Angels in the Architecture Read Online Free PDF Page A

and he toyed with it a few moments, enjoying it for what it was. It beseeched him and longed for connection with the boy’s own light, some energy to nurture it a small enough amount. The light of the bird did not play with Thomas though, as Thomas wanted it to, and Thomas did not hear the bird’s prayer either and so left its message hanging in the ether between them. And then the light faded from the dark red eyes and was gone, and the bird’s eyes closed slowly on the world. Thomas cocked his head to one side and measured their closing and some distant remembered pain circled briefly around him, so he looked away to the corner of his eye hoping for the goodness he liked, that he loved, and that warmed him.
    The two men and the boy delivered the sad load to a shocked Father Taylor at the Priory, promising to send some men back to bury the bird should the Father need it, for they themselves had to return to their tasks at the town.
    ‘Where was the bird found?’
    ‘At edge of Thane’s land, Father. Between there and town,’ Bennet replied.
    ‘And who is responsible then? His Lordship will want recompense.’
    ‘There’s no knowing at all, Father. No knowing. I’m not so clear as how any man could kill such a great beast as this. And broke i’s neck indeed. A mighty strength is what it would’ve took. Maybe no’ a man ‘t’all.’
    ‘Of course it was a man. A poacher , no doubt. We cannot tolerate this lawlessness. The Thane will surely bring in more of his thugs, and heaven knows they only add to the lawlessness, bullying as they do. It’s more than we need. It’s more than I need!’
    ‘ Aye, Father.’
    Father Taylor sternly bade them keep about their business and he would report the loss to the King’s Thane, for which the men were more than a little relieved. Poachers were treated swiftly and violently and neither man wished to be mistaken for such, despite their honest paths and obvious standing in the town, albeit the physician’s was much lower than a churchman, and the peasant’s much lower still. A man’s reputation was something better than nothing.
    Neither man was ever encouraged by the disposition of the local priest, who took a too serious and dark view of the World and its peasants. But to deliver the consequences of this monstrous deed to a Man of God seemed far and away less formidable than to venture anywhere near the Thane’s manor. Better leave that mission to the Father. And so they turned back to the village in silence to resume the tasks they’d set upon that day, Gamel back to his sons at the market square and the dispatching of their goods. He was keen to leave behind the experience of the morning and distance the superstition and fear from his thoughts. It had no place with him and no good could come of it.
     
     
    A whispering lingered about the villagers and none took their commerce too seriously the rest of that morning. By the afternoon, Gamel was annoyed not with the ruckus of the morning so much as with its impact on people’s pockets, and he was more than usually brusque in setting his sons to reloading their cart and turning their thoughts to their return journey. All thought of superstition was gone from Gamel but apparently it clung elsewhere. Berta Draper’s reputation for prescience was simple enough – a death predicted here and a birth there, some of course unexpectedly as there’d be no such reputation otherwise; folk weren’t so foolish as all that. So her predictions of impending threat hung in people’s minds, and they were hard-pushed to ignore them; indeed they could not.
    It was the social nature of the market that aided its business. People wanted to meet up with friends and family from around the parish, to hear each other’s news and pass on wishes. There was no other means by which they connected. So they wandered stall to stall to talk , and along the way bought a bit of this and that, or exchanged one thing for another. Events of the