Legion

Legion - Chapter 1

Legion
By
S. L. Forster






1523
Lymington, New Hampshire
Great Britain
Prologue








Tobin Abernathy was a source of puzzlement and wonder to all. A gentle boy of sixteen, he was an idiot savant. He could decipher complex mathematical formulae the way blinking, breathing, and motion came naturally to others, yet he could not tie his own shoes. By glancing at the position of the moon and stars in the night sky he could accurately predict the precise date and time of the next solar eclipse anywhere across the world, despite having no coherent understanding of the globe or of the location of continents and countries in relation to one another.
         An unusually large lad, he was infinitely gentle and would often stop in his tracks to remove a worm or small beetle from his path to prevent others from walking on them. His perennially darting eyes were permanently directed northwest to some unfixed position in the sky and his head was always cocked to the right, giving the impression that he was slightly drunk. His gait was cumbersome and his fingers twitched constantly as though conducting a miniature orchestra.
         His mother and younger sister loved him dearly and it was thanks to the tireless patience of Father Roland, who had gone to great pains to explain his condition to an otherwise frightened congregation, that Tobin had obtained some small semblance of acceptance. The worst that could be said of him was that he was prone to infrequent outbursts in the middle of Father Roland's sermon, something the young priest feared some of his parishioners may have considered a blessing. His mother kept him home mostly, away from the ignorant taunting of some of the younger children, where she could occupy his time constructively with his building blocks, the small vegetable garden he lovingly tended, and minor chores about the subsistence farm.
         Molly Abernathy had sent her son into Roydon Woods that morning to search for the delicate mushrooms she sold to Lymington's taverns and cookhouses to supplement the meager income their ailing farm provided. He had been gone longer than usual and she was beginning to worry.
As he progressed through the densely forested woodland, Tobin hummed a nursery rhyme his mother sang to him each night to ease him into slumber. Lately the nightmares he increasingly suffered had become more harrowing and he often awoke screaming, sweating and shaking uncontrollably, inconsolable until dawn's first light washed across a pink tinged countryside. Almost immediately he would forget his nocturnal terrors and proceed with his day as though the night had passed without incident, though he would disappear for hours with no explanation as to his whereabouts upon his return.
         As he made his way home, his basket fat with mushrooms and even a highly prized truffle that he had happened across in his rummaging, he abruptly fell silent and stopped beneath a colossal oak. His usually erratic and unfocussed gaze stilled and he looked around. Something did not feel right. To his unique perspective it felt as though the world had been punctured and something forbidden and poisonous had seeped into it. It was unidentifiable but palpable nonetheless and the pale skin of his arms dimpled to gooseflesh as though warning of imminent peril.
         Tobin suddenly felt deathly cold and with it, the sense that something powerful and terrible was near. In a rare moment of lucidity he realized he was being stalked; hunted by something cogent and calculating, something pitiless and beyond primal. His mouth unexpectedly dry and his pulse quickening with every heart beat, he realized it was above him in the trees.
         Tobin slowly looked up.
         He never saw what it was that took his life for it moved with a swiftness unlike anything born of man or beast. It was a menace spawned outside of Creation, a predator of horrifying and singular purpose. It was not supposed to be there.
         It had obtained a body now. Not a host to be controlled and tormented by some diabolical parasite, but a corporal shell, a skin in which to manifest and ultimately penetrate the mortal plane.
         Moments later a discarded basket of mushrooms lay on a deserted path in a silent wood where bird and scrubland creature alike had fled.

Book 1







6 months later.
They clustered like moths in the dark around a single unseated candle whose timid flame seemed to quake in the presence of an unseen menace. Barely suppressing their shrill giggles, they shushed one another in a flurry of flapping hands. They sat cross-legged, their white nightgowns incandescent in the quivering candlelight, giving them the appearance of beautiful wraiths. Then, joining hands, they began.
         "Have you all learned the chant?" asked Dolores Drixon, her cool, detached gaze stabbing at each of her fellows. A large girl with a persistent sniffle shifted uneasily across from her and bore the crushing yoke of that terrible glare.
         They each assented.
         "First we say the chant and then we each enter the bath chamber, one by one, with only a single candle and challenge the witch in the mirror," she continued, adding a dramatic huskiness to her tone for effect. More hushed giggling ensued.
         The cabin was little more than a derelict shack in which old William Mumford, the Drixon's former groundskeeper, had lived until his death several years earlier. Since then mould, several harvest mice, and a colony of tiny fruit bats had settled into the disused wooden cottage. Old William's clothes still hung, dusty and mite riddled in the small wardrobe. The softly spoken gardener had died one day and the family had simply buried him and left the shack to ruin. The groundskeeper's last meal would yet have been sitting atop his plate on an uneven-legged table in the corner had a somewhat disagreeable badger not happenstanced upon it years before. The new groundskeeper lived in the servant's quarters near the main house.
         In spite of the crisp evening air that pervaded the open shutters of the hut, the girls' palms were moist and clammy with the nervous anticipation of their mischief. They spoke as one and it was not until they uttered the verse aloud that they felt their voices constrict ever so slightly, as though something very deep within, something vigilant and alert, was warning them of a peril to which they were oblivious.

         Bloody Mary, full of evil,
         The Lord is far from you.
         Wicked art thou among women
         And wicked is the withered fruit of thy womb, Lucifer.
         Unholy Mary, mother of sin,
         Come for us sinners,
         Now and at the moment of our death.

         Dolores Drixon turned first to her best friend, Livinia Allsop, a rakishly thin, insipid girl with a severe slash for a mouth that seemed perpetually curled into a sneer.
         "You first, my darling," she quipped. They exchanged covert smiles as though harboring a private joke. Again Nichola Oberg sniffled and shifted her ample frame. Dolores Drixon shot her a baleful frown and the portly young woman froze.
         Livinia Allsop rose to her feet, touched the wick of her candle to the flame in centre of the circle and, with a wink, left the group to enter the small chamber, closing the creaking door behind her.
Almost immediately apprehension gripped her and the precocious smirk fell from her face. The bath chamber was little more than a tiny room, no bigger than a closet, in which a narrow bench abutted the wall, atop which sat a dented basin and cracked water pitcher. At head level a small mirror had been mounted on the perished boards. Its reflective surface was pocked with dark blotches where moisture and eventually mould had aggressively devoured its silver glazing.
         Gooseflesh dimpled the skin of her exposed arms and she mistook the sudden dip in temperature for a chill ripple brought on by rankled nerves. Placing her candle on the bench and taking a deep breath, she faced her marred, slightly distorted reflection in the mirror and spoke.
         "I don't believe in Bloody Mary," her voice was so feeble that a flare of annoyance rose within her, "I don't believe in Bloody Mary," she asserted more firmly in spite of her shuddering breath. Again she stated it. And again.
         Thirteen times she repeated the phrase and then spun slowly, anticlockwise on her heel six times before facing her reflection once more.
         "I do believe in Bloody Mary."
         Even as she spoke she felt time grow heavy, sluggish. Her voice seemed to decelerate dramatically and deepen inhumanly before she had completed the final phrase. Her body felt weighed down, as though her flesh had become rock and her veins lead. Even her breathing lost pace, with the lengthening of each slovenly moment. Fear punched into her chest like a blow from an unseen assailant and the only thing unaffected by the protracted draining of time was her heartbeat, thundering so violently against her breast that the pain brought a wince to her rigid features.
Behind her the door fell open, its swing measured by each successively slower second that passed. In the reflection of the mirror she watched in a mute stupor her friends' robes slag almost to a standstill in the syrup thick breeze. The very air itself gelled to a stasis. Their whispered conversations ground to a halt, their expressions set, their hands frozen mid-gesture.
And then in a single, solid moment that did not pass to the next, everything stilled. Even the wafer thin wings of a small beetle drawn to the flame through the nearby open window had ceased beating and it hung in the air.
         A flicker of movement in the mirror caused her to convulse with excruciating lethargy and her terrified eyes grew wide as an image began to take shape in the garbled reflection. Her reactions felt torpid, like she was drugged, but the acuity of her terror penetrated the haze of her physical flaccidity.
         Although indistinct at first, Livinia Allsop squinted and the image resolved. She felt her chest heave with the effort of gasping but there was no intake of breath. A woman appeared in the mirror, replacing her own reflection, a grotesque mockery of humanity. She was aged, her disheveled black hair shot with grey streaks. Her clothes were moth ridden; insects and worms crawled in and out of the many holes scoring the course dark fabric. Her head was tilted down slightly but her black eyes, like cabochon onyx orbs, bore into those of the stricken girl.
         It was her face, however, that instilled Livinia Allsop with dread. It appeared to have been slashed repeatedly and strips of skin hung from the exposed flesh in bloody ribbons. Her throat had been savagely rent, punctured dozens of times. And yet in spite of these abominable disfigurements, the woman in the mirror smiled - a terrible, appalling smile that caused blood and pale fluid to ooze from her mutilated face.
         The woman raised her hand, her movements twitchy and wooden, like those of a marionette. At once Livinia Allsop felt her arm rise in a macabre mimic of the woman that had replaced her reflection. The woman held a rusty pair of open scissors, her fist clasped tightly around the exposed blades so that blood pooled in her hand and dribbled down her withered arm.  With a sudden and sickening understanding of her plight, Livinia Allsop's eyes flickered to her own puppetted hand to find them gripping identical scissor blades, her own blood coursing down her alabaster arm as her fist involuntarily tightened on the sharp blades.
         Livinia Allsop would later lose all recollection of the horror of her ordeal. Mercifully her mind drove the incident into the deepest recesses of her latent consciousness to remain dormant for an indefinite period of time.
         She did not recall butchering herself beyond her mother's ability to identify her, save for the unique birthmark she bore on her left ankle. She did not remember her actions being at the mercy of the reflection, a perverse inversion of the laws of nature - for the grisly woman in the mirror controlled her movements. As the disfigured woman slashed at her face again and again, so too did Livinia Allsop deface herself in precise imitation. The pain was indescribable, maddening, and the memory of it in years to come would plummet her into dementia.
With a sickening stab, Livinia Allsop put out her own eye. A reactive lurch in her stomach caused her to vomit as she felt ocular fluid drain from the ruined socket. She opened her mouth to scream but her voice became wedged in her throat and little more than a suffocated, inhuman wheeze escaped her lips before blood dripped over her lips and onto her tongue.
The hushed whispering abruptly ceased when the bath chamber door swung wide and Livinia Allsop broke into a staggering run for the open door of the shack and into the night. Her hands covered her face and her white nightgown streamed behind her. Several shocked gasps were heard and a languid pause ensued before suppressed giggling broke out amongst the girls once again.
When later questioned, two frightened girls who in the end did not participate in the game, would testify that Livinia Allsop had fled, sobbing, from the bath chamber, her face whole and her nightgown spotless. Strangely, neither would be able to account for why they had not seen the atrocity of her ruined face or the blood and vomit that saturated her nightgown.
         Unaware of the tremendous danger in which they had placed themselves, the girls continued their ‘game', convinced that their friend had fled dramatically in order to intensify their already heightened unease.
         Dolores Drixon turned her puncturing gaze on the mirror's next victim, Geraldine Wiltshire.
         "You're next!" she whispered with restrained enthusiasm...









Always it was thus. An almost featureless, timeless landscape in which everything beyond a few feet in all directions was obliterated by the intensity of an enveloping white light. He had never seen anything so white before, so clean and impenetrably brilliant. Only a few leafy branches and a little ground litter that fell within the orb of the light's core where he sat remained discernable. Even these were awash with light, as though delicately veiled with gossamer thin spider silk.
         His companion sat upon a large boulder before him in a well-travelled hessian robe, the sandals upon his feet misshapen from the many thousands of miles he had walked in life.
         Always he felt at peace in the presence of the old man, complete and content. He knelt before his companion, prepared to receive instruction.
         "Peace be with you, Father," the younger man offered in gracious reverence. His companion's smile was warm and benevolent.
         "And also with you, my son. I have something to tell you. Your life is about to change. Someone is coming who will liberate you."
         "Liberate me, Father? But I am not imprisoned. I want for nothing. I am happy."
         "I do not mean from your path in the world of Man, but from within."
         "Forgive me, Father, I don't understand. I am at peace with my life and my Creator. What is it I am to be liberated from?"
         "From aloneness."
         "I relish my solitude. It permits me more time to seek communion with my Lord and Savior. It enables me to listen to the world, to find the harmony in it."
         "We all enter the world halved. Some of us find wholeness in communion with Christ and His work. Others are completed by another."
         "I have found my wholeness in prayer."
         "I have come to tell you that you are beloved of God, but your life is not reserved for Him alone. He has prepared for you another through whom you will attain completeness. Your world is about to change. Be watchful. This person will bring about a revolution in your life. You dwell between worlds, my son, belonging wholly to neither. It is time you took your place in one, fully and completely, for the other awaits you when you are called back to Christ at the End of Days."
         "Of whom do you speak? I don't understand."
         "You will. When your paths cross, you will understand. Do not let it trouble your thoughts, my son, for it is a wondrous joy that awaits you. Have faith in the Lord your God, for He is ever mindful of even the least of his followers. Three times did I disown him in life and He granted me mercy and compassion. I was the least worthy among them all and still He loved and forgave me, and placed me at His right hand. You believe that you are of no consequence and that at the moment of your death the world will continue as though you had never lived. I tell you, your work in the world will shake mountains, unseat kings and alter the course of history for centuries after your passing. I tell you this neither to embolden nor alarm you. I tell you this that you might remember that God's plan for you is yet unrevealed. Beware of complacency. Every moment of every day God puts before you opportunities to serve Him and whatever you do for the least of your brothers and sisters, you do for Him. When you serve others, you serve Him. He is with you always. If your faith is strong, there is nothing you can ask of Him that He will not grant you. Only thrice shall we meet again, and then no more, for your place is in the world of Man. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you and all around you but you shall not be cut loose to dwell there wholly in spirit until death. Embrace life. I shall always be with you."
         The light dissolved and with it, the old man.

A young man sat in a sheltered glen at the fringe of a sprawling meadow. Slowly he permitted the music of the world - birdsong, the breath of wind through bough and leaf, the distant lowing of cattle - to once again flood his senses. His heart swelled with unidentified, exhilarated apprehension as he recalled the old man's prophetic words. So much remained unanswered, unspecific, open-ended. The questions he might have posed were so many and so indistinct that he felt giddy and momentarily directionless. He was as one who had heard only half a revelation, yet enough of it to perceive the imminence of something immense and portentous, something that must necessarily remain untold to reveal itself in due time to fulfill its true and proper purpose.
         He arose and began the long walk back to the village. Squinting skyward he surveyed the movements of the cloud bank overhead. The weather was turning and the air was fat with moisture, fragrant with fading winter blossoms. Soon it would become colder and the rain would come.
         He took a deep breath and resolved to be patient. He was unaware he would not be made to wait for long...









The weather was particularly foul that afternoon. A grey wash of rain and low cloud sullied the landscape. Sheet upon rhythmic sheet of water slaked away months of dust thrown up by wind and coach onto the shop front masonry of the High Street market district. The wide cobbled street had become perilously slick, too precarious for both wheel and shod hoof.
         The street was deserted save for a single horse and buggy outside the manicured grounds of the Parish Church of Saint Thomas the Apostle at the high end of the street. The horse shuffled and snorted, tossing its head defiantly against the rain. Thunder rumbled across the sky, though the lightning had long since ceased and a steady downpour had set in.
         A cloaked, unhorsed rider lead a weary mount up the desolate street and with thoughtful deliberation tethered the irritated animal beside the yoked steed. The horse settled and whickered softly to its companion, gratefully inclining its head towards the larger gelding. Removing a pack from the saddle, the lone figure picked a careful path through the hedgerows and autumn saplings of the church grounds, disappearing through the unadorned heavy oak doors of the church.
         Inside, Roma drew back her hood and ran a hand down her face to wipe away the rivulets of water that trickled down her neck into her sodden tunic. A brief sweep of the dim church interior revealed it to be empty save for a man seated upon the altar steps with a book in his hands. He was surrounded by a half dozen attentive, grimy children riveted in situ as he regaled them with a story Roma could not hear for the drumming rain on the tiled roof overhead.
         A movement proceeding down the isle towards her drew her attention from the man.
"Weather matches the circumstances to have brought you here, I'm afraid," an affable voice greeted her. She smiled warmly as she recognized the soft Celtic lilt that betrayed the black-robed priest's Dublin heritage. Embracing the woman warmly in spite of her saturated attire, he deftly whipped her waterlogged cloak from her shoulders.
         Beneath it she wore a fern-colored thigh length tunic cinched at the waist with a simple cord, soft leather trews the color of pale honey, and black riding boots. In the past her appearance had caused anything from slight controversy to a sensation, depending upon which parts of the world she traversed, for she was a woman dressed in the attire of a man. But she was unmistakably a woman, for in striking discord with her unflattering raiment was her exquisite beauty. Dark brown hair framed a lustrous complexion of olive radiance betraying her European descent. Her deep brown eyes, soft features and poised countenance gave her the appearance of an earth-bound angel - like a wondrous creature of some higher order anchored to the corporeal plane to give embodiment to wonder, awe and reverence.
On the day of her birth, the most powerful man in all of Europe had described her as ‘a beauteous creature, too marvelous for the world of Man'. As a young girl in Florence out on an early morning errand, she was approached by a youthful artist who asked if he might sketch her likeness, for he testified to have never before seen so wonderful a child. Professing to believe her an angel, he inquired why she kept her glorious wings hidden. Flattered and disarmed by his gentle charm, she had stood patiently while his hand furiously committed her delicate features to paper. When he had completed his sketch, she granted him a magnificent smile and a kiss upon the cheek before skipping off, humming a wistful tune.
The young man's name was Michelangelo.
Though his sketch of the girl never received the acclaim of his later works, for it was neither published nor even released, the memory of that joyful, ethereal girl stayed with him until his death.
         "How far have you ridden?" the priest's concern was evident. Roma smiled reassuringly.
         "Not far, just from Pennington," she replied. A movement from within her saddle pack caught his attention. The priest shot her a look of disbelief.
         "You brought that ill-behaved, scruffy scrap of fur by sea and overland all this way?" he queried in astonishment. She cast him a roguish grin.
         "Now, Roland, you know he and I go everywhere together. After all, he's the ill-behaved, scruffy scrap of fur that got me where I am today," she sighed in resignation, for they had had this conversation many times before. Leaning down, she pulled back the sodden flap of her pack and a slightly damp, bedraggled ginger and white cat peered out. From the safety of his moist transport he surveyed his new surroundings before delicately stepping out onto the cold, hard floor of the church. With the airs and graces of an injured socialite, he disdained them both, drew back a shoulder and commenced preening his belly. The priest appeared bemused but pursued the matter no further.
         "Come, I've prepared a room for you in the rectory. You'll have virtual run of the place. I've a private residence of my own now in a cottage behind the church," the young priest explained. His companion cocked a curious eyebrow at him.
         "Moving up in the world, Father?" she quipped and he grimaced. At thirty five he was a mere ten years her senior and she had always been more like a sister than a protégé or even parishioner. She had always called him by his Christian name and only ever referred to him as ‘Father' in jest for she knew it galled him.
         ‘Probably the Holy See's way of compensating me for having to handle you once again," he shot back, grinning, his crisp Irish wit overcoming his usual façade of compassionate patience. His reference to the unspoken catalyst for their reunion struck them dumb and they lapsed into companionable silence as the priest picked up the cat he would never admit to having a fondness for. Roma wearily took up her waterlogged pouch.
         They started up the narrow isle of the church. As they progressed, Roma's eyes fell upon the statue of the Madonna and Child and her usually scrupulous gaze softened. The image brought a smile of fatigued contentment to her flawless features. In spite of her departure from the cloistered life, she had never felt removed from the love of the Virgin and the very sight of her still brought great joy. Reverently she genuflected and made the sign of the cross to her Son, offering up a quick prayer for guidance and prudence in her work. Though no longer in the employ of the Church in her original capacity, she remained an official representative of the Throne of Saint Peter and undertook God's work nonetheless.
         She reached the altar, absorbed in her thoughts, when her sopping riding boot slipped on the smooth marble step. She pitched sideways, unbalanced by her heavy pack.
         A strong hand caught her arm and steadied her before she toppled. As it did, a jolt shot through her, like one in a drowse suddenly awakened by a sharp nudge. She looked down to find that the man reading to the children had intercepted her fall. He held her gaze a moment and in that brief droplet of time she found herself immobile, enraptured. It was like looking upon the face of Caesar or Alexander. Something about him demanded she look into him, not merely to feel but know without misgiving that here was someone of momentous significance. The priest broke their silent bond.
         "Are you alright?" he asked her, taking her other arm and helping to right her before turning to the young man, "Thank you, Michael, you've the reflexes of a cat," he asserted with genuine gratitude, "And one with considerably less padding than this oversized jalopy," he added dryly. Roma noticed that it was with slight disappointment that her rescuer released her, but his warm, inquiring smile banished at least some of the chill that numbed her saturated condition. She experienced mild confusion upon realizing she felt a strange reluctance to depart from this intriguing man. The priest once again began to direct her path towards the far end of the church altar which led to the rectory beyond.
         "Thank you," she hastily offered her silent champion, her rolling Florentine accent soft and enthralling, as she looked back to him once again in an attempt to gauge the source of his indefinable magnetism. When she was beyond earshot, she leant towards the priest. "Who is that?" she asked in a hushed tone.
         "Who, that? That's Michael. He's a local driver. Tragic story there, remind me to relay it to you some time," he shook his head in saddened pity. Roma staggered and he steadied her, "Are you alright?" he asked, his concern intensifying.
         "That man," she murmured, lost in a disorientating maelstrom of baffling and conflicting thoughts, "When he touched me I felt something...I don't know...powerful," she struggled to give voice to the overwhelming, hypnotic sensation of awe that had gripped her at their meeting. She shook her head - how was she to explain the impression of authority and charisma he exuded? The priest frowned, tenderly stroking the cat he professed to dislike.
         "You look dead on your feet, girl, you're just weary from your travels. Come, I've prepared a good meal for us. I'm glad you arrived when you did. Strange happenings are afoot here and it's going to take me all afternoon and most of tonight just to relay to you what has happened so far," he sighed, bracing himself for the long diatribe he was to deliver to the young woman, "Have you your papers?" he asked.
Fishing into her tunic she retrieved a set of papers in a waterproof cache that carried so much weight even the priest was reluctant to take them. His thumb ran over the enormous unbroken wax seal he knew so well, "And what name are you to assume whilst here?" he inquired.
         "Ruffalo. I'm using my mother's maiden name," she replied simply.
         "Events here are so unnatural, so unbalanced. And folk are scared. None but I know your identity and while I appreciate the necessity for anonymity so that we might carry out our investigation properly, if it must come out in order to safeguard your person or prevent any hindrance to our work, I will reveal you and the identity of the one who sanctioned your task here," he continued in a grave tone, an intensity of brotherly protectiveness emerging in his suppressed voice.
         Roma smiled. Having never had any family save her fellow sisters at the convent, she had always found Roland's fraternal affection a refuge and comfort. They disappeared into the rectory.









         Hattie Milsop busied herself as she did every day over the orderliness of her home. A farmer's wife and much-sought apothecary, she had little time to fuss over the particulars of home tidiness, but believed stoutly in one of her mother's overused sayings - ‘to each item its proper place'. Of course, having a six year old daughter who careened through home and hearth without the slightest regard for the simplest precepts of a well-kept home, this often proved to be a losing battle.
         The farmhouse suited her perfectly. Outside the village on acreage, her dwelling was larger than those of her social equivalence living in the poorer docks sector of the busy port town. For one, her daughter Melinda had her own room, something of an enviable luxury. Most of her peers shared rooms with siblings, some even with their parents. The farmhouse was not large by any standard but it was spacious and comfortable and had only to house Melinda, Hattie and her husband, Daniel. It was a peaceful and fulfilling existence.
         That was until recently.
         Returning to the main living area to dust, Hattie's eyes darted towards the macabre painting hanging over the hearth. A gift from her mother upon completion of the farmhouse, Hattie had never liked it. In fact, it had always filled her with a deep and inexplicable dread. Her mother had told her that paintings of its genre were all the fashion in London and Paris. Her mother had never left Lymington, not once in sixty seven years.
         The painting portrayed a deserted streetscape strewn with litter and refuse. Every window of the multi-storey buildings on either side of the narrow alleyway was shut, as though the unseen residents within greatly feared what lay beyond. The sky was filled with dark clouds bunched in forbidding ranks across the sky. They gave the image an oppressive air, as though the low cloud were thrusting the two figures on the streetscape forth into the viewer's lap.
         But it was the figures that chilled Hattie to her marrow. A small boy stooped in the street, his head ducked as though he feared a terrible blow, his hooded eyes pleading with the viewer for the help that his resigned posture denoted he knew would never come. Behind him stood a demon, its vast leathery wings outspread in covetous ownership of the boy. Its body was malformed, a sclerous thin frame supporting a bloated midsection. A bony hand with elongated digits that terminated in wickedly sharp talons savagely gripped the boy's shoulder, causing him to cower. Though hunched, it stood at almost twice the boy's height, its emaciated legs slightly bent in a pose of pre-flight readiness. It too gazed out at the viewer with terrible intensity, as though giving silent warning of an unspoken intention to return for the viewer once it had dispatched the boy. Its eyes were coal red and to look into them too long was to be filled with an immense fear that something real and malevolent was staring back.
         Hattie's eyes flared wide and she dropped her duster, staggering back and barely catching herself against the mealtime table. Her heart slammed against her chest with such force that she stumbled a second time, steadying herself with a trembling hand.
         The painting had changed. The demon was gone and the boy lay face down in a shallow pool of water in the street, dead.
         For several seconds the disorientated woman stared at the painting, unable to reconcile the alteration. She drew in several shuddered breaths. It was happening. The sightings, the encounters, the intrusions - until now they had all occurred elsewhere. Until now. On that fresh January morning, with the sun shining brilliantly outside and birdsong drifting through the open window, terror had come into her home.
         Melinda played amongst the leaf litter and the last of the winter blossoms outside and called out to her mother a request for scones for her morning tea. The sound of her daughter's voice broke the stranglehold of Hattie's panic. She hastily grabbed a dishcloth from the larder and threw it over the painting, loathe to touch the object lest the absent demon suddenly reappear and lurch out from the canvas to claim her. Frantically she removed her apron waist cord and bound the covered painting to hold the cloth in place before veritably hurling it to the floor to rest awkwardly against the wall beside the hearth. Her heart throbbed in searing bursts and she winced, clutching her chest, before taking several forced, measured breaths.
         By the time her daughter entered the cottage, Hattie Milsop was a picture of poised countenance. She flashed her daughter a beaming smile.
         "Let's see about those scones, eh?" she quipped cheerfully, her heart still racing. Her daughter threw her arms about her waist and hugged her and they made their way to the larder.
         She would take the painting to Father Roland - he would know what to do.









"Incredible," Roma murmured as Father Roland related to her the astonishing events that had occurred in and around Lymington during the past several months. There had been vanishings - a farmer had disappeared before the eyes of his wife and children on his farm. The following day a small scorched circle appeared at the site and neither bird nor beast would suffer to go near it. There had been sightings of enormous dogs stalking the woods of New Forest. Beatrice Rothschild, the spinsterly sister of Doctor Tiberius Rothschild, had been startled one morning to see a man in the reflection of her mirror. He appeared to be sitting at the end of her bed looking at her. When she spun to face the bed, he was not there. Upon turning back to the mirror, she saw him in the reflection once more. In fact he could be seen in every reflective surface of the room - vase, ceramic pitcher, bedside drinking glass - and in her peripheral vision but he was simply not there when she attempted to look at him directly. As the light of dawn exiled the lingering fringes of night, he arose from the end of the bed and she watched through the mirror as he left the room. She heard footsteps descend the stairs to the ground floor of the house, followed by the sharp crack of her front door slamming shut. Racing to her window to glimpse her intruder, she had found her front yard empty.
         "It all began around six months ago with the disappearance of a young savant boy. To this day he has not been found. But it was a game of Bloody Mary re-enacted by a group of girls from the estate district about a month ago that signified the beginning of truly horrific events," the troubled priest disclosed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
         "Bloody Mary?" Roma inquired, her thick Italian accent stumbling across the words, "I have not heard of this Bloody Mary." She leaned in, her curiosity stirred.
         "I'm not too familiar with it myself, but the basic precepts of the game involve the participants positioning themselves in a circle. They chant a perversion of the Rosary, then each girl enters a bath chamber alone with only a candle, looks into the mirror, states ‘I don't believe in Bloody Mary' thirteen times, spins counter-clockwise six times - the devil's number - before looking into the mirror and saying ‘I do believe in Bloody Mary'," the genial young priest's complexion was ashen and he swallowed hard, his mouth parched, "Blood Mary is supposed to appear in place of the girls' reflection and compel them to do...things."
         "What kind of things?" Roma urged, her attentive gaze boring into the priest.
         "One girl slashed her own face and throat until she was unidentifiable even to her own family. Another was found bleeding from her eyes, mouth and ears and is now in a catatonic state in an asylum up in the north country. Two girls did not participate in the game but for reasons unknown cannot recall witnessing what occurred to the first two girls. A third victim testified that a horribly mauled old woman reached through the mirror, grabbed her by the head and pulled her towards the mirror. But whilst her protrusion through the mirror left the glass whole, it began to splinter and eventually break when she pulled the girl back through the mirror. The serrated teeth of the broken mirror ripped her face apart. Unfortunately, her rescue worsened her injuries for the glass lacerated her again when her friends pulled her back through and out of the clutches of her attacker. She's been left frightfully disfigured and will not speak of the incident save to say that the woman, who claimed to be a witch, told her something which has so terrified her that to this day, and perhaps for the rest of her life, she requires a heavy sedative to sleep, one that prevents her from lapsing into a dream state. Before the sedatives were administered, she awoke screaming every night, her hysterical ravings illegible to any who heard."
         "I've never heard anything like it," Roma whispered, her thoughts inverted, her brow steeped in deep concentration.
         "Oh, it gets better," the priest continued with a sobriety of tone that prickled the fine hairs on the back of her neck, "Robert Carruthers returned here just this summer following a three year stint far north in the mines. He was met by his dog, Shep, at Buckland Bridge and was about to cross to return to the shire but the animal took off, urging him to follow. Much annoyed and hurling the odd expletive or two at the animal, he reluctantly followed the dog who led him to Baimbridge Crossing, the old rope bridge, several miles further up river and a far greater distance out of his way home. The dog crossed over and Carruthers followed him, sore-footed and surly, eventually arriving home a full half day later than his scheduled arrival. Some two miles before reaching the farm, Shep did the bolt and Carruthers thought nothing of it, for the dog always bounded ahead close to home, especially if it detected the scent of its dinner on the wind. Upon reaching the homestead, he apologized to his wife, explaining that Shep had led him on a wild goose chase up to the Baimbridge and then home. After she came round from her fainting spell, she managed to explain to him that Shep had died the previous winter and the Buckland Bridge had been washed away in flash flooding two years earlier," the tawny-haired priest shook his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose once again.
         "His dead dog led him home," Roma reiterated to ensure she had heard him correctly.
         "Not only that, Carruthers hadn't come upon a derelict, washed out bridge. He saw Buckland whole and uncompromised. Had he ventured onto the ruined crossing, he'd have plunged into the water and died. The man can't swim," he added, still grappling with the incongruity of the circumstances.
         "He saw a bridge that wasn't there and a dog that had been dead two seasons," Roma stated more to herself than her companion, "Anything else?" she queried with the measured calm of one to whom these events were anything but uncommon.
         "Some of the children have reported seeing ghostly figures in Roydon Woods," he added. Roma cocked a skeptical eyebrow.
         "Children seeing ghosts? Sounds to me like the furtive imagination of inventive young minds, especially considering the hysteria these events have generated," she suggested. He shook his head solemnly.
         "My nephew Dairmid has seen it," the priest cut in, "I made him swear by all that is holy that he wasn't lying, even told him he was on pain of going to Hell if he fibbed and that there are no butter cookies in Hell, something the lad takes very seriously. He swore on his mother's butter cookies to have seen it," he explained. Roma suppressed her amusement at the image brought to mind of the affable young priest ordering his bewildered nephew to swear upon his mother's cookies that he spoke the truth.
         "Did he describe it?" she asked.
         "He said it was indistinct, like trying to discern the shape of something through fogged glass. It was dark and human in form and size but hooded and cloaked. No face could be seen inside the hood and when he squinted to peer more closely, it became even hazier. The children called it the Pacematcher for when they fled, it did not pursue them but rather kept apace with them from a distance. When they slowed, it slowed, when they quickened, so too did it. Since then, several other children have reported the same sighting independently of one another, children unknown to one another and in some cases of different classes. There's no possible way they could have collaborated stories. If it were a hoax, you can't tell me a child of three tender years can collude with other children of various ages and backgrounds and uphold so elaborate a fiction," he slumped back into his former den chair in the rectory study, a warm rumble emanating from his lap where a well-fed ginger cat languished, purring. Absentmindedly, he stroked the animal who thrust its head into the palm of his hand as one in the undisputed conviction of his superior placement in the pecking order of the room's occupants, "Little Seraphina Willows was flanked by it not last week and ran through the woodland all the way to her grandmother's house. When she and her pursuer reached the outer fence simultaneously, it turned towards her and pointed in the direction of the house before dispersing to vapour before her eyes. When she entered the house she discovered that her grandmother's sister, with whom the elderly lady lived, had just that moment died. The children now think that this Pacematcher, whilst not being the bringer of death, is nonetheless a herald of disaster. They all dread seeing it lest it point toward the dwelling of a loved one. I've issued an edict that all children under twelve must be accompanied by an older child or adult when going into any of the surrounding woods. No youngster must travel them alone," he concluded.
         Roma could see the burden of these unsettling events etched upon her mentor's face. He was physically exhausted and not a little spiritually fatigued. As parish priest, all events of an unnatural or unexplained origin were not only brought to him, but deposited with the expectation that he would assume all responsibility for correcting the balance of a seemingly disturbed natural and supernatural scale. Simply, he was expected to miraculously fix what he could not even begin to identify.
         Taking the opportunity to change the subject during the silence that followed, the exhausted priest took a deep breath and broached an issue that weighed even more heavily on Roma.
         "Have you seen...it...since you left Florence?" he asked, unwilling to name the object of their dialogue. Even the thought of it chilled him beyond any capacity of flame or hearth to reignite warmth in his veins. Roma's gaze became unfocussed and took on the hollow, haunted gleam of one tormented by an unspeakable rancor.
         "I saw it once, in the distance, atop a cathedral steeple almost half a mile away, clinging to it like a primate, as we cast off from port in Naples. And again during a storm at sea one night. It hung with ease from the top of the main mast. Neither wind nor wave nor rain buffeted it from its perch," she took a deep breath, obviously disquieted by the recollection but composed in the recounting, "It's here. I can feel it. Not close by, but never far away. It's waiting for me to stumble into doubt, to surrender to dread. Once that happens, it will be but a breath away. And its intent feels darker now, as though I'm near to something it does not want me to discover and will prevent by any measure," she replied, her voice, though steady, barely a whisper.
         "You think it will attack again? Physically?" the priest inquired in a hushed murmur, his expression clearly horrified.
         "I honestly don't know," Roma replied, unwilling to lend her thoughts to speculation for there lay the path to fear and doubt and these were the emotions that lured the predator, "All I know is that it's here - as if you need yet another dark chapter to add to your book of troubles - and it is at once protecting something and resolved in its objective to do me harm."
         They lapsed into silence, each lost to a tide of disquieting thoughts on a churning sea of ostensibly insurmountable odds. Only the reverberating purr of the precocious ginger cat softened the solemnity of the late hour.









         It was ever the same. He referred to it in his personal journal as a triptych dream, for like the artistic representation of the same name, there were three separate dreams in one, all interrelated.

         A scattering of people in a field of chest high grass gazed toward the night sky expectantly, some chanting, others praying and calling out. He walked among them but they could not see him. Each in their own fashion called to the Christ, beckoning Him to appear, to give them a sign to prove His existence.
         Roland urged them to earnest prayer, strove to explain to them that faith was the essence of a true communion with Christ. He pleaded with them to forsake their futile desires to be granted a vision as proof of His existence for in proof there died the necessity for faith, the very capstone of a relationship with the Lord. Without faith alone, he urged, there could be no entry into Heaven. Still they called out to Him to prove to them His omnipotence with a sign in the Heavens.
         Each time it was with certainty that the young priest knew they could not hear him, and perhaps could not even see him. He was an invisible shepherd inexplicably removed from his lost sheep. He felt helpless and weary of perpetually failing to steer them back to the truth of the Word.
         Always he would depart, defeated and dismayed.

         A small group of people stood huddled in a grotto in the woods by a cave mouth. A large, flat, natural stone formation that served as a makeshift altar stood between them and a pair of well dressed priests standing opposite, resplendent in their finery. The assembled group, their shabby clothes advertising their poverty, hastily handed over exiguous earnings which the priests pocketed with undisguised alacrity. The surrender of even this small amount of coin most likely meant they would go hungry for days. In a nauseating demonstration of spurious piety, the priests dramatically waved their hands about in apparent ritual mysticism. A static and illuminated image of the mother of Jesus appeared from nowhere atop the stony formation, barely a foot in height. Instantly the small assembly fell to their knees and, with rosary bead wrapped hands clasped in desperate supplication, they each began to frantically petition the blessed Mother for a reprieve from their individual ailments and woes.
         The beguiled gathering remained oblivious to two hidden priests who, through an elaborate configuration of hidden mirrors, crystal prisms and a skilled etching of the Virgin on blue glass, projected the image of the Madonna onto the rock from the concealment of a nearby thicket.
         Again, Roland attempted to expose the deception, but neither false priest nor deluded villager could see or hear him. He bore mute witness to the vile fabrication.
         At the point of abandoning his fruitless efforts to communicate with the group, Roland witnessed a miracle. In the midst of the amassed crowd, a young deaf girl suddenly stopped signing to her mother and turned towards the cave mouth as a brilliant light drove away the darkness from within. The crowd, so blinded by their desperation and engrossed in their entreaty with the inert Virgin, failed to perceive the holy visitation just a few feet from them. Filling the entire gulf of the cave mouth, the incomparably peaceful and compassionate face of the Virgin Mary appeared; kindness, love and maternal tenderness spilled from her sublime features like wash upon wash of warmth from an eternal flame.
         Turning her attention only to the deaf child, the blessed Mother spoke to the attentive girl. In a strange inversion of the natural law, the deaf child was able to hear every word spoken by the Virgin as attested by her regular nods and periodic replies, but neither Roland nor those assembled were privy to the hallowed words of the Madonna. After conversing at length with the child, the true Virgin smiled kindly upon her and disappeared, the black vacuum of the cave mouth swallowing the illumination that encircled her face.
         Disillusioned and despondent, Roland walked away from the farcical visitation.

         He walked the windswept streets of an unknown city. Everything was as lifeless as it was colorless. He walked on, stooped and bone weary, down the centre of a deserted metropolitan thoroughfare, impossibly colossal buildings soaring towards the sky on either side of him. They were grey, lifeless shells that terminated at a dark, cloud-packed sky barren of bird or airborne litter. It was like walking the city of the dead. Nothing moved and no sound save the hollow moan of the wind reached his ears.
         He walked for an eternity.
         The city abruptly terminated at the foot of a lofty mountain whose peak gored the moisture laden clouds overhead. Without hesitation, Roland began to scale the rocky incline, securing hand- and footholds with the methodical precision of one who had ascended these disorientating heights countless times.
         At a height so dizzying as to cause the ground far below to seemingly sway, he reached a narrow ledge in the rock face. Looking up he perceived an angel who reached down to assist him onto the shelf. Disturbingly, he was not awed by this mighty and transcendent agent of glory. A spiritual numbness had desensitized him both body and soul, preventing him from experiencing any emotion save the anaesthetized stupor of nothingness. The angel attempted to speak to him but suddenly disappeared, along with the mountain, the landscape and everything in it
         In the next moment he perceived a glass box in a museum exhibit in a far flung future. In it he could see his own hand, severed at the midsection between wrist and elbow. It was curled in a tight fist and had remained in a naturally preserved state for hundreds of years, without the assistance of alchemic aid or stabilizer to halt the progression of decomposition, long after the rest of his cadaver had wilted and perished. It was the hand the angel had grasped to lift him to the mountain ledge. His physical encounter with divinity had rendered it invulnerable to decay.
         Slowly the fingers moved with excruciating lethargy. Soon he could make out the outer edges of a parchment encased by the fist. The fingers unfurled further until he perceived script upon the parchment but he could not discern what was written.
         The fingers unfolded further. He strained to perceive the script, the exertion taxing every fiber of his soul in his labored effort to read the crumpled parchment...

         Roland awoke with a start, his breathing arduous, the bitter tang of disappointment strong in his dry mouth. He sat up in bed, burying his fingers in his hair as he rested his head upon up-drawn knees. He groaned. Would it ever end? Or would he dream this dream until madness overwhelmed him. Would he ever understand it? Despair threatened to engulf him. He wondered if he should bring this conundrum before Roma. She was intuitive where he was obtuse; she was insightful where he was myopic. She might cast some light on the conundrum that plagued his dreams and preoccupied his waking hours. He was reluctant, however, to burden her with the millstone of his affliction, for she grappled with a far darker and more baleful menace than his irksome dream, one that did not merely perplex the senses but rather hunted her on both the spiritual and physical planes. He would give it more thought before disclosing his concerns. There would be time for Roma to address his disquietude. For now she needed to remain focused on drawing together the disparate threads of a multitude of hopelessly unrelated events to identify the singular commonality binding them all. She alone could expose both the cause and intent of the frightening supernatural episodes occurring throughout the thriving port town.
         He smiled. It was no small comfort to discover that a ginger blanket thief had stolen in through his bedchamber window in the predawn hour to inconspicuously participate in the sharing of warmth and companionship. During this time of tribulation in which he felt adrift from his God and his flock, the unassuming presence of the irascible orange feline seemed to anchor him back in the world and grant him some small measure of comfort.









Inwardly Michael groaned. He disliked few things but one of these was the patronage of Christabel Hannan. He did not abhor her personally; in fact, he pitied her, for to him she seemed to be choking on the cancer of her own spiteful vindictiveness. Critical, cruel and disdainful, she greatly relished the hardship of others and few escaped the brutal denigration of her scathing tongue. She took particular joy in slating the handsome carriage driver whose nobility of character far superseded that bestowed upon her by societal rank and wealth. As ever, he refrained from engaging her malicious acrimony and remained politely reticent throughout her tirade of abuse.
         "Really, Michael, you have done an appalling job of the upkeep of this carriage," the older woman blustered, running a gloved finger over the spotless upholstery of the gleaming open-air carriage, "And you've no natural way with that temperamental beast of yours. It veers this way and that, with no regard for maintaining a rhythmic gait," she sighed dramatically in feigned exasperation. Michael was, in fact, her favorite sport, for in her estimation his family tragedy had been the source of her greatest social embarrassment, one she strove never to let him forget, one she feared she might never live down. She mistook his gracious silence for docility and dimness of wit.
         "My apologies, madam," he replied courteously, snapping the reins briskly onto the gelding's flanks to quicken its step slightly. The sooner Christabel Hannan reached her destination, the sooner peace and concord would return to his day.
Like all wealthy citizens of Lymington, the Hannans reserved their family carriage for such special occasions as the ostentatious seasonal balls they attended. For such events they hired city coachmen, impressive in their attire and polished of manner. For the day to day running of errands and social appointments, the Lymington elite utilized ‘public transport', a vulgar generalization of the term in their assessment since the general public could ill afford to be ferried from destination to destination in the same manner as their wealthy counterparts.
Independent carriage owners kept accounts with several families and worked on retainer. The household manservant would make regular trips into the docks district of the port town, where the drivers stationed their vehicles, to provide them with the following weeks' appointments so that they might not be tardy in arriving on time to pick up their patrons. Michael often wondered why the Hannans did not simply utilize the services of another driver, for Christabel Hannan continually criticized the condition of both his open-air carriage and fully enclosed coach, both of which were of a standard far exceeding his competitors.
To make matters worse that day, Christabel Hannan had brought along her asinine daughter, Eugenie. Michael was ferrying them to Wainright Estate for mid-morning tea with the Huxleys, who were the equivalent of royalty throughout New Hampshire. Wainright Estate was the hub upon which the social wheel of Lymington's elite revolved. To be invited to tea at the estate was to have truly ‘arrived' in society.
         "Don't madam me," Christabel Hannan snarled, "I'll not suffer the title of that filthy bordello whore and those smutty slatterns she keeps house with. Infecting our town, the lot of them, with their foul trade, luring our young men with their craven merchandise," she leveled a venomous gaze at the back of the driver's head, "And don't think I don't know about your frequent expeditions into that vipers den. Jeremiah Oberg has more than once commented on seeing you enter that den of iniquity."
         Michael smiled in mild amusement. Obviously it had not occurred to Christabel Hannan that Jeremiah Oberg had witnessed his arrival at the bordello on several occasions purely by virtue of their coincidence with his departure. It was not the curiosity of the young men with which she should rightly have concerned herself, but rather the wanderings of the old.
         "And to think that you and my Eugenie-" she cut herself off abruptly, theatrically raising a kerchief to her powdered complexion to stifle a horrified sob, "It hardly bears contemplating," she concluded in a choked sniffle, yet she so swiftly resumed her derisive assault that she betrayed the fraudulence of her performance, "I don't know why I suffer you. You must be the worst driver in all of New Hampshire and it does little to augment the Hannan name to be seen chauffeured about town by someone whose family almost irrevocably damaged our reputation. Were it not for my charitable generosity and selfless compassion, you'd have little coin in your pocket, for it is I who have urged my peers to broker your services in spite of having endured the greatest of grievances on your family's account. One word from me and your purse would dry up in an instant. Your current misfortune would seem a luxurious existence indeed compared to the poverty into which you would be plunged," she rasped with a malevolence unbefitting a lady of her standing. She took a deep breath and resumed her cold composure. "Do try to make more of an effort with your appearance," she patronized, sneering with disgust at his well-worn but clean coachman's coat and tri-pointed hat, in full knowledge that he had not the funds to invest in the tailored apparel and costly accessories of the city coachmen. They wore golden rings, velvet slippers and arranged their hair in the elaborate and feminine coiffures currently taking Paris by storm, "Your vesture reflects on us and I for one shall not be seen around and about with a driver who has little regard for personal raiment."
         As the carriage pulled into the Wainright Estate drive and on past the immense iron entry gates, Christabel Hannan mercifully fell silent, collecting her dignity and fortifying her unflappable façade of demure modesty.
         "Do stop fidgeting, Genie," she hissed, "I hardly think Lord Huxley will want his son consorting with a young woman bearing anything less than the deportment of a sovereign. If you cannot quell your nerves, keep your hands clasped before you and concentrate on measuring your breath. It hardly befits a young lady to be seen with a patchy complexion and sweaty palms due to her inability to moderate her temperament. And it does little to promote your eligibility for marriage."
         A gentleman to the last, Michael alighted from the driver's seat and respectfully took Matron Hannan's delicately poised hand in his as he opened the carriage door and assisted her to the paved courtyard below.
         Eugenie Hannan pretentiously presented him with a hand, her nose thrust high into the air. He rightly surmised that she was rehearsing her impending portrayal of confidence and self-possession for Lord and Lady Huxley - and of course their son. He saw her safely to the pavement below.
         As he drove back through the Wainright gates, he shook his head absently. His ‘misfortune', as Christabel Hannan had so referred to it, had in fact been his deliverance. The circumstances that had left him debt-stricken and dispossessed as a thirteen year old boy so many years before had liberated him. It had marked a rite of passage into manhood that no amount of privilege or affluence could ever have imparted upon him. He had gained admittance to a vastly different world and rather than finding it to be the brutal, pitiless rock upon which his dreams had been dashed, he had discovered an existence of beauty and splendor both mysterious and mystifying in the sheer inexhaustibility of opportunities that awaited those attentive and patient enough.
         Each encounter with Christabel Hannan reminded him that it was he who was free and unfettered in his ‘misfortune' and she who was enslaved, the crushing yoke of wealth and position about her neck little more than bondage disguised as fine fabric, facetted jewels and numerous land titles.









Always at this time of year his knee caused him grief. Grimacing as he dismounted from the driver's seat of his rickety open carriage, Tom Borland braced himself for the jolt that would rocket up his leg as he made the short jump to the ground. It would seem a veritable tickle, however, when compared with the roasting he would receive from the lady of the house.
         Camilla Rhys-Huntington kept an immaculate residence. A small cottage in the gentle ebb and flow of the valley country outside Lymington, it was kept fit for a queen. Two diligent goats maintained a surprisingly even lawn within the bounds of the waist high paling fence that surrounded the dwelling. Within this boundary neatly corralled and manicured gardens of wild poppy, snapdragon, and foxglove flourished. Climbing jasmine scaled lattice frames secured to the cottage and two large fruit trees provided welcoming shade for the wild blackberry bush wandering along the ground. A neat vegetable patch enjoyed the afternoon sun on the lee of the cottage and several long pots burgeoned with herbs both medicinal and culinary.
         It always struck Tom Borland that the warm, inviting welcome offered by the garden could not be more removed from the greeting that awaited him within. Steeling himself for a caustic rejection, he approached the covered porch. He smiled a wry smile. The woman was a banshee, that much he knew, but a beauty and a mystery to be sure, and he had never been able to shake the inimitable attraction he had felt towards her, not even when she married Ephron Rhys-Huntington forty two years earlier and lost him twenty two years later.
         For twenty years he had been courting her, with the support and encouragement of her son, and for twenty years she had acerbically rebuffed him. In all that time his love for her had never waned, and he strongly believed that this was a fact to heed solemnly. He had come to expect her mordant rebukes and they had something of an understanding about his ‘courting' - he would strive to win her affections throughout time eternal and she would forever revile his efforts. They were sparring partners of a sort, for Tom Borland could take so much character stripping before the gloves were thrown down and a good old fashioned barney ensued. Camilla would sooner walk through a forest of razor wire and broken glass than admit she attained some degree of enjoyment out of their encounters but Tom Borland knew it to be true. He swore that before he reached his ninetieth birthday he would marry the shrew, even if he must bind and gag her and drag her before the priest.
         Raising a cupped hand to his mouth to ensure his breath was fresh, and running a thick, calloused hand through his shaggy crop of grey hair, he took one last deep breath before knocking softly upon the cottage door with a restraint of touch one might have thought beyond the capacity of so large a man, especially a blacksmith.
         A short wait ensued, just long enough for all of the moisture in his mouth to dry up. A soft shuffle was heard beyond the door before it was unlatched and swung open. A slight woman, with her hair tied in a neat bun at the back of her head and one hand on her hip, regarded her visitor with undisguised bemusement.
         "Whatever it is you are flogging today, Thomas Borland, you can take it and just march yourself right back to that flying death trap you call a carriage and return to town," came the noxious greeting. She cocked an unimpressed eyebrow at him to prompt him into action when he did not budge.
         "Top of the morning to you to, Camilla," the barrel-chested blacksmith replied cordially, "Was just on my way back to town from the Devlins. Broken wheel pin and worn universal strut on their plough. Needed some replacement parts and axle grease. Thought I'd poke my head in and see if there was anything about the cottage that needed tending before I headed back," he offered politely.
         "I've no want for anything you're peddling, Thomas, so be off with you," she shot back with a sharp nod of her head towards his transport. He looked past her into the invitingly homely living room beyond, breathing deeply and closing his eyes to accentuate his delight in the pleasurable aroma that met his inhalation.
         "That be your jam dumplings for market you be cooking, Camilla?" he queried, utterly ignoring her insistent suggestions. She assumed a stance of indignant disbelief.
         "Have you not ears in your head, man?" she retorted, "I said off with you! I'm a busy woman and in no mood for your uncouth ingratiation."
         Outside another carriage pulled up and a younger man dismounted from the driver's seat with decidedly more grace and agility than the older blacksmith. The woman regarded him with a critical gaze. He left his coat and hat on the porch, moved lithely past the barricaded Tom Borland, gently kissing Camilla on the cheek as he entered the roomy residence.
         "How are you feeling this morning, Mother?" he inquired. She shot him a baleful glance.
         "I'd be feeling a damn sight better if you'd live up to your responsibilities and rid me of this old rascal once and for all like I've been asking you all these years," she replied with barely restrained hostility.
         On his way back out the door, he handed the blacksmith a handful of his mother's highly prized jam dumplings. Her face flushed beet and her expression darkened beyond reckoning.
         "Here you go, Tom, we both know she wants you to have them even if her plantation-sized pride won't broker the admission," the younger man offered, unaffected by his mother's acidic comments. Tom Borland looked his love right in the eye and took a large bite out of a steaming dumpling, leaning comfortably in the doorway as the younger man, his hands also laden with the delectable sweets, reclined on the porch settee to enjoy his prize.
         "Come, Camilla," the roguish blacksmith coaxed, "When are you going to drop this ruse and just admit you're crazy for me?" Camilla's eyes narrowed and she shifted her weight with steadfast deliberation to the other hip.
         "You'll be waiting until the second coming before I ever admit to affection for you, Thomas Borland, now get off my porch and be off with you!" she rasped before stepping back and slamming her front door shut. He chuckled and consumed another dumpling with relish.
         "That woman's cooking alone is enough to warrant suffering her temper," he mused, undiscouraged by her blatant hostility. Michael smiled at the personable blacksmith from his comfortable seat.
         "Hang in there, Tom, she can't hold out forever," he said confidently, "She had a fever last winter that spiked so badly one night she slipped into a delirium. She talked for a while in her disorientation but the last thing she said just before the fever broke and she drifted off to sleep was ‘Goodnight, Thomas'".
         The blacksmith's relaxed posture took on an alertness most would have thought beyond the grizzled old forge master.
         "Was it a cordial ‘Goodnight, Thomas' you might expect when returning a lady home to her front door from a civilized afternoon picnic?" he asked eagerly, "Or was it the kind of ‘Goodnight, Thomas' one might receive on the doorstep of slumber following an exhausting night of wild passion?" his eye took on a mischievous glint.
         Michael laughed. It was a resonant, warm sound.
         "Would I be encouraging you to continue in your pursuit had it been the former?" he quipped cryptically, grinning. Tom Borland whooped, stomping one great bear paw of a foot onto the shuddering porch boards beneath.
         "I knew it!" he hooted, "You know, they used to call me Tom the Boar in my day on account of my manly charms and way with the ladies," he assured his younger companion. They both continued to enjoy their succulent bounty.
         "I'd believe it," Michael pledged earnestly. The old blacksmith cocked his head to one side.
         "Say, lad, when do you fancy you'll find a young lady and settle yourself down for the long stay?" he queried. He had always enjoyed a deep and abiding friendship with the younger man he regarded as a son.
When Michael's father had died he had made a commitment to Camilla, in one of perhaps two civil conversations they had ever shared, to be there for the boy in every way that mattered as a father. Though she had assented with a simple nod, Michael had known then that her love for the old scoundrel was the only thing greater than her unspoken gratitude. He had never understood why she resisted him so, even to the present day. And Tom Borland had lived up to his word - it was he who had taught the young Michael to shave, to draw a bow, to grow produce, to harvest the forest for the wild crops there, and to ply his present trade. And in spite of the scandalously presumptuous liberties he took with the ladies, landing him a reputation for smooth talking and roaming hands, he took very seriously his responsibility as role model. It was due to the unfaltering commitment of Tom Borland that Michael grew into the gentleman he had become. It was precisely because of his love of the female form and all its ways that the blacksmith had conscientiously coached Michael in exercising proper respect for the opposite sex and the necessity for treating women as precious jewels in the crown of a man's contentment.
         Michael sighed and gazed off across the rolling landscape. He thought of the marvelously beautiful woman Father Roland had whisked off to the rectory earlier that week.
         "I'd like to tell you, Tom, but I just don't know," he replied.
         "There's plenty of girls in town with their eyes on you, boy," he reminded him, thinking back nostalgically to his youth when he had had his pick of the pretty young things that would swan by the forge, "Why, you're the most eligible bachelor in these parts, could have your pick of any number of the sweeties that flash their lashes at you during Sunday sermon. Certainly the image of your father and he was considered quite the most handsome man in all of Lymington a ways back," he cut himself short and shot his younger companion a cock-eyed glance, "Say, lad, you're not, you know, a fence-jumper are you? Not leaning towards the other end of the post, so to speak?"
         Michael rolled his eyes.
         "No," he replied dryly. The old blacksmith sighed with evident relief.
         "Glad to hear it, I am, boy," he grinned broadly, "I'm counting on escorting your mother to your nuptials one day," he disclosed, "One day soon," he added.
         Michael smiled and tossed the beam-shouldered blacksmith his last dumpling. He thought of the woman in the church again.









It was a full week before Roma considered herself fully briefed of the strange and unexplained occurrences that had taken hold of the bustling port town. During that time she had documented every sighting and experience brought before Father Roland by the villagers, as well as embarking upon her formal church duties as scribe. Having chronologically recorded every unnatural event experienced by Lymington's residents, she puzzled over how they might be related. There was no commonality binding each to the other. The episodes transcended all barriers of class, age and occupation. No one thing isolated and contained these events. No experience was similar to another. And yet she could not escape the feeling that the most tenuous of links bound every incident to a mutual core or source.
         The rectory den had the appearance of frenzied, yet strangely organised, chaos. Books, loose papers, scrolls and maps had been spread across every available surface, giving the impression of an eclectic paper mache gone mad.
         "I see you've had a visitation from the patron saint of whirlwinds," Roland raised a curious eyebrow to the melee of research flung hither and yon throughout his once immaculate retreat. He did not venture into the room. Roma was gathering up her day pouch, preparing to make a trip out into the village. The young priest sighed.
         "Don't start," Roma advised without looking up, her tone brokering no argument. She had heard that sigh before and it always preceded one of his politically motivated debates. Roma despised church politics and loathed even more that it encroached upon the priest's ability to undertake his spiritual responsibilities without hindrance.
         "Roma, you're here officially to undertake the transcription, unofficially to conduct the investigation," Roland ignored the warning, "But the responsibility of tending souls is not yours." She continued to hastily stuff her pouch with the goods she would need for her short trip.
         "You're right," she agreed without meeting his stunned gaze. He had not expected her to relent so easily. A moment later he realized she had not relented at all. "But I've the means to provide for those less fortunate - those abandoned by the Church - access to proper medical care, some semblance of an education and perhaps a little spiritual comfort," she replied stiffly, cutting in before he could speak, "Don't concern yourself, Roland, I'll not be overstepping my bounds. You won't find me courting excommunication by trying to administer the Sacrament of Communion or absolving sins without the authority of the Church. But you won't prevent me from giving to them what is within my power to grant them a better life."
         Roland sighed again, this time in resignation. The brusqueness of her actions and the set of her jaw told him that arguing further would result in nothing more than argument for its own sake. He had known her too long and too well to challenge her when her mind was fixed. And she more than had the means and the power to bring about almost anything she put her mind to. Instead he elected to facilitate her plans, for at least she was doing some measure of good in an arena in which his hands had been tied.
         "When you enter, ask for ‘Mother', she is the administrator of the...facility. I told her to expect a visit from you," he offered. Roma's posture relaxed and her expression softened. As she ducked past him, she gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek.
         "Who says old dogs cannot learn new tricks?" she quipped brightly.
         As she left the church and descended the broad market strip of High Street, the port town was thronging with a vibrancy of activity that openly defied the bleak weather. Stall vendors peddled their wares in a cacophony of rhythmic, atonal shouts, occasionally thrusting samples of their merchandise into the startled faces of unsuspecting passers by. Shop fronts advertised goods both gourmet and staple in attractive displays. The sweet aroma of fresh baked foodstuffs cooked on roadside stalls mingled peaceably with the pungent smell of ale and tobacco smoke drifting from the taverns and local hostelry. Shabbily dressed orphans, called ‘street urchins', darted artfully through small crowd pockets. Their unwashed rags and grimy faces struck discord with the marvelously cosseted, elegant ladies of the estate district, each of whom were flanked by well dressed footmen carrying purchases that numbered in the dozens.
         Roma was regarded with a mix of open-mouthed awe and barely concealed contempt. A resident of barely a week, already her presence had generated as much interest and speculation as the Saxon invasions centuries earlier. In spite of the many and varied rumors that had flared about her, one remained constant. There was intense conjecture that she was more than she seemed. It was in her bearing. She carried herself as one with no physical, political or social barrier before her. Even Father Roland, the highest and final authority in town, appeared to defer both in manner and action before her. She was someone of immense influence but beyond that they knew no more. And nothing she had said or done had alluded even remotely to the character and degree of power it was she held and how far it reached. The young men of the town were enthralled by her, the young women envied her. And the older folk regarded her with reserved caution.
         Ducking down a narrow alley, no more than a slit, between buildings in which passers by were forced to rub shoulders, Roma made for the concealed bordello entrance. Her gait balked suddenly when she saw a familiar face exiting the secluded brothel.
         The man who had broken her fall in the church on the day she arrived stepped lightly from the ornate portico and out onto the cobbled street beyond, his hands in his pockets, his eyes to the ground.
         As he passed Roma he looked up, his eyes flaring slightly in recognition. He stared at her a moment longer, his curiosity evident, but lowered his gaze once more when met with the surprised and disappointed glance from the woman he had not been able to put aside from his thoughts for days.
         A stunned Roma considered her own unexpected disenchantment for a moment before lithely ascending the steps leading to the bordello entrance and focusing on the purpose of her business.
         Stepping inside the dimly lit bordello, Roma noted that it was not dissimilar to every other of its kind that she had ever graced. Large oil paintings of subjects entwined in sensual embraces dominated the dark wood walls. Ornately upholstered furniture adorned every corner. Lavish oriental rugs lay before her on the floor and every lamp was muted with a lace overthrow that cast delicate patterns of light across everything. Scantily clad young women draped themselves in provocative poses over patrons both wealthy and indigent with attentive confidence - coin was coin and issues of social position both favorable and unfortunate were inconsequential if the tab had been paid.
         A well-bosomed, large woman of African descent, her hands on her hips, approached Roma with blasé nonchalance, assessing her with a sweeping glance. A broad and friendly grin broke out on her face, her brilliant white teeth framed by plump, tinted lips.
         "Welcome, child, I've been expecting you," she greeted her warmly with a hug one might expect from their own mother. Roma liked her instantly.
         "Hello, Mother," she replied, returning the embrace, "I hope my visit is not too delayed. I've been embroiled in Church business and even had to spar with Father Roland before coming here." She was met with wizened regard. Apparently Mother was no stranger to verbally jousting with the genial young priest herself, but evidently had to her advantage something in the proximity of twenty or so more years on the good shepherd.
         "Not at all, child, not at all," she reassured in a deep, resonant timbre that bespoke her origins in the great desert continent. She placed her arm around Roma and led her to a small room behind the bordello foyer where, judging by the austere furnishings and the presence of two enormous safes, the financial transactions of the brothel took place, "Have a seat, my dear girl, and enjoy the tea I have prepared for you. Something from the mother country that takes me back to the great plains of my ancestors," she offered graciously, her eyes reflecting a momentary descent into memories of a distant time. Roma gratefully accepted the tea.
         "Whatever it is I can do for you, Mother, you've but to ask," she began, her voice both kind and steeped with a compassion the older woman had not received in many years.
         "I ask only this, my child," she gingerly placed her elbows upon the table at which they sat to lean a little closer to Roma, "Minister to my girls."
         Roma took a deep breath, her heart heavy.
         "I've no authority to act on behalf of the Church," she replied apologetically, "I can perform no sacrament and grant no absolution." She proffered her companion an empathetic look of regret. The ample bordello madam sat back comfortably in her chair and shook her head, her smile ever warm and understanding.
         "Tis alright, girl," she replied kind-heartedly, "That's not what I'm asking. I ask simply that you come see us once a week to join with us in prayer. The Church will allow us to attend mass, even if we are prohibited from receiving the holy host, but Christ stated that faith will lead to salvation, not the weekly participation in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. We wish only to pray with you. You've led an exemplary life and you are the closest thing to a gateway to the blessed Virgin Mother we have. Pray with us, guide us in our journey through the gospels. Perhaps in your company we shall be looked upon more favorably by our Lord and Savior on that day of days," she asserted earnestly. Roma smiled and took her hand.
         "The Lord consorted with whores and tax collectors, Mother," she reminded her gently, "And blessed Mary Magdalene was esteemed by Him with no less a regard than that He granted His disciples," she cocked an eyebrow and cast the older woman an unflinching look of surety, "Don't underestimate the Lord's compassion and understanding for women of your trade. It will be easier for a whore of simple prayer to enter the kingdom of heaven on that day than a faithless bishop."
         In that simple promise, Mother felt a lifetime of shame, regret and uncertainty depart from her burdened soul. She knew in that moment that this strangely attired, self possessed young woman would forever claim a special affection in her heart. When Roland had informed her of the foreigner's pending visit, doubt and indecision had grasped her in a fist of anxiety. Presently hope and trust had loosed this grip and she quietly thanked the Almighty for gently encouraging her to place all of her faith in this mystifying young woman.
         Roma began to rummage through her belongings until she came upon an unembellished pouch. It sagged to a bulge at the base and was tied with only a thin leather cord. The table groaned under its weight as she placed it atop a stack of papers.
         "I understand you've a teacher amongst you," she prompted.
         "Isabella," Mother replied, "Her husband divorced her when she was unable to bear children and threw her out onto the street without coin or clothing," she explained, her defined jaw set hard in disgust.
         "Remove her from the rotation," Roma instructed gently, "Place this pouch in your safe. Let none know you have it. There are forty thousand ducats within," she added and the coffee-skinned woman blanched at so incomprehensible an amount of money, "Isabella is to teach all of your girls to read and write. During the day she is to act as minder and teacher to all the children sired under this roof by fathers who will never acknowledge them and give them the education and opportunities in life they deserve by birthright. Use the coin to underwrite medical expenses. Buy good, nutritional food at the market each Saturday. Give each of the girls a little extra every week on top of wages. Use it to improve your lives and your minds," she counseled the brothel madam with astute acumen and profound sensitivity.
         For several moments Mother was rendered mute, large glistening tears pooling in her wide, dark eyes. The breadth of Roma's generosity was so unexpected that she had not the words to express her gratitude.
         "You will never know what this means to my girls," she finally spoke, her voice trembling, "The children," she stammered, "This will mean everything to the children," she took Roma's hand when words failed her and squeezed it. Her younger companion smiled tenderly.
         "Tell no one of this," Roma advised, "Not even Father Roland."
         "It is not...," Mother's voice trailed off, her brow suddenly dipped in concern.
         "Stolen?" Roma ventured. She shook her head, "No. The money is mine," she reassured her, "But if none but you and I know of it then none can come to your place of business looking to take it by whatever means they deem necessary. Money is at once a blessing and a burden."
         "Why so much? Why would you give it to us? Why not to those of the community who, though poor like us, are hard working and abstain from gleaning a living through immoral means?" Mother's curiosity got the better of her.
         "Why not you?" Roma countered, "The world may condemn and decry you but only God has the authority to judge. More appropriately, do you think God wouldn't judge me if I didn't help you? You are no less deserving of his mercy and kindness than any other living soul and I would be remiss and grossly arrogant to assume that the currency at my disposal is also at my discretion to determine to whom it goes. Why so much? Because the only thing money is good for is helping to improve the lives of others. I have everything I want and it has nothing to do with the accumulation of wealth. I believe this money has come to me that I might simply pass it on to those who need it more than I."
         Mother shook her head in astonished bewilderment.
         "You are a revelation and a mystery, child," she surmised, her eyes glinting with a wisdom gained through a lifetime of hardened experience. Roma smiled again, an unassuming, uncritical beam of quiet contentment. An unforeseen thought shifted her attention to an unrelated matter.
         "When I came, a man was leaving," she began, her brow furrowed in concentration, "Tall. Light hair. About yay broad at the shoulder," she indicated this with hands spread, "Who was that?" she inquired. Mother smiled, noting Roma's attempt to disguise her inquiry as nothing more than mere curiosity.
         "You mean Michael," the older woman replied, grinning with such perceptiveness that Roma felt exposed, "Gorgeous young man, that," she added. Roma blushed.
         "I saw him in the church earlier this week," Roma stumbled over her explanation with a haste that betrayed her keen curiosity, "I...I just didn't expect to see him here," she concluded quickly, averting her gaze.
         "You'd be surprised how many good churchgoing folk grace my door, child," Mother replied dryly, drawing out Roma's tortured anticipation before deciding to end her torment, "His father was a great patron of ours. Michael, on the other hand, merely ministers to our medical needs. No doctor within a hundred miles will tend us. He is skilled in making and applying the salves and poultices we're oft in need of. Some of my clients can be a little heavy of hand but the ill treatment my girls receive mostly arrives in the form of visiting sailors who've been at sea too long or merchants passing through on their way to Milford or Sway. Regular clients know I don't tolerate that behavior and that I'd close my doors to them should they rough up my girls. Drifters come and go but once, knowing they've no cause to worry about being banned on account of violence, as they're not likely to be back anyways," Mother explained, "Most folk know Michael's association with my house is a purely chaste one and he's more than once intervened when the demon drink has caused one or more of my usually cordial clients to turn to thuggery, so you might say he is something of a minder as well as a healer."
         Roma's guilt surged. Michael's exit from the bordello had prompted her to jump to the most obvious conclusion. Her conjecture could not have been further from the truth. She took a deep breath, regret pummeling her conscience like the clanging of a great gong. She was guilty of falsely judging the man in an instant and of failing to recognize how lofty her own sense of spiritual superiority had soared. Deflated by the sharp reminder of her very human imperfections, her previously haughty self-assessment plummeted back to earth to takes its place amongst those of her fellows.          Her readiness to conclude the coachman's presence at the bordello was carnal in nature delivered an acute but necessary sting to her unrecognized spiritual vanity - she was guilty of committing the very same sin she repeatedly condemned many of her Church contemporaries of perpetrating.
         She promised herself she would seek out the carriage driver and apologize for her conceit. It was a habit of hers that originated in childhood. The Abbess had taught her the value of self-effacement in the act of apologizing for wrongs committed either in spirit or in person. To repent and petition forgiveness from those wronged both humbled and restored the soul, serving as a poignant aide memoire that even those called into the service of God were terribly flawed.








"Quit it!" Sophia insisted, swatting her cousin's arm as he pinched her again. Dairmid giggled.
"Don't be such a girl," he teased, his hand reaching out once again. The young girl shot him a cursory glare that made him rethink his decision to rib her. She looped her arm gingerly through her basket once again, careful not to bump and bruise the delicate mushrooms they had gathered.
"I am a girl!" she asserted, shoving his shoulder, "If I drop these because of your tomfoolery then I'll tell mother and you won't get any of her potato and mushroom pies." The threat alone was enough to stem the portly boy's badgering. If there was one thing Dairmid took seriously, it was food.
The youngsters continued their trek through Roydon Woods in jovial companionship. They speculated on the rumored kiss between Nathaniel D'Arby and Arrabella Bundy behind the old maple tree near Buckland Rings, each emphatically stressing their undisguised disgust at the entire institute of kissing. They tested one another on their times tables. When boredom threatened to intrude upon their long walk, they even resorted to discussing at length their uncle's sermon from the previous Sunday, Dairmid performing an amusing, spontaneous parody of Roland's delivery. This avenue of entertainment exhausted, he returned to the one topic of discussion of which he never tired - food. Sophia rolled her eyes.
A flicker of movement caught Dairmid's eye and he stopped short. Peering past his cousin, he glimpsed it once again but could not fix upon the source. A dark haze began to take shape no more than forty feet from them, its coalescing form partially concealed by a screen of brush and foliage.
His complexion pale, his expression stricken, he seized Sophia's hand, causing her to drop her basket.
"Oh Dairmid!" she admonished sternly, but before she could reprimand him further he had broken into a run, pulling his vexed cousin behind him.
"Pacematcher!" he wheezed, his throat constricted with terror. As she stumbled on blindly through the dense woodland behind him, the young girl craned her neck to catch a glimpse. Her pulse quickened and her head throbbed at the sight of the ghostly form keeping apace with their flight. It did not bob up and down as one in a steady gait. Rather, it glided, neither branch nor bush obstructing its path. It deathly grey cloak did not ripple behind as it would were it subject to the passage of air flow. She could not see its face. Instead, the cowl of its cloak was filled with darkness, like a small pocket of impenetrable night where the figure's head should be.
Sophia had never seen the apparition. Some of the first to have seen it, like Dairmid, called it the Pacematcher. Recently the children had begun to refer to it as Death Face following the outcome of Seraphina Willows' recent experience.
"Run," Dairmid urged, putting on a burst of speed uncharacteristic of his squat, roundish build. He had his mother's butter cookies to thank for that.
In spite of the rumors that the Pacematcher never actually approached but rather kept apace, Sophia quailed at the sight of the towering specter. Its vaporous form trailed a full foot from the ground away into pale tendrils of haze where its feet should have been. A tomb-cold dread filled her and she gripped her cousin's hand all the tighter as they fled the silent wraith...









Wally Barlen trudged through New Forest with all the grace and deportment of a bear. He peered up into the leafy canopy overhead, his leathery, brine-weathered face wrinkling into a frown. It was twilight. He must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. It was only noon when he had entered the immense woodland at what had seemed only an hour ago. He shrugged, giving it no further thought. He must have been daydreaming to pass the time and failed to keep to the main path. His thoughts often drifted back to those days as second mate on Ephron Rhys-Huntington's glorious True North. Now that was a ship. And what a captain. Ultimately a dreadful financier. Pity. Ah, but what a captain!
         A rustle behind him saw him cast an absent-minded glance over his shoulder.
         His heart lurched in his deep barrel chest.
         Not ten feet behind him an enormous black dog had emerged from the forest onto the path. It stood stock still, its unblinking eyes fixed on the burly seaman. It was the animal's eyes as much as its size that alarmed the seasoned sailor. They looked directly into his, as though something eerily intelligent regarded him. The dog, powerful at the shoulder, like Old Mick Minchenburry's staffy, was easily the length and breadth of a small pony.
         No stranger to dogs, Wally held the animal's gaze to communicate his dominance. The indication of fear or submission at times caused these natural born fighters to attack. Slowly turning back to the path, his heart railing against his rib cage, Wally Barlen resumed his journey, striding confidently so that the beast might understand that he was unafraid to turn his back to it.
         Pad. Pad. Pad.
         Shoulders braced instinctively, his hands jammed in his coat pockets, Wally Barlen glanced back briefly. The dog had begun to follow, its eyes set with intent.
         It was a leviathan. It moved effortlessly and with lithe grace.
         Returning his attention to his route, Wally Barlen's breath quickened, along with his pace. Something menacing emanated from the dog, something that turned his blood to ice and beaded his brow with sweat. Nothing about the dog's behavior instilled within him the clawing trepidation that gripped him. Rather it was as though pure malice radiated from it.
         Pad. Pad. Pad.
         The dog's pace accelerated to match its quarry.
         Glancing back again, Wally Barlen could have sworn it had closed the gap slightly. He flinched when struck by several large, unexpected, watery missiles. And then the rain began to fall steadily. Reflexively pulling his beanie down over his perspiration slick brow, he began to trot down the path, hoping desperately that the dog would be driven to shelter by the shower.
         Pad. Pad. Pad.
         In dismay, Wally Barlen noted that the dog appeared oblivious to all but him.
         And then he stopped suddenly. Without balking, the dog stopped several paces behind him. Unaccustomed to experiencing the depth of fear to which he was subject, Wally Barlen felt the course hairs on his arms bristle as he noted that the dog was not wet. It stood in the same rain shower as he and already his coat was soaked through, but the dog remained dry. It was then that he observed with horror that its flanks did not heave with the intake of breath. It was like a statue. The realization struck him like a wall of green water surging over a ship's bow.
         The animal that followed him was no animal at all. It was not a living thing of bone and flesh. It was something else. Something unnatural. Something that trailed him like a hunter, something whose sole purpose was to stalk the living.
         Wally Barlen broke into a sprint. Periodically he looked back over his shoulder to gauge the dog's distance, only to witness an anomaly he had failed to see earlier. The path was closing behind the pursuing dog. In spite of the drumming rain, he could hear the groan of shifting earth, the strain of timber, the snap of breaking roots, as trees, shrubs and undergrowth uprooted themselves, moved and re-rooted the cord-like tendrils of their trunks, obscuring the path behind the dog. This spectacular display of nature impossibly animated spiked both fear and speed in the seaman.
         His chest heaving with exertion, he felt certain the colossal dog was all but on top of him when suddenly he broke free of the forest and sprawled onto the grass of an abutting meadow. Involuntarily yelping, he threw himself onto his back and raised his arms to shield his face, bracing for the crushing impact of the attack.
         He was met with nothing but a pleasant breeze warmed gently by the mid afternoon sun. Squinting, he peered at the sky, his eyes assaulted by the light. A cloudless blue sky hung overhead. He continued to draw racked breaths in shuddered gasps. Several feet beyond him at the edge of the forest, the rain pelted down. Looking over the treetops, he saw nothing but blue sky. The forest was dark, as though enveloped in a blanket of night. Outside its boundaries the sun had been barely toppled from its zenith. The rain pouring down in the forest fell from somewhere high up in the canopy, not from above it. The darkness within extended from the moss pocked forest floor to its densely meshed leafy awning, and not beyond it. It was a terrain unto itself, existing within and yet not of the natural order.
         Slowly Wally Barlen arose on unsteady feet. The dog was nowhere in sight. Something gave him the inexplicable sense that it did not - could not - exist outside the forest. Hesitantly he approached the edge of the forest. The path he had taken no longer existed. The rain fell hard right to the edge of the forest but not one inch beyond it. Had he ventured a toe within, it would have been steeped in shadow, as though cloaked by night. Looking up through the forest canopy he could see the stars of a night sky beyond as the rain clouds began to disperse. He backed away cautiously, attempting to swallow past the lump wedged in his throat.
         They had all heard the stories since returning from sea a week back. It was just as Skinny Dick Cartright had said on Tuesday eve in the Solent Way Inn as they drank to the success of their latest voyage - the world was going mad and the drain about which they were all circling was centred in the sinister woodlands of the beleaguered port town of Lymington.









Roma drew little attention as she traversed the narrow cobbled streets of the tiny port town, mainly because the chestnut stole wrapped around her shoulders draped almost to her knees, obscuring her unusual attire. She tossed the hood back. Though it protected her eyes from the glare of the heavily overcast morning, it shrouded her vision and she did not fancy an obstructed view of her surroundings - not since that familiar, sinking feeling had returned.
         She took a deep breath as she made her way to the docks. The fine hairs on her arms bristled and her scalp tingled. Gooseflesh dimpled her skin despite the warmth that her clothing provided. Her chest felt tight but she moved with purpose and discipline, proceeding with her plans in spite of the acute unease that bore through her. Sometimes it resulted in the inevitable, sometimes it disappeared without incident. There was never any way of knowing until she heard that sound.
         Roland had directed her to the tavern at which the carriage drivers stationed their transports when not in operation. A small, neat inn called the Seaspray, it was owned and managed by the priest's sister, a woman by the name of Maude McSweeney. It enjoyed a thriving trade for although Maude did not charge the carriage drivers a docking fee for stationing their carriages down the port side of the establishment, they were one and all frequent patrons of her bistro. She had even bought more than a dozen sturdy outdoor benches and chairs for customers to enjoy their meals in the fresh open air of the broad, paved boardwalk in front of the tavern. More often than not they proved necessary in order to provide seating for patrons when the inn itself was filled to capacity during the lunch hour rush. Its location on the docks often drew weary, footsore sailors who had endured too many months of stale ships provisions. Maude's famed cuisine was rumored to be exceptional for such an affordable price. The drivers, in unspoken acknowledgement of Maude's generosity for their rent-free station, were quick to quell any brawls or violence that broke out before too much damage was inflicted on the premises. The presence of these unofficial minders often deterred would-be rabble rousers.
         Roland had informed Roma that she might find Michael there. In spite of the oppressive sense of danger that flanked her, she continued on undeterred. She had an apology to make and she would not be able to return either to her work or her investigation until she had taken measures to make amends.
         Exiting a steep alleyway, her hair was blown back off her face by the gusty onshore wind washing over the busy port. More than a dozen ships of varying size and condition bobbed drowsily in their docks as diligent dockworkers, milling like ants seeking high ground before rain, ferried crates and cartons back and forth between cargo holds and the massive warehouses lining the waterfront. A low distant rumble out to sea alerted all to the coming showers.
         Her eyes swept across the docks until she located the inn. Several patrons enjoyed outdoor dining without heed for the foulness of the weather or the constant thrumming of shouts and activity on the docks. Relieved, she located the man she sought and began the short walk to the small table at which he dined alone.
He had finished his meal and appeared lost in thought, his gaze directed out to sea.
         As she drew closer he looked up. Her timorous smile caught him off guard and he cast a glance over his shoulder, almost certain she must be smiling at someone beyond him. Turning back he could see clearly now that her warm, dark eyes were fixed on him and he absently straightened slightly. His chest constricted suddenly as her gait balked and stopped. Something was very, very wrong.
         A bone jarring jolt slammed through Roma as though she had been doused in icy water. Her pulse quickened and she dragged her gaze from the handsome carriage driver. Eyes darting to and fro, she scanned her immediate surroundings before widening her search to the rising slopes beyond the docks.
         It was close. Her skin prickled and her wind blushed complexion emptied of color as she shook off a momentary fear-induced immobilization. Swallowing hard, she searched again. The most debilitating aspect of the fear - sensing it but failing to locate it - meant that it might be a mile away or it might be right beside her. She could fall victim to it before she had even laid eyes on it.
         Her oak dark eyes widened imperceptibly and her pupils expanded.
         Without hesitating, she rushed forward. On an impulse that was as bewildering as it was pleasurable, she kissed the unsuspecting carriage driver, not as one greeting a friend but rather as lovers reunited. She was surprised to find that although momentarily taken unawares, she soon found the intensity of her affections returned and a surge of unexpected exhilaration flooded her. For the longest moment she surrendered to the elation of this intimacy, for she had never kissed a man before and certainly not with the kind of passion that had drawn the attention of several onlookers.
         Then she heard it. The sound she loathed and dreaded most. It was not like any sound borne of the natural world. But then it was made by a thing spawned wholly from a place of darkness. It was a rapid, irregular clicking, like the dull clack of two spoon backs percussing erratically. Interposed over this hollow clicking was a shallow wheeze like a massive pair of lungs straining to draw air through a constricted throat. Like a creature dying. The sound was entirely alien and unmistakably threatening.
         Roma kissed the driver again, this time with greater intensity until a shrill hiss recoiled from her immediate proximity, retreating some several yards distant. She drew back from her stunned companion and sunk into the chair opposite him, her hand fiercely clutching his to maintain contact. Before he could even collect his thoughts, she leant across the table and met the pale blue hue of his eyes with a gaze so intense it paralyzed him.
         "Please pretend that you know me," she whispered through a shuddered intake of breath, her eyes periodically darting to a fixed point some distance beyond him. He squeezed her hand and nodded, leaning forward to collect her other hand in his as though they were more than merely familiar with one another, "There's a man," she began, taking a deep breath to steady her voice, "There's a man following me. If he thinks you and I are...together...he will stay away," she implored.
         She heard the hiss again and flinched but the next chain of events took her so completely by surprise that she was struck dumb for several moments afterwards. Her attractive companion turned his head, as though having heard something curious. Abruptly he surged to his feet with a force that flung his chair aside.
         "What the hell is that?" he cried out in astonished horror. Roma's breath congealed in her lungs. Peering up at the tall driver she followed his gaze to its target. He was rigid, as one braced for impact.
         "You can see it?" she whispered in amazement.
         Several tables away stood a creature of indescribable horror. Humanoid in form, it had the appearance of a rotting corpse but the alertness and manner of an animal poised for flight. A grotesque abomination, its scabrous scalp was poked with oozing patches of decay amidst tufts of wispy grey hair. Its flesh was cadaverous - dull grey, rotting through to exposed bone in several places. Its clothing was shredded and disintegrating as though it had crawled from the very earth of the grave. Its teeth were as fangs, filed to points. It stooped slightly as though bearing a disfigurement of the spine and its fingers were elongated and taloned.
         It was the creature's face, however, that instilled a terrible dread in any that perceived it. Its expression contorted into an expression that combined a humorless grin, a sneer and a grimace. No human face could replicate it. The corners of its mouth were drawn up so high they appeared snagged by invisible barbs, transforming the creature's ‘smile' into an appalling parody.
         It was with almost equal shock that the creature realized the driver could see it. Its expression transfigured into an alarming snarl and it dropped to a primal crouch. Its neck craned to one side to glimpse the wide eyed woman before it hissed threateningly at them both, abruptly fleeing on all fours with such inhuman speed that it covered several hundred yards in just a few heartbeats. It disappeared into the dense vegetation of a steep hillside against which the village perimeter snugged.
         His complexion drained of color, the startled driver looked around. Every other man, woman and child in his vicinity carried on their discussions, ate their meals and conducted their business as though nothing had happened.
         "They cannot see it," Roma explained softly, reaching out to take his hand again. Her touch reanimated him and he turned slowly, his expression baffled and horrified. Awkwardly he picked up his chair and sank into it, "Until today, no one has ever seen it. No one but me." Roma could not take her eyes from the driver's azure washed orbs.
         "I thought you said a man was following you," he stammered, slowly collecting himself following the disturbing encounter.
         "Until now no other but I have ever been able to see it. I was being followed, yes, but I had to tell you that it was a man because you would have thought me mad had I told you that I was being hunted by a malformed corpse whose speed and abilities were spawned outside of Creation," she replied. Again he squeezed her hand in reassurance.
         "Are you alright?" he asked, rapidly recalling the dire fear he had seen on her face earlier. She smiled appreciatively.
         "Mores the point - are you?" she countered gently, "I've had many an encounter with that thing before. I'd almost forgotten how horrifying it was to have looked upon it for the very first time," she apologized.
         "What was that..." he struggled to articulate his question, "...that sound?" he stammered, his brow steeped in confusion.
         "I don't know but I always hear it when it draws close," she replied. He took a deep breath, recalling the instant of their meeting.
         "Why did you kiss me?" he asked softly, bewildered.
         "When I was ten feet away from you, it was perched on that rooftop over there," she pointed to a residence on the slope beyond the warehouse district some four hundred yards distant, "By the time I reached you, it was standing right behind you," she disclosed and a fist of shock punched the air from his lungs, "It's hard to explain, but it doesn't see this world or anything in it the way we do - in tangibles, shapes, angles, solids, colors. It navigates only in emotions. It is empowered and drawn by dark emotions - fear, deceit, betrayal, rage. Positive emotions like love and tenderness, selflessness and kindness repel it. It fled from me because of your compassion and empathy towards me. Your humanity drove it off. To it such things are a poisonous fume. It cannot bear to be within range of these emotions," she leant back in her chair and took a slow breath, her eyes flickering in the direction it had fled, "It will return when my fears resurface: when I am alone, when I feel vulnerable, when I begin to doubt, when I begin to dread its return. Imagine there is a fine thread linking it to me. No matter how far I flee from it geographically, no matter how finely that thread is stretched, it always finds me. There is no place on earth to which I can flee that I can ever escape it."
         Michael's expression darkened in deep disquiet. Still he did not release her hand and she did not wish it so.
         "What can I do?" he asked, clearly stunned, "How can I help you?".
         "You can't," she replied sadly, "It is at war with me. I am its only target. Beyond that, I do not know what it wants with me - why it chose me."
         "I can protect you," he asserted, his penetrating gaze perforating her composure. Again she was riveted to her seat by the unshakable sense that he was immensely powerful, but not in any conventional way, rather in some impalpable respect. She shook her head resignedly.
         "For one, there is no lock or bolt that can keep it out, no weapon of this world that can harm it, and no ritual or exorcism that can expunge it. It can appear at will, wherever and whenever it chooses. My only defense against it is discipline - the will to refuse to fear it. Fear is the cancer it consumes to empower itself. The greater my fear, the closer it can get to me. My very first encounter with it took place three years ago. I was so terrified by the sight of it and the sheer malevolence that poured forth from it that it got close enough to do this," she looked around to ensure that their conversation drew no attention before subtly pulling her stole away and slipping her tunic from her shoulder to reveal the joined twin arcs of a dotted scar in the flesh there. The usually imperturbable driver winced at the sight of the punctuated flesh. It was a bite mark made by a mouth filled with filed teeth, he realized.
         "It bit you?" he murmured in mortified disbelief. She nodded, modestly pulling up her clothing to conceal the scar.
         "Apart from you, there are only two other people in all the world that know of the existence of the Smiling Man," she replied. His brow furrowed.
         "The Smiling Man," he repeated, baffled by her unusual description of it. The baleful menace it had exuded utterly contradicted the name by which she had addressed it and she recognized his incomprehension. She had seen it only twice before.
         "Its ‘smile' is anything but genial, but that's the image that remains with me even months after I have last seen it. That vile, perverse grin that promises harm," she explained as best she could, "This is the second time you have come to my rescue in a week. I am so terribly sorry to have made your acquaintance under such deplorable circumstances." He smiled for the first time since their encounter with the Smiling Man.
         "There were elements to our meeting that weren't so deplorable," he reminded her and she blushed, averting her gaze as she recalled their kiss.
         "I'm so sorry," she stammered, "You must have thought me mad." He shook his head.
         "I wasn't doing a whole lot of thinking at the time," he teased and although her face flushed a deeper shade of beet, she was grateful of his valiant attempt to assuage her embarrassment by lightening the awkwardness of the moment.
         "You must be wondering why it was that I kissed you," she replied, regaining her composure swiftly, "The second time I encountered it I did not know then what I know now about defending myself. It was the middle of the night, I was still awake, reading. My cat was in my lap and had stopped purring. I felt every one of its hairs stand on end. Its ears flattened and it growled as though nose to nose with an unseen dog. Then I heard the sound, the clicking wheezing sound. A moment later I felt it, felt how close it was to me. I pulled my cat into my arms and kissed the top of his head to show it I loved it and to say goodbye. In an instant the Smiling Man screamed and fled. After the second encounter I consulted with a man knowledgeable in this manner of...phenomenon. He did not tell me how he knew of the Smiling Man, but he did tell me how to arm myself against it. It was he who told me that the kiss drove it off - that any display of affection, love, passion, any positive emotion would ward off an immediate attack. And then he schooled me in the mental and spiritual discipline I would need to exercise to keep it away as best I could."
         Her handsome champion took a long, slow breath and rubbed his furrowed brow. Roma fell silent. She granted him this natural lapse in conversation to process all he had seen and heard.
         "Who schooled you?" he queried.
         "That I cannot tell you. I am honor bound," she apologized, "But there is one other who knows of the Smiling Man. He is unable to see it but he believes me unquestioningly, especially after he received counsel from my...confidant," she added carefully, "Father Roland knows of its existence," she smiled at the mention of his name. Even the memory of him brought her comfort.
         "You've known him a long time," Michael deduced.
         "Since I was born," she confirmed, "He was my childhood mentor, my girlhood friend, and my brother in adulthood." Michael hoped his relief at learning that their relationship was purely platonic did not register on his face.
         "Is that why you're here?" he pressed softly, "Does it have something to do with this Smiling Man?".
         "Some of it," she professed, "I'm a scribe. I make my living traveling from parish to parish making copies of the Bible. Once I have transcribed it, an illuminator arrives to embellish it, it is blessed by the Church and then put into service. I am here to replace the parish Bible and from the sorry state in which I found it, it has seen better days," she clarified. He peered at her with piercing perception.
         "That's not all of why you're here," he asserted, unconvinced that he had heard the unabridged reason for her arrival.
         Roma made to rise but he secured her grasp.
         "I'm sorry," her voice faltered and she broke his gaze, "I've already said too much. Please accept my apology. I did not intend to involve you in this. I had no idea you would be able to see my tormentor. I came here to apologize for another matter entirely. I saw you exit Mother's place of business and wrongly concluded your reason for being there. I was presumptuous, judgmental and conceited and I wanted to make amends for accusing you in my heart of impropriety when I am far from blameless." She still could not bring herself to meet his perforating gaze.
         "Wait," he pleaded, "Don't go." She hesitated and met his imploring expression.
         "I don't know what implications will stem from your ability to see it and I am sick at heart to think I facilitated your meeting. Until I know more, I think it best I stay far from you. I can see it and it hunts me. I will not take the chance that your ability to see it means it will hunt you too. The less I see of you, the less likely you are to see it again," she replied hastily but still he would not release her hand. He shook his head slowly.
         "I am in this now," he reminded her, his tone devoid of blame, "Perhaps we stand a greater chance of combating it together. What if it is counting on division - on keeping you apart from others for fear you will bring it down upon them - to wear you down, to separate you from help?" he supposed. Roma ceased to resist his grasp and considered his logic. She cocked an eyebrow.
         "What are you suggesting? That I kiss you every time I see it?" she asked. He grinned mischievously, shrugging. Roma laughed, relieved once more that he had shattered the intensity of her alarm with his playful humor.
         "I could think of worse alternatives," he replied. She deliberated over the choice she faced for several long, heavy seconds before smiling at the handsome, enigmatic carriage driver. Something about him, something intangible, conveyed to the beautiful scribe that so much more than met the eye stirred beneath the surface of this unassuming coachman's calm exterior. She was unable to staunch her curiosity. And of course there was her very vivid recollection of his kiss.
         "My name is Roma," she introduced herself formally. She felt strangely connected to this man she knew nothing of. He smiled as though he had known her all his life, it was at once disconcerting and reassuring.
         "Michael," he replied warmly, "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Roma." She realized he still had her hand in his and curiously she had no inclination to reclaim it. Not just yet.
         "Have you any time free today?" she inquired, "If you are going to be involved in this, you need to know all of it. There is more to it than I have thus far disclosed."
         "For you, I have all the time in the world," he affirmed.

         For the remainder of the afternoon, Michael and Roma walked up and down the docks, a living pendulum of perpetual motion. Michael steadfastly kept Roma's hand in his. Though he knew his logic to be flawed, this small contact made him feel he could somehow protect her. She told him of her upbringing in a small convent in Florence, Italy, where she was deposited at birth, her mother dead from the rigors of labor, her father unable to acknowledge her. She recalled with fondness, however, her life in the cloister, one so spiritually fulfilling that she had taken her vows at fourteen and until three years ago had lived contentedly as a nun before leaving the order.
         "What made you want to leave?" he asked.
         "My cat," she replied. He frowned.
         "Your cat?" he ventured, wondering if something had eluded him.
         "In the cloister you must give up ownership of absolutely everything in order to serve God," she explained, the warmth of his hand in hers both comforting and soothing, "I did this without question for nine years. I had no attachment to material things. But one day a kitten wandered onto the grounds and I fell in love with him. I fed him, loved him, raised him, played with him. I named him Scram on account of having to tell him to scram whenever I was about to be discovered tending to him instead of my duties but eventually he would come when he heard ‘scram!' instead of darting off. Soon the Abbess became concerned because my attachment to the cat was becoming evidently personal. When she asked me if I could give him up, it struck me that I could not. It was not so much that I would miss its love and attention as I would miss loving and attending it. I knew in that moment that I was not predestined for a lifelong commitment to serving God in the order. I felt an overwhelming capacity to want to love, to give love. As long as I felt that longing, I could not properly discharge my spiritual duties. So I took Scram and I left the cloister the very next day."
         Roma elaborated on life beyond the cloister. On the day she was born a young seminary novice, barely ten years of age, had been charged with her education. His name was Roland Bernard. Throughout her life and his vocation he would remain her teacher and confidant. When she left the convent, already a skilled scribe, he lobbied the Holy See to appoint her to travel from parish to parish wherever she was needed across Christendom to transcribe Bibles in preparation for the great illuminators to complete before they were blessed and put into service. It both enabled her to see the world and provided a modest income. It suited Roma perfectly for she experienced a freedom of which she could never have conceived whilst maintaining close ties to the Church and continuing to serve God free from the stringent fetters of her former vows.
         She went on to detail the other dimension to her work, one for which she had such considerable talent that it almost eclipsed her formal scribing employment. She demonstrated such a keen predisposition for it that even the Vatican approved, albeit unofficially, of her pursuit of this vocation.
         She investigated abnormal occurrences of a supernatural proclivity. A new term had been created to describe it - paranormal activity. Following a full investigation, she would report her findings to the Vatican. The Holy See would send an emissary knowledgeable in that particular area to contain and quell each supernatural outbreak. She had investigated demon possessions, purported stigmata, sightings of the dead, allegations of strange aberrations in nature. The scope of this paranormal activity was almost inestimable.
         This particular strain of her work had brought her to Lymington and reunited her with her much beloved mentor and friend. Her work as a scribe, though genuine, was largely a diversion to legitimize her presence in the small port town.
         "So there is truth to the rumors that something stalks our town?" he queried. He was clearly disinclined to take idle gossip at face value. Roma admired that. It was a rarity among society as a whole, which so often disintegrated into mob hysteria, becoming irrationally crippled by baseless fears steeped in hearsay. Had most human beings seen what she had witnessed, their unfounded panic would be more realiztically likened to a child's birthday party. She had experienced horrors both indescribable and unrepeatable. There was terrible evil at play in the world and she had seen the very worst of its consequences.
         "Usually my investigations revolve around one or two, at most three, preternatural events in the one region over a short period of time - three, maybe four weeks ordinarily," she divulged, his grip tightening faintly as her fingers flexed in his hand. The gusty onshore wind jabbed at their hair and clothing and Roma absently moved a little closer to her companion. "Roland has informed me of the events which have plagued this port in the last seven months. They number in the dozens. I have never seen anything like it. I am daunted somewhat in knowing where to begin my investigation. There is something here that has made Lymington a hotspot for heightened paranormal activity. Not since the time of Christ has there been so much evil evidently at work in the world. My biggest problem is that Christ no longer walks this plane as a flesh and bone intercessor between these forces and those they seek to harm."
         "It was when you began this work," Michael interjected, "that the Smiling Man first surfaced, wasn't it?" His insight was at once refreshing and impressive.
         "'Surfaced' is quite the apt description," Roma noted with new consideration, "since it most likely clawed its way from the belly of Hell to ascend into this higher mortal plane."
         For the rest of the day they wandered the docks, stopping occasionally at a pier stalls to satiate spent appetites. Roma experienced an immense relief in the mere retelling of her life and work. The nature and gravity of her calling had meant that, outside of her friendship with Roland and alliance with the holy Roman Catholic Church, she had never disclosed her true vocation to another living soul. Until now. Something about the unfathomable coachman bespoke an inimitable trustworthiness and stoicism of dependability. She allowed herself to briefly delight in forging a bond with another human being. Friendship had been a luxury her trade had not lightly tolerated, for the nature of her work demanded secrecy and confidentiality, and her constant geographical mobility was not conducive to sustaining long term associations. Ironically, she had left the order upon recognizing her own capacity to love only to enter a vocation that would largely preclude all opportunities to do so. She wondered if he might similarly savor this small measure of friendship or whether the yoke of his enforced involvement would generate eventual resentment towards her. She could not have guessed then, their acquaintance scarcely hours old, that he was to become the centre of her world and subsequently shape her whole future. His entire existence was a series of as yet unactuated revelations so portentous in their corollary that they would utterly dwarf even the greatest of her extraordinary achievements. He was unaware of the depth of his own import, as were most great men of history unencumbered by vanity, ambition and conceit.
         It had all begun with a chance encounter in a small church on a rainy afternoon. Little could they have surmised that their brief first meeting would culminate in a series of events so exceptional and inconceivable that years later even the Vatican would tremble before their puissance. Had they known the extent to which it would decimate them personally they might have reconsidered the choices they were to make. But in the moment of first contact, a crucial cog had turned and the machinery of destiny had rumbled to life on the great wheel of time.
         Only time would tell where fate would lead them.