A Story from Yorkshire
Benedict Aquila returns in this prequel, yet standalone, short story to The Good Death of Kate Montclair
What could possibly inspire the alienated and atheistic Benedict Aquila--a student at Holy Rood College, an independent, all-male Catholic boarding school in the Yorkshire Dales--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, and with some other IHM girls, Dolores 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. 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.
“Pursuit Among the Ruins” is a new short story about the early life of Benedict Aquila, the friend of Kate Montclair from Daniel McInerny’s novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair (Chrism Press 2023).
It’s a standalone story, however, so if you haven’t yet read the novel, that’s okay.
Paid subscribers can enjoy the entirety of “Pursuit Among the Ruins” below. The ebook is also available here on Amazon.
Wet from the rain, in excited, chatty groups of two and three, the student-pilgrims returned to the coach after the restroom and tea break in York. Now the perpetual scent of chewing gum was mixed with the dank smell of damp clothing, the aroma of Earl Grey from paper teacups, and the savory fragrances of the sausage rolls that several of the boys were still cramming into their mouths.
Benedict sat by a window, alone, in the middle of the coach, listening to Bob Dylan’s Hard Rain on cassette through his Walkman. He had gone into the tea shop to buy a bag of mini scones, but then had quickly returned to the coach to write his diary.
A moment ago one of the holy rollers, I think his name is Tamplin, asked me if I had a rosary—because apparently Father Catesby is going to lead us in the rosary after we get rolling again. I told him that I customarily use my toes. He just gaped at me like I was barking….I should be more careful. Won’t do to blow my cover just yet. Not that I think Father Catesby is fooled. He knows I used to float along the fringes of Parker’s Boys. I wonder what Parker would say if he could see me now? ‘Are you out of your mind, Aquila, going on pilgrimage with the holy rollers? Was it for this that we dragged ourselves out of the ooze of the Dark Ages? Oh, it’s a girl, is it? So—what do you expect you’ll talk about together? The Spanish Inquisition? Or perhaps the Galileo Affair?’
This has all been a mistake. She’s blown me off once already. What makes me think she’s going to want to talk to me now? Maybe’s she’s twigged that I’m not one of the fold? Besides, if I’m going to be stuck with this lot for four days, why not focus my energies on someone worth looking at? Hannah Brierly, for instance. She’s not too bad at all. She dated Will Gilchrist for a while last year, so how holy could she be?
The loud Yorkshire accents of Harry, their coach driver, disrupted the movement of Benedict’s thoughts. He looked up and saw Father Catesby and Miss Weston, huddled around Harry in his driver’s seat, talking about the weather report from Whitby.
“They said on the radio that it’s been torrential along the coast for days,” Harry was saying. “I suspect the abbey grounds will be flooded.”
“That will make for a mess of an afternoon,” Father Catesby said.
“What’ll we do, then?” Miss Weston asked him.
Father Catesby considered the question. “What if we changed up the itinerary, Harry, and did Rievaulx Abbey this afternoon? Maybe the North Moors aren’t as flooded as the coast. Then tomorrow we could go out to Whitby.”
Harry shrugged. “You’d have to call and change all your bookings.”
“You could use the phone in the tea shop,” Miss Weston suggested.
“Wait! Are we not going on to Whitby today?”
It was her. Tall, gangly, unworldly, standing on the top step of the stairs, gaping at Father Catesby and Miss Weston with panic in her eyes.
It startled Benedict, and not for the first time, to realize how plain she was. Plainer than the plainest nun. A plainness not helped by the fact that, as usual, she wore no make-up, and that she had pulled her hair back tightly off her puffy, tired face in a cruel knot. There were pink swollen circles around her eyes, as if she were having an allergic reaction to Father Catesby’s idea to postpone Whitby Abbey until the next day. Her name was Dolores. She was “spectacularly unspectacular,” according to the official dormitory lexicon. But Benedict, for reasons he could not begin to understand, was transfixed by her.
Taken aback by her reaction, Father Catesby nonetheless smiled at the girl. “I’m just wondering, Dolores, given that Whitby’s likely flooded, if we might do better seeing Rievaulx today and Whitby tomorrow.”
“But we’re supposed to see Whitby today!”
“I know, but—”
“I was counting on it. You said we were going to Whitby today!”
She had the whole coach’s attention now. Benedict wondered at the panic in her eyes. What did it matter if they saw Whitby today or tomorrow—or any day, for that matter? There were ruined medieval churches all over Yorkshire, one as useless as the next.
Father Catesby continued to smile pleasantly at Dolores, but Benedict could tell that he was busy scanning her illogical response for its subtext. Finally, he said to her in a calm, soothing voice: “Of course. It’s madness, anyway, to try to rearrange our bookings. If the abbey grounds are flooded, we’ll see the town in the afternoon and then try to see the abbey in the morning.”
Without so much as a ‘thank you’ Dolores stalked down the aisle to her lonely seat on the bench at the very back of the coach. As she swept by him, Benedict noticed that she was still clutching her book, The Story of A Soul. She no doubt had preferred to read in solitude over her tea rather than talk to the other girls.
A moment later, as Father Catesby came down the aisle making his head count of the student-pilgrims, he suddenly spun and sat down in the open seat next to Benedict. Benedict lifted up one of his earphones, and Father Catesby bent his head and said in a low voice:
“Her mother’s ill, you see. Cancer. You might be a knight in shining armor, Benedict, and go talk to her. She could use a friend.”
Father Catesby returned to his head count, leaving Benedict to debate the prospect in his diary.
Why did Father C. want me to go talk to her? I suppose because he thinks she’s just about my speed. She does look a horror-show today. Obviously woke up too late to wash her hair. Do I simply say, ‘I heard your mum is ill’? Or is that just too weird?
Why am I wasting time on this nonentity????
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