Fludd

by Hilary Mantel

  “I mean the exorcist of Loudun.” Father Angwin rose, levering himself up with his hands on the arms of his chair; Fludd had noticed how, in the short time he had been in the parish, the priest’s movements had slowed, and his animated features had become masked by a frozen disappointment and grief. He had carried on his pretence so well, so long, never by word or deed betraying the disillusion at the core of his priestly vocation. But my coming here has changed things, Fludd thought; falseness can no longer be endured, truth must out. There must be new combinations within the heart: passions never witnessed, notions never before formed. “What was I saying?” Angwin asked. “Ah yes, Father Surin.” He went to the bookcase, took out a volume, opened it at a place he had marked. “When I wish to speak my speech is cut off; at Mass I am brought up short; at confession I suddenly forget my sins; and I feel the devil come and go within me as f he were at home. I translate,” he said, “freely.” He closed the book and put it back on the shelf. “Father Surin lost all consciousness of God. He entered on a state of melancholy. His illness lasted for twenty years. In the end he could not read or write, he could not walk, and he had to be carried everywhere. He had not the strength to lift his arms to change his shirt. His attendants beat him. He grew old and paralysed and mad.”

  “But he was cured, was he not? In the end.”

  “What cures melancholy, Father Fludd?”

  Fludd said, “Action.”

  At midnight, Fludd went out alone. It was cold, clear, still; a dried-up half-moon was skewered against the sky. The upper air was full of snow, the year’s first. He could hear his own footsteps. He let his torch-beam loose among the trees, then brought it back to his side, as if it were a serpent he were training.

  The old wooden doors of the garage were quite rotten. They should have been painted, he thought, with some kind of wood preservative, if they were to withstand the Fetherhoughton weather. There was a key somewhere, but he had not wanted to advertise his intentions by asking for it. He stood back and gave the door a good kick.

  Sister Philomena sat up in bed—quite suddenly, as if she had been given an electrical shock—and her hair—what there was of it—rose on the back of her neck. She threw back the covers, put her feet on the chilly floor. When she stood up a pain darted through her joints, as if her bones were filed sharp.

  I am a wreck, she thought. Her ribs and shoulders still ached from Purpit’s recent assaults. She went to the small attic window and peered out. Not an owl: no nightbird, no storm, no lightning flash. She did not know what had woken her. Her window was at the back of the convent; beyond lay the slumbering moors, unseen but always present, like the life of the mind. The thought of the moors made her shudder. What anarchy in Heaven the day those moors were made. Anything may happen, she thought. Her nape prickled again. She stared at the black treetops: but not for long.

  Miss Dempsey fumbled, and found: her candlewick bedspread, her knees, and her dressing-gown, draped decorously over the end of her bed. She pulled it towards her and, still sitting up in bed, wriggled her arms into it and fastened it across her chest. The room seemed more than usually cold.

  The brass-belled alarum clock said ten past twelve. Are they still down there, carousing, she thought? Is that what woke me, Father falling over?

  If he has fallen over, she thought, he will need another cup of cocoa, and strong admonition. That young little devil doesn’t seem to have a need of sleep, or else he sleeps so sound in the few hours he takes that it does him more good than it does the rest of us.

  Miss Dempsey eased her feet into her bedroom slippers. They were the standard Fetherhoughton sort, with a nylon-fur ruff of powder blue. They made no sound as she passed along the corridor and set them on the stairs.

  At the foot of the stairs, she stopped and listened. But there was nothing to hear: not the expected murmur of voices, nor the snoring of Father Angwin fallen asleep in his chair. She sensed at once that she was alone in the house, and this sensation was enough to send her, despite the cold and her state of undress, hurtling out of the front door and into the night.

  A dry leaf touched his cheek. Father Angwin stood quivering, a fox at bay. Waking suddenly, he had scrambled from his bed and had pulled on his clothes, armed himself with the presbytery’s other torch, and taken the stairs two at a time, impelled by he hardly knew what; and I said I was paralysed, he thought, I told Fludd that soon I would need people to carry me about. He heard the dull grate of metal striking stone; then nothing more, but a soft sound of funerals, earth falling on earth with its familiar hiss.

  Yet not the sound of funerals, but anti-funerals. He approached the broken ground, the private graveyard that he had mentioned to Philly in the confessional, which he had offered for the use of her Protestant bones.

  Fludd, he saw. Elegant back bent. Digging. Digging like an Irishman. And as he watched, the curate stepped back, and with a cavalier gesture, holding his spade at chest height, tossed the soil and gravel over his left shoulder.

  “Holy God,” Father Angwin said. He approached the excavation, his black feet sliding on the frosty ground. He flashed his torch-beam into the hole. “Would we have such a thing as a second shovel?”

  EIGHT

  Torches were not enough; and when they had debated what to do, Father Angwin took from his pocket the key of the sacristy and handed it to Philomena. “But I am not sacristan any more,” she said. “Purpit took it away from me.”

  “Tonight is not an ordinary night. These are extraordinary circumstances. Agnes, go with her. Open the top cupboard, on the left. You’ll find half a dozen old candlesticks. Bring some of the big tall High Mass candles, you know where they are. We’ll plant them around the place.”

  “I have household candles,” Agnes said.

  “Don’t waste time,” Father said. “Off you go.”

  In the church porch, Philly gave Miss Dempsey her hand, feeling that she should somehow be the stronger of the two. The door into the church opened with its customary groan, like a jaded actor falling back on proven effects; and they made their way together up the centre aisle, over the familiar stone flags, mouths open slightly, swallowing in the darkness. There was a moment when Miss Dempsey disappeared; Philly’s stomach squeezed tight in sudden terror, and she clutched at the empty air. But the housekeeper was only genuflecting; she bobbed up again, with a whispered apology, and they moved closer together and tiptoed on.

  In the sacristy they spoke, short and to the point; Philly got up on a chest, and unlocked the cupboard, and found what Father wanted. She handed down the candlesticks, one by one, and Agnes grappled them to her bosom and jiggled them to herself with an upraised knee. Philly jumped down and chose six candles from the box, running her fingertips over the arches of creamy wax.

  When they returned, Father Fludd was leaning on his spade; Father Angwin, like a sprite, sat cross-legged on the ground. He jumped up, “Fiat lux. Delve away, my boy.”

  Philomena knelt on the ground by the hole Father Fludd had made and put out one finger, experimentally as if the earth were water and she were going to bath a baby. Below the loose surface the soil felt heavy, saturated. She felt something move, against her finger: as it might be, a worm. “Oh,” she said, pulling her hand away: the refinements of the convent parlour. “Worm,” she said.

  “Don’t frighten me,” Father Angwin said.

  Fludd said, “We see devils in serpents. We see serpents in worms. They are things within our common experience.”

  Philomena glanced up. She imagined a sceptical glittering expression in his eyes, although really it was too dark to see any expression at all. Agnes Dempsey said, “As for worms, we all know where they are coming from and going to.”

  There was a silence. They looked down at the graves. Candle flames flickered in the air, doubling and bowing like genii let out of bottles; their eyes grew accustomed to such light as there was, and they wished that they had not, for the priest, the nun, and the housekeeper were able to see in each
other’s faces a reflection of their own unease.

  When Philly explored again, she found something solid, thin, hard, and sharp. “It’s OK, you’ve done it, Father Fludd,” she said. “We’re down to them. They weren’t too deep at all.”

  Without speaking, Father Angwin dropped to his knees beside her. She saw his breath, a smoky plume in the air. The snow above was too hard and cold to fall; if you could shake Heaven tonight, it would rattle like a cradle toy. The priest leant forward, one hand steadying himself, the other groping in the shallow pit. “I feel it,” he said. “Father Fludd, I feel it. Agnes, I feel it. I think it is the edge of St. Cecilia’s portable organ.”

  “Let me scrape with my spade,” said Fludd.

  “No, no. You might damage it.” Father Angwin crouched, both hands dabbling and patting at what lay beneath the soil.

  “If we are not to use the spade,” Agnes said, “the excavations will not be done by dawn.”

  “Miss Dempsey, you are ill-protected against the elements,” Fludd said, “I did not notice, when you so suddenly arrived. Should you not go back indoors and dress more sensibly?”

  “Thank you, Father,” Agnes said. She blushed red under cover of the night. “I have this warmish flannelette nightgown on underneath.” She shivered, but she could not tear herself away.

  Philomena at least was properly dressed. When she had turned from the window of her room, excitement and fear had guttered inside her, a blaze about to start; but she must roll on those thick woollen stockings, pull on her drawers. Her heart pounding, she must shake out the three petticoats the Order prescribed, and lash them about her waist, knotting their sashes and strings. She must punch her arms through her stout scratchy bodice, her cheeks growing hot, and fumble with her shaking fingers at the buttons at its neck. What a time it took, what an agonizing time, what an eternity to climb into her habit, the black folds stifling and gagging her. Then her undercap with its drawstrings, and the tiny safety-pins to secure it, and all the time the knowledge of the necessary encounter, waiting out there in the frozen night. Fludd is adjacent, he is proximate, he is nigh; and here she juggles with her starched white outer cap, ramming it on to her skull, pressing it over the brows, feeling it bite into its accustomed sore groove on her forehead; and now she scrabbles for the long straight pins to secure her veil, and now she drops one, and hears them—yes, in the midnight silence of the convent, hears a pin drop, and roll. So now she must throw herself to her knees and pad with her hands and dab the floor under the bed, and then, rising successful, pin pinched between her fingers, catch the back of her head a glancing blow on the under-edge of the bedstead; iron on bone. Sick, half-stunned, emerging from under the bedstead on hands and knees, she must lever herself up and put on her veil, skewering it with the pins, and then seize up her crucifix and drop it over her head, then lay hold of the long swinging string of her rosary beads and whip it out into the room and secure it around her waist. Then—the breath of the future misting the panes, the future grinning at the window eager to have her in its jaws—she must bend again, dizzily, pick up her shoes, pluck at the knots in the laces which, contrary to holy obedience and all the dictates of the Order, she has left fastened the night before. Then, gasping with irritation, she must fling the shoes to the floor, work her feet into them still fastened, stamp and then jump them into place; thrust her handkerchief into her pocket, and then, only then, cross herself, murmur a short prayer for guidance, open the door of her cell, make her way along the passage, down the stairs and swerve sharp right, ignoring the big front door, and through the passage to the empty, echoing kitchen. She had not dared to put on a light, but the moon from a clear sky shone through the kitchen window, a small, mean, wintry moon, palely gilding the ladle and the tureen, the up-ended pans on their rack, the jugs standing ready for morning tea. She had tugged at the bolts of the back door and held her breath as she drew them back; then she had pulled the door shut behind her, and run out into the night.

  Now Miss Dempsey leant forward, and put a hand on Philomena’s shoulder to steady herself. Grunting with effort, the housekeeper got to her knees; sucking her underlip, she put out her hands to feel the ground. “I beg to differ, Father Angwin. I don’t think it is the portable organ. I think it is the edge of St. Gregory’s Papal tiara.”

  “Let me at it,” said Fludd. “I won’t smash a thing.”

  “You are both wrong,” Philomena said. “What you can feel there has no thickness at all. It is the arrow that pierces the heart of St. Augustine.”

  “We had better yield to Father Fludd,” the priest said. “Two women and an ageing fellow like me, what can we do against superior strength? Go at it, my dear.”

  “Move aside, Sister,” Fludd said. Unwilling to stand up and retreat, she remained on her knees and shuffled two feet to the left. His braced knee brushed her upper arm. He aligned the tip of his spade, and then she heard the sickening squelch and clatter: steel on plaster. He had driven it in, right by (she believed) St. Agatha’s head; as if the virgin were to be martyred again.

  “Careful, careful,” said Agnes, clasping her hands; Father Angwin breathed, “Steady on.” But Philly moved forward on to hands and knees, her eyes on the edge of the spade; she wanted to be the first to see, the first to catch a glimpse of the face emerging from its grave.

  Father Fludd planted his foot in the trench he had made; it was an inch, perhaps, to the left of Agatha’s shoulder. He seemed not to feel her own urgency to uncover one particular set of features; his efforts were general, unspecific. But then, she thought, he did not know the statues, not as individuals. His curiosity did not focus on one or the other. Long before he came to the parish, they had been buried.

  “St. Jerome,” she whispered up at him. She pointed. “Over there. Uncover the lion.”

  “You should get up,” he said, pausing for a moment, but not looking directly at her. “You’ll take a chill.”

  “Agnes,” Father Angwin said, “would it not be the best service you could render if you brought us cocoa?”

  Fludd’s spade scraped away; the tip of a nose appeared, startlingly white.

  “Oh, I could not,” Miss Dempsey said. “Forgive me, Father. I could not leave now.”

  Philomena launched herself forward once again. With her fingers she scooped the earth away. It was Agatha, indeed. Philly pinched out the plaster cheekbones. She passed a finger over the sealed lips. Then, flinching, over the painted retina.

  “Shine your torch, Father Angwin,” she said. She wanted to see the face; and as soon as she did so, she knew that this interval, this suspension, this burial had brought about a change. She did not mention this change to the others; she realized that it might be something only she could see. But the virgin’s expression had altered. Blankly sweet, she had become sly; unyielding virtue had yielded; she gazed up, with a conspiratorial smile, into Heaven’s icy vault.

  Soon they ceased to speak; the cold crept into their bones. They heard one o’clock strike. Bulky outlines were seen, still shrouded by the soil. Then parts of saints emerged; an elbow, a foot, St. Apollonia’s pincers. In silence they recognized and greeted each one. When St. Jerome and the lion came out, Sister Philomena jumped into the trench, and Fludd paused, leaning on the spade, allowing her to clear the beast’s features with her hands. Her feet slipped, as she regained her place with the others; Father Angwin put out a hand to steady her, and she clung to him for a moment, leaning heavily on his arm, as if she were winded.

  Then Fludd stopped digging, and said, “Listen. Somebody’s coming.”

  “Who goes there?” called Miss Dempsey: introducing a military note. But without reply or preamble, the new arrival was upon them, transfixed for a moment like a rabbit in the beam of Father Angwin’s torch, yet wearing an expression too smug, too imperturbable, for a rabbit to wear. Then he shone his own flashlight, right into the priest’s eyes.

  “It is I. Judd McEvoy.”

  “Good morning, Judd,” Father Angwin
said. “Why are you out at this hour? If I may inquire?”

  “I have been down to Fetherhoughton,” Judd replied. “I wanted a basin of peas.”

  “So that is what you have there.”

  “Yes, and fish. In my newspaper.”

  “I did not know the shop was still open at this hour.”

  “They fry very late, these nights, to oblige anyone from up the hill who might feel peckish. We people up the hill are never early to bed. When the nights are long, we take advantage of them.”

  “Not you surely, Judd.” Father Angwin faced him across the graves. “Surely you, a pillar of the Men’s Fellowship, you don’t go in for their rites?”

  “Oh, I am aware that you have your opinion of me, Father.” Judd’s tone was airy. “You speak as if you mean to shame me into some admission. But when I say ‘we,’ I speak of my neighbours. I speak of the Netherhoughtonians. It was an expression, merely an expression. Would you like some of my fish?”

  “Be careful there,” Father Angwin said. “You have almost got your foot on Ambrose.”

  Judd looked down. “So I have.” With a delicacy and sureness that suggested to Father Angwin that he was indeed of nocturnal habit, the tobacconist picked his way through the trenches. “It is a pity I did not come on the scene earlier. By way of the footpaths it is no distance to my home. I could have brought my own spade. Father Fludd has had everything to do.”

  “Why have you a spade, Judd? You have no garden.”

  “You forget, Father, that I was one of the allotment holders. In the old days.”

  “Were you so? Then why could you not influence your brutish compatriots? Could you not turn away the raiding parties from their careers of crime and violence?”

  “Oh, I am not a man who would turn a person away from anything,” Judd said. “Or towards anything, either. I am by nature merely an onlooker. This enterprise of yours, for example, this secret and private enterprise—I regard it with complete equanimity. You have not asked my opinion, I have not given it. Nothing would induce me to give it. I am one of the world’s bystanders.”