Page 72 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“I think I’ve been waiting for you,” the man says, and then he sits down with a muscular grace. He’s wearing a priest’s collared shirt and black slacks, but he’s also got on a dark pink cardigan, paired with a decent amount of stubble, and he looks like he’s just wandered out of a locally owned coffee shop where he was reading a Russian novel or something equally sapient and pretentious.
“Waiting for me?” Becket asks, but as soon as he asks, he feels it—the brush of the man’s soul against his own.
It’s another soul of zeal, another heart of fire.
Becket meets the man’s dark eyes and decides to ask a different question. “Why have you been waiting for me?”
“I’m here to hear your confession.”
They are not in a reconciliation room or a confessional. Becket didn’t come here for this, and in fact, he was thinking he wouldn’t do this until later. Much later.
And he has questions—so many questions—but he is used to questions at least, he has heard the other-drums in the forest and watched his friend transform into the Thorn King. If this man says he has been waiting for Becket’s confession, how can Becket say he’s wrong?
Becket thinks for a moment. “I’m not sure how repentant I am,” he says.
The man pulls a stole out of his cardigan pocket. It’s reversible—one side white, one side purple—and it’s the purple side he arranges facing up after he kisses it and puts it over his shoulders. “We do a disservice to penance by conceiving of it as a static state. I’ve learned from a good friend that sometimes it’s a journey. Sometimes it leads to unexpected places.”
“And my journey is to begin now?”
The man inclines his head, but doesn’t speak.
Becket looks over at him. “I don’t want to make a mockery of this sacrament by pretending shame or transformation. I don’t intend to change what I’m doing.”
“And yet you are torn. You have two hearts where there should only be one.”
Becket’s lips part with surprise. “Yes.”
“What sins there are, there is new life also. But one does not feed the other.”
Becket moves his eyes away, to the small niche set into the wall next to him. It’s filled with a carving from the Stations of the Cross: Veronica Wiping the Face of Jesus. “Then what does feed new life?” he asks.
“Choice.”
Choice.
Beyond this niche, there is another Station, and then another. Jesus falling, falling again, Jesus stripped, nailed, killed. But it wasn’t a journey of passivity.
It was a journey of choice.
The man’s hand rests on top of Becket’s. Warm, big. Again Becket feels the man’s soul, clean like snow and hot like flames. “I used to feel the same as you—that there could be no confession without purity of purpose. But now I believe sometimes the feet must move for the heart to follow. And I also believe we won’t make a mockery of this,” the man says. “Together, we will make it holy.”
It is impossible not to believe this man. It’s impossible to resist his goodness, his faith. His fervent clarity. “What is your name?” Becket asks. He needs to know, he needs to have something to cling to before he wades into the thorn-edged whirlpools of his deeds.
“Jordan Brady,” the priest says.
Becket smiles at him. “I’m glad you were here today, Father Brady.”
Jordan nods. His hand is still on Becket’s, and the weight of it is reassuring, comforting. Like being shepherded.
Becket lets himself melt into the feeling and takes a deep breath.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he says, and then he begins to speak.
Midsummer
Delphine
Delphine feels like she’s lived entire lives in this room.
