A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,79
getting ready for daily Mass but I'll show it to you first." He unlocked the doors of the church with an enormous key and motioned them inside. "Weekday Mass is a bit of a bygone now. No one much bothers unless it's a Sunday. William Teys was my only consistent daily attendant, and with William gone...well, I've found myself more often than not saying Mass in an empty church during the week."
"He was a close friend of yours, wasn't he?" Lynley asked.
The priest's hand wavered over the light switch. "He was...like a son."
"Did he ever talk to you about the trouble he had sleeping? About his need for sleeping pills?"
The hand wavered again. The priest hesitated. It was too long a pause, Lynley decided, and adjusted his position in the dim light to see the old man's face more clearly. His eyes were on the light switch but his lips moved as if in prayer.
"Are you all right, Father Hart?"
"I...yes, fine. I just...so often the memory of him." The priest pulled himself up with an effort, like someone drawing the scattered pieces of a puzzle into one disjointed pile. "William was a good man, Inspector, but a troubled spirit. He...he never spoke to me about having difficulty sleeping, but it doesn't surprise me at all to hear it."
"Why?"
"Because unlike so many troubled souls who drown themselves in alcohol or escape their difficulties some other way, William always faced them head on and did the best he could. He was strong and decent, but his burdens were tremendous."
"Burdens like Tessa leaving and Gillian running away?"
On the second name, the priest's eyes closed. He swallowed with difficulty: it was a rasping sound. "Tessa hurt him. But Gillian devastated him. He was never the same once she'd gone."
"What was she like?"
"She...she was an angel, Inspector. Sunshine." The shaking hand moved quickly to the lights and switched them on, and the priest gestured towards the church. "Well. What do you think of it?"
It was decidedly not the expected interior of a village church. Village churches tend to be small, square, purely functional affairs with an absence of colour, line, or beauty. This was none of that. Whoever had built it had cathedrals in mind, for two great pillars at the west end had been intended to bear more tremendous weight than that of St. Catherine's roof.
"Ah, so you've noticed," Father Hart murmured, following the direction of Lynley's gaze from pillars to apse. "This was to have been the site of the abbey; St. Catherine's was to have been the great abbey church. But a conflict among the monks resulted in the other location by Keldale Hall. It was a miracle."
"A miracle?" Deborah asked.
"A real miracle. If they'd built the abbey here, where the remains of St. Cedd are, it would all have been destroyed in the time of Henry VIII. Can you imagine destroying the very church where St. Cedd lay buried?" The priest's voice managed to convey his complete revulsion. "No, it was an act of God that brought about the disagreement among the monks. And since the foundation for this church was already laid and the crypt complete, there was no reason to disinter the body of the saint. So they left him here with just a small chapel." He moved with painful slowness to a stone stairway that led from the main aisle down into darkness. "It's just this way," he beckoned them.
The crypt was a second tiny church deep within the main church of St. Catherine's. It was a vault, arched in Norman style, and pillared with columns that had meagre ornamentation. At its far end a simple stone altar was adorned with two candles and a crucifix, and along its sides stones from an earlier version of the church - crossheads and cross shafts and pieces from vesicular windows - lay preserved for posterity. It was a damp and musty place, poorly lit and smelling of loam. Green mould clung to the walls.
Deborah shivered. "Poor man. It's so cold here. One would think he might prefer to be buried somewhere in the sun."
"He's safer here," the priest answered. He moved reverently to the altar rail, knelt, and spent the next few moments in meditation.
They watched him. His lips moved and then he paused for a moment as if in communion with an unknown god. His prayer completed, he smiled angelically and got to his feet.
"I speak to him daily," Father Hart whispered, "because we owe him everything."