the dying son of God. There seemed no trace in the old body of the sharp-eyed, sharp-minded woman who had shushed him and Tris to silence a hundred times.
Reverend Hird limped to the pulpit. Age might have bent his body, but his voice was still as strong as a Welsh tenor’s. “Please rise for hymn seventy-nine: ‘Saviour Again to Thy Dear Name We Raise.’ ”
The congregation rumbled as it stood. And so the funeral commenced.
S peakers rose, praised Gavin, lamented the loss to his wife and his mother, opened spectacles, read poems, folded papers, dabbed tears, returned to their seats. The air was warm and still, the voices monotonous. Nicholas fought to stay awake. He did calf raises. Cleaned his nails. Took deep breaths. His eyelids sank, heavy as stones. He sat back in the hard pew and let his gaze trace up those cyan windows, across the curved timbers overhead, to linger on the carved timber ceiling boss some six meters above him.
Suddenly, his weariness vanished like gunpowder in a flash pan. His heartbeat broke into a brisk trot and the hairs on his arms and neck rose into goosebumps.
The ceiling boss was carved as a face. A face with oak leaves sprouting from its sides and mouth. A face that was chillingly familiar. Nicholas dragged his eyes away, but they kept returning to the inhuman visage: a mouth drawn wide and thick, with vital leaves springing from its corners like fleshy tusks. It was a face he’d seen before, though he couldn’t place where. It scared him.
“And now,” Reverend Hird rumbled, “I’d like to call on Gavin’s wife, Mrs. Laine Boye.”
Nicholas dragged his startled eyes down from the ceiling.
Laine Boye held herself straight and took neat steps. Her black suit and skirt were well-fitted and expensive. She reached the pulpit, glanced at the casket, and then looked over the small congregation.
“Thank you for coming today.” Her voice was high-pitched but clear, a neutral accent that spoke of private schooling and careful grooming. “Gavin left no children,” she continued. “And he left too soon.”
Her gaze sought and found Nicholas, and rested on him. There was no puzzlement there any more; she’d figured out who he was. He was close enough to see that her eyes, like the dark day outside, were gray and unyielding as stone.
Laine Boye was on her way back to her seat when a scream broke the silence.
Mrs. Boye was on her feet; she ripped off her hat and hurled it at the carving of Christ. Her white hair flung out like lightning. She screamed again, a furious shriek, and the congregation was jolted into whispering motion.
“Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord!” she cried. Her voice echoed loudly in the transepts and hung unpleasantly on the air.
Laine hurried to Mrs. Boye’s side. The man beside the struggling old woman took firm hold of her arm. Hushed-voiced, they tried to comfort her, Laine’s fluttering hands grabbing for hers. But Mrs. Boye shook them off, her hair wild. “Blood alone pleases the Lord! ” She spat the last word like a curse.
Reverend Hird shot a nod to his young understudy, who hurried down to Mrs. Boye. Fast as a snake, the old woman slapped the young reverend hard on the face.
“Fisher of men!” she cried. “What do fishermen do with fish? Haul them from their water, drown them in air, and then gut them! Eat them! Or toss them back dead and empty! Fisher of men!” This time she did spit, a huge mouthful of foamy saliva that arced through the air to land on Christ’s shin.
Nicholas stared, stunned.
Firm hands took hold of Mrs. Boye. She fought for a while, then settled in a grump. Hird nodded to the organist, who started a lively rendition of “To Jesus’ Heart All Burning.”
And so the funeral finished early.
N icholas huddled under his umbrella as the pallbearers loaded the casket into the hearse. Suzette and Katharine came to stand beside him. The rain fell steadily and cold.
“Nice service, I thought,” said Nicholas. “Colorful.” His head throbbed. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate.
“You might have called,” said Katharine. “Your sister and I were worried sick.”
Suzette simply punched him hard on the arm. “Fuckwit.” She leaned close and whispered harshly, “I need to talk to you.”
“Okay. What, now?”
Suzette smiled primly. “No.” Of course not; not with their mother right there.
“Later, then?” Nicholas suggested helpfully.
The church sat on a corner block, and graceful movement there caught his eye. Laine and another man were shepherding Mrs. Boye into a dark sedan. The old woman was hunched and docile, as if the outburst in the church had never happened. Before following her mother-in-law into the car, Laine hesitated, straightened, and looked around. Her eyes lit on Nicholas. She said something to the driver, then strode over to stand squarely in front of Nicholas. They watched each other a moment. Then, deliberate as a chess tutor, she turned to Katharine and extended her gloved hand.
“Laine Boye, thank you for coming.”
Katharine took it. “Katharine Close. I’m so sorry for your loss. This is my daughter, Suzette, and my son, Nicholas.”
Laine returned her steady, gray gaze to Nicholas. “Would you be so kind as to excuse us, please, Mrs. Close? Suzette?”
Nicholas smiled pleasantly at Suzette. “Chat soon?”
“We’ll see you at home this afternoon. ” Suzette took Katharine by the arm and they walked away.
With them gone, the air between Nicholas and Laine seemed to chill. Nicholas found himself looking again into her cool gray eyes. Dark shadows at their corners betrayed the stress she’d been suffering since Gavin’s death. But her face was without expression as she stared hard at Nicholas. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.
“What happened?”
Something lurked beneath her fine features. Not fury. Not disgust. Nicholas watched her.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” he said.
Laine’s face was inscrutable, her features motionless as a portrait’s, something from another time.
“What did you do to him?” she asked. This time, there was accusation in her tone, and Nicholas felt a burr of anger.
“Me? How about you? You didn’t pick up any little hints that Gavin wasn’t perfectly happy? Lack of sleep? Crazy stare? Love of firearms?”
She watched him, testing his eyes. After a long moment, she nodded curtly and turned away.
“He was going to kill me!” said Nicholas, loudly. She kept walking. “Mrs. Boye!”
She stopped. Droplets of rain collected like glass beads on her shoulders. She turned. Her mouth was held tight. She lifted her chin and met Nicholas’s gaze.
“How did he know I was back?” he asked.
He could see now what the emotion was, brewing behind her eyes. The knowledge surprised him. She was embarrassed.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Close.”
She turned, again with a grace belying her weariness, and hurried to her car to follow her husband’s casket.
Nicholas looked around for his mother and sister, but they were gone.
He watched the remaining mourners drift away in twos and threes. In just a few moments, he felt awkwardly exposed, like a desperate adolescent still standing on the dance floor that all others have vacated at the first beats of an unpopular tune.
“I saw you looking.”
The unexpected voice behind him made Nicholas jump.
It was the young reverend. Nicholas saw he had misjudged his age. He was probably closer to forty than thirty.
“Looking at what?”
“At our Green Man.”
Nicholas steadied himself. “At your what?”
