4 A Demon Summer

by G. M. Malliet

  “Remarkable,” said Max. And of course with no hope of a cure, and no real understanding of the disease, it was for many of the nurses a terrible and almost guaranteed death sentence.

  “There also was a leper chapel at one time—sadly, it’s gone now,” she told him.

  “That is too bad,” said Max. “Except I’m glad there’s less need of it now.”

  “Normally we don’t mention the origins of the place to the guests,” Dame Tabitha confided. She lowered her booming voice to a rumble, like a helicopter on a strafing run. “It puts some of them off. Even though it was centuries ago, the images it conjures up are … not so restful. Just think—people used to believe God visited terrible diseases like leprosy only on sinners.”

  “We haven’t traveled so very far from that sort of superstition,” observed Max.

  “I really must fly,” she announced. “Full instructions and a map are on the desk. You’ve missed your dinner. Shall I bring you a tray?”

  Max shook his head. “Thank you, no. I had a pub meal on the way here. A place called the Running Knight and Pilgrim.”

  “Ah! Well, I’ve heard they do a decent fry-up. But it wouldn’t have been organic and fresh like the food we serve. Dame Ingrid, our kitcheness—she is a marvel. You’ll see. But for breakfast you are on your own, as I’ve said. The guest kitchen’s cabinets and drawers are all labeled as to contents.”

  He nodded. “Thank you. I’m sure I’ll get everything sorted.”

  “Good night, Father. Feel free to join us for Compline.”

  She bustled away, skirts billowing behind her like a black sail.

  * * *

  Max closed the door and looked around the room. It was small, with a large picture window at one end. Nearest the window and against one wall was a desk; over it hung a matted and framed photo of the cloister gardens, presumably an offering from a prior guest with artistic leanings. It may even have been a Piers Montague, although it was unsigned. Near the desk was a washbasin with mirror—that mirror would be forbidden in the nuns’ cells, he suspected—and behind that a tall, shallow row of shelves with stacks of fresh towels and linens. Behind the shelves was a built-in open cupboard with assorted clothing pegs and hangers. Flat against the other wall was a single bed, at the foot of which was an end table with a reading lamp. Next to that a cushioned armchair completed the basic décor.

  The room was nicely heated, and when he tested the hot water tap it ran lukewarm, nearly hot. He wondered if the nuns enjoyed the same amenities as the guests. He suspected their water, if they had running water, would run cold.

  Max picked up from the desk a sheaf of paper, mimeographed and stapled together. It was headed “Rules for Our Guesthouse Visitors,” and it contained a map and a number of admonitions designed to preserve the quiet and safety of the place. Smoking was of course prohibited, as was alcohol. Tape recorders were permitted so long as they were used with earphones, but musical instruments were not allowed. Mobile phones were not mentioned, but he imagined such things had not been discovered when the rules were being drawn up. Or perhaps it was known that they were miles out of tower range.

  Reading material “of an uplifting nature” was provided in the guesthouse library as well as in the guesthouse living room, and retreatants were encouraged to attend daily services so long as they confined themselves to the visitors’ seating area in the nave of the church. A schedule of psalms and readings was attached. Guests also were welcome to use the small chapel attached to the guesthouse for private prayer and contemplation.

  Finally, it was pointed out that while the abbey generated its own electricity, each guest room was provided with a battery-powered lantern for use in case of emergency; this item could be found in the room’s cupboard. The bishop had already advised him to bring a torch.

  “But you won’t be needing an alarm clock,” the bishop had added. Had there been a twinkle in his eye when he said that?

  It was delicately suggested at the end of this long list of warnings and admonitions that donations were in no way obligatory, but that the cost to operate the guesthouse was fifty pounds per person, per night. Three daily meals and snacks were included in the stay. It seemed an eminently fair request to Max. He wondered if anyone had ever had the temerity to stiff the good sisters.

  Awena, if she had been there, would have said such a thing would absolutely guarantee bad karma for the future, probably forever.

  Surely she would have been right.

  And how devoutly he wished Awena were there. Closing his eyes he sent up a prayer, which as always included Awena and the child she carried, a prayer cloaked in anxiety—please please please let them be all right—and in wonder:

  He was going to be a father.

  He. Max Tudor. A father.

  The idea would not take hold, no matter how often he repeated the words. He had always loved children, but this was a new frontier.

  He sat and took a few deep breaths.

  Breathe in for a count of six. Hold for a count of six. Release for a count of six.

  It was a calming technique he had learned from Awena, the most serene person he had ever met.

  It helped a bit to quell the panic that lately simmered at the edge of his consciousness. Most of her ideas did help. He wondered if he should pant as they’d been shown in the birthing classes they’d been attending but decided against it.

  After a few minutes he collected his sponge bag and plunged into the semi-darkness outside his door, feeling his way toward the men’s shower room.

  PART IV

  Sext

  Chapter 7

  THE VISITORS: I

  All visitors to the abbey shall be made welcome, as we recall in Matthew: “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”

  —The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy

  The next morning, Max was wakened by the early bells—the very early bells calling the nuns to prayer. He gave a fleeting thought to joining them but turned over and went back to sleep.

  An hour later he entered the kitchen to find a central wooden table with eight mismatched chairs slotted round it. In the middle of the table were a bowl of fruit, another of fresh brown eggs, and a tray of eating utensils individually wrapped in cloth napkins. Ranged along the walls were cupboards; a large, old-fashioned sink; a stove (ditto); and a small refrigerator—no microwave. One small window, facing east, overlooked the magnificent cloister garden and was framed by a tied-back muslin curtain.

  It was, as Dame Tabby had explained, strictly a serve-yourself setup and, although basic, seemed designed to accommodate almost every breakfast preference a guest could wish for. The refrigerator revealed a tub of what looked like freshly churned butter and a cloth-covered plate of farm cheeses. There also were a colorful variety of preserved fruits—blue, red, and a pale golden color. Max started to reach for one of the jars—it looked like it might contain blueberry preserves—and then thought better of it. He saw a jar of honey on a nearby shelf and chose that instead. Why, he asked himself, ask for trouble?

  He found a fresh loaf of brown bread, clearly homemade with seeds and nuts, and rootled around in several drawers for a bread knife. He cut three thick slices off one end of the loaf, realizing how hungry he was—the pub meal of “bubble and squeak” of the day before had been filling but it seemed an age since he’d left the Running Knight and Pilgrim.

  He heard the door open behind him. The man who entered the room could only be, from DCI Cotton’s pithy description, Piers Montague.

  The photographer, conceding nothing to the season, wore the standard-issue artsy uniform of black turtleneck and black slacks, accessorized with an expensive belt and Italian loafers of a buttery soft black leather. Piers’s dark hair would have been the envy of any woman, let alone man, and it fell with silky precision across his tanned face from a deep, gleaming side part. Max was to learn that Piers frequently tossed his head to one side as he spoke, and, as if to display the skill of his barber, his hair o
bediently flicked back in place each time. Max, with his own tousled mane, felt he might look like a windswept poodle by comparison. Piers had dark eyes of a brooding melancholic cast that probably went down a treat with the ladies, who would want to help him unburden his soul, and indeed he had the breezy, offhand confidence of a man whose conquests probably were legion. Max disliked him on sight, fighting back the groundless, instant prejudice as unworthy of someone of his religious calling. Somehow he suspected it would be a long fight with many hostages taken on both sides. Everything about Piers Montague, beginning with his name, just rubbed Max the wrong way.

  “Hello,” Max said. He extended a hand in friendly greeting and was repaid with a bone-crushing grasp. He resisted the urge to crush back, and in no way let his face betray that his fingers were left in crumpled pain by the encounter. What a jackass.

  “Oh, Paloma, darling. There you are,” said Piers, turning as a dark-haired woman of middle years entered the room. “I was just getting ready to set out with my camera. It’s a nice day for moody outdoor shots. Lots of shadows. Then I thought I’d stop into the church once the nuns have done praying.” He turned to Max. “I love these old buildings. I studied to be an architect at one time. Today’s designs can’t hold a candle.”

  “Well, hul-lo,” the woman said to Max. This had to be Paloma Green, whom Cotton had described as “artistic—runs a shop selling high-priced paintings and things for the upscale sitting room.” Paloma gave her caterpillar-like lashes a slow, preliminary bat in Max’s direction. The impression was of an extra effort involved in opening and shutting the weighty trim of fur around her eyes, but more likely it was part of a practiced vampy act she trotted out whenever a good-looking man crossed her path. The too-tight leopard-print pants, the plunging neckline of her short-sleeved jumper, the jangly “gypsy” jewelry at her neck and wrists all spoke of a woman clinging as hard to youth as the elderly Dame Hephzibah clung to her bell rope.

  For some reason, Paloma Green looked familiar to him, but Max could not think how he had come to cross paths with such an exotic creature. Certainly it hadn’t been in recent years. She was much more the sort of person he might have dealt with in his MI5 days in London; this va-va-voomy persona was not associated in his mind with placid Nether Monkslip. He’d have noticed her long before now, if only as serious competition for Suzanna Winship, the official village vixen.

  Paloma shook Max’s hand. She said, “Piers a-dores architecture and goes around taking snaps of everything. And of course this place just oozes atmosphere. It’s haunted. Naturally, it would be,” she said, matter-of-factly. Before Max could question her basis for this claim, she added, “Piers has done a lot of restoration work and he specializes in pictures of scenic old ruins.”

  “Not including you, my dear,” Piers said laughingly to Paloma. But she did not share the laughter. Max had the impression it was a very old and very tired joke between them. Piers clearly was ten years younger than Paloma, at least. Although her shoulder-length hair was curled in the chocolate-y brown swirls popularized by the duchess of Cambridge, Paloma probably had a fifteen- or twenty-year head start on the princess. The curls were held back from her face by a patterned strip of scarf that just missed clashing with the rest of her ensemble. She wore a great deal of makeup, and even Max could tell the eyelashes were fake. A blind man, he corrected himself, could see that they were fake.

  He had the idea it was her makeup he was remembering, more so than the woman herself.

  “I mean to say, architecture, particularly medieval architecture, is my passion,” said Piers. “Given half a chance, I might have become an expert. But my parents were so working-class and they didn’t believe in the sort of university education that sort of career would require, and once photography began paying the bills…” He shrugged. “I was stuck.” A whiny note had entered his voice as he sang the refrain of the undernourished genius. It was not an attractive sound.

  Max thought of the ongoing renovations at St. Edwold’s, which seemed to be a permanent fact of the economic life of his parish, along with purchases for facial tissue. “I do feel I know rather a lot about building renovation and restoration, one way and another.”

  Neither of them invited Max to elaborate on his expertise. Paloma was still looking a bit miffy, and Piers was clearly eager to get away before she took it into her head to follow him. Max had the impression of a relationship under some stress. Was this in any way related to the mysterious financial doings at the nunnery?

  Sensing at last that his joke about Paloma’s age had fallen flat, Piers said after a few stiffly awkward moments, “Well, I’ll be off now.”

  “Actually, I’d appreciate it if you’d stick around a moment,” said Max. “I have a few questions I’d like to ask if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of us?” They exchanged glances. Piers said, “W-a-a-l-l-l … I don’t think I—”

  “You are staying at the abbey as a sort of spiritual retreat?” Max asked, smiling ingenuously, keeping the skepticism from his voice. All were welcome to seek renewal among the nuns—people from all walks of life and background. But these two were as out of place as Viking raiders at a car boot sale.

  Paloma confirmed this impression by saying, “Well, hardly. I mean, jeez. No, we’re here in more of a … supervisory capacity. Or, investigative. Wouldn’t you say, Piers?”

  “W-a-a-l-l-l … sort of,” he agreed, but judiciously. “Paloma helped raise funds for the abbey’s new guesthouse, you see. And I donated several of my best photos. Sort of a goodwill gesture—you know. For the publicity. We thought it would be a lark to spend a weekend in the country and see how our good deeds were being put to use.

  “If they were,” he added.

  “If?” asked Max.

  “I don’t see any signs of construction or groundbreaking, do you? Still, it’s not completely a waste of time. As I’ve said, I am enamored of old ruins.” Wisely, this time he did not even glance in Paloma’s direction. “But it’s … rather quiet here.”

  “Ah,” said Max neutrally.

  “It’s not what we’d expected, to be sure,” Paloma offered.

  And you were expecting—what? Max wondered. Cirque du Soleil?

  “But you’ve been here before?” Max asked.

  “I have,” said Paloma. “But how did you—?”

  “It’s really quiet here,” Piers elaborated, yawning. “I have just returned from a two-week trip driving alone around Leeds, on commission, looking at sites some building magnate wanted photographed. That was a lawless riot by comparison.”

  Paloma had apparently forgotten her question to Max. Again batting her eyes, she said, “If things don’t pick up, we’ll probably leave tomorrow. I can’t even get a signal on my mobile out here. I left my gallery in the charge of an imbecile, and it’s the busy season.”

  “Uhm,” said Max. “Well, each to his own. Personally, I’m looking forward to a little down time away from the World Wide Web.” He added politely, “Where is your gallery?”

  “In Monkslip-super-Mare.” She mentioned the name of an art gallery on the High Street in the popular seaside resort. It was one of many galleries, but one serving the upper end of the tourist trade.

  The penny dropped. Max knew where he must have seen her before.

  “You carry Coombebridge’s work!” he exclaimed. Lucas Coombebridge was an artist living in secluded Monkslip Curry who had nonetheless achieved a global renown for his seascapes. Max owned several of his smaller works, bought at a time when they were still within reach of the salary of a country parson. Max happened to know the woman before him had been granted exclusive rights by the artist to display and sell his works. Max also knew, as it was an open secret, that she was one of many former lovers of the infamous painter.

  “Yes,” she said, pleased at the recognition.

  “I’ve bought several paintings from you,” Max told her, “but that was long ago. And I’m sorry to say that while you look familiar somehow I don
’t think I remember you from the gallery.” The more he thought about it, the more he was sure he’d not met her in person. “I’m certain I would have remembered,” he added gallantly.

  She expanded visibly. The over-the-top costuming surely was intended to make the biggest impression possible, and she was pleased it had succeeded. “I’m not often there,” she said. “You probably saw my photo in the promotional literature for the gallery. Coombebridge was a right—ahem … he was a right stinker, but his commissions set me up so well I soon didn’t have to be in the shop much. I travel abroad a lot.” She held out one arm and jangled the attached bracelets, as if to show what could be bought if one went abroad.

  “His work is so overrated,” scoffed Piers.

  “Not a match for your work,” she exclaimed loyally. But the wink, not meant to be seen by Piers, was aimed at Max.

  “Well, it’s been a pleasure, I’m sure, Mr.…?” Piers began. Max remembered he was not wearing his collar. He’d thrown on a jumper and jeans and trainers, not really expecting to meet anyone this early.

  “It’s Father Max Tudor, actually.”

  “Ah!” They both looked taken aback, as though a priest were the last thing they’d expect to meet in a nunnery.

  “Well, I guess you’re here on retreat,” said Paloma.

  Max smiled. “Sort of,” he said. He thought he might quiz them some more later on their reasons for being there, not that he expected to hear the truth.

  But for right now, he was hungry.

  Chapter 8

  THE VISITORS: II

  Be tolerant of the young and the old.

  —The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy

  Once Paloma and Piers had left, she trailing scarves and he creeping after, a model without a runway, Max resumed assembling his breakfast.

  He was just slicing peaches for his granola when the door swung open to admit a young woman of indeterminate years—she could have been sixteen or thirty, but her costume, like that of a child playing dress up, suggested the lower end of the age scale. She wore a black leather jacket over a full skirt of tie-died fabric, and beneath it showed several layers of petticoats, also of rainbow hues. Her black boots matched the jacket; purple-and-black striped socks, worn over white lace stockings, peeped from the tops of the boots. Her hair was a thatch of white-blond, randomly tipped in pink at the ends. Max saw that her fingertips were indeed painted blue, as had been reported by Dame Tabitha. He took a wild guess that this was Xanda, daughter of the American family, the Goreys. She was short and slightly pear-shaped, and with the hair she looked like a baby chick that had come out the worse for wear in an Easter egg decorating competition. On entering the room she had the preoccupied look of adolescence, but on seeing him she switched on a cheery smile: Here, at last—something new! She had a gap between her front teeth that added to her charm.