Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [49]
No one knew who he was. He had a greatcoat over his soutane with its telltale red piping, and a big black umbrella to keep off the mist of rain. He looked much like everyone else on that soft day, hurrying toward a roof and a dry place to sit.
Father Timothy was blissfully unaware of the fly in his ointment. He looked out from the sacristy across a sea of faces—a church packed full, with people standing in the back and along the aisles—and knew the contentment of a man whose job is well done. The old pagan things were driven out. Ballynasloe was saved.
His vestments were waiting, with the server beside them, ready to help him into them. He did not just then recall the boy’s name. There were so many redheaded, freckle-faced, snub-nosed imps in the village. If he called out “Sean” or “Seamus” or “Patrick,” he had as good a chance as any of happening on the right one.
The boy greeted him with a gap-toothed grin. For a moment Father Timothy wondered how old he actually was. Those eyes were much too sly and knowing to belong to a child.
Children these days were abominably worldly and wise. Father Timothy nodded toward the vestments. “It’s time,” he said.
“Oh yes,” said the boy in the broadest brogue imaginable. “That indeed it is.”
A movement caught Father Timothy’s eye. He looked toward the corner and started.
The hermit was sitting there. He looked terribly young and pale, and in fact rather ill. He had a rose in his hand. Supernal sweetness wafted from it.
The hermit held out the rose. Father Timothy took it without suspicion. He was armored in the Lord. He had nothing to fear from any earthly thing.
A thorn pricked his finger. He hissed at the sting, and licked a drop of blood the exact same color as the rose. Its taste was supernally sweet. It made his head whirl.
Mass was beginning without him. He heard the voices of the choir. Had they ever sung so beautifully? They were like the voices of angels. The wheezy old organ lifted up the cry of trumpets and the shiver of harps.
He moved toward the door into the church. He had no memory of putting on any of it, but he was vested in shimmering white as befit a great celebration, a Mass of the Angels: the feast of the salvation of Ballynasloe.
The procession was waiting. They were all, like the server, vaguely familiar. They were dressed in white and carrying palms, considerably out of season but beautiful to see. Were those wings arching above their heads?
His heart swelled until it was ready to burst. Angels had come to celebrate with the mortal congregation. The church was full of them. They perched on the corbels of the arches and wreathed the pillars with heavenly garlands. They floated over the altar, a dense and whirling wheel of them, singing the Te Deum.
He lifted up his arms and sang with them, floating down the aisle in his escort of heavenly visitors. He danced and dipped and whirled, giddy with supernal joy.
FATHER TIMOTHY WAS STILL SINGING in his pleasant baritone as the monsignor’s companions helped him into the wagon. The straitjacket was just a precaution, the bespectacled medical man had assured the hermit. “It’s unlikely he’ll turn violent,” he said, “but the journey’s somewhat long, and he’s clearly not himself. Better be safe than sorry.”
“Do you think he’ll get better?” the hermit asked in honest concern.
The medical man shrugged. “Who’s to tell? Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. It’s in the hands of God.”
Maybe, thought the hermit, and maybe those hands had nothing to do with the Christian Deity in Whose name the priest had driven the faerie folk out of Ballynasloe. He said a prayer, and not just because it was his duty, that Father Timothy would come out of it in the Lord’s good time and be his old self again—without the urge to preach a crusade.
A good number of the priest’s former crusaders, now greatly chastened,