He went back out to Colin. People continued to stream in. The priest from Holy Re-Formed and the Muslim imam went across to Oriel for more chairs, and the vicar fiddled with the thermostat on the furnace.
“I saved us two seats in the second row,” Colin said. “Do you know what Mrs. Gaddson did at tea? She threw my gobstopper away. She said it was covered with germs. I’m glad my mother’s not like that.” He straightened his stack of folded orders of service, which had shrunk considerably. “I think what happened is her presents couldn’t get through because of the quarantine, you know. I mean, they probably had to send provisions and things first.” He straightened the already straight pile again.
“Very likely,” Dunworthy said. “When would you like to open your other gifts? Tonight or in the morning?”
Colin tried to look nonchalant. “Christmas morning, please.” He gave an order of service and a dazzling smile to a lady in a yellow slicker.
“Well,” she snapped, snatching it out of his hand, “I’m glad to see
Dunworthy went in and sat down. The vicar’s attentions to the furnace didn’t seem to have done any good. He took off his muffler and overcoat and draped them on the chair beside him.
It had been freezing last year. “Extremely authentic,” Kivrin had whispered to him, “and so was the Scripture. ‘Around then the politicos dumped a tax hike on the ratepayers,’” she’d said, quoting from the People’s Common. She’d grinned at him. “The Bible back then was in a language they didn’t understand either.”
Colin came in and sat down on Dunworthy’s coat and muffler. The priest from Holy Re-Formed stood up and wedged himself between the bellringers’ tables and the front of the altar. “Let us pray,” he said.
There was a plump of kneeling pads on the stone floor, and everyone knelt.
“‘O God, who have sent this affliction among us, say to Thy destroying angel, hold Thy hand and let not the land be made desolate, and destroy not every living soul.’”
So much for morale, Dunworthy thought.
“‘As in those days when the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel, and there died of the people from Dan to Bersabee seventy thousand men, so now we are in the midst of affliction and we beseech Thee to take away the scourge of Thy wrath from the faithful.’”
The pipes of the ancient furnace began clanging, but it didn’t seem to deter the priest. He went on for a good five minutes, mentioning a number of instances in which God had smitten the unrighteous and “brought plagues among them” and then asked everyone to stand and sing, “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen, Let Nothing You Dismay.”
Montoya ducked in and sat down next to Colin. “I have spent
She turned to Colin. “If I do get the dispensation, I’m going to need volunteers to help me. How would you like to dig up bodies?”
“He can’t,” Dunworthy said hastily. “His great-aunt won’t let him.” He leaned across Colin and whispered, “We’re trying to determine Badri Chaudhuri’s whereabouts on Monday afternoon from noon till half-past two. Did you see him?”
“Shh,” the woman who had snapped at Colin said.
Montoya shook her head. “I was with Kivrin, going over the map and the layout of Skendgate,” she whispered back.
“Where? At the dig?”
“No, at Brasenose.”
“And Badri wasn’t there?” he asked, but there was no reason for Badri to have been at Brasenose. He hadn’t asked Badri to run the drop until he met with him at half-past two.
“No,” Montoya whispered.
“Shh!” the woman hissed.
“How long did you meet with Kivrin?”
“From ten till she had to go check into Infirmary, three, I think,” Montoya whispered.
“
“I’ve got to go read a ‘Prayer to the Great Spirit,’” Montoya whispered, standing up and starting along the row of chairs.
She read her American Indian chant, after which the bellringers, wearing white gloves and determined expressions, played, “O Christ Who Interfaces with the World,” which sounded a good deal like the banging of the pipes.
“They’re absolutely necrotic, aren’t they?” Colin whispered behind his order of worship.
“It’s Late Twentieth Century Atonal,” Dunworthy whispered back. “It’s supposed to sound dreadful.”
When the bellringers appeared to be finished, Dunworthy mounted the lectern and read the Scripture. “‘And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed…’”
Montoya stood up and edged her way past Colin to the side aisle and ducked out the door. He had wanted to ask her if she’d seen Badri at all on Monday or Tuesday or knew of any Americans he might have had contact with.
