Vixen. Rosie Garland

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with its many cells was like a psaltery, each of the cells a psalm dripping with the treacle of God’s word. The hive was the community of this church, the congregation bees who laboured for their queen, bringing tithes of nectar and offering them freely.

      I was delighted with these clever notions. Here was a fine Saint’s Day sermon to instruct as well as dazzle the people. But a worm twisted in my mind: if the priest was the queen, then that made me a female. If I saw it, so would they. I imagined them snickering behind their hands and my enthusiasm stumbled.

      I revived myself hastily; the remainder of the idea was sound, especially the part about the tithes. Then I remembered that bees had stings and used them on whoever tried to take the honey. Also, they were as like to desert a hive and fly to a better place if they had a mind to it. My idea, so clever, crumbled. Perhaps God did not speak to me after all. I shook off the prick of disappointment.

      An idea would come to me. The pilgrims were here. They had heard of the pious priest who tended the relics. I would make them love me, would take the leaden blank of this day and stamp my impression upon it. I wanted them to carry away a clear picture of their new priest, not Father Hugo. I was tired of hearing how bold he was, how strong, how jolly, how wild. I wanted them to return home with my name on their lips and in their hearts. Oh, that Father Thomas, they would say round their hearths. You should have heard him preach! Not like Father Hugo, and that’s a good thing. Next year, I would be greeted like an old friend.

      I sighed. I could delay no longer. I climbed back down, pulled open the great west door and turned to greet the pilgrims with a broad smile.

      Straightaway, they swarmed towards the shrine: clawing the stone, kissing and licking and begging to be cured of the itch, the flux, the ague, the earache, the falling sickness, the fever. All of them weaving their limbs in and out of the openings until the shrine could barely be seen for the bodies wriggling upon it, the onion reek of their breath so strong it heaved my stomach.

      One man, very grandly dressed, approached the shrine on his knees. It was only when he passed that I noticed that the flagstones behind him were smeared with blood. Exhaustion had ploughed deep furrows upon his face. When he reached the chancel steps he paused and lifted one leg in an effort to climb the step. I approached and took his arm. He shrank from the contact.

      ‘Don’t touch me!’ he growled, only then noticing my liturgical garments. ‘I beg forgiveness, Father,’ he moaned, balled his hand into a fist and clouted himself on the side of his head.

      ‘My son,’ I said. ‘I offer succour. It is Christian charity.’

      ‘I said, do not touch me,’ he replied, only a little less angrily. ‘I have vowed to undertake this pilgrimage with no help from any man. Do not thwart me when I am so close.’

      Tears rose in his eyes and spilled down his cheeks into the grim stubble of his beard. I made the sign of the Cross over his head.

      ‘The Lord forgives you, my son.’ I spoke most earnestly, for his pain had moved me.

      ‘How do you know?’ he snapped. ‘How dare you speak for God?’

      I gasped at his intemperate speech, only to gasp louder when he tore away his tunic. The flesh of his back was raked with gashes. Where they had scabbed over they had been torn afresh so that new scars lay atop the old. Now I understood why the ground about him was smeared with blood.

      ‘This is too much, my son,’ I said gently. ‘The Lord does not demand such—’

      ‘Such what? Such shows? How do you know what God has demanded of me?’

      The cause of his wounds was clear: about his middle was a girdle of iron, tight-fitting and barbed with teeth that pierced his skin every time he breathed in. Fresh blood soaked into his hose. As I watched, he removed this cruel belt and struck himself over the left shoulder: once, twice, thrice; then over the right, tearing fresh wounds. There were gasps of wonder from those standing around. He uttered not the smallest sound, teeth gripped together, face set like stone.

      ‘You have no idea what sins I have committed,’ he grunted. ‘What God and my priest have ordered as repentance.’

      When he finished flogging himself, he fastened the belt once more and put on his over-tunic. Without so much as a glance at the shrine, he turned and, still on his knees, dragged himself back down the nave. I walked at his side. No one else would stand close to him and I grieved for his loneliness.

      ‘Absolution awaits all who truly repent,’ I said.

      ‘Do you presume to see into my heart?’

      ‘I am a man of God,’ I declared. ‘Be careful how you address me, however noble you may be.’ I strove to make my voice tender again, for he was a soul in torment. I had never seen one so undone by his sin. ‘Surely you may stand now that you have completed your pilgrimage?’ I said quietly.

      ‘Completed?’ he said, bitterness dripping from the word. ‘I am but a quarter way through.’

      ‘My son—’

      He interrupted me. ‘I am charged to visit every shrine in England, on my knees. Then Wales, then Ireland. Then Saint James at Compostela.’

      ‘God grant you peace,’ I said.

      He turned empty eyes to mine and hauled himself away, huffing and puffing, swinging the stumps of his legs one after the other. All heads turned to follow him on his painful journey out of the church. Two servants awaited him, a grim-faced old man and one much younger of the same stamp: I guessed father and son. When they saw me they bowed their heads with the precise amount of reverence due an insignificant parish priest and not one whit more. It was difficult to tell if they succoured their charge or watched to see if he reneged on his vow.

      ‘What did he do, Father?’ said a voice at my shoulder, so unexpectedly that I jumped.

      I turned stern eyes upon my questioner, a youth from the village whose name I did not remember.

      ‘That is for God to know, and not for men to gossip about.’

      ‘It must’ve been something very wicked,’ he mused, as though I had not spoken.

      I fixed him with a disapproving stare. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders and sauntered out of the church towards the great yew, where a clutch of young hatchlings gathered, lounging against each other and whistling at the girls who had flocked from the surrounding villages.

      He pointed his finger at the retreating penitent and their heads drew close as they whispered who knew what sort of nonsense. I considered marching across and chiding them for treating this holy day with so little respect. However, when I raised my eyes to the west window, the Saint looked down with such loving kindness that I relented. I counselled myself that it might be better to bring them to godliness through mild words rather than cruelty. Perhaps kindness should be the watchword for my sermon.

      The pilgrims were much affected by the agonising spectacle of the penitent on his knees. Their weeping increased in intensity, as if it was not already deafening. One woman fell to the floor with a particularly piercing wail. She was helped back up by her companions, but struggled against them, falling once more. They tried to lift her but each time were defeated.

      I hurried to assist, for the disturbance was distracting the pilgrims from their devotions as they queued to touch the shrine. In the time it took СКАЧАТЬ