Falconer bit the apple but tasted only dust. So many of his actions over the past weeks had been wrong. And his attitude had been worse. He had bulled through situations that required silence and stealth. He was circled by people who cared for him and wished him only well. Yet all he could give in return was a severe remoteness.
He would prefer facing the enemy and holding fast. Taking aim at the goal and giving it his all. Anything but more days of staring at what would never be his.
He rose from his little table and walked out behind the cottage. The rainwater cistern was covered with a thin skim of ice. He cracked it with a knuckle, drank deep, then washed his face and hands. Gasping, he returned to his chamber. The light was dimming. He fumbled for the tinderbox, then set it back down. He would merely light the candle and watch it flicker, his gaze slipping over the Good Book, the words unread.
Falconer lowered himself to his knees. He bowed his head and crouched upon the floor in pain, all muscle and drive and blindness. And mute. All he could say was, “Father . . .”
He could not have said how long he knelt thus when a change came into his small chamber.
Falconer heaved himself to his feet and stood in the center of his darkened room, his chest pumping in and out. He strained to detect what was now gone.
For once his disappointment was vanquished. A fresh wind had blown through. One strong enough to clear away the smoke and the charred ashes from his heart.
Falconer tasted the air with all his senses on full alert. The air remained as highly charged as if a lightning bolt had blasted into the room.
He had heard a voice.
He was in no doubt whatsoever of this. A few words, spoken so clearly they might as well have been whispered into his physical ear.
Wait upon the Lord.
Chapter 5
Serafina woke to a March dawn, the room dark and beyond her shuttered window only night. Still, she rose and washed her face, shivering as she dressed. Ever since her time in service at Harrow Hall, she found herself unable to sleep beyond the first hour before morning, which was very odd for a young lady who two years earlier could lie abed until almost noon.
She lit a candle and trod carefully along the upstairs hallway and down the home’s only staircase. Everything was of course very new. The windows did not have proper drapes yet, just the closed shutters. All the rooms had a rather unfinished look. The furniture seemed as artificial in their station as plants just settled into the garden. Serafina walked down the hallway separating the living and dining rooms from her father’s office. She entered the kitchen and gasped at the sight of a figure shrouded in shadows.
The form shifted and turned from the window. “It’s only me, lass.”
“F-Falconer?”
“I’m sorry to have startled you.”
She held up her candle, her heart slowing its pounding. “Why are you standing in the dark?”
“I was praying. Here. Let me make some more light.” He moved to the corner where a modern galvanized stove was situated. He used tongs hanging from the wall to open two lids. Instantly the room was bathed in a warm glow. “Would you take tea?”
“That would be nice. Thank you.”
She watched Falconer draw two mugs from a packing crate. He set a pot onto the stove lid that was still closed. While the water boiled, he opened a sack and put a heaping spoonful of tea into a mug, followed by a good dollop of honey. Serafina remarked, “Sailor’s tea.”
“You remember.”
“I’ll never forget.” She accepted the mug with a smile of thanks. “Will you join me?”
“Yes, if you wish.”
She studied him more carefully as he poured himself a cup. “Something is different. You’ve changed. What is it? You seem calmer, more at peace. Yes. That’s it.”
Falconer said nothing. He lowered himself into a chair at the end of the table and took a cautious sip.
“Are things to be better between us now?”
Falconer seemed to taste his response with the tea. The stove’s glow reflected on his face, and she could see the pensive cast to his eyes. “Has God ever spoken to you?”
Serafina heard more than the question. For the first time in weeks she heard again the voice of one who had become her dearest friend. The man she had trusted with her honor and her life. The brother who had helped her to trust in God.
His dark eyes looked almost copper in the light. “Has He?”
“Of course.” She found herself recalling the first time they had spoken like this. How astonished she had been to meet a man who treated God as the unseen presence within every room, every moment. “He speaks to me through His Word. He speaks to me in church. He speaks to me through a sunrise. Through the lessons I have learned in my mistakes. Through my family. And through my friends.”
“No. I mean . . .” Falconer fumbled with the words. “Has God ever spoken to you in a voice that you could hear?”
“I don’t understand,” she said with a small shake of her head. “What difference is there between one voice and another? If I have indeed heard Him, it is all the same. Is that not so?”
He nodded slowly. “You have grown in wisdom, Serafina.”
A shiver went down her back. Not at the words, but the way he said her name. With ease. Again. Finally. At long last. “Have I?”
“Very much. Do you know, this is the first time I have asked your advice about faith.”
“All I can offer you, John Falconer . . .” She sipped from her mug to ease the restriction in her throat. “Whatever I have learned, it is because you were there when I most needed a friend.”
He had such a strong face. Fierce even in repose. Fierce and yet gentle. Equal amounts of strength and sorrow. She wanted to trace that scar with her fingers, but of course she would not. Yes, the sorrow was still there, and it wounded her to know that his unanswered love was the cause. Yet there was a new calm to the moment. A sense that God was there with them— a healing balm, even now. Falconer said, “Friends.”
“Oh yes,” she said and smiled. Though the man at the table’s other end was rimmed by tears that could be held back no longer.
That night Falconer slept a full eleven hours. He fell into bed at dusk and slept until the church bells woke him. He rose too swiftly and had to grab the wall for balance, he was so groggy. He stumbled while drawing on his pants, then stumbled again over the doorstep and would have sprawled flat had Gerald Rivens not caught him. “Steady on, friend.”
Falconer walked barefoot across the almost frozen ground. He dunked his entire head into the rain cistern. Bits of ice laced his skin before he came up blowing like a whale.
He walked back around and hurried inside, for he saw now that Gerald was seated on a narrow bench beneath the cottage window next to Mary, and both were dressed for the Sabbath. Falconer tugged on boots and donned a formal high-collared shirt. He combed his hair and tied it back, then returned outside and demanded, “Why did you not wake me for my watch?”
Gerald made wide eyes. “Was that you? I thought a bear had crawled inside your lair, eaten you whole, and suffered from indigestion.”
Mary hid a giggle behind one hand.
“I suppose I did need the rest,” Falconer allowed.
“Yes. I reckoned as much.”
As Falconer started for the kitchen, he said over his shoulder, “I will spell you tonight.”
“Don’t forget the new man is here to help share duties,” Gerald called after him. “What’s more, you don’t owe me a thing, John Falconer.”
The house held an empty silence. Falconer assumed the family had already left for church. But there were signs of early activity. Every surface in the kitchen was covered with dishes. A vast iron pot simmered on the stove, filling the air with fragrances of tomatoes and fresh herbs. Someone had thoughtfully left a jug of apple cider, along with bread and cheese on the windowsill. Falconer took his breakfast along as he wandered around the new house. Through the front windows he spott
ed a flock of dark-cloaked figures headed for the church at the square’s farthest corner. He recalled the young man and his invitation and went back to the cottage for his coat.
Saint John’s was a quiet place, one that embraced all believers in whitewashed wood and simple lines. Falconer arrived just as the last stragglers were being sent upstairs to the loft, as the downstairs was packed. Just as at the Langstons’ church in Georgetown, most of the congregants were dressed in dark colors. The men wore frock coats and stiff-collared shirts, the women gray or black cloaks and stiff little hats tied under their chins. Falconer slipped into a pew by the loft’s back wall just as the pastor began his welcome. The man’s first words caught him unaware.
“Some of us come in joy,” the minister told the gathering. “Others in sadness. In the Lord’s eyes, what matters most is that you have come at all. Is your heart troubled? Come. Is your world fraught with peril? Come. Are you filled with joy and triumph and a sense of accomplishment? Come. Have your prayers been answered? Come. Is there pain, anguish, an unraveling of the mortal coil? Come and find welcome in the name of our risen Savior.”
Falconer had been impacted by many Sabbath services. Never, however, had the words felt so keenly directed to him as this day. God was speaking through the pastor. To him. The force blew aside Falconer’s ability to question. He was struck by a divine cannonade that began with the opening welcome and continued to the benediction.
He listened to the pastor read a passage from the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel. A valley of bones, the pastor intoned, a place of death and loss and mortal despair. Without hope or future, the man explained, without any sense of life. And God asked His prophet, can these bones ever walk with life and purpose again?
“Yes.” Falconer was astonished to find he had spoken aloud. Yet the power flooding through him would not be denied. “Yes!”
“Indeed so.” The pastor found nothing untoward with a response from the balcony. Nor, clearly, did the others. There were murmurs and nods throughout the congregation as the pastor went on. “The day of renewed hope that the Lord spoke about is certain to come. Those, my brethren, are His own words. Wait upon Him. He will call His divine winds to course through your dark valley and draw forth life. Will you remain heartsick, alone, even sad? Perhaps. Even the apostle Paul was commanded to bear his thorn. But God will knit together your bones and from your despair bring forth reason.”
Falconer slipped off the pew and onto his knees. A few glanced over, but attention soon turned away. He covered his face with battle-scarred hands and offered a warrior’s prayer, as direct and well-aimed as a stabbing sword. Give me your purpose, Lord. Make gold of my dross. I am your man, and I am ready. Amen.
Falconer spotted Nathan Baring as he exited the church. The young man made his way through the black-frocked crowd. “Falconer, how good of you to join us,” he said in his genial way.
He saw Nathan scout about and saved him the trouble of asking about Serafina. “She is not here.”
“Pardon?”
“Miss Gavi. She accompanied her parents to mass.”
To Falconer’s surprise, the young man did not seem that interested. Nor did he halt his perusal of the crowd. “Ah. The Gavis are papists, are they?”
“Actually, on Wednesday evenings Miss Gavi worships with the Methodists in Georgetown. She attends Sunday mass out of respect for her parents.”
“How extraordinary.” The young man’s attention was now riveted upon Falconer. “You mean to say she is genuinely devout?”
“She is.”
“Forgive me, sir. It was an impudent question. But one so lovely as Miss Gavi, particularly a European from a titled family . . . well . . . Never mind.”
Despite his own initial hostility, Falconer found himself liking the gentleman. “I understand perfectly.”
“Yes, a gentleman of the world like yourself, I should imagine you do.” He went back to searching the crowd. “There was someone I wished for you to meet, though I fear he did not wish to be seen with us.”
Falconer remained caught up in all he had experienced within the church. “Might I ask you a question?”
“By all means.”
“Have you ever heard God speak to you?”
“What, you mean audibly?” His focus came back once more, calm and penetrating. “What a remarkable question.”
“I take that as a no.”
“In a sense. My father, God rest his soul, knew I wished to become a pastor. I took aim at the pulpit when I was just thirteen. All my young life I wanted nothing else. But the morning after my seventeenth birthday, my father brought me into his study and announced that God had spoken to him in the night. I should enter government service, and my brother would be going into the family business. My father asked me to trust him and trust God. But if I refused, he would not object.”
Nathan Baring turned to let an approaching woman pass, closing the gap between them so they would not be interrupted. “Because I loved him, Mr. Falconer, I could not refuse my father’s request. Though it left me heartsore and wretched.”
At this close range, Falconer could see the shadow still in the man’s smoky green eyes. “Was your father right?”
“Upon his deathbed, my father asked me the very same thing. Had he been correct in speaking as he had? I could not lie, not then. I told him I did not yet know. Though eight years had passed since that morning, still God had not revealed to me a purpose I could not also have accomplished through the ministry. Or so it seemed to me. My father said merely, ‘Everything in God’s time.’ Those were his last words, Mr. Falconer. I hope and pray he was right.”
Falconer felt a sudden bond with the gentleman. “I am not as patient a man as you, Mr. Baring.”
“I would ask that you call me Nathan.”
“My friends know me simply as Falconer.” He paused and looked into the face near his. “I could not endure eight years of waiting.”
Nathan had a diplomat’s manner of saying nothing with great volume. He asked, “What did God say to you, Falconer?”
“To wait.” Falconer shuddered. Eight years.
“Will you take advice?”
“Gladly.”
“Three things. First, God will not send to you more than you can endure. Second, you will learn immense lessons in your fallow time.”
“That much I can already attest to. And third?”
“Thirdly, yes. I should encourage you to not wait in solitude. Speak of your hardship and your need. Pray with others. Find comfort in the company of believers.”
Falconer offered his hand. “God brought me here this morning with a purpose, Nathan. I am grateful for your advice.”
“Your words do me great honor.” Nathan Baring did not release his hand. “I apologize for speaking of such matters here on hallowed ground. But the gentleman who has vanished, he carried with him a warning. Of danger and peril.”
“Against the Gavis,” Falconer said. “Yes. Thank you. I already know of this.”
“Not the Gavis,” Nathan corrected. “Against you.”
Serafina returned from church with plenty to accomplish. Other than Mary, they had no female help around the house. Finding a suitable cook was going to be very difficult. Lillian Langston knew no one who had even the slightest idea of Italian cooking. And like most Italian men, Serafina’s father was very particular about his food. So Bettina said she would cook and teach her daughter at the same time. That evening they were playing host to Reginald and Lillian Langston. No proper Italian could say thanks without spreading a feast.
Serafina found great pleasure in the shopping and the preparations. The previous evening Serafina and her mother had spent hours making long sheets of pasta. The fresh dough was featherlight as they rolled it flat. Serafina had laid out streams of finely milled flour before her mother’s rolling pin, and the table upon which they had worked was covered with a wet cheesecloth, such that the pasta would adhere to the cloth and not peel or tear. Overnight
the pasta and the cloth had dried together. Now Bettina peeled it away from the cloth and sliced the hardened pasta, rolling it gently so it would not break, as Serafina ladled in the fresh tomato sauce they had made that morning. They would then add spinach cooked with fresh basil and some cheese. The reggiano and mozzarella they would have used in Venice were not available. But they had bought an aged cheese made from cows’ milk by a German dairy farmer. They could only hope it would prove adequate.
Serafina loved the work and the closeness to her mother. It was a return to her happiest recollections. She recalled other such times, the two of them making pastries in the kitchen fronting the Venetian street or setting the table while gondoliers sang their way through sunlit waters in the canal beyond their dining room window. They laughed over such memories, as though the interim tragedy had never happened. They tasted sauces and kneaded dough for panini. Eventually her mother asked how she had fared in England. The question came naturally, two friends wishing to catch up on each other’s lives. Finally managing to speak of the lost weeks and months.
Serafina’s tale about Aunt Agatha and Harrow Hall took them through the rolling of the veal in ground pepper and sage and setting it in the oven to roast. She cleaned potatoes while her mother sliced carrots, and Serafina described the young lord’s attack and how Falconer had saved her. How he had taken her to church. How he had reintroduced her to hope.
Together they set the table as Serafina described Gareth and Erica Powers and their mission to abolish slavery on both sides of the Atlantic. Bettina Gavi made coffee as Serafina scrubbed the kitchen table and related their travels to the home of William Wilberforce and her two drawings for the pamphlet—the one of Falconer and the one politicizing the slave trade. She and her mother dipped biscotti into their demitasse cups as Serafina told of the pamphlet’s impact, the passage of the bill eradicating slavery within the British Empire.
The Night Angel Page 5
