‘Wasn’t there an artist who painted images like this?’ I asked Warraner.
‘Giuseppe Arcimboldo,’ he replied. ‘I’ve always meant to study up on him, but there never seems to be enough time. I imagine that he and the creators of these carvings would probably have had a lot to discuss, particularly the intimate connection between man and the natural world, had they not been separated by the ages.’
I moved to the altar and stood before the carving on the wall. If the face on the right was almost cheerful – albeit in the manner of someone who has just watched a puppy drown and found it amusing – and evoked images of the earth’s bounty, this one was very different. It was a thing of roots, thorns and nettles, of briars, bare winter bushes and ivy. Branches bristling with spines poured from its open mouth and seemed both to form its features and to suffocate them, as though the image were tormenting itself. It was profoundly ugly, and startlingly, vibrantly present, an ancient being brought to life from dead things.
‘It’s the same visage, or the same god, depending upon one’s inclination,’ said Warraner from behind me.
‘What?’
He pointed to his right at the face made from produce, to his left at another constructed from blossoming flowers, and finally at a fourth face that I had not noticed before as it was above the door: a face composed of straw and leaves that had just begun to wither and die.
‘All versions of a similar deity,’ said Warraner. ‘In the last century the name “Green Man” was coined for him: a pagan god absorbed into the Christian tradition, a symbol of death and rebirth long before the idea of the resurrection of Christ came into being. You can see why a building decorated in such a manner would have appealed to the Familists, a sect that believed in the rule of nature, not God.’
‘And are you a Familist, Pastor Warraner?’ I asked.
‘I told you,’ he answered. ‘The Familists no longer exist. Frankly, it’s a shame. They were outwardly tolerant of the views of others while repudiating all other religions entirely. They refused to carry arms, and they kept their opinions and beliefs to themselves. They attracted the elite, and had no time for the ignorant. If they were still around today, they’d regard most of what passes for organized religion in this country as an abomination.’
‘I read that they were accused of killing to defend themselves,’ I said.
‘Propaganda,’ said Warraner. ‘Most of those allegations came from John Rogers, a sixteenth-century cleric who hated Christopher Vitel, the leader of the Familists in England. He called the Family of Love a “horrible secte”, and based his attacks on depositions given by dissenting ex-Familists. There’s no evidence that the Familists ever killed those who disagreed with them. Why should they? The sect’s members were quietists: they didn’t even publicly identify themselves, but hid among other congregations to avoid being identified and put at risk.’
‘Like religious chameleons,’ I said, ‘blending into the background.’
‘Exactly,’ said Warraner. ‘Eventually they simply became what they pretended to be.’
‘Except the ones who traveled here to found Prosperous.’
‘And in the end even they vanished,’ said Warraner.
‘Why did the Familists leave England?’ I said. ‘It wasn’t clear from the little that I could find out about them. As far as I can tell, religious persecution was already dying when they departed. Why fee when you’re no longer threatened?’
Warraner leaned against a pew and folded his arms. It was a curiously defensive gesture.
‘The Familists entered a state of schism,’ he said. ‘Disagreements arose between those who advocated following the Quaker way, and those who wished to adhere to the sect’s original belief system. The traditionalists feared being named as something more dangerous than dissenters, particularly when it was suggested that the building we’re in should be razed. They viewed this church as the wellspring of their faith, which was probably why those who had chosen to follow an alternative path so desired its destruction. A wealthy cadre of the faithful came together to save the church, and their sect, from annihilation. The result was an exodus to New England, and the founding of Prosperous.’
He glanced at his watch.
‘Now, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I really do need to get back to my kitchen closets.’
I took one more look at the largest of the faces on the wall, the image of a winter god, then thanked him and joined Morland, who had waited throughout by the door. We watched Warraner lock the chapel with a key from a heavy ring, and check that it was securely closed.
‘One last thing,’ I said.
‘Yes?’
He sounded impatient. He wanted to be gone.
‘Wasn’t Christopher Vitel a joiner too?’
Warraner thrust his hands into his pockets and squinted at me. The sun was setting, and the air was growing colder, as though the chill inside the chapel had permeated the outside world while the door was open.
‘You really have done your homework, Mr Parker,’ he said.
‘I like to keep myself informed.’
‘Yes, Vitel was a joiner. It was used against him by his enemies to suggest that he was nothing but a vagabond.’
‘But he was much more than that, wasn’t he? I understand that he was also a textile merchant in the Low Countries, and it was there that he encountered the founder of the Familists, Hendrik Niclas, except at that time he was Christopher Vitell. He dropped the second “l” when he returned to England to spread the doctrine of the Familists, effectively giving himself a new identity.’
‘That may be true,’ said Warraner. ‘Such changes of spelling were not uncommon at the time, and may not even have been deliberate.’
‘And then,’ I continued, ‘around 1580, when the government of Queen Elizabeth was hunting the Familists, Vitel simply disappeared.’
‘He is not present in the historical record from that time on,’ said Warraner. ‘It’s not clear why. He may have died.’
‘Or assumed another identity. A man who changed his name once could easily do so again.’
‘What are you suggesting, Mr Parker?’
‘Maybe preaching isn’t the only talent you inherited from your genes.’
‘You should have been a historian, Mr Parker. A speculative one, perhaps, but a historian nonetheless. But then, isn’t historical research a form of detection too?’
‘I suppose it is. I hadn’t really considered it.’
‘But in answer to your suggestion, I have no idea if my line stretches back to Vitel, but I would consider myself blessed indeed if that were the case.’
He tested the door one last time, and began walking toward the gate.
‘It’s been interesting talking to you, Mr Parker,’ he called back just before he reached it. ‘I hope you get to visit us again sometime.’
‘I think I’ll be back,’ I said, but only Morland heard me.
‘It’s a dead end,’ he said. ‘Whatever you’re looking for isn’t here.’
‘You may be right,’ I said, ‘but I’m not sure what it is that I’m looking for, so who’s to know?’
‘I thought that you were looking for a missing girl.’
‘Yes,’ I said, as Warraner vanished into the woods without a backward glance, ‘so did I.’
Morland escorted me from the churchyard and locked the gate behind us. I thanked him for his time, got in my car and drove away. I thought he might have followed me to the town limits to make sure that I was leaving, but he didn’t. When I turned right, he went left to go back to Prosperous. I kept the radio off, and played no music as I drove. I thought about Jude, and Morland, and my time with Pastor Warraner. One small detail nagged at me. It might have been nothing, but like a fragment of thorn buried in my flesh, it itched at me as I headed south, and by the time I reached Bangor it was impossible to ignore.
Warraner had not asked me anything more about Jude, or my reasons for visiting Prosperous, once we had left the subject of Jude’s intrusion on the cemetery. It might simply have been the case that Warraner wasn’t curious about Jude or his missing daughter. He may have become distracted as we talked about his beloved chapel. Or there was a third possibility: Warraner didn’t ask about Jude because he already knew that Jude was dead, but if that was so, why not mention it? Why not ask who had hired me, or why I had come so far north to ask about a homeless man? Yes, Morland could have told Warraner the reason for my visit while I was following him to the churchyard, but if so, then why would Warraner have bothered to ask me the same question a second time?