With ineffable gratitude in his soul, he trudged upstairs to pack a bag.
Aquinas House stood in a shallow valley hidden deep in the Forest of Dean.
Adam had spent the month of August in prayer and anguished efforts at atonement. If he’d known how to make a hair shirt, he would have done so. Instead, he spent three hours at a stretch on his knees on the cold stone floor of the chapel. He fasted for three days out of every seven. He went on long forest walks, letting the brambles scratch him and the nettles sting, never stopping until he was physically incapable of moving any further. Then he would lie where he was and sleep until he was able to walk back.
He struggled daily with the knowledge of what he had done. He had gone to Julia, night after night, and given in to the lusts of the flesh. Yet when he tried to think back to how it had happened, what had been the moment of fatal weakness, he could never put his finger on it. How had he fallen, so far and so fast? It was witchcraft. There could be no other explanation.
‘Lord, deliver me from this evil woman,’ he prayed. ‘Turn her away from her sin and direct her to the path of righteousness. I failed to do so. I was weak and I became her vessel. Oh, how shall I ever atone?’
Kneeling, naked from the waist up, he reached beneath the bed that took up most of his Spartan cell and found the instrument he had made from a handful of birch rods, bound together with twine. He whipped it over his shoulder, letting the branches swoop down on his back, establishing a dull, painful rhythm, carrying on past the point where he thought he could bear it, until he broke down in tears and fell on his face on the floor.
After perhaps an hour, he stood up shakily, put on his shirt and jacket and went out into the forest.
He hadn’t walked far when he became aware of sounds behind him – twigs snapping on the forest floor, a cough. He was being followed.
He turned around and groaned with dismay.
‘Evie. What are you doing here?’
‘Why did you leave us? I’ve had to call in a few favours to find out where you were.’
‘I needed some time. Saxonhurst … Well, it’s not a healthy place for me to be.’
‘It’s healthier than that holy prison up the road.’
‘I fell into an abyss. I’m trying to find my way out.’
‘That’s very poetic, Adam.’ She stepped closer.
Dear Lord, she was even more beautiful than before. Autumn was in the air, and she wore tight jeans and a figure-hugging long-sleeved T-shirt, a headscarf making a nominal effort to tame her mass of dark curls. A jewel flashed on the right side of her nose and her lips were plumper, her eyes brighter, her skin more touchable than ever.
He sat down on a felled tree trunk, winded.
‘Why have you come?’
‘I missed you. Came back from France, couldn’t wait to see you. Ran all the way to the vicarage, but you weren’t there. Aunty said you’d gone on retreat. Retreat from what? From me?’
She sat down beside him.
If she touches me, I am lost.
‘From Saxonhurst,’ he said. ‘The most godless village in England. They weren’t wrong.’
‘We have our gods. Our own ones.’
‘I can’t work with that, Evie. Polytheists. Witches. Heathens. That’s all Saxonhurst is made of. It’s no place for a man of God.’
‘You’re saying you want to leave?’
‘I think that’s the decision I’ve been building up to, these last weeks. God has shown me that I don’t have the strength to prevail in that place. He has showed me my weakness … I pray every hour of the day for His forgiveness, that I might be made worthy. But I will have to prove myself in some other arena. Saxonhurst has defeated me.’
Evie, who had been smiling and shaking her head, suddenly looked anxious, pale beneath her tan.
‘No, Adam, you ain’t defeated. You needed a rest, that’s clear. But you’ll come back stronger and you’ll build up that congregation. I’ll round up some of the locals, get them down the church next Sunday.’
‘Church attendance is immaterial. They have to have true faith, or it’s meaningless.’
‘They just need time, that’s all. They’ll come round. Get a choir together, some good rousing hymns. They love a bit of singing. Have a jumble sale.’