The editor also had included, for no apparent good reason, a photo of Bree, Lady Baaden-Boomethistle, taken on her wedding day outside a registry office in London. Her skirt had been caught by the wind, allowing for a sort of Marilyn Monroe moment, which the editor undoubtedly had been unable to resist. She was smiling and her husband, head firmly attached, was beaming. It looked to Max as if it had been a happy occasion.
“Have a seat, Father Gumshoe,” said the bishop, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “I hope I haven’t interrupted your investigation too much by calling this meeting?”
Max sat as instructed, arms resting on the wide arms of the chair, adopting a relaxed attitude he did not really feel. He ignored the bishop’s question, which was clearly meant only to showcase his irritation.
“We have a lot to talk about,” the bishop began.
Isn’t that the truth, thought Max. He tilted his head to one side expectantly. Much better, he had discovered, to let the bishop guide the conversation. That way the real issues—the things Max was not quite ready to discuss—often went, well, undetected.
“I rang the editor of this execrable newspaper to explain our position.”
We have a position? Good, good. Max was hopeful. If “we” had a position, that could only mean the bishop was on his side.
“I did not, overall, sense a keen intelligence at work behind the man’s surface geniality.”
“No,” Max allowed. “No, one probably would not expect to find that.” A regular reader of the Globe and Bugle, since it was the only game in town for following local events, Max could honestly say intelligence was not the word that generally came to the forefront of his mind. Scurrilous and rubbish often did. The paper was only saved from lawsuits for slander, one sensed, by the comedic quality of much of the sly innuendo, the allegations that stretched nearly into the realm of science fiction. Max and Awena often read bits of the paper aloud to each other of a morning, to start the day off with a laugh. Max had missed this morning’s paper only because he had already been on the road to Monkslip Cathedral.
“It is difficult to say what angle of the man’s ‘story,’ for lack of a better word, was most alarming.”
Alarming. This could not be good. What did he mean by alar—
“There is, of course, the whole question of whether your parish duties are being subverted by these investigations.”
“I assure you, Bishop, particularly now that I have a curate—she is working out wonderfully well, by the way—I have—”
“I am certain that is the case. I would have heard if it were otherwise. You have an … an active group of parishioners who would not hesitate to complain if anything were being neglected.” The bishop stole another glance at the newspaper. “Really, it’s quite a good, photogenic portrait of you, Max. You do look dashing, if you don’t mind my saying so. How fortunate you were wearing your collar, so the press could play up the whole Father Brown angle. Perhaps we could use you on a recruitment poster. ‘Max Tudor, Celebrity Sleuth.’ And of course they have emphasized your rumored MI5 background in the article. Too good to resist, along with the cheesecake shot of Lady Baaden-Boomethistle. Let’s see—ah yes, here it is: ‘According to his parishioners, Father Maxen Tudor, smothered by the Official Secrets Act, is not able to discuss his background, but it is believed he was instrumental in breaking up the more venomous of the drug cartels plying their heartless trade in London.”
“Regrettable,” murmured Max. He couldn’t tell if the bishop were more exasperated with the media than with Max himself. Perhaps it was a mixture of both.
“‘Heartless trade.’ That’s rather good. I must remember to use that in my next antidrug speech when I visit the schools. How are Awena and the baby doing, by the way?”
“Oh!” Max, as often happened, was thrown off by the bishop’s change of topic. “Right as rain. Just fine, Bishop. Owen is such a joy, I can’t tell you.”
“Remember, I have four of my own,” said the bishop, pointing to the family portrait on the credenza—four girls, all redheads like their father. “I know. It is only the beginning. Talk about heartless—they steal your heart and go off with it one day without a backward glance.”
Max was sure this was true, and while he hoped it would be different with boys, somehow he doubted it.
“The article goes on,” the bishop began carefully, “it goes on to say your wife has a reputation as a healer.”
“This is true, Bishop. She … it’s part of her business, you know. Her shop. She sells homeopathic remedies and so forth.”
“The implication is that she does more.”
Max sighed. “May I see?”
The bishop handed him the paper and sat in silence while Max took it all in. The reporter had, of course, gotten hold of the whole neopagan angle vis-à-vis Awena and played it for all it was worth. He (one Clive Hoptingle, whose talents clearly were being wasted in reportage, given his driving narrative style) implied without actually stating it that Awena went in for esoteric ceremonies, gathering herbs by moonlight, sprinkling “blessed” water on crops—all the while being married to a priest of the Church of England.
What Clive reported was not wrong, exactly. It was a question of focus, of shading, of innuendo and suggestion, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks with every cliché at his or her disposal. Awena, the most gentle and loving of creatures, was being subtly portrayed as something out of Macbeth, a model for one of Shakespeare’s three witches. Max felt his face flush with anger. This Clive person was a moron. How dare he.
Awena was a healer; Max had seen the evidence for himself, had experienced it for himself. It was, however, another reason her growing reputation might make the bishop leery. She sold, for one example, an ointment in her shop that worked fine to alleviate skin conditions; its main ingredient was witch hazel or something innocuous. But, as he once had learned when he injured his ankle, it worked with 100 percent efficacy when Awena applied it to his skin. There had been other, even more profound cures of several people in the village that he attributed to her intervention. There was no other explanation. But explaining to anyone like the bishop, who had not experienced this for himself, well …
Max recalled the discussions he and Awena had had on the subject of religion, particularly when they were trying to contrive a wedding ceremony that could enfold both his beliefs and hers.
Awena prayed to the benign and protective being in which she believed absolutely, an entity neither male nor female, but which, as she explained it, resided in the center of a flame that burned with a pure and resolute and indissoluble love for all things living.
It was, she said, a question of faith rather than of belief. A being that just was, never requiring conscious thought or invocation, but pleased nonetheless to be summoned.
“The universe is so varied,” Awena had said. “No wonder we struggle to name and categorize, in an attempt to understand it all. But when we fight wars over definitions of the deity—or deities—that’s when the trouble starts. In the name of religion, we kill one another. How mad we are!”
She had explained to him then what a hand-fasting ceremony was, and had asked, “Would you feel such a thing compromised your beliefs in any way?”
“It depends,” he had said. “What are the vows, exactly?”
She had told him. While they could compose their own vows, they basically would promise to be each other’s shelter in any storm: “To love and honor and respect each other as individuals, and to seek the light instead of the darkness in all our dealings with each other and with others.
“I would include a promise to be your soul friend—the one person you can rely on to stand by you until the end of your life. The ancient Celts called it ‘anamchara.’”
Max, consumed by the strangely indefinable yet undoubtedly feminine essence of Awena—his lover and his best friend—had said, “I actually think that’s all quite beautiful. Is it legally binding?”
“To me, it is. But to an
swer the meaning behind your question, no, it’s not. The UK doesn’t recognize the ceremony. Yet.”
He found he could not capitulate on this, as much as he loved her and everything about her approach to life. She who could make poetry of any occasion, of any corner of a room, of any meal. Everything she undertook received the same reverent attention: flower arranging, decorating, operating her business, choosing the very ornaments and fabric and clothing she would wear. But alongside her reverence ran that rare ability she had to live in the moment, as the jargon went—it was what made her unique in Max’s and others’ experience.
He would have done whatever she asked, but on this one thing he had held firm. They would marry, and it would be a legally recognized union. And so after much more back-and-forth, they had agreed they would also have a civil ceremony in order that all the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. With Owen on the way, it was something Max had insisted they do.
He and Awena had likewise reached a compromise on their living arrangements. It made no sense for her to abandon the lovely horizontal sprawl of her cottage for the quirky verticality of the vicarage, a structure that seemed designed to provide hazards for the very young just taking their first tentative steps.
Although, Max had observed, designed was the wrong term. Nothing about the vicarage seemed planned. It was sporadic, haphazard, more as if someone with a compulsion to construct and remodel and build on—someone like the Winchester rifle heiress of California Max had read about—had taken over the place a century before. It was full of rooms that seemed to serve no purpose and yet were not large enough to be put to any conceivable good use. And so the vicarage had become Max’s office during the day—an elaborate mazelike study, as it were—while family life took root over at Awena’s cottage. The routine with Mrs. Hooser and her children did not change, and, in fact, Max could not find it in his heart to upset what amounted to free baby-sitting arrangements for the Hooser children. They did their homework at the vicarage’s kitchen table, as they always had done, and Mrs. Hooser made ineffective forays into the vicarage’s many rooms in need of cleaning, armed with her duster, as she always had. For the time being, he and Awena moved easily between cottage and vicarage during the day, as before, the difference being that Max had now moved all his personal belongings into the cottage, which they now called home.
There had been so many things to decide back then, and the few months before Owen’s birth had not seemed to Max nearly long enough to decide it all. He remembered a conversation they’d had one day when they were still trying to decide what to do about day-care arrangements. She had been wearing a typical Awena outfit of what he thought of as icon colors: blues and pinks and violets and cherry tones brightly embroidered against a gold background. The long dress was gathered at the waist, Kabuki-style, with a wide belt.
They had been standing before the vicarage fireplace and she had pulled out of his arms, tipping her head back to look up at him. “I don’t know, Max,” she’d said. “I can watch the baby all day. It’s no problem. This will be ever such a good baby, I’m sure of it.”
“Yes, but you’ve a business to run.”
“So have you, when you think about it. Really, Max, I’ll figure out a way. The other women in the village will help me. And I won’t like being away—I know myself; I won’t want to miss a moment.”
And what she said had proven to be true. Unlike in most young families, where there was a permanent hullabaloo, life with Awena and Owen continued on a serene course, a fact he credited to both their tranquil natures, mother and son.
Awena had held some sort of purification ceremony after Owen’s birth. Her sisters Unita, Xantha, and Zoe had all attended, making the journey from the west coast of Anglesey, full of good cheer and unasked-for but useful advice, prattling happily away, their faces wreathed in smiles. Every time Max saw them, one or another was holding aloft some tiny garment or toy, exclaiming over it in lilting Welsh. Max had known Awena spoke the language but had not realized how second nature it was to her. She was alight with happiness from the presence of Owen and her sisters. As she told Max, “It is like the gods are shining on us all.”
Max’s heart had stilled for a moment when she said that. While he agreed, superstitiously he wondered if it weren’t tempting fate to say it aloud. Looking into Awena’s translucent eyes that day, eyes Owen looked set to inherit, Max had pondered the path that had led him there, to that very moment, to the only woman who had ever entirely owned his heart. Cocteau had said of Edith Piaf that she had “the eyes of a blind person struck by a miracle, the eyes of a clairvoyant.” That was as near a perfect description of Awena—her appearance and her essence—as Max could conjure.
And Max felt he could not live without her. Awena, with her dark hair marked by its distinctive streak of white, and her tea-rose complexion.
He was happy. Sublimely happy.
In early February, halfway between the winter solstice—Yule—and the spring equinox—Ostara—the three sisters had returned to celebrate the onset of spring. In Awena’s tradition, this was Imbolc. Their traditions, his and hers, all blended together, making a perfect kind of sense.
One evening not long afterward, he heard himself asking Awena if there were any more of that baked tofu left over from the party, and he had laughed aloud at the “new” Max. He felt he had been thoroughly brainwashed. But if this was brainwashing, he was delighted, happy to succumb. Life, he thought, could not get any better than this, right here, right now, as they lived in this cheerful give-and-take, appreciating and honoring each other’s traditions, bound together by their love for each other and of Owen.
Whether the bishop would share this happy appreciation was always open to question.
He might adapt. He had done so before. Max recalled the bishop’s initial horrified reaction when Max had explained to him the more esoteric traditions of the hand-fasting ceremony.
“I don’t see how you can participate in what is essentially a neopagan ceremony,” the bishop had said at last. “It’s rather … preposterous for a man in your position.” He heaved a mighty sigh, and his face visibly softened, for he liked his scofflaw priest. “I’m sorry, Max. I truly am. But I don’t see a way. The media…”
Oh, Lord, yes. The media. “The media,” said Max, “will find a new dancing bear to keep them and the British public entertained, within a week or less. You know that, Bishop, as well as I do.”
When Max had later related this conversation, Awena had laughed.
“Perhaps I should wear an embroidered scarlet letter on my dress: P for pagan.”
He gathered she had heard about the rather unfunny Hester Prynne remarks. And typically, wisely, she had chosen to ignore them.
He realized now that the bishop had asked him a question. Fortunately, he had rushed on, not waiting for an answer.
“Before you say anything, Max, I have already composed a letter to the editor. I will run it by you, but I don’t feel that anything as silly and scurrilous as what this reporter has written and this paper has published should go unchallenged.”
The wave of relief that swept through Max made the room practically shimmer before his eyes. He had had no idea how the bishop would react, but Max felt he should have known the man would react in exactly the proper way. For one thing, having met Awena, the bishop knew how ridiculous this portrayal of her was; the bishop and his wife had ended up attending the much-debated hand-fasting ceremony, demonstrating once again their open-mindedness. They had, in fact, ended up staying half the night, enjoying the festivities afterward. It had been a fabulous party, even by Nether Monkslip standards.
“Thank you, Bishop,” said Max in all sincerity.
“Now, we come to the difficult part.”
There was a more difficult part? Then he remembered the “miraculous” face appearing on the wall of St. Edwold’s, which, of course, the reporter had included in his report.
“This image on the wall of St. Edwold’s. Thi
s face. How convinced are you there is nothing to it?”
“You mean nothing miraculous?” Max hesitated. It almost seemed like a trick question, like one of those tests from the early days of the church, when learned men had debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. “To be honest, Bishop, I don’t know. I was completely thrown for a loop when Nether Monkslip came up in connection with the so-called miraculous Face at Monkbury Abbey. It’s not that I became convinced there was anything to it, you understand. It is that the confirmation of all the long-simmering legends was just … weird.” He didn’t add, “considering the source of many of those legends was a wildly unreliable narrator like Frank Cuthbert,” but he thought it.
“But more than that,” Max went on, “I can’t ignore the fact that I have had that wall whitewashed and scrubbed and painted more times than I can recall, and the image returns, sometimes by the next day. There is no question whatsoever about that. I’ve had the roof and ceiling and outside walls checked for leaks. Nothing. And that roof, as you know, is practically brand-new anyway. There is no accounting for it, and yet…”
“And yet there it is.”
The Haunted Season Page 17
