Free Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) by C. C. Benison Page B

in a first-world country. But at forty he was midway through his earthly journey or, ifone wanted to come over all peevish about it, he was suddenly, irrevocably, half dead. Being peevish about one’s age was not an attractive quality, though he had said nothing to his parishioners about his forthcoming birthday and had laid down the law to Madrun to keep
schtum
on the subject, which was in truth rather peevish of him. “Perhaps a small party when Miranda and I return from Gravesend,” he’d allowed, frowning over a much-too-early card from an old friend in London featuring a dinosaur, ha ha, how very droll.
    If he hadn’t been theologically trained, it might matter less. But he couldn’t help but be reminded of the appearances of the number in the Bible. God, the God of order and purpose, had a penchant for things forty: forty days of rain for Noah, forty days of fasting and temptation for Jesus; forty years of exile in the desert of Midian for Moses, forty years of wandering the wilderness for the Israelites. The common theme: tribulation, testing, and trial.
    Oh, dear
.
    He yawned again, so hard this time his jaw ached. He wasn’t sure he was quite ready for a bout of tribulation, testing, and trial. Perhaps tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will be the day of tribulation, testing, and … that other thing. He pinched his pudge again. Jesus lived to only thirty-three and odds were He didn’t have time to get a pudge. Lot of walking in His ministry, of course—good exercise!—and He didn’t have a housekeeper who’d trained at a very good catering college.
I wonder how they managed all those meals
, he wondered as he pulled the sheets down and slipped into the bed, vaguely aware his thoughts were growing gabbled and silly. All that cooking for the Twelve, plus Jesus,and who knew who else. Couldn’t do the loaves-and-fishes bit every day!
    Must have hired a team of excellent women
.
    Funny the Bible never mentioned them
.
    But then men’s doings got all the attention, didn’t they?
    Patriarchy! Lisbeth would have said
.
    Ha ha. I love you
.
    He would have laughed
.
    And she came to him as an angel
    As the waters of Lethe
    poured over him
.
     

     
    Some time later—not long he thought, though in his woolly state he couldn’t be certain—he was jolted to wakefulness, not by some nightmare’s trident, he considered after a dull moment, but by light, an unrelenting stream of it training against his eyelids. He had been dreaming a falling dream, the ragged edges of which flittered away in the soft safe certainty he was home in Thornford in bed. But the bed felt oddly out of place. And the furniture, shadowy forms, appeared newly arranged. The window loomed high and strange, a glowing frame pulling his eyes to a full moon suspended in the black, black sky like a mammoth crystal, from which cool rays, like those from a dying sun, streamed into the room, seeking out its remote corners, pooling along the floor, and pouring over the bedclothes. Tom widened his eyes to the transfixing loveliness and in his trance felt himself set on a silver barque on a silversea. But the trance lasted little time. The fairy dust of moonlight soon settled dim and cold along the room’s alien shapes as his night mind sharpened to his surroundings. He knew where he was now. And he knew, too, that it wasn’t simply moonlight that had disturbed his sleep. Someone had entered his room.

Eggescombe Hall
     
    7 A UGUST
Dear Mum
,
Lovely station aryery , don’t you think? I am ensconed ensc at Eggescombe at last. All the years I’ve lived in Devon and never thought to visit even though it’s open-to-view most weeks. Remember Hazel Turriff, Mum? Of course you do. Dad’s cousin (third?) who I boarded with when I went to Leiths. She’d lived near 50 years in Shepherd’s Bush and hadn’t seen the Tower of London or the V&A. One day, she said. But she never seemed much wont to leave Tunis Road and I’ll wager she