Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [319]
But now the west doors were thrown open and a great procession began to enter the cathedral and move slowly up the aisle. It was led by the choirboys who carried long candles and chanted as they went. Behind them came the priests, several dozen of them, their long white robes hissing on the polished stone floor, their deep voices intoning the raw, majestic harmonies of the plainsong chant. Canons and deacons swept by, and last, accompanied by two boys who held his train and by the priests who carried the sacraments, came the tall, stately figure of the bishop. He walked slowly. Over his robes he wore a magnificent cope, embroidered with gold and silver and encrusted with precious stones that glowed dully in the light. His fine ascetic face looked neither to right nor left, and his height was further accentuated by the tall mitre with its silver cross that he wore on his head. In his hand he carried the long ceremonial crook of his office, its curved head looping elegantly like the neck and head of a swan.
Solemnly he strode by, up the church’s great arcade of stone. The people knelt as he passed. Finally he went through the choir screen into the inner sanctum.
It was just as he reached this point and the voices of the choir echoed from the distant altar, that Osmund saw Cristina. She was a little in front of him, on the other side of the aisle, standing beside her father. At the moment when the bishop entered the sanctum, the great west doors were closed, and as she looked round to watch this, her eyes rested on Osmund. He thought she smiled before she turned away.
Once again, his fever rose.
Soon the mass was in progress. Its soothing murmur and its distant chant spread their timeless comfort over the congregation. But to Osmund, it was a torture.
“Agnus dei . . .” the chant echoed. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He tried to think of the Lamb, led to the slaughter, the great sacrifice of the Christian rite.
“Agnus dei . . .”
But another figure insistently presented itself before his eyes. He tried to concentrate.
The moment of the transubstantiation came. The bell rang as the priest presented the body and blood of Christ to His people.
And it must, Osmund knew, be the Devil himself who at that moment sent him a different vision, a vision that refused to be dispelled, of the girl’s body, naked, arched and trembling on the high altar.
At the feast that night in the market place, where the oxen turned on huge spits and the crowd sat at the long trestle tables that stretched for fifty yards, the mason sat with his family in silence. His children chattered; even his wife’s face was, for once, wreathed in contented smiles. But Osmund did not join in. Instead he sat slumped, conscious only of the terrible lust, so urgent that it made him want to cry out, which afflicted him. In an agony of despair and rage, he sullenly gorged himself with food and drink in the hope that another sin, the sin of gluttony, might drive this greater demon out. He continued until, bloated and fuddled, he slipped off the bench into oblivion.
The crisis came in June.
Since the completion of the cathedral, Osmund had finished the scenes of Lot turning into a pillar of salt and Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. He was pleased with these because the fluidity and natural expressiveness of the figures that he strove for was at last beginning to come. It was with a sense of optimism that he now began work on the story of Isaac and Jacob.
The spring that year was particularly fine and warm. As he made his way through the lush Avon valley Osmund felt a sense of excitement, a tingling anticipation that he had not known for many years; and just as he had when he carved the roof boss as a young man, he felt that something of the rich and fertile spirit of the place where the five rivers met was showing through in his work. Sinner that I am, he considered, God has let me see some light in the darkness. And he went to his work more contented.
It was a warm morning in June; the valley was lush; a cuckoo was singing. He had walked