John Saturnall's Feast Read Online Free PDF

for me,’ added Josh.
    Pack-men's bargains, thought Ben. ‘What's that?’ he asked.
    ‘See him?’ Josh pointed. ‘Won't talk, will he?’
    The boy stood beside the mule, raking his scalp with his nails. He was crawling with lice, Josh had noticed last night. Father Hole's letter was all very well but the boy's arrival would hardly set the chapel bells ringing at the Manor. Or Mister Pouncey clapping his hands for joy. A useless mouth was bad enough. A lousy useless mouth was worse. But a lousy, useless and mute mouth . . .
    ‘Get his tongue wagging,’ Josh told Ben. ‘Get him talking, understand?’
    Ben flexed his shoulders and felt the welts from the straps of his pack. How hard could talking be? He handed up his bedroll. The oilcloth parcel followed with its curious smell. Josh packed both then picked his way around the puddles to where the mule pulled up mouthfuls of grass. The boy watched him warily, rubbing his wrists where the cords had chafed. Josh looked at the sunken cheeks and thin limbs wrapped in the blue coat.
    ‘You ain't going to run away, are you, John Sandall?’
    The boy gave the merest shake of his head. The wicked Blades of Grass, thought Ben. What had the priest meant?
    ‘We're going to Buckland Manor,’ Josh continued. ‘You know where that is? Sir William's going to take you in.’
    The boy pulled the blue coat around him and looked back up the valley.
    ‘You can't go back,’ Josh said quietly. ‘You can't do nothing about what happened.’

    God had been missing for forty-three years. A little old man in a long blue smock bent double beneath an enormous sack, he had vanished in an explosion of glittering splinters. A moment later Saint Clodock had followed, sung to his destruction with a toneless psalm by the Geneva-cloaked ruffians who had marched into the church with their stones, their long poles, their whitewash and brooms. The windows of Saint Clodock's had been bare ever since.
    That had been Father Hole's first Easter in the parish. Now, sweating, swaying, his white hair waving, the priest climbed the creaking steps to his pulpit and wondered why the crash of glass should resound in his memory on this unremarkable Sunday morning. Why, after the reigns of a queen, two kings and the seating of six Bishops of Carrboro, should God's disappearance trouble him now? Resting his hands on the smooth rail he surveyed his congregation, seeking an answer in the upturned faces. From the ancient pews below, his parishioners stared back.
    The wealthiest yeomen sat at the front, the Cloughs, the Huxtables, the Sutons and the respectable side of the Chaffinge family. The pews behind them were reserved for the Parkisons and Fentons, then the Drurys, the other Chaffinges and the Riveretts. Behind them, in the free pews, sat everyone else. They wore their best bonnets and dresses, their cleanest boots, stockings and breeches. They gaped at him and breathed through their mouths against the faint smell of decay from underfoot. The Starlings and Dares were ignoring each other this morning, Father Hole noted. Tom Hob swayed a little, his mouth open wide enough to catch flies. In front of him sat Maddy Odd-bone, newly dismissed from her place in service, her swollen belly brazenly on display. Ginny Lambe had a fresh bruise on her face and Elijah Huxtable sported eyes even redder than his nose. In the corner, Susan Sandall sat upright in the back pew. Her boy, normally motionless and silent, seemed unable to stop fidgeting. At the back of the church stood his black-garbed warden, his heavy face surmounted by a full head of long blond hair and punctuated by two unblinking blue eyes.
    That was it. That was why he remembered, realised Father Hole, swallowing the sprig of spearmint in his mouth. Timothy Marpot's eyes. It was their certainty. Their absolute absence of doubt. The black-cloaked window-breakers had possessed the same look.
    But no zealot would wear his luxuriant blond hair so long, thought Father