Free Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell Page A

considered that as God’s mercy is infinite, and though there is surely hell, it is possible that no human soul dwells in it! Only a week ago I thought, again, that Evil is only in man, himself — ”
     
    “God have mercy!” he cried in a loud and shattered voice. “God have mercy on me! Christ have mercy! Lord have mercy! Christ have mercy — !” He sank to his knees, crossed himself, covered his face with his hands. He moaned as if dying, “Lord have mercy! Christ have mercy! Forgive me! Help me! The most worthless of Your servants, the most detestable! But let me save Michael! Deliver me from Evil — from Evil — from Evil!”
     
    He groveled in his grief and anguish and remorse. His hands fell on the stones and needles and dead leaves of the forest, and they disappeared in the mist. Slowly he raised his tortured head and saw the young man watching him coldly. Slowly, inch by inch, he pushed himself to his feet, bit his lip to keep from shrieking with pain. And never did he take his starting eyes from the stranger. His lips moved in a litany, in the simplest prayer he had ever uttered. He caught the trunk of a tree and pulled himself upright. He took a step. The wall had gone. Still watching the stranger in utter horror and revulsion, he staggered nearer him. Now they were abreast and looking into each other’s silent eyes. The stranger stepped back, a single step, and staggering and weaving, the priest passed him, his garments soaked with his own cold sweat.
     
    He went on, dragging step by step. After a little, he glanced fearfully over his shoulder. The stranger was still watching him. Then, suddenly, he was there no longer, and the moonlight was dimmer. From somewhere, near or far, there was a howl as of a wolf. “Deliver me,” whispered the priest. “Deliver me. From Evil.”
     
    He accepted his pain as his punishment for his urbane sophistication. He rejoiced in his suffering. “But please, dear Lord, do not visit my sin upon Michael. He — that Horror — where is he? Has he gone for Michael’s soul? Mary, most tender — ”
     
    There was a sudden blankness in his mind, filled with darkness and scarlet flashes. When he could see again he saw the castle on its low rise before him. His exhaustion and pain overcame him again, and he fell to his knees. He heard running footsteps on the stones, the falling of gravel and pebbles. He shivered, and shrank. Then he saw another of Michael’s shepherds before him, and the youth, exclaiming in pity and fear, was helping him to his feet.
     
    “Hurry. Let us hurry,” whispered the priest. “No, do not mind me. Just let me lean on your shoulder, your arm.”
     
    “Sure, and it’s hurt you are, Faether — ”
     
    “No, no. It is nothing. Just help me, a little.”
     
    The shepherd was strong and young; he half carried, half dragged the priest up the rise. Sometimes, panting, he had to rest, so that the priest stood on his own feet, wincing with the savage pain in his leg, and urgently begging for no delay. The castle appeared to move down towards them, gray and crumbling in the moonlight, with only a slit of dim radiance piercing, here and there, its silent bulk, its one remaining tower cutting off the brilliance of stars. The moon floated among her rags of black and rushing clouds, and occasionally disappeared behind them, leaving a wan shine on the black earth. “Hurry, hurry, in God’s name,” whispered the priest, and the sweating shepherd drew on all his strength. His clothing smelled of sheep-fat and boiled mutton and cabbage; his breath was thick with raw whiskey. At many times the priest had fastidiously closed his nostrils against this stench in the confines of the Confessional. Now he breathed it in deeply, with gratitude, for it was the human smell of a man who was helping him to reach another man on the very edge of hell.
     
    If I do not reach Michael in time, then I dare be a priest no longer, he said to himself, as the pebbles and