An All-Consuming Fire (6 page)

Felicity was enthralled. She wanted to know all the details about his interview and the various members of the crew. “Maybe I could go with you one day. I know Mother would find it fascinating.”

Antony liked the sound of that proposal better before Felicity added the last sentence, but he gave an “Um-hum” of agreement. He still needed to tell her about Fred’s accident and the broken dolly. If anything devious was going on he certainly didn’t want her involved.

But Felicity brushed off the idea of anything nefarious. “Well, accidents do happen. And you said yourself the stone walkway was rough. Fred probably hit a rock and just snapped the shaft on that wheel. You aren’t thinking it was cut or anything are you?”

Antony admitted there had been no such suggestion.

“Well then,” Felicity turned in his arms for another kiss. “What a good thing that you have a day off tomorrow. You can help me with this mad pageant idea.”

Antony laughed. “At least you admit it’s mad. And I’m happy enough to have the time to brush up on Richard Rolle’s process of contemplation. I don’t know just how much information Joy—or Sylvia—whoever makes those decisions—will want but I need to be ready with a concise answer if she asks.”

“That’s good then. So stop worrying.” She ran a finger along the furrows in his brow.

“It’s just that we need to be through with Rolle at least before Christmas because I have to be off to Blackpool.” He paused. “Felicity, are you sure that’s all right? You know I’d rather spend Christmas with you.”

“Of course it’s all right. You need to be with your aunt.” She shook her head. “Her first Christmas without Edward in sixty years. I can’t imagine. Do you think we’ll ever be married that long?”

Sometime later—considerably later than he had planned, actually—it was so easy to lose track of time—Antony left the cottage with a small smile on his lips, the glow of the Christmas lights seemingly following him out into the misty December dark.

The great wrought iron gates of the community were swinging shut behind him when a sharp noise made him glance over his shoulder. He frowned at the sight of a little green car parked beside the curb. Surely not the same green car that had seemed to follow him back from Pickering?

N
owhere had Christianity been embraced with greater warmth than in England, and nowhere was there a more fertile soil for mysticism… This new departure of mysticism—as a separation from Scholasticism—is embodied in Richard Rolle, who represents the protest of the heart against intellectual scrutiny
… Antony rubbed his hands together briskly to warm his fingers, then picked up his pen to resume the notes he was making from a little-known nineteenth century German writer.

Perhaps he should have taken the book back to his room to work. He hadn’t realized quite how thoroughly the chill had penetrated this north side of the library. He glanced out the window looking out over the community’s back garden. The grass was still green and a few faded blossoms clung to the rose bushes in the borders. But little heat emanated from the radiator under the window.

Still, the cold could be a prompt to help him focus; a counter to the warmth of Richard Rolle’s passion derided by the German Horstman who suggested that Rolle is
quite as excessive on the side of feeling as the Scholastics on that of the intellect; indeed, he is all feeling, enthusiasm, inspiration, unrestrained by reasoning or any exterior rule, without method or discrimination.

Antony shook his head. That was his challenge, to make sense of Rolle’s poetic right-brainedness in a way that wouldn’t sound either dull or demented to modern, secular viewers. And yet Rolle was not without structure in analyzing his road to contemplation and his experience of the mysterious presence of God. As with all the mystics, Rolle underwent the classic three-step process of Purification, Illumination and Contemplation…

“We need to be going.” Antony started at Felicity’s voice. He hadn’t heard her footsteps. “I brought your scarf and cap. I knew you’d forget.” She held them out to him. “Although it actually feels warmer outside than it does in here.” She shivered, making the bobble on her red knit cap bounce.

A pale winter sun broke through as they walked hand-in-hand, along the path to the back of the community grounds. For just a moment Antony recalled the day last February when he and Felicity had run along this same path fleeing what they had been led to believe was his certain arrest for murder. How long ago that all seemed. How could so many life-changing events have been crammed into less than a year? He squeezed Felicity’s hand through their gloves.

Her question brought him sharply back to the present. “Who was your fellow researcher? I didn’t think the community took guests the last week of Advent. Aren’t the monks in retreat?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“That man reading in the next stall. Didn’t you see him?”

Antony thought. There were five individual study carrels in that wing of the library, each stall completely enclosed with floor to ceiling stacks of books. The Community of the Transfiguration was ever a place of scholarship. People came from around the world to read in their library. Little surprise, then, that there would be another reader there. Except for the fact that the community was, as Felicity suggested, closed to visitors at the moment. And that his fellow reader had been surreptitiously quiet. Antony’s brow furrowed.

Felicity, however, looked around with carefree pleasure. A lemon-yellow sun shone on drops of moisture clinging to still-green leaves on the bushes lining the path over the hill. Birds chirped as they hopped from branch to branch pecking at the bright red berries. So different from the Decembers of her childhood in Idaho where one fervently hoped for snow to cover the winter-brown grass and bare branches. “You know, this pageant thing might work. If they hold it in the early afternoon and then offer mulled wine in the Common Room afterward. Everyone will be past the Christmas party rush so it could be a really welcome thing for starting off the new year.”

“Maybe,” Antony’s tone showed that he wasn’t convinced. “I suppose it could be a good teaching moment for people no longer accustomed to celebrating the Epiphany. In medieval times it was a bigger celebration than Christmas.”

They passed the monks’ cemetery where row on row of brown wooden crosses with little A-frame roofs marked the passing of faithful, holy lives lived in this community over the past century and a quarter. Felicity paused briefly at the cross marked, Dominic,
REQUIESCAT IN PACE.
Dear Father Dominic. Such a brutal end to a life dedicated to love and peace, but his murder had brought her and Antony together. “Thank you,” she whispered before moving on.

On the back side of the hill the path descended by way of stone stairs set into the hillside. Here the overhanging tree branches were bare and the fallen leaves and autumn rains had produced a slimy pulp over the already mossy steps. “First thing will be for Corin and Nick’s work crew to clear these stones off. Public safety and all that.” Felicity pulled a notebook from her pocket and jotted a note. “Maybe we could get tiki torches to line the stairs. That would add safety and just think how dramatic it would be!”

At the bottom of the stairway they came out from under the tree branches onto the wide floor of the quarry. The weed-and-bracken-covered basin sloped gently downward toward the sheer stone wall that had produced materials for the manor house and outbuildings in the nineteenth century when the property had been a gentleman’s country estate. In front of the rugged backdrop a low stone building had been erected with a flat concrete roof that apparently served as a stage in earlier days. She considered the logistics. “People would have to bring their own chairs. We could set the holy family scene on the stage…” She looked back at the stairway they had descended. “But I don’t think we could get a camel—or even llamas—down those steps.”

“I wish you’d quit saying ‘we’,” Antony objected.

Felicity gave him a quick hug. “Don’t be a grouch. I know you can see the possibilities. It could be really wonderful.”

Antony frowned, but after a moment he pointed across the quarry floor to a grassy bank curving away from the stone wall. “The slope looks gentler over there. I suppose a path could be cleared for the animals. But I don’t really recommend it,” he added hastily.

Further contemplations were interrupted by a cheery “Hulloo!” And two familiar figures came around the corner of the stage, the tall Corin towering over the shorter, stockier Nick.

Felicity strode through the knee-deep growth and followed the lads to the back of the flat stone structure. Nick disappeared inside the open doorway, then stuck his head back out the window opening. “This is great space in here for storing props and such—well, will be when we get it cleaned out. These stone walls and the cement roof are pretty much water tight. Want to come in?”

Felicity hesitated. There wasn’t much that put her off, but there would certainly be spiders lurking in there. “That’s all right. Thanks.” She scrambled up the steps leading to the floor of the stage instead. “This certainly feels solid enough.” She looked around.

“Do you figure we’ll need a sound system? Or will the rock walls of the quarry provide the necessary acoustics?” She asked. Almost a hundred years ago these rock walls had rung to the sound of actors’ voices proclaiming “Murder in the Cathedral.” Felicity added her voice to that of the thespian ghosts:

“Unbar the doors! Throw open the doors!

I will not have the house of prayer, the church of Christ,

The sanctuary, turned into a fortress.…

The church shall be open, even to our enemies. Open the door!”

Antony, still back at the foot of the stairs, applauded. Felicity gave a satisfied nod. Right then. Acoustics good.

“Kendra said she could get whatever we’ll need in the electronic line for the music.” Nick had come out of his burrow and joined her on stage. “It won’t be elaborate. Just a narrator and the audience singing familiar things like ‘We Three Kings’.”

Corin also joined them. He pushed back his blond shock with a fierce jab that expressed the agitation he was suppressing. “I rang my dad this morning. He’s none too excited about my not coming home for Christmas.” His frustration came out in a cross between a sigh and a growl. “So much pressure being an only child. If I had six brothers and sisters like some—” He shot Nick a half-amused look, “They’d be glad to be shot of me.”

“Hey,” Nick objected. “My family loves me.” Then he smiled self-deprecatingly, “But of course, my brothers are glad enough to have me out of the bedroom.”

Corin returned to the subject at hand. “Still, I haven’t given up on talking dad into loaning us some sheep.”

‘”Maybe if you went home for Christmas he’d more amenable to your bringing a truckload back,” Felicity suggested.

Corin shook his head. “It’s more than just a few sheep or one holiday. I’ll probably go for Mum’s sake, but it’s…”

“His dad’s, um, well—difficult,” Nick tried to help.

Corin shot is friend an ironic look. “Difficult I could handle. He’s fixated. I’m supposed to follow in his footsteps. Be a sheep farmer.” He shook his head. “He’s sure this ‘priest thing’, as he calls it, is a passing fancy.”

Felicity nodded. The source of Corin’s moodiness was clear, but she could sympathize with the father, too. “That probably means he has a deep love for the land and wants to pass it on to his son. I can understand that.”

This time Corin made no attempt to suppress his growl. “Love doesn’t enter into it. Grasping control is more like—not wanting the farm to go to my great, great something grandfather’s line. There was some silly family squabble about a hundred years ago and he’s still living it.”

“So maybe it would be best not to bother your father about sheep for the pageant,” Felicity suggested.

“I don’t know. I think in some strange way he might be flattered. Show him his world can be important to mine.” He shrugged and executed one of the swift mood changes Felicity was becoming familiar with. “I can but hope.”

Antony, who had wandered a way across the weedy expanse during that exchange, spoke from beneath the stage, “If you got the sheep early they might be able to graze down some of this undergrowth.” Felicity wasn’t certain whether Antony was being helpful or ironic but was glad enough to leave the uneasy subject of Corin’s family problems, although she could sympathize. Her mother hardly understood her calling.

Glancing at the notes she had been jotting in a small notebook Felicity shared her thoughts about tiki torches along the path, which Corin and Nick heartily endorsed, “Yes, and we could line the rim of the quarry with torches, too. That would be brilliant!”

“And be sure any publicity advises the audience to bring their own chairs,” she added.

“And blankets.” Yes, this time Felicity was certain Antony was being ironic. Talk about sub-subliminal humor.

But he had a point, in spite of her enthusiasm, she had to admit that the cold was penetrating. Abandoning her center stage stance she descended the stairs and linked her arm through Antony’s. “Right. Time for a pot of tea. I really should buckle down to writing my essay. Why don’t you bring your books over and we can have a cozy afternoon with our heads in the Middle Ages.”

Abandoning Nick and Corin to continue their scheming, Antony and Felicity strolled back arm-in-arm, chatting about their work: Antony’s script on Rolle’s time in Hampole and Felicity’s essay on the medieval practice of translating religious works written in vernacular English into Latin. “It seems so backward,” she mused, “until one considers that Latin was the
lingua franca
of Europe in the Middle Ages, so a work appearing in Latin meant it could travel anywhere. For those with the ability to read, that is, of course.”

Antony nodded. “And it gave the work literary respectability. It was also considered a way of preserving a work’s orthodoxy—keeping it out of the hands of the
hoi polloi
who might be more likely to run to heresy than an educated Churchman.”