In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  “Miss Dowdell, if you could stay behind, I need to have a word,” he said, and then turned back to that chit, Sarah. Well, it wasn’t Sarah he’d asked to stay back, was it? Sarah shot her a look of hot jealousy, to which Elspeth responded with a cool smile. She could afford to be magnanimous with these harlots now. She had the Reverend’s ear, she had his trust. She was his confessor. She didn’t like using the Roman Catholic term, but there was a delicious intimacy to the word that appealed to her. She waited patiently, invisible in the shadows, always invisible to these gaudy women who clustered around the Reverend after his sermons.

  Eventually, all the women left, most casting her curious glances wondering, she knew, why she of all people had been asked to stay back. The Reverend waited until the last one had left the church before walking across the well-polished floor to her.

  “I need you to come across the way with me,” he said.

  She followed him without question. His house was quiet and dark, and he did not bother to turn on any of the lights when they went in. He gestured to her with one thin hand that she should follow him up the stairs. She quailed a little when she realized he was leading her into his bedroom.

  He went and stood by the window while she hovered uncertain in the doorway. She could hear him sigh. He braced his hands against the windowsill and bowed his head. She wondered if he was praying, beseeching God for comfort or for guidance back to the pathway of the righteous.

  The dark had settled in, and a beam of light from a street lamp came in through the window, anointing him. He turned, the sad air still emanating from him. She longed to take the pain from him and bear it herself for she would happily do it if only he would allow her.

  “Elspeth, what I want—what I need…” he put his hands over his face and she felt her heart break inside her.

  She went to him, drawn by his pain and suffering. “What is it that you need, Reverend? Tell me and I will do it for you.”

  He looked up, his face a mask of pain. He took her hands in his own and pressed them to his chest. Elspeth was both alarmed and excited. “We need to be washed in the blood of the lamb,” he said. “I would baptize you and me—together—here this night so that we might both be washed clean and begin anew to our purpose.”

  “I…I,” she stuttered, wondering what he meant by baptized; it could be a euphemism for any number of things. Not to mention the possibly dubious theology of baptizing oneself.

  “With water,” he said gently, clearly discerning her difficulty. “It would be best if you took your dress off. I know that you, Elspeth, always wear modest undergarments, so you will still be suitably clothed.”

  She hesitated only a second, and saw his glance harden. She supposed someone like that whore whose hair had been in his bed would take off her clothes without question. She knew there were more than a few in the congregation who would do it only too willingly as well. She took the dress off and folded it fussily before laying it to the side. She was shocked to realize that he had removed his shirt too, and stood before her bare-chested. His skin was uncommonly fine everywhere. He took her hand and led her to the chilly bathroom, where the tile gleamed from her recent scrubbing. He lit two candles, and she felt a twinge of alarm, this was feeling all a little too papish in nature to her.

  He handed her into the ancient tub, and then paused to collect a crystal jug which had been sitting on the floor. They kneeled together in the tub, the cast iron creaking as they took their places, facing each other, close enough so that she could feel his breath on her face and neck.

  He lifted the jug and spoke, voice low and filled with a sorrow that she could feel in her very bones. “And thus we are made pure by this blood of the Lamb that we may go forth and do His will and cleanse the earth of sin as we are washed clean by his blood.”

  Elspeth shivered as the water slid over her body, soaking her slip and raising goosebumps on her fevered skin. She felt as though he poured light into her, his light, and she was blessed above all other women, or at least above all others in the congregation. Oh if only that nasty Sarah could see her now, how she would envy her. She looked up and saw the Reverend looking down at her with such tenderness in his face that she could feel tears gather behind her eyes. He trusted her with his weakness, and it was apparent to her that his weakness was great. No one could lead him toward redemption as she could. He had made that clear to her, when he’d confided his sins in her. He had confessed to her and for the first time in her life she understood the Catholic sacraments and why this particular one had such appeal. There was an intimacy to it that bound the one confessing to the confessor. It was an intimacy no other woman had ever or would ever have with him, an intimacy greater than that of sex. Her whole body strained and yearned, and she felt that her ecstasy was that of the Lamb, of becoming one with his vessel here on earth, the man still wet with their baptism across from her. She thrilled to the words as they resounded through her body, their baptism, it was like a marriage, only holier and more sacred, for it would not be sullied by fleshly passion. A shudder of pure ecstasy rippled through her body, leaving her flushed and warm and slightly breathless.

  “Elspeth, there is something I need you to do for me.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and he shone silver in the moonlight that fell through the window. His chest gleamed with water and his hands were hot on her skin.

  “It’s about the woman, the one with the dark hair, the one you made the doll for.”

  Elspeth felt a wave of fury—just the thought of that woman was enough to make her see crimson. Why, oh why must he bring her up now in their greatest, most sacred moment together?

  “Yes,” she said, striving not to let her irritation come through in her voice. “What is it you would have me do?”

  After Elspeth left, Lucien washed his hands for a full five minutes, making sure to soap all the way up to his elbows where the woman had grasped him. He could still feel her touch clinging to him, like a smear of dirty oil on an otherwise pure vessel.

  It was not an easy dance he had begun with her for he had to balance things well enough so that events didn’t spin out of his control and start a conflagration before he was ready to deal with it. He also had to conceal his revulsion at her touch. She had been sexually aroused, but he knew her well enough to understand that she had convinced herself it was something else altogether. Some form of religious ecstasy.

  Coming upon her that day with her hands filled with Pamela Riordan’s hair he had realized he had two choices—either to kill her, or to bind her to him irrevocably by making her believe he had the same failings as other men. It was unfortunate one of the woman’s hairs had ended up in his bed; it must have gotten caught on some piece of his clothing and wound up on his sheets. Of course Elspeth had assumed that he’d had a woman in his bed. Which was all to the good, for now she believed she could save him. And that was all he needed to control her and put her in play as the most destructive piece on the board. He had saved himself from disaster that day, for if she had paid proper attention to the files and the names therein, if she had truly understood the import of what she had seen he would have had to kill her right then and there in his bedroom. Which would have been messy and unfortunate. So he had spun her a tale, a tale of a man who was tormented by the desires of his flesh, and a woman who had cunningly seduced him. That it was all a lie had only made it easier to embroider and embellish. He had been tempted to tell her the truth for a minute—that he had once killed on the woman’s behalf, but had restrained the impulse to do so. He had reassembled his pieces so carefully, putting roots down through the chessboard of politics and violence, and nurturing the tendrils in dark soil so that now he had players in all the Loyalist factions, both the faithful church and lodge members, and in the pubs where only the hard men drank. Both those merely political and those political and terrorist. And in the case of a few men—vicious killers.

  Elspeth had thought he wanted her in his bed, he had seen that in her fa
ce when he had told her to take off her dress. He had felt a certain repugnance at the notion. He was not a man of the flesh. However, if he had been, he would not have taken dowdy little Elspeth to his bed. She had her uses for now, though, and that gave her value—for a time.

  When it was done, when the game had been played out to its conclusion it was likely he would have to kill her. There was always collateral damage, after all, even in the smallest and most personal war.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The Peace People

  “THERE’S SOMETHING I’D LIKE to talk about with you.” Father Jim knelt beside her in the garden, helping her pull up onion sets and put them in the bucket she had brought out for the purpose. He had come for Sunday tea after church and stayed to help her bring in much of her garden. It was early September and while the weather was pleasant during the day, the nights had become chilly enough that she knew it was time to bring in her harvest, as meager as it might be in comparison to previous years.

  She turned, peering out at him from beneath the brim of her battered straw hat. “Yes?”

  “Well, it has occurred to me, Pamela, that it might be good for you to take pictures of something positive, rather than all the maimed bodies you’ve been subjected to of late.”

  He sat back on his heels, and poked a finger inside his dog collar. The sun was still high enough that it was hot in the garden. “Help yourself to more lemonade, Father.”

  He poured out a glass for each of them and she took hers gratefully, the cold prickle of lemons with the edge of sweet a relief to her parched throat. The air around them was filled with the fruits of summer: fat bees humming as they addled along on frowsy wings through the green and gold air of September, butterflies, delicate as lace fans, floating in drafts of sunshine and the last of the blackberries hanging thick from the brambles. Paudeen was happily asleep in a patch of clover next to the garden and Conor was mucking about in his own patch of garden, where he had, over the course of the summer, grown six straggly peas, a gaggle of ragged carrots and one enormous turnip. Isabelle was asleep on a blanket in the grass, having played herself out some time ago. If Casey were here, the day would have been one of those slow perfect ones, which were rare and therefore all the more cherished. He would smell of earth and starch, from digging up the last of the potatoes and he would taste of lemons and sugar when she kissed him. Conor would be by his father’s side, helping him with the harvest, and learning the ways of the world through Casey’s observations. If she closed her eyes, she could conjure the scene to her, could hear Casey’s deep voice, humming something old and lovely, the words of the song floating out along the air just as the butterflies did, caught in sunlight and shadow.

  “Pamela, are you all right?” Father Jim’s voice knocked her back into the here and now, and she gave herself a firm mental shake, flushing hotly under the priest’s scrutiny.

  “So what event is it that you want pictures for?” she asked briskly, slapping her gloves together to get rid of non-existent dirt. She had visions of church functions dancing in her head, therefore his answer surprised her.

  “There’s going to be a peace rally this Saturday. I think it’s something that ought to go on record, just to prove we’re trying to change here in this country, if nothing else. You’re familiar with the organizers?”

  She rubbed the end of her nose with the edge of her glove, the scent of onions warm and comforting on her skin.

  “I am, but only so much as anyone else who reads the papers.” She knew the broad strokes of the story—a mother had been walking her children home from school, when a car with two IRA men fleeing a British patrol was shot up, and with the driver dead and passenger too injured to act, had ploughed into the mother and children, killing two of them outright and badly maiming a third—a two-year-old, who tragically died the next day in hospital. An IRA man dead, three Catholic children dead, their mother permanently injured and a small heap of wilted flowers, a string of rosary beads, a snuffed candle at the roadside and prayers that felt futile, left behind. Except that this time, something changed, for the mothers of Belfast turned out a thousand strong the next day, pushing their prams, their children held by the hand, in a protest for peace. The aunt of the three dead children, sister to the woman who was still lying in the hospital, had gone on camera condemning the violence that was costing everyone more than they could afford, even in a lifetime. Another woman, a Catholic housewife, saw the report on the television and began with a simple question to her neighbors—‘Do you want peace?’ A raggle-taggle petition, signed on scraps of paper, bus tickets and pages from notebooks was born and bloomed into six thousand signatures within forty-eight hours.

  “There’s going to be a huge march. They are expecting upwards of fifteen thousand or so to march up the Shankill. I think you should come and photograph it.”

  “You do?” she asked.

  “I do. You need to see something positive. Things have been terribly dark for you for a long time, I think you need to go out and see a movement for change in the making. You and Patrick used to be at all the marches.”

  “It seems a very long time ago now,” she said, feeling slightly wistful. There had been a feeling in the air then, a burning hopefulness that real and lasting change was coming. In some ways it had, and in others it had not come at all. She had met Father Jim at one such event, a civil rights march from Belfast to Derry, during which she had been attacked and left with a long scar on her face as a result. It was due to Father Jim’s skills as a medic that it was only a narrow line of white down her cheek, and not a large disfigurement.

  “Will you do it? I can arrange a sitter for Conor and Isabelle, if you need one?”

  “There’s no need, I’m sure if I ask Gert, she will be happy to watch them for me.”

  The look on his face was half hopeful, half worried. He was her one American friend here in Ireland and he had been a quiet comfort to her through this very long last year. “Will you do it, then?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’ll do it,” she said, feeling a small thrum of excitement at the prospect of an afternoon taking pictures of something that didn’t require her to rub mentholated grease beneath her nose.

  And so it was that she was there when twenty thousand people marched up the Shankill, her Leica in hand, extra film and lenses in her bag and the humming excitement that attended such large gatherings when people were intent upon one goal, even if it was that most elusive of causes—peace. It was a beautiful September day, the air as clear as glass and the sun held in it like early autumn wine.

  She took her first shots off the top of a building, a smooth hum to her movements, as she framed each shot, checking the light, the arrangement within the borders of each picture, and that thing, always elusive, which made one photo stand out from the next.

  On the ground was where she found the real gems, though—there was a lightness to the air, both in atmosphere and mood that she had not felt since those heady days of the civil rights marches. There were mothers pushing prams, Protestants hugging Catholic nuns, grandfathers in tweeds and grandmothers in hats, teenagers in bell-bottomed jeans and scruffy coats. The road was scattered with flower petals, and young girls held bunches of flowers in their hands. She got a perfect shot of a little girl, gap-toothed with a halo of cotton fluff hair, handing a flower to a man who was trying in vain to give out leaflets on the sidelines, blaming the British for the deaths of the children. They didn’t seem to understand that no one cared about pinpointing blame, they just wanted the violence to end, full stop. Another shot was of a mother bending down to pick up a tired toddler, a peace sign held in her other hand, and then a line of nuns, four abreast, expressions of fervid determination on their faces, the sun frisking light over their crosses.

  She lost herself entirely to the process, to the people caught by her composition, faces like flowers preserved in amber for all time, here for a fleeting moment brought together in their desire for a society without soldiers and gunmen in
the streets, for a world in which their children could walk home from school in relative safety and where gunfire and tanks were not the first lullaby their babies heard in their cradles. When it went well, photography was like ballet, one move flowed into the next, a moment captured like a perfectly-aligned movement, pure emotion in content and muscle.

  She was brought forcefully out of her reverie when she was knocked unceremoniously to the ground, falling hard on one knee. Her camera was jarred from her hand by the fall and hit the pavement and bounced in a manner that made her feel sick. She grabbed it up, relieved to see that it appeared relatively unharmed. Casey had given it to her for Christmas a few years back and it was irreplaceable. When she went to right herself, she found a man was offering her a hand up.

  “Apologies, Miss, didn’t mean to knock ye over like that,” he said and leaned down to take her arm. She looked up but the sun was in her eyes, and she was nearly blinded. The man was wearing a hat with a brim that fell over his face, making it impossible to see his features. Despite the warmth of the day, his hand was cold and she could feel the imprint of his fingers through the thin cloth of her blouse.

  “I’m fine,” she said, standing and just barely refraining from rubbing her arm where he’d touched her. He was already gone, though, slipping away into the crowd and disappearing in seconds. She couldn’t even see the odd hat he was wearing weaving its way through the mass of people. She shivered, looking around her, but he was gone. He’d hit her quite hard when he’d bumped into her and she looked down to see that the fabric of her jeans was ripped, and her knee bloody.

  She limped off to the side and shot off another couple of pictures, just to make certain her camera was in working order. Her knee would have to wait. To her great relief the camera was unharmed. It would have broken her heart had it been damaged.