Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) by C. C. Benison Page B

at her son. Her upturned mouth, her delicate nose, her large, wide-set eyes were so finely rendered that she seemed less a symbolic representation of the feminine than a highly individuated woman, capturedin a moment of pure maternal joy. He sighed a little, earlier trepidation vanished, affected not only by the loveliness of this exquisite representation of Madonna and Child, but by a stinging of his own loss. Mary had been his first adoptive mother’s name. Had she ever held him like that? And what of his natural mother? Had she? Or had he been torn from her minutes after his birth? Liverpool: Marguerite had slipped him a clue to his natural parentage. Liverpool. How … odd.
    He put the thought aside and glanced past the statue to the bordering hedge, deeply scalloped here, each cool shadowy lunation embracing a rounded wooden bench, suited to rest after the journey, and to contemplation. He had thought centres of labyrinths ought best be holy absences, places to fill with one’s own thoughts, and wondered a little at Lord Fairhaven’s conspicuous expression of his Roman Catholicism. Was it even a good marketing strategy in a nation of nominal Protestants? But the sculpture held an irresistible power he was sure others felt. He turned his thoughts to Morning Prayer, the General Confession slipping easily onto his tongue:
    Almighty and most merciful Father
,
    We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep
,
    We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts
,
    We have offended against Thy holy laws
,
    We have left undone those things which we ought to have done
,
    And we have done those things which we ought not to have done …
     
    Tom paused in his recitation, the last words sinking like stones into his soul.
“And we have done those things which we ought not to have done,”
he intoned again, his voice this time fallen to a murmur. He shifted his weight on his crutch and continued:
    And there is no health in us: But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders
.
     
    Tom paused again, the severity of the avowal
—there is no health in us
—reminding him, with a ridiculous literalness, of his ankle. Twenty minutes of hobbling with crutches was wearing. He would sit to finish Morning Prayers.
    He made to twist around to move to the nearest bench, one behind him, which sat in the deepest shadow. Six lunations, he counted as his eyes circled past, a rosette pattern. What delightful symmetry! His eyes fell first on a torch left on the ground, switched on still, its feeble light casting a pallid arc no match for the rising sun’s. And then his gaze travelled to what seemed at first glance a large grey heap marring the perfection of the scene. Puzzled, fears rekindled that some creature had indeed penetrated the Labyrinth by defiling its boundary, he moved closer, steeling himself for some sort of unpleasant confrontation, and peered into the gloom at the base of the bench. It was no animal, but a man. Oliver, he realised with a shock when he peered closer, noting the rumple of red hair, the idiosyncratic needlework at the neck of hisshirt. One arm was wedged against the base of the bench, the other flopped forwards, the kufi hat just beyond the reach of clawed fingers. Tom gazed upon the sight unbelievingly for the time it took another jackdaw to sound his alarm, battling a wave of nausea. Oliver fforde-Beckett, seventh Marquess of Morborne, wasn’t sacked out, sleeping off some night of drunken debauchery. No snores, no guttural snorts, competed with the bird’s call. Lord Morborne wasn’t asleep at all.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     

 
    “ J ane!”
    “ ’Morning, Tom!” Lady Kirkbride’s arm lifted in a cheery wave as she jogged along the lawn, Bonzo loping in her wake.
    “Jane!” Tom shouted again, urgently. She had disappeared behind a grove of trees and would soon vanish down the road to the Gatehouse and the village if she were not diverted. “Would you come over