Communion, Chapter 10

Here's the next installment of The Communion of the Saint. The book is also available at amazon.com in trade paper and for the Kindle

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Chapter 10

     

      Sweat ran down my back. My heart beat loud enough to drown out the sounds of the woods. My foot went forward and encountered only empty space. I had been running on autopilot, without thought.

      A deeper darkness gaped before me—under me, now. My balance shifted towards the emptiness beneath. I screamed, a wordless animal cry. I grabbed at a tree limb and swung out over the space, trapped by momentum. My single hand slipped around the branch. Bark dug into my palm, tearing the skin.

      Reflex took over. I’m not quite sure how, but I found myself with both arms and a leg hooked around the limb. Sometimes it helps to be descended from primate ancestors. I took a couple of deep breaths and gave thanks for my monkey progenitors while I tried to figure out how to get down alive.

      The branch felt thicker to the right. I inched along, upside down, until I bumped my head against the corrugations of a trunk. It couldn’t be too far to the ground, if what I’d run into was in fact the trunk. It had to be, I figured. I can’t jump too high—can’t jump at all while hanging like a cartoon character over emptiness.

      I reached out my bleeding hand to explore the body of the tree. It seemed as wide as the earth looked in the pictures from space, the curvature barely noticeable—too wide to throw an arm around.

      My right hand stung. Blood made it sticky and slippery. My left arm ached and couldn’t hold much longer. My legs were okay for the moment, but I was upside down, hanging like a bat. Blood flowed to my head. My legs began to tingle; they were going to sleep.

      It was an unstable situation.

      Let go.

      Alban?

      It’s safe. Let go.

      Sure it is.

      The tingling in my legs changed to numbness. Soon, they wouldn’t be able to hold on. I swung my right hand up to the branch. The bark snagged on the cut in my palm, but there was no choice. I was losing control of my leg muscles. My ankles came apart. My legs swung down like a massive pendulum. I heard my feet hit something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. My right hand slipped.

      I fell—all of the three feet between my behind and the ground. My hip crunched to the root of the big tree. My feet dangled into nothingness, remote from my plight, as if they had given up the struggle for survival. I clutched at the roots that clutched at the rocky edge of the cliff. I picked up one of the stones and threw it into the blackness before me.

      It fell for two full seconds before swishing through a lower canopy of leaves—sixty feet or so.

      “It’s all right, now, dear.” Christina’s voice came out of the darkness behind me. I tried to turn, but my numb legs wouldn’t behave.

      She plopped down beside me. Her round body gave off a smell of earth and warmth.

      “You’re not so alone as you make out, you know.”

      I couldn’t think of a reply.

      “It’s a long way down,” she said. “I’m glad you stopped.” Amphibalus picked that moment to drop from the tree into Christina’s lap. I gave off a startled, squeaking shriek, but she accepted it as if the big orange tom were a falling leaf. Her hand moved automatically across the fur.

      “Stopped?” My voice was still a little shaky. The best I could do was another question.

      “You are wanted for something. Providence guides you.”

      “It doesn’t help,” I said, relieved at having some kind of declarative statement to make, “when you talk like that.”

      “About God?”

      “Whatever.”

      Amphibalus purred and stared out at me from Christina’s petting.

      “There was another Christina, before me. A long time ago. You remind me of her. Then again, I remind me of her. She didn’t fit in with what people expected of her. Her parents tried—unsuccessfully—to marry her off to the local Norman gentry. They were from the Saxon nobility, what was left a century after the Normans came. It would have been quite a step up for her, a kind of Cinderella story, but she would have none of it. She was wanted for something, too. Like you. She promised God that she would become a nun.”

      “Better her than me,” I countered. The incongruity began to work on me. I sat at the edge of a cliff in pitch darkness, with a psychic holy woman who was lecturing me about a twelfth century hermitess. Happens every day.

      The cat kept staring, his eyes alien.

      “Of course not. You’re nothing like a nun. But you still have a vocation, and it’s quite close to you.”

      “And that is?”

      Christina laughed. Her peals echoed through the darkened wood. Her laugh was full-throated and gentle. “I know that you’ve been called here. I know that you belong here. I know that we need what you bring to us.”

      My legs were functional by now. I stood up and started off into the woods, hoping that I was headed back to her cottage and the road.

      “Wait!” she called. “Not that way. You’ll be lost again. Help me up.”

      I deliberated. I was out of her sight, but I couldn’t leave her there at the edge of the cliff in the darkness. Then I realized that, aside from her voice, I had no bearings. I didn’t know which way to go. Amphibalus materialized out of the underbrush and yowled.

      “You need someone,” she called to me from the cliff. “You can’t do what you’ve come to do by yourself.”

      The problem was that I didn’t know what I’d come to do. I couldn’t wander alone in the dark much longer. I needed someone who knew the territory; I just didn’t want it to be Christina. She frightened me, with her self-assured mysticism and her supposedly “psychic” tricks. If anyone, I wanted Tom, but he’d left me with her. Amphibalus stopped in my path and settled down to wash himself.

      I turned back. The darkness was impenetrable. “Say something.”

      “This way,” Christina answered. “I’m over here.”

      I got her up, after much huffing and puffing. For all her flesh, she moved lightly through the forest, as if she could see the path in the blackness. In a few minutes we reached her cottage.

      She fed me hot tea with sugar—three lumps. Amphibalus had stayed in the woods, doing cat things.

      “I know it’s quite a lot, but your blood sugar’s sure to be low after your experience. Adrenaline just burns it up. Two cups—I won’t be content until you’ve had both.”

      I glanced at my watch. Tweety’s hands showed ten after ten. After finishing my two cups of the syrupy tea, I got to my feet. She was right. I felt better.

      “Thanks for coming after me. I was foolish. You’re very kind.”

      I was itchy, though, and couldn’t sit down. I wandered around the parlor and came to a stop in front of the treacly picture of Jesus.

      “Awful, isn’t it?” Christina said.

      I nodded. What could my answer be?

      “I wouldn’t have it in here, but that He told me to.”

      “He?”

      “Our Lord.”

      “I would have expected better taste from the creator of the universe.” The words were out of me before I could trap them. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

      “No, it’s quite all right. It is a terrible painting. I’m quite ashamed of it, actually. He explained to me that I should be reminded that He comes in many guises, and that good taste is not a prerequisite to holiness. It’s a lesson I need quite often, apparently. That’s why, I suppose, there is so much bad art in churches—it’s the esthetic equivalent of kissing lepers.”

      I eyed the picture again. This Jesus was a simpering, watery-eyed weakling. “He explained to you?” Blond hair fell in ratty strings around His blue eyes, which peered, without understanding, from beneath an overdone crown of thorns. “He talks to you?” There were streaks of blood, much too red, in the hair. A Nordic Christ, but a weak one, badly painted.

      “Yes.”

      I couldn’t think of an answer to her simple affirmation, so I returned to my chair.

      “You will have settled in to your job with the Saints by now, I expect,” Christina said.

      The muscles in my brow tensed. Christina laughed.

      “Don’t be angry. Everyone is quite excited about you.”

      “Are you a member?” I asked.

      “They wouldn’t have me, and it’s just as well. You might call me an interested bystander. Word does get ‘round, though. When you showed an interest in the job, their stock rose quite a bit. That’s when the bishop put Tom on their board.”

      “He wasn’t, before?” This was starting to get interesting.

      “The bishop of Saint Albans does not quite know what to make out of the Saints. That’s what he calls them in private, even though they like to be referred to as the Communion. He thinks they’re a collection of kooks, and doesn’t like them using that name.” Christina laughed again, a chortle that shook her fat. I found myself responding to her gossip in spite of my dislike.

      “Tell me more.”

      “Well,” Christina said, “I don’t like to carry tales, but you’re an American and won’t understand anything without some sort of background, and no one around here is likely to be forthcoming.”

      She was right. Mrs. Fern could wait.

      “People come to me—but if you ask them, they’ll deny it, and so shall I, because it’s a sort of confessional, if you get my drift. Even Father Tom. Even some of the gentry—Lady Verulam—that would be Leslie Phelps to you. Even Sexton. There’s a pair for you.”

      I tried to imagine the latter two as a couple, and failed.

      “But you must promise me something, before I go on.”

      “What?” I felt like Margaret Mead in Samoa, at long last about to hear the tribe’s secrets, see their private rituals. I inched forward to the edge of my seat. That’s where Victorian chair makers wanted us to sit, anyway.

      “Everyone needs to confess something, Clio. Until now, there has been no one for me. But you must not reveal where you heard these things—or even that you have heard them. You must promise.”

      I did. “What’s your confession?”

      “Gossip, Clio—nothing more, but nothing less, either.” Christina chuckled; her ample flesh jiggled in sympathetic motion. “It’s the besetting sin of one to whom people tell things. But you must never use what I tell you to hurt anyone. Do you promise that, as well?

      I did.

      “Well, then,” Christina went on, “you’ll be needing to know about the local things that don’t find their ways into books. Unscholarly matters.”

      If I’d had the wit to ask, that was what I would have asked for.

      “Lady Phelps is descended through a long and torturous route from Francis Bacon’s family—you’ll remember, he’s the one who might have written Shakespeare, if Shakespeare hadn’t already done so.”

      Christina spoke about the Elizabethan scientist and courtier as if he were a particularly irritating neighbor, someone more real than a mere historical character.

      “It’s always bothered Leslie—officially ‘Lady Verulam,’ she claims, though why she’d bother, I don’t know—that Francis can’t be proven to have written the plays. So she’s turned her efforts in other directions, namely the Saints. It’s terribly important to her to have significant ancestors, so that she won’t have to achieve anything of importance on her own account. Her family’s money supplies most of the Communion’s budget.”

      “And my salary.”

      “I dare say. You grasp the implication.”

      Indeed I did. It explained a lot about Leslie’s attitude, why she seemed both possessive and irritable toward me. I was her prize and her surrogate; when I didn’t behave properly in her eyes, it was as if she herself were coming up short. Like so many of the rich, she believed that wealth and position gave her certain rights that others did not have. When those others failed to dance to her tune, she would take measures.

      “But her accent—”

      Christina smiled. “You’ve heard it slip?”

      “Yes.”

      “Then you certainly caught her off guard. That voice of hers is bought and paid for, as surely as the clothing she wears. Leslie married well.”

      “What about the others?”

      “Major Hewitt,” Christina said, “has been infatuated with Leslie since they were children together. Leslie’s father was the groundskeeper on the Hewitt estate. It could have been quite the romantic tale, but the Hewitts could barely keep coal in the furnaces during the winter, and Leslie married money. When she wouldn’t have Major Hewitt to husband, he joined the Army. He was invalided out during the unpleasantness with Argentina and returned to find her widowed, but no more available. He follows her around like a dog. He offers up his gongs as proof of his devotion, but she keeps him at a distance. It’s quite sad, really.”

      “His gongs?”

      “Medals. He was quite the hero.”

      I thought back to the meeting. “There were two women—”

      “Aha!” Christina leaned toward me. “Joan Elspeth and Helen Hardesty. Sisters. Joan never married, while Helen married badly and never has forgiven Joan her solitary happiness. Joan is the elder, by a few years. They’re competitors.”

      I fit the two women into my mental catalogue of the town’s denizens. “Then that’s why they talk to each other they way they do.”

      “Always sniping, though I’ll say that Helen usually comes off second-best. Joan’s smart as a whip—actually understands most of what she reads. Helen tags along because it keeps her out of the house.”

      “What does her husband do?”

      Christina smiled. “We’ve all been trying to decipher that puzzle. If you find an answer, you’ll be the first. The Elspeth money keeps the family afloat. Helen’s completely foolish when it comes to finance. If it weren’t for Joan’s management, they would have gone under long ago.”

      “That leaves just one—”

      Christina held up a hand. “Two, actually, including Father Dorcas. But the one you’re thinking of is Richard Sexton.”

      “It is his name, then.” The words popped out before I could stop them.

      “You’ve met him before.” Christina’s normally calm expression turned sour.

      “In the abbey, where he works. He was—unpleasant.”

      “Yes, he can be.” Christina’s tone went cold. Until this moment, she had been forthcoming, even garrulous, an older woman glad to have someone to gossip with. She stared off, away from me for a moment before lifting herself from her chair and going back into the kitchen.

      I waited. When she returned, she carried more tea.

      “Here.” She placed a cup in my hand, then sat back down.

      “I’m sorry. I’ve been rude.” She took a deep breath, then went on with her story. “Many years ago, when King Harry broke up the monasteries, the last abbot, Richard Boreman, could not bring himself to abandon the place. He married a local woman, although there were some who claimed that it was not a true marriage, because of his previous vow of celibacy.”

      “Whoa,” I interrupted.

      Christina stared at me as if I’d made a rude noise. “Woe?”

      “I’m sorry. It’s an Americanism; it means hold on a second. What does the closing of the monasteries have to do with Sexton? It was nearly five hundred years ago.”

      “Sexton thinks he’s a descendant, that he by rights ought to be recognized, at least, for keeping the abbey going. He feels possessive toward it, and doesn’t much like others being in control of it. He’s been the sexton since anyone can remember, as was his father before him. The abbey graveyard is full now, but since the Closing, most of the graves have been dug by his family.”

      I sat back in my chair and sipped my tea. It wasn’t nearly so sweet as it had been. “For five hundred years?”

      “Memory runs deep here. Leslie Phelps thinks of Francis Bacon as her not-so-distant grandfather,” Christina said. “I imagine that’s why so many left for the new world. They wanted a place where memory was shallow, and a man could start fresh, without so much weight from the past dragging him down.”

      I chewed on that for a long, quiet moment. I already felt constrained, caught by the past, since coming here. Every one of the people Christina had told me about dragged a history generations long. They knew who their ancestors were farther back than anyone I’d ever known before. The Elspeth sisters lived on a fortune that had its beginning centuries ago. Leslie Phelps demanded ancestral fame. Major Hewitt’s fathers for generations back had served in the Army. Richard Sexton thought himself the caretaker of the abbey by divine right.

      It was all quite foreign to a girl from Philly.