Free Gaudete by Amy Rae Durreson Page A

one?”
    “I’ll see you then,” Jonah agreed, and headed along the nave. The choir was still rehearsing, and he breathed in softly and let the singing flow through him, tracing every rise and fall of the music, following each intricate, intertwining line, and smiling with rueful sympathy when somebody’s high note wobbled slightly. None of the wandering tourists had noticed, but he knew, and the singer would too.
    As the singing stopped, the intercoms crackled, and the duty preacher announced the hour and asked for quiet for a prayer. Jonah sat down, hooking his hands over his knees, and looked up at the soaring columns of Purbeck marble that supported the vaulted roof, and the thin pointed arches of the windows where the light fell through in sweeps of color to illuminate the polished floors. He had put his faith aside, with other childish things, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate the beautiful things men had made to glorify God.
    When he finally stepped out into the cathedral close, the cold and the noise took his breath away. He pulled his scarf higher and pushed his glasses up his nose to stare at the spectacle before him. The ice rink installed on the cathedral green was the same, but there had only been twenty temporary chalets put up for the market in 2002, the last time he’d been here. Now there were a good two hundred, in aisles around the edge of the green and along the close, all bedecked in plastic greenery and strings of lights. Christmas music was playing cheerfully and the crowd seemed to be growing by the minute, everyone wrapped warmly as they shuffled from stand to stand. Even from here, he could see ten varieties of Christmas ornaments, three types of handmade jewelry, four soap stalls, six canework reindeer, two Gluhwein stands, and, quite possibly, a partridge in a pear tree. Determinedly quirky hand-painted signs directed him to the food court and the local craft market.
    He couldn’t see the roast chestnuts, but he could smell them, and he kept scanning the crowd hopefully, that sweet, elusive sense of Christmas past settling into his heart. It was only after a moment that he realized who he was looking for. Christmas meant carols, the cathedral, and Callum.
    Which was really rather silly, after eleven years away.
    Callum had only come here to help out his mum, after all, and even if he was still hanging around, they’d both grown up, and there was no reason he’d even remember Jonah. The only reason he’d come to mind was because Jonah was back here in Aylminster, and Callum had been so important to Christmas here when they were kids. He probably wouldn’t find Callum himself, but maybe Callum’s mum was still selling chestnuts and he could persuade her to tell him Callum’s surname (which hadn’t mattered in the least when they were ten, but was a rather vital bit of information now), and Jonah could look him up on Facebook just to satisfy his own curiosity.
    With that in mind, he plunged into the crowd, tucking his elbows in and murmuring apologies every time he jostled someone. It was a bright, cold day, and everyone was wrapped up in heavy coats and hefting bags of shopping. He had to slow down to the speed of the crowd, which was easier said than done when he was a good few inches taller than most of them and kept stumbling over his own feet trying to keep his strides short.
    The smell of food was getting stronger, and he could hear the sizzle of sausages even above the contented hum of the crowd. Then, inevitably, everyone seemed to surge back toward him, and he almost fell over a waist-high wooden duck. He dodged it but stumbled into the path of a town crier in full Victorian costume (Dear Lord, why?), lunged back out of the way, almost drop-kicking a stray toddler, and then finally lost his balance just in time to go crashing down toward a rack of fresh, glossy, and horribly overpriced mistletoe.
    Someone caught him, firm hands warm on his arms, and a kind voice