The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [105]
They were shown into a large room lined with leather-and vellum-bound books. A fire of pine logs burned in an iron grate and made the air sweet with the scent of resin. The smell brought a pang of hunger to Seaton’s stomach. They had shared breakfast on the train from Ashford but had eaten nothing really since. A cleric came into the room dressed in the brown fustian and rope belt of a Franciscan monk. He was carrying a tray. He gestured for them to sit in chairs to either side of a wooden table and placed bowls from the tray in front of them. The bowls were filled with a thick dumpling stew. He put down a platter, heaped with chunks of bread. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘Please, gentlemen, eat freely.’ His English was harsh with mountain vowels. ‘You are to meet with Monsignor Lascalles. You will need for your bellies to be full.’ He laughed at whatever joke he thought he had made and poured water from a pitcher into pewter goblets for them before turning to go.
‘Without wishing to sound ungrateful,’ Mason said, ‘when it comes to monks, I’ve always had a preference for the Trappists.’
Seaton sipped water from his goblet so cold it bit into the nerves of his teeth. Mason tore bread with strong fingers and shoved a piece into his mouth and chewed. Seaton thought he should try to make conversation, make a joke of his own, make light of the circumstances. But he couldn’t think of anything funny to say. And Mason seemed to be avoiding his eyes. He was suddenly struck by the feeling that Mason was nervous, meeting the old priest. So, like his companion at the table, he ate in silence. The only sound in the room was occasional sharp cracks and bursts from the grate as heat exploded pockets of resin under the bark on the burning logs. Both men concentrated on their food until their bowls were empty under resting spoons. Then the handle turned in the door and Lascalles came in.
They stood. The priest bowed his head briefly, twice, once in courtly acknowledgement of each of them. He wore a soutane to his ankles and his head was bare. His white hair was cropped severely short. He was tall in the soutane and looked very thin. When he walked towards them, Seaton saw that he wore old shoes, vigorously polished to a painstaking lustre. And he felt a completely unexpected and hugely strong wave of pity for the old priest. For his fragility and his proud unflinching faith.
He wondered would the three of them somehow prevail. Fate linked them, perhaps even predestination. There was something Gothic and strange, and at the same time recognisable, about their situation in this remote and Catholic keep, with its roaring logs and walls of scholarly vellum. It reminded Seaton of the fictions of Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker. Three men, civilised and formidable, gathered to plan an assult on the forces of evil armed with valour and learning and staunch moral rectitude. It was a plot that seemed reassuringly familiar from the torchlight reading of his youth under the blankets of his bed. Except that he had been to the Fischer house. And the reality of it was so black and hopeless with evil that it made a nonsense of the cosy collusive fantasy he was tempted to indulge in now. You weren’t staunch in the midst of the slippery chaos dwelling in the gloom in the mansion in Brightstone Forest. You were helpless. You were prey.
He looked again at the priest. The skin was like taut tissue paper over his facial bones. At one temple, in the firelight, an artery beat feebly with the thin blood that fed his brain. His faith endures, Seaton thought, but whatever strength and vitality he once possessed