The Angel in the Glass Read online

  Two little words, but they change Jonathan Carew’s life.

  What Martin Oude says is, ‘Kill me.’

  And, gravely and calmly, Jonathan Carew says the words and performs the actions that his faith requires of him when death approaches. Then he picks up the second soft feather pillow – he was very careful to bring two – and, having first spread a fold of the old priest’s soiled robe over his face, he puts the pillow in place and holds it very, very firmly.

  There is barely a struggle.

  After a surprisingly short time, it is done.

  Jonathan keeps the pillow where it is while he checks. But the pulse has ceased, the heart has stopped. He holds the pillow in place for a while longer, then removes it.

  He draws the fold of cloth away. He has arranged it thus in case a thread of cloth or a tiny, stray feather should be shed from the pillow to betray this deed that he has just done.

  He kneels beside the dead body and he prays. When he is done, he goes on kneeling there, keeping vigil with Martin Oude while his soul departs.

  Jonathan knows that he has done the right thing. The old man asked him to do it, and the alternative – the horrors and the agony that tomorrow would undoubtedly have brought – was not to be contemplated. To obey the command ‘Kill me’ was the compassionate response, the only response.

  So Jonathan Carew tells himself.

  Yet the commandment says quite plainly, Thou shalt not kill.

  And he has just taken a life.

  As yet, kneeling there beside the cooling body, he has absolutely no idea how he is going to live with it.

  Jonathan has understood that Martin Oude was talking about the stained glass that was removed from his church – his little Devon church – during the iconoclasm of 1547, when Edward VI ascended the throne. Before the men came to obey the royal injunction to ‘destroy all shrines, pictures, paintings, and all other monuments of feigned miracles so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glass windows or elsewhere within their churches or houses’, the little priest made quite sure that his church’s glass would be safe.

  And Jonathan thinks, as finally he gets up from the cold, damp floor and the cooling body of an innocent, loving old man and stumbles back to his own room, why? What did it matter? Was it worth all this agony, all this dying?

  He discovers, over the ensuing days, that working for the spymasters has lost its appeal.

  Jonathan becomes rebellious, outspoken. He speaks up for the oppressed, he is strident in his criticism of the use of brutal torture. ‘Don’t you see that it does no good?’ he shouts courageously but unwisely to his superiors. ‘A man in agony will tell you anything you want to hear if he believes you when you say you’ll stop if he breaks his silence!’

  His superiors hear him without comment. They watch, and they wait.

  Increasingly Jonathan is haunted by Martin Oude’s words on Christ’s love. How horrified the Lord must surely be at what was being done in his holy name.

  And the clever, narrow-eyed men in the spy network know that it’s time Jonathan Carew was ejected from their number. They’ve had enough of him; they don’t trust him any more. He’s sent off somewhere where the work is largely of a clerical nature, lengthy, monotonous and largely unimportant – a sort of penance posting – and then the living of Tavy St Luke becomes vacant when Philip Snell dies and they decide it would be quite ironic and amusing to send him there. They believe that by booting him off to such an out of the way, forgotten, unimportant, tediously dull and excruciatingly boring place where nothing ever happens and that they believe he will hate, they will be giving him the constant, painful reminder that he has brought his exile – and the end of his glittering career – entirely upon himself.

  ‘You asked some time ago how I knew the panels were here,’ Jonathan said.

  He had been talking for a long time. He was clearly very tired, but he was a lot less pale and he looked – lighter, was the best way I could describe it to myself.

  ‘Martin Oude told me he’d buried them in “the dell”, and I surmised that he meant some location close to where he had his incumbency. I tried to search when I first came here, but I discovered very soon what an impossible task it was. I didn’t forget – I don’t think there’s been a day when I haven’t thought of Martin Oude and the promise I made to him – but I let the matter slip to the back of my mind.

  ‘Until one day those two lads came running into the village shouting that they’d found jewels in Foxy Dell. I should have realized, for I had heard people speak of Foxy Dell, only I suppose I thought that a local landmark sufficiently well known to have been given a nickname wouldn’t have been chosen as a hiding place. But perhaps it had not yet acquired its name in Martin Oude’s day.’ He paused, slowly shaking his head. ‘But I knew, then. Even as the realization dawned, I seemed to hear Martin’s agonized whispering, and it didn’t stop. Then I began to see him as well.’ Briefly he covered his eyes with his hand.

  ‘You saw him when you were in the pulpit that Sunday after the lads’ father had fought with Farmer Haydon,’ I said. ‘You went quite pale, and you clutched at the sides of the lectern as if it was the only thing keeping you on your feet.’

  ‘It was,’ he said quietly. ‘That was the first time that Martin appeared to me. I saw him – believed I saw him – standing at the far end of the aisle, and he was smiling at me with such kindness, such love.’ He broke off.

  After a few moments I said, ‘I don’t imagine he’ll be back. You’ve done what he wanted, Jonathan. The panels are back where they should be and soon, when the time is right and it’s safe, you will unveil them. Martin Oude will be able to rest in peace.’

  He nodded.

  I stared suddenly, for I’d just thought of something. ‘But what about the Angel panel?’

  Jonathan looked at me without speaking for a few moments. Then he said, ‘It must have been Martin Oude who added it to the two parcels of panels from the church, for it’s too much of a coincidence to think that—’

  ‘He did!’ I interrupted. Once more I heard Josiah Thorn’s words: Ah, I remember how that tubby little priest remonstrated with him …

  Thomas Fairlight, afraid, guilty, ashamed, had confessed his love and his lustful hunger for Jannie Neep to his priest, and the priest had told him he must give up the Angel panel even as he gave up the boy he adored. And Martin already had a hiding place for stained glass panels and so did not need to hunt out another one …

  ‘He – your Martin Oude – slid Thomas Fairlight’s pride and joy – his Angel panel – among the five from his church!’ I cried.

  And Jonathan, a very tentative smile on his face, said, ‘Yes. And that was what I came to tell you.’

  I asked after a while, ‘What should we do with it?’

  ‘I think,’ Jonathan said slowly, ‘that we should hide it again. Oh, not where we found it!’ He managed a laugh. ‘I don’t think I have the courage to risk Farmer Haydon’s mastiffs again, even with the benefit of your little bottle of potion.’ He looked at me, his face serious again. ‘I believe it has evil in it,’ he said quietly.

  So did I.

  ‘Then we’ll find a suitable place and consign it to the forgiving earth,’ I said.

  And while we did so, I thought, I would find a way to ask Jonathan Carew to pray for the souls of Jannie Neep and Paulus Fiske.

  Except that there would be no need to ask him, for without a doubt he would think of it for himself. They would be there in the forefront of his mind, beside Martin Oude.

  Presently he got up to leave, and I saw him to the door. We said our goodnights, and I watched him walk briskly away. His steps were swift and sure now; he was, I thought, on the way to recovery.

  I locked and bolted the door, then made my way wearily up the stairs.

  Celia must have heard me, for she appeared at her end of the gallery.

  ‘What a tale,’ she said, the horror still showing in her face. ‘That poor, poor man.’r />
  I wasn’t sure if she meant Martin Oude or Jonathan. Possibly she referred to both of them. But I was exhausted, and sad with the residual emotions from hearing Jonathan’s story, so I just said lightly, ‘I knew you’d be listening. You always did have flappy ears.’

  She came swiftly to stand beside me, giving me a very warm, intense hug. It hurt, but I didn’t say so. Then she let me go.

  ‘Good night, Gabe. I hope you’ll sleep all right, and the pain won’t keep you awake.’

  ‘It won’t.’

  I went along to my room, undressed and got into bed. It felt wonderful.

  I knew there had been no need to warn my sister to keep Jonathan’s secret. Celia, after all, carried in her memory deeds even darker than his.

  TWENTY

  Although Celia and I had been to London in March, where among other entertainments we witnessed the King’s official entry into the City, we decided that another visit to the capital was exactly what we needed after the drama of recent events. My fellow Symposium members and I had a vague arrangement to meet at some point in the latter half of the year, and when I wrote to them suggesting the second week in July, they agreed.

  Celia said we ought to take Jonathan with us. I said he wouldn’t come, she said of course he would, basing her certainty solely on the fact that he’d once said he’d lived in London before coming to Tavy St Luke’s. In the end, since it began to look as if my sister and I were going to fall out over it just as we used to do as children when both of us were convinced we were right, I asked him.

  He gave me his singularly illuminating smile and said, ‘There’s nothing I’d have liked better, Gabriel, but I’m afraid I cannot be away from the parish for more than a few days at a time.’

  I almost said, ‘Could you not ask another priest to take the services for you during your absence?’ but, just in time, I swallowed the words. I didn’t know if it was possible to arrange a locum, although I thought it must be. What would happen if a vicar was taken ill? If he died suddenly?

  Jonathan, I thought, had used the fact that he could not leave his parish for the length of time required to go to stay in London for a couple of weeks as an excuse to turn down Celia’s and my invitation. I was sure he’d been truthful when he said there was nothing he’d like better; there had briefly been a hungry look in his strange green eyes when I’d said London, as if he was imagining all the delights of the city, seeing them arrayed before him like jewels on a velvet cushion. And I thought I knew why he had refused: it was because he did not feel he deserved such a treat.

  Somewhere in his soul, in his heart, Jonathan was still doing penance for the death of Martin Oude.

  Since I continued to be stiff and in some pain from my wounds, Celia decided it was up to her to be the leader of our two-person party. She carried out her role with nonchalant efficiency, arranging the hire of the same rooms we’d occupied on our previous visit, in the house where I had lodged while studying at the King’s College of Physicians and, on the long journey to London, being very firm about what time we stopped each evening and selecting the finest available inn for our overnight stay.

  London was busy muttering about the new King, and about the progress, or lack of it, of his plan to unite his two kingdoms of England and Scotland under one crown. About his Catholic wife, about his favourites. There was more frivolous gossip too, of course, and his new subjects had already noticed how keen he was to get away to the countryside and go hunting whenever he could but was a terrible shot and had to have animals finished off by better men; how his manners left quite a lot to be desired, with his tongue too large for his mouth so that he slurped and dribbled when he ate; how his after-dinner conversation was crude and even scatological, with bawdy jokes about farts and turds; how the Queen preferred the cosmopolitan delights of London and had a particular fondness for patronizing poets, playwrights and artists; how the ten-year-old son and heir, Prince Henry, had already impressed his peers with his quick and ready wit and his dignified demeanour. There was talk, too, of the new English translation of the Bible, and King James himself was said to have worked out what must surely be the incredibly complicated arrangements for its accomplishment.

  He had been busy, this new King, for in addition he was rumoured to be the author of an anonymously published pamphlet entitled A Counterblast to Tobacco, in which, as well as roundly denouncing the vile custom and its filthy smoke and black stinking fume, the author also rejected the supposed medicinal benefits of smoking and claimed that the hot, dry nature of burning tobacco was quite alien to the cold, wet nature of men’s brains. He had quite a lot to say on the subject of the humours, and, since this ancient doctrine was the subject of my presentation to the Symposium, I anticipated a heated discussion when my fellow physicians and I met.

  Celia was quite determined, however, that my prime requirement was for a succession of cheerful leisure activities, and we went on the river, browsed the shops and the markets and joined the audience in the Globe Theatre to watch the King’s Men – the new name for Will Shakespeare’s Chamberlain’s Men – perform a couple of plays. The first, Titus Andronicus, was in hindsight perhaps a poor choice, since its subject was revenge of the most bloodthirsty kind, and we had recently experienced something of the sort in our own lives. As we sat through human sacrifice, beheadings, the lopping-off of hands and the cutting-out of a tongue, the serving to a woman of her own sons in a pie and a final mad slaughter of almost everyone else left alive, Celia reached out and took my hand, whispering, ‘It’s only a play, Gabe.’

  For contrast, the second play we saw was Much Ado About Nothing, a light, frivolous piece about a group of people meeting in Messina for the celebration of a wedding, and the various tricks and mix-ups that threatened to prevent the right couples ending up together. I lost track of the plot quite early on, but it didn’t seem to matter much as the actors were attractive and appealing, throwing themselves into the action with enthusiasm, and the pompous, self-important Dogberry and his inept crew of amateur watchmen made the groundlings laugh extravagantly when they weren’t busy lobbing sundry objects at them.

  The glittering diversions of London could not, however, dispel the gloom of my mood. I went to the Symposium meeting and allowed myself to become far too heated as I defended my increasingly solid belief that the doctrine of the humours was outdated, to say the least, and ripe for investigation by the wider medical world. My colleagues fought back, reminding me that a part of our oath as physicians was to ensure that the methods and the treatments of our predecessors were faithfully perpetuated. ‘We walk in their footsteps and we must respect them!’ one of them cried, watching me anxiously as if I’d just demonstrated evidence of incipient madness.

  ‘But what if they were wrong and what we do does no good?’ I shouted back.

  Both my friends paled. It was as if I’d torn up their ancient, precious medical books before their eyes. I shouted a bit more, stomped up and down the room a few times, then abruptly all my fury went out of me and I shook their hands and apologized.

  They seemed to know without being told that I’d been through some distressing experience recently, and they were aware I’d been wounded. Good friends that they were, they suggested we wind up our session early and go and have a few ales.

  My thoughts reverted repeatedly to Wrenbeare; to that house of dark memory, where a man’s inability to control his base nature had led to the deaths of six people, not counting himself. Celia had been quite right when she tried to encourage me to disassociate fact from fiction, and I didn’t tell her about the nightmare I had after Titus Andronicus because I sensed she was feeling enough remorse already, it having been her suggestion to see the wretched play.

  I could have wept for Jannie Neep and the loyal, loving Paulus Fiske. Yes, Paulus had committed violent, brutal murder, and none of what had happened had really been Lady Clemence’s fault, but his simple logic – she had broken Jannie’s heart and so I broke hers – was understandable. Poor
Paulus had experienced so little love in his life. It was small wonder that he should have acted in such a way to avenge his friend’s death.

  But Clemence too was to be pitied, I thought as I lay awake long into the night a few days after our second visit to the Globe. Ugly, unwanted, unable through no fault of her own to produce the nursery full of lusty sons and beautiful daughters that were required of her, bitterness had eaten into her until all she had left was the echo of her late husband’s status. For that too to have been taken away by the visit from that little wraith from the past must have been something she simply could not contemplate.

  And Thomas Fairlight’s disease-induced madness had come down to his daughters, keeping one trapped in the distorted body of a mad child and turning the other into a murderer.

  I thought of Theo, with six corpses to dispose of and on whose deaths he would first have to write lengthy explanatory reports to send to whomever he was required to answer to; I realized I didn’t know who this was, unless it could be Lord Cosmo Underhay, our local justice of the peace. That little puzzle also kept me awake for some time. I realized, as Theo filled my thoughts, how much I valued him, both as a coroner and as a friend. The fact that I derived enjoyment from his company even when we were bending side by side over the most noisome corpses and the bloodiest murder victims said a great deal for the man.

  But the person I thought about most often during those sleepless London nights was Jonathan Carew. As far as I was concerned, I approved utterly of his action in giving Martin Oude a swift death, for the alternative was not to be contemplated. I would have done exactly the same thing myself, but then I wasn’t a priest. Although I was a physician, and our most binding oath is to do no harm, I believe I could quite easily have convinced myself that putting a pillow over Martin Oude’s face, and thus saving him from a far more agonizing and prolonged death, was the right thing to do.

  But Jonathan, I realized, was a different sort of man.