"Pursuit Among the Ruins"

This short story is a prequel of sorts to my novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair.

The Context

“Pursuit Among the Ruins” is a new short story about the early life of Benedict Aquila, the God-haunted friend of Kate Montclair from my novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair (Chrism Press 2023). The story comprises an episode from Benedict’s schooldays at Holy Rood College, an independent, all-male Catholic boarding school in the Yorkshire Dales. What could possibly inspire the alienated and atheistic Benedict to go on a four-day Easter pilgrimage to the ruined medieval abbeys of Yorkshire? Her name is Dolores. She is a student at Holy Rood’s sister school, Immaculate Heart of Mary, who, with some other IHM girls, has joined the group of Holy Rood boys for the pilgrimage. But the reasons why Benedict finds Dolores attractive are inscrutable—most of all to himself. She is “plainer than the plainest nun,” or “spectacularly unspectacular,” according to the official dormitory lexicon. Yet she seems to Benedict to be protecting a mysterious hidden life, and in his desire to plumb that mystery, Benedict is drawn into a most surprising encounter among the ruins of Whitby Abbey—an encounter in which we can detect the spark of Benedict’s later, adult preoccupation with the renovation of ancient buildings and, more significantly, with the Shadow in that toppled sanctuary that seems both to reject and to pursue him.

Here’s the .epub file of the story for you to download and then upload onto your preferred digital reading device.