St. Gomonda #2
“Mr. Hilliard?” He looked up from his diary.
“I’m worried about Mr. Tregarrick. From what Jack’s told me, people are making up their minds about him.
I worry about what might happen to him, but also about what might happen to us if everybody decides it was him and stops looking for the real killer. ”
He studied me closely. “You seem pretty convinced he’s innocent.”
“I know I’m nobody, but I don’t believe he’d do such a thing.”
He closed the book and put it away. “On the contrary. As a victim yourself, and as one of very few people who’ve ever actually spoken to the man, I take your thoughts on the matter quite seriously.
I’ll leave you now, but if you have any more encounters with Mr. Tregarrick, I want to know about it. ”
“Yes, sir.” On impulse, I said, “Are you going the way of the village, by any chance, Mr. Hilliard?”
“I am, yes.”
Did I really have the cheek to ask him to take me to The Magpie? What if Jack had told him I was barred from going there?
Instead, I found myself saying, “With all that’s happened, I was thinking I might like to speak to Father Kelly. If you’re not in too much of a rush . . .”
I trailed off as he nodded. “I’ll take you. I saw him out on the grounds on my way here.”
Father Kelly could quite often be seen among the gravestones at St. Gomonda. So often that Mum had believed he spoke to spirits.
The constable took his watch from his pocket. “I believe it’s a while yet until the tearoom opens. Do you think Mrs. Moyle would be willing to run you home?”
“I’m sure she would, sir.” I knew Mrs. Moyle would be glad to hear I’d spoken with the priest. And I’d have my chance to give her the note for Mr. Carew—which was of course the real reason I wished to go to the village.
My hand went to my hip, steadying the knife in my pocket as the constable helped me up to the gig. A few minutes later we rolled to a stop in front of St. Gomonda, and he bade me good day.
The parish church was pretty as a picture, built of weathered moorstone and surrounded by graves from as far back as 1700—likely older ones, too, whose stones you couldn’t read.
Mum and Da were buried here, and though I’d only used the church as an excuse for coming to town, I felt a sudden desire to visit them.
After passing the church entrance and bell tower, I made my way to the back of the yard, where the simpler folk were buried in the hazel grove. There were more yellow and orange leaves than green now, and nut husks littered the root-studded, rocky ground.
I soon found the plain wooden crosses marking their graves, low mounds covered over with grasses and leaves.
Tears welled, and my voice broke as I spoke to Mum, who had been so much in my thoughts over the last week. “I wish you were here to help me talk to Jack. And to teach me about the tea leaves.”
A hazelnut dropped, landing in my hair. I glanced up to see a red squirrel, with its funny ear tufts and fluffy tail, skittering along a branch. Da once said there were hardly any red squirrels left, and it was lucky to see one. Heaven knows I need it.
Often when I came here, I found myself wondering whether I’d ever have anyone besides Jack in my life.
Whether I’d ever marry. After a couple of years working at The Magpie, I wasn’t sure where I belonged anymore.
When I thought of the change from keeping house for my brother the clay miner to my husband the clay miner, it seemed like hardly any change at all.
Maybe it felt different when you were a wife. Was it possible to find a man suited to my station in life who wouldn’t forbid me from working outside our home, or view my books as idleness? Even if it was, babes followed marriage, and they would leave no time for such things.
Hearing leaves rustling, I turned to find Father Kelly approaching in his black coat and shovel hat.
“Mina,” he said, looking relieved, “how happy it makes me to see you recovered from your ordeal.” He was a handsome man with crinkles about the eyes, his collar bright against dark-brown skin, and a neat beard that showed traces of white.
“Good day, Father,” I said with a bow of my head. “I want to thank you for your help that day.”
“I’m grateful I was nearby and able to give it.” He smiled. “It’s good to see you at church again.”
My cheeks warmed. “I suppose it has been some weeks since I came to service.”
“And more since your brother came. Yet just yesterday he, too, made an appearance. Our present troubles seem to be returning many in the parish to God.”
Jack had been to church after all! “He told me he had been here,” I said. “I confess I didn’t believe him. I suppose he came to visit our parents, too?”
Father Kelly clasped his hands in front of him. “I found him in the nave praying for your recovery, and we had some conversation.”
“He . . . ?” I stared. Praying for me? “Forgive me, Father, but that doesn’t sound much like Jack.”
The priest’s expression was gentle. “He was very worried about you, Mina. But I imagine like most people right now, he also came for reassurances we don’t have a devil among us.”
This sounded more like it. “You told him we don’t?”
By his look, I knew he thought that I, too, was hoping to be reassured. What I really hoped was that he’d talked some sense into Jack.
“It’s hard to deny that a man who could do such things does seem a kind of devil,” he said. “But I urged your brother to trust the constable and his men, and to pray for God to use them as his instruments.”
This gave me some relief, though I had my doubts as to whether the priest’s advice would be heeded. I imagined Jack had stopped believing in God granting prayers the first day Da had taken him to the mines. I thought I knew what he’d really come here about.
“I suppose he asked if you knew any old stories about Roche Rock.” I couldn’t bring myself to name Mr. Tregarrick.
“He did, in fact. And he asked some questions about the wall painting in the bell tower.”
I frowned, trying to think what he meant.
“The one of St. Gomonda slaying the demon,” he continued. “It was a good opportunity for a lesson about the stories of the saints, and how those stories have been preserved, in part, to remind us that righteousness and true devotion to God are the best armor that we can wear.”
I recalled the painting now. Da had pointed it out to Jack and me once when we were children, though what was left of it was too high for us to see very well.
I had no memory of anything he’d said about it.
Most of my time in church was spent wishing to be anywhere but church.
Though I did remember that Jack had gone up on Da’s shoulders for a better look.
A battle with a demon was just the kind of story he loved.
“Would you show me the painting, Father?”
“Of course,” he replied, pleased.
Feeling guilty for deceiving a priest—because my interest in the painting had nothing to do with saints and everything to do with why Jack was interested—I followed him back across the graveyard and through the tower’s arched doorway.
Inside, the tower was empty but for a rough stone stairway that curved up toward the bell.
There wasn’t enough light to see by, and Father Kelly bade me wait while he fetched a candle from the nave. When he returned, he raised the flame close to the only section of the painting that remained, above the doorway we’d entered through.
“That is St. Gomonda in the center,” he said, pointing out a robed figure.
“He is something of a mystery and not heard of outside Cornwall. We know next to nothing about his life. One ancient document—lost now, but described in church records—indicated he was an apothecary. Beyond that, all we know is what we see in this single section of a much larger painting, which likely survived the slow destruction of time simply because it’s high enough on the wall to avoid being touched by every . . .”
I lost the thread of what the priest was saying as my gaze stuck on a different figure, opposite the saint. My breath caught, and for a moment I thought the flickering candlelight had played a trick on my eyes.
The figure had tree branches fanning out from its head.
“What is that?” I asked, heart thumping as I pointed at the figure. The creature was willowy and tall, but its face had been mostly worn away. All I could make out was a long jaw studded with pointed teeth—like a dog, or a wolf.
The priest cleared his throat—I had probably interrupted him. “I would guess a nature spirit of some kind.”
“But didn’t you say this was a painting of the saint slaying a demon?”
He nodded. “As far as the early church was concerned, there wasn’t much difference. The ancient Romans went to war against the religion of the Britons, which was a kind of nature worship, and that war never really ended. Over the centuries, those old ways were all but stamped out.”
It seemed to me that “nature spirit” might be another way of saying “fairy,” and if so, the priest’s explanation made it clear why my mother had told me never to talk about fairies in church.
But what struck me most was the bit of the creature’s face I could see.
Could this be the Wolf of Roche Rock? With its branch-antlers, I thought it must be the same creature—or at least the same kind of creature—that I’d seen on the heath.
Continuing to study the painting, I saw that the figure of St. Gomonda held a bow nocked with a strange kind of arrow; it seemed to be sprouting flowers.
Another flower arrow hung in the air above the scene, and a third stuck out from the creature’s chest. Besides the two main figures, there was another robed man holding a large cross before him like a shield.
People who had been slain were strewn over the ground.
My breath caught again as I noticed a woman with a line of red running from her neck into a small pool of the same color.
In the backdrop of all this, high on the wall, was a steep, black outcrop.
“That’s Roche Rock!” I said.
I realized the priest was watching me closely now. “So it is.”
Rising on my toes to see better, I said, “There’s no chapel, though.”
He raised the candle higher, casting light farther up the wall.
“The story of St. Gomonda is much older than both the chapel and this tower. They were both constructed in the fifteenth century, and the original church of St. Gomonda—elements of which can be found in the current structure—is centuries older than both.”
Stomach knotting, I pointed out the bleeding woman. “And what do you make of that, Father?”
“Mina.” His earnest tone drew my gaze. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told your brother.
This story has nothing to do with the killings in the parish.
Or with your attacker. I think what we can take from it is that though we may face danger and even death, God is the shepherd who protects his faithful flock from . . .”
Again his voice faded as my thoughts grew loud. I wished for a chair or stool so I could go up and see everything closer, but Father Kelly clearly wanted to discourage both Jack and me from dwelling on any possible connection between Roche Rock and the murders. And that was just as well.
The priest had finished speaking, and I smiled and nodded as if I’d heard all he’d said. “Thank you very much for showing me, Father. I won’t take up any more of your time.”
His gaze, keen and searching before, began to soften. “Of course, Mina. Now you go on home and stay there until the constabulary sorts this out, all right? You’ve been through quite enough.”
“Yes, Father. I will.”
I glanced at the wall one last time—and noticed something I hadn’t before.
Along one side of the doorway arch, someone had used something sharp to scratch a word below the painting.
The letters were small and crooked, but I could make them out: “Goosevar.” The word meant nothing to me and might simply have been someone’s name.
But I repeated it to myself several times so that I would remember it.
I felt Father Kelly’s eyes on my back as I walked around the front of the church to the road, turning toward home—though I was not going there. Nor was I going to The Magpie. There was no time for what I had planned this morning. To explain myself to Mrs. Moyle, or for her to find Mr. Carew.
I had Mum’s cross, and my kitchen knife. I would carry my letter to Roche Rock and leave it at Mr. Tregarrick’s door.