Here's the next installment of The Communion of the Saint. This time we're in the 5th century.

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Chapter 9

     

      I looked back—Tom had vanished. The walls of the chapter house had gone with him. Instead of being inside a modern brick building, we were out of doors, but still in the same place. I think.

      I reached for the brooch. Once again it was smooth and shiny in my hands. I traced the gentle curves. It fit my hand like a worry stone. The brooch was my talisman, my signal that showed me what was going on.

      And something clearly was, not that I understood. It had been a long time since Alban had last appeared. I had  missed him.

      “What are we doing?”

      “You came to learn.” Alban looked different now, more care-worn. It showed in the fine lines around his eyes, the speed at which he moved. Do you age in the afterlife? I made a mental note to ask, but, as usual, got caught up in events and never did.

      The prie-dieu at which I knelt was all that remained of the chapter house. Nearby, just visible in the early darkness, a smaller church lay silent, a single candle flickering through a tiny, unglazed window. A cluster of wattle and daub huts surrounded us like an overgrown fairy ring.

      I knew where I was—I had studied the old Celtic ways. The huts were the cells of monks. Alban was giving me what every historian lusts after: a chance to see for herself the living past that the books dried up on their pages. There might be a price to pay, it might not even be real, but the chance was worth the risk.

      “It’s not so easy to teach you,” Alban said. “You don’t want to learn.”

      “I do.”

      “So you say. But you don’t want to change, and how can you become something new if you won’t let yourself be altered?”

      “Who will I be this time?” Eagerness pumped through me, as necessary as blood, as life-giving as breath. I was frightened, sure, but not frightened enough to back away from the adventure of a lifetime.

      The saint sighed. For a dead man he was awfully lifelike.

      “You need some little background. Pelagius was a Briton who went to Rome. There, to his everlasting shame, he became a theologian. His ideas became popular, and eventually collided with those of Augustine, the African.”

      “Saint Augustine?” I asked. “Original sin and all? I never liked that idea.”

      Alban gave me a stern look. My opinion didn’t impress him. I shut my smart mouth and tried to look properly chastened, but convinced neither of us. He eyed me before going on.

      “The same. Pelagius took a rather different view. Augustine says we are only saved by grace, by the unearned, undeserved mercy of God. Pelagius says that we may, by our own efforts, using the gifts of reason, hope, and will given us by a good God, make our way into heaven unaided.”

      “Says?” I asked. “Present tense?”

      “One of these days, we will have to have a chat about time and eternity.” Alban rolled his tired eyes. “Pelagian ideas found fertile ground in old Britain, when the raiding began. From Gaul, a bishop came to Verulam to correct the thinking of the Britons.”

      It began to rain. Alban flickered and faded from sight. My clothing changed from my skirt and blouse to a shapeless brown habit made of wool. It itched. The brooch, somehow, had left my hands; now it held the front of my woolen robe together.

      The prie-dieu I held so tightly twisted from my hands, and I found myself kneeling in the mud in front of a bucket.

      A voice shouted behind me.

      In Latin.

      Remembering the last time, I paid attention to my shape. At least I was still female, although younger, undeveloped—a girl, really. I was dressed in a robe of rough, brown wool.

      The voice—there was nothing otherworldly about it—called again; exasperation and impatience coarsened it.

      “Hurry! They’re coming. Can’t you see?” The Latin I had learned in grad school sounded little like what was being spoken. If the Angles and Saxons had never come to Britain, this was the language that might have been spoken there—a slangy, low class Latin, full of borrowed words and slurred nearly to incomprehensibility, the Latin of soldiers and servants.

      But I understood it.

      Another part of me understood the urgency in the voice. I took up the bucket of water and hurried to the wooden church, the only building large enough to shelter the visitors.

      “You’ve spilled the half of it,” Cuno complained. He was the cook. I was his helper. He dumped the water into the cauldron.

      “More,” he ordered.

      “It’ll ruin the soup.”

      “Not your concern, is it?” He threw the bucket back at me. I ran back to the spring, getting wetter and wetter each time. Soon, I was soaked to the skin.

      A long line of people stretched from the old city, below, up Holywell Hill. They were streaming from the open-air Roman theatre. A rumble of talk came from them, audible even over the steady rain.

      “Come on, child,” Cuno shouted from the door of the church. I had stopped to watch. May be that my own family was among the pilgrims come to see the argument. I had not had a chance to hear it, I who had been given to the saint because none could be found who would marry me. Da’ had sent me to learn humility, as well, because he could teach me none.

      I slipped in the mud between the men’s houses and the women’s. Neither were numerous or grand enough to hold the crowd come to Verulam to hear the bishops argue with the high king’s men. Thirteen monks and half as many sisters lived in the handful of wattle and daub huts, one per dwelling, as we had learned the monks of Egypt did, alone to seek God as well as each might. Meeting God is a solitary task.

      I picked myself up, cold and shaking with anger, and hurried to please Cunobelinus enough to stop his shouting at me. Besides being cook, he was novice-master.

      Worse, he knew my father—not the father of Clio Griffin, but the father of a girl called Bryn, known to be difficult to manage, a headstrong girl, barely showing breasts at fourteen, who had lived at the monastery, such as it was, for less than a year. It was confusing.

      “Where are your wits, girl?” Brother Cuno’s anger boiled like the pot he was stirring. “You behave as if you’re living in another world.”

      “Sorry.” I hurried off to bring more wood for the fire. Cuno’s mood grew fouler the closer the pilgrims came to the shrine. All the other monks and nuns had gone to the theatre to stand by the side of the visiting bishops during the argument. Only Cuno and I were left behind to tend to things, and he felt left out.

      The wood pile normally was sheltered from the weather, but with the coming of the royals and all the dignitaries from miles around, it had grown too large to keep the rain off.

      The wet logs were heavy in my arms; Cuno would upbraid me for their steaming reluctance to burn. I hated him, the shrine, and all the people coming up the hill to make my small life miserable.

      When I returned with an armload of dripping sticks, the church had filled with pilgrims. I picked my way through the soggy crowd and wrinkled my nose at their smell. Sweating, unwashed bodies crowded against each other. The two bishops held court up front, near the altar. The high king’s entourage stayed near the entrance. Whatever the outcome of the argument, no one’s mind had changed.

      I searched for my Da’s face, for my sister Ceil, for anyone from home. There was no one in the monastery of my own age. The other women were far older—some of them even as old as thirty, dried up hags whose juices had never flowed for a man. As for the monks, they were mostly like Cuno, obsessed with work and God, except for the two who kept trying to catch me alone in the woods. A girl has to be careful.

      I had thought Da’ would come, and bring the family. He takes an interest in the things of God, which is why I was where I was. He meant me to pray him into heaven, and I did my best, or tried to.

      Ceil was his golden girl, my younger sister. He loved her more than me, but I still missed her. Envy of her had driven me to do things that had earned me a heavy penance. Ma’ could do nothing to stop the anger that sometimes took me over. Still, I looked forward to seeing them, and they had not come. I worried over it. There were raiders about, which was why the high king was in the area. The raiders came down from the north all the time now. The king and his men could not be everywhere. There were few fighters, so many being needed to till the soil.

      I had heard of a wall the Romans built, far to the north, to keep the barbarians out of Britain. Gossip said that once it had worked, when there were soldiers enough to watch along its towers. Rome sent no soldiers now.

      Da’ was a soldier, a captain for the high king. He should have come to meet his leader.

      “Bryn!” At the shouted call, I pushed through the crowd with my poor armload of wet wood. It made a pitiful pile next to the huge cauldron.

      “Trenchers!” Cuno ordered. “Come on, girl. Your wits are useless today. We must feed them.”

      For a week the ovens of both the city and the monastery had been busy, baking the bowls of bread to supply this poor feast. They were stored beneath the altar, a fitting place for bread, if the mice could be kept away. No one at the shrine or at Verulam had sufficient pottery for this crowd.

      The two bishops from Gaul, along with their men, were gathered near the altar, in the way. I tried to go around them, but they were packed as tight as lovers. I had to push my way through them to the back of the altar.

      The bishop Germanus was the tallest among them, as big a man as his companion Lupus was small. Germanus wore a soldier’s cloak, the same one, so the story went, as he had worn when he was an officer in the legions. Lupus wore the habit of a monk, and seemed far more ordinary than his partner.

      I knelt behind the altar and pulled open the small door that gave access to the contents. The saint’s bones would, we hoped, protect the bread until it was needed. I made the cross over my breast before opening the tiny door. If the mice had found the trenchers, I knew Cuno would think it my fault, when really it had been the saint’s failure. What could such a one as I do against the sneaking mouths of mice?

      A leg bumped me. I looked up. The great bishop, Germanus, peered down. Where my people were Celts, short, slender and dark, he was as Germanic as his name, tall and fair, as bulky as a man who’d soldiered his whole life ought to be. His brow wrinkled, and his mouth opened. I tried to forestall him.

      “It’s only for the bread.” I pushed the words out ahead of what breath I had in me. “We hide it here from the creatures. For the saint to watch over it.”

      Germanus’ frown vanished. He broke into a huge, saintly smile.

      “The creatures?”

      “Mice and rats and bugs,” I explained. “We had nowhere to store all the trenchers, and—”

      “I see!” His smile grew even larger and he laughed out loud—so loud that the whole assembly in the church, to its farthest reach, fell into silence.

      Germanus’ huge hands wrapped around my arms and he lifted me bodily into the air above the altar. I tried not to shriek, for, small as I am, I was still afraid he might drop me down on top of the saint’s tomb. It was of stone taken from a ruined house in the town, and hard.

      “A little child shall lead them!” he cried.

      I remember his words, then, for we all feared what might come, in spite of the high king and his Saxon queen. Even a mere girl knew that more and more people fled southward, afraid of the Pictish marauders who now ventured far below the wall of Hadrian.

      I had never seen a miracle before. The priests tell us of miracles aplenty, back in the days of Christ, and of the years immediately after. But to see one is a different thing.

      “Here is the proof I told you would come,” Germanus said, still holding me aloft. I tried to be very still, so as not to loosen his grasp of me. I am small enough, but there was no point in taking an unneeded chance. It seemed a long fall down to the altar stone.

      “You all know that the depredations of vermin are like the plagues that befell Egypt, when the Pharaoh held the Israelites as slaves.”

      I wished that he had looked inside the tomb, before he told everyone.

      “This girl hid the bread that we are to eat today in the altar, under the protection of the mighty saint, Alban, the friend of God. She trusts him to preserve it against spoiling and against ‘mice and rats,’ she says.”

      “And bugs,” I reminded him.

      “And bugs,” Germanus continued. “She doesn’t trust in her own schemes to protect her.”

      Actually, the tomb was the one place we had where the vermin did not go. Nothing there to eat, normally. But I did not say so. Who would contradict a bishop in the middle of his sermon?

      “She trusts in the schemes of God. So let us see whether she has done well.” He put me down gently, and whispered, “I hope you were right.”

      “You could have checked, first,” I whispered back. “It would have been prudent.”

      “God hates prudence, child. He loves our trust in him. Bring out the bread.”

      If God hated prudence, He and I might get along after all, but it wasn’t what the monks and nuns taught me.

      I knelt again to get the bread. Cuno had come close to see all the commotion.

      The saint was well back from the tiny door in the altar. Piles of shallow, bready bowls blocked my sight of him. Their yeasty smell filled my nose. I grabbed the nearest stack and lifted them up to the altar.

      Germanus took one of the trenchers and bit into the crust. “So far, so good, young one.”

      The bishop flung bowl after bowl out into the crowd, sailing each one as an athlete flings a discus, letting them fly down on the assembly like manna. It wasn’t prudent, but it worked. And, thanks be, the trenchers were dry and whole. The crowd was won over, except for the king and his party, which would have been more of a miracle than even a saint could perform.

      “That’s the crux of it, you see,” Germanus said, still sailing the bowls out to the crowd. Their noise covered our talk. “Your king trusts in what he can do. But we must trust in what God can do.”

      There came a commotion at the door. Shock spread silence through the crowd in a wave that grew and grew until it washed over me. The crowd parted to make room for the man to pass through them toward the altar, where I watched with Germanus.

      My Da’, bloody-headed, his leather armor gashed with sword cuts, limped toward us. In his arms he carried Ceil, but a Ceil almost unrecognizable, splashed in blood herself, curled into a silent, frozen ball, looking for all the world like a babe still hiding in the womb.

      Da’ carried her forward. He cradled her in his arms, as if she were once more an infant, then set her gently on the altar stone before us and smoothed her hair. Tenderness fought worry in his face. I reached for him, but he could not see me for the blood in his eyes.

      The blood on her had dried to a dingy brown. Ceil still curled into a tight ball, more like a disturbed bug than a girl. Her balled fists pressed against her eyes.

      Ceil had always taken pride in her grooming, unlike me. I’m the cruder of the two of us, I think because Da’ had wanted a boy but got me instead. When Ceil came along, he was ready for a girl who would act like a girl. Ma’ didn’t care; she just loved us.

      Where was Ma’?

      Da’ turned to look at me. His face crumpled. He had carried Ceil the miles from our villa in his arms, striding down the old Roman road. He had held together until he got here.

      He shouldn’t have come alone.

      “Ma’?” I asked.

      He couldn’t talk. He only shook his head. A single tear coursed down his sculptured face, through a day’s growth of beard.

      I couldn’t look at Da’ when he looked that way. I couldn’t look at Ceil, either.

      Ma’ was dead. From the blood on both of them, it had to have been the raiders we’d been hearing about. I knelt behind the altar, holding back tears. Tragedy happened all the time; people still had to eat. I gathered an armload of trenchers. It was something to do.

      Those hands, as before, found me and lifted me. He plopped me on the altar itself, next to silent, bloody Ceil.

      “She’s your sister,” Germanus said. His eyes bored in on mine. I wouldn’t look at her. Ma’s blood covered her all up, and all I could see was Ma’. If I didn’t look, I could fool myself, at least for a while.

      Germanus wasn’t having any of my stubbornness.

      The bishop tore a corner from his rain-soaked trooper’s cloak and put it in my hands. The cloth was rough.

      “Clean her up.”

      I tried to wipe her face without looking at her. Germanus took my head in both hands and turned it so I had to see her.

      Blood like dirt. Dried blood re-wet with the rain that still fell outside. Blood like mud, sticky and thick. It smelled of hot metal, but it was old, cold blood.

      I drew the wet cloth across her face. If she’d been awake she would have fought me; the cloth was coarse and rough.

      A hand grabbed my wrist. I was only too willing to stop. I looked to see who had interrupted me.

      It was the heretic, the magician, himself. Beyond him, members of the king’s entourage whispered among themselves.

      “You would force the girl to wash away her own mother’s blood?” Merlyn demanded of Germanus. “Is this the kindness of Christ?”

      It didn’t feel kind, from where I looked at it. I was used to doing things I didn’t want to, but that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want to—didn’t want to at all.

      Germanus didn’t answer. Merlyn took a soft cloth from his cloak, a cloth made, I think, from Egyptian cotton, white, unstained.

      “Water,” he said, the order as soft as a distant bell, as demanding as death. One of the king’s men scrambled and a bowl of water appeared on the altar. Merlyn dipped the cloth and gently dabbed at Ceil’s face.

      It was easier to have the heretic do the work, but I felt strange about it, especially at the altar.

      Until Ceil popped him one. Right in the eye. She had always been bitchy, even as a tyke, about who might take liberties with her physically. As pretty as she was, the trait would aid in her survival.

      Maybe he hurt her. It looked as if he was being gentle with her, but he was a courtier, not a man who cared for things. Ceil flew—literally—off the altar, away from the magician. Only the hands of Germanus saved her from falling to the floor.

      Ceil kicked as she flew by me. I think that her aim was off, being blind and all, and she just didn’t know I was there. I think that, because I’m a Christian and forgiving.

      Her foot caught me on the side of the head. I clearly remember thinking, “She’s going to kick me,” before the pain knocked me out and sent me flying into darkness.

      I woke up in the hospital—in hospital, as the English say, as if they don’t distinguish between one and another, the way Americans say in jail.

      When my eyes opened, I stared, without understanding, at a pattern of dots in the ceiling, dots that resembled a mosaic, but not one that I’d ever seen.

      “It’s abstract,” I told myself, and then wondered to whom I was talking. “Geometric. Like Euclid.”

      “She’s coming around.” The new voice, female and authoritative, hovered somewhere behind and above me. A latex-gloved hand probed at the notch of my jaw, taking my pulse. There was human warmth inside the latex, but it felt distant as it touched me. Disconnected.

      Father Tom’s face moved into my field of view. A wrinkle of worry creased his forehead. “How are you?”

      I remembered my sister. Like her I wanted to fly from this altar. My muscles stiffened and I tried to leap, but wide leather straps held me to the table.

      “Ceil!” I cried. “Da’!”

      “Who’s Ceil?” the female voice said.

      Father Tom shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s said the name several times.”

      His head moved out of my field of view. I knew who he was, but it seemed wrong, somehow, for him to be here. Da’ should be here, Ceil, and the holy man, Germanus. Even the high king would be better than all this strangeness. It even smelled wrong; instead of wet clothing, sweat and bread, the place stank of chemical fumes.

      Another face loomed in front of me, a woman.

      “Ceil?” I asked.

      She shook her head in negation. “I’m a doctor. Do you know how you came to be here?”

      I didn’t trust myself to answer.

      “Do you know where you are?”

      I thought. After a moment, a word came to me. “Hospital.”

      “Good.” The doctor smiled. Freckles dotted her face. “That’s very good. Tell me your name.”

      I had to think about this one, too. I kept at it too long and came up with two of them. I looked into the doctor’s eyes and tried to shrug, but the straps wouldn’t let me. My vision blurred with tears. I wanted to do right, but I couldn’t.

      The face withdrew. I heard them talking about me, as if I were hardly there. They wanted to keep me from doing harm to myself, as if there was any chance of that.

      You’ll be all right. The voice was back, inside my head. Do what they say. They won’t understand for a while yet, but they mean good for you.

      I twisted. Alban always feels as if he’s behind me, but that’s probably because he’s inside. Hands pressed down against my shoulders.

      “Alban?”

      “Ssh—be still, now.” It was the female voice. It belonged to the gloved hands. The doctor’s strength surprised me.

      “Tell me your name.” She leaned over me, her face close to mine. Her breath warmed my skin. Her red hair and freckles glowed in the cold fluorescent light of the treatment room.

      I answered, knowing this time what was expected of me.

      “The date,” she demanded gently. Again, I knew two answers, but I also knew which was “right.”

      “Does anything hurt?” “Do you have a headache?” “Is your vision blurry?”

      Nothing was wrong except that I was imprisoned on her table. I didn’t know how long I had been there, but it was cold and hard against my bare back.

      “How do you feel?”

      I told her that, too.

      “You were upset when they brought you in. That’s why we have the restraints on you.”

      “I don’t remember.”

      “I’m not surprised. You were out of your head. Would you like them off?”

      “Please.”

      “You’re not upset?”

      “No.” My body trembled with anxiety to be free. I took a deep breath and stilled it. “Really. I want to go home.”

      Doctor Freckles busied herself with the buckles. “Is there anyone at home who can look after you? You have a nasty knot on your head, and I’m still worried about concussion.”

      The straps fell away. Doctor Freckles helped me to sit up. Behind her, Tom and a nursing sister watched every move I made.

      “Look over my shoulder,” Doctor Freckles ordered. I tried not to gig-gle at the name I’d given her as I obeyed. She shone a bright light into one eye, then the other. “Are you sure you don’t have a headache?”

      Then I made a mistake: I shook my head. The pain thrust through my skull like a spear. It was all I could do to take my next breath, then another. I held rock still, and it eased.

      “I thought so.” Doctor Freckles sounded smug as she turned away to Tom. I was still trying to hold on to myself, but again I heard them talking about me.

      “She needs to be where she can be watched. I don’t think she needs to be in hospital, but she’s had a knock on the head. I’d like someone to keep an eye on her for twenty-four hours.”

      “She’s living in a B-and-B.”

      “Whose?”

      Tom mentioned Mrs. Fern.

      The two of them talked further, tête-à-tête, softly, as far from me as the room would allow. I didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Fern’s. She had walked off and left me with Father Tom, which had led to my present problems. Her house didn’t feel like much of a refuge at the moment. She would be all over me, full of matronly fuss and gossipy questions that I didn’t have answers to.

      “Christina,” I said.

      The three of them—Father Tom, Doctor Freckles, and the nameless nurse—stared at me as if I’d lost my wits again.

      I leaned up on an elbow. “There’s a woman who came to see me, Christina. She’s the only other person I know, really.”

      It was a pretty thin hope, but I desperately wanted to escape the hospital. Doctor Freckles was okay, but she didn’t know me, and I wanted to keep it that way. Whatever was going on, a clinical setting was not the place to deal with it. “Do you know her? She might take me in.”

      Father Tom knew her. “She might, at that.”

      “Who is this person,” the physician asked. She looked severe, despite her warm hair and freckles—not a person to be distracted or made light of.

      “An older woman,” Father Tom explained. “She lives outside of town. We sometimes work together.” He blushed slightly, and I wondered why. “On projects we have in common.”

      “Is she dependable?”

      “Very.”

      “Would she be willing? It means getting up in the night and checking the patient.”

      “Christina already gets up in the night,” the priest answered, “for her prayers.”

      Doctor Freckles shrugged. “Give her a call, then.”

      “She has no telephone.”

      “What a lucky woman.” The doctor smiled. It made her face light and bright as sunshine. Then she reverted to business, and the sky darkened. “I’ll allow it, if this Christina person consents.”

      “I’ll drive Dr. Griffin out there myself.”

      Doctor Freckles scribbled on a pad of paper. “Here are the instructions.” She turned to me. “I want you in here tomorrow to be followed up. If there’s any sign of a problem—unusual sleepiness, headache, or mental disturbance—you’re to come right back, no matter what time of night it is. I’d be happier if you were in town, but this will have to do. Do you understand?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “Father will lend you his cell phone, just in case.”

      Tom looked nonplused, but took the cellular from his pocket and placed it in my hands. “I think I’ll rather enjoy being out of touch.”

      “All right then.” Doctor Freckles turned away to write in my chart. “Father? She needs to get dressed.”

      Father Tom reddened. He left the treatment room, with the doctor trailing him. The nurse helped me off the table and presented me with bits of clothing. I dressed slowly under her gaze. My knees felt a little weak, and I was full of questions that lacked answers. Worse, I wanted to go back; the story I had been part of was left unfinished.

      Doctor Freckles reappeared pushing a wheel chair.

      “Must I?”

      “Get in. You need to do what you’re told for a while.”

      The nurse pushed me toward Father Tom, who waited by the Emergency desk. He took over there and wheeled me out to the car park. The sun caught me by surprise. Indoors, I had somehow thought it was night, as if a great deal of time had passed. But I didn’t expect the slanting light of late afternoon. I felt the same disorientation as when I left a movie matinee to find the sky still bright.

      He held the chair steady while I transferred myself to the passenger seat in his old Morris Minor. This was the third time I’d been in his ancient automobile. He returned the wheelchair to the Emergency entrance, like a shopper returning a cart.

      The car smelled of him, of course. It was a scent compounded of maleness, a hint of tobacco—the father was a secret smoker, then—a touch of cologne, leather, books—a complex melange of odors that he trailed behind him, all unknowing. The odors shifted and seemed to open up and make room for me in the tiny car. I shook my head, experimentally, to see how much it would hurt. The answer was a lot less, but still too much to ignore.

      He returned, and we drove away from the hospital in silence, at first. Once he had negotiated the narrowest of Saint Albans streets, he said, “You did need help, didn’t you, when you called.”

      I didn’t want to talk about it. I felt reasonably normal now and wanted to keep it that way.

      “Please,” Father Tom said. He couldn’t do more than glance at me; the road was too twisty. “I haven’t treated you fairly at all, and I’d like to make up for it.”

      I didn’t answer.

      “You see,” he went on, “your manner and your being an American put me off a bit. You do have a tendency to be outspoken, as well as rather prickly. And I couldn’t see beyond those things. So when you appeared in the one place where I was sure you would never show up, I acted badly, I’m afraid.

      “You see, I’m jealous of you.”

      “Stop the car. Pull over.”

      Father Tom found a lay-by and slid the car into it. We were in the hills now, and the view was of a tiny green valley, slowly sinking into evening’s darkness.

      “You’re jealous—of me?” I squared around to face him.

      He nodded, his mouth a thin line.

      “Why?”

      “Because I think you may be sane,” he said.

      “That’s a relief.”

      “But inexpressibly rude. You have no idea of the value of what you experience.”

      “And you do?”

      “Clio, this is important. Don’t be cute, don’t wisecrack, don’t talk before you think.” He waited. An answer was expected.

      “All right.” Maybe he had something.

      “Back in the chapter house, what happened to you wasn’t an accident. It was an ecstasy. I’ve never seen one before, but it was either that or a fugue.”

      “But I thought I hit my head.”

      “Afterwards, yes, you pitched over and smacked your skull. But for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, you knelt in front of me in ecstatic prayer. I remember your saying you didn’t have the talent for it, but you’re wrong.”

      I touched the bruise on my temple and was rewarded with a renewal of the throbbing. “You’re sure?”

      He hedged. “No. But the signs are positive.” He rubbed his eyes with both hands. I hadn’t noticed before, but they were red. “It’s not an isolated incident, is it?”

      I shook my head.

      “And the brooch you carry?”

      “That’s part of it, too.” Before, I hadn’t told him the whole story of how I came to find it. Now it came spilling out of me.

      His hands gripped the steering wheel, white with restraint.

      “Damn it.” He forced the words between clenched jaws.

      I touched his near hand. “What’s the matter?”

      He willed himself to let go of the wheel. Both his hands clutched mine, dwarfing them. Tears welled in his eyes, but he stared through them, unaware of their existence.

      Faint tremors ran through his arms, then slowly subsided. Fine, fair hair dusted the backs of his hands and disappeared under his cuffs. The nails were strong and cut square across.

      “Not your fault,” he managed to say. “My dilemma.”

      I tried a smile. I wanted him not to hurt so badly, not to suffer so much, not to be so angry—especially at me. “What is it?”

      “I ought to know better.” Tom slipped his hands out of mine and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. He dabbed at his brow, then became aware of his tears. It made me proud—I know that’s strange—that he wiped them away without apology.

      “Better how?” I asked.

      “I am a priest, dedicated to serving God, and I would nearly kill to know what you know. Part of me disbelieves you—maybe most of me. It would be easy to put you in a box labeled ‘crazy’ and let it be at that. People don’t have visions, not people like me. I serve God as well as I know how, but he doesn’t talk to me, or send his messengers with special revelations. You have what I want—you know.”

      “And you don’t?” I thought that the clergy would—I don’t know—have something that kept them going, something that made their lives make sense.

      “No. I get by on hope.” He leaned back, as far as the tiny car’s seat would let him. “Usually it’s enough. Then I come up against you, and I have to ask why someone like you has what I want.”

      “If I could give it away, I would.” I meant it to be kind.

      Tom snarled. His lips curled away from his teeth and anger again swirled on his face.

      “Don’t—don’t ever say that.”

      “Why not?” I demanded. I didn’t like having my few, feeble attempts at goodness thrown back in my face. I told him about Mama, and how it terrified me to think that I might have inherited her affliction. My fury matched his. “Do you think it’s pleasant?” I shouted. My voice hurt my own ears in the confines of his Morris Minor, but I’d had enough.

      “Do you think I asked for this, that it’s a prayer answered? Jesus, it scares the shit out of me. I don’t want any of it—not the voice, not the visions, not this.” I fumbled in my pocket for the brooch. “Here—you take it. Maybe you’ll get a vision, too. Then we can go off to the nuthouse together.”

      Tom stared, mouth open as if I’d struck him. “Put it away.” His voice was low, restrained. He started the car and pulled out of the lay-by.

      Soon, we skidded to a halt on the gravel outside a low wooden rail fence. Tom climbed out of the car and headed for the gate. A path led off into darkness. The full moon hung low beyond the trees. They filtered its milky light between leafy, branching shadows.

      “Come on.” Tom waited at the gate.

      I stayed in my seat. I was tired of being at the beck and call of others, of being pushed around.

      He came back to the car. He pleaded a little. I gave in and got out, content to have made some small assertion of my individuality. I walked with him to the door, which opened to reveal Christina, the woman who had visited my office so portentously, a pale, heavy figure silhouetted by a single lamp inside. Around her ankles, or where her ankles would have been visible if not for her bulk, a fat, orange tomcat snaked, his voice demanding, questioning this intrusion.

      “That’s the last thing you need to worry about, love,” Christina said, “your individuality. God already knows you. He won’t let it get lost.” She picked up the tomcat.

      “This is Amphibalus,” she announced between panting attempts to catch her breath. “You would know the name, of course.”

      Of course. Alban was first arrested because he had hidden a Christian priest from the authorities. According to the legend, that priest’s name was Amphibalus.

      Christina’s house, such as it was, was a Victorian nun’s cell. She had a red damask easy chair, the back of which sported a worn antimacassar. On the end table lay what religious novels in the nineteen-fifties cautiously call a discipline—a whip for scourging the flesh. One of those dreadful, sad, misty-eyed, black velvet portraits of Jesus hung on the wall opposite the chair. There was no telephone, no radio, no television. There was no carpet. There was nothing in the room without purpose.

      “Sit down, child.” Christina behaved as imperiously as Victoria herself. Her hair was caught up in a tight bun.

      “Well.” Father Tom slid his hands against each other. “That’s it, then.”

      The plump old woman turned to Father Tom. “You may leave, Father Dorcas. I’m certain you’ve gained credit in heaven.” Christina’s voice deepened with the command. She was used to being obeyed, and Tom left with barely a backward glance. I felt abandoned and almost got up myself, but Christina turned back to face me, the orange cat still overflowing her arms.

      She saw me flinch at her sarcasm toward Father Tom, but must have misinterpreted it.

      “I won’t hurt you,” she promised. It was disconcerting to feel her shift personae, from her voice of command to this sweet, elderly lady who, at any moment, might bring out a tin of biscuits.

      “How will I—”

      “Never mind.” She located herself quite carefully in front of me, below the sentimental Jesus, on an antique wooden chair that looked far too weak for her weight. Her eyes roamed over me.

      She lifted a crucifix from a tiny end table and placed it in my hands.

      “I don’t—”

      “Humor an old woman.”

      I obeyed. Amphibalus the cat crawled down Christina and climbed dutifully up into my lap. A terrible urgency, an almost physical need to unburden myself, took me over, as demanding as hunger.

      “You’re holding in quite a lot.” She was matter-of-fact now. Her behavior reminded me of Mrs. Fern, in a calmer version. Physically, the only thing they had in common was their age. I guessed both of them to be in their sixties. Where Mrs. Fern was angular and busy, Christina was round and still.

      “You hide things from people, Clio, but I know you.”

      I held on to the crucifix. The corners dug into the skin of my palms. It had to be some kind of trick.

      “It’s not, you know.” Christina answered my unvoiced thought.

      “How do—” I clamped my mouth shut.

      “It’s all right, dear one. I’m psychic. Everyone knows that.”

      Something must have betrayed my fear. I couldn’t believe she just read my thoughts.

      “Don’t worry—I’m very discreet. No one will know what goes on here, not even your priest friend.”

      I wasn’t sure I liked that idea, but I knew I didn’t like the thought of her prowling around inside my head, even if I didn’t believe in the possibility.

      “You must let Father work through his jealousy. He feels competitive with you, and it’s clear he’s going to lose. It took quite a lot for him to bring you here.”

      “Competitive?” I asked. I hadn’t seen that, though I remembered his anger all too well.

      “You were occupied with your own problem, Clio. It can be hard to see the needs of others when your own survival is at stake.”

      “Survival?” I seemed unable to do anything but question Christina every time she paused. I stood up. Amphibalus yowled at the disturbance, then landed on all fours, as if he’d intended to jump from my lap. The cottage felt close, confining, claustrophobic. My heart raced. Christina stared at me, concern written on her plump, oval face. “I’ll be going, then.” It was important not to give away what I was feeling—if I could get out of the room, I could be alone, safe, with no demands. All of this need not happen if I could just get away.

      “I’ll be going, then.”

      Christina made no move to stop me.

      The last thing I wanted was someone reading my mind, and I didn’t believe in ESP anyway. I threw open the front door and stepped out into the darkness.

      I walked fast, driven by confusion. Any direction was fine, as long as it was away from all the strangeness, away from people who pushed themselves uninvited into my head—away from Christina, and Tom, and most of all, from Alban.

      The crunch of gravel underfoot gave way, before I stopped to think, to soft lawn, then the rough, disjointed floor of woodland. I tripped over something—a root, a rock—something that I couldn’t see in the dark—and fell to the rugged ground. I pushed myself back up to my feet. Pain stung my hands.

      The moon was gone. I listened—no old lady sounds, only a hint of wind in the branches and the occasional sibilant scurry of a small creature. At least, I told myself, there were no wolves left in England.

      I looked back toward her house. If there was a light in the window, I couldn’t see it. I wasn’t even sure of the direction now. I was lost.

      So naturally I did the appropriate thing for a situation like this. I panicked.

      I ran.