Page 71 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“And they help.”
Saint can already see it—Auden’s hands playing over Poe’s tits, rubbing Poe’s clit, maybe even seizing Saint by the hips and helping him find just the right angle to make Poe scream.
“You don’t play fair,” Saint says, but he steps forward anyway, letting Auden lead him over to the cross.
Auden’s voice is amused again.
“Why would I play fair?”
Midsummer
Becket
Centuries ago, when Masses could be bought and sold for any old cause and chantries could be founded by any nobleman with a heavy purse and a healthy fear of hell, priests were often required to say Mass at least once a day, sometimes even two or three times a day. In fact, many medieval churches were built with multiple altars simply to manage the surfeit of Masses needing said.
Becket would have made a very good medieval priest.
He wouldn’t mind saying Mass every day, or more, and even more so, he wouldn’t mind working in a chantry, speaking prayers for the dead behind a screen of lacy, ornate stone. Perhaps he should have been a monk, so he could order his days around prayers and rites, so he could spend all of his time with God and God alone, but no, he’s no monk. The sacraments mean too much to him; he is a priest through and through.
Anyway, he has his breviary, he has his daily offices, there is enough prayer to anchor him. Because while the zeal has eased, it hasn’t left him and perhaps it never will, and so it’s through prayer that he finds himself centered and calmed. It’s through the motions, the tasks, the unyielding liturgies, that he feels his hungers and fears ease. Without these little pearls of divinity strung through his day, he’d be lost. His heart was made to live inside God’s, hour by hour by hour, and if he had to leave . . .
No. He won’t have to leave.
He doesn’t try to reconcile what he’s done with the exhaustive, molecular laws of the church. He knows when he confesses—which he will—that his confessor will think him in a state of grave sin. He knows that his confessor will remind him that a priest is not allowed to perform sacramental rites while his soul is apart from God. He knows the ways any other priest will see what’s happened in the thorn chapel, he knows the words they’ll use—sin and separation, blasphemy and lust. False gods, sacrilege, heresy. Fornication. The sin of Sodom.
Sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance.
These are all grave sins according to canon law, and yet he does not feel a gravity, he does not feel a danger. It’s helped him love God more, not less, and it has made him happier and healthier and more whole.
How can that be grave? Mortal?
But still, he must confess, right? He loves this vocation, he loves this church, he even loves its fussy little rules, its centuries upon centuries of thought about what it means to lead a holy life. He may not agree with all of those thoughts, he may not agree with even half, but he does agree that these things must be thought about.
And who will change this place if not him and people like him?
The problem with confession is that he must be repented of his acts, he must plan on doing them no more, and is he truly ready for that?
Ready to say goodbye to the thorn chapel?
The others have slept late, were still stretched over guest beds and sofas when he woke to the pink glimmer of dawn outside his window. Instead of waking them, he decided to go for a run, and after that, he went to the Catholic Church only a few blocks away to pray his daily office in the sanctuary there. When he started, it was fully morning and a cluster of old ladies were praying the rosary in the front two pews.
Now he is alone, save for a lone man kneeling with his head ducked in the back.
Even though Becket is finished with his prayer
s, he finds he’s not ready to leave. The church is a cheerful place of Romanesque arches and fake barrel vaults, recently refurbished and chilly with air conditioning. It couldn’t be further away from St. Petroc’s damp stone and leaded glass, and it’s easier to think here. Easier to sift through what must be done.
He has to honor his ardor for God, but how? How can he give up stained glass for the broken walls of the chapel? Why should he have to make that choice?
He doesn’t.
He won’t.
“Excuse me,” a voice says, and Becket realizes he’s been so deep in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice the praying man from earlier approaching him.
“Hello,” Becket says.
Sunlight glows through a window, turning the man’s blond hair into a jeweled halo. His features are sculpted with a stern beauty usually reserved for statues of demigods.
