Priest Hole

A short story

This short story appears in the new issue of Canal, entitled ‘Dark Rooms’, alongside a bunch of amazing writers. Right up my street, and up yours too I hope. You can buy a copy here. It’s launching on Friday with a special show on Resonance FM at 8pm UK time, and if you want to hear me read the story, tune in! Lastly, as this is likely the last issue of ‘Huw Lemmey’s Utopian Drivel’ (wish I’d chosen another name) before Christmas, a reminder that you can buy a subscription as a gift for the friend who has everything, as well as supporting independent writers like myself. You don’t just get all my new pieces, but access to hundreds of essays in the archive. Bones festes to all of you!

What lamentable wretch am I, watching? A sinner, aye for sure. I hold myself to account, but with this cramped madness the fear of God leaves me. Man seems a good deal more fearsome, although I am not faithless. Yet. Each footstep upon the stair has become a fine wire fuse set to light me up like a petard at the city walls. I inspect the creak for familiarity; the lady of the house? The master? Those conscientious young maids, trustable and sturdy, yet not light of foot? The rougher footmen? Yet, thank God, not pursuivants and their men. Not yet.

In Rome, to perform my examen felt like a rich addition of routine to wrangle my disordered life. I was just a young man when I gave myself to the Jesuits, subject to all the sins of young men, and in Rome, where sin is but a quick currency. The streets were fast and busy, the yelling hawkers and vendors rising to the windows of the Collegium Romanum, where I took my study. Once down the stairs and passing among them, I felt opportunity pulling at the cuffs of my cassock. The teachings of our Father General, Ignatius Loyola, were like a balm placed over a furious rash of sin that spread across my mind. It made that rough sea tranquil. But now I ache for a spiritual storm, trapped here in this cold old cage, the north wind beating against its stone walls for now my third winter here.

My hide is a dank and dissolute hole, and it tests me. These brick walls sweat through the summer and freeze in the winter, but in no season betray a chink of light. There are no windows, and the air gets thick with dust and smoke. Yet it is a gift from the Lord to protect me, my armour. I can enter from a small bench built beside the inglenook fireplace. A wedge of wood can be removed from the arm, allowing the seat to be lifted. From there, I can squeeze myself in, dropping a few feet onto the bench on which I sleep. The seat is replaced, and I am gone, like a ghost into the walls. There is a desk, a bucket, a candlestick, and precious little else. It is not bright enough even to read my Exercitia spiritualia, but no matter, for I know it by heart. Above my head the steps lead from the hall to the chambers of my master’s family. It is not safe enough to take my own bedroom; if I am not offering Mass, or talking with them in their private rooms, here I am, in the dark, waiting, praying. Listening.

In Rome, I saw sin, I smelt it, I touched it in the streets, I tasted it in the taverns. But it is only here, in the dark, listening, that I finally got to know sin.

I am a priest, a true servant of our Lord, and there is a bounty upon my pelt. I know my name is written in their books, just as it is written in His. Across North Yorkshire, I am told, these schismatic brigands pace, with writ and warrant, although it might just as well be with dogs and horses. They had heard I, their renegade priest, had made landfall in Sussex. They had word I was travelling north. Their spies say Yorkshire. Well, so much is true, but as I enter my third year with this family, I remain undetained. My liberty is this prison, lodged between chimney and staircase.

That first winter I was awoken one night by footsteps overhead. I know not the time, but it must have been in the middle of the night. The whole house was asleep. The soft padding of the toes against the oak. Creaking. A door latch opening. The master’s chamber. His wife? Surely they are too old to share a marriage bed still. And yet? I stood on my bed and held my ear to the roof. Dust dropped down from between the floorboards, and I could make out the faintest illusion in candlelight. Not the master’s wife, but her maid, Sarah, followed by his lascivious noises. I am a priest, not a fool: you cannot make me doubt what I heard. First kissing, his old mouth against her young breasts. The wanton fool. And the sound, the sound she made when he sank his fat fingers into her cunt. To know sin.

I am here on account of his wife, not him. Does he love her, or humour her? Certainly they seem to live a happy life. Too happy. I can hear the raucous feasting they do on their high days, with guests drunk on wines from Spain and Italy, and music and laughing, and the smell of roasting beef filling my dark room. Too risky for me to come out. Christmas was a miserable time. They all come, my lord, my lady, their children, for every mass and service I lay out on the small altar in the attic room. They do all they are expected to, and take advantage of their regular confessions by filling their copybooks with their own exercises of sin in the gaps between. How can I tell her ladyship, after all they have given me? Our job, I remind myself, is to serve the sinful, and bring them closer to God. So I wait, ear to the floorboards, for him to defile his sacrament, week in and week out. He grunts when he finishes, and I return to sleep.

Some days, when it is quiet, when no guests are expected, my little door to the world is open, and me and my lady converse a while in her chambers. I hold my head to the window, and beyond those little diamonds of glass I see a cavalcade of the creation. Pinks, greens, reds, the world outside so fresh and fine with the spring. From my room I can hear the birds up the chimney. Birdsong, sweet perfumed blossom, and the bleating of lambs, all pass muted through the brickwork. I wish to taste their sweetness on my tongue. I return to my spiritual exercises.

I am glad I didn’t tell her. Spring is the sinner’s season. His Lordship had left for a new Parliament. Desperate to reconnect this dread chamber to the world, I used my knife to bore a hole. A small hole, into the riser of the stair. From it I could peep straight down the hallway on the second floor. Suddenly, a world opened up to me. Before, I had no appreciation of the workings of a house. Like a seminary, it has its rituals and routines, an opening up and a closing down, and from this tiny aperture opened up before me a whole theatre of family life. With her husband gone, the lady of the house turned it over. Footmen and maids and figures from the village I had never seen before were coming and going, sweeping out rooms, restuffing mattresses, fixing chairs and whitewashing walls. It was too risky for me to venture outside; each night, Sarah would bring me a jug of water and a jug of wine, a little food, some meat if I was lucky, and a new candle.

That night I hadn’t even gotten to sleep. Some minor transgression from my past gnawed at my soul, and I was accounting for it. The spring sunshine had released the smell of the oak from the floorboards, I remember that much. I lay there, shirtless, as I heard the unmistakable gait of her ladyship upon the stairs. As I went to my hole, and peered, I saw John, the second footman, waiting at the end of the corridor. I watched her approach to tell him his nightly duties. I watched him stuff his hands between her legs and begin to frig. I watched her drop to her knees and remove from his breeches a fine, stiff prick. I didn’t know it was possible to do as she did, less still that she seemed in thrall to it, bewitched even. He drops his britches and pulls loose his shirt, and stands there like a colossus looking down upon here as she slurps and laps in worship at his rod. His skin is firm and changed by the sun. Mine is white and cold to the touch in the dark. He whispers his secret liturgy to the stars beyond the window. Like an anchoress, I looked upon this black mass, but still, I knelt, I prayed.

They love God, not me. I merely remind them of him. Through a glass, darkly. At least that is my job. But perhaps my presence is as intermittent as his. I wonder if the good Lord took me in my sleep, whether they would ever remember me. Perhaps I am an anchoress. Perhaps this priesthole is my bed and my tomb. But they love God enough to love me, and hide me here, whispering in advance for the eternal repose of their soul, which they say they want, and for the return of a Catholic to the throne of England, which I know they want. That is a love to the point of death: theirs and mine. There is no authority to whom I can report their iniquity except the Lord himself, and as I have said, they are already his lovers.

What could I do? What can I do? I can only stay, and preach, and hope. And listen. And now, look. John again. Mid autumn. The harvest collected, new smells in the chimney, and an apple dropped with my food into my little cell. I am the heart of this home. I know of the sin before I hear the confession. The house beats and the heart feels it. John is addressing my Lordship. I can tell his tone is impertinent. Yet no flash of anger on my Lordship’s face. Perhaps improper? Does my Lord know? Is an adulterer confessing to an adulterer, like I, the confessor, confessed to my own confessor? Forgive me, my Lord, for fornicating with your wife? What is that curl of the lips? The laugh from my Lord. His hand on John’s ribs. John’s hips. John’s cock. I see. So it is; a home containing all the sins of the Decameron. And on the staircase, my Lordship bends himself, his breeches dropped to the floor, and right before my own little hole, a detestable sin of sodomy, the leering face of the lord, a hand gripping his cock, the sweat pouring across his fat belly, between his legs John’s barbarian balls, and through my hole a single shaft of light that illuminates my face as I hear the grunts and smell the sodomy and see the seed spilled on the ground.

But I too am a fugitive from God. A single shaft of light has penetrated this room, so unexpected, and something I tried to evade has found me in the darkness. So here, after mass, after the last fires have been raked out, after the windows are shuttered and the doors barred, in this house of good and faithful Catholic penitents, I lie, and I listen, and I taste, and I sin with myself.

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