The Wolf in Winter

by Connolly, John

  “And you’ve been hired to do this by whom?”

  “I haven’t been hired by anyone.”

  “So why are you looking for her?”

  “Because nobody else will,” I said.

  Morland took this in, then told me to follow his car.

  He was still shaking his head as he pulled away.

  CHAPTER

  XXIII

  The Chapel of the Congregation of Adam Before Eve & Eve Before Adam, to give it its full title, was situated in the middle of a forest about half a mile northwest of Prosperous. A road marked PRIVATE, and secured with a lock and chain for which Chief Morland had a key, wound through the woods until it came to iron railings painted black, within which lay the town’s original cemetery and the church. Morland parked his car on a narrow strip of grass beside the railings, and I parked on the road. There was a gate in the railings, also kept closed with a lock and chain, but it was already open when we arrived.

  “I gave Pastor Warraner a call along the way and asked him to join us,” said Morland. “It’s just good manners. The church is in his care. I have a key, but it’s only in case of an emergency. Otherwise, I leave all such matters to him.”

  I looked around, but I could see no sign of the pastor. The church was even smaller and more primitive than I had expected, with walls of rough-hewn gray stone, and a western orientation instead of the more usual eastern. I did one full circuit of the building, and it didn’t take long. A heavy oak door seemed to be the only point of entry or exit, and there were two narrow windows on its northern and southern walls, sealed with glass from within and bars without. The wall behind what I presumed to be the altar was blank and windowless. The roof was relatively new, and appeared incongruous above the ancient stones.

  The main decorative features, the faces for which the church was famous, were in the upper corners of each wall, creating a kind of Janus effect where they met, an impression compounded by the fact that the lengths of carved ivy and branches of which the decorations were composed flowed between the faces and continued along the upper lengths of the walls, so that the visages all appeared to spring from the same source. They had weathered over the centuries, but not as much as might have been expected. Intricate constructions of stone leaves formed a protective screen around them, from which the faces peered out. They reminded me of childhood, and fairy tales, and of the way in which the markings on the trunks of very old trees sometimes took on the appearance of contorted, suffering people, depending on the light and the angle at which they were examined.

  But what struck me most was the sheer malevolence of the expressions on the carvings. These were not manifestations of gentle emotions, or signifiers of hope. Instead, they boded only ill for all who looked on them. To my mind, they had no more place on a church building than a pornographic image.

  “What do you think?” said Morland, as he joined me.

  “I’ve never seen anything like them before,” I said, which was the most neutral reply I could offer.

  “There are more inside,” he said. “Those are just the opening acts.”

  As if on cue, the door to the chapel opened and a man stepped out.

  “Pastor Warraner,” said Morland, “this is Mr. Parker, the detective I told you about.”

  Warraner wasn’t what I had expected of a cleric who had charge of a building that was almost a millennium old. He wore jeans and battered work boots, and a brown suede jacket that had the look of a garment long reached for instinctively when warmth and comfort were required. He was in his late forties, with heavily receding hair, and as we shook hands I saw and felt the calluses on his skin, and caught a faint smell of timber and wood shavings on him.

  “Call me Michael,” he said. “I’m glad I was around to say hello.”

  “Do you live nearby?” I asked. I hadn’t seen any other vehicle when we arrived.

  “Just the other side of the woods,” he said, gesturing over his right shoulder with his thumb. “Five minutes on foot. Same time it takes me in my truck by the less scenic route, so it makes more sense to walk. May I ask what brings a private detective to our town?”

  I stared at the church carvings, and they stared back. One had its mouth wide open, and a tongue poked obscenely from between its carved lips. It seemed to mock any hope I might have of finding Annie Broyer alive.

  “A homeless man named Jude came to Prosperous recently,” I said. “Chief Morland tells me that he may have trespassed on the church grounds in the course of one of those visits.”

  “I remember,” said Warraner. “I was the one who found him here. He was very agitated, so I had no choice but to call Chief Morland for assistance.”

  “Why was he agitated?”

  “He was concerned about his daughter. She was missing, and he was under the impression that she might have found her way to Prosperous. He felt that he wasn’t getting the help he needed from the police. No offense meant, Chief.”

  “None taken,” said Morland, although it was hard to tell if he was sincere, as he had kept his sunglasses on against the glare of winter sun on snow. I barely knew Morland, but I had already figured him for a man who guarded any slights jealously, nurturing them and watching them grow.

  “Anyhow, I tried to calm him down, but I didn’t have much success,” said Warraner. “I told him to leave the grounds, and he did, but I was worried that he might attempt to break into the church, so I called the chief.”

  “Why would you think he’d want to break into the church?” I asked.

  Warraner pointed at the faces looming above his head.

  “Disturbed people fixate,” he said, “and this wonderful old building provides more opportunities for fixation than most. Over the years, we’ve had attempts to steal the carvings from the walls, and to deface them. We’ve found people—and not just young ones either but folk old enough to know better—having sex on the ground here because they were under the impression it would help them to conceive a child, and, of course, we’ve been visited by representatives of religious groups who object to the presence of pagan symbols on a Christian church.”

  “As I understand it, this town was founded by the Familists, and it was originally their church,” I said. “Their belief system strikes me as more than a complicated variation on Christianity.”

  Warraner looked pleasantly surprised at the question, like a Mormon who had suddenly found himself invited into a house for coffee, cake, and a discussion of the wit and wisdom of Joseph Smith.

  “Why don’t you step into my office, Mr. Parker?” he said, welcoming me into the chapel.

  “As long as I’m not keeping you from anything important,” I said.

  “Just kitchen closets,” he said. “I run a joinery service.”

  He fished a card from his pocket and handed it to me.

  “So you’re not a full-time pastor?”

  Warraner laughed. “I’d be a pauper if I was. No, I’m really just a caretaker and part-time historian. We no longer have services here; the Familists are no more. The closest we have are some Quaker families. The rest are mainly Baptists and Unitarians, even some Catholics.”

  “And what about you?” I said. “You still keep the title of ‘pastor.’ ”

  “Well, I majored in religion at Bowdoin, and studied as a Master of Divinity at Bangor Theological Seminary, but I always did prefer woodworking. Still, I guess you could say that the theological gene runs in the family. I hold a weekly prayer group, although often I’m the only one praying, and there are people in town who come to me for advice and guidance. They tend to be folk who aren’t regular churchgoers but still believe. I don’t probe too deeply into what it is that they do believe. It’s enough that they believe in some power greater than themselves.”

  We were in the church now. If it was cold outside, it was colder still inside. Five rows of hard wooden benches faced a b
are altar. There were no crosses, and no religious symbols of any kind. Instead, the wall behind the altar was dominated by a foliate face larger than any that decorated the exterior. Two slightly smaller faces of a similar kind were visible between the windows.

  “Do you mind if I take a closer look?” I said.

  “By all means,” said Warraner. “Just watch your step. Some of the stones are uneven.”

  I approached the altar along the right aisle of the church. As I passed, I glanced at the first of the faces. It was more detailed than the ones outside, and had a grinning, mischievous expression. As I looked at it more closely, I saw that all its features were made from stone re-creations of produce: squash, pea pods, berries, apples, and ears of wheat. I had seen something like it before, but I couldn’t recall where.

  “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 twisting 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 identify themselves publicly, 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 asked. “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 flee 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.”

  “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, “bu
t I’m not sure what it is that I’m looking for, so who’s to know?”

  “I thought 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 into 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 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 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 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, why would Warraner have bothered to ask me the same question a second time?

  My headlights caught bare branches and twisted trees, and every shadow concealed the face of the Green Man.

  CHAPTER

  XXIV

  Morland drove to the outskirts of Prosperous and sat in his car, drinking coffee from his thermos and watching the cars enter and leave the town. His Crown Vic rested on a small hill partially concealed by trees, a site that he often used as the location for a speed trap when the mood took him. His father had shown him this location, pointing out to him the sweet spot, the perfect position from which to watch without being seen while also giving an unrestricted view of the road. On this occasion, Morland left the radar gun in its case. He didn’t want to be disturbed. He wanted to think.