"Holy Jesus! I was there last night! She seemed so well, Father!" "I know. She was perfectly well when I took her up the stairs about three, but she must have died almost the moment she retired. Mrs. Smith found her at six this evening. By then she'd been dead so long she was hideous; the room was shut up like an incubator all through the heat of the day. Dear Lord, I pray to forget the sight of her! Unspeakable, Harry, awful."
"She'll be buried tomorrow?"
"She'll have to be."
"What time is it? Ten? We must eat dinner as late as the Spaniards in this heat, but no need to worry, it's too late to start phoning people. Would you like me to do that for you, Father?"
"Thank you, it would be a great kindness. I only came into Gilly for vestments. I never expected to be saying a Requiem when I started out. I must get back to Drogheda as quickly as I can; they need me. The Mass will be at nine in the morning."
"Tell Paddy I'll bring her will with me, so I can deal with it straight after the funeral. You're a beneficiary, too, Father, so I'd appreciate your staying for the reading."
"I'm afraid we have a slight problem, Harry. Mary made another will, you see. Last night after she left the party she gave me a sealed envelope, and made me promise I'd open it the moment I saw her dead body for myself. When I did so I found it contained a fresh will."
"Mary made a new will? Without me?"
"It would appear so. I think it was something she had been mulling for a long time, but as to why she chose to be so secretive about it, I don't know."
"Do you have it with you now, Father?"
"Yes." The priest reached inside his shirt and handed over the sheets of paper, folded small.
The lawyer had no compunction about reading them on the spot. When he finished he looked up, and there was a great deal in his eyes Father Ralph would rather not have seen. Admiration, anger, a certain contempt. "Well, Father, congratulations! You got the lot after all." He could say it, not being a Catholic.
"Believe me, Harry, it came as a bigger surprise to me than it does to you."
"This is the only copy?"
"As far as I know, yes."
"And she gave it to you as late as last night?" "Yes."
"Then why didn't you destroy it, make sure poor old Paddy got what's rightfully his? The Church has no right to Mary Carson's possessions at all." The priest's fine eyes were bland. "Ah, but that wouldn't have been fitting, Harry, would it now? It was Mary's property, to dispose of in any manner she wished."
"I shall advise Paddy to contest."
"I think you should."
And on that note they parted. By the time everyone arrived in the morning to see Mary Carson buried, the whole of Gillanbone and all points of the compass around it would know where the money was going. The die was cast, there could be no turning back.
It was four in the morning when Father Ralph got through the last gate and into the Home Paddock, for he hadn't hurried on the return drive. All through it he had willed his mind to blankness; he wouldn't let himself think. Not of Paddy or of Fee, or. Meggie or that stinking gross thing they had (he devoutly hoped) poured into her coffin. Instead he opened his eyes and his mind to the night, to the ghostly silver of dead trees standing lonely in the gleaming grass, to the heart-of- darkness shadows cast by stands of timber, to the full moon riding the heavens like an airy bubble. Once he stopped the car and got out, walked to a wire fence and leaned on its tautness while he breathed in the gums and the bewitching aroma of wildflowers. The land was so beautiful, so pure, so indifferent to the fates of the creatures who presumed to rule it. They might put their hands to it, but in the long run it ruled them. Until they could direct the weather and summon up the rain, it had the upper hand. He parked his car some distance behind the house and walked slowly toward it. Every window was full of light; faintly from the housekeeper's quarters he could hear the sound of Mrs. Smith leading the two Irish maids in a rosary. A shadow moved under the blackness of the wistaria vine; he stopped short, his hackles rising. She had got to him in more ways than one, the old spider. But it was only Meggie, patiently waiting for him to come back. She was in jodhpurs and boots, very much alive.
"You gave me a fright," he said abruptly.
"I'm sorry, Father, I didn't mean to. But I didn't want to be inside there with Daddy and the boys, and Mum is still down at our house with the babies. I suppose I ought to be praying with Mrs. Smith and Minnie and Cat, but I don't feel like praying for her. That's a sin, isn't it?" He was in no mood to pander to the memory of Mary Carson. "I don't think it's a sin, Meggie, whereas hypocrisy is. I don't feel like praying for her, either. She wasn't . . . a very good person." His smile flashed. "So if you've sinned in saying it, so have I, and more seriously at that. I'm supposed to love everyone, a burden which isn't laid upon you." "Are you all right, Father?"
"Yes, I'm all right." He looked up at the house, and sighed. "I don't want to be in there, that's all. I don't want to be where she is until it's light and the demons 200, of the darkness are driven away. If I saddle the horses, will you ride with me until dawn?"
Her hand touched his black sleeve, fell. "I don't want to go inside, either."
"Wait a minute while I put my soutane in the car."
"I'll go on to the stables."
For the first time she was trying to meet him on his ground, adult ground; he could sense the difference in her as surely as he could smell the roses in Mary Carson's beautiful gardens. Roses. Ashes of roses. Roses, roses, everywhere. Petals in the grass. Roses of summer, red and white and yellow. Perfume of roses, heavy and sweet in the night. Pink roses, bleached by the moon to ashes. Ashes of roses, ashes of roses. My Meggie, I have forsaken you. But can't you see, you've become a threat? Therefore have I crushed you beneath the heel of my ambition; you have no more substance to me than a bruised rose in the grass. The smell of roses. The smell of Mary Carson. Roses and ashes, ashes of roses.