Corazon

By Stephen Brown

Geeza Vermies, Shamanic Detective, is hot on the heels of a gang of poachers. Bumping into his old friend Elliot, they join forces and follow the trail to Mexico, but their investigation quickly uncovers a far deeper plot, and once again they find themselves in a race against time to save the world!
Meanwhile Father Sadfael, the bumbling, out of time Benedictine monk, also finds himself in Mexico, sent to stop a vitriolic campaign of destruction being carried out against the entire Christian Church.
Who are the sinister figures orchestrating their deadly schemes from the shadows of the jungles? Could a rogue vicar burning down churches have any connection to a plot to bring back the bloodthirsty Gods of the Americas? And if so, what can anybody do to stop it?
Not a lot really - not when you don’t know what it is that’s supposed to happen, who’s going to do it or where it’s going to take place!
And especially when you’re up against a Jaguar-Priest of exceptional power, not to mention the small matter of the Aztec Gods themselves...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Brown
• Release date: Jul 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301219674

Stephen Brown

Stephen Brown is Emeritus Professor of Learning Technologies and former Head of the School of Media and Communication at De Montfort University. He has been Senior Technology Adviser at the JISC Technologies Centre, Head of Distance Learning at BT, Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in Engineering Design, and President of the Association for Learning Technology. He has also been a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and an Associate Member of the Institute for Ergonomics and Human Factors. Since 2005, he has been a registered European Commission research expert in the fields of Technology Enhanced Learning, Digital Libraries and Cultural Heritage. He was a member of the AHRC Peer Review College for ten years.

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CORAZON

By Stephen Brown

Copyright 2013 Stephen Brown

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For

Everyone who has touched me along the way,

although not necessarily literally…

A special mention to Peter, for his sage advice about libraries

I remain unconvinced

And especially for Jutta,

for your patience and your loveliness

Table of Contents

Title page

Contents

The Beginning

About the Author

Other works

Chosen Charity

***

THE JOURNAL OF ELLIOT CRIPPLESBY

Finally, I’m sitting here out of plaster and it feels so good! Well of course it does; anyone who has ever broken a limb will know only too well how damned uncomfortable it is to have their beloved appendage, an arm in my case, stiffly wrapped up in a fibreglass shell. It is a wretched inconvenience, however colourful they make the casts these days.

But at last I can write again! I have tried over the last six weeks to write left-handed, but while my efforts did improve, as anything will given practice, the results were still barely legible once the memory of what I’d been saying was gone, usually after only a few days.

I also tried to write my journal on a computer, but it just isn’t the same, tapping at a keyboard. It’s ok I suppose, functional, but it lacks that certain something, that personal connection with your thoughts that you get writing it out by hand - feeling the smooth, flowing liquidity of your thought processes as they travel from your brain down through your arm and into the pen, blossoming across the paper like a lotus unfurling its petals in the brightness of a Midsummer’s morning.

I wasn’t able to start straight away mind you. I had a week of physiotherapy to contend with before I could purposefully put pen to paper because my arm, scabby and skeletal when it emerged from out of the cast, was slightly worse than useless. The feelings which assailed me immediately after the casing was cut were very, very strange. You hear of people who have undergone a surgical transplant, a kidney or a liver or whatever, only for the body to reject the new organ, shunning it as something alien and unwanted - a foreign invader if you like, as so many of the St George waving Englishmen have started grumbling about the Scots cluttering up Parliament down in deepest Westminster.

It’s funny, but it is commonly believed that the English conquered the Scots when we muscled our way over the border all those years ago, succeeding where even the mighty Roman Empire had failed, and yet if you look at the way the world has moved on since those heady days of Edward I and William Wallace, it seems more a case that it is the Scots ruling us, albeit from down in London instead of craggy Edinburgh. I’ve heard it said many a time that if you wanted to find a Scotsman in Westminster all you have to do is throw a brick into the Members’ Lobby - you’re bound to hit one; they totally dominate Parliament in all parties across the board.

Not that it matters because politicians are a breed unto themselves anyway and you can’t trust any of them, no matter where they’re from.

Back to my arm though, and I felt exactly what I imagine the body must go through after one of those transplants. As I stared down at this withered-looking, scaly limb that had been entombed for six weeks I had to make a considerable effort not to simply refuse it and will it to drop off and die. I genuinely felt that it was not a part of me; that it did not belong.

It was an utterly bizarre and most uncomfortable sensation.

Amazing what a hot shower can do though. Ohh yes, that was nice. I was right as rain again after that, although it did have a tendency to swell up if I left it hanging down for any length of time.

What was also distinctly unpleasant was when I first saw the doctor for my initial examination. After only a cursory glance at the x-rays he was keen to screw the bone back together with a metal plate, a procedure they view as standard these days apparently, ensuring that the healing is quick, correct and efficient. I did not share his enthusiasm though and in fact had to practically fight the scalpel-wielding maniac off with my copy of Lola McLogan’s New World Adventures, the book I was reading at the time.

Somehow I just knew that I would have some kind of psychological problem with having a chunk of metal inserted in me, so I declined his offer and insisted that we let Mother Nature do it her way, as natural healing must surely be best.

I felt his disapproval like a punch in the face as he glared at me with furiously arched eyebrows. Angrily stuffing his surgical blade back into his top pocket alongside a thermometer, two pens and what looked for all the world like a sherbet fountain, he called out for a nurse and sent me away to the plaster room with a disdainful sweep of his hand.

I can only hope his behaviour was not typical of all doctors, as the impression he gave was that to question his authority was about as unthinkable as a lamb or a cow telling the knacker-man it would rather not be slaughtered today. It was as if patients were an unwanted burden to be squeezed in between rounds of golf, and the fact that one of them might actually have an opinion about something was… well, unthinkable.

The nurses also pressed for me to have the operation as it made things a whole lot easier, but when I politely declined them too they simply shrugged and began cocooning my arm in the fibreglass casing they use these days, telling me to be prepared to have my patience tested to its very limits. I was in for a period of considerable discomfort, they told me, and it would be better if I set my mind to accept this.

Interestingly though, it was not as bad as I had imagined. Sure enough, there were pains and frustrations, but they were by no means constant. I hardly noticed anything in the first week, for example, as I was almost totally given over to stunned disbelief - ‘this hasn’t happened to me, surely?’ My mind was taken off the six weeks to come by the constant desire to either eat or sleep, both of which I did to excess.

I muddled through for a while then, before coming to the only two weeks to go stage and that’s when the despondency kicked in. Those last two weeks dragged by so slowly I thought the healing process had been put under the management of some UN Aid Agency and that before the bandages, miles and miles of red tape had to be cut through first.

However, like the days of the British Empire, those days are gone and you find me right at this very moment reclining on a sun lounger at the side of the swimming pool in my hotel on the sunny island of St Lucia. I have come to the Caribbean for a well earned break (no pun intended) because when I think back I have had no peace at all since that concert at the pyramids seven or eight months ago, when we somehow managed to stop the Tokolosh from destroying the world.

I’ve not heard a peep from Baxter and had neither sight nor sound from Geeza since we all went our separate ways in the autumn of last year. I guess Ollie is back racing again and Rachael gardening, but to be honest I’ve been too busy to keep track. Busy busy busy, but in no danger - or so I’d thought, until that big BP sign came crashing down on top of me!

For the past twenty weeks I have been on another massive worldwide tour, back on my soap box to promote Clean Energy Awareness, in particular that of Wind Power. Research suggests there are an estimated seventy-two terra watts (TW) of energy available worldwide from ‘harvestable’ wind alone. Current total human usage globally runs at around seven TW so you don’t have to be an Oxbridge graduate to see how we could meet our needs so easily.

While I was over in Hong Kong I chatted with a quite senior executive in a prominent Indian multi-billion dollar company who is sympathetic to the cause. He told me that the research department of his company had predicted a model for high-altitude nations to become the major players in the global power markets by the year 2050, shoving the big oil companies and OPEC countries unceremoniously off the perches they’ve been sitting on for so long. I can’t say I’d be sorry to see that happen.

At the same time, my tour was also given over to raising funds for the victims of the numerous El Niño related disasters which have been all too prevalent of late. Ironic, I know, that on the one hand I am encouraging people and governments to embrace the renewable power of the world’s winds and on the other I am calling for relief to be distributed to victims of the earth’s largest wind-driven environmental disaster for the last God knows how many years.

We have been experiencing a particularly big El Niño for some time now, which has had catastrophic effects all over the globe. Australia has seen the worst droughts in living memory while on the other side of the Pacific, the floods there have caused unprecedented damage. There is not a nation on earth who is not feeling the effects of this temperamental weather system, and what’s worse is that it shows no signs of abating.

Be that as it may, I am particularly keen on championing wind energy over and above everything else, as it seems to be something absolutely everybody - every nation on earth - has access to. There’s a Scottish engineer I have flown over to the Faroes and set up in a lab, funding his experiments to suspend turbines from helium filled balloons floating at various heights in the atmosphere in order to tap these high altitude winds.

A rather whacky, eccentric fellow as most inventors inevitably are, Dr Ross G. McGloss is a black-bearded Highlander with - and you’ll never believe this - an eye-patch and a hook! Both injuries came about one fateful fishing expedition when he got into a tussle with a ferocious Loch Arkaig Pike which rather got the better of him. He has coped admirably well, especially with the loss of his hand for which he has had several attachments custom-made, different tools for different occasions which can be slotted neatly into his Swiss army wrist, as he calls it. He laughs loudly at the James Bond villain-ness of it all, but the only time I found it slightly off-putting was when I joined him for eighteen holes at the Plockton Municipal Course. Click-click - 6-iron off the tee. Click-click - wedge. Click-click - putter. Down in three he was. Scandalous.

Anyway, remembering him helps to put my own accident into perspective. It was just over three months into my tour when it happened. I was chairing a conference on the benefits of one of the latest designs of wind turbines, several models of which I was showing off to a selection of the main players in the energy-petro-chemical industry, when the large BP logo that was hanging on the wall behind me for advertising purposes fell off its mountings suddenly and knocked me into the middle of next week!

BP used to stand for British Petroleum, then Beyond Petroleum, which they used in their marketing campaign a few years back, but for me now I am doomed to think of it forever more as Bloody Painful! Fortunately only one of the bones in one arm got broken, but I was slightly concussed for a day or two and turned a colourful shade of blue all down one side of my body.

Needless to say, various conspiracy theorists have made all sorts of noises about ‘the arrogant, flagrant attack on one of the world’s most outspoken and influential environmental campaigners,’ by the ‘shadowy elite that steer and manipulate the governments of the world into doing their nefarious bidding,’ but I don’t know.

I suppose it could have been deliberate, but then again, probably not. Personally I am more inclined to think it was more a case of ‘gravity overcoming shoddy workmanship,’ by the ‘overpaid stage designers who couldn’t even bang a couple of nails in properly.’

Who knows? All I can recall is a gigantic, MDF lump falling on top of me shortly before being carted off to hospital. I was repeatedly told in the days that followed how lucky I had been to sustain only the injuries that I did because the logo had been quite a considerable weight - what exactly is MDF anyway? Everything seems to be made from it these days; we’ll be eating it next. Of course there are those that say certain fast food outlets have been peddling it for years, but that’s not for me to say…

***

THE RIGHT AND ORDERLY NOTEBOOK OF FATHER SADFAEL, VICAR OF BRAMFIELD

I still find my hand trembling slightly whenever I think of my current title, for it is as illustrious as it is ill-deserved! Although it has been a good two years since I was elevated by my Superiors in Canterbury to this lofty status, the honour has not yet fully sunk in.

And how can it? Within myself I do not feel in any way different from the lowly monk I once was in King Stephen’s war-torn England, more than one thousand years before the age I dwell in today and yet the facts, however strange they are (and they are!) are indisputable. I am no longer that hessian-wearing Brother of the Benedictine Order inhabiting the cold, stone chapels and corridors of St Malcolm’s, but rather a Father of the Anglican Church with my very own Parish of Bramfield!

But it is not only the concepts and responsibilities of my new status alone that are giving me pause for thought - there is so much I am struggling with. The Anglican Church for one. Apparently we no longer recognise the authority of the His Holiness the Pope, ever since a German man named Martin Luther voiced his protests about the seeming corruption of the Vatican several hundred years ago.

In nailing up his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg he effectively banged the last nail in the coffin of Catholicism in these lands, and many more besides. His objections resulted in a schism which has split the Church into as many fragments as the mirror I previously used for shaving, until I dropped it accidentally to the floor only two days ago. Having had a goodly portion of this theologian’s points explained to me in some depth, I can agree that most were valid, but to be honest the fact that he was an Augustinian is all I need to know about the man.

We had many of those mendicant clerics pass through the hamlets and villages around St Malcolm’s back in the day, and I have to say they were itinerant blabbermouths to a man! I’m not purporting them to be bad men, or wrong in what they preached - only that they all loved the sound of their own voices, every man Jack of them. So no, it is no surprise to me that such dramatic changes were brought about by one such as he. Once they got a bee in their bonnets (or up their cassocks, as once happened when one of their kind strayed too close to the hives at the edge of the Pease field), there was no stopping them.

I don’t suppose his Diet of Worms can have done much to improve his choler either. Perhaps if he had only enjoyed a more leguminous diet, things might have happened more amicably.

But there it is. I am an Anglican now, so I’m told, a member of the Ecclesia Anglicana or Church of England, which is itself but a portion of the expansive Protestant Church. Oh well, the Lord is still the Lord and continues to watch over His failing flock, no matter what we choose to call ourselves! What with the Lutherans, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Calvinists, us Anglicans, the Pentecostals, the Adventists, Baptists, Anabaptists, Charismatics, Congregationalists, Evangelicals, Methodists, Moravians, Presbyterians, Reformists, Unitarians and so many more, the mind simply boggles! We are all still Christian I suppose - I never thought to ask!

Even my title, Father Sadfael, Vicar of Bramfield is but one of the baffling variety contained within the structure of the Church. I have been honoured with the position of vicar, but stand amongst a plethora of others from rectors and pastors, deacons, arch-deacons and deans right up to canons, bishops and arch-bishops!

When the Hierarchy in Canterbury so magnanimously deemed me to be worthy of such a thing they offered to bestow upon me my choice from three possible titles, each of them equal in standing. I plumped for vicar, but could as easily have been Rector Sadfael or else Perpetual Curate Sadfael, which I thought had a certain ring to it. However, whilst I found this last one tempting, there was actually no question in my mind which to decide upon; if vicar was good enough for my friend Gawdley Pinball back in Bramfield then it was good enough for me!

Of course I didn’t know it then, but Gawdley would have already vanished by the time I arrived back in his cosy little parish - his parish, which was to become our parish, but has ended up becoming solely my concern these last two years! No one in these parts has heard a single word from him since

the day he packed his bags and left, reportedly in foul temper, but for what I remain clueless to this day. Still, I shall be the first to welcome him back should one day he return.

***

THE CASEBOOK OF GEEZA VERMIES

I’m writing under a paraffin lamp in the district of Serracunda, in the house of a man known as Seiko, my contact here in The Gambia. It is a district made up of red, dirt roads and corrugated-iron dwellings, with the odd breeze block house squatting here and there, probably the homes of officials from one of the nearby Mosques.

I arrived here in a taxi held together with chicken wire, poly-filler, and a lot of good luck after sending in an update of my mission back to CITES. This involved going back into Banjul, the squalid capital once again, with its dusty streets, worn out Pepsi signs and the country’s only commercially independent Internet Café. My reports have been few and far between, and in the three weeks or so I have been working for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, I must have only ‘written home’ twice.

Not through any deliberate awkwardness on my part, which I’m sure the guy I’m dealing with understands. It’s just that the trail these poachers have taken has been almost impossible to follow and - funnily enough - there haven’t been too many phone boxes along the way.

But at last the end is in sight, which I had great pleasure in informing my man in CITES from the crumbling dive that is Challerams International Cyber Café. Lance Pahia is a New Zealander who has been involved with CITES since its birth back in 1975. He’s a likable guy, as most Kiwis are, and had apparently been looking for me for about six weeks when he finally caught up with me in the Ivory Coast. He was by then on a tight schedule so he came straight to the point over our arranged breakfast meeting at his hotel.

We don’t get many chances to crack a ring of poachers Mr Vermies, and especially not ones like this. There’s just not enough co-operation between governments or willingness in industry to face up to facts. This I could only agree with. Add to that the combination of severely limited finances and the sheer enormity of the problem we face right across the globe and you can probably see our job isn’t an easy one. I nodded again. It was clear to see that Lance was a man who cared passionately about his work. "For some time within our organisation there has been a growing belief that if we continue to work solely along orthodox channels we might as well kiss good-bye to the lot of them - Tigers, Snow Leopards, Turtles, Sharks - they’ll all be gone within twenty years.

Finally though, after months - years - of throwing this argument at the Board, backed up with gigabytes of statistical forecasts and computer models based on current and projected trends, they finally agreed to apportion a small amount of our funds towards a more… direct, if not widely publicised, course of action.

Which is where you come in? I enquired.

"It is where you come in Mr Vermies - we hope."

Tell me more, I shrugged. I wasn’t involved in anything at that point and I liked Lance. Something about him, his energy, his intensity - and his cause.

There’s this one particular gang of poachers, highly organised and operating for some of the biggest buyers from all round the world. There’s nowhere they won’t go and nothing they won’t stoop to. They have killed and mutilated species on the critically endangered list and have at least twelve human deaths on their hands as well, anti-poaching troops mostly as well as two quite senior Customs officials whom they obviously couldn’t bribe.

They must be pretty exclusive, if they’re willing to go so far, I commented, because most poachers will usually cut and run at the first hint of confrontation. They’re in it for the fast buck and are normally not prepared to face up to an armed anti-poaching unit. More often than not the actual poachers themselves are just local people - sometimes low-life scum, but just as often villagers just trying to get by and feed their families. They don’t make much and simply pass on the carcass to the next in the chain. And as usual, the higher up you go, the bigger the pot gets and the bigger the sleazebag feeding from it.

Like I said, Lance pushed his plate aside, his breakfast only half-eaten, "only the biggest players use their services and their prices are high - they have to be to bribe so many officials in so many places.

Eight or nine years ago they were notoriously prolific; they seemed to be everywhere in those days, but after a couple of years of inactivity they just started operating again.

Why the lull?

We got them, that’s why! he said with some venom. They had avoided capture on every other occasion, twisting out of the way here and squirming over a border there, but one time down in Panama we nailed them! But their bloody bastard lawyer found a couple of loopholes in the law which forced us to drop the charges and every one of them got off scot free!

Lance got pretty stewed up as he told me about ‘that day in court.’ He told me how the six men had laughed openly as the judge let them simply walk away, despite having been caught red handed with Tiger pelts, Rhino horn, live Panamanian endangered Frogs and plenty more - in all nearly three quarters of a ton of illegal wildlife goods.

I want these guys caught, and now with this new legislation we have our chance.

We’ve heard about you from field operatives of ours and of the WWF’s here in Africa, although how much is true is… questionable. There’s all sorts of stories flying around about how you find things, or do things when everybody else has given up. You’ve taken on a bit of a mythical status amongst some of the junior members of staff in CITES, so much so we weren’t sure whether or not you really existed until that thing in Uganda.

He was referring to an incident a few months back when I managed to trace a party of smugglers from the Ugandan Rain Forests up to an isolated airstrip where they had absconded with two juvenile Gorillas who were due to be flown out to Germany to a private collector. I happened to be in the area at the time, and became aware of the incident whilst conversing with local Mountain Spirits.

I had hoped to effect a rescue nice and quiet, tidy tidy, but there kind of ended up being a bit of trouble. Certain Spirits of the Mist followed me up there and attacked the smugglers, with some pretty horrific results. Most of them were driven mad with terror and, with so many guns being waved about as the fear and panic took hold, the entire group managed to shoot itself dead. Good riddance to bad rubbish, but it was a mess.

I can’t say I lost any sleep over their deaths, but it would have been a nasty way to go - I’ve seen these Spirits, and they’re not the easiest to get on with even when they’re being friendly.

Amazingly the Gorillas’ family group had not been murdered, which is what normally happens in these situations, but more amazing than that - curse my luck - there just happened to be a freelance journalist in the neighbourhood, so unfortunately I couldn’t totally escape the limelight. I tried to appeal to her discretion, but apparently she didn’t have any.

She kept my name out of the papers, but not much else. The story appeared in the international news, making mention of ‘a wily man of the Mountains whom locals referred to as Ngueizi, who heroically rescued both Gorilla infants after leading a local anti-poaching unit to a well-concealed jungle hideaway.’ The report went on to say ‘the armed and British-trained unit attempted to apprehend the ruthless gang, but a cross-fire ensued and none of the perpetrators survived.’ Etc., etc. Well, it was the best story I could come up with at the time.

A picture accompanied the story which the crafty woman had managed to take on the sly when she finally pinned me down to an interview over dinner in the nearby town. Thankfully it was kind of dark and somewhat blurred and it would be difficult to recognise me from it, but it had apparently proved my existence in the offices of CITES and so Pahia and several others had been dispatched to try and find me and enlist my help.

It wasn’t hard to persuade me, to be honest. This ring Lance was after has been chased across every continent in the last few weeks, where they have carried out their brutal work very specifically, targeting just one animal from each major landmass. They were known to have entered Africa by the time Pahia found me, so it was then over to me.

I waived the fee they were offering - you can’t charge for something like this - but asked for expenses, as I would have to visit the site of each of their killings to have any hope in finding them. I was furnished with a credit card, a contact who would secure all my permits and special ‘access all areas’ visas, a gmail address and a completely free reign, at which point Mr Lance Pahia departed, his job done - for the time being at least.

I spent an exhausting fortnight flying out to all the sites of the atrocities and what I found in each case sickened me - the hearts had been removed from each of the murdered animals and the rest of the carcasses had been simply left to rot.

I started off in Antarctica, then on to Oz and then all round the globe, but unfortunately by the time I got back to Africa - yesterday - I had run out of time. The gang had already killed again, and although by then it was as easy to trace them as an Elephant through a field of corn, even with the aid of the Denubari and all the other Spirits I’ve become acquainted with over the past few years I couldn’t catch up with them before they left.

My Denubari friend Umfalezi, the mighty Tusker, was weeping over the corpse of the Elephant they had slain and left to rot on the plains. No scavengers dared come anywhere close with the huge Elephant Spirit around, so the body had not been spoilt. Several shots had been fired to kill the ancient male and a precise incision in his side spoke tellingly of what they had been after. They had not even taken the enormous ivory tusks that must have curled majestically before him while the Bull Elephant had still lived.

It was a disgusting sight to behold and filled me with more anger than I like to admit. Like I said, it was easy to find them, but I was just too late in preventing them from leaving African soil.

However, the last thing I was able to find out was that the poachers, a party of six, have boarded a Liberian-registered merchant ship crewed by Portuguese, bound eventually for the Caribbean. In some perverted twist of fate the ship is called le Coeur d’Afrique and I can tell by the ugly, rage-coloured swirls of their violence still dripping in the æther that St. Lucia is its final destination. I intend to be there when it comes into port.

***

THE RIGHT AND ORDERLY NOTEBOOK OF FATHER SADFAEL, VICAR OF BRAMFIELD

It is abhorrent how poverty can be rampant even on your own doorstep and yet somehow you do not notice it! Here I am, supposedly the chosen representative of the Good Lord Our Heavenly Father, ministering to the needs of His Parishioners in Bramfield, and yet only this week I have become aware of such a terrible hardship being suffered right here underneath my very nose! How long this travesty has been going on I know not, I am sorry to confess, and for that I consider myself a disgrace to my office, having failed so completely in sniffing it out.

Despite those to whom I have confided in all being of the opinion that I am being more than a little hard on myself in my condemnation, it is nevertheless something for which I must contemplate long and hard on how best to chastise myself. It will not do.

I was invited, some three days since, to call around at Mrs Gower’s cottage any time that evening, should it prove convenient for me to do so. She, that is to say Mrs Gower, is a widow of middle years who has not long moved to the village, taking up residence in the Apple Yard, the cottage recently vacated by poor old Mr Fingers, who was forced to quit his job as the Regional Executive for Public Transport after his turn, brought on so people say, by pressures of work.

I gather he is doing well at the hospital he was taken to and am indeed doubly comforted by the knowledge that he will not only be well-tended there, but safe as well, as I have heard it mentioned that he is being housed in the building’s ‘secure unit.’ Perhaps it is one of the infirmaries governed by the Knights Hospitaller, given that there are currently no Crusades for them to embark upon.

But this is by the by. Three days ago I found myself knocking on the door of the Apple Yard with a small basket of fruit which I have made into a custom of mine, whenever I formerly greet a new village member. I have met the lady on several previous occasions, of course, and indeed she seems a most keen and attentive listener at church - she has not missed a single one of my sermons to date and sits always in the front row of pews.

I particularly admire her determination because she remains utterly focused throughout, never once taking her eyes off me despite obviously suffering some not inconsiderable discomfort, a fact I have grown to suspect by the way she keeps shifting her position where she sits - one minute leaning forwards, sometimes stretching slowly, arching her back and constantly crossing and uncrossing her legs, yet smiling kindly at me the whole time.

I thought to myself that perhaps she has piles, and intended to ask her that evening, as I know of an excellent herbal remedy for just such a condition.

When the door was opened to me at the end of her winding brick path, edged along its length by colourful flowers, I was horrified by what I saw and castigate myself for not having noticed before - all the signs must have been there to a more careful observer, no matter how well she had tried to cover them! The mettle of the woman is a credit to us all as she stood quite unashamedly, her gown the most spartan and threadbare I have ever seen! You could see practically all the way through it!

Father Sadfael, I was wondering when you’d come, she told me a voice so deep and husky I wondered if a chill had not already settled on her chest.

My poor dear! I exclaimed, at once struck by her desperate plight, and to save her blushes I bustled her immediately beneath the lintel and threw my cloak around her. The poor woman! Obviously she has become so used to her state of poverty that there on her own doorstep she had forgotten to keep up the brave face she evidently has been putting on for so long. I must have caught her with her defences down. Unable to speak as I scurried through with her to her living room, she was clearly embarrassed by her predicament, though I told her not to be. As she sat in what appeared to be a state of shock, her secret finally revealed, I explained to her that I would do whatever I could to help.

The Church is here for you, I told her, but my poor dear woman, you must never be too proud to ask for our assistance. If but one of my parishioners is suffering some poverty then we are all the poorer for it!

She looked numb and remained mute despite her mouth flapping open a few times as if to speak.

Say nothing my dear, say nothing, I soothed her. Do you have fuel and food enough? I could see no kindling stacked up, so I made certain to reassure her she would not want for anything in that regard. I shall bring a basket of stout faggots around as soon as the evening service is completed - and do not worry, I held up a hand to qualm her fears, I will be the soul of discretion. No one need ever know if that is how you want it.

Her finances must be in a bad shape because she hardly had any lights on, resorting instead to burning several of the old-fashioned wax candles that I am more accustomed to in the vicarage - I still prefer them to the glass-bulbed lighting so common in this new and magical age, but most households have their illumination supplied by a place called Electric City, wherever that is.

As I busied myself making her a cup of tea as I have learned to do, by clicking the switch on the smooth white cauldron people know as a kettle, I took the liberty of checking her cupboards to see what food she had in store. Fortunately the situation is not as bad as I had first thought, as there seemed to be a whole myriad of foodstuffs.

In fact I was surprised to see several exotic, what you might consider luxury items in the long, white tallboy known commonly as the refrigerator - asparagus, oysters, strawberries and a princely bottle of French wine, along with a bowl of dessert I have since heard may have been something called ‘whipping cream’, though what this tastes of I cannot imagine.

Nor was this the last surprise I was in store for either, for when I re-entered the living room with two cups of tea, I found the good widow Gower sat up on her settee in a burgundy coloured robe of excellent quality, my own cape lying neatly folded up and moribund on a nearby chair arm.

I must have seemed as baffled to her at that point as she did to me on her doorstep when I wrapped her in my coat. Gently patting the cushion next to her, she smiled a charming smile and bade me sit down. Then she rested a caring hand upon my knee and stared deeply into my eyes.

May I be forward with you Father? she asked.

Much better than being roundabouts, I informed her of my preference, to which again she smiled.

Father - Sadfael - have you ever loved a woman?

Quite why she thought this particular question relevant remains beyond me even now, but I endeavoured to answer none the less. But of course! Why, if it were not for the warm smiles and numerous tasty cakes given to me by some of the ladies of my congregation this job would a far less pleasurable!

She frowned and shifted slightly, her wine-coloured robe falling open slightly to reveal the suggestion of a most comely bosom lying beneath. Most delicately, she placed her other hand on my other knee and then leaned close in towards me, so close in fact that I was in danger of becoming intoxicated by her perfume - a delicate blend of jasmine and carrot I remember thinking at the time. She paused just before the point of actual physical contact, yet was still close enough for