Read Online Brotherhood of the Tomb by Daniel Easterman - Free Book Online

them, of course.’
    Word for word, yes. But why they were put there, who wrote them - I’ve no idea.’ High above, the mice moved slowly in the darkness. Or were they bats after all?
    ‘Oko za oko, zub za zub?
    Patrick looked puzzled.
    “An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.” Someone wanted revenge. A spiritual revenge ... by very earthly means. What commandment had your priest sinned against, Patrick?’
    ‘Most of them, I should think. Or none. What difference does it make?’
    ‘To me, none at all. But perhaps it made a difference to someone. What’s this all about, Patrick?’
    Patrick stared at the Russian, as though challenging him.
    ‘C’mon, Alex - what are you telling me? That you didn’t know what you’d find here, didn’t know I was here - is that it? I suppose you’re just in Dublin on holiday and dropped in here for an early-morning tour of one of the city’s less-visited churches.’
    Chekulayev said nothing. It needed only a camera round his thick neck to transform him into the archetype of a certain type of tourist. His fawn coat and burgundy scarf were neatly pressed, his shoes reflected the light of the candles. He could have been
    a businessman on leave, meddling in holiness for his soul’s pleasure. But Alex Chekulayev did not have a soul.
    ‘Let’s sit down, Patrick. I feel exposed up here, like an actor on a stage. All those empty pews back there, all those shadows piled up behind the pillars - they make me nervous. Let’s sit down.’
    Patrick shuddered and looked away. He remembered - how many years ago? - a performance of Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. Where had it been? St Patrick’s? Christchurch? He forgot. But he had not forgotten those final images: Becket by the altar, pierced and bleeding, the knights-tempters with their reddened swords, the chorus of the women of Canterbury chanting in the shadows:
    ‘The land is foul, the water is foul, our beasts and ourselves defiled with blood. A rain of blood has blinded my eyes.’
    A rain of blood. An eye for an eye. And now Alex Chekulayev like a ghost come out of nowhere to haunt his present. Or a knight with a bloody sword, stepping forward to regale his audience with rational explanations for a bloody act.
    They walked together to the back of the church and sat in the rear pew, like penitents come to wait their turn for confession, ringed by shadows.
    ‘If I believed in anything,’ said Chekulayev, ‘I would become a Muslim. Churches are such gloomy places, don’t you think? They give me the creeps. But mosques are all right. No statues, no memorials, no dead men nailed to crosses. It’s morbid, don’t you think, this religion of yours?’
    Patrick thought of Eamonn. He had never been morbid. Patrick realized that he had always loved the old man, even throughout the long years when they had seldom met.
    ‘You were going to explain how you come to be here.’
    Chekulayev reached inside his pocket and drew out a packet of cigarettes. He held them out to Patrick.
    ‘No thank you.’
    The Russian shrugged and took one before returning the packet to his pocket. He jammed the cigarette into a small ebony holder ringed by a thin line of ivory and lit it. He used a match, cupping the flame in thick hands. For a brief moment, his face was lit up, like an icon in darkness, faded and grey and peeling. The face had matured, thought Patrick. Or perhaps just aged.
    ‘Russian,’ Chekulayev said, meaning the cigarette. ‘At my age, you get used to things. And my people get suspicious of agents who acquire a taste for Western comforts. Just as yours are wary of a man with a penchant for leftish ideology. We never ask what a man thinks - that’s far too abstract. It’s what he wants that makes him dangerous.’ He breathed out a thin pillar of smoke. Patrick wondered if there was still a Russian word for ‘sacrilege’.
    ‘A few weeks ago,’ Chekulayev began, ‘I came to Dublin from Egypt. I was following rumours, a lead