met at Trinity College or the Chester Beatty Library in Ballsbridge: the old priest kept his worlds quite separate. Perhaps that was what kept him sane.
‘I’m not a good man,’ he had once told Patrick. ‘I find it hard to be a priest. I hate poverty. I loathe petty crime and the mess people make of their daily lives. If I had it to do over again, I don’t think I could face it. Do you know, if I believed in reincarnation like these Indian yogis, I think I’d go crazy. Imagine - having to come back again! Jesus, Patrick, doesn’t that give you the creeps now?’
Patrick knocked again. Perhaps hating his vocation was what made a man a saint. He didn’t know: he was one of the people who made messes of their lives. He suddenly realized that he had not been to confession in twenty years. There were a lot of messes to get off his chest. Mist swirled round the enamel-painted door. Why didn’t De Faoite answer? There was a light on in the upstairs room that served as the old man’s study.
There was no answer to his third knock. As he turned to go, he noticed that another light was burning in the church next door. He opened the iron gate and went through. The old church loomed out of the darkness, faintly menacing in a veil of mist.
It had been built in 1689, and much of it was now in a state of serious decay. De Faoite had started a restoration fund and issued appeals for money, but who was going to dig into his pocket to gild a church among the tenements?
Above the door, a weather-worn statue of the Virgin gazed down at him. The face was almost featureless, without nose or eyes or expression. On her head she wore a crown, and on her lap a deformed child, its limbs eroded by wind and dirt, stretched a fingerless hand towards a faintly delineated breast.
The door opened to his touch. There was a smell of wax and incense, mixed with an underlying odour of damp. Beneath an icon of the Sacred Heart, a red lamp flickered in the draught from the door. He slipped inside noiselessly, feeling alien and ill at ease. When had he last set foot inside a church?
Faint shadows moved beneath the ceiling. At the far end of the church, above the altar, a single lamp hung on a copper chain, shedding a dull sepia light to the top of the sanctuary steps. Nearby, half a dozen candles had burned to stubs at the foot of an alabaster statue of the Virgin.
He called De Faoite’s name, but there was no answer. Mist followed him into the church, rolling gently across the floor. He closed the door behind him.
‘Are you here, Father?’
A faint echo rang from the ceiling, hidden in darkness. Automatically, he dipped his fingers into the holy water stoup and crossed himself. The church was unheated, and tonight it felt like an ice-box.
Perhaps the priest had been called out to hear an urgent confession from one of his parishioners. There were three confessionals against the west wall. Patrick made his way to them. They were all empty.
He called again, but his voice was swallowed up in the damp, sacral silence. He was wasting his time here. Best to find a telephone and ring De Faoite again. He turned and started to go.
There was a low sound. It seemed to come from the direction of the transept, possibly the sanctuary. Patrick froze. In the shadows, nothing moved. A candle sputtered and went out. He took a cautious step forward.
‘Is there someone there?’ he called.
No one answered. He felt the hairs ripple on the backs of his hands and the nape of his neck. Why was he afraid?
The sound came again, a little louder. It was like a moan, scarcely human. An animal, perhaps. A dog or a wounded cat.
He padded through the darkness towards the transept. Above the host, a red flame shuddered. He strained to see in the gloom.
There was something on the altar. Something living. He felt his breath catch in his throat, sour and frightened.
‘Eamonn,’ he whispered, ‘is that you?’
The thing on the altar moved. Patrick climbed the steps, the scent of incense heavy in his nostrils. The air felt sickly, raddled with holiness. As he drew near, he saw that the white altar-cloth was stained. Like juice or wine, a long streak of red had soaked into the cloth. Memories rushed in from his childhood to dismay him, the horror of the chalice of blood, the horror of the flesh offered up as bread, the horror of Christ’s bleeding from seven wounds across the altar. The thing on the white table was a man.
They must have tied him before dragging him here. They could not have done what they had done while he was loose: he would have struggled, in spite of his age. He seemed unaware of Patrick’s presence, unaware of anything but the pain surrounding him. But he was conscious, that was the horror.
Patrick’s fingers fumbled with the ropes. He felt bile rise in his throat, burning him. They must have hacked out the eyes: the sockets had filled with blood, like rock pools after high tide. Like a basin of blood in an abandoned Egyptian temple.
‘Eamonn,’ he said, ‘it’s me, Patrick. Can you hear me?’
The old priest moaned again, but showed no other sign of recognition. The ropes were tight, lashing the frail body like the threads a spider uses to secure its prey. But they were not needed now. The old man had no strength left in him.
‘Who did this, Eamonn? Why? Why?’ He was crying. Tears touched the altar cloth. His hands trembled, loosening the knots. He looked up and saw the figure of Christ, suspended in semi-darkness, a wooden figure nailed with wooden nails. The old man groaned and tried to move.
‘It’s all right, Eamonn. Don’t try to speak. I’ll get an ambulance. We’ll get you out of here.’
The last knot came undone and he pulled the ropes loose. There was nothing more he could do here. He had to get an ambulance. Taking off his coat, he rolled it up and placed it under the priest’s head as a pillow. He knew he should wipe away the blood from De Faoite’s face, but he had a horror of the bleeding sockets.
‘You’ll be all right, Eamonn. We’re going to get you to hospital. I’ve got to go to ring for the ambulance. But I’ll be back soon.’
As he looked up, he caught sight of something on the back wall. Above the altar pyx, someone had scrawled a message in large black letters. There were two lines. The words meant nothing at first, then, with a shock of recognition, he saw that the letters of the First line were actually Hebrew and that the inscription was in the same language. The second line was in Greek.
The first line was easy to translate:
Eye for eye, it read, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
He was less familiar with Greek, but the inscription was not difficult:
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.
The paint was still wet. It had run in places. The writer had been in a hurry. But not too much of a hurry. Underneath the lines of writing, the same hand had drawn a circle. In the centre of the circle was painted the outline of a candlestick. A candlestick with seven branches. A menorah with a cross.
‘Eamonn, if you can hear me, nod. I’d like to know if you’re aware I’m here.’
Suddenly, De Faoite’s hand reached out and grabbed Patrick by the wrist. He pulled him down towards him. His lips were moving, trying to form words. His breath came in jagged lumps. Saliva ran across his lips and chin.
‘Pass ...’ It was scarcely a whisper. Patrick bent his
head closer, his ear against the old man’s trembling lips.
‘I can hear you, Eamonn. What is it? What are you trying to say?’
Again the lips moved.
‘Pass ... Pass ... over...’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Soo ... soon ... Pass ... over ... soon. Find ... Balzarin ... Gave him papers ... Knows ... something ... Ask ... Balzarin ...’
De Faoite’s hand relaxed and let go of Patrick’s wrist. His body fell back limp. At the foot of the Virgin, another candle gave itself up to darkness.
EIGHT
The footstep was soft, but magnified in the stillness. Patrick whirled round. Shadows. Darkness that was not quite darkness. A sound high up in the ceiling: mice? bats?
