Read Online Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve - Free Book Online Page B

church, me keeping watch for passers-by, Peri hugging herself against the chill of the wind. She was giggling nervously with the thrill of it. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, I suppose. I warned her to keep quiet. “Angels don’t giggle,” I said.
    “How do you know?”
    “The sort of angels Saint Porroc thinks about don’t giggle, and that’s the sort we’ve got to give him. Remember to keep quiet. He’ll know your voice. He’s never heard mine.”
    Saint Porroc had built his church without windows, but high on the wall above the door there was a hole to let smoke out and the light in. I scrambled up the roof and hung over the edge of the thatch to peer through it.Upside-down, I saw the chapel’s dim innards. An altar, with a swag of reddish cloth hung up behind it, and Porroc down on his knees in front of it.
    That surprised me. I’d thought him a play-actor, pure and simple. Thought to find him sitting in a soft chair, sipping wine. But maybe there was some truth in his religion after all. Maybe he really did think he was God’s servant. Maybe he’d been honest once, before he understood what a living he could make with his prayers and prostrations.
    For a moment then I felt the huge peril of what we were doing. What if God was looking down on me, and didn’t see the joke? But I couldn’t go back now without looking a fool in front of Peri, and I didn’t want that. I remembered what Myrddin had said. Porroc was a charlatan. God wouldn’t care what tricks we played on him.
    Down below me, my pretend angel stood outside the door, her long shadow stretching out from her bare feet. Her worried eyes upturned to mine. I nodded, and made faces at her till she gathered up her wits and nerve and shoved the door open, like we’d agreed.
    Saint Porroc turned from his praying, and stuffed a cup of wine behind him somewhere. There was a scowl on his face as he swung round, but it dropped off him quick enough as the light from the open doorway hit his face.
    What did he see? A dazzle of sunlight, and in the heart of it a white robe, and the light shining through two spurts of white feathers. His face went empty and amazed. He tried to shade his eyes. And I leaned close to my spy-hole and shouted through my cupped hands, “Porroc!”
    There was a good echo in that high-roofed place. His name seemed to come at him from all around. He went down on his face, whimpering.
    “God’s lost his patience with you, Porroc!” I yelled. Not very angelic, but the best words I could find, and they seemed to work. Porroc writhed, a long black worm trying to burrow into the flagstone floor. “You love wine more than prayers,” I told him, “and you rob the poor widow who gives you shelter!”
    All that shouting was making me want to cough. I paused, swallowing, while Porroc wailed apologies at the floor.
    “Go from here, Porroc!” I yelled. “Punish your body! Go to the cold sea and clean yourself!”
    I looked down at Peri and hissed for her to move aside. She left the doorway and scrambled nimbly round the corner of the church. She’d barely made it when Saint Porroc shot out through the open door, like God’s own boot had kicked him up the arse. Wailing, he ran through the rampart gate and away down the board-road towards the beach, and his monks in their fields left their work and hurried after him.
    I slid down the thatch and flumped on the ground next to Peri. Coughing and laughing. Peri looked as if she still half expected God’s finger to reach down and rub us into the dirt like two gnats.
    “Come on,” I said, when my cough had gone. “He’s out of our way. Let’s see what he hides in that hole of his.”
    Peri shook her head. Her bravery was all used up. She was fumbling with the belt, trying to drag off her heretical wings.
    “Keep watch, then,” I ordered, and ran into the dark of the church. Black as a pit, it was, after that sunlight outside. No wonder poor old Porroc had