The raven backed into the wiry shadow of a crooked rose. ‘Bit of disease you’ve got there,’ he said, nodding at the petals. ‘Aphids. I can fix that up for you.’
‘Someone is stealing from my church?’
‘The one you call Barnabas Brittle,’ the raven said, between studious pecks at imaginary aphids. ‘He takes from the collection basket when it goes around.’
All the dirt had trickled down from Father Cadman’s fingers now, and one lone worm lay wriggling in the centre of his palm. The priest stood very still, but the line of his shoulders said that inside he was not still at all.
‘With my sincerest respect,’ said Father Cadman, ‘I don’t see how that could be true. My church is a place of generosity and spirit. Everyone there is a friend to everyone else. No one would steal.’
‘Well, with my sincerest respect,’ said the raven, ‘I’d thank you not to call me a liar. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Barnabas Brittle. He slides money up his shirt when he passes the basket around. Then he stores it in the old belltower room when everyone has left. Right in one of the old organ pipes. I’ve watched him do it.’
Father Cadman laid the worm back down into its bed of dirt. It wriggled furiously and within seconds had burrowed into the soil.
‘Is this a test of my faith?’ said Father Cadman.
‘Absolutely not,’ said the raven. ‘I am not a bird who plays games. And I’ll tell you what else I don’t do – send my friends in search of honey when I am well aware that he could be in danger from bird-eating bees.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Father Cadman.
‘Wiped it from your memory already, have you?’
‘It hurts me to hear you say this. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what to do,’ said the priest. ‘Please tell me: am I being tested?’
‘It hurts me that you don’t believe I am telling the truth. What exactly, may I ask, have I done wrong? I uncovered corruption in your church.’
But Father Cadman seemed not to have heard, because he was walking back inside, his head bowed and his hands clasped together behind his back, knuckles ghostly white. A minute later the raven heard the groan of the old belltower doors as they were wrenched open, and then the clatter of furniture being shifted.
Ha! That will show him who the liar is.
The raven made the most of Father Cadman’s absence to uncover all the centipedes he’d just watched disappear. His beak tore through the dirt, and legs and antennae flew everywhere.
He was cleaning the mess from his chest when Father Cadman came back. The raven settled in for the accolades he would surely soon receive. But the priest only frowned and his bushy eyebrows quivered very low over his eyes.
‘I searched every pipe. There was nothing there.’
‘Kraaaa,’ said the raven.
‘No one has been stealing from my church,’ said Father Cadman. ‘You are mistaken.’
‘Excuse me,’ spluttered the raven. ‘I am not mistaken. Under the pipes. In a glass jar. I saw him. I’ve seen him take it. Right from the bowl.’
‘No,’ said Father Cadman. ‘It cannot be.’ He paused, while the raven turned around in circles, all hot and bothered. His claws sank into the loose petals and tore them to shreds.
‘I must say, and forgive me if I am out of place,’ said Father Cadman, taking a step back, ‘that what you did was not kind. If you were testing my faith, you have also labelled one of your people a thief and a liar. You have falsely shamed him in your own house. I do not understand why you would choose to do this.’
‘I have not! He is!’ The raven tangled himself up in the rosebush. He felt the thorns prick into his claws and the tips of his wings and he squawked in outrage. ‘Kraaaa! Kraa! The man is a ruffian! Him, not me!’
‘I am sorry, but I fear I have been mistaken about you. I cannot believe that my God would sow seeds of doubt and mistrust.’
‘What?’ said the raven.
‘Forgive me, but I no longer believe you are what I thought you were. I must close these doors to you. You are no longer welcome in this church.’
And BANG! BANG! Father Cadman – his mentor, his equal, his number-one supporter – slammed the doors shut in the raven’s face.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The raven wandered about as lonely as a single cloud in a perfect blue-sky day. He stumbled over cracked headstones and pitted paths, and every step he took the thorns went in a little deeper. Each time he blinked he saw the church doors slamming shut.
Exhausted, he came to a stop and tried to detach the rosy barbs from his body. First the bees, now the thorns. What had he ever done to Father Cadman to deserve this?
‘And again!’ A voice came croaking up from beneath his feet. ‘Who is it this time? Who comes all shakin’ me bones with pain? Who comes all disturbing my well-earned sleep? Ain’t a man entitled to his rest, but isn’t he so! Not even when he’s dead!’
A ghostly hand appeared and started to grapple about right next to the raven’s beak. It was old Jeremiah Hickelsby, cranky and disgruntled all the way down into the marrow of his bones. Something rancid and rotten drifted out with him. It was highly unusual for ghosts to smell, but Jeremiah had been lying about, mouldering in his coffin for well on half a century.
‘Aye,’ he said, and only the tops of his eyes, hooded and suspicious, peeked out over the thin layer of grass. ‘Off ye go walkin’ all over me bones, and there’s me, not buried even near deep enough, and there’s you, with a tread on ye like ye boots are filled with sackfuls of cement! Can a man not get one wink of shut-eye, not even after fifty years of being dead?!’
‘Excuse me,’ said the raven. He was not in the best of tempers and a crabby ghost certainly wasn’t helping the situation. ‘That’s enough of associating me with words like “heavy” and “cement”. Due to a condition I am suffering at the moment, an incurable malady, I have been unable to eat like a regular bird. I have actually lost weight. I’m the trimmest I’ve been in my life.’
‘Why are ye still talkin’?’ Jeremiah Hickelsby’s hands thrashed about and he clutched at what used to be his head. ‘Go away and leave me alone. I just want to sleep, is all. It’s enough to drive one mad.’
‘Kraaa.’ The raven pecked a thorn from his wing and spat it at the ghost. It was not the type of action he would usually endorse, but he felt as though he’d been strung out by his wingtips. Of course, the thorn went right through, harmless, but Jeremiah Hickelsby was having none of it.
‘Me head, me poor old head,’ he wailed. ‘Look what ye’ve done! Like a boulder rollin’ on through, it is. How could ye be so unkind? How could ye be so unkind to not dig me up and bury me deeper? No peace, no peace, even in the grave.’
‘Yes,’ said the raven, ‘I got your point. Three hours ago.’
‘I just want to shut me eyes for good,’ the man wept.
‘Well, you died a hundred years ago. Kind of missed the opportunity, didn’t you?’
‘A hundred years, is it?’ said Jeremiah. ‘A hundred years of this agony, is it then? A hundred years and not one wink of sleep. People walkin’ over me and singin’ and spittin’ thorns. And me only half-dead, stuck in these wretched old bones.’
‘Then get up and go,’ said the raven. ‘Everyone’s got problems. Leave. It will be better for all of us.’
‘But where would I go?’ said the ghost. ‘What would I do? Where is the place where I can finally rest?’
‘Far away from here,’ said the raven, and made his escape. He half-flew, half-flopped over the gravestones, muttering angrily and wondering just how he’d found himself in such a dire predicament.
‘Hey, Ravo.’
The raven looked up from his self-important protestations and found himself staring at the wispy outline of Todd. He hovered over the gate of the children’s plot before drifting down to the ground.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said the raven. ‘What did you just call me?’
‘Ravo,’ said the boy. ‘Wanna
croissant?’ He pointed at the pastry lying in the dirt next to the bottlecaps. The scent of it hit the raven full in the beak, and his stomach roared as if to remind him that recent gut-wrenching and humiliating events had seriously depleted his energy levels.
‘Kenzie left it for me,’ said Todd, ‘before she started shouting and all that in church.’
‘Yes,’ said the raven, ‘quite inappropriate.’ He hopped forward. ‘Thank you, I will have that croissant.’
Todd went to pick it up, realised he couldn’t, and slunk back down.
‘Probably for the best,’ said the raven. ‘I don’t need someone to feed it to me. I’m rather above being treated like a dog. Especially today.’
Todd shrugged. The raven darted forward and snapped up the croissant. He made to fly away with it back to his belltower, where he could sulk and eat at his own leisure. But he checked himself and turned back to face the boy.
‘All right, then?’ he asked.
‘Nah,’ said Todd, ‘not really. But thanks.’
‘Yes, well,’ said the raven, ‘you’re not the only one. I’ve suffered above and beyond myself today.’
‘Think she hurt her hands,’ said Todd, his eyes unable to fix themselves on anything for more than a second, ‘tearing up those thorns. They’ll be real cut-up. Won’t worry her much, I guess. Takes more than a scratch for her to notice.’
‘She certainly has a powerful set of lungs,’ said the raven. ‘They could probably use her in the church choir.’ His guts twisted at the thought of his exile from the church and all the songs he would miss out on.
‘You know, I miss her,’ said Todd, still looking into space. ‘I do. Watching and talking to her all one-sided – it’s not like the real thing. Feel kinda stupid doing that. Doesn’t mean much to her, does it?’ He sighed, and his thin shadow almost sunk into itself.
The raven nudged about the dirt with his claw. ‘There’s new grass coming up,’ he said, looking over the boy’s grave. ‘That didn’t take long.’
Todd looked too, but he didn’t say anything. The silence drew on until it got positively uncomfortable. Dead people were just so depressing.
‘None of my friends have come to see me yet,’ said the boy. ‘Thought they would, maybe.’
It was the raven’s turn to be silent. A single stream of sunlight shone down, picking out the bottlecaps one by one as though they were passing on a secret message.
‘Bottlecaps,’ the raven finally blurted. ‘I have more bottlecaps. I’ll bring you some more down if you like. That will make her happy. Something has to.’
Todd looked at the T that marked his grave, and his face was filled with the glint of the golden dots. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that might be all right.’
‘Okay,’ said the raven. ‘Good. I’ll see to it. Thanks for the croissant.’
‘She thinks it was me, you know,’ said the boy.
‘What’s that?’
‘She thinks it was me who put them there. The bottlecaps.’
‘Well,’ said the raven, ‘I guess that’s for the best, isn’t it?’
Back in his den the raven devoured the croissant in a couple of gulps. He staggered out into the fresh air, stuffed and lethargic, to shake the crumbs from his breast. And it was then he saw Barnabas Brittle – the very man who had made him an outcast in his own church.
He was quite a distance away, but the raven could smell a traitor a mile off. Brittle was just coming back from the path that wound through the Mausoleum Garden, walking much too casually for a man just going about his business.
The raven saw his arch-nemesis’s eyes dart around furiously, questioning every shadow and covered nook. He saw his penny-pinching hands curled up into horrid little fists, swinging at his sides. And then he saw Father Cadman slamming shut the church doors, and the silence that his gospel songs used to fill.
He could swoop down, claws out, and launch himself at Barnabas Brittle’s face. But it probably was not the best of ideas, seeing as his belly was so full of buttery croissant. So instead he let loose with a few particularly spiteful Kraaaas! and made his own way towards the mausoleums.
Barnabas Brittle had been up to something. The raven intended to find out what.
It didn’t take him long. The churchyard was the raven’s territory, and he spent his days surveilling it, checking that nothing was amiss. Even in his sluggish state, he could spot Brittle’s footprints, the pile of rubble near one of the mausoleum doors where someone had recently let themselves in.
It was in the oldest part of the Mausoleum Garden, a decaying, cruddy crypt, covered with weeping violets and crawling honeysuckle. The raven hopped in through a hole near the door, his bright eyes alert. He noted the tracks in the furry dust, the foot patterns in the rubble, and followed them until he came to a low arch. He traced the traitorous stench of Barnabas Brittle down a narrow, curving passageway, which was broken up by steps and festooned with bugs and crawlies and twitchy spider legs.
And then he came into a little alcove, which struggled to hold even the wisp of light falling through a fissure in the roof.
But the lack of sun didn’t matter, because the alcove was lit from within by jewelled chalices, silver ornaments, and the glass jar that contained the stolen money.
Now the raven had experienced a truly atrocious day. But when he saw this stolen stash, he felt it well up in his throat – the luxuriant, velveteen taste of success.
Pruuuuuuk.
This wasn’t over. Not yet.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘Well, mate, good to see you alive and kicking! What’s in the water in your neck of the woods?’
The raven barely glanced sideways. He could tell it was the pigeon from the disgusting stench. ‘I’m not interested,’ he said.
‘What’s that verbal linguistic you are bequeathing me with?’
The raven twitched and looked around for a rogue gust of wind he could escape on.
Nothing.
‘I said, please go away. And take a bath.’
‘Deadly accurate,’ agreed the pigeon. ‘I’m as happy as a pig in mud.’
‘I bet you’ve never seen a pig in your life.’
‘Well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,’ said the pigeon.
‘Great,’ said the raven. ‘Go join them elsewhere. I’ve got things to do.’
‘Ahh, you’re giving me the old five’s a company but one’s a crowd.’
‘There’s a point – take it,’ said the raven.
‘Where?’ The pigeon looked around.
The raven landed, hit the ground with too much force and tried to roll out of it as though he did that kind of thing every day. He was out on a visit to the little farmstead, a few hundred metres down the road from his church. Farmer Reece grew the best cabbages and the tastiest turnips, and they in turn grew the juiciest slugs this side of the weatherhen.
‘Batten down the hatches,’ the pigeon said, ‘this looks like a nice place to sit.’
But as he was doing just that the branch he made to sit on reared up and started to talk.
‘I see me two wing-things,’ it said. ‘Rest your ends on these arms I got, I promise you I has polished them smooth.’
The pigeon was knocked beak over claw and landed splayed out in a raspberry bush. It was not above the raven to laugh out loud.
‘Aah, aah!’ twittered the pigeon. ‘My time has come, but my spirit remains unbroken! Go, go, gently into the night!’
The raven barely looked up. ‘Oh, shut up,’ he said. ‘It’s just a scarecrow. An unfashionable one at that.’
The scarecrow in question waved his arms ever harder, and his burlap sack head nodded up and down as if a rodent was caught inside. Hay and crinkled leaves flew out the ends of his tied-up sleeves. The pigeon dodged them as though they were bombs and he was in the middle of warfare.
‘Don’t be scaredied away of I,’ said the scarecrow. ‘I’m not the one to be hurting of you. I like you. Jump up to my arms, ors my face if
you like, and you can be having a rest.’
‘Aah, aah!’ The pigeon was still carrying on. ‘It’s a beast! A monster! It’s hideous! Oh, save me, save my poor soul, let me not meet my end this very day.’
‘Would you shut up,’ said the raven, poking his head out from under the leafy shade of a cabbage. ‘It’s a scarecrow. Are you stupid? Don’t answer that.’
Meanwhile the scarecrow’s head drooped and his arms lapsed down to their normal rigidity. The ends of his wooden arms had been cut to resemble hands. He wore an old shirt, overalls patched up with scraps of material, and a raffish, if grubby, old pointer hat. His body, stuffed full of straw, rustled in hushed tones and ended in two legs, panning out from the central beam. Boots were tied to the end of his overalls and stuffed with oily rags and old towels. Even these were faded, decorated with age.
‘Yes, well,’ he said. His voice came from a place much deeper than the stuffed hollow of his chest. ‘I is not surprised. I is a most terrible hurter of eyes. Creatures look past me, alls the minutes, every day, unless they gets to be running away. For the time that is long, now. For many moons. Always waving, but nothing is coming back.’
The raven peeped out from the cover of his cabbage leaf. There was something in the scarecrow’s voice that commanded his attention, that drew him forward in the way of a gospel song. The pigeon, too, had stopped his idiotic fluttering about and was gaping at the scarecrow, his neck in the middle of some kind of crisis.
‘Running, hurrying, scurrying, burrowing,’ sighed the scarecrow.
‘What’s that?’ said the pigeon. ‘Are we having a singsong?’
‘No,’ said the raven, and then he hopped out in front of the scarecrow. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Right as rain,’ said the pigeon.
‘Not you,’ the raven said.
‘Nooo,’ said the scarecrow, and it was so long and drawn out it sounded like the wind when it got stuck in the old chimney flutes of the church. ‘I is lonely. One sit on my arm is alls I want. One talk-speak I wants whispered in my head-side. Just one, I is only asking. Someone to hear well to the thoughts I is having in my head.’
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