"Guy N. Smith - Sabat 4 - The Druid Connection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

CHAPTER ONE



THE YOUNG curate shivered in the cold and felt uneasy. Something was wrong but
it was difficult to work out exactly what. The atmosphere for a start; when he
had set out on the quarter-mile walk from his home to the church, a warm
spring breeze had fanned his cherubic features and the setting sun had almost
blinded him. Now, and it could not be more than twenty minutes later, it was
almost dark and very cold. Getting colder by the second.

The Reverend Philip Owen felt slightly dizzy as he stood by the lychgate and
tried to recollect his senses. The last twenty minutes seemed to have slipped
away without him noticing. He wiped his forehead with the back of a flabby
hand; his fingers came away wet and cold. His throat was raw and dry as though
he had an infection of some kind. He was ill, he decided; sickening for
something. He was trembling slightly and little shivers ran up and down his
spine. A chill perhaps, or the flu. He had always been susceptible to viruses.
At 31, and still a bachelor, he felt the years closing in on him . . . just
like those deepening shadows all around him were doing right now, obliterating
familiar surroundings and creating a previously unknown hostile world.

He tried to swallow and realised just how painful his throat was. He should
return home and go straight to bed. No, it was better that he prepared the
church for early communion now rather than face a mad scramble in the morning.
Indecision, apprehension mounting into . . . fear!

It was ridiculous, Philip Owen told himself. There was nothing to be
frightened of here, not in the grounds of God's house. That meeting at the
church hall was to blame for all this, the way a crowd of irate parishioners
had vented their wrath upon him. The vicar had conveniently found an excuse to
be absent and left Owen to face the anger of those whom he had always thought
to be his friends. And, inevitably, the bishop was unavailable for comment.

You couldn't blame the people though. The Church had deceived them, held them
in contempt over this latest issue. Philip Owen felt the guilt welling up
inside him because he was a party to this deception. It was dishonest but he
hadn't the courage to tell the vicar so. It was all so glib, like the
confidence trick it was.

The whole thing had begun just after the war when Sir Henry Grayne, a resident
of the village, had bought ten acres of land adjoining the cemetery and then
willed it to St Monica's church in trust. Church land forever, a last bastion
to repel the spread of greedy jerry-builders, or maybe one day it would become
an extension to the graveyard. And this might be needed before the decade was
out, the way the village was growing, almost into a sprawling suburb of the
town itself. Sir Henry Grayne had been a regular worshipper at St Monica's. He
was a multimillionaire even in those days, his own grave a monument to his
life. Philip Owen felt a pang of guilt as he remembered the huge marble
headstone, now green with moss and spotted with bird droppings. Sir Henry had