The Fabric of Sin

Requiem

THE FIRST OF them to come in was Adam Eastgate. Hooded eyes, military scrutiny. Looking around at the drabness and the pitted plaster, the floor that was half-flags and half-linoleum, shrivelled and long-embedded like mummified skin, and he sighed.

‘We don’t often make mistakes.’

Maybe it was one of his sayings.

‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘if you’re thinking of selling it on, I’d urge you to vet any potential purchaser extremely carefully. But I expect you do that anyway.’

‘I don’t recall mentioning selling it,’ Eastgate said. ‘That would be a bit defeatist.’

‘Adam … sorry, this is Mrs Morningwood.’

‘Aye, I know,’ he said.

Which was unexpected.

She’d been thinking that, if Muriel hadn’t been here, now might have been the best time to ask Adam Eastgate again about those threatening communications the Duchy had received. The ones possibly containing Welsh phrases, perhaps suggesting that the Prince of Wales’s purchase of Templar properties on the Welsh Border had been … noted. Probably with disfavour.

Letters which, if you were looking for an author, might point towards a Welshman fanatically proud of his family’s links with the greatest national hero of all time. Or, less obviously, but more likely in Merrily’s view, to someone who had no cause to love this Welshman … and a personal need, which could no longer be suppressed, to let light into dark places.

Some of us do know our Welsh pronunciations but can’t resist taking the piss.

‘Merrily,’ Eastgate said, ‘you look, if you don’t mind me saying so, like you’ve been doing a spot of cleaning.’

‘Yes, well …’ She pushed hair back from her face. ‘Women in the clergy … not afraid to get our hands dirty. And, erm, everything else.’

He smiled; he still looked less than comfortable.

‘So this’ll be for Felix, will it? And the woman?’

‘Going to be a bit non-specific, Adam. Straightforward Eucharist, quite short, relating to a number of people who had connections with this place. And, if I could just say this, what happened to Felix … that may not be quite what you think. It’s quite important we don’t blame Fuchsia. I’m telling everyone this.’

She watched Mrs Morningwood approaching Eastgate, gripping his arm.

‘Ah … I know who you are, now. Recognise the Geordie accent. You’re the chap who left a message on my machine the other day. Been away, you see.’

‘Just a query, Mrs Mornington.’

‘Wood.’

‘Aye. Sorry. I was just given your number. Only, I gather you’re quite well known as a herbalist and a healer, kind of thing, and not the only one in this area.’

‘Quite a few in the general area, involved in different disciplines. Eight … nine, perhaps.’

Merrily shot her a look.

Eastgate said, ‘So if this place – and I’m talking off the record and in a very tentative way – were to become – assuming it could be done without damaging the character – a centre for alternative health … do you think that would have local support?’

Mrs Morningwood wrinkled her nose.

‘There’s a good possibility.’

Bloody hell. Merrily remembered Jane raising the idea, not entirely seriously.

‘This is a bit sudden, Adam.’

‘Not really.’

‘It would’ve come down from …?’

‘The place things come down from,’ Eastgate said, as Jane herself came in, holding the door open for Roxanne Gray, pushing Paul in his wheelchair to within a few feet of the relic that Mrs Morningwood had found in the inglenook.

John 20.

A text often used during funeral services, with or without the Requiem Eucharist. She read it to the gathering.

‘On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early …’

Except for Paul Gray in his wheelchair, the congregration was standing. Adam Eastgate at one end, Sycharth Gwilym at the other, tight-faced, uneasy, no sense of a man who’d come home. In the middle, Roxanne and Mrs Morningwood. Lord Stourport on his own by the door, hands in pockets, breathing down his nose. Next to him, Lol and Jane and, at their feet, lying down, nose between his front paws, the dog that Mrs Morningwood had said would refuse to come in here.

It was the biggest congregation you’d get in Garway this particular weekend.

It added up to nine people.

‘Peter then came out with the other disciple and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first and, stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there …’

On the portable altar, a simple white cloth, wine and actual bread to celebrate the Eucharist.

A Requiem, then, for some people she could name, one she couldn’t. And one she was she was still agonizing about and would do, right up to the moment.

In front of the altar, on a trestle they’d found in the barn, where a coffin might be at a funeral, was the sandstone urn, size of a small chalice, recovered from a recess half the size of a bread-oven behind the face of the Baphomet.

They’d managed to remove the top, she and Mrs Morningwood. Some powder in the bottom … had to be ashes.

Lol had told her what Stourport had said about Teddy Murray’s intention to bring something into the church for his gnostic, Masonic service. She’d asked his advice, and Lol had said, do it. If anybody needed it …

Merrily let the ritual unwind at its own pace, still unsure.

Listening.

There was no name on the sandstone urn, no words at all. For all she knew, there could be dozens of these all over Europe; there would’ve been a lot of ashes. No clues when it had been walled up or who had first brought it here. But it made sense.

Merrily took a breath, picked up the urn, kept her voice fairly low. She commended to God the souls of Fuchsia Mary Linden and Felix Barlow and, in her head, in a second of silence, Mary Roberts Linden, sleeping in the herb garden.

She cleared her throat. The marks on her alb were like smuts on a spectator backing away from the flames into the shadow of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Or maybe the smears on a doormat.

Do this.

‘We also commend to God’s keeping the soul of Jacques de Molay.’

She looked up briefly and saw Jane’s eyes widening, didn’t look at other eyes.

‘… knowing he died in pain and persecution. We pray to God to … forgive him and bring him eternal light and peace. May the peace of God which passes all understanding be with him now and in this place.’

At some point, the door blew open, the dog stirred and whimpered and the wind came in from the White Rocks.