Evensong

“It tumbled out of the container. A dead body. Been kept in cold storage. Forensics have done all the preliminary checks—DNA, dentition, retinas, fingerprints—and it’s unmistakeable.” She hesitated, and went on. “Features are unmistakeable too: the build, the hands.”

Gaetano rounded on Anwar. “So you really did it! I said I didn’t think I’d see him again. We will have an accounting, Anwar.”

“No,” Arden said, “it wasn’t Proskar’s body...”

Anwar froze.

“...it was Parvin Marek’s. And he’s been dead for at least three years.”

TEN: OCTOBER 10 - 14, 2060

1

Olivia was given the news about Marek as soon as Anwar got it,in the early morning of October 10.Her reaction was quiet, almost uninterested. It was, of course, a story from the past that had no reason to concern her as personally as it concerned Rafiq or anyone else from UNEX. But she told Anwar, after a short pause, “I need to be sure you’ll stay until the summit’s over.”

“I already told you—”

“Tell me again.”

“Yes. I’ll stay.”

“Until the summit’s over.”

“Yes. You know I won’t walk out on a mission.”

“I’m taking tonight’s Evensong service in the Cathedral. I want you there. I’m giving the sermon.”

The news spread like wildfire: she was actually taking a service. She hardly ever took services, at least not routine ones like Evensong.

The media attention was huge. Reporters packed the Cathedral.Someone (Olivia herself, or the New Anglicans’ PR people) had told them it would be her biggest public statement since the Room For God broadcast. The Cathedral filled up. Gaetano and several of his staff were placed strategically, and Anwar had chosen an aisle seat in the pews, five rows from the front.

She wasn’t known for observing details of ceremony and ritual,andhalfthecongregation(themediahalf)werehoping for her to slip up somewhere and give them some good footage. She didn’t, though. She took the service impeccably.

The choir was singing the evening’s first psalm. She recognised the words from other Evensongs at other churches. The New Anglicans had regular Evensongs. She’d seen to that after the one she attended at Rochester Cathedral five years ago. She remembered meeting Michael Taber there. A nice man, and also very smart. She’d seen him only a few days earlier on her banks of screens, when Rochester Cathedral was occupied.

For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter.

He shall defend thee under his wings,

And thou shalt be safe…

October had turned cold and grey. No copper evening sunlight. A biting wind, a choppy pewter sea. The effect of the cold evening light on the Cathedral’s white and silver interior, the plain pale wood, the altar with its plain silver cross on which no figure was nailed, was to turn it colder.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace...

The words of the Nunc Dimittis always sounded like they should be the closing words, but they weren’t; there were some responses and collects, and then a brief silence during which the noises from Brighton’s foreshore could be dimly heard as she walked up to deliver her sermon. The New Anglicans didn’t do pulpits; she simply stood, a small figure in a dark red velvet dress, in the space before the altar where Anwar had fought Bayard and Proskar and six others, and where she’d ridiculed him. And where he’d met her on October 6. She spoke without notes.

“These last few days, I’ve found an unexpected companion. Someone who’s shown me some unexpected things. This companion told me recently I should hate our enemies less and understand them more.”

Anwar felt a thrill go through him.

“I was walking along the seafront, past those arches between here and the Palace Pier, and past some arcades with games. There was one where things popped up and you had to knock them down with a rubber mallet, only for others to pop up, also to be knocked down. My companion asked ‘Remind you of fundamentalists?’”

There was a faint ripple of laughter in the congregation.

“Yes, that’s how I should have reacted, but I didn’t. I went into a rant about fundamentalists everywhere. Filth, I called them, and scum. ‘I hate their beliefs,’ I said, ‘more than I love mine.’ My companion said, ‘If you hated them less and understood them more, maybe even more people would support you. Including some of them.’”

She looked around the Cathedral. The sounds of the Brighton foreshore and the gulls and the sea, which had been waiting outside for just such a moment, crept into the Cathedral as she stopped speaking.

She knew exactly where Anwar was sitting and carefully avoided looking in his direction when she went on. “That was important for me. More important than my companion suspected. It’s come back to me several times since. And for several different reasons, some of which I’ll share with you this evening.”