Read Online Mercy by Alissa York - Free Book Online Page A

wipes the concave features with a bleached cloth, then lards up his fingers and begins rubbing fat into their cavities and cracks. For the moment he forgets all about the paunch. The mixture’s perfect—soft but not sloppy, the gelatin spread evenly throughout. He ladles the headcheese into the mould, then carries it to the back cooler with care.
    Two hours later, the mask springs out lively, florid and expressive on its plate. Thomas displays it on the top shelf with sprigs of parsley cresting back from its brow.
    Mrs. Carstairs is the first of many admirers. “Oh, Mr.
Rose.”
She presses her fat fingertips to her mouth. “It’s you, isn’t it? It’s
you.”
    “I’d’ve been about twelve,” he tells her with a wink. “You can see for yourself the ravages of time.”
HIS SMELL
    Mathilda has waited patiently at the end of the line. Stepping into the stifling box, she lowers herself to the kneeler amid the countless odours of those who came before. She draws close to the screen, catching a whiff of male pungency from the other side.
    “Bless me Father for I have sinned—” She hesitates, hearing him shift in his cassock at the sound of her lowered voice. “It’s been a month since my last confession, and since that time I’ve had—impure thoughts.” She plays with the hem of her dress. “And not just once, either.”
    He takes too long to answer. Far too long. Sounds strangled when he finally speaks. “Yes, my child. And have you—”
    “I can’t help it!” she cries. “It’s the Bible!”
    “The—Bible?”
    The matchbox rattles in her hand. She fishes out a redheaded stick and strikes it, illuminating the tiny book in her palm. She’s kept the page with a thin ribbon, something fairly safe to start with. Deepening her voice for thepart of the groom, she begins. “ ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks—’ ”
    The match dies against her fingernail, releasing a smoky, disquieting smell. Taking his silence as a kind of assent, she lights a second. “ ‘Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet,’ “she reads softly. And more softly still, “ ‘Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins—’ “The match curls up black and she shakes it out. She can hear him breathing now. “You see, Father?” she says. “I can’t help it.”
    Still nothing but the hammering at her temples, the drag of his laboured breath. She’s reaching for another match when he forces a loud cough.
    “Ten Hail Marys,” he wheezes.
    “But, Father—”
    His thin door opens and falls shut. Footsteps—measured, almost mechanical—carry him away.
ET VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST
(
and the word was made flesh
)
    August was taught the
Canticum Canticorum
as metaphor—Christ the groom, his spouse the One True Church.
    Tossing in his sheets, he suspects it may in fact be what it seems
—The Song of Songs
, a fragrant comb of words steeped in the honey of sex. When sleep finally comes, he dreams of Mathilda’s mouth opening beyond the screen.
    Dentes tui sicut greges tonsarum— Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn—
    Of all the lines that might, it is this one that surfaces, her lips parting to utter it, both eye teeth revealed. Gleaming fangs turned fleecy and soft, they leap out, lead the others ewe upon lamb. The whole flock passes magically through the mesh, engulfing him in a woolly white stream.
    He wakes with damp pyjamas, the hand a sticky phantom lying spent beside his deflating sex.
    The male seed is the medium for original sin
. So Saint Thomas Aquinas taught, and though many dissented, August was never so sure. Thus was the Redeemer born of a woman undefiled, delivered guiltless, completely untouched by the stain.
    August holds his palm to the moon’s weak light, staring at it as a murderer would, his colourless emission as damning as any blood. In his guilty, sleep-addled state, it seems his hand is thinning out,