Gibbous House 28

Both Maccabi and I, for differing reasons, were reluctant to impose on the churchman’s hospitality. For myself, I failed to see any practical disposition of the Vicarage’s two bedrooms between the three gentlemen and the young woman. No discernable comfort could be found in the cramped accommodations of the parlour. Harbinger was insistent, he proposed overnighting himself in the vestry, as he had done in the past. My counter proposal was that I should avail myself of that part of the church, wishing neither to be so closely accommodated with the jew, nor another night interrupted by devotions of the devout, diverting as the last had been. Once posited, this plan was accepted. I remarked with interest the admixture of distress and delight at the arrangement on Maccabi’s features. One could only surmise as to its cause.

At midnight, I found myself in the cramped room that was the vestry. Vestments hung from hooks in the absence of an armoire. Also deficient was any kind of strongbox: the church’s entire collection of plate was in a brass bound chest, whose key was conveniently in the padlock. It turned easily. The hasp was not so compliant. The plate itself was a disappointment, tarnished and thin. I contented myself with removing the communion chalice and filling it from one of the bottles of red wine, neatly stacked on the floor in the corner. It was no fine vintage, rather something bottled in a wooden outbuilding on a Breton farm, rough as the callouses on a grape picker’s hands. Perhaps in transmogrification the flavour would improve, but I doubted it.

Once again my mind returned to John Brown’s behaviour, he had seemed most desirous of confirming yet not confirming my identity as Alasdair Moffat. How could he possibly know anything of Alasdair Moffat’s antecedents? I thought back to the peculiar circumstances of Alasdair Moffat’s death and resurrection in me. It was not possible that the notary could know of events in far off Edinburgh.

It was true that the man then named Aladair Moffat had educated me, and well. That was indeed the name with which the lunatic had entered bedlam. When I became his companion during his stay in the hospital, he used many names. He remained totally convinced of their validity. I learned something of the Greeks from Socrates and Alexander, experienced the grandeur that was Rome from Martial, Trajan and Hadrian. Figures of high culture paraded through the sick man’s psyche, Michelangelo among them, more recent historical figures too. I learned far more than I wished about James I and the Duke of Buckingham. This chameleon’s education had been such as would have graced a Newton or any polymath. Yet the man was only six years my senior, although I was of a height with him. In fact, we were most remarkable similar in outward appearance, sufficiently so as to make one think us cousins of such consanguinity as to prohibit the relations we had in the latter days, were we man and woman.