Evensong ended as my eyes flickered open. Stone pressed painfully against my knees. My arms were stiff and sore, my left resting on the back of the pew before me, my right still in my pocket, hand clutching the worn and pitted piece of jewelry. The brooch came back with me. It was impossible, I know—impossible and true.
Bishop Bacon’s voice, rich and still surprising, spoke the final words of Chrysostom’s prayer, “...granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting.”
Tom’s amen came from my right, Jane Fern’s from my left. Had they been with me the whole time I was off in that other life?
I drew a breath and moved experimentally. Air rushed into my lungs, cool and beneficent, and didn’t make me cough. My limbs moved normally and well, after the initial stiffness caused by my long stillness. Bishop Bacon gave the final benediction. I heard the congregation stand, and I followed suit.
“Are you well?” Tom’s voice was solicitous, careful.
“She’s had one of her visions, I daresay,” Jane told him. “She’ll be wanting quiet for the time being.”
“No, I’m fine.” I’d meant to be polite, but it was true. Energy poured into me. “In fact, I feel extraordinarily well.”
Tom and Jane accompanied me down the south aisle through the nave to the western door.
The dregs of the congregation watched us leave. A day before—an hour before—their attention would have made me nervous. Now, it was only curiosity, and in their place I would have been equally inquisitive.
“I didn’t do anything strange, did I?”
“Well—” Tom began. Jane interrupted him.
“No, dear, you didn’t. But a strange thing happened. You glowed.”
“Glowed?”
“It was really most extraordinary. You didn’t make a sound or a movement. Indeed, you were quite still, except that the air around you brightened, as if the light came from you.”
We reached the door, where Bishop Bacon waited to bid the worshippers farewell. A cluster of people waited just beyond, out in the darkness of the night.
“I’m glad you came,” he said, “but I thought there were to be no miracles for a while.”
“It’s not up to me, bishop.”
The brooch was back, for whatever reason God and Alban might have, and, I felt certain, a gift meant for me, not the others.
“Billy Bacon,” Jane said, “the poor girl doesn’t choose the time and the place. You of all people should know that.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. The bishop wasn’t used to being addressed by a diminutive, and Jane knew it. “You ought to get down on your knees and thank God that there’s another one in our midst.”
“Jane—” I began, but she shushed me and went on.
“And if you’ve the sense that God gave a village idiot, you’d marry her to your priest, here, so that they can get on with the work God gave them to do, instead of frittering away the—”
“Sorry, bishop.” Tom nudged my back and Jane’s. We passed the bishop and landed on the steps, above the small group that waited for us below. “What are you trying to do?” he demanded of Jane.
“Pardon me for trying to talk sense to your boss, when you won’t, and Clio is too polite for her own good.”
I held up a hand to still their bickering. The dozen or so people waiting outside were dropping to their knees. I picked out a few faces—Ted, the phone installer; William, the computer man; the sullen sister of the boy killed in the accident. The rest I didn’t know, but they knelt, too, their open, hopeful faces lit by the glow that came from the church doors.
Except, when I looked back, the doors had been closed.
The three of us were trapped on the step.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s you, dear.” Jane Fern took it matter-of-factly.
“Me?”
Others filtered on to the cathedral grounds, a smattering of people who seemed to wander in to see what the attraction was.
“Just keep going,” Tom said. I nodded, and we descended the steps.
But I couldn’t simply pass them by, as if this kind of thing happened every day. I reached the Indian girl. Her eyes were red and puffy. I forgot the growing crowd and those with me.
“What do you want?”
“My brother, is he well? Have you prayed for him?”
“Not yet, today.” Her face clouded, and tears formed in her eyes. “But let’s do it now—both of us.” I knelt in front of her and took her hands in mine. “Together.”
She nodded. Her hands trembled. My prayer was more for her; her pain vibrated between my palms. I had the sudden sense of something snapping. She gasped. Her hands clutched at mine. I felt the long, vain teenage nails dig into my skin, felt the fluid ooze out.
“Look!” she screamed. She lifted my hands over our heads. I tried to hide them, but her grip overmatched me. Light flooded over us—the glare of television. Blood dripped down our joined arms.
My blood.
Then they were on me—not physically. No one touched me but the grieving girl, whose hands clutched my own. Desperation poured from her most of all, but it was in the lot of them. They were all as inadequate, as weak and helpless with their own sorrows as I was with mine, and saw in me a chance to—to what?
Tom pried our hands apart. He was gentle, but his strength refused to yield me to the crowd. He separated me from the girl.
“Can you stand?”
I could, I found.
“Let’s go.”
Tom led the way through the kneeling people. I followed, touching their outstretched hands as I passed. Their need still pressed against me, but with Tom in the lead, I could move. Jane Fern brought up the rear. Together, we parted the crowd. A photographer’s strobe added to the TV lights. These two, from the beginning, had been my strength, and they continued, Tom stern and silent in front, Jane behind, handing slips of paper from her purse to each of those we passed.
“She only has so much strength. Write it down. Put your need on the paper. She’ll see to it. Write it down. Put it on the paper.”
Tom guided us to his parking place. The Morris Minor, a two-seater, groaned at the weight of three people. Jane got in first, and sat me on her lap, heedless of the sticky blood. Tom drove the short distance to the hospital.
“Not again!” It was Doctor Freckles whom we found in the emergency room.
I had fallen into a kind of daze. The sense of need in the hospital, behind every door, every pair of eyes, leached something out of me, and it took all my effort to respond to Alice.
“What is it this time?”
I held out my hands and heard her sharp breath.
“It’s not what you think.”
“It most certainly is. Those are fingernail punctures,” Alice said. Her voice was insistent, edgy. “How did you do this?”
“She didn’t, Doctor,” Tom said. “It was done to her.”
Jane had gone silent, and looked at me from questioning eyes.
Alice led us into a treatment room and got to work. Jane stayed out in the lobby; the last I heard, she was giving my name to the receptionist. Alice cleaned the dried blood away and smeared the wounds with antibiotic salve. Then she put a non-stick pad on each palm and wrapped my hands with gauze to hold the pads in place.
I felt like a boxer getting ready for a bout. Alice turned to dispose of the wrappings. I jumped off the treatment table—those things always make me feel about six years old—and shadowboxed in the light from the examination lamp. Part of me prayed; part of me feared what prayer might bring.
Tom and Alice watched. I felt their eyes; they thought me crazy, but I didn’t care. Tom needed to get used to me as I was, not as he thought I should be. I liked this manic excitement.
Fists up, striking at the empty air, I thumbed my nose at Alice. “Wanna fight?”
“No.”
The whimsy had me, now. I turned to Tom. “How about you? Coupla rounds?”
He wouldn’t play either.
I jabbed a few times at the air next to his face. “C’mon!”
Still he didn’t move. I jabbed closer and closer to his face. I gauged my punches quickly, carefully, getting closer and closer. Finally, I grazed his cheek.
“Clio, what are you doing?” Alice stepped toward us.
Tom lifted a hand. “Let it be.”
I looked Tom directly in the eye. His pupils dilated. His breathing sped up and got deeper. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he knew he was going to get hit.
I decked him and yelped with shocked pain. No wonder boxers wear gloves.
Tom flew backward against an idle EKG machine. The crash echoed in the hard-edged treatment room and down the corridor. Alice was on me in an instant. She knocked me to the floor. While she held me down, Tom struggled to his feet. A handful of people appeared in the doorway.
“What’s the matter?” one voice asked.
“It’s all right, I slipped.” Tom rubbed at his cheek with his hand, covering the bruise, as he stood up.
“But—” the voice tried to go on. I heard him staring at me and Alice on the floor.
“It’s all right. We’ll sort it out ourselves. No harm’s been done.” Tom spoke in a voice that I hadn’t heard before, a voice tempered with authority and strength. He closed the door, shutting out the onlookers.
Alice pinned me to the tile floor; her knee pressed heavy against my breastbone. It was hard to breathe.
“Let her go.”
“Bloody hell, I just got her down.” Alice protested. She turned her head to look down at me. “What’s the matter with you?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know why I punched him. Torn between pain and remorse, I could only hold up my hand. “I think I broke it.”
“Serves you right,” Alice said, but she took her bony knee off my sternum. “Stay there.”
I nodded.
“Don’t do anything.”
I nodded again. Alice was roused. Her eyes flashed with anger and protectiveness. My hand throbbed.
“I hope it hurts. A lot.”
“It does.”
“Shut up. And stay put.” Alice reached into a small refrigerator and pulled out two synthetic ice packs, blue liquid suspended in a plastic casing. She dropped one near enough to me and turned to Tom.
“Anything broken?” Her fingers touched his face, probing for damage.
Tom moved his jaw experimentally. “I don’t think so.”
Alice held the blue ice against his cheek. “It’s going to swell up. This will help.”
I stretched my unhurt left hand for the other pack. Alice ignored me. Knowing that I deserved it didn’t help. At least on the floor I couldn’t fall any further.
Alice called someone to take me to X-ray. I went off, then to a place that looked more like a mason’s workshop than a hospital room, where they put a cast on my hand and wrist.
When I returned to the emergency department, Alice was out of sight. Tom and Jane, I was told by the receptionist, had gone back to the cathedral to retrieve my car. I was to wait.
The gesture was meant to humble me, I suppose. The effect was just the opposite. I sat under the television set in the emergency waiting room. There was only one other person there. She dragged a chair up to the TV.
“Change the channel?” Her accent marked her as clearly as if she’d worn a sign—British working class slut. Her makeup was as garish as the dives in Soho. Her eyes burned with the fire of cocaine.
“Marcie?” I hadn’t really registered her presence.
She climbed up on the chair and turned the station. One set of background noises replaced another.
“That’s me. ‘Ere now, look at this. Is that you?” She didn’t recognize me from the hospital.
“Marcie?” I asked again.
“I told you already. Now, is that you?”
The announcers’ dual voices penetrated my funk.
“Does Saint Albans have a new resident mystic? There was quite a stir tonight at the abbey cathedral’s service of vespers, when, according to witnesses, Doctor Clio Griffin, the American scholar, developed the stigmata of Christ in full view of a group of two dozen onlookers. Miss Griffin has been working with a local group, the self-styled Communion of the Saint—”
The girl turned the sound off. “It is you. Come and look!”
I did. It was me on the screen, a photograph of me, hands held aloft by the Indian girl, rivulets of blood running down each of our arms.
“And you’ve got bandages, too! Does it hurt? The stigmata, I mean.”
“No, not now. And they’re not stigmata,” I complained. “She dug her nails into my skin, that’s all.”
“Yeah, right.” She stuck out her hand. “It’s not every day I get to meet a saint, what with bein’ a sex worker and all. So it’s a right pleasure to meet you. I have AIDS, so I’ve had to give up my work.” Marcie was the mistress of the non sequitur. “They tell me I could live for years. Or not.” She tilted her head to indicate the medical staff. “What they haven’t told me yet is how to keep body and soul together until the virus gets me. Jesus, I need a cigarette. Come out with me?”
I went. Marcie rummaged in her cavernous drug addict’s purse until she found an empty pack. “There’s more in my car.” She led us to an ancient hulk that looked as if it might self-destruct on the slightest excuse and dug in the glove compartment until she found a bent cigarette. Back into the purse she dived, until a box of matches appeared in her hand. She lit the limp cylinder and inhaled deeply.
“So, what’s it like being a saint?”
“It’s a pain.” I answered. “How are you doing?”
“Why do you care?”
“Don’t you remember me—from the hospital?”
She took another drag and closed her eyes as the nicotine took effect. “Ruley died, they told me. Jumped in front of a train, they say. I think he ran away.” She shrugged, eyes still closed. “Anyway, he’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, Marcie.”
“Ruley was all right.”
What kind of all right was it that committed suicide by leaping under a train, I wondered. Marcie had her own kind of peace. I wouldn’t have traded for it, but I wouldn’t take it away from her either. We stood in silence for a long moment, before sadness for her gave way to self-concern. I eyed her car.
“Does that run?” I asked.
“My car? Sure. It looks awful, don’t it, but it can still go. Let’s take a spin.” Marcie opened the passenger door and threw the debris there into the already crowded back seat.
“Sorry for the mess. It’s where I live and work. Guess I’ll have to give up the work, though.”
We got in. I’ll admit, I sat down rather gingerly. “You work in here? Where?”
Marcie laughed, a harsh, chemical-stained chuckle. “They ain’t looking for comfort, are they. They’re looking for comforting.” She started the car and swung out of the hospital parking lot. “Where to?” I barely heard her over the rattles, squeaks and bumps her old car made. Her question was at the heart of my dilemma.
“Home, I guess.” I directed her, and she drove smoothly and confidently out of the town and along the country roads. Tom and Jane would be back at the hospital soon to gather me up, but I didn’t care. It felt awfully good to be in the company of someone who couldn’t go all morally superior on me.
“You don’t act like a holy woman,” Marcie said. We were near the cottage, in the darkness of the countryside. I’d been staring out the window, trying not to think, not to notice anything, not to be.
“I’m not.”
“I like that. You go to the charities for help, and they want to change you. Make you into something you’re not.”
“In there.” I pointed at the cottage. Marcie wheeled the old car into the gravel. The engine shuddered and coughed before Marcie could shut it off. “Out of petrol,” she said. “We just made it.” We got out. I breathed in the cool night air. No other cars were in evidence.
“Ain’t we going in?” Marcie broke the silence.
“Yes, of course.”
With the bandages and the cast, I couldn’t get the keys out of my pocket. I turned to Marcie. Her hand wiggled in and drew out both keys and the brooch.
“What’s this?”
“A keepsake.” My voice shook. Marcie mistook the emotion.
“A lucky charm?” She turned it over in her hands. “It’s awful old and beat up.”
“Please.” I held out my less damaged hand.
Marcie hesitated before returning the brooch. “Is it valuable? It looks right ancient.”
My hands throbbed with pain while she still held the brooch. “Give it to me. Please.”
“All right, no need to get your knickers twisted.”
“Sorry.” I hadn’t heard anger in my voice. The pain eased as soon as she handed the brooch back to me. I unlocked the door. We entered, and I went through the cottage, turning on lights and looking around. It seemed like ages since I’d been here. I returned to the living room. Marcie was staring at the velvet Jesus.
“He looks awful. Cheap-like, you know?”
The phone rang. I pretended to ignore it.
“Ain’t you going to answer it?”
It could only be Tom. No one else would let it ring so long.
“Well?”
I shook my head.
Marcie shrugged and picked up the receiver. “‘Ello.” A pause. “This is Marcie—‘oo’s this?” She listened, then hung up. “Wrong number. ‘E sounded nice enough, though.”
Again the telephone sounded.
“‘Ello, again. It’s still Marcie.” She grinned, eyes full of mischief, alive for the first time. “Aye, she’s here. Doesn’t want to talk, though.” Her eyes widened. “I’m her bloody social secretary, that’s who!” She covered the mouthpiece. “He doesn’t sound so nice, now. What do you want to do?”
I took the phone. Tom already knew I was here.
“You gave us a bloody scare, you know.” Through the ear piece, his voice was tinny, angry, distant. “Who’s that with you?”
“A friend.”
I could almost hear him thinking. “Right, then. I’m bringing Jane over.” He rang off.
“He didn’t sound very happy,” Marcie said. “Got any food? It’s been ages since I ate.”
I could well believe it, living in her car. We rummaged in the kitchen and found the makings of an omelet.
“I’ll just bet he’s in love with you.” Marcie chopped vegetables. I could still cook, but between the bandages and the cast, handling a knife was impossible. Marcie’s hands moved delicately, precisely, belying the stereotype of the dope-savaged whore.
The smells roused a memory of Christina. She’d done this for me, once.
“I’ll just bet he’s in love with you.”
“In love?” I’d meant it to sound as if I didn’t know what she was talking about. It came out all wistful and sad.
“The bloke on the telephone. He was all angry and puffed up, the way men get when they can’t have what they want.” She was offhand, but her hungry eyes followed every movement I made. Marcie was almost all eyes, bone skinny. Her arms were as thin as pencils, all angles and points. I wondered how far along her illness was.
“When did you last eat?” I didn’t want to discuss Tom.
“I can’t remember. Yesterday, perhaps.”
And here it was, night. “Broke?”
“Uh-huh.”
I cracked the eggs into the frying pan and stirred furiously. I’ve never been good at omelets, so I don’t really try. What I make are more like scrambled eggs with some stuff mixed in. I had just pried them out of the pan when an entire convoy of automobiles pulled up in front of the cottage and the knock came at the door. Each of them must have come in a separate car—Jane in my Spitfire, Tom in his old Morris Minor, and Alice in whatever it was that she drove. My front driveway must have looked like a Wal-Mart parking lot.
“Here—eat while it’s hot.”
Marcie loaded the eggs with salt and pepper. I left her to feed while I went to open the door.
All three of them were there—Tom and Jane and Alice. Tom’s shiner had blossomed into a huge purple and red bruise. My broken hand ached in sympathy.
“Where is she?” Alice demanded. “She was supposed to be admitted.”
“You caught me, Doctor Freckles.” Marcie stood in the kitchen doorway, licking her fork clean.
Alice looked from Marcie to me.
“She’s eating?”
We both shrugged. “She was hungry.”
“Let me look at you.” Alice took Marcie back into the kitchen.
Jane and Tom hadn’t settled down any.
“What’s Alice doing here?” I asked.
“When we got back with your car, I called from the hospital. Alice overheard me saying Marcie’s name. She was beside herself with worry about the girl.”
“Why?”
“Because she was about to be admitted to the AIDS hospice.” Tom’s voice dropped. “She also has hepatitis and a cancer of the stomach. She’s dying.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say in reply, so I said the only thing that mattered. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have to hit you. How’s your eye?”
“Sore.” He grinned lopsidedly and winced. I lifted a hand to touch him, and he flinched. “Why?”
“I—I don’t know. You keep rescuing me. You’re always there. I was scared and angry.” I was babbling now, but once started, it all came out like a flood. “I never wanted any of these visions. And you do—I can see it every time you’re there when I come out of one. You’re jealous. So I figure that you only care about me because it’s a second-hand way to God.
“And you!” I turned to Jane, in full flood now; nothing could break the flow of ugly words spewing out of my mouth. Even as it was happening, I knew it was wrong, but the pressure was too much. I couldn’t stem the tide. “God, you were thrilled to have your own pet psychic or saint or something. You latched on to me as soon as I hit town. Leave me alone. Let God have me to himself. That’s what he wants. That’s why he gave me the visions, and not you. Either of you.”
Tom had the same look as when I’d decked him. Jane sat stone still for a moment, her face as hard as the abbey’s flint walls. Then she stood up. “I’ll just get my things and be going, then.” She disappeared into the extra room. Tom stared down at his hands. I just stared, waiting for the drama to end. Everything I saw was in peripheral vision. Nothing was at the center.
My hands throbbed; I was clenching them tight, pressing my own fingers against the bandaged wounds. The cast made my right hand stiffer and more painful.
Jane emerged, her overnight bag slung over her shoulder, her face rigid. She stopped at the front door, made as if to turn, then went out. The door closed softly behind her.
“Clio—”
I shook my head. I heard the throaty rumble of my Triumph as Jane started it.
Alice, with Marcie leaning on her, came out of the kitchen. “We’re going back to the hospital.”
“Marcie?” I asked. “Is that what you want?” She looked even worse. There was no color in her at all.
“I shouldn’t have eaten, I guess. They told me, but I didn’t care. It was awful good.” She sounded exhausted, her voice a wisp, as thin as the rest of her. A trail of red hung from her mouth. “Thank you.”
Alice took her out. One car door after another slammed outside.
“They’re all leaving. Why don’t you go, too?”
“You’re pushing them away.” Tom’s eyes were red and puffy.
“I’m not,” I protested.
Alice’s car roared to life, then the sound diminished as she drove away with Marcie. I went to the window and saw darkness. In it, the deeper shadows of Tom’s Morris Minor, and Marcie’s old car, useless and destined for scrap.
“I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“I know.”
“My car’s gone.”
“Jane probably took it. She drove it over here.”
It was all so sad I could hardly stand it. “Why me?” Stupid question.
“God has his reasons.”
“Well, I don’t like them.”
“They’re not for us to like or dislike,” Tom said. “They’re his. If only Christina were still alive, someone for you to—”
I whirled on him. “Someone to tell me what to think? How to feel? What sort of person I should be? You’d like that. If I would only settle down and be what everyone thinks I should, starting with Leslie and ending with you—even the damned saint!”
I tried to jam my hands into my pockets, but they snagged on the bandages. I tore at the gauze, fighting the cast on my right hand, until the strips of white fell to the floor.
“Let me see.” Tom held out his hands for mine. He turned my palms up. Aside from a little dried blood, no sign of the wounds remained. “If you knew what this meant—”
I knew.
“The sling—take it off.” I couldn’t get at it by myself. Tom undid the plastic clip that held it around my shoulder. I flexed my broken hand within the cast. It wouldn’t move far, but within the confines of the plaster, it felt whole. Nothing hurt.
“Jesus,“ I said.
“Exactly.”
“Stop it! There has to be an explanation. Maybe Alice was wrong. They misread the x-rays. This can’t be happening.”
It was better to be crazy than to have all these things be real. If they were all real, if Alban and all his dead friends weren’t hallucinations, then I was responsible. If it was real, then everyone who was after me to do the right thing was right, and I was wrong, and whatever I decided mattered—mattered so much that I could—
I wept. Tom held me, his arms strong and loving, until I stopped. I drank in his smell, the tweedy, male scent of him, felt the starch in his collar. I wanted to push him away, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I did the next best thing—I kissed him. He tried not to respond, but I demanded. His arms loosened, but I held him with an iron grip in my own.
“Clio—”
He knew, then, that I didn’t want him to leave. If I could lose myself in him, then I wouldn’t have to feel the things I was fighting with. I reached behind his neck and found the button that held his starched collar in place. I wanted the man behind the collar. I kissed his mouth, his eyes, his neck, his bruised cheek.
I couldn’t get the damned button loose.
Tom’s eyes met mine as I broke the embrace in frustration.
“Not yet,” Tom said.
“I thought you loved me.” Even to my ears, it sounded like an accusation.
“I do.”
“And now you’re going to tell me that’s why you won’t sleep with me.”
He nodded. “But I’ll stay.”
“No.” The decision came from deep within me. “No half measures.”
His eyes were troubled. “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
“No one’s after me. Sexton’s in jail. Besides, I have the saint and all his friends to look after me—or don’t you believe in them, after all?”
“Not the way you do. Not as real people like you and me.”
“As what, then?”
He rubbed his bruised cheek. “I don’t think Alban could have given me this.”
I held out my healed hands, palms up.
“Point taken,” he conceded. His hands wrapped around mine. He lifted them to his lips and kissed my bruised knuckles. For an instant I was afraid he might kiss the healed wounds on my palm, but I had underestimated him, again.
Chapter 28
Tom went out. The door slipped from my hands and slammed behind him. I opened it. He stopped and turned back. The night washed over us in the doorway, spilling darkness into my house.
“Are you all right?”
“No.” I quivered with anger, and discovered that I wanted him to see it, wanted him to know how abandoned he made me feel, wanted to penetrate his calm.
Wanted to get even.
“I will stay if you want.” His hands found my shoulders and pulled me toward a chaste embrace. “What you’ve been through would be more than enough for anyone.”
I broke his grip. I wanted him, but on my terms, not his.
“Don’t give me that,” I snapped. “I don’t want your pity.”
“It’s not—”
“Just go!” Cold slipped into me, more than the chill of the night air could account for. I struggled against it even as the words poured from me. “I don’t need you.”
“Clio—”
I pushed him out onto the gravel walk. “I don’t need your bishop. I don’t need your waifs. I don’t need your church. I don’t need you—I’ve got God and all his saints. So leave me alone.”
I flung the door shut in his face, and this time it was no accidental slip. He stood there a long moment, a face hanging in the dark, lighted by the spill from the cottage. After a moment, he turned away and trudged to his car. He couldn’t see my face; the light was behind me. I waited until his Morris Minor crawled slowly into the darkness, leaving me alone.
I shivered at the sudden solitude after the crowd that had been in the tiny house. I shook it off and stalked into the kitchen, to clean up the remains of Marcie’s omelet, one-handed. I didn’t want to get wet under the cast; my hand would itch for days. Hot water poured into the sink. Suds rose. Damn him. I’d thought he was someone I could trust, but he was just like all the others. The water swirled around my hand. Marcie’s plate cracked against the frying pan under the water. Christina would be disappointed in me. Too bad I wasn’t what she’d had in mind as a replacement. I wasn’t Christina, wasn’t the holy bloody mystic everyone thought I was. Too bad for them all.
All of them?
“Yes.” I’d spoken aloud before I realized it was my voice. It had been a long time since I’d heard from him. “You too, for that matter. I’m not what you thought I was.”
He didn’t answer. “No mind games, buster. I’m not in the mood for any of your tricks. If you have something to say, say it and leave me alone.”
Look in your pocket.
The brooch was in the right side. I had to use my left hand to get at it.
The metal was warm to the touch, shiny, new. It glowed, even under the electric light.
“So what? I know you can do magic. What else is new?”
Not impressed?
“Not impressed.” The biggest advantage of living alone was that I could talk out loud, and no one would think I was crazy. If I ever lived with someone again, they’d have to put up with that without giving me strange looks.
A life flickered by, then a dozen. I kept washing dishes. A glacier covered the landscape out the window, then receded. Seasons alternated. Armies—Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Danish, French, English wearing red roses and white, red coats, khaki—marched past my kitchen window. The abbey grew from a couple of mud and stick huts through a spit of flame and up to its present flinty solidity. I yawned; it had been a long day.
You don’t need much.
“Damn right.” I went through the house, closing curtains and turning off lights. I refused to let a disembodied spirit disturb me. People had already done quite well, thank you, I told myself. Real flesh and blood people.
I wished Tom had stayed. Until I dropped into the old bed, between Christina’s lonely sheets, I’d held myself together, even welcomed old Alban’s voice, hallucination, visitation, or whatever. The dead woman’s loneliness, though, had seeped into the sheets, the bed, the very wood that framed the cottage. Everyone had come to see her, talk about her, ask her advice, but no one had lived with her. No one had loved her, not the way she needed to be loved.
I wept into Christina’s pillow. Mine now. The feelings were hard, but I could handle them. I’d been lonely before.
What I couldn’t handle was abject terror.
A weight pushed my face down into the pillow. I tried to breathe; only a little air got past the eiderdown.
I fought. If this was a spiritual lesson, it was distinctly physical. A fierce pressure shoved me down against the bed. I flailed back with my good hand and struck flesh—a person, then. I bucked, like a horse, but he outweighed me. Breathing grew harder. I relaxed. Deception worked. I threw my right arm back to where I thought his head would be and felt it smack into skin and bone. The cast broke into shards. I stepped on them as I flung myself across the room to the light switch.
Sexton.
He roused even as I stood watching. Fear paralyzed me. I’d never really felt it before, I discovered, not even in the vicarious lives I’d sampled with Alban and his friends. I felt each heartbeat, each urgent droplet of adrenaline that squirted into my bloodstream, each ragged breath I tried to draw. Like a traffic accident that happens in slow motion, when you see every detail of the two cars hurtling toward each other and are powerless to stop the collision—I saw what this huge lunatic wanted to do to me.
Blood trickled down his face from the gash my cast had cut into his forehead. He rubbed the blood from his eyes and stared at his reddened hands.
“Nigger bitch.” He snarled, baring yellow, feral teeth. He still wore the jail clothes I’d last seen him in. “I’ll teach you.”
He lunged for me. I scrambled back through the open bedroom door. Sexton was on me by the kitchen, the next room. Foul breath and powerful arms encircled me together. He lifted me off the floor as easily as I might pick up a puppy. I kicked and fought and screamed, but none of it mattered. It was as useless as criticizing a thunderstorm, an avalanche.
Sexton threw me on the small couch in the living room and flicked on the light. He leaned over me, and for the first time I looked into his eyes.
They burned with anticipation, with yearning. Spittle hung from his slack mouth. He closed his massive fist around my hands until I thought they would be crushed. When I cried, and Sexton saw tears, he relaxed the pressure.
“Good.” He nodded, happy with the results. “Good.” He let go and turned away. I took a breath of hope, and never saw his fist before it drove into my stomach. All the air I’d ever breathed rushed out of me at the point of his fist. I tried to breathe—my chest wouldn’t move. I tried again. The pain paralyzed everything except my mind; I knew that I had to get air inside me again, but nothing worked.
Except pain. Those nerves worked just fine. The panic nerves worked pretty well, too. I would have been glad to run away, to hide, to fight, to do almost anything at all—especially breathe—but nothing worked. The seed of hurt planted by Sexton’s fist took root, grew, and blossomed inside. One blow turned me into a garden of pain.
Then air came back inside me. I concentrated on that for a long moment. Even with Sexton breathing in my face, air tasted sweet to my starving lungs.
“What do you want?” I spoke as soon as my lungs would let me. The effort earned me a slap across the face. A new bloom in the garden. I didn’t ask any more questions. I was too busy praying for a way out.
Sexton played with me.
He turned his back. I slid off the couch and dived for the door. Somehow, he got there before me. He snatched me up and threw me against the wall. I landed flat on my back, only the surface I hit was vertical, so I crashed to the ground. It was like getting run over twice.
Sexton waited until I came to. I ached all over, but the fear was worse. Did dying itself hurt? I asked the velvet Jesus. Or is it the pain beforehand? I didn’t want to find out, but there was every chance that I would.
What was he waiting for?
Sexton must have seen my eyes open. He flew over the couch and dove toward me. I scuttled away, but he was bigger and faster. His hands moved over me in a vicious caress. His weight pressed me against the floor.
Sexton smiled, his teeth bared, his breath as rotten as the wolf’s.
The man trusted his size and strength, my fear and weakness.
I relaxed a little. Sexton’s grin widened. I had to convince him that all the fight had gone out of me. My hands, which had pressed against his chest, fell to my sides. He reared up on his knees and fumbled with his trousers. His breath came ragged and hot. I reached for his belt.
“Let me help.” A man in that state of mind will believe anything.
I held his belt for leverage and ground my hips against his.
Then I head-butted him in the nose. Oh God, it hurt me, but it hurt him worse. He screamed and fell off me. Red sprayed everywhere. I shook his blood from my eyes and ran through the living room and out the door.
Gravel bit into my bare feet. The moon shone full.
Sexton roared out of the cottage, a vengeful, moonlit demon. If I stayed where I was, he’d have me trapped.
So I ran.
He’d catch me on the road. I fled past the neatly trimmed hedges, around the side of the house, past the fallow vegetable garden, the compost pile at the back of the yard, into the woods. Sexton thundered behind me.
Branches flailed at my skin, tore my pajamas. Twigs and stones hurt my feet, but I ran.
Shafts of moonlight slashed down through the new spring growth. Leaves and branches threw dark shadows in my way. I plunged on, deeper into the wood.
I risked a glance back. Sexton was only a few yards behind me, his face dappled black with blood. The moonlight glinted off his teeth, bared in a rictus of rage. I sprinted, as fast as I could, and knew it would never be fast enough.
The cliff was somewhere up ahead, and I knew at once that I would go over it rather than let him catch me. Better a clean death than torture and rape. With any luck, Sexton would follow me out and be killed himself.
The ground started to rise toward the cliff. I pounded up the gentle slope. The end was coming.
Sexton’s hand brushed my back. Now or never. I leaped forward, and discovered that I believed in God after all. Into your hands—
Reach up!
I obeyed the voice. Gnarled bark skinned my palms. My legs swung out over emptiness. My once-broken hand burned with pain, but I held on while Sexton screamed at the deception, at the shock of having nothing underfoot, at the betrayal. He screamed all the long fall down, then gave a final grunt as he crashed onto the road below, air pushed from his body by the impact.
Momentum swung me up onto the branch.
Alban was sitting there. The branch was crowded with the dead. Christina dangled her pudgy legs. Egwyn the monk, and Wulf, the hulking Dane. Dorcas. Sheila. The young Indian boy whose death I had attended. Cunobelinus, Germanus, Bryn. Cob. Sister Stronghand, and the little leprous nun who had taught me to battle the wolf, and a host of others I hadn’t met yet, but would.
Ghosts, moonlit and pale, peopled the old ash tree. The branches were full of them. I trembled from shock and release. Down below, Sexton’s corpse lay empty, spread-eagled on the macadam.
None of them spoke. They watched me, their faces hopeful. They were on my side in this struggle, but the choice was mine.
I had to change. I had never, not since the first vision, doubted, not really. Doubt was only an excuse that let me do what I wanted.
Believing meant that everything mattered. God was watching.
Belief meant that all I was, all I did, counted so much as to make me fearful. I am amazed, to this day, that God had so much patience with me.
Momentum swung me up onto the branch, but momentum could not live my life for me.
In the old days, people thought that God created the world for them, and that they were responsible. Maybe people weren’t at the center of the universe any more, but the dead in the tree watched with eyes that God looked out from, and I knew.
It was as clear as the late night sky, as clear as the moonlight that poured through the trees and dappled the broken body below. I had been granted another chance to try to get it right.
Sexton’s salvation was my salvation. I was he, and he was I. We were not identical, but we were one. And I understood what lay beyond the proposition forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
The arguments against it filled my mind—he tried, three times, to kill me, to rape me—I owed him nothing. But I found myself knowing better, and I let go of my branch, dropped to the bank, and scrambled down the hill. My saints were beyond harm, but Sexton was not.
Branches and twigs scratched. Stones cut my bare feet. My breath came in ragged gulps of cool night air. I pushed the grasping brush out of my way and scrabbled down, half sliding, half running, to the road.
Sexton’s chest heaved with a hollow, sucking sound. Blood masked his face and pooled in the sockets of his eyes. His legs bent in the wrong places. The pain should have been unbearable, and only moments before, I would have prayed for his suffering to continue.
But now, he looked up at me through the blood in his eyes. I couldn’t read his thoughts, but he spoke them.
“Nigger bitch,” said the Christ. Something caught in his chest. He didn’t breathe again. His eyes widened. I was grateful not to see through his eyes.
I took his hand. Whether he could feel anything or not, I needed to touch him, the way Francis needed to kiss lepers. My choices mattered. I held him until he was finished dying. I whispered all the prayers that memory and hope could supply.
I suppose I had always been capable of compassion, but I felt relief, too, when the headlights came and wiped out the moonshadows. I looked up into the glare. The lights slowed to a stop.
God does not require hypocrisy, came the not-sound of Alban’s voice.
I looked back down. Sexton’s eyes had gone dull. I touched his neck for a pulse—nothing left. And still I cradled him, until Tom came ‘round. He, too, checked the man’s pulse, then gently unwrapped my arms from Sexton’s body.
Tom folded me in his arms. I turned in his embrace. The bumpy surface of the road scraped my knees. I wept for Sexton, for Mama, for Alban, for the tearing apart that is built into our lives, and Tom held me, let me cry it out, until my tears were gone.
Then it was his turn. What a near thing it had been—how close we had come to not having each other.
Then we had to attend to all the sordid details. A telephone call brought the police. Someone from the Hertfordshire Advertiser heard the police radio, and alerted the editor, Simon Bluetooth, who in turn notified Jane Fern, who called Dr. Freckles. . . .
The night flashed blue, red and white. Tom waited with me, a towering presence in all the confusion of a violent death in a small town. He stood with me while the police investigated, while Simon interviewed me, while the ambulance came and took away Sexton’s corpse. He stood with me while the Bishop came and spoke sternly to me—after Bacon decided that I was emotionally able to handle the meeting.
“I want the whole story,” Bacon said. The three of us stood alone in the living room of Christina’s cottage, hours later. Jane Fern and Doctor Freckles busied themselves making tea in the kitchen. The police, the reporters, had gone. Only friends were left.
I started in on it, but Tom held up a hand. “Bishop, I think that can wait. I appreciate your coming out here in the middle of the night, but Clio’s been through hell.”
I held up my own hand. Something was starting here that I had to nip in the bud. “I can speak for myself, Tom. I love you dearly and I’m glad you’re here, but it’s my story. I need someone to love, not a manager.”
He looked so crestfallen, like a rooster watching his hen go off with another, that I had to laugh. That didn’t help, so I hugged him. “It’s all right. I can handle it,” I whispered. Bishop Bacon tried to look tolerant and amused while we nuzzled. A pair of giggles sounded from the kitchen, but when I turned, the two women were out of sight.
“Bishop, with all due respect, I think you’d better marry us before too long.” I grinned, as wolfishly as I could. Even though I was teasing both men, a tingle ran through me and I realized I was about to speak more truth than usual. “I’d hate to be the occasion of sin for so good a priest, but I may not be able to help myself.”
Tom’s crest was rising again, along with the blush in his cheeks. My tingling increased. This was going to be fun.
I felt like a new woman. I’d cast something off that cliff with Sexton. It wasn’t that I didn’t have doubts and fears any longer; they just felt less important. The living was too good to waste whatever time I had on them.
Jane and Alice didn’t bother to restrain their laughter as they carried an early tea into the room. There weren’t enough seats for all of us. Alice went back to the kitchen for chairs.
“Bishop,” Jane Fern said, laying the tea service out for us, “these two children know what they’re about. Get in their way, they’re likely to run over you. Marry them, before they take matters out of your hands.”
“And soon.” Alice dragged two chairs from the kitchen. She held one for me, then slid one into place behind Tom. “That’s a medical opinion.”
“And besides,” Jane said, pouring, “the more you let this one wrap you around her little finger, the worse trouble you’ll be in. She’s already ruined Father Tom.”
Father Tom merely sat and grinned in all directions. I felt a little smilish myself.
Bishop Bacon lifted his teacup toward the east window, where the sun was rising.
“I give up,” he said.
Chapter 29
The ceremony was held on Easter Monday, in the same chapel as Christina’s funeral, the Lady Chapel where Sexton had surprised me. But Sexton was gone to wherever damaged souls go, and the chapel was a safe and holy place.
There were two parts. I had been christened as an infant, but Tom’s Church of England was new to me. I wanted him to know what I now believed. The best way to show him was to let the Bishop make me a part of that church, and the way he did it was to call me to the altar and question me. Anyone can read the questions and my answers in the prayer book.
Arrayed in white, I knelt in front of Bishop Bacon. Tom stood behind me, my sponsor, flanked by Jane Fern and Alice Frickle, who were to be my godmothers. Both of them had spent the morning fussing over me, helping to fix my hair and get me into the simple white dress, fitting for both a confirmation and a wedding.
Bishop Bacon’s gnarled old hands covered my head. He pressed down on me and spoke the ancient words: “Defend, O Lord, this thy servant Clio with thy heavenly grace, that she may continue thine for ever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until she come to your everlasting kingdom.”
Along with him, the small congregation answered “Amen” in unison. Other voices joined in, their accents varied—some in old Latin, some with a guttural Anglo-Saxon tone, others with a liquid French, a few lilting Gaels. They perched like gargoyles on the altar, the walls, the window sills; some floated in mid-air, grinning like idiots. I almost shushed them before I remembered that the others couldn’t see them. Among them, I heard the nasal accent of Philadelphia’s streets, and the lilt of Jamaica colored a woman’s voice.
Bishop Bacon lifted the pressure from my head and took my hands to lift me up. Tom came to my side. Alice and Jane stood by me, too. In the small congregation, Simon Bluetooth sat cheek by jowl with Leslie Phelps, newly released from hospital and wearing bandages and a cast.
I stole a look at the throng of spirits helping to celebrate our wedding. My father and my mother floated arm in arm in the air, their feet a yard above the ancient stone floor. Tears gushed from my eyes, and I made no effort to stop them.
Tom cleared his throat, capturing my wandering attention. He grinned, and I grinned back. He had a few tears on his face, too.
The bishop opened his book and found his place.
“Dearly beloved,” he began.
The end of
The Communion of the Saint
by Alan David Justice
If you would like a copy, please visit the book's page on amazon.com.
It's available in trade paper or for the Kindle.
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