Angels in the Architecture by Sue Fitzmaurice

were cast down to the ground, he kept his firm embrace about his young brother’s shoulders. What they had come to rely on was no longer. In its place was a new reliance, on himself and his authority and power to keep intact and unassailed this small company of youths. This new exigency seared into him and he knew that some position as this had been ordained and fixed in his birthright, and he assumed it now as a load, with all the obligation and guilt that implied. He no longer had a father or mother. He eschewed their place in the narrow vista of his world view, erasing them as if from a sketch.
    ‘C’ mon, Dem. There’s a long walk to take. There’s hope I s’pose we’ll sleep over friary tonight ‘n’ take to cathedral tomorra’.’
    ‘We’ve no water anythin’ to sup on way, Gree.’ Dem’s fear and surprise was still apparent in his voice and face.
    ‘Nothin’ for it, Dem, as to keep movin’ now. We’ll manage.’ He could see his brothers already finding purchase for their souls with their eldest brother’s reassurance.
    ‘D’ya think this is doin’ of dead swan, Gree? Is anybody’d say t’were, all earth rumblin’s and what-no’. ‘S’got be some’t in i’, don’ ya think, Gree?’ ‘S’no’ roight we’re a-goin’ off loi’ this, is i’? ‘S loik i’s forever an’ no way art’iv i’. Whoi, Gree, whoi?’
    But Gree couldn’t explain to his brother, even if he’d had words to do it. He felt that some shadowy force unknown had crashed into their lives and turned things on their end. He had only one training in his life, only one way to respond, which was to go as directed and without query, because query anyway did not draw much breath in their world.
    As the boys traipsed on to the thin road, turning towards the town, Geoffrey took his arm from his brother’s shoulder and trod on, walking between his brothers, ready to place a reassuring arm about them again if there was need. It was for certain there would be.
     
     
    Inside their small house, Gamel Warriner had sat down in a large chair by his hearth and stayed there staring into the ashes. He had few choices with which he could assert control of his own life and had been forced to exercise one of those now, or so he thought best, to make clear quickly and definitively the way things were to be. If a direction and rule were to be set, then best he have a part in it and make it his own. That at least would secure him some place of certainty and strength in his own existence.
    Alice sat Thomas inside a padded wooden enclosure, away from his father. She’d had her husband and sons build this to keep Thomas in when she didn’t feel she could always watch him. He was happy here, as though the close walls of its surrounds gave him a particular warmth and security. Old cloth was knotted around wooden slats to prevent Thomas from harming himself when he came to bang his head repeatedly as he did some evenings. Was he tired at the end of the day to make him hurt himself, or was it the noise of so many that somehow provoked him? Alice didn’t know, but she wouldn’t have him bruised, nor would she tie him up to prevent it either, as some had told her she should.
    She searched her small house, its divisions and its corners, for any menial task to which she could apply herself with force and dedication, if just to slow a pain capable of slicing her in pieces from overtaking her ability to act or speak, not least since to speak, to speak up, was not a right available to her. Spying a long brush, she began an earnest motion to and fro that may ultimately have promised to clear the floor clean away, and she remained at this activity till the dust and the day’s heat forced her back out to the air outside, where only a short time since her reality had been less dark than she found it now.
    When laughter came from a small way away to her ears, a slim and tenuous ray of light briefly showed itself in her soul before fluttering away as