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<h1>11</h1>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>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
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<em>never</em> recovered.</p>
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<p>Jimmy's history starts way back when the great volcanoes were cooling down. Ardmhor, Dumbuck, Dumbarton Rock, Dumbuie.</p>
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<p>Those vents of towering volcanoes that had spread their ash and dust 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 fossil shapes in the shale. Out of that sea poked the volcanoes that thrust up from the mantle of the earth and drained off the water to form the level plain that would become the central lowlands of Scotland.</p>
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<p>Arden was right at that point where the plain butted up against the ancient mountains that marched north. There were swamps, dragonflies as big as birds, centipedes that were six feet long and more. Later on there were reptiles and then mammals and then came the 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.</p>
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<p>The man they found in the dugout canoe on the mudflats, so well preserved, had been one of the early explorers. Short, squat and strong.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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 markers to show that they had been here and had gone.</p>
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<p>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 curraghs 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.</p>
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<p>Then came the Romans and their legions, building their wall that split the country north and south and sending raiding parties into the hills to quell the Picts, and the Scots, those blue-painted 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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 sickened and died. He was not the only one.</p>
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<p>The clans rose against the oppressors and the Colquhouns marched north into Glen Fruin just above Arden and were massacred. There was plague, and there was famine and there were killings.</p>
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<p>Arden took it all and stayed put.</p>
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<p>Every now and again, in all the records since written history began - pieced together fact by careful fact - was the evidence that Arden harboured some sort of curse that inflicted it with madness or war, or sickness or death.</p>
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<p>Kitty MacBeth called it
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<em>Cu Saeng</em>, the ravener, the evil entity that lived under the roots, brought into this world by terrible spells in terrible times.
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</p>
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<p>The monks called it the wrath of God. Jimmy Allison and the old people said it was a <em>bad summer</em>.</p>
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<p>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
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<em>Bane</em>.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>I was watching through the 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 with only an inch on either side of the handlebars. The sun gleamed on the shiny black helmet and reflected from the tinted visor that came down over his face like a huge insect eye.</p>
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<p>In the kitchen, he unstrapped the skid-lid as he called it and took several minutes to free himself from the black leather jacket.</p>
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<p>'Great gear for the road,' he said, 'but too damned hot when you stop.'</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>'I heard you needed last rites,' he said after the first sip.</p>
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<p>'That was days ago. I need the rites that come after the last ones.'</p>
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<p>'Well, you look all right to me. Mr Bennett told me you'd been nearly killed.'</p>
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<p>'By the time the story gets to the other side of town, I probably will have been.'</p>
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<p>'What happened, then?'</p>
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<p>'Some idiot threw half a brick at me. Nearly took my head off. At least that's what it felt like next day.'</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>
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'That's just my image,' I said, and he laughed.</p>
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<p>'Listen, what are you doing today?'</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>'I brought another helmet,' he said. 'Just in case you fancied coming up to the God spot.'</p>
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<p>'God spot?'</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>He saw me hesitate. I didn't really feel like socialising, especially with a bunch of old priests, or eager young acolytes.</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>He nudged me on the shoulder and winked like an honest to God car salesman.</p>
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<p>'Or are you still sworn off the drink after your last case of the heebie-jeebies?'</p>
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<p>'Okay, I'll come on up, as long as I don't have to sit through a service or preaching or anything like that.'</p>
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<p>'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 youth.'</p>
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<p>'You probably are.'</p>
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<p>
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'That's right, and they know it. I'm the devil's advocate. A walking example of what a priest should never be.'</p>
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<p>'Amen to that.'</p>
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<p>'And here was I thinking you never prayed,' he said, raising his eyes skyward. 'There's more rejoicing for one sinner.'</p>
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<p>'After the last couple of weeks I've had, I reckon I should start,' I said.</p>
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<p>'Why? Are things still not going right for you?'</p>
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<p>'You could say that. I don't think things are going right for anybody.'</p>
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<p>'That sounds pretty deep,' he said, taking his boots off the table and swinging forward towards me. 'How do you figure that out?'</p>
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<p>'I know you're going to think it's stupid, but I think something's going wrong around here.'</p>
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<p>'Go on,' he urged, leaning forward even more, giving me his full attention.</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>'Accidents happen at sea. They'll find something sooner or later.'</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>
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'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. It was a bad storm, you know. So now what?'</p>
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<p>
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'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.'</p>
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<p>'So what you're saying is that we've got a Bermuda Triangle in the firth. A local disaster zone?'</p>
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<p>'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 bloody awful 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, 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.'</p>
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<p>
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'Wasn't there a fatal accident inquiry?'</p>
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<p>'Formal verdict. Accidental death,' I said.</p>
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<p>'And didn't you mention any of this?'</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>'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 pattern, and I don't like what I'm seeing.'</p>
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<p>Gerry was about to interject, and I held up my hand to forestall him.</p>
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<p>'After that came Edward Henson, who took off both his hands with an outboard motor. His mother shot him and then she shot herself. And before you say anything, I've got to tell you that his father lost both hands way back in 1991 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.'</p>
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<p>'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?'</p>
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<p>'Some people believe this place is cursed,' I told him, watching his eyes for the merest hint of amusement.</p>
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<p>'Cursed? Like in black magic? That sort of thing?'</p>
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<p>'Yes, something like that.'</p>
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<p>'And you believe it?'</p>
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<p>'I didn't say that.'</p>
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<p>'Well, what <em>are</em> you saying?'</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>'And they've been going on for a long time,' I said, pausing to spoon sugar in my coffee.</p>
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<p>'They call it a Bad Summer. The old folk do. The last one was in ninety 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?</p>
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<p>'How do you know all this?'</p>
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<p>
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'I've spoken to a few people. And I've got a friend who's spent years studying this place.'</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>The look he shot me was one of total incredulity.</p>
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<p>'Demons, eh? And you an agnostic! Do you really believe in all this?'</p>
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<p>'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 real 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 bad is going to happen.'</p>
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<p>'Maybe it's you,' he said, qyietly. 'Maybe everything that's happened has unsettled you.'</p>
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<p>
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'That's a nice way of saying I'm cracking up.'</p>
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<p>'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
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<em>will</em> 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.
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</p>
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<p>
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'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 ride and get some fresh air. Nature's best cure.'</p>
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<p>Gerry spent five 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>
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'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.'</p>
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<p>'How about the vows?'</p>
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<p>'Ah, you mean <em>the</em> vow. The big one?'</p>
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<p>'I suppose I do.'</p>
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<p>'Well, 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 hormones. It just makes them feel more acute.'</p>
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<p>I laughed, and he joined in ruefully. 'It doesn't help to have this 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.'</p>
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<p>'And you've never . . . ?'</p>
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<p>'Broken my vows? Have you ever revealed a source? That's between me and Him upstairs,' he said, bobbing his head to indicate the direction of the third party. 'And He's not telling.'</p>
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<p>When he was finally strapped in, he pulled on his gauntlets which completed the slightly menacing ensemble, and clapped me on the shoulder.</p>
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<p>'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. And remember the final commandment.'</p>
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<p>'And what's that?'</p>
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<p>'Thou shalt not worry about things you can't do anything about.'</p>
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<p>'Up yours too, padre,' I said. 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.</p>
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<p>
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'I'll probably walk back,' I said, when I gathered enough saliva to make my voice work again.</p>
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<p>'Rubbish. I was only doing seventy. That beast goes all the way up to a hundred and eighty.'</p>
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<p>'Not with me in the saddle. There's a law against suicide.'</p>
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<p>'Trust me. If we come off, I'll hear your confession on the way up and give you absolution on the way down again.</p>
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<p>'And who'll hear your confession? For manslaughter.'</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>'Make it a month, young blasphemer,' came a voice from the arched doorway, 'and clean your mouth out in the font on the way in.'</p>
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<p>Standing in the dappled light against the worn sandstone was a tall, thin priest with a serious, forbidding face that was deeply 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 and his mouth, between those two furrows, seemed set in a line of grim and un-fun-loving determination.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>The monsignor's eyebrows arched up, hauling away the 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.</p>
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<p>What I got was a deep rumbling laugh that was totally out of place in such a forbidding figure.</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>I couldn't have been more wrong in my at-first-sight assessment of Monsignor Cronin, christened Michael, but known as A.J., for reasons fairly obvious to anyone who reads good books. 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.</p>
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<p>'Come away in, Nick. And you too, you rapscallion,' he roared in his deep opera singer's voice.</p>
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<p>The vigorous handshake all but jarred my shoulder from its sockets. The handshake and the voice were completely incongruous 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.</p>
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<p>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 them around a little votive statue to the virgin, beautiful chrysanthemums, fuchsia and freesia, arranged with loving care.</p>
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<p>A.J. 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.</p>
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<p>'Terrific 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?'</p>
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<p>'I thought he looked like Torquemada when he stepped out of the doorway,' I said.</p>
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<p>'Oh, that's beautiful. He'll love that one.'</p>
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<p>
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'Don't you dare,' I warned.</p>
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<p>'Oh, don't worry about it. Old A.J. 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.'</p>
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<p>'How do you mean, a hero?'</p>
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<p>'Just 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. 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.'</p>
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<p>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.J. swears I never will.'</p>
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<p>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 ripening potatoes 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.</p>
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<p>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 moved alongside. There were men working in the fields, on tractors and on foot, young and old, sweating as the sun rose high towards noon.</p>
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<p>We took a lane down to the mill at the stream where a wheel turned slowly in a sparkling crescent of bright water. Inside an old priest delighted in showing us the ancient wooden machinery of cogs and wheels that turned the giant millstones. 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.</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>After a few minutes, he got up and dusted his knees off, sending up little light clouds.</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>'You do that every day?' I asked.</p>
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<p>'Only on the premises. We don't get down on our knees if we're elsewhere, although we're supposed to say a prayer no matter where. But here on the farm, it's just part of the way of life.'</p>
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<p>'What happens if it rains?'</p>
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<p>'Well, we don't actually have to grovel in the mud. But some of the others do just that. It's their own way.'</p>
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<p>We walked 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 monks had done for centuries before them.</p>
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<p>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 drowned 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.</p>
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<p>During lunch, AJ 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.</p>
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<p>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 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 AJ must be the light entertainment in amongst all that serious talking that seemed to be going on among the recruits.</p>
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<p>The monsignor countered with a few tales of his own from equally far-flung 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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 nature. He seemed a man who had come to terms.</p>
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<p>As we strolled through the gardens, the tall priest pointed out his flowers that burgeoned in riots of colour. Walking through the garden, I wondered what I was doing here. All right, I had accepted a casual invitation , then reluctantly allowed myself to be virtually hijacked by a suicidal, but likeable maniac, and found myself surrounded by a bunch of priests who I'd never met before.</p>
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<p>And now I was in a flower garden with an ex-commando who was explaining the joys and rewards of horticulture. 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.</p>
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<p>AJ was telling me something which, in my momentary reverie, I missed.</p>
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<p>
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'Pardon?' I begged.</p>
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<p>'Our dark knight mentioned to me that he thought you might need some help?'</p>
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<p>So that was the reason for the hijack.</p>
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<p>'Dark knight'?' I dodged gauchely.</p>
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<p>'Father Gerry. Our caped crusader.' He wasn't fooled.</p>
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<p>'He seems like a good guy,' I said.</p>
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<p>'Oh, he is. One of the best. I worry about him, you know.'</p>
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<p>'Why, in case he crashes that bike?'</p>
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<p>'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 world outside the cloister, his bridge to the other side. If he didn't have that I don't know what he would do.'</p>
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<p>'Why do you worry about him, then?'</p>
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<p>'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. I fear he's going to burn himself out.</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>The priest turned and beamed from under the craggy eyebrows.</p>
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<p>'I gather he's adopted you as one of his causes. I asked him to bring you up to lunch.'</p>
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<p>'I think I know what you're talking about. I told Gerry something which should perhaps be left unsaid.'</p>
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<p>'Yes, he told me what you said, and he asked me what advice he should give you. On the question of curses and what-not.'</p>
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<p>'He thought I was heading for a nervous breakdown.'</p>
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<p>'Yes, I imagine he did. And does. I told him to bring you here for some peace and quiet.'</p>
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<p>'That was really nice of you. I've enjoyed myself a lot,' I told him, genuinely.</p>
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<p>'That must have come as a surprise,' he said, with uncanny accuracy.</p>
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<p>'Well, I suppose you're right. I expected a lot of prayers and religious tedium.'</p>
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<p>'That makes two of us. I expected that when I came here too,' he said, and laughed again.</p>
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<p>Then his face went all serious again. 'Tell me about this curse,' he said quietly.</p>
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<p>'Why do you want to know?' I asked.</p>
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<p>
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'Let's say I'm curious,' he said, and one side of his mouth turned up in a half smile.</p>
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<p>'Do you believe in curses?' I countered.</p>
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<p>'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 time ago, of course. But I believe in good and I believe in evil.'</p>
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<p>'I'm not sure what I believe in.'</p>
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<p>'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. They kept records, you know.'</p>
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<p>'Records of what?'</p>
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<p>'Oh, the usual things. Births, deaths, marriages. Harvests. Battles. Very efficient record keepers, were the old monks. Had a mania for writing things down.'</p>
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<p>'Go on,' I urged.</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>
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'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 say he was a local man. He said the
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<em>ravener</em> 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.'
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</p>
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<p>'The <em>bane</em>,' I said.</p>
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<p>'Yes. That's how he described it. A bane.'</p>
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<p>'And do you take it seriously?'</p>
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<p>'Let me say I don't close my mind to anything.'</p>
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<p>'I'm surprised,' I told him.</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>'But if I believe in a good, and a God, then I must believe in the converse.'</p>
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<p>'An evil force?'</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>'I don't think anybody would believe it.'</p>
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<p>
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'Quite.'</p>
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<p>He paused again, gathering his thoughts.</p>
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<p>'Father Gerry said you were concerned about some recent happenings.'</p>
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<p>'Yes, I am.'</p>
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<p>
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'Why?'</p>
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<p>
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'It's a long story.'</p>
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<p>'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 put together with natural branches of yew, and we sat down.</p>
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<p>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 Ardmhor. 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?'</p>
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<p>
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'No,' he said. 'I don't.'</p>
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<p>The monsignor stood up when I had finished, and we started to wander around the flower beds again in the bright sunlight. The bees were toiling busily amongst 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.</p>
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<p>'Cu Saeng,' I said. 'Could such a thing be true?'</p>
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<p>'Is there life beyond death?'</p>
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<p>'I don't know,' I confessed.</p>
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<p>'I do. Otherwise I wouldn't 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.</p>
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<p>'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.'</p>
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<p>'You believe that?'</p>
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<p>'Read your Bible laddie, with an open mind. I don't expect anybody to take in the Old Testament word for word. But some of it must be true. The old legends have a basis in fact. Arthur found the secret of melting metal, 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.</p>
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<p>'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?'</p>
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<p>'I don't know what to believe,' I admitted.</p>
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<p>'Neither do I. But I am uneasy about what <em>not</em> to believe,' he said quietly.</p>
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<p>
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'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'm aware of what has happened in this place of late, and it so resembles other times that I fear there is more than coincidence.</p>
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<p>'That is why I am talking to you, alone, of this. Because I am afraid that there is something bad that must be fought, and I am considering how best to fight it.'</p>
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<p>'You mean with prayer?'</p>
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<p>'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 like a dormant disease, and something tells me that the illness is coming back with a vengeance.'</p>
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<p>'That just about sums it up for me.'</p>
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<p>'There is another reason that I asked Father Gerry to bring you up here,' he said, staring intently at me.</p>
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<p>'I dreamt about you two nights ago.'</p>
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<p>'About me?'</p>
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<p>
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'Yes.'</p>
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<p>'But we have never met before.'</p>
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<p>
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'That's true. But I don't ask for a reason. I just accept the gift.'</p>
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<p>'What did you dream?'</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>'I awoke in fear that I had failed.'</p>
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<p>I stared at him in surprise.</p>
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<p>'What were the others like?' I asked, stupidly.</p>
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<p>'A girl with golden hair, and a boy with dark eyes and a bow in his hand. But I knew you.</p>
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<p>'When Father Gerry spoke to me, 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.'</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>'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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>'Thank you, father,' I said.</p>
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<p>'Call me AJ,' 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.'</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>He had told me that I was not cracking up, not having a nervous breakdown. He, a man of God, mentor to dozens of young men who wished to become priests, had actually put some credence in the curse, the
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<em>bane</em>.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>My 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 certainty of foreboding badness seeping into Arden. Now I had an ally in that certainty.</p>
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<p>Whether this made things better, or a whole lot worse now that somebody else had put credence in it, I was unsure.</p>
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<p>As I walked in the sunlight, the water bottle banged against my hip.</p>
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<p>Monsignor Cronin had blessed me, then taken me to his study and given me the old, worn, canvas covered bottle.</p>
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<p>'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 others if you can. I hope you won't need it, but it can't harm anybody.'</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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