Читать книгу Cemetery Silk - E. Joan Sims - Страница 5
ОглавлениеPrologue
Father Barnard could not sleep. His head ached, his pillow felt like a concrete block, and for some reason the new mattress his grateful congregation gave him last Christmas was no more comfortable than the hard cot he had slept on as a chaplain in the army. He tossed and turned until his bedclothes were wrinkled and twisted, but sleep would not come. He wondered why. It was so unlike him to have insomnia. And even though he usually boasted of a hearty digestion, his dinner of corned beef and cabbage was a sour memory that hovered, a dull burning pain, somewhere between heart and stomach. What was wrong, indeed?
His day had been a pleasant one, beginning with the christening of a chubby baby boy. The proud parents were a couple who had grown up in his church. He had watched as their puppy love developed into the lasting devotion that he had sanctified in a marriage ceremony two years before, and he was proud and happy to bless their new son.
It had been a lovely service—full of happy tears and laughter, and he remembered with a smile the warm sweet smell of the child. He felt his body relax and his mind slowly drift—floating through memories. Suddenly he recalled the thin, dry, hands of the old man grasping his with a strength that only the dying can muster.
Father Barnard sat bolt upright in bed and wiped the perspiration from his face. He fumbled about for the carafe of water his housekeeper always left for him on the bedside table and poured a glass, spilling half on the front of his pajamas before he got it to his mouth.
The old man! That was it—but surely as a priest he had done nothing wrong? It was God’s will: He giveth and He taketh away. A time to live and a time to die, that was what Father Barnard always preached. It was the old man’s time, and Father Barnard had merely gone to his hospital bedside at the request of a man in his parish to save his friend’s immortal soul. Where was the harm in that?
Oh! But those ancient eyes: so pale a blue they were almost clear—a window into a soul in pain.
The old man had no family. His wife was gone, and they had no children. There was no other immediate family, or so the parishioner had said. “He is alone. I am his only friend—his dear friend and companion. My wife and I love him like a father. We don’t want him to die without your blessing.”
Father Barnard shook his head in bewilderment. What was wrong with saving a soul? Besides, the bedside conversion assured the old man a Catholic funeral—the one Father Barnard had scheduled for ten o’clock tomorrow morning.
He put down the water glass and slipped back beneath the covers to close his eyes once again. He began a silent entreaty for sleep, but the old man’s eyes appeared unbidden behind his own eyelids. Against his will he recalled the sharp pain as the yellowed, unkempt nails dug into his arm in a desperate attempt to hold on to life. And sleep eluded him once more.