The Sixth Lamentation Read Free

on.’
    ‘The
sooner he leaves the better. Otherwise we risk protracted public fascination
with why he came here in the first place.’
    With a
tilt of the head the Prior drew Anselm away, leading him towards the stile gate
and the bluebell path. ‘I’m going to find out what the sisters think. They had
a Chapter this morning.’
    As they
walked through the grass, wet with dew, Anselm pursued his point. ‘If he’s
forced to go now, any uproar will be short-lived. And there is an explanation
we can give in the future if we get hammered for throwing an innocent man on to
the street.’
    ‘Which
is?’
    ‘This
is a monastery, not a remand home for the elderly’ Anselm was pleased with the
phrase. It was pithy and rounded: a good sound bite … prepared earlier.
    The
Prior nodded, mildly unimpressed. Anselm persevered, eyeing the Prior as he’d
often eyed judges in another life when trying to read their minds.
    ‘The
alternative is the other, longer horn. If he moves in, and that’s what it will
amount to, we’re in trouble. There could be a trial.’ Anselm paused. ‘Nothing
we say will convince anyone that we’re not on his side.’
    They
reached the stile and the Prior climbed over on to the path, gathering his
black habit under one arm, the white scapular thrown over one shoulder. Anselm
sensed him drifting away, chasing private thoughts. ‘We’ll find out more
tomorrow night. Detective Superintendent Milby’s coming at six. I’d like you
and Wilf to be there. Then we’ll have a Special Chapter. Let everyone know,
will you?’
    ‘Yes,
of course.
    Anselm
watched Father Andrew disappear along the path, across a haze of blue and
purple, his habit swaying in the breeze, his head bowed.
     
    2
     
     
    Anselm had met Detective
Superintendent Milby several times in the past. In those days Milby had been a
foot soldier with the drugs squad. He’d had long hair and dressed in jeans, but
had still managed to look like a policeman. Anselm had been a hack at the
London Bar and their meetings had been limited to the pro-forma
cross-examination about stitching up and excessive violence. Like all policemen
familiar with the courts,
    Milby
had taken it in his stride. That was well over ten years ago and they’d both
moved on since then.
    Leaning
against the stile gate, Anselm could almost smell the heavy scent of floor wax
from his old chambers, and hear again the raucous laughter of competing voices
in the coffee room. He smiled to himself, winsomely
     
    When Anselm left the Bar
it caused a minor sensation, not least because it was such a wonderful Robing
Room yarn. Since it was endemic to the profession to treat such things with
private gravity and public levity, Anselm only heard the lowered voices of
shared empathy: ‘Tell me, old son, is it true? You’re off to a monastery? I can
say this to you; we’ve all got secret longings. The job’s not everything …’
    Anselm
had knocked up ten years’ call but, unknown to his colleagues, had never fully
settled into harness. There was a restlessness that started to grow shortly
after he became a tenant. Imperceptibly he began to feel out of place, as if in
a foreign land. There was another language, rarely spoken, and he wanted to
learn it. Determined attempts to live a ‘normal’ life as a professional man
floundered at regular but unpredictable intervals. He could be waiting for a
taxi or heading off to court, doing anything ordinary, and he would suddenly
feel curiously alienated from his surroundings. It was a sort of homesickness,
usually mild, and occasionally acute. He later called these attacks by stealth ‘promptings’.
All Anselm knew at the time was that they were vaguely religious in origin. He
responded by purchasing various translations of the Bible and books on prayer,
as if the answer to the puzzle lay somewhere between the pages. On one occasion
he left a bookshop having ordered a thirty-eight volume edition of the Early
Church Fathers. They