Communion, Chapters 23-26

Chapter 23

     

They left by the back door. Meg and Edgar had been kind to me, watching over things while I couldn’t. I started out, as much to avoid Alice as to cement my apology to the pair of caretakers.

      Tom stopped me.

      “Wait—they’ll be all right. Meg’s easily angered, but it blows over quickly. Tomorrow it will all be forgotten.”

      “How do you know?” I rounded on Tom.

      “I work with them. They’re a project of mine, away from the cathedral.”

      Father’s waifs. Some days I’m slow, particularly when just released from a mental hospital. I turned back to the door, watching the two of them make their way around the side of the house and out of sight.

      Alice waited.

      I kept watching out the back door. A swirl of brown leaves skittered across the neglected lawn. “I trusted you.”

      “I know. That made it easier.”

      All three of us kept a silence, each for our own reasons, until Doctor Freckles broke it.

      “It had to be done.”

      I tore my gaze from the outdoors. Beyond Alice, over her shoulder, Jesus still hung on the wall, pale skin in contrast to black velvet. No wonder people still thought Elvis would come back. A brass urn stood on the mantle, under him—Christina.

      Alice talked some more.

      “Plague—and it was plague—is a public health matter. It has to be reported. When we got to the hospital, you were out of your head.”

      I didn’t remember. I bumped into Alice and she gave way. I pushed past her, into the living room, to be under the velvet portrait, near Christina. Alice smelled of the hospital—hers, not Rapp’s.

      “You demanded that we let you and Cob come back here.” This was Tom talking, following me in to the living room. And I was remembering, now. “You said that Cob was a messenger from the past. God, you said, meant for you to understand something. You talked about your voices and visions.”

      “You hit me,” Alice said.

      Then she walked the few steps from the kitchen doorway and folded her hands around mine.

      I looked into her brown eyes. “Can you forgive me?” Shame filled me, a hot flush of oh-my-God-what-have-I-done.

      Alice smiled. The wry turn of her lips gave her away. “You have an advocate in the father—a very persuasive one.” Her hands still held mine; her voice was pitched low. “If you want a bit of advice, Clio—keep this one. He cares for you.”

      I nodded, still too choked with shame to trust my voice.

      Tom stood awkwardly by the kitchen. We smiled at each other. He must have heard; it was a small room.

      Alice nodded and slipped out the door. I turned to Tom.

      “I can’t stay,” he said.

      “Why not?”

      He ducked his head, as if he were walking through a too-small doorway. “Because I want to—too much.”

      “Tom Dorcas, are you courting me?”

      “Not yet.” He grinned, his face open and bright. “It’s too soon.”

      “Not for me,” I lied and leaned toward him, and brushed a kiss across his lips. He looked alarmed, and I giggled.

      “It’s all right. Your virtue is safe with me.”

      “I hope not,” he said, “at least, not for long.”

      “That sounds serious.”

      Tom touched a single finger to my lips. “Too serious to muck about with.” He looked at his watch. “She should be here by now.”

      “Who?”

      “Someone to stay with you.”

      The old rebelliousness rose within me. I hadn’t left it at the hospital after all. I didn’t want someone to “stay” with me, as if I were fragile, even if I was. I didn’t need a minder. I needed Tom. Or Alban. Or both.

      Tires ground on gravel. Brakes squealed. I peered through the curtains.

      I felt like an old lady, peeking between the filmy panels, one finger holding them apart just enough to see through. I turned away, willing myself to wait, like an adult, until whoever it was came through the door.

      Tom grinned at me, smug and expectant.

      “Who?”

      His grin widened.

      A tap sounded at the door.

      “You have a guest.”

      Suspicious, I opened the door.

      “Clio?”

      For the first time since I’d met her, Jane Fern sounded tentative. She stood in front of me, a small satchel in one hand. Amphibalus emerged from immobility and snaked around her ankles. Jane halted.

      “A cat.”

      “Amphibalus.” I introduced them.

      “How…delightful,” Jane said. Some people are not cat people. They try, but the animals know the truth. “How are you?”

      “Okay,” I managed. “It’s you?”

      She nodded. I stepped aside. There was no one else in Saint Albans I would have trusted. She set her satchel inside the door and come forward one step.

      “This is all Father Dorcas’ idea. The doctors wouldn’t release you to live alone, but I won’t be a party to imprisoning you again in that hospital.” Her voice clotted on the word. “I’ll lie to them if you want and tell them I’m staying here.” She turned on Tom. “And you will back me up, if need be. Do you understand?”

      Tom nodded in obedience.

      “I won’t have you sent back there, no matter what. But if you’d like the company, I would be pleased to stay with you for a time.”

      “Your B-and-B—”

      “—wasn’t working out. No one else who appeared on my doorstep was fit to be in my house. If need be, I can put it to let, but Henry’s pension has been reinstated; I dare say I won’t need to. Besides,” she said, here eyes bright, “I think your need for a room mate is only temporary.”

      Tom’s fair skin blushed as red as the stained glass in the church. My own skin warmed with a sudden rush of blood. I must have smiled at her, for she picked up her satchel and marched inside.

      “The front garden’s been let go. We’ll need to see to that—and soon.” Jane eyed the sky. “We’re almost through Lent. There may be another freeze or two yet to come, but the plants need tending now, or there will be an awful mess by the door.”

      The thought of green and growing things took me through the door and outside. Cumulus clouds, swollen with the spring winds, sailed the azure sky, all making for a hidden destination in the east. The air was alive, moving, one moment a knowing caress, the next a shove, impudent and unpredictable.

      Tom took the opportunity to leave Jane and me alone together. I walked him to his car.

      “Will you be back soon?” I felt as nervous as a schoolgirl, as fragile as china.

      “Yes,” Tom answered. “Once you’ve have a chance to settle in.”

      “I’d like that.” I kissed a finger and touched his forehead. He grinned and drove off, spraying my ankles with gravel. It stung a little, but it was worth it. Being out of the hospital made everything better.

      It was a delight to be outside. Whether I had been ill, deluded, or insightful, I had spent ages in my own head, and I was truly sick of it. The questions remained unanswered. I would simply take my delusions straight up from now on, if I was lucky enough to get any. Pleasure was back, and it was nearly enough. I laughed.

      Jane was at my side.

      “It is rather overgrown, isn’t it?” I said. “The garden, I mean. Christina must not have had the strength.”

      “I know,” Jane said. “That’s why there are such great hopes for you, still.”

      “Still?” I asked.

      Jane shivered in the breeze.

      “Let’s go in. I want to get settled.”

      I followed her into the cottage. She disappeared into the spare room. I trailed her, suddenly concerned that the bed linens might never have been changed since Will’s sickness. I pulled back the sheets; they were as pristine as new snow.

      “The waifs took care of all that.” Jane pulled the coverlet back into place and put her suitcase on the bed. I stepped back to give her room. She stopped unpacking and gave me a look.

      “It was all real. Or rather, it is. You know that, don’t you?”

      “Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t know. I don’t trust it. Look where it landed me.”

      “The hospital? That’s over now, isn’t it. You have to look forward.”

      “To what?”

      “How should I know? Father Thomas seems interested. You have a lovely little cottage. People respect you.”

      “Like the ones who locked me up?”

      “Some of them. Remember, it was Alice and Tom who took you in.”

      That was a bit of data that I hadn’t finished processing yet. Alice I could be angry with, but when I thought about Tom cooperating with it, I grew cold and lonely.

      “You didn’t.” I was glad there was someone.

      “Clio, look at me.” Jane cupped my chin in her hand. Her skin was dry, but cold from being outside. “If I had been here, I would have, too. You’d been exposed to a dangerous disease, an illness you could spread to others, without meaning to. On top of that, you were in a panic. You were afraid of what it would cost you—exposure as mentally unstable. You did the right thing anyway. Now the worst has happened. You’re well again. You can go on.”

      “Not like before.”

      “Not as before, I agree. What difference does it make? People who cared for you took over when you couldn’t cope—and you asked them to. It was you who called for help.”

      “So what do I do now?”

      “Whatever needs doing.”

      That I could handle. If I were now the responsible party, I would tend to the shrubbery outside, but I also had unfinished business with Leslie Phelps.

      I looked from the doorway into the spare room. Jane busied herself with putting her things away. The table on which the computer had been drew my eye.

      At least Leslie had left me the telephone in the living room. I dialed her number. It must have been the servants’ day off again; she answered on the second ring.

      “Doctor Griffin.” The voice was cold and distant. “You’ve been released, then. How are you?”

      I took a deep breath. Jane watched, her lips pursed.

      “I’m well, thank you.” I held on to politeness. What I wanted to do was finish the relationship with Leslie. “I take it that I’ve been let go.”

      “Was it necessary to ring me up?” Leslie sighed. “I should think that it would have been obvious.”

      “Just making sure,” I answered.

      The voice back at the manor house was silent. A faint electronic hum sounded in my ear. “You’re not making this easy, you know,” she finally said.

      I tried to reply without sarcasm, my besetting sin. “It’s understandable. I’m not sure I would have wanted me, either, after a stint in a mental hospital. I’d like to come into the office and pick up a few things.”

      “I’ll have them sent over.”

      “Okay.” She didn’t want me anywhere near her project now. Why didn’t I end this conversation?

      “Doctor Griffin,” Leslie said after my pause, “the press—Mr. Bluetooth—may be calling you. I’d appreciate it, for the sake of the Communion, if you referred all questions to me for damage control, you understand.”

      I understood. I was tainted now, just like Mama.

      “Good-bye.” I hung up the phone and turned to Jane. Her eyes were teary, too.

      “Isn’t it just like the swells?” She bit her lip and took a breath. “You have a spot of trouble and they drop you like a hot coal.”

      I nodded. My throat seemed to be clogged. I wanted to say something smart and uncaring, that with Christina’s cottage and the money she had bequeathed me, I didn’t need the job anyway, but the words wouldn’t come out.

      Jane opened her arms, and I rushed into them, and she held me and let me cry and cry.

     

* * *

     

      Morning dawned like the afternoon before, bright and windy. There was pruning to be done, and winter’s mulch to be cleared away, so that the sun could warm the roots and soil.

      Jane started to make the cleaning up a metaphor for what I was going through emotionally, but I held up a hand when I saw where the conversation was tending.

      “Let’s not push this too far,” I asked, after a good two hours’ work. The debris of our effort lay all around us. I leaned on my rake, out of breath, but pleased with what we’d accomplished in so little time. Christina must not have been well for months, to let the garden get away from her like this. When we’d first met, then, she had known she was dying.

      “The underbrush is cleared away.” Jane went on, in spite of my caution. “It has only to be raked up and carted off. Then new growth can begin. And just in time, too.”

      A pickup truck gasped to a rattling halt on the road. The dilapidated trailer behind it, full of ancient yard tools, clattered for several seconds after coming to a stop. Edgar leaned out the missing window on the driver’s side.

      “I knew once Mrs. Fern arrived you’d be after it.” Self-satis-faction poured out through his wide grin.

      He bounced out of the cab and snatched a rake from the jumble of tools that hung on the trailer’s side.

      “The old mulch, now that’ll go in the compost, behind the house.” Edgar’s rake danced over the mess we had left, separating twigs and branches from the half-rotted leaves, and lifting the clippings into the trailer. “There’s a cart in the back.”

      He disappeared behind the cottage, only to come back a moment later. I watched in slack-jawed wonder, then followed his example. Soon the mess was cleared, his trailer half-filled with prunings and the cart ready to be wheeled to the compost pile. Jane went inside. I trailed Edgar to the back of the house. Back in the corner of the yard, just where the wood began, there was a low mound that I hadn’t noticed before.

      “That’s last year’s pile,” Edgar explained. “You’ll be wanting that.” He dug into the soil and pulled forth a handful of rich, black loam. A pair of earthworms struggled to dig back into it, as he held the handful out for my inspection. “Smell it.”

      Dutifully, I dipped my head in the direction of the worms. The smell was heady, earthy, and rich. I took the soil into both hands; it was barely warm to the touch.

      “Christina left that for you to use.”

      “I’m to have a garden, then?”

      “If you like. Some folks do, some don’t. Christina was one of them who do. Liked the feel of the dirt in her hands, she did. Said it was like the people she prayed for—out of the waste comes something good and growing. Made a believer out of me, I’ll tell you.” He hefted the cart’s handles. “Where do you want this lot dumped?”

      I looked around the yard. We were about eighty feet from the back door.

      “Right here—next to Christina’s.”

      He tipped the cart on end. The old leaves swooshed out onto the ground. I seeded it with my handful of dirt and worms.

      “Tea’s ready!” Jane Fern stood in the back door long enough to make her announcement, then disappeared inside.

      “You’ll do.” Edgar dug in his pocket and slipped a folded bit of paper into my hand, while looking back to make certain we were unobserved. “For the prayers,” he said, looking now into my eyes. His were dark brown, liquid with unshed tears. A smile formed on his lips. “It’s not important, except to me.”

      With that, he turned away and strolled up the gentle slope to the cottage.

      The paper had been white, once. I unfolded it. Dirt showed in the creases. A smear of sweat had dried over the words, written in the careful, crude hand of a man unused to writing his thoughts down, but they showed clearly enough to read: For Heeling of Canser. E. Angleton.

      This was what Christina had done for the waifs—prayed for them.

      I had never understood prayer. I wanted Tom to explain to me, but this—this boon I had been asked was private, given in silence and in confidence. I couldn’t ask someone else’s opinion. I had been trusted.

      Cancer of what? Of whom? Edgar had been kind to me, and obviously believed that I could help. Feeling slightly ridiculous, alone in my back yard, I formed the words internally, but they felt awkward and insincere. I felt awkward and insincere, but knew that Edgar’s trust was worth more than my own inadequacy. So I said them. They weren’t much: Father God, heal the man who brought me this paper. Amen.

      I felt as foolish when I had done it as I had before. If God was loving and powerful, he would do what he wanted to do. It all seemed arbitrary. If my prayer could heal Edgar, why wouldn’t God do it anyway? Why should he need me to ask for what he ought to do out of his own goodness?

      “The tea will get cold.” Jane’s voice penetrated my reverie. I answered, something, and walked up to the cottage.

      Please, I added. Help him.

      Edgar was the first. After he had gone, while we washed up the tea things, Jane made her request. She was almost shy about it.

      “I’ll understand if it seems a little strange to you.” We were side by side at the sink; I washed, she dried. The warm water comforted my hands. The common drudgery eased my mind. It had been difficult to maintain a normal conversation after Edgar’s request, and I had kept searching his face for some sign that he was—I didn’t know—changed in some way. Since I didn’t know what I was looking for, I didn’t find much. “It probably will sound odd to you, but I hope you’ll pray for the dead in the churchyard.”

      It struck me as funny; I couldn’t keep the smile from my face. “I might know some of them.”

      Jane stopped drying, dish and towel in hand. “I dare say, you might.”

      I apologized.

      “One of the lessons you’re still to learn, I see, is to bridle your tongue.” Her lips compressed to a thin British line of disapproval. “The dead are merely dead to us, not to God. They are absent to us, but not to Him. Surely you know that.”

      I didn’t know what I knew any more. I had come out of the hospital where everything I thought I knew had been denied—with vigor and with all the weapons available to modern pharmacy—and now all the doubt that had been infused in me was itself called into doubt.

      It was like treading along the border between two countries. In one land, black was white; in the other, white was green. The rules of one didn’t apply to the other, and I was an alien in both.

      “It’s all new to me.”

      “Get used to it.” Jane was no longer the sweet little old lady I thought I had come to know. “One prays for the dead as one prays for the living. It’s all one can do for the dead. One can no longer feed, clothe, or visit them. Do you see that?”

      She demanded a response. I nodded.

      “Prayer was what Christina did for us. Once, it was the monks who did this office, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but at least it was done. Now, you are the one chosen to do it. That is why you are here.” Her gesture included the cottage, the town, maybe all of England. “You do know that nothing occurs by happenstance?”

      Everyone around me now seemed to believe that. I still wasn’t so sure about myself.

      I was reading in Christina’s journals when a throaty, mechanical thunder pulled me from the chair to the window. Simon Bluetooth himself roared up to the cottage on a motorcycle. He brought the old Harley to a gentle stop on the gravel out front, then stood, straddling it, to remove his helmet and leather gloves. He was wrapped head to toe in black leather. Shining steel studs marked out an intricate pattern on the jacket and leggings.

      I was waiting with the door open before he was finished.

      “You don’t look like a lunatic,” he said in greeting.

      “But you do.” I shook his outstretched hand. “I’ve been warned away from you.”

      “Leslie Phelps?”

      “The same. Come in.”

      “You may not want to talk to me. Some of it’s for the paper.”

      In spite of his warning, I stood aside. Simon entered and over-filled the cottage. Jane looked in from the kitchen, found no space in the living room, nodded, and returned. Simon looked so out of place that I laughed. He stared eye to eye at the velvet Jesus.

      “Let’s go outside.”

      He followed me through the kitchen.

      “Simon.” Jane crowded herself into a corner to let us pass.

      “Jane.”

      There was an old wooden bench outside, under one of the oaks. A sprinkle of green showed in the tree’s branches.

      “Lost your job, I hear.” Simon wasn’t one to circle around when he could plunge straight ahead.

      “So far, so good.”

      “Leslie Phelps has put it about that you were let go for reasons of mental health.”

      “Or lack thereof,” I joked. Simon rewarded me with a small laugh, more than the quip deserved.

      “Actually, her press release is quite charitable, on the face of it.” He held out a single sheet; his hands were almost as large as the paper.

      It was on the letterhead of the Communion. I scanned the words—“With regret, the Communion of the Saint announces the departure of Dr. Clio Griffin from the position of executive director for reasons of health.” There was more—a quick summation of my career to date, including the unpleasant fact that I’d left my last job involuntarily. It was polite, it was graceful, and the overall impression it gave was that the Communion had been snookered by the unstable but apparently brilliant Jamaican-American historian it had hired, but would be wiser in future and stick to Britons. I looked up at Simon.

      “Any comment?”

      “For the record?” I shook my head. Anything I might say would only sound like sour grapes, and I truly didn’t feel so sour as I would come off.

      “Off, then.” Simon leaned back; the bench groaned under his weight, but held. “What will you do?”

      “Do?” I felt thick, stupid.

      “Do,” my seedy Viking repeated. “As in, do you plan to stay or go? How will you earn a living? Are you as dotty as Leslie would like to make you out, or is what some people are saying about you true?” He grinned, and made me think of the toothy smile of Wulf, the berserker Dane, Egwyn’s protector.

      “What are you thinking?” I shot back. “You have something in mind, Simon Bluetooth. I can see it.”

      “There are some who think you might keep doing what you were brought here to do.”

      “And that would be?”

      “Write about what you learn. Your stories, whatever their source, have had an impact. People talk about them. They buy more papers. I’ve no aversion to an increase in my advert rates.”

      “I don’t need a job.” I was thinking out loud. I could stay. I didn’t have to leave. Christina had seen to that.

      “All the better,” Simon said. “That means I can run your stuff if it’s good, reject it if it’s tripe, and not worry about putting you on the street. You won’t have to get an okay from the Communion, only from me. And there’s been some interest from papers out of town. We may run a syndication deal.”

      It was a lot to take in. Rejection and acceptance, denial and vindication, all in one conversation.

      “What’s the catch?”

      “You become public property. But in some sense you already are. People talk about you. They take sides.”

      “And which side are you on?”

      “My own. If you do something awful, I’ll be the first to tell about it.”

      My face must have betrayed me. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to take Simon’s offer, but was afraid of the way it would make me public.

      “Think about it.” He stood, and the bench rose an inch in relief. “I can wait for an answer—at least a few days.”

      I walked with the big man to the front of the cottage where his cycle waited. He settled the helmet on his head, grinned his toothy Viking grin at me, and roared off. The cycle’s wheels kicked up a spray of gravel and made me turn away. In the window of the cottage, the curtain twitched.

      I marched in the front door. Jane made a pretense of straightening up. She was dying to know what had been said, but too proud to ask, and I too unsure to tell.

      Tom came by later to check on me. Jane was still in a snit, marching around the cottage, putting things that didn’t suit her to right.

      “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered, while she was off in the kitchen.

      We trooped out. “Where to?” Tom asked.

      “I don’t care. Just away.”

      We drove through the countryside for an hour, through Hemel Hempstead, Tring, Luton. We watched people going about their usual lives. They went to shops, drove their cars, worked, played, wandered. I found it comforting, and said so.

      “I’m not up to everything that people expect of me. Why can’t I just go about my business like everyone else?”

      Tom pulled the car into a rest stop. Its overburdened motor sighed in relief as he turned off the ignition. The abrupt silence let me hear the returned birds’ chirping, the spring wind in the trees.

      I cringed at the look of sympathy he gave me.

      “Christina would have troubles, too, some of the time.”

      “I’m not Christina!” I said. “I’m the wrong woman for all the fantasies that people have about me. I didn’t ask for this.” My hand crept on its own into my pocket and tightened on emptiness. I had reached for the brooch without remembering that it wasn’t there. I pulled my hand from my pocket. I wasn’t looking for another vision, anyway, only some kind of reassurance

      “When I realized I would have to enter the church, I felt the same way,” Tom said.

      “What do you mean—‘have to enter’?” I asked. The vernal breeze grew chill; I shivered.

      “It was like a conspiracy.” Tom’s smile was wistful, wry. “I wanted to make money. Or perhaps fly in the RAF, or join the Navy. Holy orders weren’t on the menu at all.”

      “What happened?” His forelock danced in the breeze that came through the open windows of the Minor. “I can see you as a pilot.”

      “No one else could. Oh, the RAF thought I might make it, but the conspiracy wouldn’t let me.”

      “Who?” This was one of the first chances I’d had to learn about his past.

      “This will sound terribly self-important.”

      “No, it won’t. Go on.”

      He pushed the errant lock of hair back into place. It defied him almost immediately.

      “My teachers. My friends. My family. People I met at parties. Even a girl I was seeing.”

      “A girl?” I felt impish and turned in my seat to face him.

      “A girl. I wanted her to move in with me at university. She wouldn’t—and not because of her sterling moral qualities, I assure you. Jealous?”

      I turned away, so he couldn’t see my face, which burned with embarrassment. “No. But why not, then?”

      He leaned back in the seat. “She said that when I became a bishop, she didn’t want to have our affair raked up when my name was put before the House of Lords. We stopped seeing each other shortly thereafter.”

      “And will you? Become a bishop, I mean.”

      “It’s extremely doubtful.”

      “Good.”

      I hadn’t planned to kiss him, but I did. We took the kiss slowly, tentatively at first. Tom was good at it. He took his time, which boded well for the future. He cupped my face in his hands, which weren’t as soft as I would have expected for a priest. My arms found their way around his neck. The muscles there moved as we slipped deeper into the kiss. He gave off a feeling of strength held in reserve. At least until his pager went off.

      “Damn.” We spoke simultaneously.

      “Such language.”

      He dug the device off his belt. “It’s the group. They must need something.”

      “The group?”

      “Probably Edgar or Meg. The others wouldn’t call.”

      “Father’s waifs.”

      “They’re not waifs. They’re not abandoned.”

      “That’s what some people call them.”

      “Some people are quite wrong, then.” He started the car. “They don’t quite fit in, so they take care of each other.”

      “With a little help from you.”

      “Well, why not? Something must have happened. They wouldn’t call unless it was important.”

     

     

Chapter 24

     

      The Rolls Royce had been rolled into a ball of crumpled aluminum at Sumpter Yard, a sort of back entrance to the abbey. Embedded in the side of the Rolls was a bulky, black sedan, like the one that had chased me on the road to Markyate. Police cars flashed their multi-colored lights and blocked the road in officious disarray.

      Tom pulled up to the nearest constable.

      “What’s going on here?”

      “It’s Lady Phelps, Canon,” the officer said. “She’s badly hurt. The paramedic said it was touch and go.”

      “What about the other driver?”

      “Don’t know, sir. He wasn’t here when we arrived. We’ll trace him from the car, though.”

      Tom sighed. “No need. I recognize it. It belongs to our sexton.”

      I had been right about Sexton’s being dangerous. It could have been me that was hurt. Then the short-lived sense of vindication turned to shame. Instead of me, it was Leslie.

      “Are you certain, sir?” the policeman asked. Tom nodded in reply. The cop took down Sexton’s name, address and description.

      As we drove away, I looked out the tiny rear window of Tom’s Morris Minor. The corner where the wreck had occurred, Holywell Hill and Sumpter Yard, shouldn’t have been the site of an accident. The gates stood far enough back from the street that anyone waiting to turn onto Holywell would be plainly visible.

      “I don’t like this,” Tom said.

      “Where are we going?”

      “The hospital. She’ll be in surgery.” He ran a hand through his hair, then tugged at his collar. “I don’t know why I’m going there, actually.”

      “Her family?”

      “Only the cousins.”

      “That’s why, then,” I said. Tom only grunted in reply.

      City Hospital, where I had already been twice, was only a mile or so away. We wound through a rat’s nest of tiny streets, some hardly wider than Tom’s old car itself, before arriving. Tom slipped into a narrow slot under a “No Parking” sign.

      Dr. Freckles emerged from a treatment room as we came in. Behind her, two white-suited orderlies wheeled a gurney from the room into a waiting elevator. Bags of fluids hung over the sheeted form on the stretcher. Plastic tubes shivered with the gurney’s movement.

      “Is that—”

      “Yes.” Alice stripped a pair of latex gloves from her hands, careful to avoid touching the blood that clung to them. She looked around, searching for a place to throw them away. “Damn.” She fled into the treatment room and re-emerged after a moment without her safety glasses, disposable gown, and gloves.

      “I hate head injuries.”

      “How serious is it?” Tom asked.

      “Very.” Alice picked at her lab jacket. “Lord, I want a cigarette. It’s been three years, and it’s as fresh as if it was yesterday. I hate head injuries. She may never regain consciousness. Or, she might never speak.”

      “I know some who would think that a mercy to us all.”

      The new voice was Joan Elspeth’s. I hadn’t seen her since the day Mrs. Fern and I picnicked on her estate.

      “I know that’s a terrible thing to say, but Leslie, bless her soul, has the habit of speaking much too freely. She thinks her money and position entitle her.”

      Tom answered. “She’s not speaking now. No one deserves what’s happened to her.”

      “I know.” El’s tone was apologetic, shamed. “My mouth tends to run a bit wild under tension.”

      The four of us looked at each other. “Leslie will be in surgery for a couple of hours. Maybe longer.” Alice rubbed her drawn face, scrubbing at fatigue.

      “There’s no one to notify, then?” I asked.

      El shook her head, then looked at Tom. “The chapel?”

      He nodded. A distant siren sounded. At the nurses’ station, a radio crackled with electric voices.

      “I’ll be by later,” Alice said. “More work is on the way.” She slipped behind a door marked Doctors’ Lounge. Tom and El started deeper into the hospital. I hurried to catch up.

      We traversed a maze of corridors. Saint Albans City Hospital had grown over the years since the first building was put up. Victorian woodwork took the place of the ER’s stark modernity, which gave way to pale green tile. Finally, we turned a corner near the administrative offices, in another, older section.

      The chapel was a tiny Gothic wonder. A rainbow of light spilled from indigo through yellow from the high windows. Saint Luke the physician was its patron, of course. I was completely lost in the twistings and turnings we’d taken.

      A center aisle ran between three ranks of short pews. Twenty people might have filled the infant church, but we had it to ourselves. A single candle, contained in clear glass, burned at one side of the altar. El slipped into the front pew and let the kneeler down, while Tom crossed the altar rail. I knelt next to El, wondering what was coming.

      She smelled outdoorsy, windblown and sweaty. Her folded hands were callused and rough. Tom opened a small door in the wall by the candle, withdrew a cruet of wine and a tiny pyx, and carried them to the altar, behind which a bearded Luke prayed at the feet of a bleeding Jesus, accompanied by a Lazarus still wearing his shroud. All three spilled their light down over us.

      The chapel was so quiet that I heard El’s breath, regular and soft. Footsteps sounded behind me. It was Meg, trailing Edgar in her wake, along with two others I didn’t recognize. Meg smiled at me and nodded with something like satisfaction. They all knelt in the back pew.

      “This sacrifice is offered in the name of our sister, Leslie, who lies in need of your care,” Tom said from the altar. His face was a mask of calm.

      The rite proceeded. The others knew it, but to me it was, if not alien, at least distant in memory. My responses fell a hair behind theirs. They were in known territory. Soon, we were kneeling in a row at the altar rail. Tom put a thin, round wafer in my hand. Taking my cue from El, I ate it.

      I nearly gagged on the gluey blandness as it dissolved in my mouth. It didn’t taste divine—more like solidified library paste, without the tang. Christ ought to have more flavor.

      Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice drop to her knees down the rail. She held out her hands, and looked up at Tom with an intensity that sent a shock of jealousy through me. Her hair was tangled. Sweat still beaded on her forehead.

      Some holy woman I was turning out to be.

      Then Tom’s hands appeared in front of me, holding a silver chalice. Warm red wine poured down my throat. I clamped my jaws shut.

      My vision doubled. I was still in the tiny Gothic chapel, but I was elsewhere, too. I was Alice of a few minutes before, working over the body of another patient, pushing needles through dark skin, slipping my hands into torn flesh, searching for the bleeding that wouldn’t ever stop. And still I knelt at the altar rail, my skin cool and damp.

      I shook my head—a mistake. Instead of clearing it, I found that my head ached, throbbed, threatened to spill open, and I was helpless to stop it. I couldn’t, in the vision, do anything. People were trying to help me—I could see shadows, through my shuttered eyelids, of hands and arms and dimmer shapes beyond, moving and reaching inside me, feel the hands touching me where none, not even a lover’s touch, had felt before. And still I knelt at the altar rail, stood and walked back to my seat on the hard, oak pew, felt the polished wood press against the bones of my buttocks and spine, listened to the final words spoken at the end of the rite.

      “Let us pray,” Tom said. “Almighty and eternal God”—Clamp — “our hearts to you” — Sponge — “so fill our imaginations” — Get that bleeder! — “control our wills” — Sixty over thirty — “wholly yours” — Intracranial pressure of — “use us, we pray, as you will, and always to the glory and welfare of your people....”

      “Amen.” Tom, El, Alice, Edgar, Meg and the others spoke the single word. The vision snapped off, as if a switch had been turned. Experimentally, I shook my head. Nothing bad happened.

      “Clio?” Tom’s expectation shaped his face, his voice.

      “Is there a waiting room?” I wanted to be out of the chapel. I’d spent lots of time in hospital waiting rooms, waiting for Mama. It would be familiar territory.

      “This way,” Alice said, leading us out the door. The sweat had dried. She pushed her hair back into a semblance of order.

      Alice walked at my side, the others behind.  I glanced back—they watched me for signs of either strength or weakness, faith or doubt. Tom worried how I would bear up. I was a butterfly, pinned by their hope and trust.

      Again we slipped through the hospital, through layer after layer of architecture, from the Gothic chapel to the postmodern ICU.

      We wouldn’t have the waiting room to ourselves. A family group huddled under a babbling television, the sound soft, but audible. A father, mother and daughter—immigrants, probably from India—clutched hands. The daughter, in her teens, stole glances at the TV revealing lustrous, liquid dark eyes. The parents’ eyes were rimmed with red, their faces swollen with weeping.

      We entered as unobtrusively as six people could. Alice whispered, “Its their son—an auto accident. He’s the one who came in right after Leslie.” She nodded to the family. The father detached himself and came over to us.

      “Doctor—have you heard?”

      “No,” Alice said. She glanced at her watch. “It will be a while, yet. He is in surgery.”

      “Our Peter, he will be well?”

      “I hope so, but his injuries were severe.”

      “No matter what happens, doctor, you have our thanks.” The father bowed to Alice, then went back to his family.

      The mother listened intently to the father’s translation. The daughter eyed us like invaders. The mother smiled.

      The father spoke sharply to his daughter. She lowered her angry eyes. He came back to us, his son’s photograph in his hand.

      “Please, this is my son, as he was before the accident.”

      Alice nodded. “A handsome boy.” She passed the photo to Tom, who handed it to me.

      I held lightning in my hand. Deep brown eyes gazed out from under a shock of black hair.

      My voice came back, so powerful that I was stunned that the others did not hear him.

      Pray for him.

      You’re back, I thought.

      Pray. The voice had no regard for my joy. It was, perhaps, not my voice at all, but something larger. It felt so good to hear something inside that I let it overflow to Tom.

      “He’s back!” I said.

      “Who?”

      I explained. Tom frowned, irritated. “Then maybe you’d best take his advice.”

      “I thought you’d be happy for me.” I wanted to fold my arms and stamp my foot.

      “It’s not about you,” Tom’s whispered words cut like knives. “Yes, you’ve had a time of it, but you’re not lying on an operating table, open to the breeze, either dying or not dying. You’re so enamored of divine revelation—why don’t you do what you’re told? It’s not complicated. All you have to do is forget yourself for a little while. Pray for them—now!”

      He was right; I was wrong.

      The boy’s eyes drew me into the photograph. He must be barely old enough to drive, I thought, proud of his new skill, joyful in his new freedom. In the picture, his head was cocked to one side, his obligatory smile quirky and a little lopsided, tolerant of his parents’ need for this token of his being. A mother could not help but love this one, so masculine, so handsome, so young.

      So hurt.

      Like Leslie. Both of them, so different from each other, now the same, lying on tables, strangers poking through their insides, trying to heal them.

      I kept thinking of the two of them. Leslie—arrogant, proud, trying so hard to make her dream of herself into a reality that she rode over people who might have thwarted her desires. Yet those desires themselves showed what she was, broken, unsure, afraid—now broken in body as well as heart. What dreams did she have while the doctors and nurses put her back together—how afraid she must be in spite of anesthetics and narcotics.

      We were helpless. My useless hands clasped each other, cradling the boy’s photograph, cradling Leslie, too, somehow. And somehow, wanting so much to do them good, I found a place where I could complain to Whatever there was that formed them and gave them being that they were not being treated well and deserved better, and wouldn’t it be best if they lived.

      I stayed in that place, for how long I don’t know. Two surgeons walked into the waiting room. One came to our group, one to the Indian family.

      Our surgeon, sweaty, robed in green scrubs, his mask hanging from his neck, his hair still encased in a green cap, glasses smudged, smiled wearily.

      “We were able to control the bleeding. The damage seems manageable. I think she’ll be all right.”

      But across the waiting room, the other surgeon spoke in low tones, inaudible at this distance. The sullen daughter wept. The mother screamed an eastern ululation. The father was too stunned to speak. He held to the surgeon’s hands. Tears washed his face of hope.

      My relief felt obscene.

      I still held the boy’s photo.

      Tom reached for it, hoping, I thought, to relieve me of a difficult duty. I snatched it away from him.

      “You can come with me, to explain to them why their son died and an evil old woman lives.”

      “You don’t mean that.” Meg twittered at my side.

      “Don’t I?”

      I marched across the waiting room, to the father. His face, when he looked up to see who was there, was open, devoid of all calculation, waiting and willing to be struck again. Red rimmed his eyes. His face was wet with tears and sweat. His wife knelt at one side, now, the daughter, her sullenness swallowed in grief, at the other.

      I held out the photograph. “I’m sorry.” It was too weak for what I wanted to say.

      “Thank you. You are very kind. I thank you for praying for my son.”

      Tom put a hand on my shoulder. I nodded. The father bent again to his wife and daughter, whose tears continued, unabated. He looked as if he could sit in that waiting room forever, or until their tears stopped, whichever came first. Tom touched the father’s head, quickly, and breathed a prayer. I had meant to embarrass him; he shamed me.

      Alice had gone back to work, Meg and Edgar and their companions to wherever it was they went when they were elsewhere. El stood in the doorway, waiting.

      “They’ve found him.”

      “Who?”

      “The police.”

      “No, who have they found?”

      “Oh. Sexton.”

     

     

Chapter 25

     

Weeks passed before I was allowed to see Sexton. The police had some notion of protecting him from me. When you’ve been officially crazy, stuff sticks to you.

      I badgered the police. They insisted that I provide proof of sanity before I would be able to see Sexton—if he were willing.

      I told them of his attempted assault, and brought Tom in as a witness. All the more reason, the police said, for caution.

      I told them that I thought Sexton had tried to run me off the road, that he’d been hostile since I arrived in England.

      Just so, said the police.

      So I was forced to visit Rapp again.

      Rapp asked how things were going. A twinge of guilt ran through me, a quick palpitation deep in my belly. I promised myself to try to pray for him, as he had asked.

      “How are you?” he repeated.

      “All right. People are taking care of me.” I told him about Meg and Edgar, about Jane coming to live with me.

      “So why do you want to see this man at all?”

      Rapp sat across the coffee table. He had no couch in his office, just his desk, his books, and a tidy sitting area with two chairs upholstered in rich, dark leather facing each other across a glass-topped coffee table.

      “Every time I’ve come across Sexton, he’s been in control.”

      “So it’s vengeance?”

      That slowed me down. “Some. But I want to know why he was hateful to me.”

      “Why? What do you see happening when you’re in the same room with him? What do you want to get?”

      “I want to understand. None of it makes sense.”

      People don’t often get it when I make that admission. Usually, I don’t bother, but Rapp had wormed the truth out of me, again, and Rapp understood.

      “If it all made sense,” he asked, his voice gentle, regretful, “would it hurt less?” That stopped me.

      “It might.” My voice sounded small and weak, even to me.

      “Don’t bet on it.” He walked to his desk and signed a piece of paper. “Here’s a testament to your sanity. It says that you’re not a danger to yourself or anyone else.” He held the paper in midair, as the sign for Mrs. Fern’s B-and-B had hung. “Don’t ruin my reputation.”

      I reached for the paper, then hesitated.

      “Take it; read it,” Rapp said.

      I snatched at the sheet. He had typed it on his letterhead before I arrived.

      “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

      “Don’t get me wrong—I think you’re at least as deranged as I am. But not physically dangerous.”

      Letter in hand, I returned to the police, officially absolved. The sergeant pointed me toward a visitation room.

      A table and plexiglass window divided the room in two mirror images. Six wooden chairs, oak, scarred by rough use and low budgets, faced partners on either side of the table. Beneath its surface, a plywood partition, dirtied and scuffed by the shoes of countless visitors, prevented contact between the imprisoned and the free. A tiny grill, the kind in a motion picture theater box office, let thin sounds pass between the visitors and the visited.

      Shrill voices filled the hard-edged room. Five of the six places were occupied, four by young women, one by a youth. The sergeant pointed to the untaken spot, number five out of the six. Two of the women had babies with them. Ripe diapers and sour milk tainted the air. One child slept. The other cried, ignored by mother and prisoner alike, a tired, annoying shriek that reached into me like instinct. I wanted to shake the mother, only a child herself, put some sense into her, and get her to stop the baby’s crying.

      Instead, I walked behind the visitors. Each fell silent and grew watchful. These were people who had learned to beware of those around them. Then, after I passed, they turned back to their interrupted conversations. I was like a wave sliding down a beach.

      The imprisoned, all men, stared up at me with vacuous sexuality. One of the visitors, a young man attending an older inmate, looked up as I passed. He smiled at me, as if recognizing a fellow misfit. I lowered my eyes and walked on.

      Sexton entered on the other side and paralleled my walk down to the fifth place. His eyes locked onto me, like a missile’s radar. The suppressed violence I had perceived before now bubbled just under the surface, like water one degree below boiling.

      He sat at the fifth place, smiling slightly. A stubble of whiskers covered his cheeks and jaw.

      I had to work at not trembling as I took the seat opposite. Evil scares me.

      “Why did you do these things to me? Why did you hurt Lady Phelps?”

      “‘Leslie,’” he mocked. He hissed the s like a snake and drew out the el sounds.

      “Why did you attack me?”

      Sexton smiled like a saint, like a stained-glass window, like the baby Jesus in kitschy Christmas arts and crafts, like the parents in a Norman Rockwell painting.

      “He told me to.”

      “Who?”

      “Christ Jesus, through the Holy Ghost Amen. It’s no secret now. At first, He wanted it between us, but now He wants you to know. To put you on notice.”

      Sexton seemed as calm as could be, but most of the time before he’d done so, too.

      “On notice for what?”

      He tilted his head and looked up from cunning eyes. Then his face relaxed. “It won’t be easy. Not for you.”

      “What won’t be easy?”

      “Late Lady Leslie, going to the town. Jesus wasn’t so definite about you, but He was quite sure on her account. Late Lady Leslie, all fall down.”

      For a moment he stared off, as if listening to another voice. He turned back and snarled through the plexiglass.

      “What are you doing here?” He slammed a callused hand down. The table shook with the impact. I jumped against the back of my chair. It was a measure of the visitors’ room atmosphere that no one bothered to pay attention but me.

      I eyed the plexiglass separating us. It was only a quarter of an inch thick. The sole guard pored over a newspaper.

      Sexton’s face crumpled. Tears streamed down his cheeks and disappeared into the stubble. “I failed. It was given to me to kill you, and I failed.”

      “Why?”

      “Weakness.”

      “No—why were you to kill me? Who told you that was what you were to do?”

      Again he cocked his head, his face still wet. “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

      An electric bell rang shrill and loud. I jumped, but everyone else ignored it, including the guard.

      “Time’s up.” Sexton smiled his innocent, beatific smile. “And you still don’t know.” He leaned back in his chair, satisfied with himself.

      “You hated me from the moment you saw me.”

      “Nothing’s changed.”

      Movement caught my peripheral vision. A pair of guards entered, on the prisoners’ side of the divide.

      “Nothing ever changes,” Sexton said. The smile remained in place, but his eyes flicked from side to side. They were deepest brown, still liquid with tears, shiny, mesmerizing. He returned my stare. A tiny image of me flared in each of those brown eyes.

      The bell sounded again, and Sexton exploded into action. His chair flew at me and crashed against the glass barrier. The prisoners and their visitors seemed immune to startling, but the guards were on Sexton in an instant to wrestle him to the floor. I watched through the starred glass, wondering why it failed to shatter, failed to break into a thousand cutting shards as surely Sexton had intended it to do.

      The prisoners’ side flooded with police, uniforms aplenty to drown resistance. The original three pinned Sexton to the floor. He allowed himself to lose the fight, until they stood him up. He shook them off and leaned close to me, his breath fogging the cracked barrier.

      “We’re not done with you.” His voice was a ragged whisper.

      Hands touched my shoulder. I whirled, afraid of what might come next.

      It was the youth who had smiled up at me as I walked past him.

      “Are you okay?” His voice was as thin as the rest of him. He was a discordant symphony of smells—unwashed skin, cigarette smoke, vomit, and cologne.

      “Jimmy Smith.” He hustled me out of the visitors’ room, his hand insistent on my back. “Hate to see that kind of thing happen. Doesn’t do anyone the least benefit, gives the coppers an excuse to tighten down again.”

      Rapp had insisted that someone accompany me to the jail. Tom paced outside, in the lobby. He saw Jimmy and cut him out by slipping in between us.

      “‘Ere now, guvn’r! I done her a service.” Jimmy did his best to make his pasty face look guileless, but a drug hunger had left its mark, perhaps forever. Jimmy would never be innocent again.

      “Get away from her!” Tom’s usual mild-mannered minister turned rampant male in defense of his woman. I might have been offended, but Jimmy scared me.

      “Oooh, look at the Christian now!” Jimmy sneered. “None of this ‘other cheek’ business when there’s a skirt involved, right, guv?”

      Tom tensed. I leaned toward him, touching shoulders. “Let me,” I whispered.

      Jimmy preened like a peacock when I took his arm. Tom glowered—I hoped he was acting.

      I put on my best dumb blonde voice. “I hope you boys won’t fight with each other.”

      The sniveling little drug addict put a possessive hand on my breast and checked Tom’s reaction. I’d guessed right. Jimmy wanted to humiliate me.

      My priest wasn’t acting any longer. I caught his eye and wished for telepathic powers. Don’t do it, I prayed. Trust me on this one. Whatever happened, he stopped lunging for Jimmy and seemed to hang in mid-motion. I leaned into Jimmy, as if I liked what he was doing to me. It took effort.

      I slid a hand around his waist. He radiated smug satisfaction in Tom’s direction. I let my hand drift south, trailing my fingertips across the rough denim. Jimmy’s hand came down on top of mine, encouraging. I let him get into it. His eyes focused on Tom, not me.

      Then I let him have it. I reached underneath, grabbed and squeezed—hard.

      Jimmy screamed.

      He tried to hit me, but with each attempt I squeezed harder, and he finally got the point. He turned out to be trainable after all.

      Every eye in the lobby was turned on the three of us.

      “This won’t do much good with the bishop,” Tom said, grinning.

      I let Jimmy fall to the floor. He seemed to have a good grasp on the error of his ways.

     

* * *

     

It was not the best way to meet Tom’s boss. The bishop of Saint Albans sat before us at an ornate Victorian desk. We’d already been through the “so-this-is-the-one-causing-all-the-trouble” stage. I felt like a show dog who’s pooped on the stadium floor. I knew I’d been wrong, but the urge had been overwhelming.

      The summons had come before we even got back to the cottage. Tom’s pager went off three times during the drive. He spoke in a repetitive monotone into the mouthpiece of my telephone: “Yes, sir....Yes, bishop....Yes, sir.” I’d never heard him so obedient.

      Obstreperous white hair gave the aging bishop an Albert Einstein look. The Right Reverend Bacon—no relation, he hastened to assure me—had the sort of hair that, even with a crew cut, would go off in all directions. He patted it regularly, as if afraid it might disappear when he wasn’t checking. His mane circled his head like a halo and floated above his purple shirt like a cloud.

      At the center of all that hair was a face carved out of mischief. The Bishop was ugly enough to be one of the gargoyles high up on his cathedral. His nose hooked like a scythe. His blue eyes bulged as if inflated, even when he was calm. His mouth splayed open between heavy, pouting, wet lips. His ears outgrew even those of the Prince of Wales.

      I fell instantly in love, which was a pity because he was chewing me out in that proper way the British have. It only made him cuter, especially since I had no particular desire to do what he wanted.

      “If, Ms. Griffin, you propose to live as an anchoress on the edge of my diocese, you will understand that I must take an interest in the matter.”

      “I’m not a member of your church, bishop.”

      Tom winced.

      “I’m fully aware of that.” The bishop turned to Tom, then back to me. “Believe me, I am. That raises another difficulty.” On the second try he managed to shift his attention to Tom.

      “Father, you are romantically entangled with Ms. Griffin, I take it?”

      “Yes, bishop.”

      “And this sentiment is reciprocated?”

      I jumped in. “Fully.” We had only kissed a couple of times, but I was enjoying all this male discomfort. Tom shot me a look of surprise and confusion.

      “I see.” The bishop patted his hair in a futile effort to make it behave. “And your intentions are?”

      “Bishop,” Tom said, a smile of embarrassment playing on his face, “you have a way of cutting straight to the heart of the issue.”

      “That’s not an answer,” I said.

      “Doctor Griffin is correct,” the bishop said. “It is not. How long have you known each other?”

      I counted up the days. It had been high summer when I stumbled into Saint Albans and almost immediately met Tom. Now it was nearing Easter. “Eight months,” I said.

      “Doctor Griffin, do you foresee a time—however distant—when you might let Father Dorcas answer for himself?”

      It was my turn to flush with embarrassment, until I saw the glint of mischief in Bishop Bacon’s eyes. Tom, I noticed, looked smug.

      “My intentions are,” Tom said, “to continue this friendship and see where it goes. The thought of marriage has entered my mind.”

      “It won’t be an easy one,” Bishop Bacon said, “and that brings me, Ms. Griffin, to my next question, one that Father Dorcas has not, I take it, broached yet. If the two of you marry, it would seem incumbent upon you to take instruction and join the Church. How do you feel about that?” A look of alarm crossed his face. “You’re not from one of those bizarre American cults, are you? Snake handlers and the like?”

      I shook my head.

      “Yet you do claim to have visions?”

      “Have you read my stories in the Advertiser?”

      “With diminishing glee, Ms. Griffin, but increasing interest.”

      “Those are my visions, Bishop.”

      “In toto?”

      “Well, no. Those were the best, though.”

      Tom slid a hand over his face.

      “Rather spectacular. Do you expect more?” Bishop Bacon grinned at me; saliva collected in his mouth, threatened to overflow. His eyes sparkled. He positively exuded bodily fluids. “We could do with something like that in the Church—right, Father? I rather like the idea—a renewal movement centered right here at Saint Albans! We’d give those Catholics in Yugoslavia something to worry about. What’s the name of that town?”

      “Medjugorje, Bishop,” Tom said, “but you’re not seriously‑‑”

      Bishop Bacon leaned back in all his episcopal glory. “Indeed I am. The Church needs some fervor. Besides,” he said, “it will put me one up on the Archbishop.” He turned to face me. “This was his diocese, you know, before he was elevated. We have a friendly competition.” He leaned forward again. “When shall we start your instruction? I’d like to do it myself, since Father is disqualified. It’s been ages since I did anything so—so pastoral. We can talk about the other thing, too. I must go see Lady Phelps in hospital.” His face fell—crashed, actually. “You’ve only recently left. Are you up to snuff? Were you quite bonkers, or only dismayed? I’m wondering, don’t you see, how that could work in with this other business. We don’t want the Church in an awkward position vis-à-vis your sanity, do we?”

      My mind reeled at the ideas Bacon was admitting. Medjugorje was a Balkan town where three teenagers had been given to receiving visions and visits from the Virgin Mary, like the children of Fátima. Since the Bosnian war, though, the Virgin had had a lot less to say. I always wondered why she never spoke out against killing Muslims. Maybe the kids just grew up, if they lived through the war.

      Maybe they grew up to be soldiers—Chetniks.

      Maybe I was absolutely crazy for even listening to him, but I liked the old guy. Even if he was Tom’s boss. So I told him who had been treating me. He knew them both.

      “I do wonder, though,” the Bishop said, “if you might avoid brawling in the local lockup.”

      “She was attacked, sir,” Tom complained. “It’s not as if she had any choice. And her attacker is a known sexual offender. I think she did admirably.”

      “Hm.” Bacon patted his unruly hair again, frowning. Suddenly, he brightened. “My women priests will like that, I dare say.”

      A chime sounded. The bishop stood. “I must be off. We’ll speak again soon. What were you doing in the gaol?”

      “Visiting Sexton. I wanted to understand why he did—”

      “There’s no understanding evil, Doctor Griffin.” He stood, to deliver the closing words of the interview. “Evil deceives. Evil lies. Evil kills.”

     

     

     

Chapter 26

     

Leslie had no family except Joan Elspeth and her bigoted sister. The latter was off somewhere on the continent avoiding her husband and couldn’t be reached. Alice managed to sneak me into the ICU for a brief visit.

      Leslie Phelps, Lady Verulam, wore a heavy bandage over her head wound. Her skin was ashen. Her scalp, what was visible, was shaved bare. Intravenous tubes snaked down from plastic bags overhead and disappeared into her veins in both arms and one foot. Gauze restraints at her wrists kept her hands from worrying the lines. Purple and yellow bruises and brown scabs spotted her face and bare arms.

      El sat by the bed, holding Leslie’s hand. Major Hewitt, his face etched with Leslie’s pain, sat on the other side.

      “How is she?” I asked.

      “You needn’t whisper,” El said. She was as matter-of-fact as ever. “Hearing voices is, they tell me, good for her. I talk to her most of the time.”

      “I thought she was going to be okay.”

      “Swelling in the brain, the doctors say. If it goes down, she’ll come right. So that’s what I pray for.”

      El’s voice held the hint of a question, so I shifted my attention to Major Hewitt. I hadn’t seen Leslie’s ancient admirer since the job interview, and that seemed to belong to another life. He looked older than ever. His wrinkles were deeper, the eyes overflowed with rheum. I wanted to wipe those eyes and smooth the wrinkles. He had waited for her so long, and this was where it might end.

      Instead, I only smiled.

      “Will you pray for her?” he asked. His voice trembled with—what?—fear for his love, exhaustion? I couldn’t begin to guess, but his weakness got to me.

      I had stopped at a stationer’s shop—what I would have called an office-supply store months before—and bought a small notebook to keep track of the requests for prayer that I kept getting. It was nearly full. Even the clerk who had sold me the journal asked to be remembered while handing me a slip of paper with his intention. My purse was crammed with such slips—first from Edgar, most recently with the clerk’s. I had copied each into the book.

      The father of the dead boy had asked me to keep his son’s photograph. It was now taped inside the front cover of my little book of prayers.

      I was getting used to the requests. Acting on them made me feel self-conscious, even presumptuous. I had to force myself.

      El and Major Hewitt waited.

      “Let’s do it together, then.” I held out my hands.

      El took one. Her calluses pressed against my soft scholar’s skin. El still held Leslie with her other hand while I waited for words that wouldn’t be rote and empty. I took the Major’s hand. He touched Leslie’s shoulder, so the chain wasn’t perfect, but this wasn’t a seance, either; it was a prayer. I wanted to be very clear about that.

      In the waiting, holding El’s rough, work-hardened hand, a prickle slithered down my arm, the kind of uncomfortable tingle that signals a foot going to sleep. My muscles twitched, against my will. El looked sharply up at me for an instant. Then her look went internal, as if she were trying to see inside herself. Both of us looked at Leslie, following the prickle, which now had grown into warmth as well, as it moved through us, and, perhaps, into Leslie.

      “Amen,” El said. Major Hewitt echoed her. Her voice trembled; his had lost its weakness.

      The current stopped. I jerked my hand out of El’s, afraid of what had happened, or what I had hallucinated. But El had felt it, too, unquestionably.

      Leslie’s eyelids flickered. She took a deep breath and sighed it out. Her eyes opened. She registered us.

      She groaned through dry lips. I stepped back from the bed. El leaned forward. She dipped a wash cloth into the pitcher of water and moistened Leslie’s lips, letting a few drops into her mouth.

      “Leslie, it’s me, El. You’ve been in an accident, but you’re safe now. You’re hurt, but you’re going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right. Just rest. I’ll stay with you. So will James.”

      Leslie nodded weakly and let her eyes close.

      El looked up at me. I backed away. My hands trembled. El glanced back at the Major, who nodded. He had felt it, too. She came toward me.

      “Here,” she said, “come and sit. You don’t have to be afraid.”

      But I was.

      Leslie was better. Something had gone through me to her, and, whatever it was, it had made her better.

      It made me feel small, weak, even helpless. That God might work through me made me tremble. I could barely walk through the hospital corridor back to the car park. A thick drizzle hung in the air. The sky was leaden, heavy.

      I put the key in the lock, but couldn’t turn it. Nothing was wrong with the Triumph; it was I. After what had happened, I couldn’t just drive away, go about my business. Things were different. I was different. Everything, until now, admitted of explanation, of one sort or another—coincidence, mental disturbance, empathy. But not this.

      I went back inside, out of the damp air. I followed the architecture again into the past until I found the empty chapel.

      Only it wasn’t empty. Luke and Lazarus, their colors dulled by the gray outside, still had light to share. I sat in a pew and stared up at them. Each had a halo of gold.

      Alice sat, gently, beside me. Her hand found mine.

      “It’s real.” She answered my unspoken question. “You’ve done a miracle.”

      “Not me,” I said.

      She squeezed my hand.

      “Oh, Alice, I’m so scared. Everything’s changing.” I held to her hand as if to a lifeline. “I don’t know anything any more.”

      “Ssh.” Alice put her arm around me. I nestled into her warmth. The past was gone. I stood at the edge of an abyss. All my old, familiar refusals, my work, my independence, my sarcasm, my loneliness, were stripped from me. Nothing remained except the warmth of another human being. I held to her for a long time.

     

* * *

     

Bishop Bacon’s office was across the street from the abbey, at the top of a rather plain three-story building. Holywell House, I think he had called it over the phone. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to see Tom until I’d had a chance to recover. I’d stopped only to calm down and drink a pint at The Sword of Peter, where Alice had fed me. My first appointment with the Bishop was just after noon. He called it an inquirer’s class, but I was the only student.

      “Come in, come in.” His frizzy white hair haloed his ruddy face. “I was just finishing lunch—want any? Take off your coat—here, let me take it—sit down.” He managed to hang my coat and hide the remains of lunch in his desk in one graceful gesture. Before I knew it, I was seated across a low coffee table from the episcopal presence.

      “It sounds like the real thing.” So he already knew about Leslie.

      I pretended ignorance, but it wasn’t working.

      “Don’t be ashamed.” Bishop Bacon said. “It’s a gift—accept it.”

      “I didn’t ask for it. I hate it that it’s me he’s chosen. It could have been so many others.”

      “Well,” the bishop said, his smile spreading through his face, from lips to cheeks to eyes, “that answers my first question for you. You are a believer.”

      I shook my head, not in disagreement. “I don’t seem to have much choice.”

      “And it bothers you.”

      “At first, I thought I was going crazy. Then, later, I did.”

      “Perhaps a little. For a while.”

      “Now, everyone I meet asks me to pray for them—even my shrink.”

      “And do you?”

      “Yes—how could I not?”

      He nodded, apparently satisfied.

      “And, you’re enamored of my priest.”

      “I am.”

      “My priest, who would give his heart for a single one of your visions.”

      I knew; of course I knew. I could barely bring myself to tell Tom about them, knowing.

      “Is that why he loves you?” Hair twirled around the bishop’s long, pale finger.

      Bishop Bacon’s voice was low and soft. He had a stentorian orator’s voice and knew how to use it, but this voice was gentle, compassionate. It said I hate to ask this painful question, but it’s something you must consider. I sought his eyes. It was the question I’d never asked myself.

      “It’s not inconceivable, you know,” the bishop went on, his voice as much a scalpel as any that Dr. Freckles wielded, “that Thomas loves you because he feels it brings him closer to God, that perhaps your spiritual gifts may rub off on him. What might happen if they don’t?”

      “But he’s a priest,” I objected. “He must feel something. Otherwise—” Otherwise the bottom would fall out from under me, but I couldn’t say that, because—

      “Otherwise what?” the bishop asked.

      “Otherwise—” I escaped the comfort of the chair and went to the plain glass window. Outside, a restless wind chugged around the courtyard.

      “Most of us,” the bishop said, not leaving his seat, “struggle with a faith that’s only a little more than a hope. Most of us don’t suffer visions of saints or miracles of healing.”

      “But you believe.” A bitter taste roiled in my mouth.

      “We do.”

      “Why?” I turned to face him.

      “Different people have different reasons.”

      “Yours, then.”

      “Habit, now, I suppose,” he said, “as much as anything. Consolation.”

      “Conviction?”

      “That, too.”

      “What is it that you believe in?”

      “All of it.” He lifted an open hand and gestured, taking in the office, the abbey, the whole Church.

      I stayed at the window. Sometimes it seemed as if I spent too much time looking through windows, instead of going through doors. Bishop Bacon came to my side.

      “I had a dream last night,” I remembered. “I was in a room of some kind, a hotel, perhaps, on an upper floor. It was stuffy, stifling, inside. I went to the window to let in some fresh air. As soon as I lifted the sash, I was terrified that I might fall. I backed away, but now it was too cold, and I needed to close the window. I looked down, outside, to the street below, and realized that I wouldn’t fall, but I might jump. I pushed the window down, until it was opened just an inch or two, and edged away. The pane was no barrier, really, not as long as I was near, but I felt better with it closed.”

      We stood together, looking through the hermetically sealed glass. Bishop Bacon smelled of soap and aftershave. The abbey and its grounds nearly filled the frame. Beyond and below, old Verulamium and the new suburbs and the ancient forests stretched to the horizon.

      “Why is this happening to me?” I touched the window. The glass was warm from the sun, although the air outside had been cool. Tears filled my eyes, burning and heavy. “I don’t know what’s going on. I didn’t ask for it. Everyone turns to me, and I’m afraid I’ll fail them.”

      “And fail God?”

      “I don’t even know what God is!” I snapped, grateful for the sudden surge of anger.

      “None of us do,” Bacon said. “Not with any degree of certainty.” I turned to face him, but his eyes were focused outside.

      “I have a task for you,” he continued, still not looking at me. “Homework, of a sort. I think it will help.”

      “What?”

      “Prayer.”

      “Oh, God, not you, too.” I threw myself back into the chair I’d started out in.

      He finally turned around to face me. Light from the window glowed in his frizzy hair—Albert Einstein as bishop of the Anglican Church. It didn’t figure.

      “You need a discipline, Clio. Here at the cathedral, there is a round of services through the day. Morning prayer, the Eucharist, vespers, and compline. Attend them. Spend a week at it. In the mean time, live your life with regularity. Pray for those who have asked for prayer. Work in the garden, if you’ve a mind to. Write. Think. Cook. Eat. Walk. Go on a date with Tom. So much has happened to you, it’s no wonder you’re at loose ends. Do the ordinary, daily things, and go to these four services each day. Establish a routine. Don’t look for anything extraordinary. After a week, come again, and we’ll talk some more.”

      “That’s it?” I stood.

      “That’s it. No miracles. You’ve had enough of them for a while.” He glanced at his watch. “Now I really must go. Evensong starts in twenty minutes, and it’s my shift. I don’t get to do it often enough.” He ushered me to the door. “Will I see you there?”

      Across the street, the abbey loomed in the late afternoon sun. I pulled my too-thin jacket tighter to ward off the wind and wandered the grounds while waiting for the service. Bacon was right. Too many things were happening.

      When the strangeness began; when I’d first seen that bit of paper floating in defiance of gravity, and heard the command to pick it up, read it; when I’d found the brooch; when the visions started, I’d nurtured a nascent hope that the answers would come. The brooch proved it—that all-encompassing It—was real. People around me, by and large, had thought so, too. Witness Christina, Tom, Jane, even the bishop of Saint Albans.

      But I didn’t understand. An aching frustration still ate at me. I felt like a puppet, dancing to someone else’s measure, twitched here and there by someone else’s hands. Should I turn ‘round this corner of the abbey, or go on and take a different turn—or did it matter at all?

      The sky had darkened. Off to the west, the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, a red-orange glow the only remnant of its existence. It was time—perhaps past time—for evensong, and I had wandered to the far side of the abbey. I hurried to the west door. A little regularity couldn’t hurt; I might as well begin now as later.

      The nave wrapped around the darkness like a nursing dog around her pups, protective and cherishing. In the far distance, more than three hundred feet, beyond the high altar, a glow of candle light emanated from the choir stalls. I walked softly, silently, and listened to Bacon’s voice—a clear, surprising tenor—lifting the old words toward the Gothic ceiling and beyond.

      I walked silently toward the crossing, where the transepts met the nave, as near the choir as I could get. No need to cause a disturbance by coming in late. I knelt next to a pillar, next to the choir, where I could be out of sight. Close enough to hear, if God wanted to talk to me.

      I rather hoped he wouldn’t.

      Instead, I let myself down on my knees. Ligaments stretched and crackled under my weight. The cold stone pressed back with a gentle ache where my kneecaps touched. There were perhaps two dozen souls in the choir, mostly women. They all knew the chants, knew the words, and sang from memory, like monks and nuns themselves.

      My hands grew cold. I slipped them into the pockets of my jacket.

      My right hand closed on the brooch—the brooch I had buried in the abbey’s graveyard. It was so cold it burned my hand, as cold as the ground where I had buried it.

      It couldn’t be the brooch. I had sent it back to the earth it had come from. No one else knew where it was. And I hadn’t dug it up.

      I took it out of my pocket. It was the same piece of jewelry I had resurrected on my first day here—the same abstract outline of a fish, the same hint of an eye. It was one thousand seven hundred years old, pitted with age, rough to the touch. A bit of moist soil, the same color as in the graveyard, clung to it. It was my brooch.

      I wanted to throw it away. Please God, please Alban, please Jesus—let me be all right. Let me not be crazy.

      Maybe it would be better to be nuts. If this was really happening, then I would have to be responsible. Jesus, let me be crazy. Let me wake up in Rapp’s genteel nuthouse with the chain link windows. Let me move.

      Terror pushed me from my knees. I could not keep the brooch. If I threw it away, it would only come back to me, so I left the safety of my pillar and scuttled away from the service, past the presbytery, past the stone coffins of other long-dead holy men, and around to the shrine of Alban himself.

      No one was there, in more than one way. No people; all the worshippers were back where I had left them. And no saint, either; his bones had been stolen at least three times before 1400. His shrine was as empty as Jesus’ tomb. Not even his reliquary remained, only the ornate twelfth-century base.

      All around that base were burning candles—tapers, slender little things, each the prayer of some pilgrim, from across the street or across the world.

      I found an unlighted candle, stole flame from one already burning, and set mine upright in the tray of sand surrounding the shrine. I looked up toward the stone ceiling. One more prayer, wordless but true, to the saint.

      I lay the brooch down in the sand, among the bits of wax that littered the white grains. My pitted brooch turned smooth as I watched. The surface glowed again, a rich, polished bronze.

      This is your last chance, Clio. The voice came from the empty tomb. Take it. Hold it.

      I could embrace what was offered, or I could run away. The choice was mine: madness, faith, or worse, a bland, gray, tepid sanity, where the world was all appearance and nothing had meaning.

      A proposition: The maker of all things, seen and unseen, watches us every instant, lives within us and around us, and we are never apart from God. This is a good thing.

      A counter-proposition: No, it’s not good. Not good at all. It makes every act mean too much.

      With trembling hand, I reached for the brooch. It didn’t burn, didn’t make a mark on my skin, which I had half-expected. I clutched it tight and hard, afraid to let go and afraid to hold on. I went to my knees. It was about to happen again, and all I could do was wait.

      I trembled with fear and prayed that whatever was about to happen would make sense.

      The sounds of Evensong penetrated my consciousness. I took comfort in the few snippets of the service I recognized, bits and pieces recalled from childhood—the Lord’s Prayer, the Gloria—but mostly I just knelt in the music of mostly untrained voices, near enough, but separate. Alone, but not alone.

      Always alone, now. Always now all one, sent young away, pushed from the house untouched.

      The church closed in, grew small. The two dozen singing souls shrank to few, no more than six or seven. The stone floor softened into packed dirt. I knelt no more at the shrine, but at the far rear, by a low door, past sunset, still chilled from the dewy air that rushed over the door sill. Even the candles were fewer, no more the dozens that lit evensong in the cathedral, but only the spare two that the tiny priory of St. Mary de Pré could afford.

      My brothers hadn’t touched me when they forced me out the door. They feared to come so close, feared the cracking decay that grew on my skin. Instead, they threw clods of dirt, sticks, and stones at me until I fled, in tears.

      No one would have me now but the sisters. I clutched the small purse that might buy my way into their company. My jacket was gone, replaced by a rough wool cloak, held by the shining brooch.

      The gleaming piece of metal was worth more than anything I had left. I unclipped it and moved it to hold from the inside, then spat on the dirt floor to make a paste of mud and smeared it on the brooch, dulling its glow. The sisters would take all I had and add it to their meager coffer to pay my way, if they accepted me. But I couldn’t give it up.

      The sisters hadn’t noticed me yet. The tiny priory of St. Mary lay in Praewood, to the west of the old pagan ruins, off by itself, where no one went by mistake. Despite the sickness that was the price of admission to the sanctuary, their voices sounded sweetly in the evening shadows.

      I was fourteen.

      For a week, I had skulked in the edge of the forest along the London road, hoping to sell myself for passage away, but every man I’d seen, though eager when I first made my offer, cringed when he saw my misshapen face and the sores of leprosy on my skin. Saint Mary was my last hope. I prayed to the Virgin to be allowed in, to be given food, a place to sleep where no wild beasts roamed. I had no place in the world.

      A hand fell heavy on my shoulder. “What are you doing?”

      I had thought all the sisters were singing. I looked up from my prayer. I could not see into the cowl to the face of the woman within. “Please—I need a place—”

      “Outside.” The strong hand slid under my arm and lifted me from the ground. My toes skimmed the floor as she hauled me from the church and dumped me on the threshold.

      She slammed the door. Wood grated against wood as the bar slid into place. I sprang to my feet and shook the handle. I had been inside—they should have let me stay. It was the place of refuge, and they hadn’t even let me plead for entrance. I pounded on the oaken door until my hands bled. My voice grew hoarse from screaming, and still the women’s voices inside sang the psalms of evening, sweet and high.

      “Let me in!” I shrieked. The dark hulked at my back. The forest closed on me, each tree a demon. A wolf howled to its pack.

      The singing stopped.

      The pack of wolves returned the scout’s bay. He answered them, closer now, calling them to me.

      “Please God, open the door.” I pounded my torn fists against the unyielding oak and huddled against the planks.

      Above me, a tiny portal opened.

      “What do you want?”

      The scout called again to his pack, again nearer.

      “Entrance.” I leapt to my feet. “The wolves—”

      The portal slammed shut.

      “No!” I screamed. “In the name of God—” The wolf pack answered the scout, their barks and howls a riot of excitement, closer and closer.

      “Who is it who disturbs the sisters?” The portal opened again.

      “There’s no time for your rules now!” I shrieked. “Can’t you hear the wolves?”

      “What do you seek?”

      I screamed the prescribed word again. “Entrance, damn it!” I kicked the door over and over again. The wolves were all around, by their sound, but not yet in sight. I had no desire to see the pack as they came at me.

      The portal slammed again.

      The wolves stopped their voices. They rustled the underbrush only a little as they came at me.

      A shape flew from the dark, panting as it leapt. I threw my arms up to cover my face. Foul breath, hot and rank with decay, filled my nose, but the Virgin herself must have guided my hand. I hit the wolf squarely on the snout. Her blood gushed over me and she ran away whimpering.

      My chest heaved with breath, but the respite only lasted a moment. Another wolf came to the fore, bigger, gaunter. A male. His eyes glowed out of the deepest shadow, measuring me.

      I kicked backwards against the door, afraid to turn my back on the foe. “For the love of God, let me in!”

      The beast sprang. The door fell open. Hands snatched at my arms. A pike took the wolf in the belly. His blood streamed from the awful wound and pooled on the threshold, steaming in the cold air. The same strong hands as before pulled me all the way in, my feet skimming the floor once more.

      Two of the sisters went through the door, lifted the still-bleeding body by its quivering paws, and flung it out into the darkness.

      A single candle lit the anteroom. The brown-cloaked sister with the strong hands stared down at me. Her hands were the only ones that had touched me in the past week. I still felt the memory of her grasp.

      The two other sisters returned and locked the heavy oaken door. They nodded to the first, and vanished into the small priory.

      The tall sister helped me to my feet. I followed her into the church.

      “Can I stay?”

      She made no answer, merely walked unhurriedly through the indoor shadows, herself a moving beacon with the single candle, to a side door I hadn’t seen before. There, she waited for me to catch up, then resumed her silent walk. I could not hear the touch of her feet against the earthen floor. The only sounds were my panting and the beating of my heart.

      She led me through a corridor, the walls of rough-hewn timber. The candle alternately lighted and shadowed their cracks and crevices, mouths that opened and closed as she passed.

      Again, light pooled around her as she waited for me by another door. As yet, I had not seen her face, only the glow of eyes, like those of the wolf, that shone from beneath her woolen cowl.

      This time, she made a signal with her free hand. I looked up into the cowl. She repeated the sign. I went through the door.

      The two sisters waited inside. The tall sister handed her candlestick to the shorter of the pair, and nodded to the other.

      “Take off your clothing.”

      “What?” I couldn’t have heard right.

      The middle-sized sister undid my cloak and slid it from my shoulders. She held my brooch in her hand, rubbed the dirt off, and stroked its gleaming smoothness. I grabbed at it, but the tall sister slapped my hand. The middle sister unwound the bandages from my face; I let her, afraid of what might come if I resisted. The filthy strips of linen fell onto my cloak. Then she pulled my shift over my head. I struggled, but too late; my arms were pinned inside the cloth. The tall sister boxed my ears. The shift, too, landed on the floor.

      I shivered in the cold. Goose bumps raised themselves on my skin, the skin that had betrayed me in its corruption. The three sisters examined every bit of it, lifted my arms, opened my clenched fists, poked and prodded until they were satisfied that I was foul enough to join them. I suffered their attentions because the only choice was to go back out among the wolves.

      “What do you seek?” The tall sister whose hands had dealt me so roughly spoke in the same voice as before, the only voice I had heard from any of the sisters.

      “Entrance.” I wasn’t as sure as I had been while the wolves circled me, but there was no other way I could turn. My voice shook, not entirely from the chill.

      Again, the cowled head dipped. The smallest sister handed the candlestick to the middle one, then opened a chest in the corner of the room. She rummaged in it briefly, then brought forth a white shift, shapeless and wrinkled from being packed away.

      She gathered the hem and lifted it over my head. I lifted my arms toward the sleeves and let it slide down over my skin. Rough wool scratched and began to catch the heat of my body.

      Praise God, I felt warmth gathering within the bristly whiteness.

      The tall sister held out my brooch. Its surface seemed duller. I reached for it, but she snatched it away.

      “The price of your entrance.”

      “But I have a purse.” It had fallen with my shift. I might not be able to get back without the brooch. There was another life, another me, somewhere beyond the girl I was now, a woman who lived in a shadow land, and if I gave up the brooch, I might never get back to her. “My parents—”

      “That, as well.”

      I gave it up. Over the white shift, I wore a brown robe with a cowl to hide my face. All the sisters did, to avoid the offense of watching and comparing each others’ disfigurement. We prayed, day in and day out. Before dawn, in the middle of night, we rose from hard beds, grateful to have a place, to file into the church, each the same, each different, to sing the psalms and pray the prayers of matins. Then came lauds, with scarcely an interruption. There was work to do. Some of our food we grew, some was given us as charity, some was bought. Those who could read—I was not one of them, though the books tempted me and it seemed as if once, in the future perhaps, I would read—those able would read from the lives of the saints. The other offices filled the times between work—prime, none, terce, vespers, compline—until nightfall, when we slept. It was a rhythm that changed with the seasons, keeping pace with the sun.

      Once a month, a priest came from the abbey and said a rough, slapdash mass for us. First he heard what confessions we could make, enclosed and isolated as we were. He was mostly afraid of our illness; confession was as hurried as his mass.

      “Bless me, father—” I would say.

      He always interrupted. “What is your sin, daughter?” His thoughts were easily heard, although he was careful not to voice them: he wanted to flee our sickness. It took every bit of his small courage to sit with us in confession.

      “I dream, father, of a life unlike this one. A life where I am healthy and strong.”

      “God has given you this life to ready you for the next. Your dissatisfaction draws you away from His plan. Forty rosaries. What else?”

      There always was something else—an argument with a sister, a distraction during prayer, a longing that I couldn’t identify.

      When mass was sung, he mispronounced the Latin. The tall sister, she of the strong hands, would complain about it during recreation. Over the years, I came to know her, a little. She had once been the daughter of the knight who guarded the London road. He had been liberal to her in her youth, even allowing her to learn to read a little, so long as she also learned her sewing and embroidery. She was betrothed to a neighbor knight. On the wedding night, he found the sores she had hidden from her family. Her husband returned her to her father as unfit, as she indeed was. Her father turned her out to Saint Mary de Pré. Her gentle upbringing and her ability to read made her prioress in a few years.

      She hated it, but it was her lot in life, as mine was to follow the round of prayer and to work in the vegetable garden in the spring and summer and autumn, until the weather turned cold and killed the plants. Then over again and again.

      At long last—time had grown vague long before—I lay on a hard bed in the tiny infirmary. My chest ached, and a simple breath cost huge effort.

      Sister Stronghand sat on the edge of my cot. I was chilled, and took what warmth I could from her nearness. She tried to make me drink lemon-grass tea, but my throat was nearly closed with the illness, and I would have none.

      “You never belonged here,” Stronghand said. She gripped my hands in her larger ones, the tea set aside. “But you tried. You complained the least of my girls, but it was as plain as nightfall that you were never meant to be a nun.”

      Speech was hard, my chest hurt so. “My dreams—” I managed, before a fit of coughing stopped me.

      “I know,” Stronghand said.

      She released my hands and fumbled inside her habit. I reached for her touch, afraid not to hold her, wanting a last bit of human warmth before the end.

      “Ssh,” Stronghand said. “All will be well. I have a gift for you.”

      She gave me the brooch and closed my hands around it in her own. I could not speak, could only hold the shining bronze and look into her eyes. She peered out of her cowl, eyes as bright as the piece of golden metal I held once more.

      My sight shrank until all I saw was those gold-flecked eyes, watching from the shadow of her cowl. The brooch fell from my hands. All that mattered was her worn and callused hands holding mine. Then Sister Stronghand’s eyes faded, and I felt nothing at all.

      She spoke as the shadows wrapped around me, but the words were lost.