‘None,’ he said.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘You’ve told me. Now tell him.’ She pointed to the skull on the wall. ‘Tell Moccus that you believe he exists and that his flesh can cure your child, just as he healed you.’
This was harder. But he was holding it in his hands. It was there on the wall in front of him. He had eaten it, and it had healed him. He’d been shot in the leg, and could still walk. How could it not be true?
‘Moccus,’ he said. ‘I believe that you exist and that your flesh can cure my child.’
‘Good,’ she said again. ‘Now. On your knees and beg.’
This was hardest of all. ‘What? No! I’m not going to kneel down in front of that thing.’
Her face clenched and she inhaled sharply, but Everett laid a calming hand on her arm. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured to her. ‘Let me take care of this.’ To David he said: ‘I bet you’ve never knelt to anything or anyone in your life before, have you? And you have no intention of starting now.’
‘You’re right there.’
‘I understand that, I really do. It cuts straight to the heart of your dignity as a human being and your masculine pride, doesn’t it? In the words of Meat Loaf, you would do anything for love, but you won’t do that?’
‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’
‘Tell me, David, how effective is a dose of masculine pride in healing leukaemia?’
He couldn’t answer that. There was no answer to that, and there never had been.
‘David, take out your phone and find a picture of Alice.’
‘What? Why?’
Everett sighed with exasperation. ‘I’m not going to steal your phone or profane the image of your child. Just take it out and look at it. I’m honestly trying to help you here.’
He did so, scrolling through the images until he found one of Alice on the allotment when she must have been five or six years old, before she had become sick, standing with a kiddie-sized shovel and wearing dungarees and pink wellington boots, tremendously proud of having helped with the digging. He showed it to Everett. ‘How about this one?’
‘It’s fine. She’s a lovely kid. I can’t imagine how traumatic the illness must have been for her and you and Becky. Would you kneel to her?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then do it.’
Feeling like a complete idiot, and hating the fact that they were watching him do something so submissive, never mind that it was to one of the two people in the world he would gladly give his life for, he put the phone on the concrete floor and knelt down in front of it.
‘See?’ said Everett. ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’ Before David could react, he quickly stepped forward and took the parcel from his hands again.
‘Hey…!’ David started getting to his feet.
‘Stay down!’ Everett roared, so suddenly and loudly that David obeyed mostly out of surprise. The man’s face was thunderous, and he seemed to have grown taller, like an Old Testament patriarch delivering judgement. Even Ardwyn stepped back. ‘If you stand up a moment before I give you permission, then we are done here!’ he promised. ‘You can go back to the hospital and watch your child writhe and cry for her mummy and her daddy and know that the one thing you could have done to help is forever beyond your reach because you were too proud to beg.’ His voice was barbed with scorn, and he pointed at the phone. ‘Look at her. Look at her!’ David obeyed, and found tears coming at the sight of his baby, so happy before she became the pale and forlorn shadow that the illness had turned her into.
Everett held out the package with his other hand. ‘Do you want this or not?’
‘Yes. Please.’ He was weeping freely now.
‘Then do as you are commanded, and beg, like the worm you are.’
‘Please, I’m begging you…’
‘Oh no, not me. I’m just a servant.’ Everett pointed to the skull. ‘The god. Beg Moccus for the gift of the first flesh that will heal your child.’
David turned to face bone and tusk and the black holes of eye sockets. ‘Please,’ he sobbed. ‘Moccus. I beg you. Give me your flesh so that I can make my girl well again. I’ll do anything. Anything.’ He collapsed, and all the misery that he’d bottled up to stay strong for his family, two and half years of pain, fell in a flood of tears and snot between his knees.
They helped him to his feet. Ardwyn hugged him while Everett patted his back and said, ‘There there, chum.’ They ushered him from the building, locked up, and walked back across the farmyard towards the house.
‘She didn’t eat any,’ said David, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jumper. ‘At the hog roast. Neither of them did.’
‘And that is an oversight that you can put right,’ Ardwyn replied. ‘Simply provide the first flesh for your loved ones.’
‘But Becky doesn’t eat pork.’ It felt ridiculous even as he said it.
‘Then don’t call it pork!’ Everett answered.
David stopped at the back door. ‘Just tell me why. Why the hog roast? Why give this to everyone? And why not say anything about it?’
‘We just want to help people,’ said Ardwyn. ‘But you know how this looks, you’ve experienced it for yourself: people can’t bring themselves to believe in the miraculous even when it is actually happening to them. We let them find their way to us, like you have, and on occasion we go out and seek them when we feel it’s necessary. I don’t know what kind of a marriage you and Becky have, but I suspect that you might not want to tell her about this until your daughter is actually well again.’
‘I don’t like the idea of lying to them.’ He especially didn’t like the
