Blood Brotherhood (8 page)

The main door had been swung open, and framed in the wash of moonlight stood the Bishop of Mitabezi. He too was wearing a white robe — though his was of African cut and style, and of richer material. He too was terrifyingly stained with red, one long splurge reaching from waist to toe.

He was standing there, in heaven's spotlight, gazing crazily ahead of him. The whites of his eyes seemed to pierce across the expanse of the Great Hall towards them, though his eyes were rolling. His bearing was that of a powerful man, but slouching, and with his hands outspread in a generous gesture, like a tenor finishing an aria with a sob and soliciting applause. But the tenor's hands would not be red. His were, both of them, very red indeed. They had stained the door-handle, and even as Father Anselm and the Bishop looked, their sticky coating began to drip down to the floor of the hall.

And then, to crown the ghastly horror of the scene, the Bishop of Mitabezi opened his mouth and began to croon a strange, low, atonal chant, which whispered its way round the Romanesque expanse of the Great Hall, and sent a fresh chill straight to the hearts of the two hearers, watching in the shadows at the far end.

I
T WAS
F
ATHER
Anselm, inevitably, who took charge of the situation. Showing a degree of nerve surprising even for him, he tore his feet from the spot to which they seemed to have become rooted the moment the sight had come upon him and went across the great expanse of hall floor towards the hideous chanting figure.

The Bishop of Mitabezi continuing to advance into the Great Hall, showed no awareness of any other person in the vicinity. His eyes continued to roll alarmingly, his mouth, barely open and barely moving, continued to emit weird sounds, and from its corners began to dribble two little streams of saliva. Father Anselm was tense with anticipation — a fact that could be felt by the Bishop of Peckham yards away, even though his body was concealed by his billowing robe. He took a step towards the chanting figure, stretched out his arm, and touched his. As he did so, the Bishop of Peckham's heart leapt into his mouth, and the thought of some fearsome affray, with murderous figures in clerical robes struggling for their lives on the floor, and him expected to intervene — and would he dare to intervene? — came upon him with all the welcomeness of a thunderclap on a picnic party.

But no such affray succeeded. The Bishop of Mitabezi, still chanting, allowed himself to be led, still seeming quite unconscious of any other presence, across the Great Hall towards the corridor and stairs which led to the guest bedrooms. As the two figures merged into the gloom, the Bishop of Mitabezi's chant was beginning to fade into silence. The other bishop, watching in the shadows, had a sinking feeling that he ought to follow. Every brotherly feeling
prompted him to give what help he could to Father Anselm in his difficult and highly unpleasant task. But he stayed where he was. Brotherly feelings were all very well, but they tended to evaporate with the remembrance of that body on the bed, and the gashes through the white robe, and the great splashes of red disfiguring it.

After what seemed like an eternity — and his experiences at St Botolph's were giving him a new and more vivid conception of the meaning of the word — he heard from the distance the shuffle of a foot, the creak of a stair, sounds of human movement. The horrible thought flashed through his brain that the moving human might be the Bishop of Mitabezi — that he had slaughtered Father Anselm, and was now athirst for more clerical blood. But when the figure finally appeared at the other side of the hall, its robes were dark. In his ecstasy of relief, the Bishop felt that some tribute was called for.

‘Superb,' he whispered to the approaching figure, his gratitude giving his voice real sincerity. ‘Quite incredibly brave.'

The muscles around Father Anselm's mouth tightened — could it be with contempt? — and he led the way back down the corridor into his own office. Once inside, with the door shut, the Bishop felt once more that feeling of welcome security gained, that sense of discovering at last a firm foothold after a long walk over ice. In spite of what he suspected to be Father Anselm's attitude towards his recent behaviour he felt he had to give voice once again to his appreciation. By emphasizing Father Anselm's quite exceptional bravery, he felt he established himself as a man of normal courage, rather than the abject coward he might otherwise seem.

‘You have nerves of steel, my word you have!' he said.

‘He gave no trouble,' murmured Father Anselm. ‘He got straight into bed like a child, and went to sleep.'

A very nasty thought occurred to the Bishop.

‘But there are no locks on his door,' he said in consternation. ‘He could — '

‘I
tied
him in bed,' said Father Anselm levelly. ‘With the sheets.'

‘Good gracious,' said the Bishop.
‘What
a clever plan.'

Father Anselm, however, seemed oblivious of his flatteries, and his mind had gone back to the subject of what the Bishop of Mitabezi had already done, rather than what he might be feared to be about to do.

‘A most extraordinary reversion,' he said, sitting down as stiffly as ever in the chair behind his desk. ‘I suppose the early Church had experience of that kind of thing.'

‘Certainly, certainly,' said the Bishop, allowing his thoughts to graze on the larger historical pastures, instead of centring on the hideously restricted grounds of the last half-hour or so. ‘A common enough phenomenon, as the records show, not just here, but throughout Europe. Quite understandable, of course.'

‘One wishes, in that case, that the Church authorities had shown themselves a little more aware of the dangers,' said Father Anselm with more than a touch of asperity. ‘I have lost my most capable assistant and my probable successor!'

Again the memory of the body in the next room flooded over the Bishop, and he could only murmur, ‘Quite, quite.'

‘The consequences of all this are frightening to contemplate,' continued Father Anselm. ‘But that, of course, will be your department rather than mine.'

‘Consequences?' said the Bishop, nervous again.

‘Clearly there will be publicity of the most damaging kind.' The Bishop flinched. ‘And the effects in the Third World are anybody's guess.'

The words had a magic effect on the Bishop.

‘The Third World! Oh, my goodness, yes! What do you think they'll say?'

‘No doubt that this is all some capitalist-imperialist plot
to discredit the black races,' said Father Anselm. ‘I expect you know the sort of thing better than I. And then of course the diplomatic repercussions will be endless.'

‘My goodness,' said the Bishop, ‘you alarm me. Church House will be livid. They were particularly insistent that I should keep him happy.'

‘I doubt whether they intended you should go so far as to provide him with human sacrifices,' said Father Anselm.

‘No, no, naturally,' said the Bishop. ‘Nevertheless, they will be
most
upset. The one thing they are anxious to avoid at the moment is upsetting the Third World.' He paused for a moment. ‘If only there were something that could be done . . .'

His voice faded into thoughtful silence.

Father Anselm looked at him hard. ‘Are you suggesting that the whole thing be concealed?' he asked, in a soft voice which had no note of disapproval in it.

‘No, no, of course not,' said the Bishop, but rather feebly. ‘I'm merely going through the possibilities in my mind, naturally. In any case, the young man will have had relatives . . .'

‘He had none,' said Father Anselm, in that same soft voice. ‘He was quite alone when he came here. He told me so many times.'

The Bishop became lost in reverie. He loved publicity, fuss, people talking about him; he hated ridicule, being in the wrong, being put up against the wall: In his heart of hearts he would have liked to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury, though he sometimes doubted whether the Prime Minister was the man to make such an imaginative gesture. So circumspect had he been that he was sure nobody in the world knew of this secret ambition, but in fact one of the stalest jokes of the clerical circuit was that he was preparing himself for the job by being a very arch bishop indeed. Who could imagine an Archbishop of Canterbury who had recently (for the Bishop, being an optimist,
always imagined the See of Canterbury being
shortly
vacant again, by one means or another) been involved in a murder case? It would be disastrous for the image. To put the matter at its lowest, how many television producers would be knocking at the palace door in the near future?

As the temptations of this unorthodox course of conduct became more pressing, the implications fanned out in his mind: he saw himself and Father Anselm digging a shallow grave on the moors, carrying out the . . . the Thing . . . and burying it, hugger-mugger. Would one of them say the burial service? He thought of all the evasions and concealments that would be necessary afterwards, the sessions of the symposium to be gone through as if nothing had happened. He thought of living with the memory, with the possibility of blackmail. All these considerations, which together might almost be said to add up to the promptings of a moral sense, crowded in on the Bishop. Suddenly he shook his head violently, got a grip on himself, and turned back to Father Anselm.

‘Of course, the idea's absurd,' he said, ‘quite absurd. You must ring the police at once.'

Father Anselm looked at him for a moment, then rose and again moved towards the telephone. His silence made the Bishop nervous once more.

‘I presume your local police can be discreet,' he said.

‘I have no experience of our local police,' said Father Anselm. All his former austerity of manner had now returned. He paused a second over the phone, almost as if to give the Bishop one last chance of changing his mind, then he lifted the receiver and dialled.

‘Hickley Police Station? Good. I'm speaking from the Community of St Botolph's. My name is Father Anselm . . . That's right, I am. Now look, there has been a murder here . . . No, not an intruder, a murder . . . One of the brothers . . . If you would . . . And when you get here, please do not ring the bell. There's no reason to disturb
the Community before it is necessary. I myself will wait for you in the grounds . . . Thank you — yes, if you would.'

He put the phone down, and came to the middle of the room. ‘They are coming immediately,' he said coldly. ‘I shall wait for them by the gate.'

‘I'll wait with you,' said the Bishop with transparent eagerness.

As they walked across the floor of the Great Hall the Bishop averted his eyes from the drops of blood which had fallen from the Bishop of Mitabezi's hands, and stood aside while Father Anselm pushed open the door (which had swung to) without touching the handle. Once outside the Bishop took a deep breath of fresh air and looked around him. Birds were singing, it was beginning to get light. Another day was dawning for the brothers of the Community of St Botolph's. Or for all but one of them.

The before-dawn air was chill, and the Bishop shivered. Father Anselm was not proceeding in the direction of the gate, but was standing quite still. The Bishop, finding that erect, silent figure as awesome as ever, began rather nervously to make conversation.

‘There is one blessing to be counted,' he said. ‘The publicity will be ghastly, of course — quite ghastly — but at least there can be no doubt who did it, so it should all be over in the minimum possible time. That we can be grateful for. Whether we can keep the symposium going is another matter . . .'

But as he was talking he realized that Father Anselm was not listening. The spiritual leader of St Botolph's was peering through the half-light at a series of dreadful red patches on the ground. They seemed to come from the barn, and they got smaller and smaller, and less frequent as they came nearer the door into the Great Hall. Through the light of near-day could dimly be discerned a crude daubing of red on the side of the barn. The Bishop did not want to look: it all brought back too vividly the unnerving
events of the last two hours. He found it distasteful, in fact, that Father Anselm should seem so interested. Eventually the latter spoke.

‘That's very odd,' he said. ‘I don't understand it.'

‘What?'

‘They all seem to be coming the one way.'

The Bishop dragged his head round, and looked again at the trail of blood.

‘What do you mean?'

‘There was no blood in the Hall except what we saw drip from his hands,' said Father Anselm. He turned around and looked at the door-handle. It was very red, and sticky. ‘There is blood on the
outside
door-handle, but none on the inside. And all this blood out here seems to be coming
from
the barn.'

Suddenly he seemed to make a decision, and impelled his body into action. He strode towards the barn, and the Bishop, after a moment of irritated hesitation, padded after him. They followed the trail of red, and paused briefly by the daubed sign on the near side wall of the barn: it looked like a crude and lop-sided version of the Cross of Lorraine. There was more blood on the ground in front of the barn. Father Anselm walked ahead resolutely. At the corner of the barn he stopped.

The Bishop of Peckham, who felt he had spent all night trotting after Father Anselm with his heart thumping, came up behind him once more, and once more they stood shoulder to shoulder.

In the long grass, in a little patch of ground immediately beside the corner of the high barn, lay a lamb. Like Brother Dominic and the Bishop of Mitabezi, it had once been white, but was no longer. Its throat had been cut, and a great gash had been made down its stomach, from neck to tail. The ground around it was slushy with blood, like Flanders fields.