Saints and Sinners

by Paul Cuddihy

  Footsteps were approaching, getting louder with each stride down the stairs and she tensed her aching body. They stopped outside the door and Kate imagined she could hear his breathing, steady and menacing, as he rummaged in his pocket for the key that was then thrust into the lock. It opened with a click and the door creaked open. The footsteps didn’t move and Kate lay still as a corpse. A gust of wind that had been hovering outside now burst into the room, swirling about with the enthusiasm of a child at play, occasionally slapping her face as it skirted over her body. Kate concentrated on her breathing, trying to keep it under control and as quiet as possible.

  A gritty cough. Then he spat out the contents of his throat. They landed near enough to Kate’s face that she heard the dull thud on the wooden floor. His feet seemed to slam down as he moved forward, shutting the door behind him. Kate tensed in anticipation of the first blow. She tried to fill her mind with happier thoughts; her mammy bathing her and her sisters in front of the fire, the smell of the peat on her daddy’s clothes after he’d been out in the fields cutting all day. Her first kiss, to a shy boy called Fergal, whose face turned as red as his hair once their lips parted, barely seconds after they first met. She was only twelve then. Or maybe thirteen? And then she thought of the Galway storyteller who had lain on top of her just the night before.

  The footsteps were at her face now. Maybe a boot would come crashing down on her skull and it would all be over in an instant, the pain quickly followed by relief. Instead he bent down, his knees creaking with the effort and his arms slid under her body. As he pulled her up she cried out with pain but it didn’t stop him. He dragged her across the floor and propped her against a wall. She started to topple over but he pushed her in the other direction until her shoulder crashed into another wall and she guessed she was in a corner of the room.

  ‘Kate,’ he said. ‘Look at me.’

  It was difficult for her to breathe, never mind lift her head. Something was pushing on her lungs, squeezing the very life out of them, and she slowly slid down the wall until the pressure eased slightly. Then she lifted her head, knowing that he never liked to ask anything more than once. Her right eye opened and she could make out the bulky outline of his body. He was sitting on something, a chair most likely but it could just as easily be a crate.

  There was a flash of light and a dancing flame appeared before her face. As he moved the candle away from her, the orange glow revealed his own face. He stared impassively at her and she tried to hold his gaze, though she quickly blinked and looked away. It wasn’t just that he had a numerical advantage in terms of his eyes. She felt like she was staring back into her own death and it was simply a matter of when rather than if.

  ‘Why did you do it, Kate?’ he asked in a voice that would reduce most people to quivering wrecks. It had the cold chill of hell laced into every syllable and though she was more used to it than most, it still had the ability to scare her on occasion. Now, however, she was almost in too much pain to care.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she croaked.

  ‘You’re my girl, Kate,’ he said, reaching out and flicking a strand of hair away from her left eye, which remained closed. ‘You can’t leave me. You know that.’

  She flinched at his touch and he laughed grimly. At any moment, a fist would replace the fingertips and her head would jerk back like it was going to crash through the wall. She wanted to tell him to hurry up and get it over with. The waiting was the worst part, trying to second-guess the new ways he would invent for inflicting pain upon her body. But at the same time, she knew better than to provoke him.

  ‘What am I going to do with you?’ he said with a sigh. The candle moved closer to her face until the tip of the flame caressed her cheek. He moved it closer still until it was pressing in on her flesh and she let out a tiny squeak of pain. He held the flame there for a few more seconds before he moved the candle away.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to meet up with Deirdre?’

  Kate looked up quickly and her left eye opened a fraction, though the pain that shot through her eyeball was like the heat from a furnace. His mouth broke into either a grin or a sneer. It was hard to tell which was which, but there was a definite grim satisfaction as he remembered Deirdre.

  She remembered too. How could anyone forget? He’d forced all the girls into the room and made them form a circle round Deirdre, who was slumped on a chair. The only reason she hadn’t fallen off was because he’d bound her to it with a rope, now horribly bloodstained. Her head was bowed and her chin rested on her breastplate. It was difficult to tell whether she was still alive because there seemed to be little sign of her chest rising and falling, though when he grabbed her hair and jerked her head back, a low groan escaped from her mouth. It was a pathetic sound but Kate knew it was liable to be one of the last ones Deirdre was ever going to make.

  It was as well she was wearing a dress familiar to them all because her face was purple and bloated beyond all recognition, like she had been dragged out of the depths of the river.

  She could only have been thirteen or fourteen. Kate didn’t know and had never bothered to ask. It wasn’t an important question in their world, but she knew the girl was young enough to be valuable. ‘Men pay more for fresh meat.’ That’s what she always heard him say, and it meant that Deirdre was his favourite. Some of the other girls resented the fact, but Kate liked her. She reminded her of one of her sisters, Nuala, and the thought of her own sister being caught up in this wretched existence was enough to break her heart.

  So she had looked out for Deirdre, offering a kind word here, a warm smile there, even a shoulder to cry on if the young girl had returned from any violent encounters, which wasn’t uncommon. She came from Mayo, that much she had revealed, and had arrived in Glasgow with the promise of scullery work – hadn’t many of them been given the same false promise – so that she could send money back home. But a girl who was barely out of childhood herself stood no chance in this cesspool of a city where men lurked on the dockside, watching, waiting, ready to pounce.

  For nearly a year she’d worked, day in, day out, making him money and keeping him happy. Then she disappeared. For four days it had been hellish for all of them, anyone within reach usually felled with a distracted punch, before he found her. Now Deirdre was back, sitting here amongst them.

  ‘I want this to be a lesson to you all,’ he said. ‘No one runs away from me, whether you’re my favourite or not.You’re all Jack’s girls and don’t ever forget it.’

  He rubbed his bald head with his free hand, before he slipped it into his back pocket. There was a glint of light on the steel of a blade before he ran it smoothly across Deirdre’s throat, letting go of her head which fell forward even before the blood began spurting out. There were a couple of stifled gasps, but otherwise everyone stayed silent. Some of the girls tried to look discreetly away, glancing down at their feet but Kate watched the twitching body in its death throes. She said a silent prayer for the young girl and resolved to escape the first chance she could.

  So he was going to cut her throat and there wouldn’t even be an audience to bear witness to her final moments on earth. Kate’s shoulders sagged with a tired acceptance of her fate and she began mouthing the words of the Hail Mary, which surprised her because she’d long since given up on a religion that she believed had abandoned her to this wretched existence.

  ‘God help you, right enough, Kate,’ Jack said with a laugh. He produced a knife from his pocket and held it out before her opened eye. ‘Remember this?’ he said. ‘There might even still be a trace of Deirdre here.’

  He began turning the blade in the flame of the candle as Kate took an involuntary gulp, not wanting to think about what was going to happen to her but unable to get the image of Deirdre out of her mind. She wondered if the young girl had felt anything as the blade glided across her flesh, slicing it silently open. She had already been beaten to an inch of her life by that point anyway, so it was unlikely, but Kate knew she would feel it, a
nd as he continued heating the blade, she knew it would be burning metal rather than cold steel which would draw an end to her life.

  ‘Maybe God is looking after you, Kate?’ he said. ‘Because today is your lucky day … Surprised?’ he asked as she looked up. ‘Lucky for you no one knows what you did, or I would have had to kill you. But you’re my girl and good girls are hard to find. I still need to punish you, though. You know that. Just so that you don’t do it again.’

  Kate relaxed, relieved, but only for a second before he lurched forward on to his knees, grabbed hold of her arm and pressed it down on the floor. In almost the same movement, his free hand produced a small axe from inside his jacket and, kneeling on her arm to keep it steady, he brought the weapon swiftly down, slicing off her pinkie and ring finger of her left hand. It was over in the blink of an eye, so quick Kate didn’t even have time to cry out, though she did when he pressed the hot knife on her open wound to stop the flow of blood. She screamed until she had exhausted every human sound left in her body and all she could do was whimper like a dog.

  8

  GOD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

  Thomas Costello patted his heart. The letter from Archbishop Eyre was still in his jacket pocket. He was outside the sacristy door, having knocked it gently, and he tried to control his breathing as he waited for an answer. Saint Andrew’s Cathedral was busy. People were filling up the rows of wooden benches, waiting to confess their sins and most had given him no more than a fleeting glance as he walked quietly up the side aisle, stopping to genuflect in the direction of the altar when he reached the front.

  A tray of lit candles flickered weakly beneath a statue of the Blessed Virgin, resplendent in her pale blue gown, hands joined together in prayer, her head bowed slightly to the side, full of concern for her flock. Thomas stopped in front of the statue and pushed a shilling into the collection box before lighting his own candle. He slipped into the front row and knelt down, blessing himself and praying for his own mother. He knew she was safe, and his sisters and brother too, and he hoped that would remain the case.

  John McDonagh was a good man, and had helped the family before, particularly after their father had died, making sure that the rent was paid until they had worked out how to bring in their own money and who would have to do the necessary work to make that happen. Mick used to joke that John McDonagh was making an investment for a future wife – he’d never married himself – but Thomas knew there were no ulterior motives. And hadn’t he helped pay for Thomas’ studies, especially after he was sent to Rome? Thanking God for his old neighbour’s kindness, Thomas stood up and headed for his appointment.

  The sacristy door slowly opened and a priest emerged into the doorway.

  ‘Father Costello,’ the priest said with a slight bow of the head.

  ‘Father McNeill,’ Thomas said, returning the greeting.

  A quick flicker of a smile stole across Father McNeill’s face, or it could have been a distasteful sneer, Thomas thought, as he studied his fellow priest. There was a silent standoff for the best part of a minute as the two men held each other’s gaze.

  Father Angus McNeill was the Archbishop’s right-hand man. His official title was Chancellor of the Diocese, but many of his fellow priests had less complimentary names for him. No one got to the Archbishop except through the Chancellor and that access was jealously guarded. It didn’t help that Father McNeill was Scottish, a native of South Uist who had forged a beneficial relationship with the Archbishop while he’d been in charge of the Church in the Western Isles.

  When he moved to Glasgow, the Archbishop brought Father McNeill with him who, in turn, brought an inbuilt distrust and dislike of all things Irish. Given that just about all of Glasgow’s priests were from Ireland and the overwhelming majority of their flock were of the same nationality, it made for a frosty and sometimes fraught relationship.

  Now he stood before Thomas, content to be the physical barrier between him and the Archbishop, happy to let the visitor be the one to break the silence. Thomas, however, had resolved not to be the first to speak. Father McNeill patted down a patch of black hair that was already plastered to his skull as if he’d just come in out of the rain. His nose kept twitching involuntarily, a habit which had always amused Thomas but one that Father McNeill was either unaware of or had long since got used to it.

  The Scottish priest’s head suddenly spun round at the sound of a cough from within the sacristy and he stepped aside, gesturing with another nod of the head for Thomas to enter. Not waiting for a second invitation, Thomas stepped past his fellow priest and into the room. The door shut quickly behind him but he didn’t turn round, although he knew that Father McNeill stood there, now barring his exit.

  It didn’t take Thomas long to realise there was no one else in the room and he wondered if the whole thing had just been an elaborate hoax, though he couldn’t think of any reason why that would be the case. He was on the verge of turning round to ask Father McNeill when a voice spoke up from beyond the deep purple curtain in the far corner of the room.

  ‘Come through, Thomas.’

  He recognised the voice right away. It was Archbishop Eyre. He stepped forward nervously, resisting the urge to look back towards the door for reassurance from Father McNeill. Reaching the purple barrier, he gently nudged it open and stepped into another room. This one was smaller than the sacristy and sparse except for the desk which sat facing him against one of the walls, on which was a simple wooden crucifix with a silver figure of Our Lord. Behind the desk sat the Archbishop, though he didn’t look up. He was reading a black leather Bible, the pages illuminated by a single candle, which cut a lonely figure on the right-hand edge of the desk.

  Having let the curtain fall shut behind him, Thomas stood waiting, hardly daring to breathe and conscious of not wanting to make any sound that would announce his presence. The Archbishop continued reading, his balding head bowed as he studied the book intently. He brought his thumb and forefinger to his mouth before using his dampened fingers to turn the page, all the while maintaining the same level of concentration as before. Wiry, gold-rimmed spectacles perched precariously on the edge of a stubby nose; Thomas had an irrational desire to stretch over and push them up.

  ‘There is much to be learned from the letters of Saint Paul, don’t you think?’ the Archbishop eventually said without looking up at Thomas.

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  ‘“You may be quite sure that in the last days there are going to be some difficult times. People will be self-centred and grasping, boastful, arrogant and rude; disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious; heartless and unappeasable; they will be slanderers, profligates, savages and enemies of everything that is good; they will be treacherous and reckless and demented by pride; preferring their own pleasure to God. They will keep up the outward appearance of religion but will have rejected the inner power of it. Have nothing to do with people like that.”’

  There was a pause as the Archbishop sat back, removing his glasses and placing them on the Bible, which remained open at the page he’d just read from. Thomas kept his eyes focused on the holy book rather than risk catching the other man’s eye, hands clasped behind his back. He prayed that he wouldn’t have to endure such a long silence this time.

  ‘Saint Paul’s second letter to Timothy, chapter three.’

  Thomas nodded.

  ‘Such profound words of wisdom that still resonate today, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  ‘Yet they were written almost nineteen hundred years ago. Remarkable.’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  ‘Sit down, Thomas, sit down,’ Archbishop Eyre said, gesturing towards the empty seat which faced him across the table. Thomas gently pulled the chair back to give himself some leg room and then sat down.

  ‘You’ve caught me in the middle of a guilty pleasure. Saint Paul is such an inspiration that I always find I want to share it with everyone. Forgive me this little s
elf-indulgence.’

  Thomas smiled and shook his head dismissively, not really sure what to say in reply. He’d studied the same letters himself but they had evidently not left the same indelible mark on him as they had on the older priest.

  ‘Some refreshments, Thomas? Tea maybe?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The Archbishop picked up the little silver bell that sat opposite the candle and rang it in three short bursts. On the third ring, Father McNeill appeared through the purple curtain.

  ‘Tea for our guest, Angus, if you would be so kind.’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace,’ Father McNeill said with a cold smile, bowing slightly before disappearing back through the curtain.

  The Archbishop picked up his glasses and began examining them intently as he twirled them back and forth in his hand. The gold ring he wore on his right hand, the symbol of his priestly authority, occasionally seemed to glow as it captured the reflection of the candle.

  ‘Are these the last days that Saint Paul warned about?’

  ‘I don’t know, Your Grace,’ Thomas shrugged.

  ‘I’m not sure about that myself, but I do know that they are difficult days. Our people are suffering, Thomas. I know that and so do you. Every day you see it with your own eyes, the hunger, the poverty, the spectre of death that stalks the streets day and night … Mourn, mourn for this great city whose lavish living has made a fortune for every owner of a sea-going ship; ruined within a single hour … The Book of Revelations,’ the Archbishop added by way of explanation.

  ‘And it is still not a welcoming place, Thomas. We are strangers here, you and I, and are treated as such. Our religion is despised, while our people who flee from Ireland in search of a better life are treated worse than any beast on the poorest of farms. I am English, Thomas, as you know, but in my heart I feel the pain of Ireland and all her children.’

  Thomas nodded as Father McNeill appeared through the purple curtain, the clatter of china on the tray announcing his entrance. The Archbishop closed over the Bible and slid it to one side of the table, putting his glasses back down on top of the black leather cover. Father McNeill placed the tray gently on the table and took each cup and saucer off in turn, putting one in front of the Archbishop, another before Thomas and a third which Thomas presumed was his own, beside the candle.