Chapter 50 Jude #2
He moved his gaze towards the back of the room, skimming over the hundreds of faces turned towards him.
At the end of the nave, the sloping lines of the basilica coalesced into an expansive mural.
A turbulent scene of saints battling beasts, aged by time and altar smoke.
Icons hung in gilded frames on the wall next to it.
A patchwork of devotion. The Abbey saw nothing wrong with displaying the faces of everyone they’d betrayed; proud of the generations of manipulation.
Jude wanted to burn them all.
Past the crowd, a glint caught his eye.
Her face was visible one moment, gone the next, but it was her. Maeve. Unmistakably.
He watched as she grasped a pilgrim by the shoulders, her eyes wide and begging as her mouth moved, words lost in the space between them.
The pilgrim wrenched free, leaving Maeve standing alone until another figure appeared behind her – Felix.
At the back of Jude’s mind, memories stretched their limbs.
He hadn’t realized how tight his chest was until seeing her face gave him space enough to take a full breath.
The buzzing in his ears melted away, replaced with the singing, holy and riotous.
Soon, hands pushed at the altar, rocking it on its foundation.
The first fingers brushed his robe. He heard the pilgrims chanting, begging him to grant their wishes, not knowing they were asking to give up their own memories in return.
Jude couldn’t save them. He couldn’t even save himself.
He lifted his hands from his thighs, laying them over his heart to feel the beat.
The Call of the Sun was about to begin. They expected him to guide the light into the basilica.
With startling accuracy, Jude suddenly remembered witnessing the ritual countless times during his childhood at the Abbey.
He remembered how his chest had burst open with love and devotion as he watched the shocking violence of the martyrdom.
How desperately he’d believed in its power.
He would have done anything to lay his hands upon the saint.
And he remembered the shame he felt after the rituals had been completed.
Shame that moved him into action, into rebellion.
He ground his teeth and bowed his head, squeezing his eyes tightly shut until light popped into his vision. Your choices have consequences.
He would choose the consequences for himself. He would not complete the ritual. If he were to die today, it wouldn’t be following the Abbey’s wishes.
Behind his closed lids, he dredged up the memory of the icon Maeve had painted of him.
The vulnerability when he’d first beheld it like he stood before her naked, every imperfection visible, every part of him on show for her perusal.
Yet, there had been a certain freedom in allowing her to look, to paint him for who he was.
She’d seen him like no one ever had before, and he loved her for it.
Above all, he remembered how she’d painted him as a saint but given him the unmistakable air of a heretic. And that was what he would die as. Not as a saint or an exile or even as a martyr – let Jude be known for his dissidence.
The top of his head warmed with the sun.
The singing changed to shouts as he moved slowly to his feet, the altar shaking violently beneath him as the acolytes tried to climb it to get to him. It wouldn’t be long until they succeeded. He gazed over the crowd. It surged towards him, already whipped into a frenzy.
Come tomorrow, the acolytes wouldn’t remember how they’d allowed their inhibitions to fall to the wayside.
The elders would manipulate their memories from violence to beauty, coloured in every shade of ecstasy, a divine mania.
Ezra’s words had never been more accurate – the Abbey’s reliance on the collective impacted every facet of its rotting core.
He’d never been less a person and more a saint. An object, here to grant their prayers.
A hand grasped his ankle. Jude locked eyes with a pilgrim not much older than him.
‘Please,’ they shouted. Their mouth was a damp, gaping chasm in their face. Sweat gleamed high on their forehead. ‘Please. My sister. She’s not well. Can you just—’
Their hand fell away as they were sucked back into the crowd, leaving their begging to save their sister’s life echoing in his skull. He couldn’t save her even if he wanted to.
With a metallic screech, the cover across the centre of the rose window tumbled down, ushering in a shaft of pure sunlight. A smile pulled at his lips even as tears wet his cheeks. The sun felt so beautiful on his skin, so right.
Yet—
He would not raise his hands. He would not complete the ritual.
More hands grabbed his feet, scraping at his calves, the backs of his knees, his thighs.
Nails dug into his tender skin until he bled.
He felt their anger and prayers, heard their shouts for him to raise his hands towards the heavens, but Jude remained unchanged.
The sun warmed his face, and that was enough.
His eyes didn’t open, not even when they pulled him from the platform.
Not when his robes were ripped from his body as their devotion, their love, turned to violence.
Not even when the first smell of smoke hit his nostrils.