A Shadow on the Wall by Jonathan Aycliffe

Author:Jonathan Aycliffe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2014-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Something happened at Thornham Abbey that should never have happened. The clamor—a form of ritual cursing that had been much in vogue in the eleventh and twelfth centuries—seems to have been carried out much in accordance with the correct forms. Yet our anonymous chronicler had the severest misgivings, and I too found myself perturbed by his account.

If the form of malediction used by Abbot William had been, at least, canonical, there could be no question but that the humiliation of relics before the altar had been most irregular. The practice had been prohibited by the Church in the previous century, something William would most certainly have known. As for the supposed reliquary “in the shape of a little man,” I cannot say what it may have been, except that the chronicler was wrong in thinking it a “Baphomet.” The word is no more than a corruption of the name of the Arab prophet, and since Mohammedans do not worship idols, the notion of statues of a god by this name is simple fiction. All the same, I would be prepared to wager that this strange object was indeed what Sir Hugh de Warenne had brought to Thornham Abbey.

Simone arrived as planned a few days later, accompanied by her parents and Bertrand, the latter fully recovered from his illness, but ill at ease on this, his first trip away from France. Already unsettled by the move consequent on his father’s death, the boy was understandably bewildered to find himself in a foreign country where everyone spoke a strange language. When we were all together, we spoke in French, of course, but in wider company English was needed. I promised Bertrand that I would give him lessons, hoping in this way to secure his affections. I knew little of children, for they had never figured in my life until then; but I prided myself on having some knowledge of sound education, and hoped to win Bertrand to myself as the supervisor of his schooling in years to come.

Both my parents are dead, and I have no close relations apart from my sister Agnes in Trumpington and a brother, Albert, who lives in Edinburgh and visits us here very little. Since our wedding was to be a quiet affair, I had no plans to tour the counties, exhibiting Simone to aunts here and cousins there.

When, however, I explained to Agnes that I had secured lodgings for Simone and her family in a boarding house on Chesterton Road, she lost her temper with me for the first time since we were children, said that she and her husband would never hear of such a thing, and made immediate arrangements to accommodate them at her own home. I cannot say but that I was immensely delighted. It would give Simone a splendid opportunity to get to know Agnes, who would, after all, be her first female friend in the city, at the same time permitting Bertrand to form ties with his cousins-to-be.

Herbert, the elder

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