There was no doubt about the door being jammed shut and about it being darker inside here. The small window in the door was the only source of light, a square of grey on which Therese kept her eyes fixed when she returned to the chintz couch after feeling for the presence of a handle in the rough wood of the door and finding there was none. Therese could visualise the shiny new latch on the outside of the door. If that was all keeping her inside, she was quite sure she could press it open with her own strength, and one thing she had learned after more than a year in the convent was how to deal with doors and windows warped and stuck by damp. She would be strong enough to get out, but there seemed little point in trying, right this minute, when she was more puzzled than anxious and still suffused with that pleasant laziness. What did it matter if she stayed for a while? Feeling around on the wood of the door had only resulted in a sharp splinter in her palm.
She sat on the bed and looked up at the square of light which was the window in the door, realising as she looked that the relative absence of light changed the contours of her abode. She could see all she needed to see, the outlines of the paint cans on the shelves with their colours more vivid in the half-light, and found herself wondering about the contents. Then she dozed a little. She was simply fulfilling the purpose of a garden, even a small, locked-in corner of a garden like the one she inhabited, and turning it into a place of peace. The long-lasting joss sticks still burned; she stared at the stems of them, sticking out of a paint can on the shelf, rose and took two steps to the door. The window was high and only by standing on tiptoe could she see outside, where the busy lizzies glowed in the grey light and the rain fell.
She went back and sat with her back to the wall, grasping her knees. The wall was warm and seemed to become warmer as the square of light began to fade and the rain made its music on the roof.
There was a nun she had read about who lived in a caravan in the grounds of her own convent, along with volumes of books illustrating the medieval painting which was her passion and her aid to prayer. This sister had featured in a television programme years before and evoked a whole way of life. Therese realised that she had never really had any passions at all, other than the desire not to be touched, prodded, pulled at, and the thought of going on living just like this, on the fringes of sisterhood rather than within it, seemed the best of all options, if she could deal with hunger, thirst and hygiene. Small spaces, spartan surroundings, had their own appeal. They encouraged a degree of acceptance. They were consistent with small ambitions.
A clever person, with different ambitions, like Anna, would have made a greater effort and worked out how to get out by now, Therese thought, but for herself, she would simply wait for whoever had made the mistake of locking her in to rectify it and come along to let her out, and in the meantime, consider the fate of poor Matilda. The Sisters could get their own supper. There was a satisfaction in that.
No need to bother about hygiene, yet. Her bladder seemed to have shrivelled over the last days, and while hunger had begun to gnaw, it did so with small, soft teeth. It was not unpleasant to be timeless and beyond the call of regime, almost weightless and beyond responsibility, lulled into sleep by the warmth and the smells she could now detect. The lingering fumes of paint and creosote, masked by the joss sticks, a hint of cat and, in her nostrils from that brief contact, the smell of Francis himself, making her wonder briefly what it was that made a man smell like that, what her own smell was like, what material covered the roof to make the rain echo the way it did, and then she noticed the small mirror propped on the shelves next to the paint pots, and rose to look at herself. The light was too dim to see anything more than a very pale face, which seemed to consist mainly of eyes, and she was disturbed to see her own reflection, which seemed to have so little to do with herself. The only mirror in the convent was by the front door, where few of them ever looked and only then to check their own dignities before making an exit into the outside world. Otherwise, if the appearance of one of the Sisters was ever defective, a habit hitched up in a belt, a veil not quite straight, another Sister simply adjusted it, discreetly, to murmured thanks. They could all of them dress themselves in the dark and mutely relied on one another to correct the missed details of rudimentary grooming. It reminded her of primates considerately ridding one another of fleas. The mirror reminded her that the light, such as it was, was fading, and she should use it to find the candles she had noticed earlier. Cheap candles, not like the beeswax candles of the chapel, stickier to touch, and when she found one, struck a match and melted the base before sticking it on the shelf, a fresh smell entered the chorus of the others. There, now she could pray. The candle flame, slow and steady without any draught to give it flickering life, was the best aid of all to prayer.
Oh, dear Lord, why are you doing this to me?
Lord, have I sinned, and if so, how? How can I know if I’ve sinned, unless it’s perfectly obvious, or you tell me? Be reasonable, I’m only human.
I don’t know if this is punishment . . . And then, thumping the bed impatiently, Why the hell don’t you talk to me? I’m your child.
She tried the rosary, without benefit of rosary beads, because the rosary was such a useful prayer. The one that allowed daydreaming and prayer at the same time, one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, one Glory Be to the Father, and then begin again. She tried not to daydream, but think of the mysteries, which were the prescribed accompaniment to the stanzas, but found she could only think of the sorrowful ones – Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, the scourging, Calvary, with the niggling background thought, Oh why, sweet Jesus, why did you let yourself in for that? Why did you think we were worth it and why didn’t you escape? What difference did it make? She gave up. The rain stopped.
It was only in the following silence, which seemed to mushroom around her, creating a sensation of stuffy fog, that Therese began to feel the rising of panic. There was no air in here. What little there was was subsumed by the still-glowing joss sticks and the candle flame. She was afraid of staying still, got up and pushed at the door, then banged at it with her fists, but it did not yield, only vibrated with sound. She wanted to tear at her own hair and scream, but was controlled enough to realise that that would make everything worse. This was not a sanctuary, it was a prison cell. She tried to think of a saint in captivity, any saint, and what he or she might do if they were her. Contemplate, offer the indignities to God for the benefit of another soul in purgatory, wait in faith to be released, be patient and still? No. No.
Moving lengthways, rather than towards the door, there was a maximum of four small steps between one side of the cell and the other. Therese tried to imagine she was either in the kitchen with Kim, or back inside her bedroom at home, with Anna, long ago, whiling away the hours of illness on a relatively good day. Both of them playing around and teaching themselves the model walk, copying one another in the exaggerated gyration of hips and the silly, one hip forward, head flung back, stroll they had learned from pictures in magazines and a TV programme of ballroom dancing, which they had watched with the sound turned down until they laughed themselves sick and Mother had to take control. The tango-influenced catwalk-model walk looked effortless, but was full of effort. It had exhausted them, and she did it again and again, now. Two steps forward, two back, flung herself on the bed, posed, got up, did it again. In the tenth circuit, dizzy and overheated, she stripped off her clothes. She would do this until she was beyond doing anything. Something had bitten her: something scratched. Her skin scorched.
It was late afternoon when Christopher Goodwin arrived back in the city. He breathed the air in the underpass which linked the station to the Underground, noting the various flavours of humanity and dirt, artificial light, organised chaos, noticed a couple of homeless boys who had already given up on the day, and wondered if Francis McQuaid had ever been one of those. An unwashed head stuck out of a dirty sleeping bag and he was ashamed of having no money to give, but on balance, he thought he preferred this inhuman, human bustle to the relentless pull of the tide and all that heartless sky. Kay McQuaid should come back: this was home. Although he knew it was irresponsible and he would pay later in conscience for the further neglect of his parish, he detoured via the park. On this Wednesday afternoon, the feast day of St Matthew, apostle, evangelist, symbolised as a man with wings, but once a tax collector, the boys’ football team was finishing a game. He stood and watched the sheer energy and grace of their movements, listening with delight to the innocent savagery of their yelling, until he sensed he was watched himself as he stood apart, wondering again if Francis, born simple Jack bastard McQuaid, had ever been one of these, playing football in the drizzle with the express purpose of learning how to break the rules.
On the last regretful circuit of this end of the park, Christopher saw a nun, sitting on a bench, and had a distinct temptation to change route and avoid her. He resisted and, as he drew level, watched to see if she was familiar, hoping she was a complete stranger until he saw with a shock that she was one of what he had sourly come to consider as Barbara’s bunch. He could recognise them individually, but never quite remember all of their names, except for the one or two of whom he was fond and the ones who had taken the masculine names, and he remembered Sister Joseph all the more as the one who was frequently mentioned in Sister Barbara’s catalogues of trouble, as well as being the one who was drunk, but admirably controlled, at the last meeting. A similar condition seemed to apply to her now. She was not drunk, but under the influence; on the way to being drunk and weeping copiously to add to the dampness of her habit, which was muddy at the hem. Pedestrians crossed the path to avoid her and as he sat down beside her, with the old, familiar irritation that accompanied so many a Christian act, especially one that interrupted progress to more important things when he was hungry and tired, he could see why she was being shunned. Even without the frightening accoutrements of a nun’s soiled habit, Sister Joseph was eminently resistible.
‘It’s Joseph, isn’t it?’ he asked, with his practised gentleness, which so often emerged as more bracing than sensitive and did so now. ‘What ails you, Sister? Can I help? Can I walk you home?’
‘Piss off.’
This startled him, to the point of laughter. He was used to the deferential smile, the oh no, Father, it’s nothing at all response, which typified their stoic reactions to their own distress, even on a deathbed. It was a deference that had often annoyed him, but he found he did not want the opposite either.
‘What’s the matter, Sister?’
An inane question, but he had to persist.
‘What’s the matter, you fool of a man? What’s the matter?’ Her voice was only slightly slurred and rising, so that he could not gauge the level of her inebriation, although experience of others made him guess it had some way to go before violence or oblivion, whichever took hold first. She was a strong old woman. He had often thought that the residual physical strength of the old must be as frustrating as their weaknesses, a formless, useless energy, and he did not look forward to it. She looked up at him with bleary eyes, identifying him for the first time.
‘Christ, it’s the bloody priest. Where are you when you’re needed? No one could rouse you this morning. Just think, you could have sat with me and Matilda. Sat and listened to her telling me how the devil himself had murdered Edmund and the birds and put poison on her hands. She was in such pain. The devil himself, she told me. And then . . . she died, Father. She died without you.’ The voice moved from a hiss to a mumble.
He crossed himself, depressed with guilt. ‘Matilda’s dead?’
‘Matilda’s killed,’ she spat. ‘And I loved her. We were real sisters. She’s the only one who ever loved me.’
Tears flowed. He hesitated, then touched her sleeve gingerly. It was smeared with mucus and tears. She slapped at the hand.
‘You must go back, Sister, you’ll make yourself ill.’
‘Get your hands off me,’ Joseph said with deliberate venom. ‘Save your worry. I’ve got money in my pocket and a will of my own. I don’t need your blessing, I need my anger, so piss off. Is there anything about that phrase you don’t understand?’
It was, he admitted, perfectly clear and did not allow alternatives. She was an adult woman of God, not a child.
‘What did she mean, the devil himself?’
‘Piss off.’
‘If you’re sure?’
She nodded emphatically. There was a clear glass bottle sticking out of a cloth bag, which looked like a laundry bag or the shoe bag he had carried to school, on the bench beside her. The bag was bulky, probably with Matilda’s things, he thought sadly, and not proof against the rain. He felt in the left pocket of his anorak for the small umbrella that always lived there and he never remembered to use, handed it to her. Joseph looked at it in disdain, took it all the same and stuffed it in the bag.
‘Not much of a weapon, is it, Father? I can do better than that. Piss off.’
He knew he would have to come back later and see if she was still there, as well as digest what she had said, but he hurried home. Oh, good God, not another death or another fantasy. The papers crackled inside his jacket, he was no lighter without the umbrella, and for all the strangeness of the meeting, the ghastliness of the last twenty-four hours, he was nursing a small nugget of exhilaration and he had a sense of resolution and purpose, which did not usually come from having too much to do. There was always either too much or too little, with the whole of life revolving around the juggling of priorities, obligations, duties, so that indoors there were messages from Barbara, the office of the Bishop, and twelve others, including the last from the carer of the old, brave invalid whose company he had so often kept in front of the football replay videos, offering no more than mute admiration for bravery and the consolation of another, like-minded presence. They had the same way of praying. The message was a plea for the administration of Extreme Unction. A man wanted blessing for the last rite of passage and there was no choice. Christopher Goodwin changed his trousers, seized his paraphernalia and set out for the other end of his parish.
Ravi was wrong. Anna shunned the park and longed instead for the chapel. Now, look here, Lord. Prayer was an instinctive activity in anyone who had ever become accustomed to it, even if they no longer knew to whom, or what, they prayed. A bad habit, acquired with ease and training, difficult to break, an affliction, a pain-in-the-neck need, which never went away and could never be shared with anyone who had no idea of what you were talking about. Ravi had a religion, so he knew, although he did not know what it was like to pray to Gods who had already abandoned you, and he was wrong about a person being able to do it anywhere. Perhaps he meant anywhere there was a shrine. She meant anywhere it worked well enough to quell the furies, and the places were limited. It had to be a place she loved, the convent chapel, sometimes the park, and otherwise the roof. Other people were probably the same in choosing a place to have an argument. There had to be something to look up at, something to look down on, or something to look across and preserve the idea there was something beyond that and something beyond even that. Anna thought that an aeroplane would be a good place for prayer, provided she could sit near a window.
She was very, very shaken and feeling in a way she could only describe to herself as odd, although that was an understatement, since oddness was her middle name and anyway, there was plenty about which to feel odd and it only created another phrase, oddgod, which she was repeating in the same way she once said bother. And then, How odd of God, To choose Hindus, a couplet distorted from something else. Oh, oddgod, odgod, doggod, dogged, dogged, dogged. The flat was pristine. She was waiting and knowing in her heart of hearts, as well as in her churning stomach, that Francis, the Golden Boy, was making her wait. He was not late yet, but he would be late soon. The ladder was out, up to the roof. There was time.
She was dressed like a girl, like a miniature tart, in a dress. Floral thingummy, with little roses printed in the lightweight cloth, buttoning up the front from mid-calf to neck and a touch of lace, for oddgod’s sake, at the neck. She hated it all but her bare feet, climbing the ladder stack and getting them dirty in the gunwales of the roof, who cared? The thought of the wine in the fridge made her sick.
Better, up on the parapet, with sultry city air cleansed by the rain, which only threatened to resume, but not yet, please oddgod, not yet. She propped her elbows on the parapet, so that they were level with her shoulders, and put her feet inside the shelf she had created between the lead flashing and the brick, to give her a better view. Saw a clear evening, prematurely dark, and the garden further darkened by the lights from the chapel window, although, as yet, she could see the details. There was a breeze, teasing at her long, clean hair, washed again for the occasion.
‘Oh Lord, help me. Am I to be a sacrifice? Am I going to have to let him have me in order to get to Therese? Help me to see in the dark.’
Edmund’s bench began to fade. She thought she could hear from the chapel the sounds of the singing of the Misericordia. O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria, sung in those voices by Jude’s graveside, followed by the voice of the hound of heaven. I fled Him, down the nights and down the days, I fled Him down the arches of the years; I hid from Him . . . She yelled into the darkening sky, Just leave me alone. Let me see. Make me concentrate and make me see all that my fogged-up mind is missing. I am not old, I’m not wise.
First she looked at the sky, which was a blank, bumpy landscape, turning dark, but not dark enough for stars. There was nothing on which to focus the eyes, no nice arrangement of clouds, no inspirational moon. She watched the branches of the trees, daring them to move, and then she looked at the window of the chapel, so brightly lit that the shape of it, upturned boat or bishop’s hat, was appealingly clear and the desire to be on the other side as sharp as homesickness. To the left of this beacon, lower down, there was a visible light from the parlour windows and from the rooms on the floors above. The place seemed lit for a celebration, indicating crisis, visitors, or a death. This was the way it had looked on the night Sister Jude died, as if the death of a Sister created the need to bustle and spring-clean, to fix everything so that the gap was obscured. They were busy.
There was no birdsong, not a single cry of alarm.
Anna concentrated on the smaller details, the shape of the flower tubs, the shiny damp path into the shrubbery, the point where St Michael stood, currently visible, and then let her eyes follow the path to the point further down where the bushes obscured it and where she had been when Francis had intercepted her. She could not pinpoint the exact spot, but focusing on the likely place made her begin to think of everything she knew about the Golden Boy and place it in the context of what he had said. She knew nothing, but looking at the garden, she could see what he had done.
There were no birds any more.
There was Edmund’s bench, with the light, scrubbed wood of it still visible in the clear area surrounding it. Francis had obliterated any sign of his predecessor and mentor so that it was difficult to remember that Edmund had ever existed at all. Edmund, whom she had watched neglecting the garden and feeding the birds with whom he shared that filthy bench. Ironic that Edmund was the gardener who should have been called Francis, after the saint who could magic the birds from the skies. Now there were dead birds in the garden, she had trodden on one; dead birds and a killing cat. The wrongly named Francis had lied last night. Edmund would never have shot at a bird, any bird, and he would never have broken the window. Francis would have done that as part of his ruthless cleansing operation and his preliminary step to the gaining of power. She thought of how he would have achieved that power, first by breaking Edmund’s hold on the place, then by becoming indispensable and always by being beautiful. His saintly beauty and his sex, powerful passwords. Agnes would let him to and fro whenever he pleased; Barbara adored him. There was no place sacrosanct, nothing he could not contradict. And then, although she had played a part in her own banishment through her stupidity, it was he who had achieved it. She stroked her fingers down the side of her face, remembered his hand holding her claw and raking it down his own face. The scratches had made him even more beautiful. Why, when she had faced him the night before, had that memory faded, melted by that self-same, humble charm? Why had she believed him? She clenched her own hand into a fist and looked at it. A small, puny weapon.
And as for Therese sending the bird . . . Therese would never have touched a dead bird, except, perhaps, to bury it. She would have been afraid; she was fastidious. Look at what Francis has done to the birds.
Then she remembered Edmund’s fist, his arm outstretched on the bench, with the gold crucifix and broken chain lying next to it, which she had thought was his and preserved for Matilda until Francis had reclaimed it. A thing he had worn since childhood, almost outgrown. Too small by far for Edmund’s fleshy neck. A hypocritical adornment, a badge of solidarity, an indication of faith. She thought of it being inside her pocket alongside the statue of Ganesh, and, staring at the bench now, imagined Edmund in the throes of dying, ripping the crucifix from the neck of the man who might have helped him. Or murdered him. The scene enacted itself in front of her eyes with hideous clarity. Matilda was the only one who might have known. Matilda with her bright eyes, and burned hands. He would have seen to that, too.
Craning over the parapet, she could just see the back door to the garden. That was how he came and went. He did not even need the complicity of Agnes. Most of all, she remembered her frantic scouring of the place the night before, the instinct to eradicate traces of him, although as he had sat there, she had believed everything he said and the mist of credulity had descended. She had been sorry for him; she had wanted to be liked. Oh, Lord, she said. We believe what we want to believe. And disbelieve what does not suit. Was it you who phoned with the warning? Good people do not see evil. Evil has no inhibitions.
She looked at the luminous dial on her watch. She could hear the door buzzer from here. Francis had not arrived and what was more, she could see now that he had never intended to arrive on this particular night. That promise was yet another lie. Perhaps he enjoyed the idea of her waiting for him, a piece of control, designed to humble her and make her long for him next time. Or perhaps it was something else. Perhaps he simply needed her to be captive in her own flat, waiting as he could guess she would wait for the very mention of Therese, or out of the pathetic desire for love or friendship; she would wait, poor, lonely, powerless thing. And then she remembered the other words, You are even prettier than your sister, and retched over the wall. He had never wanted her. He wanted her out of the way, and with that settled conviction came another, namely that Therese was suffering.
When they had been ill, their symptoms were originally different, but had come to coincide as if they cross-infected one another, and then it was more than that. It had turned into a physical empathy with how the other felt, an instinctive knowledge, which lessened with health and absence, but still persisted. In the friendlier conversations, the normal ones that followed the confrontational ones after Therese joined the convent, they had laughed about it. Thought of you yesterday, Therese would say. Did you have toothache, because I did. And period pain? Yes. Now, on the parapet, her empty stomach was churning. She felt for her sister an almighty fear, as if Therese was up alongside her and about to jump, and she felt for Francis the Golden Boy a hatred so intense it would have poisoned the moon. He was a monstrous corruption. Instinct said it all. Instinct knew best. He killed the birds. He would hurt and corrupt and never know conscience.
She could not bear to look at the bench, which now blurred into nothing as the last light died and she vainly tried to concentrate on what little she could see, willing it to expand into clarity. The outline of the shed was just visible. There was a light inside.
A tiny, flickering light, so small she could have imagined it. A signal, the arc light of the chapel window pointing the way to the tiny light in Edmund’s store.
Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us . . . Agnes was muttering, grumbling and frantic and confused and hungry and . . . Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi. Joseph had come home and God bless them all. This was no way to respect the dead, no way at all, coming home from the care of dear Matilda, stinking of the drink and shouting like a banshee, all over the black and white corridor, half sick, half demented, the colour of a bruised plum and yelling, Where is he, where is he? not even able to remember if it was day or night. Where’s who, Sister? Who do you mean? and only getting back, Where is she, where is she, the bitch? In the name of the blessed virgin, they couldn’t call the police to one of their own, and if only Francis would come back, her darling son, and instead of him, there was Anna running down the road in a pretty frock and those ugly training shoes she wore and which she herself privately craved. Agnes was not going to let in anyone else who made trouble and the only person she wanted to gain entry was her own darling boy. Or maybe the priest. Heaven help her, she was sick of the sight of women. After she slammed the door shut, and returned to her cubicle, waiting against hope for either the food to which they had not been called, or the return to order, which Barbara would surely restore, she put the phone under her chair where it had rested all evening with the receiver detached. She had taken the unilateral decision that they had enough to cope with, and from the depths of the black and white corridor, she could hear Joseph, shouting, tried to close her ears to what Joseph said and could not. Joseph had a way with words.
Fuelled by fear, it was even easier for Anna to get up to the top of the wall than it had been the last time. Bugger who watched, let them. She could kick, she could scream, she could yell, and the extra power came from thinking, if they close that door on me one more time . . . Ripping the dress while straddling the wall did not matter either; she tore a strip off the hem when she paused at the top, wrapped the material round her wrist like a bracelet, and then slithered down the other side with sickening speed, because the ivy was wet and slippery as oil, so that she clutched enough to impede freefall and landed with a silent thud that winded her and shook her into where she was. It was the time of the evening when sounds from outside penetrated as far as they ever would in here. The jarring of the final landing made her breathless, squatting where she landed, suddenly as careful as a cat. And there was the cat, eyeball to eyeball. She hissed at it, watched it scurry away, scared of her.
You are even prettier than your sister. Stronger, too. Anna tiptoed from the back door towards the area of the bench, looking for the clutter which had been visible from the window only three weeks before and was now startling for its absence. The scent of autumn flowers arrested her, but the flickering light from the shed drew her into the circle outside it. She could hear whimpering from the half-open door, felt the waft of body heat and sweat. Whimpering from the body beneath the other body on the patterned fabric she could see through the door, in tune with the voice of the Golden Boy, who half knelt, glisteningly naked, with his long legs too long for the couch, above the body of her sister, who lay face down with her hands clutched in her hair, saying no, Mother, no, trying to prise together the legs he had forced apart with his knees, so that her forelegs thrashed without purpose, and as she watched, he bent his whole torso towards her and bit her ear. You know you want this.You waited for me, naked. I am your brother. We do it this way so you don’t have to watch, trust me.
Anna hesitated. Then she took in the detail of the way he massaged his enormous prick and smeared it with spit while his other, big, brown hand, held down Therese by the neck. Therese might want this, but Therese was held by the neck. Passion did not whimper, did it? And then Therese screamed, bucked, used all her tiny weight to shrug him away. Anna felt around for a stone. His voice reverberated. Shush, no one’ll hear, sister.
She was going to kill him, smash in his head, now. To the mind’s echo, Thou shalt not kill, or suffer the death of thine own soul.
Golden Boy had left a pile of jagged lumps of concrete. She found one at her feet. She was going to kill him.
And then she was knocked sideways. A figure in black superseded her, yanked open the door, and punched repeatedly at that naked back as if she was trying to revive it, making repetitive, unrepeatable sounds, hmuph, hmumph, humph, then humph, humph, humph, as if she was digging into his neck. The screams grew into a symphony, his like an electrified pig, hers the sound of fury, and the body beneath adding a whimpering chorus. Then Sister Joseph of Aragon yanked back Francis’s head and plunged her small-bladed knife into his throat. She did it with a degree of determined attachment, seven times, and even in the frenzy of the attack avoided his eyes. The candle fell with the vibration of movement, caught at the damp hem of her gown, flared and went out. After that, it was all darkness and voices.
Anna dropped her lethal piece of concrete. She ran to the shed and dragged Therese from beneath a warm and twitching body. She heard only the sound of the incessant sobbing, which came from Joseph. Then there was a flurry of Sisters surrounding Therese, shushing her, covering her, leading her gently back to the house, three of them, masking the bloody nakedness and saying there, there, there. Someone else took Joseph, equally gently. Barbara remained, scuffing the earth with her shoe, addressing the sky with her authoritative voice, shining her torch into the open doorway. The Golden Boy closely resembled Sebastian, with his multiple wounds. She stepped inside and felt for a pulse, stepped back, with blood on her hands.
‘Fed Joseph drink, did he? Burned Matilda’s hands, did he? Did you think I was a total fool, Francis? Well, so I was, you devil. You try to rape a bride of Christ and you’re as dead as I’ve been blind.’
Her anger was shimmering hot, the voice colder than ice.
Anna stood behind her. Agnes and Margaret stood either side. Anna wanted to go to Therese, soon she would go to Therese, and even now, in the midst of everything else, she felt an overpowering relief that it was not her who had done this. Three reedy voices rose into the air, chanting. To you we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears . . . Turn then your eyes of mercy towards us. O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria . . .
They faltered on the notes. Then there was a long silence. Barbara’s torchlight did not waver. Her bosom heaved.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Do we bury him or burn him?’ She turned to the others.
A small voice, coming from nowhere, said that perhaps they should call for the priest.