The Haunted Season (22 page)

Peregrine did not look at all happy with the result.

Peregrine hated losing.

 

Chapter 16

MAX AND THE BISHOP

Days later, Max was summoned on short notice to the bishop's presence. He adjusted his calendar, putting off obligations where he could, and made the short drive via the dual carriageway to Monkslip Cathedral, home and headquarters of the Right Reverend Nigel St. Stephen.

Cooling his heels in the outer office under the watchful, appraising eyes of the bishop's secretary, Max browsed the magazines on the coffee table with every appearance of absorbed fascination (“No Taizé, Please: We're British” and “Beyond the Fairy Cake Sale: Online Fund-raising”), wondering all the while if the bishop might pull the plug at last on his investigative activities. He had been supportive of Max's extracurricular doings in the past, but that was not to say the man's patience was limitless.

At last, Max was admitted into the bishop's high-tech office in the low-tech medieval room with its paneled walls and stunning views over the cathedral close. The bishop was wired for the New Age, and every piece of furniture in the space was functional, with lots of stainless steel and glass and clean modern lines.

With a small inner sigh, Max saw the bishop had a copy of a newspaper open in front of him. This would not be alarming in normal circumstances, but the bishop's office tended to run clear of anything that might resemble clutter; the bishop was an early adopter of the ideal of the paperless office. Also, the
Monkslip-super-Mare Globe and Bugle,
in the minds of most of its readers, was in and of itself nothing but an untidy hodgepodge of fiction dressed as fact, random at least in terms of having a philosophical or even a political through line.

Now the bishop tapped one index finger against the offending headline of the newspaper.

Appalled, Max saw a photo of himself he had not known existed. It pictured him emerging from the Horseshoe side by side with DCI Cotton. The pair had met there just two days before to discuss the case over a pub lunch—it was then that Max had given Cotton the fuller details of Rosamund's deception over the hair clip, pleading her case for leniency. The photographer had caught Max waving his arms animatedly as DCI Cotton looked on, apparently fascinated, and the caption beneath the photo read “Father Max Tudor explains the finer points of detection to the police officer in charge of investigating the shocking Totleigh Hall murder.” Great. How Cotton would love that. It made him look like a credulous dolt and Max like Sherlock Holmes. This photo of Max the Great Detective and his disciple ran side by side with a smaller photo of Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, “whose headless corpse was discovered in the woods of Totleigh Hall by the sleuthing priest.” The paper had chosen to run a headshot of the lord, a choice Max could only hope had not been made in deliberate bad taste.

The editor also had included, for no apparent good reason, a photo of Bree, Lady Baaden-Boomethistle, taken on her wedding day outside a registry office in London. Her skirt had been caught by the wind, allowing for a sort of Marilyn Monroe moment, which the editor undoubtedly had been unable to resist. She was smiling and her husband, head firmly attached, was beaming. It looked to Max as if it had been a happy occasion.

“Have a seat, Father Gumshoe,” said the bishop, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “I hope I haven't interrupted your investigation too much by calling this meeting?”

Max sat as instructed, arms resting on the wide arms of the chair, adopting a relaxed attitude he did not really feel. He ignored the bishop's question, which was clearly meant only to showcase his irritation.

“We have a lot to talk about,” the bishop began.

Isn't that the truth, thought Max. He tilted his head to one side expectantly. Much better, he had discovered, to let the bishop guide the conversation. That way the real issues—the things Max was not quite ready to discuss—often went, well, undetected.

“I rang the editor of this execrable newspaper to explain our position.”

We have a position? Good, good.
Max was hopeful. If “we” had a position, that could only mean the bishop was on his side.

“I did not, overall, sense a keen intelligence at work behind the man's surface geniality.”

“No,” Max allowed. “No, one probably would not expect to find that.” A regular reader of the
Globe and Bugle,
since it was the only game in town for following local events, Max could honestly say
intelligence
was not the word that generally came to the forefront of his mind.
Scurrilous
and
rubbish
often did. The paper was only saved from lawsuits for slander, one sensed, by the comedic quality of much of the sly innuendo, the allegations that stretched nearly into the realm of science fiction. Max and Awena often read bits of the paper aloud to each other of a morning, to start the day off with a laugh. Max had missed this morning's paper only because he had already been on the road to Monkslip Cathedral.

“It is difficult to say what angle of the man's ‘story,' for lack of a better word, was most alarming.”

Alarming. This could not be good. What did he mean by alar—

“There is, of course, the whole question of whether your parish duties are being subverted by these investigations.”

“I assure you, Bishop, particularly now that I have a curate—she is working out wonderfully well, by the way—I have—”

“I am certain that is the case. I would have heard if it were otherwise. You have an … an
active
group of parishioners who would not hesitate to complain if anything were being neglected.” The bishop stole another glance at the newspaper. “Really, it's quite a good, photogenic portrait of you, Max. You do look dashing, if you don't mind my saying so. How fortunate you were wearing your collar, so the press could play up the whole Father Brown angle. Perhaps we could use you on a recruitment poster. ‘Max Tudor, Celebrity Sleuth.' And of course they have emphasized your rumored MI5 background in the article. Too good to resist, along with the cheesecake shot of Lady Baaden-Boomethistle. Let's see—ah yes, here it is: ‘According to his parishioners, Father Maxen Tudor, smothered by the Official Secrets Act, is not able to discuss his background, but it is believed he was instrumental in breaking up the more venomous of the drug cartels plying their heartless trade in London.”

“Regrettable,” murmured Max. He couldn't tell if the bishop were more exasperated with the media than with Max himself. Perhaps it was a mixture of both.

“‘Heartless trade.' That's rather good. I must remember to use that in my next antidrug speech when I visit the schools. How are Awena and the baby doing, by the way?”

“Oh!” Max, as often happened, was thrown off by the bishop's change of topic. “Right as rain. Just fine, Bishop. Owen is such a joy, I can't tell you.”

“Remember, I have four of my own,” said the bishop, pointing to the family portrait on the credenza—four girls, all redheads like their father. “I know. It is only the beginning. Talk about heartless—they steal your heart and go off with it one day without a backward glance.”

Max was sure this was true, and while he hoped it would be different with boys, somehow he doubted it.

“The article goes on,” the bishop began carefully, “it goes on to say your wife has a reputation as a healer.”

“This is true, Bishop. She … it's part of her business, you know. Her shop. She sells homeopathic remedies and so forth.”

“The implication is that she does more.”

Max sighed. “May I see?”

The bishop handed him the paper and sat in silence while Max took it all in. The reporter had, of course, gotten hold of the whole neopagan angle vis-à-vis Awena and played it for all it was worth. He (one Clive Hoptingle, whose talents clearly were being wasted in reportage, given his driving narrative style) implied without actually stating it that Awena went in for esoteric ceremonies, gathering herbs by moonlight, sprinkling “blessed” water on crops—all the while being married to a priest of the Church of England.

What Clive reported was not wrong, exactly. It was a question of focus, of shading, of innuendo and suggestion, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks with every cliché at his or her disposal. Awena, the most gentle and loving of creatures, was being subtly portrayed as something out of
Macbeth,
a model for one of Shakespeare's three witches. Max felt his face flush with anger. This Clive person was a moron. How
dare
he.

Awena
was
a healer; Max had seen the evidence for himself, had experienced it for himself. It was, however, another reason her growing reputation might make the bishop leery. She sold, for one example, an ointment in her shop that worked fine to alleviate skin conditions; its main ingredient was witch hazel or something innocuous. But, as he once had learned when he injured his ankle, it worked with 100 percent efficacy when Awena applied it to his skin. There had been other, even more profound cures of several people in the village that he attributed to her intervention. There was no other explanation. But explaining to anyone like the bishop, who had not experienced this for himself, well …

Max recalled the discussions he and Awena had had on the subject of religion, particularly when they were trying to contrive a wedding ceremony that could enfold both his beliefs and hers.

Awena prayed to the benign and protective being in which she believed absolutely, an entity neither male nor female, but which, as she explained it, resided in the center of a flame that burned with a pure and resolute and indissoluble love for all things living.

It was, she said, a question of faith rather than of belief. A being that just
was,
never requiring conscious thought or invocation, but pleased nonetheless to be summoned.

“The universe is so varied,” Awena had said. “No wonder we struggle to name and categorize, in an attempt to understand it all. But when we fight wars over definitions of the deity—or deities—that's when the trouble starts. In the name of religion, we kill one another. How mad we are!”

She had explained to him then what a hand-fasting ceremony was, and had asked, “Would you feel such a thing compromised your beliefs in any way?”

“It depends,” he had said. “What are the vows, exactly?”

She had told him. While they could compose their own vows, they basically would promise to be each other's shelter in any storm: “To love and honor and respect each other as individuals, and to seek the light instead of the darkness in all our dealings with each other and with others.

“I would include a promise to be your soul friend—the one person you can rely on to stand by you until the end of your life. The ancient Celts called it ‘anamchara.'”

Max, consumed by the strangely indefinable yet undoubtedly feminine essence of Awena—his lover and his best friend—had said, “I actually think that's all quite beautiful. Is it legally binding?”

“To me, it is. But to answer the meaning behind your question, no, it's not. The UK doesn't recognize the ceremony. Yet.”

He found he could not capitulate on this, as much as he loved her and everything about her approach to life. She who could make poetry of any occasion, of any corner of a room, of any meal. Everything she undertook received the same reverent attention: flower arranging, decorating, operating her business, choosing the very ornaments and fabric and clothing she would wear. But alongside her reverence ran that rare ability she had to live in the moment, as the jargon went—it was what made her unique in Max's and others' experience.

He would have done whatever she asked, but on this one thing he had held firm. They would marry, and it would be a legally recognized union. And so after much more back-and-forth, they had agreed they would also have a civil ceremony in order that all the
i
's were dotted and the
t
's were crossed. With Owen on the way, it was something Max had insisted they do.

He and Awena had likewise reached a compromise on their living arrangements. It made no sense for her to abandon the lovely horizontal sprawl of her cottage for the quirky verticality of the vicarage, a structure that seemed designed to provide hazards for the very young just taking their first tentative steps.

Although, Max had observed,
designed
was the wrong term. Nothing about the vicarage seemed planned. It was sporadic, haphazard, more as if someone with a compulsion to construct and remodel and build on—someone like the Winchester rifle heiress of California Max had read about—had taken over the place a century before. It was full of rooms that seemed to serve no purpose and yet were not large enough to be put to any conceivable good use. And so the vicarage had become Max's office during the day—an elaborate mazelike study, as it were—while family life took root over at Awena's cottage. The routine with Mrs. Hooser and her children did not change, and, in fact, Max could not find it in his heart to upset what amounted to free baby-sitting arrangements for the Hooser children. They did their homework at the vicarage's kitchen table, as they always had done, and Mrs. Hooser made ineffective forays into the vicarage's many rooms in need of cleaning, armed with her duster, as she always had. For the time being, he and Awena moved easily between cottage and vicarage during the day, as before, the difference being that Max had now moved all his personal belongings into the cottage, which they now called home.

There had been so many things to decide back then, and the few months before Owen's birth had not seemed to Max nearly long enough to decide it all. He remembered a conversation they'd had one day when they were still trying to decide what to do about day-care arrangements. She had been wearing a typical Awena outfit of what he thought of as icon colors: blues and pinks and violets and cherry tones brightly embroidered against a gold background. The long dress was gathered at the waist, Kabuki-style, with a wide belt.