Mercy Read Online Free Page A

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    With the housekeeper finally quiet above him in her room, August ceases pacing and spreads out his arms. His bedroom is too big. Seminary life has shaped him for narrow sleep—seven years in a room three paces by five—not to mention his bedroom at home, hardly more than a closet, with its rattling window and paper-thin walls.
    He reaches distractedly for his bible. Perhaps
Proverbia
. Crossing to the window, he thumbs to a random verse.
    Numquid potest homo abscondere ignem in sino suo, Ut vestimenta illius non ardeant? Can a man hide fire in his bosom, and his garments not burn?
    He lets the book fall shut, trapping his thin finger in place. The crown of her head. Her creamy lace veil and, beneath it, the part in her auburn hair. It seemed so innocent somehow, that milk-white line of scalp.
    He cracks the Old Testament again, skips back to a previous passage, his finger skimming for instruction, the comfort of a judicial tone.
    Sit vena tua benedicta— Let thy vein be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth: Let her be thy dearest hind, and most agreeable fawn: let her breasts inebriate thee at all times—
    He sits down hard on his over-plump bed, feeling it swell up to smother his thighs. A shadow rises up at the back of his mind.
Fine words from Solomon
, it asserts darkly.
Three hundred concubines and twice as many wives
.

3
GLORIFICAMUS TE
(
we glorify thee
)
    T he first Saturday, the penitents come out in droves, confession spanning the long afternoon, the lineup snaking slowly through the box. August is snug in his shadowy half—nodding, murmuring, raising his bony hand. So far, so good. Already he’s plotting a map of the parish, charting weak spots and fortresses, soul by sinning soul.
    Between two voices he presses his eye to the slit in the confessional door. The nave is a mosaic of light. At least a dozen are still waiting, not counting the lone woman seated in a pew, a triangle of head scarf bent in prayer. August squints hard. Is it—?
    As if in answer, Mathilda shifts in her seat, drops gracefully down to the kneeler and, in a brief, fluid gesture, holds her rosary up to the light. The palest of pale blue glass. Like beads of water suspended from her hand.
    “Bless me Father for I have sinned—” A boy’s small voice comes filtering through the screen. “Father? Are you there?”
    After the boy, a series of nameless transgressors. August has trouble following their breathy admissions, finds himself counting,
six down, six to go
. Finally,glimpsed again through his peephole, Mathilda rises.
    The moment she draws the confessional door shut, he finds himself swamped by a familiar smell. It’s not her meadowy wedding scent. Today she exudes dark spices and silvery herbs, rubbed together with plenty of fat.
    “Bless me Father,” she begins, “for I have sinned.”
    He mumbles the blessing in response, his hand floating up to sign her with the Cross.
Sausages
. The butcher must have made a fresh batch. She could be wearing a garland of them, so undeniably strong is the smell.
    They were August’s boyhood specialty, served up by themselves on those nights when his mother was too worn out to cook. He’d push a chair up to the stove and stand on the seat, pricking and turning them, feeling them spit back at him from the heavy black pan.
    “Since my last confession, which was four weeks ago, before Father Rock—well, anyway, since that time, I accuse myself of these sins …” She trails off.
    At seminary, sausages were the rarest of treats. Short, wrinkled fingers, they were a poor substitute for the fat, farm-style links of home. Even so, they inspired such a fierce desire that August thought it best to give them up. He became known for stoically rolling his portion to the rim of his plate. His fellow seminarians waited for this signal, surrounding him like young warriors, brandishing their shiny forks.
    “I told a lie, Father,” Mathilda says finally.
    “A lie?”
    She