An All-Consuming Fire Read online

  Cynthia was speechless so Felicity took the opportunity to change the subject. “When do the others arrive? Do you have their itineraries?”

  Now Cynthia was in her element. Ever the efficient lawyer she had her family’s schedules at her fingertips. “Jeff will come up from London when he can get away from the office—so fortunate that McKinsey transferred him to their London office. And Charlie and Judy fly into Manchester on New Year’s Eve.”

  Felicity nodded. That was her brothers accounted for. Might as well get on to the elephant in the room. “And Dad?” She held her breath. When she was a little girl and played brides her tall, handsome father had never failed to walk her down the imaginary aisle, even humming the Wedding March for her. And he always lifted the net curtain or lace tablecloth that was serving as a veil at the moment and gave her a peck of a kiss on her waiting cheek. But would he be here for the real event?

  “Did I tell you he’s ditched his doxy? I’m sure you can count on him to show up in time to walk you down the aisle.” Felicity wondered just how rehearsed her mother’s offhand attitude was. She so hoped her parents would make another attempt at putting their wobbly marriage back together but at this point least said was undoubtedly best.

  “Darling, are you quite sure about having Judy for your matron of honor—or whatever they call them here? She is six months pregnant, you know.”

  “Chief Bridesmaid. And of course I know. That’s why I chose empire-waist dresses for my attendants.”

  “The rose pink is a lovely color, dear. But mail order?” Cynthia shook her head. When Felicity didn’t respond she went on. “And about your dress—I understand not having a strapless gown—even though it is the fashion—being in a monastery and all that.” She made it sound like a prison, Felicity thought. “But it’s not too late to have some beading added.”

  “Mother—” Felicity made no attempt to keep the threatening note from her voice.

  “Just a few pearls? A sprinkling around the neckline, darling? It would be so lovely with your skin.”

  “I’ll wear the pearls Father gave me for my sixteenth birthday.” Felicity closed that topic.

  So Cynthia reverted to her earlier subject, “Well, I think it’s very loyal of you to have your sister-in-law and Antony’s sister. But only two attendants? You know, darling, this English tradition of using children for attendants—it’s really quite charming and it isn’t too late. There must be little girls at that church where you work. I was looking at some dresses online. Of course you don’t remember Charles’ and Diana’s wedding—it was before you were born—but the children were absolutely adorable. Here, I can find it on the DVD—” She reached for the television remote.

  Felicity didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “I have to study, Mother.” She marched down the short hallway to her bedroom and shut the door none too quietly on the still-talking Cynthia. In truth, she did have that pesky essay on Richard Methley’s Latin translation of The Cloud of Unknowing to do, but she certainly wasn’t going to tackle it now. Felicity flung herself on her bed and pulled the pillow over her head.

  She had relaxed just enough to emerge from under her pillow when the community bell began to ring. Ah, perfect. Now she could avoid her translation work without feeling guilty. She thrust her feet back in her shoes and hurried down the hall. Cynthia looked up from the wedding planner spread out over the coffee table. “Oh, good, I just wanted to ask you—”

  Felicity forced herself to smile. “It’ll have to wait, Mother. The bell is ringing for evensong. It’s O Sapientia, so I don’t want to be late.” She pulled a coat off the rack by the door.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about but I would love some fresh air.” Cynthia likewise took a jacket off a hook and they went out together into the dark of the December evening. “Could you possibly slow down just a teeny bit, darling? This hill is steeper than it looks.”

  Felicity slowed her long-legged stride fractionally. “I keep telling you high heels are totally impractical here, Mother. I don’t want to be late. Nor do I want you to break an ankle,” she added almost grudgingly.

  Cynthia was panting when they reached the level area in front of the community church. “Now can you please explain to me what’s so special before we go in?”

  Felicity could see Corin and Nick, two other ordinands who hadn’t yet departed for the Christmas holiday, approaching from the dormitory, so she knew she had a minute or so before the service began. “O Sapientia is Latin for Wisdom. The week before Christmas we chant one of the ‘O’ Antiphons each evening at evensong. This is the first one, so it’s special.”

  Cynthia’s confused look told Felicity her explanation had gone over her mother’s head, so she tried again. “The ‘O’ Antiphons are ascriptions for the Messiah from the Book of Isaiah. Um, names for God, praising his qualities.”

  “Yes, dear. I do know what an ascription is.” Cynthia sounded slightly miffed.

  Felicity forbore replying that she had asked. “Oh, good. Well, they’ve been used since the early church. There are seven of them—one for each day of the last week of Advent. It’s a lovely way of keeping track of time.”

  “Oh, something like an advent calendar.” Cynthia gave a satisfied nod and smiled. “Remember, I always bought the ones with chocolate in them for you?”

  Felicity did remember, with an impact so strong that for a moment she could taste the chocolate on her tongue. For once her smile for her mother was unforced as she led the way into the vast Romanesque church. Candles flickering behind the purple-draped altar cast wavering shadows on the rounded arches of the chancel and behind the stalls of the choir.

  Somehow the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent were Felicity’s favorite times in the church year. Counter-cultural though it was—or perhaps because it was counter-cultural—she had come to love this time and found that there was nothing else like it for relieving the frenzy of the run up to Christmas. The somber pageantry, the minor key hymns, the solemn reminders of the fleetingness of life and the need to prepare for the eternal always spoke to her at a deep level and then made the celebrations of the festive seasons that followed even more joyous.

  She had found it hard to adjust when she first came up from London to study in this college run by monks on a remote hillside in Yorkshire. What could possibly be more unconventional than spending the week before Christmas praying in a monastery? Especially for the thoroughly modern American woman she believed herself to be. But she had learned a deep appreciation for this very uncommon experience. And an even deeper appreciation for the church history lecturer who had taught her the value of tradition by his quiet example.

  Now her heart leapt as she spotted Antony sitting in the front row of the nave. Stepping as quietly as she could across the stone floor, she slipped into the row beside him with Cynthia following close behind her. Felicity flashed Antony a quick smile that she hoped didn’t show the lingering strain of her time with her mother. But there was no time to sit because the procession was entering. The black-robed monks, their hands folded in front of their grey scapulars, filed into their place in choir behind the processional cross and, since this was a solemn evensong, a white-robed thurifer swung a thurible emitting a cloud of spicy incense. The precentor and succentor, in purple copes, took their places on opposite sides of the choir and pronounced the opening sentence antiphonaly:

  “Our God shall come,”

  “And shall not keep silence.”

  Felicity knelt with the others for the general confession, feeling squeezed between her mother and Antony, although, in truth, there was plenty of room. She and Cynthia had come to new understanding when they had been thrown together in a perilous situation just a few months earlier. She had hoped that this time of being together before her wedding would be a final healing, but her expectations were fading fast. Felicity mouthed the words of repentance, then caught herself up short when she realized she was thinking only of her mother’s need to ask forgivenes
s for following “too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…” Did she need to repent of that herself?

  She was still attempting a somewhat reluctant self-examination when the words of the collect penetrated her consciousness. It was one she especially loved because it encompassed both meanings of Advent, of preparing for Christmas and for Christ’s second coming as well.

  “…who at thy first coming sent a messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that at thy second coming we may be found an acceptable people…”

  Determined to try harder, she struggled to make her smile sincere as she helped Cynthia find her place in the prayer book for the readings.

  After the New Testament reading the priest censed the altar while all stood for the highlight of the service. Choir and congregation chanted:

  “O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,

  reaching from one end to the other,

  mightily and sweetly ordering all things:

  Come and teach us the way of prudence.”

  Felicity felt her tension drain away and her breathing slow as the rhythms of the service continued. During the next seven days they would complete the list of appellations: O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O key of David, O Morning Star, O King of Nations, O Emmanuel, each one building the intensity and longing of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Now her smile for her mother was relaxed. Yes, a better way to mark time even than chocolate.

  At the end of the service Antony gave Felicity’s hand a quick squeeze before he departed into the shadows. He had sensed her stress easing during the service and for that he was grateful, but at the same time he felt his own anxieties mount. Tomorrow he would face rolling cameras in front of an audience of professionals. This would be a far cry from the classroom where he was so comfortable. And he felt woefully unprepared.

  It had been several terms since he had lectured on the mystics and his classroom notes would need considerable polishing to get them up to production standards. What a pity that Father Paulinus’s notes had been burnt in the freak fire that killed him. Antony shuddered. What a terrible way to die. And how odd that there should be an electrical fault in such a well-maintained monastery as Ampleforth.

  Antony started to run his hand through his hair, then stopped himself—he hadn’t done that for ages. He mustn’t let himself do it on camera. After all, it was a tremendous honor to be asked to take Paulinus’s place and he certainly didn’t want to let anyone down. Fortunately Father Anselm, the Superior of their community, had already faced the cameras yesterday, explaining, in his poetic way, the distinctive mystical fervor that developed in the north of England in the fourteenth century. In his winsome way Anselm had clarified the highly personal and intimate relationship with God experienced by the mystics. This, so very unlike the more rigid intellectualism of the scholastics who ruled the Church and universities at that time.

  Antony had been invited to Anselm’s book-lined office to observe the interview and he could still see it sharply in his mind.

  Anselm had given the camera a gentle smile and mused in his soft, almost ironic voice, “No one has ever been a lukewarm, an indifferent, or an unhappy mystic. If a person has this particular temperament, mysticism is the very centre of their being. It is the flame which feeds them.”

  Joy Wilkins, the twenty-something presenter, had wrinkled her forehead beneath her sleek blond fringe and asked a rather vague question about the theology of mysticism.

  Again, Anselm’s slow smile, emphasized by a twinkle in his eyes. “Mysticism is a temper rather than a theology, a complete giving of oneself to God in contemplation of Him, seeking unity with Him.

  “The mystic is somewhat in the position of a man who, in a world of blind men, has suddenly been granted sight, and who, gazing at the sunrise, and overwhelmed by the glory of it, tries, however falteringly, to convey to his fellows what he sees.”

  Antony shook his head and stared at his stale notes. It was all perfectly true. But how was he to convey all that to, hopefully, several million viewers through the cold facts of history and biography? Why had he ever agreed to do this? It hadn’t seemed that he had an alternative when Father Anselm asked him to take on the challenge. But now a dozen excuses filled his mind.

  Well, at least Richard Rolle was a good place to start. Not only was he the first of the English Mystics, but he was also one of the most fervent. Rolle had even titled his crowning work Incendium Amoris, The Fire of Love. And the producers, it seemed, could do no better. The television series was to be titled “The Fire of Love”.

  Antony forced himself to focus on the page before him: Born into a small farming family and brought up at Thornton-le-Dale near Pickering, Richard studied at the University of Oxford. He left Oxford at eighteen or nineteen—dropping out before he received his MA.

  Antony smiled to himself. At least he was all right there. They were to begin filming tomorrow in the woods beside the Beck, the pretty stream that ran through the village of Thornton-le-Dale, reportedly one of the most picturesque villages in England—although how picturesque it would be in mid-December, Antony was unsure. But at least he could tell the story of Richard’s unorthodox entry into the life of a hermit; he had recounted it often enough for his students.

  Then they would move on to Pickering. It sounded like a rather grueling schedule to him, but apparently the producers were determined to work around the Christmas holiday. It would set Antony his paces to keep ahead of them. He turned to the filing cabinet under his window to dig out his information on the Pickering church.

  He switched on a table lamp and as the light streamed across the lawn outside, a movement in the garden caught his eye—a furtive motion that struck him as uncharacteristic of any of the monks or the few students still there during the Christmas holiday. Surely no one else would be about in the gardens at this hour, though. He had heard the bell for Compline when he settled at his desk so all the gates would be locked. The peace of the Greater Silence reigned over the grounds.

  He was turning back to his file when the world exploded. A loud bang was followed by balls of fire hurled against his window and sizzling on the stones of the building. Antony flung an arm protectively over his face and staggered backward.

  Chapter 2

  “Fireworks?” Still dazed, Antony had rushed out into the night, but before he could summon the emergency services on his mobile, Alfred, the weekend caretaker, arrived on the scene with a fire extinguisher.

  In the light of Alfred’s torch Antony surveyed the pile of spent tubes and cartons that had been piled in the flower bed beneath his window. Fortunately the ground was too damp for the dormant plants in the border to catch fire, but black smudges showed on the stones of the building even in the dim light.

  Antony shivered as the image of erupting flames replayed in his mind, making him think of Father Paulinus’s fiery death. He shuddered. Was someone trying to warn him not to go ahead with this project? Nonsense. Why would anyone possibly care? Just a prank, surely. There would be fireworks everywhere for Christmas Eve in only a week. Some local lads undoubtedly thought it a good laugh to stir up the monks a bit.

  But Antony was the one left shaken by the escapade. How would he ever be able to focus on his notes now?

  The grey stone spire of the Pickering parish church lanced the midmorning mist, drawing Antony up the path winding through the churchyard grave stones as the events of the past few hours swirled in his mind. After the alarms of the night before he had risen early that morning: it was an hour and a half’s drive to Thornton-le-Dale, on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. Even in a winter early morning the village, believed to have been Rolle’s birthplace, maintained its chocolate box charm with the Beck flowing full in front of the thatched cottages lining the street.

  For the first scene the director had positioned him at the edge of the woods assuring him that the early morning sun and the mist swirling through the bare branches gave just the atmosphere they wanted. It had required se
veral takes to get a wrap, most of them due to Antony’s nervous gaffes and once by the director’s editing. “Cut! Wait. ‘Leafy’ has to go.” He pointed at the bare branches ringing them.

  Antony had salved his conscience with the argument to himself: Well, all right, we didn’t know for certain what month Richard made his dramatic gesture, even though his self-robing was most likely during his long vacation from Oxford which would have been in the summer. But at least the other details and his sister’s response, if not her name—Antony had added that detail for the sake of smoother storytelling—were recorded history. Richard had ministered to the nuns of Hampole for many years, and they had written down his story with loving care shortly after his death.

  Now the entire film crew had moved on to their next location, Pickering church, and Antony looked up at the spire piercing the sky. That tower had been built a hundred years before Richard’s birth after its predecessor collapsed. They were on solid ground now, and Antony hoped he wouldn’t be required to blur the history too often for the sake of dramatic imagery.

  “Sorry, you can’t go in there. We’re filming.” An officious young man with a clipboard barred the door.

  “I’m, um—” what was he? Did he have a title in this foreign world he had been catapulted into? “The history,” he finished weakly.

  The young man eyed Antony’s black cassock, probably thinking it was a costume, and ran his eye down the list of names on his clipboard. “Father Antony?” Antony nodded. “Right then. Go in quietly.”

  Fortunately, the hinges on the door had been oiled for the occasion so he was able to comply. The stone floor was covered with coiled black cables running to cameras, microphones and the strong lights beamed at the ancient wall paintings. Although Antony had been here many times, he was captivated anew by the scenes covering the walls of the nave in the spandrels above the Gothic arches. He looked up at St. George, in full armor on horseback, slaying the dragon with a lance thrust down its throat while George’s horse trampled the dragon in spite of the serpent’s tail encircling one of the steed’s legs. This had always been his favorite. Keeping well out of camera range and stepping carefully, Antony walked on up the aisle surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses hovering there: St. Christopher carrying the Christ-child; John the Baptist at his beheading; the Virgin Mary, crowned as Queen of Heaven; St. Edmund, martyred by a dozen arrows for refusing to renounce his faith…