abbey at Hartland, up in Devon, but clearly it was here earlier. There are still portions of the building that are Norman, but much of what you see is much more recent. But you'd know that; I hear you're an architect. An architect learning to build Cornish hedges, which—pardon me for saying this—sounds a bit backward to me.”
Andrew paused, looked at her, and started walking again. They were strolling among the ancient, lichen-encrusted headstones that surrounded the church. He wondered if the close-cropped grass was the work of a mower or sheep. He hoped the latter: Jesus, the Good Shepherd.
“It started as a whim, I suppose; or maybe a kind of therapy. But it's become something else, something elemental.”
They stopped at a gate that looked west, toward the sea and Forrabury Common, a medieval system of raised farming beds that had remained in use until only recently.
“It sounds like you're searching for something. Is that what got to you in my sermon about Peter last Sunday?” she asked.
Andrew leaned on the top of the gate. “I've certainly had my faith tested recently, Reverend Janet.”
“Just ‘Janet’ is fine.”
“Janet.… But that's not why I came to see you.”
The priest said nothing. She had learned the value of silence.
Andrew began walking again; Janet walked with him.
“Let's say you knew someone,” he began, “to whom something terrible seems to have happened. Maybe a long time ago. But it's clear it haunts the person still.”
“Why do I think it's not you you're talking about? It's someone else, isn't it?”
“Yes.” He wondered whether everyone in this village was a mind reader.
“How can I help?”
Andrew was impressed that she didn't ask, “Who?” He took a deep breath. “I don't know. That's what I came here to ask you” he said.
He stood beside a stone cross—Celtic, he thought, its edges and intricately carved pattern worn by centuries of Atlantic storms, but not yet obliterated. The permanence of stone; the impermanence of man's impressions upon it.
The priest folded her hands together before her, as she might in church. She looked at the ground.
“I have to confess, Andrew, that the Church isn't very good at this sort of thing,” she said to her feet. “We're charged with looking after the faith of our ‘flock,’ of trying to be of comfort in crises. But it sounds as if your friend is beyond that, and we're ill-equipped to serve as either social workers or psychologists.”
She looked at Andrew steadily for a moment and he saw a deep sadness.
“My tools are so limited,” she said. “I could counsel this person about the everlasting love of God, about the redemption inherent in faith in his love. But she—may I guess it is a ‘she’?—would have to embrace that love. And I suspect, given her trauma, that may be a lot to ask.”
Andrew was amazed. In his experience, ministers always claimed to have all the answers. That had been part of his attraction to religion as a child: the certainty. And suddenly he felt embarrassed. What had he really expected? What did he hope to achieve? He was a searcher all right, looking for the cure to an ailment he didn't even understand.
“Janet,” he said finally. “Reverend Janet of Forrabury, et cetera and so on, I'm sorry. I should have thought about this more, I guess. I'm just trying to help someone I care about.”
“I know you are,” she said softly, “and she is lucky to have you—if she will have you. I sense you are a good soul, Andrew. Others in this village think so, too. I believe you can reach her.”
“I don't know that; how can you?”
“Think about Peter, Andrew. Think about the lesson of his faith. If you believe you can help, if that belief comes from a good heart—which I believe it does—then you can walk on that water, and perhaps carry her with you.”
Andrew and Janet Stevenson stood looking at each other for several moments, and he understood that they were done. He nodded to the priest, and said, “Thank you. I'm sorry to have interrupted your evening.”
“You did nothing of the sort.”
“Good evening, Reverend Janet.”
“Good evening, Andrew. And good luck.”
He'd nodded and had walked just a few steps down the narrow asphalt path toward the lane when she said, “Have you thought of talking to Colin Grant?”
“The witch? I wouldn't have thought you had much in common with Mr. Grant.”
“More than you might guess; it's a very small parish, after all. Besides, I'll take someone who believes in something