Chapter 49 Maeve
Maeve
Maeve opened her eyes.
The basilica ceiling stretched wide overhead.
She was lying flat on her back, voices slipping under her skin like a splinter, pulling her from whatever dark and dreamless place she’d been sucked into.
Sun from the east sent shards of multicoloured light from the rose window across her supine body.
Her vision glazed, urged on by the ache in her head.
Fragile peace washed over her like an ocean tide.
She blinked. The fog inched back. She took one breath, then another.
Wait.
What was she doing here, and why was it morning?
Singing trickled into her ears. It was nothing more than the hum of disorganized voices, but it was enough to push her onto her elbows and look around.
She was boxed into the negative space between the back of the rectangular altar and the curved wall of the basilica behind her.
The space didn’t seem to serve any particular purpose outside of being a cramped corner of forgotten air, large enough to fit someone and not be seen.
Her left temple thrummed with pain. She touched it with shaking fingers, wincing when they returned sticky with drying blood. Ezra must have knocked her out. Why was she here and not tied up somewhere? And where was Jude?
Scrambling unsteadily to her feet, Maeve tried to look over the altar’s edge, past the chancel and towards the nave where she could hear the chatter of hundreds of voices beginning to shift into organized singing.
The altar was a behemoth of wood and marble, large enough to rise a good head taller than her.
Where the front was a solid mass of intricately carved wood, the back was perfectly smooth marble, cool under her hands.
There wasn’t even a jut in the wood for her to use to hoist herself up.
Her nose itched with the heady scent of incense. She looked up, catching the edge of the thuribles in full swing. A horrible realization dawned with each creak of the chains. Her memories, finally loosened from the quicksand of her mind, dredged up a vision both horrifying and startlingly clear.
The eighth hymn was beginning. It wouldn’t be long until the Call of the Sun.
As the longest and most involved of all the intercessions, the eighth hymn started at midnight and came to a fevered head a few hours after daybreak. The ritual revolved around the sun – its focus and call, serving as a tangible sign of the power of the saints.
Maeve pressed her back to the altar and looked up at the rose window.
The circle of crystalline glass at the centre was usually kept covered by a metal disc, accessed by twin ropes hanging from the side that, when pulled, would swing it free from the centre of the rose.
The Abbey uncovered it only for the eighth hymn during the four seasonal intercessions, directing a blinding shaft of light to cut through the basilica, cradled in the cupped palms of a saint in a perfect mirror of the Abbey’s sigil.
It was believed that any prayer said during the Call went directly into the mind of the saint performing the ritual, answered upon their death.
And, for the first time in weeks, months, maybe even years, Maeve’s memory of the Call was there amidst the straining memories, able to be pulled forward.
She lowered to the ground, drawing her legs tight to her chest, knees pressing into her eyes.
Light popped and flashed behind her lids as she began the arduous slog through the deepest confines of her memory.
It felt like wading through mud, like pulling Jude from the bog.
The gripping reeds and sluicing water, growing murkier and murkier the deeper she trod.
The first memory was one of shouting. Singing.
Gold laced the memory, tinting everything metallic and dreamlike.
She remembered the fevered crowd breaking through the low railing guarding the chancel, reaching up towards the saint standing at the altar.
Scratching at her until they drew blood, tearing off her robes in a desperate grab for something tangible to press to their lips.
Crying and singing merged into one frenzied voice as the crowd pulled the saint off the altar.
The memory ached; it burned.
Maeve remembered the saint disappearing into the crush like a stone cast into turbulent waters until all that was left of her was a body broken like bread, blood spilling like wine across the floor.
Suddenly, the crowd cleared. The memory wavered, a new one taking its place, brighter and sharper than the last. Gold dust filled the air.
Maeve was alone. At her feet was a single drop of blood.
It was crimson now, shining like a ruby in the clear sunlight, but she knew it would soon be the deep red of rust. She would kneel next to it time and time again as she bowed her head to pray, her thoughts on cadmium yellow and oxide red.
She would scrape her nail over it and think it paint.
Her lungs, her marrow, the very heart of her filled with the poisonous vapour of certainty – Jude’s blood would be next if she didn’t stop it. Already, the edge of the covered circle was beginning to glow with sunlight. It wouldn’t be long.
And Maeve knew, no matter how much she wished to deny it or how horrifying the idea was to consider, that it would be Jude guiding the sun this time.
The crowd would be so frenzied, so desperate for their prayers to be answered, that even the mere thought of a saint being the one to usher in the sun would drive them to new levels of zeal.
Personal devotion would no longer be enough; they needed the saints to be a part of them.
Their love turned to violence, consuming what it was meant to protect when the emotions became too much to bear.
Jude would be a holy offering. And, just like a meal prepared for a feast, they would devour him.
Adoration and violence – two sides of the same rusted coin.
Maeve crossed the small space to gaze up at the high edge of the altar.
If she ran at it and jumped, she might be able to pull herself up.
But what then? Every eye in the basilica would be on her.
All the elders would be in attendance, never mind the hordes of acolytes and pilgrims who’d flock to the altar as soon as Jude appeared.
She could try to pull him down into the corner with her, but then they’d both be trapped.
She needed a plan. Anything that would get her out of this pit and give her some options. If she tried to burn the basilica now, she’d die along with it.
The crowd fell into a softer series of hymns. Waiting for the Call, for that unstoppable flash of sun. She had minutes – if that. She had to do something.
Steeling herself, Maeve launched off the far wall, leaping towards the altar’s edge with her arms outstretched.
Her fingers skimmed the edge, nails catching painfully on the wood before she tumbled back towards the ground.
Her head cracked on the stone, shooting tremors through her skull.
She pushed to her knees and tried again.
Her fingers hooked on the edge this time before they gave out, sending her back to her knees.
Her panting breaths echoed the pulse in her fingertips, the pounding of her heart. She backed up against the wall and studied the altar. Could she lever herself up the side with her foot braced against the wall? No, the limestone was as smooth as the wooden back of the altar.
Just as she moved closer to look for a foothold, a soft scraping layered itself beneath the singing.
The middle of the smooth expanse of the back of the altar split suddenly open, a door appearing on an invisible seam at around waist height. A small opening, barely large enough for a person to fit through.
A wild rush of hope filled her chest as she crouched to peer in.
A rush of musty air washed across her face, smelling of earth and salt.
It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.
The interior of the altar was entirely hollow.
A set of stairs descended sharply downwards from a hole cut into the ground at the centre of the space.
It looked almost like the altar had been placed atop the stairs to conceal its existence.
From the depths, something moved.
Maeve shuffled backwards, fear rising sharply before a familiar face emerged—‘Felix?’
The saint pressed a finger to his lips before gesturing her to come closer.
He was halfway up the stairs, kneeling on the steps to keep his tall frame from hitting the low ceiling.
He wore a simple black habit, the sleeves pushed up his forearms. Dirt streaked across his forehead, and cobwebs stuck to his short, tightly coiled hair.
‘I can help you,’ he said in his low, scratchy voice.
‘I can help you save Jude. But you have to come now.’
Maeve didn’t pause to think, to question, she just followed him down the steps into the waiting dark.
The door shut behind them, casting them into sudden blackness.
Maeve breathed through her nose, fighting back a wave of claustrophobia as Felix opened another door and ushered her into a low-ceilinged tunnel.
Slashes of light from the pinhole windows above were the only illumination.
‘Felix,’ she whispered urgently as she followed him. ‘Where are we going?’
He didn’t reply until they reached a small rotunda, lit by a round grate above.
They must have been directly under the basilica.
The ceiling echoed with the pounding of feet above their head, the faint sound of singing.
Felix looked younger than she’d ever seen him as he turned to face her. Not much older than her.
A saint. The word no longer scared her.