On the Third Day (22 page)

            Father Thomas’ voice faded to a barely audible whisper, and Donovan leaned forward to hear.

            “Far from them…” Father Thomas repeated.

            Everything fell silent.  Father Thomas stood alone, looking small and very vulnerable on the altar.  His face hadn’t gone slack, and yet Father Prescott saw that something had changed.  Something had skewed, slid right off the face of reality, and he couldn’t quite place it.  No one moved.  There were no random coughs.  No feet shuffled, and no hymnals slid in or out of the racks on the pews. 

            From the left of the altar, very loud, a new voice cried out.  Father Thomas’ lips didn’t move, nor did he turn to see who had joined his Mass – or what.  Father Prescott dragged his gaze to the side with a physical effort and scanned the shadows.  He saw nothing – no one stood anywhere near the altar, and yet the voice boomed out and filled the cathedral with sound.

            Father Prescott closed his eyes and tried to orient himself.  In that instant, an image flashed through his mind.  A lone man, hair gray and wild, flying back over his shoulders glared at him defiantly.  The man’s robes flowed over strong shoulders.  His eyes were bright points of light that penetrated time, the room, and Donovan’s heart.  He cried out, but no sound emerged.

            The lone cantor spoke.

            “I lift up my eyes to the hills.  From whence does my help come?”

            The words were so painfully familiar they stole his breath, and so different – so filled with power and weighted with meaning it was like speaking them for the first time.  He’d read them, but now they were his own.  He’d repeated them, memorized them – now, for the first time, he spoke them, and understood them.  Tears poured from the corners of his eyes.  He whispered the response.

            “My help comes from the Lord, who made Heaven and the Earth.”

            His words rang out through the cathedral.  His whisper reverberated from the rafters and rattled the stained glass of the windows.  In the moment of silence that followed his words, the focus of the room shifted.  Every eye turned to him.  They stared, dazed, as though each was awakening from his or her own dream, only aware of their surroundings in that moment because of the impossible volume of that single sentence.

            Father Prescott shook, and his knees threatened not to support his weight.  He knew that they had heard him.  He knew because they stared at him, open-mouthed.  He had no microphone, and he’d barely mouthed the syllables of the response, but they knew the words, and they knew who had spoken them.  Comforting words.  Uplifting words.  One of the songs of ascension, the 121
^st
Psalm.

            Tears filled his eyes and blurred the image of Father Thomas, standing alone – not forgotten, but momentarily secondary to the booming cantor’s voice, whoever it belonged to, and Father Prescott himself.  Donovan blinked and tried to clear his sight.  He needed to be careful, to watch what unfolded on the stage.  If he got carried away, or became part of the experience on too deep a level, any report he might make to his superiors would be tainted.  He could say whatever he wanted, and someone would stand off to the side and casually ask him about that supposed voice-throwing trick he’d mastered.  These thoughts and more tumbled through his mind, and he clawed toward their surface fighting for control.

            All of this took a span of only seconds.  The cantor cried, “He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.”

            Father Prescott’s lips quivered.  He fought the impulse to respond.

            A gasp rippled through the congregation then.  The sound rose in various points of the room and rode the wave of those to either side, sometimes meeting in the center of an aisle in a rush of sound.  The effect was loud, powerful, and mesmerizing.

            Father Prescott managed to raise one hand to his eyes, brushed it across his eyes backhand, and blinked.  He stared at the altar, fixed on Father Thomas, and nearly moaned.  A thin line had formed on Father Thomas’ brow.  At first it seemed a band of hair had dropped and circled the priest’s brow.  It was dark, but symmetrical.  Then, very slowly that band thickened.  It might have been an illusion, some shadow cast by the rising sun and filtered through the high windows.  It might have been a dark wrinkle filled with sweat and glinting with captured light.  Father Prescott knew that it was not, and he spoke, his voice still low as he completed the second stanza of the psalm.

            “Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”

            The symmetry of the band on Father Thomas’ brow broke.  Gaps appeared along its length, and from these, rivulets rolled down the placid features of his face.  Donovan concentrated.  He tried to make out the color, but from where he sat, whatever it was appeared dark – black against the pale white of Father Thomas’ skin.  When had it started?  Had the young priest pulled some sleight of hand while Donovan was distracted by the voice?  And whose voice was it?  Where was the cantor, and why did he not make his presence known?

            There were just enough questions in all that was happening to stain the moment with doubt.  Donovan bit his lip and shook his head.  He wiped his eyes again, and again the booming voice drove forth from the shadows, reminding him that despite the fact each second seemed an eternity, only a moment had passed since he’d last spoken.

            “The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.”

            Absently, Donovan raised his hand and shielded his eyes, cupping his palm over his brow to act as a blinder.  It didn’t help.  He was too far from Father Thomas to know for sure, and the trickle of dark liquid trailed down in streaks from the band on Quentin’s forehead.  Something bunched there, folded skin – or – a crown of thorns?

            Donovan spoke again, “The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.”

            Without hesitation the voice of the unseen cantor poured out over the gathering. 

            “The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.”

            As the words rolled over and through him, Donovan realized they had shifted once again.  He scanned the shadows desperately, but saw nothing.  He turned back to the altar as the last word was uttered.  Father Thomas’ lips moved.  The sound now emanated from him as clearly as it had not moments before.  Had it been his voice all along?  Was it possible?  Had he put something in the coffee that morning, something that had addled Donovan’s mind to the point he couldn’t tell one voice from another, one direction from the next?

            Did it matter?

            Donovan spoke the final phrase and felt the power in his voice, the volume behind his whisper.  He knew they heard him, all of them heard him, impossible as that might be, just as he’d heard the voice of someone who did not appear to exist.  He did not know why it was important to finish, but it was – and he did.

            “The Lord will keep your going out … and your coming in … from this time forth.”

            One force, one huge sigh of indrawn breath, one voice.

            “Amen.”

~ Twenty-Two ~

            Father Thomas stood as still as stone on the altar.  He might have been carved in the likeness of the huge Christ behind and above him, except his head did not loll to the side.  His stance was powerful, filled with strength, and yet bereft of anything that resembled self-control.  He was controlled, but Quentin Thomas had little or nothing to do with it.

            Father Prescott stood and licked the taste of the final words from his lips.  He watched in stunned amazement as the blood flowed, coating Father Thomas’ cheeks and matting his hair.  Donovan leaned into the force that held him so still – so easily – and held out his arm to Father Thomas, but it was like pressing into a wall, or fighting the hold of strong rubber restraints.  He made no headway.

            To the right of the altar, another figure appeared, and Donovan turned to stare.  His jaw dropped slightly, and he quit struggling, just for a moment, as Gladys Multinerry stepped forward in front of the congregation.  Gladys held a Bible open in her hands.  It was a large, ornate book, but she held it easily.  Sunlight from the windows far above washed the white pages in the colors of stained glass.  That light glowed from the pages and washed over Gladys’ face so that, despite the distance, Donovan saw her expression clearly.

            A thought passed through his mind, closely followed by the realization that it was a thought he would never have believed possible.  She was beautiful.  Her eyes sparkled.  Her hair glimmered in the sunlight and her wide, heavy form seemed, somehow, appealing.  Despite her size and weight, she looked innocent and vulnerable, and when she looked up from the book in her hands rays of light emanated from the tips of her fingers and the lines of her face.  She began to read.

            “Lo!  I tell you a mystery.  We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

            “For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.  When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

            ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.

            O death, where is thy victory?

            O death, where is they sting?’”

            Gladys fell silent, but the words hung heavy in the air.  They lingered, sifting into Donovan’s mind slowly.  He knew them, could probably have recited them backward and forward with almost equal facility, but he had never felt them as he did now.  He had never heard such an angelic voice utter scripture, nor had he ever heard any words spoken with such conviction.

            He turned and tried to force his way along the aisle.  He knew he had to move, had to free himself from the grip of whatever had taken control of the cathedral, but he didn’t know how to do it.  He also didn’t know how to convince himself that he wanted to – that he needed to.  If it had not been for the blood matted on Father Thomas’ face – Donovan no longer considered that the liquid might be anything else – he might not have tried at all.

            Father Thomas raised his arms.  He held them over his head, as if beseeching, though his gaze never faltered.  He stared unflinchingly out over the crowd, and Donovan would have bet that no matter where he stood in that cathedral, Father Thomas would meet his gaze, and that of every other person present, with that same beneficent expression.

            Slowly, as though rotating parts of some great machine, Father Thomas turned his arms so that his palms faced the crowd.  A low murmur began in the crowd and rose to a wail seconds later.  Dark red patches had formed on the insides of Father Thomas’ writs.  This was not like the trickling blood on his forehead.  A red, sticky river flowed down each upraised arm.  His vestments soaked.  Large spatters and droplets hit the floor, reminding Donovan instantly and vividly of the red rain in the jungle.  There was too much.  No one body could have contained the amount of blood now flowing steadily in and down toward Father Thomas.

            Oddly, in that moment, Father Prescott’s training kicked in.  His mind shifted to the ritual, to the mass.  It was time that the gifts should be delivered to the altar.  The moment of communion was nearly at hand, but there was no bread, no wine, no candles had been brought forward.  He knew that the altar boys had been dismissed for the day, and he wondered how it would be handled. 

            Donovan turned slowly, scanning the cathedral for movement other than that before him.  There was nothing.  The outward physical symbols he’d so long associated with the moment would not be a part of this.  His mind warred over the concept.  He had never felt the spirit as powerfully as he did in that moment, never felt anything at all that approached it, and he had always assumed that when, and if, he reached this point he would be propped and supported by the objects of faith – by the ritual.

            Donovan closed his eyes, willed his mind as silent as possible, and began to move sideways down the pew.  He had to force himself around those seated between himself and the aisle.  They didn’t do anything to actively block his progress, but they were so rapt on Father Thomas, so caught up in the moment, that they were unaware of his passing.

            Father Prescott had no time to be polite, and after the first few feet began considering them all as part of one great whole that he swam through, working toward the edge where he could reach the aisle and face the altar unimpeded.  He didn’t know exactly what was happening, but there was something nagging at him, and somehow he knew that the ritual was not absent, just changed.  Something was about to happen that he should prevent, something he should
know
was the natural continuation of what had happened thus far, but it eluded him.

            He nearly stumbled into the lap of a woman in a long, green gown.  Her hands were clasped in her lap, and her gaze was locked on Father Thomas’ face.  Her eyes shone with reflected light, and her lips were parted.  Donovan caught that gaze, just for an instant, and was nearly swallowed whole. As he stared, his knee made contact with a wooden brace on the pew in front of the woman and he fell into her.

            In that moment, his hands planted on either side of her shoulders, their faces so close he could have shared her breath, kissed her, whispered for her only, despite the man seated at her side, so obviously her husband, caught up in his own little world of amazed rapture.  Her expression changed only slightly.  She seemed confused, or mildly annoyed, that he was blocking her view of Father Thomas, but even this interruption was not enough to shake her from the trance-like state she’d fallen into.