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A Newly Crimsoned Reliquary, The Monastery Murders #4

By Donna Fletcher Crow

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One
St. Frideswide Day
“Now don’t get into mischief.” Antony kissed Felicity on her forehead, then lingered a moment on her lips.
She broke away with a chuckle. “Me? I’m spending a few days in a convent, then joining your seminar. What could possibly be less mischief-making?”
Antony’s forehead furrowed as he folded her into his arms. “I can’t imagine. But it seems you always manage to find a way.”
“Not true,” Felicity started to protest, but her words were muffled in his hug.
“Never mind,” he said as he released her. “Go get your translating done for the good sisters. I’ll be there with my students before you know it.”
He watched as Felicity tossed her long blond plait over her shoulder then picked up her small bag as the train drew up to the open platform that served as the Kirkthorpe Station. She turned back for one last quick kiss. “I’ll miss you.”
“You’d better.” He started to wave her away, then paused. “It’s only a few days. I’ll be there for All Soul’s.” He knew the assurance was more for himself than for her.
“Don’t worry, silly,” she mouthed through the glass as the door slid shut between them.
But his furrowed brow spoke his anxiety.
He watched her go, his heart in his throat. How much his life had changed since that glorious, maddening woman had stormed into his life. His days would feel hollow until they were together again, but at least it would give him a chance to catch up on his work. He needed to spend some serious, quiet time in study. His desk was piled high with essays in need of marking, he had stale lecture notes that needed redoing for next term, final preparations to make for next week’s seminar with the somewhat inflated title of “God in Oxford.”
With a final wave in the direction of the train already disappearing down the tracks, Antony turned to walk back up the hill toward the Community of the Transfiguration. He was still running through his mental to do list when his mobile rang. He answered without noticing who was calling him.
He felt his whole body chill at the sound of female sobs. “Felicity?” He almost yelled. What could have happened so soon? If there had been a train wreck surely he would have heard it.
“Forgive me. Such a lack of decorum.” A loud sniff interrupted the apology.
He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the screen. Not Felicity. A much older woman. The voice sounded familiar but the number displayed meant nothing to him. “Who is this?”
Now the voice was brisk with control, command even. “Antony, I shouldn’t have expected even you to have forgotten.” Forgotten to walk the dog, forgotten to put out the trash, forgotten to eat your Brussels sprouts…?
“Aunt Beryl. Forgive me. I—it’s been a long time.” Long time? How many years? How did she even have his number? It must have been on some document. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s Edward. The ambulance just left.”
“Ambulance?”
“He was in the garden. Deadheading the roses. I took him his tea. He was…” The voice wavered dangerously.
Dead? Don’t let her say dead.
“In a heap,” she finished with tight control.
“Aunt Beryl, is there anyone there with you? Anyone you can ring? What about Mrs. Dwyer next door?”
“She died three years ago.” Voice sharp. Criticism clear.
“The vicar at St. Dunstan’s?” That should be safe enough. Beryl was meticulous in her religious duty. As she was in all duty.
“Yes. He’s on his way. I must put the kettle on for him.”
No, let him make the tea for you, Antony wanted to protest, but knew activity would be therapeutic. “Yes. That’s good. You do that.”
“I must go now. I just thought you should know.”
“Yes, yes. Thank you for ringing. Do let me know—” But the connection was dead.
Antony stood looking at the blank phone in his hand. He was amazed how shaken he felt. He thought he had put Blackpool and his antiseptic childhood behind him. But now it all came rushing back: cold baths in cold rooms, overcooked nutrition, reading approved books by a single lamp.
Little wonder his sister had cut all ties as soon as she was out of school. Gwena. Would Beryl have rung her? Should he try? How would he find her number? Where was she? The Internet might tell him if she was in a current production.
Shaking his head he turned back up the hill toward the Community and College of the Transfiguration with a considerably slowed step.
#
All the way across Yorkshire, Antony’s words rang in Felicity’s ears and his funny, lopsided, slightly anxious smile produced a mirror image on her own lips. She found herself counting, for probably the millionth time, the months on her fingers. Middle of October to January sixth—twelve weeks. Twelve weeks! And she would be Mrs. Antony Sherwood. Hmm, would that be Mrs. Father Antony? Mrs. Reverend Antony Sherwood? No, that sounded silly. But however it sounded, it certainly felt right. She hugged herself at the thought of being Antony’s wife. Just twelve weeks, she repeated.
And here she was headed away from him. No matter how enticing the assignment ahead of her was, she knew she’d left her heart in Kirkthorpe. ‘Silly,’ she chided herself. You’ll see him in just over a week.
Even with such hesitations, however, Felicity became aware of a mounting excitement when she changed trains at Huddersfield. Only one more stop and she would be in Oxford in less than four hours. Assuming all went according to schedule, of course.
Goodness, she hadn’t been back to the hallowed halls of her alma mater for more than three years. Yet in a way it seemed longer than that. In a sense it had been a lifetime. She smiled as visions of her undergraduate days studying Classics at Keble College flitted through her mind. It would be strange to be there without her friends who had returned to their homes or scattered to new adventures, yet those days would always be with her. And then her time teaching school in London, feeling more and more claustrophobic and bored until she took the incredible plunge of enrolling in a theological college run by monks in a monastery in Yorkshire…
She shook her head. It all still had moments of such unreality that she expected to wake up and find herself back home in Idaho with her quiet father, her overbearing mother, and her energetic brothers. Instead of pinching herself, however, she chose to buy a cup of steaming tea from the young attendant as the trolley came rattling down the aisle toward her. “And a Kit Kat bar,” she added, pulling out her wallet.
When she had been served she broke off one finger of chocolate and allowed herself to savor a few crispy bites before digging in her backpack and pulling out the letter from Mother Monica. Time to get to work. Or at least to get herself up to speed on the work she would be doing.
The Sisters of the Love of God, who were renown for their scholarly publishing on various topics of prayer, spirituality and the lives of saints, had been presented an early Latin manuscript of the life of Oxford’s patron saint and wanted to bring out a Life of St. Frideswide for the thirteen hundredth anniversary of the founding of her monastery from which the City of Oxford grew.
Felicity looked back at the letter in her hand. Yes, that was right, thirteen hundred years. Give or take a few. But, indeed Frideswide’s priory, where kings were known to have held several councils of state, had been established long before the city’s first written mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the year 912. Felicity shook her head wondering if the document she would be given to translate might actually be that old.
Whatever its age, Felicity still couldn’t believe the honor that she had been chosen to help with the translation. Although the learned sisters all had training in Latin and routinely conducted parts of their liturgy in that ancient language, they had requested the College of the Transfiguration to loan them a classical scholar to work alongside Sister Gertrude with the translation. Felicity liked to think that she was well qualified for the job in her own right, but she knew the fact that her church history lecturer, who happened to also be her future husband, had given her such a high recommendation hadn’t hindered her selection.
And she was determined to live up to that recommendation. She turned to the potted, if sketchy, information she had been able to find on St. Frideswide to read for background information, trying to flesh out her reading with the vivid images sheknew Antony would have used if he had been recounting the story himself.
The exercise kept her engrossed until the very proper recorded female voice rang through her carriage announcing their arrival at Oxford. Felicity grabbed her bag and was the first to jump off the train the minute it came to a halt. A sense of homecoming washed over her as she strode through the station and queued for a bus to take her to the city center. Security? Peace? Stepping back into more carefree days? She quizzed herself to define her feelings. Lost youth? She grinned. It couldn’t be all that lost—she wasn’t yet thirty.
Although she could have taken a bus all the way down Iffley Road to the convent in Fairacres, she had chosen to arrive early in order to give herself time to renew her acquaintance with the city. Just walking the bustling streets again, passing the ancient buildings, being part of the mix of students, tourists and residents that filled the city was so energizing. Such a contrast to the quiet times she had spent in her more recent studies tucked away in a monastery on a green hillside.
Well, quiet except for those three excursions chasing and being chased by murderers. With a determined shake of her head she put the darker side of those events out of her mind, choosing to retain only the learning she had acquired through those alarms and hugging to herself the wonderful relationship she and Antony had developed by sharing the harrowing events.
At the corner of Cornmarket and High Street she paused at Carfax Tower, which marked the center of Oxford. Carfax was the Roman designation for crossroads, and surely this was the busiest intersection in the city. She glanced up at the clock on the tower that was all that remained of St. Martin’s, which had once been the official church of the city for civic events. Ah, just a few minutes until noon. She would wait and hear the Quarter Boys strike the hour before she went on. The two Romanesque figures stood with their hammers at the ready below the motto Fortes est Veritas: The Truth is Strong.
Across the street the covered market brought back memories of her delight in finding bargains there in her undergraduate days. Maybe she would just have a quick look-in. She turned to cross the street, when the blue, scarlet and gold figures began striking the hour. She counted to six before the sound of bells drowned out everything else, as all across Oxford, from seemingly every tower, a glorious cacophony called everyone to stop and look upward.
Felicity stood still in the middle of the pavement and raised her face to the blue sky above the tower. The bells had been one of the things she had missed most about Oxford. The monastery had a single bell, rung to call worshipers to prayer, nothing like the glorious change-ringing from Oxford’s numerous towers that sang out over the city for every Sunday, holiday and civic occasion.
Somehow, though, this sounded different from the glorious change-ringing peals that always made Felicity think of a waterfall of crystal drops. This was no sprightly silver shower that lifted the spirits, but a measured peal sounding like an ominous warning, with only half of each stroke ringing brightly, the backstroke a muffled echo.
Then began a stately, single toll of the deep-toned tenor bell. Almost subconsciously Felicity counted as the tolls came, with perhaps ten seconds between each ring: two slow tolls, then a longer pause, the pattern repeated three times. When the final echo of the last muted knell faded, Felicity again turned her steps along the High Street.
How odd that her return to Oxford should be met with a muffled toll. She hadn’t heard muffled bells since she left. Although she had graduated thinking she would be a Latin teacher, it was really her time with the student chapel program which she attended because Bruno, one of her best friends, was involved, that had most influenced the path she was now on. Even then—before she discovered that she really believed—when she just thought things like muffling bells for All Soul’s Day and filling the chapel with hundreds of tiny candles for the carol service, were cool things to do—before she understood or cared about the meaning behind the symbolism—she was being formed in the path she was now following.
But that was in the past. And it was two weeks yet till All Soul’s Day. So what had it meant, this deadened ring emanating from Oxford’s towers?

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