Page 94 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
Chapter 27
St. Sebastian
Present Day
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Originally Beltane was a festival of fire.
The fires called in sympathy to the sun; they burned bright against air grown too thin to hold back the other world. Couples jumped over the fires to pledge troths, people brought the flames back to their own houses to kindle their hearths, and the smoke was used to purify the animals before they were driven to summer pastures.
And in the darkness just outside the fire’s ring, the people fucked.
Beltane was primal and earthy, but it was also ecstatic, complex. A little dangerous even, as it was one of two feasts where the veil between worlds thinned and fluttered and sometimes drew aside. The fires weren’t only about animals, and the fucking wasn’t only about babies. It was about facing the dark with dancing light, facing the cold with the cradling warmth of summer. It was about facing death with all the most unruly and raucous parts of living—eating and singing, and sex for sex’s sake. It could marry pleasure to purpose or it could marry pleasure to pleasure; it could be used to celebrate or it could be used to plead for something worth celebrating. It was a promise and prayer that people made to themselves and each other: we survived the winter and we will survive it again.
Summer is here.
Life is good.
If only for one night of sparks and sex and sweetness, life was good.
O Mary! We crown thee with blossoms today.
Queen of the Angels!
Queen of the May!
The voices float up into the air, clear as the blue sky above us, soft as the breeze tugging gently at our clothes and hair. My own hair is just long enough that the ends catch on my eyelashes, and more than once Auden reaches over and brushes it away from my face. I give an obligatory grumble, but my heart rocks a little every time he does it, and I try to memorize the different looks on his face each time he touches me. Impatient, amused, autocratic. Sometimes a mixture of all three.
Becket’s congregation is larger than one might think, given the remoteness of Bellever. Having attended Masses here before he took over, I can say for certain he’s the reason the congregation has swelled. Partly it’s his unwavering ardor for God and all that, but also there’s no way that these people have missed that he’s handsome as hell. Added to the fact that he’s thoughtful and unfailingly compassionate to everyone he meets, and it’s no surprise he’s won over old and young alike.
And so even on a perfect Saturday morning and for a ceremony that’s not even a proper Mass, Becket drew a crowd. We all processed out of the church, with him and Auden carefully carrying out a statue of the Virgin in front of the congregation, and after they installed her safely at the entrance to the church, the children brought up flowers and boughs of white hawthorn to lay at the Virgin’s feet. It’s time for her May Crowning.
As we sing the hymn of crowning, one of the youngest girls—not yet four maybe—totters up, and with the help of Poe, settles a crown of pink and white roses on the Virgin’s bowed head. And even as suspicious as I am of the Church, even though I probably don’t believe in any part of this, with the day so beautiful and the hymn so sweet and Proserpina smiling down at the little girl as they carefully place the crown on Mary’s head . . . I think I could almost believe it all right now. That there is a God and that he had a mother and that his mother still watches over us and cries tears of love for us all.
The ceremony concludes with a blessing for all those gathered and “for all those who need to feel the renewing love of the Queen of Heaven and her Son,” and then paper cups of lemonade and a platter of biscuits are produced. Auden, Poe, Delphine, and I drift off to the side and watch Becket laugh and joke with his parishioners.
“You think they have any idea what he’ll be doing tonight?” Poe asks.
Even the breeze—which is sending my hair into my eyes and keeps sticking Poe’s long hair to her lips—is caressing Becket with nothing but affection. It waves through his dark blond hair and presses his black shirt and trousers tight enough to his body that even the old ladies are admiring his fine, tall figure. The sun makes his gaze sparkle blue with zest, and more than one person blushes after having his full attention on them.
“No, but I bet if they did know, they’d be lining up to join,” I mutter.
Delphine leans her head on Poe’s shoulder. “He is very handsome. And he’s all ours, isn’t he, Auden?”
“Yes,” Auden says firmly. “He’s all ours.”
Despite Delphine’s wheedling, Rebecca didn’t come to the May Crowning, working instead to get a head start on gathering some of the items needed for this evening (and also to avoid going to church). She’s still not back inside the house when we get there, so Delphine decides to wait for her, which is less an act of friendship than a desire on Delphine’s part to take a nap, I think. And with Becket still at St. Petroc’s and our own Beltane revels not happening until afternoon, Auden, Poe, and I decide to walk up to the village and see some of the May Day festivities going on.
“I haven’t seen these since I was a little boy,” Auden says wistfully as the village green comes into view, bustling with people and lawn chairs and small tents serving food and beer. Young girls in flower crowns are running through the crowds giggling, and everything smells like gardens and sweet things. Later on, it will smell like smoke and beer as the more innocent festivities morph into the twilight party, but for now it’s all vestal and fresh and so very, very English.
Although . . .
“There are the antler-boys,” Poe says excitedly as we step through the low stones bounding the green. She points over past the maypole, where a herd of teenage boys are jostling and shoving at each other while they put on their headdresses. And as I watch them preening and showing off, and then look over to where this year’s May Queen is sitting underneath a tent and interestedly watching, I think despite the veneer of serene village respectability there’s still a dangerous edge of uncivility underneath it all. Something primitive. As if in some kind of collective, unconscious memory, the villagers remember that once all of this was real.
As we walk through the green to find a good spot to watch the stag hunt, people begin noticing us. Or rather, noticing Auden Guest and Proserpina Markham, daughter of a Kernstow. Whispers and murmurs ripple out from where we step, as if we’re stones dropped in a pond, and some of the festival-goers are staring outright now. Auden takes Poe’s hand to reassure her, and the gesture has a visible impact on the crowd. Like the earth itself has shifted as the people of Thorncombe see the lord of Thornchapel claiming a Kernstow for his own.
Just like Ralph would have wanted.
