by Heide Goody
"No, it’s a fine pint, that’s the main reason for my interest," smiled Ewan. "While we’re on the subject of my work though, I do need to come and look around at some point. Did you hear about the unusual symptoms that people suffered last winter?"
"No, I’m not sure that I did," said Ambrose carefully.
"It was a curious, localised phenomenon," said Ewan. "People spent several hours speaking with a rather damaging level of honesty. I’ve been shocked to see some of the longer-term fallout from that. It’s taken us some time to pinpoint the origin, but now we believe it was one of the Farmer’s Markets in Aberdaron, so we’re contacting all of the stall holders. I believe the monastery was one of them."
"Ah," said the abbot. "I think you’ll find we sell only needlework at the Farmer’s Market."
"No, that’s not right," said Ben. The abbot had assumed that Ben wasn’t paying attention, as he gazed absently at the dance floor.
"Sorry?" Ambrose asked.
"No, you sold jam. Michael bought some," said Ben. "Made from the famous Bardsey apple tree."
"Oh, yes," said Ewan, nodding. "I think I bumped into Michael after he’d bought it and we spoke briefly about the tree being of interest as it’s a unique variety."
"Ah, yes, of course," said Ambrose quickly. "How could I forget the jam?"
"Maybe you could tell me a little more about your apple tree?" said Ewan. "Perhaps I could even take a brief look, if it’s convenient? I realise the food preparation area will be busy at the moment, but I can come back another day for that."
Abbot Ambrose clasped his hands together.
"I will see what I can arrange, but it will definitely need to be another day, I’m afraid. I’m sure you can imagine how busy we all are today. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I must go and attend to some other pressing matters."
He walked away, as briskly as he could. He didn’t have a moment to waste.
Ben crossed the dance floor and slipped his arm around Jayne’s waist.
"Hello," she smiled and placed a kiss on his cheek.
"I’m astonished," said Ben.
"I am astonishing," Jayne agreed.
"The entire day has gone really well. Everyone’s got on. There have been no organisational disasters. Jeremy’s managed to keep all his clothes on and has yet to burn the building down."
Jayne patted Ben’s chest.
"It has been a good day, my love."
"Look, I’m also sorry about that little hiccup earlier."
"Hiccup?"
"The business about the holiday. The whole Alexander the Great thing. It was really thoughtful of you. I can see a lot of time and effort went into that."
"Thank you," said Jayne emphatically. "I knew you’d see that."
"And you weren’t to realise that it’s really not my thing and I can’t possibly go to those kinds of places."
Jayne’s smile vanished.
"Can’t?" she said. "Or won’t?"
"I don’t like foreign travel."
"And what about me?"
Ben searched for the right words but he was too slow. Jayne didn’t quite push him away but it was only a matter of perception. She quickly disentangled herself from him and strode out the room.
"Wait," Ben called, in quick pursuit.
He caught up with her in the quiet of the monastery gardens. It was late in the evening but the summer sun still stubbornly hung on the horizon.
"Please," said Ben, coming up behind her. "I didn’t mean to upset you."
Jayne’s chest heaved with pent-up rage.
"I’ve booked it," she bristled.
"I’m sure we can speak to the travel agent and –"
"I don’t want to un-book it, Ben!"
"Then maybe you can find a friend who’d like to go –"
"What? With me? You want me to go on honeymoon without my husband?"
Ben stopped, shook his head.
"I’m sure this is not as big a deal as it seems. I’m sure there’s a way round it."
Jayne seethed and fumed. Her arms worked and gesticulated while the words failed to emerge. It was like waiting for a volcano to erupt. An overwrought, slightly sweaty but still dazzlingly beautiful volcano, Ben told himself. He didn’t want to hang around for the eruption but he knew there was no avoiding it.
"I do not," she yelled in a pyroclastic cloud of fury, "want to spend my life doing driving tours of wartime bunkers and radar stations, sticking to your anal itinerary and hoping that my cooking gets high scores in your daily assessments!"
Ben grinned with relief.
"Is that what you’re worried about? I’m not like that."
"Are you sure?"
"Completely. I’m not into that kind of thing at all. The whole World War Two thing is so nerdy. If I picked a holiday, we’d do something far more interesting."
"Really?"
"Oh, my ideal driving tour would be very different. There are some fascinating earthworks in the West Country."
"Earthworks?"
"Ancient fortifications. Dykes and ditches and such. Okay, some of them are barely visible and you have to use your imagination a lot but I think-"
Jayne didn’t scream. She bellowed, loudly and wordlessly.
"Oh, Jesus Christ! You are turning into your dad! And mine!"
Ben staggered back and, from nowhere, found his own nugget of anger.
"Well, at least it’s better than turning into your mom!"
Jayne reeled as though struck.
"Don’t say that," she said.
"Well!" said Ben. "Listen to yourself. Dictating what people should and shouldn’t be doing. Passing judgement."
Jayne shook her head vigorously.
"That’s a horrible thing to say about me," she said quietly. "That’s my greatest fear. Turning into my mom."
Ben approached her cautiously, fearful that she might explode again.
"I’m sorry," he said, holding out his hand. "Can I tell you something? Something that’s been bugging me?"
"What?"
He waggled his hand at her. Jayne reluctantly took it.
"Your dad’s speech really bothered me."
"What? More than Jeremy’s?"
"A different kind of bother. Your dad called me your knight in shining armour."
"Yeah, I can’t quite see that one either."
"Ah, well, I think he’s right," said Ben.
"Delusional, you mean."
"You needed rescuing. From the dragon."
Jayne looked at him shrewdly.
"You are aware that only I’m allowed to insult my mother? You have to agree with me when I do but no independent mom-bashing."
"You’ve been trying to escape her clutches for years. All you needed was the means and a decent enough excuse."
Jayne said nothing. Ben hoped that meant she agreed with him.
"I’m that excuse," he said. "I’m the means."
"Maybe," said Jayne.
Ben nodded.
"And that’s the real problem."
"What?"
"You are rescued now. You are free. I don’t think you need a knight in shining armour anymore."
Across the lawn, a peacock hooted and leapt into the boughs of a low-hanging tree. Jayne bit her bottom lip in thought.
"Would you walk with me, Ben?" she said.
"Gladly," he said and linked arms with her.
~ooOOOoo~
Abbot Ambrose packed the charts he'd need into a waterproof locker on the boat. He was nearly ready to make his escape from this island and the closing net of people who were taking an unhealthy interest in him.
He checked over the boat. It was a squat but powerful motorboat that he had surreptitiously bought three months earlier for this very eventuality. It wasn’t an ocean-going vessel but it would be enough to get them down the coast and across the channel to the continent. It sat low in the water, with the weight of the hoard that was already on board.
The weather reports were good, his persona
l outlook fair to sunny.
He was worried about Arthur being exposed to the cool wind that came off the sea, but that couldn't be helped. He would need to bring extra blankets, along with the rest of the paraphernalia that was needed for Arthur's care. As long as he could keep him dry and warm then they could find a new home and things would be as they always were.
Ambrose fought a wave of sudden despair. The only thing that was more upsetting than the prospect of destroying their old routine was the thought that they would have to begin it again somewhere else. This was how it had always been. One final trip down here with Arthur and they'd be ready to go.
~ooOOOoo~
"Everybody loves doing the Macarena, don’t they?" said Sebastian, beaming at the small crowd on the dance floor, several of whom were staggering back to chairs to catch their breath, or rubbing sore knees. Clovenhoof was undaunted, and waited eagerly to see what the next song was.
"Now a real treat, retro-fans," said Sebastian. "From eighty seven, when the DOW Jones index lost over twenty two points off its value and Jayne tried to create her own My Little Pony by colouring-in a neighbour's kitten, here’s Bon Jovi with Living on a Prayer."
Clovenhoof leapt with joy as he recognised the anthemic rock tune that would show off his unmissable air guitar talents at their best. He woo-a-woo-a-woo’d along with the opening lines and punched the air.
Nerys appeared at his side, grabbing his elbow.
"Come with me," she said.
"Not while Bon Jovi’s playing," Clovenhoof whined. "I’ll come in a minute."
"No, not in a minute, you need to come now, there’s something you need to see," she said.
"He hasn’t even played my request yet," said Clovenhoof with a pout.
"Did you ask for Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, by any chance?" asked Nerys.
"How did you guess?" asked Clovenhoof as she steered him towards the door.
"Just lucky," she said.
They passed down several corridors, so that Bon Jovi was just a murmur behind thick stone walls.
"Look at these," said Nerys, stopping in front of some tapestries. "Tell me what immediately strikes you."
"Well," said Clovenhoof. "It strikes me that if you coop up a bunch of men on an island for most of their adult lives they will revert to the time-wasting pastime of embroidery just before their heads explode due to the boredom of it all. Embroidery’s even more useless and dull than Ben’s dad."
Nerys shook her head.
"Would you look at them! Never mind that you don’t approve of embroidery, look here. What do you see?"
Clovenhoof looked where Nerys pointed.
"It’s Cain. Shifty bugger, wasn’t he?"
"And here." Nerys pointed at the next tapestry.
"Oh. Merlin," said Clovenhoof and then glanced back at the first tapestry. "He looks a bit like Cain, doesn’t he?"
"Looks a lot like Cain," said Nerys. "Come on, there’s more."
They walked a few feet further down the corridor.
"Now, I have no idea who Saint Senacus and Saint Veracius were, but here they are again. The same pair, look! The one saint has his head slightly obscured by these weird pink feathers, but this one here is definitely Abel from the first tapestry."
"So the monk who did this had no imagination when it came to faces."
"No. Look."
Clovenhoof stared hard at the scene depicted.
"Well apart from the interesting repair work on the hillside, this looks like Bardsey to me. I wonder if this pair of saints are the ones who founded the monastery?"
"Come and look at the next one," said Nerys.
She showed him the crucifixion.
"Oh, come on. That’s Clint Eastwood, even I know that!" said Clovenhoof. "This is the handiwork of some monk on the brink of madness, like I told you."
Nerys rolled her eyes.
"You can quite clearly see which bits have been repaired, the colours are brighter. Those are the parts that seem a little more…eccentric. I’m talking about the original detail. Look. The Clint Eastwood character is holding Merlin’s staff. It’s quite distinctive, with that bit there that looks like a peacock’s tail."
~ooOOOoo~
Ambrose wheeled the bath chair carefully down the path. The sun was setting and there would just be time to get Arthur onto the boat in its dying rays as long as there were no disasters like a wheel coming loose. The bath chair had spent years being pushed across the smooth stone floors of the monastery, so Ambrose was fearful that the stony path to the shore would prove too much for the antique mechanics of the thing.
"When we find our new home, I think we might need to get you a new chair, Arthur," he said. "I believe there are some fine new models available. I know we don't like to touch our hoard but I need to make sure that I can care for you in the best way possible. That’s what family do, eh?"
Ambrose was forced to a sudden stop as Barry the peacock ran across the path in front of them. He screeched up at them, flashing his tail feathers.
"Shoo! Go on, out of the way!" shouted Ambrose. "Sorry Arthur, didn’t mean to make you jump."
Barry reluctantly moved off.
"You know," said Ambrose, "it hasn't been so very bad these last few hundred years, has it? Let’s face it, things have never been better." He smiled at a recollection. "Was there anything worse than the Middle Ages? Is it me or was everything covered in six inches of mud back then? Crowds of people coming out here on pilgrimages with their filthy diseases. The Black Death was nasty. Killed trade right off. You got a cold, do you remember?"
Barry's screeches faded to the distance as they neared the shore.
"Rome wasn’t much better. Oh, they liked to think they were so very civilised, but the animals they had all over the place! I trod in giraffe dung over by the Colosseum one time. It took weeks to get rid of the smell. Funny, I can still remember that."
The path narrowed on the final descent and Ambrose leaned backwards to take the weight off the wheels as the chair lurched and wobbled over the uneven surface.
"Nearly there brother, nearly there."
~ooOOOoo~
Clovenhoof’s brow creased in thought as he strolled back and forth between the pictures. Nerys was right. When examined carefully, the tapestries showed some sort of chronology. The same pair of characters popping up throughout history, almost as if they were immortal…
"Did you spot who they are yet?" asked Nerys impatiently. "Imagine this guy with a bad wig, covering up the mark he has on his forehead."
She held her hand over Cain’s head to demonstrate.
"Abbot Ambrose," said Clovenhoof. "Abbot Ambrose is Cain."
"You mean he actually is Cain?"
"Yep. And the prior is Abel."
"Who?"
"Michael mentioned him. Some codger in a wheelchair. This is starting to make sense."
"Is it?"
"Trust me. We need to go to the orangery."
"The what? I’m glad you think that makes sense because I don’t even know what you’re talking about."
"The orangery. There’s a tree growing here that’s at the centre of all this. Come on."
~ooOOOoo~
Michael swung the sword back and forth, revelling in the weight of the thing, in the guttering roar of the flames as it swept through the air. Banished from the Celestial City for almost a year, this was almost like a homecoming.
He tried a few over shoulder passes, feeling the fire caress his face as it passed. Jessie kept at a very wary distance.
Michael grinned.
"Don’t worry, girl. This thing’s perfectly safe in my hands." He ran his hand along its blade, and it passed untouched through the flames. "You know this is older than all creation? I had this at my side during the War in Heaven. Jeremy will remember this, no doubt."
Michael laughed at the thought of taking it upstairs and waving it in Clovenhoof’s face. Sure, it wasn’t the lance, with which Michael had pierced the Adversary’s side and thro
wn him down, but it was the next best thing.
"Can’t remember where I lost it though. I didn’t have it at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The last time I remember having it was at the gates to Eden. You know about that one, Jessie?"
Jessie licked her nose.
"The Almighty had placed the seraphim there, flaming swords abounding. He had kicked the humans out of paradise for their disobedience. It was our job to prevent them coming back, to guard the way back to the Tree of…"
Michael stopped.
"Of course!" he shouted in sudden realisation. "That’s where I’ve seen it before!"
Jessie shifted on her feet, sensing something was afoot.
Michael raised his sword high and waved Jessie on.
"Come on! To the orangery!"
~ooOOOoo~
Stephen lifted the edge of his habit so that he could kick a stone in fury. It didn't really make him feel any better. He hadn't been able to stop inside the monastery after his encounter with Nerys. He couldn't decide what made him angrier. Was it that she hadn't listened to a single word that he said, blathering on about her own selfish thoughts, or was it that she hadn't recognised him, not even slightly? He couldn't decide, but he knew that he needed to go back and speak to her. How could he lead a life of peace and solitude if a single encounter with a woman could unsettle him like this?
What would he say to her?
He tried out some lines.
"I know you don't remember me, but we've been to bed together. You had a sex manual under the sheets and you treated me like a piece of meat."
No, piece of meat wasn't right.
"You treated me with all the tenderness of someone practising CPR on a dummy. I'm a sensitive man. I want you to recognise that I have feelings. Do you know how much I was damaged by that experience?"
Stephen stopped as he heard stones rattling on the path ahead.
"Hello, who's there?"
He walked towards the shore. He could definitely see someone now, on the steep stony slope, moving very slowly.
