Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 10

storm tore the whispered prayers from his thin, cracked lips, he sensed he heard God calling him to another home. As the faint sunlight slanted through a gap in the wild sky and shimmered on the sea, he knew that his earthly work was finally over.

They had only left him for a few minutes in order to fetch a jar of water from the boat, but when they struggled back up the steep slope to the top of the island, they knew at once he had left them. His lifeless body, now an almost weightless rag, lay crumpled on the bare, wet limestone just below the highest point of the island, the wind plucking jerkily at his sodden robes. Although they had always known that he would not be with them for much longer, the sight of his insensible body supine in front of them, the man who had been their leader for so many years, moved them to a profound sorrow. Falling on their knees and tearing their rough shifts, they wailed into the buffeting wind, so alone now on that remote island. Even as they did so, the charging ominous clouds opened and an angled, watery sun shafted through the heavens again and touched the old man’s corpse, for an instant illuminating in yellow-gold the place where he lay, catching the edges of his raiment almost like a halo.

In that moment Andreas knew what he must do. He would create a shrine to the old man’s memory, a simple monument here on the top of the island exactly where he had been taken from them, to remember his life, to commemorate his great

THE JOURNEY