booksnew/source/Bane/Bane11.txt

CHAPTER ELEVEN
According to Jimmy Allison, Arden is older than all hell. That’s
probably how he would have put it, but that’s not how he wrote. I
was amazed at the depth of his research in geography and history,
archaeology and palaeontology. He’d studied just about every
major work ever written to find out what he could about the place
of his birth. As he once explained to me, it had started with him a
long while back when there was some dispute over whether the
Priory — as it was then — was older than Westbay church, and
Jimmy’s research for the newspaper had settled the issue one way
or another.
‘It was the finding out of one fact that led to questions,’ he would
tell me.
‘The more I knew, the more I realised how little I knew.’
So it had gone. The more Jimmy Allison discovered, the clearer
became the pattern. Every now and again — and there was no clear
regulation, no set timescale — Arden went through a period of
disaster and destruction. Oh, the town stayed on, older than all
hell, but there were times when it took long to recover. There were
times when it almost never recovered.
J immy’s history starts way back when the great lava plugs were
cooling down. Ardhmor, Dumbuck, Dumbarton Rock, Dumbuie.
Those vents of towering volcanoes that had spread their ash and
dust and nutrient-rich rock all over the centre of Scotland. Just at
that junction where the basalt welled up against the old red
sandstone, a fault developed which lifted and twisted the hills into .
the highlands, while everything south was a shallow sea filled with
sharks as big as a train and shelled monstrosities that have left their
marks in the fossils of shale. Out of that sea poked the volcanoes
that heaved and thrust up from the mantle of the earth and drained
off the water and formed the basis for the level plain that would
become the Clyde valley, the central lowlands of Scotland. Arden
was right at that point where the plain butted up against the great
folded ancient mountains that marched north. There were
swamps, dragonilies as big as birds, centipedes that were six feet
long and more. Later on there were reptiles and then mammals
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and then came the great ice sheets that covered everything and
bore down the earth with such a weight that it sank. And when the
ice melted the water came back, flooding the plain again; then the
land started its slow rise with the weight gone, shuddering its way
up from the depths around the dead volcanoes. And when the land
came back, man came with it.
The man they found in the dugout canoe on the mudflats, so well
preserved by the chemicals, had been one of the early explorers.
Short, squat and strong.
Jimmy Allison’s view is that these people, who hunted mastodon
and elk, were of the same people as the Fir Bolg, the Irish tribes
that lived throughout the west.
They were stone-age people, who made spears out of rowan and
axeheads out of basalt. Their needles were bone and their
hammers were antler. They killed the bear and the wolf and their
descendants put up stone teeth to show that they had been here
and had gone.
In more recent times, only four thousand years ago, there were
more people from the west, from Ireland. The descendants of
Bryan Boru, Conchobhar and Cu-Chulain, sailing in their big
currachs up the Clyde and mixing their blood with the old people.
They cut the ring stones and started the harvest festivals, burning
their sacrifices in the wicker man at Samhain.
Then came the Romans and their legions up to the dear green
place of Glasgow and beyond, building their wall that split the
country north and south and sending raiding parties into the north
to quell those who were now the Picts, and the Scots, the blue
barbarians. Some of those legions never came back again. The
Ninth Legion has been a mystery since it left Old Kilpatrick, the
most northerly outpost of the Pax Romana, and walked their hob-
nailed boots past Dumbuck Hill and into legend. They were never
seen again.
St Columba came and St Kentigern, with their new way and their
new god, and won over the chiefs of the western isles, the warriors
of Argyll.
The Normans came next. They didn’t conquer Scotland, but
married it and wore it down that way until one Scot, Robert the
Bruce, defied English rule and sent them home to think again. The
Bruce and the Wallace won their wars, and the King of Scotland
came back to the west to live by Arden. And when he came here he
rotted away and died. He was not the only one.
The clans rose against the oppressors and the Colquhouns
marched north into Glen Fruin just above Arden and were
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massacred. There was plague, and there was famine and there
were killings.
Arden took it all and stayed put.
Every now and again, in all the records since written history
began — pieced together fact by painful fact — was the evidence that
Arden harboured some sort of curse that inflicted it with madness
or war, or sickness or death.
Kitty MacBeth called it Cu Saeng, the ravener, the evil thing
that lived among the roots, brought into this world by terrible
spells in terrible times.
The monks called it the wrath of God. Jimmy Allison and the old
people said it was a bad summer.
Whatever it was, an ancient scribe, writing on a goatskin,
summed it up in his runic script, in a word that everybody would
agree with. He called it a bane.
Father Gerry came roaring along the narrow street in his speed
machine and did a wide sweep to the other side of the road to point
the front wheel through the narrow space and right up to the front
door. I was watching through the front window as he curved in,
wrenching the throttle hard to bump the front wheel up on the
pavement and dart, in a cloud of exhaust, between the stone pillars
that held the gate with only an inch on either side of the
handlebars. The sun gleamed on the shiny black dome of his crash
helmet and reflected from the tinted visor that came down right
over his face like a huge insect eye.
In the kitchen, he unstrapped the skid-lid as he called it and took
several minutes to free himself from the expensive black leather
jacket.
‘Great jacket for the road,’ he said, ‘but too damned hot when
you stop.’
The kettle hadn’t long boiled and I poured him a cup of instant
which he drank, leaning back in the pine chair with one boot
crossed over the other on the top of the table.
‘I heard you needed last rites,’ he said after the Hrst sip.
‘That was days ago. I need the rites that come after the last ones.’
‘Well, you look all right to me. Mr Bennett told me you’d been
nearly killed}
‘By the time the story gets to the other side of town, I probably
will have been.’
‘What happened, then?’
‘Some idiot threw half a brick at me. Nearly took my head off.
At least that’s what it felt like next day.’
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‘Jimmy Allison said you were feeling better. He’s looking a bit
unsteady on his feet with that bug he’s had. Anyway, you look
none the worse for it.’
‘That’s just my image,’ I said, and he laughed.
‘Listen, what are you doing today?’
I told him I’d planned to plough through some paper work. I was
still reading Jimmy Allison’s stuff, but I hadn’t been out in the last
few days and had been toying with idea of a stroll down the shore or
up Cardross Hill.
‘I brought another helmet,’ he said. ‘Just in case you fancied
coming up to the God spot.’
‘God spot?’
‘The big house. I’ve been planning this damned harvest thing for
weeks. It’s about time I had a day off. Come up for lunch.’
He saw me hesitate. I didn’t really feel like socialising, especially
with a bunch of old priests, or eager young acolytes.
‘Aw, come on,’ he said, dark eyes flashing and mischievous. ‘It’ll
get you out of all this. And I’ll tell you what . . . we’ll throw in some
altar wine as well, blessed or unblessed.’
He nudged me on the shoulder and winked like an honest to God
car salesman.
‘Or are you still sworn off the drink after your last case of the
heebie-jeebies?’
‘OK, OK, I’ll come on up, as long as I don’t have to sit through a
service or preaching or anything like that.’
‘Come on, times are changing. Anyway, they don’t let me
preach. They think I’m the red under the bed trying to subvert the
young ones.’
‘You probably are.’
‘That’s right, and they know it. I’m the devil’s advocate. A
walking example of what a priest should never be.’
‘Amen to that.’
‘Here, and I thought you never prayed,’ he said, raising his eyes
skyward. ‘There’s more rejoicing for one sinner.’
I ‘After the last couple of weeks I’ve had, I reckon I should start,’
I said.
‘Why? Are things still not going right for you?’
‘You could say that. I don’t think things are going right for
anybody.’
‘That sounds pretty deep,’ he said, taking his boots off the table
and swinging forward towards me. ‘How do you figure that out?’
‘I know you’re going to think it’s stupid, but I think something’s
going wrong around here.’
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‘Go on,’ he urged, leaning forward even more, and staring
intently at me.
‘All right. Take the night when the lifeboat from the Cassandra
went missing at Ardmhor. They haven’t found a sign of it ever
since. Nothing, not a trace.’
‘Accidents happen at sea. They’ll find something sooner or
later.’
‘Oh, you think so? I don’t. It’s happened before, you know,
years ago, and there was never any trace. An oar, or a hat, or a
boot. Something that floats. Not nothing}
‘I’ll concede that. All right, you have a disaster that takes place
at night, in the middle of a storm, and a lifeboat goes down with all
hands. Mysterious that they haven’t found it, but not impossible.
There was a storm, you know. So now what?’
I’ll tell you what. That fishing boat disappeared in exactly the
same way, from the same stretch of water, back at the turn of the
century. Calm sea and a bank of fog, and it’s gone. Nobody knows
where. Like it’s just been spirited away. Again, not a sign.’
‘So what you’re saying is that we’ve got a Bermuda Triangle in
the firth. A local disaster zone?’
‘Wait until you hear more,’ I said. ‘We have the lifeboat, and the
fishing boat years ago. Then we have Andy Gillon. I was there
when he died. It was grotesque, horrible. But what’s been preying
on my mind ever since is what he said, just when he died. He told
me the tree jumped. And I swear to God, when I looked at that
stump, it must have. I just don’t know how that tree could have
fallen on him. It was yards away from where the roots were
planted.’
‘Wasn’t there a fatal accident inquiry?’
‘Formal verdict. Accidental death,’ I said.
‘And didn’t you mention any of this?’
‘I wasn’t called to give evidence. I wasn’t needed. But even if I
had been called, I don’t know if I would have said anything at the
time. It was just too way out. And at the time, I thought I must
have been mistaken. I’m sure Sergeant Morrison wondered, but
when it came right down to it at the inquiry I don’t think even he
wanted to say anything. I can’t blame him either. It’s just when I
look at it in the light of all those other things that I begin to see a I
pattern, and I don’t like what I’m seeing?
Gerry was about to interject, and I held up my hand to forestall
him.
‘After that came Edward Henson, who took off both his hands
with an outboard motor. His mother shot him and then she shot
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herself. And before you say anything, I’ve got to tell you that his
father lost both hands way back in 1961 in another weird accident.
And that was the year there were a whole lot of crazy things
happening in this town, although I didn’t realise it at the time.’
‘It seems to me you’ve strung together a lot of unfortunate
coincidences and come up with some sort of reason for them. You
must have seen a lot of disasters in your travels; a whole lot worse
than this, I don’t doubt. So allowing for the fact that these
accidents have happened, and it’s terrible that they have, why
should there be any reason for it?’
‘Some people believe this place is cursed,’ I told him, watching
his eyes for the merest hint of amusement.
‘Cursed? Like in black magic? That sort of thing?’
‘Yes, something like that.’
‘And you believe it?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Well, what are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that there’s something weird going on here. There
have been times when there have been chains of disasters in
Arden. Whole bunches of them one after another.
‘And they’ve been going on for a long time,’ I said, and paused
to spoon sugar in my cup.
‘They call it a Bad Summer. The old folk do. The last one was in
sixty one. Before that it was 1906. There was another in the
eighteen fifties, and yet another in 1720. And more, going back a
hell of a long way?
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I’ve spoken to a few people. And I’ve got a friend who’s spent
years studying this place.’
‘Maybe it’s just an unlucky town. But I imagine if you study any
town’s history you’ll find terrible disasters, natural and otherwise}
‘Maybe you will. But in the old times, they believed there was
some sort of creature, a demon or whatever, that woke up and
haunted this place, and caused accidents and death.’
The look he shot me was one of total incredulity.
‘Demons, eh? And you an agnostic! Do you really believe in all
this?’
‘Listen, Gerry, I don’t know what to believe. I don’t want to
make a complete arse of myself, but I’ve got to tell you, I feel
everything going wrong. I’ve got a horrible feeling of oppression,
as if I’m at the centre of a cyclone, and just waiting for it to hit and
blow me away. I know that sounds crazy. Really I do. But I’ve got a
real bad feeling inside me that something terrible is going to
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happen.’
‘Maybe it’s you,’ he said, softly. ‘Maybe everything that’s
happened has unsettled you.’
‘That’s a nice way of saying I’m cracking up.’
‘No, it’s not. In your job you report on disaster. My job is to
handle it when it happens, and try to prevent it happening. I think
you may just be under a lot of strain. I’ve seen it happen. You need
to give yourself a break, and just stop thinking about all this for a
while. If you don’t, then you will start to crack up. Believe me, it’s
hard enough, even for a priest, to hold on to his spiritual integrity
with what the world can throw at us. We see the disasters all the
time, at first hand, and every time we ask: how does He let it
happen? But they happen all right. No curses, no demons. Just a
crazy world and too many crazy people.
‘You’re not crazy. Not even nearly crazy. But you could do with
a break. ’ He pushed himself up from his seat. ‘Come on, let’s go for
a wander and get some fresh air. Nature’s best cure.’
Gerry spent ten minutes lacing and strapping himself back into
his splendid leather jacket. He was dark and good looking and I
could readily imagine the ladies of the parish, no matter to which
denomination they leaned, seeking out the young priest for
spiritual comfort. Or any comfort they thought might be available.
He looked charming and roguish and clean cut and piratical all at
the same time. The one thing he did not look like was a priest. I
wondered why he had become one, and asked him straight out.
‘Haven’t a clue. I just woke up one morning when I was sixteen
and knew that’s what I was going to be. I hadn’t thought about it
before. I’ve thought about it since, though. Wouldn’t be human if I
didn’t. My mother was delighted. Dad was furious for a while. I
was supposed to take over the business. He’s as rich as sin, you
know. But they let me go ahead.’
‘How about the vows?’
‘Ah, you mean the vow. The big one?’
‘I suppose I do.’
‘We1l, to be frank, it’s like chronic haemorrhoids. A real pain in
the ass. And all the time. Being a priest doesn’t interfere with your
hormone levels. It just makes them more acute.’
I laughed, and he joined in ruefully. ‘It doesn’t help to have this
film star’s face, either,’ he said, still grinning. ‘The number of the
blue rinsed brigade who have told me it’s a total waste, you
wouldn’t believe.’
‘And you’ve never . . . ?’
‘Broken my vows? Have you ever revealed a source? That’s
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between me and Him upstairs,’ he said, bobbing his head to
indicate the direction of the third party. ‘And He’s not telling?
When he was finally strapped in, he pulled on his gauntlets which
completed the slightly menacing ensemble, and clapped me on the
shoulder.
‘I won’t ask you to trust in the Lord,’ he said, ‘because that
would be a waste of time. Just trust in yourself. Don’t dwell on
things. They give you headaches and constipation.
‘Remember the final commandment}
‘And what’s that?’
‘Thou shalt not give a damn about things you can’t do anything
about.’
‘Up yours too, padre,’ I said, returning his cheery smile.
Before I knew it I was sitting on the back of the big Honda and
roaring behind the Prince of Darkness past Mr Bennett’s
smallholding on the smooth tarmac that led to the seminary.
He handled that machine as if he had a death wish, but his
control was superb. We slewed into the gravel forecourt of the big
ivy—covered main building, kicking up half a ton of small stones. I’d
left my breath and my stomach a quarter of a mile behind. Gerry
took off his helmet and his face was flushed and alive. He might
have made his vows of chastity and obedience, but he hadn’t made
any promises about speed.
‘I’ll probably walk back,’ I said, when I gathered enough saliva
to make my voice work again.
‘Rubbish. I was only doing seventy. That beast goes all the way
up to a hundred and forty.’
‘Not with me in the saddle. There’s a law against suicide.’
‘Trust me. If we come off, I’ll hear your confession on the way up
and give you absolution on the way down again} He was loving
this. My knees were being less than supportive.
‘And who’ll hear your confession? For murder.’
‘God takes care of his own,’ he said with a laugh. ‘That’s
sacrilege, I suppose, but I hate waste, and it would be a waste of
that lovely machine not to let her go now and again. The good Lord
gave me good reflexes and told me to go forth and rev up. And if
the monsignor heard me talking now I’d be on bread and water on
my knees for a week.’
‘Make it a month, you irreverent young scoundrel,’ came a voice
from the arched doorway, ‘and clean your mouth out in the font on
the way in.’
Standing in the dappled light against the worn recl sandstone was
a tall, thin priest with a serious, forbidding face that was deeply
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creased on each side of a sharp, hooked nose. His hair was iron
grey and cut short in what would have been a navy crew-cut if it had
been taken any further. He had strong dark eyebrows and deep set
eyes that were hidden under the shadow of his brow, and his
mouth, between those two furrows, seemed set in a line of grim
and un-fun-loving determination.
` He looked like how I would have imagined a latter-day
Torquemada would have appeared. Self—righteous, virtuous, a
man with God’s message, and with God’s personal permission to
nail it home.
‘Monsignor Cronin, meet Nick Ryan,’ Gerry said brightly,
totally ignoring the stern-sounding admonition of his religious
superior. ‘I’ve invited him up for a look around the place, seeing
how I’m bored out of my brains running your daft harvest festival}
The monsignor’s eyebrows arched up, hauling away the great
shadows under the crags and revealing a bright blue pair of eyes
that fastened on me. I was prepared for the wrath of God to come
and strike one or possibly both of us.
What I got was a deep rumbling laugh that was totally out of
place in such a forbidding figure. It came storming up from
somewhere deep, like a basso-profundo Santa Claus, shaking the
whole frame of the man in the black cassock.
‘Bored‘? Bored? I’ll tell you young feller, you’ve got the best job
in the place,’ he boomed. ‘There’s priests here would fast for a
month for the life of Riley you’ve got.’
I couldn’t have been more wrong in my at-first-sight assessment
of Monsignor Cronin, christened Michael, but known as AJ. for
reasons fairly obvious to everyone but the students. He was a
hugely humorous, witty man who, I was soon to discover, took
great delight in almost everything he came across. He had a face
that would scare an orphanage but a sunny nature that seemed
incapable of taking offence or seeing anything but the best in
people.
‘Come away in, Nick. And you too, you rapscallion,’ he roared
in his great opera singer’s voice.
The vigorous handshake all but jarred my shoulder from its
sockets. The handshake and the voice were completely incon-
gruous in the slender figure. Both belonged to someone ten stones
heavier. Underneath that elongated robe, I assumed the
monsignor must be all bone and steel.
I heard Gerry snigger as I almost stumbled under the friendly pat
on the back and entered into the atrium. It was clean and smelled
not of incense, as I’d fancied, but of flowers. There were stacks of
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them around a little votive statue to the virgin, beautiful chrysan-
themums, fuchsia and freesia, arranged with loving care.
A.] . ordered Gerry to give me the grand tour and disappeared in
a brisk swish of black, his long legs carrying him along the corridor
at a swift pace.
‘Terrif`rc guy,’ Gerry said. ‘He scared the hell out of me the first
time I saw him. I thought "God, what have I let myself in for?" ’
‘I thought he looked like Torquemada when he stepped out of
the doorway,’ I said.
‘Oh, that’s beautiful. He’ll love that one.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ I warned.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it. Old A.] . is aware that his face was
never his fortune. He says it has outlived four bodies. His heart’s
his best feature. Big enough for all of us and more besides. He’s a
real hero.’
‘How do you mean, a hero?’
‘]ust that. He’s my hero. Everybody’s hero. I mean, he’s the
boss here, and short of just about a papal decree, he can do what he
likes here. But he treats everybody so well, from the youngest
student up. He sees good in us all. He loves us collectively and
individually. That’s what I call a hero.’
Gerry paused for a moment, then laughed to himself. ‘I suppose
that’s the kind of guy I want to be when I grow up. But A.] .
declares that I never will.’
The guided tour was a delight. As a youngster, I had trespassed
on the seminary’s extensive grounds, stealing fruit from the
orchards and trapping the occasional rabbit. To me it was just a big
school-type building with a farm around it, but it really was a
model of self—sufficiency. There were acres of potatoes in Hower
and almost ready for a main crop harvest, and lines of turnips
mottled yellow and green in the light breeze. The orchard was
smaller than I recalled as a boy, but still huge, and still filled with
apple and pear trees that were getting heavy with fruit. There were
plums turning that deep red of late summer and a vast greenhouse
filled with an ancient twisted vine that was bearded with great
black grapes. Not a weed dared poke through that hallowed soil in
the walled orchard. Beyond the wall, fields of corn and barley
gleamed gold in the sun in a bountiful harvest. In the distance, a big
red combine harvester was cutting its swathe through the gold and
shooting the ears on to a massive mound in the truck that ground
alongside. There were men working in the fields, on tractors and
on foot, young and old, sweating as the sun rose high towards
noon.
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We took a lane down to the mill at the Kilmalid Burn where a
wheel turned slowly in a sparkling crescent of bright water. In the
mill an old priest delighted in showing us the ancient wooden
machinery of cogs and wheels that turned the giant millstones in an
unceasing iiow of line iiour. He pointed out the beech and oak, the
ash and elm woods that were used to make the individual parts of
the mill’s elaborate workings. It was old and efficient and
beautiful.
‘Be sure to be at the harvest festival,’ said the dust-covered
priest. ‘Father Lynn promises to be working overtime to make the
best bread you ever tasted from all of this,’ he said, gesturing to the
bulging sacks with a white hand. His urging brought back the taste
of that fresh bread in those long ago harvest festivals. Bread still
warm from the ovens, delicious and soft where the butter melted
through. I almost watered at the mouth.
At twelve o’clock a bell rang in the far away tower in the main
building and in the fields, everybody stopped, dropped their tools
and switched off engines and got down on their knees in the field
and faced the slender cross that topped the tower. Gerry, who had
changed into a pair of cavalry twill smart trousers, did the same,
regardless of the dust underfoot.
I shuffled about a bit from one foot to another, embarrassed with
indecision and the feeling of being the odd man out, then
compromised by sitting down on a hummock of grass. Gerry
turned and iiashed me a quick smile, then went back to the serious
business of praying. After a few minutes, he got up and dusted his
knees off, sending up little light clouds.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I forgot to tell you about the
Angelus. It’s a bit of a tradition here. Everything stops at twelve.’
‘You do that every day?’ I asked.
‘Only on the premises. We don’t get down on our knees if we’re
elsewhere, although we’re supposed to say it to ourselves no
matter where. But here on the farm, it’s just part of the way of life.’
‘What happens if it rains?’
‘Well, we don’t actually have to grovel in the mud. But some of
the others do just that. It’s their own way.’
We made our way down towards the seminary, and Gerry
pointed out interesting parts of the farm. The Jersey cows with
their huge promising udders; the big Aberdeen Angus beef bull
that snorted and stamped in a paddock of its own. He explained
that the farm itself was a mini—ecology of its own. No added
chemicals, no preservatives. They made honey and jam, and flour
and cheese and butter, and took care of their land as the priests and
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monks had done for centuries before them.
Lunch in the big, bright refectory was plain, but hearty. A good
thick broth, followed by exquisite steak pie — and if you have never
heard steak pie described thus, believe it — with new potatoes
covered in butter, and fresh peas and carrots. Everything, I was
assured, was completely home-grown and organic. There was a
delicious red wine which the monsignor said was elderberry, but
tasted like a full-bodied French vintage, and which he swore he’d
made himself and bottled some years back. I had two glasses and
that was enough, even though I wasn’t driving. It had a kick like a
jack—hammer.
During lunch, A..I. insisted I tell him all about my adventures, as
he called them, and I regaled him with one or two tall tales from my
roving days.
He laughed uproariously at all the funny bits and never seemed
to notice how every time he did so a wave of silence swept through
the ranks of young, clean shaven faces at the long trestle tables
down each side of the refectory. When the monsignor’s great
booming laugh bounced off the plain walls, the low, murmured
conversations halted abruptly and a few of the more inquisitive
turned to see what the hilarity was all about. I gathered that A..I.
must be the light entertainment in amongst all that serious talking
that seemed to be going on among the recruits.
The monsignor countered with a few tales of his own from
equally far—ilung places where he’d worked. He parried any light
probes into his former profession with quick wit, telling me he’d
joined the staff of the Great Brigadier, and expected a transfer any
year now.
Later, he asked me to join him in the flower garden, which, it
transpired, was one of his passions. He, I discovered, had grown
the flowers for the array around the Virgin’s statue, and had
arranged them himself. When he told me that, I suddenly got a
picture of a Samurai warrior, hard, and tough, and deadly if
necessary, but with a love of beauty and a delicateness of thought
and a gentleness of nature. He seemed a man who had come to
terms.
As we strolled through the gardens, the tall priest pointed out his
ilowers that burgeoned in riots of colour. He knew all the names,
and their Latin classification too, explaining the relationships
between the varieties, their differences in colour and perfume; I
occasionally nipping off a bud or a leaf as we passed. Walking
through the garden, I wondered what I was doing here. All right, I
had accepted a casual invitation , then reluctantly allowed myself to
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be virtually hijacked by a suicidal, but likeable maniac, and found
myself surrounded by a bunch of priests who I’d never met before.
And now I was strolling in a flower garden with a tall, ex-
commando who was explaining the joys and rewards of horti-
culture. It may be strange, but I was enjoying myself. For a short
afternoon I seemed to have found a hideaway from the anxiety and
chill that had crept up on me. It was as if that cyclone had died
down and dissipated, leaving me in a calm stretch of clear water.
A.J.’s voice, deep and resonant, was telling me something which,
in my momentary reverie, I missed.
‘Pardon?’ I begged.
‘Our dark knight mentioned to me that he thought you might
need some help?’
So that was the reason for the hijack.
‘Dark knight‘?’ I dodged gauchely.
‘Father Gerry. Our caped crusader.’ He wasn’t fooled.
‘He seems like a good guy,’ I said.
‘Oh, he is. One of the best. I worry about him, you know}
‘Why, in case he crashes that bike?’
‘No, I trust in his reflexes and hope for the best. He’s so gifted
and dedicated. The motorbike is just his way — his lock on the land
outside the cloister, his bridge to the other side. If he didn’t have
that I don’t know what he would do.’
‘Why do you worry about him, then?’
‘Doing too much, working too hard. He never stops. I can’t stop
him. He just keeps pushing himself, and tries to carry everybody
else. I gave him this harvest festival thing to organise, hoping it
might make him drop one or two other things he’d got involved in,
but no, he just added it to the rest. I fear he’s going to burn himself
out. ’ The monsignor paused to pluck a tiny white flower from a low
cluster. He gave it to me and told me to smell it. It had a scent like
wild honey.
‘Alyssum,’ he said. ‘Delightful, isn’t it?’ It was.
‘I expect he’ll settle down, but until then I’ll have to keep
praying for him, otherwise he’ll exhaust all his energies and his
talents. I’d hate to lose such a gifted and dedicated man.’
The tall priest turned and beamed his blue eyes from under the
great crags of his eyebrows.
‘I gather he’s adopted you as one of his causes. I asked him to
bring you up to lunch.’
‘I think I know what you’re talking about. I told Gerry
something the other day which should perhaps be left unsaid.’
‘Yes, he told me what you said, and he asked me what advice he
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should give you. On the question of curses and what-not.’
‘He thought I was heading for a nervous breakdownf
‘Yes, I imagine he did. And does. I told him to bring you here for
some peace and quiet.’
‘That was really nice of you. I’ve enjoyed myself a lot,’ I told
him, genuinely.
‘T hat must have come as a surprise,’ he said, with uncanny
accuracy.
‘Well, I suppose you’re right. I expected a lot of prayers and
religious tedium.’
‘That makes two of us. I expected that when I came here too,’ he
said, and laughed again.
When he stopped laughing, his face went all serious again. ‘Tell
me about this curse,’ he said quietly.
‘Why do you want to know?’ I asked.
‘Let’s say I’m curious,’ he said, and one side of his mouth turned
up in a half smile.
‘Do you believe in curses?’ I countered.
‘I believe in a lot of things. Like you, I’ve travelled, and I’ve
done some things that man shouldn’t do to man. All a long and
misguided time ago, of course. But I believe in good and I believe
in evil.’
‘I’m not sure what I believe in.’
‘I also believe in history. And we have a lot of it here. This place
has been inhabited by religious orders since the time of St
Kentigern — St Mungo to the Glaswegians. They kept records, you
know.’
‘Records of what?’
‘Oh, the usual things. Births, deaths, marriages. Harvests.
Battles. The usual comings and goings. Very efficient record-
keepers, were the old monks. Had a mania for writing things
down.’
‘Go on,’ I urged.
‘We have them all here. In our library. It’s a hobby of mine,
since I’ve been here, to acquaint myself with everything that’s gone
before. And in reading through all those old records, I’ve
discovered that this place has had more than its fair share of
turbulent times.
‘I’ve got a roll of parchment skin that was written by a monk who
was one of the few survivors of a famine in the seventh century
here. He spoke of a plague of madness that afflicted the villagers,
and said that the survivors had gathered here in the chapel to
escape the curse. It is written in Latin mixed with Gaelic, so I dare
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say he was a local man. He said the ravener had awoken to steal the
minds and souls of the people. At the time he wrote, there were
sixty survivors in a village of seven hundred.’
‘The bane,’ I said.
‘Yes. That’s how he described it. A bane.’
‘And do you take it seriously?’
‘Let me say I don’t close my mind to anything.’
‘I’m surprised,’ I told him.
‘Oh, don’t be surprised. I’m not superstitious, or a religious
fanatic. Suffice it to say that I’m a man who has seen the effects of
both sides and have chosen one. I believe in good, and I believe in
evil, and there are many things that I cannot explain. And the trail
of devastation that has centred on this little place is one of the
things that I cannot explain.
‘But if I believe in a good, and a God, then I must believe in the
converse.’
‘An evil force‘?’
‘If you will. The archbishop would probably have me sent to
Rome for decontamination, so I’d be obliged if this conversation
was kept strictly off the record, for the moment, as you journalists
like to put it.’
‘I don’t think anybody would believe it.’
‘Quite.’
He paused again, gathering his thoughts.
‘Father Gerry said you were concerned about some recent
happenings.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Well, if you’re not in a hurry, sit down and tell me,’ he said,
taking my arm gently and leading me to a rustic bench that had
been lovingly put together with natural branches of yew, and we
sat down.
I told him everything. He just sat and nodded encouragingly as I
started right at the beginning, the dreams, the deaths, the
disappearances. My conversation with Kitty MacBeth and my
study of Jimmy Allison’s work. The dig and the discovery at
Ardhmor. The legends, and the history. He soaked it all up like a
computer assimilating data. At the end of it I asked: ‘Do you think
I’m cracking up?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’
The monsignor stood up when I had finished, and we started to
wander around the flower beds again in the bright sunlight. The
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bees were toiling busily amongst the incandescent hues of the
flowers in that little haven of serenity where I had spilled my soul
about things that could not possibly be true in that place and on
that day.
‘Cu Saeng,’ I said. ‘Could such a thing be true?’
‘Is there life beyond death?’
‘I don’t know,’ I confessed.
‘I do. Otherwise I would not be a priest. But I don’t believe that
we have the monopoly on such knowledge. Christianity is such a
young religion. But my God is not young, and neither is man in this
place.
‘If good and evil existed from the start, then even primitives
were entitled to believe and worship. It does not matter to me, nor,
I suppose, to God, what they called Him, or any manifestation of
Him. The same goes for the dark side, and when a minion of evil is
in the world, it is difficult to get him out again.’
‘You believe that?’
‘Read your Bible laddie, with an open mind. I don’t expect
anybody to take in the Old Testament word for word. But the spirit
of it must be true. The old legends have a basis in fact. Arthur
found the secret of melting iron, and gave his people the sword that
vanquished. Wotan climbed his tree to flee the wolves and
hallucinated in thirst and became Odin. The legends couch what is
true. Jesus Christ struggled with the Devil himself, and the
Gazarene swine became lemmings.
‘I ask you, what, under God’s miracle that we call life, might not
be true? Does the old battle still rage, or have good and evil so
pervaded man that all is grey?’
‘I don’t know what to believe,’ I admitted.
‘Neither do I. But I am uneasy about what not to believe, ’ he said
vehemently.
‘I’ve heard the phrase "Bad Summer" before. Twice this year,
from old people to whom I’ve given extreme unction, on their
death beds. I too am aware of what has happened in this place of
late, and it so resembles other times that I fear there is more than
coincidence.
‘That is why I am talking to you, alone, of this. Because I am
afraid that there is something bad that I must iight, and I am
considering how best to fight it.’
‘You mean with prayer?’
‘With whatever. I cannot say your Cu Saeng exists and that it is
an evil entity. But I can say that there have been times when this »
place has suffered with an intensity and an agony that has recurred
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like a dormant disease, and there is something in my heart that tells
me that the illness is coming back with a vengeance.’
‘That just about sums it up for me.’
‘There is another reason that I asked Father Gerry to bring you
up here,’ he said, staring intently at me.
‘I dreamt about you two nights ago.’
‘About me?’
‘Yes.’
‘But we have never met before.’
‘That’s true. But I don’t ask for a reason. I just accept the gift.’
‘What did you dream?’
‘I dreamed that you were standing by the bed of a stream with no
water. Not as you are now, but as a child. But I knew who you
were, and I knew that you needed my help, you and the others. A
boy and a girl. There was a wind that was blowing trees down and I
had to get to you to give my blessing, but my feet were stuck in mud
and I couldn’t reach you before the darkness came down and
swallowed you up.
‘I awoke in fear that I had failed.’
I stared at him in surprise.
‘What were the others like?’ I asked, stupidly.
‘A girl with golden hair, and a boy with dark eyes and a bow in
his hand. But I knew you.
‘When Father Gerry spoke to me of you, I had a certainty that
you were the child I had failed to reach. There’s a miracle for you.
When I met you today, I realised the truth of it.
‘That’s why I insisted that he bring you here to see me, especially
when he told me of your troubles, and asked how he could help
you.’
We had reached the wooden doorway of the walled garden, and
the monsignor opened it to let me through. The gravel crunched
under our feet as we walked towards the arched doorway of the
main building.
‘Now I’ve been given another chance,’ the priest said as we
walked inside and into the shade where the little statue of the
Virgin was enthroned in beauty. He beckoned me over to a little
font set in the wall and dipped his hand in. I could hear the splash as
he raised his dripping lingers to my head and marked a cross on my
forehead.
‘Bear this blessing and take strength in the name of the Father,
the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ he said with a strength of feeling and
such conviction that even the agnostic in me felt the power. It was ‘
like being charged with force.
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The water dripped down between my eyes, but I ignored it. It
was a strange moment, one that I will never forget, ever. At that
moment there was a bond between me and that tough old, joyful,
fearful, grizzled priest that was more than words could describe.
He had given me something. I didn’t quite know what, but it was
something special, his backing, and the backing of Whoever was
backing him.
‘Thank you, father,’ I said.
‘Call me A.J. ,’ he said, chuckling. ‘They all do behind my back.
But remember, not a word to a soul, or they’ll drum me out of the
Brownies. ’ He had shifted his position from being deadly serious to
devil-may-care with one deft flick of his thumb over my forehead,
and the spell was broken, as if the previous conversation about
things beyond the reach of man had never taken place.
I walked home. Gerry had disappeared somewhere and had not
come back to give me a hair—raising ride home, for which I was duly
thankful. As I strolled past the pillars which marked the entrance
to the long drive, I thought about what the monsignor had said to
me. Really, it was hard to believe that he had actually said it. He
had told me that I was not cracking up, not having a nervous
breakdown. He, a man of God, who was in control of dozens of
young men who wished to become priests, had actually put some
credence in the curse, the bane.
I didn’t know whether to be elated that I had a fellow traveller,
someone who was as rational as anybody can be, but who was
prepared to say he believed there might be something happening in
this place that was way beyond reality. I didn’t know whether to be
happy, or to be truly shit scared.
My little, and altogether strange, talk with the priest, had left me
a little bewildered, but a little stronger. Something bad was
happening, something I couldn’t identify, no matter what I’d been
told. I still didn’t really believe in the Cu Saeng, or demons or
spirits. But like the priest, I had a strange certainty of foreboding
badness seeping into Arden. Now I had an ally in that certainty.
Whether this made things better, or a whole lot worse now that
somebody else had put credence in it, I was unsure.
As I walked in the sunlight, the water bottle banged against my
hip.
Monsignor Cronin had blessed me, then taken me to his study
and given me the old, worn, canvas covered bottle.
‘Here take it. It’s a memento of mine from the bad old days. It
has seen me through a lot of dry spells. We get our font water from .
the spring at Strowan’s Well. I’ve blessed you. Pass it on to the
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I
others if you can. I hope you won’t need it, but it can’t harm
anybody.’
I took it, a bit nonplussed, and thanked him. I hadn’t a clue what
I was supposed to do with it then, but hindsight is a great clearer of
mysteries.
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