Excerpt
…his training at the seminary, his acceptance by the Church. Obviously His Holiness did not know the full story of this dark man from the mountains of Drumard or wherever it was he came from in the first place. Obviously His Holiness did not know from whom this same man received his education: from pagans and harlots. To have sent back to them this man from the shadow side of time and place, to have ordained him as their own new priest, the old ones regarded as an insult and an outrage. Padraig knew when he returned to the village that few of his flock had accepted him with any willingness and far less with trust. But he had proved himself in only a short time. Now all was lost. Their old suspicions had returned. They remembered. They talked. They retold stories. Some no doubt had seen him shudder or shake or stiffen or stumble and fall. They knew that Satan had come back for him. They knew that his celebration of the Mass was a sacrilege. They were affronted. Their gaze burned like hell-fire. Even the young spurned him; they spat at his passing in the street. When he stood at the altar, holding aloft the Host in celebration of the Eucharist, Padraig could feel their conspiratorial sneaking-forward down the hushed nave of the church, their long knives drawn, their white teeth gleaming like the fangs of wolves, their wild hearts pounding with the urgent wish to kill him.
Padraig no longer had his arm in a sling, but the cuts and bruises on his face had not yet completely healed, though the earlier discoloration was fading. He strode across the stone floor of the sacristy and stopped at the door, his hand outstretched but unwilling to lift the wrought-iron latch. His head ached. Satan thumped the insides of his temples, punched the backs of his eyes, drummed loudly in the whorled cavities of his ears. Padraig opened the heavy, dark door, and his arm jerked with pain. He looked out into the church. In less than two hours he must face the hostile crowd that would come to the wedding of Caitlin MacLir and Michael Carrick. The church was empty yet, except for two young altar boys who were talking earnestly in the front pew.
“Stephen,” Padraig called, steadying himself against the door post. “Stephen, come here a minute.” His voice boomed like explosions in his head.
One of the altar boys, one of Joe Carney’s sons, came forward, unsurely as the young Samuel. “Yes, Father?”
“Stephen, do you have your bicycle outside?”
“I do, Father.” The surprise that showed in Stephen’s eyes was a response either to the unexpected question or to the look of black-eyed distraction in the drawn face of the priest.
Manolis Aligizakis 