February-May 1635
The organ at St. Mary Magdalene's in Grantville moved into the opening strains of "Glory Be to Jesus." Dennis Kovar poked an elbow into his cousin Dominic Grady's ribs. "I love this hymn. It's just so gruesomely gory," he whispered.
"Yeah," Dom whispered back. "If we absolutely have to serve at vespers during Lent, all that blood dripping out of severed veins makes it better."
"Isn't that supposed to be 'sacred' veins?"
"Whatever."
After the service, Father Athanasius Kircher eyed his acolytes. Three hundred seventy years of progress between his own day and the Ring of Fire had not done much to improve the cultural level of pre-adolescent altar boys.
"Tomorrow," he said.
The boys looked up.
"The regular acolytes at the St. Elizabeth's chapel at the fair grounds are both down with tonsillitis. Since Dennis and Dom's families have up-time bicycles that they can use, I want those two to serve at the chapel tomorrow evening. Father Stanihurst will be hearing confessions in English after vespers. Wait and come back to your houses with him. I don't want you out after dark without an adult."
"Aw, hell. Who's serving here, then?"
"What is the proper answer, Dominic?"
"Yes, Father Kircher."
"That's better. Florian, you can serve here tomorrow, and . . ." Kircher looked around the room. ". . . Pete." He pointed at Florian Drahuta, originally Schott, and Peter Bartolli, originally Hunyadi, two more down-time children who had been adopted by parish families."
****
"So here we are," Dom said. "Stuck at the fair grounds. I'm sooo hungry. I can't believe how hungry I am, and it'll be forever before we get back home for supper, since we've got to wait for Father Stanihurst."
"Why wait?" Dennis asked. "I was thinking that I'd just sneak out."
"Father Kircher said to wait. 'Yes, Father Kircher.' Ya, you bet'cha, Father Kircher. How does that song go. 'Yes, your majesty' something, something else, your majesty.'"
"We have the bikes. We can just leave."
"What do you bet that he told Old Stanihurst that we'd be waiting. Nothing escapes Father Kircher. He's like one of those elephants who never forget. Why did the Jesuits have to assign us a damned genius for a priest?"
"Father Stanihurst's not really old," Thomas Bu?leben said. "More like thirty than eighty."
"What's the difference?" Dom shook his head. "What did the hippies used to say? 'Never trust anybody over thirty,' I think it was."
Dennis laughed. "Then, like Dad says, they all got to be over thirty. Like Tom Stone. Now he's got to be eighty, at least."
"I'm going to starve before I get any supper."
"You can't be that hungry."
"I can," Dom insisted. "I am. I'd eat . . ." He waded through his mental catalog of legendary up-time horrible foods, most of which he had never personally enountered. "Well, I'd eat sushi. Or . . . spinach souffle. Or . . ." He reached for more practical experiences-things he had actually seen since his arrival in Thuringia at the advanced age of eight years. "Or that awful stuff that the Scottish guy who married Rachel Tyler fixes. Or . . ."
"I've got food here," Thomas said. "Not a lot. I think that Caspar Engelhaupt stashed some, too."
"Where?"
"You can eat mine if you pay me for it, but you can't eat Caspar's. He has tonsillitis so he's not here and he can't give you permission."
"Maybe if I left him some money, too . . ."
Dennis shook his head. "Not without permission. If he's here some evening and hungry, he can't eat money."
"Hell."
"That's the way it is."
Dom looked up in disgust. "You know? One of these days, if we keep acting like each other's consciences, we'll end up what my grandma calls 'well-behaved.' Okay. What have you got, Thomas?"
"Bread. It's pretty stale. Some raw turnips, pretty wrinkled and dried up. Carrots, the same. A little cheese, but it's probably as hard as a rock by now."
Dom reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jar. "Anything's good if you put enough salsa on it. I'll take them. How much? And where'd you hide it?"
****
Dom wormed along on his hands and knees, following Thomas. "It's dusty back here," he whispered.
"Well, that's the reason I made my hidey-hole back here. The cleaning ladies never come. What's the point in putting my food someplace where they'd find it? They'd just toss it out. Or eat it themselves."
Dennis smothered a sneeze. "Where are we?"
"Getting food," Thomas said.
"That's what we're doing, not where we are," Dom answered. "We're behind the confessionals. This is my Robinson grandparents' old house. When they got sick and moved in with Mom and Dad, they gave it to the church to make a chapel at this end of town because the refugee center was right next door, way back when Grantville was full of refugees."
Thomas turned his head back. "Is that why it's so weird for a church?"
"They pulled out the inside walls to make space for the altar end and the nave. That's why it has two-by-fours here and there out in the middle to prop up the roof beams. What's the sacristy now used to be a breakfast nook next to the kitchen. The carpenters walled in the old screened porch to make this side section where the confessionals are. That's why the roof slants down. They bought old booths second-hand from some other church that was getting new ones and they turned out to be too tall to go all the way to the wall, so there's this space behind."
Thomas grinned. "Handy, isn't it?"
Dennis stuck out his tongue. "If you're really into sneaking into the sacristy, climbing under a table, and squeezing through the bottom half of what used to be a door that won't open all the way any more."
"We're here," Thomas whispered. "Now be quiet, because Father Stanihurst will be coming into the booth any minute. When I figured out that the back and sides of the confessional and the top and front of the bench inside it made a nice, solid, empty box, I sort of borrowed some tools, cut me out a little door in the back, put on a couple of strips of leather for hinges, drilled holes in the little door and the back so I can tie it closed with another strip of leather, and like the magician says, presto. Just be careful to hold the door up, so it doesn't scrape on the floor when you open it."
He collected his money from Dom. "If any food disappears from now on, I'll know who to look for. I'm taking this money home to Mutti." He slid sideways past Dom and Dennis, squirming out the way they had come in.
Dom stuck his hand in the hole, fishing around.
Sure enough. Bread wrapped in old, much re-used, waxed paper. Shriveled vegetables. He dusted off two carrots, handed one to Dennis, and opened the salsa, but before Dennis could take a bite, Dom put a hand over his mouth.
"Wha . . . ?"
Dom shook his head and pointed at the booth.
Something scraped. The door at the side. Now Dom waved his other hand frantically. Father Stanihurst was in the confessional and they were truly trapped. They didn't even dare take a bite of carrot or bread. They were too crunchy. He might hear them.
Dennis nodded.
A slightly different scrape. That was the curtain at the front of the booth closing, the wooden rings sliding along the wooden rod. They were stuck-and about to breach the sacredness of the confessional. They couldn't squirm away without getting caught, not even if they managed to get their shoes off. If they could hear curtain rings on the rod, Father Stanihurst could certainly hear their belt buckles and shirt buttons on the floor.
Dennis gave Dom the look that meant, "This is the sort of thing that Grandma says we could go to hell for."
Dom nodded.
****
The only way out was how they had come in. The other two booths, in use by priests hearing German-language confessions, went all the way to the far wall.