‘Sure.’ Belle’s answering smile lit up her face, as if she had found some small event to look forward to after all.
Magnus said, ‘I’ll be stopping by for a chat with Jacob and Father Wingate before I go.’
Jeb turned his prison stare on Magnus. ‘Do what you have to.’
There was bite in his voice and the girl glanced from one to the other, unsure of what was going on. She kicked Magnus’s chair again. ‘See you in the ballroom.’ She closed the door gently, taking any good feeling with her.
There was a Bible on the table next to the bed. Jeb picked it up and flung it across the room, but Magnus had seen the move coming and ducked. The Bible splatted against the wall and landed splayed open on the floor. Magnus picked up the book and glanced inside. A sentence was underlined: But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. He closed it.
‘You wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t stuck here.’ Jeb pulled the bed sheet back as if he were about to get to his feet. His body was lean and girded by prison muscle.
The sight of it made Magnus wonder if Jeb was right and whether he would have had the courage to press him had he not been imprisoned by a broken leg. He said, ‘What do you expect me to do? You weren’t locked in there for nothing.’
‘Neither were you.’
‘I tried to stop a rape. Things got nasty and when the police turned up they thought I was part of it. The whole thing would have been cleared up if it wasn’t for the sweats.’
Jeb touched his leg as if the pain of it reassured him. ‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Where’s your proof?’
‘I don’t need any proof.’
Jeb leaned forward, as if he would like to reach out and put his hands around Magnus’s neck. ‘Neither do I.’
Sticking his nose into other people’s nasty business was what had landed Magnus in jail in the first place. If he had walked away from the man tussling with the woman in the alley he might have caught a flight to Orkney when the sweats had started to take hold. He would be home now and would know, for good or for bad, how things were. Magnus sighed and said, ‘So tell me why you were locked in solitary in the wing reserved for sex offenders?’
Jeb looked away and for a moment Magnus thought he was going to refuse to tell him, but then Jeb leaned back and propped himself against the headboard. His eyes met Magnus’s.
‘It isn’t just sex offenders who are classified as vulnerable prisoners. I was kept in solitary for my own safety. I used to be a policeman.’
Twenty-Five
Magnus had never been to a mass before. He sat beside Belle on one of the chairs that had been arranged in a line before the altar in the ballroom, stealing glances at Raisha who had chosen a place at the opposite end of the row, and mulling over Jeb’s revelation. Raisha stared resolutely ahead, her features hidden by the black curtain of her hair. When she and Belle rose to receive the host from Father Wingate, splendid and smiling in his robes, Magnus remained seated, feeling awkward and resenting the trick that had been played on him. There were many miles to travel and a sea to cross before he reached home, but the priest had managed to imprison him indoors in fair weather. It was a hoax to rival transubstantiation.
The ballroom was large, with picture windows and a parquet floor. It had been a prettified marketplace, where daughters and sons of the rich were paraded and paired off in time to a band. Now the chandeliers that had graced the ceiling were gone. The room’s only decorations were a suffering Christ and the Stations of the Cross. From where he was sitting Magnus could see Jesus being nailed up.
Will acted as altar boy, still dressed in his gardening clothes, but ringing bells and swinging a censer of sweet-smelling smoke and incense with casual confidence that suggested he was not new to the task. His face was blank and it was impossible to know if the duty brought him comfort, or if he was merely going through the motions to please the old man. Perhaps they were all dolls in Wingate’s playhouse, puppeting through a semblance of a life because their real lives were over.
Jacob stepped up to deliver the lesson dressed in the same combination of army fatigues and dog collar he had been wearing when they met. He set his Bible on the lectern and rested his fingers lightly on its black cover.
‘I had the privilege of serving in Bosnia during their civil war. It was a painful conflict, as all wars are. During one particularly savage battle, my troop and I took shelter in a bombed-out factory. It had manufactured tin boxes. One of the many strange aspects of war is the way inconsequential objects often survive, while other, stronger, more important things are ruined. Metal boxes were scattered everywhere around the factory floor, but the people who worked there were either dead or had fled.
‘The glass windows of the factory had been blown out and as we sat there, steeling ourselves for the next round of fighting, a tiny bird swooped in through a window. It flew across the large cathedral-like space of the factory floor and disappeared through a rupture in the opposite wall. I realised then that we are like that bird. We appear on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing.’
Prayers were said for Henry, wherever he might be, but Melody went unmentioned. Magnus wondered if her suicide had put her beyond the reach of the Church, or if she was now ranked among the amorphous dead, too numerous to warrant individual pleading.
When the service was over, Jacob and Father Wingate stood at the door to the ballroom, shaking hands with each of the small congregation as they left. Raisha was the first to go. Magnus slipped in front of Will, keen to catch her, but Father Wingate took hold of his arm and stayed him in the doorway.
‘I know you are eager to leave us, but we have a favour to ask.’
Magnus caught Jacob’s eye and knew that the soldier was calling in his debt.
‘Don’t worry.’ Jacob put a hand on Magnus’s shoulder. ‘We’re not about to ask for anything you’re not equipped to give.’
The priest’s words reminded Magnus of a phrase his mother had repeated in times of trouble: ‘God never burdens you with more than you can bear.’ He wondered if even she could believe that now.
Father Wingate led the way out of the ballroom, across the entrance hall and down a flight of stairs into a basement corridor. Upstairs the house retained glimpses of the stately home it had once been, but there had never been an attempt at grandeur down here. Everything was dark and meanly proportioned. Magnus recalled his granny telling him that big houses contained hidden networks of servants’ corridors and stairways, so the gentry would not have to see them going about their work. The servants had been the blood of the house, running along webs of hidden veins.
Father Wingate opened a door and ushered them into a small sitting room. ‘This used to be the butler’s pantry when I was a boy.’ The old priest’s youthful smile was at odds with his wrinkles. It added mischief to his face and Magnus was reminded of an old Shakespearean actor who had been the stalwart of Sunday dramas before becoming the unlikely star of Hollywood science-fiction blockbusters, wizened in Spandex. The memory prompted another stab of loss. All the multiplexes were empty, the hotdog and popcorn concessions silent and mouldering.
Jacob had seated himself in a winged armchair, but Father Wingate hovered uncertainly on the edge of the hearthrug, still talking.