An Unholy Communion Read online

  Text copyright © 2013 Donna Fletcher Crow

  This edition copyright © 2013 Lion Hudson

  The right of Donna Fletcher Crow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Lion Fiction

  an imprint of

  Lion Hudson plc

  Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road,

  Oxford OX2 8DR, England

  www.lionhudson.com/lionfiction

  ISBN 978 1 78264 004 2

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 005 9

  First edition 2013

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Cover image: jaybeestock

  By the same author

  A Very Private Grave

  A Darkly Hidden Truth

  With deep gratitude to my sisters in crime

  Sally Wright

  and

  Dolores Gordon-Smith

  Without whom it wouldn’t have happened

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  By the same author

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Time line

  The Bishop’s Palace

  Glossary

  The Dawn of Promise

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Felicity and Antony’s adventures continue:

  Permissions and References

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you so much to Father Stephen Gallagher, his wonderful team and my fellow pilgrims that took me to their hearts as a considerably over-age pilgrim on the amazing experience of walking from London to Walsingham (126 miles) to celebrate the 950th anniversary of the founding of the shrine. Father Antony wouldn’t have had any idea how to go about leading his little band of pilgrims across Wales without their great example.

  And to Dolores Gordon-Smith, who did lead me through Wales in sun and driving rain. And to Sisters Alma and Nora for their gracious hospitality at St Non’s retreat house and for giving me the room with the stunning view which later became Felicity’s.

  You can see pictures of all our adventures at

  www.donnafletchercrow.com/

  Time line

  304 Julius and Aaron martyred at Caerleon

  500 (c.) Non gives birth to St David

  546 St David preaches at the Synod of Brefi, is named Bishop of Caerleon

  1150 (c.) Cistercians establish Llantarnam Abbey

  1188 Gerald tours Wales

  1203 Llantarnam establishes manor at Penrhys

  1328–47 Henry de Gower is Bishop of St David’s

  1538 Shrine of Our Lady of Penrhys destroyed

  1904 Welsh Revival

  1953 Statue of Our Lady of Penrhys erected

  The Bishop’s Palace

  Glossary

  Arcade: A succession of arches

  Argentiferous: Rock containing silver

  Ascension: Feast commemorating the bodily Ascension of Jesus into heaven, fortieth day after Easter

  Aspergillum: Liturgical implement used to sprinkle holy water

  Aurochs: Ancient type of wild cattle

  Barbour: Exclusive waterproof jackets for country wear

  Camlan: King Arthur’s final battle

  Cairn: Manmade pile of stones, usually for ceremonial purposes

  Caractacus: A first century British chieftain of the Catuvellauni tribe

  Castra: Roman word for fort

  Clerestory: Windows in an upper level to bring in light and air

  Compline: Final Office of the day in the canonical hours

  Coney: Rabbit

  Corpus Christi: A joyous feast celebrating the presence of Christ in the Eucharist

  Crockford’s: Clerical directory of biographies of Anglican clergy in UK

  Croeso: Welsh for welcome

  Cwm: Welsh for valley

  Cymru: Welsh name for Wales

  Dolomitic: Sedimentary rock containing calcium magnesium carbonate

  Epipen: Instrument for injecting allergy medication into outer thigh

  Frigidarium: Cold pool in Roman baths

  Frontal: Altar cloth covering the entire front of the altar

  Garth: Celtic word for field

  HobNob: British biscuit (cookie) made from oats

  Hollow way: A road which has over time fallen significantly lower than the land on either side

  Ipecac: Syrup used to cause vomiting

  Kyrie eleison: Lord have Mercy (Greek)

  Lemsip: Brand of lemon-flavoured hot drink for colds containing paracetamol

  Llan: Welsh for church

  Malefice: An evil deed

  Menevia: Ancient name for St. David’s

  Metaled road: Road built on a bed of crushed rock

  Miter: Liturgical headdress worn by bishops and abbots

  Mithraism: Religion popular in Roman army worshipping the sun-god Mithra

  Mizzle: Drizzle; light, depressing rain

  Motte: Mound topped with structure known as a keep in castle construction

  Nightwish: Symphonic metal band from Finland

  Ordinand: One studying for ordination

  Pelagius: Fifth-century preacher who denied original sin as well as Christian grace

  Paracetamol: Analgesic similar to aspirin

  Paraments: Liturgical hangings around the altar, altar cloth

  Parapet: A wall-like barrier at the edge of a roof

  Pediment: Low-pitched gable surmounting the façade of a classical building

  Pilum: Javelin used in Roman army

  Pinny: Wrap-around apron, cover-all

  Piscina: Place near the altar used for washing communion vessels

  Portico: Porch leading to the entrance of a building

  Potholer: Spelunker, a person who explores caves

  Pulpitum: Massive screen, usually stone, dividing choir from nave in a cathedral

  Refectory: Dining room, especially in a monastery

  Renesmee: Child of hero and heroine in Twilight vampire series

  Reredos: Screen or decoration behind the altar

  Rood Screen: An ornate partition between the chancel and nave of a church

  Satnav: GPS

  Satsumas: Small, loose-skinned orange, seedless Mandarin Orange

  Scrynne: Used to contain precious writings or sacred relics, forerunner of a shrine

  Sidesman: Usher

  Silures: Celtic tribe occupying much of present Wales

  Snogging: Vernacular for kissing

  Spatha: Longer sword used by the Roman cavalry

  St. John Ambulance: First Aid ch
arity in UK

  Stations of the Cross: Fourteen prayers and meditations on scenes in the passion of Christ

  Summer Solstice: June 21, beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere

  Swot: Vernacular for study

  Tepidarium: The warm room in Roman baths

  Thelemic: Occult mystical system to achieve understanding

  Thurible: Metal censer suspended from chains in which incense is burned for worship

  Titania, Oberon: Faeries in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Triangulation: Process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points

  Tump: Hillock

  Tussock: A small mound of coarse grass

  Tyburn: Historically the principal place for execution in London, near present Marble Arch

  Vallum: Earthwork rampart around a Roman camp

  Versicle: A short sentence spoken by a priest and followed by a response from the congregation

  Viaticum: Latin, “food for the journey” reference to Communion

  Volturi: Coven of vampires in Twilight series

  The Dawn of Promise

  Non is old now. Old and frail, her skin white and thin as gossamer. The stones are warm behind her head. She can feel the heat through her veil. It warms the fine silver hair that was once a cascade of gold, longer than her veil is now. She smiles. Thin, pale lips that were once the lush red of cherries curve in soft remembrance. Her blue eyes are still clear, yet it is not the scene before her that brings a smile to her lips and softness to her face, but the scene in her mind.

  Non is old now. Old and frail, her skin white and thin as gossamer. But when her skin was smooth and golden as thick cream, she was loved by a king and a great thing came of that love.

  It was her favorite walk atop the cliffs above Whitesands Bay in her faraway, beloved Wales. The waves crashed on the shore below her, spewing white foam on the black rocks. The bay beyond was blue, bluer even than the sky swept free of clouds by the wind that tossed her hair in the sunlight and billowed the skirt of her grass-green gown. She had been listening so intently to the call of the seabirds wheeling and diving over the bay that she had not heard the approach of the horseman.

  It was a lifetime ago. It was yesterday. Sandde leapt from his horse and would have taken her that moment in his urgency had it not been for her maidenly insistence on her virtue. She was horrified. Sandde was not old; he was barely half again her age. Sandde was not without position; of the family of Cunedda Wledig, descended from Bran the Blessed, he ruled the neighboring canton. Sandde had not come with the intention of taking her in dishonor; he had just come from forming a liaison with her family. Yet she would not. Could not. She had made her choice.

  It was a lifetime ago. It was yesterday. Non was to be vowed to the religious life. It had been in her heart and her prayers, always. The nearby convent at Ty Gwyn was the home of her choice, not the castle of Ceredigion. But Sandde would have her. So in the end, it was a matter of force. And the rejected suitor rode back to his people and left Non to go on alone. Yet not alone, for she carried the marvelous child within her.

  Three months she had carried her child that day when she went to church as usual. And as usual the priest Gildas, a lemon-sucking man with deeply furrowed brow, declaimed his scowling sermon. “Know ye not, oh ye wretched, that it is God’s will that ye be slaughtered and enslaved by the Saxons? The puerile progeny of our leaders are sadly degenerated from the excellence of our ancestors. And now the hangdog enemy—” He was struck dumb mid sentence.

  Non smiled as she felt again the child leap in her womb. Did ever infant announce himself with such violent quickening since John the Baptist leapt in his mother’s womb at the sight of the Mother of our Lord? Gildas fell to his knees before her, silent like the stricken Zechariah, making known by gestures and hasty scribblings that Non’s child was to excel all religious teachers.

  It was then that the holy Nonnita knew that she must go to the house of Sisters above Whitesands Bay, for in her deepest heart of hearts, she had never left her desire for the vowed life. She would make her profession now. Six months later it was there that she was brought to bed.

  Nothing could have been a greater contrast to the day of David’s conception than the day of his birth. No place could the sun shine brighter and the breezes blow more sweetly than on the green peninsula thrust so far into the sea at the westernmost edge of the land, and no place could the black clouds hang lower or the winds beat more violently. And so the storm raged. Hour after hour, as black as night in the middle of the day, the sound of the howling wind and crashing sea pounded in Non’s ears with increasing ferocity as the intensity of her pains grew. The noise of the storm, the shaking of the conical thatched roof over her head and the relentlessness of her gripping pains were so all-consuming that she was not aware of the ministrations of the nursing Sisters, but hung all the more tightly to the large, smooth stone beside her pallet, giving her something to push against in her labor.

  The peak of the storm and the peak of her labour climaxed together. “A son.” “It is a son.” “A fine, strong, prince of a son.” “Praise God for a miracle.”

  “And another miracle, holy Mother. Look.” Little Sister Bryn pointed at the stone to which Non had clung. In sympathy for her pain it lay crumbled, the fragments bearing Non’s fingerprints.

  And yet the wonders were not ceased. Sister Elspeth, blind these many years, rushed into the room like a romping child. “A well, a holy well.” She pointed across the field just beyond the wall encircling the clutch of convent huts. “New sprung. I heard it bubbling forth and felt along the turf until my hands came away wet. I wiped them on my eyes, and I can see!”

  At that moment the infant in Non’s arms wrinkled his face and gave a great howl. Miracles or no, David would not be ignored.

  Non took her son to Aberaeron in Ceredigion that he might be baptized by his cousin Eilfyw and educated by the most learned, most holy men in the kingdom: Colman, Illtud and Paulinus. And so Non returned to her convent and gave over the nurturing and educating of her son into other hands. But she did not give over the praying.

  Non is old now. Old and frail, her skin white and thin as gossamer. She has lived these many years in Brittany, a nun professed. And every day for all the years of her son’s life hers has been the deepest joy of all. The joy of praying for the holy child that was born to her in the midst of that great storm on that rocky cliff edge so far away. She sits now in a sunny corner in the cloister and thinks long thoughts. And smiles.

  Chapter 1

  Thursday, Ascension Day

  The Community of the Transfiguration, Kirkthorpe

  The thickened light engulfed her. Fighting the heaviness, she opened her mouth. But no sound came out. The black figure plunged over the edge of the tower and hurtled toward the earth. Then, as the skirt of his cassock flared like a parachute, the scene changed to even more horrifying slow motion. Falling, falling, falling.

  Would he never reach the bottom? Felicity screamed. But still the figure fell. She screamed again.

  And woke up. “Oh, no!” She grasped her alarm clock and groaned. How could she have overslept this morning of all mornings? She had looked forward to this day so much. In Oxford it had been May Morning when she had stood below Magdalen’s Great Tower to listen to the college choir singing up the sun. And Ascension morning at the College of the Transfiguration was going to be just like that only better, because she would be up on the tower with her fellow ordinands singing “God is Gone Up on High” and all the wonderful Ascension hymns she only got to sing once a year.

  But now it was all wrong. And the phantom of her nightmare hanging over her like an incubus was the least of it. She had so carefully set her alarm last night. Then failed to switch it on. If her scream hadn’t wakened her… Sunrise at 4:49, BBC Weather had said. That gave her twenty minutes.

  She thrust her tangled duvet off, splashed water on her face and pulled o
n her jeans. Still clumsy with sleep, her fingers tangled as she struggled to do up all the thirty-nine self-covered buttons of her long, black cassock— a task which it never paid to rush. How could she have made such a stupid mistake? What was the point of all this scramble if she was late? Her frenzy increased when she had to waste time searching under her bed for her second shoe.

  The moment she flung open her door, however, she found herself engulfed by the fresh, golden air of an early June daybreak. The spirit of the day that had seemed to have fled now captivated her. The first shafts of sunlight pierced the trees and an exultant dawn chorus rang in her ears as she raced up the hill toward the tallest building in the grounds.

  She would surely have made it on time if the slick-damp stones under her feet hadn’t brought her to disaster in a border of lady’s mantle, coral bells and creeping geranium. She picked herself up, brushed impatiently at the stains on her cassock and raced on.

  As she started up the steep green mound that led to the tower, a triumphant shout and enthusiastic clanging of handbells told her she was too late. Her fellow ordinands had already ascended the tower of Pusey Hall to sing in Ascension, celebrating the fortieth day after Easter by hymning Christ upward as He ascended to heaven. Felicity would be relegated to observing from the ground rather than singing from the top of the tower herself.

  Putting her frustration aside and determining to make the best of the experience, even though she was by nature a doer rather than a watcher, Felicity sought a reasonably secure footing on the slope of the precipitous embankment. At least her presence on the ground provided an earthly audience for her fellows as well as their heavenly one. With one more burst of tintinnabulation they began the hymn “Hail Thee, Festival Day.”

  Felicity stood alone in the peaceful garden, gazing upward just as that band of disciples must have done on the hill outside Jerusalem on the first Ascension morning. Trying to picture what that first day would have been like, Felicity’s mind scrolled through the artists’ interpretations she had seen all the way from full-length paintings of a ghostly, white-draped Christ floating in the air, to a silver gilt plastic cloud with just the nail-pierced soles of Jesus’ feet poking through. Her favorite depiction of all, though, was one she had seen in some cathedral with Christ looking back down through the clouds, His hand raised in blessing, appearing for all the world as if He were waving to her.