Chapter 12 Maeve
Maeve
Maeve was back in the room she’d commandeered as a studio when Jude materialized in the open doorway.
Olive wound between his legs. She set about sniffing her painting things with her tail held high.
Maeve stiffened at the sight of him. It had taken ages yesterday to dry her hair after the potato debacle. ‘What do you want?’
‘May I come in?’
She swept her hand across the space. ‘By all means. It is your house, after all.’
To her surprise, Jude walked to the centre of the room, bent his knees, and sat right in front of her stool. Flickering light from the oil lamp licked at his features. Olive jumped onto Jude’s folded legs and began kneading at his thigh.
They stared at each other, neither willing to break the tenuous silence.
Maeve leaned forward to rest her hands on her knees, wondering what he saw when he looked at her.
Not the bedraggled traveller the storm had spat onto his doorstep.
Not the furious acolyte holding an icon to his face.
Not even the woman kneeling before a locked door, her mind awash with gold.
She didn’t want to be any of those things.
She wanted to be a portrait, distant and untouched by worry, doubt, or fear. Something she would never be.
Sometimes, when Maeve felt weak and alone, she wondered if she knew herself at all or if she was simply a combination of everything people had told her she ought to be.
‘I have a few questions, if you don’t mind,’ Jude said into the quiet.
‘Politeness doesn’t suit you.’
The corner of his mouth quirked up. ‘I beg to differ.’
His mood had shifted dramatically from the tightly wound frustration she’d seen in the kitchen.
Something was different about him. He seemed…
lighter. She noted the redness lining his eyes and how he pressed his lips together as if forcing himself into silence.
He looked towards the ceiling as though trying to avoid her scrutiny.
The movement reminded her of a guilty child, and she found a raspy laugh bubbling to her lips. ‘What have you been smoking?’
Jude blinked rapidly, one hand pressing against the centre of his chest. ‘Me?’
She fought a smile. She’d seen behaviour like his before.
Growing up, some of the older boys at the Abbey had made a habit of sneaking back from trips to Whitebury with faces just like Jude’s – a little too happy, a little too loose.
She’d questioned them once, suspicious at their seemingly uncontrollable laughter and jealous of the obvious, and illicit, friendship between them.
One of the boys had drawn the offending substance from behind his back and let her try for herself.
Maeve didn’t like how it had made her feel, but clearly, that wasn’t a problem for Jude.
She found she liked this improved version of the saint.
‘I’m just happy you’re not shouting at me again,’ Maeve said.
For the first time, Jude smiled fully. He had dimples on either side of his mouth.
Charming things that softened the harsh lines of his face into something almost handsome.
Shame she’d never see them again. His skin was smooth in the warm light, emphasizing the cut of his cheekbones and his closely shorn dark hair.
Stubble lined the edge of his jaw. Maeve begrudgingly admitted he had a certain appeal if one was partial to sharp-edged men with soft mouths.
Which she was not.
‘It’ll wear off soon,’ he said. ‘Best enjoy it while it lasts.’
She nodded. ‘What is it you’d like to ask me?’
‘It’s about the Abbey.’
Maeve tightened her hands into fists on her knees. ‘If you’re going to make fun of me again, you might as well just leave.’
He shook his head, lifting his hands out in her direction. His palms bore faint white scars scored through the middles. ‘No. No, I just want to clarify a few things, if I may.’
She didn’t want to say yes, not when she knew how touchy Jude could be with Abbey-related topics, but they needed to have this conversation eventually.
She didn’t like feeling as though he hated her.
If she were to spend any length of time in his home, she’d rather it be in a state of tentative truce.
Maeve smoothed both hands over her thighs. ‘Fine.’
‘I’m curious about your prayers,’ he said. ‘I’d like to know how you’ve seen them answered. And how you make your requests when you pray.’
‘Shouldn’t you know, considering you’re the one who receives the prayers?’ Maeve asked, surprising herself with her candour. ‘Besides, you made it very clear I was not to pray in your home.’
‘Because I’m asking nicely,’ Jude offered with a smile.
She huffed a breath. ‘I pray by first choosing an icon—’
‘How?’ he interrupted. ‘How do you choose which icon to pray to?’
What he was asking felt private. Exposing. ‘I just do. Whichever one I feel like that day.’
His brows shot up. ‘Not the same one every day, then?’
‘No… Well, sometimes. It depends.’
‘On what?’
At this, she finally gave in to her frustration and tossed her hands into the air.
‘I don’t see how that’s relevant. I let the saints lead me, okay?
I listen to which icon calls to me. Sometimes, it’s because of their expression – if I’m searching for peace or re-assurance, I’ll pray to someone who looks inclined to give it. Is that enough information for you?’
Jude’s eyelashes cast long spikes down his cheeks as he tilted his head back. ‘And how do they answer?’
‘How?’ she clarified.
He nodded. ‘A specific instance, maybe. Anything that comes to mind.’
Discomforted by his questions and determined not to answer, Maeve studied the stretch of his legs occupying the space between them, counted the slats of the floorboard between his thighs.
His black trousers were a shade too short on his long legs, the hems splattered with mud.
Jude shifted under the weight of her eyes.
Olive jumped off his lap, clearly unhappy with his fidgeting.
‘Maeve.’
She didn’t want to answer him.
The silence stretched.
Maeve shifted, uncomfortable. Finally, she sighed.
‘I can’t see why that’s important, or why you need to know.
You’re not a part of the Abbey anymore. The saints answer our prayers everyday.
There is always food on the table. Droughts never last for long and the waves never breach our walls.
Even the influenza steers clear.’ She met his penetrating gaze with one of her own, vowing to be just as sharp, just as unyielding.
‘That’s enough for me. Faith is believing in the unexplainable.
That includes both the mundane and the miraculous. ’
‘Specifics,’ Jude pressed, ignoring everything she just said. ‘What do you pray for specifically? And how do the saints answer? Specifically.’
‘Why should I answer you?’ Maeve snapped, trying desperately to quell her underlying panic.
She soothed herself with the reminder that she could give him an answer if she really wanted to.
She could, but she just didn’t want to. ‘It’s about faith.
About the power of the saints. About the knowledge that my prayers have been answered at all.
I had the faith to believe as a child, and I still have the faith to believe now. ’
Jude tucked his legs under him and stood, swaying slightly from whatever he’d smoked. As he leaned down, a chain slipped free from the loose neck of his jumper. A shining gold key dangled in the empty space between them.
Her heart jumped. The locked room.
‘I want you to consider every moment of answered prayer you can remember,’ Jude said. She dragged her gaze from the key to his face. ‘Remember the saint you prayed to. Remember how and if they answered. As specifically as you can.’
‘Why?’ she asked, voice a choked whisper.
He didn’t reply, only continued to study her.
This close, Maeve could see a faint spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose. The shade of his eyes was a swirl of green and brown and grey. Just below, the gold key shimmered and swayed.
She needed that key.
The sole letter she had sent Ezra had barely contained anything useful. She knew it hadn’t been good enough. His lack of reply told her she needed to try harder, and she was certain that locked room held the answers she so desperately wanted. She couldn’t risk Ezra’s disappointment.
‘I want you to remember every moment you believed your prayer was answered and ask yourself if your recollections are a true, perfect account. Memory is a funny thing. I know better than most how the devotion of an acolyte can skew faith into blindness. Think on it.’
He straightened.
Maeve rose, too. Her heart hammered in her chest. Almost subconsciously, she rubbed her hand over the miraculously healed stretch of skin on her arm. She could tell him about that answered prayer, but why should she? Why did he deserve her unearned secrets?
‘Why? Why should I think on it? I know what I believe. I know what foundation lies beneath me. My faith is not blind.’
Jude paused in the doorway. Slowly, he turned to face her. Darkness lurked deep in his impenetrable gaze as he cocked his head. ‘Isn’t it?’
She’d had enough.
Maeve pushed past him into the hallway. Air came thin into her tightened chest. The walls of the house closed in as she fought for breath. She couldn’t bear it anymore. Couldn’t bear him.
Ignoring the heavy weight of his gaze on the back of her neck, Maeve hurried down the stairs and outside into the heavy near-dark beyond. The moors were vast and empty, soothing the rolling anger consuming her every thought. She pushed open the gate and strode towards the oak tree in the distance.
There, and only there, could she finally breathe.
Until she heard him call her name.