The Keys of the Kingdom Read Online Free

enter Holywell, the famous Catholic college in Northern Scotland, to study for the priesthood. With Francis he served the altar at St Columba’s. Frequently he was to be found kneeling in church, his big eyes fervent with tears. Visiting nuns patted him on the head. He was acknowledged, with good reason, as a truly saintly boy.
    ‘We’ll have a procession,’ he said. ‘ In honour of St Julia. This is her feast day.’
    Nora clasped her hands. ‘Let’s pretend her shrine is by the laurel bushes. Shall we dress up?’
    ‘No.’ Anselm shook his head. ‘ We’re praying more than playing. But imagine I’m wearing a cope and bearing a jewelled monstrance. You’re a white Carthusian Sister. And Francis, you’re my acolyte. Now, are we all ready?’
    A sudden qualm swept over Francis. He was not of the age to analyse his relationships; he only knew that, though Anselm claimed him fervently as his best friend, the other’s gushing piety evoked in him a curious painful shame. Towards God he had a desperate reserve. It was a feeling he protected without knowing why, or what it was, like a tender nerve, deep within his body. When Anselm burningly declared in the Christian Doctrine class ‘I love and adore our Saviour from the bottom of my heart’, Francis, fingering the marbles in his pockets, flushed a deep dark red, went home sullenly from school and broke a window.
    Next morning when Anselm, already a seasoned sick-visitor, arrived at school with a cooked chicken, loftily proclaiming the object of his charity as Mother Paxton, – the old fishwife, sere with hypocrisy and cirrhosis of the liver, whose Saturday-night brawls made the Cannelgate a bedlam, – Francis, possessed, visited the cloakroom during class and opened the package, substituting for the delicious bird – which he consumed with his companions – the decayed head of a cod. Anselm’s tears, and the curses of Meg Paxton, had later stirred in him a deep dark satisfaction.
    Now, however, he hesitated, as if to offer the other boy an opportunity of escape. He said slowly: ‘Who’ll go first?’
    ‘Me, of course,’ Anselm gushed. He took up his position as leader. ‘Sing, Nora: Tantum Ergo.’
    In single file, at Nora’s shrill pipe, the procession moved off. As they neared the laurel bushes Anselm raised his clasped hands to heaven. The next instant he stepped through the paper and squelched full-length in the mud.
    For ten seconds no one moved. It was Anselm’s howl as he struggled to get up that set Nora off. While Mealey blubbered clammily, ‘It’s a sin, it’s a sin!’ she hopped about laughing, taunting wildly. ‘Fight, Anselm, fight. Why don’t you hit Francis?’
    ‘I won’t, I won’t,’ Anselm bawled. ‘I’ll turn the other cheek.’
    He started to run home. Nora clung deliriously to Francis – helpless, choking, tears of laughter running down her cheeks. But Francis did not laugh. He stared in moody silence at the ground. Why had he stooped to such inanity while his father walked those hostile Ettal causeways? He was still silent as they went in to tea.
    In the cosy front room, where the table was already set for the supreme rite of Scots hospitality, with best china and all the electroplate the little household could muster, Francis’ mother sat with Aunt Polly, her open rather earnest face a trifle flushed from the fire, her stocky figure showing an occasional stiffening towards the clock.
    Now, after an uneasy day, shot equally with doubt and reassurance, – when she told herself how stupid were her fears, – her ears were tuned acutely for her husband’s step: she was conscious of an overwhelming longing for him. The daughter of Daniel Glennie, a small and unsuccessful baker by profession, and by election an open-air preacher, leader of his own singular Christian brotherhood in Darrow, that shipbuilding town of incomparable drabness which lies some twenty miles from the city of Tynecastle, she had, at eighteen, during