Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [77]
And then her son cried, a proper lusty cry, and she put him to her nipple and he sucked, and all was well.
Faintly she can hear the rector of St. Mary's now, still calm-voiced, reading from a big book open on the lectern in front of him. "The necessity of burning means that if anyone in Hell asks for butter, he receives only brimstone; if he would give a thousand pounds for a cup of water, he shall have none. There shall be flies that bite his flesh, and his clothing shall be worms. God cannot be merciful, because his mercy is saved for the deserving."
But Margery won't listen. Her mind runs back to the night she gave suck to her son, and how she let herself doze at last, how she couldn't help it. And in the morning he was cool on her belly, chilly as a small bag of barley.
Then the village priest came down to her cottage, his eyes lidded against the headache.
"Father," she told him, "you should have brought the lantern and bell. What this child needs is burial."
"Hold on," he told her hoarsely. "Did you christen him yourself, is that what I hear?"
"That's right, she did," muttered Roger Starre, almost proudly.
"What did you say, exactly?" the priest asked Margery.
"I said the words," she repeated, confused.
"Which words?"
She wept then, as she said them again, over the tiny creature who was dead at the foot of the bed: "I christen thee both flesh and bone in the name of the Son and the Father and the Holy Ghost."
The priest was shaking his head. "Ah, woman," he said crossly.
"What?"
"What is it?" asked Roger.
Margery was almost shrieking. "What? Aren't those the right words?"
"Aye," the priest said, pursing his lips, "but in the wrong order. The Father goes before the Son, as any ignoramus knows. It's the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost."
She stared at him. "What does that mean?"
"It means this child's soul is lost to hellfire through your carelessness, woman, that's what it means!"
She said nothing, then. She didn't go for the man's throat; she didn't cry, even. She and Roger stared at each other, and the priest walked home to his wife. The next day the nameless child was buried—not in holy ground in the churchyard, but down by the stream, in a hollow his father dug him, no bigger than a rabbit hole. Margery used to wonder, after that, if Roger Starre blamed her for consigning his son's tiny soul to the flames, but she never found a way to ask him, in the few years before he died himself.
A terrible pounding. When the Widow Starre comes back to the present, kneeling in Great St. Mary's church, where the rector is still explaining the horrors of hellfire, she realizes that nobody is listening to him anymore. All heads are turned to the back of the church, where the barred doors are shaking like the skin of a drum. A crash, at last, and they splinter open.
The rector pauses, mid-sentence. His slim finger marks the word where he stopped reading.
The rebels race up the aisle, and the congregation shrinks back. Somebody—Philbert Carrier, in an incongruous yellow velvet cap—hauls the book off the lectern.
"How dare you!" The rectors voice has cracked at last. "This book has been in the possession of the Holy Church for three hundred years."
"High time it went on the bonfire, then," says Philbert Carrier easily, tucking it under his arm.
Margery Starre feels a huge gulp of laughter in her throat.
After that it all moves very quickly. Most of the Massgoers slip out the door, but Margery stays where she is, crouched on the stone floor, fascinated. The rebels shove the rector into the back room and come back staggering under the weight of an enormous chest filled with jeweled chalices, silver plate, but also rolls upon rolls of yellowed papers.
"Widow Starre!" Philbert Carrier sings out her name as soon as he catches sight of her. "Do you know what we've got here?"
She gets to her feet, stiff-jointed.