cars, everything, ad nauseam. Maybe it’s best to just live our lives and stop worrying.”
He smiled at her, and said, “How old did you say you were?”
She crinkled her forehead as if to say, please don’t patronize me. “My parents were always cross with me because I never took religion seriously. The Cantwells are famous old Catholics. I liked the Latin bits, but I always found the rituals and ceremonies painfully irrelevant. Perhaps, in the morning, I’ll reconsider.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I’m knackered, so you must be absolutely paralytic.”
“I could sleep.” He finished his drink. Then, given their newly forged bond he felt comfortable enough to ask, “Do you mind if I bring the bottle with me?”
In New York, it was the Phillip’s bedtime. After his bath, Nancy lay on the bed with her infant beside her. He was powdered and diapered on a soft fluffy towel. He was placidly playing with a plush toy, clutching at it, putting the bear’s snout in his mouth. She opened her cell phone and reread Will’s last message. Arrived safely. Home soon. Love U. She sighed and typed a reply. Then she stroked Phillip’s soft, round belly making him giggle, and kissed him on both cheeks.
To Will, the long, upstairs hallway was swaying like a suspension bridge in a canopy jungle. It was a pleasant, free sensation, and he felt light on his feet, as if the law of gravity was about to be suspended. He carefully followed Isabelle as she tiptoed as not to wake the old man. He wasn’t sure, but she seemed to be under the demon’s influence too-she was weaving around invisible obstacles and midway down the corridor she brushed the wall with her shoulder. She opened his bedroom door with a whispered flourish. “Here you are.”
“Here I am.”
It was dark and the quarter moon shining through the lace curtains turned the furniture into black-and-gray shapes. “You’ll never find the light,” she said.
He followed her in, watching her slender silhouette against a window. Dormant circuits in his brain started tripping, the ones dealing with booze and women. He heard himself saying, “You don’t have to turn the light on.”
He knew that was all it would take. He sensed that her pump was primed by the drink, the excitement of discovery, the isolation of the country.
They were on the bed. Clothes were being shed in the once-in-a-lifetime way that marked first times. Cool, dry flesh became warm and damp. The heavy bed frame creaked at its joints, and the high-pitched squeals of wood on wood played counterpoint to their low grunts. He wasn’t sure how long they were taking or if he was doing well. He only knew that it felt good.
When they were done the room was completely quiet until she said, “Wasn’t expecting that.” Then, “Did you bring the bottle?”
It was safely standing on the floor by the bed. “I don’t have a glass.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She took a swig, gave it back to him, and he did the same.
His head was swimming. “Look, I…”
She was already off the bed, reaching in the dark for her things, saying a quick sorry, when she brushed her hands against his privates, fishing for her knickers. “What time should I wake you?” she asked.
He was taken aback, unused to being on the receiving end of casual sex. “Whatever works for you,” he said. “Not too late.”
“We’ll have a cooked breakfast, then we’ll get on with it. I can’t find my other sock- now can I turn the light on?”
He closed his eyes protectively at the flare and felt a peck on the lips, then squinted at her naked retreat, her clothes bundled under one arm. The door closed, and he was alone.
When he retrieved his cell phone from his pants pocket, the little red light was flashing. He opened it and read a text message. Not mad at you anymore. Miss U. Philly misses U 2. I read the poem. Amazing. Call me soon.
He realized he’d been holding his breath for an uncomfortably long time, and his audible exhale sounded like a low woof. There was something unspeakable about texting her back while naked and wet from another woman. He thought about it for a while, then tossed the phone on the bed and took another hit from the bottle instead.
Outside, the tail end of the cold front was sending chilly, rolling winds through the back garden. A night-vision monocular scope was poking through the dripping branches of a lush stand of rhododendrons. Through the scope, Will’s window glowed uncomfortably bright.
When Will rose to go to the bathroom, DeCorso saw his naked torso pass by. It was the first time he’d made him in hours; he was certain he was in the house, but still it reassured him to confirm his man was present and accounted for. A minute earlier, when the room was dark, he’d gotten a fleeting look of a woman’s bare ass, goddess green in the scope’s optics. Piper was having a better night than he.
It was going to be a long, cold stretch of time until morning, but he was steadfastly resigned to doing what watchers do.
Chapter 15
1334
Isle of Wight
Felix led the congregation in the Prime prayers. Mercifully, it was the shortest office of the day because he was desperately fatigued, and his head was pounding again. The cathedral was filled with his brothers and sisters, dutifully responding, lifting their voices in prayer song that was surely as sweet as the songbirds perched on the rooftops of the church calling to their number in the nearby oaks. It was the rarest time of year, when the atmosphere within the cathedral was, in a word, heavenly-neither too cold nor too warm. It would be a shame, he thought, to depart this earth in the glory of summertime.
Through his good eye, he saw the monks sneaking furtive glances from the pews. He was their father, and they were worried about him and, indeed, worried about themselves. The death of an abbot was always a time of worldly concern. A new abbot inevitably changed things and altered the rhythms of abbey life. After all these years, they were used to him. Perhaps, he thought, they even loved him. Adding to the uncertainty, the chain of succession was cloudy. His prior, Paul, was far too young for the bishop to elevate, and there was no other candidate within their walls. That meant an outsider. For their sakes, he would try to live as long as he could, but he knew better than most that God’s plan was set and inalterable.
From the high, carved pulpit, he searched the length of the cathedral for his visitor, but Luke was not to be found. He was not terribly surprised.
As Psalm 116, a Prime standard, was drawing to a close, he was suffused with a sudden joyful realization: that at the moment he had completed his confessional letter, Luke had arrived. Surely, this was providential. The Lord had heard his prayers and was providing an answer. In praise, he decided to insert one of his favorite old Prime hymns into the service, the ancient Iam Lucis Orto Sidere, Star of Light Now Having Risen, a poem dating back centuries, as far back as the lifetime of the blessed spiritual founder of their Order, Benedict of Nursia.
Iam lucis orto sidere,
Deum precemur supplices, ut in diurnis actibus nos servet a nocentibus.
Now in the sun’s new dawning ray, lowly of heart, our God we pray that He from harm may keep us free in all the deeds this day shall see.
The congregation seemed uplifted by the hymn. The high, soprano voices of the young nuns sounded lovely within the hollow, echo chamber of the great cathedral.
Ut cum dies abscesserit, noctemque sors reduxerit, mundi per abstinentiam ipsi canamus gloriam.
That when the light of day is gone, and night in course shall follow on, we, free from cares the world affords, may chant the praises that is our Lord’s.
At the conclusion of the service, Felix felt rejuvenated, and if his vision was doubled and his eye was painful, he hardly noticed it. As he left the church, he motioned to Brother Victor and asked the hostillar to bring the night visitor to his rooms.
Sister Maria was waiting for him at the abbot house and immediately began to ply him with tea and coarse
