Legendary

by Amelia Kibbie

  With that, he opened the nave door. “Please clean up before seven. Father and Mrs. Dale will be in to set up for the christening. Goodnight.” He sprang out the door into the rain, and clanked it shut behind him with a wooden thump.

  They were left in the 11th century haven then, as the rain pattered on the roof and lashed against the stained glass windows. The wind sighed through the organ pipes, a sweet, sad sound. The men looked at one another in disbelief and Mrs. Wylit belched. Without warning, a train rattled by on the nearby tracks and shattered the surreal moment.

  “Holy pilgrims we,” Lance laughed, and set down his bag. “I can’t believe...”

  “Let’s not think too hard on it,” James advised, “because my arm’s about to go numb.” He tried to shift Mrs. Wylit to the other side. She stood for a moment on shaking legs before Arthur swooped in and eased her into a chair.

  They regrouped. Lance and Arthur went to the storage cupboard to find the cots while James eased her out of the chair and took Mrs. Wylit to the loo. While he patiently washed her hands and face, she seemed to shake back to full consciousness, and stared at him very seriously with her bloodshot eyes.

  “What is it, Vi?” He wrung out his handkerchief and draped it over the faucet to dry in the night.

  “Don’t do it,” she said, low and slow. It gave him a shiver when she talked like that, in her voice of prophecy. “You’ll want to, but don’t. You’ll hate yourself.”

  “I still don’t understand what you’re talking about.” James hauled her to her feet and picked up her jacket from where it had dropped on the floor in a sad heap. “All your cryptic little messages aren’t helping anything.”

  “You heard it on the wireless,” she warned, and kicked off her shoes. She tried to bend down and pick them up, but nearly plunged into the wall. James steadied her then picked her shoes up himself.

  “I heard what on the wireless?” he asked in an exhausted sigh.

  “What’s going to happen. And you thought, why, that will never happen to me, couldn’t happen to me.”

  He shoved her shoes in her hands, and steered her out the door into the nave again. Lance and Arthur had found the old metal cots, stretched with aging canvas, and some army blankets that were indeed pocked with moth bites. They’d set up their accommodations in the sanctuary, which seemed blasphemous, but was farthest away from the door and the draft. The kindly janitor had turned off the lights except for a few electric sconces that protruded from the columns that held up the buttressed ceiling. The gold of the candlesticks and chandeliers glinted dully in the soft light. Somehow, the echoey stone chamber was drowsy and cosy.

  James tucked in Mrs. Wylit, who stared at him with her silent, accusing eyes, until her head lolled back and she began to snore. He tucked the blanket around her limp body and turned her head to the side so her snores weren’t quite so violent. Lance had set up two more cots in front of the altar and prepped them with blankets, and Arthur was busy creating a pile of blankets for himself to lay on. He was far too long for the little cots, and with the decade that had passed since their use, they were of dubious strength.

  There were five ham sandwiches in the lunch pail. “Where does he put it all?” James wondered, surveying the food that seemed to spring magically from the bottomless metal box.

  “Where do you put it all?” Arthur reached out to pat James' flat abdomen affectionately.

  “I’ve got to enjoy it now.” Lance took up a sandwich and unwrapped the wax paper. “You’ve seen my father. That pot belly is what I have to look forward to. He looks like a tea kettle with spindly little legs.”

  The image lightened the mood as they sat on the floor with their backs to the communion benches to eat, and did their best to mind the crumbs that fell into the aging carpet. “My dad looks like me,” Arthur said around the ham in his mouth.

  “Shaped like a capital T,” James said. “Isn’t he?”

  Lance laughed and agreed with a flash of his white teeth. “How about you, mate? Do you have a belly to look forward to, or has your father aged well? Don’t tell me you’ll go bald.”

  Though it was logical for Lance to ask, the question hooked into James and tugged with a painful, disorienting jerk. His mind swam backward to the singular vague memory of his father he could conjure up — a man with smeary spectacles, fuzzy hair, and always wearing clothes that seemed too big. The memory-father was faceless, a blank bank of pale flesh with glasses over where the eyes ought to go. James thought too of beige and dark brown, of pipe smoke, and the joyless void left in his father’s wake. I suppose that means I must have loved him, he thought. Now the vague sensation of being carried in those skinny arms, being lifted into the air, laughing, grabbing at his father’s glasses.

  “James?”

  “He didn’t know his father,” Arthur shifted closer to James on the floor as if to shield him from something. “Left when he was young.”

  “Sorry, mate, I didn’t mean —” Lance coughed and looked away. “Look, do you want to paste me?” He held out his square chin and pointed a finger at it that was marred with a smear of mayonnaise. “Go head, I won’t flinch.”

  “Don’t be an idiot — you didn’t know.” James tried to air it out with a cheerless little laugh. “Really, it was so long ago, it doesn’t matter.” He forced his features into a smile. “I hope he isn’t bald or podgy.”

  They ate in silence for a while, staring at the darkened stained glass windows. One of the panes depicted a young girl praying on a pillow, her saintly face raised to Heaven. Something about it struck James as particularly sorrowful, but he wasn’t sure if it was the glass girl, or the sudden memories of his father.

  It was very late. James and Lance stretched out on their creaky canvas cots, and Arthur bedded down on his pile of blankets.

  “I still can’t believe you threw the sodding thing at him,” Lance said after a stretch of silence. “Did you hear the clang as it ricocheted off of his head?”

  “It was more of a toss.” Arthur’s words floated up from the darkened floor.

  Images of the golden cup clanging off of Tom’s shoulder in a cloud of cigar ash replaced the father shadows in James' mind, and he clamped his hand over his mouth to keep from roaring with laughter. “It didn’t hit him on the head. At least not the first blow. I think it sort of cartwheeled up and bopped him, though.”

  “He was just so smug about it.” Arthur laced his fingers over his broad chest, eyes on the ceiling. “The way he talked about Mr. King. Called his daughter a slag. Couldn’t help myself.”

  “Do you think he was telling the truth?” Lance asked the question that was on all of their minds. “That Mr. Blanchard is really in the loony bin at St. John’s?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” James turned on his side and propped himself up with an elbow. “We’ll have to go there and ask to see him.”

  “But if he’s a loony, how is he going to tell us anything about Matthew Barlow?” Lance reached into his coat pocket and shook out a cigarette, but did not light it. Instead, he tapped it incessantly, pensively on the back of his hand, eyes distant. “This could be where the trail ends, lads.”

  This settled them all into discomforted silence. However, after a time, this dissolved into Arthur and Mrs. Wylit snoring in tandem.

  James had never been a sound sleeper, as his mother was always quick to point out. Strange places, strange beds — well, what could be stranger than a cot in a church with a dedication stone dating back to the Roman era? He’d always envied Arthur’s ability to quite literally fall asleep standing up in a phone box (it had happened once before). It was lonely, being the only one awake. Even after they’d reckoned with Morgan and his gang, James remembered, Arthur was able to slumber away in the repurposed parlor of Willowind House.

  But now he wasn’t alone. After a quarter of an hour, he watched Lance get up and stroll to the chapel side of the church. He paced awhile with his eyes on the stained glass windows, and finally li
t the cigarette he’d been playing with. The smoke went up around his head, a misty halo crowning his silhouette in the dim light.

  James turned and looked at Arthur’s placid slumbering face. He looked twice as young when he slept, an errant black curl resting against his eyebrow.

  James stood, and trod softly over the ancient stones of the nave. Lance turned, and his devastating smile crept up the corners of his mouth. “My partner in insomnia,” he said softly, and opened one arm. James slid beneath it and let Lance fold him into a half-embrace.

  Chapter 19

  James forced himself to pull away. The heady scent of Lance’s cologne, mixed with the sweet tendrils of tobacco smoke (somehow so much less acrid than whatever Mrs. Wylit inhaled) was too much. He felt himself sliding into the scent, the moment, and Lance’s touch with an abandon he found distinctly alarming. They stood shoulder to shoulder and gazed on the stained glass, despite how dull it was in the dark of night. Occasionally, the colors popped in the headlights of a passing car.

  “When I get home, I’m going to sleep for a week,” James groaned softly, just to say something, something to help this feeling slide. “In my own bed.”

  Lance raised the cigarette to his mouth. The white paper of the stick was temporarily stained red as a car drifted past and cast light through the rosy glass before them. “Back home with Arthur.” Smoke curled in tendrils from the corners of his full lips. “To your own flat, your own life, your own bed.” He smiled and showed half of his two rows of straight white teeth. The curve of his cheek was devastating in the dim light, but it was more of a half-grimace than a smile, more sad than consoling.

  “Yes.” James didn’t know what else to say.

  “I suppose you’re eager to have this over with. So the two of you can get back to your lives.”

  “I’m happy to do whatever it takes to fulfil Mr. Marlin’s last wishes.” James crossed his arms over his wrinkled beige shirt; a sudden, protective gesture.

  “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant.” Lance turned and faced him, and took a small step closer to put a reassuring hand briefly on James' shoulder. “That must have sounded like... no, that’s not — cocked this one up, haven’t I? I meant, well — what I’m trying to say is...” He filled the silence with a drag from his cigarette. “I’m jealous,” he finished.

  “Jealous?”

  Lance nodded, and scratched the back of his golden head with one thumb. “Yes, if I’m going to be honest. The two of you will go back to your lives, go back to the home you share. And... well, I hate to whinge and feel sorry for myself, but I can’t imagine, after all of this, after what I’ve understood about myself, discovered, if you will — I can’t imagine going back to my parents’ house, back to my job at the law office, back to Meopham.”

  “Then don’t go back.” James followed Lance as he began to absently pace the bank of windows along the side of the chapel. “Nothing says you have to stay. Now that Mr. Marlin’s gone. You could move to London, too.”

  “I think I shall have to.” Lance raised a foot and put out the cigarette against the bottom his shoe. He crossed his arms and sighed at the stained glass. “Can you believe it? It’s daft.” He gave a gentle chuckle that rubbed James' ears as sardonic. “Three fairies and a madwoman sheltering in a church. Claiming sanctuary.”

  “We’re on a quest, like so many pilgrims before us.” James flicked invisible dirt from his shirt sleeve to avoid Lance’s gaze.

  “I find it funny.” Lance reached out and tapped the multicolored window with one finger. “You know, my mother’s a real Bible-beater. Don’t know where she got it from — Granddad wasn’t really. Perhaps it was what he saw in the war, I don’t know, but he always had an excuse not to go with us to church.”

  James nodded. “When I knew Mr. Marlin, he seemed rather secular, I suppose. Lady Barlow as well. Though there was something about her that was,” he paused, “mystical. I can’t explain it.” He smiled at the memory. “I wish you could have met her.”

  “Me, too. I know it was difficult for you, leaving home and being trapped there with those bullies, but I almost wish I’d gotten to go off on Pied Piper. But Meopham, well — our little village wasn’t much of a target for the Germans.” Lance strolled over to the altar of the Lady Chapel and rested his fingertips lightly on the cloth. Then, he reached out and grabbed the silver cross that adorned it. James sucked breath in through his teeth at the sacrilegious nature of it, but stifled it with a little laugh.

  Lance laughed as well, and turned to waggle the cross gently toward James before putting it back. “Whew.” He pretended to drag a palm over his perspiring forehead. “I thought maybe my hand would burst into flames.”

  “Are you a vampire?” James smirked as he took a few steps closer and crossed his arms an eyebrow raised.

  “I vant to suck your blood...” Lance put his fingers on either side of his mouth and hissed like a cornered cat. James guffawed, and it echoed through the empty church.

  “Hush! Sleeping!” Lance lunged forward and grabbed James' shoulder with one hand, and pushed his other over James' mouth. They froze that way for a moment, their foreheads inches apart, before James gently stepped back. Lance kept the hold on his arm a fraction of a second too long, and a flush of blood pooled in James' cheeks again.

  “Right, a vampire that lives with his mum,” Lance laughed.

  “From personal experience, I can tell you that we monsters prefer to move out as soon as possible,” James said as he played with his hands, not sure where to put them. Lance’s quizzically-arched eyebrows urged him to continue. “My mother knows — she’s always known. And she tried to make a go of it, to be fair, but...” He shrugged. “She was embarrassed of me. At twelve I could see the relief on her face when she packed me onto that train with Arthur and the rest of the children. Though, now that time has passed, I think she realizes this is who I am, who I’ll always be. Now, she’s terrified for me, that I’ll be arrested or beaten or worse.”

  “God, if Mother ever found out.” Lance rubbed his lower lip with a grimace at the thought. “Well, I told you how damned churchy she is. That’s why the cross ought to have burned my flesh at the touch. Because, well, you and I.” He flung his arms out and gave one dramatic spin. “All of this — this building is dedicated to a faith that casts us out. I remember sitting in the pew as a child and listening to the preacher belittle the ‘sinful sodomites.’ No one said ‘amen’ louder than I.” He leaned against the altar and rubbed his forehead first, and then his cheek, as he shook his head. “That night in Grantham when I confessed to you, I felt invincible. I felt so free and joyous. Only, over the last few days the glow’s worn off, and I’m worried. I’m worried about what it means to be who we are in this world. Terrified. Like your mum.”

  “We have to protect each other.” James sensed some kind of thick force around his legs resisting his forward motion toward Lance. But he was able to push through and put a hand on Lance’s shoulder.

  “Thank God—” Lance stopped himself with a curve of his full lips that twisted with irony. “Thank someone I found you.”

  And somehow it happened, then, what shouldn’t have, what James never dreamed would occur — Lance embraced him. No, if the truth was to be told, they embraced each other. And kissed, hip to hip, against the altar dedicated to the Mother of God.

  It was a rushing sweetness. That was all James was aware of in those moments when Lance’s mouth was on his, as they crushed together. After the initial tide of euphoria subsided, it was strange — he swore for a moment he heard lute music, and pulled away. No, some kind of auditory illusion, because the only sounds in the church were Lance’s panting breaths, and the innocent snoring from the opposite side of the room.

  Lance put a hand in James' hair and drew him forward again.

  Chapter 20

  James woke to the gentle pressure of a soft, paw-like hand as it caressed the small of his back. He knew instantly it was Arthur: how many times had those
hands touched him? The number was unfathomable now, after ten years of the deepest companionship either of them had ever known. A love and kinship that felt blessed, legendary.

  And now, perhaps, ultimately doomed.

  James' eyes flew open and his breath died in his lungs for a few long moments as the events of the previous evening flashed through the camera in his mind. You feckless idiot, his mind shrieked, what have you done, what have you done?

  It was only a kiss. Another thought clawed desperately at the first one in an attempt to drag it back down. Between mates. It was his first time. He ought to have that experience with someone he trusts, someone safe.

  Someone with a partner. Who happens to be another best mate.

  Just a kiss — nothing more!

  It was more than one. And you let him do it.

  Arthur’s meaty hand shook him gently. Each imprint of his fingers burned James' flesh through the musty blanket and the fabric of his shirt. He jolted and took a breath, and did the best he could to reset his face. James allowed the hand to guide his shoulders around so he was on his side, facing Arthur, who sat on the floor next to his cot.

  “Should get moving before long.” Arthur rubbed circles with his thumb on James' shoulder. It scraped over his flesh like sandpaper. “Sun’s up.”

  James glanced over at the stained glass windows of the Lady Chapel, the only witnesses to his infidelity. They blazed now with technicolor glory. Mrs. Wylit slept with her mouth open in a pool of kaleidoscope light, haloed by her tangled hair. With her face slackened and bathed in the churchly glow, she looked equal parts saintly and otherworldly, a pagan figure turned Christian for the purposes of converting the wild peoples of this isle.