Looking in the kitchen, thinking that he might have gone searching for food, I found Parkinson talking to one of the other Pace Eggers who was at the sink stripped to the waist and scrubbing his face vigorously with a flannel. The water in the bowl had turned to ink. His robes were on the table along with his false moustache and his sword. I put the tray on the table as he patted his face dry with a towel and went to put his shirt back on. I saw that it was the elderly companion of Parkinson and Collier who we had first seen wheezing across the field the day we came to Moorings. Yet now his face was a healthy pink and he radiated the vitality of a much younger man.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he said, holding me briefly by the shoulders, as he went off to join the others. ‘Wonderful,’ he said to Parkinson, who smiled and nodded and watched him go.
‘Dying from the drink, he was, Mr Hale.’
Hale. I remembered the name from the list in the envelope Hanny had brought back from Thessaly.
I turned to go, but Parkinson spoke again.
‘I didn’t think a good Catholic boy like thee would dismiss a miracle so readily.’
He walked past me and closed the kitchen door on the laughter coming from the sitting room.
‘I hear tha’s been over to Thessaly quite a bit,’ he said. ‘You and your retard.’
I looked at him.
‘Oh, I know all about your retard,’ he said. ‘Your padre’s quite a gasbag when he’s had a drink.’
‘He’s not a retard. Father wouldn’t have called him that.’
Parkinson smiled.
‘How much did he give you?’
‘Who?’
‘My friend at Thessaly.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘What was it? Five, ten quid?’
‘I told you, I don’t know anything about any money.’
He looked at me.
‘Twenty,’ I said.
‘And is that going to be enough?’
‘For what?’
‘Come on, tha knows what he gave thee that money for.’
I said nothing and Parkinson shook his head and sighed.
‘I told him it wouldn’t be enough. You see, my friend at Thessaly hasn’t quite got the head for business I have. I know people much better than he does. I don’t believe people always want money. Not when there’s something more important to them. Money you can piss away like ale. What people really want is something that’s going to last.’
He put his hands in his pockets and went on.
‘I said to him there were a better way of making sure that tha didn’t misunderstand what were going on. I said to him that we ought to invite you and your retard to Thessaly, see if there’s something we can do to help.’
‘Help?’
‘Aye, make him better, I mean. Like Mr Hale.’
‘I need to go now,’ I said.
Parkinson looked at me and then opened the door. The Pace Eggers were singing again. He followed me as I went back to the sitting room.
‘He looks after this place well, dunt he, Clement?’ he said, patting the wall. ‘These old places are a bugger sometimes. Damp as hell. All the wiring shot. Dunt take much for a fire to start in them. You hear stories all the time around here. People burnt in their beds.’
When we came to the sitting room door, he stood and looked in on the singing and dancing. The noise had grown louder.
‘We’ll be expecting thee then,’ he said. ‘Tha knows where to come. Or we can come and fetch thee, if tha likes.’
He smiled and went off to join the other men who had linked arms in a circle and were stamping and singing as Hale swung Mummer round in a dance that she pretended to enjoy as much as she could. Father Bernard stood by and clapped along. Mr and Mrs Belderboss looked anxious for the antiques that had been too large to move. Miss Bunce clung to David’s arm with a thin smile, as Collier tried to coax her into the circle. Only Clement sat apart, with a protective arm around Monro’s neck. Two outcast dogs.
Chapter Twenty-one
I found Hanny asleep under his bed with his crayons and his sketch pad. Drawings of Else were everywhere, covering the mattress like a patchwork blanket. He was curled up and snoring softly, a crayon melting in his sweaty hand. I eased it out and not really awake he shuffled out from under the bed and put his arms around me.
He had drawn Else in the window at Thessaly, with the bell tower next to it and Leonard’s car parked at the side. Else standing outside in the grass under a huge yellow flower of a sun, holding her albino cat. The one he had been working on as he had fallen asleep showed he and Else standing side by side holding hands with a grinning baby between them.
The silly sod thought the baby was his, that when Else had let him feel it butting her stomach like the lamb had its mother she was teasing him with a present that she would give to him one day. That was why he wanted to go back to Coldbarrow. He wanted his gift.
But I couldn’t take him there. Not after what Parkinson had said.
I removed the pieces of paper and loose crayons from his bed and drew the candlewick over him. He didn’t stir at all. He had no idea what was going to happen to him at the shrine tomorrow. He wouldn’t remember anything about it until we got there. I watched him sleeping, and wished that his peace could last. I knew what they would make him do at the shrine but he wouldn’t understand even if I tried to warn him. I thought about slipping away and taking him down to The Loney to hide when the time came, but there would be no point. Mummer wouldn’t let up until she had made him go. I knew that I would be coerced into helping to get him there. Keep him happy and keep him ignorant of where we were really going. I hated her for that.
***
Despite what Mrs Belderboss had said in her confession, Father Wilfred didn’t seem all that absent to me. I still felt his hand at work, pushing Hanny towards his role as the touchstone that would prove God’s love for the faithful.
I remembered their faces last time we’d been to the shrine. Half fearful, half rapturous that they were about to witness a miracle as Hanny took a mugful of holy water and started to choke. Mummer went to help him, but Father Wilfred held her back.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Let the Lord do His work.’
Hanny bent over and gasped for breath. When he stood up his mouth was opening and closing. Father Wilfred held his face tightly, stared into his wide, frightened eyes and began to repeat the Hail Mary until everyone joined in.
‘Speak,’ said Father Wilfred.
Everyone became silent and listened to the frail note that came out of Hanny’s mouth.
‘Speak,’ Father Wilfred said again. ‘Speak.’
He gripped Hanny’s head tighter and shook it. Hanny opened his mouth wider but no other sound came out.
Although Father Wilfred looked down his throat with an expression of anguish, as though he could see the miracle disappearing like water down a drain, he still thanked God for sending His spirit down. For showing us His power and munificence. For showing us a taste of the bounty to be had if only we might pray longer and harder.
***
Now that Moorings was quiet, I could hear the ewe bleating in the field. It was standing alone in the dusk, nosing at the white pile by its feet. When I went outside, it moved away and lay down under a tree. I climbed through the wire and waded through the long grass, feeling my trousers wet and tight against my thighs. There was a strewing of white cotton and limbs, and then I found a small hoof, polished and black, like a mussel washed in on a surge tide. The lamb had been torn to pieces by Collier’s dog. I couldn’t even find the head.