Page 28 of Malady

I smile at him with far too much enthusiasm. “Gideon.”

“What are you doing in here?” he asks.

“I was just… I was—uh—praying,” I say quickly. “The churchyard is hardly quiet at present, what with the penitents and half of Beswick gathering to watch men flay their own backs, so I thought I might find somewhere a little quieter.” My eyes dart around the paper-stacked room. “Somewhere that… felt like you.”

A tired smile tugs at his lips. ”You should have come to me,” he says softly. “You never have to hide yourself away if you want to pray, Ophi. I would sit with you for as long as you need.”

“I know.” I force my expression into something resembling embarrassment, which requires remarkably little acting by this point. “I just wanted to try it by myself first.”

He crosses the chamber towards me, still smiling. “And what have you got there?”

Before I can think of a convincing answer, he catches my hands and draws them gently around from behind my back, bringing De Natura Daemonum with them. His smile falters as he turns the book enough to read the faded title across the cover.

“Although,” he says, “I might have suggested beginning somewhere other than demonology.”

I follow his gaze to the book, feigning my own surprise at discovering it there. “It was nearby.”

Gideon raises his eyes to mine. “It was halfway up the second shelf.”

Ah.

“Then perhaps… Perhaps I was drawn to it?”

He laughs quietly and takes the book from my hands, returning it to its place among the assorted horrors I’ve just disturbed.

“If you wanted somewhere that felt like me, you might have saved yourself the trouble and simply come to me,” he says. “Come through. Brother Leon left pottage warming in the kitchen. I’ll bring us some, and you can tell me what you were hoping to find.”

Before I can decide whether there is any graceful way to flee, he disappears through the vestry.

A short while later, I’m sitting opposite him at a little table with a bowl of thin pottage between my hands and a heel of bread hard enough to crack a tooth.

“Where would you like to begin?” he asks, tearing his own bread in half. “There are passages Mother loved. Father’s old psalter is here somewhere too, if you would rather begin with something familiar.”

“Oh.” I had not anticipated options.

“Mother always liked the Psalms when she was troubled. Do you remember? She used to read⁠—”

“No, no.” I stop him before he can rise and return with some cherished relic of our childhood. “Please, sit. Just give me a moment.”

He does, though the brightness in his face does not lessen as he shovels down a spoonful of pottage and waits. My gaze drifts to the moth throwing itself against the stained-glass window above the hearth, its wings battering blindly against Saint Michael’s blue robes before it drops to the sill and tries again.

“I think…” I begin carefully. “I would rather understand the… enemy.”

His spoon pauses halfway to his mouth. “The enemy?”

“The evil behind all of this. The thing we are supposed to be praying against.” I watch a piece of turnip circle the bowl. “I already know what I can do for the body. Perhaps I ought to properly know what I’m fighting beyond it as well.”

The pride in his face is almost unbearable. “You want to learn about the Devil.”

“His works,” I correct quickly. “Demons. Whatever might prey upon people when they are weak or dying. If I’m going to fight this pestilence with everything I have, then I may as well understand what you believe is working against us.”

Gideon sets down his spoon. “Was it the penitents? It was the penitents, wasn’t it?”

I hesitate. “The penitents?”

“Seeing them today stirred something in you, didn’t it?” He leans closer. “Watching men offer their own flesh in penance, seeing the parish pray together—perhaps you finally understood that there are battles medicine alone cannot touch.”

That is certainly one interpretation of what happened.