Free Mercy Seat by Wayne Price Page B

darker and made on a smaller scale than the rows in front of it. Nearly a thousand years old,he said, full of satisfaction. Saved from the abbey at Strata Florida, see.
    The ledges were decorated with chunky, stylized carvings of people and animals. Take a good look, he said. Take your time, if you like that kind of thing. He went back to work on the radiator.
    What are they? I asked.
    Misericords, he answered over his shoulder. Mercy seats. They were made for the really old monks so they could rest their arses when the prayers went on too long.
    Most of the carvings showed animal scenes – a fox preaching to geese; a monkey playing a cat through its tail like bagpipes; pigs tearing a wolf to pieces with bizarre, dagger-like fangs; a grinning dog parting a monk’s habit with his huge head and jaws, clamping its teeth on his genitals. The farthest was shadowed in the corner of the stall and hard to make out: a fish arched over what looked like flames and a human figure beating an ape with a staff.
    The church was one of the first places I took Jenny when we started seeing each other. She’d found it hilarious that my idea of a date was showing her such odd, grotesque things, and it became one of our few private jokes together. Part of me resented sharing it with Christine now, but I was excited, too, by a creeping sense of symmetry in it all. I’d had a powerful feeling of déjà vu as she crouched to examine the pictures, and I moved away from her and sat down in one of the pews to let the sensation pass. It seems odd to me now that I didn’t confront her about the pellets of grit in Michael’s sling. It was still on my mind, of course, and I half intended to bring it up when we were alone in there, but she hadn’t harmed him as such, and she’d shown no sign of guilt or embarrassment, so I suppose Ididn’t know how to begin. And I was curious more than angry. It was as if I couldn’t ask her that question while there were other, much simpler but much more difficult, questions between us.
    Why are the pictures so violent? she said, her voice muffled behind the stalls.
    They’re fables. All the animals are symbols for things.
    Like what?
    Devils and demons, priests, Jews, lust, Christ. All that kind of thing.
    How do you know about all that?
    I read up on them. They’re from an old abbey about twenty miles away. But there are others all around the country. All around Europe, in fact.
    Were they stolen?
    Well, the abbey’s just a ruin. Someone must have saved them. They were in another church for a few hundred years before they were moved here.
    They’re good, she said flatly, then stood up straight again and let her gaze wander round the whole church. They’re so childish, in a way, she added. It’s funny.
    I waited, expecting her to carry on, but she just folded her arms and half leaned, half sat against the back of one of the pews.
    I looked up at the modern stained glass windows: cheery, inoffensive pastels in abstract organic shapes. I felt Christine at my elbow, though I hadn’t noticed her moving towards me.
    Dad was always dragging us off to look at church windows, she said. Real ones though, not like these.
    You and Jenny? I asked.
    All of us, she said. It was his idea of a good day out.Driving halfway across the country to gawk at some old glass. It used to drive Jennifer and my mother crazy, she added. It was the first time I’d ever heard anyone refer to Jenny by her full name, but Christine spoke so flatly it was impossible to guess at any feeling behind her words. Just for an instant my dream came back to me: their father’s face at a high window, staring down at me, mouthing, becoming Christine. It was a face I’d only ever seen in a photograph, and then only briefly before Jenny shuffled it away again. He hated organised religion, she went on. It drove him wild, but he loved looking inside churches. He never told us why, or what