of you,” I shot back. “I always enjoy your visits.”

      Sarcasm is wasted, dear one.

      Sarcasm is never wasted; it always makes me feel better, as if my wits are still working.

      That’s such a mortal thing to say.

      I would have given him such a look, if he’d been there. Besides, I didn’t say it.

      Jesus tells us that to think a thing is to do it.

      Do you mean that “lust in my heart” thing that got President what’s-his-name in such trouble?

      I swear to God that he nodded, even though I couldn’t see him. A wave of nodding swept through me.

      “You were pretty rough on me.”

      That was Bryn. She has a few raw edges.

      “Not you?”

      Why should it be? I’m not the only martyr around.

      “I’ve been with several of them recently,” I said. It was less weird to be talking to him than it had been. Either I was getting used to being crazy or something else was going on. I didn’t know which was worse.

      “I don’t guess I can go back to having a normal life.”

      What was so great about normality? he asked.

      “What happened to Bryn?”

      Would you like to see?

      “No—just tell me.”

      So he did. Bryn’s sister Ceil’s sight came back when Germanus touched her eyes and promised that the saint himself would heal her. But Ceil remained as spoiled and self-indulgent as ever. Bryn, after witnessing it, stayed a nun for the rest of her life, and lived to be part of another miracle.

      “What?”

      I should have known better than to ask.

      The brooch shimmered into newness again and flew from my hands to my white terry robe. I pinned it through the cloth, which itself changed as my fingers worked. The walls faded; I was smaller again, and again pale of skin. Germanus had sent me as one of a series of lookouts. I was camped in a tree at the edge of a large stand of woods, the last sentinel in a chain stretching along the old Roman road that ran up to Hadrian’s wall, far to the north. Spring had been busy, freshening the trees to give me cover.

      It was Good Friday.

      Da’ was now with Germanus and the main body of men who had come northward on the road. Months had gone by since the defeat of Merlin and the healing of Ceil—plenty of time for my Celtic brothers and sisters to start a legend about the brawny bishop from the continent, and for that tale to leach into the superstitious minds of the raiders, who were neither Christian nor civilized. I was present when Germanus explained his plan to Da’.

      “In battle, the Picts and Saxons are brave—none can compare to them. They love the fight itself, and, man to man, they are dangerous. If we had time to train our soldiers, we could defeat them, because this strength of theirs is their weakness: they are undisciplined, more interested in glory and plunder than in sound tactics. But there is no time.”

      Da’s scouts had reported back. The raiders who killed and tortured Ma’ and frightened Ceil into blindness were an advance party. The main group—an unruly mix of Saxon, Pict, and Irish barbarians—was heading south down the very road I was lookout on, aiming to split Britain down the middle from Hadrian’s wall to the channel. Thereafter, we would be easy pickings for them.

      The plan, Da’ explained, could work. Britain was no longer anything like a state. There was no government, no rule that held the Britons together. Vortigern, the erstwhile king whose mage Germanus had bested, was not obeyed when out of sight.

      Da’ had gone ahead, until Germanus could catch up, readying what men he could as soldiers, and I with him. Ceil stayed with the monks, useless on such a journey. I burst with pride when Germanus and Da’ agreed that I should go with the fighters. I fancied myself a young Boadicea, nun or no nun. Besides, I was only a novice.

      The legend did its work. Da’ re-gathered a force of hundreds. Drawn by the tales of Germanus’ miracles and his military reputation, they filled the glade when Germanus came from the south.

      It was spring, and the forest that hid them from casual view was a riot of fresh, new green.

      Germanus wasted no time. The army, such as it was, was anxious to see him. We had a desperate thirst for hope.

      Cunobelinus, the novice master, had been busy while Germanus and Da’ scouted for the enemy. I had been of some small help, talking to the women and the children who came with the men. When Germanus and Da’ rode back into camp on Good Friday, late in the day, Cuno had already led the prayers for the service, and, for the more impressionable of his soldier-students, it was a devastating time. Christ was dead and in the grave. The camp was silent and solemn.

      “No one challenged us,” Da’ complained.

      “I saw you,” I answered. “But I knew who it was. I followed you back, and you never saw me.” He gave me a look that closed my mouth. Da’ had forgotten how to smile. I stood at his side anyway, relieved that he was back safe from being near the barbarians.

      Germanus and Da’ insisted on walking the perimeter of the camp.

      “They are preoccupied,” Cuno said by way of explanation, concerning the would-be fighters gathered in the camp. He and I followed in the tracks of the two leaders like eager children, wanting them to approve what we had done. “They wait to be baptized tomorrow night. It’s a relief you’re back in time.”

      The bishop pulled his cloak tight against the evening’s chill, and stopped to stare at Cuno and me.

      “All of them?”

      “I believe so.” Cuno was grinning, proud, and so was I. “The women and children, too.”

      “There are so many,” Germanus said. “I never thought—”

      “Some were already of the faith,” I spoke up, unable to contain myself. “Especially among the women. They helped. A lot.”

      Germanus was shocked into silence. He looked around, as if seeing the world anew, interested in every detail of every thing within his sight. He grinned at Cuno and me. I knew that he was pleased, but Cuno could only smile weakly.

      “Did I do wrong?”

      “Wrong?” Germanus laughed. “Oh, no, friend. You have seen a miracle!” The bishop twirled around, a dancer who could not keep still. He would have burst if he did not caper and shout.

      “Wake up! Wake up!” he cried to the camp. “Don’t you see—it’s a miracle!”

      The rocks beneath the trees answered him in his own voice.

      “A miracle!” they echoed.

      Germanus stopped, as if struck by an arrow. I started to rush toward him, but Da’ held up his hand.

      “Listen,” the general commanded.

      “Listen,” said the earth.

      How can a girl hide when the very earth itself speaks to her? I was frightened, but paid attention to Da’ and Germanus. Da’s look of alarm matched my own, but he stared at his leader.

      Germanus took a few steps away and tried again. Nothing happened. A few steps more; the echo returned, but the tone was subtly different.

      The four of us scattered, the same thought impelling us through the narrow valley. I ran a dozen steps, stopped, and shouted. Nothing. A few steps more, another shout, answered this time by the echo of my voice, magnified, powerful, scary. It made me jump. Da’ laughed at me, and I laughed back. It was the first he had smiled since before the attack.

      We dashed madly about. Shouts and laughter filled the defile.

      By dawn, the four of us had mapped out the whole of the small valley of the encampment. We had already sent scouts out to the north, along the route the raiders would take, each nearer one within signaling distance of the further out. We would have continuous notice of the approach of the invaders.

      Saturday, the day before Easter, was spent in final preparations. The mixed force of Saxons, Picts, and Irish would attack without much discipline, expecting little resistance. Trip-lines, snares, and deadfalls lined with sharpened sticks were laid. At dusk came word that the invading force had pitched camp nearby and appeared ready to attack at dawn.

      Cuno brought the men, I the women and children, in small groups down to the stream that ran by the altar stone. There, in the dusk of Easter eve, Germanus baptized every one.

      Still wet from the font, each trooper was taken to a spot in the valley and told what to do when the attack came. Da’ went with each. “When the enemy appears, lie still, as if sleeping, or better, dead. When the time is right, Germanus will shout. When he does, follow his lead.”

      The night was long. There were many to lead to the font. I heard noises that did not come from our own people. Foreign eyes touched Cuno and me as we went about the business of bringing hundreds of Britons into the faith of Christ.

      To the superstitious Picts watching us from the forest, Cuno and I must have seemed Death’s messengers, Germanus Death himself. Finally, just before first light, we finished. I delivered my last soldier to his spot and returned to the altar. The women and children were out of sight. In spite of my Da’s protests, I stayed with the fighters. I couldn’t bring myself to miss this.

      “Now what?” Cuno said. The four of us huddled in a shadow by the altar stone. The sound of the brook masked our whispers. I hoped.

      “Now we wait,” Germanus answered, “and pray.”

      “Quietly,” Da’ added.

      Like all the others, I had a specific spot to wait in. The cool of the night, pleasant enough when I was moving around, turned to a deeper chill as I lay motionless on the ground, sleepless, trying to pray for my soul and for success. I shivered as the dew began to coalesce, then freeze on my hair and clothing. For the soldiers it was a second baptism. Each of the Britons would be glazed in white frost.

      I had not known that I could hear a shadow. The raiders moved among us. They stank. I could smell each one as he came near. I fought to stifle a wave of nausea, and did not know whether it was their stink or my fear that caused it, but I lay still, as ordered, waiting for the signal.

      At any moment, one of the raiders might poke a still body with his weapon, just to see if it was alive. As that thought occurred to me, the sound of a blade being unsheathed slithered through the cold air—too close. I felt the blade move through the space between me and the enemy. My heart thudded, and I thought sure that the devil standing over me must hear it.

      The sword’s point was worn, but its owner was hardly gentle. It hurt, even through layers of clothing. I forced myself to lie still as the soldier probed at my unresponding form. It was the hardest moment of my life, harder even than hearing of Ma’s death at the hands of these same invaders.

      The song began with a single voice rising from the chill, damp earth. An alleluia, slow and drawn out, its syllables rising and falling like breath, full of heat and moisture, coming from the cold ground.

      Another voice answered the first, an antiphon from deep inside the earth itself.

      The sky lightened. The shapes of the raiders were visible as silhouettes, frozen by fear. The alleluia bubbled to my lips as well, soaring through me and adding earth’s voice to my own and the voices of all the others. Still white with hoar frost, we sang our joy and our surprise and our dawning realization that another miracle was taking place.

      Here.

      Now.

      The raiders broke and ran. Most headed down the hill, past the altar, into the stream which, until Germanus ordered it dammed, had been shallow and swift. Now it was deeper than a man’s head, and the raiders were panicky, burdened with weapons and armor. Many drowned.

      Others fell into the deadfalls and died. Still more went tumbling over the snares we had set.

      When the sun cleared the horizon, the Britons held the field. Forever after, men called the battle, such as it was, the Alleluia Victory. Da’ and Germanus counted the dead invaders into the hundreds. The rest fled, panicked, into the wild. Some regrouped to retreat. Others simply disappeared. The barbarian alliance was broken.

Communion, Chapter 11

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Chapter 11

     

      “When did you last eat?”

      Whatever else I had expected from Christina, it wasn’t that. I had to think for a moment.

      “Yesterday—supper.”

      “No breakfast?”

      “Uh-uh.”

      “Then it’s no wonder you’re going about with the faints.” Christina went to the tiny kitchen. Drawers slid open and closed. Cabinet doors clunked. Jars rattled. A knife snicked and clicked as she sliced. Gas puffed to flame in her stove. Butter sizzled. The whole performance was an incantation of hunger, and it worked. Soon the smells joined the sounds—onion, sausage, eggs, all making an olfactory rite that lifted me up out of my blanket and chair and into the kitchen, where I leaned on the doorpost, the entrance to heaven. Amphibalus appeared by my feet, mewing his hunger and profound sense of neglect.

      Christina’s hands moved in a ballet of preparation. She lifted a corner of the omelet to check at the same instant she pushed down the switch on a toaster. Those tasks done, she scooped the remains of her chopping and cutting and slid the debris neatly into a compost bucket by the sink, then rinsed the knife and set it to dry. Her tiny kitchen had become as clean as could be, before the meal was fully cooked.

      I clapped in appreciation.

      “You put my dad to shame, and he’s neat.”

      “I appreciate food—obviously. I hate a mess, though. Sit.”

      Amphibalus mewed. Christina sliced off a bit from her own omelet and tossed it to the cat. The morsel never touched the floor.

      While I sat she slid a spatula under one of the omelets and tipped it onto an old, chipped piece of Delft ware. I was ready to dig in, but waited until she had her own plate ready. The first bite, steaming, redolent of onions and peppers, was on its way to my mouth.

      “Stop.”

      My hand trembled with the frustration of it. She had tempted me so, and now I couldn’t.

      “Put that down, please.” Christina’s voice had grown chilly and stern. “I begin to see why you irritate Father Thomas so. I thought it was only envy. Have you no religion?”

      “I beg your pardon?” I temporized. What had set her off, I didn’t know.

      “Grace, child! Give thanks before eating! It’s rude not to acknowledge your maker.”

      The omelet tormented me with its smells, so close but so impossible to reach. Christina stretched across the tiny table and pushed my hand down.

      “Grace and peace come from you, O Lord,” she said, her eyes upon me. “Blessed are you who brings forth bread from the earth. We give thanks to you, O Lord our God, who watches all our days.”

      I know a cue when I hear it. “Amen.”

      Christina repeated the ancient word.

      “Now, eat.”

      The prayer had dulled my anticipation. Now the delectable egginess was only food for my hunger. I wolfed it down, seasoned with a heavy sprinkling of shame.

      Christina waited until I was finished. I tried to help her clean the meager dishes, but she refused. “I’ve been doing for myself so long that it feels wrong to watch someone else,” she said, but she didn’t trust me to wash to her standards. Maybe if I prayed before washing up, she’d think I was okay. Then again, maybe not.

      I felt like a chastened child watching her work at the sink. I slipped into the living room. The awful velvet portrait of Jesus stared down at me, as accusing as Christina’s self-righteous cleanliness. I sat down with my back to him, trapped in this cottage with a woman who disapproved of me, carried here by a man who envied me, and I hadn’t asked for any of this. I just wanted to do my work and be left alone.

      “What is the purpose of your gift?” Christina stood in the doorway from the kitchen.

      “Is that what you call it?”

      “Why you?” She wasn’t about to be stopped by my rhetorical tricks. “Why were you chosen? There are many others who would welcome such a visitation from heaven, yet you treat it as an irritation.”

      She knelt in front of me and took my hands. Her pale, pudgy fingers wound through my dark and skinny ones, warm to the touch, and moist with a sheen of perspiration. I tried to remove myself from her grip, but she held on with surprising strength.

      “Clio—if you try to do this alone, you will be defeated. You don’t have the training, the context, to handle this. You need a soul friend, or it will break you. You need prayer, both your own and others. Today was just a foretaste of what’s to come.”

      I tugged my hands; she held on.

      “Let me go.”

      She looked up into my eyes. I don’t know what she saw there, but she released her grip.

      “Please—listen.”

      “You listen,” I said. “I didn’t ask for whatever’s happening here. I didn’t do anything to bring it on, but I’m not stupid, and the rest of you don’t know any better than me what I should do, how I should be. All that happened today was that I bumped my head, and everyone panicked.”

      Christina sighed and sat back on her haunches. The movement made her thighs fatten. She looked like a balloon being blown up.

      “If you believe that—”

      “It’s what happened. Then Tom kidnapped me.”

      “You might have ended up in the mental ward. It could still happen. You were confused and disoriented.”

      “I’ve been that way since I got here. You haven’t helped.”

      “But I’m trying to. You must believe me. It’s terribly important.”

      I got out of the chair. “Why?”

      “Something is happening here,” Christina said. “It centers on you. You don’t realize what forces you’re dealing with.”

      “Why don’t you tell me?” I objected. “Everyone talks around things.”

      As the words escaped me, I realized it was true. I had spoken unthinkingly, but there were hints and suggestions—even my voice gave only those—but everyone I’d met was evasive, as if participating in a grand, though unspoken conspiracy.

      “You haven’t been precisely honest yourself.”

      How could I be honest, when the visions might mean that I was coming apart at the seams?

      A chill descended on me. The cat dashed across the living room and disappeared.

      “Did you feel that?” she asked. Her eyes were open, but she was looking within. Outside, through the window, nothing had changed. There was no gust of wind. I was certain that if I looked at a thermometer, the temperature would have been unchanged, but we were both cold.

      It was the first time I’d felt something spooky that another person shared. Perversely, I was jealous. Whatever I was going through, so far it had been exclusively mine.

      “I get so afraid,” I said. The words fluttered out of me. I didn’t want to trust this fat mystic, but I had lost any sense of calculation, of self-protection. “I think I might be going crazy.”

      “I understand that.” Christina enfolded herself in her fat arms. It would have been funny, if we hadn’t been so scared.

      “What’s going on?”

      “I don’t have an answer.” Christina shivered again, as if a chill breeze had touched her. I felt it, too. That did it for me.

      “I want to go now.” I stood and moved toward the door.

      “Please.” Christina pleaded. “Please—stay.”

      I stopped. It was a long walk back, and I’d already scared myself enough for one night. That chill was still with me.

      “When is Tom supposed to come back?”

      “Tomorrow, in the morning. Please, stay. Whatever else is going on, you had a nasty bump, and I promised the doctor I’d watch over you.”

      “On one condition.” I no longer felt cold; I felt strong, for once in control. The feeling came from being willing to strike out on my own; I’d have to remember that. “No advice. No direction. No telling me what to do.”

      I didn’t know why she was willing, but she was.

      “Agreed.” Something fell away from her, some self-image, maybe, of the holy hermit of Markyate. Suddenly, Christina looked like an ordinary person, a pudgy, oversized woman whose best days had long ago passed her by. It made me sad to see it happen.

      “I still wish you’d pray with me, though.”

      “Look what happened the last time I tried that.”

      “You do have a point,” Christina said, “but so do I. You’ll have trouble if you’re so determinedly self-reliant.”

      “Watch it,” I said, but I found myself smiling. She was at least trying.

      We talked the night away. My headache eased into the background as Christina spoke of herself and the town she’d grown up in. It was a delight to listen to her go on and on, to feel weak currents of near boredom, to allow myself to drift with the flow of conversation. For that while, I had a respite, a break from intensity. I let her voice wash over me and drifted with it.

      Christina lived near the site of a locally famous anchoress, once a nun of Saint Albans. The other Christina’s cell had been here. From here she had advised the twelfth-century abbot of the monastery—and conducted a supposedly chaste love affair with him.

      The present Christina had never left Saint Albans, not even as a young woman during the war. Now in her seventies, she’d had a beau then, but he fell at Dunkirk. Her parents died during the early blitz, on a visit to London. Anyone she’d loved had left and died; she stayed, as a matter of survival.

      When the war ended, Christina, even then pudgy and awkward, found herself alone. There was enough inheritance to live frugally. Religion became her refuge, Jesus her companion.

      When, in a fit of postwar rehabilitation, the government started building the new highway through the old city, Christina volunteered for menial work on the archeological excavations and soaked up every bit of knowledge that she could, but she was without formal education. Nevertheless, the dig triggered her interest in the local Christian past. When she came across the story of Christina of Markyate, she took her small inheritance to a land agent and bought the cottage she still lived in. With enough scrimping, she managed.

      She lived as an observer, at the edge of the life of the city, through the years of recovery from the war. People occasionally came to her for advice, because she was alone and uninvolved and had a reputation for piety. She listened and kept her silence about what she heard. She knew everyone, if not in person, then by what others had said about them.

      Saint Albans was divided. Near London, it was a getaway spot and a bedroom community. A train took half an hour from King’s Cross. The abbey drew tourists, as did the picturesque town center and the ruins in Verulamium. Many wanted to capitalize on these attractions. The suburb itself grew suburbs, incorporating the outlying villages.

      Others wondered about the growing commercialization of the past and trivialization of the present. Christina found herself in sympathy with them, but repelled by some of the people on both sides of the divide.

            Her least favorite were Lady Phelps and Mrs. Fern. So of course they showed up, together, but separately, first thing in the morning.