An All-Consuming Fire (3 page)

She was still attempting a somewhat reluctant self-examination when the words of the collect penetrated her consciousness. It was one she especially loved because it encompassed both meanings of Advent, of preparing for Christmas and for Christ’s second coming as well.

“…who at thy first coming sent a messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that at thy second coming we may be found an acceptable people…”

Determined to try harder, she struggled to make her smile sincere as she helped Cynthia find her place in the prayer book for the readings.

After the New Testament reading the priest censed the altar while all stood for the highlight of the service. Choir and congregation chanted:

“O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,

reaching from one end to the other,

mightily and sweetly ordering all things:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.”

Felicity felt her tension drain away and her breathing slow as the rhythms of the service continued. During the next seven days they would complete the list of appellations: O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O key of David, O Morning Star, O King of Nations, O Emmanuel, each one building the intensity and longing of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Now her smile for her mother was relaxed. Yes, a better way to mark time even than chocolate.

At the end of the service Antony gave Felicity’s hand a quick squeeze before he departed into the shadows. He had sensed her stress easing during the service and for that he was grateful, but at the same time he felt his own anxieties mount. Tomorrow he would face rolling cameras in front of an audience of professionals. This would be a far cry from the classroom where he was so comfortable. And he felt woefully unprepared.

It had been several terms since he had lectured on the mystics and his classroom notes would need considerable polishing to get them up to production standards. What a pity that Father Paulinus’s notes had been burnt in the freak fire that killed him. Antony shuddered. What a terrible way to die. And how odd that there should be an electrical fault in such a well-maintained monastery as Ampleforth.

Antony started to run his hand through his hair, then stopped himself—he hadn’t done that for ages. He mustn’t let himself do it on camera. After all, it was a tremendous honor to be asked to take Paulinus’s place and he certainly didn’t want to let anyone down. Fortunately Father Anselm, the Superior of their community, had already faced the cameras yesterday, explaining, in his poetic way, the distinctive mystical fervor that developed in the north of England in the fourteenth century. In his winsome way Anselm had clarified the highly personal and intimate relationship with God experienced by the mystics. This, so very unlike the more rigid intellectualism of the scholastics who ruled the Church and universities at that time.

Antony had been invited to Anselm’s book-lined office to observe the interview and he could still see it sharply in his mind.

Anselm had given the camera a gentle smile and mused in his soft, almost ironic voice, “No one has ever been a lukewarm, an indifferent, or an unhappy mystic. If a person has this particular temperament, mysticism is the very centre of their being. It is the flame which feeds them.”

Joy Wilkins, the twenty-something presenter, had wrinkled her forehead beneath her sleek blond fringe and asked a rather vague question about the theology of mysticism.

Again, Anselm’s slow smile, emphasized by a twinkle in his eyes. “Mysticism is a temper rather than a theology, a complete giving of oneself to God in contemplation of Him, seeking unity with Him.

“The mystic is somewhat in the position of a man who, in a world of blind men, has suddenly been granted sight, and who, gazing at the sunrise, and overwhelmed by the glory of it, tries, however falteringly, to convey to his fellows what he sees.”

Antony shook his head and stared at his stale notes. It was all perfectly true. But how was he to convey all that to, hopefully, several million viewers through the cold facts of history and biography? Why had he ever agreed to do this? It hadn’t seemed that he had an alternative when Father Anselm asked him to take on the challenge. But now a dozen excuses filled his mind.

Well, at least Richard Rolle was a good place to start. Not only was he the first of the English Mystics, but he was also one of the most fervent. Rolle had even titled his crowning work
Incendium Amoris
, The Fire of Love. And the producers, it seemed, could do no better. The television series was to be titled “The Fire of Love”.

Antony forced himself to focus on the page before him: Born into a small farming family and brought up at Thornton-le-Dale near Pickering, Richard studied at the University of Oxford. He left Oxford at eighteen or nineteen—dropping out before he received his MA.

Antony smiled to himself. At least he was all right there. They were to begin filming tomorrow in the woods beside the Beck, the pretty stream that ran through the village of Thornton-le-Dale, reportedly one of the most picturesque villages in England—although how picturesque it would be in mid-December, Antony was unsure. But at least he could tell the story of Richard’s unorthodox entry into the life of a hermit; he had recounted it often enough for his students.

Then they would move on to Pickering. It sounded like a rather grueling schedule to him, but apparently the producers were determined to work around the Christmas holiday. It would set Antony his paces to keep ahead of them. He turned to the filing cabinet under his window to dig out his information on the Pickering church.

He switched on a table lamp and as the light streamed across the lawn outside, a movement in the garden caught his eye—a furtive motion that struck him as uncharacteristic of any of the monks or the few students still there during the Christmas holiday. Surely no one else would be about in the gardens at this hour, though. He had heard the bell for Compline when he settled at his desk so all the gates would be locked. The peace of the Greater Silence reigned over the grounds.

He was turning back to his file when the world exploded. A loud bang was followed by balls of fire hurled against his window and sizzling on the stones of the building. Antony flung an arm protectively over his face and staggered backward.

“F
ireworks?” Still dazed, Antony had rushed out into the night, but before he could summon the emergency services on his mobile, Alfred, the weekend caretaker, arrived on the scene with a fire extinguisher.

In the light of Alfred’s torch Antony surveyed the pile of spent tubes and cartons that had been piled in the flower bed beneath his window. Fortunately the ground was too damp for the dormant plants in the border to catch fire, but black smudges showed on the stones of the building even in the dim light.

Antony shivered as the image of erupting flames replayed in his mind, making him think of Father Paulinus’s fiery death. He shuddered. Was someone trying to warn him not to go ahead with this project? Nonsense. Why would anyone possibly care? Just a prank, surely. There would be fireworks everywhere for Christmas Eve in only a week. Some local lads undoubtedly thought it a good laugh to stir up the monks a bit.

But Antony was the one left shaken by the escapade. How would he ever be able to focus on his notes now?

The grey stone spire of the Pickering parish church lanced the midmorning mist, drawing Antony up the path winding through the churchyard grave stones as the events of the past few hours swirled in his mind. After the alarms of the night before he had risen early that morning: it was an hour and a half’s drive to Thornton-le-Dale, on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. Even in a winter early morning the village, believed to have been Rolle’s birthplace, maintained its chocolate box charm with the Beck flowing full in front of the thatched cottages lining the street.

For the first scene the director had positioned him at the edge of the woods assuring him that the early morning sun and the mist swirling through the bare branches gave just the atmosphere they wanted. It had required several takes to get a wrap, most of them due to Antony’s nervous gaffes and once by the director’s editing. “Cut! Wait. ‘Leafy’ has to go.” He pointed at the bare branches ringing them.

Antony had salved his conscience with the argument to himself: Well, all right, we didn’t know for certain what month Richard made his dramatic gesture, even though his self-robing was most likely during his long vacation from Oxford which would have been in the summer. But at least the other details and his sister’s response, if not her name—Antony had added that detail for the sake of smoother storytelling—were recorded history. Richard had ministered to the nuns of Hampole for many years, and they had written down his story with loving care shortly after his death.

Now the entire film crew had moved on to their next location, Pickering church, and Antony looked up at the spire piercing the sky. That tower had been built a hundred years before Richard’s birth after its predecessor collapsed. They were on solid ground now, and Antony hoped he wouldn’t be required to blur the history too often for the sake of dramatic imagery.

“Sorry, you can’t go in there. We’re filming.” An officious young man with a clipboard barred the door.

“I’m, um—” what was he? Did he have a title in this foreign world he had been catapulted into? “The history,” he finished weakly.

The young man eyed Antony’s black cassock, probably thinking it was a costume, and ran his eye down the list of names on his clipboard. “Father Antony?” Antony nodded. “Right then. Go in quietly.”

Fortunately, the hinges on the door had been oiled for the occasion so he was able to comply. The stone floor was covered with coiled black cables running to cameras, microphones and the strong lights beamed at the ancient wall paintings. Although Antony had been here many times, he was captivated anew by the scenes covering the walls of the nave in the spandrels above the Gothic arches. He looked up at St. George, in full armor on horseback, slaying the dragon with a lance thrust down its throat while George’s horse trampled the dragon in spite of the serpent’s tail encircling one of the steed’s legs. This had always been his favorite. Keeping well out of camera range and stepping carefully, Antony walked on up the aisle surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses hovering there: St. Christopher carrying the Christ-child; John the Baptist at his beheading; the Virgin Mary, crowned as Queen of Heaven; St. Edmund, martyred by a dozen arrows for refusing to renounce his faith…

Antony took a seat in the choir. He smiled at the American flag hanging just beyond his left shoulder, marking the plaques commemorating England and America’s alliance in the Great War. Felicity would like that. He made a mental note to tell her. But for now he turned his attention to the proceedings in the nave. Sir Royce Emmett, RA, an expert from London in medieval church art, was telling their future viewers about the frescoes. “These paintings would not have been considered unusual in the fourteenth century. In those days nearly all church walls were covered with biblical scenes and depictions of the saints. The paintings were there as an aid to worship to help the largely illiterate congregations understand religious stories.

“
Biblia Pauperum
, the poor man’s Bible, they were called.” He pointed at St. Edmund. “The scenes of martyrdom, so frequently depicted, helped people in the Middle Ages face the closeness of death in their everyday lives.”

The expert strode back down the nave, careless of cords and cables, obviously confident of being followed by camera and crew, to take his stance before the depiction of the Descent into Hell. “This is perhaps the most striking painting in the church.” He gestured upward and one of the cameramen obediently zoomed in on the wide open jaws of a fiery red dragon, swallowing people in his sharp-toothed jaws. “A warning to the would-be sinner, yes, but, surprisingly, this is not a painting of damnation.

“It is actually a message of hope. Christ is there, pulling souls from the very jaws of the dragon. And,” he pointed to the next scene, “notice the rays of sunshine emanating from the risen Christ to tell us that, even in the darkness of Hell, he represents the light of the world. All very encouraging to the medieval mind which readily accepted this as fact.”

“Cut. That’s a wrap.” Harry Forslund, the director, strode forward and clasped Sir Royce’s hand as the crew offered a smattering of applause. The director’s smile softened the severity of his close-cropped black beard. “Thank you, that was superb. Just the right tone.”

The rest of the chatter was lost to Antony as a plump young woman with luminescent pale skin and red, full lips scurried toward him bearing her make-up kit. “Oooh, you’ve been biting yer lips ’aven’t you?” Tara Gilbert shook her mop of magenta-dyed hair.

Antony’s impulse to apologize was cut short by her application of gloss to his lips. She stood back and observed him through narrowed, kohl-lined eyes. “Len, can we get some light over ’ere?” She tugged at her black sweater pulling it tight over her voluptuous figure as if preparing to be in the spotlight herself.

Lenny, in charge of the lighting crew, obediently flipped a switch on his magic panel and the chancel was flooded with light. Tara considered her handiwork, standing alarmingly close to Antony, then backing away and observing him with a creased forehead. “Mm, just as I thought. The lights wash you out.” She produced a pot of blush and a large brush.

Antony started to protest, but she forged ahead with her work. “Don’t worry. I won’t make you look painted. Just restoring your natural color—what there is of it. Naturally pale, aren’t you? It looked good in the woods earlier—suited the mist—but ’Arry’s sure to want more definition indoors.”

Antony shut his eyes and let her get on with it. His more serious concern was whether he had chosen the right spot for his narration. The church furnishings were, of course, relatively modern. The 1876 renovations had also removed the whitewash covering the medieval paintings, judged to be “too popish” by an earlier generation. But Antony wanted to be as close as possible to the site of the actual scene of the events he would be relating. That is, if they were in the right church at all, of course. Scholars did suggest others, but Antony felt they were on good ground here in this historic church.